He studied her at great length, liking what he saw. “Take off the robe,” he ordered.
She tugged the belt loose and shrugged. The robe slipped off her gleaming shoulders, the smooth fabric caught for one delicious, suspended moment upon her taut brown nipples. It snagged even more briefly upon the curve of her hips, and pooled silently around her feet.
Gilded toenails, he noticed. He liked that detail. He did not like the toe ring, but that could be overlooked for now. He would mention it to the housekeeper tomorrow. “Turn,” he said.
She gracefully did so, lifting her hair and arching her back. Her muscles rippled and flexed, and her breasts were perfect. The sharp, humming energy in his body coalesced. The moment was right.
Victor gestured for the girl to kneel in front of him, and then leaned back to watch as she sank to her knees, smiling at him with seductive promise. She reached confidently inside his robe, grasping his aroused penis with cool, smooth hands.
He was pleasantly impressed with her technique. The girl was skillful and sensual. The pacing was perfect, the ratio of depth to pressure very enjoyable; he felt no teeth. The way she used her hands in tandem with lips and tongue was per- feet. She was bold yet graceful, managing to be beautifully carnal in the act of fellatio while avoiding the pitfall of vulgarity, never an easy task. She made no unpleasant noises with her mouth. Above all, she displayed an unforced, pleasant enthusiasm for the task. He appreciated that, whether real or feigned.
He shifted his attention to the mirror, enjoying the picture she made. The dip of her waist swelled into buttocks that looked as if they had been polished to marble smoothness. Flawless. He would inform his housekeeper to give her a bonus. He lit a cigarette. Mara's eyes flicked up in a questioning look. He nodded, indicating that she should continue.
The dimness of the room suddenly struck him as oppressive. He flipped on the light, but this proved to be unfortunate, as it highlighted the fact that Mara's forehead was somewhat low, her nose a bit too narrow. Her makeup, under the light, seemed harsh.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the sight, and found himself thinking of his niece. Her tryst with Mackey must have been a good experience. Or, at least, extremely intense; the only kind of experience worth having, in his opinion. He wondered idly if Mara was still capable of blushing. He opened his eyes and observed her. Watching his penis slide in and out of her glossy crimson mouth, he rather doubted it.
The conflicting thoughts weighed upon him, threatening both his mood and his erection. He tried to dismiss them, but a startling thought was taking shape in his mind, so ludicrous it was impossible to ignore.
He was jealous of his clumsy, ignorant, blameless niece. She was poised on the brink of miracles and disasters. Anything could happen to her. Anything probably would. The danger and intensity of her life was worlds away from the flat emptiness that he faced every day.
He closed his eyes, deliberately allowing the warm, wet suction of Mara's skilful mouth to coax him over the crest.
He came, in a long, painful shudder. A crashing silence descended on him.
When he opened his eyes, his cigarette was a teetering tube of ash. Mara was wiping her mouth, trying to hide the apprehension in her eyes. He twitched his robe shut. “You can go,” he said curtly.
She rose to her feet. She looked faintly hurt, but was far too professional to make any protest. She left without a word.
He stared out the window. The cold inside him deepened.
Summoning Mara had been a mistake. Sometimes sex alleviated the cold; sometimes it intensified it. Unfortunately, in the initial stages of sexual excitement, it was impossible to tell which of the two it would be. He should probably give up sex altogether, he thought, with a fierce stab of regret. It was no longer worth the risk. Self-denial was tedious, but at this point, self-indulgence usually was, too.
He experienced a flicker of discomfort at how cold and abrupt he had been with Mara. She had done her best, and the situation was not her fault. She was being very well paid to get her feelings hurt, however. He brushed the thought aside, poured a glass of whiskey and sipped it, gazing at the desolate beauty of the moon on the water.
He knew what would happen now. The cold would deepen into a hollow ache. The ache would spread out, cracking him open until he was staring into an abyss of emptiness. On nights such as these, the moon was a cold, unfriendly eye that witnessed all, remembered all, forgave nothing. Sometimes he was tempted to medicate away the ache and the emptiness, but he preferred even intense discomfort to the fog of drugs or alcohol. He should not even try to sleep tonight. In such a mood, a dream was sure to afflict him. He wondered if Raine had inherited the Lazar gift of dreaming.
It was a most inconvenient birthright for a man such as himself.
He needed something absorbing to entertain him, if sex was no longer a viable diversion. He'd been on tediously good behavior since the wretched Cahill affair, and this moratorium on illegal activity galled him. Perhaps it was time to turn back to collecting. Not the treasures he had down in his vault, though many of them were indeed priceless. His real hobby was collecting people.
He had always had a talent for finding and exploiting people's weaknesses. The stolen murder weapons were just a new variation on an old theme, binding people to him with secrecy and collusive guilt. He loved the power, the sense of control.
His collection was vast and varied, but lately he had gotten bored with collecting public figures and pillars of the community. For some time now he'd been toying with the notion of collecting more dangerous, unpredictable creatures for his private zoo. Exotics, as it were. Such people's key secrets were uglier, more dangerous. Rather like his own.
That was the impulse that had gotten him involved with Kurt Novak. Novak was the most exotic creature he had ever attempted to collect. It was like swinging a poisonous serpent by the tail—one had to keep the centrifugal force in constant motion. Once collected, however, Victor would have a lever with Kurt's even more powerful father, Pavel Novak, a Hungarian, and one of the richest and most influential bosses of the burgeoning Eastern European mafia. That was a prize too intriguing to resist, with infinite possibilities for entertainment and profit.
His last attempt had been foiled by Jesse Cahill % untimely interference. Novak had been infuriated by the whole affair. Trapping and murdering the undercover agent had barely appeased him.
Victor had sincerely regretted the necessity of Cahill's death. Murder was never to his taste, and Cahill had been a likeable young man; but he had known who he was dealing with. He had rolled his dice, and lost. He was glad that he had not been present at Cahill's execution. Novak's tastes were baroque, to say the least of it.
He had seen it in his dreams, however. Most unfortunately.
To set the new game in motion, he had to gamble on one of his dreams. He seldom did so, because of the unpredictable nature of his uncanny gift. It could betray him at any time. Therein lay the risk—and the reward. His mind seized hungrily onto the idea, giving him instant relief from the ache and the emptiness. He had been formulating this plan carefully for months, ever since the Corazon dreams began.
He lit a cigarette and reached for the phone.
The scrambled line clicked open on the fourth ring. “Hello, Victor. I'm surprised you have the gall to call me at this hour.”
“Good evening, Kurt. I trust you've been well?”
“Just because you suffer from insomnia doesn't mean you have to impose it on me.” His cool, clipped voice was faintly accented.
“I apologize, but some conversations are inappropriate to conduct by daylight. They lend themselves naturally to the darkness.”
Novak grunted. “I have no patience for your mysterious ramblings tonight, Victor. Get to the point. This is a secure line, I trust.”
Victor smiled up at the luminous clouds. “Of course, Kurt. Have you heard of the recent disappearance of the Corazon pistol?”
Novak's sudden attention leaped through the phone lines like a surge of electricity. “Did you have something to do with that, Victor?”
Victor took a drag on his cigarette, savoring the intensity of the other man's interest. Dangling raw meat in front of a deranged animal such as Novak was the very best kind of sport. “I confess that I did. You can't imagine how many favors I had to call in to procure this object. I stressed a system of contacts that took an entire career to build.”
