Ultimate Weapon (20 page)

Her face flamed. This feeling was for the man, not for her. Helpless, desperate, flopping like a fish on a hook, ripe for whatever agenda he might have. She shook her head, but she couldn’t stop clenching her thighs around him. Shivers rippled down her legs.

“You want to see how a professional liar and scam artist fakes an orgasm, Janos?” she asked. “While we’re at it, I’ve always wondered how male professionals manage that trick. The technical aspects of it baffle me. Am I about to find out? Shall we trade professional secrets?”

His arms tightened around her. His hand slid up, his fingertip gliding tenderly down the cleft of her buttocks until it found her tight folds, hot and slick and yielding. He stroked her, penetrating her.

To his credit, he did not laugh at her to find her so hot and soft and drenched. His smile was oddly gentle. “
Va bene
,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers. “Pretend all you like,
bella
. And I will do the same. Pretend to the best of your ability.”

She jerked away from his kiss. “Don’t you dare make fun of me.”

“Never.” He cupped her head and kissed her again, almost angrily. His mouth coaxed hers open just as his finger slid deeper, stroking the whole length of her cunt and then delving deep.

She came instantly, almost painfully, convulsing around his hand. Sobs choked out of her with each deep, wrenching spasm.

He waited, immobile. Listening, feeling. Stroking at her lips tenderly with his own, then a delicate, careful touch of his tongue, the brush of her nipples against his chest, the tip of his tongue sliding into her mouth. No hurry, no fear. Complete mastery. She tried to breathe, tried to speak. There was nothing to say. He had bested her.

His lips caressed her cheekbone, kissing her eyelids, her brow. “The most realistic faked orgasm I ever felt,” he whispered. “A tip,
bella.
A faked orgasm is more realistic if you make me work for it. At least a little bit, no? Wait longer next time. I did not even touch your clit.”

She licked her dry, trembling lips. “Fuck you.” She mouthed the words, but was too breathless to voice them.

A brief smile illuminated his face. “That is what I intend to do,” he said. “But first, another fake orgasm. This time, try to wait, no? I will help you.”

She twisted against him in protest, only succeeding in lodging his fingers deeper inside her slick channel. She squeezed her thighs around his big hand as he stroked and swirled, following all her nerve pathways as if he were inside her mind.

This time, he did make her wait. He teased and beckoned, but every time she started to crest, he drew back, time after time, until she wanted to scream, writhe, beg. He drove her deeper and deeper into that altered state, mind to mind, shockingly intimate. She struggled around his caressing, invading hand. She was made of lightning, heat, steam, making desperate sounds she barely heard over the pounding of her heart, the roaring in her head. And finally, he brought her off.

The orgasm cracked her wide open.

Behind that wall was something she hadn’t known existed. A part of herself she’d thought was long dead. Something wordless and tender and unknown. It shone, dazzling her with its purity.

She must have fainted. She could not tell and did not care. Janos scooped her up into his arms long before she recovered and strode down the hall. He tried every door he passed until one of them opened. He slapped the door open, flipped on the light. It was a staff kitchen.

He set her on her feet, shoved the door to and stared into her eyes as he flipped the door knob with a deliberate “click.”

She laughed shakily. “I didn’t say you could—”

“I am not asking your permission. You would kick me in the teeth and spit on me as you walk over me with the spiked heels, no?”

She almost betrayed herself by giggling. “Bullshit.”

He grinned wickedly. “I know what you like,” he said. “A spineless dickhead with no balls who asked nicely would not arouse you, Tamara Steele. We have established this fact beyond all doubt.”

Don’t presume to know me.
She wanted to say it, but her mouth was too busy frantically kissing him.

The kiss was wild, rough. A mutual devouring, and she set the tone. His grip tightened as his lips dragged down her jaw, teeth grazing the tendons of her throat as he wound his hands into her hair, pulling out clips, pins, clasps. He tossed the ornaments carelessly down onto the kitchen counter. He was not afraid of them, despite what she had done to him in the hotel. And he seemed to be sure she would not hurt him.

At least not until she’d gotten what she needed.

He unraveled her hair, spreading out braid-crimped locks and draping them over her shoulders. She felt younger with her hair loose, vulnerable. He pressed his face to her nape, wrapping thick skeins around his fists. Even her hair felt pleasure, tingling in her scalp, swirling through her at each stroking touch down its length.

He tugged her stretchy bodice down over her shoulders, her breasts. His hungry mouth followed the path of his hands, trailing slow, dragging kisses over her collarbone, her chest. His hands slid up her thighs, over the stockings to the smooth, bare skin.

Her legs threatened to give way when Janos stepped back and undid his belt. Delicious anticipation fluttered across the surface of her skin at subtle sounds of leather creaking, buttons popping.

She reached down, impatient, and fumbled to free him from the black denim, the snug black briefs. She grabbed his cock.

His hand covered hers and squeezed. Stroked.

Yes. She made an involuntary sound like a satisfied cat. He was long, heavy, rock hard. Scalding hot, velvety smooth. Every beat of his heart throbbed hard against her palm. She swirled his thick, blunt, cockhead in her palm. It was flushed a fierce, hot red. Very large.

Excellent. She’d never given a damn about size before, but she liked it that Janos’s cock was big. She liked excess, she liked overkill.

She’d been hungry for so long. Bring it on. Loads of it.

He shuddered, his fingers fumbling with the condom from his pocket. She wanted to bat the latex out of his hands, hungry for naked contact with his hot skin, but a last, lingering shred of sanity stayed her hand. She’d abandoned the pill after the Novak debacle, figuring contraception would never be an issue in her life again. She doubted she was particularly fertile even without it, but life was full of inconvenient surprises. And there were diseases to consider.

Not that she was in any condition to consider anything. That and all other rational thought melted away to nothing at the sweet shock of contact. Janos slid the head of his thick shaft slowly up and down her cleft, seeking out the strokes, the angles that made her gasp.

He surged deep inside, filling her. Impossibly thick and deep. She didn’t recognize the way her body felt. She had no frame of reference at all for this experience. Her body was entirely new, shivering around that secret place inside that had flushed with heat, burst into bloom.

Each surging, rhythmic twist and thrust of his body into hers was a discovery. She lifted herself for more, gasping at the intensity, building, swelling with each deep, slick stroke, sliding over and over a marvelous hot spot inside her that got hotter, hotter. Dear God, there was no end to it, no controlling it. She could feign an utterly convincing orgasm, but she had no clue how to survive real pleasure, to stay on top of it like a canoe in the rapids, to not drown in it, faint from it, go mad from it. He pumped his big, powerful body slowly into hers, his hips swiveling, stirring her into a writhing, moaning frenzy.

The climax drove her still deeper into that magic inner place that she had glimpsed before. He came with her, the force of it reverberating through her body, harmonics blending with hers into a deep chord, unbearably long and sweet and lingering. He was there with her inside that secret place. Souls brushing, melding.

Tam floated in that magical dream for a moment of timeless bliss…until reality began to intrude. Her mind, always independently crunching the data, and presenting its cool, considered conclusions. Whether she wanted them or not.

She didn’t want them, but there was no escaping them. The realization of what he had done stung like a poisoned needle. She’d hidden the truth from herself because temporary relief from that agonizing tension had been so irresistibly pleasurable. But the truth had been right there. That glow, the floating, the gaga mellowness that couldn’t be explained by a few glasses of wine.

Staring her in the face. So fucking obvious.

Drugs.
The whole thing had been chemically induced. He’d slipped her something subtle, sophisticated, to mellow her ever so slowly and delicately, and then wrangled her into a state of sexual surrender. She’d thought she was good, but he left her in the dust.

She was incapable of speech for minutes. They were poised together, braced against the door. Still joined. The hot, animal smell of sex rose between them. His arms circled her, trembling with strain. His cock was wedged so deep inside her, it pressed up against her womb. Pleasure jolted stubbornly through her limbs. Her body had no pride. It didn’t care if it had been grossly deceived, drugged, tricked. Pleasure was pleasure, and her long-suffering body got precious little of it.

Her voice shook with self-loathing. “What exactly did you drug me with, you lying son of a bitch?”

The flash in his eyes, the tension in his mouth confirmed it. Somewhere in her mind, she had still been hoping she was wrong. That this was just her standard paranoid freak routine.

She cringed inside. Hated herself for hoping, hated herself for falling for it, hated him for doing it, hated herself for hating it.

Janos cleared his throat. “I’m…sorry.” He pried the words out like rusty nails.

Sorry? Holy shit. She was dumbstruck at the raw nerve of him.

“Sorry?” she repeated. “You’re
sorry
? You prick. Get away from me. Get out of me.” She shoved at the expanse of his chest. She felt trapped, immobilized by the sheer mass of his body, that huge, throbbing member jammed up inside her. She felt invaded.

He withdrew. The slide of his thick shaft still felt shamefully wonderful. Tiny muscles inside her clutched him, unwilling to let go. Her helpless response was humiliating.

He stopped, a question in his eyes, caressing her with the thick bulb of his cock. Ready to give her more, although he’d just come, and explosively, too. The man was a world-class fucking machine.

But what had she expected? He was a professional, after all.

She spat in his face and dissolved into tears.

V
al wiped spit off his face and pulled out of the silken clutch of her body, staring down at the shining pink folds distended around his cock. She left a slick sheen of gleaming lube on the latex.

She hid the tears behind her hand. He tried not to look. He didn’t want to see them any more than she wanted them to be seen. She was proud, haughty. Not the kind of woman who used tears as a weapon. God knows, she had plenty of other weapons in her arsenal.

This outcome exceeded his wildest hopes, and yet he felt shattered. He had obtained the means to keep Imre alive for a few more days, but he felt no triumph, not even relief. Just a sickening sense that he was sliding ever deeper into a pit that had no bottom.

It shook him that he had actually lost himself in the experience. He had forgotten Novak, Imre. He had forgotten about the hidden camera. He had forgotten every agenda but that of his own pounding body.

And he could fuck her again, right now. Gladly. All night long.

He disposed of the condom and arranged his erect penis inside his jeans as best he was able. The silent weeping was driving him mad.

“Stop it,” he broke out harshly in Italian. “Stop crying, for the love of God. I cannot stand it.”

“
Vaffanculo
,” she shot back. “I can’t control it, and it’s your own goddamn fault that I’m stoned. So deal with it, dickhead.” She tugged her skirt down. One of her stockings had slipped loose of the garter and rolled halfway down her thigh. He sank to his knees in front of her and rolled it up. The skin of her upper thigh was exquisitely hot and smooth. Lily petal soft. So fucking perfect. Her legs shook. She wobbled on her flimsy, eight-hundred-dollar spike heels.

His legs would shake, too, were he standing.

He did not want her to see the look on his face, so he leaned forward and pressed it against her mound, kissing her. A wordless apology that he knew she would reject violently, but he could not help himself. Could not resist breathing in more of her hot female scent and then more. Letting his secret tears soak into her skirt.

She made a catlike hissing sound and slapped at his face, but without much force. He looked up from that supplicating position at her face, flushed and wet, eye makeup blurred into a mask that just made her brimming eyes look brighter.

So beautiful, it made his chest clench.

He wanted to shove her skirt up and beg for her forgiveness with his tongue, but she would kill him for his pains, and he would not blame her. Even so, he wrapped his arms around her waist and clung to her, like a child. It was a stupid move, a vulnerable position. She could kill him in a hundred ways with the arsenal he’d plucked out of her hair or with her bare hands alone, for that matter.

He did not care. If she wanted to kill him, she was welcome to do so. He deserved it. He braced himself, waited.

No crushing death blow came down, though. No needle’s burning sting. Her hands slid into his hair, gripping handfuls of it and yanking, hard. Her nails dug into his scalp.

“You’ve fucked a lot of people you didn’t necessarily want to sleep with in your career, Janos, right?”

He tensed, sensing a tarpit. “Yes,” he admitted cautiously.

“Was it difficult?” Her voice was hard. “To drug me up, make me come? Did it hurt? Did you have to grit your teeth, hold your breath?”

It took a minute to gather the courage to answer her, with the stark truth—even though he knew that she would not believe him.

“No.” His voice hoarse, raw. “This is the part that hurts. The rest of it was incredible. I’ve never wanted anything the way I wanted you.”

She laughed through her tears. “Me? No, it’s not me you wanted. You wanted a piece of me. That’s all anyone wants. The pretty part, the smart part, the mean part. The part between my legs. The rest is a pile of broken pieces. No use to anyone.”

He tightened his hands on her hips, fingers digging into her curves, feeling the smooth heat of her, the play of sleek, strong muscle.

“The rest of you is beautiful,” he whispered. “Broken to pieces or not. All of it is beautiful.”

She covered her face, shoulders shaking with bitter laughter. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered. “There’s no point in bullshit sweet talk. It hurts to listen to it, OK? Let me be, Janos. I will never do what you want me to do. Nothing will convince me, understand? So stop torturing me. Just disappear. I am begging you.”

He took his hands off her body, and stood up. “You will not be better off without me. You will have no more peace, Steele. If it is not me shoving you around, it will be someone else.” He laid it out for her, his voice flat. “Someone much worse.”

“Worse than you?” Her eyes shimmered with furious tears. She dabbed beneath them to wipe up her mascara. “Not possible.”

“It is very possible,” he said stonily. “When PSS catches up with you, they will take Rachel and lock her in a room somewhere to control you, as they ordered me to do. And you do not want to imagine what will happen when Novak catches up with you…and Rachel.”

She flinched, and tried to twist up her thick, glossy hair with trembling hands. “And you think that calling the cops on me, messing with Rosalia, fucking with the adoption agency, isn’t controlling me with Rachel?”

He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped. “There is no comparison. I have done my best to protect her.”

“Oh, my. I am overwhelmed.” She stopped trying to put her hair up, and gathered the bristling array of hair ornaments into her hands as she shook it loose. She unlocked the door, yanked it open, and flung her parting shot at him. “What a fucking hero you are.”

He grabbed her wrist. “There’s one more reason why you should reconsider,” he said. “I have one final thing to offer you.”

“Oh, really?” She flung her head back, tear-blurred eyes blazing up at him. “Spit it out.”

“Drago Stengl,” he said.

The handful of hair ornaments clattered to the ground, bouncing and scattering. Her face was white to the lips.

“No one knows that. How…?” Her voice was a dry whisper.

The change in her eyes unnerved him. He felt as if he had just driven a knife into her chest.

“There was a photograph of you in Novak’s files,” he admitted. “It was taken at the memorial service some years ago, for the massacre in Zetrinja. I did some research and found out who gave the orders. I thought that you might be interested in, ah…news of him.”

“News? Of the man who murdered my father? I want more than news.” Her voice was colorless, dead. “I want his heart’s blood. I want him stretched on the rack. I want him screaming in hell.”

He had won, he realized. He had hooked her, but the realization gave him no satisfaction. On the contrary. It made him feel like a piece of shit to use her in this way. Turning a knife in old wounds.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I don’t have his location yet, but I have a solid lead,” he hedged. “I will help you follow it. In exchange for your support on my project.”

She laughed. “Project? What a word for it. What do you mean by a lead? If you are fucking with me, I swear to God I will kill you.”

“I know where his daughter is,” he said.

Her soft white throat worked. “Ana,” she whispered.

“Yes, Ana. She lives in Italy. She is married to an Italian businessman with connections to the Camorra. I have someone following her right now. A client of mine can introduce us, the wife of a Camorra boss. I can exploit the connection. If you like.”

“If…I…like,” she echoed, her voice hollow. She stared at him, or through him. She had forgotten that he was there. She was looking back through the years at something he could not see and did not want to. From her haunted eyes, he understood that it was as vivid as if it were happening here and now.

He understood that. There were moments in his life as well that had burned their indelible afterimage onto every day that followed.

He steeled himself. “So?” he prodded her. “Do we have a bargain?”

She made a choked sound, put her hand over her mouth, and lurched out the door. Her rapid, clicking footsteps receded down the hall.

Val gripped the door frame with his fist. Was that a yes? Nothing was ever obvious with that woman.

Three steps back
, he reminded himself, but it was no use. The emotions he’d learned to step back from had never been like these. They had no place, no right to exist. Inconvenient desire and guilt. And grief.

Imre.
He gathered up the hair ornaments, retrieved the video camera, and headed out a door at the end of the corridor that led out onto the grounds. He cut through the forest on his way to the parking lot. It was freezing cold. He had not bothered to retrieve his coat, but he was still in a near molten state, from the encounter with Tamara Steele.

He could melt the polar ice caps in this condition.

He loped through frozen leaves and twigs crunching beneath his slippery dress shoes and slid into the car. Hoping desperately that there would be wireless coverage. He did not want to have to drive away from her and Rachel. He hated to let them out of his sight at all.

He booted up the laptop. Ah, joy. There was coverage. He established a connection, activated the tiny videocamera embedded in the screen. Downloaded the digital video footage.

Editing it made his heart pound. The footage was too good, the angle paradoxically perfect, showing every detail of Steele’s flushed face, eyes closed, head thrown back, her perfect thighs clamped around his.

His chest ached. This experience was private, precious. And he had to throw it to that fiend, Novak. A chunk of meat to quiet the beast.

He edited out her tears, their conversation. A meaningless attempt to protect what he could of her privacy. He encrypted it, attached it. His finger lingered for minutes over the button. He closed his eyes and thought of Imre’s hands.

He clicked “send.”

He sat in the dark with his hands clamped over his face for over ten minutes until he could trust himself to link up to the videophone.

András’s grinning face flickered into view. “Ah, there you are. We were enjoying your show. Lucky pig.”

“I want to see Imre,” Val said stonily.

“Wait.” András disappeared. Val waited, staring at the blank screen, the antique chair’s carved back. Several minutes passed.

Novak seated himself in front of the computer, grinning. He had licked his purplish lips until they gleamed.

“Well done, Vajda,” he said. “Forgive me for making you wait, but I was riveted to the screen. Your performance with La Steele was magnificent. I have not been so stirred in years. I shall set up video screens in the room where I conduct her punishment and loop the footage the entire time. Those will be the last images she ever sees, before I gouge out her eyes. Perfect, eh?”

Val instantly manufactured white noise in his brain to block out the image. It did not work. “I want to speak to Imre,” he repeated dully.

“Of course, of course. I had him brought down the minute your video appeared in my inbox. He was privileged to watch it with us. Let me give the chair to him. I wish to go back and watch it again.”

Novak dissolved into a swirl of pixels. Another blurred, moving image as Imre was muscled onto the seat that Novak had just left.

The murky blur resolved into Imre’s face.

Val stared, his jaw aching. Imre looked shrunken and grayish and small. His eyes were sunk deep into their cavernous sockets. His cheeks looked caved in. He had aged fifteen years in four days.

Val’s hands clenched into fists. “Are they treating you well?” He hated himself for saying it. How stupid, how incredibly fucking inane the question was under the circumstances.

Imre’s eyebrow gave its habitual ironic upward quirk. “They have not beaten or cut me, if that is what you mean.”

“Are you eating?” Val persisted. “You have to eat.”

An irritated frown flashed over Imre’s face. “Don’t be a fool, boy.”

An agonizing, helpless silence followed. Val finally broke it, in desperation. “I will get you out of there,” he said.

“By betraying that poor woman? Delivering her up to torture and murder? Do not make me party to this, Vajda.”

Impotent rage swelled up in Val’s throat. “Do…not…judge…me,” he ground out.

Imre glanced over to his left. Loud, raucous bursts of laughter and lewd comments were audible. “This man is a demon,” he said quietly. “He will drag as many people to hell with him as he possibly can, and he wants you in particular to keep him company. Take care you don’t go with him.”

“I am doing the best I can!” The words exploded out of him.

“Indeed.” Finally, it was the dry, ironic tone that Val knew so well. “Was that your best? May God have mercy on us all. That performance was a bit much for an aged widower, boy.”

Val’s jaw tightened at the disapproval in Imre’s tone. “I cannot believe it,” he said. “Here I am, scrambling like a fucking monkey to keep you from dismemberment and death, and you are lecturing me?”

Imre’s lips twitched mirthlessly. “Fucking monkey is exactly the term for what I just saw, boy. And yes, I am lecturing you. Old habits die hard. I think you will have to do somewhat better than your best to get out of this predicament. Go with God, Vajda.”

The screen flickered, and the picture was lost. Val leaned over and knocked his pulsing forehead against the steering wheel.

Stuck-up, old bastard. Better than his best, his ass. What else could he do? Val was tying his balls in a knot as it was. Fuck Novak, fuck Imre, fuck them all. He wished he could find the nearest cliff to drive off. Let them sort it out however the fuck they wanted.

But he could not. Not an option. Not for him.

One more detail. It had been a wild gamble, assuming that Stengl was located near his daughter, assuming that Donatella could contrive an introduction. Assuming that the vain, capricious Donatella would even speak to him after years of neglecting the connection. She had wearied him to death, but now that he needed her, he regretted having been so lazy. He glanced at his watch. Six
AM
, an indecent hour to call her, in Italy, but he could not bear to wait.