Dreamwalker (24 page)

A harsh gasp told Rory she was getting to Damon, drawing him closer to the edge. Feeling him shudder beneath her lips, the intensity of his desire made something melt inside her, something she couldn’t name. She redoubled her sensual efforts, heedless now of the risk.

“Minx.” Without warning, he pulled away and flipped her to her back, into the bed’s soft depths, covering her in one fluid, predatory motion that reminded her of his lethal nature.

Her heart leaped in anticipation, knowing what would follow. Despite weeks of frequent lovemaking, excitement beyond anything she’d ever felt on her commissions left her breathless. In fact, the inevitability of his possession only fueled her appetite for more.

Damon slid into her in a steady, relentless thrust that brooked no resistance, so thick she was overflowing. Threat and promise rolled into one prize male package.

Wet and aching with need, Rory was more than ready for him. Squirming in the throes of desire, she locked her legs around his hips and drove him deeper, wanting him against the very heart of her.

His cock stretched her sheath all the way in, finding and rubbing her pleasure points, fanning the flames and setting off sensual fireworks made no less powerful for being expected.

They both groaned when he was hilt deep, a simultaneous exclamation of relief at the intimate friction.

The sensation of him inside her—this dangerous man who could kill so easily—seemed to quench an inner hunger Rory hadn’t known she’d had and didn’t want to face. Ignoring the tumult in her heart, she rolled her hips, swirling him against her delicate inner membranes and glorying in the friction. Letting the resulting conflagration sweep her away.

She didn’t want to think, only feel. This was supposed to be a straightforward exchange of pleasure, just part of her payment. Nothing more. Surely that was enough.

Despite her thighs clamped around his waist, he managed to pull out partway, then drive back in. His hands nipped her waist, anchoring her as he started a ruthless pounding that ratcheted the need in her womb to vicious tightness.

Panting, Rory writhed under Damon, clawing the bed and his back as desire grabbed her by the throat and stole her voice. She could only sob in desperation as she strained for release. After all this time, how could she want him so much?

He ground his pelvis against her mound, the pressure jolting her clit and fanning the wildfire inside her.

Still, she needed harder. Faster. More!

Damon bent over her. His lips grazed her neck, glided down the side to nuzzle and suck the base, right where it met her shoulder. The rasp of his beard sent shivers racing down her arms and spine, all the way to her toes, her climax gathering like a hurricane over the horizon.

Rory gulped for air, her bounding heart threatening to leap out of her chest. His scent filled her lungs—musk and that indefinable something that was Damon.

He bit down firmly. Shockingly, the small pain catapulted her over the edge, into rapture.

Her orgasm rolled over her in a tidal wave of pleasure, dragging her under and smashing her into a million shards of pure delight. With a silent scream, she gave herself over to raw ecstasy, barely hearing Damon’s growl as he took his own release.

The brutal world outside their room slid away and Rory let it, content to rest in the arms of her Adonis.

“So, what did you have in mind?”

Facedown in yielding cleavage, Damon frowned, not quite registering the languorous question. “Hmmm?” He turned his head reluctantly and was rewarded with the sight of a pink-tipped mountain and endless fields of silken flesh recently explored.

“You mentioned something about reducing the guards,” Rory prompted somewhat breathlessly, her pussy feathering his cock once more in another orgasmic aftershock that wafted electric tingles up his spine.

He grunted a curse under his breath. She expected him to talk sense after she’d reduced his brain to mush? Impossible. Surely he didn’t have enough blood upstairs to formulate an answer. “Oh, that.”

“Yes, that.”

Dispersed by ecstasy, Damon’s thoughts refused to gel. She had a damned genius for rendering him mindless. All he wanted to do was lie there and enjoy the final quivers of pleasure of her body, and maybe sleep a little.

“Spill,” Rory ordered, amusement making her soft breasts quake under his cheeks. “Ve haf vays ov making you talk,” she continued in a campy accent, waving her fingers beside his ribs meaningfully.

“No fair.”

“You bit me. Fair’s fair,” she countered, her fingers still held at the ready.

The threat of a tickle attack sharpened his mental focus marvelously. “Divide and conquer. You know, stir things up, so they’re spread too thin.”

At his answer, she went still, her aura washed clean of playfulness. “How?”

Resigning himself to a discussion, Damon levered his body off his delightful pillow and slid his cock free of distraction. Settling on the bed, he mustered his thoughts. “Basically, by throwing a bone among the dogs. Get them at each others’ necks. Sow some distrust. It’s happening already, because of the deaths. Maybe give it a shove.” Disturbed sleep might not seem like much, but it made people irritable. Which meant that the aggressive men walking the streets would have hair-trigger tempers. It would take very little to create flashover conditions.

“Is there anything I can do?” Rory tilted her head to indicate the black box with its blinking status lights. “That doesn’t need me hovering. Everything’s up in the air until security’s been whittled down.”

Inspiration bloomed. The idea took shape immediately, unfolding so smoothly that Damon knew it had been in the back of his mind for some time, just waiting for her invitation. He struggled with himself and an uncharacteristic protectiveness that urged him to keep Rory from further danger. Duty finally forced him to speak. “Can you plant some things for me? It will help stir things up.”

“Easily.” She leaned over him, her blue eyes bright with enthusiasm. Clearly, she viewed his idea as a challenge, and a change of pace from her usual operation. “When do I start?”

Her pose practically stuffed her breasts in his face, reminding him where he’d left off. “Tonight. But in the meantime, you can get back over here.”

Pulling Rory on top of him, Damon slid back inside her, more than willing to be distracted once again. After all, even he couldn’t do anything until later, when his targets were asleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The sliver of a crescent moon vanished behind a craggy peak, its meager light casting only a faint halo in the clouds. The wind was gentle, chill, but not the rude slap of previous evenings. With the townsfolk restive, there was just enough bustle in the streets to cover any inadvertent noise. All in all, it was a perfect night for a jaunt across the rooftops.

Rory scaled the wall slowly, the coarse clumps of mortar protruding between its bricks providing sufficient traction for questing fingers and toes. The familiar activity left her mind free to ponder the events of the past days.

The furtive gossip in the markets had whispered of an angel of Death stalking the new-come terrorists. That plus the “gifts” Damon had asked her to plant had tensions running high. Fights had broken out between rival gangs, and random outbreaks of violence were keeping KFOR troops occupied; they’d also had the benefit of forcing Karadzic to lend some of his security to supporters to reinforce their holdings.

It tickled her funny bone to be on the giving end, instead of stealing. In tonight’s case, the freebie was schedules and floor plans that would stir a lot of trouble in the wrong hands, for special delivery to one Osum, no first name provided.

Taking them had been simplicity itself. The papers had been exactly where Damon had said they would be, their erstwhile owner dead to the world—literally—with only the body’s guards in the adjacent rooms to pose complications. That had been a bizarre experience, breaking into a room with its occupant still there; even at her most daring, she’d never attempted that.

Now, she had to plant them where they would do the most good: the target’s office.

Rory didn’t know who Osum was and didn’t particularly care. The fact that he headed one of the gangs allied with Karadzic was enough for her. Damon apparently intended to use Osum’s possession of the schedules and floor plans to sow distrust and dissent among the natives.

Their efforts were already bearing fruit. Their daily review of the video feed from Karadzic’s stronghold showed the size of his security detail shrinking in leaps and spurts. The latest riots near the local KFOR headquarters alone reduced his strength by eight men—some due to injuries when the crowds had run wild and damaged a few of Karadzic’s own businesses.

The success of Damon’s plan was heartening. Besides the improved odds for her job, she liked the fact that he wasn’t hide-bound by regulations, despite being a Fed.

It struck her that Damon used anonymity to his advantage. Like her, he lived in the shadows and understood its necessity. Again and again, similarities between them continued to emerge, tempting her to believe the differences between them weren’t that marked, that the gap between thief and Fed—and a hit man, at that!—was little more than a crack in the pavement.

Foolishness, of course.
No matter how she tried to rationalize her attraction to him, it didn’t change the fact that she was a lamia who really ought to be keeping her distance from government types.

Still, Rory couldn’t silence the inner voice that urged her to plant the documents quickly, so that she could return to the hostel and the strong arms of her Adonis. The memory of his lovemaking warmed her blood, despite the chill mountain air.

She cursed silently when she saw a flickering light coming from the room beside the office that was her target. Someone was working late.

Debating whether she should cut the night short, Rory crept to the window to assess the situation. Her heart sank at the picture that met her eyes.

A guard, to judge by the submachine gun and two-way radio on the table beside him, was watching local porn. She recognized the naked woman on the screen as one of the hookers she’d seen on the streets while casing Karadzic’s base. From the cheap furniture visible—familiar from nights spent planting relays—the video was a record of activities in the whorehouse.

Rory made a face behind her ski mask, the exposed tops of her cheeks complaining of the cold air. Waiting through a bad home movie wasn’t her idea of a good time. Checking her position for exposure, she hunkered down on the roof tiles, tucking her bare fingers under her arms to keep them warm and limber, resigned to the delay. The office’s location at the corner of the top level meant few could see her in the immediate vicinity, but the ledge wasn’t that wide and someone farther away could probably make her out if he knew where to look.

Perhaps it was because she knew the woman, if only by face, but a reluctant fascination drew Rory’s gaze back to the video. She could only speculate on how the woman had ended up a hooker: kidnapped, duped with promises of a better-paying job, sold off by an uncaring, impoverished family? She couldn’t imagine anyone would choose to become a sex slave, subject not only to the lust of strangers but also to ogling by perverts.

The moans from the dimly lit room were coming faster as the guard milked his cock in time to the slurping sounds of the video.

If it weren’t for her family, that might have been her fate. Certainly, a life in the shadows didn’t encourage one to take an ordinary, nine-to-five job.

Lost in her thoughts, the first punch caught Rory by surprise. The hooker’s cry of pain drove home the reality of the violence. Her customer actually seemed to take pleasure in her pain, following it with more blows.

To her disgust, the guard merely grunted at the hooker’s mistreatment, almost as though he’d expected it. She scanned the night to make sure no one was creeping up on her and no guard had an angle on her position, grateful for an excuse to escape the abuse.

But a murmur of anticipation drew her attention back to the video just as the man picked up a knife.

No, he couldn’t mean to
—

Rory flinched as blood spurted. Even at one remove, the violence churned her stomach. Worse, the shithead watching the hooker’s murder continued to jerk off, mumbling encouragement as the man on the screen fucked the dying woman.

The radio sputtered to life, scratching out a name. The shithead gave a guilty start, then stuffed his limp cock back into his pants, swatting the monitor off just before he snatched up his submachine gun and radio, and left.

A loud click accompanied the shutting of the light. The darkness didn’t help. Rory shivered, still seeing that poor woman’s death in her mind’s eye, the way her blood had splashed her murderer as he took his pleasure.

How could anyone do that to another human being? Or take extreme pleasure in witnessing that horror?

For some reason, the hooker’s death hit close to home. She wasn’t even an acquaintance. Rory didn’t know her name. But that only made it worse, somehow.

Loud barking recalled Rory to her precarious position. Though the moon had set, there were still guards and KFOR patrols with searchlights that could expose her; even the dark skin she’d adopted for this outing didn’t guarantee complete undetectability. She couldn’t stay on the ledge forever, nursing her angst.

She had to get the documents planted and return to Damon. Now, more than ever, she wanted his arms around her.

Moving with grim purpose, Rory returned to the window of the office that was her original target. If what she did tonight resulted in that shithead and his boss’s deaths, she wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. They deserved killing.

Boom!
The explosion shook the room, blasting a cloud of plaster dust into the air from the cracked walls.