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He’d forgotten her breasts. Small, perfect, the nipples hard in the warm room. He’d forgotten the soft, muffled sounds she made when she was ready to come. Like she was right now.
And he’d forgotten the dark, bleak pain in her eyes when she had no defenses left, and he’d trapped her, used her, and there was no love at all.
He’d pull out. Away from her, before he could destroy her completely. That’s what he had to do—he couldn’t, he shouldn’t…
Her hands came up from the floor and touched his face, gently. Her fingers brushed his mouth, slowly slid down his tense, sweat-dampened body, light and caressing. She was crying…. A woman like Isobel Lambert shouldn’t cry. And then her hands gripped his hips and she arched, bringing him in deeper still, and she said yes to his unasked question. Yes, and yes, and yes.
He kissed her, because he couldn’t stop himself. He tried to go slowly, to make it good for her, to make it the best she’d ever had, but she was already past that point, making those strangled little cries that sent him over the edge, and there was nothing but heat and damp and the smell and the touch and the taste, and he could have no more stopped himself than he could have stopped the storm outside.
He was a man who fucked in silence. And when he climaxed, long, hard, endlessly, inside her tight body, he heard his voice in the darkness. Calling her name.
Reno stretched out on the floor, a beer cradled in his hands, his eyes drifting closed as he listened to the sound of the storm outside. Tiny pellets of icy rain were beating against the windows, mixed with the noise of the video game Mahmoud was playing.
It had been a strange day.
He opened one eye, glancing at the kid. He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress Reno had dragged out for him. The second bedroom was crowded with discarded furniture, but he could at least get out the mattress. Mahmoud would have been happy enough sleeping on the hard floor—clearly he’d slept in far worse places—but Reno had a soft spot for the kid.
Besides, he probably wasn’t going to sleep at all—he was going to stay up all night playing video games. It had been love at first sight; one taste of Mortal Kombat and the boy was hooked. Reno had battled him for hours, opponent after opponent. Sometimes he let Mahmoud win, at other times he’d simply slap his character to the ground and rip out his spinal cord. Reno didn’t let himself dwell on the eerie thought that Mahmoud would have lived in a world like that. Well, the ripping out of spinal cords was not usually seen outside of a video game, but the blood had been real for him.
He looked relaxed, happy, with his newly spiked purple hair, rude T-shirt and ripped jeans that had cost more than a child soldier would make in a lifetime. And they’d figured out how to communicate, a crazy mix of French, English, Arabic, Japanese and video game terms. After two hours of silence Mahmoud had started talking, and he hadn’t stopped, as characters battled on the HD television screen and fake blood spattered.
Reno understood only part of it, but it hadn’t mattered. Mahmoud had needed to talk, and he listened. They moved from fight games to first person shooters, and Reno found himself hopelessly out-classed by a kid fifteen years younger than he was, something he wasn’t about to put up with. Older brother kindness could only go so far, and he moved him on to RPGs, fantasy role-playing games where Mahmoud could wander through enchanted forests, kill trolls, turn into a wizard and collect potions. The kid was in heaven, and Reno could retire to his bedroom in peace.
They’d already had a solemn exchange of presents, Japanese style. He’d given Mahmoud his most prized possession, his handheld game system that was still in beta mode, unavailable on the open market and so advanced it made PS3 look like an Atari. And Mahmoud had given him a string of beads, cracked, ancient, worthless. The beads had belonged to his foster sister. He’d taken them from her dead body, and had sworn on them to kill the man who’d murdered her.
He’d given them to Reno, along with his blood oath of revenge, finally letting go. And Reno, cold, unsentimental punk that he considered himself to be, had wrapped them around his wrist, knowing he would carry them with him until the day he died.
He could hear nothing from the floor below. He’d never even realized there was a closed-off living space down there—he was just glad Peter Madsen hadn’t decided to put him in it during his training period. England was bad enough; being in a prison wouldn’t help.
Madame Lambert had looked like a different woman than the cold, efficient robot she’d appeared to be the only other time he’d been in England. But then, that had been miles away from the plain, middle-aged cult follower that had been the first disguise he’d seen her in. Maybe the robot was a disguise as well, and the bloody, torn and troubled woman who’d been waiting for them with an unconscious man and a furious Mahmoud was the real Madame Lambert.
Normally Reno wouldn’t care. It was none of his business. But it didn’t look as if he’d be getting back to Tokyo anytime soon, and he held the firm belief that if he was going to do something, even if coerced into it, then he should do it completely. And in order to accomplish that, he needed to understand the people he worked with.
What had she been doing all day with the man she’d drugged? He was more than just a hostile—Reno could figure that out by the expression in her eyes when she’d thought no one was looking. They’d dumped his unconscious body on the small bed in the closed-off apartment, and she’d stood there, looking down at him with an unreadable expression on her face.
Maybe she’d killed him at some point during this long day. But then, he would have been called to help Madsen move the body. The Committee’s operatives had gone undercover, and right now there seemed to be only the three of them.
Reno hoped Taka was looking out for himself, that son of a bitch. He was the one who’d arranged to have him shipped out of the country, and while there was no doubt Reno had made the mistake of losing his temper with some very un
forgiving people, it also had something to do with the fact that Taka’s sister-in-law was coming for a visit. He and his wife kept Reno as far away from Jilly Hawthorne as they could, even if it meant exiling him halfway across the world.
He pushed himself up off the floor, considering his annoyance with his entire family, women, the Committee, England and life in general. “I’m going to bed,” he told Mahmoud.
The boy simply nodded, staring fixedly as his video game character rode a dragon through a flame-colored sky.
“Don’t stay up all night,” Reno said, and then could have kicked himself. He’d turned into an old man. The kid could stay up for days if he wanted to, playing games, and be none the worse for it. Reno had done it often enough.
Empty Red Bull cans were piled high in the trash bin; boxes of cereal, Chinese take-out containers, bags of chips were littered all over the place. The boy hadn’t stopped eating. Reno had taught him how to use chopsticks rather than his hands, but it had been harder convincing him not to leave them stuck in the rice. Mahmoud had argued with perfect logic that it should only be bad luck to leave them stuck in Japanese rice, not Chinese. But then he’d carefully removed them.
No, the kid was okay. Tomorrow, maybe he’d take him to a video game arcade and let him try Guitar Hero and DDR. Or steal a fast car and drive out into the countryside, and maybe they could find a castle or two.
At least Reno was no longer so damn bored.
Mahmoud made no sound when they came for him. The struggle was silent, muffled, and Reno wouldn’t have woken up if they hadn’t knocked over the bin of soda cans. He came flying through the darkness toward the shadowed men, and he took out two of them with the sheer element of surprise. But then he heard the crack of his arm breaking, as if from a distance, and felt a flash of blinding pain. Then nothing at all.
Bastien Toussaint glanced around the pristine offices of Spence-Pierce, wondering what the hell was happening behind the double-thick walls. It was three in the morning, and he wasn’t any more eager to face Chloe than Madsen was to deal with his very annoyed amazon wife. They weren’t much further than they’d been when they’d started out that morning, and there was no way either of them was going to stop until they figured out what the hell was going on. So far they’d come up with bugger all.
Bastien sank back in the chair, taking the mug of coffee Madsen offered him, liberally laced with Scotch. He had no fears the Scotch would slow him down—he was riding on pure adrenaline, as if the last three years of peace had never happened. Old habits died hard, he thought, looking at the high-tech arsenal Peter had laid out on the teak desk.
