Dreamwalker (20 page)

“You sure you’re alright?” he repeated. Concern dropped his already deep voice to a lower, core-melting register. He tipped her head up with a gentle finger under her chin, his chestnut brown gaze solicitous. His kiss was slow and searching, clean and sweet, coaxing a response from her she hadn’t thought possible, given her sated condition.

Since Rory wanted time to absorb the implications of her slip, she didn’t appreciate her body’s inopportune arousal. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Opening her eyes reluctantly, she pushed off Damon’s chest and pulled the blanket to her chin. The motion made her breasts sting like hell. She hissed, then jerked the blanket down to inspect her body. Her fair skin had an extreme case of beard burn; even her thighs hadn’t escaped unscathed. “You marked me!”

He eyed the rash covering her breasts with a distinct lack of concern. “You weren’t complaining at the time.” The corner of his mouth hitched up in a look of pure male smugness. “I’d say it served its purpose.”

Flushing at the reminder of her weakness, Rory glared at him but couldn’t work up that much heat against the truth. Her general lack of stickiness suddenly registered. He must have washed her while she was asleep; that he’d been able to do so without rousing her was further proof that he’d earned her trust on a subconscious level. “I hope last night wasn’t a problem.”

“You were upset.”

She faced the window, squinting at the beam of sunshine. “You might say that.” It was an understatement, since she barely remembered returning to the hostel.

Damon shifted behind her, his weight making the mattress sway. “I take it you saw the whorehouses.”

“They were awful.” Rory dug her fingers into the pillow, sheer will driving down the images that tried to rise.

“I’m sorry you had to see that.”

As if he had any control over what happened to her. She shook her head impatiently. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“Still, you wouldn’t have been here if not for me.”

Rory turned over to face the Fed. “Why doesn’t the UN do anything about it?” She considered herself less idealistic than most, but surely a political construct like the United Nations would have a vested interest in putting down something as blatant as the brutality and exploitation she’d seen last night.

“The UN?” Damon shook his head ruefully, apparently at her naïveté. “The so-called peacekeepers are some of Karadzic’s best customers locally. Human trafficking is big business around here, involving international networks. Besides, the UN’s pragmatic. Since the gangs maintain a semblance of order in their territories, they’re off-limits.”

Stunned by his matter-of-fact summation, Rory made a face of disgust. “Isn’t there something
we
can do?” It stuck in the craw to even think of turning a blind eye to that horror.

“Hit them where it hurts.” At her look of inquiry, he added: “Their wallets.”

She leaned against the headboard, hugging her legs to her chest. “And getting
that
from under them?” she asked, referring to the nuke. Even with daily checks for bugs in the room, they couldn’t risk mentioning the objective out loud.

Damon scratched his beard thoughtfully, a habit that had surfaced after a few days of stubble; Rory suspected he preferred being clean shaven. “It’d be a major hit. There’s the initial outlay, opportunity cost, and . . . loss of face.”

God, just the way he said that—totally dispassionate yet phrasing it in terms she could easily relate to—made her hot! A reaction that made her uncomfortable, given the shift in the balance of power between them.

For some strange reason, Damon picked up a burst of arousal from Rory. He had to wonder what was going on in her head that his answer elicited such a response. He also wanted to ask her what exactly had brought on last night’s desolation, but remembered her injunction about wanting to forget. Questioning her about it wouldn’t be conducive to forgetfulness.

He shrugged inwardly, then switched to the topic that had his curiosity on overdrive. “How do you do that?” He twirled his fingers beside his head and down in an encompassing gesture to elaborate on his question. “You know, morph.” He still had difficulty accepting what memory told him he’d seen. Incredible as it was, his master thief was a shapeshifter. Even for an incubus, belief took some doing. No wonder his slip of the tongue hadn’t fazed her.

She blinked at him, then tightened her hold around her bent legs, wariness slipping over her like a dark green cloak. “I don’t know. It’s never been studied, and I’m not volunteering to become a lab rat just to find out.”

It made sense, although Damon suspected there was more to it than that. “It’s not a skill you discovered recently.”

Rory gave him a thin smile. “Was yours?”

He acknowledged her
Back off
signal with a nod. “I was fortunate in that I wasn’t the first incubus to join the Company.”

Now that the attention wasn’t on her, she released her legs to lean forward, intense curiosity practically shining from her, banishing all the green from her aura. “You’re not?”

Damon found that he wanted to tell her, to discuss that side of him that most people didn’t see. “No, I’m not. Luckily, my uncle recognized what I was.” Dion Venizélos had been the deputy director of the agency and gotten him into incubus training early to hone his dreamwalking.

She pulled a pillow into her arms, like one of his cousins, when they were younger, snuggling down for a bedtime story. “Your uncle?”

“I was living with him.” With the onset of puberty had come the awakening of his mental sense; he’d discovered another incubus in Dion’s dreams and turned the tables on the assassin. There’d been no question he’d join the agency after that.

Her face softened. “Your parents really were killed by terrorists?”

So she remembered that? He nodded, keeping his face blank. “They were kidnapped, then murdered, when I was eleven.” He looked away to avoid seeing the pity in her deep blue eyes; what he picked up through his mental sense was bad enough. They’d been agents; their deaths had been in the line of duty, though he hadn’t known it at the time.

Damon changed the subject, not wanting to dwell on the past. “Did you complete whatever you were doing yesterday?”

He could sense her hackles rising at the question. But she swallowed the
Mind your own business
that had probably been at the tip of her tongue, pursing her lips in irritation instead.

“No, the rain interrupted me.” Rory’s answer surprised him; he’d half expected her to ignore the question. “In fact, I’d better get moving.”

Though she might have said so to avoid further discussion, his master thief rolled out of bed and bounced to her feet, releasing the pillow as though she hadn’t taken shelter behind it. Her stride wagged her bare ass provocatively; then she bent over her pack, and his heart nearly stopped.

Pink pussy lips peeked out between her slender thighs, the tender folds spread in invitation, like a vision of heaven.

Damon’s cock gave a convulsive twitch, reminding him that he hadn’t gotten any last night. Fuck, one would think he’d been celibate for months, instead of just a little over twenty-four hours, the way his brain dropped south at the sight.

Worse, the minx was completely oblivious to his response. She didn’t evince even a spark of awareness of his condition, so focused was she on whatever she wanted in her pack.

“Got to go. Work to be done.” Radiating determination all at odds with her devil-may-care facade, she squeezed into a minuscule tube dress that ended well short of her knees.

“That’s . . .” He blinked, jolted out of his carnal fugue by her choice of attire.

“Nobody really looks at the hookers,” Rory explained, plumping a bustline that suddenly threatened to burst her seams, though the rash across her breasts remained, contributing a hefty measure of authenticity to her disguise. She paused before the door, her hands rising to tousle hair that was rapidly turning black and curly.

“What are you doing?” After the lengths she’d taken to hide her shapeshifting ability, Damon was surprised that she now did it in front of him without any hesitation.

She turned an average-pretty face to him, slightly dusky and indistinguishable from dozens of whores in the streets. “Since you’re supposed to be alone, I thought it’d be best if the same woman wasn’t seen leaving your room every day.” She shrugged dismissively, as though her consideration were nothing out of the norm.

And maybe it wasn’t, for someone with her background and proven ability—after all, that was why the Old Man had chosen to recruit her for this mission—but it still surprised him that she extended her wary diligence to his end of the bargain.

Just part and parcel of having a partner. Damon had to admire Rory for adjusting so quickly to not working alone. He had better make the same adjustments himself, if their mission was to be successful.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

All the easy prey—the known quantities—on his kill list were done, leaving Damon the ones with spotty information, such as ibn Turki, the moneyman for a UK-based terror cell and his next target. Damon knew something of the road that had taken the Saudi Arabian to London from the radical Wahhabite madrasah in Riyadh where he’d studied, but not enough for a strike. He needed more.

To succeed in his missions, he had to understand his targets’ fears, to apprehend them intimately enough that he could evoke the most dreaded terror in their sleeping minds. So he watched from a distance, stalking his prey, learning the spikes of emotion, the fears and excitement that distinguished the finicky, long-limbed man.

That night, his surveillance led him into the northeast sector, deep in territory affiliated with Karadzic, through dark winding streets to a mean brothel indistinguishable from its neighbors. A not-so-unexpected destination, given the Saudi Arabian’s predilection for beating short blondes to death—that much had been in his files.

Shedding his covey of bodyguards outside the three-story building to mingle with the brothel’s security, ibn Turki disappeared inside with ill-disguised eagerness. If his purpose was the usual, a hooker would die by his hands before the night was over.

Grateful that the weather provided an excuse for his encompassing cloak, Damon ghosted to the rear of the brothel, tracking his target’s murky aura as the Saudi Arabian was led by another man to a second-floor room where a woman waited. The shadowy alley at the back was deserted, which made his job easier; even better, only the upper stories had windows overlooking his position. The view of the building across the alley was blocked by low trees; if he had to, he could hide in their branches.

Obviously an impatient man, it didn’t take ibn Turki long to get started. Within minutes of his guide’s departure, the woman cried out, a sharp flare of pain to Damon’s mental sense. Clearly, the Saudi Arabian was up to his usual tricks. He pitied the hooker who’d drawn the short straw. She wouldn’t have a quick death, if his target ran true to form.

Resigned to the drawn-out torture to come, he settled against the thick trunk of his chosen tree. There was nothing he could do for the hooker, except watch . . . and kill her murderer when the time came.

The fury that answered the audible blows was a change from the usual, but it didn’t mean anything to him, since it was coming from the victim, not ibn Turki. The fact didn’t expand his knowledge of the target. The dull thuds and cries of pain and anger mixed unpleasantly with the creaking of box springs and the slapping of wet flesh and studied exclamations of passion from the other rooms. A busy night at this brothel. It made him wish he were back at the hostel servicing his master thief instead—or even out breaking someone’s neck with his bare hands. Almost anything else would be better than waiting for Death to come visiting.

A sudden crash jolted Damon out of his watchful crouch as the murky aura he was monitoring disappeared. A quick probe told him ibn Turki wasn’t dead, only unconscious. Too bad. Because he was just below the window, he saw a woman stick her face out, blond hair catching the meager light. He figured she was the intended victim trying to escape when she grabbed the bars and strained to pry them apart.

The desperation beating against his mental sense had him shedding his cloak before he realized that he’d decided to help her. Backing up for a running start, he leaped up and caught a narrow ledge along the side of the building. Hanging by his fingers, he got his feet under him long enough to lunge up and transfer his grip to a solid bar rough with rust.

Then his brain caught up with the rest of him.
Fucking idiot, are you going to risk blowing your cover for a piece of tail?
Training said he could still salvage the situation. All he had to do was drop down and leave her as she was.

At his appearance, the hooker jerked a damaged hand to her bare breasts, hissing in shock, but didn’t cry alarm.

“You’re not getting out that way.” Damon scrambled up to stand on the ledge, his hackles rising at the thick, overly sweet stench of fresh blood coming from the room. He didn’t waste any more time second-guessing himself. The sooner she was out, the sooner he could be back under cover. Now wasn’t the time to browbeat himself for giving in to stupid impulse—and courting discovery.

Setting his feet against the brick wall, he yanked on the bottom rail of the bars until the bolt in the corner that held it in place pulled free of crumbling mortar. The squeal of metal sounded loud over the drumming in his ears, but hopefully the noises of the brothel’s other customers drowned it out. He did the same to the other corner, then held the bars away so the woman could slip through the gap.

And still ibn Turki remained unconscious. Damon was tempted to sneak in and complete the job. But that might put the rest of his targets on guard.

While the blonde teetered on the ledge, he hurriedly reversed his ascent, dropping to the hard cobbles of the alley with an involuntary grunt. He straightened immediately and extended his arms, flicking his fingers impatiently when she wavered. They didn’t have time for delay.