Short backstory: The heroine (Sheridan Keyes) is an artist whose bread-and-butter work is restorations. She was hired to redo an 1890’s Museum painting on the ceiling of one of the halls. During her research, she went through some unmarked papers and unknowingly turned up a rough draft of Leng’s immortality formula. Fairhaven found out. He searched her apartment; kidnapped and tortured her lover, Jackson Lisle. When that didn’t turn up the formula, he went after Sheridan in the Museum in his Surgeon guise, but she escaped. He held Jackson as hostage, but she circumvented him by hiding the formula and turning herself in to a couple of cops sharper than Braskie. Unfortunately, Fairhaven killed them—and after a prolonged nasty chase through the Museum, grabbed Sheridan. She refused to reveal where the formula was, but was too badly-injured for him to torture her. Fortunately, his attention was distracted by Smithback poking around the mansion upstairs, so he left Sheridan in the operating room next to her lover’s body—where Pendergast saw her during his confrontation with Fairhaven. Afterwards, Pendergast had Sheridan taken to the same hospital he recouped in. During that time, she tells him what parts of her story he hasn’t already discovered. Guilt-stricken, he reveals Sheridan can’t go back to her old life. She’s listed as a possible Surgeon victim, but her reappearance would certainly cause Braskie’s more-competent replacement (Singleton) to reopen the investigation, which would raise questions that shouldn’t be answered. For her part, Sheridan knows she won’t be able to withstand intensive police questioning no matter how good a story she and Pendergast come up with—indeed, since Fairhaven is dead and justice has been served, she just wants to start a new life. And she’s equally unnerved at the attraction she senses between her and Pendergast, fueled by the few times she has seen him vulnerable during recovery. She tells him where the formula is—then leaves the hospital as much to escape Pendergast as being confined. She wanders around the country under a piecework identity doing odd jobs—and even making a stop in New Orleans that is most enlightening (g!). Pendergast searches for her, but she’s able to stay off the grid fairly well and he just misses her. Finally, she gets a gig restoring a New England lighthouse. By chance, Pendergast locates her and poses as the lighthouse supply guy to come visit her without scaring her off. They begin talking... and that brings us up to date. :) She’s an orphan, btw, and was raised by her arty, eccentric aunt who died a year before the story begins.)



Sheridan gave Pendergast a searching look. “I don’t know what’s worse—losing people who’ve been there your whole life, or not having many folks at all and losing them. At some point, you start wanting to minimize the damage, you know?”

There was a long silence. “I believe I do,” Pendergast replied. His profile was impassive as he gazed out over the ocean. Sheridan remembered how he had looked in the hospital asleep, his face cool and remote. But there was the occasional restless movement, quickly suppressed. And the faint twist of his mouth—in pain or fear, she couldn’t tell which—that made her wonder what he dreamed and for some reason made her even more glad she didn’t know. She had never felt so hesitant and unsure in her life, as if having any feelings towards him was somehow an unforgiveable intrusion. And once again she told herself that caring about him was a mistake, your basic “you saved me” transferrence, an emotional hangover from her recovery that she could still dispel with more time and as much distance as she could cover...

As if aware of her sudden silence, Pendergast glanced at her with a questioning look in his eyes. Impulsively, Sheridan leaned in to lightly brush his lips with hers. She had the impression of a cool softness, and something—she was never sure exactly what—that made her linger. She felt his hands on her shoulders as he gently pulled away. His pale eyes were expressionless, but intent, as if he was searching her thoughts from a distance. Sheridan held his gaze with an effort.

“Sorry. Unfinished business, I guess,” she said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Indeed,” Pendergast replied.

“Some things you just have to try and see, you know. And if they don’t go anywhere, well at least you’ve tried and gotten them out of your system and all that.”

“Of course.”

Sheridan smiled weakly, moving to turn away. She was babbling, and she figured it was high time to retreat from an eminently unsalvageable situation. “Hey, no loss, no foul, right?”

His grip tightened imperceptibly on her shoulder and she felt his slender fingers under her chin, tilting her head up.

“Even the simplest game has unexpected complexities,” Pendergast said quietly. “And I never make the mistake of regarding emotions lightly, Miss Keyes.”

He moved so swiftly, blocking out everything but the darkness and the icy mist drifting in from the sea. For a moment, Sheridan felt she couldn’t breathe, that she was being drawn into his kiss and held there, unable to be aware of anything else. Her hands were on his shoulders, his back, and even through his suit jacket she could sense the controlled power in his movements. A dream, she was dreaming; and it took everything she had to respond, to pull him closer, her fingers in his hair, running her hand down to his collar. His hand closed over hers as she reached his tie knot, but Sheridan moved her other under his jacket, slowly down his shirt front. She had seen enough of Pendergast in action to know he always needed to run the game in some way, and suddenly she wanted to push that control, to get under those defenses, to see behind the masks. A memory of his face in the hospital came unbidden. She felt an involuntary shudder—of fear or anticipation, she couldn’t tell. Didn’t want to. Didn’t care.

She felt the lighthouse tower door against her shoulders. Pendergast drew back, his eyes holding hers. His hand traced purposefully along her jaw.

“You aren’t one to rush, are you?” she said, with a faint wryness.

In the shadowy light, she thought he smiled slightly. “‘Anticipation is its own desire,’ I believe.”

“Anais Nin. An... unusual person for you to quote. And isn’t that ‘its own reward—’”

“Very much so,” Pendergast replied softly. His fingers, as cool and inexorable as the mist surrounding them, glided slowly along the pulse of Sheridan’s throat. Her body arched against his lean frame, reacting before she could even register the sensation.

“Pendergast,” she whispered.

His lips met hers with deceptive gentleness, then covered them completely. Beyond his hand tangled expertly in her hair, past the overwhelming sensation that was slowly undoing her body, she sensed something more than the kind of exquisitely controlled desire she had expected; certainly more than the simple wanting Jackson had brought to their lovemaking. It was darker and more intense than even the focus Pendergast brought to his work, something that would answer to no polite reserve, no refinement or reason. She realized that his deliberateness was as much to master himself as to bring her pleasure, to protect them both from something he needed to control as much as he wanted to yield to.

But she couldn’t stop, she wouldn’t. Not with his arms binding her to him, lifting her effortlessly onto the bed in the tower. Not with his voice murmuring words that bespoke a gentle longing totally at odds with the way his mouth was moving down her throat. Sheridan pulled his jacket back down over his shoulders and was dimly aware Pendergast somehow let it fall from his body with ease. She placed her fingers on his mouth. He paused, pulling back slightly, and with a swift motion she had tugged her sweater over her head and tossed it away. She felt the silk of his shirt against her bare skin as she met his lips again. As her hand drifted to his shirt front, she realized his tie was gone. His slender fingers moved along her shoulders and one hand traced delicately over her breast. She gave a faint gasp—the feel of his fingers on her warm skin was shock enough, but he knew exactly where to touch, lingering long enough to open her senses and leave her wanting more. He drew her body to his, and she faintly registered his shirt drifting effortlessly to the floor.

“Um... you wouldn’t happen to have a first name, would you? When I’m trying to seduce someone, it helps to know who they are.”

Pendergast smiled faintly. He moved his fingers down her bare back, and for a moment she couldn’t say anything. “Who do you believe I am, Miss Keyes? Or is that so important? In all honesty, I find explanations very tedious.”

“You mean you prefer to find out ‘the truth about and above all’—except about yourself.”

His pale eyes met hers. “I meant that I find verbal explanations not nearly as interesting as other kinds.” He touched his lips to hers, and Sheridan felt that curious sense of suspension, deeper now, as Pendergast seemed to draw her breath and consciousness into his. “And I dare say you would agree.”

With an effort she grasped at one last doubt, one last question. “Why are you doing this? Really. If it’s because I’m irresistible, you might have a point. But if it’s something else—you weren’t responsible for Fairhaven, or Jackson, or what happened, and you don’t owe me anything.”

A shadow crossed his face. “You don’t seem to think very much of yourself, Miss Keyes,” he said coolly.

“And you’re not going to have much of a future letting the past eat you alive.”

She felt the sudden tension in his body even before he was about to move away, but she held him to her, her eyes locked on his. “Just tonight, Agent Pendergast,” she said softly. Pendergast went still. Sheridan pulled him close, taking his mouth with hers, letting pure sensation flood her senses, driving away any doubt, any reason. She realized that for now she didn’t care about his motives, or her own, or anything beyond wanting him. She knew at any given moment he could break away from her grasp—that he could have done so when she confronted him, and she still felt a resistance from him. But suddenly his body was hard against hers, bearing her back onto the mattress. His lips lightly touched the pulse of her throat, lingering there. Distantly, she felt the icy mist drifting across her now-bare legs, its exquisite chill causing her to shiver. She thought she heard Pendergast’s voice—a low, almost spectral whisper she couldn’t understand, but full of a barely-controlled longing, of loneliness.

“Please... don’t let me go,” she whispered.

His fingers laced with hers, and Pendergast drew one hand to his lips, and kissed it gently. With one swift movement, she felt him enter her. Sheridan arched against him, her hands on his waist, her body drawing him deep into her with every motion. Pendergast’s hand caressed her face, and his lips met hers once again, not gentle at all now, moving with a dark, searching intensity. She felt a fiery warmth spiraling through her, gathering slowly, making her body weak and demanding at the same time. She heard her soft, hungry cries drifting through the air as if from someone else’s throat and felt her nails trace brutally down Pendergast’s back. He gave no sign he felt any pain—his mouth moved with a ruthlessly restrained tenderness over hers, satiating her partway, then pulling away to recapture them with cool, expert efficiency.

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