The Espionage Effect(60)
Statistics. Cold numbers. Facts in the case.
As the days had ticked by, followed by weeks, and months, then years—the calendar cruelly indifferent to those governed by it—two undeniable things surfaced crystal clear. My sister was dead, evidenced by the bones of a partial skeleton that surfaced years later and two counties over, along the shoreline of a river. And the loving family I’d once known perished right along with her, pronounced dead at the scene of the crime, the very night she’d vanished.
Somehow I found my voice again, forced strength into it. “She’s dead.”
“You’re not.” His tone held a cutting edge.
Lost in a whirlpool of misery, I found myself tugged toward the side as he grabbed hold and pulled me from the downward spiral. Weak from the night’s events and the freshly opened wound that had been too scarred to fully heal, my head lolled to the side until my temple rested on the wet wool of his tuxedo jacket.
He curled his arm up and cradled my head with his hand. “You’re alive for a reason, Devin. I don’t believe in coincidences. I didn’t just drop onto your balcony by some random occurrence.”
I let out a soft snort. “I hadn’t thought so. If you recall, I’d commented on the statistical improbability at the time.”
“It was meant to happen.”
Confusion clogged the gears of my brain, surely he couldn’t mean… “Fate?”
A slight wobbling told me he’d shrugged his shoulders. “Sure.”
Comfortable silence followed, minutes ticking by until he finally broke it. “You’re a scientist. Take higher-power ideology out of the equation. Before I met you, I was an operative stuck in his assignment—in need of a breakthrough. You had the skill set and unrelenting motivation to fill that need.”
One corner of my mouth tugged up at his “unrelenting” comment. “And we were innately drawn to one another before either of us knew the other’s situation.”
His arms and legs gave me a quick full-body squeeze. “Exactly.”
Before I registered what was happening, his weight shifted back, to the side, and then upward, drawing me up from the floor with him until I stood, barely. He settled his hands on my shoulders, then turned me around.
“No more talk of the past.” He peeled the sand-encrusted stiff silk from my skin and dragged the material down my sides. “You focus on here. Now. Just keep breathing, slow, deep…steady.”
His low, soothing voice came out in a rhythmic metronome, calling out a subtle cadence that demanded obedience. Exhausted on countless levels, I submitted to his ministrations, needing whatever I instinctually knew he would provide.
He slowly undressed me, pulling the ruined fabric away from where it had been plastered to my body. Once lustrous fabric now crackled, a stiff, beaten mess. Coarse grains of sand abraded already irritated skin, but I welcomed the minor pain.
Cool air rushed over the abused surface. But the uncomfortable chill would be temporary.
Naked in front of the man who’d tenderly bared me wide open, exposed me to a level I hadn’t dreamt possible, I stood there in the dark room before him, waiting, unmoving.
He quickly undressed, and his warm, solid hand slipped into mine. A gentle tug drew me forward in the darkness. Then the tinny sound of glass hitting metal clinked out, echoing against hard surfaces. A soft squeak sounded, followed by water droplets splatting onto tile. He ushered me inside an obvious shower enclosure, his chest to mine, his body a shield to the sudden elements. The cool mist that rained down on my face and upper arms quickly warmed, then grew hot.
Without request, he’d left the lights turned off. Another method of blindfolding perhaps, getting me to feel, not see. Yet when emotion had overwhelmed me, he got me to think, not feel.
And now, without sight, brain too exhausted to think, I followed his instructions…and just breathed. His solid frame stood inches from me, not crowding, but not easing away either. In natural movement to steady myself in the unfamiliar place, without sight to guide my balance, I brushed up against him in places, bumped into his thigh with a knuckle, his chest with my nipple. Yet the touch wasn’t overtly sexual, merely comforting.
Water, heated just below scalding, pelted my skin, washing away the sand, the grime. A pleasant aroma filled my nostrils on the next inhalation, earthy with a light herbal undertone. The fragrance triggered a memory of our first sexual encounter, his body covering mine, me inhaling his incredible male scent. Now I knew the source. It began with him…in his shower. The sudden knowledge that he’d brought me into his private domain comforted me.
Foamy suds followed, and he turned me, facing me away from him. His hands slicked over one shoulder, cupped over my arm top and bottom, then massaged down the length of it, to elbow, wrist, then fingertips. He repeated the process on the other side. Every so often, his touch would pause over a tender spot, then massage gently, as if he knew I’d been injured there, wanted to fix it.
Steam billowed up around us in the generously sized enclosure as he rubbed my shoulders, my back, working his way down to the uppermost cleft of my ass. Then he rubbed down my glutes, one, then the other, before his soapy fingers slipped down the crack in between, cleansing every hidden part of me.
Then he moved from the stream of water he’d been blocking and allowed the hot spray down as he turned me under it. After another momentary pause, he shifted in place again, and his soapy hands returned, this time to my front side.