“Happy now?” Vik said.
Gunderson shrugged. “I got to make sure a man can handle himself with a blade. That he’s not afraid to use it.”
“You must lose a lot of crewmen with that kind of test. You might want to pit your job prospects against somebody outside your own team.”
“Bobby was a thief. And worse. He got what he deserved.” Gunderson turned to Maggie. “Thanks, babe. Bobby pay you already?”
She startled at the sudden attention and nodded vigorously.
He turned back to Vik. “You can have the girl if you want. Can’t rape a whore if she’s been paid anyway.”
“You could’ve fooled me. But no thanks. I’m not in the mood after all this childish bullshit.”
Maggie neglected to point out that a knife fight to the death wasn’t what one normally thought of as childish.
“Okay. Up to you. See you first thing tomorrow at the docks. We’ll take off then.”
Vik nodded, glancing at her, and then back at Gunderson. “Look, you got a second? I got a few questions.”
Gunderson was looking at Maggie with a slight smile and opening his pants. His attention was something she sure as hell didn’t want, from everything she had heard and from what she had just witnessed here, but she had it now.
“Not now, man. I feel like hanging out here for a while. She was paid for, after all.”
Maggie’s stomach inexplicably dropped. She took a deep breath, not sure why she felt so squeamish all of the sudden. Maybe it was Bobby’s blood still on the carpet.
She could do this. She really could. It was what she did.
She glanced around desperately for the whiskey bottle, realizing with despair that she had left it downstairs, and felt those intense green eyes on her.
Not knowing why, she locked eyes with the one man in the room who she knew for sure was a killer, that she had seen kill, even though she knew the other one had a list of victims a mile long if the gossip was true. She glanced at this Vik’s green eyes. How had she ever described them as cold? They were warm, soft and warm and surrounded by long, black lashes.
Suddenly, Philly seemed so far away as she stood in her little Jakarta hovel, looking for comfort from this Greek god of a fellow who could wipe another man’s blood off his knife like most people would grab a paper towel in the john. Incredibly, she almost felt as if she was going to cry.
And Christ, she probably hadn’t cried since that first trick more than a decade ago.
“Actually,” Vik said, “I changed my mind.” Not taking his eyes from hers, he walked right up to her, in the process forcing Gunderson to back away a little. “If you don’t mind, I will take the girl.”
Gunderson gave a jovial laugh and she saw with relief that he was zipping his pants back up. “Well, you really should. You earned her. We’ll be out at sea for a while and she’s what passes for pretty around here.”
Instead of leaving, though, the big blond man sauntered over to the only armchair in the room, a worn overstuffed number Maggie often slept in since she equated the double bed with more taxing endeavors. He sat down.
“Don’t mind me, you two. I like to watch. I can tell a lot about a guy from how he uses his blade. But even more from how he uses his cock.”
Vik’s lips thinned at the comment and his eyes darkened. In that moment, Maggie saw that Bobby may not have been too far off the mark about this stranger and if pushed too far, Gunderson might see that as well. Not stopping to analyze why, she put her hands around Vik’s neck and brought his head down to hers, standing on her tippytoes to bring her lips to his firm, warm ones.
Tense for a moment, he then relaxed into the kiss, his fingers sifting through her hair. Funny, a long, long time ago, her lover had done just that and it had felt so…so shivery. So like it felt right now as this strange, beautiful man did it, gently, his fingers running through the long strands of her hair as she kissed him. She felt his lips move along her cheek, her neck, her throat as his hands strayed down to her hips.
With his mouth against her ear, he whispered, “You don’t have to do this with him watching.”
She pulled back and repaid the favor, tasting the clean, warm skin of his throat, his jaw, his ear. “But you do,” she whispered, biting his earlobe gently, and feeling his hands clutch on her hips, knowing he understood what she was saying. This was a test of another kind and he’d be wise to just pass it. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “I see only you.”
Against her stomach, she felt his hardening cock twitch and she thrust her tongue in his mouth, sucking on his for a moment.
She led him to the bed, pulling her clothes off as she did so until she was naked. When she put her hands to the waistband of his jeans to do the same for him, though, he stopped her, simply unzipping his jeans instead and pushing her to lie on the bed. He lay down on top of her, balancing his palms on either side of her head, almost as if he was trying to shield her from the other man’s gaze. It was ridiculous—she’d had more men and more permutations thereof than she would ever care to remember—but she found it more endearing than she would have thought. As he settled between her thighs, she opened them with more than her usual professional enthusiasm.
And then came the kissing.
Kissing wasn’t something Maggie particularly liked to do. Never had. Except with her long-ago lover of course. It was the rare client who cared anyway. But she fell naturally into kissing this man. His mouth was soft, but firm, and his tongue insinuated rather than invaded. They kissed for so long that Gunderson grunted from the sidelines, “Jesus, you going to fuck her or not?”
She didn’t know if Vik heard the sarcastic comment. She only knew she barely had. And she certainly didn’t care to get on with it, as she usually did, time being money and all. Because as intoxicating as this man’s kisses were, his gentle fondling was even more extraordinary. With hands big enough to close over breasts she’d long ago given up lamenting were too small, he felt her up—not in the crude way usually associated with that expression. No, he really felt her, kneading softly with one palm until his fingers moved in ever closer concentric circles to her nipple. The groan she let out into his lips was as genuine as she had emitted in a decade.
“That feels so good,” she murmured, because it was true and not because she was trying to turn him on. He was turned on already anyway. She could feel the hard, heavy weight of his penis against her bare thigh.
Suddenly, she did want to feel him in her. She fumbled for one of the handy condoms she had in any number of places around her bed and then slipped her hand down to pet him, registering how big he was as he took the condom from her and slipped it on. A hefty size down there was something she normally did not welcome, since a lack of enthusiasm on her part and a big penis on the man’s usually meant pain for her or at least discomfort. But as she slid her hand along his solid length after he had donned the condom and he paused in his kisses to catch his breath sharply, she knew she was enthused sufficiently. There would be no pain with this man. Eager for it suddenly, she brought her hands around to the back of his jeans, slipping them down his bare ass to give him more freedom of movement. When he thrust into her, she was the one who gasped this time.
“Yeah.” Even Gunderson’s hoarse encouragement couldn’t spoil the simple, pleasurable feeling of Vik inside her.
He slid out slowly and then smoothly back in and she wrapped her legs around his narrow waist, planting her hands on his shoulders still covered by the cloth of his tee shirt. Another sharp thrust had her arching into him and opening eyes she hadn’t even realized had shut. When she did, he was looking down at her. “Do you like that?” he murmured, so softly she was sure their audience did not hear it.
“Yes.”
He plunged into her again. “Okay.”
He was quicker about it than she would have liked, but he stunned her at the end. She honestly had not thought she could orgasm anymore.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that as he pulled
out of her, getting up to dispose of the condom.
“Nice,” Gunderson said, standing up as well. “Might have liked a little better view of the girl during it all, but nice. See you tomorrow, Vik.” He gingerly closed the door behind him with a festive little wave.
“There goes one sick bastard,” Vik commented, zipping his jeans as she sat up in bed.
Maggie took a deep breath. “I guess I should thank you. Bobby would have let you do anything to me, no matter what he’d told me. Kill me even.”
“Yeah. I’m sure he would have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to. I don’t have anything against you.” Incongruously, he smiled.
“And Bobby?”
The smile dimmed. “Look, I’m sorry if he was your boyfriend or something, for real. But he was a bad guy. Believe me.”
“Stealing isn’t exactly out the ordinary around here.”
“Not that. He had a thing for kids. Anyway, the world is a lot better off without him.”
“He wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“Good.”
“I don’t have boyfriends. I’m a whore.”
She collapsed again on to the lumpy mattress behind her as he went over to the sink. After some clattering and the sound of the tap, he sat beside her and held a glass of cold water to her lips. “Drink.”
She did. Cool, clear water. It was the one advantage this dump had.
She drank it down and then he set the glass on the floor beside the bed. He was holding her hand too, she realized, his long fingers over hers, his thumb lightly stroking her palm.
“Who are you?” she asked softly.
The corner of his mouth went up. “Nobody you have to worry about.”
She nodded.
“It was a stupid test,” he added ambiguously. “A cop is just a man. He’d fuck you if he wanted to.”
“Even with that asshole watching?”
He shrugged. “I have to go.”
“Don’t.” It was out of her mouth before she realized it.
“You want me to stay, Maggie?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “If you won’t hurt me.”
He stood up and pulled off his tee shirt and then his jeans. Naked, he climbed into bed beside her and pulled her on top of him. “I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
But he had lied. He did hurt her. He reminded her of how it felt to make love. And then he left.
Just like they all did.
Vik—short for Vikram—Pillay made his way to the docks. He shouldn’t have done that. He should have just walked away and let Gunderson have the girl. It wasn’t as if it was something she hadn’t done a thousand times with a thousand different guys. But she had looked at him in that moment with such despair in those tired, beautiful blue eyes—a despair he had undoubtedly compounded by knifing a man right in front of her—that he resolved not to leave her to that sick brute. Not in that moment. He had wanted to save her from that at least—even though they had both just ended up putting on a show for the bastard anyway.
And he should not have stayed the whole night. That was another mistake.
But he was lonely. And he was about to be even lonelier, for a very long time.
* * * * *
Flunking out of college was ridiculously easy to do. Miss a few paper deadlines, skip a number of finals altogether and the admissions office got all huffy on you. Add in hacking into the college’s database to change a boyfriend’s grade and any hope of a diploma was history.
Whatever happened to academic probation?
“What I don’t understand, Samantha, is that I’m told it took a tremendous amount of expertise and intelligence to hack into the grades database and yet you couldn’t seem to pass Introduction to Basket Weaving or whatever the hell it was you were taking. I don’t understand that.”
She said nothing.
“You have such a brilliant mind. My mind as a matter of fact.” The fruits of Damien Reynolds’ brilliant mind—as well as the generations of wealth passed down to him—were all around them. From the original Renoir hanging on the silk-draped wall to the size of this five-story townhouse smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan to the three-carat diamonds in Samantha’s own earlobes, everything about the Reynolds family screamed money. “Thank God you have your mother’s looks without her pea brain.”
“Leave my mother out of this, please.”
“I wish I could. Unfortunately, her genes keep surfacing in this lamentable tendency of yours to run away from things.”
“Mother ran away from you, Daddy. Not things.”
“And consequently left our daughter running away from every opportunity she’s ever been presented with, time and time again. I just don’t understand it.”
“What do I need to go to college for?” The question was a reasonable one and she’d thrown it at him a thousand times. “It’s not as if I’ll be working for a living or anything.”
“What will you do for a living? Bar hopping? Sunbathing?”
He left out running away with the riding instructor as her mother had done, but she didn’t bring that one up.
“How about both?” she said instead. When she reached for a decanter from the bar, a mere glower from her father as he sat behind that mammoth desk from which he always lectured her had her snatching her hand back like a child.
“Don’t you want your life to have some meaning, Samantha?”
She got up and walked to the picture window looking down on the streets of Manhattan, turning her back to him. “Like yours, you mean? I don’t see what increasing the Reynolds’ family fortune will do for the world. We already have more money than we could spend in a hundred lifetimes.”
“Then find something to do with that money. Run a charity or—”
“Is that what you’re billing Reynolds Industries as these days?” She whipped around to face him again. “A charity?”
“You don’t have to work at the company. In fact, I don’t think Michael would want you to.”
“He’s not the boss of me,” Samantha muttered automatically at the mention of her oldest brother’s name.
“My point is you have to do something. I thought that college would give you some time to think about that, like it did your brothers. But your mother’s genes seem to be interfering with that.”
“How do you keep track of all the mothers of your children and their defective genes, Daddy? You divorce them all so quickly.” She picked up the sole photo on her father’s desk—a picture of a black-haired beauty beaming from under her wedding veil, circa 1970s. “If only Michael’s sainted mother hadn’t died in childbirth, you wouldn’t have been put to all the trouble of perpetually looking for just the right replacement.” She put the photo down with a noticeable clatter. “Or maybe you would’ve gotten around to divorcing her, too, after a while.”
Her father leaned back in his leather chair. “Do you say these things to hurt me, Samantha? I’m an old man. You’re my youngest child. My only daughter.”
Samantha looked at Damien Reynolds’ full head of white hair and firm ruddy skin and trim waistline. He looked easily twenty or thirty years less than his true age of over eighty. But he was old. And she was trying to hurt him. She was always trying to hurt him, whether she admitted it to herself or not. It was silly.
She was silly.
She sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t take Yale seriously, Daddy. It just seemed to take itself seriously enough for the both of us. But I’ll try again if you want. It probably has to be somewhere else, though. I know you had your heart set on Yale, but I’m guessing that unless you offer to buy the place, they’re not letting me back in there.”
“I don’t know about that.” Damien Reynolds was a firm believer in the adage that there was nothing money couldn’t buy. “But I agree. Let’s try someplace new altogether. How about the Sorbonne? You’ve always loved Paris. You can stay in your grandmother’s apartment. It’s been empty a long time and it’ll be yours when y
ou come into your trust fund next year anyway.”
“Sure, Daddy. You know me. I’ll try anything once.”
She smiled. Besides, her new boyfriend Justin would adore Paris. Just perfect for a poet. And he had nothing else to do either.
Thanks to her hacking, he’d just flunked out of Yale too.
Chapter One
January 2012
Oh Christ. This wasn’t right. What the hell was that doing here?
“You seeing what I’m seeing, Vik?”
Vik lowered the night-goggle binoculars and glanced at Rolf Gunderson. He had hoped tonight would be one of the last times he’d have to put up with this vicious Neanderthal, but it looked as if that wasn’t happening.
This was so not going according to plan.
“I see it. It looks kind of small, though.” Lying through his teeth in the calmest voice imaginable was one of Vik’s special skills. One of the many that had led Interpol to recruit him as an agent so many years ago.
“Small? Are you fucking kidding me? It’s a hundred feet at least. State of the art. It’s perfect.”
Vik shrugged. “If you say so. It’s probably easier to take than The Victory anyway. So if you don’t think we’re up to that one, this might be a good second choice.”
Reverse psychology often worked on the stupider of the criminal element.
On the stupidest, not so much, unfortunately.
“Yeah. Fuck The Victory. We go with this one.” Gunderson signaled to the rest of the crew to start the engines of this sleek little motorboat up again. With a shout he indicated over the resulting noise that they were headed for the yacht dead ahead.
The Samantha.
* * * * *
Samantha Reynolds was going insane with boredom. She missed Justin. She hated her father.
And she was hot as hell.
Already in the briefest pajamas she owned—short shorts and a spaghetti-strap tee—she didn’t think even stripping naked would help with this South Seas heat and if she did she wouldn’t be able to go up on deck and at least catch the occasional breeze. As it was, her father would probably scold her for walking around in her jammies in front of the crew. As if her bikini wasn’t even more revealing. Who cared anyway?
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