Текст книги "Midnight Secrets "

Автор книги: Lisa Marie Rice

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“Show me,” he said again, his voice insistent.

“How?”

He took in a deep breath. “Open your legs.”

Watching him, she widened her stance. At some point in her life she must have taken ballet lessons because she lifted one foot, pointed her toes, then gracefully placed it back on the ground.

“I know how to show you,” she said, her voice a breathless whisper in the quiet darkness. With her free hand, she reached down and opened herself, to show how she glistened. She was wet. For him.

Reaching with her index finger, she slid it between the folds, then lifted it so he could see. Even in the semidarkness, he could see that her finger was coated with moisture.

The hand that held her bunched nightgown moved upward and she pulled the gown over her head and tossed it to one side. The gesture lifted her honey hair and it settled back down around her shoulders, crackling with electricity.

It was time. Isabel recognized that as she stepped to the bed. At the last minute, when she was ready to climb in beside him, Joe lifted her up and over him, settling her down on top of him.

He’d run out of time.

Feeling her against him nearly set him off. She smelled and felt so damned good. Instinctively she’d opened her legs, kneeling along his thighs, her sex open and hot over his cock.

Joe groaned. He brought her face down to his with a hand cupped over the back of her head and opened her up with the fingers of his other hand. Feeling himself at her rim was simply too much. He kissed her hard as he thrust up into her, seating himself fully inside her with a grunt.

He felt her cry against his mouth and pulled her head back half an inch. “Did I hurt you?” he said, his voice guttural. It seemed to come from his stomach instead of his throat.

Isabel opened her eyes, stared down into his. She was panting, her breath washing across his face in hot waves. Her face—he couldn’t read that expression. It was pained, but not pain. All of a sudden it was as if she turned inward, frowning, her shoulders turned inward and he was about to pull out when she gave a cry and fell forward onto his chest, fingers digging in deep, writhing around him.

She was coming.

Her sex was milking him hard. There was absolutely nothing in him that could resist her. Lunging upward hard, he came, too, in long painful spurts so intense they almost made him black out. He didn’t even thrust, just kept himself deep inside her as she moved against him, clutching him with her arms and thighs.

Finally, finally he stopped, completely wrung out, holding her tightly to him. He was breathing hard, bathed in sweat that plastered them together. Isabel’s hair fell in tumbling curls over his shoulder, caught on his stubble, a lock crossed his forehead. He shifted it away, savoring the softness, that subtle smell of a sweet shampoo.

Was he hurting her? Was he holding on to her too tightly? Probably. He gave his arms the command to let go but there was a kind of communications breakdown and his arms remained tightly wound around her. He had to give himself orders, like an instructor to a trainee, a newb.

Right arm, pull away.

Except his right arm was comfortable and happy where it was, arm crossing Isabel’s back, hand resting lightly on her firm butt.

Right arm, pull away NOW!!

With a sigh, Joe obeyed himself. He didn’t exactly pull it away so much as loosen his grip. Because not being in touch with all that soft satiny skin seemed insane. Why would he do that?

Because you might be hurting Isabel, fuckhead, was the reply.

He loosened his left arm, too, just a little. He was embracing her now, not clutching her. He wanted to be on her good side because, well...he tested her. Moving his dick in her gently, thrusting maybe an inch in and out.

Oh man. His juices and hers. She was soft and completely welcoming. Oh yeah. Because in a minute or two, Joe was going to be ready for round two. Or, considering that round one hadn’t exactly been a masterwork of style, technique and stamina, round one and a half. At the thought of sex with her again, he hardened.

This was going to be better than the last time. She was a little less tight, softer, wetter. Joe nudged inside her again. Oh man...

But she wasn’t responding. She was lying on him, breathing calmly. Joe couldn’t breathe calmly, not while in Isabel. Then he heard a weird sound coming from her. He pulled his head back, swiped her hair away from her face and grinned.

She was fast asleep. Out cold, actually. Not even a flicker of those thick eyelashes. That luscious mouth was slightly open and a ladylike little snore escaped from it.

So. No more sex. Not right now, anyway. He couldn’t bear the thought of disturbing her sleep. She’d often said that she had trouble sleeping.

Carefully, carefully, Joe withdrew from her body, edged her gently over so she was nestled against him, head on his shoulder, and pulled the covers up over her shoulders.

He lay back and studied the dark ceiling, wondering how far gone he was when lying in bed next to a woman he wanted more than his next breath, with a hard-on that could hammer nails, developing blue balls—and just holding her was better than sex with any other woman.

* * *

An air of evil in the room, so strong it was almost a stench.People all around, happy, popping with joy, dancing to the celebratory music.Smiling, smiling.Couldn’t they feel it?Couldn’t they feel the darkness like smoke swirling around the room?

She looked around, trying to warn everyone.Most of them were familiar faces though she couldn’t put any names to them.They didn’t stick around long enough for her to identify them.They’d dance close to her then twirl away.She’d reach out but they swirled out of her grasp the instant she opened her hand.

Everybody moving, moving.Only she stood stock-still in the room as the shadows in the corners filled it.Wisps of darkness coalescing, wrapping itself around the clueless partygoers.

She screamed and no one listened. They were having too good a time.

The music was so loud she couldn’t hear herself think, couldn’t make herself heard by anyone, not even those close by.

Someone danced close to her, grabbed her by the waist, twirled her.It made her dizzy and unsteady.She had to watch her feet so she wouldn’t fall over.When she lifted her eyes she saw HIM.

Always him, always watching her, always just out of reach.

She caught a glimpse of his face but then he disappeared again.He was somewhere in the room, elusive and mocking.Aviper in human form and oh so dangerous.Why couldn’t anyone else see it, feel it?She could feel him so vividly, though she couldn’t see him.

She saw him every night in her dreams.In her nightmares.No matter how the dream started, it ended as a nightmare.Always lots of happy people, celebrating, with a hidden monster lurking at the edges.And yet nobody noticed, nobody cared.

Every night she struggled to make her voice heard above the noise, to warn the happy people what was coming.

Every night she failed.

She tried to scream but no sound came, ahuffing of breath, no more.She clutched at jackets and dresses and they removed her hand and moved on.

Right now she could see the bare outlines of his face, staring at her from a podium.The light came from behind and his eyes were in utter darkness, only cheekbones, mouth and chin visible.

That skull-like head with no eyes, watching her.

And, just as she had known, monsters came out from the walls, an army of them.Bearing guns, swords, in a killing rage.They wore black masks and seemed inhuman as they shot and cut their way through the happy throng, happy no more.Trying to flee the monsters.

Men and women, shot and stabbed, dying.

And still no one heard her scream. The breath in her lungs wasn’t enough. The black-suited minions continued killing and killing. And yet she was spared.

She looked again to the podium and he hadn’t moved.Dark voids where his eyes should be but somehow she knew he was staring at her, watching her as all around her people died.

Then, he smiled.Ahorrible rictus of a grin, the empty holes where the eyes should be, the mouth lifting in an unnaturally wide smile, mouth another dark hole.

That horrendous face filled her horizon, coming closer, ready for the kill, closer, closer.Though he hadn’t moved, she was suddenly shackled, immobilized.Utter prey as he came closer.

She tried to scream, scrabbled with her feet, fought for her life...

“Jesus, honey, calm down. It’s a dream.” A deep voice. Calm. She knew that voice. Her nightmares didn’t have voices, nobody spoke. They were like silent movies from hell. No deep, calm voices. Something was stroking her face. “Open your eyes, honey. You were having a bad dream. See for yourself where you are.”

Something that had shackled her released, just as she opened her eyes and saw she was in her bedroom. With Joe. Who was looking calm, but with deep brackets around his mouth. “It’s okay,” he said.

She hadn’t been shackled. Joe had put his arms around her. They were still around her, only not so tightly.

“I’m going to let go of you.” His dark eyes bored into hers. “Do you understand that you were having a nightmare?”

She nodded, throat too tight to talk.

“Good,” he grunted, and stroked her hair.

She was with Joe, in her bedroom. She was safe. It was like something had been squeezing her, stopping her from breathing. Isabel took in a huge wheezing breath. Another.

“That’s right,” Joe said. “That’s my girl. What were you having?”

“Nightmare,” she gasped. “Not real.”

But it had felt real. The evil, the killing, the man with empty eyes staring at her—it had all felt as real as anything. Her heart was still triphammering.

“No, not real,” Joe said. “Here.” She always kept a glass of water on her bedside table. He pressed it into her hand and she sipped. “See if you can get it all down,” he urged and she did.

“Better?” Isabel started shaking her head no, when she stopped. Actually, she did feel better. She nodded.

But his face didn’t clear, it still looked tight.

“You scared me.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Scared the shit out of me, as a matter of fact.”

“You should have seen it from my point of view,” she said and gave a little laugh that might have been hysteria.

“No, thanks.” Joe put pillows behind him, sat up and coaxed her to sit between his legs, her back against his chest. He grunted with satisfaction when his arms went around her. She was surrounded by warm, hard man. Warm, hard, reassuring man. “It was bad enough being beside you. I couldn’t get you to wake up. It sounded like someone was torturing you but you were gagged. And your legs were running, like you wanted to run away.”

This, this was the reason she hadn’t slept with anyone since the Massacre. The nightmares. It wouldn’t be any fun at all for a man to sleep with someone who went crazy every night. No wonder she hadn’t had a love life. Too scary, too creepy.

“Sorry. I’m so sorry.” Isabel pushed her hair out of her eyes. She felt washed-out, as if she’d run a thousand miles. Maybe she could convince Joe to go back to his house. And then avoid him until he got the message. It was too humiliating for words being exposed like this. What had she looked like while in the nightmare? Not pretty, that would be her guess. She hadn’t been pretty since the Massacre but in the light of day she could at least put up a front. Or if not a brave front, she could at least put on lipstick. But at night, when having nightmares? The rawest part of her was exposed.

Luckily, she wasn’t facing him. She didn’t know if she could face him right now.

Joe’s arms tightened briefly. “Good God, don’t apologize! I was just terrified that I couldn’t wake you up. What was the nightmare? Do you remember?”

“What it always is, the Massacre,” she said wearily, looking down at her hands. He’d clasped them in his warm fists. Where she touched him—all along her back, along the sides of her thighs, her arms and hands—she was warm.

The rest of her was deathly cold.

“The Massacre? In detail?”

“No. And it’s not really the Massacre itself, I shouldn’t have said that. I have retrograde amnesia and my memory so far is not coming back. I don’t have memories of much of anything beyond Friday afternoon, the day before the Massacre. What I’m dreaming of—what’s in the nightmares—is more like—like a metaphor. A metaphor of the Massacre.”

Joe rested his cheek against the top of her head. Her head was now warm, too. “Tell me,” he said gently. “Tell me everything before you forget it. And do you have these nightmares often?”

“Every night,” she blurted, then covered her mouth. She’d wanted to say never because only crazy people had constant nightmares. But the truth had simply fallen out of her mouth, like poison her body wanted to expel. “I have them every night. Except last night.” She twisted her head briefly to see if that sparked a smug smile. Fabulous sex that kept the little lady from her nightmares. He could be proud of that.

“I’m glad.” Joe didn’t have a smug smile. He just looked worried. He nudged her with his shoulder. “So, tell me. Is it always the same nightmare?”

Isabel blew out a breath. “This is going to sound weird, possibly cowardly, but I am so terrified when I wake up that my only thought is to get the images out of my head as quickly as possible.”

“That doesn’t sound weird and it sure doesn’t sound cowardly. Do you think you can make an exception now and try to remember instead of trying to forget?”

Now that Joe was with her, now that she was surrounded by him, now that she could feel his steady heartbeat against her back...yes. Having him here made all the difference. Before, all those nights and nights of waking up in terror, cold sweat covering her body, she’d felt absolutely alone. Not just alone in her house but alone. The last human in a dark universe populated by monsters.

“Okay.”

Joe’s hands tightened around hers and she realized her hands had been trembling. It gave her a spurt of warmth and energy. No one had held her hands during the night terrors.

“I can tell you about this nightmare. The one I just had. I’m in a room. A big room, a room I’ve never seen before. It is filled with people dressed up for an occasion and there is the air of a big party in process. The people are laughing, happy. Waiting for something big.”

“That sounds like the ballroom the night of the Massacre. So you do remember it.”

“No.” Isabel frowned, trying to explain what she barely understood. “My memory of the Massacre, if it ever returns, will be different. Because I’m familiar with the Burrard and I knew a lot of the people there to celebrate—” Her voice wobbled. “To celebrate Dad’s intent to run for the presidency. There would be a lot of the party activists I wouldn’t necessarily know but I’d know a lot of people there, if only fleetingly. Dad’s friends, reporters, donors. There wasn’t anyone I recognized in my nightmare. And there was this air—”

She shivered, looking for the words to describe the horrible feeling of menace.

“Take your time,” Joe murmured.

He was good. She’d been to two shrinks who had tried to lead her through her memories but she had felt pushed, prodded. Joe simply waited to hear what she would say. You’d think soldiers would be restless adrenaline junkies, but Joe was the opposite. He always gave off an air of infinite calm and right now of infinite patience.

“This air of menace. Of great evil. I know that sounds crazy—”

“Evil exists in the world,” Joe said quietly. “I’ve seen it, touched it.”

Yes, he would understand. He had been a soldier in terrible wars. He would understand evil.

“Dark, menacing. Horrible. Triumphant. As if it knew something we didn’t. But all these people dancing and laughing and celebrating—they’re clueless. Something truly horrible is about to happen and I am trying to warn everyone, but they’re not listening. They can’t hear me. I want to scream but I can’t. I want to run around but I can’t. I can’t move. It’s horrible.”

“Sleep paralysis,” Joe said. “Glycine and gamma-aminobutyric acid paralyzing the muscles during REM sleep. It’s a self-defense mechanism of the body. Otherwise we’d kill people in our sleep.”

“Awful. Just awful.” Like being trapped. “So no one would listen to me, no one paid me any attention at all, though I knew something horrible was going to happen. They didn’t even pay attention when something horrible did happen.” She drew in a deep shuddering breath. “People started dying.”

They were silent. Isabel couldn’t go on and Joe simply wrapped himself more tightly around her, a wall of warm flesh acting as protection.

Finally, Isabel spoke again. The nightmare was starting to lose its contours, fade. She wanted to nail it while she could see some flashes of it. “I was told by police authorities that they used machine guns during the Massacre. They even told me the make and the caliber, though I don’t remember any of that.”

“AK-47s,” Joe said softly. “The weapon of choice of your discerning terrorist.”

Isabel shook. AK-47s had killed her parents, her brothers. Her aunts, uncles, cousins. And hundreds more family friends and supporters of her dad’s policies. She squeezed her eyes tight but one tear seeped out, ran down her cheek.

Joe wiped it away with his thumb. He didn’t apologize for telling her the make of the weapons. Any website would tell her. She’d wiped it from her mind, but the reality didn’t change.

“In my dream they had guns, of all types. And swords. They hacked at people. I saw limbs being sliced off. What I think was a shotgun nearly took off the head of a man standing next to me. I’d been holding his arm, trying to get his attention, when all of a sudden I was covered in blood and brains.”

She twisted again to look at Joe. His face was expressionless but his dark eyes were warm. “None of this is real, though. From what I understand there were no swords. The lights went out immediately anyway and nobody could have seen anything. So it’s a nightmare that comes from my subconscious and not my memory. Do you see the difference?”

He nodded his head slowly.

“And then there was...him.”

“Who, Isabel?”

There was only one possible answer to that. An answer that came straight from the bottom of her soul. “Evil. Pure evil. A—a man. On the podium, staring at me. Only I couldn’t see his eyes, they were deep in shadow. And he had a huge mouth, full of teeth. It seemed like he had more teeth than a human should have...”

Isabel shut up. It sounded like she was describing a vampire, not a human. Some supernatural being. It was her subconscious ascribing monstrous qualities to him when the monstrosity was internal, not external.

“Sorry. He was...unsettling. And he smiled as his minions mowed people down. As if he were enjoying it. As if he were on the stage watching something that pleased him. None of the killers had a face, they were like devils, killing and killing. And yet some of the people in that big room still hadn’t understood what was going on, were still laughing and chatting, while others were being killed in the most horrific ways. And I couldn’t get them to listen, to pay attention. To run away. It was as if I were invisible. So I tried to get them to head for the exits but I couldn’t, and I slipped in the blood that was flowing and I tried to run harder...” She buried her face in her heads.

“And then I woke you up,” Joe said gently.

She nodded, her limbs shaking, a huge lump of something sharp in her throat.

Joe pulled the blankets up to cover her shoulders, rocking her gently, as you would a child.

At that moment, Isabel felt like a child. A child who’d seen the boogeyman and was terrified he’d come back.

Joe let her take her time putting herself back together again. He didn’t say anything, he just held her, rocked her. Finally, when she was calm again, he leaned down and spoke in her ear.

“You know, Lauren is a great artist. Do you think you could give her a description of this man, like you would to a police artist?”

Could she? “Maybe. But in my nightmare he was a monster. It wouldn’t be of any use to anybody.”

“You never know,” he said, his voice neutral. “If nothing else, it might rob him of his power in your subconscious.”

“Maybe.” Isabel hadn’t thought of it that way. She’d dreamed of the man almost every night, but when she woke up she could never remember what he looked like, only that he was cruel and evil. Brought darkness and violence in his wake. She’d fixed some elements of his face in her memory. She’d perhaps be able to talk Lauren through the drawing, even if the end result would probably look like a comic book villain. Manic and diabolical, like the Joker.

Joe nudged her gently with his shoulder again. “So we can plan that? Come to the office tomorrow morning and talk Lauren through the portrait?”

In the office. Talking about her nightmares in front of everyone. She suppressed a shudder. “I’d rather do it here.” Not let all Joe’s friends know about her craziness.

“I know, honey.” Joe’s voice was regretful. “But Felicity has her stuff there and we’re going to try to get back into contact with the guy—or the person who contacted us about you. Remember?”

God, yes. How could she have forgotten? So much had happened. “How does he know about me? And how does he know I live here?”

“All questions we want answered,” Joe replied, voice grim. “If I had to make a guess, I’d say he’s CIA or ex-CIA. And I’d guess he knows something about the Massacre that doesn’t fit the narrative.”

Isabel felt her eyes grow wide. She turned again to look at him. “Something about the Massacre? Like what?”

“I don’t know. But I think he thinks you have some kind of key or intel about it.”

“Me?” Good God. “I don’t have anything, least of all what you call ‘intel’. I don’t even remember it. Plus how did he track me down to Portland? That’s creepy.”

“It wouldn’t be hard to track you down. You weren’t on the run or anything. Did you file to change your name from Delvaux to Lawton?”

Isabel nodded.

“There you go. That would be in the public record. You weren’t in hiding, you just wanted a fresh start. If this guy is CIA and is secretly investigating the Massacre, he’d start with the survivors. How many survivors were there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone has done an official count. I don’t know how many of the serving staff survived. Presumably some of them weren’t in the part of the building that collapsed. I think about thirty or forty people who were in the ballroom survived. But I’m not positive.”

“So maybe this guy is contacting them all.”

“But how would he know to get in touch with you?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard. Your new address is on record. He’d look at the other people on the street and I’d pop up. I’m a former SEAL, that’s on the record and I am on the record as an employee at ASI, which is a well-known company. Very aboveboard. He’d add two and two. Even if I didn’t know you well, it would make sense for him to contact me and ask me to keep you safe. Maybe he’s making his quiet way down the list of survivors. We’ll know soon enough. He’s asked for someone from the FBI to be in the office tomorrow.”

“The FBI?” This was getting more and more strange.

Joe slid down in the bed, taking her with him. She was on her side and he was curved around her.

He was also erect, but he wasn’t prodding her with it, or asking for sex. He kissed her shoulder gently. “I think we’ll be getting some answers tomorrow, but I also think you need to rest. It’s 4:00 a.m. and we should get up around 7:00, so that only gives you three hours to sleep. See if you can manage it.”

“I don’t think I can,” Isabel said, then yawned.

“Uh-huh.” Joe kissed her shoulder again. She could see his face above her, smiling down at her. “Just try. Close your eyes for a minute.”

Oh man, he didn’t know just how hard she tried to get back to sleep after a nightmare. It was impossible. She’d just lie awake, tense and frightened, until the sky outside her bedroom window started to lighten, and she’d get up to start another exhausting day.

“It doesn’t work.”

“Try,” he coaxed. “Just for a minute. For me.”

“Make me,” she said, her voice suddenly low, suddenly husky. In a flash, a switch had been thrown. That massive male body surrounding her, that enormous erect penis against her back...All those intense emotions evoked by the nightmare morphed in an instant to desire. There had never been another mechanism for her to deal with the aftermath of the nightmares before. Just silence and the endless hours of the night. But now—now there was the world’s greatest distraction wrapped around her.

“What?” Obviously Joe didn’t operate like she did, emotions flipping from one extreme to the other. He had to keep up.

Isabel turned her head to smile at the dark male face above hers. “I need help getting to sleep. So either you warm up some milk for me or make love to me. Your choice.”

He closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them his gaze was fierce.

“Put like that,” he said. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

He turned her gently on her back and mounted her. There was no other word for it. His hands were gentle. She could see the effort that gentleness was costing him in the taut tendons of his neck, but the movements were pure sex, pure animal. His thighs separated hers and he slid into her with an ease that astonished her. She was ready for him, though. Needed him, even, and her body knew that before her mind did.

And oh, God, when he entered her she was infused with heat and strength. Sex was this, too. Elemental, primal. Heat and power entering her as much as his body entering hers.

His mouth covered hers and he started moving and there was nothing but heat and blinding pleasure and the animal comfort of his body in hers.