A bubble of hilarity lodged beneath his sternum. This would have to be the performance of a lifetime.
He buried his hands in Rory’s hair, her chocolate brown curls twining around his fingers. Mortar scraped his back as he jerked his hips to her suction, unable to resist her skillful blandishments.
Four guards on Karadzic’s roof.
Damon couldn’t miss their interest in Rory’s impromptu sex show.
None on the neighbors’.
He hissed as she swirled her tongue over his tip, sending delight tripping up his spine in heated spirals.
Two dormers, unbarred, maybe a foot and a half wide.
Molten rapture gathered in his balls and he couldn’t stop it. Not if he wanted to stay in character.
Side door, two guards smirking at them.
Rory milked him, her motion irresistible, drawing his orgasm onward. She took him deeper, down her throat, so tight around his cock head he nearly swore.
Damon barely had the presence of mind not to speak. If he said anything, it would be blunt, four-letter Anglo-Saxon—and would blow his cover straight to hell. No fucking way could he manage any kind of accent except his own.
Fire erupted from his balls, blazed up his spine in a glory of excruciating pleasure. He didn’t feel the clumps of mortar digging into his back as his hips jerked, didn’t hear the hectoring calls of the whores in the street beyond, didn’t see anything save Rory’s lips around his cock, sucking him down into rapture.
Their egress had been anticlimactic. The only difficulty Damon had faced was retaining the security details he’d observed in his sex-soaked brain. Trailed by the guards’ coarse laughter, they’d left under the pretense of seeking a hotel to continue where they’d left off.
Now, while Rory worked to extract the information she needed from his pleasure-fogged memory, he grappled with the emotions he’d sensed from her in the alley.
No hesitation, no anger or confusion. Nothing but delight in bringing him to climax. That wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He suppressed a snort of laughter. Not what he’d expected? Nothing would have prepared him for what she’d done back there. Once again, his master thief had taken him by surprise, going down on him like that in public.
“That’s everything?”
Yanking his mind back to business, Damon tried to give her question the strict attention it deserved and not let his mind dwell on irrelevancies. “Yeah, that’s everything.”
Nodding absently, Rory pushed a hank of mousy brown hair out of her face. Flipping over the sheet of paper to expose its blank side, she began to sketch. He recognized the layout of Karadzic’s base. Then she began filling in the details he’d read off her cell phone and those he’d provided her.
The unerring flow of lines struck a familiar chord in the recesses of his memory. With a bit of nudging, he coaxed it to light: that pretty artist at the park had wielded her pencil with similar confidence. While his master thief’s exterior might change, the strengths and skills and quirks of personality that made her Rory remained the same.
It dawned on Damon that that was what he wanted.
She
was what he wanted. But was the difference in what he’d picked up of her emotions at the alley significant . . . or merely a lapse of her memory? Had Rory set aside her objections to his kills or had she just been caught up in the moment, in the risk they were taking?
Or perhaps there hadn’t been any difference, simply wishful thinking.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Peering through a gap in the curtains, Damon searched the adjacent buildings and the streets below for the source of his disquiet. Someone out there was tripping a mental alarm by radiating the calm patience of a hunter. While Damon wasn’t necessarily the target, the indistinguishable source of the emissions made him edgy and impatient for some indication of progress with their main mission.
For distraction, he turned back to the room and the minx who was—as usual—lounging on the bed in her birthday suit. “How’s it going? Are you ready yet?”
Sitting up, Rory snagged her cell phone from her rucksack. “Oh, ye of little faith.” She snapped it open to reveal a full-function, miniature QWERTY keyboard, which she set on her flat belly. Another click extended a hand-size plastic display that tripled its normal screen size and obscured his view of the tawny brown curls at her groin but not of her perky breasts.
Damon drifted closer to watch as she tapped the keys in rapid sequence with unerring precision and no wasted motion, displaying an unsuspected electronics expertise.
Less than a minute later, a window popped up on the thin screen streaming black-and-white video of a bunch of thugs desultorily playing cards. “I’m in already.”
He blinked at the casual assurance in her voice, which was backed up by the steady confidence she radiated. He’d so focused on her disguises and the physical demands of her work that he’d overlooked her other capabilities, having never really thought about the mechanics of breaking and entering. Rather shortsighted of him to underestimate his master thief. He made a mental note not to repeat that mistake.
Rory shot him an indulgent sidelong glance, clearly aware of his surprise despite his attempt to keep it off his face, then pointed to a black box with flashing status indicators on the floor beside her rucksack. “I’ve been monitoring them for days now.” The image changed to show a guarded corridor, then to other views as she switched feeds. “It’s how I put together that list.”
Watching the video over her shoulder, Damon scratched his itchy beard thoughtfully. Their joint foray into Karadzic’s territory had filled in some of the gaps in the checklist she’d shown him, but had it been sufficient? “Have you seen enough? Can you do it?”
She cut the feed and shut her phone. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” She set the device on the floor and stretched out on the bed, flaunting her nudity as naturally as breathing. Despite her internal conflict over his assassinations, his master thief still insisted on having him as a lover; that gave him hope she would come around.
Recognizing Rory’s game for the habitual power play it was, he sat on the floor and pulled out his .45 to occupy his hands, scrounging through his bag for his cleaning kit to hide a grin. While he knew they’d eventually end up in bed, fucking like minks, he refused to succumb that easily to her wiles. As much as his cock stirred at the sight, there was no reason to cut the game short. Anyway, with the frequent rains, it wouldn’t hurt to give the pistol another rubdown.
Placing a gray-stained rag beside his weapon, Damon uncapped a small squeeze bottle. Normally, he limited himself to a quick swipe, but this time he seemed intent on a thorough round of cleaning as he applied oil to the tattered flannel cloth.
Rory immediately got a whiff of anise cookies, bringing to mind warm memories of childhood theft—totally inappropriate for her plan to vamp her Adonis. Since she couldn’t do anything more until Karadzic arrived with the nuke—and hopefully weakened the current security setup—she wanted to make the most of her sexual arrangement with Damon. “Do you have to do that right now?”
“If you don’t take care of your gun, it’ll jam just when you need it. So I wipe it down,” he replied absently, bending over the gun and setting words to frustrating action.
“Bullets, too?” As soon as the words were out, she bit her tongue, hoping he didn’t take it as a suggestion.
“Cartridges. The bullet’s just the tip that goes down the barrel.” Damon tapped a short length of matte black metal, still not looking at her.
She made a face at the correction, wondering what else she could do without being obvious about her intentions.
“It’s just like you checking your climbing ropes for rope wear.” He flicked a glance at her, a smile lurking beneath his beard. “Or trying to keep the upper hand by displaying yourself that way.”
Finally a response!
Unconcerned by her nudity and his astute observation, Rory smiled wickedly. “Distracted?”
Damon gave her a level look as he slowly stroked the rag along the length of the barrel, the exquisite care he took to make sure he got all its nooks and crannies almost loverlike.
Watching him, she had to fight the urge to squirm, her nipples tingling from more than just the cool draft from the window.
Men and their toys.
Although for a phallic symbol, his gun was disproportionately small.
“Tempted to warm your backside.”
“In your dreams,” Rory retorted before she remembered whom she was talking to.
Chuckling, Damon grinned at her, a raffish expression made all the more intimidating by his unshaven face.
Deciding that silence was the better part of valor, Rory lay back on the bed, pillowing her head on her clasped hands. If he insisted on working, two could play that game. Determined to ignore him, she forced herself to mentally review the guards’ rounds she’d studied for weakness.
No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t identify any opening she could exploit: in this case, quantity was a quality all its own. “Security is too tight. If this were one of my usual targets, it would be less of a problem since most places depend on electronics. As it is, there’re too many guards.”
“So we reduce the guards.” He put away his gun and cleaning implements, once more satisfied with his weapon’s condition.
Forgetting her pique, Rory raised herself to her elbows to stare at her partner. “I thought the plan was to finesse things? You’re planning . . . what? A frontal assault with just the two of us?” She rounded her eyes at him to emphasize the ridiculousness of such an undertaking. The thought of her brandishing a gun like some GI Jane was just laughable.
Damon got to one knee beside the bed and reached out, trailing an anise-scented finger over her breast and coaxing one of her nipples to a peak. “Do I look suicidal?” It was obviously a rhetorical question since he punctuated it with a snort, his mouth twitching in amusement.
Relieved by his response, Rory twisted to her side to consider him. If her movement pressed her breast into his callused palm, that was only an added benefit.
After weeks of not shaving, her Adonis had the beginnings of a respectable beard shadowing his jaw. It made him look less like a Fed and more like the gangsters in town—unless you knew the sharp mind behind the disreputable exterior and the hard body concealed by his rough attire.
Something she knew quite well.
Not that she’d mind a refresher course. She needed to release the tension that impatience had built up while she’d stewed over Karadzic’s security; they both might as well enjoy the process.
Rory licked her lips, savoring the familiar desire pooling in her belly as Damon continued to fondle her breast with masterful fingers. Heat flushed her body with readiness, her heart racing in expectation. “No, I wouldn’t say that.”
“That’s good.” Laughing softly, he sat down, facing her, his weight making the mattress dip and tilting her into his lap.
With her hands on his thighs and her nose pressed against his groin, she had to laugh, too. “Oh, you didn’t actually mean for this to happen, did you?”
His cock twitched and hardened, lengthening into a definite ridge against her cheek. “Serendipity.” His male scent strengthened, enfolding her in sensual memories, the tenting of his pants growing more pronounced.
Damon kneaded her shoulders, his hands slicker than usual and still smelling faintly of anise. Cookies and sex. A unique fusion of childhood comfort and erotic invitation that was next to irresistible.
And there was no reason to deny herself.
She leaned forward, caught the tab of his zipper between her teeth, and dragged it down.
He hissed, his hips jerking once before he reestablished that rock-hard control of his. But he also undid the button of the waistband and let his fly gape open.
Smiling to herself, Rory nosed the flaps apart, filling her lungs with his delicious male scent.
His cock emerged from its dark nest, flushed and naked, already thick but getting thicker, the dark vein along its underside pulsing to his heartbeat.
“Well, hello there.” She planted a kiss on its velvety head, relishing the singular softness against her lips, one of the few spots on her Adonis’s body that could be described in such terms. “Does this mean you’re distracted?”
“Minx.” Damon gripped her nape, urging her nearer. “If you don’t do something, I might go with my first impulse.”
Whoops!
Knowing she could push him only so far, Rory took the plumlike knob into her mouth to divert him from entertaining thoughts of spanking. The saltiness that met her questing tongue told her he hadn’t been as unmoved by her earlier display as he’d pretended, much to her gratification.
She kept the penetration shallow, focusing her laving on his cock head since he was hypersensitive there—not that she could have taken him deeper without Changing her mouth bigger. His thighs tensed under her hands when she traced the flared ridge of his cock, then clamped her lips around him to suck.
Damon groaned, his hands clenching on her hair.
Triumph exploded in Rory’s heart in a heady rush of feminine power. There was no mistaking his response, no matter how he might try to hide it. Nothing got to him faster than a vigorous blow job, and after he’d threatened to spank her, she wanted him so hot and desperate his orgasm would obliterate even the shadow of a memory that he’d entertained such a notion.
Problem was, seducing him was a double-edged blade. His excitement spurred her own, making her wet and impatient to be taken. Desire made familiar by weeks of fomentation pooled in her belly. Her labia swelled and spread, the delicate folds slick with cream. Her clit throbbed to her heartbeat, eagerly awaiting the friction from his possession.
She drew on him, remembering how he hadn’t held back that time in the alley and wanting the same from him again. But even more than that, she wanted him wild and uncontrolled, pumping her like there was no tomorrow and all they had were these few precious hours.