“Look at me.” Nick’s voice was an erotic combination of the softest whisper combined with a feral growl.
She bit her lip, the intimacy of the need was almost overwhelming as it was; to look him in the eyes was just too much.
“Tara.”
She lifted her head.
The slight smile touching the man’s face melted her heart. He said nothing as the connection of their loins was intensified by the connection of their eyes. Tara was lost in it, like an infinite hall of mirrors of love and lust.
Then he began bouncing her. It was on the very first landing that she felt, because of the odd angle, his hardness hit her G-spot. Tara gasped.
“Get ready,” Nick told her, the feral growl having returned in full, with a vengeance.
The ride got more rugged and pretty soon Tara found herself screaming her lungs out as she came in a deep, long-denied orgasm. Nick bounced her like a child on a toy horse, holding her steady in just the right spot for his wonderful cock to bring her to ecstasy again and again and again, even as she reveled in the exhilarating fear of almost falling over. Flying Sex.
She was unaware he was even close to climaxing himself until she heard a hissing grunt from the man she rode, then felt a splash of heat up inside and the delicious satisfying trembles of a man whose needs had completely taken him over and given her the final thing she needed. His pleasure.
Trusting that he had strength to spare, Tara leaned forward and collapsed over his muscular shoulders, allowing him to hold her on his lap and in his arms, gently rocking her as, over the course of minutes they recovered from the intense climaxes and his rampant erection slowly relaxed.
“I want you to know me,” he whispered in her ear as she rested her chin on his shoulder.
Long minutes later he stood, only a little unsteadily, and still holding her to him, walked them both to the bed.
Tara let out a small sigh of protest as he slipped out of her, but then thought she almost felt herself purring as he lay her down on the huge bed and slid in beside her. His body, carved out of living stone, engulfed her. Moments later sleep reached up and grabbed the young photographer from Ohio and pulled her deeply down into the soundest slumber she’d ever known.
CHAPTER 42
“My…my…my…someone is a little hoarse this morning,” Greta said, smiling as she brought Tara a cup of tea to which she’d just added honey.
Tara thought she should be blushing and was surprised she wasn’t.
“I thought…” she tried to clear her throat but it didn’t help. It was raw from the screaming the night before. “I thought that an old place like this would have thicker walls.”
Greta sat across from her friend and pushed the plate of lightly-buttered toast over to the disheveled photographer.
“I’m sure it does, but if you leave the door open…”
Tara did blush then. Not intending for what happened to happen, and once it had begun to caught up in the moment to care, she realized she had never closed the door to the master bedroom when Nick had shared what they had shared.
She took a bite of toast, then quirked her eyebrows.
“Wait, how would you know the door was open?”
To Tara’s astonishment Greta blushed.
“Y-you said he was a nicely…uh, built man.”
“You were watching us!?”
The blush deepened.
“Only for a little bit. You were in the way most of the time.” Greta put her coffee mug to her mouth and slurped loudly.
CHAPTER 43
Nick laid the three major New York newspapers out on the oak coffee table in the front room. Leaning forward from their seats on the couch the women reviewed the headlines, then, with blank faces, looked up at the man who had been gone all morning.
His look of triumph and satisfaction did not dim.
“Scan the articles,” he told them.
Each woman grabbed a paper. Nick waited in comfortable silence. He didn’t have to wait long.
“Cirq: Do labor laws apply to religious organizations,” Greta announced looking up at the man. He nodded just as Tara found a similar article.
“’Is it time to reexamine the rights and privileges of Religious Organizations’.” She paused. “It’s an op-ed piece.”
”Mine is an actual article,” Greta said, handing her paper over to her friend.
“It makes no difference,” Nick said. “The one thing most…strike that…all religious organizations fear is having the veil pulled back. If they are known for anything they want to be known for charitable work. That’s it. This is Cirq’s worst nightmare, and one of the articles, you might notice, is the first in a series.”
The women exchanged glances.
“How…I mean, won’t that just get them more determined to get me…get us?” Tara said, her voice pitched with tension.
“Yes, but remember what I said about everything being a tool?”
Tara nodded, then the cellphone in Nick’s coat pocket chirped. He held up a finger and answered it. The brief one-sided conversation included mostly “Yes” and nods with a few emphatic “No” and the repeat of an address, then one more “No”. He clicked it off.
“That was a conference call with my lawyer, and a lawyer for Cirq. We have a meeting set up to talk about how to make the bad press go away at three o’clock this afternoon. Both of you are welcome to come. It might be a bit dry.”
Tara didn’t believe that any meeting that involved Mr. Hamilton would be dry. She also knew there was no way she would be okay with such machinations going on behind her back.
“I’m coming,” she said.
Greta stifled a snort. “Heard that before.” Then she looked up as the room got quiet and saw Nick and Tara looking at her.
“Oh, sorry, did I say that out loud?” the busty blond said innocently, looking back and forth between the couple.
“Never mind,” she said seeing them both speechless, “I’m not going. “ She shuddered. “If I never see Hamilton or that woman again it will be too soon. Just make sure, Nick, that when it’s over…it’s over. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually miss our old life in Ohio.”
Tara stared at her friend for a long time after she’d finished speaking.
“I know what you mean.”
Nick nodded solemnly and tapped the closest newspaper. “Okay, so let’s talk about leverage...”
CHAPTER 44
She hated the sound, a long deep echo, that her heels made on the marble floor. It was like she was being announced, at every step, with a bullseye on her forehead.
They crossed the grand entrance of the Cirq “church” at an even pace. Nick, once again silent as a shadow, almost vibrated with contained energy. Tara tried not to look around too much and settled for the general impression of the palace from the Wizard of Oz. She was certainly Dorothy, and Nick was all the other characters combined, except maybe Toto.
The cavernous space was dimly lit and they were almost at the throne-like chair set up on a large dais twelve steps above floor level by the time she realized there was actually someone sitting in it. If it weren’t for the events of the past week, the dramatic overkill might have been humorous. She was sure it impressed the the believers of the head of Cirq and Elder Ezekiel to no end.
Their escort, a large man that had very thoroughly frisked both of them, stopped them a a few feet before the steps. He bowed deeply and backed away into the gloom. Even as he did so two people appeared at the foot of the steps on either side of the couple.
Tara shivered. She wasn’t surprised at who they were, but still didn’t like it…not in the least.
“We can come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial for all, I am sure,” Hamilton said, patting down his coat in his usual elegant yet somehow slimy manner. He pulled a document from his breast pocket as though surprised to find it there.
“An agreement,” he said, reading it, but not handing it to Nick.
“We hav
e troubles.”
The voice, old and froggy, echoed throughout the chamber with unlikely force and all eyes went to the man on the throne.
“We need allies. Not adversaries. We need not compound our troubles.”
In that small instant, with but a few words, the cavernous hall seemed filled with the old man’s presence and Tara suddenly understood, as she never had before, what a dangerous and unpredictable tool charisma could be. Though old and frail, there was something indefinably magnetic about the man.
“If allies will not come to us, we will make them,” Ezekiel intoned. For a moment it appeared the old man was struggling to stand, but then gave up.
“Too much commotion has arisen, thanks, I am sure, to your influences, Mr. Kendrick, for us to continue backing the candidate Miss Miles saw me…dealing with,” Mr. Hamilton said. “He is no longer part of our team….per your request.” He handed the documents he held over to Nick.
“We have found a suitable replacement,” he continued. “One who, with our backing and your endorsement as a military war hero and favorite son of New York, will put him, virtually uncontested, into the Mayoral office. He has a good background. You are familiar with him, I believe.”
Tara watched Nick as he scanned the document. She felt a cold grip of fear when his eyes stopped and his face turned slack and red with incredulous rage. His arm dropped and he faced Mr. Hamilton.
“Driscoll,” Nick said, his voice dripping with lethal venom.
Hamilton patted down the lapels of his coat and tugged on his sleeves.
“I said I would give my endorsement to a new candidate in exchange for Tara’s safety. I didn’t agree to this,” Nick shook the sheaf of papers in his hand like he was trying to snap a snake’s neck.
“Not this. Not a chance,” Nick’s voice continued to rise, echoing through the vast chamber. “I will never, ever back this man. Do you know what a sleaze he is?”
Hamilton smiled.
“We make concessions, you make concessions. This is yours. You will agree to this or the deal is off. I believe the term ‘going nuclear’ is appropriate here. Mutually assured destruction. Cirq, however, can rise from its own ashes; you and Miss Miles cannot.”
Nick stood rigid in rage.
“It’s a simple matter. We will have the man of our choosing as Mayor of New York. The only real question is the cost.”
“This man is the reason I quit acting. This man…” Nick shook the papers again.
Tara put her hand on his arm and he looked down at her.
“He was my manager.” The hatred in Nick’s voice told Tara all she needed to know. “When he had his fill of being an agent, he went into real estate, and then figured out that pubic office was another way to suck the marrow out of any living thing.”
“As I said,” Hamilton continued, a slight smile touching his face, “a perfect candidate for us. Do we have an agreement?”
Nick was silent for so long Tara began to fear he would not be able to contain his rage and would attack Hamilton. A quick look over at Lily told her the woman was thinking the same thing and, to her alarm, might be hoping for it.
“Agreed,” Nick finally said through gritted teeth. “But if anything happens to anyone even remotely related to Tara -- her friend Greta, any family member, their business, their dogs -- I will have nothing to lose. Do you understand me, Hamilton?”
The smile the tall well-quaffed man returned made Tara want to hit him.
“Our needs are met,” he said after a long moment, then looked up at the man on the throne. “We have our alley, Elder,” he said to the wizened old man.
The man’s nod was almost imperceptible in the gloom.
“Then it is fixed. It is done,” Nick said, his eyes darting from Hamilton to the man on the throne.
The fixer for the pseudo-religious organization turned his attention back to Nick.
“Not fully. My associate feels some wrongs have to be righted. She was…unhappy with the last encounter and felt you were not allowed a good showing. She also wants pay back for the death of Marko and Vladimir.”
Hamilton’s slight nod towards Lily was the only warning Nick got.
But it was enough.
As the lethal woman sprung at him, Nick arched back and put a hand on the floor torquing his body around and bringing his leg into a graceful wide arc over head. More acrobatic than dangerous, the gathered people could only watch as he twisted, almost in midair, and as he did so, kicked the instep of his right foot with the toe of his left. There was a sharp wisping sound of metal-on-metal and in the dim light Tara saw a flash of a blade spring out from the toe of Nick’s shoe.
The attacking woman’s face registered shock, but already in motion, she was unable to change her trajectory. Nick brought his foot around behind her and used the blade that had shot out from his shoe to slice her Achilles tendon with surgeon-like deftness.
Lily collapsed in a muffled scream of pain.
Nick landed on his feet in a defensive stance facing Hamilton. The man’s face had gone blank with shock.
“A full cut like that damages the tendon for life,” he told Hamilton. “She’ll never be the operative she was.”
To his credit the fixer quickly regained his composure.
“You think she is the only ‘operative’ at my disposal? “
Nick stared at him a long time, then, slowly went over to the stricken woman. She roused herself enough from the crippling pain to fight him off, but soon realized he had no interest in attacking her. He simply bent forward and slid out one of the fighting sticks she had displayed at the restaurant.
“You’re right,” Nick said looking at the innocuous weapon in his hand as he drifting casually towards the fixer. “You will always have more.”
He glanced at the man on the throne, then with stunning brutality, shoved the stick into Mr. Hamilton's throat, the savage force and speed not crushing it, but piercing through and through.
Hamilton gagged for just a moment, then collapsed before he could bring his hands up. He died, his eyes never even fully registering shock.
Nick looked up at the man on the throne.
“This changes nothing. He had a personal grudge against me that would have interfered with business. I will keep to my agreement.”
The man on the throne was silent for so long Tara feared he was dead. Then, finally, he lifted one finger and nodded. Nick returned the nod and began backing away.
“You will send me instructions on whatever you need me to do,” he said putting a hand out to Tara.
Another slight nod.
They were out on the street before Tara could breath again, and a good five blocks away, amid the noise and traffic of New York proper before she was certain death was not imminent.
EPILOGUE
“I would be afraid, but I know you’re a man of your word,” Tara said, coming down from her tip toes as she ended the kiss.
Nick kept hold of her arms as she let go of his neck and looked into her eyes. She returned his gaze, noting there was a calmness and surety now that she had not seen before.
The Heart's Dangerous Trek Page 17