Authors: EC Sheedy
“Charity will be joining us as planned?” he said, requiring this final confirmation.
“Yes, she’s gone ahead to Tofino to reconnoiter and set things up.”
“Including the necessary weapons?”
“Yes. Charity will have everything we need when we arrive.”
“Good.” Naturally, he’d brought his own weapon, but hearing about Mercy’s added arrangements was welcome news. “Have you discovered anything more about Phyllis Worth’s connection to this particular town?”
“No.” She flipped down the car’s sun visor. “But it’s a small place. Charity will have located her before our arrival. All we have to do is show up, Mister Braid.” A ghost of a smile played over her mouth. “But tonight we rest—if that’s your pleasure.”
He cast her a sideways glance. “My pleasures are simple, Mercy. And should they include you, I’ll let you know.”
She met his eyes briefly, her expression hard to define. When she again turned her attention to the road, Q turned to silence.
In minutes, the brilliant bronze facade of the Wynn Hotel Casino came up on his right. Minutes after that, barely looking at the Wynn’s extravagant tree-lined entry, Q was heading to the elevators, Mercy a step behind him. The room was under her name, or whatever one she’d chosen, so there was no need to check in.
The suite was lavish with a view of The Strip that, if you cared about such things, you’d find stunning.
Q didn’t care.
Nor, apparently, did Mercy. Walking across the suite’s black marble floor, she kicked off her shoes, shrugged out of her jacket, and began unbuttoning her white shirt. The rounds of her breasts and a fine strip of blue lace quickly came into view. “Shall we shower first,” she said. “Or do you want me to get you off and shower later?” She pulled a pin from her hair, and rich brown curls tumbled to her shoulders. Long and lustrous, her hair, unlike her eyes, appeared natural.
Ever since Q had confirmed she looked as good as she sounded, he’d planned to have her, but in his own time. In his own way. He certainly hadn’t expected her to make the first move—and such a sudden and aggressive one at that. No one approached Quinlan Braid with such force, such . . . brass.
Although he did like her approach. It was efficient. And certainly the more businesslike the arrangement, the less it interfered with his sexual attachment to Giselle. At the thought of Giselle, anger bit into his usual steely poise.
She’d gone. He hadn’t wanted her to go, but she’d left anyway. He still didn’t know how he felt about that, why he couldn’t let it go. He didn’t know why Giselle was such a presence in this room when a new and promising female was on the banquet table. The idea that he cared for the woman on some unknowable level was ridiculous—upsetting. Perhaps even threatening.
Q slipped out of his light Hugo Boss jacket, folded it, and placed it on the arm of the pure white sofa. “You take a rather overt approach,” he said, purposefully noncommittal.
“I see no reason not to. We can wait, if you prefer, but when I saw you I decided I didn’t want to.” She shrugged. “And we could waste time on the will-she-won’t-she game, but there’s no real point to that. Because the answer is I will—and so will you. What you’ve got there”—she looked boldly at his crotch—“will be in me sooner or later. I prefer sooner. And I never play games.”
“Obviously, you don’t
fore
play either.”
She unclasped her belt, slipped it through its loops, and tossed it on top of his jacket. “No. You touch me in the right place a couple of times, chances are I’ll come. And if you don’t, I’ll take care of it myself.” She pulled down the zipper on her jeans, exposed a Vee of blue silk, low on her taut belly. It matched the blue satin covering her breasts. Exposed to him frontally, from her undone shirt to her undone zipper, she put her hands on hips. “You can watch, or you can participate,” she said.
He didn’t move and wasn’t sure he wanted to, feeling, as he was, some new, unexpected responses to such an earthy and direct sexual come-on. His tendency was to analyze them, put them in proper perspective. When it came to sex, Q always took the lead, assumed control. He should hate this, should tell her how underwhelmed he was by her crassness. Yet, unbelievably, he was getting hard.
“Take off your clothes,” she instructed, her eyes again on his zipper area, some of the cool now replaced by heat. “Or I’ll do it for you.”
Carefully, slowly, he breathed deep. “Let me guess, behind your rib cage, beats the heart of a dominatrix.”
“And let me guess, behind your expensive zipper, beats the cock of man who wants exactly what I want.” She peeled her blouse off, dropped it on the floor, closed the few steps between them, and turned her back. “Unclasp me.” He obliged. Her shoulders were straight, her upper arms threaded with firm, clearly defined muscles. Weight-lifter muscles. A strong woman. A powerful woman. He itched to reach his hands around her, cup her breasts, test the weight and firmness of them, but he resisted. Folding the lacy bra, he tucked one cup inside the other and when she turned to face him, offered it to her.
She didn’t take it. “I’d heard you were a control freak,” she said, “but that”—she nodded at the folded bra—“takes some kind of prize.”
“May I ask how you heard I was a ‘control freak,’ as you put it?” He placed the bra on the coffee table. The curl of excitement low in his belly, knotting into suspicion.
“Our mutual friend Victor. He said he’d never seen you sweat. Not about a job, business, or a woman.” She tilted her head. “Especially a woman. He said the two of you shared pussy on more than one occasion, and that you never so much as grunted.”
He relaxed. Trust Victor to spread old gossip. “You don’t like foreplay; I don’t like noise.” Except from Giselle. God, he loved it when she screamed.
Naked to the waist, Mercy put her hands on her hips, her odd-colored eyes fixed on him intensely, her gaze speculative. “So . . . do you want to fuck, Mister Braid, or do you plan on being faithful to the girl back home?”
Q met her gaze. “What do you know about ‘the girl back home’—or even if there is one?”
“A man like you? Unless there’s a boy, there’s a girl.” Her gaze increased in intensity. “And I doubt it’s a boy.”
“You’d be right. But neither is there anyone else of note—which doesn’t mean I’m yours for the asking.” Briefly, his lie bothered him.
Mercy took two quick steps, her expression now bordering on savage. “You don’t get it, do you? I’m not asking.” In one fluid moment, she tore off his five-hundred dollar shirt. Buttons hit the marble floor with sharp little clacks. Then she worked his belt. Slipping the fine leather through the loops of his slacks, she tossed it over her shoulder as if it were a bone from a Viking table. He glanced at his torn shirt, discovered he didn’t care.
He let her proceed unhindered—or his erection did; it was thick with need, greedy for what was to come. Either way, she was right; what she was offering, he wanted. So, he’d have it. Still he didn’t move, content to let her take charge, relaxed under the deft movements of her hands.
He looked down at her agile fingers as they unbuttoned his slacks, and breathed contentedly, savoring the heat and power infusing his penis—those little thrusts and surges so insistent in their demands.
The ambient light in the suite played shadow tricks on Mercy’s strong, corded arms, and accented her physical strength, a feminine power Q had never encountered before. She was new. This experience was new. He wanted her to have him. What was the harm? When this was over, she’d be dead, along with everyone else connected with the forthcoming kills—and his past. He’d go back to his Giselle and life as it should be.
He’d consider this a goodbye party—he just wouldn’t tell Mercy. No need to spoil her fun.
She undid his zipper, slid her hand into his pants, and grasped his fully engorged organ. “So,” she said, squeezing him firmly and meeting his eyes, “do we fuck or fold laundry?”
“We fuck,” he answered, the word strange on his tongue, but instantly understood by the erection encircled in Mercy’s strong hand. It jerked, pulsed to even greater girth. Perhaps there was something to this gutter talk during sex after all.
Leering at him, she released him. “My way?” she asked, cocking her head.
Q worked to ignore his hard, throbbing penis, jutting from his slacks; abandoned by her hand, the cool air of the air-conditioned hotel suite now heralded its imminent collapse. “Your way.” His voice was uncharacteristically hoarse, his excitement level dangerously high, his body drum-tight with anticipation. He needed this raw sex—the coming kills. This was why he’d come here—to feel old feelings, to gasp and grasp—to feel potent again.
Her smile, arrogant and self-satisfied, held the warmth of a specter. “You’re a man, after all, aren’t you, Braid? Just like I told Charity.” He didn’t miss that she’d dropped the mister, but couldn’t bring himself to care when she went back to stroking his penis as if it were a prized pet, her sole possession. “The woman actually thought you wouldn’t like my style.”
“What do you mean—”
She seized his upper arms and forced him down on the sofa.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she ordered. “Because if I do this right—and I usually do—it’ll take some time.” She fell on him and worked her way down, lapping his chest, licking his nipples, his stomach, lower—
Dear God, what was she doing?
Pulling, tugging, sucking .
. .
If he’d had a question about her remark about Charity, it was lost in her sexual attack—and his inability to think clearly in the midst of it.
He bucked, reared like a rutting stag, gave himself to her talented, voracious mouth—oral sex the likes of which he’d never experienced before. She pulled him deep, deeper . . .
Panting, thrusting, he threw his head back, the cords in his neck popping like cables snapped from under the water. His hands, tangled in her thick tumble of hair, fisted involuntarily. His mouth slackened, but still he held back the roar poised on his tongue. Every sense he had lay strangled in the depths of her relentless mouth.
Her teeth grazed him, threatened the soft tissues they scraped, only to heighten his pleasure. A harsh hissing sound slid over his lips.
Sliding her hands under his buttocks, Mercy lifted his hips, brought him closer to her insatiable mouth—and Quinlan allowed her to take him, all of him, in a way he’d never been taken before.
Chapter 24
Joe, tense as hell, couldn’t sleep. For Cornie’s sake, April had taken the room across the hall from him, saying something about how she didn’t need Cornie knowing more of their business than she had to.
If Joe was tense, April made him look Zen by comparison.
She’d been quiet all through dinner, her smiles forced, her words equally so. He knew she was distressed by not being able to raise Tommy Black, either at the Sandstone or on his cell. She’d even tried the hospital, but he hadn’t shown up there either.
She left messages wherever she could, but at the point they’d all headed up for bed, Black still hadn’t called. Joe hated that he couldn’t do anything about her stress, do
anything
to make her feel better. He’d even toyed with the idea of telling her about the possible line on her brother, thinking it might cheer her up—but as Julius had confirmed during their earlier meeting, the information on Gus Hanlon was still unconfirmed. So that idea wouldn’t fly.
Knowing it was a guy thing to figure hot sex would be the perfect cure-all, he was left with accepting—
manfully
, he thought,
considering he wanted her with an ache bordering on terminal
—her decision to head for her own room. She’d looked exhausted, more tired and fretful than he’d seen her since this . . . quest, for want of a better word, had begun.
His mother was putting her through hell. It was April’s call to her that started her downhill mood in the first place. Whatever they’d talked about, she hadn’t shared it with him. She expected him to ask, maybe, but he hadn’t. He didn’t want to talk about Phyllis. Nor did he want to tell April that the closer he got to meeting her, the more antagonistic he became; or that his gut got so tight it felt as if it were wrapped in barbed wire. For a man who’d written off his mother years ago, having her emerge as a priority was like being tossed into a sealed room with an open crate of snakes.
Ensnarled
. ..
Remembering Riggs and his horoscope, he smiled. If Donny Riggs got wind of Joe’s serpentine thoughts, he’d never let him live it down, be yelling fortunes at him all the way down the block.
But neither April nor Cornie would like the snake analogy. He didn’t much like it himself, but it was what it was. They were crazy about their mother; Joe was . . . not.
So he and April had ended up walking to her door like a pair of teenagers on a first stilted date, holding hands, him full of wishful lusting, her mind God knew where. Hell, even their kiss was adolescent, all need and confusion, as if a parent lurked beyond the door. When it ended, she’d put her hand on the doorknob, looked up at him, and said, “Later, okay?” Then blew him a kiss and went to her own room.
He was counting on that “later” of hers, had been counting on it for two endless hours. Mister Joe Cool hadn’t sweated over a woman like this for as long as he could remember.
Own up, Worth. You’ve never sweated like this. Never.
Tipping back the last of his beer, he ambled out to the balcony overlooking the pool and looked down from his second-floor vantage point.
Ringed in low-voltage garden lights and softly lit from below, the water in the pool shimmered in the small waves made by its lone swimmer.
April.
Joe’s stomach took a hit and he went totally still.
She was swimming easily, lazily, from one end of the pool to the other. It wasn’t exercise, it was mindless communion with the water. He watched her do a final lap, pull herself out of the water, and sit on the tiled edge of the pool.
Easy flexible strength,
he thought,
all her movements fluid, graceful, and unhurried.
Pulling her long hair to one side, she wrung it like a towel and flipped it back, letting its thick wet coils settle against her back. The lights from the pool danced over her pale skin, shifting and shining, making her features wavy and indistinct. The swimsuit she’d selected, from Julius’s storehouse of them, was a black two-piece— and the body wearing it was as perfect as a body could be: Endless legs, toes she laughingly said were too long, feet she said were too big, the silver-dollar-sized birthmark on the inside of her left thigh that she’d described as her personal map of Ireland.