course I am.” He didn’t even question the truth of those words before they burst out. He pulled out, flipped her over, folding her legs wide to stare at the perfect pink flower of her pussy. She was so flexible, elastic as a dancer. Her skin, soft as a fine new leaf unfurling. Every curve and hollow astonished his eyes.
He mounted her again before she could change her mind, and they found their rhythm face to face. She stared into his eyes, undulating frantically, nails digging as the energy of her climax began to crest.
She panicked then and started slapping him, in a disordered, haphazard way, her eyes bright with furious tears. “Damn you,” she hissed. “Damn you, you son of a bitch.”
He tried to catch her hands, but she wrenched them away with a snarl. He just let go, let her pummel at him while their bodies slammed frantically together. She needed that violent struggle for dominance, and he sensed that she needed him to win it for her sake. But nothing she could do to him could hurt him now. He was riding a thundering crest of colossal pleasure.
Some time later, who knew how long, he found himself on his side, facing her. They were bathed in sweat, their arms still around each other, clutching. Her legs wound around his hips.
He tried to loosen his grip, but his shaking muscles would not immediately obey him. Their hearts thudded against each other.
He willed his arms to relax. Their bodies unglued with a little wet sound. He pulled his gleaming, softening cock out of her. They fell back onto their backs, shivering in the cool room as their sweat dried.
Someone knocked on the other side of the wall. “Ehi. Auguri, amico,” their neighbor called in a dry, amused voice. Hey. Congratulations, pal.
Neither of them had the energy even to react.
When he dared to look at her, she flinched away from his gaze and dragged herself up to the edge of the bed. He laid his hand against the elegant curve of her shoulder blade. She started away as if his hand had burned her and got to her feet. She stumbled, her legs buckling beneath her, and caught herself against the wall.
He jerked up, alarmed. “Are you—”
“Fine.” She spat the words out. “I’m fine.”
He stetched out a pleading hand. “Tamar—”
“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t. I’m going to take a shower. I’ll be a while. Don’t bug me.”
He stared at her retreating back, flinched at the slam of the door. The brass key clicked and ground in the antique lock. The shower began to hiss against the marble. His heart still drummed. And beneath it, his belly was cold and heavy with guilt for what came next.
Now, damn it. This was his only chance. Still, he sat on the bed like a lump of lead. Miserable.
Imre. Novak’s game would continue, and tomorrow a fresh piece of erotic footage was due, to keep Imre in one piece. Val couldn’t be queasy and hesitant about getting it. After all, he was not literally hurting or betraying her by doing this. God knows, he was putting his whole heart into fucking her. He had never been so honest and forthright with any woman in his life—except about this. This one little detail.
The rationalizations didn’t work. He had to do what he’d learned to do as a boy, when Kustler sent him to certain apartments, certain houses. Special clients. Or when he had no appointments, and was sent out to work the streets. The cars would stop for him, and he would put the mechanism to work. Break off a piece of himself. Let it get into the car and do the job while his mind floated somewhere apart and safe. Numb.
He had survived it. It had gotten easier with time. But this, for some reason, did not.
He unfastened the cellophane that covered the plant he’d ordered via the Internet from a local florist. A voluminous fern. He rigged the little camera in the shadow of two gracefully draped fronds. Adjusted the angle to make sure he got the bed. Adjusted the leafy fronds, to conceal the camera but not block the view. He would make it right with her somehow. God grant, she never had to know at all.
A great deal to hope, the way his luck was going.
After an hour in the shower, Tam began to feel ridiculous, cowering in the billows of steam. She was appalled to be feeling this way. Emotions sprawled over her face. Truths she never meant to say, or even knew were true, bursting out with no warning. She couldn’t trust herself to act in her own best interests. And there was the humiliating phenomenon of morphing into a mindless, scratching cat in heat whenever he looked at her with those smoldering eyes.
And she would do it again. Right now. She would just march right out there buck naked and leap on him with all four paws. At the slightest provocation.
She shut off the water, toweled dry. The mirror was obscured by condensation, which was good, because she didn’t want to look at her own face. Not when she was this angry at herself.
Working a comb through her hair killed another twenty or so minutes. It was getting stupidly long, but she hadn’t wanted to bother with dying or styling it for so long, it had evolved into its own new super straight look that suited her austere mood these days. She considered slicking it back with styling gel into a tight, wet braid, and then rejected the idea. Let it dry, and hang wherever the hell it wanted. She was sick and tired of trying to control every last fucking tiny detail. Enough.
Same with her eyes. She stared into her travel-reddened topaz eyes in the mirror, hating the idea of inflicting colored contacts on them again, without even the benefit of a night’s sleep. What did she care if Val knew the real color? He knew every other significant fact about her. Why balk at this?
To hell with useless barriers. They were draining her energy.
She wrapped a huge bath towel around herself and flung open the door. Val sat naked on the bed, waiting for her. Or rather, waiting for his turn in the bathroom. The guy probably had to piss like a racehorse after all their traveling. She had no sympathy in the least. Served the presumptuous fucker right for not booking her a room of her own.
But the bitchy mental chatter faded as she took in that huge, sculpted golden body, his intense, somber face. His thick penis was impressive even when it was soft, dangling against a springy twist of curling hair. Her fingers curled with the urge to grab him and pet it.
He sensed the thought and his penis twitched, lengthened.
She turned away deliberately and went to rummage through the suitcase he’d ordered for her. She dabbed herself with expensive face cream, deodorized her pits with the ridiculously pricey bottle of deodorant. What a blast of naughty, fleeting fun she’d had with that online catalog. The criteria by which she’d chosen each item had been exquisitely simple. She’d just gone for whatever cost most.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know that she was a vengeful bitch. She’d made no effort to keep it a secret.
“I will take a shower, and we will get some dinner,” he said.
Right. Like it was a good idea for her peace of mind to have a romantic candlelit dinner with this man in San Vito, of all places. Pound the final nail into her coffin, why didn’t he.
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “You go on. I want to rest.”
“Stronzate.” His voice was curt. “You ate
