Dominant Predator (16 page)

The competing instincts—being impossibly turned on while resisting the urge to take myself in hand and relieve some of the pressure—put every nerve in my body on edge. I needed to get Armise that keyed up. He released my biceps and fisted his right hand in my hair, closed both his hands, pulling my hair at the roots until the pain caused me to pull back and suck in a ragged breath.

I spared only a second to see his blown-out silver eyes—nearly black—close and his mouth open as he licked at his bottom lip. Then I sucked him in without warning and he bucked his hips up, trying to drive himself farther into my mouth. I dug my hands into his hips until my fingers hurt from the strain, until I could feel the press of his bones, and wonder if I was holding so tightly to him that I would break the skin open. But Armise just kept pushing, fighting my hold.

I growled, the vibrations in my chest rumbling through me and where Armise’s cock was buried deep in my throat. He wouldn’t let up, wouldn’t give in, and my frustration kicked up just as much as the desire making me painfully hard. I took my hands off his hips, popped my lips off his cock, but before he could protest I lifted him off his feet onto the dresser and pushed him back against the wall, my hand on his chest pinning him. I bent down and licked up his length with a long hot swipe then back down. Armise didn’t have the leverage of his legs anymore and I grinned as I took one of his balls into my mouth and his head thwacked against the wall. I licked at them, mouthed them, ran my hand down his chest and to the base of his cock, gripping the length with a harsh pressure that had him letting out a litany of swear words.

From this position he was at my mercy. He put his palms on the dresser surface, sliding from the slick sheen of sweat over his entire body. He gasped for breath and his eyes were clamped shut, no longer able to focus on watching me work.

This.

This was what I needed.

I teased my tongue around the head of his cock, languidly, slipping the foreskin back to run my tongue along the underside then pull just the head into my mouth and suck so harshly that if I hadn’t been holding him down he would have jumped off the dresser. I took him deep after that, fast, roughly. Hand, tongue and teeth grazing the silky flesh then nipping into it. His breathing came in laboured gasps, my name a plea on his lips. His knuckles were white, gripped around the edges of the dresser as he desperately tried to pump his hips.

I scratched my nails down his torso, swallowed around him, and he came apart, spilling hot down my throat as he groaned. I took it all in, my own cock pressing tightly against my pants begging for release. But I didn’t pull away. I floated in that space of his defeat, savouring the taste of his cum, the feel of his body sagging into the wall, all that strength leached from his body, ripped away by my lips, my hands.

Armise gave an audible exhale of breath, then opened one eye and tipped his head in my direction. “Your turn?”

I gave one last swipe of my tongue across the head of his cock that caused him to flinch and swat weakly at me. I stood up, wiping my lips with the back of my hand. I readjusted my aching cock, cracked my neck, and gave him a smile. “Nah. I’m good.”

Armise gave a low chuckle that washed over me just as surely as a caress of his hands. I bit at my lip ring, palmed my cock and seriously considered his offer. My dick hurt—there was no other way around it—but I used the pain to ground myself and focus. I put my amped-up energy into the task of gathering my weapons and making sure I had everything I needed organised into one small pack. Armise watched me, silent, for a while, then stood on shaky legs and shut himself into the en suite.

I could hear the water running and splashing, then the creak of the faucet being shut off.

“I need to get a real rifle from the munitions depot if you’re bringing your sonic,” I noted, speaking louder so he could hear me.

The door to the en suite opened and Armise emerged—still half naked—wiping a towel across his face. Without his beard, and with his emotions this at the surface and unguarded, he looked years younger. I found myself studying him as if I didn’t know him.

I knew his body, his movements. His strategy and method of attack. I could have picked out his voice among thousands.

And despite the unknown variables, I had no doubt in this moment that he was wrong when he’d said I didn’t know him. There was nothing I didn’t recognise. Nothing I couldn’t see. There was nothing in our relationship for me to second-guess or mistrust.

I trusted Armise Darcan.

It wasn’t as foundation-shaking an idea as I supposed it could have been.

Armise threw the towel back into the en suite then pulled on his pants. He walked to the table where his weapons were laid out.

“You could do that.” He bent down and picked up a rifle case from the floor. He set it on the bed and flipped the latches. “Or you could take this one. I have a fondness for it. And I believe it’s one you’re proficient using.” He smirked and handed the gun over to me.

I assessed the scarred barrel and stock well worn from use over centuries. I shouldered the rifle, looking through the scope, and gave a grunt of surprise when I realised why the rifle felt familiar. “This is the gun I used to assassinate the Premiere.”

Armise handed me a chest strap to attach to the rifle. “Happy birthday, Merq.”

I took the strap and began attaching it to the barrel then the stock before I realised what he’d said to me. “I don’t even know when my birthday is.”

Armise chuckled at that. “It’s today.”

“I don’t know what today is,” I said honestly. “I don’t pay much attention to days, or dates. Just the passage of time, I suppose.”

“How do you know when you’re supposed to be anywhere?”

“I just do.” I shrugged my shoulders. It was a question I didn’t know how to answer because I’d never been able to understand others’ reliance on physical reminders of time. I might not have known it was the anniversary of my birth, but that was because that date was of no consequence to me, therefore I didn’t track it.

“You’ve never celebrated your birthday?” Armise questioned.

“You’re fucking with me, right? And you have?”

“Every year,” he said, his brows scrunched together. “There are Mongolian traditions I observe. Ones that I’m sure are not as intended, but it’s all I remember from my childhood. There aren’t any records for me to know either way.”

“Ah yes, the Mongol Giant,” I said with just a hint of sarcasm.

Armise grumbled and crossed his arms. “Only one place you would have heard that name.”

I frowned. “Ahriman had quite a bit to say about you. I’m inclined not to believe anything he said to me or to at least filter it and decide as I go what is real and what is manufactured, what is manipulation.”

“Let me save you some time. It’s all manipulation.”

“He said he needs you.”

Armise pulled on his pants and sat back against the table his weapons were stacked on. “I’m sure he thinks he does. I’m more inclined to believe that I die the second I set foot on Singapore soil.”

“He wants you alive. No, I think he said he
needs
you to be alive. At least for a time. He wants me to bring you to him then I can fight for the Opposition.”

At that Armise went silent for a heartbeat and I began to wonder if Armise knew why Ahriman needed him alive, but then Armise asked me something I didn’t expect. “And what do you want?”

I lifted the rifle and slung it over my chest, adjusting the strap so it fit tightly enough to keep it fixed to my body but loose enough that I could turn it in my hands and easily bring it into the firing position. Satisfied with the fit, I turned to face Armise. There was only one answer. “To kill him.”

Armise grinned. “You have any ideas about how to keep us plugged in without actually being connected to command?”

“Yeah. Chen used a design off the infochip. We’ll have the Committee members’ coordinates and intel loaded onto a chip that won’t be connected to anything. We have to use a handheld reader to access the information and if we damage or lose the chip the information is gone. We’re going to combine that with even more antiquated technology to map our progress, make sure we don’t get lost traipsing through the continents. I had Exley create a series of star and topography maps for our most likely target locales. We’ll be able to wear those maps on our forearms, underneath clothing. Of course those are not as readily updated as a communication chip. Communication with Neveed or the President is going to be non-existent. We’ll rely on local informants and contacts to relay messages. But I suppose this is all normal procedure for the Dark Ops Officer.”

“You would think so.” Armise shook his head, then waved his hand as if wiping the consideration away. “I adapt quickly. And anyway, I prefer to go into this op blind and off grid. We don’t need communication or transport chips.”

I grinned. “Good.”

Chapter Twelve

I looked at the watch on my wrist then ran my hands over the stash of knives I had secured in various places on my body. I wouldn’t need them if everything went according to plan. And there was no room for error in this kill or the one Armise was engaged in on the other side of the darkened United Union city of Amsterdam.

I couldn’t believe two of the Committee members had remained in the same vicinity, let alone the same city, for this length of time. From the time that Grimshaw had handed over their names and locations to Jegs until Armise and I could get on the ground without the use of transport chips and without anyone tracking our movements, it had taken us nearly a month to cross from the East Coast of the States into the continental spread of the UU.

If all the intel we’d gathered hadn’t pointed to them being two of the most inept members then I would have thought we were walking into a trap. Maybe their inclusion in the Committee had been a play by Ahriman all along as an early warning system. Trip wires of a sort. Because neither of them had moved or given any indication of being worried about their safety. We researched them for days, surveyed them for another week, meeting with informants in darkened alleyways and abandoned storefronts. They were more excited about the prospect of these fools being bumped off than skittish about their complicit roles in the deaths.

Armise and I could have been complacent about the apparent ease with which these first two kills were coming together, but we were much better trained than that. Too experienced to fall for that rookie mistake. Armise and I knew what we were walking into.

These Committee member deaths—sure to be the easiest out of all the Committee members—were likely designed to set the surviving members on alert. I didn’t expect any sabotage, any attempt to save the man and woman. They were being led to the slaughter so that the others could escape the executioner’s blade while we were occupied.

Which meant that Armise and I had to make these first two deaths appear as innocuous and accidental as possible, so that none of the remaining members would know we were on our way for them as well.

For my old and infirm female target, I was using poison that would cause an instantaneous heart attack. For Armise’s mark, a murder-suicide supposedly at the hands of the man’s mistress. They were old tricks. An assassin’s grab-bag thousands of years old, passed down through stories told by brash military recons attempting to one-up each other. By the whispers of legends that were infinitely more interesting than tactical battle manuals. Or by inebriated witnesses and spotlight-seeking gossips in dank bars. I usually found the latter were the most reliable.

Regardless of the source, these tactics had continued on because they worked. It would be our job to never be spotted, to leave no question as to the complete lack of originality and intentionality of their passing, despite their similar timing.

We were hoping that the nearly simultaneous natures of the kills would help sway opinion as well. Assassins rarely worked in pairs. Ahriman knew we were working together, but he was unlikely to raise any noise that could point us in his direction. I was sure that no matter how many Committee members we picked off, Ahriman would remain silent and unexposed.

While the President craved being on the front lines, Ahriman would be concealed behind them in layer upon layer. Ranks of soldiers, officials and decoys masking his true location.

He would be the most difficult target to get to, but we had twelve others to eliminate before him. And I wasn’t going to do anything that would jeopardise my ability to get to him in the end.

The light flipped on in the house in front of me and my target descended the stairs leading into the kitchen. She looked worn down, haggard, and I was sure it wasn’t just the late hour that gave that impression. When I’d seen her just over a month ago at the Opening Ceremony, she’d been in an elegant gown of black and threads of shimmering purple, reflecting the colours of the UU, her home country. Her age and failing health had been obvious then but allayed by a light in her eyes and a triumphant smile—both of which were decidedly absent now.

She shuffled through the kitchen, her body hunching into itself. She was alone, as she had been since her partner had learned of her decision to actively work for the Opposition. She had made her decision and it had cost her her family and her health. Soon it would also claim her life. But this ending was going to be more mercy than vengeance.

She turned on the faucet, holding a glass under the water, waiting for it to cool. I slipped the injection device out of my pocket and pumped the mixture into where I’d tapped into the shared purified water line for the string of grandiose houses in the neighbourhood. She slipped the glass under the flow, filling the cup and taking the liquid back greedily. Her heart treatments made her inordinately thirsty. She wouldn’t have to worry about the treatments or the overwhelming thirst for long.

With a half-life of ten seconds, the heart-attack-inducing poison was engineered to break down in water—even the water molecules within the bloodstream—and be completely untraceable in less than a minute. The nanoparticles within it had been modified to bind only to her DNA, so it didn’t matter that the toxic mixture was spreading to all the houses in the area. She would be the only casualty of the poison tonight.