MasterStroke (37 page)

As her body sagged, Jack was suddenly there, sweeping her up in his strong grip. His concern radiated off him in waves.

“It’s OK, baby. I’m here. You’re safe now.”

Sandrine was scared.

“I’m falling, Jack.”

“Not while I’m around. I’ll never let you come to harm,” he said and the last thing she thought, before she passed out, was that she believed him. Implicitly.

Chapter Forty Three

“I would have liked to kill Sylvester myself,” Sergei said as he grabbed a frosty bottle of vodka from a silver ice bucket and poured three glasses, splashing the liquid haphazardly, downing one immediately without offering them around.

He looked out across the city skyline, brows knitted in concentration. The clouds had dispersed and the blue sky was bright enough to dazzle the eyes. From so far up, Sandrine considered she could see spring approaching from afar.

It was whisper quiet inside the top floor apartment that had served as Sylvester’s city base. It had been cleaned up since Jack and Sandrine had last been there, barely the day before, with no trace of the pizza boxes, fast-food containers or overflowing ashtrays. The stains on the carpet had miraculously disappeared and even the air smelt fresh.

“Please, my manners desert me. Join me in a drink.” He turned back. Jack grabbed a glass, offering one to Sandrine who declined gracefully.

“A little too early for me, thanks.” she said.

Sergei barked a big, hearty laugh.

“The sun is shining, we have all our limbs and we’re above ground. Are there any better reasons?” Sergei grinned widely. Sandrine mused it was unusual to see the big Russian smiling; there were many men who would have ended their lives without ever seeing that. “You owe me, Jack. It has been an expensive trip. You took Sylvester out before I’d been fully paid.”

“He had a choice to walk out alive but he didn’t take it.”

“What about the artwork he wanted so much? Maybe I could have it in payment instead?”

Sergei was a natural wheeler-dealer, Sandrine considered.
More front than the Met
. Despite their earlier dealings, she was beginning to warm to him.
I’m sure he’s dangerous in the wrong conditions
, she thought to herself, quietly appraising him,
but he’d also be a fiercely devoted friend. It’s good that he seems to like Jack.

“Nice try. Marcus will do particularly well out of that piece. One of the country’s better known art museums made quite a generous offer for it,” Jack said.

“Which you refused,” Sandrine reminded him.

“Well, yes,” he countered. “But only because I knew another institution was interested. In the end, there was a bidding war of sorts. The final price was far higher but still agreeable to all parties.”

“For a sketch that a lot of people privately agree is the real thing,” Sergei said bitterly. “But won’t publicly admit.”

“That will come eventually.”

Sergei snorted.

“Bah. Another opportunity thwarted. As I said, you owe me.”

“You’re not so badly off. At least you have Boris and Viktor back with you. We thought they were dead.”

This time, his snort held considerably more humour.

“Yes, yes. In our line of work, we immediately assume the worst. I was sure Sylvester had killed them. The real reason for their disappearance was a lot more innocent,” Sergei said.

Sandrine recalled Jack’s handling of a certain phone call. He was incandescent with fury, the first time she’d seen him lose his temper. It had come from the head of the local FBI. When Boris and Viktor had arrived on the scene of the bombing at the bookstore, they’d attracted the attention of a couple of special agents who, suspecting they were somehow involved, had them arrested and transported downtown before anybody else had known they’d been there.

Inter-departmental rivalry being what it was, the FBI didn’t inform any other agency, even the local police, and the two Russians languished forgotten in a cell.

“It’s good to have the boys back. I didn’t relish having to tell their mothers.”

“So what now?”

“We fly home tonight. It’s been interesting but there’s other business I need to attend to.”

Jack downed another glass of vodka which Sergei hastily refilled.
That’s your third.
She hoped he could handle his liquor.

“You may like to consider putting it off for a few days. I know it’s not the same but I have it on very good authority that there’s a Turner coming up at a yard sale in Washington, Connecticut, this weekend. It’s pretty dirty, doesn’t look anything like it should and urgently needs restoration. But it would well be worth the trip. It’s my gift to you.”

This time, Sergei could contain himself no longer. His snort held equal measures of surprise and delight and he swooped in and clutched Jack in a crushing bear hug. He held Jack’s face with both hands and planted a big wet kiss full on his lips. Jack’s eyes went wide with surprise.

“We were adversaries for quite some years, Jack Lucas. Now we are like brothers, although not like my brother. I had to kneecap him. You are like the brother I would have if I had a brother I deeply loved and respected.”

“In the Russian tradition,” Jack interjected.

“In the Russian tradition,” Sergei agreed heartily. “Or as that line in that famous American movie goes, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

This time, Sandrine took the proffered glass of vodka. It tasted only moderately better than Sylvester’s
cachaca
.

Chapter Forty Four

The first time she’d been in the Games Room, Sandrine had felt physically ill. She’d never seen anything like it, barely knew such things existed, and the wave of revulsion that resulted made her question everything she’d believed about Jack.

This is sick
, she remembered thinking that first time. There was shock that Jack would have anything to do with the elaborately-fashioned iron bed draped with black satin sheets, the strange furniture, the uses for which she couldn’t immediately fathom, the black leather cabinet full of the vilest instruments of torture.
He likes to torture women? Inflict pain? Humiliation?
The doubts clouded in on her, sweeping claustrophobic waves of darkness that brought an acid bile to her throat.

A part of her refused to believe.
He couldn’t be like that. This is some elaborate joke, an art installation perhaps, there has to be a logical reason for all of it.

Then Jack had appeared, walked in the door so nonchalantly, sensed her distress and confusion, and…..made a joke of it.
A joke!
Called it the Games Room as if it was some innocent man-cave, with a jukebox, pinball machine and a few neon beer signs. She didn’t know what to think and the doubts began anew.
How could someone so interesting, so extraordinary, be so sick?

He had explained the situation, of the lover who had broken his heart and spirit with her unnatural demands, but it wasn’t so much what he’d said as what he hadn’t. While it had tempered the revulsion, it had started something else. She’d begun to think more about the room and its contents. A curiosity had developed and, although she hated to admit it, a part of her began to respond.

Initially, it was simply an abstraction, a way of looking at a disagreeable concept from a different angle. Then the thought became an emotion and eventually, as alien a feeling as she could possibly imagine, it manifested in the physical. Her body responded. Arousal. She wondered what it would be like to experience the room, really experience it. To have Jack dominate her, treat her roughly, even hurt her.

That was the most surprising aspect of the entire matter. She began to crave the room. She wanted to experience it for herself. Although she was convinced that the only way to exorcise Jack’s demons, to banish the lingering ghost of that lover’s hold over him, was to take her place, it wasn’t entirely pragmatism that drove her.

She ached to be the subject of Jack’s harsh sexual demands. She tried to hold her mind in check but the first tempting glide of thought towards the room made her body react with a passion that surprised her. The more she dwelled on it, letting her memory linger on the bizarre contents of the cabinet’s drawers, the faster her arousal built until the hot velvety wetness at her core flowed within her, warming her, dulling the edges of hesitation with a throbbing erotic rhythm that made her body hum.

Her nights and mornings and so many times in between would be sensually-charged daydreams not of Jack’s tender touch but of violent need. Her own. When she masturbated, the memories of Jack’s lips and fingers and his intoxicatingly hard cock, brimming with impatience and desire, began to be replaced with thoughts of being restrained, tied up and helpless, her arms and legs immobile on one of those strange pieces of furniture, and used by Jack however he desired.

She knew how wildly satisfied she was when she and Jack made love, how she reached such shattering orgasms as she’d never experienced before, but there was more. There was never any doubt that Jack had introduced her to a completely new world of sensuality. Sandrine was a most eager student and she’d discovered aspects of her sexuality she had no idea existed. And Jack was an excellent teacher.

They both loved sex, giving as much as receiving and had a sense of humour; Sandrine had rarely known a lover who would laugh in bed, who didn’t take things too seriously. She may have had certain reservations about trying new things but, as she now recognised, such hesitations were soon banished and there was nothing she hadn’t yet tried that she didn’t like. In fact, with many things, she wondered why she’d waited so long to try them.

It had been a whirlwind few weeks.
A few weeks? Is that all it’s been?
But the most satisfying aspect of it all is that she had fallen so madly, deeply, intensely, in love with Jack. If there was some way of measuring her life and personality before she had met Jack compared with after, it would certainly show a startling transformation.

It’s true Jack had saved her life but he’d also changed it. For the better. Permanently. Whatever happened in the future, and she hoped that Jack would be an integral part of that, Sandrine could never go back to what she was. Although there was still much that was unresolved, and the trauma of her early years would likely continue to haunt her, she was moving in the right direction.

Sandrine was thankful to Jack for all he’d done. She could never forget that. If he walked out of her life tomorrow, as wrenching as that would be, she would continue on the path he’d set her on.

Do I need him?
The question popped into her head so unbidden, the old Sandrine bristled immediately.
I don’t need a man to make me whole, to justify my existence.
But she was glad Jack had entered her life when he did, had stayed by her side when she needed help, seemed as besotted with her as she was with him, and gave no indication that he wouldn’t be there tomorrow or the next day.

Maybe it was all intertwined. She hungered for Jack physically because she loved him but, as she quickly reminded herself, she’d been attracted to him the moment they met. Getting to know him only added to the allure. Falling in love came later; it wasn’t a thunderbolt out of the blue, she wasn’t a hopeless romantic and she didn’t believe in such concepts as finding “the one” and living happily ever after. She snootily dismissed such concerns as middle class. Moreover, it had gradually dawned on her that she was emotionally involved with Jack, that she’d fallen in love. The old Sandrine would have scoffed at such a suggestion. The new Sandrine merely accepted it for what it was.

In the whirlwind that had been Sandrine’s recent life, things had changed so remarkably in such a short space of time. Her life now included Jack and she drew forth an image of him, his face, his body, first clothed and then naked, and felt her own body respond. She imagined him standing before her, at ease, hands casually by his side, breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling, and that which she now considered the centre of him, the beautifully sculpted hanging heaviness of his penis growing slowly, filling out steadily, getting harder as he watched her.

Her breath drew up short as the image overwhelmed her. It happened this way all the time. The more she came to know about his body, the quicker such thoughts overloaded her senses. Just the thought of him could do it.

And the realisation came that a part of her existed to please him. It was as simple as that. And it excited her so completely. As much as she might identify herself as a feminist and that the concept of interdependence would be alien to such a philosophy, she had to acknowledge that there was no other satisfactory way to describe it.

Her body existed to please him. Sandrine wanted him to understand that. Which was why she was back in the Games Room, naked, kneeling on the floor, back straight, nipples erect and stinging with anticipation, the moistness between her legs almost uncomfortably noticeable.

Her mind had wandered far in the half hour she’d been waiting. Jack knew she was there and he was obviously drawing out the tension. Sooner or later, he would walk through the door and find her like this. She hoped he would be pleased. She wanted to see how pleased he was.

I am so horny now
, she thought.
I need to be looked after, taken care of
. She wanted to touch herself, run a finger along the edge of her labia minora, slip it through the wetness she knew awaited her, probing shallowly at first and then deeper inside her, circle the throbbing hardness of her clit, around and around, not quite touching it, teasing until her mind began to lose focus and her breathing became ragged, then strum her fingers across her clit, rubbing harder, finger-fucking herself with her other hand until the muscles deep inside her contracted and an orgasm thundered like an out-of-control freight train and left her slumped on the carpet, whimpering.

But I won’t.

Not that she didn’t want to antagonise Jack. He’d already warned her not to touch herself. In that wonderful deep voice that set the hairs on the back of her neck tingling. With a darkness to his tone that sent the thrill resonating through her body.