Chapter 13
“Sir?” The flight attendant knew the
penalty for waking her boss, but the penalty for his missing a call
from an associate was usually worse.
Usually.
She waited a heartbeat and spoke again,
a bit louder. “Sir, you have a call from your
specialist.”
He sat up so abruptly she gasped.
Regaining her equilibrium as quickly as she could, she presented
the satellite phone on a tray.
He glared at her, but evidently this
was one of those times when missing the call was the worse choice.
He took up the phone and spoke.
“You’re in place?”
“Yessir.”
“Have you seen anyone?”
“The older one, his pal. No sign of the
younger, or the girl.”
A simple code, but effective. They both
knew who they were talking about. “Then stay on wait-and-watch. If
it looks like he’s pulling out, going under—you know what to
do.”
“Yessir. And the woman and her
man?”
“Same goes.” Kill them
all.
“Understood.”
He hung up and handed the phone to the
flight attendant. “Thank you, Marjorie. Please bring me something
light to eat, perhaps a glass of white wine. A mineral
water.”
“Of course, sir. Would you like the
Wall Street Journal as well? We picked it up
before we left.”
“That would be lovely. Thank you.” He
turned and looked out the window, studying the clouds, thinking how
wonderful it felt to see long-term plans coming to fruition.
Interestingly enough, it wasn’t as much of an issue now, if either
of the men died. They had been stripped of their
status.
Their humanity, their ethos—one
disgustingly honest, the other determinedly criminal—was broken.
The thought of Davros stuck in a cell or a cave with the woman he’d
lusted after for so long but wouldn’t touch... ahhhh,
priceless.
“It’s better, really. Knowing they’re
doomed,” he murmured to the clouds. “It’s been a long time coming,
waiting for them to grow up, doomed children of a bastard
father.”
“Beg pardon, sir?” Marjorie was back,
her tray holding a light salad, an elegant quiche on china with a
beautiful golden wine in a crystal goblet.
“Nothing, nothing.” He smiled at her,
thinking she would never understand the joke, the sheer
deliciousness of it. “Just appreciating the view. This looks good.
Thank you. Ah, and the Journal as well.
Good. Well done.”
She soaked up his praise like a dry
sponge; he could see her cheeks flush and her eyes sparkle. “Thank
you, sir. If there’s anything else?” she asked
hopefully.
He waved her away. “No, no. Just peace
and quiet to read the Journal you’ve so
efficiently procured me.”
“Very good, sir. Ring if you need
me.”
He waved her away, but with a smile. It
was always good to acknowledge superb service. Marjorie was
excellent at her job.
He worked solidly through the meal,
smiling the entire time, thinking of Dav, trapped with his frigid
female, pining for her, but unable to break through. It was such a
terrible torture that he chuckled out loud. They were making his
revenge so easy, so thrilling, he was almost sorry to end
it.
Almost.
The curses flew in four languages as he
huddled on the floor cradling his hand. He covered it, gripping it
hard to clamp the pain and bleeding. He didn’t want Carrie to see
the sheared end protruding through his flesh. It was severely
broken, that was obvious. A compound fracture. Carrie was calling
out to him, but he didn’t want her to see the break, so he followed
his first impulse and with one strong jerk, he pulled the finger
straight.
Agonizing pain shot through him and
blurred his vision to black. His sight wavered in and out as he
gripped his fingers, pressing them together to apply pressure.
Nausea threatened to choke him.
“Dav? Dav? Are you bleeding? Where are
you hurt?” Carrie’s hands were a flash over his body, and he moaned
when she touched the side of his head.
“Oh, my God, did you hit your
head?”
“Yes, a bit, but I broke my finger when
I landed.” He ground out the words, fighting back the blackness and
the pain. “It is all right, Carrie-mou. I am not bleeding badly,
nor am I likely to die from these stupid mistakes.” He might not
die, but he surely was in pain. The grating when he’d straightened
the finger told him that he’d probably fractured other pieces of
the bone as well.
She huffed out a breath, but he
couldn’t tell if it was pique or relief. “What the hell were you
doing?”
“Finding the end of the tunnel,” he
managed, blocking out the waves of blackness as he shifted his jaw,
ran his tongue over his teeth, and gingerly stretched his neck to
one side and then the other, checking for other injuries. When no
sharp pains or twinges followed the action, he sighed with relief.
Stupid he had been, but not mortally so, he hoped.
“You felt you needed to find the end of
the tunnel with your head?” she demanded, her voice both scared and
irritated.
“Not the best choice, I agree,” he
answered. “I must be more careful, yes?”
Another huff, and then she answered in
a lighter tone. “Yes, you must. I’m going to turn the light on it
now, and see what’s up.”
He closed his eyes, knowing that they
would be blinded by the beam.
“Wow, that’s bright,” she muttered, and
then she gasped. “Oh, my God, your head is bleeding.”
“Really?” He felt no blood, no warmth
or trickle. Then again, his hand was screaming so much, he wasn’t
sure he’d have felt anything else.
“Not much, but it’s in your hair, and
on your face.”
Now, he thought he detected a laugh.
Was she hysterical? He opened his eyes, just a slit of vision so he
could see her.
“You are laughing at me,” he accused.
“Why?”
“I’ve never seen you look so terrible,”
she giggled, and he could hear the edge of hysteria in her voice.
“Oh, Lord, Dav, you should see yourself. You’re bloody and filthy
and you have nearly a full beard. I’ve never seen you with a
beard.”
He narrowed his eyes, squinted almost
to see her. “I have marked your skin terribly,” he growled,
reaching with his uninjured hand to run a finger down the soft,
reddened skin of her neck. “I have hurt you.”
“No.” He could see the faint gleam of
her smile, and some of the calm and sanity returned to her eyes.
“You haven’t hurt me. But your beard looks...”
“Yes?” He gritted his teeth on the
word, still gripping his finger to staunch the bleeding and dull
the pain.
“Piratical.”
He frowned, trying to make sense of the
word in his befuddled, pain-riddled state. “Like a pirate?” he
guessed.
“Yes, with your skin and your beard and
the blood on your forehead, you look like a pirate.”
“I feel like a wrecked ship,” he
managed, shifting off his legs and onto his rear. He moved his head
in the wrong way, making pain shoot along his arm once more. His
knees were protesting all the crawling, and his back hurt from
stooping. More than anything, however, he needed to get comfortable
so he could wrap his hand. He hoped wrapping it would prevent
further injury and keep it from bleeding more. “I think I’m going
to need to tie up my hand, bandage the fingers together. Otherwise
I will hurt it more.”
She frowned. She hadn’t asked to see
his hand yet, and he decided she hadn’t heard him say he’d hurt it.
She’d seen the head wound and focused on that.
“Your hand?” she asked, confirming his
guess. “What did you do? Let me see.”
“I broke the little
finger.”
“What? How? Let me see,” she
demanded.
“I broke it when I fell, and it is
badly broken. I have pulled it straight, and the bleeding is
stopping,” he said, seeing her eyes widen in the light of the
flashlight. “But it is not a good thing.”
She gulped and nodded. “No. No injury
is. Okay.” She seemed to gather herself, collect her wits. “Hang
on. Here—” She handed him the flashlight, which he took in his good
hand as she delved into the coat-pack. She used her tool to cut a
wide, long strip out of the lining of his coat. He had wanted to
leave the heavier coat behind, but she had argued against it. Now
he was glad. “Let me see it now.”
Reluctantly, he held out his hand. With
the pressure off, it began to bleed again, but more slowly this
time.
“Oh, my God,” she said, staring as she
took his hand with gingerly care. “This looks really scary, Dav.
I’m going to use the last of this hand-wash stuff to try and clean
it off, but it’s bad,” she said.
All laughter had fled now.
He gritted his teeth and agreed. The
gel stung in the wound, but if the gel prevented infection, the
pain would have been worth it. With a great deal of tender care,
she wrapped his last two fingers together, tying the wrapping with
another strip cut from the bag.
“It’s swelling a lot,” she said. “I
hope that wrapping it tight may help, but it could make it worse. I
have no idea. I don’t know anything about broken bones or
medicine.”
Dav was white-lipped and sweating
profusely again by the time she finished. Carrie could see the pain
written all over his face.
“Here.” She thrust the light at him
again. She’d taken it and held it under her arm as she worked, but
now she needed him to take it, shine it away from himself so she
didn’t see his pain. “Hold this while I get you some
aspirin.”
“Aspirin? You have that?” he asked with
a note of relief in his voice.
“In my purse. You have no idea how much
of a headache the gallery can be sometimes,” she said, trying to
lighten the mood. “I always have aspirin.”
She made him use more of the water to
swallow three of the pills, though he claimed he could do it dry.
She’d seen the sheen of sweat, felt it dampening his arms as she
bandaged him. He was losing far more liquid than she was. She was
perspiring, but he was truly sweating. With his fear of the dark,
and now an injury, she could certainly understand. She wished there
was more she could do for him, more ways to help.
“We need to keep moving,” he said,
grunting as he shifted to his knees. He stayed there, panting for a
moment before struggling to his feet. “If I sit much longer, I will
be like those who die in the snow—I will not get up.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling panic in her
gut. The thought of him sitting there, unmoving and comatose,
flashed into her mind. The image was far too real for
comfort.
“Let’s see how tight the squeeze
is.”
“Don’t say that,” he ground out. “Just
show me where the tunnel is.”
“Right. Got it.” She wanted to scream.
She wanted to pound on the floor and tell him to make it all go
away. It was one of the things he did best. He liked to fix things,
make them better. She realized it must be killing him to not be
able to do anything. To have to depend on her, and the lone
flashlight, to lead the way.
Hell, it was killing her and she wasn’t
afraid of the dark. She probably would be from here on out, if they
ever got out of this hellhole.
“I will go first.” He said it tersely,
a sharp clipped order.
Even as she understood his need to
maintain control, she snapped back, “Yessir, your
majesty.”
“Huh,” he growled. “I am exalted now? I
am king of dirt and tunnels. Yes.” He grunted again, pulling
himself into the narrow, round tunnel opening. “Ahh, that hurt,” he
cursed again. The Greek was flowing more rapidly now, and she
suspected the curses were getting nastier and more
foul.
“What does that mean?” Asking about it
kept her from thinking about another dead end and another long,
dark tunnel.
He didn’t answer for a long
time.
“Dav?”
“I was going to say, it is not for a
woman to hear, but that doesn’t seem like a nice thing to say to
you, in these circumstances. You have more courage than I, Carrie.
Yet I guess saying these things in English would be—” he hesitated,
stopping his forward motion.
“Crude? Rude? Lewd? Socially
unacceptable?”
“All that and more.”
“Keep moving, Dav. Please,” she begged,
knowing they couldn’t stop or she would die. Just die.
“Ah.” Again he hesitated. “I am trying
to decide if I can get through.”
Tears sprang into her eyes and she
closed them against the horrible thought of going back to the cell,
waiting to die. No. This couldn’t be happening. She heard him grunt
and the sound of tearing cloth. Her eyes flew open, and she saw
that he was five feet farther down the tunnel, but lying on his
stomach.
“Dav? Dav?”
“I am okay, Carrie-mou, but my back is
now marked as well. Keep your head down as you come through; there
is a sharp place in the middle of this part of the
tunnel.”
“Oh, no, your back,” she murmured,
seeing the split in his shirt and a welling line of blood along the
rent in the fabric, as she flashed the beam of the flashlight on
him, rather than beyond him.
“I am through, though, so come on and
let us keep moving.”
She squeezed down the narrow space on
hands and knees, knowing her smaller frame made it a hundred times
easier for her to navigate.
“I think the builders must have been a
lot smaller than you, or me.”
He grunted in response and kept moving.
She didn’t know whether to talk or not, or ask again about the
curses.
Crawling along, she pondered it, but
forgot the issue when he cried out again.
“Yamato!”
“What?” She nearly shrieked the word,
her nerves strung so tautly that she wanted to scream.
“Yamatoyamatoyamato!” He ran the exclamation together
the way another man might say “shitshitshit!” “There is another drop. I caught my
hand, the fingers bent again. Ahhhhh.” He moaned the last, but she
saw his uninjured hand reaching back. “Hand me the light. Let me
see if we are going to meet Hades or if it is another way station
en route to this particular version of hell.”
She passed the light into his open palm
and waited, shivering a bit in the deep darkness as he flicked the
beam out into space. With his body in the way, she couldn’t see
what he was seeing and it was maddening. Every part of her body
hurt, or itched, or felt scummy and filthy. Closing her eyes, she
imagined a shower. A hot one. Hell, a cold one—she wasn’t
picky.
She could almost feel the water
coursing over her body, washing away the tiredness, the sweat and
dirt. She was so deep in her imagining of it, it was so real that
she heard the water splashing, felt the cooler air on her
face.
“Carrie?” Dav’s questioning voice broke
the moment and her eyes popped open.
She couldn’t see him now, though the
glow of the light was still in front of her. “Dav? Where are
you?”
“Crawl forward, you must see this.”
There was excitement in his voice. Relief. Hope. What had he found?
Scrambling in the dust, she squeezed past the rough
rocks.
She reached the end of the tunnel and
in the puny beam of the flashlight, saw a wonder before
her.
A long, drawn-out and nearly
inarticulate “Ohhhhhh,” was all she could manage.
“Is it cold?” Carrie asked, even though
she didn’t care. She just started stripping off her clothes as she
walked toward the long, narrow ribbon of water pouring from
somewhere high above them and splashing on a round, tablelike
stone. The water pooled only slightly in a wide shallow basin in
the stone before draining away somewhere below the
rock.
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Dav
echoed her thoughts as he too stripped down.
It was an almost orgasmic experience to
have the cool water running over her, sluicing away the days of
sweat and grime. She tilted her face to the spray and let the water
rinse the blood, tears and dirt from her face. Next to her, Dav was
doing the same. The wide blade of the waterfall was just enough for
both of them to stand under as long as they were close. In the
faint light from above them, she saw Dav’s expression. He looked
like a cat with cream. Or catnip.
“That feels ... divine,” he
managed.
“Yes, it does. Turn around, let me see
if I can wash out the cut on your back.”
He complied and she let her hands trace
the muscled contours of his shoulders, and along his spine, washing
the dirt away, making sure the long scrape was clear of dust and
debris from the cave roof.
“If you keep that up,” he said, and she
felt the words echo in his chest under her seeking fingers, “we may
end up in a compromising position, Carrie-mou.”
The thought of being clean, the sensual
delight of it, was heating her blood. His hot skin under her hands
was turning that sensation up a hundredfold.
“And if I put you in a compromising
position?” She moved closer, pressing her body, her breasts, to his
back, sliding her hands around to caress his chest and
belly.
“I will protest, but I think it will be
in vain as you’ve already—” He stopped talking when her hands
cruised lower, finding him hard and ready.
“What, no words? No banter?” She kissed
his back, bent her knees so she could press a line of approval down
his spine.
“I’m without words,” he managed, and
she felt his body clench as she carefully tightened her grip on
him. Polishing the dirt from his skin was as sensual an experience
as she could ever remember. When he turned to her, lifting her wet
hair to kiss her neck, his big hands glided down her shoulders,
down her arms, around her back to pull her closer.
The water splashed and danced on them
and around them, its cool embrace making their caresses hotter,
making his skin and his body feel like the flame he’d named
her.
When he drew her closer, fitting her
body to his, she wanted to purr, to shout with delight. She pulled
her mouth away, denying him, but only briefly. Instead, she used
her lips to mark a path down the front of his body this time,
kneeling before him to enjoy the taste and shape of him. His groan
of pleasure made her want more, more of everything, more of him,
more feelings, more sensations.
She let him pull her upward, enjoyed
the powerful sense of him taking her in a deep, plundering kiss,
letting him lift her, helping her wrap her legs around him as she
slid over him, onto him.
When they connected, flesh to flesh and
body to body, they both cried out. It was an exquisite pleasure to
feel him fill her, feel her own body heat to a flash point and
envelop him.
“Carrie-mou.” He cried her name,
lifting her slightly as he drove upward, into her, giving her all
that she wanted and more.
“The wall,” she said, meeting his
powerful thrusts, needing more.
“Your back,” he began, and she could
have screamed in frustration.
“I’m not fragile.” She growled the
words, fisting her hands in his hair. “I want you to take me. Now.
Up against the wall.” When he hesitated, she insisted.
“Now, now, now, Dav.”
“Your wish,” he muttered, into her
throat where he was devastating her with his tongue and mouth, “is
my command.”
She felt the solid, slick stone behind
her and braced against it, using the unyielding surface to lever
herself up, then come down to meet his thrusting hips. It felt
better than anything she’d ever felt, better than any other time
they’d made love, even.
“Nownownownownow!” she demanded, using
everything she had to bring him to the brink with her, to fuel his
need with her own and release the nearly unbearable pleasure that
was building between them.
“Yes, now,” he agreed, his hands
underneath her, driving her in closer even as she pulled away and
came back. “Now, Carrie. Mine,” he cried as he closed his eyes and
threw back his head, powering her upward with his complete abandon
to their passion.
“Ahhhh ...” She felt the waves swamp
her, the pulsating, amazing delight of a blinding
surrender.
It was as if she could feel everything,
and nothing. The sound of their harsh breathing echoed around the
chamber, but she also felt deafened, stunned by the depth and power
of their lovemaking.
He rested his head on her breast, his
shoulders heaving as he panted. She felt the heat of his breath,
shivering her sensitive skin and nearly sending her into another
orgasm.
“You,” he said, and his voice was a
rasp of sound, “are spectacular.”
She bent to kiss his beautiful hair,
jet black and slicked to his head from the water. She traced along
his hairline, enjoyed the faintest hint of silver at the temples.
She loved the look of him, the heavy muscle, the broad
shoulders.
“I’d say the same of you,” she said,
struggling suddenly to form the words, to get them past the
realization that lodged in her chest that she was deeply,
irrevocably in love with him.
“What?” he said, raising his head to
meet her gaze, feeling the change in her, somehow. “What is
it?”
“I,” she began, and had to swallow
against a dry throat. How had he sensed that change, her shift of
emotion? His dark eyes were watchful, waiting. “I just realized I
must be getting heavy,” she said. It was lame, and she knew
it.
He smiled, lifting her enough to help
her slide down and set her feet on the wet floor, holding her
steady as she found her balance.
“Never too heavy, my flame.” With a
searing tenderness, he framed her face and kissed her—a deep,
passionate, lingering kiss. A lover’s kiss.
She wanted to make a joke, break the
moment, do something to shift the focus from her, from what they
were doing. Looking in his eyes, the need passed. He drew her in
and held her, his honest and obvious tenderness stripping her of
the ability to speak. She couldn’t dismiss it, or him. Not when he
looked at her that way.
“You will not put me off this time, my
love,” he murmured. “I care for you. You need to know this. This
passion between us is not just the heat of the moment. There was
much I had wanted to say to you, even before.”
“I know,” she managed, closing her
eyes. “I know.”
As if sensing her conflicted emotions,
he tucked her head under his chin, banded his arms around her in
the most wonderful hug she’d ever felt. In one moment, one contact,
he made her feel safe, and whole. She felt secure and sexy and
magnificent, despite the conditions, despite the desperation of
their situation.
For that moment, that one moment,
nothing else mattered. Filled with a sense of well-being, she
drifted off to sleep in his arms.