Lethal Reaction

by S A Gardner

  His incredulity was one for the books. “You’re going prudish on me? Not with my mother in the house? A house this size? And even if it was a one-bedroom condo…” Then he frowned as my addition sank in. “And what about Desideria?” Disappointment darkened his face, driving a skewer through me. “Dios, you’re too convincing. I sat there watching you talking each other’s heads off and had no doubt that you liked her.”

  “I do.” At his headshake I blurted out my insistence, “I do!” Oh, hell. Just tell him. “I know it’s stupid, but with her around, I’m not feeling very feminine. And not at all sexy.”

  He stared at me for one more moment. Then he burst out in peal after peal of debilitating amusement. “Ah, mi alma, mi vida, perdoneme. But you’re hilarious.” Laughing harder, he reached for me. Fuming, I struck his hands down.

  “Yeah, I’m a regular clown.” I swatted his seeking hands away again and again. “What kind of pervert wants one?”

  He caught me to him with one hand, cupped my face into the other. “Desideria’s screaming femininity dented your ego, sí?”

  Making fun of me, was he? I was so bringing him down.

  I latched onto him in my favorite nage waza judo throw, the ko uchi geri, reaping one of his legs from the inside, following by a frontal lunge, taking him down.

  But he didn’t just go down. He went down in a ma sutemi waza direct sacrifice fall, lodging his foot into my middle, using the force of his fall and my momentum to throw me over him and onto the bed in a wide cartwheel.

  Then he rebounded to his feet, pounced on me and wrestled me spread-eagled beneath him.

  “You know you still have your teeth because this isn’t a real fight, don’t you?” I hissed once we both stilled.

  “It’s in your best interest not to damage my teeth, to protect them at all costs. Just think of all the things I’ll do to you all night using them.” He nibbled his way down my neck to one nipple, made a feast of it through my shirt and bra.

  Pleasure stabbed a spear from his teeth to my core, ripping a moan all the way from down there. I bucked, to contain the pain and his erection, wanting him inside me, thrusting me into oblivion. He throbbed a furrow into my stomach, grinding his equal need. But I still needed to make sense of it. It was the damned scientist in me, needing all the whys and wherefores.

  “Just why do you want me, Damian?” I panted. “Is it because I’m the hardest choice, as Desi said? You’re addicted to conquering the impossible and I’m the one who can provide that, since all women throw themselves at your feet? But I’m not impossible anymore. So—what happens now?”

  He rose on both arms, still simulating the act we were both disintegrating for, groaned, “You think now you decided you loved me, you’ve removed the challenge and I’ll cool down? What happens if I do? You’ll shrug and walk away?”

  “Yeah, right after I kill and quarter you.” Damn. That sounded right out of Obsessive Psychos’ Handbook Of Romantic Quotes. “Uh—that came out wrong…”

  He threw his head back and his laugh inundated me in a new breaker of arousal. “Madre de Dios, don’t take it back. That’s the best thing you’ve ever said to me, mi vida.”

  I scowled up at him. “Yeah. Pervert. I was just trying to…“

  “To tell me how losing me can drive you to extremes? Just as I said, the best thing I’ve ever heard from you.”

  “Just don’t let it deter you if you want to walk away.”

  “So mentioning killing and quartering was your way of making sure I make un-pressured choices, eh?” He chuckled as he moved off me, but only to dissolve my clothes off me and melt me in cosseting. “You’re right about the challenge, though,” he groaned into my breast. “If wrong about what it is. Getting you wasn’t a challenge; it was a war. One I can’t survive waging again. It almost killed me, more times than I want to count. The challenge is you. Keeping you and keeping up with you, deserving you and your respect and love and need. So, it’s unending.”

  God, but this man could talk. And I wanted more.

  I heaved beneath him, took him by surprise, ended up straddling him. “So what makes me so special?”

  He spread himself for me, let me expose and torment his every divine-art inch. “How can you not know? Who but you can survive me, give me as good as she gets and better? On every level? You make me believe in being half of a whole.”

  This was run-for-your-life beautiful. What-are-we-letting-ourselves-in-for to-literally-die-for. I pounced on his lips with my need and dread, pulled back only when we were both burning, for breath, for fusion, for release.

  “Ayesha once made all those points—but—that’s not what I’m asking.”

  “You don’t want to know why you fit me, why I love you, but why I’m always starving for you.” I nodded, grinding into the evidence of just how he was. He drove his head back into the mattress, thrust up at me, let out a pained growl. “I can only make you understand why if I lend you my eyes and senses.”

  This was all. And beyond. I kissed these eyes, did my best to ignite these senses. His shuddering merged with mine, his groans became unceasing. And I couldn’t wait. I bore down, impaling myself over his length and girth, filling myself to bursting, body and senses, with him. He let me ride us both into oblivion that first time.

  But during our nightlong lovemaking he didn’t let me do much else. The things he did to me, said to me… I had no words. It was like he had given me his eyes and senses, showed me how my brand of femininity was the only one he appreciated, craved, how I whetted and fulfilled his every need and fantasy.

  All through the night, I took notes on how he’d done it all. Our next time, I was returning the favor. And then some.

  If there were no other reasons, this was reason enough to survive the coming days.

  “Mi preciosos, we’re going to have a ball!”

  It all hit me at once. The cheery proclamation, the salivary glands-bursting aroma of tinto, dawn spreading from the open French windows and Desideria walking in on us as we lay entangled in a best-erotic-cover position.

  I disentangled myself from Damian’s envelopment, shot up dragging the covers over myself. Desideria waved a don’t-bother hand, continued rolling a food-laden cart up to Damian’s side of the bed.

  He sat up, too, casually adjusting the covers and reached up to receive his mother’s affection on his cheek.

  The cheek I was mortified to notice had a livid scratch where it met his jaw.

  Neither mother nor son seemed to think there was any reason for embarrassment here, as she dragged a chair beside the bed and Damian poured us the Colombian coffee he’d gotten me addicted to. I wanted to yell them both out until I’d erased all evidence of our night of abandon, from myself and the whole room.

  Completely unperturbed, Damian sighed. “You’re a wonder, Desi. I knew you’d do it.”

  “Ah, querido. I preferred to wake you up with the good news. Regretfully, there is bad news, too.”

  He winced. “As I’m still not fully awake, why not elaborate on the good ones?”

  “Fair enough. Almost everyone I called has already answered with their happy agreement to attend our ball.”

  This was my idea, totally owed to my fascination with the nineteenth-century Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha who’d gotten rid of all his enemies over dinner in the infamous Citadel Massacre. And lived long and prospered afterwards.

  We’d come here hoping Desideria would help us arrange us our own version. As someone packing the combined punch of limitless personal wealth and a worshipping oil mogul husband, and because she always made it worth their while in a big way, everybody who was anybody in the world attended her social functions as they would the most influential president’s or royalty’s. Yet it still startled me to hear her state her success in such nonchalance. Must be nice to have incalculable power. But even that didn’t guarantee results.

  “And the bad news being the ‘almost’?” I prodded, rising worry almost overcoming my di
scomfort at sitting naked in bed with Damian in front of his mother.

  “Sí, querida.” She sighed as she handed me a fine China plate heaped in mini croissants and pâtés. The aroma made my focus blur. “Three of the twelve you want declined, due to ‘scheduling impossibilities’. The other piece of bad news is that I couldn’t gather all of the rest sooner than in five days’ time. On the very edge of your week’s deadline.”

  Silence fell, congealed.

  I knew what Damian was thinking. Exactly the same thing I was

  It didn’t matter that only a minority wouldn’t be there.

  Everything rested on our being able to gather all our enemies in one place to get rid of them en masse.

  Now it was either fix this, or kiss this plan goodbye.

  Eighteen

  Sayingn goodbye to Desideria had been hard.

  So I’d known what we’d ask of her going in, but now that I’d met her—let’s say I wanted to take it all back.

  I didn’t care how untouchable she thought she was. Or that she said she’d seen and done things that would make Damian and me blanche. Even if she had, it had been by her choice. This time it was us who were miring her in an ultimate-stakes gamble.

  And it was all going wrong before it started.

  Too much of my so-called plan gambled on everything going exactly our way. And if this early on, things were going against us, hope for the results I was aiming for was dwindling by the minute.

  Hell, who was I kidding? Even if everything went according to plan, and we reached endgame in the ball, there was no guarantees it wouldn’t all devolve into a catastrophe then anyway.

  Still, my plan, as precarious as it was, was still our only hope. There was no other way we could bring all those major players down without paying huge prices ourselves. Even Damian’s strikes would have been piecemeal and had factored in too many losses.

  We’d agreed we had no recourse but to keep on going. Till the end. Whatever that end might be.

  We made it back to the Sanctuary by 8:30 am, called a war council as we ran in.

  Once assembled, we pulled out all the files Damian had on the three who’d declined Desideria’s invitation and the info compiled by Rafael.

  They were three of the world’s richest, most influential men. A Middle Eastern oil-mogul, a rival of Desideria’s husband and a financier of major Islamist terrorist organizations. An American ex-CIA director who was the driving force behind most Big Brother electronic and surveillance projects in the world. And an Argentinean ex-president who had a fist in every legal pharmaceutical and illegal drug trade pie.

  There was an intense hush as each of us finished reading their credentials. We were talking long, gory histories here.

  It was Shad who fractured the stillness. “We have to risk arranging ‘accidents’ for them. One of those bruisers left alive after the ball would bring everything down, anyway.”

  I shook my head at his suggestion. “One accident in five days our enemies may buy, two is a stretch, three is a no way.”

  “And don’t forget this comes on the tail of my elimination spree,” Damian added. “And that I exhausted all natural-looking demises. We can’t have our targets’ cronies suspecting anything. We need the other nine in the mood for ball attendance.”

  “You mean we can’t do it right now?” José asked. “But we won’t have time after the ball to pick them off and stop them from going to all-out war mode once they get wise to our plan.”

  “You may have exhausted your natural-looking deaths, Damian.” Matt’s voice rose, sure, chilling, just like his smile. “But we haven’t. Put Calista and me on someone’s case and he’s dead in the exact way that suits you. Even with the sudden mishaps befalling their partners in crime, they won’t begin to link them together to feel threatened. The most comprehensive forensic investigation won’t reveal a trace of foul play.”

  Whoa. This was the Matt I remembered. Was he really back?

  All eyes were clinging to him now, fascinated, admiring. Suz’s were outright adoring.

  Yep. We were a strange lot.

  Then all eyes turned to me for corroboration.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh, Matt’s right—in theory at least. I’d be wary about being cocky in practice, though.” At the collective oh-yeah? glance I got, I grimaced. “Yes, I do wary and let’s-cover-all-bases, not only jump-and-don’t-bother-looking-later. I’m getting old and slowing down, happy now?” I got more ridiculing glances. I swatted my hands at them in exasperation. “Think what you like. Later. Now we need to arrange hand-of-fate demises for those three, built on our in-depth analysis of them and their moves. Any suggestions?”

  Damian raised his hand. I raised my eyebrows.

  “Leave the Middle Eastern mogul to my team. He has announced enemies who have nothing to do with his involvement with TOP and PACT—tribal disputes and blood feuds over extensive oil land and honor killings in his homeland. There have been many attempts on his life, two of them lately. We’ll leave evidence incriminating his enemies. Multiple monsters with a single bullet.”

  I grinned at him. “Great. Do your stuff. He’s all yours. That leaves us the other two. Any suggestions, Matt?”

  “I think we can have lots of fun with the paranoid/obsessive ex-CIA man,” Matt said. Then he explained just how.

  Mama. The man was back, with a vengeance.

  By the time he finished detailing his plan, Damian was looking as if he’d just found another soul brother, and Suz was almost swooning.

  Taking a leaf from his diabolic methods, I proposed a plan for the severely asthmatic Argentinean.

  Once we agreed on the basics, we started refining our plans. We voted to start with Bill Worthington, the ex-CIA man. He was residing in Los Angeles, making him within immediate reach.

  A hook up with my father got us all the inside info on his family, associates and guards. There were no innocents among them. Which meant what we planned would be very much deserved.

  Dad supplied us with another piece of vital information.

  Bill Worthington had recently fired all his bodyguards after what he believed had been an attempt on his life. The ones infesting the grounds of his Sunset Boulevard residence were all three-weeks-new. It all fell in with Matt’s plan.

  Afterwards, Matt and I disappeared into our lab, concocting our weapon. Damian provided us with the piece of hardware we’d need, and Rafael calibrated it before they both turned to obtaining recordings of Worthington’s conversations. The others prepared the vehicles and disguises we needed.

  Then we gathered for a dry run.

  We made a perfectly synchronized machine.

  Not that perfect dress rehearsals mattered. It would be all in the execution. Both figurative and literal meanings intended.

  Nineteen

  At 2.30 pm, Damian, Rafael and me were sitting in a car in a side street around the corner from Worthington’s house.

  The paranoid bastard slept in erratic patterns so that no one would know when to catch him unawares. From the reports we had on him, Damian asserted that he did have a method, complex enough as to look random, but predictable once you fathomed its pattern.

  Being the expert in apparent randomness that was built around a core of unswerving method, Damian was the one who’d unlocked Worthington’s code and worked out when he’d be sleeping today. Right now. Now was also time for the first step in phase one.

  The boulevard itself played a major part in it. It ran through rugged terrain, had hairpin curves, blind crests, not to mention notorious cracks and potholes and no center divider. It was only two lanes here.

  All in all, the perfect place for car accidents. And since morning bumper-to-bumper traffic had dissipated and evening one was still hours away, the perfect time.

  I gave the signal. In seconds two cars came speeding from opposite directions. Suddenly one car swerved onto the oncoming lane and the other car screeched towards the house’s electronic wrought-iron gate, colliding
into it. Guards, from the gate and the immediate grounds, came running, shouting into walkie-talkies that had to be blazing with demands for reports.

  Fadel and Sam spilled from one car, the one that had caused the accident, José and Shad from the scrunched one, all shouting obscenities. They didn’t waste time coming to blows and Shad ran back to his demolished car, produced a butcher’s hook. He charged after Fadel, pursued him into the grounds of the house through the partially opened gates, with guards converging from all around the house to intercept them and end the situation before their boss woke up and descended on them.

  On Rafael’s satellite surveillance feed, we saw the commotion clearing our point of entry. He then jammed their electronic surveillance. We only had until one guard regained his post when the first thing he’d notice would be their system was down.

  In under two minutes, Damian and I had scaled the fence and the house and were on the ledge of Worthington’s second-floor window. Damian worked the lock of the double-glazed bulletproof window with a disrupter magnet. He unlocked it and slid one of the panels.

  I parted the blackout curtains, jumped soundlessly onto the plush carpeting. Damian followed, closed the window and adjusted the curtains behind him.

  We’d made no sound. None. The double-glazed windows that isolated the house from the traffic noise would have intercepted the commotion. But there was one thing we hadn’t counted on. Worthington’s inbuilt early alarm system.

  I saw his silhouette jumping up from bed with a gun already in his hand. The son of a bitch must sleep with it below his pillow, with one eye open.

  My awareness expanded, engulfed my surroundings, registering everything. The size of the room, the distance to our quarry, the slash of light cutting between the curtains bisecting the solid piece of darkness that he was, illuminating one feral, ice-blue eye. The rising outline of a semi-automatic. No time for conscious decision-making, just letting engrained training and knowledge of each other’s moves take over.