by J. R. Ward
And then the world spun and she found herself on her back, the guy with the wallet taking the place of the one in charge at her sex and filling her just as thickly.
She was the one who reached for his silent, commanding friend, bringing his cock to her mouth, pulling him out of his role of spectactor and into her once again.
He was so big that she had to stretch her jaw to fit him in, and he tasted fantastic—nothing like she’d had before. Sucking on him as his buddy fucked her good, she was all about the sensations of being filled, of being invaded by hard, blunt cocks that rocked her body.
In her delirium, she tried to see the man she was blowing, but he somehow always kept his back to the flashlight—and that made everything more erotic. Like she was sucking off a living shadow. Shit, unlike the other one, he made no sounds now, and he didn’t even breathe hard. But he was into it, for real, pushing into her mouth and withdrawing and pushing back in. At least until he popped himself out and palmed up that erection. Holding her breasts together, she gave him one hell of a landing pad to come on, and holy crap, even though it was number three, he covered her.
Until her chest was glossy and slippery and dripping.
Next thing she knew, her knees were up at her ears and the one with the cash was going for broke in the best possible way. And then his boss was at her lips again, pressing in, wanting more. Which she was perfectly happy to give him.
Staring up at them as they moved in sync, she felt a passing fear. Curled beneath them, she had the sense that they could snap her in half if they were so inclined.
But they didn’t hurt her.
And it went on and on, the two of them trading places again and again. They’d obviously done this a lot, and God, she was so giving them her number.
Finally, it was over.
Neither of them said a thing. Not to her or to each other—which was odd because most of the threesomes she’d been in had ended with the pair of idiots high-fiving each other. Not these two. They zipped up their cocks and . . . well, what do you know, wallets were coming out again.
As they stood over her, she brought her hands to her mouth and neck and her breasts. She was covered in so many places she couldn’t count, and she loved it, smoothing what they’d left on her skin, playing with it because she wanted to—not for their benefit.
“We want to give you another five,” the first one said in a low voice.
“For what?” Was that satisfied drawl really her?
“It’ll feel good. I promise.”
“Is it kinky?”
“Very.”
She laughed and rolled her hips. “Then I say yes.”
As the man peeled off the benjamins, there appeared to be plenty of others in that billfold—and maybe if he were someone else, she might have hit up her pimp and told Mack to hold him up out in the parking lot. She wasn’t going to do that, though. Part of it was the incredible sex. More was the fact that these guys would likely beat the ever-living shit out of her boss.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked as she took the money and crushed it in her fist.
“Spread your legs.”
She didn’t hesitate, her knees flopping wide.
And they didn’t hesitate, both of them bending over her weeping core.
Holy shit, they were going to suck her off? Just the thought of it made her eyes roll back in her head and she groaned—
“Ouch!”
She jacked up, but hands forced her back down onto the mattress.
The subtle sucking that came next made her light-headed. It wasn’t on her sex, though. It was right off center on both sides, in the juncture where her legs met her torso.
Rhythmic sucking . . . like nursing.
Karrie sighed and gave herself up to it. She had the shocking sense that they were feeding from her in some way, but it felt amazing—especially as something entered her. Maybe it was fingers—probably.
Yeah, definitely.
Four of them filled her and two separate hands fell into an alternating push and pull as two mouths suckled on her flesh.
She came again.
And again.
And again.
After God only knew how long, they nuzzled her a couple of times—the places where they’d been sucking, not where their hands were.
And then everything was disengaged, mouths, fingers, bodies.
Both of them straightened up. “Look at me,” the leader said.
Her lids were so heavy that she had to struggle to obey. And the moment she did, she felt a searing pain at her temples. That didn’t last long, though, and afterward . . . she was just floating.
Which was why she didn’t pay much attention to the distant, muffled scream that came from next door a little later—not the room that Mack was in, but the one on the other side of her.
Boom! Thump. Bump . . .
Karrie started to fall asleep at that point, dead to the world, the cash glueing to her palm as what had been wet turned to dry.
She wasn’t worried about anything. In fact, she felt amazing.
Fuck . . . who had she been with . . . ?
As Xcor stepped outside the whore’s motel room with Throe directly behind him, he shut the door and looked left and right. The facility that his soldier had chosen for this carnal diversion was on the outskirts of town. Run-down and rotting in places, the single-story building had been cut up into some fifty little cupboard-like boxes, with the office all the way down on the left. He had wanted the terminal room on the other end for privacy, but the best Throe had been able to do was the next in from that.
Though, truly, what were the chances of occupancy? There was hardly anyone here.
Scanning the parking spaces in front of them, he saw a black Mercedes that was desperately trying to look newer than it actually was . . . and a truck with a cap over its bed. The other two cars were way down at the far end, by the office.
This was perfect for the kind of purpose they’d fulfilled. Secluded. Populated with people who wanted no one in their business and were prepared to extend a similar courtesy to others. And the exterior lighting was poor: Only one out of every six bulbs by the doors worked—hell, the lighting fixture next to his head had been smashed. So everything was dim and dark.
He and his band of bastards were going to have to find females of their race to service their blood needs long-term, but that would come. Until then? They would partake from the likes of what he and Throe had just fucked, and they would do it here in this deserted place.
Throe spoke quietly. “Satisfied?”
“Aye. She was well and good.”
“I’m glad—”
A scent upon the air drew both of their heads toward the door to the terminating room. As Xcor inhaled deeply to confirm what he had caught a mere whiff of, the smell of fresh human blood was an unwelcome surprise.
Unlike the expression on Throe’s face. Which was an unwelcome nonsurprise.
“Do not even consider it,” Xcor bit out. “Throe—Fuck.”
The fighter was turning to the door with a thunderous expression—his aggression no doubt inflamed because that was female blood being spilled: The fertility was obvious in the air.
“We have no time for this,” Xcor spat.
In a manner of reply, Throe kicked the fucking door in.
As Xcor cursed, he only briefly considered dematerializing out of the scene; all it took to cure the impulse was a look inside. Throe’s ridiculous heroic streak had opened the way to a mess. Literally.
A human female was tied down onto the bed, with something crammed into her mouth. She was almost dead—and too close to the edge of her grave to save. Her blood was everywhere, on the wall beside her, dripping onto the floor, soaking into the mattress. The tools of whoever had done this were on the bedside table: two knives, duct tape, scissors . . . and half a dozen small clear jars with colorless fluid in them and tops that were set aside.
There were things floating in the—
&
nbsp; A slam echoed out of the bathroom. As if a transom or window had been opened and shut.
As Throe ran in, Xcor lunged forward and caught the other male by the arm. In a quick one/two, Xcor unclipped the steel cuff he kept on his weapons belt and clamped it on the thick wrist of his soldier. Hauling back with all his weight, he hauled the male around, swinging him like the ball on the end of a chain. There was a thump on the far wall as the cheap plaster stopped the vampire pendulum.
“Let me go.”
Xcor yanked the guy right in close. “This is not your concern.”
Throe pulled back his arm and threw out a punch into the wall, smashing the flat plane. “It is! Release me!”
Xcor slapped his palm on the back of the male’s neck. “Not. Your. World!”
They struggled at that point, the two of them wrestling and knocking into things, creating more noise than they should. And they were just about to fall on the bloodied carpet when a human man with no neck and sunglasses the size of windowpanes slid into the doorway. He took one look at the bed, another at Xcor and Throe, and then he muttered under his breath, covering his eyes with his forearms as he ducked out.
A split second later, the door to the room they had fucked in opened and shut . . . then opened and shut again. High heels clip-clopped fast and uncoordinated, and there was a clomp, clomp of people getting into a car.
An engine roared and the Mercedes peeled out of the parking lot, no doubt with the whore and the cash in it.
And didn’t the fast departure prove Xcor’s assumption about the clientele here.
“Listen to me,” he said to Throe. “Listen to me, you stupid bastard—this is not our problem. But if you stay here, you make it so—”
“The killer got away!”
“And so are we.”
Throe’s pale eyes shot over to the bed, and the mask of anger slipped for a brief moment. What was underneath arrested even Xcor’s aggression. Such pain. God, such pain.
“She is not your sister,” Xcor whispered. “Now come with me.”
“I can’t . . . leave her. . . .” Wide glassy eyes hit his. “You cannot ask me to.”
Xcor spun around while keeping hold of his soldier. There had to be something of the murderer’s in here, something they could—
Xcor dragged his fighter into the bathroom, and there was a grim satisfaction to be found upon the window above the toilet. The single, thick pane of frosted glass was unbroken, but there was a bright red streak on the edge of the sharp metal casing.
Just the remnant that they needed.
Xcor reached up to the window and ran his two fingers around what had caught and torn the flesh of that human.
The blood cleaved unto his flesh, pooling.
“Open,” he commanded.
Throe parted his mouth and sucked those fingers down, closing his eyes to concentrate as distant sirens began to peal through the night.
“We must needs depart,” Xcor said. “Come with me now and I shall grant you leave to find the man. Agree? Nod.” When Throe did, he decided he needed more. “Swear to me.”
Throe bowed at the waist. “I so swear.”
The cuff came off . . . and then the pair of them disappeared into thin air just as flashing blue lights announced the arrival of the human police.
Xcor was not one for mercy on any occasion. But if he had been, he would have offered no pity unto that human defiler—who was now Throe’s target . . . and soon to be prey.
FORTY-FOUR
“ Dr. Manello?”
At the sound of his name, Manny snapped back into reality and found that, yes, in fact he was still at Tricounty, out on the lawn. Damn ironic that the security guard had had a mind job done on him, and yet he was the guy who had the focus.
“Ah . . . yeah. Sorry. What did you say?”
“You okay?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, you got jumped—I can’t believe how you handled him. One minute he was all up in your face . . . the next you had the gun and he was . . . flying. ’Course you’d be out of it.”
“Yeah. That’s it. Exactly.”
The cops showed up two seconds later and then it was a flurry of questions and answers. And it was amazing. The security guard never mentioned Payne. It was as if she had never been there.
Shouldn’t have been a news flash, considering what Manny had been through not only with her but with Jane. Still was, though.
He just didn’t understand so much of it all: how Payne had disappeared into thin air in front of him; how there had been nothing of her, at least as far as the security guard knew, but the guy remembered Manny just fine; how she had been so calm and in control in a deadly situation.
Actually, that last bit had been erotic as hell. Watching her pummel the fuck out of that guy had been an incredible turn-on—Manny wasn’t sure what that said about him, but there you go.
And she was so going to lie, he thought. Tell her people that he was scrubbed. Say that she’d taken care of things.
Payne had found the solution that worked: He had his mind, she had her legs, and no one was the wiser among her brother and his ilk.
Yup, everything was taken care of. All he had to do now was spend the rest of his life pining after a female he should never have met. Piece of fucking cake.
An hour later, he got into his Porsche and headed back for Caldwell. Driving by himself, the car seemed not just empty but a wasteland, and he found himself putting the windows up and down. Wasn’t the same.
She didn’t know where he lived, he thought. But that didn’t matter, did it. She wasn’t coming back.
God, it was tough to decide what would have been harder: A long protracted good-bye where he looked into her eyes and bit his tongue to keep from talking too much? Or that short, rip-the-Band-Aid shit?
Sucked either way.
At the Commodore, he went underground, parked in his spot, and got out. Hit the elevator. Went up to his apartment. Walked in. Let the door close.
As his cell phone went off, he fumbled to take it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number, he cursed. Goldberg from the medical center.
He answered without any enthusiasm. “Hey.”
“You picked up,” the guy said with relief. “How are you?”
Right. So not going there. “I’m okay.” When there was a pause, he said, “And you?”
“I’m good. Things have been . . .” Hospital. Hospital. Hospital hospital, hospitalh ospit alhosp. Ital hospit alhospital . . .
In one ear, out the other. Manny did get busy, however. He went to the bar in the kitchen, took out the Lag, and felt like he’d been punched in the head when he saw how little was in the bottle. Leaning into the cabinet, he took out some Jack from the back that had in there so long there was dust on the cap.
Sometime later, he hung up the phone and got serious about the drinking. Lag first. Jack next. And then it was a case of the two bottles of wine that were in the fridge. And what was left of a six-pack of Coronas—that had been left in the pantry and weren’t cooled.
His synapses, however, didn’t recognize any difference between alcohol that was lukewarm and the shit that was chilly-chilly.
All told, the festival of consumption took him a good hour. Maybe longer. And it was highly effective. When he grabbed the last beer and started for the bedroom, he walked like he was on the bridge of the Enterprise, shuffling left and right . . . and then listing back again. And even though he could see well enough with the city’s ambient light, he ran into a lot of stuff: By some inconvenient miracle, his furniture had become animated and the shit was determined to get in his way—everything from the stuffed leather chairs to the—
“Fuck!”
—coffee table.
Annnnnnnnnd the fact that he now was rubbing his shin as he went along was like adding a set of roller skates to the party.
When he got to his room, he took a slug from the Corona to celebrate and stumbled into the bath. Water on. Clot
hes off. Stepped right in. No reason to wait for the hot stuff; he couldn’t feel anything anyway, and that was the point.
He didn’t bother to dry off. Just walked over to the bed with the water dripping off his body, and he finished off the beer as he sat down. Then . . . whole lot of nothing. His alkie meter was spiking really frickin’ high, but it had yet to reach critical mass and knock him the fuck out.
Consciousness was a relative term, however. Although he was arguably awake, he was utterly unplugged—and not just because of the alcohol/blood count he was sporting. He was out of gas on the inside in the most curious way.
Falling back on the mattress, he supposed now that the Payne situation had resolved itself it was time to start pulling his life back together—or at least give it a shot tomorrow morning, when his hangover woke him up. His mind was fine, so there was no reason he couldn’t go back to work and make it his business to put distance between this fucked-up interlude and the rest of his normal life.
As he stared at the ceiling, he was relieved when his vision got fuzzy.
Until he realized he was tearing up.
“Fucking pussy.”
Wiping his eyes, he was absolutely, positively not going there. Except he did—and he stayed. God, he missed her to the point of agony already.
“Fucking . . . hell—”
Abruptly, his head shot up and his cock swelled. Looking out through the sliding glass door onto his terrace, he searched the night with a desperation that made him feel like the mental crazies were back.
Payne . . .
Payne . . . ?
He struggled to get up off the bed, but his body refused to budge—like his brain was talking one language and his arms and legs couldn’t translate. And then the hooch won, pulling a Ctrl-Alt-Del and shutting his program down.
No rebooting his ass, however.
After his lids crashed shut, it was lights-out, no matter how hard he fought the tide.
Outside on the terrace, Payne stood in the cold wind, her hair whipping around, her skin tingling from the chill.