MadetoBeBroken

by Lyra Byrnes

  “This is burn scar, not shrapnel.”

  “It’s both. An umbrella caught fire and fell on me, and the fire turned the sand into glass shards. They spent months picking out the slivers and grafting new skin on my side. But that was nothing. We lost three men that day. I lost them.”

  Again he tipped the glass of water to her mouth. “You feel guilty?”

  “Feeling is something I’ve tried not to do since.”

  “Little bird.” He stroked her cheek. “The Greeks called it hubris, Hindus believe in karma. You know that it does not exist, yes? The gods do not punish one for pride or confidence. They do not raise the humble to glory. There is only one who judges us all equally, and that is Death.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to stay away from him too.”

  Chapter Eight

  She awoke to such a strange sensation that it took her long minutes to realize that her wrists and ankles were free. She sat up and rubbed the places where the cuffs had chafed. Beside her on the bed was a little pile of plastic, stomped into jagged pieces. Bits of her cellphone she recognized, but there were too many shards, some of them silvery in hue. Then it struck her—the van’s distributor cap. She would not be escaping unless it was on foot. Alexi’s tactics were rough but effective.

  He was nowhere inside the cottage so she stepped into a large, cedar-scented bathroom for a much-needed shower. Reveling in the gush of warm water, she felt her head clear. Alexi could remove every means of escape he liked, but she wasn’t going anywhere. She could not flee this place until she had the information OSO needed. As long as she was free and unencumbered, there was still a chance she could get it. The playing field had been leveled. She was no longer Alexi’s prisoner, but neither was he hers. One well-timed move would put him back under her power, but she would have to be careful.

  A cursory sift through her purse revealed that he had removed everything but her lipstick and tissues. Even the mirror compact was gone. Smart move; it would have been far too easy to smash the glass and hold a sliver of it at his throat, or better yet, his eye. No problem, she told herself, pulling on a short white robe she found hanging behind the bathroom door. It was time to switch to what Alexi called “psychological tactics”, to bring the enemy down with his own weapons.

  He wanted her. It wasn’t true that desire made everyone weak but him strong, he had only been taunting her by saying so. Anyone in desperate need gives up power, and this man’s need was easy to stoke into a flame that burned up every ounce of resolution.

  Whether she felt any similar need was a question she tried not to ask herself.

  She padded into the big front room then stilled, every sinew frozen. Someone or something had its eyes on her, and there was a not-quite-rightness in the air. She willed the rush of adrenaline to subside throughout her body and slowed her fluttering heart. The sound of something hard dropping to the floor made her pivot, and there, in the open doorway, a squirrel watched with regret as its acorn rolled noisily across the wooden floor.

  The squirrel fled without its snack as Coco pushed out the door and into the gentle Scottish sunlight. The day was warm, with a caressing breeze, but it was the view that stopped her, her breath hitching in her chest. They had driven in at night and missed the spectacular beauty of the landscape—rolling green hills tufted with shaggy clumps of trees and patches of pale-purple flowers like exquisite throw rugs tossed here and there over the velvet grass. From somewhere behind the house came the splashing of water and she followed the sound, rounding a trio of elegant saplings and emerging onto a grand field that dropped off into nothingness in the distance.

  Alexi lay on his back, naked and golden, at the edge of a small lake, a silver Thermos by his side. Even in its relaxed state, the member he had teased her with, stroked her with under rough denim, was thick and smooth, as bronzed as the rest of his skin. She looked away, up to the waterfall that plunged into the lake, narrow and deeply blue, churning up a shallow layer of foam as it hit the water. Nothing about this assignment had been what she’d signed up for when she joined OSO, but this—this was beauty, peace and sensuality like she’d never imagined. If he had been an ordinary man and she an ordinary woman¼

  He did not open his eyes as she cast her shadow over his supine body.

  “You didn’t have to do that, disable the van.”

  “You should have checked hotel,” he countered mildly. “Take all security measures.”

  “Why didn’t you just take it yourself and leave?”

  “Sit with me, krahsniy. Look at the water. Maybe we are both off duty for one minutes, okay? Tell me you were not little bit relieved to see mobile phone all smashed up.”

  She sat, tucking the hem of the robe around her knees. “I told you I have no superior. And neither do you. Warlords make their own rules.”

  He sat up and shaded his eyes. “Warlord? Is that what they call me in your shiny American office?”

  “That and worse.”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “I spoke to you before of home, but your ears were closed.”

  She watched a golden plover dive close to the water and snap its beak around the body of a dragonfly. It rose into the air and circled once, as if in triumph, before disappearing behind a screen of leaves. She knew what home meant better than he did, and for the opposite reason.

  America was a dream of home, a place she didn’t see until she was seventeen. Her uncle would come to visit the family in Bangkok or Burma, take her fishing on lakes not unlike this one, and tell her stories about home. Her father never rose far in the diplomatic corps, being shuttled from one less-than-luxurious country to another, but as a little girl, she knew no other way of living. Travel light, don’t make too many friends, be ready to pack up your toys every three years and fly to another place whose language you did not speak, whose customs were strange and whose kids had already found each other and had no need for a gap-toothed, red-haired American interloper.

  Home was a fantasy of Hershey bars and neon-bright television shows, soda pop and water that was safe to drink, skyscrapers and trendy clothes. What she would never tell Alexi was that when she finally made her way there, it felt nothing like home at all. It was another foreign country with strange customs, smooth, salty foods, sterile, empty streets and kids who had already made enough friends. So she built another one in her heart, and it was this America—this phantom of home—she would kill or die to defend.

  “I was listening,” she said quietly.

  He shook his head. “Guns, freedom, baseball—pauf! You have immaterial constructs, ideas only, for which you kill men.”

  “I don’t kill—”

  “The truth, please. Now we are neither of us at home. Why not enjoy it?”

  “Because the great thing about immaterial constructs is they travel well. If you need your fearsome mountains to keep you going, I feel sorry for you. The idea of freedom lives within me, and yes, I will kill for it. That’s why I won’t run away. I have a job to do. Now answer my question.”

  “Nyet. I am in control.”

  “Control? There’s a bullet in your leg. What’s to stop me from dropping a big rock on your head?”

  “If I’m dead, I cannot fuck you, and you want me to fuck you. There is tea in Thermos,” he added.

  “I damn sure do not want you to fuck me!” she exploded, leaping upright. His amused expression did not change. “I want to do my job and get home. You had me chained up last night. I had no choice.”

  “No choice but to come like steam train at my touch?” He grinned and poured tea into the Thermos cap, handing it up to her.

  “That was a normal physical reaction to stimulation, nothing to do with you.”

  “And those men on that night.” His face darkened. “You were not chained up, you were not in love. Is not because of scar, I believe that. So again I ask why. Or maybe better I tell you.”

  She sipped her tea, her lips numb. The sun was rising, showering warmth on her wet hair, the waterfall s
plashing across the lake. From the crown of a shaggy-topped tree, a dark mass of birds took flight all at once, scattering into specks as they rose into the cool air. Alexi stood before her, gently pulling the robe from her shoulders to drink in the sight of her firm breasts, pink nipples pebbled in the breeze. She did not stop his hands.

  “Is because you want to be taken by someone you don’t know, someone you don’t care about. No love, no heartache, nothing to touch you deep down. This scar,” he put his palm against her torn side, “is just a scratch. There is bigger one in here.”

  The tip of his finger pressed against her sternum.

  “Let us make a bargain.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue—The United States does not bargain with terrorists. God knows she had said it enough times before. But she couldn’t speak. His strange eyes with that ferocious scar filled her vision. There was a slash of skin in the center of his eyebrow where the hair had not grown back.

  “You want Alexi inside you, you want answers. I want to rest in this wild, peaceful country that looks so much like my home, and also want to take my pleasure with you until your moans silence that waterfall, until you are aching and shuddering in my arms. No love, no heartache, just a ‘normal physical reaction’.” He repeated the phrase back to her with a smirk. “One answer for every time you satisfy me.”

  She tried not to glance at his manhood as it hardened against his thighs. “You want me to trade sex for secrets.”

  “No. I want you to fulfill your fantasies on a mad warlord and take to your bosses all you have learned. If your body is open to me—if you do everything I say—I will not lie to you. That is what you want, little red bird so full of desire, no? To submit to the demands of a strong man.”

  Amanda’s words floated to the top of her mind, and the memory of her breath coming fast and warmth spreading through her body as the madam perceptively noted that, while Coco may be no whore, she wanted desperately to be treated like one. To be taken by someone you don’t know, someone you don’t care about. She didn’t care about Alexi, true, but if she agreed to the bargain, she would know him very well by the time she was on a plane back to DC.

  Or even a direct flight elsewhere, away from her anonymous Pentagon City efficiency and her anonymous life, and back to Southeast Asia, where there was action, color, life, where all her senses could be engaged again while she did the thing that she did best. Get the bad guy.

  All she had to do was get this bad guy.

  “I told you I’m alone on this mission,” she answered, pulling the lapels of her robe closed over her breasts. “Nothing you tell me can be verified until I take it back to the head office, and you’ve destroyed my phone. Why should I trust you?”

  “I have hurt people, krahsniy, many people. I have made men and boys, little boys, from villages all over Chechnya into ruthless killers, and Russian mothers and wives have drowned in tears because of my actions. This is no secret. But I will not lie to you. One question now, but after, you must wait until you are completely satisfied.”

  “You said before that I was to satisfy you.”

  Alexi leaned in and placed his lips on her neck, kissing and sucking at the soft flesh.

  “Oh you will, so much, with that beautiful body, and the fear and desire in your eyes when you submit to my will. That will satisfy me greatly. But if I don’t please you with my hands, my mouth, my cock, the deal is off. Ask.”

  She drew free the belt of her robe and let it fall to her feet in a fluffy white drift. “Who is number two in the CRF?”

  He had the nerve to look disappointed. “That is wrong question, krahsniy.”

  His cock did not so much as twitch when she drifted a hand down her neck, between her breasts, over her flat belly. Annoyed, she snapped, “Answer it.”

  He shrugged. “Man named Umarov.”

  For some reason, her little display wasn’t working. She had gotten her answer—possibly a useful one, although she had no idea of knowing—but Alexi looked at her dispassionately, as if her body were merely part of the pretty landscape. His cock was at half-mast, waiting for orders from the rest of his body.

  “Umarov, okay. Take what’s yours, Alexi.”

  “You are very beautiful, but I cannot take what is offered to me.” He pulled her up and put a hand under her chin, tilting her face toward his. “You will not seduce me with silly writhings. No woman comes to me on her back or her knees. I put them there.”

  She could smell the sunshine on his skin, warm and clean. Wetness gushed between her legs as she thought of him pushing her head down, training it at his cock, but her naturally contrary nature took over. “This is ridic—” Her words dried up as he grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked.

  “So on your knees.”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “Even better.”

  So this is what he wanted, for her to fight and lose. A flush pinked her skin from head to toe and his cock responded, thickening enticingly. She had him now. He didn’t want a submissive, a geisha—he wanted her, feisty, furious and finally, powerless, playing a game she had privately longed to play.

  “Let go of me, bastard!” she cried.

  He pushed her down until she knelt in front of his golden baton, a single drop of desire forming a pearl at its tip. The grass felt cool and velvety beneath her knees.

  “Suck me, you little slut.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Oh god,” he groaned. “That’s so good. Open your mouth, slut, or I will shove my cock in it so hard I will break you in two.”

  Delicately she licked the droplet, swirling her tongue around the head of his shaft. Alexi let out another groan and buried his hands in her hair, slamming his hips into her face.

  He was so big he stretched her lips wide, but he tasted delicious, like musk and sunshine. She pumped her head, taking in the length of him from root to tip with each bob. The guttural, helpless noises he made as she sucked him inflamed her, deepened the ache in the very core of her body.

  The sun was warm on her shoulders, caressing her naked body, and the wet sounds of sucking mingled with the splash of the waterfall in the distance. It was as if they were part of the landscape, as much of nature as the flock of birds or thickets of heather, primal beings indulging in the oldest and most sacred act.

  She wanted to ease the yearning and touch herself, but if Alexi disapproved, he might pull that glorious cock from her mouth, and right now it was more vital that she felt it filling her, bumping hard against the back of her throat. She wrapped one hand around his good thigh and lifted the other to his balls and felt them, full and hard, in her grasp. This seemed to drive him even wilder and he bucked his hips hard, driving his cock deep into her throat.

  She gagged, swallowed a salty droplet and ran a hard tongue along the underside. He moaned in a gratifying way, his hands tightening in her hair. The sensation along her scalp was electrifying and she thought of him as she’d briefly imagined him before, yanking her hair back while taking her roughly from behind.

  “Good little slut,” he panted. “Don’t stop.”

  Something in his voice brought her up short. Her lips tightened and she cast her eyes upward to meet his, taking care that he was watching his cock disappearing into her mouth over and over. When he saw her glance up, a yearning for his approval in her eyes, he gave a mighty groan, pulling her head so close she could have swallowed him, root and balls both, and held her there while his seed spurted down her throat.

  She breathed in the dark scent of his pubic hair, part soap, part his own leather and fresh tobacco scent, trying not to choke as she swallowed. Then, for reasons she could not explain even to herself, she sat back on her heels and opened her mouth wide for his inspection.

  “Every drop,” he husked. “Good girl. You know how to satisfy a man with your mouth. Tell me, are you satisfied?”

  “Yes.”

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled hard, snapping her head back. “You lie to me again.
We had a bargain.”

  “I¼ I’m wet,” she said, more weakly than she wanted to.

  “That’s better.” He spread the robe on the soft grass and gestured for her to lie back. “Open the legs.”

  This time he knelt before her, his hands stroking her calves and thighs worshipfully. “So beautiful, this sight,” he murmured against her skin. “I dreamed of a sweet pussy like this, tight and pink. Your pussy.”

  She felt the soft pressure of his lips high on her inner thigh, where the skin was silkiest and most sensitive. Moisture wept from her cleft as he kissed her again and again on her mound, her belly and in the indentations just inside her hips. He took one of her lower lips between his teeth, nibbling lightly then sucking, but her clit pulsed, untouched and aching. She writhed beneath his head, tilting up her hips desperately.

  “So impatient, krahsniy. I could make you come just like this.”

  It was true. He flicked his tongue against her weeping slit, not touching her throbbing bud, and her legs began to shake. He pushed her thighs farther apart so that she could not clench and stimulate herself, licking, sucking and kissing every millimeter of velvety flesh except the one that had grown hard and sensitive. Her juices leaked, soaking the robe beneath her.

  A new sensation made her gasp—a waft of warm air on her very center. Her clit trembled each time he blew on it, setting her to writhing, weak moans escaping her lips. The ache was unbearable. If he would only keep doing that, rhythmically and without letup, she could finally come. She felt his fingers dip into her sex and she strained to meet them, but he had other plans. A gentle but insistent push between the globes of her ass startled her. The slick finger probed relentlessly. She relaxed against the pressure, focusing on the puffs of air stimulating her nub and not the invasion of the finger—now two fingers—pumping in and out of her tight rosebud, igniting nerves she never knew she had.