Eric van lustbader chi.., p.43
Eric van Lustbader - China Maroc 01, page 43
Jake was conscious of his nakedness, but to make a move to cover himself would have made him feel even more foolish. He was aware of blood suffusing his face. He was certain it wasn’t from the hot water.
“Do you have a reason for skulking around like a spook?”
“But I am a spook,” she said. “Skulking is one of the things I do best.” Her first sight of him coming out of the shower had taken her breath away. Smoke curled from him as if he were some mythical creature, rare as a dragon. He seemed full of power.
She moved into the bathroom light and he saw that her lips, partly open, were tremoring slightly. He came all the way out of the shower. She wore what she had had on when she picked him up at Kai Tak, a black-and-white silk dress with a crisscross bodice and no back to speak of. She was barefoot.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I thought I had.” It was so hard for her to speak. Raw emotion was a fist in her throat.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see what you looked like.”
“And you came in. Just like that.” His voice was getting tighter and tighter.
“Yes.”
“Goddammit, I am naked!” he exploded. “It’s not … it just isn’t …”
“Don’t,” she said. Her eyes were full and glittery. “Please don’t yell at me.” Her voice was thick.
“Bliss, really.” He was at a total loss for words. “This isn’t fair!”
She took a halting step toward him. She was so close now he could see the faint tracks her tears had made down her cheeks.
“Bliss …”
“Jake.” Her voice was a reedy whisper. “Don’t take my heart away, Jake.”
No one had ever spoken to him in this way. No one had ever spoken his name the way she did. A caress.
“Forgive me, Mariana.” He heard her faint words and the rustle of fine silk against flesh in the same suspended moment. One sound blended with the other so that later he was unsure if he had actually heard either. In an instant, Bliss’ dress was a soft halo around her ankles.
Jake had the good sense to stare. He could hardly have done otherwise. The sight of her robbed him of all volition. She was as tawny as a great cat, her skin lustrous and firm, gently muscled, so well formed that it was as if the years had barely touched her. She was lush and small at the same time. Her waist and ankles were slender. She had the shoulders of an athlete but the hips of a woman, flaring and sensual. He saw the muscle rippling along her thigh; he could see its power.
She put her extended arms over her head, drawing up her breasts even higher. They were full and firm. Her large nipples were already hard. She put her hands underneath them.
“Do you like me?” That reedy whisper again.
This time he shivered in anxious response. “Bliss,” he breathed.
“Even if it’s just a little bit, tell me yes.”
“You have no right to do this.”
“My love gives me the right. I’ve dreamed of this moment for so long.” There was a wild spark in her eyes, a heavy orange flickering of the sort one sees in animals through dense jungle foliage. Her voice was thick with emotion. “I’ve loved you from the moment we climbed side by side at the Ta Chiu. I have slept with no man without dreaming of you. Their arms around me became your arms. And when they penetrated me, it was you I felt.”
“Bliss.” As he whispered her name again, Jake was aware that he had been wrong about her in the airport. She was not the sister coming to meet her older brother, but a woman hesitantly about to open her heart to her future lover.
She came toward him, seeming to float across the tile floor. He was fascinated, watching the play of her long muscles beneath that lustrous, smooth skin. He saw that she had the stride of a panther, a sinuous grace that was as powerful as it was erotic. She led with her thighs; she moved from the hips down with a low center of gravity. With each step she took, it was obvious that she drew strength upward from the ground upon which she walked. It was this elementalism that gave her innocence an erotic resonance.
At the moment their bodies touched, Jake gasped out loud. It was as if he had been brushed by an electric current. He felt the nerves beneath his skin bristle as if they had been lying dormant for years. Something inside himself had been brought alive by her.
He felt her arms come around him, her face tilt upward on its long neck. He was aware of her whole body lifting up, propelled by the arching of her feet. And because of this, her flesh slid against his.
At the instant his mouth came down over hers, he felt the heat of her groin pressing inward, felt with a kind of lunatic tingling the brush of her pubic hair against his lower belly.
He groaned into her open mouth as he tasted her. She was like a sweet liquor of which he could not get enough. His head swam and he felt the tension in his legs burst into muscle spasm.
With this, he recognized that he had been thinking of her since the night of that first dream in the hospital. He had wanted her then and ever since, but his guilt and then his mourning for Mariana had not let him feel it fully.
He clasped her to him, feeling her warmth stealing through him, thawing his icy insides. At that moment he thought he felt his heart cry out, and he slipped down to his knees. His palms caressed her muscular flanks. His face was very close to her essence. Her innocence stirred him profoundly as he, too, thought of that children’s night in Cheung Chau.
He could feel her heat on his cheek. His nostrils flared with the scent of her arousal. He opened his mouth and felt his tongue being drawn into the core of her. He licked softly and gently in long, loving swipes, and was amazed to find how quickly she opened to him, layer upon delicate layer.
Above him, Bliss thrust her fingers in his thick hair, holding on as she rocked her pelvis in toward him. Her heart beat like a triphammer as she felt her own secret flesh flowering open. Her insides had turned to water and she felt a fine filament of sensation arcing downward from her navel to the spot where Jake was making love to her.
As his tongue moved, so too did the filament, filling out and intensifying into a ribbon of pleasure beyond anything she had ever felt. Her lower belly fluttered with its movement, out of her conscious control.
Without quite knowing what she was doing, Bliss reached down and took Jake’s hands, drawing them upward until she could press his palms against her breasts.
She moaned when she felt him grasping her there. The feel of his callused flesh brushing back and forth over her distended nipples was almost more than she could bear. Now the ribbon extended itself upward, fluttering through her breasts. Now she felt connected to him in all ways, as if, truly, he had entered her.
Bliss felt an energy building within her. Her intensive lifelong training with intrinsic energy caused her to be open to it, to embrace it rather than fear it, for she was immediately aware of its power.
“Ahhh,” she cried, panting. “Ahhh!”
Bliss was crouching down, spreading her thighs as much as she was able in this position. Her openness increased her pleasure. Her neck arched and she threw her head back. She stared sightlessly at the ceiling, lost in the web of ecstasy Jake was weaving within her. Her eyes fluttered closed. Her breasts heaved within the confinement of his palms.
She could not stop her hips from flipping forward against him. She wanted him inside her, but even more, she wanted this ecstasy to continue.
She cried out sharply as she felt her engorged flesh being drawn into a liquid place. Heat suffused her and then the licking commenced again, but this time with the added sensation. She looked downward, saw that he had taken part of her into his mouth.
“Ohhh,” she gasped. “I can’t stand it. I can’t … Oh!”
The heat struck her across her chest, suffusing her shoulders, rib cage, and heart in a bath of liquid fire. It rushed up her neck and into her face.
Her breath shuddered through half-open lips, her nostrils flared. The tension in her muscles reached epic proportions. Then it all gave a final outward thrust as her orgasm overwhelmed her. She shuddered and shook within his embrace, crying out in Burmese in her release.
She collapsed into Jake’s waiting arms, her head bowed, her eyelids flickering.
Jake lowered her slowly onto himself. He drew on what control he had left; he was mad to soak himself inside her. He was so hard he hurt, quivering with the burning images of her in the throes of her intense climax.
All the breath went out of him as he felt her streaming wetness engulf the tip of him. “Oh, God!” The words were expelled from him like steam from an engine.
Bliss’ hands were on his shoulders, and he felt them grip him as she came down on him. Her head bent forward into the crook of his shoulder. Her open lips bit into his flesh.
“Take me.” Her voice was a ragged whisper. “Take me, oh, please.”
Tentatively he pushed himself upward, felt himself sink another half-inch inside her. Her warmth was almost too much for him to bear. His lungs were working like a bellows. Sweat streaked him. It pearled her long, night-black hair, strands of which clung to him like tiny arms.
“Oh, Jake!” It seemed that she had no breath left. He felt her hand moving downward beneath their connection. Her strong fingers cupped him gently, squeezing rhythmically.
It was too much for him. With a deep moan, he slid all the way into her, hilling himself. Then he felt her lifting herself away from him. He slid all the way out and she hovered, brushing against his tip for as long as they could bear it. He hilted himself again.
Jake grabbed her, certain he could not hold out for much longer. He did not want this feeling to end, yet the ecstatic friction was ascending to such a height within him that he knew it could not be long sustained.
With every stroke he felt the core of her fluttering nakedly around him, felt her high mount pressed against his belly, her fingers squeezing gently but urgently at him.
He felt the weight growing inside him, the gentle pulling at his loins becoming ever more urgent. With a lurch, his anal sphincter tightened. He grew inside her, trembling.
Bliss sensed his ending and she rode him more rapidly now, pressing the top of herself against him as he pistoned in and out. Their flesh slapped together faster and faster, and as that happened, Jake felt a kind of ecstatic merging. He felt floodgates opening inside him, felt his vulnerability to Bliss and did not shy away from it. He embraced it.
And with great force and heady emotion, he jetted into her with an abandon he thought beyond him.
Merged with him, Bliss felt the building of her own forces. His trembling ardor fueled her own, so that she was on the brink when he came. The force of his explosion transferred itself to her and she exploded again, a quick, sharp burst quite different from before, but no less pleasurable.
Perhaps it was not only the hot water still running in the shower that steamed the room, but the force of their mingled emotions.
Outside, the moon had risen, huge and oblate, dimming the gemstone lights from the Peak all the way down to the harbor. The water glittered like a pathway to the stars in the new light.
David Oh was on the run.
Night. In his city. He would be all right, he kept telling himself. He knew he had to get to Jake, tell him what he now knew. No place inside the Quarry was safe. At his shoulder, the Singapore hotel rose up like a glass beehive, its room lights bright and inviting. Not for him. He hurried on down Lockhart Road. In brightlight Wanchai, full of late-night bars, dance halls, and cinemas he felt safe. Then why was he shivering?
Remembering himself hunched over the GPR-3700 computer terminal, in the process of finding out that Stallings’ missions somehow coincided with KVR missions of unknown objective; that shortly after his aborted missions, opposition leaders had been terminated, not killed as published reports indicated.
Except for Mahmed Al-Qassar, a secret CIA double whom the KVR had cheerfully allowed Stallings to mistakenly terminate.
Perhaps all of this had made no sense to Stallings. Perhaps if he had lived a bit longer he would have reasoned it out. David Oh had a leg up on that: the knowledge that someone inside the Quarry had ordered Mariana Maroc’s termination before the official “seek and terminate” directive had been given.
More time at the computer and a greater knowledge of the software programming allowed him to extract another vital piece of the puzzle. All the opposition terminations had been traced back to one source: Nichiren.
Nichiren was being run by the KVR. That meant General Daniella Vorkuta. The “contrary” directives from inside the Quarry all benefited the Soviets. Vorkuta again.
That was enough for David Oh. As soon as he had come up against the stone wall of the “eyes only, Quarry director” graphic, he had made a hard copy of all the intelligence he had unearthed, including that.
Vorkuta had penetrated to the very core of the Quarry. She was attacking from inside and out. David Oh had no idea how far she had already gotten, but one thing was certain: he could trust no one. No one but Jake.
He slipped into the Gray Shark, a sleazy dive where the lights were low, the drinks two parts water, and the girls totally without a memory. The place was filled with noise and smoke. The noise was coming from sixteen loudspeakers girdling the enormous room. Billy Idol was spitting out the words to “White Wedding.”
Red, green, and gold spots roved the rafters, swinging down every so often to brush the swaying dancers’ shoulders. Sailors. David Oh saw lots of sailors. An American aircraft carrier was in. Piles of money would be made in Wanchai tonight, three-quarters of it illicitly.
He went to the neon-trimmed bar and ordered a whiskey and soda. It tasted like water, which was okay with him. Now was not the time to get a buzz on. Except for the raised octagonal dance floor, the place was filled with tiny tables. To one side, near the bathrooms, a steep flight of metal gridwork stairs led up to a second story.
David Oh’s eyes scanned the room, but he saw no one he knew. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the door. Outs he ignored. It was the ins he was concerned with.
Within six minutes of his arrival he saw three possibles. All men, they caught his eye because of their faces. They had been trained by a large, disciplined organization. Their eyes swept the room, piercing to a different quadrant every eight seconds. There was no deviation. In a moment they were gravitating toward him.
David Oh grabbed a girl and, pulling her close against him, moved away from the bright aurora of the bar.
It had been a risk, using the computer in the manner he had over the past several days. Because of the peculiar nature of the software, he had picked up Stallings’ trail. He suspected that General Vorkuta’s contact inside the Quarry hierarchy had done so as well. That was why he had been sent back into Japan. Not to terminate Nichiren, but to be terminated himself.
David Oh knew in the back of his mind that the same fate could very well be in store for him. Still, he had continued with his unearthing. Once begun, he could hardly back off. He’d never be able to live with himself.
Now he knew that he had been discovered.
He took the girl up the stairs with him. In his ear, he heard her breathing the grocery list of prices. Did he want it straight or would he like to make it a threesome? did he want oral or anal sex? did he want to spend a half-hour, an hour, longer? Very romantic. He didn’t even bother to tell her to shut up.
They went into one of the two dozen or so rooms upstairs above the disco floor. Inside, he threw her from him, ignoring her. “Hey, S and M will cost you plenty more!” and jerked the small window up. Music permeated the floorboards, the heavy thump-thump-thump of the bass setting his teeth rattling.
He peered out. Drainpipes galore. There was no time to think about how long they had been there or how sturdy they were. He wriggled like a cat through the aperture, grasped the pipes, filthy with encrusted dirt and rust. Shinnied down into the gloom of the back alleyway.
He took off into the night, thinking, My only chance now is to find Jake. Three blocks later, filling his lungs with much-needed oxygen, he remembered Bliss. He had suspected from the first that Jake had slipped out of Hong Kong with her connivance.
Now she might be the only link he had. He dug in his pocket for a coin and began to run again. Looking for a phone.
Sir John Bluestone knew that he had his edge over his competitors as soon as the other man came into the room and began to report.
It was interesting, Bluestone thought now, stretched out on his leather sofa. Like a prince. A prince of commerce. That was how he thought of himself. Partially. He had his secret life as well, which warmed him every hour of the day and night. Working for a cause, that connected with him. He had been born in England’s upper class. In India, then in the smaller countries of Southeast Asia, he had seen how the arrogance of the white man had turned a series of exquisite paradises into the dust of destruction.
The wanton disregard for life that his people exhibited had filled him with disgust and, more importantly, disquiet. He had begun to make his feelings known. And had been contacted, vetted, recruited. Then he had been sent to Hong Kong and eventually had risen to his current level as one of the five tai pan of Five Star Pacific.
It was interesting, Bluestone thought again, watching the Chinese give his report. His study, in which he now reclined, was a reflection of himself. It was composed of a series of patterns—all variations on the theme of black and Chinese red. The ceiling was black lacquer, the walls papered in a black-on-black, gloss-and-matte pattern, with a scattering of tiny chrysanthemums in red.
The leather couch on which he reclined was red, the chairs black. The floor was covered with plush wall-to-wall carpeting in black with red pin-dots. Ebony bookshelves climbed the wall behind the ebony desk and the black lacquer and red metal chair. There was a Chinese altartop sideboard in red, on which stood the only splash of another color: a priceless Qing vase that was so translucent it could be said to contain either no color or all colors at once.
