Knife.
The written story.
The unsullied blister pack of capsules. Wolfe had given me that – a drug that could help dull the power and the aggression. I hated drugs. Artificial shit.
The photos of her after I had her, and before.
Who needed luxury settings when you had your first collected girl?
I remembered the alley between tall buildings.
One photo of her freshly brought to heel. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, her back to the grubby brick wall. Tongue in mid-sweep across her red lips. That dark yet sexy pantsuit with the thin red tie. Her neat short hair. I could see the swell of her breasts beneath the cloth, and her hips.
Red hair. Red lips. Red tie.
CIA? I saw only a thing I could have.
Have. Keep. Fuck.
Outside, Vitor made whacking noises as he slammed into the girl. Seagulls screamed. The girl gurgled and gasped incoherently like an animal caught in a delicious trap. My nostrils expanded, smelling the sex. My cock livened, swelled.
The monster pumped with searing rawness in my veins, same as it had then. It desired all of me. Sometimes I could almost see it – sucking on me, flowing like raw and bloody sex in my veins. I wrapped my hand over my forearm and felt the swell of muscle, the bump of my pulse. I was a bigger, bulkier man than I was then – a mesmer side-effect.
The monster could never be allowed full rein. I wanted to remain me.
Hence my ritual.
What if I didn’t need it anymore?
I fingered the second photo of her – kneeling on the pavement, her head angled up, my cum splattered on her face and dribbling from her swollen mouth.
Wolfe: “Take her, put semen in her, touch her, make her orgasm, and you will have her fully.”
I’d done that.
She couldn’t tell tales about us. Couldn’t orgasm by herself.
I’d kept her a few days but I’d not let her or myself come again, just to prove I could be that restrained. Then I let her go with a smile.
I’d leaned on the corner of the hotel and waved. Bye bye.
So smart, I’d thought. Restraint was my answer.
And the ritual.
Carefully, I drew the knife across my arm. The pain yanked the room into startling focus. I bled. Red leaked through the hair, dripped onto the timber of the desk top. I’d heal from this quickly. I picked up the worn pages, the small digest of that day, to relive what it was to be Isak Bain, a man who cared.
The girl outside groaned then screamed in climax, for the third time. I blinked away the monster. Mechanically, I touched the photos, the knife, the capsules, then I mouthed the words. I only read a few of them nowadays, and it was enough.
“It was a bright day in Cuba when I first saw Wolfe and I first saw Red...”
This was my shrine to the day Isak Bain went bad but stayed a little good.
The girl was sobbing and I matched the rhythm of my words to her sounds.
When I finished and stood, she lay curled on the stone. Vitor was taking down the ropes. Her breathing was still rapid, she was mottled and striped with red, but she was fine. I clicked my tongue.
“Vitor, take her downstairs. She’ll get sunburned there.”
CHAPTER 2
I flew in, went through customs, and hired a local taxi, within an hour of landing. With my innocuous luggage in the trunk, I was on my way to where he lived. I knew his name, couldn’t think it without fearing retribution. I couldn’t think it without feeling ill.
As we drove down from the hills surrounding the town, it unfolded like some perfect, pop-up children’s book. Small and peaceful, on the surface. The vast and sparkling blueness of the sea overwhelmed me more than the cuteness of the houses.
If this was the last thing I saw before I died, at least it was pretty. Such dark musings.
A dull gnawing in my stomach reminded me of the stupidity of my plans.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, smearing lipstick. I rubbed off the marks on my skin with a tissue until all of it was gone. Cleanliness was close to innocence.
Could you become innocent after being dragged through the dirt? Not that he’d done much to me physically – it was having someone inside my head that bothered me. It’d left a stain, a dirty, stinking, life-wrecking stain.
Most of this trip was arranged and planned. Being downgraded to an analyst hadn’t deprived me of the ability to get things done. I’d manipulated the system and would get fired and arrested, if I returned. When.
Who gave a fuck? Except it limited my free time here. The agency would catch up with me soon.
Years of agonizing lay in my wake.
I had the names of illegal gun dealers but hadn’t been able to arrange a weapon, and I couldn’t kill him up close.
Those years...
No lovers. No orgasms. No intimacy. Crying myself to sleep because I could tell no one what had caused my so-called breakdown in Cuba.
That first time I encountered a mesmer in the US...
Luckily, he’d died before he could do anything except brush across my mind, adding another microscopic layer of grime to what the other man had left. I took it as a warning and hired protection for when I wasn’t at work – briefed my bodyguard on possible actions if I did anything odd. I took other precautions, as a suspicious, over-paranoid agent might do.
Then...nothing.
No one came near me and no one obstructed my search for him. A fingerprint
