Operation Proof of Life (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The rain continued, slow and easy. Under the assassin’s umbrella, with Michael’s arm around her, Brigit barely noticed. The street was deserted in the early morning hour, although light from several bars and restaurants dotted their path to her rented room at the inn.

The rest of the group had gone to the hostel. Michael had wanted her to go with them, telling her it was a safer place to spend the last half of the night.

But Brigit wasn’t worried. Michael’s arm reassured her. His bigger-than-life presence relaxed her. And even though she loved having a new group of friends to be part of, she wanted him all to herself again.

Inside her room, she set the umbrella near the radiator to dry and flipped on a table lamp as Michael locked the door. Few words had passed between them as they’d walked, as if they’d been a couple for a long time, but now as she slipped off her trench coat and hung it on a hook near the door, self-consciousness flooded her mind. The bed in the far corner seemed suddenly too big for the space. Should she make tea? Turn on the TV? Strike up a conversation about world events?

Continuing to run options through her mind, she watched him go from window to window, checking locks. Once satisfied, he shrugged out of his jacket and threw it on the nearby chair. His blue eyes met hers and Brigit was pretty sure from their darkened, sultry appearance, tea was the last thing on his mind. He moved toward her and turned off the light.

Without a word, she took him by the hand and led him to the bed. In the shadows, he kissed her, running his hands up her arms, over her shoulders and into her hair. Rising up on tiptoes, she did the same to him.

With slow movements and maintaining perfect quiet, he removed her sweater, then her bra. She helped him with her jeans, kicking off her shoes and stripping down to nothing.

His clothes went next, and then he eased her onto the bed, the box springs squeaking under them. He made love to her mouth, sucked the skin of her collarbone, worshiped each breast in an exquisite torture of lips and tongue and teeth.

Moving to her stomach, he licked her skin and kissed each hipbone. His hands parted her legs and his mouth took her, not with strength, but with gentleness. As he worked her with his lips, tongue and fingers, she cried out in the dark room, and his name echoed in the shadows as well as in her heart.

She’d been starved for so long, the orgasms came fast and hard, one right after the other. He stroked her through them, teasing them out and exhausting her. After the third one, he released her legs and pulled her close.

Bliss tingled her nerve endings. Snuggling into Michael’s chest, she was content to drift and wonder how she was going to keep him around for awhile. Once they were done exacting revenge on her brother, what would hold them together?

Nothing. He was Deputy Director of the CIA and she was…a psychologist without a job. She wasn’t even a consultant anymore, for the president or anyone else. In fact, if Thad Pennington found out what she’d been doing for Jeffries—she shuddered at the thought.

Michael’s hand stroked her back, up and down, up and down, comforting her, and she pushed thoughts about the presidents, old and new, out of her head. In their place, an image of Michael as a small boy rose. After losing his dad and blaming himself all these years, Brigit thought he was the one who needed comforting.

She shifted her head to kiss his chest, his heartbeat strong under her lips. The hard planes of his body called to her fingers. He was a big man from his head to his feet. A hard man.

Kissing the scar above his heart, she moved her lower half languidly to find what she wanted. He sucked in his breath at her touch and she rose over him, spreading her legs. Comforting each other was done.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured as his hands locked onto her hips and pulled her down. “Damn tight too.”

Little by little, she eased his hot thickness into her body, wishing she could do the same with his heart. He’d already stolen hers and the thought of not having him beside her, inside her, made her eyes well with tears. For once she was glad the light was off.

She found the rhythm she wanted, bracing her hands on his gorgeous, rock-hard chest and blinking away the tears. “You’re not bad yourself.”

He chuckled and even though she couldn’t see the details of his face, she knew what he looked like. Deciding this might be the only time she could let the raw feelings in her heart show on her face without him seeing them, she kept the rhythm steady and thought about how nice it would be to have this man, with his high-powered job, traditional house and group of friends, to make a new life with. Instant security. Instant family.

But even without that treasure chest of dreams Brigit had longed for all her life, Michael Stone was what she wanted. What she needed. He made her look to the future with hope instead of trepidation. He made her accept who she was, so she could stop pretending to be who she wasn’t.

Don’t go there
. There was no future with him, certainly nothing long term. Just like she’d told him, she wasn’t his kind of woman. Powerful men always attracted her, but they always tried to control her too. They usually saw her as a willful woman who intrigued them. A challenge.

Some played mind games with her. They always lost. Others took the me-Tarzan, you-Jane approach. They lost too. When each of them realized there was no wearing her down or breaking her spirit, she became disposable. A good fuck, but a pain in the ass.

When Michael returned to Langley, she’d find more consulting jobs and go on with her life. She hoped to form a new relationship with her father. What she wouldn’t do was hang around, waiting and hoping Michael would fall in love with her.

Even if he did, she couldn’t handle his constant demands in the long run. No one told her what to do or when to do it. She wasn’t necessarily a feminist, she’d just been on her own for too many years to ever play second fiddle to anyone, most especially a powerful Washington bureaucrat.

Michael still gripped her hips and now urged her to increase the speed of her strokes. She removed his big hands from their spot and put them on her breasts. “This time, we do it my way.”

He latched on to her breasts with no further encouragement. “Yes, ma’am,” he said in a perfect-sounding military response. “I’m at your mercy.”

Having power over Michael Stone was a Disney kind of fantasy for her.
Pretend you love me
, she wanted to command. Instead, she rode him harder. “Kiss me,” she said.

He reached up and pulled her head down. “Whatever you want, Doctor.”

Hot and sweet, his lips took her, and Brigit gave herself up to the power.

Morning dawned too early for Michael, even though the bubbling clouds outside hid the sun. The bed was far too small for both him and Brigit to sleep comfortably, but then they hadn’t slept much anyway. Brigit had recovered relatively quickly after their first lovemaking session, sleeping for less than an hour before slipping under the covers to bring him to full attention again with her mouth. He’d found himself completely under her control and loving every minute of it.

At some point, she’d gotten up and used the tiny bathroom. When she’d returned, she’d snuggled back into his body, only to place her lips next to his ear and give him instructions on what she wanted him to do to her. Very explicit instructions. Teasing her about her language, even as he forced her onto her back, he’d laughed when she blamed her Irish roots.

Lying on his side now, facing her, he memorized the minuscule freckles on her nose, counted the lashes on her cheeks, timed the rise and fall of her chest.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d faced the morning after with a woman he hadn’t already established a relationship with. One-night stands had disappeared from his routine by the time he hit thirty, and casual affairs had followed shortly after. Always, he blamed it on the job. In reality, he just wasn’t interested in anything quick, casual or meaningless.

He had one more night with her, two tops, unless their plan to snatch Donovan from the memorial service failed. If they succeeded, the exchange in Bolivia would take place in twenty-four hours.

His gut tightened as if Brad had just landed one hell of a kick to his solar plexus. Outside of that, and the fact he’d had a total of three hours of sleep, he was totally juiced.

Brigit’s eyelids fluttered open, revealing her sexy, beautiful eyes. She stretched, arching her back, and smiled lazily at him. “Tell me I wasn’t talking in my sleep.”

Her voice, husky from sleep and the night’s depravity, made him instantly hard. Hello, morning after. “You might have admitted a couple of scandalous things.”

She studied him for sincerity as she stifled a yawn. “What did I say?”

Stealing the muscles in his mouth so he wouldn’t grin, he pushed the sheet down to reveal her breasts. Oh, yeah, they were exactly as lush and erotic as he remembered. “You said, ‘Michael, take me home with you. I want to be your sex slave.’”

The sleepy look left her face as if he’d shocked with her ten volts of juice. Embarrassed horror took its place, and she glanced away. And oh, hell, his solar plexus took another hit.

She didn’t want a relationship. Not even an ongoing sexual one after this. Surprised he’d read her so wrong, he mentally cursed himself, and then he mentally chastised her too. Didn’t she realize it was okay to have a relationship? Didn’t she just once want someone to take care of her? Love her?

Love? Whoa. He was not going down that road again any time soon.

Touching her chin with his finger, he tipped it up to make her meet his eyes. “I was kidding. The most you did while I was watching was sigh.”

She looked at him now, seeing him again as he was, naked and honest. He turned on the charm and added a flirtatious smile. After a heartbeat, she took his hand in hers and held it. “I’m a loner, Michael. I’m used to being on my own, relying on myself for everything. Relationships are a challenge for me.”

Her honesty took him by pleasant surprise. As long as she was telling him what she thought, he could work with it. “Hell, Brigit, they’re a challenge for me too, but your independence is a strength, not a weakness. I respect it.”

She ran her fingers over the healing skin of his knuckles, then stroked his index finger between hers and her thumb. Such a simple touch and yet he could hardly stand not to jump on her, spread her thighs and go for the gold. “From the look in your eyes, I think I could say just about anything at this moment and you’d swear you respect me.”

Ding, ding, ding. The lady was a winner.

Her fingers tickled over his wrist at the spot of his compass tattoo. “Did you get this in the Marines?”

“No, just a few months ago.”

“The intricate design must have taken hours.”

Several hours and multiple visits to the tat parlor. Pain he’d embraced. “A compass, the North Star and wits were all a sailor ever needed to find his way in the world. I lifted the design from an old navigational chart that belonged to my father.”

She went back to stroking his fingers. “Does it help you find your way?”

The N at the top of the compass pointed at her while her fingers slipped over his again. His breath came faster. “Yes.”

She stroked his middle finger. “Cards on the table, okay?”

He couldn’t do more than nod.

She took a deep breath. “We need to talk about Ruth.”

The gears in his head strained to shift. They were both naked and mere inches from each other and she wanted to do a family intervention. His voice sounded weird as he spoke. “Now?”

“Yes.” She moved to his ring finger. “I need to get this off my chest.”

He’d move mountains to get anything she wanted off her chest. “Okay, but you better make it fast because I have the attention span of a gnat on Red Bull at the moment.”

“When Ruth was in London on her Rhodes scholarship, she took weekend trips with a friend to Belfast. While there, she and Kelly met a member of the Real IRA. At first, the two simply hung out with the man and his friends, enjoying the attention. They were American girls after all. But at one point, Kelly stopped going on these weekend trips and only Ruth continued to meet with the man. They spent hours together, like lovers do, down by the wharfs, in pool halls and at his place.”

She took a breath and continued full-throttle. Whether to please him or to get it over with as fast as possible, he wasn’t sure. “During the following months, one of the professors at her university was killed. Shot on his way home from his last class on Friday night. A liberal group on campus promoting birth control was targeted at a fundraiser. Half a dozen students were seriously injured. A fire burnt the political science hall to the ground and the cause was ruled arson.”

She paused, as if to give Michael time to catch up with what she was insinuating. He didn’t need any time. “You think Ruth was involved?”

“I was watching Peter and his group. Ruth showed up on too many occasions directly before these terrorist activities to dismiss her involvement. She fed him information about the campus, the professor, the student body.”

His chest hurt, and he had to take several deep breaths to slow his hyper heart rate. “Peter? The man was Peter?”

She shook her head. “One of his younger followers.”

Michael pulled his hand away. “Ruth would never hurt anyone. If she did give him information, she didn’t realize what she was doing.”

“Maybe the first time she didn’t. I certainly gave her the benefit of the doubt in the beginning. But your sister is a Rhodes Scholar, Michael. After the second and third incidents, you really think she didn’t put two and two together?”

Michael sat up, scrubbed his face with his hands. He bent his knees and dropped his forearms on them. “There could have been dozens of college-aged people running information for Donovan.”

“There were a few students during that time interested in antisocial movements, but Ruth was the only one coming from Cambridge and meeting with one of his compatriots.”

“But she…she…” He couldn’t finish.