Smoke and Mirrors (10 page)

She slid from his lap and threaded her arms about my neck. “Wait until Mama hears.”

Then she departed for the handful of spectators, explaining to each relieved face that she would soon be picking out enough cats to fill a small zoo. Alberto watched her, surprising me with his obvious love for the little being. “She likes you. She doesn’t usually sit still for anyone who checks her blood.” He turned, countenance grave, beseeching me. “Consider being her fulltime doctor. She spends half her time with me in Bogotá, but you would be paid for a full year if you could assure me that for those six months you would be at her side twenty-four seven.”

I had the foresight to appear startled.

Giovanni looked as though a grenade would have been less surprising.

“I’ll need to think about it,” I said at the same time De Torres spoke a very different answer.

Soft, but dangerous, he breathed, “You can’t possibly entertain the idea of subjecting Alexandra to Bogotá.”

Our conversation was interrupted by Francesca’s reappearance. “Can we get them now?”

Smiling distractedly, Alberto picked up the slight girl and shook his head. He held an arm outstretched toward a table laid thick with every breakfast food imaginable. “There’s plenty if either of you are so inclined. It would seem my daughter has her mother’s affinity for excess. Never knows exactly what she wants, so she orders a little of everything.”

I shook my head, knowing half of Francesca’s trouble was a result of overindulgence and lack of schedule. The bill for room service alone must have set Alberto back several thousand Euros. “No, thank you.”

Still fixated on his daughter’s improving complexion, Alberto continued. “Well, consider it an occupational perk if you chose to accept my offer. You’ll never want for anything, Alexandra, anything at all.”

I have always hated the presumptuous inclination strangers have for using first names, and I bristled inwardly. “It’s not such an easy decision.” I paused and looked deliberately at De Torres.

Alberto followed my glance. “She will be well guarded if that’s what you fear, and my expression twenty-four seven was obviously a figure of speech. You would be welcome to come and spend as many ‘moments of peace’ as you’d like.”

De Torres raised an eyebrow and tugged lightly on one of Francesca’s long braids. He momentarily switched to English, “I won’t speak my concerns in front of your daughter. Will you golf with me later today?”

Alberto shrugged. “That depends upon the Dottoressa. Is my daughter sufficiently recovered for me to leave her for a few hours?”

I pulled the other pigtail. “She’s quite resilient, your Francesca.”

Kissing her forehead, Alberto set the girl down. “Could we perhaps start after four?”

“It’s my course.”

Of course it’s your course,
I thought, once more wondering how SIS could afford this kind of op.
It doth appear you own the entire island.

Alberto kissed my hand. “Gracias, Alexandra. From the bottom of my heart, gracias.”

“It was nothing. She’s a delightful little patient.”

Then I watched as Giovanni’s eyes bored a hole in Alberto’s heart.

•   •   •

Wind blew blistering off the fifteenth hole, leaving Alberto to sweat and glance nonplussed at his host’s dry brow. “Don’t you ever get hot?”

Brad swung his club softly, bending down to watch as the ball swirled into the hole. “Not generally.”

Unwilling to give up the obvious double nature of his question, Alberto said, “Generally being only when Alexandra is not in your presence, eh?”

Brad eyed his Colombian friend’s playful countenance. “You’ve set your eyes on someone that means a good deal to me, have asked her to leave with you and live in a distinctly hazardous place and now you push me to reveal my bedroom secrets. Have you lost respect for me, Alberto? Because I am rapidly feeling that way about you.”

“You’ve become altogether too serious, Giovanni. Have you considered that?”

Brad changed tactics. “I was in Milan last year. Ran into Isabella inside her favorite restaurant. She’s as stunning as ever. You should never have cheated on her.”

“That’s none of your goddamn business. And for your information, her eyes wandered as well.”

“They still do.”

“Did you fuck my ex-wife?”

Brad gave his companion a hard stare. “I respect our friendship. Does that answer your question?”

“Point taken. But you know me,” Alberto added, “Alexandra is not my type. Too savvy. Too self-confident. I don’t want to sleep with her, just hire her.”

Considering the comment for a moment, Brad said, “How exactly do you protect Francesca?”

Sanchez’s smile faded. “She has four body guards with her at all times. Goes to school in a building I had built. Sleeps and plays in my own hacienda, which as you know is fortified like Knox. And –”

“And?”

“I had a chip imbedded in her tooth. It’s a molar that will fall out, and when it does, I’ll have another put in. She doesn’t know it’s there.”

“Does Isabella?”

Sanchez shook his head.

“Why the hell would you live in a place where you have to do such things to keep her safe?”

“You know exactly why, my friend. And what’s more, if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be living like this.” His hand swept the championship golf course in illustration. “Now, if you’ll think about it for a moment, we could have the same chip put into Alexandra’s mouth.” A smile parted the Colombian’s lips. “And I would offer her the same protection I do my own flesh and blood. Would that satisfy you?”

Shouldering his clubs, Brad studied Sanchez’s expression. “It doesn’t matter what I think; she’s her own mind to make up.”

And the fucking depressing fact was it was the truth.

•   •   •

Two days later, the villa was empty, apart from De Torres and me. I had taken the job, pleasing C, Alasdair and the rest of SIS with my new appointment. The jury was still out on Brad.

We dined al fresco on the lower terrace. And at last, when the sun had set and the moon was rising over the sea, he played the piano while I sat beside him.

He looked more like he had the first time I’d laid eyes on him. When he’d come to my HQ office so I could stitch him up.

As if reading my mind, he turned, his eyes like pitch. “When I first saw you,” he began, his hand unconsciously touching the scar beneath his shirt’s hem. “Standing in that sexy, bloody lab coat, your hair on its way down.” He lifted his fingers, but stopped before they came in contact with today’s tangled version. “I wanted to turn the fuck around.”

“That’s because I had a suture kit in my hands,” I whispered, ridiculously happy he remembered how I’d looked that day.

He didn’t return my smile. “It’s because I wanted another doctor.”

“I would have given you an anesthetic, if you’d let –” I began, feeling defensive about the decision he had made.

His fingers shushed my parted lips. “I didn’t want a fucking anesthetic, Alex. I wanted to feel your hands on me.”

Damn funny coincidence.
“And here I was thinking you were trying…” I never finished mumbling my sentence, because one of his hands slid under my chin as the other gripped my thigh.

Without another thought, I threaded my fingers through the dark mass of his hair. It was longer, sexier than even one week ago. He hadn’t shaved in an equal amount of time, leaving rough beard to drag across my skin with each languid and surprising pass of his tongue. I shivered, my movements causing him to fleetingly lose hold of me, only to lead him to grip me all the tighter.

Then his mouth was on my neck. Teeth sinking into my heated skin. My hands found their way beneath the shirt I hastily unbuttoned. The white open-necked variety he favored. His dark, taut flesh, alive with unspent desire, was nearly invisible in the night. It was smooth, apart from the dusting of hair over his flat abdomen that never failed to draw my attention.

I dragged my thumb beneath the band of his jeans and brushed the solid, arc of his cock. His bite jumped, only to sink deeper.

He was murmuring in Italian, flicking his tongue and nipping beneath my chin, along my shoulder, under my ear. I clung to him, lost in the heady thrill of his mouth and the tight, possessive grip of his hands. Whatever my mind may have wanted seemed inconsequential to the rest of me.

I heard his many names spill from my lips, glad no one was around to hear me. Aware only of the building ache along every inch of my overly sensitive body.

He pushed his corded thigh – over which my bent leg now rested – into the juncture of my legs. I gasped and arched back, my body seizing with the first sparks of an almost-orgasm.

“Fucking hell.” His hands changed positions, pulling me back so he could take my mouth with harsh tongue thrusts. I could taste the wine on him, knowing it wasn’t enough to have altered his personality.

We would both remember tonight. And I couldn’t decide which scared me more.

Then the thought fell away as he ratcheted our kiss into the feverish, all-consuming type. My hips began to move with the never-ending thrust of his tongue, and I heard him move from breathless to heaving gasps. We dropped off the rocking bench onto our knees.

His mouth pulled away from mine just enough to give him room to speak. His thumbs ran twin paths down the length of my moaning throat. “You’re fucking beautiful.” His words vibrated through my parted lips, down through my gasping throat and into my lungs, where they bounced to all parts of my being, reiterating his compliment with each harsh beat of my heart. Growls were coming soft and low from his throat as he slid a finger beneath my bra. His dark eyes were ancient in their lineage. Rome afire.

I felt those hands caress my sides until they were at the small of my back. Slowly, he lowered me to the marble floor, draping himself over me, careful to keep his weight on elbow and hip.

My hand worked at the shirt barely covering one of his shoulders as his hand runched my dress higher and higher until his fingers slid past my thong.

•   •   •

Brad jerked his torso to better help her with his straitjacket of a shirt. “Fucking rip it,” he managed, before his mind went blank at the feel of his fingers within her.

Her hips bucked, leaving his cock jealous as hell of his hand. Somehow, she got hold of the back of his shirt and yanked it over his head. There was a loud shredding sound, and he felt victorious as the brush of her uncovered nipple registered against his own.

There was a primal wildness between them that defied reason. She was like some devious goddesses come down from Olympus to fuck with him.

“My Artemis,” he whispered against her throat as she spread wide the front of his jeans.

There was a flutter of her moan beneath his mouth and then the breath-snatching feel of her fingers around his cock. He shoved himself into her grip and felt her thumb ride once more over the slick head of it. “Wait,” he growled, not wanting to come in her hand.

She tightened her grip and he reconsidered, thinking spilling himself across that sexy stomach of hers wouldn’t be the worst hand dealt his ego.

She laughed, low and throaty. “Beat you to it.” Before he could think of what that meant, she had rolled them both to the side, leaving him nudged up against the wet heat of her core.

Her hair was running riot over both of them, a loose curl coiling over his wrist like a living handcuff. He wanted to be chained to her. Tied. Bound. Whatever it took so he never had to be without her.

The thought was a fucking scary one.

Until he forgot how to think when her hand slid beneath the tight pull of his jeans over the curve of his buttocks. She threw a leg over his hip and pushed him inside her.

His whole body twitched and thrashed as she climbed him, her legs on either side of his hips as she came to rest above him. He was in deep. Then, impossibly deeper, as she rocked her hips, pushing off his heaving chest with the flat of her palms. Her frock was fucked, leaving her curves to spill out and tease his mind as well as the rest of him.

He felt his jaw clench and stomach muscles bunch as he met her thrusts. “Can’t control –” It was out before he knew the words had formed.

She slid downward, her lips brushing his, and let him roll her until he was the one on top. He kicked up the pace and her eyes went black with passion.

Suddenly, a cold fist wrapped itself around his heart. He tried not to think about Sanchez, about what he’d do if the bastard touched her. Instead, he drove into her with every last bit of strength he possessed. She crumbled into his shoulder, half-sobbing, half-screaming as he punctuated his remark with a dozen strokes, ultimately coming in raucous silence and blessed, mind-numbing heat.

•   •   •

Afterward, he carried me, facing him, my arms and legs wrapped about his stripped form, to his bedroom, where we used the bed for the purpose it had been made.

I awoke somewhere between midnight and dawn, aware that he too was awake, sitting up, eyes lost in the hazy space where the ocean and sea melded. My head was resting on his abdomen and his fingers were absently stroking my hair. Rolling to my back, I reached up and caressed his cheek with the knuckles of my left hand. “A penny for your thoughts?”

He never looked down at me, just kept staring out at the crashing sea. “I’ve never slept in this bed with anyone but you.”

I was disturbed by the revelation and his sudden detachedness. “Why not?”

“Giovanni doesn’t like anyone in his room. He’s obsessive about keeping the second floor off limits.”

It was bizarre to hear the man beside me talk of himself in the third person
.

“What about Brad?”

His chest lifted my head with a deep breath. “It’s tearing out his soul that you’re going with Alberto.”

I sat up then, wondering how we’d gotten it all so backwards. “Brad, I
have
to go to Bogotá.”

The dark eyes met mine at long last. Every bit of Brad’s warmth and humor squeezed from them. “Which is why this won’t ever happen again.”

A
lasdair watched me through binoculars as the Lear jet set down on the rain slicked runway at El Dorado International Airport. It rolled to a halt some distance from the main terminal. Three silver Audi Q7’s pulled up next to us, and four huge men emerged from each. By now, the hatchway had opened, and two equally intimidating bodyguards stepped out onto the extending stairs, eyeing the surrounding perimeter with expert care.