Tasting Fear (26 page)

He dragged her out the door after that, scanned the stairwell landing, and stuck his head back inside her door. He made an obscene gesture, for the benefit of any hidden cameras he hadn’t found.

“You’re not getting her,” he told the bug that lay on the table. “Fuck off and die, shithead.” He slammed the door, for emphasis.

Nell was alarmingly quiet in the car, staring ahead, throat bobbing. He knew the feeling. She was trying to swallow it. It wouldn’t go down. But the silence was so heavy, it was making him twitch.

He reached for the first thing he could think of to break it. “Do you have a copy of that letter your sister found?” he asked.

“I have it scanned onto my computer,” she said. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I’m just—”

“Interested. Yes. I’ve noticed.” There was a touch of acid in her voice that silenced him again.

He stared out the window, wondering what his next move should be. He saw a Korean deli coming up on the corner, with banks of multicolored flowers on display. “Stop the car,” he told the driver.

Nell looked startled, as the car braked and he flung the door open. “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “This’ll just take a second.”

He stared at the flowers, at a loss, and grabbed a bunch of the best-looking long-stemmed roses out of a bucket. He handed the boy sitting next to the flowers a couple of twenties, and got back into the car.

“Here.” He handed her the flowers, realizing too late that the long, thorny stems were still dripping. He hadn’t even had them tied, wrapped, trimmed, anything. But she was looking wide-eyed, charmed. She sniffed them. Smiled at him. It had worked. Praise God.

After a moment, she groped for his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I appreciate the fact that you’re interested. I’m probably alive because of it. I just don’t get it. Why is this happening? It’s senseless.”

“Money,” Duncan said.

She looked over at him, blankly. “Huh?”

“Money is why this is happening,” he repeated.

She looked doubtful. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, Duncan, but I don’t have very much of it. Practically none, to be honest.”

He shook his head. “There’s a short list of probable motivations for crimes like this. Insanity, revenge, or money. It doesn’t look like you girls have pissed anyone off that badly—”

“We haven’t,” she cut in. “We’re goody-goody pussycats.”

“And there’s the murdered jeweller and his whole family, too, so I’d strike personal revenge as a motive. We could consider revenge against your mother, but that falls pretty flat, since she’s passed on. Insanity’s a possibility, but there are the references in those letters, to maps, searches, keys, secrets. Whoever this dickhead is, he’s invested time and money watching you, and probably your sisters, too. Whatever Lucia wanted you girls to find? It means big bucks. Very big. And they’re not going to stop till they have it.”

Nell hid her eyes and massaged her temples. “It’s so ironic,” she murmured. “If that’s true. We don’t need this money, wherever it comes from. We don’t give a shit about money. None of us do. All we want is to live our lives in peace. Oh, God. There’s so much to freak out about, I’m in tilt.”

“Don’t think about any of it,” he suggested.

“Slick solution. Neat trick.” There was a smile in her voice. “And just exactly how do you suggest I do that?”

It had been such a weird evening already, he decided one more crazy risk wouldn’t change anything. He lifted her hand, and gave it a long, lingering kiss. “I’ve got a few good ideas,” he said.

She laughed behind her hand, and the vibrations in her shoulders went on for so long, he got scared she was crying again.

“I had no idea I was so damn funny,” he said. “Who knew.”

Her shoulders shook harder. She threw her head back, and wiped her eyes. “It’s not you. I just can’t believe it. I felt safe, in my place, after I put the alarm in. The thing cost a fortune. And the whole while, they were watching me. God, it’s disgusting. How did they get in there?”

“They probably wired the place before you put the alarm in.” He handed her his phone. “Call your sister. If she’s told you where she’s going on that telephone, tell her to change her plans.”

“Oh, God, you’re right,” she whispered. “Vivi.”

She called, and he listened to her garbled, one-sided conversation for the rest of the drive to his Upper West Side condo. The driver pulled over at the lobby entrance. She was still talking as he paid the driver.

“…can’t stay with me there any longer, Viv. Haven’t you been listening? They’ve been watching us all along! We can’t go near the place until we fix this mess. Go to Liam and Nancy’s…Yes, I know, but be a grown-up, Viv. Being a fifth wheel is better than being stuffed into the backseat of a car…. Oh, no, don’t worry about me. I’m staying with a friend.” Her eyes flicked to Duncan. Her voice got defensive. “No, you don’t know him…. Yes, it is a him, okay? And so? What of it?”

Duncan heard a shrill, tinny burst of female verbosity from the telephone, and Nell rolled her eyes and snorted. “If you must know, he’s the one who clobbered the kidnappers for me…. Of course I knew him before! He’s my new boss.” Another impassioned burst from the phone. “Look, Viv, I know it’s crazy, but can we thrash this out another time? Come to the seisìun at Malloy’s tomorrow night with Nancy and Liam, and we’ll talk there, okay?…Of course. You be careful, too.”

She ended the call and handed the phone back. “She’s staying with an old art school friend she met at the fair by chance, so we never discussed it on the bugged phone. Thank God. The Fiend has no line on her there.”

“Could you folks work this out once you’re outside the vehicle?” the driver asked, his voice plaintive. “I got another call. I gotta go.”

Duncan led her into his building, dragging her huge trolley behind him into the elevator. Up thirty-five floors, and he closed the door after her, engaged the chain, the dead bolts, the alarms.

He let out a long, relieved breath. Finally. He had her right where he wanted her.

N
ell looked around, impressed. His apartment was huge, almost empty. Austere to the point of chilliness. Blond wood on the wide expanse of gleaming floor. Three gray couches, grouped in a square around a low table with a vast plasma TV and entertainment console. A big, shadowy kitchen, back in a distant corner. Picture windows with stunning, brilliant cityscapes on two sides. A big terrace. A scattering of black-and-white photographs hung on otherwise blank walls.

“Wow,” she murmured. “Is this place, uh, yours?”

He nodded.

Um. This apartment answered any questions a person might have about how lucrative the business of intelligent data analysis program design had been for him. It beat academia and poetry writing all to hell. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t chosen to be a scholar for money.

He disappeared into the kitchen. Lights flipped on. She heard water running, clattering and clinking. When he came back out, he was holding out a big glass of wine, so densely red it was almost black.

“This stuff will knock you out on an empty stomach, so sip it slowly,” he said. “I’ve got some water on to boil for some artichoke ravioli, and some red sauce. That work for you?”

She laid the flowers down on a table and accepted the glass gratefully. “That sounds like heaven.”

She savored the complex, aromatic wine as she gazed at the photographs. They were stark, dynamic, full of high contrasts. One showed a young man diving off a cliff into a lake. He was still upright, his body starting to jackknife, his face a grimace of concentration.

She peered more closely and realized that it was Duncan’s brother, Bruce.

She took a closer look at all of them. There was a young girl, curled up asleep, her mouth open. The same girl again, older, laughing, swinging on a rope swing, hair flying like a banner. She was pretty, with the same narrow face and uptilting eyebrows as Duncan. Then a photograph of a handsome older woman in profile, staring off a porch, smoking a cigarette. She looked like Bruce. Mother. Family.

There were landscapes, too. Deserts and mountains, barren and stark. Cruelly sharp contrasts of light and shadow made them almost like moonscapes. They were lonely, strange, aching. Very personal.

She called back to the kitchen. “Did you take the pictures?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re beautiful,” she said. “Is there one of your father here?”

He came out of the kitchen and leaned against the entryway, sipping his wine. “No. He’s long gone. Haven’t seen him in years. Off in California, working on his fifth wife. She’s welcome to him.”

“Oh.” She stared down into the cup of bloodred wine. “I think I can one-up you there. I doubt my father even knows of my existence.”

“No? Your mom kept it a secret from him?”

“In a manner of speaking. Are these landscapes Afghanistan?”

His brow furrowed. “What do you know about Afghanistan?”

“Bruce told me you were stationed there. That you were a spy.”

He grunted. “Bruce babbles about things he knows shit about.”

“So? Did you take them there?” she prodded him, staring at a picture of jagged mountain peaks, the sun a blazing halo behind them.

“Yes, most of them,” he said.

“Was that where you learned to fight like that?” she asked.

He hesitated. “More or less.”

“Amazing photos,” she offered. “I wouldn’t have dreamed that you had an artistic side.”

He looked uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“Heaven forbid that you engage in something as frivolous as art.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you busting my balls?”

“No. I just like your pictures. I like what they say about you.”

He looked alarmed. “What do you mean? What do they say?”

“Relax,” she soothed. “I couldn’t tell you in words. I can’t discuss visual art intelligently. I just…I like the way they make me feel.”

A cautious smile started in his narrowed eyes. “Thank you.”

Duncan slowly lifted his glass. She lifted her own in response. Toasting rare, delicate perfect moments of connection, the kind that got her worked up and longing for things she could not have. The tinkle of crystal was a chime, sweet and faint as a blown kiss. The sound of an unspoken pact, delicately sealed.
Stop it, D’Onofrio.
She had to stop projecting wishful fantasies onto every single interaction. It was stupid.

She’d been privately dubious about eating pasta at two in the morning after an evening like this, but when he set the plate loaded with plump ravioli, red sauce, and a generous dusting of savory pecorino, something inside her stood up and cheered. It smelled superb.

They ate in silence, every last bite, and afterward, he watched her finish her wine. His unwavering gaze made heat rise in her face.

“I expect you want a shower,” he said.

She nodded, mutely.

“The best one is off my bedroom,” he said. “Come this way.”

Ah. Well, he could hardly be blamed for assuming, she thought wildly, as she followed him and her suitcase down the hall. Was this what she’d intended? And if not this, then what?
Get real. Calm down.

He didn’t join her in the shower. Part of her was disappointed. She stayed in the pounding hot water, pondering it.

Duncan Burke was wrong for her. She’d known it in the restaurant. His mind was wired in a way that was foreign to her. He would annoy, insult, and disillusion her. He already had. He would again. It was a sure thing. A death-and-taxes type of sure thing.

This was set against the fact that he aroused her to a screaming pitch of excitement, he was an incredibly gifted lover, and he’d saved her life tonight. He’d used his body as a shield when that guy was pointing a gun at her. He was a good guy, beneath his hard edges. Brave, valiant, self-sacrificing. Incompatible or not. Insensitive or not.

And she wanted him. Bad.

When she got out of the shower, her decision was irrevocable. She toweled off, let her hair out of its clip, and shook it loose.

She hung the towel carefully back on the rack, and looked at herself in the mirror, naked but for the little pendent with the
A
in tiny rubies that Lucia had given her. Hanging right between those rather large breasts that had always embarrassed her. She’d felt since she was twelve or so as if her curvy body were flaunting itself to the world against her will, demanding attention that she did not actually want.

But Duncan seemed to like it. Finally, those boobs were good for something. She reached up, touched them gently. They were much more sensitive than usual. Goose-bumped with delicious anticipation at the thought of what lay ahead. Her nipples tightened.

She walked out into his bedroom like that. He had showered, too, in another bathroom, and wore a terry cloth robe. He glanced over, did a double take. “Ah…holy God. You’re…just look at you.”

“Did I thank you for saving my life?” she demanded.

He looked alarmed. “Yeah, but you don’t have to thank me by—”

“Shut up, Burke. Make love to me now, before I lose my nerve.”

He blinked. “Ah, okay,” he said hoarsely. He started toward her.

“I know this is a mistake,” she announced.

He stopped, looking perplexed. “It is?”

“Yes,” she told him. “But I don’t care. I’ll pay whatever price I have to pay. Life’s too short. I figured that out when those guys shoved me into the car. It could all go away so quickly. And I want to feel this.”

He touched his finger gently to her lips. “Shhh. Don’t work yourself into a state,” he soothed. “How much wine did you drink?”

“This is not about wine!” she yelled. “I know exactly what I’m saying and doing, Duncan Burke! Don’t you dare condescend to me!”

“How could I?” he asked, dryly. “You’re terrifying.”

“Oh, yeah? Do I intimidate you?” She put her hands on her hips.

“Some of me.” He tossed off his robe, displaying his naked body and his huge erection. “Other parts of me are fucking fearless.”

She stared at him. He was so perfect. Tall, broad, those lean, defined, capable-looking muscles, just the right amount of hair, beautiful thighs and flanks, long, narrow feet. And his penis. Oh, boy.

She wanted to read him like braille. Lick him like a lollipop.

He tossed the comforter back and pushed her until she tumbled backward onto the silvery sheet. It was cool against her damp skin. She scrambled up, curling her knees beneath her.

He stood there, erection bobbing right before her eyes. He started to speak, and stopped himself. His face looked grim.

“What?” she demanded. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

His throat bobbed. “I don’t want to fuck this up again.”

The raw, lost tone in his voice startled her into a rush of tenderness. She had been so overcome by her own reaction to him, it never occurred to her that he could feel vulnerable, too. The thought gave her a somewhat unwelcome sense of power. It reminded her of her mother. Elena had wielded power over men, whenever and however she could. And yet, she had died all alone. No one but Nell at her funeral.

She pushed the thought away. “You won’t fuck up,” she said. “You did fine in the conference room. You almost made my heart stop.”

“As long as I kept my mouth shut,” he said sourly. “I have an adrenaline hard-on that would drive nails. My hands are still shaking. I am not in control. At all. And I do not like it.”

She hid her smile, sensing that he would not appreciate it. Instead, she ran her finger around the swollen tip of his cock. “Strange,” she mused. “This ravenous, howling-at-the-moon beast managed to bring me to his fancy home, cook me a nice dinner, pour me wine, chat about art. Such savagery really chills the blood. Besides, I thought sex was all about losing control.”

He shook his head. “Not when you’re as big as me. I could hurt you.” His voice was a shaking rasp. “I can’t afford to make any wrong moves with you. You are a fucking minefield, Nell D’Onofrio.”

She swirled her whole hand around him, making the tendons stand out on his throat. “Sorry I’m so difficult,” she murmured.

He clambered onto the bed, dragging her close until their bodies touched. His heat was a sweet shock. The sheer mass of him, the crackling energy, his own male scent overlaid with perfumes of his soap and shampoo. He made her mouth water. She moistened her hand with the slick drops of pre-come, and began milking the long, broad stalk. “I think it would be exciting to make you lose control,” she told him.

“We’re not going there.” He slid his hand between her legs, teasing her tender folds open, sighing when he found her already wet and slick.

“We’re not?” She caressed him, two handed, long, tight, sliding strokes while his fingers delved. They stared into each other’s eyes, fighting for breath. She squirmed around his fingers. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, breathlessly, for no reason she could understand.

And it was true. She’d changed. That was why the sex was so good. Apart from his very considerable talent, of course.

He reached down and trapped her hand at his cock, holding it motionless. “Do not provoke me. I’m walking a knife’s edge, as it is.”

She swirled her fingertip on the pre-come dripping off his penis. Then with the same finger, she gave his chest a tiny shove.

“What’s that about?” he demanded. “You pushing me away?”

She smiled at him, mysteriously up through her lashes. “No,” she murmured. “That’s me, pushing you off your knife’s edge.”

He shoved her onto her back. “You asked for it.”

“Sure did,” she agreed. “Don’t make me ask you twice.”

She wiggled beneath his big body while he rolled the latex onto himself, lungs locked with excitement. He nudged against her, pushing until her body finally yielded, until she was gasping with the pressure of that broad bulb, caressing her sensitive inner flesh. She tried to move, but she could barely budge. He shoved deeper.

She was so primed, she came almost instantly, with a gasping shriek. Duncan stopped moving as she convulsed around him, his breath hissing. When the climax had widened out to a glowing ripple of residual pleasure, he hooked her legs up over his elbows and began.

He rode her hard, and she loved it. She gripped his arms, bracing herself against each jarring thrust. She was a hot shimmer melting for him. Long, sobbing spasms of delight rippled out into everywhere.

He got up some immeasurable time later, got rid of the condom. Then he slid back between the sheets and clutched her against his big, hot chest. She snuggled against him, suspended in a liquid dream.

Only a tiny, needle-thin part of her mind stayed apart, wondering how long the dream could possibly last.

Duncan was disoriented when he woke. He’d trained himself to wake at a quarter to five a.m. He was used to having his eyes open while the sky was dark, mind clear and sharp and already generating a streamlined plan of attack for the day’s work.

The sky was not dark. The room was flooded with sunshine. And his mind was not sharp. It was drugged with a strange sensation of intense well-being. He was intoxicated with the scent of dark ringlets that tickled his nose. He was unbalanced by a rush of startled joy.

Nell. In his bed. He couldn’t get over how soft she was. Her skin beneath his hands, as fine as a baby’s. She slept, her back to him, her round, rosy ass pressed against his hips. With predictable consequence.

The urge to roll her onto her belly, mount up and slide into that hot grip of her luscious body took all his mental muscle to withstand. Too dangerous. He had no idea how she would feel when she woke.

Better that she not wake up with his cock already inside her.

He nuzzled her neck, instead. The graceful angle of bones and tendons under her soft skin, that little brown mole, the way the grain of her hair swirled in those wild vortices at her nape. The responsive skin there, perfumed and decorated with fine fuzz. The fine white-gold chain.

He scooted back, just far enough to let her roll onto her back, so he could properly admire her tits. God. World class. So full and soft, jiggling, the way they swelled out, the tight brown nipples. The glittering pendant lay on her collarbone, a bright point of light.