For another of those frozen moments she felt him go as motionless as stone, as if he had to force himself not to pull away, and inside her chest something squeezed as she waited for him to reject her kiss.
But he didn’t, and tentatively she tilted her head to deepen the contact. His lips were soft and warm; the heated scent of him filled her, called to her, jerked her from satiation to need. He hadn’t opened his mouth for her and she craved that, but was almost afraid to ask for more. She dared the smallest touch of her tongue to those soft lips.
Abruptly he was kissing her in return, wresting control from her and pressing her back onto the mattress, his heavy body covering her. He kissed her as if some primal beast in him had slipped its leash and he wanted to devour her, his mouth hungry and hotly demanding, his tongue dancing with hers and forcing more response. She clung to him, arms and legs twined around him, and gave herself up to the storm she’d raised.
At another moment, lying exhausted and half-asleep, she realized she didn’t know his name. That lack of knowledge hurt her, somewhere deep inside where she let no one touch. The way he’d kissed her emboldened her, let her reach out to rest her hand on his chest as he lay sprawled beside her. His heartbeat thudded fast and strong under her fingers and she flattened her hand over it as if she could link herself to that beat of life. “What’s your name?” she asked, her voice soft and drowsy.
After a moment of silence, as if he weighed her reasons for asking, he said calmly, dismissively, “You don’t need to know.”
In silence she removed her hand from his chest and curled on her side. She wanted to jump astride him and tease him, nag him, pry the information out of him, but one of the rules she’d developed over the years was not to nag, to always make herself agreeable, and the action, or lack of it, was so deeply ingrained she couldn’t persist. Still, his lack of trust chilled her. She might feel as if some weird link had been forged between them, but he evidently didn’t feel the same way. He was a killer, pure and simple, and he stayed at the top of his profession by trusting no one.
Some time later he lifted his head to look at the clock, and Drea did the same. Almost four hours had passed.
“Now,” he said, his tone going rough and deep as he moved over her, pushing her knees apart and settling on her, in her. His muscles tightened, and a stifled groan rumbled in his throat, his chest. He shuddered, as if being able to release his self-control was a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.
She caught her breath at the power of his invasion. She was swollen and more than a little sore from everything he’d done to her, yet she didn’t want this to end. “We still have an hour left,” she heard herself say, and cringed inside at the small note of pleading in her voice.
A cynical expression hardened his gaze. “ Salinas won’t honor the full five hours,” he replied as he began thrusting long and deep. It was as if a dam had been breached, and the power that had been restrained suddenly rushed forward. All she could do was cling to him and try to weather the storm, offer him the same generous use of her body that he had given her-and be surprised, yet again, by a response she hadn’t thought herself capable of. He stiffened and began coming, groans tearing from his throat as he surged against her in powerful rhythm. She locked her legs around his and arched upward, her own raw sounds of pleasure piercing the air as her climax chased his.
When their bodies quieted, he extricated himself and immediately moved away. “Is it all right if I use your shower?” he asked, walking toward the bathroom.
Drea searched for her voice and whispered, “Sure,” a useless permission because he’d already closed the door behind him.
She lay amid the tangled sheets, knowing she needed to get up but unable to put thought into action. Her body was heavy and limp, her eyelids dragging downward with fatigue. Disjointed thoughts formed and disappeared. Everything had changed, and she wasn’t yet sure exactly how. Certainly her time with Rafael was over, or almost over, and she needed to think about that, about what she should do. She knew what she wanted to do, and the idea was so new, so foreign to her, that she could scarcely take it in.
He came out of the bathroom within ten minutes, his hair wet, his skin smelling of her soap. Silently he began dressing, his expression calm and remote, as if he were lost in thought. She watched him, drinking in every inch of him, waiting for him to look at her. What they had shared for the past several hours had been so intense she almost couldn’t remember what her life had been like before, a line of demarcation so plainly drawn it was as if everything before was in shades of gray and everything after was in Technicolor.
She waited, and still he was silent. She waited, certain that when he finished dressing he’d look at her and say…what? She didn’t know what she wanted him to say, only that pain was swelling in her chest again, a pain that threatened to suffocate her. She couldn’t stay with Rafael any longer. She wanted more, she wanted to be more, she wanted…God, she wanted this man, so intensely she couldn’t let herself fully realize the breadth and depth of it.
He turned toward the door without saying anything and in panic she bolted upright, clutching the sheet to her breasts. He couldn’t leave the same way Rafael had, as if she meant nothing, as if she was nothing.
“Take me with you,” she blurted, choking back the humiliating burn of tears.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob, finally looking at her, his brows drawing together in a faint frown. “Why?” he asked in a sort of remote puzzlement, as if he couldn’t understand why she’d said something so outlandish. “Once was enough.” Then he walked out and Drea sat motionless on the bed. He moved so silently she didn’t hear the penthouse door open or shut, but she felt his absence, knew the exact moment he left.
Silence closed around her, profound and tomblike. There were things she needed to do, she realized, but actually doing them seemed beyond her. All she could do was sit there, barely breathing, considering the shambles her life had suddenly become. She had just been screwed, in more ways than one.
3
WHEN THE ASSASSIN LEFT SALINAS ’S PENTHOUSE, HE DIDN’T take the elevator. Instead he strode silently to one of the stairwells and went down four floors. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door to the luxury apartment he’d leased for a couple of months. He had to live somewhere, and though he moved frequently, he liked being comfortable. When he had to, he could-and did-endure long periods of wretched discomfort, but this wasn’t one of the had-to times. Besides, it amused him to live right under Salinas ’s nose.
The silence wrapped around him like a welcome blanket. Only when he was alone did he relax-at least, as much as he ever relaxed. The rooms were spare, not because he couldn’t afford to buy furniture, but because he liked the space, the emptiness. He had a place to sleep, and a place to sit. He had a television, and a computer. The kitchen was supplied with just enough for him to get by. He didn’t need anything else.
When he moved from here, he would wipe everything down beforehand with a cleaning solvent to remove any fingerprints he’d left, then he would donate all the furnishings to a charity. Finally, he would have the apartment professionally cleaned, and it would be as if he’d never been here at all.
He would take some of his clothing with him, but, like the furniture, he wore things only a few times before donating them. If a sharp forensics tech found a thread that had first escaped his own notice and then the attentions of the cleaning service, and if by some colossal stroke of good luck on an investigator’s part led to him, nothing in his wardrobe would match that thread.