MadetoBeBroken (3 page)

Just then, the tongue on her clit began to play a rapid
sonata, driving her to ecstasy. Frantically she pushed her breasts together, opening
her eyes in supplication to the sight of Jean-Luc, who smiled knowingly and
slid his cock between her white mounds. Marcello’s throbbing erection speared
between her lips with renewed vigor. One more stroke from the cocks in her
mouth and between her tits, one more suck on her clit and she would explode.

A shadow, a blot blacker than the gloom, fell over her face.
It was a man, decidedly not naked. He seemed to loom over the panting, moaning
foursome before he sank back into the dark. She could just make out his grim
expression, but could not be sure whether an ugly scar bisected his left eye.
Coco jerked upright, pulling up the top of her dress.

“
Carina
¼
”
moaned Marcello. His now-neglected cock was red and throbbing, gleaming from
her saliva.

She looked for her shoes, patted the floor for her panties.
“I have to go.”

She dashed past an openmouthed Madam Amanda without a word
and pushed out the door into the cool late-spring night.

Alexi. Her target, watching her service three men like a
common whore. She had possibly blown the mission and definitely blown her own
Rule Number Two. Show no weakness.

Alexi Maksimov did not often have bouts of self-doubt and
when he did, he knew there was something seriously wrong. Confidence was his calling
card—he moved in a dangerous world, and without utter assurance, he would have
been devoured by the forces around him long ago. It wasn’t feigned confidence
either. Maybe when he was younger, yes, he had been less sure of himself. A
different set of responsibilities required it. But that was before
¼

He pushed the memory out of his head. If he looked back, all
would become unraveled.

So something was seriously wrong if he was trying to
convince himself that he had not broken his Rule Number One. She had come to
him the first time, that was what mattered. Following her to this crazy sex
club, it was not weakness. Call it curiosity. She had come after him, as he’d
suspected someone would. It was good to get to know your adversary, probe for
soft spots.

But it seemed those other guys had found her soft spots
first—between her ripe, red lips, her ivory breasts, inside that sweet little
pussy. His cock swelled.

“Are you gonna come in my mouth? I don’t do that,” said the
redhead kneeling before him.

He glanced down. She had smallish brown eyes and her hair
was not as long or lush as that of his American adversary. So what? Why think
of her? He had allowed this skinny girl to pick him up in the coffee shop only
because he needed release, not because she had flaming-red hair and, if he
squinted, he could believe it was
her
generous mouth into which he
pumped his cock.

That made two things he was trying to make himself believe,
thanks to this damn woman. He grabbed the girl by the back of her head and
forced himself deep into her throat, holding her tight against his balls.

“
Sosi moi hui, shalava
,” he growled. “Suck my dick.
No talk.”

She went back to working him, but rather listlessly, with
her eyes closed. Anyone who said there was no such thing as a bad blowjob was
wrong. He watched the top of her ginger head take his dick in over and over,
watched the lips slide up his shaft loosely. He was never going to come like
this.

But thinking of
her
, splayed out on the dark velvet,
mouth and pussy open for violation, shoving her creamy white mounds together to
make a tight sheath for a hard dick. When she had locked eyes with the man,
silently begging him to fuck her tits, he had almost exploded right there.
Fuck, she was hot. What he could do with those breasts, that mouth, that
delicious little pussy that gave up its sweet juice so easily! Make her whimper
with mingled pleasure and pain as he inched it inside her, feel her clench
around him, fucking her until their screams shattered every window
¼

With a wrench, he pulled out of the brown-eyed girl and
pumped his cock, spewing hot seed on her neck and the tops of her breasts.

“What the hell was that?” she whined, mouth still open in
shock. “This is a new blouse.”

His voice was low and dangerous. “Get out.”

The lazy bitch raced for the door, shooting him a frightened
look on the way. But Alexi already had his pants back up and was striding
toward the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

He lit a cigarette off the stove and glared. No samovars in
gray London, nothing to make a proper cup with. How he longed for the rugged
green mountains and rough forests of his own land. The sky had a paleness to
it, even in warm weather, and the winter snows lay a thick blanket of silence
over every tree, every field, every village. Soon, he could return. After the
mess of the other night, there was only one more directive to carry out.

He watched unseeing as the liquid in the cup turned from
amber to a bitter tobacco color. Funny word for “mess” in Russian,
bardak
,
it meant same as bordello, or the kind of pleasure palace he had found her in.
His balls tightened again, thinking of her.

No. Rule Number Two was show no weakness. He would not let
his desire for her interfere with the mission. Better than most men, Alexi
Maksimov knew the meaning of sacrifice. He would do what he had to do before
leaving for home.

Kill the girl.

* * * * *

“You haven’t gotten our man yet.”

Rod sounded aggrieved and accusatory over the phone. His
pulling rank like a puffed-up bureaucrat was the last thing she could take right
now. Coco was still pulling herself together after the night she’d had.

Put it out of your head,
she told herself,
and do
your job.
Things looked better in the light of morning. She could almost
believe that hadn’t been Maksimov in the club at all. It was so dark, and her
mind, to say the least, was elsewhere. She didn’t need an ex-boyfriend scolding
her from thousands of miles away to undo the fragile truce she’d made with her
conscience.

“I will,” she answered, pushing her feet into sensible
tourist walking shoes. “Look, there’s gotta be a dossier on this Kaminsky. If
I’m going to get close to the assassin, I have to understand his victim.”

Rod sighed. “Okay, but you’re wasting your time. I can get
you the official file. As far as I can tell, it’s all pretty straightforward.”

“No sign of an unofficial file?” she asked. “Did you try
your counterpoint in Moscow?”

“Don’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs, Coco. I know
my job. And until you get Maksimov to the safe house, we’re just spinning our wheels.”

This time she would remember her wallet. She stuffed it into
her purse and drew a light scarf out of her holdall. It looked to be another
scorcher.

“That’s another thing. Those questions you want me to ask
him? I need them now, before we get there. He made me at our first contact, and
I didn’t like that at all.”

“A ruthless warlord has a lot of enemies. If you got
spotted, I’m sorry to say that was mission error on your part.”

He didn’t sound sorry at all, the condescending bastard.

Her voice hardened. “The questions. I want them or I fly
back to DC tonight.”

The white van was where Rod had said it would be, parked
around the corner from her hotel in front of a fast-food place that seemed to
sell nothing but potatoes. In her four years with OSO, Coco had been in
innumerable exotic places. She’d seen insects served on skewers, fresh snake
blood for sale, sheep’s eyes and whole bird fetuses, complete with downy
feathers, offered as delicacies. It was funny how in places with cultures very
different from her own, she expected the unusual and even, to her Western soul,
distasteful. Here in upright, English-speaking, clean, gray London, the idea of
an all-spud restaurant—or beans stewed in bacon fat for breakfast—seemed more
exotic and more appalling than a bowl full of lightly fried crickets. Which had
actually been pretty yummy, she remembered, thinking fondly of the Bangkok
street stalls.

The van’s location meant she was expected to knock out
Maksimov right on the street, close to the hotel where she’d already met
someone who could identify her should the kidnapping go south. She hoped Madam
Amanda’s “work” at the Fordham was done for now. She considered changing hotels
or hiring a driver, but neither option would be very useful in the end.
Overall, it was a damn shoddy operation Rod had chosen for her. Once an ass,
always an ass.

She bought a newspaper and settled into a booth in a dark,
almost empty teashop with a cup of black coffee and a croissant. There was no
more news about the Kaminsky assassination. Of course not, if those bumblers
from Interpol were on the case. She was just passing the time, anyway, waiting
for OSO to hit her back with the dossier. She would look into Kaminsky, maybe
grab lunch in a pub and study up on the questions. Because she had no doubt
Maksimov knew how to find her, if he wasn’t watching her right now. If not, he
would make himself available in the Three Cocks.

Ugh, best not to think about him watching her being
willingly violated by three cocks. Best not to think about the dream she’d had
after escaping the Palace, in which it was Alexi naked in the shower, her legs
around his waist and back against the chilly tile while he pounded inside her.
A crashing orgasm woke her up, her mouth dry and clit still throbbing, until
she pressed the last sweet reverberation from it.

She’d never run across an adversary who didn’t flee from a
confrontation with an agent who clearly wished him harm, but this one had
beckoned her over, told her they would meet again, even, possibly, followed her
to the Palace. And now he was invading her dreams. That would never do. Rule
Number Three sounded simple but it required a complete shutting down of every
decent, forgiving human impulse. Trust no one.

Her phone gave an echoing, outer-space ping. The Kaminsky
file came up on the screen, neatly photographed, the pages numbered to prove
that nothing had been deleted.

Templeton had not lied—the official dossier was
straightforward indeed. He seemed to have been a well-known FSB agent without a
blot on his record, even according to the notoriously paranoid Russian security
service. He had a wife and four boys at home. A widow, that is, and fatherless
boys. Coco felt sick.

She rose, half of the croissant uneaten. What the file did
not say was whom he had come to London to meet. Tracing a Russian diplomat
could not be that hard, even for an agent on her own. And she was completely on
her own. There was a monster on the loose and she was the only person who could
stop him.

* * * * *

Getting into one office in the embassy was a breeze. Wet
eyes, practical tourist clothes and a sob story gained her admission to a
stout, wood-paneled office and the audience of a black-haired, severe-looking
man with a face like the lunar surface. The leather chair creaked as she shifted
in her seat.

“Disappeared, you say?”

“Yes.” She tried to smile wanly at the pockmarked face on
the other side of the desk. “I haven’t heard from my sister in weeks. We were
already upset when she hooked up with this guy. I mean, I’d heard he came from
a trouble spot in your country, something about a breakaway republic?”

His dark eyes showed interest for the first time.
“Chechnya?”

“Yes, that’s it! And he seemed into all kinds of scary,
rough stuff. But Patricia, she just, like, flounced out of Boston and went to
live with him. And now, like I say, I can’t reach her. I’m really scared, sir.”

“Miss,” the official frowned down at her passport, “LeBlanc,
I suggest you contact your own embassy.”

“I tried,” she breathed. “They said they knew nothing about
it and, frankly, one officer told me privately that you Russians are so much
more skilled at this sort of thing.”

Probe for weaknesses. She had this guy’s Achilles’ heel
pegged from first laying eyes on him—framed certificates covering the walls,
shadowboxes of various medals on the desk, turned outward to impress visitors,
a fancy pen and ink set in an imposing brass holder that looked untouched. He
wanted to be seen as powerful, competent, the best. Here was a man who kept
score.

“Is that so?” he asked, unsmiling. But he sat up a little
straighter.

“I believe the word he used was ‘masterful’.”

“Do you have a name for this boyfriend?”

“Um, just a first name. But I read something in the
newspaper, about that poor man who got killed with the umbrella? He was here to
meet a Russian diplomat who knew all about the situation over there. If I can
talk to him, give him my sister’s name. He must know who all the rebel bad guys
are.”

Had she overplayed her hand? The man sat as still as a
snake, his black eyes on her.

“We are not all equally adept at our affairs, miss. I am the
embassy’s most knowledgeable resource as concerns the Chechen rebels.”

Hope rose in her belly. “It was you he was on his way to
meet?” she asked, hoping she sounded like an adoring groupie. At that moment,
if this was her guy, then “adoring groupie” wasn’t so far off the mark.

“No one in this embassy had an appointment with
Commissionaire Kaminsky. I’m sorry for your trouble, miss. My secretary will
see you out.”

* * * * *

By early afternoon, the blazing-blue skies above London made
the pale buildings blinding-white and the city sparkled. Coco’s crepe-soled
shoes made no sound on the pavement as she admired the rows upon rows of white
houses, all attached cheek-by-jowl and fronted by low wrought iron fences with
horsehead posts. Even with the breeze, it was almost uncomfortably warm, and
her hair was sticky on her neck—what happened to those sudden turns in the
weather British people joked about while visitors shivered?

The pockmarked embassy official had been lying, but about
what, she could not tell. Either he was to meet with Kaminsky or he was not the
top man in regards to Chechen affairs. She had blown her only chance to find
the right man and probably set the KGB on her tail. The Russian secret service
was as careful as her own, and even her personal directives were useless in
that grim office. It was her second-most important rule and she had been forced
to set it aside. All for nothing.

This whole weird case was messing with her head, had her breaking
her own rules.