Devil s Bargin Page 0,78

She moved forward, a bare three-inch lunge, and kissed him. She felt him tense in surprise, then deliberately relax, and those lips she'd been staring at for the past long minutes were warm and baby soft and damp against hers, and the heat she'd been feeling that she thought was anger was turning into something else, a white-hot flare that burned down her spine and melted bone along the way. She started to pull back, but then Borden's lovely manicured hands slid up her arms and ruffled her hair and cupped the back of her head and, oh, my Lord, his mouth opened and his tongue, his tongue like hot velvet stroking her lips, then sliding inside...

Somewhere on the other side of the Plexiglas came the harsh clang of a metal door slamming open.

Jazz gasped and jumped back, shaking, tingling all over, staring at Borden, who looked just as stunned and ruffled as she felt. His lips were damp, still parted, a little swollen and red. She wanted to touch them. No, she wanted to devour them. Again.

She swallowed hard, looked away and moved as far from him as it was possible to get in the narrow confines of the tiny cubicle. She heard him pulling in deep breaths, and out of her peripheral vision making fussy, nervous movements, smoothing his jacket, his shirt.

I can't believe I did that.

It already seemed like a strange daydream, and she might have convinced herself it hadn't happened at all, except that she could still taste him, still smell him on her skin and, oh, that felt so...good.

"Later," he said quietly.

"In your dreams," she shot back. Unsteadily.

"Yeah, I'm almost certain that will happen, too."

On the other side of the barrier, she heard jingling metal. Shuffling shoes. And then saw a shocking orange blaze of a jumpsuit - Jazz thought irrelevantly that Ben McCarthy was wearing the same color, right now - sidle awkwardly into the frame of the window.

The legendary Max Simms had arrived.

Where McCarthy filled out his prison garb in flat planes and intimidating angles, Simms was entirely different. Slender, lost inside the ill-fitting outfit, with giant blue eyes and wispy white hair and a face that looked gentle and sensitive and old before its time. He stood maybe five foot five, at most, and his shoulders were stooped like an arthritic ninety-year-old. It looked like his restraints weighed more than he did.

He fixed those mild blue eyes on Borden, who had risen to his feet, and nodded. Borden returned the gesture and settled back on the very edge of his chair...and then Simms turned his attention to Jazz.

It was like having all the air sucked out of the room. Like being in the center of the brightest spotlight in the universe, a beam so bright that she felt one instant away from combusting, so bright that there was no hiding in any corner because there were no shadows left, anywhere.

Simms blinked, mild as milk, and settled into a plastic chair that a deputy thumped down on concrete for him on the other side of the glass. He rested his elbows on the table and flicked on the old-fashioned intercom on his side of the barrier.

Borden reached over to turn on the one on their side of the glass.

"Mr. Simms," Borden said. "Thank you for seeing us, sir. How are you?"

Simms nodded slightly, still staring at Jazz. She no longer felt that appalling rush of - of what? Focus? Intensity? - but she could feel herself shaking from the aftermath. "It's good to see you again, James," he said. He had a pleasant, quiet voice, nothing remarkable. A little deeper than she'd expected. "I see you brought Ms. Callender with you."

"Had to," Borden said. "There was a letter - "

"Yes, I know," Simms said. "May I see it? Just flatten it against the glass, if you don't mind."

She fumbled it out of the envelope in her pocket, unfolded it and slapped it against the barrier for him to read. He had fussy little reading glasses that he fished out of his jumpsuit pocket and placed far down on his nose. His pale blue eyes moved in short jerks down the page.

"Ah," he murmured, and removed the glasses as he sat back. "That's interesting, don't you think?"

"The part about me getting killed? Yeah. I think it's pretty damn fascinating," she said, and folded the letter back into the envelope. "Thanks for agreeing with me."

He smiled. It looked like a nice, kindly sort