Darkness(77)

Her eyes widened as she felt him stirring under her. Her lips parted to give him a glimpse of her pretty white teeth. Then she gave a little wriggle, pressed her hips deliberately down, and—

Holy Mary Mother of God, if he got any hotter he’d catch fire.

His hand slid on down to check out that enticing heat of hers.

“Oh,” she said as his hand moved between her legs, parting her folds, stroking, exploring. He pushed two fingers inside her and was blown away by how tight she was, how hot and wet. She said “Oh” again, on a squeaky little note of surprised delight that instantly made him so big and hard that the marble monolith of the Washington Monument had nothing on him.

She closed her eyes with one of her sexy little moans that made every muscle in his body tighten, every time she did it. Then, with his fingers moving purposefully in and out, with her body undulating on top of his like she was deliberately trying to drive him out of his mind, with her panting and flushed on top of him and her nipples practically branding his chest and enough heat rising off the pair of them to steam up the air, she opened her eyes, gave him a dead-sexy look, and said in a throaty growl, “I knew there was a reason I pulled you out of the sea.”

That surprised a laugh out of him. First time he could remember laughing while he was in the middle of some serious foreplay, with his cock begging for action and his balls aching like they were getting ready to explode.

“Lucky me,” he said, meaning it, and rolled so that she was beneath him again.

Their gazes met as her arms came around his neck and he bent his head to kiss her. Her eyes were hot for him, just like her body was hot for him, but there was something else in those big baby blues of hers, too, something that he couldn’t quite—

“Lucky me,” she said softly, and lifted her mouth to meet his.

The instant before their lips touched, he had it. He knew what was looking out at him from behind the blaze of torrid passion in her eyes: vulnerability. And trust.

What do you do with a woman who looks at you like that?

He f*cked her until she screamed.

Afterward, she passed out, while he managed to stay awake long enough to get up and retrieve the flashlight and his weapon, which he wanted to keep within easy reach.

Ordinarily the phenomenal sex would have been enough to occupy his thoughts, but as he rolled their coats into substitute pillows and then blew out the lantern, Cal found himself once again turning over in his mind the unwelcome scenario that had first occurred to him when Gina had described the Texas accent of the gunman she called Heavy Tread. Cal’s CIA handler, Lon Whitman, who’d hired him for this job, was from San Antonio, and his twang was as Texas as they came.

Was it possible that Whitman had sold him and the operation out?

That would mean that Whitman had gone rogue, a possibility that Cal ordinarily would have rejected as impossible. He’d known Whitman for a number of years, and the guy was a straight-arrow, by-the-book operative whose integrity he’d never had any reason to doubt.

But someone had gotten to Hendricks and Ezra. Hendricks he could, very dimly, envision being corrupted by any number of unsavory interests. Ezra? Cal once would have said, never could happen. It had happened, though, and the only way Cal could envision that going down was if Ezra was approached by someone like, say, Whitman, their trusted CIA handler. With some plausible reason why Rudy should be prevented from returning to the United States and why Cal should be kept in the dark about this, along with a promise, coupled with the power to follow through, to make the less-than-positive repercussions from their losing Rudy after obtaining him from the Kazakhs go away. Plus the money. Thirty million was a lot of money. Having that much on the table certainly would have inclined Ezra to listen when Whitman talked.

When Ezra had shot Cal, he hadn’t been shooting to kill. In what possible scenario could Ezra have thought that was going to work out? Not killing Cal after turning traitor on him and shooting him was like leaving a live grenade in your own house, and Ezra would have known that.

Unless Ezra had been assured that everything would be smoothed over and explained once the alternate disposal of Rudy was accomplished. Just about the only person Ezra might have trusted to be able to smooth over what he would have known Cal would see as a base betrayal was their CIA employer, Whitman.

Ezra had said Cal would get his share of the money. He would have been counting on ten million dollars going a long way toward mollifying Cal, too.

The scorched-earth magnitude of the response to his survival would have been exactly what he would have expected if the CIA—that is, Whitman—was directing it.

If he was right in what he was thinking, and Cal profoundly hoped he wasn’t, he and Gina were in exponentially more danger than he had thought. Cal knew his own skills and abilities, and had every confidence in them. But if Whitman, with his CIA resources, was behind this, the technology and manpower they might be facing would be overwhelming. With Cal alive, Whitman would have everything to lose. He would stop at nothing to make sure no one who could tell the tale lived to do so.

There were other possibilities, of course. So many bad players on the world stage made for a large pool of suspects. But Cal kept coming back to that Texas twang. What were the chances that there were two drawling Texans involved in this?

Very small, Cal judged. In fact, almost infinitesimal.

Shit.

Nothing to do about it at the moment, he told himself grimly. Tomorrow would be time enough to deal. For now, he needed to sleep.