Carol (Carol Schmidt Series) (15 page)

So Jerry Hobbs was
left there, lying on the bed, a big pile of old encyclopedias on the floor of
his bedroom, where there should have been two and a half million dollars in
cash. It had been a simple enough job for Carol, and an utter delight to crack.
She’d enjoyed his company, and the straightforward nature of his lust. He was
just a horny guy who’d screwed up in his professional life, using his legal
know-how to con innocent people out of their money. He had to pay for it, but
at least he and Carol had enjoyed themselves.

As she’d stood there, looking down at him on the bed, helpless and
confused as he realized that his off-shore account had been emptied, she felt genuine
pity. Suddenly, his pot of off-shore money was gone, and with it any dreams for
the future.

She’d forced herself not to feel too sorry for him, though. After
all, he still had his own house and a decent profession to his name. He had not
been left destitute. Just desperate. And the most pleasing thing: it had all
been his own fault.

After leaving him there, still handcuffed to the bedstead, she’d
flown over to London and spent some time hitting the galleries and museums. It
was as if she needed to relax and recover from what had been a deeply
gratifying but exhausting few days with Mr. Hobbs. It had been more than simply
a good day at the office, she had to admit; it had been awesome.

Now she needed a break. Wandering around the National Gallery and
sipping overpriced lattes in the city’s endless coffee shops was just the thing
to take her mind off Jerry and his insatiable desire.

As usual in London, she chose a small, modest hotel. There were
fabulous hotels in the city, some of the best in the world, and she could have taken
her pick. But there was something annoying about them. The best London hotels
had suddenly become vulgar, packed with people who seemed to need the whole
world to know just how fabulously rich they were, talking loudly and acting
like petulant teens. She hated flagrant demonstrations of wealth, which was
somewhat ironic, given her lifestyle.

There was also the small matter of a million dollars to deal with,
her cut of the money from Hobbs. It was the first time the Cardinal had given
her money directly. Had it been significant, a means of telling her she was
free, severance pay?

It was difficult to tell, because money always seemed to be the last
thing on the Cardinal’s mind. In all the time she had been working for him, he
had never once brought up the question of how much she could spend. She had a
couple of credit cards in her name, and she spent exactly as much as she
wanted, funding a life of unrestrained and unchecked luxury. How much had she
spent over the years? Way more than a million. Two? Three? She had no idea. But
the balance on the accounts was always cleared, no questions asked.

Now, though, she had been given a million dollars, a cash check made
out in her name. Was it a golden good-bye? A thank you? She had no idea. She
knew one thing, though: there was still one job left to do, and nothing would
stop her.

It hadn’t taken her long to persuade the Cardinal that Alex Strange
would be a worthy recipient of the kind of justice only he and Carol could
deliver. And now, as preparations were being made, Carol had been told to await
further instructions. The job would be a little more complex than normal, and
there was no guarantee of success. All she had to do, for the moment, was wait.

Three weeks after arriving in the English capital, her instructions
arrived, in the shape of a slightly overweight woman in a baggy trouser suit
and several document folders in her arms. She was middle-aged, with untidy hair
and a motherly smile. She came directly to Carol’s hotel room.

“Hi,” she said, in one of those weird Brit accents that Carol
couldn’t place, but which sounded like the villain in a million Hollywood
thrillers. “My name is Michelle, and I’m going to be your tutor for the next
few days.”

Fortunately, Carol had been warned about this. Michelle taught
copyright law at London University, and had been contracted to deliver a crash
course on the subject to Carol, who was posing as a Hollywood writer doing
research for a script about a computer programmer.

For the following week the two women sat in Carol’s modest West
London hotel room, studying copyright law. The lessons were more interesting
than Carol had anticipated, and once they’d gotten over the basics, they looked
in detail at digital copyright, especially software theft, taking old test
cases and seeing how they’d been resolved by the courts, both in the UK and the
US. They also, on the Cardinal’s instructions, managed to get Carol up to speed
on the basics of legal practice in Hong Kong.

After five days of class, Carol Schmidt was ready. She wouldn’t fool
a lawyer, but she’d damn well fool anyone else.

Then the call came: go to New York.

*

When she was through security in JFK, she took a cab straight to the
Marriot
on Times Square. She couldn’t get the same room that she’d had a
decade earlier, but she got one on the same corner, looking down Forty-Sixth
Street, which always seemed to be shrouded in dark shadows and a little grimy,
despite being so near to the lights of Broadway.

Ten years ago she’d pulled up at the hotel on a sunny Friday
afternoon and stepped out onto the streets of New York for the first time, on
the very morning of her eighteenth birthday, still hardly believing that she
was on American soil, never mind at the center of the world.

She remembered it now. It had been a crazy couple of days. Just
twenty-four hours earlier she’d said good-bye to the convent for the last time.
Discreetly and without fanfare she had slipped out through a side entrance and
into a waiting car, the Cardinal sitting impassively in the passenger seat. As
the gates opened and she was driven away, she looked back at the old building
with a certain fondness. It hadn’t been a bad place, all things considered. And
it wasn’t as if anyone else had been offering to take her in when, as a young
girl, she had been orphaned.

No, the
Slaves of the Lord
had done her well enough, although
she knew that she could never go back, never, not after the death of Raúl. Her
life there was over, and her new one was just about to begin.

That same evening, a decade ago in Mexico City, she’d done more than
had been asked of her. Not only did she make sure that Father Bonavente was
photographed in the most compromising of positions (and with an underage convent
girl), but she also retrieved the camera that the photographer dropped as he
escaped, dodging the bullets from the priest’s gun. Carol had been scared too,
scared to death. But she knew what was at stake for her, and she had simply
closed her mind to the dangers and run, the camera in her hand.

Flying up from Mexico the next morning, on her eighteenth birthday, she
knew she’d finally made it. She was free of her former life, free of the scandal
which had engulfed her back at the convent. Carol Schmidt was about to be
reborn, and in exchange for such an amazing opportunity—a first-class ticket to
life!—she would work for the Cardinal. Happy birthday, Carol!

The Cardinal had spoken to her only briefly by phone when she
arrived in New York that day, but over the coming weeks and months she began to
understand exactly what he wanted of her: whenever he needed a woman of
especial beauty, someone sexually irresistible and, above all, a consummate
actress, he would call Carol. As long as she agreed to the job and was willing
to use her skills of seduction on whomever it was that needed punishing, the
Cardinal’s work could continue, and another victim could be wrapped in a web of
his or her own sins...

Ten years later, and she was checking into the
Marriot
again.
This time she was not quite so excited by life, not giddy at what the future
might hold. But she still loved what she did, rejoiced in her ability to
ensnare absolutely anybody, to turn them inside out with desire for her. As
long as a person had an ounce of lust in their body, they would fall for Carol,
and hence for the Cardinal’s plans. She had never stopped reveling in the
curious kind of satisfaction that such a warped, beautiful form of justice
brought, and the fact that she enjoyed every second of it was an added bonus.

She walked into her room, and, just as she had ten years ago, she
let herself fall backward onto the huge bed. Staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, it
was as if secrets of how to unlock the unbridled ecstasy of life were spelled
out for her on its pristine white surface. Hotel rooms were amongst her
favorite places in the world, and the
Marriot
was her favorite hotel
ever, in her favorite city. So Carol Schmidt, after ten years working for the
Cardinal, was once again at the center of her own sensuous, seductive universe.
And she loved it.

She jumped up and carefully took off her clothes. Immediately she
felt the same gorgeous sense of liberty she always did, ever since that first
time in the bulb room down behind the convent, when she had felt the warm air
all over her young, developing body. It’s not just Carol, though. Who doesn’t
like to walk naked around a hotel room when they’re alone?

Running her hands over her breasts, she looked down, feeling them
lift and fall under her touch, and sighed with satisfaction. Ten years of
womanhood. Were they sagging? Not at all! They were fuller, the nipples darker
and still fabulously responsive, and they still had that alluring naturalness
that had been irresistible to so many people over the years.

She loved the way her breasts fell free, still perky, the nipples
pointing slightly upward, but just a little heavy with their own weight, that
girlish firmness replaced by the deeper, more sculptured roundness of maturity.
If she could have done so, she would have knelt in front of herself, kissing
and caressing them, delighting in their incredible softness and the tense, responsive
nipples at their hardest. She would have worshiped herself, there on the
carpet. Vain? Oh, yes! Carol Schmidt was the vainest person imaginable. Yet she
had a quality which offset almost any amount of vanity: she knew it, and
rejoiced in it. She knew who she was, and she knew what made her happy. Or,
rather; she
thought
she did...

The only regret she had about her sexual life was that she would
never know what it was like to be seduced by herself. It was more a matter of
professional curiosity that anything else. Over the years she had brought
people to the wildest of climaxes, the kind of orgasms that made them cry and
wince with unbearable pain, the fullest, dirtiest gratification they had ever
known. Sometimes—just now and then—she wished she could do it all to herself,
from the first flirtatious glance to the final spine-twisting jerk of ecstasy.
But of course, that was impossible.

She breathed deeply and felt the soft, deep carpet as it seemed to
wrap itself around her bare feet. Standing there next to the bed, she continued
to examine herself. Her pubic hair was darker than it had been ten years ago,
and somewhat thicker. She’d never been one for trimming and shaving. Her little
pad of hair down there was just right, she thought, completely natural, springy
not wiry.

She’d never understood the whole Brazilian thing. Whenever a man
went down on her, they would bury their faces in her pubes, inhaling hard, moving
their faces back and forth across the curly mound. More than once a guy had gotten
off just licking her bush, the hairs drenched with his saliva as he turned them
to a slithery mass.

Once a lover had asked her to shave herself. She agreed to do it,
but only if he did so too. They screwed like crazy, turned on by the sight of
their smooth, vaguely pre-pubescent crotches. A whole week they were at it,
covering themselves in oil, writhing and sliding against each other. Eventually
the hair started to grow again and they both ended up scratching each other red
raw with their hard pubic stubble.

As she reminisced, there in the hotel room, her hands continued to
move over her body. Her buttocks were taut and just right, the same as they
always were. And her stomach was flat. She was almost twenty-eight, but she
still had the litheness and athleticism of a very young woman. Meanwhile, her
hips and breasts were of a goddess. There was nothing even faintly girlish
about her figure.

The overall effect was enough to give a man an erection without him
realizing. It happened all the time. Guys would find themselves staring at her
across a restaurant or bar as they talked to their wives or colleagues, and
before they knew it there’d be an embarrassing bulge in their pants. Then
they’d simply break off the conversation, squirming in their seats, but unable
to take their eyes off her.

Sometimes the whole thing was a pain in the ass. These days if she
happened to be going to a bar alone, she would dress down to the point of
making herself look as unattractive as possible. It wasn’t that she disliked
being hit on, it was just the frequency of it. She actually enjoyed being
alone, and there’s nothing that ruins a nice thoughtful drink alone at a bar
than being propositioned between every sip of wine.

In general, though, she was pretty much proud of her physique. It
came at a cost, though. Maintaining a body like Carol’s required serious hours
in the gym and a pretty sensible diet. But a healthy regime was not really what
made Carol Schmidt so alluring, her body so maddeningly horny. It was natural, a
gift, an aura, something you couldn’t acquire however many grapefruits you ate.
The Cardinal had been right: she had a talent, and that talent was knowing
exactly how to use her sexuality, how to ensnare and seduce people with it, to
draw them out of their safety zone and into a world of untold pleasure.