like to watch, Mara?” he asked softly.
She shifted until she was leaning back against him, a light, warm, silken weight “I like a lot of things,” she said.
He put his hand upon the fine-textured skin of her thigh, and slid it up beneath the short skirt. He discovered, with pleasure, that she was naked beneath it. Depilated as well; her mound was smoothly shaven with just a flirtatious little puff of hair shielding her clitoris. She widened her stance, opening for him with a sigh. He delved deeper and found that she was already aroused. She moved her body with feline grace against his hand. Hairless, silky and slick. Delicious.
He bit her neck, savoring the reaction rippling through her slender body- “You're a naughty girl, aren't you?”
“If I wasn't, I certainly wouldn't be here,” she said. Her voice choked off into a gasping moan as he thrust his hand more deeply, unfastening his trousers with the other. She braced herself against the edge of the table and arched herself open.
“True enough,” he agreed.
He drove inside her with a violence that surprised them both. She cried out and stumbled forward, catching herself against the table, and then braced herself more firmly. The room was a haze of glowing images, the bank of monitors with their assorted scenes of pleasure and depravity, Mara's perfect buttocks, the silk tunic pushed up to her delicate ribs, his penis gleaming as it thrust in and out of her.
He barely heard the grunts and gasps, the slapping sound of contact. The cool, detached part of his mind that always watched was well aware that it was his fury at Riggs that fueled this brutal rhythm. He didn't want to hurt Mara, but he paid lavishly enough for her services to indulge in his baser instincts without needing to ask either permission or pardon. He was so aroused. More alive and aware than he had been in years, not since his brother, Peter—
No. He pushed the thought away before it could unfurl, before it could detach him from the intensity of this delightful experience. The tight, slick depths of Mara's perfect body exciting him beyond measure as he caressed her trembling buttocks, giving into the hard, driving rhythm.
Erotic heat roared through him and carried him over the brink. He spent himself in a long blast that blotted out every thought in his mind.
When he moved to withdraw, Mara made an inarticulate cry of protest and shoved herself back against him. “Wait” she gasped. She came, long and shivering and totally unexpected. Delicious to watch, to feel. Her lingering pulsations milked and massaged his still-erect penis.
They were sticky and wet, but the architect had not planned the room with spontaneous sex in mind, so there was no adjoining bathroom. He withdrew himself, closed his pants and waited for his heart to slow down. Mara sank down onto the carpet, her legs sprawled out beneath her, as limp as a rag doll. She was still trembling. With her back hunched over like that, she looked fragile and vulnerable. He put his hand on her bare shoulder. It was hot and damp. She looked up at him. He felt a shock of startled recognition as their eyes met.
The sex had genuinely excited her. A fascinating discovery.
He held out his hand, pulled her up onto her feet 'Thank you, Mara. That was a revelation,” he said. “You can go.”
Her face convulsed. “Don't dismiss me like that!”
Another moment of blank surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
Mara looked suddenly unsure of herself. “I said... don't dismiss me,” she whispered. “Not after we've just had sex. Like that.”
“My dear, I can do anything I want with you,” he said gently. 'You agreed to that when you were hired. Remember?”
Her wide mouth trembled. She stared him in the face, eyes wide and glittering with unshed tears. “Don't,” she repeated.
He was taken aback, almost touched by her daring. Under the circumstances, that gesture took both courage and honesty. Both of which were in short supply in his life.
Ordinarily he would never permit a member of his staff to make personal demands of him. But tonight was a night for rule-breaking, for risk taking. Tonight, he would overlook this breach of protocol.
The girl was shivering. Her taut, dark nipples were clearly visible through the delicate fabric. He would not mind seeing those breasts again, he realized, with a fresh wave of lust He saw her in his mind's eye, naked on the bed, her hair fanned out across the white linen. Those topaz eyes, filled with genuine need.
Yes. It would be good. It would work. He was hard again. Already. He gave her a brief nod. “Come along, then. Let’s go to my suite.”
Victor stalked down the corridor, watching as Mara scurried ahead of him, her bare feet silent on the cold flagstones. She cast nervous, wide-eyed glances back over her shoulder at him, as well she should. She was an intelligent girl. She had good reason to be nervous.
He opened the door with a predatory smile and gestured for her to enter. Mara was hungry for something, too. And in appreciation for her charming honesty, he was going to see that she got it.
As much of it as she could take.
Chapter 19
Riggs swerved on the dark road, correcting just in time. It was bad tonight. Ever since Jesse Cahill's death, his ulcers had been flaring up to the point of burning agony. Medication didn't do much good, mixed with bourbon, but he needed booze to take the edge off the knowledge that he was an unredeemable piece of shit Survival lay only in keeping that knowledge from Barbara and the girls for as long as he possibly could.
He thought of this morning; how she'd pressured him to see a therapist with her. “You have to face your feelings, Eddie,” she said, with that goddamn
The girl was a lot like Alix, in spite of the clumsy clothes, the glasses and the scraped-back hair. Alix's billowing mane had always been perfectly coiffed; Alix had worn clothes that would have cost him a month's salary for a single outfit. He'd never had a woman like her, a drop-dead, blaze-of-glory woman. Barbara was lovely, but she was a good girl. Too good for him. He'd met her in college, and had been attracted to her ladylike manners. Barbara was an obvious choice for a wife, the perfect mother for his two girls.
But when he met Alix, something had detonated inside him, blowing everything he thought he was to pieces. A man could die happy fucking a woman like Alix. She was feral in bed, a bitch in heat. A couple of lines of coke snorted off her perfect tits, and they'd gone at it for hours, doing things he'd only heard of but never dreamed of trying. Things he could never imagine with his sweet, quiet Barbara.
He'd held himself together during that hallucination of a summer back in '85 by keeping his two worlds separate. Even Haley had never gotten a clue, thank God, since he himself had been the one infiltrating Lazar’s operation, not Bill. Barbara had inhabited one segment of reality, safe and sane and sensible with her cardigan sweaters and her smooth dark bobbed hair, all meatloaf and babies and breakfast cereal. Alix had ruled another segment. Naked, wide open, burning for him.
He'd had a pretty good life once, before that bitch had spread her legs and welcomed him into the gates of hell. Victor’s hooks had sunk into him so insidiously that he’d barely noticed them. Riggs was so far out of it that when the order came down, when he found out how deep in shit he was, he'd
Riggs cringed, thinking about how gullible he had been. The world had exploded in his face, and when he sifted through the rubble, he was left with the knowledge that he was not one of the good guys, like Barbara believed. Maybe he never had been. Maybe he had been a piece of shit all along. Victor's creature, belly-down in the mud.
