Текст книги "Midnight Secrets "

Автор книги: Lisa Marie Rice

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Chapter Eight

Washington, DC

The plan. Phase two started.

Now phase three. And then four and five.

Hector Blake read the file on his computer avidly. It would erase itself in fifteen minutes but as a lawyer he was used to absorbing large amounts of data in short amounts of time. Here, he didn’t have to memorize the details because he wasn’t involved in three of the major events.

For the moment, he was just involved in the Washington Massacre and making sure an obedient weakling became the next president. Considering the target, it made sense to have him in the loop. The other events were described in general terms.

Someone in some ministry somewhere—he suspected China—had a very strong grasp of economics and mass psychology. Five events, maybe more that he wasn’t privy to, guaranteed to bring the behemoth to its knees. The shadowy forces pushing the events were using America’s strength against it, like a jujitsu master fighting a bloated overweight monster. Because many of America’s strengths became weaknesses if you looked at them the right way.

America had very efficient, very fast financial markets and stock markets. They were able to squeeze value from stones, thanks to the quants. But by the same token, when overwhelmed, the system ate itself. The Massacre had tanked the economy, sucking several trillion dollars out of the system. On his way home from his office, Blake counted several soup kitchens, more appearing every week.

His own money was safely abroad. Two billion dollars that no one would ever see but him. He could even access some of it legally since he had an “advance” from a small publishing house no one had ever heard of for his memoirs. And then several million sales of the book would be arranged.

He was thinking of doing that again, just so he could have capital in-country he didn’t have to account for. He’d already made discreet inquiries for a good ghostwriter.

Being rich while everyone else was poor was delicious. Power lay in contrasts. Poor people were obedient, subservient, biddable. Particularly those who had come down in the world. They were so desperate to come back up they never questioned why they’d fallen in the first place.

So step one—impoverish everyone—was done. Trillions of dollars had been sucked out of the economy and sent elsewhere. Blake imagined that there would be a couple of other economic shocks coming down the pipeline.

Then London as president. He’d do anything Blake told him to do.

The step after that, ah. Pure genius. The next step was blinding America and he now understood exactly what he’d been told to do while on the Senate Intelligence Committee and why. He now understood the value of the people he’d placed in strategic positions. He knew there were others, in the NSA, in the DIA, at the Pentagon. Not the FBI, though. The FBI was proving impenetrable and incorruptible.

It was something Blake couldn’t understand. The base salary of a newly minted Special Agent was a little under forty-four thousand dollars. Peanuts. It topped out at about a hundred and thirty thousand for the Director. What some people spent on clothes. How could it be so hard to recruit FBI Special Agents?

But the plan could go forward even without the FBI, who weren’t tasked with foreign intel anyway. By the time anything came to the attention of the FBI, the US would be a giant on its knees. The FBI could even be disbanded. There was Homeland Security anyway—the FBI was a drain on resources America didn’t have.

The file winked off and he knew he would never be able to find it again. But no matter. Blake understood that immensely resourceful and smart people were behind the project and that in five years’ time, maybe less, the United States as he knew it would be gone.

Portland

They Skyped Nick. They could do that safely. Joe wasn’t going to say anything overt anyway. Nick was a smart guy, he’d catch on fast.

There he was. Walking along a street in DC. Nick was dressed in civilian clothes, wasn’t on duty. Not decked out in MultiCam camouflage, Kevlar helmet, armed with an HK416 assault rifle.

Metal took point. The two had recently worked together on an op that involved backpack nukes.

Nick smiled. His cell’s camera caught him from below, showing a jutting jaw with a dark five o’clock shadow though it was only fourteen hundred in DC. “Metal! My man! Wassup? How’s Felicity? She hacked into the NSA yet?”

“Nah. She’s working for us now and we keep her in check. Listen, Nick, we need your help.” Metal turned Joe’s monitor around so Nick could see Jacko and Joe.

“Jacko, Metal,” Nick said nodding. He brought the cell closer to his face. “Is that Joe Harris? Hey, man.”

Joe nodded his head and didn’t smile. Nick was no dummy. His smile dropped off his face, too. “Sitrep,” he said quietly.

“Not over an open line.” Joe looked at the camera directly. “It would be nice—it would be really nice if you could make it to Portland.”

Nick’s black eyebrows drew together. “Soon?”

“Now.”

Joe shifted the monitor so Nick could see both Metal and Jacko in close-up. He was glad he’d Skyped because the seriousness of the situation could be read in their faces.

“Now?”

“Now.”

Both Metal and Jacko nodded.

Joe turned the monitor back. “Can you do it?”

Nick was checking his cell phone. “There’s a flight leaving in five hours. A red-eye. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.”

“Come to the office,” Joe said. “We’ll have a briefing.”

“I’ll be there,” Nick said and killed the connection.

“We need to tell Mystery Man.” Metal and Jacko nodded.

Mystery Man seemed to be keyed into Joe’s computer. Probably by malware. He’d been meaning to have Felicity secure his computer but hadn’t managed to get around to it yet. That was good news and bad news. If bad guys had access, he was in a shitload of trouble. However—if Mystery Man had access, presumably he’d gone through his hard disk for signs of other intruders.

Taking a deep breath, Joe keyboarded:

Tomorrow we’ll all be at ASI. Including FBI

After two seconds, words formed on his monitor.

Mancino?

Joe looked at Metal and Jacko. Metal gave a thumbs-up. Okay, they were going all-in with this guy.

Yes.

He checks out.

Yeah, by any measure Nick Mancino checked out.

Yes.

Give me number of encrypted satphone.

Joe sat back while Metal input a number he took from his cell. Felicity would have made the number untraceable and she would make sure the encryption was strong.

Four bells.

Four bells was 10 a.m. nautical time. A reference to the fact that he knew Joe was navy. Was this guy navy? Former navy? What the hell was he?

Four bells.

Joe confirmed and sat back in his chair.

* * *

Something happened when Joe and the guys went back to his house. They’d been laughing and teasing Joe about taking all their money when they left. When they came back, they were sober and quiet.

Felicity and Lauren picked up on it right away. The three of them had been laughing over the plot of the latest lame romcom, scarfing down the squares of double chocolate fudge Isabel had pulled from the freezer, when the guys walked in. Felicity and Lauren immediately quieted, watching their guys carefully. It was amazing to see. It wasn’t as if they were watching Metal and Jacko out of fear of a mood change. No, it was more as if whatever their guys felt, they felt.

Nothing showed Isabel more than this that they were couples. Teams. Jacko walked directly up to Lauren and whispered in her ear and Metal made a beeline for Felicity and put his arms around her.

Couples.

She was contemplating that when Joe walked in a minute or two later, carrying a duffel bag. He walked straight to her, eyes glued to hers, as if there was nobody else in the room. He opened his arms and she walked straight into them.

A couple.

Crazily, yes, they were a couple. It was the sex, sure, because that had been spectacular. The best of her life. But it was more than that. She was attuned to him, dialed in to his frequency. She was aware of wherever he was in the room. She looked for him, constantly. Joe did the same. When he walked in, he didn’t look anywhere but at her.

He felt it, too.

The embrace lasted a minute, the time it took to reacquaint herself with his smell, with the feel of him in her arms, to search out that specific spot where she nestled her head. His body was an extension of hers, part of hers.

It would have been frightening, this immediate connection, if it hadn’t felt so right.

But because she was so attuned to him, she realized that something serious had happened while he was gone. He was holding her too tightly. His muscles were harder than usual, tense and stiff. That reassuring heartbeat, a beat per second, like a metronome, was speeded up. His breathing was speeded up, too.

She could ask when the others had left. Or she could wait for him to tell her what was wrong. Because intimacy ran both ways. She hadn’t told him about the Massacre. About the hell she’d endured after.

It was still too painful to talk about, still jumbled up in her head. She had things she wasn’t ready to discuss. Maybe he did, too. Maybe this was a business thing and it was confidential.

One thing she knew, though. She trusted him. If he felt it was necessary to talk it over with her, he would. If he didn’t, there was a good reason. Joe was a straight shooter. She felt that down to her bones.

By the time she lifted her head, both Lauren and Felicity had their coats on. So did Metal. Jacko seemed perfectly willing to brave the cold dusk with only a T-shirt on, a light denim jacket over his arm. Looking at that dark, impervious face, it was as if nothing affected him, except Lauren.

Metal had a hand to Felicity’s back. He gave Joe and her a two-fingered salute off his forehead and Isabel had no problem seeing the soldier he’d been. “See you tomorrow morning,” he said to Joe. “Felicity’s going to do some research.”

Felicity looked up at him. “I am? On what?”

“Conspiracies,” Metal said darkly.

She smiled. “Love me a good conspiracy. I’ll search the darknet. That’s how I found out the aliens in Roswell are secretly vampires.”

“You know,” Jacko said as he walked Lauren out the door. “That doesn’t sound too far-fetched.”

Felicity stuck her head back in the door. “But we have a rain check on that dinner, right?”

“Right,” Isabel answered. “Whenever you want.”

She cupped Joe’s jaw briefly when they were alone. “You want to tell me what this is about? Something happened over at your place, didn’t it?”

Joe took her hand, brought it to his mouth. She felt his lips, warm and soft, against the palm of her hand.

“I’ll tell you, yeah. Not right now, though. Not until I have more information. Do you trust me?”

She pulled her hand away, letting her fingers caress his cheek. Her faith in everything had been broken, shattered. The Massacre had poisoned her faith in everyone and everything. But to her vast surprise, she trusted him.

“Yes,” she said softly.

The taut muscles of his face relaxed a little. He checked his wristwatch. “Do you know it’s been almost six hours since you fed me?”

She smiled, rolled her eyes. “That long? You should call 911.”

“I should.” He kissed her hand again. “So what’s on the menu for tonight?”

* * *

Christ, a fucking army coming out of the bitch’s place!

Kearns was dressed in a tracksuit and had dumped some water over his face to look like he was soaking wet with sweat. With a watch cap, yellow wraparounds, scarf around his neck and lower face, he was sure he was unrecognizable.

Kearns had run three times past her house at half hour intervals. Couldn’t even tell if there were people in her place. But there were three vehicles parked right outside the house on the street so she had people over.

He was walking slowly, pretending to have runner’s cramps, when the front door opened and two big guys—one tall, one not—came out with two lookers. The ones who had helped Harris put up security cams and monitors around Delvaux’s house.

The men were operators. Kearns could tell by how they handled themselves, the way they looked around. It was pure luck that he was coming up on them as they walked down the little sidewalk and got into their vehicles. If he’d already passed them, and turned to look at them, they’d have made him. These guys observed everything.

Shit, this was getting impossible.

Level of protection the bitch had, he’d need at least a twenty-man team, and here he was in Portland, all alone with his ass hanging out.

Blake should be paying him ten times what he was for this.

His cell rang. One of the guys—the shorter one but still a big bruiser—glanced over briefly. At least Kearns had a reason to stop.

Jogger getting a business call. Or maybe a call from the little lady. When are you going to finish that run? The food’s getting cold.

“Talk to me,” Blake said. He wanted a report.

Kearns swore he could feel his spleen spurt bile. You send me out here with zero resources, no backup at all, I’m supposed to keep tabs on a chick that has navy SEALs protecting her?

He couldn’t say that, though. Because then Blake would want to know how long the SEALs had been around and he’d have to start defending himself.

Blake himself wasn’t scary. He was a politician and he was soft. Used to the good life. Had fucking drivers, probably had forgotten how to drive. Wouldn’t know how to mow his own lawn or fix his own car. But he had operators around him and those operators were scary. He was surrounded by guys who’d carried out the Washington Massacre. Almost one thousand people gunned down and blown up, one thousand Americans, and they did the job in ten minutes then disappeared slicker’n snot. Not even DNA left behind.

If Blake snapped his fingers there would be no place on earth for Kearns to hide, because that was another thing. Blake seemed to have unending money. Rivers of it. Oceans. World-changing money.

So he said what he had to say.

“Nothing’s changed. It looks like she hasn’t even left the apartment today.”

“It looks like?” Blake said, his voice icy.

Fuck.

“I’m alone here. I make the rounds every two hours, but I can’t do more because someone is going to notice something. I haven’t seen her go out. And last time she did go out she was shaky. Today’s cold and there’s ice on the sidewalks. I figure she won’t go out when it’s this cold.”

“Next report, I want more facts. And make sure you brief me on any changes.”

“Roger that,” Kearns said evenly, keeping the resentment out of his voice.

No changes, asshole.Just a pack of navy SEALs.Nothing worth reporting.

* * *

Dinner was something called spelt soup with onion and cheese bread. Joe didn’t actually know what spelt was but learned all about it from Isabel. One of the oldest cereals known to man. Mentioned in the Bible, older than wheat. Isabel said that some specialty microbreweries made beer from spelt and promised to find some for him. She said it had a special nutty flavor.

God.

He’d never eaten like this in someone’s home. Home for him meant takeout or something scrounged from someone else and put in the freezer for a rainy day. Lots of rainy days in Portland.

Metal was a decent cook and Joe loved eating over at his place, but it was nothing like this.

“So. You ran a food blog?” Joe pointed his spoon at Isabel.

She smiled sadly. “Ran is the operative word. I haven’t posted anything since...” She swallowed, kept her voice even. “Since the Massacre. I haven’t even looked at it since then. I’ll have lost all my readers.”

“How many readers did you say you had again?”

“About a million and a half.”

Fuck. “Your readership was more than the number of active personnel in the US military. That’s a lot. Literally an army of foodies.”

She’d been tracing a pattern in the tablecloth with the tines of her fork and looked up. “Yeah. I guess so.”

There was something in her voice.

“You ever think about starting it up again?”

Isabel sighed. “Off and on. And only in the past few weeks. But it would be like starting over and it took years of very hard work to get to where I was. I don’t think I have that kind of energy anymore. And I did a lot of research and sometimes I traveled to get local recipes and pictures.”

“I don’t think you’d have to work that hard,” Joe protested. “I mean these things go viral, don’t they? As soon as word gets around that you’re starting up again, readers will flock back.”

“Maybe.”

“And, well, if you can hold off for when I’m free, I’ll accompany you on your trips. We could do it on weekends. Don’t know anything about food but I can carry your bags for you. Prime bag-carrier, top tier. And I work cheap. For food.”

That brought a smile to her face, a little less sad. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” Joe put certainty in his voice. Very aware of the fact that this was the first time any kind of future was mentioned between them. It was going to keep cropping up because he had no intention of leaving her side. Did she want to go to Tallahassee to research chitlins? Joe was right there. “Is it still online?”

Isabel’s eyes widened. “Do you know—I don’t know. Isn’t that crazy? I haven’t looked at it once since...since the Massacre. It probably is.”

It wasn’t crazy. Joe was firmly of the suck-it-up-and-move-on school. Her life had come to a standstill and she’d just dropped everything. But Isabel loved what she did. It had given her joy and maybe it could give her joy again.

“Lately, even before the Massacre, I’d eased up because I had another project.”

Her eyes had gone back down to the tablecloth.

“Which was?”

“Well, I was taking notes for a book. I wanted it to be a big book, full of beautiful illustrations. Full of information and recipes. A celebration of food. A book you can dip into and always find something interesting. An agent was interested.”

Joe put his hand over hers. “That sounds fantastic. I’m sure it would be a great book, a bestseller. Do you still have those notes?”

“Oh yes,” she breathed. Joe looked into those beautiful eyes and saw something that made his heart thump hard in his chest.

Hope.

Isabel had hope again. She was coming back and she would be stronger than before, because that was the way it worked. If you were broken and came back, you were stronger in the broken places.

He squeezed her hand gently. “Sounds like writing a book is going to be in your immediate future. And picking up the blog again too. Can I see it?”

“The blog?” Isabel rose and Joe noticed that she seemed to be moving more easily, too. He was beginning to see the magnificent woman she must have been and would be again. Beautiful beyond words, graceful, smart, knowledgeable. Capable of moving millions of people with her own passion. “Sure. If it’s still there.”

She went to her desk and clicked a key to turn the monitor on. In a second she’d pulled up a home page. She turned the screen so Joe could see better. He pulled up a chair and sat down and was instantly lost.

The blog was beautiful to look at. Across the top a carousel of brightly colored photos floated from left to right. Aged, agile brown hands kneading bread, a smiling farmer holding a bushel of small intensely red apples, two women in hairnets pulling on mozzarella in a vat, making knots, another woman rolling rice inside a grape leaf...the images went on and on. The quality was exquisite, many of the images were in sunlight and all of them celebrated the joys of the products of the earth.

“You’ve got a great photographer.”

She was watching the screen with him, the colors so intense they reflected off her pale skin. “Thanks. I took most of those.”

Astounded, Joe watched more images march across the header. His first impression was right. The photographer was inspired. And the photographer was Isabel.

“These are incredible images. Makes you want to reach into the screen and pull something to eat out.”

“Thanks. I’ve traveled a lot and I like to take photos. I had a whole bunch in my archive so when I started the blog I put together a slide show of some of the photos I’d taken. It was just a question of balancing out the color palette and making sure there was a flow from one photo to the next.”

“Huh,” Joe grunted. He’d never have thought of that for a blog header, not in a million years. The blogs he read had to do with geopolitics and gear. But now that he was paying attention, he saw that from photo to photo there was a slow continuity of color, an intensely pleasing sense of balance.

He scrolled down and saw that the blog was dated two days before the Massacre.

“I didn’t have time to update the blog at all,” Isabel said quietly. “My father was preparing to announce his candidacy and everything was in an uproar. My next blog was going to be a three-parter—celebratory foods throughout the world.” She huffed out a breath. “Because I thought we’d all be celebrating.”

No, they didn’t celebrate. They were all dead.

Joe scrolled down, read the last entry. “The Humble Chickpea.” He read for half an hour, fascinated. The history of the chickpea dating back to the Bronze Age, its nutritional value, the use of chickpea flour, different ways of making hummus. She’d even unearthed some poems praising the chickpea, translated from Lebanese Arabic. At the end of the post were four recipes arranged according to difficulty, which even he, ignorant as he was, saw was smart. The blog appealed to beginners and sophisticated cooks alike.

He scrolled quickly down and saw feature after feature on various foodstuffs, giving the history, interesting factoids, the same scale of recipes. All lavishly, beautifully illustrated.

He couldn’t imagine the amount of work that went into it, the vast research behind the highly readable and entertaining articles. Toggling left, he saw that the archives could be accessed by foodstuff, by recipes, by ethnic cuisine.

“This is amazing, Isabel,” he said seriously. Joe was ashamed of himself. When he’d heard Isabel had run a food blog he’d thought—how cute. This wasn’t “cute”. It was a very serious labor of love that a lot of people found useful. She was an expert in the very thing that kept humans alive. Food.

They had that in common. It just so happened that he was an expert, too, on one of the other things that kept humans alive. Weaponry.

“You need to bring this blog back to life. And you need to write your book. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

She looked him full in the eyes, this incredibly talented woman. This incredibly beautiful and talented woman who was his. The smile reached her eyes. “I promise.”

She was coming back to life right in front of his eyes. Putting herself back together again, picking up her life where it had been blown up.

He knew all about that. He’d picked himself up, too. The difference was he’d had a lot of help along the way.

“It’s late. Are you tired?” Startled, Isabel checked her wristwatch.

Joe didn’t bother checking his watch, he had a perfectly functional one in his head. It was 10:35 p.m., give or take a minute. He didn’t give a fuck what time it was, though. All he knew was that it was time.

“Because I’m tired,” he said, rising. He cupped his hand under Isabel’s elbow and she rose, too. “I think it’s time for bed.” Either he took her to bed or his dick was going to explode.

Right now Isabel was absolutely impossible to resist. The Isabel he’d met had been like a wounded bird. He’d wanted to touch her, kiss her, bed her, but also curl himself around her and protect her. But there was another Isabel inside, not wounded, a confident woman, talented and worldly. Incredibly sexy. Like she was the woman sex had been invented for.

Joe softened his hands. He wanted to hold her tight, kiss her hard, but he had big strong hands and he had to watch himself. To make sure he didn’t clutch her too hard, he placed his open palm against her back and kept it open as he moved her toward the bedroom.

She looked up at him in amusement. “So, it’s like that, is it?”

He wanted to smile but it was hard to do when he was shaking with lust, trying to control himself. “Exactly like that.”

In the bedroom, Isabel immediately veered for the bathroom. Yeah. Okay. Chicks wanted to be all fresh before they had sex. Joe didn’t need that. He’d want her if she just came off a marathon. He wouldn’t care.

He sniffed his armpits just to see if they were rank, but they weren’t. Let’s hear it for twenty-first century deodorant. Inside of five seconds he was naked and under the covers. He was boiling hot but he had the blankets up over his crotch because his cock looked almost inflamed, and it felt harder than it had ever felt before.

It almost scared him and it was his cock. So he didn’t want her to see it and run screaming. He wanted her to scream all right, but not that way.

He sat up against the headboard, hands behind his head, waiting. She was doing something in the bathroom. He heard running water, then silence. Oh God, she was naked in there. He shut his eyes because his cock had given a painful pulse. He didn’t think it could become harder than it already was, but it did.

Because Joe knew what she looked like naked. She was designed specifically to drive a man wild. Soft skin, full breasts with pretty pale pink nipples, only the very tips became cherry red when she was aroused. All that honey blonde hair—enough for six women—fluttering around her shoulders. Those long slender legs, a pale little cloud between them, groomed and neat, pink-and-red folds peeking through.

The folds glistened when she was excited.

Oh yeah.

God, please make her come out now or he was going to spill all over her bed and wouldn’t that be fucking embarrassing? The sheets were soft and crisp at the same time. He’d read somewhere that sheets were graded on a thread count, the higher the count the higher the quality. These sheets probably had a billion thread count. And covering the bed was a huge thick comforter patterned with rosebuds, feminine overkill.

It was certainly killing him.

He waited and waited and waited. Though the clock in his head said that about a quarter of an hour had gone by, it felt like days, weeks, months. He had to clench his abdomen a couple of times to keep from ejaculating. He recited the Ranger Creed in his head. He wasn’t a Ranger but they had the coolest creed of all the armed services.

He was running through the driest of the SEAL exams—mechanical comprehension—when the bathroom door opened and all thoughts flew out of his head. Straight out of his head. He was reduced to a sack of oversensitive skin, an aching dick and a hammering heart.

Look at her. She didn’t have on that pretty woolly nightgown that had been secretly sexy. Now she had on a nightgown that was openly sexy. Full-length. Cream-colored, thin straps, showing every outline of her body. The full breasts with the hard nipples, the tiny waist, the gently curving hips...

She wasn’t wearing anything at all underneath.

Joe blew out a breath, hard.

She was swaying as she walked, eyes on his, smiling. She knew the effect she was having on him. Though she couldn’t see his dick, he was sure it was sending out signals.

He held his hand up. “Stop.”

She stopped, pretty feet gripping the floor. She cocked her head. “Joe?” Her voice was low and husky. She could see how worked up he was. Her stopping wasn’t in the program.

“Pull your nightgown up.” His voice was hoarse, strangled.

Her eyebrows shot up, but she obeyed, bunching that soft, creamy material in her fists and raising the hem to her shins.

Fuck. Those feet and ankles were so damn pretty. He was going to suck her toes...his cock surged, grew slick. He couldn’t afford to think of sucking her toes.

“Higher.”

Isabel studied him, trying to figure out what his deal was.

Well, tell her.

“I’m...a little worked up. As you can probably tell.” Joe manfully refrained from looking down at his lap. “So this is about the only foreplay you’re going to get. You’re going to have to do it yourself.”

“DIY foreplay?”

“Yep.” He was glad she seemed to have a sense of humor about this because it was actually not in the seduction playbook—to tell the lady that she wasn’t going to get any foreplay, she was going to have to do it herself. But he didn’t have a choice here. “When I get my hands on you it won’t be slow and it won’t be gentle.”

Her eyes opened wider.

“So pull that nightgown up.”

Isabel didn’t feel his urgency, otherwise she would have pulled that fucking nightgown over her head in a flash and run to the bed. But she didn’t. She was having fun. The hem of the gown inched up a little higher. Not much.

“More.” Joe was reduced to words of one syllable.

Isabel smiled. Raised the hem another inch.

“More.” Joe rubbed a hand over his chest. He was sweating slightly.

Another inch.

“More.”

Isabel swayed slightly, tilting her head, studying him. She gave that Mona Lisa smile only beautiful women manage, because she had his number. He was dead meat here, fragged, bagged and tagged. She lifted her hem higher, to the tops of her long smooth thighs.

Ah Jesus...

“What are you feeling?” He hoped against hope she felt a fraction of what he did. Like jumping out of his skin. Like being radioactive.

“Hot,” she whispered. “In every sense.”

“Show me.” Joe’s voice was urgent.

“What?”

“Show me you’re hot. Show me you’re ready. Show me now.”

Goddamn, why was he pushing this?

Because he was hanging on to control with two shaking hands and it was slipping from his grasp by the second.

With one hand, Isabel bunched the nightgown in her fist, lifting the folds of material up and to the side, baring her body from the waist down, pubic hair neatly shaped around her sex. The hair on her mound was a light ash brown, the same color as her eyebrows, a shade darker than the hair on her head. Her skin was so pale it looked silvery in the light from the bathroom.

She looked for a moment almost otherworldly, a dream of a woman instead of flesh and blood. Insubstantial, as if she could float right away at any moment. But she wasn’t insubstantial. Joe had been inside her. He’d kissed almost every inch of her and if there were a few square inches left unkissed he had every intention of making up for it tonight.