by Cook, Lori
She turned without a word. And as he watched her go, his eyes full of tears, he took his penis in his free hand and began to rub it slowly, thinking about everything she’d done for him.
Chapter Sixteen
So Jerry Hobbs was left there, lying on the bed, a big pile of old encyclopedias on the floor of his bedroom, where there should have been two and a half million dollars in cash. It had been a simple enough job for Carol, and an utter delight to crack. She’d enjoyed his company, and the straightforward nature of his lust. He was just a horny guy who’d screwed up in his professional life, using his legal know-how to con innocent people out of their money. He had to pay for it, but at least he and Carol had enjoyed themselves.
As she’d stood there, looking down at him on the bed, helpless and confused as he realized that his off-shore account had been emptied, she felt genuine pity. Suddenly, his pot of off-shore money was gone, and with it any dreams for the future.
She’d forced herself not to feel too sorry for him, though. After all, he still had his own house and a decent profession to his name. He had not been left destitute. Just desperate. And the most pleasing thing: it had all been his own fault.
After leaving him there, still handcuffed to the bedstead, she’d flown over to London and spent some time hitting the galleries and museums. It was as if she needed to relax and recover from what had been a deeply gratifying but exhausting few days with Mr. Hobbs. It had been more than simply a good day at the office, she had to admit; it had been awesome.
Now she needed a break. Wandering around the National Gallery and sipping overpriced lattes in the city’s endless coffee shops was just the thing to take her mind off Jerry and his insatiable desire.
As usual in London, she chose a small, modest hotel. There were fabulous hotels in the city, some of the best in the world, and she could have taken her pick. But there was something annoying about them. The best London hotels had suddenly become vulgar, packed with people who seemed to need the whole world to know just how fabulously rich they were, talking loudly and acting like petulant teens. She hated flagrant demonstrations of wealth, which was somewhat ironic, given her lifestyle.
There was also the small matter of a million dollars to deal with, her cut of the money from Hobbs. It was the first time the Cardinal had given her money directly. Had it been significant, a means of telling her she was free, severance pay?
It was difficult to tell, because money always seemed to be the last thing on the Cardinal’s mind. In all the time she had been working for him, he had never once brought up the question of how much she could spend. She had a couple of credit cards in her name, and she spent exactly as much as she wanted, funding a life of unrestrained and unchecked luxury. How much had she spent over the years? Way more than a million. Two? Three? She had no idea. But the balance on the accounts was always cleared, no questions asked.
Now, though, she had been given a million dollars, a cash check made out in her name. Was it a golden good-bye? A thank you? She had no idea. She knew one thing, though: there was still one job left to do, and nothing would stop her.
It hadn’t taken her long to persuade the Cardinal that Alex Strange would be a worthy recipient of the kind of justice only he and Carol could deliver. And now, as preparations were being made, Carol had been told to await further instructions. The job would be a little more complex than normal, and there was no guarantee of success. All she had to do, for the moment, was wait.
Three weeks after arriving in the English capital, her instructions arrived, in the shape of a slightly overweight woman in a baggy trouser suit and several document folders in her arms. She was middle-aged, with untidy hair and a motherly smile. She came directly to Carol’s hotel room.
“Hi,” she said, in one of those weird Brit accents that Carol couldn’t place, but which sounded like the villain in a million Hollywood thrillers. “My name is Michelle, and I’m going to be your tutor for the next few days.”
Fortunately, Carol had been warned about this. Michelle taught copyright law at London University, and had been contracted to deliver a crash course on the subject to Carol, who was posing as a Hollywood writer doing research for a script about a computer programmer.
For the following week the two women sat in Carol’s modest West London hotel room, studying copyright law. The lessons were more interesting than Carol had anticipated, and once they’d gotten over the basics, they looked in detail at digital copyright, especially software theft, taking old test cases and seeing how they’d been resolved by the courts, both in the UK and the US. They also, on the Cardinal’s instructions, managed to get Carol up to speed on the basics of legal practice in Hong Kong.
After five days of class, Carol Schmidt was ready. She wouldn’t fool a lawyer, but she’d damn well fool anyone else.
Then the call came: go to New York.
*
When she was through security in JFK, she took a cab straight to the Marriot on Times Square. She couldn’t get the same room that she’d had a decade earlier, but she got one on the same corner, looking down Forty-Sixth Street, which always seemed to be shrouded in dark shadows and a little grimy, despite being so near to the lights of Broadway.
Ten years ago she’d pulled up at the hotel on a sunny Friday afternoon and stepped out onto the streets of New York for the first time, on the very morning of her eighteenth birthday, still hardly believing that she was on American soil, never mind at the center of the world.
She remembered it now. It had been a crazy couple of days. Just twenty-four hours earlier she’d said good-bye to the convent for the last time. Discreetly and without fanfare she had slipped out through a side entrance and into a waiting car, the Cardinal sitting impassively in the passenger seat. As the gates opened and she was driven away, she looked back at the old building with a certain fondness. It hadn’t been a bad place, all things considered. And it wasn’t as if anyone else had been offering to take her in when, as a young girl, she had been orphaned.
No, the Slaves of the Lord had done her well enough, although she knew that she could never go back, never, not after the death of Raúl. Her life there was over, and her new one was just about to begin.
That same evening, a decade ago in Mexico City, she’d done more than had been asked of her. Not only did she make sure that Father Bonavente was photographed in the most compromising of positions (and with an underage convent girl), but she also retrieved the camera that the photographer dropped as he escaped, dodging the bullets from the priest’s gun. Carol had been scared too, scared to death. But she knew what was at stake for her, and she had simply closed her mind to the dangers and run, the camera in her hand.
Flying up from Mexico the next morning, on her eighteenth birthday, she knew she’d finally made it. She was free of her former life, free of the scandal which had engulfed her back at the convent. Carol Schmidt was about to be reborn, and in exchange for such an amazing opportunity—a first-class ticket to life!—she would work for the Cardinal. Happy birthday, Carol!
The Cardinal had spoken to her only briefly by phone when she arrived in New York that day, but over the coming weeks and months she began to understand exactly what he wanted of her: whenever he needed a woman of especial beauty, someone sexually irresistible and, above all, a consummate actress, he would call Carol. As long as she agreed to the job and was willing to use her skills of seduction on whomever it was that needed punishing, the Cardinal’s work could continue, and another victim could be wrapped in a web of his or her own sins...
Ten years later, and she was checking into the Marriot again. This time she was not quite so excited by life, not giddy at what the future might hold. But she still loved what she did, rejoiced in her ability to ensnare absolutely anybody, to turn them inside out with desire for her. As long as a person had an ounce of lust in their body, they would fall for Carol, and hence for the Cardinal’s plans. She had never stopped reveling in the curious kind of satisfaction that such a warped
, beautiful form of justice brought, and the fact that she enjoyed every second of it was an added bonus.
She walked into her room, and, just as she had ten years ago, she let herself fall backward onto the huge bed. Staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, it was as if secrets of how to unlock the unbridled ecstasy of life were spelled out for her on its pristine white surface. Hotel rooms were amongst her favorite places in the world, and the Marriot was her favorite hotel ever, in her favorite city. So Carol Schmidt, after ten years working for the Cardinal, was once again at the center of her own sensuous, seductive universe. And she loved it.
She jumped up and carefully took off her clothes. Immediately she felt the same gorgeous sense of liberty she always did, ever since that first time in the bulb room down behind the convent, when she had felt the warm air all over her young, developing body. It’s not just Carol, though. Who doesn’t like to walk naked around a hotel room when they’re alone?
Running her hands over her breasts, she looked down, feeling them lift and fall under her touch, and sighed with satisfaction. Ten years of womanhood. Were they sagging? Not at all! They were fuller, the nipples darker and still fabulously responsive, and they still had that alluring naturalness that had been irresistible to so many people over the years.
She loved the way her breasts fell free, still perky, the nipples pointing slightly upward, but just a little heavy with their own weight, that girlish firmness replaced by the deeper, more sculptured roundness of maturity. If she could have done so, she would have knelt in front of herself, kissing and caressing them, delighting in their incredible softness and the tense, responsive nipples at their hardest. She would have worshiped herself, there on the carpet. Vain? Oh, yes! Carol Schmidt was the vainest person imaginable. Yet she had a quality which offset almost any amount of vanity: she knew it, and rejoiced in it. She knew who she was, and she knew what made her happy. Or, rather; she thought she did...
The only regret she had about her sexual life was that she would never know what it was like to be seduced by herself. It was more a matter of professional curiosity that anything else. Over the years she had brought people to the wildest of climaxes, the kind of orgasms that made them cry and wince with unbearable pain, the fullest, dirtiest gratification they had ever known. Sometimes—just now and then—she wished she could do it all to herself, from the first flirtatious glance to the final spine-twisting jerk of ecstasy. But of course, that was impossible.
She breathed deeply and felt the soft, deep carpet as it seemed to wrap itself around her bare feet. Standing there next to the bed, she continued to examine herself. Her pubic hair was darker than it had been ten years ago, and somewhat thicker. She’d never been one for trimming and shaving. Her little pad of hair down there was just right, she thought, completely natural, springy not wiry.
She’d never understood the whole Brazilian thing. Whenever a man went down on her, they would bury their faces in her pubes, inhaling hard, moving their faces back and forth across the curly mound. More than once a guy had gotten off just licking her bush, the hairs drenched with his saliva as he turned them to a slithery mass.
Once a lover had asked her to shave herself. She agreed to do it, but only if he did so too. They screwed like crazy, turned on by the sight of their smooth, vaguely pre-pubescent crotches. A whole week they were at it, covering themselves in oil, writhing and sliding against each other. Eventually the hair started to grow again and they both ended up scratching each other red raw with their hard pubic stubble.
As she reminisced, there in the hotel room, her hands continued to move over her body. Her buttocks were taut and just right, the same as they always were. And her stomach was flat. She was almost twenty-eight, but she still had the litheness and athleticism of a very young woman. Meanwhile, her hips and breasts were of a goddess. There was nothing even faintly girlish about her figure.
The overall effect was enough to give a man an erection without him realizing. It happened all the time. Guys would find themselves staring at her across a restaurant or bar as they talked to their wives or colleagues, and before they knew it there’d be an embarrassing bulge in their pants. Then they’d simply break off the conversation, squirming in their seats, but unable to take their eyes off her.
Sometimes the whole thing was a pain in the ass. These days if she happened to be going to a bar alone, she would dress down to the point of making herself look as unattractive as possible. It wasn’t that she disliked being hit on, it was just the frequency of it. She actually enjoyed being alone, and there’s nothing that ruins a nice thoughtful drink alone at a bar than being propositioned between every sip of wine.
In general, though, she was pretty much proud of her physique. It came at a cost, though. Maintaining a body like Carol’s required serious hours in the gym and a pretty sensible diet. But a healthy regime was not really what made Carol Schmidt so alluring, her body so maddeningly horny. It was natural, a gift, an aura, something you couldn’t acquire however many grapefruits you ate. The Cardinal had been right: she had a talent, and that talent was knowing exactly how to use her sexuality, how to ensnare and seduce people with it, to draw them out of their safety zone and into a world of untold pleasure.
And a lot of people had been ensnared, always in the name of justice, the kind of justice that, for one reason or another, was not available through the normal legal routes. The knowledge that a moral point was being made with each seduction gave her added satisfaction. Win-win. One thing she had never bargained for, though, was that her unique lifestyle, and the sexual confidence that made it possible, might itself fall victim to a force infinitely more powerful, to urges beyond her control.
She had never stopped to consider the possibility that she too might be seduced.
Chapter Seventeen
Back when she had just turned eighteen, her new life was still ahead of her. Waiting for the Cardinal at the Marriot, having just flown up from Mexico, Carol had no idea what was in store for her, although she had already worked out that the Cardinal’s line of work was way unusual.
That first day at the hotel, she had eventually made her way down to the lobby to have a look around, her curiosity getting the better of her, and the call of Times Square too much to resist.
And there he was.
It was like a scene in some ridiculous romantic movie. As she walked into the lobby, Jason had just checked in and turned toward the lifts.
He was young, early twenties, with shaggy mid-brown hair. He was skinny in a tight black T-shirt, and his black jeans were faded to a mid-gray and frayed at the bottom. He wore rimless glasses, and over his shoulder hung a large sports bag so heavy that it pulled his whole body lopsided, giving him the appearance of being younger and weaker than he actually was.
He saw her, checked his step for just a second, then continued toward her.
“Jeez,” he said, as if they were old friends, “I work in tech and I’ve never even seen one of these before. They open the door, right?”
In his hand was a plastic room card.
He was bobbing up and down on his heels, clearly hoping that she’d respond in the same slightly over-confident, grad-school way he had of talking. And even then, so young and inexperienced, she instinctively knew that it was all bravado, and that unless she said something to keep his confidence up, he’d deflate, his gambit punctured irreparably.
“Me too,” she said, opening her eyes and drinking him in. “What ever happened to keys?”
“Yeah,” he said, almost exploding with relief, as the most gorgeous girl he had ever seen smiled at him and seemed keen to stop and talk. “It’s like, there was a problem with the key? I mean, as a technology, the key suddenly ceased to function? Or was it that our dirty underwear and fake leather luggage suddenly needed more protection in our hotel rooms?”
That, more or less, was it. She knew she wanted to take him to bed. And he, of course, wanted exactly the same thing. What was unusual was that she managed not only to be
coy and reserved, but also to convey the fact that she wanted him to fuck her.
The deliberately mixed message in her eyes and on her young lips was something he would never see again, not so perfectly done. Not ever. And over the years since then he had lain awake at night many times, his wife sleeping quietly next to him, and thought about the way Carol had looked at him that afternoon in the hotel lobby.
“So,” she’d said, about ten minutes later, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of his room and watching the back of his green T-shirt as he fixed them both a drink from the minibar, “this is, like, a freebie for you?”
“Yeah,” he said, hobbling back over to her on his knees, two small glasses in his hands. “They’re paying for the trip. Strange Tech. Heard of them?”
“Nope,” she said, taking a sip.
Some of the older girls at the convent used to smuggle drinks into the dorms, and would make ridiculously strong Cuba Libre cocktails, so much liquor in them that one glass and they’d be delirious on their beds, or drooped over the toilet basin.
But Jason had mixed very little Jack Daniels into her Coke. She liked that, how he wasn’t trying to get her drunk. Plus, she loved the way they were sitting on the floor like students, no rush, no urgency, just hanging out together. On the dresser was a CD player and two mini speakers. He’d put a Nirvana disk on. He was cool. She desperately wanted him.
“Strange Tech,” he told her solemnly, as if by simply speaking the name he was invoking some higher power, “is the tech behind the tech. Every coder in the world wants to work for them, I mean, apart from guys who are into web design and games and shit like that.” He spat out the words as if they were distasteful. “All good coders want to work for Alex Strange right now. He is completely unknown outside the industry. But he is gonna be absolutely massive.”
