Last Kiss (Hitman #3) (21 page)

I’m pleased by this compliment. “It’s because we’ve been around each other so much that we’re likely now immune to each other’s pathogens.”

He snorts. “If you say so. Or perhaps it is just you, because you are special to me.”

I tense a little at the word
special
, but when he clarifies it, I relax. I don’t mind being special to Vasily. I take the soap from him and dab my fingertips on it, then stroke them across his now-streaky eyebrows to clean them. “When do we go to this sex club?”

“We go tomorrow.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

I smooth my thumbs over his brows. “I want you to find my G-spot again.”

VASILY

On my right, Naomi is lovingly stroking the brim of her cap repeatedly. Her fingers must be chafed at this point. I shift in my small seat. My cock is sore today. If she propositioned me, I may have to turn her down. I am not at all certain I could accommodate her request.

In the slow-moving Fiat I appropriated near the university, the images of our bathroom endeavor filter through my mind. First there was her command to locate her G-spot, which was easily done. I have it memorized, and my fingers seek it out without effort. But after rubbing her until she gasped and came around my fingers, I turned her to face her freshly cleaned tile and pounded into her until she was screaming and I was coming harder than I ever had before.

Perhaps we should have stopped there. We slid into the curved
porcelain tub, exhausted and weak. With the last ounce of energy, I pulled a towel over us. We must have dozed off, but then I recall waking with my cock in her mouth, her ass bobbing rhythmically by my face. I pulled her over to straddle my face and ate her as she choked around my cock.

Naomi is not a good multitasker.

But when I finally was done licking her juices, she declared that we could not sleep again until my own erection was relieved. I did not argue.

“Did you know that in this position it is much easier for me to maintain firm contact against my clitoris without the aid of your hands or mine?”

“
Nyet
,” I grunted in response, lifting her ass up and then enjoying her slam down.

“Our bodies fit really well together. I worried you would be too big. But you aren’t too big. I mean, you’re big. Definitely bigger than average.” Her words went on and on, breathy syllables separated by gasps of air. “Your hair is both soft and scratchy. Why is that?”

“Shall I shave it for you?”

She stopped then. “You would shave? Yes, I think you should. For science.”

“For science,” I repeated solemnly, and then buried my face into her neck as her cunt muscles began squeezing and releasing me. “What are you doing, Naomi?”

“I’m working my Kegel muscles. Those are—”

“I know what they are,” I interrupted.

“Yes, well, I’m seeing if they enhance intercourse. I think it does. It makes me want to orgasm more quickly. I think it’s the friction or pressure on various parts of my vagina. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes. Squeeze me again,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Does it feel good to you?”

“Da
!
Fuck me . . .”

“Vasily . . . Vasily.” Naomi tugs on my arm. By the frown on her face, it appears she has been attempting to gather my attention for some time. I shake myself to loosen the sexual memories.

“What do you wish?” She has a new laptop we acquired in Firenze open and is fiddling with the tag we will be placing on our mark for tracking purposes.

“I want to test the range of this tag.”

“You have written a program?”

“Yeah, just a simple little code but I can’t test how far away this thing will emit a signal when I’m sitting next to it.”

“Guillaume said a few hundred feet.”

“That’s not very precise. How will we track this guy?”

“Venice is small. We will walk around until it goes off.”

She frowns at me. “Seriously? That is your plan? That’s really bad, Vasily. Pull over,” she orders.

I shrug. A break to stretch our legs would be welcome. I drive the Fiat onto the median and engage the emergency break.

“What are you doing?” she asks, confused.

“Pulling over.” I open the car door and step out.

“I meant like at a gas station or something.”

“This is Italy. There are no roadside gas stations as there are in the United States. It is perfectly acceptable to pull over to piss.”

Her mouth forms a circle of horror, and then she digs into her bag, pulling out a bottle of hand purifier. Thrusting it at me, she orders, “Use this after you are done voiding. I don’t like urine.”

I take the bottle. “You don’t seem to mind my come.” I throw the bottle up lightly and catch it.

“It’s not the same thing.” She
harrumphs
and closes the car door.

I walk backward down the median with the tag in my pocket, waiting for her to signal to me. She waves me forward. I turn, jog a few paces, and turn back. We repeat this several times until she finally emerges from the vehicle and gestures for me to return.

“How far is that?” she asks when I near.

“Approximately four hundred feet.” I hold the door open, aware of an oncoming Audi traveling at a swift distance. “Get in and move to the driver’s side. Your head should be below the window.” She hesitates. “Now, Naomi. Go.”

I slam the door shut behind her regretfully. It would have served as a nice shield. Pulling out my gun from my shoulder holster, I wait for the car to near. I jump lightly in place to loosen my muscles, allowing my right hand to hang freely along my thigh. A glance to my left reveals Naomi pressed up against the passenger window. I bang my elbow against the glass, causing her to scurry back.

The car is almost upon us. The lights flash once, twice, and then it’s gone. I turn and raise the gun almost reflexively before it finally registers the Audi was no threat. Almost regretfully I round the front of the Fiat and climb into the driver’s seat.

“What was that? Did you think they were going to shoot at us? Why did they flash their lights?”

“They flashed their lights to tell me that I am an idiot for standing in the middle of the road. You were to remain with your head below the dashboard,” I remind her, pulling into traffic and then maneuvering the car into the slow right lane. Not for the first time today I wish for a different car. An Alfa Romeo? We would be in Venice by now.

“I had to see what was going on and I couldn’t do that with my head down,” she argues.

“If there was a gunman, he could have shot you between your eyes.”

“No way. That only happens in the movies. A bullet’s trajectory would be moved by impact against the glass, not to mention the vehicle was moving at a high speed.”

“Nikolai Andrushko once shot a Chechen warlord in the left eye in a vehicle going 110 kilos per hour while the warlord’s vehicle was traveling at an equally swift pace.”

“I don’t believe it,” she says stubbornly. “The thickness of the glass, as well as the velocity of the bullet, not to mention wind speeds, moisture in the air. And besides, if a gunman was that good, hiding behind the leather seat wouldn’t be the safest place. Probably the safest place is the engine block. How do you know that this Andrushko character made the shot? It’s probably a myth.”

“I was driving the Audi that Andrushko was sitting in,” I told her.

“Oh . . . well he was a very good shot, then.”

“
Da
, one of the best,” I agree.

“Where is he now? We should fly him down and then you can drive, I can work on my computer, and Andrushko can protect us.”

“He is . . . dead,” I say.

“Was he killed by another shooter? Because we should get that guy instead.”

What do I say?
Your brother and I faked the killing of Nikolas Andrushko, but he now lives happily ever after with some bosomy farm girl from America?
“I believe he is unavailable currently. You will have to endure my protection services.”

“Is that a sexual innuendo? You know I have a hard time catching on to those.”

I smile because she might have problems catching them with other people, but she understood mine. “I will protect you all night and into the dawn.” The clock indicates that it will take us three more hours to get to Venice. I enjoy hearing her voice and want her to talk. “How was it that you came to be in the hands of Hudson?”

“Oh that?” She scrunches up her nose as if she’s smelled something bad. “That was my attempt at being normal. You see, in the United States, kids in college and sometimes even high school kids go to resorts in Mexico or the Caribbean for vacation. They imbibe lots of liquor and have random sex with strangers.” My knuckles tighten around the steering wheel at the thought of her with another man but then I remember her . . . idiosyncrasies. She would not have been comfortable there with the strangers and the noise. “Daniel encouraged me to go. I skipped a lot of grades and didn’t have many friends my age. He said it would be good for me. But it was so . . . noisy and you couldn’t step out of your room without someone running into you. People were very clumsy, too, always spilling their drinks or spitting it out. It was very disgusting so I went for a walk on the beach.”

“You were taken then?”

“Yes. I think they were going to—you know—hurt me like they do to women.” She meant be raped. “But I convinced them that I could make them a lot of money if they would only give me a computer.”

“And you spent eighteen months in Hudson’s basement,” I conclude for her.

“It wasn’t as bad as it seems. It was quiet there. He left me
alone mostly. There was one guard who was kind to me. His son was autistic. He brought the son in to meet me and we discussed trains. Trains are like—” she searches for an analogy which is difficult for her.

“Bees to honey?” I supply.

“Yes. That’s a great comparison. We love the orderly nature of them. How the tracks can switch back and forth. The timeliness of them. The way we can track their routes. It’s fascinating and kind of relaxing.” She makes a face. “It’s too bad we got shot at on the train before because it would have been awesome to take the train to Venice.”

“It is better to be safe than sorry,” I say, repeating a famous U.S. idiom.

“What about you? What’s the story with you and the painting? Why go to all this trouble? Can’t I just buy your way to power?”

“Do you know the story of Pablo Escobar?” She shakes her head no. “Pablo Escobar controlled the manufacture and distribution of cocaine the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. He was purportedly one of the wealthiest men in the world at the time of his death. What made him so powerful, however, wasn’t just the money or the violent way he exercised his authority, but that the people of Colombia revered him. When he died, twenty-five thousand Medellín citizens came out to mourn his passing. He built churches and schools, fed the poor, nursed the sick. And for this, they helped hide his men, his coke, his guns.

“They believed in him like they believed in a deity, and if Pablo Escobar spoke, the people of Medellín carved his words in their bodies. That is real power, Naomi, and it requires more than merely money but a spiritual connection between you and the people around you. The
Bratva
once existed like that for the
people around us but it has backslid, concerned more about personal wealth and gain. The current pack of Petrovichs take things, never giving, treating all of those around them like . . . toys.” I spit out the last word, feeling revulsion curl around me like a snake, threatening to choke me. “I do not know if I care about the principles of Escobar, the giving, the Robin Hood, mentality. But I know that if I get this Madonna, the
Bratva
will coalesce behind me and I will not be subject to the whims of the Petrovichs again, because I will be the one who holds the power in his right hand and the sword in his left.”

Kilometers pass. Village after village flits in and out of our windows, and then she finally speaks. “But what if it doesn’t?”

“It will.” It must. For this woman beside me to be safe with me, for my sister to live openly and without fear. It must. If I have to burn it all to the ground and rebuild it stone by motherfucking stone.

NAOMI

I run my fingers along the keyboard of my new laptop, thinking. Keyboards are filthy things, but this one is practically from the factory, and I wipe it down prior to each use. No germs have touched this but mine.

At the thought of germs, I think of my
volk
. I ache between my legs from our marathon of sex. As Vasily likes to point out, once I have a new toy, I am not easily distracted, and sex with him is my newest fascination. Even right now, I feel the urge to find him and put my mouth on his cock and see his reaction. He tells me it’s time to stop because his body aches, but I think this is a specious argument for someone that likes pain during sex. It’s more likely that I’m costing us valuable time to prepare.

We’re going to the house of perversions tonight, to find Vasily’s mark. Our trail across Italy leads to one particular pervert,
and once we find him, Vasily can return to his
Bratva
and make a difference in Russia, and I will go to his
dacha
in the woods and . . . what? Relax? Hide from the world and code? Two weeks ago, I would have been fine with that, but two weeks ago, Vasily was not my
volk
. Two weeks ago, I had not found my G-spot. Two weeks ago, everything was different.

I’ve been abandoned several times in my life. Never by my parents, who love me, and my brother, who is smart and responsible and has never treated me like I’m weird. But beyond that trio . . . I’ve always been abandoned. Friendships are fleeting, relationships even more so. College was just as lonely as grade school. There is no club, no sorority, no activity I can join and not be an outsider. No matter what I do, I am rejected by those I want to share my life with. I’m used to it by now. It still hurts, but it’s an expected hurt.

But the thought of Vasily using me until he gets his painting and then tossing me aside while he reconquers Russia fills me with anxiety and unhappiness. I understand his motives. I felt a twinge of pride in my heart to hear his plans—to rebuild the
Bratva
into greatness and to make a difference in the lives of everyone. It’s noble. But I’m pretty sure there’s no place at his side for a hacker geek who drifts off on tangents on a whim and who can’t be around crowds. If he’s to take up the leadership reins, there’s no room for Naomi in the picture. Naomi will be at the sad little
dacha
in the woods, isolated and safe and utterly forgotten. No one will touch her G-spot or ask to be bitten during sex.

If there’s no room for me at his side, though, I can at least help secure his empire. I flex my fingers before I begin typing again. I start a myriad of searches on the Internet and a second one on my deep web. I’m looking for crime families in Russia, mentions of
Mafia or organized crime, and family names. Once I have the information I need, I’ll run a cross-check against clearinghouse deposit records, looking for bank transactions. Once I’ve narrowed down where Vasily’s rivals are storing their money, I can simply peck away, using script after script, until I empty their accounts, one by one.

Money greases a lot of wheels, and if I can cripple Vasily’s opponents by removing a tool from them, I will. I’m not like Daniel, who came after me, guns blazing. I’m not good with firearms—the noise sets off one of my spells and I go deep inside myself. But I can be fierce and protective. I can perform my own form of combat on his behalf.

He’s my vo
lk
.

—

“You must not show alarm tonight,” Vasily coaches me as we get dressed for the Pervert House. “Do you remember all we have talked of?”

My fingers move up the hooks of my corset, but when I can no longer reach, I pat Vasily’s arm. As if we are an old married couple, he spins me around and finishes the hooks for me, without a word passing between us. I think of our preparations for this party. “No blindfold this time. If I get anxious, I am to use my safe word, since that will not cause any alarm amongst the partygoers. Submissives often get nervous in new settings and cling to their masters for reassurance.” I parrot the words he told me earlier in a bored voice. “There will be many kinds of scandalous actions there tonight, but I am not to get distracted. I am to look for a man who seeks the attentions of animals. If there are more than one of these kinds of men, we are to look for signs of wealth.
Jewelry, servants, etcetera, etcetera.” I even use the same hand motions Vasily did when telling me these things.

He chuckles. “You are getting quite good at mimicking me. And here I thought you were not paying attention.” His hands finish the corset and glide down to the satin panties covering my ass, as if unable to help himself.

I don’t mind this touch. Anything Vasily sends in my direction, I accept happily. Well . . . unless it’s on another dirty mattress. I push that thought aside and turn around, gazing up at Vasily. He’s in a dress suit with tails, and we’ve fixed his eyebrows so they match his hair once more. With the dark brows and hair, he looks saturnine and forbidding. “Is there danger tonight, do you think?”

“I am
Bratva
. There is always some danger, Naomi. It is never far behind.”

This is not an answer that makes me happy. “The train was supposed to be safe and men with guns came after you.”

He frowns. I know he doesn’t like this reminder. “There will be no men with guns tonight, Naomi.”

“There weren’t supposed to be men with guns on the train, either,” I tell him, frustrated. There is a piece of lint on the jet-black lapels of his suit and I idly pick at it, then dust my fingers over the seams, ensuring all the fabric falls beautifully on his big body. “Who sent those men? The assassins in the train car?”

He is silent.

I press on, because I refuse to take silence as an answer. “Golubevs? You said it wasn’t them. What other enemies do you have? What about Hudson’s men?”

“It was not them,” he adds after a moment. “They did not seek you. I think their plans were simply to kill me.”

“So who wants you dead?”

He bares his teeth at me. “Everyone.”

This is not an answer I like. I continue to fuss with his suit to keep my hands busy. “Do we have weapons planned?”

“The invitation was clear, Naomi. We will be thoroughly searched, and wanded with metal detectors. There will be no room for weapons anywhere. I will rely upon garroting anyone that needs killing.”

I touch the necklaces at my neck. Each one has a purpose. One is the tiny gold chain with the tracking device coded to my computer. Another is a thick metal “slave collar” band that wraps tight around my throat. It will protect my throat from similar attacks if anyone should retaliate. Another necklace is made up of multiple thin wires that have a decorative bead but will serve as Vasily’s garrotes.

I’m not satisfied, though. “I feel we are not utilizing our costumes to their full ability.”

“Oh?” His fingers caress my jaw. “What would you like to add to yours, then, little slave?”

It’s something I’ve been considering all afternoon, ever since I came to the full realization that Vasily would be going into the Pervert House weaponless. I don’t like seeing my
volk
without a gun. “I am thinking I should be a naughty slave.”

One of those falsely dark eyebrows goes up. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” I tell him, with growing enthusiasm for my plan. I want to impress him, to please him with my ingenuity. “Many vibrators and dildos with a vibrating function have a screw base where the batteries go. We can purchase a large one, remove the battery packs, and place a thin, small knife inside. We would have to wrap it with fabric to ensure it did not rattle in the case, but it should
work. Then we can return the lid and insert the dildo into my vagina. Once we are inside, we can remove it and extract the knife.”

Vasily’s face is as unreadable as ever. “Do you propose that you enter this den—”

“The Pervert House,” I chime in, since I like my nickname for the place.

“—with a knife in your
pizda
?”

“We should make use of all orifices,” I tell him thoughtfully. “Do you think one in the anus as well would be too much?”

“You would do this for me?”

I give him a puzzled look. “Of course I would.”

He leans in, cups my face, and gives me a fierce kiss. He mumbles something in Russian that sounds like an endearment, and his thumb brushes across my lips. “Clever Naomi,” he says at last.

“It will seem natural,” I tell him, since he’s not running out the door with credit card in tow just yet. “If I’m your slave and I’m misbehaving, you can punish me. If this is a club of perversions, it won’t seem out of place.”

“And you are sure you wish to do this?”

I’m not sure, actually. Entering a sex den with a dildo pushed into my vagina seems like a scream for attention, but the alternative is Vasily with no weapon other than a thin wire. “I’m sure,” I tell him. “You should go buy me a dildo. A really big one. Big enough to fit two knives. One for me and one for you.”

He snorts at this. “Two knives.”

“Two,” I agree. “If they are thin enough, you should be able to fit two.”

“If the blades are discovered, it will be chaos.”

“They won’t be discovered,” I say boldly. “It’s the safest place on
the planet. You would kill any man that got within an inch of my cunt.”

His breath hisses, and I’m not sure if he’s laughing or shocked. But in the next moment, his mouth bears down on mine in another fierce, possessive kiss that leaves me shaken. Then, he releases me and heads for the door. “Wait here, Naomi. I will return quickly.”

“Quickly” turns into an hour, but he arrives soon enough with a small pink bag, and my heart hammers at the sight. He pulls the toy out with a flourish—hot pink, bulbous, and with a screw-off section like I suggested. For a few tense minutes, I watch as Vasily removes the working parts from inside and pushes two thin, deadly-looking blades into the pouch created. He tucks a handkerchief around them to ensure there’s no telltale rattle, and then screws the end back on. He eyes the object, and then looks at me. “Are you wet enough to take this?”

“Not just yet,” I tell him, and strip off my panties. Then, I gesture at my now-exposed pussy. “Come give me one last kiss. Then I will be.”