From calling him a peacock, Christine’s colleague Nathan had moved, grudgingly, to talking about Angel as a unicorn, the mythical creature in whose existence so many women wanted to believe: the romance novel hero who reformed his wild playboy ways for the sake of a nice woman. How could she possibly resist that?
Angel ran a hand through Christine’s hair, turning her face to his so that he could drop a kiss on her lips.
‘My poor darling,’ he said, his fingers caressing her cheek, straying down to the sensitive place on her neck that he knew by now sent a shiver through her entire body, touched a string that pulled up right between her legs. ‘I’ve been neglecting you horribly with all this expedition training! But it won’t be much longer. We’re back in a few weeks, and then I’m going to whisk you away for a long weekend. Granny Viv and Berkeley can surely spare you for that long! Venice, maybe, or Capri. Somewhere really romantic, where we don’t have to see anyone but room service waiters for the entire time . . . wouldn’t that be wonderful? Maybe even Tylosand! That would be rather lovely, wouldn’t it? To go back to where we met?’
Even as Angel was stroking Christine, making her body respond to him with his expert touch, he was talking to her but looking at Tor, a little smile on his perfectly shaped lips as he taunted Tor with the mention of his home town. And even as Christine tried not to close her eyes in pleasure at the feel of Angel’s hands on her, knowing that if he wanted to take her into a bathroom now and push her up against the wall and lift her skirt, she would let him – more than that, would pull up her skirt herself, undo his trousers, pull out his cock – she was still intensely aware of Tor so close to her, so attractive in such a different way from the man who had his arm around her waist now, his fingers tracing her jawline.
Her body was hot, melting, and more confused than it had ever been. She didn’t know who she wanted. No, that was a lie; she wanted both of them. She raised her eyes to Tor’s face and saw his mouth twist, his jaw set hard as he turned away from her and Angel, walking over to greet a group of sponsors who were chatting further down the balcony. For a moment, she imagined herself naked with both Tor and Angel, taking both of them at once; that made her even hotter, even more confused, and she found herself turning to Angel, hugging him, mainly to press her face into his shoulder and hide it from anyone who might be looking over at her.
‘I have been neglecting you,’ Angel murmured into her ear, biting and licking it, his breath deliciously hot and stimulating. ‘What a terrible boyfriend I am! And darling, I can’t see to your needs tonight! I have to get some rest before leaving tomorrow I’m so sorry Will you take care of yourself tonight? Fuck yourself silly with your Rabbit and think of me while you’re doing it?’
Christine mumbled a yes, even while the image of Angel and Tor naked having sex with her consumed her imagination.
Work, she told herself, taking a deep breath, trying to recover some composure. I’ll concentrate on work until the auction. It’s good that Angel’s going away – it gives me even more time to focus. I have a major negotiation with Lil’ Biscuit and Silantra tomorrow! I need to get my sleep to be fresh for that. . .
She had no idea, of course, that Angel’s plans that evening did not involve getting an early night before the flight to La Paz the next day; instead, he and Nicole would be engaging in a lively threesome with Silantra, ensuring that she was in the best of all possible moods for the meeting with Christine at Berkeley Swiftly Angel speculated whether it was safe to leave Christine alone that evening, considering the interest that Tor was still showing in her. He was ridiculously persistent, annoyingly so. Tor and Christine had only met each other once, yet the chemistry was evident: Angel had seen them talking to each other on the balcony, and instantly seen what was going on. They were like two magnets trying to snap together, prevented by a force field. Tor had been almost vibrating with yearning to reach out and take her in his arms.
It made Christine even more attractive to Angel. There was a specific and consuming pleasure to fucking a woman who was desired by a man one intensely disliked. Angel actually wished he didn’t have a prior engagement with Silantra and Nicole: how he would have enjoyed spending the night with Christine, looking down at her as she deep-throated him, just as he had taught her; once he’d shot his load and she’d licked him clean, he’d eat her out in turn, oil her up and slide a string of anal beads inside her, pulling them out slowly as he made her come.
And with the other hand, just as she was coming hard, he’d reach up, catch one pink pointed nipple and pinch it hard enough to make her scream. He knew that the pain was no delightful extra for her, that she accepted it only because the pleasure was so intense, and that gave him even more of a thrill – the delight of constantly forcing something on her that she didn’t want.
Nicole didn’t understand why he was still enjoying sex with Christine so much: well, this was why. Never before had he had a regular partner who did not share his predilection for mixing pain with pleasure, but found the pleasure so intense that she accepted the pain as the price she had to pay for it. How much he could make Christine take, how far he could push her, were questions he was pursuing with the utmost enthusiasm.
Would she eventually stop protesting at the marks he delighted in leaving on her in return for the flood of orgasms, the thrill of not knowing what his clever fingers would do to her next? Nearly two months in, he still relished the frisson of seeing those big blue eyes widen in surprise when he hurt her and made her come simultaneously, the freckles stand out on the bridge of her nose, the flush in her cheeks, the O her pink lips made as he pinched her and fucked her and made her scream.
Leaning over, he whispered to her what he would have planned for them that evening, if he could, and watched as her nipples hardened under her dress, visible even though she was wearing a bra – unlike Silantra and Nicole, those filthy sluts, he thought, his cock in a pleasant state of engorgement for all three women. He knew Christine wasn’t in love with him, but he couldn’t have cared less. It was enough that she was mesmerized by him. She might not love him, but she wouldn’t leave him, not unless he let her.
And he wouldn’t let her. Vivienne’s promises of huge financial bonuses for the wedding and births of the children were very compelling. Angel, naturally, had an ulterior motive for joining Tor’s expedition – one that had nothing to do with cancer, and everything to do with a financial emergency that not only required his presence in that part of the world, but a plausible cover story to explain it. God only knew whether the emergency would be resolved; even if Angel managed to pull off the whole tricky business, most of the monetary return was already earmarked to settle his gambling debts.
So he needed to have his trust fund fully reinstated, plus every penny of those promised lump sums from Vivienne. What else did his grandmother have to spend it on, after all? She wouldn’t be amassing more jewellery, and her business empires were still bringing in a huge income.
Besides, by marrying and knocking up Christine, he would drive Tor insane with frustration and jealousy Big, muscly Tor with his tight buttocks and his sweet nature! How Angel would enjoy watching Tor’s reactions at Angel and Christine’s wedding, when Tor saw Christine swelling up with Angel’s baby, holding it in her arms! He would be able to torture Tor with this for years to come. Poor Tor was the opposite of Angel, a serial monogamist who needed to be in love to have sex with someone. Tor had been with his childhood sweetheart for donkey’s years, and now he was plainly nursing a huge crush on Christine.
Which makes her extra-precious to me, Angel thought, finishing up his stream of sex talk to Christine, having reduced her to a near-puddle of frustrated desire. But I’ll have to keep her away from Tor until I’ve sealed the deal. She likes him too much, and he’s much more suited to her than I am. Two nice vanilla people just longing to settle down and get married and bake cookies together in a house with a white picket fence while never having sex with anyone else for the rest of their lives. God, I fee
l sick at the mere idea . . .
Angel would propose, he decided, on his return from the Andes as a triumphant, cancer-fighting action hero; sweep Christine off her feet, get Vivienne to lavish her with attention, turn the screw so that she didn’t feel she could say no. It would be a new game, keeping a woman who wasn’t in love with him and who was half-yearning for a man Angel loathed. A game, Angel realized, that he could play for years with Christine and Tor as the main pieces, and his and Christine’s children as the pawns. What fun he was going to have!
Sighing with happiness, Angel planted a kiss on Christine’s head.
‘Darling,’ he said, reaching for a cigarette with his free hand. ‘I am literally going to count the hours till I get back from the Andes and can see you again, I tell you. We are going to have the most amazing reunion. Think of me, celibate for all that time! Can you imagine the head of steam I’ll have built up for you? My God, I won’t let you out of bed for days!’
He felt her tremble in his arms, and smiled triumphantly over her head at Tor, who, though now talking to Prince Toby, had been unable to resist a glance back at Angel and Christine. Angel raised the hand clasping the cigarette packet and waved it at Tor, rather regally.
Goodness, I have a long to-do list, he reflected. Pay my gambling debts, propose to Christine, snag a mansion from Granny Viv, grab the marriage bonus as well as half the finder’s fee from Lil’ Biscuit and Silantra – oh, and the no-doubt hefty sum the gossip magazines will pay for exclusive photo shoots and interviews of our engagement and wedding . . . and I’ll get Granny Viv to set me up with some promotional job at her foundation so I can travel a lot, avoid spending more time than I have to with my wife, ensure I get plenty of fun on the side . . .
It wasn’t exactly how he had pictured the next few years of his life. But after all, he had been rather in a rut, hadn’t he? This new game plan presented him with a whole range of interesting challenges. And Angel did dearly love a challenge.
Chapter Fifteen
The Andes – two weeks later
The two men wrestling on the edge of the snowy clifftop were fighting for their lives. Their grunts of exertion were audible and with each one, a puff of breath formed in the ice-cold air: hot, brief clouds that were testimony to both the sub-zero temperature and the intensity of their struggle.
It could have been the climax of an action film. They both had film-star good looks, though in very different styles: one was lean and taut, the other stockier and solidly muscled. Each was trying to get a grip on the other’s Arctic parka, but their hands, encased in windproof gloves, kept sliding off the slippery fabric as they battled for supremacy. Their protective face masks were pulled back, revealing their grimaces of concentration as they grappled clumsily, both acutely aware of how near they were to the brink of the mountain and the lethal drop directly below.
The more heavyset man was wearing wolfskin gloves, and that advantage finally enabled him to grab the other by the padded collar of his parka and hold on for dear life. Both hands dug in with great strength, the rough animal pelt clinging to the fur trim of the collar. He forced his opponent to look at him as he yelled into his face:
‘What the hell are you doing, you idiot? You’re going to get us both killed!’
The speaker’s features were craggy and strong. His eyes were a piercing bright blue, as light and clear as the sky above them, which seemed almost bleached by the reflection of the snow-covered peaks of the Andes mountain range. His square chin was covered by a magnificently thick coppery beard worthy of a Viking or a Tudor monarch, the sunlight glinting off the rose-gold hairs, his forehead corrugated in disbelief as he shook his adversary, head tilted back a little to look up at him.
‘Oh, no!’ the taller man said lightly. ‘Not both of us.’
He was dazzlingly beautiful, his face, as striking as a Michelangelo marble statue, framed in a cluster of curls, with a classically straight nose above a full, pouting mouth. His pale cheeks were flushed with exertion but his eyes were dancing with excitement; he seemed somehow to be enjoying the adrenalin rush of this life-and-death struggle, even as a bruise started to blossom on one of his high cheekbones. Although he, too, was sporting a beard, it was much lighter than the other man’s, as if the lower part of his face were dusted with gilt.
The Viking shot a glance down at the icy ground on which they were standing, perilously close to the brink. Below it was the fissure of a jagged crevasse hundreds of feet deep, rocky outcrops tumbling down its side as if frozen in place by the heavy covering of ice, myriad blades pointed upwards to impale anyone unlucky enough to fall over the edge.
‘That’s crazy,’ he said, frowning even more deeply. ‘Are you on that stuff of yours? You’re talking like a madman. Let’s both take a big step back, okay?’
He jerked his head behind him, indicating the relative safety of a rock-strewn plateau. Relative to their present position it was a suntrap, the ice much less thick there. Clearly he was calculating that even if the fight continued beyond this standoff, a fall from the plateau would not be life-threatening.
‘Spoilsport,’ the Michelangelo statue said; but he acquiesced, letting the Viking guide him, still gripping his collar, a couple of steps back. The copper-bearded man let out a long, slow breath of relief as, their parkas brushing closely together, moving slowly in their heavy, snow-crusted boots as they found purchase on the stony, ice-covered ground, they inched away from the killer drop.
‘Okay,’ the Viking said, letting his hands fall, his expression still serious. ‘So we need to—’
But he never finished his sentence. As soon as his grip loosened, the Michelangelo, in one swift, elegant movement, dropped to one knee and immediately rose again, now with something in his hand. He might have been a dancer, so smooth and choreographed was the flow of his body. His back heel anchored into the ground, simultaneously pushing back and driving him up again in one long line that ran right up his legs to his torso, twisting now, the motion pushing to his arm, which whipped out in a tightly controlled gesture. It all happened so fast that the other man barely had time to grimace in disbelief, his words dying on his lips as the fist-sized stone the Michelangelo had picked up from the plateau floor crashed into his opponent’s left temple.
It connected with an audible smash of rock against bone. The copper-bearded man staggered, his fur-lined hood tumbling back from his face. But he was as tough as an ox – or the Viking he resembled – and managed to stay on his feet, his legs spread wide, even as one hand rose to his forehead and came away wet with blood. He roared in anger, surging towards the Michelangelo, his wide shoulders ducked to charge him.
The lighter, faster man, a matador to his opponent’s bull, held his ground until the last possible second and then sidestepped, dancing onto one foot, raising the other to plant the sole of his boot into the Viking’s side, kicking him with all his force to send him reeling off balance. As the Viking, arms outstretched to try to save himself, hit the ground, the Michelangelo narrowed his beautiful eyes in swift, lethal assessment – and then, with an overhand throw, flung the rock he still held against the now-bare and vulnerable coppery head.
The Viking went down under the blow, his forehead striking the stone ground. Either that impact, or the rock to the back of his head, knocked him out. He was motionless, his big square body limp inside its insulating layers of wool and down and Gore-Tex, unable to defend himself further.
‘I did say “not both of us”,’ Angel observed to the lone condor that was riding the thermals, wings outspread to a magnificent three-metre span, soaring above the peaks across the wide crevasse. ‘Is it my fault he couldn’t listen properly?’
He waited, however, a good minute more, ducking over to observe the blood trickling from Tor’s forehead and clotting in the thick red-gold thatch of hair at the back of his head. He was extremely cautious, wanting to be absolutely sure that that Tor wasn’t faking unconsciousness, setting a trap for Angel to come close so that he could
take him off guard, regain the advantage, grab an ankle and send Angel twisting off balance.
But the blood continued to flow, and Tor stayed exactly where he was, his head at an angle on the stones. Finally warily Angel stepped forward and shoved the body with his foot, rolling it closer to the precipice. It was heavy a dead weight, but it yielded under a firm push. Emboldened, Angel gave another shove, grunting with the effort, and then another, until finally he bent down and slid one gloved hand under Tor’s back, the other under his solid buttocks, clad in windproof trousers.
Slowly and carefully, because of the slippery fabric, he tipped the body away from him, turning it on its side over the last few rocks, then onto its face, rolling Tor like a carpet closer and closer to the edge of the mountain. Eventually, with a last big grunt of exertion, he heaved Tor’s still-breathing body over the edge of the cliff. His abdominals clenched, controlling the movement with every bit of his strength to ensure that the effort of tipping the body into the crevasse didn’t send him over with it, too.
Angel expected to hear a crash of some sort, a solid thunk as bone and muscle and thick clothing layers smashed onto the jutting rocks below – but no sound came. Kneeling on the icy brink, he craned his head over and saw the body shooting away down a fissure in the rock, as fast as if it were travelling down a long ice slide. He smiled in pleasure, aware that the eventual impact would be even more devastating when it came.
‘Enjoy the ride,’ he observed. ‘That’s really quite the ski jump.’
He stood up, dusting the snow off his knees.
That was the trouble with decent chaps, he thought meditatively. They expected everyone else to fight clean. Poor Tor. A stint at Angel’s boarding school would have done him a world of good; he’d have learned to get down and dirty with the best of them.
Killer Diamonds Page 27
