He stayed locked on her eyes as he worked himself.
He was so sensual, so...unfurled in front of her, hiding nothing, both vulnerable and powerful. "Are you going...to make...me hold it...?" he groaned between gulping inhales. Her greedy stare roamed over him, and she committed the erotic sight of him to permanent memory as surely as if she had carved the images out of stone. "I have...to..."
"Come for me," she said. She wanted it to last forever, but she knew it was going to start to hurt in earnest soon.
Now his chest really got to pumping and so did his hands - faster and hard enough so that the muscles in his arms strained.
When he orgasmed, he came all over his stomach and his thigh because he couldn't seem to stop. And his eyes never left hers even as his palms finally came to rest and then released and flopped to the side.
As his breathing eased, she smiled and went to him, capturing his face, kissing him softly. "Thank you."
"Anytime you have a hankering for that kind of show, just let me know?"
"You can bet on it."
When they finally rinsed off and stepped out of the shower, they had identical ahhh-lovely smiles on their faces, and Vin got her a monogrammed towel from one of the warming racks. The white terry-cloth expanse was so big it covered her from breast to ankle, and by the time she'd turbaned her hair with a second one, she felt as if she'd been slip-covered in velvety softness.
Vin picked up a third, dried his hair until it sat straight in spikes, and covered his hips. "I like you in my towels."
"I like being in them."
He came over and kissed her, and in the pause that followed, her breath stopped in her throat.
She knew what he wanted to say. And agreed it was far, far, far too early for it.
"You want something to eat?" he asked.
"I...probably should head off." She had a lot of packing to do.
"Okay...all right."
Sadness thickened the steamy air as they slipped their arms around each other and left the bathroom -
"Am I intruding?"
Marie-Terese froze and so did Vin.
The woman he'd shown up with at the Iron Mask was standing just inside the bedroom, her hands hanging loosely at her sides, her long glossy hair down over her shoulders, her black coat belted tight around her tiny waist.
In her resonant stillness, she looked exactly as any model-chic female would on the surface, but there was something way off about her. Way. Off.
First of all, if she'd been badly beaten the night before, her face wasn't showing any signs of it; her features and skin were as smooth and pristine as fresh-cut marble. Second, she looked perfectly capable of killing someone as she stared at the two of them.
Oh...God. Her eyes. There wasn't a white rim around her black iris, her glaring gaze nothing but a pair of pits that were as dark and bottomless as sinkholes.
Could that be right, though?
As the skin across the back of Marie-Terese's neck tightened, the woman focused on her and smiled like an axe murderer who was looking at his next victim. "I saw your purse down on the dining room table, darling. Given how much money was next to it, I'd say your prices have gone through the roof. Congratulations."
Vin's hard voice sliced through the air. "How did you get in. I locked everything - "
"Don't you get it, Vincent. Your door is always open to me."
Vin put his body in front, shielding Marie-Terese. "Leave. Now."
The laughter that sounded out was all nails-on-a-blackboard, high and cringe-worthy. "Ever since we first met, things have been on my terms, Vin, and that isn't going to change now. I've invested a lot in you, and I do believe it's time to call you home."
"Fuckyou, Devina."
"You certainly did," the woman drawled. "And very well, I might add. But you weren't the only one. Your friend Jim also did right by me, and I think I liked him better than you. With him, I didn't need someone else."
"Yeah, I had to have more than you gave me as well," Vin snapped.
A wave of coldness rippled out from the woman, and her eyes, those awful black holes, shifted to Marie-Terese and locked on. "You've met Jim, haven't you. You ever been alone with him? Maybe...in a car? Maybe when you were taking him back home yesterday?"
How the hell did she know that? Marie-Terese wondered.
As Vin's body stiffened, the woman continued. "When you took him back to that shitty studio of his over the garage, you liked the taste of his cock, didn't you - but you would have blown him even if you hadn't. You need all the money you can get, and he was willing to pay for it."
Marie-Terese glared across the room. "That never happened. Never. I didn't go to his place."
"So you say."
"No, so you say. I know what I did and didn't do and with whom. You, on the other hand, are a desperate bitch who's trying to hold on to someone who doesn't want her."
The woman recoiled a little, and Marie-Terese had to admit there was some satisfaction to be had with that.
But then Vin stepped away, and one look in his pale face made her realize that Trez had been tragically right. A past like hers had a long reach, and Vin and she hadn't known each other long enough for even rudimentary trust to have developed - much less the kind of faith required for a man to believe that a prostitute wouldn't be doing her "job" with his friend.
Thank God for all the towels she had on, she thought.
Because she suddenly felt as though she were out in the frigid wind.
"Jim."
Standing in front of Devina's bathroom door, Jim measured the expression on Eddie's face: dead serious. More to the point, that big-ass body was going to be in the way if Jim made any move for the doorknob.
Releasing his tight muscles, Jim eased up his body and looked over his shoulder at the bureaus. Adrian was pulling open drawers in a methodical manner and rifling through whatever was in them - and there evidently was a lot given all the rattling.
"Fine," Jim murmured. "Guess we should join in the Easter-egg hunt?"
"I know it's hard," Eddie said. "But you have to trust me."
Eddie clapped him on the back and together they turned to head over to his buddy. Jim followed one footstep -
And wheeled around for the doorknob. As the fallen angel barked out a curse, Jim yanked open the slab of wood and jerked to a halt.
A young woman was hanging naked and upside down over the porcelain tub, her legs open in a V, her ankles bound with black rope to the circular rod that should have held a shower curtain. Her hands were tied together with the same black rope and pulled tautly up her body so that her fingers just barely touched the top of her sex. All around her belly there were deep cuts, arranged in a pattern of some kind, and red blood covered her white skin, running down her torso before splitting around the jut of her chin and jaw and flowing through her blond hair.
The tub was plugged and full.
Oh, Lord...about two inches above the pool she hung. Her eyes were open and fixed straight ahead, but her mouth was working ever so slightly..."She's alive!" Jim called out as he leaped forward.
Eddie caught him and yanked him back. "No, she's not. And we've got to get out of here now, thanks to you."
Jim thrashed free of the hold and rushed forward, raising his hands, ready to start on the complex series of knots -
A hard, heavy palm locked onto his shoulder. "She's f**king dead, man, and we've got a problem now." When Jim shook his head roughly and fought against the hold, Eddie's voice rose. "She's dead - those are autonomic spasms, not signs of life. See the cuts on either side of her throat?"
Jim's eyes careened around her body, desperately looking for a shallow draw of breath or recognition in her face that she was going to be saved...something...anything...
"No!" He pointed to her fingers as they twitched ever so slightly. "She's alive!"
As he strained until he roared, the scene changed before his eyes, flipping from current horror to remembered tragedy. He saw his mother surrounded by blood, her eyes blinking slowly, her mouth working to form the words necessary to get him to leave her.
Eddie's calm voice came right into his ear, as if the guy weren't so much speaking, but implanting the words: "Jim, we've got to get the f**k out of here."
"We can't leave her." Was that his voice? That reedy croak?
"She's gone. She's not here anymore."
"We can't leave her...She's..."