All The Queen's Men (Fantasy Heights) (4 page)

Josh lifted her languid frame off him and turned her around. She put her feet on the floor, and he pulled her back to ride him cowgirl style.

Her attention telescoped to the feel of that exquisite friction, of his cock rubbing inside her. She planted her hands on his knees and lowered and raised herself, studying the feel of it, hyper-aware of his every tiny movement, attuning her motions to the sounds he made.

Her body responded as it always did to Josh, rebuilding its way toward climax. The faster she moved the more intoxicating the sounds he made. She was racing straight for the finish line when Josh took back over. He sat up and grasped her around the waist, forcing her to slow down. Then he made her stop completely by letting go once more, only to clamp his hands right behind her knees. He curled his arms, lifting her off her feet once more.

She was utterly unable to stop him or move very much at all as he scooted forward. His grip behind her knees held her in position to receive long, hard thrusts straight up into her pussy. His cock pressed hard against that soft, heated expanse inside, and she was right on the verge of coming again when he loosened his grip, releasing one of her legs to reach his free hand between her legs and rub hard on her clit.

Pleasure swallowed her whole. Long, quivery pulses of release emptied her lungs and spread into her chest and down her legs, growing ever stronger once she felt him finally reach climax beneath her.

She lapsed into a clingy, possessive afterglow while he settled them into bed. They lay with their heads on pillows, hanging onto one another under the sheet. He kissed her, and then changed everything by starting to talk.

He explained how it had all started, growing up a few doors down from Steph in a family with an enviable pedigree but no money to speak of. He and Steph had gone to high school together, and then attended the same university. After graduation, they’d lost touch for a few years until Steph’s father passed away and Josh came home for the funeral. As a new owner and CEO of Fantasy Heights, Steph had talked Josh into building a few things for the resort. He had also agreed to pick up the occasional shift in security. With the extra money, he could build up more capital to start his own company, faster.

He’d been well on his way when, five months later, he delivered a set piece to the resort and ran into Kay Prescott. From the first moment, he’d been a goner. Kay had been gorgeous and charming and bursting with appetites that cast an unbreakable spell.

It took Josh a year to realize he’d married a sociopath. Kay had been an expert since youth at hiding her condition, mimicking normal emotions when it suited. Josh was so blinded, so in love, he never realized he was Kay’s disguise of choice. They were the golden couple. He made Kay look good. Look
normal
.

He found her out one night after returning home a day early from a worksite to find a very frightened, angry, bleeding Saudi billionaire tied up in Prescott house’s wine cellar. Josh had let the man go, and confronted Kay. The mask came off completely. She was cold. Unaffected, though she did seem to understand that Josh and the billionaire had grounds to be angry. And she didn’t get away with it: The billionaire had complained to Mercury, dragging the Accord and its purpose into the light where Josh had seen it for the first time.

Back then, with Kay and a different DOJ rep involved, the Accord had been a very different body. They had used the access to Fantasy Heights in a much looser fashion. Both the Feds and the Mafia used sexual and fantasy fulfillment to pay off debts, purchase favors and assuage enemies. The practice continued to do this day, though in a much more responsible fashion.

“That’s what makes it so tough to walk away,” Josh had told her. “You’d think that the way they abuse their position here would be all bad or self-serving, but it’s not. This place has purchased a hell of a lot of peace in this world. Averted a ton of conflict. If we did the logical thing right now and closed the whole place down, it’d be like the Chernobyl of diplomacy.”

Amanda had murmured agreement and listened while Josh continued. Hurt and embarrassed for having been fooled, he withdrew into his brand new contracting company. Every chance he got, he fought with Kay to let him go. But Kay left him in no doubt that he was still her favorite possession. She would destroy him and his company if he attempted to leave.

He’d drifted, then, until he encountered Bill Dunkirk, Thomas’s late FBI partner, at a dinner party. The investigator had come to update the resort’s screening tests, and he was absolutely fascinated by the Prescotts. Or rather, the personality disorders that ran in their family. Kay was a full-blown high-functioning sociopath. Her younger sister Yvette suffered from bi-polar and an array of attachment disorders.

Many of the Prescott cousins had similar afflictions, including Jennifer Grove. She, too, was a sociopath. Steph was the only one in many generations to escape them completely.

Josh told Amanda about the night he and Bill met face to face at that dinner party. Josh had been drowning his sorrows on a patio when Bill casually joined him for a short, frank talk. “So. Looks like Kay has finally shown herself.”

Stung and offended, feeling foolish, Josh hadn’t responded.

Bill produced a business card and held it out. “I wouldn’t try to leave. She’ll kill you, if you’re lucky. If not, she’ll target your loved ones until you’re back under control. Take my card. You may need my help someday.”

Years later, when Kay went missing, Bill came running to investigate. He brought with him his partner-slash-bodyguard Thomas Bishop, who’d been about as friendly as your average humorless mercenary. Josh and Thomas had little contact during the investigation while Bill had efficiently uncovered Kay’s activities leading up to her disappearance. At the core of it all sat DriveRate. Though small and very private back then, DriveRate had been used to lure in and evaluate all sorts of disaffected types. The recruits Kay deemed disposable were handed over to a pair of doctors for testing updated versions of the Janos drugs.

Six months passed with no trace of Kay. During month two, the first of the doctors went missing. The second doctor disappeared six weeks later. Their bodies were found a month after that. Bill had pecked away at the case until one night, he and Thomas tried to execute a search warrant on one Simon Dixon, a mining executive whom Kay and friends had subjected to a destructive spectrum of drugs.

“They had fried him beyond repair,” Josh had explained, “but the poor bastard held it together long enough to hunt and kill Kay and both of the doctors. After that, he went completely out of what little mind they’d left him. He was so paranoid by the time Bill and Thomas tried to use that warrant, he had the whole place rigged with explosives.”

Josh had been flattened by what happened to Bill and Thomas. He became determined that Thomas should survive, even while the consequences of Kay’s death descended around him like nuclear fallout. To spite her sister Yvette, Kay had bequeathed most of her estate to Josh, including part of her Fantasy Heights shares. The other part went to Steph, turning her into majority stockholder.

Harvestment and its subsidiaries like DriveRate, however, had gone to Yvette.

“Probably because Kay knew Steph and I would dissolve the whole works if we inherited,” Josh concluded.

Amanda had asked, “So Kay’s sister is the one you’ve been trying to call all night?”

“Yes. I’ve been trying to reach her since that morning Derek showed up at your townhouse, demanding I do something about Nicole. Problem is, Yvette hates my guts. And if DriveRate is really behind all this, she has even less reason to talk to me.”

“So that’s nice,” Amanda had said with feigned optimism. “A mentally unstable woman in charge of a bunch of creepers who have no qualms about redecorating victims’ brains with drugs. I like our odds.”

Josh had stared at her in the darkness. Then reached for her again.

The district attorney’s voice startled her back to the present. “What are you thinking about?”

Amanda folded her hands into her lap, taking a moment to reason out a response to his question. “I was just remembering Josh telling me about Yvette and Kay that night, and how those two envied each other. And how Bill Dunkirk warned Josh against leaving Kay.”

Mr. Hughes’s features softened with sadness. “It’s a pity you never got to meet Bill. He was a good, decent man. He never could quite square this place, though. If he’d had his way, he would have shut it down and brought the Janos records into the light where they could be studied. Short of that, he made sure his tests weeded out the violents, the victims and the addicts. You have him to thank for the caliber of people you work with and service.”

She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. She could think of a number of instances where Bill’s tests had failed them miserably.

Mr. Hughes watched her for a moment, then crossed Josh’s name off the list. “Let’s move on to the management meeting that next morning. The first one, after Thomas left for Arizona. Tell me what happened with Wade Fraser and Mercury Milazzo, as best you can recall.”

Amanda did her best. She had taken a place at this very table, seated at Josh’s right hand. The rest of the owners and the Accord and all their lieutenants except Thomas had filed in.

“I didn’t notice anything wrong with Mercury,” Amanda said. “At least no more so than anyone else. Everybody was pale and worried and not themselves.”

Wade Fraser dominated the start of the meeting. He was not happy that Carter Warnous, a runaway and a minor, was in their custody. They hoped the boy could identify the DriveRate counselor who had threatened him, but they could not interview Carter without a guardian present. Gail was still locked up and out of reach. Robert, who did not have legal custody, did not meet the guardian qualification, and yet they had all the makings of a nightmare on their hands if Robert found out his son had run away from home seeking Thomas’s help.

Steph
had reassured the group. Sort of. “I can handle Robert. But we are going to have a problem, soon. He doesn’t believe what happened to Derek and Ridley and Nicole has anything to do with DriveRate. He doesn’t believe any of us are in danger, and he doesn’t want our protection anymore. He wants to be able to leave the resort.”

“In other words, he wants to get high,” Mercury said.

Steph had turned an alarming shade of red, but Wade cut her off. “Regardless, Warnous has a point. We have no right to dictate what he does. If we keep him here against his will, it’s kidnapping. We have to let him go.”

“Can’t Dr. Carpenter convince him to stay?” Mercury asked. Then, under his voice: “Or make him go back to treatment?”

Wade said, “Dr. Carpenter is still unreliable, as far as I’m concerned.”

What did he mean? Amanda remembered, vaguely, hearing Eric say something at auditions about Dr. Carpenter being in trouble. Amanda learned from the ensuing argument that the doctor had been romantically involved with Brent Johnson, the IT tech Derek had interrogated, the one who’d subsequently been fired.

Steph had defended Dr. Carpenter, and in a guilty, defensive tone, asked again that she be allowed to handle Robert. No one seemed too happy with that idea, though there was little anyone could do about it.

The final issue on the table turned out to be the reason Josh had brought Amanda to the meeting: her contract, or lack thereof. She had been disconcerted to learn the reason why the owners and Accord had been dragging their feet so long. Early on, she had been earmarked by Fiona, Jennifer, Ben and Phillip for an invitation to the Paramour Project.

As it was explained to her that morning, Paramours were personal assistants who worked with clients for extended periods. Their duties were determined solely by their client’s needs. A healthy sexual relationship was certainly part of it, but of equal importance were specialized services like estate management or private security or even commercial and industrial espionage prevention.

Fiona, who ran the Project, said, “You’ve got the four chief attributes we look for. You’re ethical, uninhibited, logical and unattached. It’s your experience in banking that pushes you over the top.”

Put on the spot, Amanda could only respond one way. Both Fiona and Jennifer looked stunned by her lukewarm request for time to think about it. Worse, though, was the weight that had settled onto her chest. All she’d been able to think about was the fact that Ridley would have given anything to receive a Paramour invite. And now the girl was in a hospital halfway across the country, weeping inconsolably, thanks to whatever chemical shit-storm the DriveRate thugs had forced into her veins.

They all agreed to a provisional contract in the interim. Josh had done most of the talking and saw to it that her security clearance was raised as far as it could go.

“Next thing I know,” she told Mr. Hughes, “Mercury slumps forward in his chair.”

She made a ‘timber’ motion with her arm. Mercury’s chair had wheels, and rolled backward to compensate for the shift in weight. Marla rushed to him. Mercury had been a deadweight by then. Marla had barely caught him in time to keep him from slithering to the floor.

The room had erupted into panic.

“Except for Jennifer Grove,” Amanda remembered. “While everyone else was freaking out, Jennifer asked Fiona to run upstairs into the security office and grab a blood screening kit. And thank God she had the presence of mind to think of it. That blood sample changed everything.”

“Indeed. And you were the one who called Mercury’s son, correct?”

“Yeah. I told Scott we’d meet him at the hospital. Josh and I followed the ambulance while Steph and Jennifer and Fiona went to work on locating Yvette.”

She watched as Mr. Hughes drew a star next to Yvette’s name on the list.

What did that mean?

“About the hospital,” Mr. Hughes said. “I understand there was a scuffle between Marla and Scott?”

Amanda sighed. The whole thing still made her mad. Scott and Marla normally got along all right but that day, emotions had been running high. Scott had accused Marla of failing to protect his father. Marla had countered with insults about how Scott disrespected Mercury. The sniping had escalated to shouting about how Marla was an idiot if she thought Mercury Milazzo would ever put a ring on her finger.