Rachel Caine: Devil's Due

His breath caught, and he reached out to slowly slide the robe across her shoulders, fingers lightly skimming skin, and then down over her arms. She let the robe fall to the floor.

She led him to the bed and put her hands on his shoulders. "Don't move." She'd never seen him this way before, so quiet and yet so tense. It wasn't passivity, it was intensity waiting to break free, and it made her breath grow short, her cheeks burn, her fingers shake. The buttons on his shirt surrendered, and underneath that his chest was defined, not muscular, and covered by a mat of graying dark hair. She ran her fingers possessively through its coarse texture, then down to hook into the waistband of his blue jeans.

He stopped breathing and closed his eyes. Fighting to stay still.

She popped the button loose, and ran her fingernail slowly down the zipper. Teasing. Felt him shudder… He had more control than she could imagine. She remembered him turning away from her, knowing there would be a price for his refusal. Maybe a fatal one.

He'd never expected that they'd abduct her and force a medical rape on her. She had to believe that.

She took hold of the zipper tab and dragged it down, one slow click at a time. He let out his breath in a rushing moan as she put her palms flat on his hips, then pulled on the loosened jeans, sending them tumbling in a heap over his feet.

Well, that answered the questions she'd briefly entertained about his preferences in underwear…not that it mattered now. The briefs followed the pants to the floor. She ran her hands slowly from his collarbone across his chest, down the fluttering muscles of his stomach.

Down.

"Ben," she whispered. "You can move now."

He opened his eyes and she burned in the fire of them, and then that intensity was loose. His mouth was everywhere, finding every untouched place to draw a gasp or a moan, those clever fingers knowing exactly where to press, how to move.

The things he was saying flowed through her, thick and sweet as honey, words shaped on skin. He drove her mad with words, and then they left the hobbles of language behind, and it was only intensity, and passion, and love spoken in flesh.

In the moment of white-hot transcendence she felt herself embrace that spark of life buried deep inside, and wrap the whirlwind around it.

Giving it not just life, but purpose.

Ben collapsed against her, gasping for air, and she ran her hands through his graying curls.

"That," he finally managed to growl, "was not what I expected."

"Not as good?"

"Idiot," he murmured, and put his head back down.

She laughed. After a few seconds, so did he, deep rumbles from his stomach, subsonic waves through her skin.

If Simms could see us now, she thought, and was momentarily chilled by the idea that, just perhaps, he could.

And so could Eidolon.

There was no way to understand right and wrong anymore. There was only good, and she had to seek it.

She turned toward McCarthy's warmth, his love, his sense of safety.

Toward the good.

She woke up fast to a loud buzzing sound, and catapulted out of bed naked, reaching for her gun, before she realized two things. One, the sound was the intercom calling for attention. Two, Ben McCarthy had rolled out of bed on the opposite side, and he had a gun in his hand as well.

They shared rueful smiles, and she kept the weapon in her hand on the way to the keypad, to press the call button. "Yes?"

"Sorry to buzz you so early, Ms. Garza, but there was a special delivery for you. The guy said to tell you that it's a package from back East. That make any sense? I can't read the label."

"No, that's fine, I'm expecting it. I'll be down in a minute, thanks." She turned back to find McCarthy pulling on his briefs, then his jeans. She walked to him without hesitation and stepped into the circle of his arms, her bare skin pressed against his from the waist up. The luxury of it nearly overwhelmed her. His left hand moved lightly up the curve of her arm, and in the morning light she saw a fine lacework of lines around his eyes when he smiled at her. They deepened when she stroked her fingers through the warm mat of hair on his chest.

"No regrets?" he asked her.

"Why in God's name would I have regrets?"

He traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. "I'm old, you know."

“Older," she acknowledged. "Didn't slow you down."

"Oh, it did," he said, and dropped a slow, warm Mss on the skin of her collarbone. "But that has compensations. Lets me concentrate on getting the most out of every… single…moment."

"I noticed." When had her voice taken on that particular low purr? You can't be distracted like this, some cold part of her brain said. You're drunk on him, Sober up. There are things to do.

She couldn't stop touching him.

His lips moved across her throat, up to the column of her neck.

"I have to…get…the package," she murmured.

"Yes, you do."

"Things to do."

"Important things."

Her fingers curled in the waistband of his pants.

"I just got those on," he murmured against her skin. His hands were wandering, too, down her back, down the smooth curve of her hips. Inward.

"Stop." She tugged at his pants, pulling him harder against her when he tried to move back for better access. "I have to go downstairs."

"Like that? They'll be thrilled."

"Dressed. I have to get dressed." She finally found some strength to put behind that statement. "Ben, no. I have to do this."

He stopped playing, and the smile slowly died. "Do you?" He searched her face intently. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure that I can't live like this. And neither can you, or Jazz, or for that matter, Simms and Borden. If Simms is right, I could be the only one left standing if I don't act. So yes. I'm sure." She read the fear in him. "I'll be all right."

"Simms sold out about twenty of his friends, so far as I could tell. Forgive me for not trusting him with your life."

She stopped him with a kiss, a long one. "I have to go."

She dressed quickly, just underwear, jeans and T-shirt, feet in a pair of flat shoes. Her hair still looked loose and tumbled, and she could smell McCarthy all over her skin.

She reset the alarm on the way out—native paranoia— and took the stairs to stretch the soreness out of her leg muscles. Marsh glanced up as she came out the fire door, took in the way she looked, and wisely said nothing beyond a polite, "Good morning, Ms. Garza." She signed the clipboard and picked up the package. It was, as Gregory had predicted, heavy; not something one could slip easily into a purse. She'd need a duffel bag, or a backpack.

She was thinking about it on the way back up the stairs, but the extra weight in her arms made her slower. She stopped to readjust the weight on the third floor landing, and as she did, she heard the ground floor door open, and hard-soled shoes coming up. Men's shoes, from the sound of it. Two or three pairs of them.

"— both there. Be ready. She's a tough little bitch, and McCarthy's a stone-cold killer. He'll fight to protect her. I don't want any shooting if we can help it."

"If it comes to that—"

"If it comes to that, kill McCarthy, but don't kill her. We need her. Understand?"

Voices carried. Lucia ran almost soundlessly up another flight, eased open the fire door and sprinted for the elevator. There was an intercom button next to the Up and Down; she slapped her palm on it, juggling the package clumsily. "Security! Security, pickup!"

"Security, yes ma'am."

"Get up to the sixth floor. There are three men on then-way to my apartment and—"

"Ms. Garza? This is Marsh, ma'am. Those men are police officers. They came in just after you picked up the package—they had a warrant. Nothing I could do."