Unholy Promises (13 page)

Whips has no such safety measure in place. Damn.

Sean Paul rolls his eyes and exits through a side door. I don’t follow, at least not yet.

I know where to find him…

I catch the beauty’s hand mid-swing and, taking her knee in hand, lift so that her stiletto is removed from her slave’s mouth. To take the sting out of my interference, I distract her with a kiss. Well, some would call it a kiss; none would call it romantic, or soft. For a moment, I possess her—mind, body and soul. It is a kiss she will remember the rest of her days; though I will forget the taste of her a second after I walk away.

“May I?” I ask, as I remove the flogger from her limp hand.

Eyes wide, she nods.

Taking her slave’s chain leash in hand, I yank him to his feet and push him over the nearest table. With his wide, muscled back as the perfect target, I teach the model a basic stroke for warming up, a stinging stroke, and a nice thuddy stroke and watch as she imitates for a few moments before leaving them to finish their evening. As with most Saturday nights, the crowd has brought the action out of the back rooms and into the public areas, providing an audience for my impromptu demonstration. Applause heralds my exit and I realize that, for a man so intent on keeping the visit to Paris secret, I haven’t been very careful. It almost seems I welcome my enemies discovering the truth.

I smile, knowing that most of my enemies received word that I live within seconds of my phone call to Sean Paul, demanding this meeting. The man never could keep a secret, a highly valuable character trait in an informant; not so great in a friend—or at least friend once.

I am tired of hiding from the truth.

Sean Paul also hides, though for very different reasons, and where better to hide than in a place where no one ever uses real names and shadowed darkness is the norm. Sean Paul was my inspiration when I decided to hide in San Francisco.

Like a sloth, he moves slowly, controlled, drawing no attention to himself, becoming one with the décor until forgotten. Sean Paul was a marvelous teacher while I was here; I owe him a lot.

The playroom is dark, but I don’t seek out a light switch, rather crossing the room to the center. I remove all my clothes as expected, laying my three weapons on top—bowie knife, 9mm, pocket-size cache of explosives. The missive I received from Sean Paul earlier in the day had been very explicit as to expectations if I wanted to learn anything at all about Daniel’s whereabouts.

It speaks volumes about just how far I am willing to go to find my brother—to play submissive to Sean Paul’s top. I don’t regret my decision until he steps away from the wall, the deep ebony darkness of his skin having blended perfectly with the wall’s darkness—I didn’t realize he was there. His pleasure at my not-well-disguised shock reflects in the whites of his eyes and the gleaming whiteness of his broad smile.

“Bang, you’re dead,” he jokes badly, his Jamaican accent, whether real or created, hangs thick in each word. “Oh, too late, that was your last trick. What’s your trick this visit to Paris?”

It’s a question that isn’t meant to be answered.

I watch his approach, a slow swagger meant to accentuate his solid, lithe frame, every oiled muscle gleaming with perfection as he swishes the leather-thonged flogger in his right hand, lightly slapping the black leather covering his thigh. In a distinctly feminine gesture, he tosses his long braids over his shoulder with an exaggerated head toss. The many beads, laced in its dark length, clink together, breaking the silence. He waits until he is near, very near, before he whispers my name lightly, as if he whispers my name with such tenderness every night. As if I belong to him, and have belonged to him for a time long enough that he has the right to say my name with such gentle passion.

A chill goes up my spine as I answer him similarly, his name a well-practiced caress, flowing off my tongue.

The flogger slaps against his own thigh in perfect, timed rhythm. The same rhythm he will soon use across my back. “I attended your funeral. I mourned for you—deeply. I held your brother as he broke down the night he heard the news. So, can you imagine my surprise when I heard your voice on my private line?”

I shrug. Sean Paul’s questions rarely require answering.

“Why have you returned from the dead, Luka?”

“I made it quite clear what I require from you, Sean Paul. Information. That’s it.

Where’s my brother?”

Moving closer, slapping his thigh, he circles me, assessing my nakedness, trying to intimidate me.

“You’ve wasted a trip across the ocean, my friend. I don’t know.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sean Paul,” I growl, unnecessary frustration and raw emotion choking me. “The two of you were lovers too long for you to deny knowing his whereabouts now. Just tell me where he is.”

“If I knew, I would tell you,” Sean Paul promises, raising the butt end of the flogger to caress my cheek.

“I don’t believe you.”

The strike on my cheekbone is almost expected. I pull in my emotions as fast as I can, locking down. I know he witnesses the tightening in my jaw, but it can’t be helped.

“You never were a very trusting man.” Sean Paul laughs, spinning and swinging so the knotted tails of the flogger bite deep.

I tense, ready for the second slap, but it doesn’t land.

“That was for breaking your brother’s heart.”

“He knew I was still alive.”

“Did he? And how is that, Luka? How do you think he would know such a thing when all the world accepts your death?”

“I hoped he knew.”

Sean Paul circles me, calculating.

“And what do you know about your brother?”

“I know he is innocent, he hasn’t switched sides,” I lie, my gut telling me long ago that Nikkos was in over his head, enjoying himself too much. He’d turned and that is why I am here, but Sean Paul doesn’t need to know that.

“Why do you lie to me?” Sean Paul swings wide, wrapping the throngs around my side so that the knots strike my ribs, breaking skin. “Now, when you want me to hand you the whereabouts of your brother? I will not let your doubts cost him his life!”

Two more strikes fall, raking hard. Slap, slap.

“Arrange the meeting, Sean Paul. Please.” I hate the emotion in my voice.

“It isn’t that easy. Go home, or go to whatever hole you crawled out of,” he seethes, raw emotion making him a lethal force. “Let it be enough that he is safe, that he is well.

Let it be enough that Nikkos believes the lie of his life so much that that is what you are feeling. But know this, he has not turned. He will never turn—not completely. He is not the same man you left, Luka. He will never be the man he once was; but I love him still, and I will protect him—even from you.”

Slap, slap, slap. “Arrange the meeting,” I grit out. It feels like Sean Paul is cleaving away flesh with each strike, but it is an illusion. I will have welts, bruises, but no broken skin.

“King Cobra won’t let him out of his sight long enough for you to meet.”

“Then arrange for me to meet King Cobra. If they are that close, I will see the truth with my own eyes.”

Sean Paul wraps his hand into my hair, pulling me close, brushing his lips ever so lightly across mine before pushing me to my knees. His look tells me what he wants, as he insists, “Not possible. Cobra doesn’t meet anyone new. I won’t risk your brother’s life with such a suggestion.” His hand wraps more tightly in my hair, pulling for real, not play. “Unzip me.”

I consider his request an extra moment before unzipping his pants, surrendering to his top one of the hardest things I’ve done in a very long time. Holding his gaze, I slide the zipper down with deliberate slowness, exposing the white cotton of his briefs. I’d expected color, perhaps satin boxers. My surprise doesn’t show as I lick his erection from bottom to top, swirling lightly over the dark purple head barely peeking above the wide elastic band. “You think this man is more dangerous than me?”

“Oui.”

I lick the head, pushing the tip of my tongue into his small urethral hole with teasing force, stretching the entrance just enough to get his attention. “Do you want this, Sean Paul?”

His eyes close, air hissing through his lips. “Yes.”

“And if I make you cum in less than two minutes, you’ll deliver my message to my brother?”

“I’m not here to bargain with you, bitch,” he growls, jerking my hair. “Now suck me off!”

“Worried that I can really get you off that fast?” I chuckle. Wrapping my fingers into the waistband of his shiny, black leather pants, pulling both leather and briefs to his knees in one quick slide.

“Make the deal with me, Sean Paul. What do you have to lose?”

His erection bobs straight out only for a second before tightening muscles pull his length closer, a dribble of thick pre-cum falling over the edge to slide down his length.

“Two minutes, bitch, starting now!”

I close my mouth around the helmeted tip of his circumcised dick, grabbing with my lips, grazing with my teeth, sucking hard, just the tip, a technique a whore once told me was called milking the mango. Sucking harder and harder, rolling the helmet with my tongue, I milk him, sucking, pulling hard and fast on just that helmeted end. He tries not to moan and fails, his hand tightens against my skull, fingers digging into my head as I bite then milk him harder, sucking, bringing him quickly, easily. And when he looks down at me just before throwing his head back, I see just a flash of anger.

Rising, I grip his still-throbbing dick in my hand. His knees shake against mine. I lick his cheek, leaving the evidence of his orgasm as a slime trail on his face. “Call my brother. Now!”

Climbing into a borrowed Jag, I tell myself that I can be on the next plane back to San Francisco. As I disable the alarm and cross the wires needed to start the engine, I think back to all I left behind … but the truth is … there isn’t so much to return to anymore, now that my children are lost to me. The life I loved most is over. There is only Sophia and Garrett.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes, knowing I should call them. There is always the possibility that they are worried about me.

No. They won’t be worried. I come and go from their lives so much of late that worry isn’t what they will be feeling. Irritation, maybe, that I am gone again without so much as a note or a phone call. I’m rude, inconsiderate … some days, blatantly mean, but I have to be. My actions give me the distance I need.

Shifting the Jag into drive, I peel out of Whips’ parking lot and hit the road to follow more clues. Sean Paul wasn’t completely honest, I know that, but some of what he said was truth … truth hidden in lies. It is my job to separate one from the other. I hope it is easier to find the truth of where my brother is hiding than to unearth the truth from the lies I’ve hidden myself in.

I can tell myself a million lies … that my line of work makes it dangerous to be so involved with Garrett and Sophia, that they need time to be a couple, that I don’t love them. Lies are my specialty, but when lying to myself … it just doesn’t work because, really, they are all that matter to me now and that thought hurts too much, knowing all I’ve lost. I don’t want to lose them too, and when my fears ride high, I’d rather run from them, hoping that if I’m the one who runs, I won’t hurt as badly as I would if they left me first.

Accelerating down a long stretch of asphalt, no answers are clear. Why am I here?

Am I only hiding from Sophia and Garrett?

No, I’m here for my brother. Am I? After all of these years, I’m only now concerned if he lives or dies?

It is a partial truth, not an all-out lie.

And Eva?

What in the hell is Eva, if not a convenient distraction from the life I’ve only just begun to share with Sophia and Garrett? A memory, a dream, a ghost? I can only wonder at why I refuse to commit fully to them and what makes me tarry here. I think I loved her once, though it was so long ago, I wonder if I fabricated the love to keep me distant from Latisha, and now I fall back on old habits, keeping my heart distant from Sophia and Garrett. Intelligence tells me to run from Paris as fast as I can … but as I drive up the dark alley that leads to the warehouse, I laugh out loud, wondering why I’m torturing myself.

I’m a sadist, not a masochist.

“…the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.”

~ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

December 29

The Welsh countryside is lovely in the winter, peaceful … yeah, that was the lure, the promise. Ducking deeper into my parka, I count three precipitants falling from the sky simultaneously, rain, sleet, and snow. Only the Welsh countryside could be so hospitable.

Only crazed Welshmen could find pleasure in such a moment.

I shiver. Liam looks perfectly comfortable in his long-sleeved, cotton-knit shirt and nylon shorts. A quick look at his dripping hair, reddened cheeks and thighs, one would think he was out enjoying a warm summer day. The red knees above his knee socks could almost be called cute.

I ask myself again if this trip could possibly be worth it.

Will my plan work?

The welcome I received from his family was most unwelcoming, and boded ill from the moment my plane touched down. I scope out the other spectators, Liam’s parents and very irritated younger sister. Their disposition hasn’t improved. Conclusion: they aren’t impressed with their first impression of Liam’s fiancée. Unfortunately, I am in this game up to my frozen eyeballs.

No helping the first impression, I did my part by covering all the erotic bites and bruises beneath a wool turtleneck. I hope to get Liam away from the family long enough to explain, before he actually sees the bruises up close and personal. Or I could just insist on undressing in the dark for the next two weeks. Lousy plan. Maybe he’ll be understanding, or won’t ask questions, or I could blame an assignment. I’ve been bitten on assignment before. Chewing my bottom lip, I watch the game, cataloguing bruises for the umpteenth time; thinking, perhaps I am making it out to be worse than it is. I decide no, if I’ve succeeded in winning his heart for real, he isn’t going to be very understanding about the teeth marks encircling my breast, or my shoulder, or my inner thigh.