Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “It’s a couple of steps up from Kevlar,” he explained. “One of Sergeant-Major Gillespie’s spookier pals developed it and let it out to us for field tests before he tries to sell it to Her Majesty’s government.”

  With his right hand, Cruz plucked the warm slug from Laurel’s palm and inspected the metal carefully.

  “I can report that it works pretty good against nine-millimeter slugs at about seven feet,” he said, throwing the slug up in the air and catching it deftly. “Of course, bullets lose a lot of their punch when you run them through a silencer.”

  She stared at the bullet, then at the body armor, and finally at the fragile human flesh that had been beneath. Two dark smudges were already forming on his rib cage, just below his left nipple.

  Without the armor, either bullet would have killed Cruz.

  “Retrograde m-macho son of a bitch,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “Talk dirty to me some more, honey. I love it.”

  “You really get off on catching bullets, don’t you?” she said angrily. “Most fun you’ve ever had with your clothes on, right?”

  “Beats hell out of the alternative.”

  Very gently he tested the larger of the two bruises with his fingertips. He winced but kept probing.

  “If pain is your drug of choice,” she said, watching him poke at what surely was very bruised flesh and bone, “why don’t you just bang your head against the wall?”

  “Tried it. No future in it.” He let out a long breath. “You’ll be happy to know that I’ve got torn cartilage and maybe a broken rib.”

  When he turned toward the light to examine the bruises more closely, she noticed an odd pattern on the skin around the injury.

  “What’s that?” she asked sharply.

  He looked where her trembling finger was pointing. “It’s just the pattern of the bulletproof fabric. The shock wave stamped it into my skin.”

  Laurel turned aside and tried to still the shaking of her hands. The realization that he would have been killed but for some high-tech body armor kept breaking over her in black waves.

  She didn’t want this, any of it.

  And she certainly didn’t want to be responsible for Cruz’s death.

  22

  Los Angeles

  Monday night

  Claire Toth stripped back the comforter on the king-sized bed, piled the pillows, and undressed. Room service would arrive in half an hour with the late-night snack she’d ordered. Jamie Swann should be back real soon with the egg. She didn’t want to waste any time after he arrived. She was already on fire.

  When Swann let himself back into the hotel room, the box holding the Ruby Surprise was under his arm. Toth lay propped against three pillows. The top sheet was tucked artfully around her torso, leaving one hip and most of her full breasts uncovered. Against the stark white of the bed linens, her skin was the color of well-rubbed, ancient ivory.

  Smiling, he closed the door and threw the security bolts with measured movements of his hand. Then he stood and looked at her. When her nipples hardened as though he’d pinched them, he felt like throwing himself on her, holding her down, and screwing her until she screamed.

  “That didn’t take long,” Toth said.

  “I didn’t want you to start without me.”

  Her slanted, almond-shaped eyes were as black as the night, as clear, and far more intelligent. She patted the bed beside her.

  “Show it to me,” she said.

  He put the rectangular wood carrying case on the bed and sat down. After he undid the catches, he laid the lid aside and removed the egg on its ornate pedestal.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She sat up and leaned closer. The sheet that covered her breasts slid as far as her dark nipples, hesitated, and then slowly fell away to the nest of her lap.

  He cupped his hand over the smooth, cool, pointed end of the egg like it was a woman’s breast.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Pretty? It’s stupid. Why did they put all that work into the outside? What’s inside is all that matters.”

  Swann laughed. He ran the back of his hand down between Toth’s breasts to her belly and from there to her crotch.

  “The same could be said of a woman,” he said.

  She laughed with him and opened her legs until there was more room between. With one hand he pulled on the thick, curly hair. With the other, he held out the beautiful egg. She touched it with her palm, then traced its jeweled length with the elegant tip of her finger, mirroring the motions he was making between her legs.

  Swann wondered whether it was his hand or the power implicit in the Ruby Surprise that was making Toth’s nipples gather into dark daggers.

  “Show me,” she whispered. “Show me how it works.” Her voice was throaty and urgent, heavy with arousal.

  Abruptly he didn’t care whether his hand, the egg, or both were turning her on. He was going to get the benefit of it.

  The thought made him hot. He’d taken women of all sizes and races, all over the world. Toth was unique. Some of it was her spectacular body. Some of it was her cunning mind. A lot of it was her prowling, challenging sexuality. The way she climaxed was incredible. He could get off just thinking about it.

  So could she.

  Lightly, teasingly, he rubbed one thumb over the cool surface of the egg. His other thumb was searching a much warmer surface. With slow movements, he quartered the egg, closing in on the single knot of gold that, when touched just right, would open the egg’s riches to him.

  She made a low sound as his thumb rubbed over her repeatedly.

  “Open it, damn you,” she said huskily.

  “Patience.

  “Fuck patience.”

  He laughed and teased both egg and woman, watching both, feeling Toth’s increasing heat, holding her on the ragged edge of climax. Then he dragged one thumb over a solid gold knot and one thumb over a straining knot of flesh.

  There was a faint click and the top half of the egg parted slowly, smoothly, almost languidly, revealing a big faceted ruby at its center.

  Toth gasped and shuddered. The scent of her climax was a musk more potently sexy than anything ever packaged and sold over sterile perfume counters.

  Swann admired the ruby and the woman.

  “You’re an inventive bastard,” she said huskily. “You’re the only man I’ve ever had who screws me as much with his mind as with his dick.”

  “You’re the only woman I’ve ever had who needed both.”

  Languidly she rolled onto her side, keeping his hand between her thighs. She could see that he was hard and hot as a cheap pistol. She licked her lips and smiled.

  “What do you figure it’s worth?” he asked. “Five million? Twenty?”

  She stared long and hard at the ruby, as if trying to read a message concealed deep within it.

  “This pony will take us anywhere we have the hair to ride it,” she said after a moment. “All we need is the bridle. Where is it?”

  “It’s coming. Patience.”

  The sound she made was distinctly impatient. She drew the nail of her index finger across the cold, polished surface of the ruby.

  “When?” she demanded.

  “When I’m good and ready.”

  With a fluid movement, she took his hand from between her legs, straightened up, and drew the top sheet across her breasts, covering the aroused nipples like a fan dancer.

  “You told me you had everything you needed, lover,” she said coldly. “You want to get off tonight, you handle it yourself.”

  Swann knew what Toth was doing as well as she did. But it was like knowing about gravity—it didn’t change the fact that gravity worked. Down was still down and he was still hard and she was ready for more and they both knew it.

  “Relax, lover,” he said. “I don’t wander around with custom-made power cables and E Bloc computer links in my luggage.”

  He reached over and lightly traced t
he outline of Toth’s nipple through the cool sheet. His fingers left damp marks on the cloth.

  “But I can make the damned thing work in a couple of hours…when I want to. All we need is some fast, anonymous cash from Hudson and we’ll be on our way.”

  She stared at Swann for several heartbeats. Beneath his finger, her nipple was softening rather than becoming harder.

  “You think you’re a cold one, don’t you?” he asked.

  His lips drew back in a feral smile as he used his thumb and forefinger to pinch the flaccid nipple into renewed response.

  The tip of her breast remained as smooth and lifeless as silicone gel in a plastic envelope. She fixed him with an expressionless stare while he twisted and manipulated her with increasing force. What had been titillation became abuse and finally punishment but her expression didn’t change.

  Smiling oddly, he loosened his grip and went back to teasing. “Not into pain tonight, huh?”

  She just looked at him.

  “Someday you’re going to run into a guy who will rape you just to watch you scream and bleed,” Swann said.

  “I met that kind before I went to first grade.”

  Swann wasn’t surprised.

  “Mother-daughter acts were big where I came from,” she said casually. “I learned to go away to somewhere else in my mind a long, long time ago.”

  “You don’t have to with me, remember? Any blood that gets drawn is mutual.”

  “I know. I just wanted to make you work a little. If it’s too easy, you’ll lose interest.”

  As she spoke, life returned to the tip of flesh between Swann’s fingers. The nipple grew and filled and hardened as though by magic.

  He dragged a deep breath through his teeth as his own body responded savagely. There was something perversely exhilarating about a woman who was so completely in control of herself. Toth was right—if he’d been dead certain of her response every time, he’d have been dead bored a lot of the time.

  “How could I lose interest in this?” he asked, pressing his hand against her crotch again. “So long as you don’t get any ideas about going back to that queen Novikov, we’ll do fine.”

  Shifting, smiling slightly, Toth let Swann do what he liked between her legs while she thought of her next move.

  Very quickly she discovered it was damned difficult not to come in Swann’s hand all over again. She’d never been so hot, never so close to losing all control.

  The excitement of ordering death was explosive.

  She rested her hand on his thigh. Then she touched the cool, beautiful egg with her palm as her fingertips stroked rhythmically against his erection.

  “Aleksy isn’t really gay,” she said huskily. “He likes little boys or big boys or girls or knotholes in the fence. But most of all he likes power.”

  “So do you,” Swann said. “Political, sexual, physical. You name it. If it’s power, it turns you on.”

  She laughed low in her throat and opened her legs wider, taunting him even as she showed her trust that he wouldn’t hurt her. Not really. Not the way she’d been hurt in the past.

  “You sure about that, lover?” she asked.

  “Dead sure, baby. It’s what I like about you. When do you see Hudson again?”

  “What are you, my pimp?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “It takes a lot more than it’s getting,” she retorted.

  Swann laughed and kept teasing her without ever coming close to the knot that would open her as easily as the egg.

  She knew she should punish him by going cold again. She knew, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Not tonight. There would never be a night like this again with Swann. She was going to use both of them to the fullest.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said.

  “Will Hudson have the money?”

  “He’d better. The stuff Aleksy already had printed out is dynamite. All about the first deal between Hudson’s petrochemical firm and the Soviet state fertilizer concession.”

  “Old news,” Swann said. He twisted flesh precisely and was rewarded by a gasp. “Nobody cares anymore.”

  She closed her eyes and savored the skill of the man who was playing with her the way she liked it best, holding her suspended between pleasure and pain, letting her know it could go either way.

  “They’ll care,” she said huskily. “There’s a complete description of the way Hudson International supplied the critical technology for a nerve gas plant in Libya. Hudson doesn’t even know the Russians found out.”

  “You’d better be careful when you break the news. He’s old. His heart might not take the shock.”

  Her eyes opened like twin slices of midnight. “Not likely. He’s a potent bastard.”

  “Did you haul his ashes for him?”

  “I didn’t have to. He came in his shorts while I was reciting his file.”

  Swann laughed and stretched her with his thumb and forefinger.

  “I almost feel sorry for Hudson,” Swann said. “Probably be a week before he gets it up again.”

  “He had it up again in five minutes,” she said, shifting her hips languidly.

  “Impressive.”

  “He’s been taking Romanian sex hormone treatments for the last ten years.”

  “Painful, if rumors are true.”

  “Yeah. And like heroin, you can’t just stop after a few. The longer you take the hormone, the more you need it.”

  “Lovely,” Swann said huskily.

  “I’m trying to figure out how to use it against him.”

  “You really get off on blackmail, don’t you? Makes you a good journalist.”

  “Public kiss-and-tell isn’t real power. Real power is letting some poor bastard like Hudson think you’re about to print his secrets. He’ll jump through ten thousand hoops to avoid it. The fun comes in designing the hoops especially for him.”

  “Is that what you did with the guy who’s bothering my daughter?” Swann asked. “Make some hoops and watch him jump?”

  Toth cut a narrow-eyed glance at Swann’s face, wondering for the first time if he somehow suspected what she’d done.

  Swann was watching his fingers. The look on his face was bluntly sexual.

  Smiling, she flexed her body, reminding him of how it would be when they finally quit torturing one another. She was rewarded by a flick of his thumbnail that made her squirm hungrily.

  “Cruz Rowan was a righteous, stiff-necked prick,” she said, breathing quickly. “All he had to do was cooperate with Aleksy and I wouldn’t have printed a word. The Soviets didn’t want to destroy Rowan. They wanted to use him.”

  “Clever. A well-placed federal agent, a man deep in the heart of the American counterterrorist corps. Quite a coup.”

  “You got it, lover. Rowan would have been a hell of a lot more valuable working on our side than the momentary propaganda benefit my article gave the Soviets.”

  Swann leaned forward and put the gem-studded egg between Toth’s big breasts.

  “Hold on to that,” he said. “I’m going to need both my hands.”

  “What for?”

  “Watch.”

  With a lithe movement, he knelt between her legs. His hands went beneath her, sinking into her full hips, holding her in a vise that would leave marks.

  She didn’t care. She knew what was coming. She was wild for it, twisting and straining up toward him, only to be held down by the clenched power of his hands.

  “Not yet, baby,” he said thickly, looking at her flushed, swollen flesh. “I’ve never had you this hot before. I’m going to see what you’ve been holding back.”

  Slowly he dragged a stubble-roughened cheek down the length of first one thigh, then the other. By the time he lowered his mouth to Toth, she was shaking uncontrollably.

  It was the first time she’d experienced the dangerous sexual thrill of ordering the death of an assassin’s only child one moment and surrendering her body to that same assassin in the next. It was a dar
k, compulsive thrill, and it could only happen once. She tried to hold back, but it was too late. Swann was right. She’d never been this out of control before.

  She climaxed at the first raking touch of his teeth.

  23

  Cambria

  Monday night

  Cruz looked at Laurel’s rigid profile and wondered how much longer he would have to wait before he could risk pushing her. If she blew up, it would take too long to settle her down again. The assassins or others just like them would be showing up at her house real soon. She couldn’t be here when that happened.

  He wanted to go to her, hold her, comfort her. Yet he knew that anything he offered in the way of gentleness would be thrown right back in his teeth. The aftermath of an adrenaline jag took most people that way—pure, raging, hair-trigger temper. He was used to that reaction in himself and largely controlled it.

  But Laurel was new to the game.

  He looked at his watch and decided. If push came to crunch, he could always knock her out, stuff her in his car, and drive.

  “Help me get back in the armor,” he said calmly.

  She wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head.

  “If that’s all the thanks I get,” he said dryly, “the knight business isn’t what it used to be.”

  “Knights don’t go around s-shooting people for the thanks it g-gets them.”

  “You’re right. The image of professional knighthood has taken a hell of a beating around here in the last few minutes.”

  She took a ragged breath. Then another. It helped calm the frantic rush of adrenaline and the pounding of her heart. “Are you saying those creatures that sh-shot you are knights?”

  “No. But your father is. At least, he used to be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a hell of a world when a knight throws his own daughter to the dragons.”

  She turned to face Cruz so quickly that she nearly fell. Distantly she realized that her knees were shaking. She braced herself on the worktable and ignored the weakness in her knees.

  “My father didn’t throw me to any dragons,” she said distinctly.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”