“Are you the one they call Spider?” Dan asked, inching closer still, hoping to distract the guy with questions.
“Ha!” Hat Guy laughed, but it wasn’t funny. The sound was filled with hysteria…and a strange sort of sadness. “I am just the bullet. Another man pulls the trigger,” he said cryptically.
“Is that man Spider?” Dan asked, shuffling just a little closer. He tried to slow his racing heart using the technique he’d been taught during SEAL training. But it didn’t work. The organ refused to cooperate and continued to gallop out of control, sending adrenaline surging through his system until his nerve endings burned, until he could taste its metallic flavor on his tongue. Despite the cool, fall evening, a trickle of sweat slipped down the groove of his spine.
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” Hat Guy hissed. Dan lifted a brow when he saw two fat tears slip from the man’s eyes. And now Hat Guy’s receding chin was trembling. “You have no idea what he’s capable of.”
“Who? Spider?”
Hat Guy just swallowed, his face the picture of anguish.
“Please,” Dan begged him. Obviously the guy had some sort of conscience, the ability to feel something, even if that something was fear. “Let the woman go. We can talk about this. We can figure a way out.” He inched closer still, then stopped and raised his hands in the air when Hat Guy pressed his barrel tighter to Penni’s temple, making her cry out.
I’ll fuckin’ kill him! Terror and fury mixed together with the growing panic in Dan’s veins to create a deadly cocktail that threatened to melt away his reason, his control. He was about to Hulk out. He could feel it.
“There is no way out.” Hat Guy shook his head, taking a step back. “You don’t get out.”
“There’s always a way,” Dan implored him. “Always.”
“Please,” Penni said, obviously feeling the indecision in the man holding her hostage even if she couldn’t see the fear and tears in his eyes like Dan could. “Please, I’m begging you. Don’t hurt me.” And then she looked at Dan, anguish in her eyes and something…something he couldn’t quite put a name to. She finished with a whispered, “I-I’m pregnant.”
Dan blinked, thinking he hadn’t heard her correctly.
Hat Guy stilled, a flash of horror crossing his panicked face. “Pregnant?” he demanded.
So Dan had heard her correctly. Despite the cataclysmic situation, and despite the sudden sensation of having pins and needles prickling every inch of his skin, his mind was ripped back to the bathroom in the basement of the hotel in Malaysia. To Penni having reached her wit’s end. To the grief and horror of her colleagues’ deaths having finally overcome her. To her asking him to help her forget it all, escape from it all, for just a little while…
“Make love to me,” she whispered against his neck between a string of hot, hungry kisses. She lifted a leg, hooking her heel behind his knee and rubbing herself against the raging hard-on that strained the fly of his jeans. He could feel her heat even through her trousers, feel the sultry moistness reaching out to him, surrounding him, tempting him.
“Brooklyn…Jesus,” he groaned, flattening his palms against the bathroom door beside her head. And when she bit his earlobe, his cock throbbed so hard it was a wonder it didn’t rip the seams of his jeans.
This is crazy! he thought. And it was. Crazy hot. Crazy fast. He knew he should stop. A part of him wanted to stop. Now wasn’t the time. Not when she was beside herself with grief. And worry and self-reproach. Not when she wasn’t thinking straight.
But then she reached between them to attack the buttons at his fly, ripping them open until the two halves gaped wide. When she shoved her hand inside, past the waistband of his boxer briefs and wrapped her fist around him, squeezing, stroking, he knew stopping her wasn’t going to be an option. He didn’t have the wherewithal or the willpower. His brain was fried. His synapses firing out one and only one message. Now, now, now!
The skin on her palm was both unbearably soft and slightly callused. He was hugely swollen, so sensitive that her caresses caused both pleasure and pain.
“We shouldn’t,” he gasped, his head falling back on his shoulders. “Holy shit, that feels good.”
“Mmm,” she hummed, keeping one hand inside his pants, pulling, petting, stroking, as she used the other to undo the button on her trousers. Her zipper made a soft scriiiitching sound that was barely audible above their heavy, gasping breaths. Lowering her leg, she toed out of her shoes. She released him to slide her pants and panties down her thighs.
“Make love to me,” she said again, stepping out of the puddle of her clothing and wrapping her arms around his shoulders, going up on tiptoe to realign their bodies. “Make me forget just for a little while.”