'Did I hurt you? Do you want me to stop?'
She kissed him. 'Would you relax? There is no hidden message here. No code to decipher. I do not want to stop. Read my lips, OK?'
He jerked his head away, but she wound the hair around her fingers, trapping him. 'You are so fucking complicated,' he snapped.
She sighed. 'Just keep making love to me. Gently. And stop being ridiculous and anxious. What's complicated about that?'
He pried her fingers out of his hair and pressed his face against her neck, burrowing closer. 'I just want to please you.'
She was moved by the ragged tremor in his voice. 'Oh, but you do,' she soothed him. 'Didn't you feel what happened? What you did to me? It was intense, but it worked. Just like you knew that it would.'
'I thought I went too far,' he admitted. 'With that stupid lord and master crap. I thought I'd screwed up.'
'No. You didn't. I trust you, Connor.' Her words softened to a senseless croon as she covered his hot face with kisses. She moved beneath him, caressing his shaft with every delicate, clinging muscle inside her sheath. It was a lazy, licking, tender kiss between their sexes. Their lips joined to match it, hungry for sweet reassurance.
Their power games had transformed into something infinitely more beautiful and treacherous. His dominating energy was rendered down to desperate, shaking need. Now she was the strong one who clasped and held, with the power to give or to withhold. But there was no question of withholding. He was inside her mind, he was everywhere. Her heart glowed for him. Every part of her was liquid and soft, merging with him, surging and heaving like the sea.
Much later, he murmured and lifted himself off her body, and stumbled away into the dark to dispose of the condom. She didn't have the strength to turn her head and tell him where she kept the trash basket. He lifted the quilt, slid into bed again, rolling her on top of him.
'I'll squish you,' she protested, without much force.
'Nah. This is another one of my classic Erin fantasies. Sleeping with your naked body on top of me. Your hair draped all over me, your hand against my chest, your breath mixing with mine. Your skin…'
The rest of his whispered words blended into her dreams like a swirl of melting honey.
Kurt Novak and Georg Luksch were not worth this pain and humiliation. They had used him, and thrown him away. He could feel it.
The police flung Martin into the holding cell, and the gate clanged shut. He fell heavily to his knees, retching.
Just his luck, that he should get rough, brutal types for his interrogation, but he had been prepared. He had been very strong. He had told the police exactly what his employers had ordered him to say. He had made the police torture it out of him, as instructed. He had held back as long as he could before finally gasping out where he had last seen Novak and Luksch, and when. He had been desperate, very convincing.
Then he had repeated the same story, no matter how hard they hit him. He had been strong, but there was no one to bear witness to his loyalty. Novak and Luksch would never know or care how brave he had been for them. No one would ever know. He was sure of this.
He was disposable, and they had thrown him away.
His bosses had told him that if he did this for them, that his parents and his uncle would be spared, and that two million euro would be transferred to a private numbered account for him in a bank in Zurich upon his release. His very rapid release. We own the judges, they had told him. It will be arranged quickly, more quickly than the last time. We need you, Martin. That was why we arranged your escape with Luksch and Novak in America. Only you are strong enough for this task. Do not fear. Be strong, Martin. You will be rewarded.
Rewarded. He laughed, but the pain of his cracked ribs stopped him. He huddled in the fetal position on the frigid concrete and wiggled his teeth, one by one. He would lose some of them. The left front, and the incisor. His mouth was full of blood. His tongue ran over the smooth capsule they had soldered to a filling in his back molar.
A microchip, they had told him. So that we can always find you, always rescue you. Just a precaution. It will do you no harm. It is for your protection, Martin. Trust us.
He suppressed another laugh, wiggling the loose molar with his tongue. Two million euro could replace lost teeth, he told himself. Two million euro could make up for a great many things.
But not all, something whispered. Six months in an American prison, and now this. He was shrinking, curled up on a floor that smelled of urine and vomit. Smaller and smaller until he was the size of a child's doll, with tiny balls like shriveled raisins.
Too small to be seen by the bank personnel in Zurich.
He pressed his tongue against the smooth capsule and wondered if they could listen to him through it, if there could be a microphone so small. He started, hysterically, to laugh again, even though every jolt of his diaphragm hurt like knives stabbing.
'Fuck you,' he muttered, just in case they could hear him. And then, for good measure. 'Fuck you both. Fuck Kurt Novak. Fuck Georg Luksch. Fuck your mothers, your grandmothers. Fuck you all.'
It happened immediately, as if in answer to his words. A
The pain was huge, but he felt no surprise. He understood a million things in that timeless moment that his heart ceased to beat. The choices that had led him to this stinking concrete floor. The boredom and greed and restless anger that had gotten him mixed up with that murderous scum. The many cruel things that he had done with them, for them. It raced through his mind, together with all the choices that he could have made, and had not.
He could have married Sophie, joined his uncle's wine business. Sunday mornings strolling in the village square, he with their young son on his shoulders, she with the baby carriage, their infant daughter asleep beneath her pink blanket. A splendid lunch, and then lazy afternoon sex with his wife while the children napped. A game of cards at the club, a beer with the friends watching soccer on TV Weddings, baptisms, funerals.
The ordinary seasons of a blameless life.
He watched it spin by, until real time caught up with him. The iron fist closed, and crushed his heart out of existence, and what could have been and what truly was were both extinguished.
Chapter Fourteen
She was still on top of him when she woke up. Dawn had lightened the dingy brick wall outside the window, turning it a charcoal gray. She glanced up at Connor's face. He was gazing at her with his usual intensity, but it no longer flustered her. She liked it now.
She shifted on top of him, murmuring with pleasure. He was so solid and warm. Her thigh was flung across his, and his erect penis pressed against her, as hot as a brand. She poised herself over him so that her hair fell around them in a shadowy curtain, and touched his lips with hers. His mouth opened at her urging. Their tongues touched, a delicate, questing flick that melded into a deliciously sensuous kiss. It brought her body to tingling wakefulness.
She expected him to spring to action, but he just lay beneath her, rigid and trembling. She lifted her head. 'Connor. Don't you want to… ?'
He rolled his eyes. 'Like you have to ask.' She dropped a kiss on his jaw. 'Then why don't you?'
'You gave me a hard time last night. About pushing you around.'
She was indignant. 'I never said—'
'I'm sick of it. I'm just going to lie here and see what happens. If you want something, take it. If you need something from me, ask for it.'
He folded his arms back behind his head, and waited.
She was disconcerted, but not for long. She didn't need instructions. She had ideas coming at her by the truckload. If he wanted to be a love slave, he'd come to the right place.
She flung back the quilt and rose up onto her knees. This was going to be fun. She leaned over and kissed him, thrusting her tongue aggressively into his mouth, the way he so often did to her. He murmured in surprise, and
