Midnight Man (Midnight #1)(47)

CHAPTER ELEVEN


It was barely dawn when John awoke. He was a soldier and was used to waking up instantly alert. They used to practice it—he’d keep his men sleep-deprived for days, then test marksmanship a few minutes after waking them up, minutes into REM sleep. John himself didn’t have problems. He was good at that, good at being able to focus instantly on the new day.

Now, though his mind was alert, his body foolishly wanted to simply stay in bed, curled around Suzanne’s back.

She didn’t move when she slept. He couldn’t hear her breathing but he could feel it, one hand curled around her rib cage, fingers just brushing the soft underside of her breast. She was impossibly soft and delicate, almost too much so, for the use he’d made of her through the night. His dick stirred at the memory and he pulled her even closer, burying his face against the delicate skin of her neck. His beard rasped against that pale, fragile skin and he pulled back. He didn’t want to give her whisker burn.

He lay still, savoring the moment. That, too, was a soldier’s trick. In the field, any moment could be your last. Your senses opened, each sight, sound, taste, smell razor-sharp and intense.

This wasn’t a firebase, but danger still threatened. Which is why, though he’d rather just lie here forever, curled around Suzanne, he had to get up. Contact Bud to see if there had been any developments. Check the perimeter. Get his men in on the investigation.

Pete and Jacko wouldn’t be as hampered as Bud in getting info. Bud had to obey the law. Pete and Jacko had to obey him and he was a hell of a lot more demanding than the law. Particularly when it came to protecting Suzanne Barron.

Detaching himself from Suzanne proved harder than he thought. His hands simply didn’t want to leave her. He usually rolled out of bed two seconds after waking up, but now he simply lay there, stroking her skin, smelling her hair, feeling her warmth.

Finally, when the sky started turning pink outside the window, he forced himself out of the bed. Padding naked into the bathroom, he wet a washcloth with warm water and walked back to the bed. He stood for a moment, looking down.

There were smudges under her eyes, half-hidden by the long, lush eyelashes and a few bruises on her hips he’d given her toward the end. At some level, he knew he shouldn’t have used her as much and as hard as he had. He couldn’t regret it, however. If someone had put an AK-47 to his head last night, he would have been totally incapable of stopping.

He bent down and rolled her carefully onto her back. She was so exhausted she didn’t wake up.

He gently cleaned her between the legs. He’d come three times in her and she was sticky. He wiped her carefully, trying hard not to wake her up.

This is something he should have done last night, but he’d been too wiped out to do anything but collapse on top of her and fall into a sleep so deep it felt like a coma.

She was so beautiful, even here. The folds of her sex were soft, the palest pink, surrounded by ash-brown pubic hairs interspersed with gold. His breathing sped up as he imagined kissing her there, licking her, sucking the little clitoris he could see when he opened her a up a bit with two fingers.

Such mysterious folds of flesh, so simple and yet the source of such mind-blowing delight. He wanted to sink to his knees and bury his face between her thighs. He wanted to lick her until she shook with the force of her orgasm, as she’d done last night. God, it had been so exciting to feel her pulling hard on him while she came, shuddering…

He had a hard-on. Again. If he followed his instincts, he’d slip back into bed with her, mount her, pull her legs apart and start moving the instant he entered her. With any other woman, he would have. He’d never, ever pulled his punches with women. They knew right upfront what to expect.

He made sure the women he had realized he had a strong sex drive and that they were going to be used hard. If that’s what they wanted, fine. If not, there were plenty of other women around.

They knew what they were in for and he hadn’t had many complaints. So if this hadn’t been Suzanne, he’d be in her right now, watching her wake up to the feel of him moving in her.

But this was Suzanne. He wasn’t too sure what made her different from the others, but there it was—she was different.

She was tired and needed her sleep, and that took absolute precedence over his iron-hard erection. He pulled the covers up over her, watched her for another moment, easing a pale curl away from her eyes with a movement which became a caress, then forced himself away.

A quick shower, shave and cup of coffee later, and he was in his underground lair.

Bud wasn’t going to dance with joy at being woken up this early, but tough shit.

“Morrison.” Bud’s voice was annoyed but alert.

“John here. What have you got for me?” The long silence had John sitting up straight. “What?”

“It’s bad. You’re not going to like it, Midnight.”

“There are a lot of things I don’t like about the situation. So spill.”

“Suzanne worked off and on with another decorator, a guy called Todd Armstrong. And before you go off the deep end, he was gay. Nice guy. Smart. I met him a few times. He was fun.”

There was a bad feeling in the pit of John’s stomach. “Was?”

Bud sighed. “Yeah. Guy was wasted. Portland PD found his body about six hours ago. He’d been tortured, Midnight. It wasn’t pretty.”