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The other was a mind-exercise that induced sleep. Deep sleep, the kind you needed when all you had were minutes instead of hours.
It had worked. He was well-rested. He had to be because by the time dawn roused the sleeping forest, he needed to be ready with a plan.
What would be the most effective way to force the truth from his prisoner? And that was what she was. How could he have deluded himself into seeing her as something else?
She wasn’t a beautiful woman he’d met at a party. She was a criminal, or she damned well would have been if her lover hadn’t protected her. That he’d forgotten that proved how far removed he was from his days as a spook.
Okay. He’d made a mistake, but he wouldn’t make any others.
He lay still in the dark, feeling the strength flowing through his body, the cobwebs clearing from his mind. He was fine now.
She was the subject, this was an assignment and—
And, what was that sound?
Mia was weeping.
Quietly. So quietly that it was hardly more than a thickness in the inhalation of her breath but yes, she was weeping.
Let her, he thought coldly.
She’d used him, and he didn’t like it. Or maybe it was that he didn’t like himself, for being dumb enough to let it happen.
Either way, let her cry.
Let her lie beside him, arms jerked into a position that wouldn’t leave lasting damage but was surely uncomfortable. Let her imagination work overtime, painting vivid pictures of what he was going to do to her…
Of what he’d already done.
Held her in his arms. Kissed her mouth, tasted her sweetness on his tongue. Put his lips to her breasts, sucked on her nipples as he stroked her. As he put his hand between her thighs, caught the warm dew of her femininity in his palm. As he lifted her legs over his shoulders, entered her, slowly, slowly, exulted in her moans, her cries, the way her muscles had tightened around him, the way she’d sobbed his name as she came…
Goddammit!
He sat up and swung toward her.
“Stop that crying,” he said gruffly.
Her breath hitched. He could tell she was trying to obey his command but she couldn’t. Well, so what? A woman’s crying had never killed anybody.
Except, maybe, the man listening.
“Did you hear what I said? Stop sniveling. It pisses me off and, trust me, you don’t want to piss me off any more than you already have.”
She made a sound he knew meant she was trying to choke back her tears. It didn’t help. If anything, her weeping intensified.
Matthew shot to his feet, marched across the floor and slammed the bathroom door behind him.
He stood at the sink for a long time, hands clutching the rim, head bowed. Then he flicked on the light and stared into the mirror. He looked like a man who’d just had a quick glimpse of hell.
He turned on the shower. Stepped under the spray, turned it as hot as he could bear it, then turned it icy-cold. He bowed his head, let the water beat down on his neck and shoulders. Turned on the side-sprays and let them do their work on the muscles in his back and his hips.
It seemed like a hundred years ago, he’d stood in this same shower stall, Mia before him, watching the water turn her hair to silk, watching it turn her bra translucent…
Matthew mouthed a harsh obscenity.
To hell with that.
He needed a plan. He had to shake the truth loose from her. Either she had dope on her or she didn’t. Then he’d decide whether to take her back to Hamilton or send her to the States or—or—
