Bad Angels

by Rebecca Chance

  She looked down at Marcos, whose eyes were shut in concentration now as he tried to last, tried not to let his cock explode inside her until she told him to. He was absolutely beautiful, his lashes long and silky, his skin velvety-soft. She’d definitely keep him around for another few years. A good cock was hard enough to find, as were the deliciously masochistic tendencies that meant that Marcos, though protesting, secretly adored Dasha’s rough treatment of him. She remembered the cock and ball torture she’d inflicted on him a few days ago, how she’d made him cry, beautiful tears pouring down his pretty cheeks even as his cock throbbed bigger and bigger with every spank, and the memory made her come yet again, her pussy contracting around him; she leant over, pulling on his reins, and pinched one of his nipples till he screamed.

  ‘Yes, scream, little pony!’ she yelled happily. ‘You dirty little bastard!’

  Dasha was on top of the world. Everything was exactly how she wanted it. In a few days, Grigor would be dead, and she would inherit all their possessions: she would control everything they had built together.

  Why didn’t I think of this before? Why didn’t I have Grigor taken out years ago?

  The picture of a life where she ran their business interests much more ruthlessly than Grigor had done was a huge, heady rush. Retirement hadn’t suited her. Torturing one Brazilian toy boy was no substitute for the kind of major-league sadism in which Dasha had indulged before retiring to Monaco.

  No one’s going to know what’s hit them! Dasha thought triumphantly. Taking both reins in one hand, she reached back with the other, grabbed Marcos’s balls and twisted them hard.

  ‘Now you can come, little pony!’ she said, watching the expression on his face with relish, pain and pleasure fighting for dominance as he let go and shot his wad, her fingernails digging into his balls, the other hand still dragging on the reins, holding his head up at an awkward angle.

  Control. It’s what I live for.

  And the first thing I’ll do when I get full control is have that hitman killed. He’s much too dangerous to leave on the loose.

  The thought of ordering first the murder of her husband, and then the man who’d killed him, gave Dasha such a rush of excitement that, as Marcos’s hot sperm flooded up inside her, she ground her hips down viciously on his spasming cock, forcing it into an awkward angle, making him squeal in distress even as he came. His cries of pain were music to her ears as she wrung out a last, shattering orgasm.

  In fact, hearing him scream made her pleasure even more acute.

  December 24th – Christmas Eve

  Andy

  ‘Merry-nearly-Christmas!’ Andy carolled with a big smile as the door of apartment 3512 swung open to reveal a bewildered-looking Mrs Takahashi. Small, plump and with her skin as pale as lightening serums could make it, Mrs Takahashi was like a Japanese version of Imelda Marcos, her hair black, shiny and rolled back from her scalp to give her extra height, dressed in Burberry and Hermès, her pumps classic Ferragamos. She peered at Andy nervously, confused by the chrome luggage cart beside him. It was stacked high, not with the

  Vuitton trunk cases favoured by the Limehouse Reach residents, but with evergreen wreaths woven with shiny red and white baubles and bells. Andy bent over to pick one up, jingling it happily in Mrs Takahashi’s face, a delicious odour of pine needles issuing forth as he did so.

  ‘Would you like a wreath to hang on your door?’ he asked.

  ‘Or some mistletoe?’He gestured to the cart, at a smaller pile of delicate green branches laden with white berries and tied with red ribbons. ‘That’s for kissing under!’

  He grabbed one in his other hand, pursed his full, plummy lips, held it over his head and blew a kiss at Mrs Takahashi. ‘You can kiss the mister under it!’ he suggested. ‘Have a bit of a romantic evening when the kids are in bed, eh?’ ‘I no understand,’ Mrs Takahashi said, her dark eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and fear, backing away from the door. Over her shoulder, she called to her husband in a rapid stream of Japanese; he appeared from the living room, a tumbler of whisky in his hand.

  ‘Ah, yes! Konichi-wa!’ Mr Takahashi took in the sight of Andy, dapper in his burgundy gabardine uniform jacket and trousers, the Nehru-collared black shirt underneath. ‘Merry Christmas! Very nice,’ he said, nodding at the wreath and mistletoe in the concierge’s hands. ‘Very happy.’

  ‘Exactly, Mr Takahashi! Merry Christmas!’ Andy jingled the wreath again. ‘This is a present from Mr Khalovsky, up in the top-floor penthouse. He’s got me to bring them round to all the residents, give a bit of Christmas spirit to the building. He sponsored all the decorations on the tree in the lobby – did you see, we have a theme going? The Nutcracker! And all the lovely new lights, that’s Mr K too. Very generous, isn’t he?’ He beamed, his handsome face gleaming like a polished chestnut. Mrs Takahashi, whose English was limited, looked anxiously up at her husband, asking him, in another stream of Japanese, what on earth Andy was saying: but Mr Takahashi was too deeply impressed by the mention of Grigor Khalovsky to answer his wife.

  ‘Khalovsky-san?’ he repeated, his own eyes widening as he pronounced the name of the billionaire oligarch. ‘Oh! That is very kind,’ he said, bowing deeply in homage to Grigor’s wealth and status. ‘Very thoughtful of Mr Khalovsky. We must return this kindness with a suitable gift.’

  He turned to his wife and let off another stream of rapidfire Japanese. As she took in the information that they were not being stalked by an over-enthusiastic, Christmas-obsessed concierge, but given a present by the richest, most influential owner out of all the multimillionaires in Limehouse Reach, she relaxed visibly. Her peach-lipsticked mouth broke into a careful smile, and her manicured hands, the peach varnish matching the lipstick exactly, pressed together on her thighs as she bowed too, both her and her husband’s bodies lowering at a precise thirty-degree angle.

  ‘Most kind, most thoughtful!’ Mr Takahashi said again, taking the wreath from Andy with a nod and then, all too obviously, at a loss as to what to do with it, staring at the concierge in bafflement. ‘We hang it on the wall, perhaps?’

  ‘On the front door,’ Andy said eagerly. ‘If you’ll allow me—’ Andy reached out to take the wreath back and then turned towards an uncomprehending Mrs Takahashi, who was between him and the door. Her panic returned as she saw the large evergreen arrangement coming towards her face. Holding up her hand to her neck, she yelped and dodged away, babbling something and shaking her head vigorously; her husband barked back at her just as fast, and then turned to Andy, who had frozen in place, holding up the wreath.

  ‘She thinks you want to put it over her head! Like a necklace!’ Mr Takahashi said, very amused. ‘I explain to her that no, it is not for that!’

  Mrs Takahashi, watching Andy hang the wreath on the door, hooking its ribbon loop over the door number, nodded enthusiastically, mostly with relief.

  ‘Very nice!’ she said, clapping. ‘Very nice on door!’ ‘And the mistletoe...’ Andy held it up. ‘May I come in for a moment? It really needs to be hung up inside.’

  ‘Please! Come in!’ Mr Takahashi backed into the apartment, his wife following. It was a duplex, large and sprawling, with multiple balconies, and through the living room, on the balcony that led off the high mezzanine, could just be seen a thin, black-haired figure, sprawling on a lounger, seemingly oblivious to the cold, headphones on, tapping away at a handheld games device. The apartment was beautifully decorated with heavy, imposing dark red and black lacquer furniture and a staggering array of built-in electronic and digital devices: Mr Takahashi was the director of a firm specialising in violently expensive cutting-edge audio-visual equipment, and had kitted out his London apartment with every possible mod con.

  ‘Have you got somewhere that I could maybe...’ Andy held the mistletoe even higher, over his head. He looked at Mrs Takahashi, who was now relaxed and smiling, and decided not to rattle her again by miming a kiss. ‘Um, you need to be able to stand under it,’ he explained.
/>   Mr Takahashi tilted his head back and turned in a slow circle, looking up.

  ‘No, not turn around—’ Andy began. ‘Just stand underneath—’ But Mr Takahashi wasn’t listening. Dashing over to the lacquered coffee table, he picked up an iPad and pressed a couple of buttons. On the mezzanine balcony, the thin figure jerked as if it had been Tasered, dragged off its huge headphones and spun to glare viciously down at the occupants of the living room. Mr Takahashi waved his arms, signalling that the figure should come down; dramatically throwing the headphones onto the lounger, its shoulders slouching, the figure slumped over to the sliding glass doors, pushing them open and pointedly not closing them again, the cold air pouring in. Mrs Takahashi remonstrated, and, with a theatrical sigh, the figure made a gigantic production of shutting the doors before it thunked, on its customised DM boots, along the mezzanine and down the superbly constructed staircase, a series of floating, translucent glass treads that seemed to hang in the air with barely any visible means of support.

  It was revealed to be a male teenager in a tight black sweater and equally tight grey jeans, so skinny that his legs didn’t meet at any point, not even at the very top. His straight dark hair hung over his face, his shoulders hung over his ribs. He mumbled something resentfully in Japanese, to which his parents both responded sharply.

  ‘Hi, Haruki,’ Andy said cheerfully.

  ‘It’s Hari,’ the boy mumbled in a perfect English accent. ‘I prefer Hari, okay?’

  ‘Great!’ Andy hadn’t become a successful concierge by adopting anything but a relentlessly positive attitude. ‘So, Hari, are you going to help us decide where to hang the mistletoe?’ Hari looked at the mistletoe, rolled his eyes and heaved the world-weary sigh of a vampire who had been alive for hundreds of years and was utterly sick of pathetically enthusiastic humans. ‘Yes,’ Mr Takahashi said bravely. ‘I think we do it as a family. Christmas is for families.’

  He glared at Hari, who ducked his head so the hair completely obscured his face.

  ‘You’d really get on with Mr K,’ Andy observed. ‘Honestly, I’ve been going round the building asking people if they want wreaths and mistletoe – there’s barely anyone here anyway, but most of ‘em don’t even care at all!’ He sighed, momentarily disheartened.

  ‘Cool! Who are they? Can I go and hang out with them?’ Hari said sarcastically through his hair-veil.

  His father hissed a reproach at him as Andy said quickly: ‘Oh, teenagers! It’s just a phase, Mr Takahashi.’

  ‘In Japan,’ Mr Takahashi said coldly, ‘we do not have phases.’ Mrs Takahashi, tripping to Hari’s side, took hold of his hair with both hands and opened it up as if she were drawing back a curtain.

  ‘Handsome!’ she said to Andy. ‘Look, he is handsome boy! Why he hide handsome face?’

  Hari writhed in agony, as if he really were a vampire and his mother, in exposing his face to the light, was scorching the exposed skin. Andy was still holding up the mistletoe, a big, professional smile fixed to his face; he waggled the mistletoe at the Takahashi family like a nanny trying to distract squabbling children with a toy.

  ‘Pretty white berries!’ he said. ‘Look, they’re nice and shiny! Poisonous, though. You’d never think it, would you?’ ‘Poisonous? Brilliant! How many do I have to eat?’ Hari asked, perking up.

  Mr Takahashi snapped something furious at his son. Mrs Takahashi backed away as Hari looked at the mistletoe and executed a contemptuous shrug that rippled up and down his body, every inch of his thin frame expressing utter disdain. Grabbing the iPad from his father’s hand, he tapped in a command; a speaker high in the ceiling floated down slowly, suspended from a steel wire so fine it was nearly invisible. When it was just within reach, Hari tapped again, shoved the iPad back to his father, snatched the mistletoe from Andy, and twisted the ribbon loop around the wire so that the green branch dangled prettily just below the speaker.

  ‘Very nice!’ his mother said, clapping again.

  ‘It’s for kissing under,’ Andy explained. ‘On New Year’s Eve, or whenever you feel like it. Your mum and dad could kiss under it right now!’ he added to Hari, always the optimist. An expression of utter and complete revulsion flooded across Hari’s face, his nose wrinkling up in loathing. ‘God, I really will eat those berries if I catch them doing that,’ he muttered. ‘If I don’t sick them all up straight away just at the thought of them snogging. That’s beyond gross.’ Turning away, he slumped back off upstairs, the hardware on his boots clicking as he went. Mr and Mrs Takahashi looked equally taken aback at the thought.

  ‘We do not kiss now,’ Mr Takahashi said firmly.

  ‘No,’ Andy sighed. ‘Well, maybe for New Year’s?’ It was obvious that Mr Takahashi was holding himself very still in an effort not to shake his head furiously in denial. ‘I’ll be off, then,’ Andy said. ‘I’ve got Prince Al-Qarashi in the opposite apartment to yours.’ This was proving to be a hard day, trying bravely to bring cheer to a handful of people who didn’t seem to care about the holidays one way or the other. He grimaced.

  ‘Oh dear... I don’t suppose he’ll be that much into Christmas either...’

  Jon

  Am I going to have to tell Grigor Khalovsky that his wife’s plotting to kill him?

  Jon was lying on his bed, which was made, as always, with military precision, the pillows perfectly lined up parallel to the mattress, the duvet draped in the exact centre of the bed, the top sheet folded over the edge of the duvet so neatly that you could have measured the margin on each side with a ruler and obtained exactly the same reading. His arms were folded behind his head, a posture that made his triceps bulge out so impressively that Aniela would have gone dizzy if she saw them. He was ostensibly staring at his blurry reflection in the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a smudgy head rendered in purple and green and pink, like a portrait by Francis Bacon.

  Beyond it soared some of the tallest buildings in London, silvery steel monuments to money and power, topped by pyramids, sliced at dramatic angles, the slender, elegant Pan Pacific towers nestled together, the Citigroup red umbrella adding a whimsical touch high up among the big square behemoths. Jon could appreciate their architecture, the effort and risk and sheer hard work that had gone into their construction: but he had already spent way too much time in cities, and if he never visited another one after he left London, he would be perfectly happy.

  Could I duck out? I can’t leave the island, but could I maybe head up to Scotland, over to Wales, camp out in some shack away from civilisation till my face recovers? I don’t need any more medical check-ups, I’m healing fine. Hell, I’ve been through much worse in the field. I once had to dig a bullet out of my own shoulder with a Swiss Army knife.

  But getting anywhere out-of-the-way, with my face like this – how the hell am I going to manage that? Plus, the smaller the place I end up in, the more the locals will gossip. Because it’ll be a month, at least, before I can travel somewhere I need to use a passport. This face is going to make me way too conspicuous anywhere I go.

  Shit. But if I stay here, I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. If I tell Grigor Khalovsky his wife’s out for blood, how will he react? He might try to take me out straight away, or he might believe me and kill her. Or both. It’s the definition of high-risk. I need to figure out how he’s going to react before I pull a stunt like that. And how do I get to know a Russian oligarch with more bodyguards than God has angels?

  In the movies, Jon thought in wry amusement, he’d fake an attack on Grigor’s life and then, dashingly, swing in on a rope or ride in on a motorbike to carry him to safety at the last possible moment, thus earning his trust; Grigor would throw his arms around Jon, declare eternal friendship and tell him all his secrets in the space of a few days. Which is why I don’t go to the movies, Jon reflected.

  He swung his legs off the bed and walked through into the en-suite bathroom, a beautiful piece of modern design that was entirely wasted on Jon. The white free-standing Agape Spoon bath with
its simple, elegant lines, the Antonio Lupi bowl sink on its polished wood base, and the wall-hung toilet, were cutting-edge, but Jon neither noticed nor cared. The under-heated natural stone floor was pleasantly warm beneath his bare feet, but it was a completely unnecessary luxury as far as he was concerned. The toiletries with which the Four Seasons had stocked the apartment were L’Occitane’s finest: and all he registered about them was that they did their job and didn’t leave him feeling itchy.

  He stared at himself in the silvered-glass mirror. For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder what he might look like when the bruising and puffing from the surgery faded. Gingerly, he reached up to touch his cheekbones; originally, they had been high, craggy ledges. He’d inherited a square, impassive, Easter Island face from the legacy of his Anglo-Scottish ancestors, who immigrated from the poverty-stricken Borders in the eighteenth century, but he’d always thought those cheekbones might have come from some Cherokee ancestor; the Cherokee tribe was still to be found in the Appalachian hills. Though Mac knocked me across the room when I speculated about it. Kept my mouth shut about that ever since.

  The easiest way to change a face was to take away rather than to add. In his two major reconstructive surgeries, Jon’s features had had their edges softened quite a bit. His jaw was still square, but, running his fingers around it, he could tell that it jutted out less than it used to. His cheekbones felt less prominent, less wide, and though his nose was still too sore to touch, he knew it would be shorter and straighter. His ears had been reshaped, some of the cartilage cut off, and they had been pinned back to lie flatter to his head.