Afterburn by Karen L. Abrahamson
Vallon clicked the phone shut and handed it back to Xavier. She still held the two files of her father and Rebecca Murdoch. At least the call was done. Jason was on the job. She inhaled the room’s scent of incense and cedar and wished she hadn’t. Her afterburn ached low down and sexy, like an incessant itch she desperately wanted to scratch. “Short enough for you?”
“We will hope. It will depend on whether they were monitoring Detective Bryson’s phone closely.”
“He was pretty pissed off.”
“He should not have been. He knew you were with me. Safe.”
“Sure. You’d expect him to think that.” She shook her head when he didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “We better get this photo to him asap.”
He accepted it and led the way to the stairs, Vallon following in his wake, still holding the files. She should just look and get it over with. See who her possible mothers were. Was she Rebecca Murdoch’s child? Fi’s sister?
Upstairs Xavier unlocked a door across from the bedroom Fi occupied. More than a complete office. A bank of computers filled one wall; fax machine, scanner, and a few machines she wasn’t sure of against another. File cabinets built into the wall.
Xavier slapped the photo face down on the scanner and did what needed to be done while Vallon went to the window.
Sun finally found its way through the patchy clouds and placed pearlized highlights on the lake. The sunlight was hot through the window, and hot on her hands, still clutching the files.
“Something has you bothered.”
Again Xavier had done his move-too-quietly-for-words thing again and his nearness made the whole world seem to tumble into a somersault. Unfortunately when she turned she was trapped in the corner of the room, with sunlight flooding his face with a warm gold glow. Yesterday’s beard darkened his jaw and the nascent afterburn wanted to rub her hand over that sandpaper line.
She forced her gaze away and back to the files. Sighed.
“These. Memories. Both. I don’t know.” She shook her head and tried to ease past him, but he wasn’t about to give way.
“This is not the time to be running away, Vallon. There is too much we must face in our future.”
That brought her gaze up to his and she steeled herself. “You want to know? You really think you want to know just how pathetic I am?”
She clenched her eyes shut for a moment, then forced them open, forced herself to breathe slowly.
“Oh hell, what does it matter? The thing is, all this reading the files made me remember the last time I saw Rebecca Murdoch. She was really pissed at something. At the time I thought it was me. Maybe it was—partially—but I think she was really mad at my Dad. She said she was taking Fi away. At the time I thought it was just a mean taunt because my Dad was dead, but what if he wasn’t? The way she said it makes me think she was saying my Dad could have taken me, too. If he’d wanted.”
Dammit, her voice had faded until she was almost whispering, but it was the only way she could seem to get the words around the huge stone caught in her chest.
Xavier’s gaze was too hot on her face. She tried to turn from him, but he caught her biceps. “You think your father left you behind by choice?”
She fought the rush of afterburn. Jerked herself away. “What am I supposed to think?” she snarled. “We both came to the same conclusion that no one was killing off those early agents. They left on their own for points unknown. My Dad left me by his own choice, because he didn’t need all the problems I entailed.”
Shit. Two tears had cut loose in long lazy lines down her cheeks. She backhanded them away and glared up at Xavier.
“Is that enough? You got everything you need to feel better than me?”
“Vallon.” He raised a hand towards her.
She lifted her chin. “Because it doesn’t matter to me what you think.”
“Vallon, listen.”
“I don’t need anyone. Anything.”
“Vallon, if you please.”
He caught the files from her hands. Set them down and studied her, then gently touched her face to wipe away new tears with his thumbs, and dammit, “I don’t need your pity.”
But his touch made her shiver.
“Is that what this is?” he leaned into her, his fingers trailing down to lift her chin so his lips could find hers.
So exquisite she thought she could die. Soft and hard, his incense and cedar scent so thick she might drown, and the afterburn raged so loud she couldn’t think, forgot her name and, “Holy hell, I want you.”
His mouth found her neck, her ear. “It is mutual, meu caro. Almost since the first time I saw you.” He bit her earlobe and she moaned as she ran her hands down his hard back, narrow waist and found his ass. Hard as well. He pressed into her and the urgency of the afterburn had her fingers making quick work of his shirt. She yanked it from his jeans, nuzzling his chest’s olive flesh lightly covered in fur. Bit his nipple and heard him gasp.
“Bela Menina, you go too fast. This is something to be made to last.” He pulled her hands from where they worked at his jeans’ button and brought them to his mouth and kissed them. “You—we will do the most beautiful of dances together, but anything truly worth doing must be done slowly, and well, to be savored. Otherwise you lose the nuance of the dance, no?”
Holy hell, he was a sweet talker.
He kissed her lips, her neck, under her hair, all the time holding her hands in his hard ones until she was ready to scream for the need to DO THIS.
Then he pulled back, still holding one of her hands. “If you wish this, come.”
“Anywhere you lead, pardner.” Her voice sounded hoarse and coarse to her ears, but Xavier only smiled, truly lighting his almost-black eyes as if he actually liked her weak attempt at humor. Liked her?
Out of the office, and down the hall to a door that guarded the front of the houseboat. The room beyond was encased in rainbows—or at least that was how it looked until she realized there were small imperfections in the wide windows that acted like prisms. She preferred to focus on the rainbows and the sheets of light on the wide white bed, the single crimson pillow at its head. The bedding, the floor seemed to spark and glow almost as golden as the flow of earth power.
A sanctuary, it looked like. His hidden place. A place he could recover from the darkness he usually dwelt in. Her darkness.
She turned to him, fighting the throbbing demands of the afterburn.
“You don’t have to do this. I’m not a risk like this, if that’s what you’re worried about; I can manage myself.”
A low chuckle as he pulled her into his chest. “Of course you can. I have seen.”
For some reason that made her blush and he chuckled again, lowered his lips to her ear.
“I have watched you not only for duty, but for my own pleasure, Bela.”
His hands skimmed her back, caught the back of her shirt, and yanked it over her head. “Better, yes? Skin to skin.”
For an answer she lifted her head, caught him in a kiss so fiery she almost forgot to breathe as his hands stroked her back and sides. If she was a cat, she would purr.
He led her to the bed, helped her discard her jeans and did the same, then laid them both down on the pristine bed. “You are so fair.”
He held out his arm to compare it to the pale skin of her belly, placed his palm there, hard and heated across her skin, and she arched into his touch. He ran a single finger down her breastbone to the edge of her panties, but no further, then leaned down to kiss her breasts.
Vallon slammed his chest with her palm, rose to her knees and pushed him down, straddled him. Her hair fell around her face and she closed her eyes inhaling his clean cedar and incense, and let the afterburn take her.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” She rubbed herself along him. Cupped him in her hand.
But he rolled her off of him, stroking her sides as if he would woo her into submission.
“It will not be best like that, Bela. It will
not.” Then he breathed into her ear and he tasted her neck, her shoulder. His tongue trailed down to her breast and she arched into him as he stayed there. As his hands gently heated her flesh.
Finally, finally he slid her panties down her legs, almost making a ceremony of it, kissing each inch of flesh, before tossing the flimsy silk aside. Then he sat back and looked down at her.
“Você e muito linda e nao o sabe.”
“What is that?”
“You are lovely.”
She rolled her eyes. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Aah. Do I?” He shed his underwear and laid himself beside her, slid down and opened her like slow petals, refusing her urgency, slowing her down until she was ready to rage at him, scream. Then he raised himself above her. Stroked her face as he entered.
“Oh Criador, ha quanto tempo eu queria isto.”
She wanted to scream with the pleasure, the building. The room went silent except for their breath. Except for the creaking of the bed, their low moans, the sound of giving flesh. Scent: cedar and anise, incense and roses. So potent they would never leave her.
She was caught in his scent, caught by his flesh and his hands that knew with laser accuracy just what to do, and something more. In the midst of the rainbows that colored their flesh he opened his Gift, too.
Heat flooded her, golden, huge, so they lay entwined and floating on the earth’s power. He thrust into her and she fought a stab of fear.
He thrust into her and she caught her breath in pleasure.
He thrust into her and carried her so far of herself all the earth stretched around her and she spread, floated, sank in, became part of.
Something greater, as he thrust into her and she arched her back, wrapped her legs, and—“Xavier, take me!”
The world exploded as he pulsed inside her, as he threw his head back and yelled. “Criador, a você eu dou-lhe este amor.”
Then he collapsed still inside her, their breaths, their scents mingling as he smiled at her and stroked her. As she floated, still connected to—something.
It could not be true.
She waited for him to be gone. That was how it usually went, now that the afterburn had been replaced by afterglow. Simon had always showered and left her. The others had as well.
She touched his face, felt where his five o’clock shadow had burned her skin, and studied those dark, dark eyes. Secrets lurked there, that was obvious. But something more swam in his gaze. Honest caring?
Right, Vallon.
No one was that honest or that obvious. She shoved back the swell of emotions that rose when she looked at him. Stupid-first-blush-infatuation, girl.
“What was that?” she asked. Keep it fact-based, analytical. That was always safest. “It was like you actually took me somewhere. Beyond compromising positions and all that.”
She screwed up her face to keep things light and humorous and met his too-serious gaze.
“You have not felt it before?”
“Mister, I’ve felt a lot of things, but not like my body just exploded and I’d become part of the earth.”
“Mãe do Deus. Your pardon.” He shook his head and smiled as he lifted himself on one elbow and trailed a finger down her side. It was a good smile but still held hints of mystery. “It is just I cannot believe you do not know.”
“Soooo?”
“You are part of the earth, Bela Menina, and this is the giving back. Pangea provides the Gift for you to use, so you make offering to her; and that is the act of procreation, just as you used her power to create, no? A balance, a gift in return.”
She considered. It made some sense but sounded perilously close to a religious belief.
“I never thought of it that way. The afterburn just makes me feel sexy.” She sat up to face him.
“Not that simple, Bela Menina.”
“What is?” She rolled off the bed, but he grabbed her, pulled her back to cradle her against him, demanding she relax in his arms, when every bit of evidence in her life said it was wrong.
“You don’t need to do this. It’s done, okay? You don’t need to stay.”
He kissed her head and his warm hand came up to cup her breast. “Perhaps I like this. This moment with you. There are too few in life.” He kissed her again. “Perhaps we do it again, simply for our pleasure?”
Was that a sigh? She looked over her shoulder at him and caught an unfamiliar look that painted an unusual gentleness in his face. Somehow, it eased the tension she felt. But she would not believe.
She stood up, but he put his arms around her. “There’s strength in being together, Vallon.”
“Yes. It relieves the afterburn.”
His arms loosened and he turned her around, her still-sensitized breasts mashed against the breadth of his chest. But she wouldn’t meet his gaze. There was too much vulnerability that way.
“You fool yourself, and you are not a fool. What has happened here, Vallon?”
That brought her gaze up. “We relieved ourselves. Fucked.” She pulled away hoping he’d leave her. Or not.
“Is that all?” His arms came around her again, trapping her and yet she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
“I have wanted to do this a very long time.” He kissed her hair. “The anticipation has been most—agonizing.”
Believe him? The prospect frightened her. She didn’t know if she’d ever be free of his scent of incense and cedar, but she wasn’t made for quiet times in front of a fireplace, even if for the first time in her life she felt totally quiet inside. The afterburn more than just satiated.
A low, terrified, moan cut through the quiet. Vallon jerked away.
“Fi!” She scrambled for her underwear and jeans and sweater. “Dammit, dammit, dammit. I’m fucking around when Fi needs me.”
She glanced at Xavier—handsome, troubling, powerful, Xavier—and felt like a fool as she hopped around on one foot pulling on a sock, a shoe. A pity fuck. That was all it had been.
He swiftly dressed and beat her to the door. A bang came from downstairs.
The guest room door was open. So was the office door, and the contents of the two files and the photo of Rebecca Murdoch lay scattered on the floor. Fi had seen them.
They swarmed down the stairs but the damage was done. The houseboat door swung open in the morning breeze, the wharf empty.
“She’s gone.”
“We must find her. If it is her mother, she will notice her away from the water’s protection. Stay here. It is safer.”
“No way, José.” She grabbed her jacket off the couch, feeling safer having the tools of her trade handy. She wasn’t going to get caught without them again. She stepped onto the dock just as a loud buzzer sounded on the boat.
Xavier froze on the wharf. He scanned the shore. “Damnation.”
“What is it?”
“An alarm. Someone comes.”
Chapter 23—Secret History
“We will hope. It will depend on whether they were monitoring Detective Bryson’s phone closely.”
“He was pretty pissed off.”
“He should not have been. He knew you were with me. Safe.”
“Sure. You’d expect him to think that.” She shook her head when he didn’t pick up on the sarcasm. “We better get this photo to him asap.”
He accepted it and led the way to the stairs, Vallon following in his wake, still holding the files. She should just look and get it over with. See who her possible mothers were. Was she Rebecca Murdoch’s child? Fi’s sister?
Upstairs Xavier unlocked a door across from the bedroom Fi occupied. More than a complete office. A bank of computers filled one wall; fax machine, scanner, and a few machines she wasn’t sure of against another. File cabinets built into the wall.
Xavier slapped the photo face down on the scanner and did what needed to be done while Vallon went to the window.
Sun finally found its way through the patchy clouds and placed pearlized highlights on the lake. The sunlight was hot through the window, and hot on her hands, still clutching the files.
“Something has you bothered.”
Again Xavier had done his move-too-quietly-for-words thing again and his nearness made the whole world seem to tumble into a somersault. Unfortunately when she turned she was trapped in the corner of the room, with sunlight flooding his face with a warm gold glow. Yesterday’s beard darkened his jaw and the nascent afterburn wanted to rub her hand over that sandpaper line.
She forced her gaze away and back to the files. Sighed.
“These. Memories. Both. I don’t know.” She shook her head and tried to ease past him, but he wasn’t about to give way.
“This is not the time to be running away, Vallon. There is too much we must face in our future.”
That brought her gaze up to his and she steeled herself. “You want to know? You really think you want to know just how pathetic I am?”
She clenched her eyes shut for a moment, then forced them open, forced herself to breathe slowly.
“Oh hell, what does it matter? The thing is, all this reading the files made me remember the last time I saw Rebecca Murdoch. She was really pissed at something. At the time I thought it was me. Maybe it was—partially—but I think she was really mad at my Dad. She said she was taking Fi away. At the time I thought it was just a mean taunt because my Dad was dead, but what if he wasn’t? The way she said it makes me think she was saying my Dad could have taken me, too. If he’d wanted.”
Dammit, her voice had faded until she was almost whispering, but it was the only way she could seem to get the words around the huge stone caught in her chest.
Xavier’s gaze was too hot on her face. She tried to turn from him, but he caught her biceps. “You think your father left you behind by choice?”
She fought the rush of afterburn. Jerked herself away. “What am I supposed to think?” she snarled. “We both came to the same conclusion that no one was killing off those early agents. They left on their own for points unknown. My Dad left me by his own choice, because he didn’t need all the problems I entailed.”
Shit. Two tears had cut loose in long lazy lines down her cheeks. She backhanded them away and glared up at Xavier.
“Is that enough? You got everything you need to feel better than me?”
“Vallon.” He raised a hand towards her.
She lifted her chin. “Because it doesn’t matter to me what you think.”
“Vallon, listen.”
“I don’t need anyone. Anything.”
“Vallon, if you please.”
He caught the files from her hands. Set them down and studied her, then gently touched her face to wipe away new tears with his thumbs, and dammit, “I don’t need your pity.”
But his touch made her shiver.
“Is that what this is?” he leaned into her, his fingers trailing down to lift her chin so his lips could find hers.
So exquisite she thought she could die. Soft and hard, his incense and cedar scent so thick she might drown, and the afterburn raged so loud she couldn’t think, forgot her name and, “Holy hell, I want you.”
His mouth found her neck, her ear. “It is mutual, meu caro. Almost since the first time I saw you.” He bit her earlobe and she moaned as she ran her hands down his hard back, narrow waist and found his ass. Hard as well. He pressed into her and the urgency of the afterburn had her fingers making quick work of his shirt. She yanked it from his jeans, nuzzling his chest’s olive flesh lightly covered in fur. Bit his nipple and heard him gasp.
“Bela Menina, you go too fast. This is something to be made to last.” He pulled her hands from where they worked at his jeans’ button and brought them to his mouth and kissed them. “You—we will do the most beautiful of dances together, but anything truly worth doing must be done slowly, and well, to be savored. Otherwise you lose the nuance of the dance, no?”
Holy hell, he was a sweet talker.
He kissed her lips, her neck, under her hair, all the time holding her hands in his hard ones until she was ready to scream for the need to DO THIS.
Then he pulled back, still holding one of her hands. “If you wish this, come.”
“Anywhere you lead, pardner.” Her voice sounded hoarse and coarse to her ears, but Xavier only smiled, truly lighting his almost-black eyes as if he actually liked her weak attempt at humor. Liked her?
Out of the office, and down the hall to a door that guarded the front of the houseboat. The room beyond was encased in rainbows—or at least that was how it looked until she realized there were small imperfections in the wide windows that acted like prisms. She preferred to focus on the rainbows and the sheets of light on the wide white bed, the single crimson pillow at its head. The bedding, the floor seemed to spark and glow almost as golden as the flow of earth power.
A sanctuary, it looked like. His hidden place. A place he could recover from the darkness he usually dwelt in. Her darkness.
She turned to him, fighting the throbbing demands of the afterburn.
“You don’t have to do this. I’m not a risk like this, if that’s what you’re worried about; I can manage myself.”
A low chuckle as he pulled her into his chest. “Of course you can. I have seen.”
For some reason that made her blush and he chuckled again, lowered his lips to her ear.
“I have watched you not only for duty, but for my own pleasure, Bela.”
His hands skimmed her back, caught the back of her shirt, and yanked it over her head. “Better, yes? Skin to skin.”
For an answer she lifted her head, caught him in a kiss so fiery she almost forgot to breathe as his hands stroked her back and sides. If she was a cat, she would purr.
He led her to the bed, helped her discard her jeans and did the same, then laid them both down on the pristine bed. “You are so fair.”
He held out his arm to compare it to the pale skin of her belly, placed his palm there, hard and heated across her skin, and she arched into his touch. He ran a single finger down her breastbone to the edge of her panties, but no further, then leaned down to kiss her breasts.
Vallon slammed his chest with her palm, rose to her knees and pushed him down, straddled him. Her hair fell around her face and she closed her eyes inhaling his clean cedar and incense, and let the afterburn take her.
“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” She rubbed herself along him. Cupped him in her hand.
But he rolled her off of him, stroking her sides as if he would woo her into submission.
“It will not be best like that, Bela. It will
Finally, finally he slid her panties down her legs, almost making a ceremony of it, kissing each inch of flesh, before tossing the flimsy silk aside. Then he sat back and looked down at her.
“Você e muito linda e nao o sabe.”
“What is that?”
“You are lovely.”
She rolled her eyes. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Aah. Do I?” He shed his underwear and laid himself beside her, slid down and opened her like slow petals, refusing her urgency, slowing her down until she was ready to rage at him, scream. Then he raised himself above her. Stroked her face as he entered.
“Oh Criador, ha quanto tempo eu queria isto.”
She wanted to scream with the pleasure, the building. The room went silent except for their breath. Except for the creaking of the bed, their low moans, the sound of giving flesh. Scent: cedar and anise, incense and roses. So potent they would never leave her.
She was caught in his scent, caught by his flesh and his hands that knew with laser accuracy just what to do, and something more. In the midst of the rainbows that colored their flesh he opened his Gift, too.
Heat flooded her, golden, huge, so they lay entwined and floating on the earth’s power. He thrust into her and she fought a stab of fear.
He thrust into her and she caught her breath in pleasure.
He thrust into her and carried her so far of herself all the earth stretched around her and she spread, floated, sank in, became part of.
Something greater, as he thrust into her and she arched her back, wrapped her legs, and—“Xavier, take me!”
The world exploded as he pulsed inside her, as he threw his head back and yelled. “Criador, a você eu dou-lhe este amor.”
Then he collapsed still inside her, their breaths, their scents mingling as he smiled at her and stroked her. As she floated, still connected to—something.
It could not be true.
She waited for him to be gone. That was how it usually went, now that the afterburn had been replaced by afterglow. Simon had always showered and left her. The others had as well.
She touched his face, felt where his five o’clock shadow had burned her skin, and studied those dark, dark eyes. Secrets lurked there, that was obvious. But something more swam in his gaze. Honest caring?
Right, Vallon.
No one was that honest or that obvious. She shoved back the swell of emotions that rose when she looked at him. Stupid-first-blush-infatuation, girl.
“What was that?” she asked. Keep it fact-based, analytical. That was always safest. “It was like you actually took me somewhere. Beyond compromising positions and all that.”
She screwed up her face to keep things light and humorous and met his too-serious gaze.
“You have not felt it before?”
“Mister, I’ve felt a lot of things, but not like my body just exploded and I’d become part of the earth.”
“Mãe do Deus. Your pardon.” He shook his head and smiled as he lifted himself on one elbow and trailed a finger down her side. It was a good smile but still held hints of mystery. “It is just I cannot believe you do not know.”
“Soooo?”
“You are part of the earth, Bela Menina, and this is the giving back. Pangea provides the Gift for you to use, so you make offering to her; and that is the act of procreation, just as you used her power to create, no? A balance, a gift in return.”
She considered. It made some sense but sounded perilously close to a religious belief.
“I never thought of it that way. The afterburn just makes me feel sexy.” She sat up to face him.
“Not that simple, Bela Menina.”
“What is?” She rolled off the bed, but he grabbed her, pulled her back to cradle her against him, demanding she relax in his arms, when every bit of evidence in her life said it was wrong.
“You don’t need to do this. It’s done, okay? You don’t need to stay.”
He kissed her head and his warm hand came up to cup her breast. “Perhaps I like this. This moment with you. There are too few in life.” He kissed her again. “Perhaps we do it again, simply for our pleasure?”
Was that a sigh? She looked over her shoulder at him and caught an unfamiliar look that painted an unusual gentleness in his face. Somehow, it eased the tension she felt. But she would not believe.
She stood up, but he put his arms around her. “There’s strength in being together, Vallon.”
“Yes. It relieves the afterburn.”
His arms loosened and he turned her around, her still-sensitized breasts mashed against the breadth of his chest. But she wouldn’t meet his gaze. There was too much vulnerability that way.
“You fool yourself, and you are not a fool. What has happened here, Vallon?”
That brought her gaze up. “We relieved ourselves. Fucked.” She pulled away hoping he’d leave her. Or not.
“Is that all?” His arms came around her again, trapping her and yet she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
“I have wanted to do this a very long time.” He kissed her hair. “The anticipation has been most—agonizing.”
Believe him? The prospect frightened her. She didn’t know if she’d ever be free of his scent of incense and cedar, but she wasn’t made for quiet times in front of a fireplace, even if for the first time in her life she felt totally quiet inside. The afterburn more than just satiated.
A low, terrified, moan cut through the quiet. Vallon jerked away.
“Fi!” She scrambled for her underwear and jeans and sweater. “Dammit, dammit, dammit. I’m fucking around when Fi needs me.”
She glanced at Xavier—handsome, troubling, powerful, Xavier—and felt like a fool as she hopped around on one foot pulling on a sock, a shoe. A pity fuck. That was all it had been.
He swiftly dressed and beat her to the door. A bang came from downstairs.
The guest room door was open. So was the office door, and the contents of the two files and the photo of Rebecca Murdoch lay scattered on the floor. Fi had seen them.
They swarmed down the stairs but the damage was done. The houseboat door swung open in the morning breeze, the wharf empty.
“She’s gone.”
“We must find her. If it is her mother, she will notice her away from the water’s protection. Stay here. It is safer.”
“No way, José.” She grabbed her jacket off the couch, feeling safer having the tools of her trade handy. She wasn’t going to get caught without them again. She stepped onto the dock just as a loud buzzer sounded on the boat.
Xavier froze on the wharf. He scanned the shore. “Damnation.”
“What is it?”
“An alarm. Someone comes.”
Chapter 23—Secret History