Kaia now sported a collar and head brace. And as for Justin, well. A ring of tooth marks on that bastard’s dick was the least that he deserved. Becca could not find it in her heart to feel sorry for him.
It had just been a goodbye, for old times’ sake, Justin had protested, as soon as he was lucid enough to talk. He’d implied that Becca should be grateful he’d gone for oral sex, not vaginal penetration. How noble of him, to sacrifice his own pleasure out of respect for his fiancée. She ought to be overcome with gratitude at his manly restraint.
Um, not.
She’d expressed her feelings forcefully. Justin had gotten angry in his turn. He’d said several ugly things, calculated to make a woman want to huddle alone on a fog-bound island, far from everyone who knew what had happened. Which was to say, the whole world.
Becca stopped at the edge of the pool, hoisted herself partly out and pressed her hot face against her folded arms. Tears welled up and spilled. More fucking tears. She could fill this pool with them.
The scandal was too lurid to keep quiet. Justin’s family was too well known and it was all over the Internet. She’d googled herself and found thousands of mentions. And those reporters, baiting her, trying to get a reaction. Bottom-feeding bastards. The notoriety hurt. A storybook princess with a ring on her finger, she’d been recast in a crass burlesque. And not even a lead role. More like second banana. The reason poor, sex-starved Justin felt compelled to unzip his pants, just to get some blessed relief. The butt of a dumb dirty joke.
No one could talk about it without laughing, but it wasn’t funny. Her ex-fiancé had another girl’s tooth marks on his penis because Becca hadn’t been able to keep him satisfied in bed. Justin said so, when he got over feeling guilty and started getting pissed.
She’d tried, that was for sure. Justin was an attractive guy and a good kisser. But she’d always been sort of awkward and stiff when it came to sex. She’d been so sure it would get better as their intimacy deepened, as their trust grew, when she finally had a chance to relax.
So she wasn’t a red hot orgasmatron. So sue her. She tried to please. She did her best. She tried to be open-minded. Uninhibited. But as Justin had taken pains to point out, trying to be uninhibited was a contradiction in terms. Either you were, or you weren’t. Period.
That struck her as so unfair, that there were things that honest, earnest effort just couldn’t change. Either you turned a guy on, or you didn’t. Either you were sexy and fascinating, or you weren’t. Either you were a wild woman who gave blow jobs in a moving car, or you were the bland, safe type who would make a good politician’s wife.
Better now than after they got married, had kids. Narrow escape.
She shoved away from the poolside and launched into another angry lap, arms pinwheeling through the water.
Sparks. That was what Justin said she lacked. Seeing Kaia had made him realize this. Kaia was crackling with sparks. Becca wondered if the head brace would cramp her fiery sexual style. Poor thing. Big shame.
She touched the side, twisted to prepare for another push off—and two huge, strong hands seized her under the armpits and wrenched her up out of the pool. A thick, steely arm locked across her throat. Something hard pressed her temple. A gun. Oh God. A gun.
“Who the fuck are you?” The voice in her ear was a rasp of pure menace.
Chapter
3
A mbush.
First thing Nick had thought when he saw the gorgeous naked chick on the video monitor. Preening and stretching, tossing her hair, showing off her tits for the camera. Diving into the pool like she owned the fucking place. The babe had nerves of steel, he’d give her that much.
He scooted backward, dragging her with him till he hit the glass poolhouse wall. The place made him feel like he was in a fishbowl when the lights were on. All glass, all around, and no cover of any kind.
He braced himself for a volley of bullets to explode out of the darkness, turn all that art deco flash into shrapnel.
Didn’t happen. Not yet. Any second, maybe. Any second.
He took the gun away from the girl’s neck just long enough to hit the switch and kill the underwater lights, plunging them into darkness. Hell. The beeper had jerked him out of a doze, and sleep-addled dumbfuck that he was, he hadn’t put on the infrared goggles before charging out here. It was a sure thing that the guys in the woods had them. If they were out there. The girl wiggled, trying to stand.
Uh-uh. Not in this lifetime. A deft kick that was calculated not to cause pain knocked her bare feet out from under her. He got her off balance so that she dangled helplessly in his grip.
“I—p-p-please—”
“Shut up. Not one word out of you. Got that?”
A shudder racked her body. Her head jerked in assent.
Jesus. How? Who? This op was so fucking secret and mysterious, he didn’t even know a lot of the details himself. Who knew about his cover, other than Tam? Had Ludmilla turned on him?
Maybe one of Zhoglo’s business rivals had an infiltrator. Maybe some foreign police agency had gotten tipped off, and was setting up a cozy welcome for Zhoglo when his boat docked. Nick didn’t blame them, but he stood to get slaughtered from every side. And Zhoglo was supposed to arrive tomorrow—aw, fuck.
He had to stay alive.
He eased the door open, dragging the naked chick out. Her feet scrabbled and her whimpering made it hard to listen for the rest of the team, wherever they were. He got her down the walkway to the house while his brain churned out possible explanations.
One: Naked Chick was an assassin, a black widow fuck-n-kill type. OK, she wasn’t packing anything he could see, but a body like hers was a weapon in itself. Might as well conk most guys over the head with a club as let them ogle tits like that. And of course there were weapons that were easy to hide.
He’d have to take a closer look. The idea sent a surge of interest into his groin. His one-eyed snake didn’t care if the bathing beauty was a icy-hearted killer.
Sometimes he wondered how men lived to adulthood, let alone old age, with that much concentrated stupidity dangling between their legs.
Two: Naked Chick was a distraction to engage his attention while the ambush moved in on him. The come-and-get-me way she’d presented her body for him in the poolhouse was one mother of a distraction. A sexual spell. The way her skin gleamed when he’d dragged her up, the jewel-like reflections on the disturbed water. It was magic.
Yeah. Sudden death could be so magical.
He guided her through the door and into the main house. Nice and easy. He didn’t need to be aggressive. She wasn’t fighting him. In one swift move he cuffed her slender wrists together behind her back, hooking them to the banister of the spiral staircase. He hadn’t lost his touch.
He stepped back, ran his eyes over her body. Wow. Whoever sent her must have a big budget. The girl was fucking amazing. He forced his mouth to close and went back to his situation analysis. Concentrate.
Three: Naked Chick was an expendable sex worker with no clue, and this was a perverse test from the big boss to see how Arkady behaved. Just the kind of game Zhoglo might play with a new guy to get a feel for his weaknesses.
Which would mean he was being watched. All the more reason not to lose his cool. And if he was careful, he might even get the upper hand. Worth trying.
“Who sent you?” he asked softly in Ukrainian.
She blinked, big-eyed. “Huh?”
She sounded American. Not likely, not for a job like this, Nick thought. “Who sent you? Tell me who sent you here,” he asked, in Russian this time.
No response.
He tried again, in Chechenyan, Estonian, Moldovian, Georgian, in case she was a ticking bomb sent by one of Zhoglo’s business rivals. He tried Hungarian and Romanian too, just in case. The big Z might have pissed off Daddy Novak. These psycho dudes were not known for their loyalty when billions of dollars were at stake.
Not so much as a spark of comprehension on her face. Just the appearance of shivering terror. But she was a professional, after all.
They’d picked their bait well, if bait she was. Stop-your-heart pretty, with all those pale, soft curves, huge green eyes. Just how Nick liked them. Not too skinny. Old world, Eastern European type of gorgeous, not a stringy Malibu beach babe.
He especially loved the mouth. The plump, parted, quivering lips made him speculate briefly about what her sexual specialty must be. She must be stellar at giving head.
He felt sort of honored. If he rated a top-of-the-line call girl to lure him to his doom, he must have hit the big-time when he wasn’t paying attention.
He wondered how old she was. He guessed twenty-three, twenty-five, max. Couldn’t have been in her current profession for long. That radiant-innocence vibe couldn’t be faked. Innocence faded real fast.
The visuals were perfect. She was still gleaming with water that trickled from her hair and ran down her body. Drops of water clinging to the dark fuzz between her thighs. Full tits, shown to advantage. Hey, cuffs were fun. Tight nipples. Helpless whimpers.
Nick dragged himself back to reality. Like hell she was helpless. She probably had a coil of wire fastened into her hair to garrotte him the second he turned his back.
“Who are you? And who sent you?” he asked in English.
“I’m, ah, Becca Cattrell,” she quavered, her voice high and thin.
“Becca Cattrell,” he repeated. “Who the fuck is Becca Cattrell?”
She shook her head, eyes wide. “Ah…me?”
“Not funny.” He tipped her chin up. “This isn’t a game. Who sent you?”
“M-m-marla sent me,” she gasped out.
“Yeah? Did she? Who’s Marla?”
“My b-boss,” she stammered out. “At the club.”
So Marla was a madam. OK. That was part of the puzzle, but not the part that interested him. “Why did this Marla send you to me?”
“Look, all she said was I could use the pool,” the girl quavered. “She told me th-th-that you were nice!”
Nice? She sounded betrayed. He chewed on that for a moment, staring at her. “I don’t know anyone named Marla,” he said. “And guess what? I’m not nice.”
“Oh.” She blinked like a trapped bunny.
He squelched a foolish impulse to trust her. “Wait here.”
Like she had any choice. He loped back into the security room to check out the infrared. Did a slow, steady sweep with the thermal imager, three hundred and sixty degrees. Nothing suspicious. He did it again. Nobody out there with warm blood and a beating heart except for wild animals.
He flicked another switch that showed two different camera angles on the spiral staircase and studied the girl from both sides. Her wet hair hung down, hiding her face. She was trembling. He had to get her warmed up.
No, he told himself sternly. He didn’t. Chivalry could get him killed. He had to think like Zhoglo. No heart, no conscience, no compassion. Cold as a cadaver in a meat locker.
He studied her body. She didn’t have the taut, nervy musculature of someone trained in hand-to-hand. She looked soft, touchable. Built for pleasure, not a sinewy, streamlined killing machine. He was tempted to rule out the possiblity of her being an assassin. But he really did have to search her first.
He hesitated as he went by the linen closet, then yanked out a towel, cursing himself for the soft-headed idiot that he was. He decided to add to his stupidity by grabbing the space heater he saw under a shelf. What the fuck did it matter if the assassin and/or call girl was a little more comfortable while he interrogated her? Zhoglo wasn’t watching. At least he hoped not.
The girl eyed him warily and Nick realized how strange he must look to her, carrying a goddamn space heater and towel like a cabana boy. Fuck it. He plugged it in, aimed a blast of hot air at her. She stiffened as he gathered a handful of her hair and twisted it gently to squeeze the water out, then let it fall.
Thoughts of that garrotte flashed through his mind. He ran his fingers through her wet, silky hair, trying to intuit the tricks a naked female assassin might use to conceal the tools of her trade.
Her hair was amazingly thick and soft. No garrotte wire in it.
She shivered at his touch. No earrings, rings, necklaces, anklets, bracelets, toe rings. She made a wordless protest as he ran his hands over the deep curve of her waist, up her back. Nothing taped up there. Then he moved between those soft thighs, another popular place of concealment. That provoked a squawk of outrage and a furious wriggle. He ignored both.
Nick brushed the edge of his hands up under her tits, which were more than full enough to conceal something taped or tucked up there. Nothing. They were amazingly soft, though. Wow.
He checked them again, just to be thorough. Hmm. That left bodily orifices, but that could wait. Hell, he barely knew the chick.
She flinched at his snort of laughter. “What’s so funny?” she snapped. “Are you done groping me yet, you disgusting pig?”
“Not yet,” he said mildly. He grabbed the towel and started briskly drying her body.
She tried to twist away, sputtering. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” he replied. He flung the towel away, ran his eyes over her. She was mostly dry and her lips had more color. Down to business.