Illicit Intent, page 18
Two hours later, Emily, foggy from sleep, came down the stairs and took in the scene. She rubbed her eyes. Who’s house is this? Nathan was on the floor stacking blocks with Charlie while Jack played with the tablet. The kitchen was spotless. A salad was in the center of the set table, and she could smell Maggie’s famous lasagna bubbling in the oven. Leslie Odom, Jr. was crooning in the background.
Emily had been adamant about not having a nanny. A nanny had facilitated her abduction as a child, and as irrational as she knew it was, she couldn’t bring herself to alter her stance. The price she paid was occasionally being overwhelmed. Her reward was peace of mind. No contest. Especially with Maggie on hand.
Nathan looked up, his face a picture of contentment. “Ready for some dinner?”
“In a minute.”
Emily crossed the room and sat on the floor next to her husband. Jack crawled into her lap and continued what he was doing on Nathan’s tablet. Charlie punch-kicked the tower of blocks and squealed with glee as they toppled. Jack set the tablet down with care and moved to help his brother rebuild the tower.
Nathan took her hand in his. “These moments…”
“I know.” She nestled closer to her husband and watched her sons stack blocks.
New York City
April 27
Tox knocked on Calliope’s door and waited. He peered through the sidelight and spotted Coco on her hind legs doing the same back to him. When he didn’t see Calliope, he let himself in with the key she had given him earlier.
“Cal?”
He took five steps into the hall and poked his head into the living room.
Aaaand….he was pretty sure his tongue fell out the side of his mouth like Coco’s.
Calliope was wearing tiny spandex shorts and a blue sports bra. She was standing on one foot, AirPods in her ears, her upper body bent in half and wrapped around her one planted leg. The other leg was extended perfectly vertically toward the ceiling in a standing split. Her face was a picture of calm. When she turned her head and caught his eye, she smiled, released the pose, and came to stand in front of him.
“Hey,” she said. Tox nodded. The cage rattled.
“You okay?” she asked. Tox nodded. The cage shook, the bars bent.
“Did that turn you on?” Another nod. The lock was giving way.
Calliope tucked her fingers into the waistband of his jeans and tugged him forward.
“How much?”
The bear was out. Tox lifted Calliope by her ass and growled low in his throat as he carried her back to the yoga mat. He came down on top of her and grabbed the lycra at her hips, yanking it down her legs and off. He stopped. Gathered himself.
“Yes?” he growled.
“Don’t even think about stopping.”
His huge hands each braced a thigh, and he dove between her legs. Tox explored her with tongue and teeth, reveling in her scent, her taste. His hands slid up and back, squeezing and exploring the firm globes of her behind. When he moved between them, she raised her hips, urging him on. Another growl, a nip, a suck, and she exploded. Without lingering, Tox rolled back to standing, watching Calliope in her daze. She was bare, one leg bent and tipped over the other in an erotic, taunting pose. Tox reached over his shoulder and pulled the Henley over his head by the neck. Then he unzipped and dropped his jeans, standing naked above her.
Calliope gave her head a micro-shake to clear it. Could this body, this work of art, really be standing on her yoga mat? Sure, she had fantasized about this very encounter with this very man, but even her imagination couldn’t possibly have conjured what towered before her. She had fallen for Tox’s sorrowful eyes, his endearing thoughtfulness, his kind heart. She hadn’t fully comprehended that all that sweet was packaged in a physique from Olympus.
Tox’s nostrils flared like a bull as he breathed, his body cut from marble—the broad curve of each thick thigh, the muscular cradle of his hips, his biceps straining even in repose. A smattering of hair covered his chest and distilled into a dark path that led down beneath the ladder of his abdominals to an erection the size of her forearm. He reached down and stroked himself once, then held the base of his cock in a firm grip, marshalling his control.
Tox may have struggled with emotional control, but never physical. He was in charge of his body. He’d once lifted the back end of a Humvee off of Steady; he was not going to blow his load like a sixteen-year-old. He took a calming breath, unable to take his eyes off what lay before him. Blind to everything else he saw her hypnotic eyes. Deaf to everything else, he heard her gentle pants. Unable to speak, in his mind, he called out to her.
Calliope gulped but couldn’t drag her gaze away. His cock jutted out, his testicles hung heavy between those massive thighs. He sank to his knees and came over her, groping behind him for his jeans. He fished a condom out of his wallet, dislodging items in his haste, and sheathed himself.
He positioned himself above her, hands by her head, expression fierce, and nudged her opening. She spread her thighs wide and held her breath.
“You gotta relax, Cal. You can take me.”
Calliope nodded wide-eyed. She inhaled and blew out slowly once, twice, and felt Tox enter her. Mashed potatoes and gravy, he was big. Ten years of yoga and this was a stretch she had never, ever experienced. She relaxed her hips, tilted her pelvis, and welcomed him into her body. He thrust into her and Calliope saw stars. Never in her life had she felt something so powerful, seen someone so potent. He consumed her from within, eclipsed her from without. He withdrew, thrust again. She opened her eyes and met his gaze. She couldn’t imagine feeling more...complete. Then Tox bit out two words that blanked her brain.
“Almost there.”
“What?”
He pushed into her this time to the hilt, forcing the breath from her lungs and the thoughts from her head. She felt every inch of him as her insides melted and contracted.
“You okay?” he asked, concern on his face.
She cupped his face in her palms. “Manda ver, colloso.” Bring it, big man. She didn’t even realize she wasn’t speaking English.
He may not have understood her words, but it seemed he got the message. He urged her to lock her ankles around his lower back. Then he began to move in earnest. He surged into her body. Calliope felt him slide his forearms beneath her and lift her horizontally off the mat. She was levitating as he moved with force and precision. She felt him slowly bend her toward him to meet his chest, hitting every magic trigger on her body in one effortless motion. She erupted, unleashing a string of epithets and religious invocations in at least three different languages. She felt him piston his hips once, twice, three times, surging, pulsing, and finally joining her in euphoria.
She finished her litany with one whispered word. “Miller.”
She felt him clutch her, tightening his hold, enveloping her as if he couldn’t let her go. They looked like a Rodin sculpture—two people carved from one piece of marble, separate yet one. She had spent her childhood fighting to be noticed, to be the sun in someone’s orbit. To be seen. And when she couldn’t achieve it, she had shrugged off its importance and told herself she didn’t care, didn’t want to be significant, didn’t need that bond—with anyone: friends, siblings, lovers. So, she flitted, collecting experiences not friendships, gathering knowledge not forging bonds. Insulating the ache in her soul with adventure and excitement.
But this…this perfect quiet moment, this mutuality, this completion had filled that ache with something infinitely more satisfying. As she felt Miller’s arms engulf her, felt his ragged breaths whirl around her neck, she noticed with dawning realization that she was gripping him with equal ferocity, clinging to this perfect synthesis, begging time to stop.
Simultaneously they lifted their heads and locked eyes, still joined. She saw his wariness and hope.
Calliope spoke first. “That was…Miller, you demolished me.”
He furrowed his brow, and Calliope found this bout of insecurity both uncharacteristic and endearing. She continued, “I’ve never felt anything like that. That was...powerful.”
Again he remained silent. “Please say something.”
He stared for a long moment, his expression slowly blanking. Seconds ticked by, but she waited. Waited for him to confess the same obliterating feeling.
Finally, he spoke. “I gotta go.”
She winced as he withdrew and when she opened her eyes a brief second later he was hauling up his jeans and pulling on his thermal. Boots in hand he headed for the hall. She thought she heard him mutter something about a fucking cage. Calliope was on her knees on the yoga mat, naked from the waist down and staring at the empty hall as the front door slammed shut.
Tox sat on the top step in front of Calliope’s brownstone and covered his face with his hands. Fuck, it’s happening again. No, it wasn’t happening again. This was new. This was worse. He had never ever experienced a bonding like that, a joining. It was as if some force had welded their souls. It was the single most delirious pleasure he had ever known. Tox kneeling on the floor, Calliope’s legs wrapped around his waist, his arms cradling her, hers encircling his neck, her cheek to his chest, his face in her hair. He was half of a whole.
He felt it again, like an angry black sludge seeping under a doorway. That feeling of need, of possessiveness. Why, why couldn’t he just be fucking normal? Why couldn’t he meet some girl, think hey, she’s cool. I’ll date her, and just do that shit normal people do? Why did he have to feel this need to know every inch of her skin, to track every movement of her body? Why did their lovemaking have to be such a…conflagration? Why why why why why?
Tox hadn’t realized he had pulled the cast iron ring out of the lion’s mouth of the bollard by her door. He took a breath and set to putting on his boots. On a positive note, he had been careful with her, making sure he wasn’t hurting her, attending to her needs first. Although attending to Calliope’s sexual needs seemed oddly selfish to Tox. Her body was Shangri-La. He wanted to study her like a college course, learn every erogenous zone, every ticklish spot, every muscle that ached, every touch that brought her pleasure. Jesus, he was getting hard again.
Another positive: he had left. She confessed her true feelings and instead of telling her he felt the same way times a hundred, times a thousand, he had left. She exposed her vulnerabilities, and he responded with a quick, unemotional departure. He gave himself a mental pat on the back.
Wait. What?
Tox replayed their last minutes together in his head. He was so consumed with not going overboard that he had gone…underboard? To the unwitting observer, say, Calliope, for instance, he would have looked like an uncaring asshole. God, the irony. He cared about her too much, too soon, too completely, too intimately. Too too too too too.
Did he need to call his therapist? Stop seeing her? Move to Bora Bora? He buried his face in his hands. What the fuck was wrong with him?
When Calliope had regained the use of motor function she pulled her shorts back on and slowly stood, sore in places no yoga routine had ever found. She was a fairly level-headed person, but Calliope knew a freak out when she saw it. Whatever was going on in Tox’s muddled brain, she was not going to be the victim of a fuck and run. They were both too good for that. What happened between them meant too much. She perched on the window seat to pull on her trainers when she spied Tox, head in hands, sprawled on her stoop.
The door opened and shut behind him and Tox stiffened. Calliope sat next to him on the step and squeezed his knee.
“Your thoughts were flying out of your head and banging on the door. Could you keep it down?”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“What happened in there was pretty intense. Want to talk about it? Or at least tell me what’s got you so upset you’re bending metal?” She picked up the circular, now split ring from the bollard, and set it on the doorstep.
“Sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry and talk to me.”
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t find the right words.”
“Okay, look. When you’re out with your, um, team, it’s a team right?”
“Close enough.”
“When you’re out with them and say you see a guy holding a bomb that’s lit heading into a house that they’re about to go into.”
“How is he holding a bomb that’s lit?”
“You know. One of those ones that looks like a cannonball with a fuse at the top.”
“So, this op is taking place in Looney Tune Land?” His dimples made an appearance.
“Just go with it. Your fellow teammates are headed into a house and there’s a guy with a bomb inside. Do you stand off to the side and say ‘sorry?’ Of course you don’t. You warn them of the danger, tell them there’s a problem.”
“You’re not one of the guys.”
“What would you say if I were?”
“That I have to be careful where women are concerned. I had a fucked-up childhood that I’m still working through, and I can sometimes develop unhealthy attachments.”
“Was that so hard?”
“Yes! That was really fucking hard. Try admitting to someone you like, I mean really like, that you aren’t the healthiest person in the world when it comes to relationships.”
“You really like me?”
“That wasn’t really the point.”
Calliope took both his hands in hers and shifted on the step. “I’m not the healthiest person in the world when it comes to relationships either. It’s okay Miller.”
“I’ve had relationships in the past that didn’t end well.” Shut up. Stop talking now.
“Nobody leaves a relationship without a few scratches and dents,” She soothed.
“I total the car.”
“Then let’s just drive the speed limit and use our signals.” Calliope pointed back and forth between them. Tox got the message. Take it slow. Communicate. Why did she have to make it sound so easy?
“Thanks.” Tox ran a big hand over his stubbled head.
“So, what happened inside?”
“Um, yeah. I felt the same as you. I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I felt like when a round from a Kalashnikov AK hits body armor. I felt like I was standing too close to a flashbang.”
“I don’t know what any of those words mean, but I get the idea,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder.
“I didn’t want to freak you out.”
“Then you should have kept your pants on.”
They both laughed at that.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“Only in the best possible way.”
“I’ll try to exercise some restraint.”
“Don’t you dare. The first time you kissed me, I sensed you holding back. I prefer the untamed version.”
He looked at her. “No holds barred?”
“Remember, I’m a yogi. I bend, but I won’t break. Imagine the possibilities.” Calliope cocked a brow in challenge. She thought she heard that low rumbling growl deep in his chest before he spoke.
“Hey, remember when you told me about that guru?”
“Hmmm?” Calliope was momentarily distracted by his growing arousal.
“The guy in jail? He said after emotional exertion you should do physical exertion?”
Calliope just nodded, wide-eyed.
In one elegant movement, Tox rose to his feet, grabbed her around the waist, and hefted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Laughing out her surprise, Calliope grabbed onto his back belt loops as he carried her into the house, kicking the door closed behind them.
New York City
April 28
Clara Gautreau blew out a silent breath as she effortlessly boosted herself to the peaked rooftop. Reynard was usually vehement in his demurral of her extracurricular activities, but she knew why her guardian had asked. He needed to replace the item lost in Las Vegas; in Reynard’s business, customer satisfaction was paramount. He discouraged her pastime as unequivocally and persuasively as he could, but she was single-minded.
Reynard had saved her life all those years ago, and while they weren’t related by blood, they were as connected as any parent and child could be. She owed him everything, and yet he continued to give. She had been stunned when he had written to ask this favor; she was sure his disappointment with himself for needing to ask was mitigated by a tinge of pride in her abilities. So here she perched, focused, ready.
The Upper East Side home was quiet, as expected at 3:30 a.m. The owner, a corpulent South African diamond mogul, was not in residence. He and his family used the 16,000 square foot home about four weeks a year. This was not one of those weeks, but a full staff remained on the premises year-round. The house had state-of-the-art security: a museum-quality Bosch IP system with control center, management systems, fire and intruder alarms, heat and motion sensors, lockdown capability, and cameras. Child’s play, thought Clara from her nest between two sharp peaks of the cross-gabled roof. She changed her gloves from the heavier, sticky climbing pair to a thinner, form-fitting latex.
Three days ago, the skylight next to her had inexplicably suffered a cracked seal, repeatedly triggering the alarm. The damage had been repaired, and the alarm company was scheduled to rewire the window tomorrow. The skylight consisted of two rows of four, two-by-two-foot decorative stained-glass panels that were original to the home and opened for cleaning with a manual crank. Lucky thing that, because it would break Clara’s heart to have to damage the fragile works of art.
Apparently, the panels could also simply be shoved open, because two days ago from the rooftop bar of the boutique hotel across the street, Clara had observed one of the repairmen shoulder it open rather than go to the trouble of turning the crank. Now, with slightly more finesse, she wedged a device between the panel and the rooftop. Working like a miniature car jack, the apparatus silently lifted the lower-left pane to a height of about ten inches.
