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Run, damn it! Get the hell away from me while you can. But she didn’t move, and he could see defeat in the line of her body, her narrow shoulders. Didn’t she realize she wasn’t going anywhere? He didn’t need her anymore. He had what he wanted. The safest, smartest thing to do would be to permanently silence her, and he was a safe, smart man.
He left her there, heading back into the bedroom to retrieve the antique kimono. He stripped a sheet off the bed to wrap it in, doing his best to clear his mind of anything but what he had to do. He could picture Summer in that huge old bed, sleeping, her hair loose around her. He still didn’t know what his damn problem was—him or her. She was nothing, nobody, merely a part of a difficult job, and yet she got under his skin. Maybe he could blame it on the time he’d spent recovering from his last botched assignment.
Or maybe it was simply that the thought of killing an innocent woman was repugnant. Killing young women wasn’t part of his normal duties. It was perfectly natural that he’d feel conflicted.
She was still sitting in the living room, staring out into the night, when he returned from the car. The rain was even heavier, blocking out the moon, and there were deep shadows in the house. Some things were easier to do in darkness. He came up behind her, looking past her, out into the damp forest. It was a chilly night, but she had the window open, and he could hear the sound of night birds, the rustle of the wind through the trees, the soft patter of the rain.
“I love this house,” she said, in a quiet voice.
Her words surprised him. She hadn’t volunteered much in the way of conversation since they’d left the bedroom in that suburban house.
“It’s very beautiful. Very peaceful.” He wasn’t wearing gloves, but it didn’t matter. His fingerprints weren’t on file anywhere, and he wasn’t going to leave the house standing. He’d already activated the device that he’d taken from the car, so there’d be no trace of anything once it went off. They might not even be able to identify her body.
He’d be on his way to Japan by then—probably even before the smoke cleared. And he wouldn’t look back.
Summer wouldn’t feel a thing. He had no more excuses, no more reason to delay, and she hadn’t moved, leaving him no choice. If he left her alive the brethren could get to her, find out what she knew. Once they did, the Committee would have no way of stopping them. The Shirosama had stockpiles of chemical weapons—enough sarin gas to spread through the subway systems of every major metropolitan transit systems. Biological weapons to take care of the countryside, including trucks that could spread it into the air. They’d done test runs in Nigeria, the Chiba Prefecture of Japan, one of the small Hawaiian islands and the American Southwest. No one had caught on, because of the variety—plague spores in Arizona, hemorrhagic virus in Nigeria, a virulent, fast-moving strain of TB in Hawaii. Only the best scientists worked for the Shirosama, and their results were deadly masterpieces. One small woman was not that great a price to pay to keep the world safe from that kind of disaster.
He came up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. He would knock her out before he broke her neck—she would never know what happened—and she’d be in her peaceful, beautiful house on the island. It wasn’t her fault that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That she’d kept Hana Hayashi’s secrets too well.
Summer jumped slightly when his hands touched her, and then she stilled. She was wearing that same baggy black sweatshirt, and he wanted to touch her skin. He wanted to see her in colors, something other than funereal black. But that was the last thing he needed. He could feel the tension shimmering through her, her blood racing.
And then she leaned back. She let her back rest against his legs as he stood behind her, her head against his stomach, releasing all the tension in her body as she sank back against his. She turned her head to look up at him, and in the reemerging moonlight he could see her eyes clearly. Fearless, accepting.
The feel of her body against his shook him to the core. He stared down at her, his hands on her neck, and he did the unthinkable. He leaned down and put his mouth against hers.
He felt her shock vibrate through her, but she didn’t pull away. She closed her eyes and let him kiss her, passive, accepting, and he realized in the short, endless time he’d known her he’d never really kissed her. Never more than the brief touch of his mouth against hers.
And suddenly that wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. He stopped thinking, pulling her up from the bench and turning her in his arms. He caught her face in his hands and kissed her, full and open-mouthed, and her response was instant, powerful, the compliant woman vanishing. She put her arms around his neck, pulled him down to her and made a low sound of need as his tongue touched hers.
He picked her up, wrapping her arms and legs around him as he carried her across the darkened living room to her bedroom, setting her down on the stripped bed and covering her body with his.
Then he realized what he was doing. He started to pull away, but she clung tightly to him. “No,” she whispered. “Stay with me.” She tried to reach down between their bodies to touch him, but he grabbed her hand, pulling it away as he rolled off her, collapsing beside her on the bed. He couldn’t do this. He didn’t even understand why he’d started it, except that he’d been fighting his attraction since he’d left her alone in the bedroom that morning.
She tried to run then, too late, scrambling off the bed. But he caught her before she hit the floor, hauling her back under him, pinning her there. She closed her eyes, averting her face. “Stop it,” she said.
“Stop what?”
Her eyes flew open, filled with rage and betrayal. “Stop pretending. You made your point this morning—you don’t have anything more to prove. You don’t want me, you can make me do anything you wish, and I’ll be pathetically grateful for your attention, while you won’t feel a thing…”
“You idiot,” he said, his voice savage. “How blind are you?”
“Leave me alone.”
He pulled her legs apart, pushing between them, fully clothed, the rigid length of his cock pressed up against her. Her eyes widened in shock.
“You can feel that, can’t you? It’s been like that all day. It’s been like that almost since I first touched you. You make me crazy with wanting you, but right now doing what I want could get us both killed.”
“No,” she said. “You’re lying. This morning you didn’t—”
He rocked against her, and she shivered in unwilling response. “
This morning I was so turned on that I came without touching myself. And five minutes later I was hard again. I need you. I need to be inside you, now, and it’s too dangerous.” He thrust against her, feeling the tremor of response wash over her, and he knew he couldn’t stop, not until he made her come again, over and over…
She kissed him then, full and deep, wrapping her legs around his hips to bring him closer still, and the heavy material between them was maddening. He’d reached down to unzip his pants when he heard the sound of someone moving through the bushes, and he froze.
16
She felt the change instantly. He lifted his mouth from hers, his soft, beautiful mouth, and barely breathed the words. “Someone’s out there. Stay very still.”
