She felt like a puppet with the strings cut. Limp, now that she didn’t have his hot, vital energy to struggle against. She curled up on the bed and thought it through.
She had to be realistic. She had nothing to offer Jack except a crushing burden of danger, financial drain, and constant, grinding stress. He’d already risked his life. Dodging bullets and knives, diving into wild water. A man couldn’t marry a risk like that. Or have children with her. She’d be stupid to demand promises from him now.
This, however, did not mean she was going to deny herself the comfort of his body. Life was short and uncertain.
She listened at the bathroom door to the shower hiss. She caught a glimpse of herself, in the prim, daisy-spattered warm-up suit, and sputtered with laughter. Whoo-hoo. Seductive. She stripped it off, and waited for the shower to stop, shivering in the air-conditioned chill.
When she opened the door, his startled face made her smile, catlike. She laid the gun on the counter by the bathroom sink. The room was a fragrant fog of steam. The bruises on his face were taking form.
Maybe she was presuming too much. Maybe he was too stressed, too injured and exhausted—or, um…maybe not. His cock was pointing straight at her, in seconds flat. “What’s this, Viv?” he asked.
She touched the dripping, gleaming contours of his body. “Just living in the moment.”
He flinched. “Don’t throw that in my face. We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t,” she said quietly. “No past. No future. Just now.”
He looked worried. “How long do we have to play this game?”
“How long is irrelevant, when you’re in the moment,” she said. “Only now exists. You should know that. Aren’t you the expert?”
He stared at her. “You’re a real hard-ass, Viv D’Onofrio.”
“I’ve had tough teachers.” She gazed into his face, and relented. “Look, if I ever have a normal life again, with no axe hanging over me, and you still want to have a conversation about our future, we can have it. Until then…” She reached out, stroked his cock.
“Until then, you just want to fuck me?”
Her mouth twitched at his sulky tone. She sank gracefully to her knees. “I ask it…respectfully,” she purred, trying not to smile.
He vibrated with laughter and pleasure as she swirled her tongue around his cockhead. “Oh, God. I’ve never gotten respect like this.”
“It’s about time,” she murmured, then sucked him into her mouth.
With difficulty. He was so thick and broad and hard, but she was inventive, and hungry for his every shudder and gasping sigh. She used her hands, her tongue, and, bit by bit, pulled him deeper into her throat, long suckling strokes that made him quiver and groan.
She kept him trembling on the brink until the ache of her own yearning grew too sharp to bear, and then rose and turned to face the mirror. She parted her legs, arching her ass so he could see everything. How gleaming wet and eager she was for him. “Take me,” she said.
He seized her hips. “I don’t have condoms.”
“I know. Of course you don’t. You’ve been busy saving my life.”
He looked worried. “But if you want to…Viv, this is exactly the kind of thing we need to talk about. I think we should—”
“No talk,” she said. “Give it to me. Now. Before I start screaming.”
He eased his penis past the initial resistance, sliding it around in her lube, and drove deep. She clutched the counter, staring at her own flushed face, whimpering at each slick, slamming stroke. They held each other’s gaze in the mirror as if the fate of the universe depended on it. He reached around and toyed with her clit, building her up to a wrenching climax. When she had the strength to prop herself up, he was still waiting for his own release, his face tight with self-control.
“I want to come inside you,” he said.
She thought about it for about half a second, and nodded.
His eyes widened. “You’re sure? You’re okay with that?”
“I want it all,” she blurted. “Everything you have to give me.”
His eyes flashed, and he gave it to her. One last shove, and he exploded. She hung over the counter, limp and soft. Light as air, soft as a cloud. One thought floating all alone in her mind, in a perfect bubble.
Of how much she would love to make a child with him.
Jack set the shower running again, and washed her tenderly, with great, sensual thoroughness. That interlude ended as one might have expected, with herself pinned against the wet tile wall, her legs draped over his elbows, sobbing with delight as he nailed her, deep and hard.
Not a thought about bad moments in her past. Not a thread of panic, of nausea. No “danger keep out” signs. Her old phantoms were gone. They could not withstand the bright light of Jack Kendrick.
Afterward, glowing and relaxed, Vivi sat naked on the bed and stared at the necklaces she’d retrieved from Ulf Haupt’s briefcase. She laid them out on the bed, fiddling with them. Staring at the white gold lacework that decorated the top of each pendant.
Something about them tickled her mind. The lacework was different on each pendant. On her own, there were open spaces in the swirling coils of gold. On Nell’s, the lacework was flat, and protruding on each side. Nancy’s was more like her own, but with the protrusions extending toward the opposite side. A strange choice, for Lucia, whose taste in jewelry had run toward the classic. That asymmetrical, random element. More like something she herself would do. Angular, quirky.
In fact, it reminded her of a sculpture she’d done back in art school, one of the pieces that had been mangled in the Fiend’s second break-in. Three female figures, made of motley chunks of glass, pebbles, and bits of plastic, all wired together. But their stylized hair swirled out like halos, hooking and tangling together. Linking the three figures.
She had entitled it The Three Sisters. Lucia had loved it. Had displayed it proudly, right next to her priceless bronze Cellini satyr.
Vivi placed the pendants side by side. Nancy, Nell, Vivi. She felt a strange, dreamlike feeling as she slipped the lacework of Nell’s pendant into the open space in Nancy’s. A push, and click, the openwork linked together. Seamless swirls of gold. Her heart pounded.
“Jack,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Come look at this.”
He looked. His eyes widened. “The other one? Does it fit, too?”
“Let’s see.” She slid the protruding part of Nell’s pendant into the openwork of her own. Click. The pieces were all united.
Jack held out his hand, and she passed the thing to him. He manipulated it, putting pressure on every point. One of the protruding bits on Vivi’s pendant moved. At first she choked off a cry, thinking he’d broken it, but then she saw that it was a lever, moving smoothly down—
Click, once again, and something snapped out of the bottom of the three pendants. Three fine, shining sheets of white gold, flush to each other, as narrow and sharp as a razor blade. They leaned closer.
Something was written on them, in letters so small, she could not make them out. Jack dug into his pockets and pulled out a pocketknife with a multitude of attachments, one of which was a small magnifying glass. He held the thing up under the lamp and peered through it.
“Salve Regina Mater Misericordiae,” he read slowly. He turned it over and studied the back. “Primus Modus Doricus.” He looked up at her. “Latin, right? Can you make anything out of that?”
She shook her head. “No, but Nell could! She knows Latin!” She pressed her hand to her mouth. It was too soon for tears of joy, but finally, a window had opened up. A ray of light, at last. “This was the part that I was supposed to figure out,” she said, with conviction.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “How’s that?”
“In the draft of the letter we found, Lucia said it was our love of art, music, and literature that would solve the puzzle. I don’t know the first thing about music or literature.” Vivi thought about The Three Sisters, and tears sprang to her eyes. “But this part was just for me.”