Ice Storm (27 page)

Her knees hit the floor as she sank down in front of him. Her hands were shaking as they worked on the snap of the new jeans. He didn’t move, just stood there and let her fumble with the zipper, his hands at his sides. He wasn’t wearing underwear. She grasped the denim and yanked it down, and in the murky light his cock was hard, bigger than she’d expected.

She looked up at him, her eyes cold and hostile. “So you can get an erection,” she said. “Too bad you can’t come.” And she put her mouth on him, a deliberate taunt, an insult, a sly, erotic challenge that she knew she would win. She closed her mouth around him, sucking at him, pulling with her lips, letting her tongue swirl around the rigid, unfeeling length of him, as she proved to him...She felt his hands on her head, oddly gentle, his fingers threading through her hair, pulling it loose from its tight bun so that it spilled over her shoulders. He was stroking her scalp, kneading her, letting her taste and suck and then swallow, as he froze, his body rigid, his cock pumping into her mouth as he held her there.

She fell back, shocked, wiping her hand across her mouth, and she could barely see the expression on his face in the murky light. “You’re right about something else,” he said, his voice ragged. “I’m scared to death of you. Because I want you, when common sense and a lifetime of experience tells me I should kill you. I want you, and if I give up then you’ll own me, and I’ll have nothing left to fight with.”

She said nothing. She could taste him in her mouth, feel him between her legs where he hadn’t touched her—and she was ready to climax from thinking about what she’d just done.
“But then, it’s too late, isn’t it? You win, princess. Now let’s take this on the bed and get it done right.”

20

He reached down to pull her to her feet, but she fought him. His jeans were halfway down his legs, trapping him, and when she struggled, he fell, taking her with him onto the cold, hard floor of the apartment.

He kicked the jeans off, rolling on top of her, and he had her clothes off her, those plain, expensive clothes, in less than a minute. She fought him, hitting him, not knowing what she wanted. He was hard again, that fast, and he shoved her down on the thin carpet, kneeling between her legs, waiting for her to tell him to stop. Whether he would listen was another matter entirely.

But she didn’t. She lay in a welter of discarded clothes, her hair loose and tousled, and he looked down at her body. A body he remembered, even after all Stephan’s handiwork.
She still had pale freckles, spots of gold, dancing across her stomach. She still had red hair, and he stopped thinking about his cock and put his mouth there, kissing her, so damn grateful that something was still the same.

She put her hands in his hair and yanked his head up, hard, and her eyes were a storm of pain and confusion. “What the hell are you doing?” Her voice was no more than a far whisper.
“You know what I’m doing. Returning the favor.” He half expected her to keep fighting, hitting at him. But she didn’t. She dropped her hands to the floor, trying to will her body into that ice-fogged State she’d lived in for so long, and he wanted to laugh. That was one battle she’d never win. He was an expert when it came to using his mouth, and he’d never done it with someone he cared about. He was enmeshed with her, body and soul, and he knew just how to touch her, with his mouth, his tongue, to make her shatter in a matter of seconds.

And before she had a chance to come down, he was inside her, pushing into the tight wet sleekness, feeling her tighten around him, first trying to keep him out, then pulling him in deeper, and he put his hands under her butt and yanked up, hard, so that he was in so deep she could probably taste him.

She
was
tasting him, and the knowledge almost made him lose it again. He loved her mouth, the cold things it could say, the hot things it could do. He arched back, looking down at her, deep inside her.

He’d forgotten her breasts. Small, perfect, the nipples hard in the warm room. He’d forgotten the soft, muffled sounds she made when she was ready to come. Like she was right now.

And he’d forgotten the dark, bleak pain in her eyes when she had no defenses left, and he’d trapped her, used her, and there was no love at all. He’d pull out. Away from her, before he could destroy her completely. That’s what he had to do—he couldn’t, he shouldn’t...
Her hands came up from the floor and touched his face, gently. Her fingers brushed his mouth, slowly slid down his tense, sweat-dampened body, light and caressing. She was crying.... A woman like Isobel Lambert shouldn’t cry. And then her hands gripped his hips and she arched, bringing him in deeper still, and she said yes to his unasked question. Yes, and yes, and yes.

He kissed her, because he couldn’t stop himself. He tried to go slowly, to make it good for her, to make it the best she’d ever had, but she was already past that point, making those strangled little cries that sent him over the edge, and there was nothing but heat and damp and the smell and the touch and the taste, and he could have no more stopped himself than he could have stopped the storm outside.

He was a man who fucked in silence. And when he climaxed, long, hard, endlessly, inside her tight body, he heard his voice in the darkness. Calling her name.
Reno
stretched out on the floor, a beer cradled in his hands, his eyes drifting closed as he listened to the sound of the storm outside. Tiny pellets of icy rain were beating against the windows, mixed with the noise of the video game Mahmoud was playing.

It had been a strange day. He opened one eye, glancing at the kid. He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress
Reno
had dragged out for him. The second bedroom was crowded with discarded furniture, but he could at least get out the mattress. Mahmoud would have been happy enough sleeping on the hard floor—clearly he’d slept in far worse places—but
Reno
had a soft spot for the kid. Besides, he probably wasn’t going to sleep at all— he was going to stay up all night playing video games. It had been love at first sight: one taste of Mortal Kombat and the boy was hooked.
Reno
had battled him for hours, opponent after opponent. Sometimes he let Mahmoud win, at other times he’d simply slap his character to the ground and rip out his spinal cord.
Reno
didn’t let himself dwell on the eerie thought that Mahmoud would have lived in a world like that. Well, the ripping out of spinal cords was not usually seen outside of a video game, but the blood had been real for him.

He looked relaxed, happy, with his newly spiked purple hair, rude T-shirt and ripped jeans that had cost more than a child soldier would make in a lifetime. And they’d figured out how to communicate, a crazy mix of French, English. Arabic, Japanese and video game terms. After
Iwo
hours of silence Mahmoud had started talking. and he hadn’t stopped, as characters battled on the HD television screen and fake blood spattered.

Reno
understood only part of it, but it hadn’t mattered. Mahmoud had needed to talk, and he listened. They moved from fight games to first person shooters, and Reno found himself hopelessly outclassed by a kid fifteen years younger than he was, something he wasn’t about to put up with. Older brother kindness could only go so far, and he moved him on to RPGs. fantasy role-playing games where Mahmoud could wander through enchanted forests, kill trolls, turn into a wizard and collect potions. The kid was in heaven, and
Reno
could retire to his bedroom in peace. They’d already had a solemn exchange of presents. Japanese style. He’d given Mahmoud his most prized possession, his handheld game system that was still in beta mode, unavailable on the open market and so advanced it made PS3 look like an Atari. And Mahmoud had given him a string of beads, cracked, ancient, worthless. The beads had belonged to his foster sister. He’d taken them from her dead body, and had sworn on them to kill the man who’d murdered her.
He’d given them to
Reno
, along with his blood oath of revenge, finally letting go. And
Reno
, cold, unsentimental punk that he considered himself to be, had wrapped them around his wrist, knowing he would carry them with him until the day he died.
He could hear nothing from the floor below. He’d never even realized there was a closed-off living space down there—he was just glad Peter Madsen hadn’t decided to put him in it during his training period.
England
was bad enough; being in a prison wouldn’t help.

Madame Lambert had looked like a different woman than the cold, efficient robot she’d appeared to be the only other time he’d been in
England
. But then, that had been miles away from the plain, middle-aged cult follower that had been the first disguise he’d seen her in. Maybe the robot was a disguise as well, and the bloody, torn and troubled woman who’d been waiting for them with an unconscious man and a furious Mahmoud was the real Madame Lambert.

Normally
Reno
wouldn’t care. It was none of his business. But it didn’t look as if he’d be getting back to
Tokyo
anytime soon, and he held the firm belief that if he was going to do something, even if coerced into it, then he should do it completely. And in order to accomplish that, he needed to understand the people he worked with.
What had she been doing all day with the man she’d drugged? He was more than just a hostile—
Reno
could figure that out by the expression in her eyes when she’d thought no one was looking. They’d dumped his unconscious body on the small bed in the closed-off apartment, and she’d stood there, looking down at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

Maybe she’d killed him at some point during this long day. But then, he would have been called to help Madsen move the body. The Committee’s operatives had gone undercover, and right now there seemed to be only the three of them.

Reno
hoped Taka was looking out for himself, that son of a bitch. He was the one who’d arranged to have him shipped out of the country, and while there was no doubt Reno had made the mistake of losing his temper with some very unforgiving people, it also had something to do with the fact that Taka’s sister-in-law was coming for a visit. He and his wife kept
Reno
as far away from July
Hawthorne
as they could, even if it meant exiling him halfway across the world.

He pushed himself up off the floor, considering his annoyance with his entire family, women, the Committee.
England
and life in general. “I’m going to bed,” he told Mahmoud.
The boy simply nodded, staring fixedly as his video game character rode a dragon through a flame-colored sky.

“Don’t stay up all night,”
Reno
said, and then could have kicked himself. He’d turned into an old man. The kid could stay up for days if he wanted to, playing games, and be none the worse for it.
Reno
had done it often enough.

Empty Red Bull cans were piled high in the trash bin; boxes of cereal, Chinese take-out containers, bags of chips were littered all over the place. The boy hadn’t stopped eating.
Reno
had taught him how to use chopsticks rather than his hands, but it had been harder convincing him not to leave them stuck in the rice. Mahmoud had argued with perfect logic that it should only be bad luck to leave them stuck in Japanese rice, not Chinese. But then he’d carefully removed them.

No, the kid was okay. Tomorrow, maybe he’d take him to a video game arcade and let him try Guitar Hero and DDR. Or steal a fast car and drive out into the countryside, and maybe they could find a castle or two.

At least
Reno
was no longer so damn bored.

Mahmoud made no sound when they came for him. The struggle was silent, muffled, and
Reno
wouldn’t have woken up if they hadn’t knocked over the bin of soda cans. He came flying through the darkness toward the shadowed men, and he took out two of them with the sheer element of surprise. But then he heard the crack of his arm breaking, as if from a distance, and felt a flash of blinding pain. Then nothing at all.
Bastien Toussaint glanced around the pristine offices of Spence-Pierce, wondering what the hell was happening behind the double-thick walls. It was three in the morning, and he wasn’t any more eager to face Chloe than Madsen was to deal with his very annoyed amazon wife. They weren’t much further than they’d been when they’d started out that morning, and there was no way either of them was going to stop until they figured out what the hell was going on. So far they’d come up with bugger all.

Bastien sank back in the chair, taking the mug of coffee Madsen offered him, liberally laced with Scotch. He had no fears the Scotch would slow him down—he was riding on pure adrenaline, as if the last three years of peace had never happened. Old habits died hard, he thought, looking at the high-tech arsenal Peter had laid out on the teak desk.
“You want to tell me why you never thought it important to share the fact that Josef Serafin was CIA” Peter said, absently rubbing his bad leg.
Bastien shrugged. “We had an arrangement. Thomason sent me to
Central America
to kill both Serafin and his boss. Ideo Llosa, the head of the Red Terror. Once I made Serafin, he agreed to take care of the other half of my mission. It was why he was there in the first place. I left him to it. The question is, why did the CIA want him to make contact with the Committee? Why stay under deep cover?”
“I can think of one good reason. They’ve never liked the fact that we don’t have the same political agenda they do. Most of the powers-that-be in the American government think they know what’s best for the world, and the Committee doesn’t always agree.”
“Don’t we feel the same way?” Bastien said. “We don’t willingly share Intel with the CIA any more than they share it with us. You’d think we’d learn to work together.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Peter said.