“Does killing turn you on, Annie?” he whispered, taunting. “Did it excite you to see someone die? To know that he’s dead because he tried to hurt you?”
She tried to pull away from him, appalled. But he held her against him, mocking, deriding. “Mary Margaret used to come when she killed someone. Did you know that women could do that? Maybe you’re more like your father than I thought.”
She was struggling in earnest now, desperate to get away from his cold, eerie voice, an odd mixture of Texas and Ireland. The eyes of death in a face of love. “Let me go,” she said in a tight, angry voice, pushing him, ignoring the pain in her arm.
“I never thought about it, but you might have untapped talents.” He ignored her struggles. “Win never killed, but he knew more about delivering death than anyone I’ve ever met. Maybe you’ve inherited his gift.”
“Stop it,” she cried, shoving him.
He let her go abruptly, setting her back down on the linoleum floor and moving out of her reach.
“Trust me, Annie, fucking a killer is highly overrated. You didn’t get off with Martin, did you?” He turned his back on her, dismissing her. “Go away, Annie. Go back to your little bedroom and thank God, if you happen to believe in him, that I let you escape.”
She didn’t move. “How do you know we’ll be safe? What if someone else comes after us tonight?”
“I’ll kill them too.” He waited, but she didn’t move, struggling between instinct and fear.
“Get the hell out of here!” he shouted in sudden fury, still not turning.
She left the kitchen. The hall was dark, the floor damp from a fresh scrubbing, and she shuddered as she walked, barefoot, where a man had died.
The bare lightbulb still shone from her tiny room, illuminating the narrow bed. She pulled the string, plunging the room into sullen darkness once more. And then she left, moving toward the other room.
It wasn’t much larger, and the furnishings were even more sparse. Just a big mattress on the dusty floor, an old flowered sheet on the bottom, a grimy-looking duvet on the top.
She stripped off the rest of her clothes, folded them neatly, and stacked them in the corner. Then she lay down beneath the duvet, shivering in the chill night air.
She wouldn’t have thought she would sleep. Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest; her fast-fleeting sense screamed that she was crazy. She ignored the shrill cries. She was here, naked, in his bed. There was no other reasonable place to be. It was that complicated, and that simple.
When she opened her eyes again, the first murky light of dawn was penetrating the room. She wasn’t alone.
James sat at the edge of the mattress, watching her out of brooding eyes. “You never listen, do you?” he said in a harsh whisper.
She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t say a word. He reached for the thin comforter, pulling it away from her naked body in the damp morning air. There was anger and something else in his cold blue eyes.
“Fuck it,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I’ve killed for you. I’ve earned you.” And he leaned over her, blotting out the light.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. The past few days had been filled with erotic dreams and guilty, sexual fantasies that she’d tried to deny. The moment he put his hands on her, everything changed.
He took her. With no words, no kisses, no sweet caresses. No foreplay, no seduction, no mutual dance of desire. He stripped off his clothes and took her with cool, merciless precision, holding her wrists against the thin mattress so she couldn’t wrap them around him, embrace him.
She was dry when he pushed inside her, and it hurt. She wanted to cry out in protest, in pleading, but she said nothing. She recognized the brutal, determined look on his face, the self-hatred and despair, as he thrust against her in silent, steady determination, and she closed her eyes, enduring it.
She was slippery then, and she realized with shock that when she turned off her mind, her body was aroused. Reacting. Responding. He was damp with sweat, muscles straining, as he fought to control himself and her, thrusting, pounding away with merciless intensity.
She bit her lip, hard, rather than utter a single protest. She felt herself softening, opening to him, and there was darkness waiting for her, just out of reach. It frightened her, and she struggled for a moment, longing for comfort and the familiarity of safe sex.
This was nothing she had ever known. Her mind, her soul were divorced from her body, and she seemed to be somewhere else, floating above their entwined bodies, looking down as James McKinley fucked her.
She didn’t want to react to him. She didn’t want to lose herself, but he took it anyway, stole her away, and the first orgasm hit her with the shock of a tidal wave, knocking her senseless.
She tried to cry out, but his hand covered her mouth, silencing her, and she tasted her own blood.
Another shock hit her, more powerful this time, and she could feel herself sliding, sliding toward that black pit. She fought, terrified, knowing that if she went over the edge she’d never come back, and there was no escape for her.
He stilled, his body rigid, the endless, passionless, determined thrusts still. His teeth were bared in a grimace, and she could feel his body convulse.
There was no saving herself. She fell, through a million starry heavens, over and over, into the pitch black night of endless death.
She was very cold. Shivering. Alone. She opened her eyes, panicked, but James lay beside her, atop the duvet, still breathing heavily from the aftermath of sex.
He’d thrown the comforter over her, but it didn’t help. She was chilled to the bone, so cold and lost she knew she’d never be warm again.
He turned his head to stare at her with bleak eyes. The light was stronger in the barren room now, and the planes and shadows of his face made him look like death.
“I warned you,” he said flatly.
“Yes.”
His eyes narrowed. Almost against his will his hand reached out and touched her mouth. It came away bloody.
“Did I do this to you?” There was no urgency in his voice, no emotion. Merely a calm question. And yet she knew the fate of everything rested on her answer.
“No,” she answered truthfully. “I bit my lip.”
He stared at his hand, at the faint trace of her blood on his fingertips. And then he brought it to his mouth, licking the blood.
He kissed her then, as she knew he would. He turned back, looming over her in the twilight, and feathered his lips against hers. When he pulled back her blood was on his mouth.
She wanted to close her eyes, to shut out the light, to shut him out. Her body felt beaten, lost, and her soul still wanted to float free. From him. From them.
But she kept her eyes wide as his mouth settled against her, open, hot, wet. He no longer imprisoned her wrists, and she put her arms up, around his neck, almost tentatively, afraid he might pull them away, afraid he might leave her, abandon her, when she could no longer deny how very much she needed him.
If he’d done this to prove her vulnerability, he’d succeeded. She felt helpless, and the only hope of strength, of survival, was James’s wet, hard mouth on hers.
She wouldn’t have thought of him as a man who liked to kiss. But he kissed her so skillfully, so thoroughly, that she felt the clawing need begin to build again. She needed his hands running up her torso, cupping her breasts. She needed the warmth of his big, hard body as he pushed her back against the sheets.
He was scarred. So many scars she was appalled. She could see them in the dim light, feel the ridges of stiff, keloidal tissue beneath her tentatively questing hands. People had tried to hurt him. Tried to kill him. And they’d almost succeeded far too many times.
She needed his voice. His words, but he was silent, his mouth busy trailing small, stinging kisses down her neck.
She needed his love, and that was the most terrifying thought of all. He was a man who couldn’t give love, he could give only death. The terr
or of that thought broke the erotic spell of his belated seduction, and she shoved him, desperate to escape.
He was much stronger than she was, and he could have ignored her struggles. Instead he released her instantly, moving away from her with the unconscious grace she’d always blinded herself to. She looked at him as fearlessly as she could, and saw a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
The fury that swept over her was so hot, so fast, so intense, it almost overshadowed the desperate hurt that pierced her heart. He looked at her, and the mocking amusement in his deepened to a cold, cynical chill.
“Do you want me to find you a gun?” he asked in a conversational voice.
If she’d said yes, he would have done it. Would have reached under the far comer of the mattress and pulled out his fully loaded 9mm Beretta and shown her how to use it. If she was at all like Win, at all like him, she would.
“Do you want me to kill you?” Her voice was barely audible, but she kept her head up, looking him defiantly in the eye. He suspected it was not so much confrontational bravery as a determination to avoid looking at his body. And that he was hard again, wanting her.
“Somebody’s going to sooner or later,” he said in a deliberate Texas drawl. “It might as well be someone who really wants to.”
“Stop it!” she cried hoarsely.
“Stop what?”
“The accent. The lies. Stop playing with me, twisting me around so that I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.”
“I believe you were coming a short while ago,” he murmured, wondering just how far he could push her.
He found out. She went for him in a scream of humiliated rage, hitting him, cursing him in words he wouldn’t have thought she knew, beating him with helpless fists.
He let her. He could have subdued her quickly, efficiently, any moment he chose, but he wanted to see how dangerous she could be in a mindless fury.
If he’d had any doubts about her training, it now vanished. She scratched him when he couldn’t catch her flailing arm, slapping him, yanking his hair, all the while cursing him under her breath as she struggled to escape his imprisoning hands.
The amusement palled before long, and he tightened his grip on her wrists, grinding the bones together until she fell back in shock and pain. He didn’t make the mistake of releasing her.
“You fight like a girl,” he said in a faintly taunting voice.
There were tears in Annie Sutherland’s furious blue eyes. The unshed glitter spilled over onto her pale face, and her slender body began to shake. He could see her struggle desperately for control, not to humiliate herself in front of him, but it was a losing battle.
And it was one battle he couldn’t withstand. “Jesus, Annie,” he said. “Don’t do this. Fight me.”
She looked up at him, her eyes drenched with tears. “I can’t anymore,” she said. “I can’t.”
He’d been impervious to women’s tears. Annie’s shattered him. He released her wrists and pulled her into his arms, and she went, awkwardly, willing, crawling into his lap as he held her, rocked her, stroking her damp hair, cradling her shivering body against his as he crooned to her, comforting, nonsense words from his childhood, a comfort he never expected to hear again in this life.
He kissed the salty tears from her cheeks, her jaw, her neck. And then he kissed her mouth, slowly at first, tasting her pain and despair. Tasting her desire.
He didn’t know whether he turned her in his arms, or whether she shifted herself. He only knew she was astride him, facing him, her long legs wrapped around his hips, and the kissing had gone long past comfort.
At some point she’d threaded her fingers through his long hair, and her hungry mouth told him things her words never would, stories of need and pain and death.
And love. She loved him. Worthless monster that he was, she loved him. She’d love him until she found out the truth.
But at that moment truth was a distant enemy, to be locked away for another time, another place.
She reached for him, awkward, eager, and he put his hand over hers, placing it on his cock, guiding it up into her.
She shuddered, closing her eyes and arching her back as he filled her, and her hands dug into his shoulders, hard, painful hands.
For a moment she didn’t move as the shivers of reaction danced across her creamy skin. She opened her eyes and stared into his face, and her eyes were dark with confusion and desire.
“Take me, Annie,” he whispered.
Her body tightened around his at the words, and he had to force himself not to react, not to take over.
He wasn’t surprised that she didn’t know what to do, that her movements were clumsy and uncertain. He knew far too much about her, including her sex life, and he knew she was frightened of what she was doing, what she was feeling. And he knew he could make her do anything he wanted, despite her fear.
She wanted him enough to conquer her misgivings, wanted him so much that it took his breath away as her body found a rhythm. Her skin grew slick with sweat, her nipples pebble hard, and he drank in her reactions, every quiver, every ripple, and reveled in it like a starving man.
Win’s ice princess was melting in a torrent of heat. Losing everything to him, as he’d warned her. And he dipped his head down, capturing one nipple between his teeth.
She climaxed immediately, violently, and it shocked him to realize he was there as well. He’d been too caught up in observing Annie Sutherland’s passion to keep his fierce control, and he was thrusting up into her, his hand fisted in her long hair, pressing her face against his shoulder as he lost himself in her.
She didn’t want to look up at him, face him, or what she’d done. Become. He let her disentangle herself, crawl away from him across the thin mattress and sink down, curling in on herself in a tight fetal ball. She made no sound whatsoever, and her eyes were shut.
She wasn’t asleep. But he found he could be merciful after all. It was still early—just a bit after five in the morning, and there was no sound from his jerry-rigged alarm system. If someone tried to break in, he’d hear them.
In the meantime he could do something very dangerous indeed. He could indulge himself.
He stared at her for another moment, then crossed the expanse of the mattress, lying down next to her and wrapping his body close around her.
He half expected her to protest, but she didn’t. As his arms crossed over her chest, pulling her back against him, he felt her tight, damp body relax.
And a moment later she slept.
Chapter Sixteen
“You can take a shower if you’ve a mind to.”
His words, flat and unemotional, pulled her out of a troubled sleep. The day was gray, dark, her body ached, and she didn’t want to look at him.
“All right,” she muttered under her breath, scrambling to her feet, the thin duvet clasped tightly around her body. He was blocking the doorway, and she had no choice but to glance in his direction.
He’d already showered and he had a mug in his hand. She had her dignity, but she also had her price. “Is that coffee?”
“Tea,” he said.
She’d been looking at a spot somewhere near his left shoulder, but his answer managed to startle her. “You don’t drink tea.”
“Not for twenty years. If you want a shower, you’d best take it now. We’re getting out of here in the next hour.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he echoed wearily, sipping his mug of tea. “Because the bodies in the shed will start to stink, and there are stray animals wandering the streets of this poor town, willing to eat anything they find. Not to mention that if those two came after us, others will as well.” He shrugged, moving away, dismissing her. “Be ready or I’ll go without you.”
She stared at his departing figure in speechless stupefaction. She had had every intention of ignoring the night before, pretending the raw, desperate passion hadn’t existed. She was planning on acting with cool dignity.
He’d been
the one to dismiss it first. Of course it had meant nothing to him. For her it had been different. Strange, frightening, it had thrown her even more off kilter. She wanted him to fold her in his arms and comfort her. She wanted to hit him again.
The bathroom looked worse in the daylight, but at least he’d left some clean, dark clothes on the toilet seat for her. It wasn’t until she was dressed that she noticed the dried blood underneath the sink.
Their bodies would start to stink, he’d said, and she remembered the sickly stench of the blood lily. She’d seen him kill for her last night. How many times had he killed for her and she hadn’t noticed?
He was waiting for her in the kitchen, and this time she looked at him directly, no longer worried about embarrassment. Last night hadn’t existed. She preferred it that way as well.
He was dressed in black, and he had a sailor’s knit cap on his long, dark hair. He looked older, his face lined, his dark eyes ageless. He looked very Irish as well, and she wondered how she could ever have seen a good old boy from Texas in that Gaelic face. “I made you some tea,” he said.
She hated tea, a fact that Win had always deplored. Thinking of her elegant father made her want to giggle, and she wondered if she was getting hysterical. She took the thick, chipped mug from him, poured half of the strong, hot stuff down her throat. “I’m hungry,” she said.
“There’s no food.”
“I don’t remember when I last had a decent meal. You may be a machine, but I’m still human. If you expect me to keep up with you, you’d better feed me,” she said calmly enough.
“You’ll keep up with me or I’ll leave you to fend for yourself.”
Fair enough, she thought, abandoning that argument. He’d already pushed open the door, and beyond him she could see the bleak, wet town. The streets were empty, the buildings around them abandoned, and she shivered. “Where are we? It looks like the back end of hell.”
“You’re not far off. A little town in Northern Ireland called Derrymore. It used to be prosperous enough twenty years ago, but their one industry closed down, and so did all the jobs. It’s mostly abandoned now—we might not run into another living soul.”