“Do that again.” I smiled.
She laughed and repeated the movement with her hair. “Anything that you want.”
“Stay there,” she whispered. “Don’t move, Alex. Don’t come closer — we might both catch fire. I mean it.”
“This could take the rest of the weekend,” I said and started to laugh.
“I hope it does.”
I heard the tiniest click.
Was that the door to our room?
Had I closed it?
Was someone out there?
Jesus, no.
Chapter 53
SUDDENLY NERVOUS and paranoid, I peered back at the door to the hotel room. It was closed and locked tight. Nobody there, nothing to worry about. Christine and I were safe here. Nothing bad was going to happen to either of us tonight.
Still, the moment of fear and doubt had raised the hairs on my neck. Soneji has a habit of doing that to me. Damn it, what did he want from me?
“What’s wrong, Alex? You just left me.” Christine touched me, brought me back. Her fingers were like feathers on the side of my cheek. “Just be here with me, Alex.”
“I’m here. I just thought I heard something.”
“I know you did.
No one is there. You locked the door behind us. We’re fine. It’s okay, it’s okay.”
I pulled Christine close against my body again and she felt electric and incredibly warm. I drew her down onto the bed and rolled over her, holding my weight on the palms of my hands. I dipped and kissed her sweet face again, then each of her breasts; I pulled at the nipples with my lips, licked them with my tongue. I kissed between her legs, down her long legs, her slender ankles, her toes. Just be here with me, Alex.
She arched herself toward me and she gasped, but she was smiling radiantly. She was moving her body against me and we had already found a nice rhythm. We were both breathing faster and faster.
“Please, do it now,” she whispered, her teeth biting into my shoulder near the clavicle. “Please now, right now. I want you inside.” She rubbed my sides with the palms of her hands. She rubbed me like kindling sticks.
A fire ignited. I could feel it spreading through my body. I entered her for the first time. I slid inside slowly, but I went as deep as I could go. My heart was pounding, my legs felt weak. My stomach was taut and I was so hard it hurt.
I was all the way inside Christine. I knew I’d wanted to be here for a long time. I had the thought that I was made for this, for being in this bed with this woman.
Gracefully and athletically, she rolled on top of me and sat up proud and tall. We began to rock slowly like that. I felt our bodies surge and peak, surge and peak, surge.
I heard my own voice crying yes, yes, yes. Then I realized it was both our voices.
Then Christine said something so magical. She whispered, “You’re the one.”
Part Three
The Cellar of Cellars
Chapter 54
Paris, France
DR. ABEL Sante was thirty-five years old, with longish black hair, boyish good looks, and a beautiful girlfriend named Regina Becker, who was a painter, and a very good one, he thought. He had just left Regina’s apartment, and was winding his way home on the back streets of the sixth arrondissement at around midnight.