One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  She shrugged her leather jacket open, to show off her tits. Arbatov’s eyes were drawn down instantly. She wagged her gun at him.

  “You boys were bad today,” she said. “Bad enough that you went to Yuri’s house without me. But going to Nina Christie’s, too?”

  “We didn’t need you,” Roy repeated, sick to death of the scolding she’d been flogging him with for over an hour. “One fucking telepath is enough to deal with at one time.”

  “Ah, ah, ah!” She waved the gun again. “You know how I hate being sidelined. Thank God you two didn’t manage to kill her, considering that Kasyanov bit the big one today. She’s our last link.”

  “You were busy humping the senator. We couldn’t wait around for your legs to close.” Roy gestured at Arbatov. “And since he was the one who probed Yuri, it made sense for him to be the one to come.”

  “Yes,” Anabel said sweetly. “And just look how that turned out. I’m surprised the boss hasn’t asked me to put you down.”

  Roy’s face was beet-colored. “He needs me,” he insisted.

  She rolled her eyes. “You just keep telling yourself that, honey.”

  “Humping what senator?” Dmitri asked.

  Anabel leveled her gun at him. “Did I tell you to speak, pig?”

  His leer faded as she probed at his mind . . . and found it blocked. A good block, too. Seamless and tough, like a walnut.

  Roy said the guy had first-dosed just over a year ago. Most new ones learned blocking techniques by that time. Nothing she couldn’t get through, of course. No one could keep her out for long. And to think Roy preferred to team up with this mafiya swine rather than her. She ran over his block, as if she were pal-pating a guy’s bicep. “Got something to hide from me, Arbatov?”

  He eyed the gun, then her tits, in the low-cut, black, stretch-velvet minidress she had elected to wear. “No.”

  “Then why this big wall?” she murmured. “You’re, like, stain-less steel, Dmitri. You’re so . . . hard . . . in there.”

  Arbatov licked his lips. “Standard operating procedure. Like keeping your pants zipped up.”

  Oh, dear. Sometimes men made it so easy, she was almost sorry for them.”Well, Dmitri. There are times to zip, and times to unzip. What kind of time do you think this is?”

  His mouth worked as she maneuvered herself up onto her knees, and swung her leg over his. Showing off gartered black lace hose . . . and no panties. She started to sparkle. She couldn’t resist. The looks on mens’ faces were her reward, that fog of mindless hunger. Dog-like worship. The sweat, beading on their brows. The bulge down below.

  Roy groaned. “Anabel, for fuck’s sake—”

  “Sssst!” She braced herself with her gun hand, and shimmied until the stretchy velvet skirt rucked up, and Arbatov could see her neatly trimmed, silky, dark blond muff, swaying over his groin.

  “At least point the fucking gun away from me,” Roy growled.

  Fair enough. She rested her gun hand on Arbatov’s shoulder, so that the barrel pointed toward his head instead, but he didn’t notice. He was in thrall, gasping for breath, fumbling desperately at his crotch. She cooed her appreciation when he finally managed to whip out his tool, gripping it at the base with his hand, offering it to her.

  She squeezed it, leaning the gun against his shoulder. He glanced down at it, his face shiny. “Uh, are you going to put that gun down?”

  She smiled brilliantly. “No.”

  He whimpered, but offered no protest. To his credit, his cock stayed hard. He was beyond speech, but it wasn’t words she wanted. Sounds magnified in the dark interior. Shifting seat cush-ions, the creak of leather, Arbatov’s rapid panting. She swayed over him, kissing his tip with her labia. Teasing brushstrokes of lube, like she was dabbing at the canvas of a painting. Roy tapped at the steering wheel with the butt of his gun, bored and uncomfortable. Poor Roy.

  Arbatov made the mistake of thrusting his hips up, and found the gun jammed beneath his jaw. “Ah, ah,” she whispered. “Be good.”

  “Oh, God,” he whispered.

  No, Goddess, she almost said, but it was redundant. Her divin-ity was reflected in his eyes. She saw herself as they saw her when she sparkled. Imbued with perfection. Shining, perilous, glorious. She undulated, coordinating the brushstrokes of her snatch with mental brushstrokes against that tough shield.

  Brushing, flicking. Weaving over him, back flexed, hair tossing, until veins popped on his forehead.

  She gripped his shaft to guide him, as she sucked his cock inside, and felt his shield falter, crack . . .

  She sank in her claws. He cried out, startled. Too late. Once she was in, she was in. No one had ever been able to dislodge her.

  Except for Nina Christie, that morning. And Kasyanov.

  She shoved the thought away and rifled through the contents of Arbatov’s mind, made her discoveries, drew her conclusions, in a few breathless, panting seconds. She processed information very quickly. She also discovered that the contents of his mind repulsed her.

  Once she had what she wanted, she was instantly annoyed with the stiff rod poking her from below. The man’s grunting and heaving disgusted her now. She slid off and shoved the gun under his chin.

  “You’ve been holding out on us.” She flung a triumphant glance at Roy. “He found her cell phone, and did not tell us! Can you imagine?”

  Dmitri reached, trying to pull her back down. “Please,” he begged.

  “No!” She swatted him away. “Jerk it off yourself!”

  “Not in the car, he won’t.” Roy pinned the guy with a cold gaze.

  “And they’re here,” Anabel said. “Right here, in this hotel.

  Isn’t that just sweet, Roy? That they’re curled up naked in bed together? When do you suppose Dmitri would have told us?”

  “You fucking sewer rat,” Roy snarled.

  “Oh, but it gets better,” Anabel bubbled on. “His plan was to get Kasyanov’s last dose of the super psi-max . . . and take it himself, and fuck all the rest of us!” She waved her pistol. “But that’s not the kicker. That guy who mowed you assholes down like grass? He’s Arbatov’s cousin! What do you make of that, Roy? Do you smell a conspiracy?”

  Roy lunged between the seats, and pinned Dmitri against the backrest, the gun digging into his throat. “Cousin, huh? The whole thing was a setup, right? You son of a bitch. You told him about the drug, right? You had a thing going behind my back?”

  “I didn’t! I haven’t seen that asshole for twenty years! He’s been in hiding! He came now because of . . .” He choked, against the pressure of the gun barrel. “Aunt Tonya,” he coughed. “In the hospice. Dying.”

  Roy glanced at Anabel, and she gave him a nod. “True,” she said. “I felt the surprise. This is fresh. He just found out, right before we got here. The aunt, that’s true too. Cancer. Poig nant, isn’t it?”

  Anabel leaned closer to Dmitri. “Sasha, hmm?” she taunted.

  “The cousin you love to hate. So tall. So handsome. So smart.

  Oleg’s favorite. I’m wasting my time riding you. I should go upstairs, and mount up onto that big, hot cousin. Is his dick bigger than yours, Dmitri?”

  Dmitri stared at her, stark loathing in his eyes. “Shut up, whore.”

  Roy dug the gun in. “How shall we kill this douche bag?”

  She shrugged. “Quickly. I want to meet Sasha. He’s the one who’s got the goods. Give me the phone, Dmitri.” She waited a moment, and pressed the gun barrel up beneath his ear. “The phone. Now.”

  “My uncle took it,” he muttered, sullen.

  Anabel exchanged disgusted glances with Roy. “Oh, for God’s sake. Where do you keep your psi-max? I don’t want to have to grub on your corpse for it, and it’s too precious to waste. Roy, take it from him.”

  She held the gun under his chin while Roy groped roughly on the guy’s chest. He found his pillbox, ripped Dmitri’s shirt, yanking it out.

  “Good,” she purred. She rummaged in her purse, took o
ut a syringe with untraceable poison she’d prepared, and plunged the clear liquid to the top. They all watched a drop swell and quiver on the needle tip, lit up like a gem by the light that came from the stairwell door.

  “Night night, Dmitri,” she said softly. “It’s been real.”

  “No! Wait!” he shouted. “You don’t know Sasha! You’ll need help to take him! You saw what he did at Nina’s house, remember?” He turned to Roy. “I can help you when he comes!”

  “I don’t think we need your help, Dmitri,” she told him.

  “I can make it so you don’t have to deal with him at all! Those two walk out in the morning, I take Sasha off your hands, and there’s your girl, swinging in the wind, all alone. You won’t even have to deal with a body, because I’ll take him away with me! No muss, no fuss!”

  Anabel exchanged dubious glances with Roy.

  “Plus, I listened to the recording Kasyanov left, and it’s all in Ukrainian. You need me to tell you what was in it! She talks about Joseph. I had my hackers check. It’s Kirk, her ex-husband!

  He must know about the drug, because she mentions him twice, so she must have sent—”

  “We’ll take care of Kirk,” Anabel said. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

  “I have men, in Portland! It’s an hour’s drive to Kirk’s from Portland! I could have men there in an hour! We could have answers tonight! ”

  Roy shrugged. It was true that they didn’t have enough personnel to man a complicated job like this. And no one wanted to tell Rudd that.

  “What do you want in exchange?” Anabel asked.

  Dmitri gulped. “A hundred tabs.”

  Anabel and Roy burst out laughing. “How about your life?”

  she said. “And if all goes well, we give you back these.” She rattled the pillbox she had taken from him.

  “But I need more. . . .” His words trailed off, swallowed. “I’ll need one for tomorrow. When they come out.”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary. Too many telepaths only fuck things up. But here. If you must.” She shook out one, and tossed it on the floor of the car. He dove, pants still undone, to scrabble for it.

  “Where is his room?” she asked. “And his vehicle?”

  “Room twenty sixty,” he said. “It looks out over this parking lot. This is the car, right next to you. Remember. Sasha belongs to me.”

  Anabel shook his pills. “Don’t get grabby. It’ll have to be slick, quiet. We don’t want noise, police, nothing. No messes.”

  “We can plan it now,” Dmitri said eagerly. “Right now.”

  Anabel looked at his unzipped pants, his unquenched erection. “Go wait in your own car. We’ll plan this, Dmitri. You follow orders. Get out of here. Now. You smell like blood. It makes me queasy.”

  Dmitri got out, muttering. They watched him limp back to his car. Anabel noticed Roy staring at her. “What?” she snapped.

  He gestured toward her crotch. “Pull the skirt down.”

  Anabel laughed as she wiggled the tight skirt down over her bare ass. “What, Roy? Jealous?” she crooned. “Want a piece of candy?”

  “Anytime, anywhere,” he replied, hoarsely. “But you’re such a bitch. You’d never give it up to me, would you?”

  “Hmm,” she murmured, tugging up her stocking. “No, I don’t think so. You’re a hound dog, Roy. And bestiality just isn’t my thing.”

  “Come on,” he said. “You’d do dogs. You’d do anyone.”

  She thought of that helpless, dazzled look of adoration her lovers gave her when she sparkled, and blew him a kiss.

  “No, Roy,” she said. “Dogs don’t have anything I want.”

  Chapter 16

  It was the dark cavern again. The chill air clung to his clammy skin, heavy and unwholesome. The cavern extended into the dark, with many dark nooks in which anything could be lurking.

  In the middle of the chamber lay a girl, dressed in a wet, dirty nightgown. Julie. She lay on her side on the jagged rocky floor, as if her body had been dumped there.

  He knelt. She was dead, of course. Her face was gray, tinged with green. Her long dark hair was tangled with seaweed. Her blind, open eyes were full of silent accusation. Eternally asking the same question.

  Why didn’t you save me?

  He woke with a jolt, and found his limbs tangled with Nina’s.

  Her hair draped his chest, tickling his jaw. Her weight pinned down his gun arm.

  Two things happened. His cock hardened, and his stomach dropped. Like a rock lobbed over a freeway overpass, about to crash into a windshield and cause a twenty-car pileup. This scenario was exactly that bad, that stupid. What the fuck had he been thinking?

  Alarm pulsated like a strobe light, jangling his brain. He tried moving slowly, but he was tangled up in all that curly hair, terrified of waking her. Danger. It was all around. He felt it, smelled it, tasted it. He’d always had an instinct for it, but danger had always threatened from the outside. Guns, knives, grenades, bombs.

  Not his own gut-twisting issues with sex and intimacy. He couldn’t tell them apart. Fear was fear. Who knew what this red alert was about? No one could have found them. No one could have connected this hotel to them. Except from the hospice. But he would have noticed if they’d been followed.

  Or would he? He thought of the shell-shocked state he’d been in when they left. Nina had practically been carrying him.

  She felt his tension and stirred in his arms. He angled himself so that she slid off his plank-stiff body and thudded onto the sheets.

  She rubbed sleep from her eyes and hoisted herself up onto her elbow, lush breasts dangling. Her puzzled, misty gaze took on focus, and started looking worried.

  Yeah. As well she might. They stared at each other. His stomach kept plummeting while pressure built inside him, like steam.

  “Wow,” she murmured. “Eight thirty. I can’t believe it’s so late.”

  “You slept like a rock,” he said. As if he hadn’t, too. He should have stayed awake. But no, he’d forgotten about the mortal danger and conked out into a postcoital haze after the three-hour fuck fest.

  Dickheaded self-indulgence. Selfish, brain-dead asshole. He deserved to get bombed into a thirty-meter crater for being so sloppy. He wished there were two of him so he could kick his own ass.

  “Looks that way,” she said cautiously, wary of his steel-cable tension. “Um. Aaro. Are you, uh, OK?”

  “You told me you couldn’t sleep.” The words blasted out like an accusation. “You said you could only sleep if you had a hiding place.”

  This hung in the air. She finally spoke. “I guess you were my hiding place last night.”

  Her tone was gentle, but he still recoiled. “Don’t lay that on me,” he said. “I can’t carry it. I can’t be that for you.”

  He felt her hurt vibing against his back in the appalled silence.

  “I’m not laying anything on you,” she said. “I was just saying.”

  He shook his head, and declined to reply, or to look at her.

  “So,” she said, after moment. “It’s like that, is it?”

  Yeah, it was exactly like that, and too fucking bad. Welcome to cold, hard reality. He’d warned her. She’d practially signed a waiver. He had never misrepresented what he had to offer on a personal level.

  Which was exactly nothing.

  He got busy with the coffeemaker, just to do something with his hands. Hoping she’d just chalk one up for experience, and they could get through the morning without any more misunderstandings.

  She went into the bathroom. The shower started to hiss, but not for long. He could tell by the look on her face when she came out, wrapped in a towel, that she’d been working up a rant. She groped for her clothing. “This sounds like my cue to grab my clothes and split.”

  “If you want to die young, sure.”

  She tried to cover herself, but the towel wasn’t up to the task.

  It took a better class of hotel to get towels big enough to wrap
all the way around ta-tas that luscious. Her glance fell to his crotch, skittered nervously away. He glanced down at his massive hard-on. Let out a harsh laugh. “Take a look at the circus sideshow act.

  Sad, isn’t it?”

  Her chin went up a notch. “It didn’t have to be.”

  “No?” He grabbed his cock, massaged it with a rough hand.

  “So you’d service me again? Great. Get over here, lose the towel, bend over.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Her voice shook. “Do you suffer from some rare mental illness? Why do you have to be so ugly?”

  “It’s my nature,” he replied. “I’m hardwired that way. I warned you last night about that, Nina. Repeatedly.”

  “Oh, shut up!” she snapped. “I am so sick of your bullshit.”

  There was a tune he’d heard before. “Of course you are,” he said. “It happened even faster than I thought it would.”

  “What?” she yelled. “What’s happened? Other than you freaking out on me, and acting like a spoiled child?”

  He gestured at the space between them. “You, hating my guts.

  You were halfway there yesterday, more than once. The only thing that kept you from going all the way is because you wanted me to fuck you.”

  She was so angry, her tits slipped out of the towel and she didn’t even notice. “You arrogant son of a bitch,” she breathed out.

  “Yeah, yeah. And now you’re all confused, because I’m not following the pretty script in your head.”

  Her mouth flapped in outrage. “What? I don’t have any script!”

  “Sure you do. You can’t help it any more than I can help being an asshole. But I’m not going to play nice. Get it through your head.”

  She drew herself up, fiercely dignified. “It’s through my head.

  You can stop hammering it in now.”

  He was breathing hard. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, but the horned berserker that had taken over his body wasn’t done hacking and rending yet.

  “So,” he said. “Do you still want it?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Want what?”