by Lyra Byrnes
But the caramel-skinned stud with a mane of tawny hair had the blonde on all fours and was teasing her pussy from behind with the tip of his straining cock. Her back was deeply arched, her white ass raised as if begging for whatever would happen to it next. The Nordic man had taken over her mouth. He grasped a handful of her pale hair and looked down at her, unsmiling, as her head bobbed over his erection.
Ace was quite right—Coco was wet and ready, and this was a chance no woman could turn down. She tightened her crossed legs to put pressure on her clit.
“I want¼ I want that,” she gasped finally, intent on the stage.
The men exchanged happy smiles. Gently Ace put his arms around her, pulling down the zipper of her dress, exposing her breasts. She stopped his hand as he began to pull the dress off.
“No, please,” she said. “Leave it on.” Of course these three were only hired sexual help, paid to act as if the patron were the most beautiful, sensuous woman in the world, but she was self-conscious of her scars. Even if they did not betray disgust at the shiny ripples on her side, she would feel the hesitation in the fingers and be plunged back into the hospital bed—burnt, ugly, useless.
Ace kissed her forehead softly in a gesture of understanding then lifted her legs and arranged her lying back. Gently he stroked her feet, her calves, his fingers trailing toward her thighs. Each stroke seemed to ignite the flesh beneath it. Jean-Luc’s big, warm hands rubbed her breasts, the palm brushing her nipples. Her eyes drifted shut. It was like floating in a sea of hands.
She felt a pull on her hair and licked her lips. Just the thought of what was going to happen next made her insanely hot. She felt her head yanked back and, unseen, Marcello’s thick cock tip began to rub over her mouth, teasing it open, the smell of aroused male filling her nostrils. She flicked him with her tongue, savoring the musky saltiness. A rush of cool air wafted over her pussy as Ace hooked her panties off, his talented fingers returning to her thighs and upward. The hands on her breasts became a mouth, sucking gently, nipping at the hard, pink tips. She gasped with the delicious shock of it, and the cock that had been teasing her lips slid deeply into her mouth just as Ace’s finger slipped on her juices and into her pussy, his thumb busily working her clit.
Whether the group was still onstage or the rest of the audience was watching or a lion was loose in the theater, Coco did not know or care. All she felt was here and now—the thick cock forcing her lips wide, bumping at the back of her throat, a tongue swirling around her nipples. And that finger—oh god, it had become another tongue. Ace was licking her pussy like a starving man, one slick finger lightly poised at her anus, testing the resistance. Mingled scents of her own juices and something dark and masculine made her lightheaded. She felt Marcello’s cock tense and begin to pulse against the walls of her cheeks and he pulled out. She could hear the slap of skin as he stroked himself.
Just then, the tongue on her clit began to play a rapid sonata, driving her to ecstasy. Frantically she pushed her breasts together, opening her eyes in supplication to the sight of Jean-Luc, who smiled knowingly and slid his cock between her white mounds. Marcello’s throbbing erection speared between her lips with renewed vigor. One more stroke from the cocks in her mouth and between her tits, one more suck on her clit and she would explode.
A shadow, a blot blacker than the gloom, fell over her face. It was a man, decidedly not naked. He seemed to loom over the panting, moaning foursome before he sank back into the dark. She could just make out his grim expression, but could not be sure whether an ugly scar bisected his left eye. Coco jerked upright, pulling up the top of her dress.
“Carina¼” moaned Marcello. His now-neglected cock was red and throbbing, gleaming from her saliva.
She looked for her shoes, patted the floor for her panties. “I have to go.”
She dashed past an openmouthed Madam Amanda without a word and pushed out the door into the cool late-spring night.
Alexi. Her target, watching her service three men like a common whore. She had possibly blown the mission and definitely blown her own Rule Number Two. Show no weakness.
Chapter Four
Alexi Maksimov did not often have bouts of self-doubt and when he did, he knew there was something seriously wrong. Confidence was his calling card—he moved in a dangerous world, and without utter assurance, he would have been devoured by the forces around him long ago. It wasn’t feigned confidence either. Maybe when he was younger, yes, he had been less sure of himself. A different set of responsibilities required it. But that was before¼
He pushed the memory out of his head. If he looked back, all would become unraveled.
So something was seriously wrong if he was trying to convince himself that he had not broken his Rule Number One. She had come to him the first time, that was what mattered. Following her to this crazy sex club, it was not weakness. Call it curiosity. She had come after him, as he’d suspected someone would. It was good to get to know your adversary, probe for soft spots.
But it seemed those other guys had found her soft spots first—between her ripe, red lips, her ivory breasts, inside that sweet little pussy. His cock swelled.
“Are you gonna come in my mouth? I don’t do that,” said the redhead kneeling before him.
He glanced down. She had smallish brown eyes and her hair was not as long or lush as that of his American adversary. So what? Why think of her? He had allowed this skinny girl to pick him up in the coffee shop only because he needed release, not because she had flaming-red hair and, if he squinted, he could believe it was her generous mouth into which he pumped his cock.
That made two things he was trying to make himself believe, thanks to this damn woman. He grabbed the girl by the back of her head and forced himself deep into her throat, holding her tight against his balls.
“Sosi moi hui, shalava,” he growled. “Suck my dick. No talk.”
She went back to working him, but rather listlessly, with her eyes closed. Anyone who said there was no such thing as a bad blowjob was wrong. He watched the top of her ginger head take his dick in over and over, watched the lips slide up his shaft loosely. He was never going to come like this.
But thinking of her, splayed out on the dark velvet, mouth and pussy open for violation, shoving her creamy white mounds together to make a tight sheath for a hard dick. When she had locked eyes with the man, silently begging him to fuck her tits, he had almost exploded right there. Fuck, she was hot. What he could do with those breasts, that mouth, that delicious little pussy that gave up its sweet juice so easily! Make her whimper with mingled pleasure and pain as he inched it inside her, feel her clench around him, fucking her until their screams shattered every window¼
With a wrench, he pulled out of the brown-eyed girl and pumped his cock, spewing hot seed on her neck and the tops of her breasts.
“What the hell was that?” she whined, mouth still open in shock. “This is a new blouse.”
His voice was low and dangerous. “Get out.”
The lazy bitch raced for the door, shooting him a frightened look on the way. But Alexi already had his pants back up and was striding toward the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
He lit a cigarette off the stove and glared. No samovars in gray London, nothing to make a proper cup with. How he longed for the rugged green mountains and rough forests of his own land. The sky had a paleness to it, even in warm weather, and the winter snows lay a thick blanket of silence over every tree, every field, every village. Soon, he could return. After the mess of the other night, there was only one more directive to carry out.
He watched unseeing as the liquid in the cup turned from amber to a bitter tobacco color. Funny word for “mess” in Russian, bardak, it meant same as bordello, or the kind of pleasure palace he had found her in. His balls tightened again, thinking of her.
No. Rule Number Two was show no weakness. He would not let his desire for her interfere with the mission. Better than most men, Alexi Maksimov knew the meaning of sacrifice
. He would do what he had to do before leaving for home.
Kill the girl.
*
“You haven’t gotten our man yet.”
Rod sounded aggrieved and accusatory over the phone. His pulling rank like a puffed-up bureaucrat was the last thing she could take right now. Coco was still pulling herself together after the night she’d had.
Put it out of your head, she told herself, and do your job. Things looked better in the light of morning. She could almost believe that hadn’t been Maksimov in the club at all. It was so dark, and her mind, to say the least, was elsewhere. She didn’t need an ex-boyfriend scolding her from thousands of miles away to undo the fragile truce she’d made with her conscience.
“I will,” she answered, pushing her feet into sensible tourist walking shoes. “Look, there’s gotta be a dossier on this Kaminsky. If I’m going to get close to the assassin, I have to understand his victim.”
Rod sighed. “Okay, but you’re wasting your time. I can get you the official file. As far as I can tell, it’s all pretty straightforward.”
“No sign of an unofficial file?” she asked. “Did you try your counterpoint in Moscow?”
“Don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs, Coco. I know my job. And until you get Maksimov to the safe house, we’re just spinning our wheels.”
This time she would remember her wallet. She stuffed it into her purse and drew a light scarf out of her holdall. It looked to be another scorcher.
“That’s another thing. Those questions you want me to ask him? I need them now, before we get there. He made me at our first contact, and I didn’t like that at all.”
“A ruthless warlord has a lot of enemies. If you got spotted, I’m sorry to say that was mission error on your part.”
He didn’t sound sorry at all, the condescending bastard.
Her voice hardened. “The questions. I want them or I fly back to DC tonight.”
The white van was where Rod had said it would be, parked around the corner from her hotel in front of a fast-food place that seemed to sell nothing but potatoes. In her four years with OSO, Coco had been in innumerable exotic places. She’d seen insects served on skewers, fresh snake blood for sale, sheep’s eyes and whole bird fetuses, complete with downy feathers, offered as delicacies. It was funny how in places with cultures very different from her own, she expected the unusual and even, to her Western soul, distasteful. Here in upright, English-speaking, clean, gray London, the idea of an all-spud restaurant—or beans stewed in bacon fat for breakfast—seemed more exotic and more appalling than a bowl full of lightly fried crickets. Which had actually been pretty yummy, she remembered, thinking fondly of the Bangkok street stalls.
The van’s location meant she was expected to knock out Maksimov right on the street, close to the hotel where she’d already met someone who could identify her should the kidnapping go south. She hoped Madam Amanda’s “work” at the Fordham was done for now. She considered changing hotels or hiring a driver, but neither option would be very useful in the end. Overall, it was a damn shoddy operation Rod had chosen for her. Once an ass, always an ass.
She bought a newspaper and settled into a booth in a dark, almost empty teashop with a cup of black coffee and a croissant. There was no more news about the Kaminsky assassination. Of course not, if those bumblers from Interpol were on the case. She was just passing the time, anyway, waiting for OSO to hit her back with the dossier. She would look into Kaminsky, maybe grab lunch in a pub and study up on the questions. Because she had no doubt Maksimov knew how to find her, if he wasn’t watching her right now. If not, he would make himself available in the Three Cocks.
Ugh, best not to think about him watching her being willingly violated by three cocks. Best not to think about the dream she’d had after escaping the Palace, in which it was Alexi naked in the shower, her legs around his waist and back against the chilly tile while he pounded inside her. A crashing orgasm woke her up, her mouth dry and clit still throbbing, until she pressed the last sweet reverberation from it.
She’d never run across an adversary who didn’t flee from a confrontation with an agent who clearly wished him harm, but this one had beckoned her over, told her they would meet again, even, possibly, followed her to the Palace. And now he was invading her dreams. That would never do. Rule Number Three sounded simple but it required a complete shutting down of every decent, forgiving human impulse. Trust no one.
Her phone gave an echoing, outer-space ping. The Kaminsky file came up on the screen, neatly photographed, the pages numbered to prove that nothing had been deleted.
Templeton had not lied—the official dossier was straightforward indeed. He seemed to have been a well-known FSB agent without a blot on his record, even according to the notoriously paranoid Russian security service. He had a wife and four boys at home. A widow, that is, and fatherless boys. Coco felt sick.
She rose, half of the croissant uneaten. What the file did not say was whom he had come to London to meet. Tracing a Russian diplomat could not be that hard, even for an agent on her own. And she was completely on her own. There was a monster on the loose and she was the only person who could stop him.
*
Getting into one office in the embassy was a breeze. Wet eyes, practical tourist clothes and a sob story gained her admission to a stout, wood-paneled office and the audience of a black-haired, severe-looking man with a face like the lunar surface. The leather chair creaked as she shifted in her seat.
“Disappeared, you say?”
“Yes.” She tried to smile wanly at the pockmarked face on the other side of the desk. “I haven’t heard from my sister in weeks. We were already upset when she hooked up with this guy. I mean, I’d heard he came from a trouble spot in your country, something about a breakaway republic?”
His dark eyes showed interest for the first time. “Chechnya?”
“Yes, that’s it! And he seemed into all kinds of scary, rough stuff. But Patricia, she just, like, flounced out of Boston and went to live with him. And now, like I say, I can’t reach her. I’m really scared, sir.”
“Miss,” the official frowned down at her passport, “LeBlanc, I suggest you contact your own embassy.”
“I tried,” she breathed. “They said they knew nothing about it and, frankly, one officer told me privately that you Russians are so much more skilled at this sort of thing.”
Probe for weaknesses. She had this guy’s Achilles’ heel pegged from first laying eyes on him—framed certificates covering the walls, shadowboxes of various medals on the desk, turned outward to impress visitors, a fancy pen and ink set in an imposing brass holder that looked untouched. He wanted to be seen as powerful, competent, the best. Here was a man who kept score.
“Is that so?” he asked, unsmiling. But he sat up a little straighter.
“I believe the word he used was ‘masterful’.”
“Do you have a name for this boyfriend?”
“Um, just a first name. But I read something in the newspaper, about that poor man who got killed with the umbrella? He was here to meet a Russian diplomat who knew all about the situation over there. If I can talk to him, give him my sister’s name. He must know who all the rebel bad guys are.”
Had she overplayed her hand? The man sat as still as a snake, his black eyes on her.
“We are not all equally adept at our affairs, miss. I am the embassy’s most knowledgeable resource as concerns the Chechen rebels.”
Hope rose in her belly. “It was you he was on his way to meet?” she asked, hoping she sounded like an adoring groupie. At that moment, if this was her guy, then “adoring groupie” wasn’t so far off the mark.
“No one in this embassy had an appointment with Commissionaire Kaminsky. I’m sorry for your trouble, miss. My secretary will see you out.”
*
By early afternoon, the blazing-blue skies above London made the pale buildings blinding-white and the city sparkled. Coco’s crepe-soled shoes made no
sound on the pavement as she admired the rows upon rows of white houses, all attached cheek-by-jowl and fronted by low wrought iron fences with horsehead posts. Even with the breeze, it was almost uncomfortably warm, and her hair was sticky on her neck—what happened to those sudden turns in the weather British people joked about while visitors shivered?
The pockmarked embassy official had been lying, but about what, she could not tell. Either he was to meet with Kaminsky or he was not the top man in regards to Chechen affairs. She had blown her only chance to find the right man and probably set the KGB on her tail. The Russian secret service was as careful as her own, and even her personal directives were useless in that grim office. It was her second-most important rule and she had been forced to set it aside. All for nothing.
This whole weird case was messing with her head, had her breaking her own rules.
Chapter Five
Maksimov was standing on the steps of her hotel, shaking out a match. His dark-brown mane ruffled by the wind and a squint of amusement in his eyes, he looked like a man waiting for his date. He wore jeans again, black, and a tight black T-shirt.
He pulled on the cigarette as she approached. “What legend are you using, krahsniy?”
She stopped short. “I don’t have one. I’m here alone.” The truth, yes, but also a way of protecting OSO. After all, even Americans didn’t know the agency existed. He wouldn’t believe her anyway.
“You are lying to me.” He stepped down, towering over her at close range. Coco didn’t flinch. “That will be last time.”
“It’s true. I made up my own story. Art student.”
“Very good. Come with me.”
He turned and took off down the street, his long legs chewing up the pavement. She raced after him.
Her brain whirled. She had been prepared for anything, but not for this. How much did he know and why was the fearsome Alexi Maksimov acting like a semi-normal human being? Perhaps he was leading her into a trap. Coco glanced around for telltale signs of confederates—solitary men whose faces were shadowed by newspapers, the sudden screech of car tires as they turned into the street. But the day was fine and placid, the sidewalk deserted except for one large hulking man striding in front of a hurrying redhead.