Carol (Carol Schmidt Series)

by Cook, Lori

  So on they went, the massage gaining intensity, the only sound in the room the occasional sticky sound of oiled flesh being handled. Carol pushed down a little harder each time, until finally she was able to touch the very bottom of Sai’s sex, fleetingly, before running the fingers of both hands slowly up between the buttocks, but making sure her touch was as soft as a feather. Then again, down and back up, but even lighter now, hardly touching at all, and at the same time blowing softly onto the small of the back.

  Sai’s ass suddenly bucked into the air, just once, a momentary loss of control. Carol now eased one buttock gently aside, she ran her other hand down until it nestled deep between Sai’s legs, letting it rest there, feeling the considerable heat.

  Sai moaned, her face pressed down into the bed. Yet still she didn’t yield. Her body remained right where it was, as if just having Carol’s hand down there was enough. There was a tenderness to it, an innocence, the way that she wanted to stay like this, not moving a muscle, as if she never wanted to move again, content to remain face down on the bed forever.

  And Carol, as she looked down on Sai’s prone, immobile body, felt a weird anxiety grow inside her. She was turned on, but she was feeling something else. It took her back to the convent, and to the purity of her first sexual feelings. There was something different about Sai, and it was making her emotions coil and twist in ways she had never felt before.

  Acting on instinct, she gently removed her hand and lay down beside Sai, who at first did nothing. But then she slowly turned her head. Her eyes were full of tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Carol said, somehow not surprised to see Sai crying, although she had no idea why. “You don’t want to do this, do you? I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to...”

  “It’s not that,” Sai said.

  Without another word the two of them slid their arms around each other. As they embraced, their legs entwined and their bodies came together. Both of them, for their own reasons and in their own ways, sank into an feeling of intense satisfaction.

  There they remained, listening to each other’s breath, until Sai’s tears had stopped.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” Carol whispered.

  Sai shook her head.

  “It’s not you. It’s me. I hate myself.”

  “Because of this? I mean, this can stop now. We haven’t done anything.”

  Sai pressed her lips onto Carol’s, and as they kissed, something ignited deep within her. They kissed with such delicate passion, reticent yet urgent, that it might have been the kiss of two lovers meeting after years of forced separation. It might, indeed, have been the best kiss she had ever had.

  The warmth of Sai’s mouth against hers seemed to communicate to Carol, something almost devotional in its purity. Then, she felt a hand moving down her stomach and reach for her sex, which, as part of the Sandra Wells disguise, had been pruned to a severe Brazilian and died blond.

  “Are you sure you want this?” Carol said.

  But even as the words came out of her mouth, they were choked by Sai’s tongue, which was suddenly hot and strong, forcing its way inside Carol’s mouth. As it did, she felt Sai’s fingers begin to enter her, not quickly, but decidedly, as if there was nothing that could stop her from taking her fill of Carol’s body.

  “Do you want me to...” Carol struggled to ask, as she felt a soft, deep pleasure grow within her.

  “Yes!” came the reply.

  She didn’t need any further encouragement. She reached down and began fingering Sai’s pussy. The lips were still together, a little swollen but no more than slightly damp. As soon as Carol eased a fingertip inside, though, she felt the juices that had begun to well up inside, as if they’d been kept back, her lust hidden deep within her.

  Sai, unable to control herself, yelped, her body twisting as she widened her legs and let Carol push deep into her, two fingers up to the hilt, in and out, as smooth as silk. Their mouths now came together again, so eager that it felt as if they were going to eat each other; their fingers went faster and faster, and their tongues stabbed and rubbed together.

  As they writhed and moaned on the bed, their legs gradually became so entwined that their sexes were just inches apart. Their hands, now working each others’ pussies furiously, knocked against one another. Then, quite naturally, they eased even closer, until their fingers, slippery and frantic, could dance together in one juice-sodden tangle. They were finger-fucking each other, but then following the other woman’s fingers into their own sex, in and out, two hands jumping from one vagina to the other until there was so much action down there that it was more than simple masturbation; more even than frenzy; it was pure physical love, for themselves and for each other.

  They could have done so much more, gone further, explored each other more profoundly. But they didn’t need to. They both knew that this was enough. As they came, in dithering little flushes, they knew there’d be time for much, much more. More ways to take each other, to gulp and imbibe of each other’s fabulous bodies. To be together.

  Carol could sense that whatever was now spreading through her was something new and powerful. She was unable to stop it, and not completely sure she comprehended its true meaning. She had always loved sex. But she had never wanted it to go on forever, without end, with the same person, for the rest of her life. Sex had never been the source of transformation, it had never given definition to life itself. But now she could feel the lines of her life shifting beneath her, and she was helpless to stop it.

  The feeling, it seemed, was mutual. Sai clung to Carol and kissed her ardently, longingly, as if all she wanted was to remain like that, the two of them on the bed together. As they arrived at the shivering ends of their climaxes, they laughed and gasped and looked with wonder and bafflement at each other: this was something very, very different.

  Carol brought her lips to Sai’s ear and whispered: “If I were you right now, I’d let me lick the juices off of your fingers.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Sai said, her hand still down between her legs.

  She kissed Carol, letting her tongue fall and roll inside her mouth as if it belonged there and the two of them were going to kiss like this forevermore, living inside each other. As they kissed, she slowly drew her fingers up over her heavily swollen vagina, squirming with pleasure, knowing that she had never felt remotely like this before.

  Carol reached down and brought Sai’s hand up to her mouth, opening her jaws wide and taking four wet fingers between her lips. They smelled sweet and fresh, and as she sucked them clean she knew that no one had ever turned her on like this. No one had ever responded to her this way. It was like a mirror image of her own sexuality, a perfect reflection of her own desire, the two of them there on the bed, with the Manhattan traffic moving up and down Broadway down below, right outside Trump International.

  *

  The afternoon ebbed slowly away, and the half-darkened room became more and more exciting, their secret lair. And all they did was talk, and talk, and talk.

  “It’s a little ironic, you know,” Sai said, as the topic finally moved onto her boyfriend, “you being an intellectual property lawyer.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because that’s what this is all about. Alex’s business. Alex Strange. You know who he is, right?”

  Carol shook her head, but hated herself for lying to Sai.

  “He’s a software guy. The conqueror, he calls himself. In private, of course!”

  “Conquests? What, sexual?”

  “No. Computer software. He’s a pretty big deal. Only he doesn’t actually write software. Never has. He takes it all from other people. Legally. That’s his business model, and he’s so proud of himself, you couldn’t even begin to imagine it.”

  “Theft?”

  “Nah. He doesn’t see it as theft, he genuinely doesn’t. The way he looks at it, the system needs someone like him, someone to take good ideas and turn them into great products. He thinks he’s the genius. He’s a meg
alomaniac. And a fucking asshole.”

  “So why are you with him?”

  Sai sighed, shook her head. She knew she could be totally honest with Carol, but this still wasn’t easy.

  “Because I’m scared? Because I want all this, the lifestyle, the glamour.”

  “Nothing wrong in wanting that. I want it myself. Can’t get enough of it. Seriously!”

  “But you work for it. You deserve it.”

  “So,” Carol said, “in a perfect world, what would you want? Who would you be?”

  “I’d be you.”

  “Me? But you don’t know who I am.”

  “I know you’re smart, successful, beautiful, and you don’t need assholes like Alex to pay the bills.”

  “Neither do you!” Carol said, resisting the temptation to add I’ll pay your bills, I’ll pay whatever you ask of me.

  Sai let the air escape from her mouth, as if she was suddenly deflating.

  “What I’d really like to do is let the world know what a piece of shit Alex Strange is.”

  “Does he hit you?”

  Sai laughed. “And the rest. He’s into humiliation. Only he doesn’t realize it. He thinks it’s normal to treat people like crap, he’s been doing it so long. My job is to look good, and not to show myself up if I open my mouth, although he doesn’t encourage me to do that. But what he does to me in private is degrading, hurtful. He knows I’ll put up with it for this lifestyle, though.”

  “You don’t have to put up with it.”

  “What else am I gonna do? I dropped out of college. Six months ago my parents died, one right after the other. We’d always been well-off, but when they died they left a pile of debt, bad investments, stock that had nose-dived. The only thing I inherited was a love of being rich. Jeez, I feel like such a fool saying that...”

  “Hey, I love the five-star life more than you could possibly know.”

  They laughed, two people giddily aware of how similar they were, yet mature enough to know that it was not just about luxury hotel rooms. It was about the simplicity of suddenly finding someone with whom you could be honest, however much of a self-centered, materialist bitch you were. It was about being OK with yourself, and knowing that someone else was OK with you, too.

  “You know what I think?” Carol said, kneeling up on the bed and folding her arms. “I think you’ve been lost. You need someone to show you a way out.”

  And with that she made a decision, in a split second. It had definitely not been part of the plan. Perhaps it would destroy the plan. It was a massive risk. But Alex Strange was her job. It had been her idea to go after him, and she knew she could screw it up if she wanted. The Cardinal had just given her a million dollars. He’d set her free. She could do whatever she pleased.

  So she decided.

  She decided to tell Sai who she really was.

  And to hell with the consequences.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Where is he?” she asked the following evening, holding her cell to her ear as she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, admiring her flat stomach and the modest amount of cleavage that her short, black De la Croix evening dress allowed.

  “In the shower,” said Sai, her voice low and just a little scared.

  “Don’t worry!” Carol told her, although she too was anxious.

  This was no ordinary seduction, and a million things could go wrong tonight. But if everything went according to plan, who knows what the future might hold? One thing was for sure: tomorrow morning Alex Strange was not going to be walking out of Trump International with the fabulously beautiful Sai Boynes on his arm.

  “What if he doesn’t go for it?” Sai said, knowing that until the three of them sat down for dinner there was nothing more she could do.

  “He will,” said Carol, perhaps trying to convince herself. “Just make it all seem as natural as possible.”

  It was a minor miracle that Strange had agreed to the idea of inviting a relative stranger to his table for dinner. The fact that she was a copyright attorney had peaked his interest, and knowing that she was young, unknown, and worked for a Hong Kong legal firm specializing in music industry litigation didn’t arouse his suspicions.

  Of course, on learning that Sai had invited her to join them for their evening meal, Strange had immediately checked her out. According to the Cardinal (who had been holed up in a room on the eighteenth floor all week, attending to the preparations for tonight) Strange had hacked the hotel’s system that afternoon and accessed her surname, billing address, and all other available information on Ms. Sandra Wells.

  Their story was sound. Sandra Wells was an intellectual property lawyer based in Hong Kong. There was a small photo of her on the company website. Just an hour before Strange started looking into her, the company website had itself been hacked and a recent photo of the newly blond Carol uploaded in its place.

  So, all that Alex Strange would learn about the woman who would be dining with him tonight, just days before the flotation of his company, was that she was a junior lawyer who worked on minor cases for the Asian music industry. Plus, if he were to try contacting her, he would discover that Ms. Wells was away from her office, moonlighting on a staggeringly lucrative job for a mysterious client in Bangkok. Yes, the Cardinal had covered all his bases on this one.

  Sandra Wells, then, seemed to be who she said she was. Plus, Strange remembered having seen her in the lift. He had a photographic memory, and what he remembered about her was that she was hot. The country’s next billionaire was allowed to surround himself in beautiful women, wasn’t he? That’s what women were for, right?

  Back in her suite, Carol went over all the arrangements a dozen times. Cell phone signals had been blocked to a radius of twenty yards, enough to stop any of Strange’s devices working once he was in here, but not affecting adjacent rooms noticeably. Incoming calls to the phone in Strange’s own suite, meanwhile, had been rerouted to the Cardinal’s room, in which a young actress sat patiently with a script, ready to tell anyone who might call that Mr. Strange was taking a bath and had been asked not to be disturbed. The hotel’s head of telecoms had pocketed a hefty five figures for access to the phone system’s digital exchange. He’d had the good sense not to ask what the rerouting was for, but insisted that it could remain for a few hours. It would be enough.

  The Cardinal’s team had been in and out of the hotel for a week, staying in different rooms, making sure that the blocking technology worked at its specified radius, installing and reinstalling the miniature cameras and making sure they were invisible and that the video and audio quality was absolutely the best possible. The cameras were on the wall lights opposite the bed, one trained on the center of the bed for close-ups, and one for wide shots. They’d taken their lead from Bad Daddy, the pickup blogger who Carol had so expertly taken down a few months ago. But this was going to be better. Better than anything Carol had ever done for the Cardinal before. This was going to be a work of art. If, that is, it worked at all.

  Bad Daddy? Where was he now, she asked herself as she paced up and down her suite, knowing that everything was ready, and that she only had to reel in the biggest catch of her glittering career. It was time to play, and this time the stakes could hardly have been higher. The money? This was not about money. It was about the only two people Carol had ever truly loved. For Jason she wanted revenge; as for Sai, Carol wanted her more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. And the feeling was absolutely mutual.

  *

  “So, Sandra,” Strange said, as he watched the sommelier pour the wine, “Sai tells me you’re a lawyer.”

  She waited as Strange tasted the wine, nodded, ignoring the sommelier.

  “That’s about it,” she said. “You?”

  “Tech.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Depends. Are you interested in tech?”

  She smiled, shaking her head as all three of them they lifted their glasses and drank.

  “I’m afraid if
it’s not about sound patterns and audio sampling, I’m about as ignorant as they come. I’m the one in the office who can never get the printer to work.”

  “Sampling?” he said, raising his white eyebrows, ignoring her joke.

  She laughed a little, waving her hands as if in defense.

  “Nothing very technical. We have experts for that. I’m just a regular attorney. Principles of law, presenting cases, paperwork, paperwork...”

  He shrugged, all too aware of how ignorant lawyers could be of the very companies they worked for and the kind of businesses they were supposed to be protecting. He also knew how much he had paid them over the years. Literally millions of dollars, money that they didn’t deserve, but which they knew they could charge, because all your competitors were paying equally expensive lawyers. It was a game. And there was only one winner: the arrogant, know-nothing attorney on five hundred dollars an hour.

  “You know,” he said, laughing to himself as if the idea of actually having dinner with a lawyer was amusing, “I’m involved in something at the moment, and the legal fees, all told, are set to reach eight million.”

  “Wow,” Carol said, “that sounds like a huge deal.”

  “Sure is for the lawyers. And all for what? Boiler plate contracts and the kind of advice a paralegal could give you.”

  Carol considered what he said, swirling the wine in her glass.

  “Corporate law, I agree. It’s excessive. But with someone like me, I think I add value. My clients are normally victims, and I try and get redress.”

  “Intellectual property, no?”

  Carol had to be careful not to overplay her hand.

  “It’s all a bit trivial when you look at it,” she said. “Korean hip hop. Who gives a crap, right? But someone is making money, and it should be the right person.”

  “Sampling? Someone steals a sound. So you use sound pattern recognition, right? That’s straightforward stuff. Where’s the issue?”

  She grinned. “I can tell you’re suspicious of the value-added a lawyer can bring to the table...”