"Shit, I'll bet she put it in one of these," Adrian said as he and Eddie went up to the jumbled assembly.
"What is that smell?" Jim asked, rubbing his nose.
"You don't want to know."
The f**k he didn't. Something was very wrong, and not just because she had some serious OCD issues when it came to decorating: The air was tainted with a scent that made Jim's flesh crawl. Sweet...way too sweet.
Leaving Eddie and Adrian to their needle-in-a-haystack routine, Jim went exploring. Like all lofts, there were no divisions of the space except for the one in the corner that had to demarcate the bathroom. Which meant the knives in the kitchen were on full display.
On the granite counter, there were all sorts of blades: hunting ones and Swiss armies and steaks and butchers and prison-made roughies and cooks' delights and box cutters. The business ends were long and short, smooth and serrated, rusted and shiny. And like the bureaus and the clocks, they were in a hodgepodge of disorder, the handles and the tips facing all which ways.
For a man who had found himself in a lot of nasty-ass situations, this was a new one.
Jim felt as if he'd walked into All-wrong Land.
Inhaling deep he tried to clear his head, but just ended up clogging his nose. That smell...what was it? And where was it coming from? The bathroom, he realized.
"Don't go in there, Jim," Eddie called out as he started in that direction. "Jim! No - "
Yeah, f**k that. The smell was the nostril equivalent of new pennies in your mouth, and there was only one thing that made that -
From out of nowhere, Eddie appeared in front of him, blocking the way. "No, Jim. You can't go in there."
"Blood. That smell is blood."
"I know."
Jim spoke slowly, as if Eddie had lost his damn mind. "So someone's bleeding in there."
"If you breach the seal on that door, you might as well trigger a security alarm." Eddie pointed to the floor. "You see that."
Jim frowned and looked down. Right in front of his boots, there was a faint line of dirt, as if it had been lightly sprinkled there by a careful hand.
"If you open this," Eddie said, "it's going to pass over that barrier and our cover will be blown."
"Why?"
"Before she left, she treated the edge of the door with a specific kind of blood and that dirt's from a graveyard. One passes over the other and it releases energy she's going to sense clear as an atomic bomb going off."
"What kind of blood is it?" Jim asked, even though he knew he wasn't going to like the answer. "And why didn't she do it to where we entered through?"
"She needs a controlled environment to pull the protection spell off. The hall outside? She can't be sure the cleaning staff wouldn't disturb the dirt or that someone wouldn't mess it up. And all this stuff" - Eddie swept his hand around - "is not as important as what's inside here."
Jim stared at the closed door as if at any second he might pull a Superman and be able to see through the thing.
"Jim. Jim...you can't go in there. We need to find the ring and take off."
There was more to this, Jim thought. As much as Adrain had revealed back at his studio, the angels had a pattern of telling him what he needed to know for the moment and not one byte of information more than that. So there was definitely shit going on here that he was unaware of...
"Jim."
Jim focused on the doorknob that was within grabbing distance. He was kind of through with being out of the loop, and if it took a showdown with Devina to bring him up to speed, it was hard to think that was a bad thing.
"Jim."
Chapter 33
Warm water over her br**sts and thighs...warm lips on her mouth...warm steam billowing out around her.
Marie-Terese ran her soapy hands up the massive shoulders of her lover, marveling at the difference between their bodies. He was so hard, his muscles flexing and releasing as the two of them moved against each other, shifting, rubbing, seeking, and finding. His hot erection stroked against her upper stomach, and between her legs she was just as ready for more as he was.
Vin's lips broke off from her own and nuzzled into her neck, then down to her collarbone...and he went even lower, bending to suck on her ni**les before licking at the tight tips. As she sank her fingers into his slick wet hair, he knelt on the marble before her, gripping her hips and staring up at her with hot eyes. With their stares locked, his mouth went to her belly button, brushing soft as the water did before being replaced by his pink tongue.
Falling back against the marble wall between two of the showerheads, Marie-Terese widened her stance as he kissed his way over to her hip. White teeth made a brief appearance on the bone, and then he was raking them gently across the skin of her lower belly before retracing the path with sucking lips.
Lower.
To make even more way for him, she put her foot up on the marble bench that was built into the corner, and his mouth went immediately to her inner thigh. He was urgent and he was gentle at the same time as he got closer and closer to the core that throbbed between her legs. She was dying for him to go exactly where he was headed, and as he paused at the very top of her inner thigh, she could barely breathe.
"Please..." she said roughly.
Vin nuzzled over and licked into her with one sure stroke. As her voice keened above the sound of the falling water, his fingers sank into her thighs and he groaned against her sex. Drugging laps mixed with tugging sucks until she found herself falling down onto the bench and bracing one foot against the soap shelf on the wall and throwing the other down the far side of his back.
And then he got serious. Lifting his head from her and meeting her eyes, he brought up two of his fingers and drew them inside his mouth. As they came out all glossy from being between his lips, he leaned back down to her sex, leading with his pink tongue.
The thick penetration was compounded by a flicking tickle at the top of her sex.
Marie-Terese came hard and loud and long, and when she was finally spent, she collapsed against the hard stone, boneless as the water itself. After he slid out of her, he licked his fingers, tongue tracing in and around while he looked at her from under his brows.
He was hard. Maybe even brutally so, given the straining length at his hips.
"Vin..."
"Yeah." His voice was nothing but gravel.
"It's really far to the bedroom, where the condoms are."
"It is."
She looked down at his erection. "I wouldn't want you to wait that long."
His smile was fierce. "What did you have in mind?"
"I want to watch."
His laugh was deep and low, and he settled back against the glass wall, his thighs opening, his massive arousal running up his ribbed stomach. God, he looked spectacular against the creamy marble. "What exactly do you want to watch?"
She blushed. God help her, she actually blushed. But then, he was sprawled out on the floor of the shower, glistening from head to toe, ready for sex...and looking for direction. "What do you want me to show you," he drawled.
"I want you...to put your hand - "
"Here?" he said, laying one over his pec.
"Lower," she whispered.
"Hmm..." His broad palm drifted down across his ribs to the top of his six-pack. "Here?"
"Lower..."
He bypassed the head of his erection and went over to his hip. "Lower still?"
"To your left. And higher."
"Oh, you mean" - as his palm found his arousal, he arched and his eyes squeezed shut - "here?"
"God, yes..."
Rolling his hips, he kept his hand still and she got exactly what she wanted: a stunning view of his blunt head piercing through his grip and disappearing, piercing through, disappearing. His heavy chest rose and fell, his lips parting as he pleasured himself.
"Vin...you're so beautiful."
His lids lifted slowly and he stared up at her, his gleaming eyes pulling her into him. "I love that you're watching me..."
With that his other hand went between his thighs and captured his potent sac. As he squeezed himself, he worked his arousal in long strokes and moaned.
"I don't know how long I'm going to last..."
Good...Lord. The entire building could have been on fire and she would not have been able to move as he squeezed his sac again and then focused on the head of his erection. After he pinched himself with his thumb, he went two-handed, his breath coming in punches.