Rocks (7 page)

Karla walked into the bar and straight up to the bartender, some pleasant-looking Eastern European, to order a gin. She could have really done with a cigarette, but that would have meant walking back outside and taking up position next to the vast car park, this particular hotel having taken a somewhat puritanical view of its clientele’s most basic needs. Fuck you, they seemed to tell her. If you’re going to pollute your lungs, then suck in some more carbon monoxide at the same time.

Performing a job like this was playing havoc with her resolution to quit smoking.

Actually, the job had gone even better than she’d hoped for. Although she’d never admitted it to Maarten, she had wondered how on earth he was going to get the Wallenstein out of Boeckman’s. She had even considered the possibility that she’d have to seduce one of the Boeckman brothers, a task made even harder by the fact that the only good-looking one among them was currently away in America.

But he’d done it—Maarten had actually gone and done it. When she’d checked into Schiphol that morning, there had been no indication that security was any more active than usual, and certainly no-one was looking for Karla Pietersen, an identity that could be dispensed with very soon. She’d brought the diamond through, maintaining an air of quiet confidence all the time, something which Maarten would never have been able to achieve. Now it was resting in a locker in Heathrow: that thought made her a little nervous, but it was as safe there as anywhere. A hundred security guards would be checking up on her precious cargo every day without the slightest knowledge of what it was they were looking after. She could collect Maarten, pick up the Wallenstein, and catch a flight out to Dublin to meet Uncle Coilin.

Collect Maarten. That was where things weren’t going quite to plan and she scowled as she took a seat next to the bar. It was mostly empty but for some guy seated a few stools down. He put away his phone and glanced up at her as she sat down, a smile flashing momentarily across his handsome face. Damn! The bartender was too boyish-looking for her tastes, but this fellow was quite the piece of beefcake, with dark hair, blue eyes and the kind of jawline you didn’t see outside old Hollywood movies anymore. He was certainly a lot better looking than Maarten.

Maarten. Bloody Maarten. Where-the-fuck-are-you-now Maarten. Why-do-I-bloody-care Maarten. She answered the last with a sigh. In one sense, it would be the easiest thing in the world to dump Mister Kropp—after all, she had what she wanted in a safe box at Heathrow. The danger was that Maarten was a squealer. As soon as she left him, he’d be straight to the police and things would heat up on her trail. Better for the moment to stick to the plan: get Coilin to fence the Wallenstein, fly out to South America and get rid of him there. Then she could lose this identity and enjoy the proceeds of her latest crime.

For a moment she wondered whether she’d be able to do all this and not have sex with him. That almost made her feel guilty:
almost
, but not quite. He’d done an awful lot for her, and she’d strung him along nicely so far, but the truth was that Maarten Kropp was a slimy little man and not the sort of person she’d fuck for pleasure—and Karla took pride in the fact that she only ever fucked for pleasure. Perhaps, if worst came to the worst, she could get away with a blowjob, just to keep him quiet. After all, as Bill Clinton had so famously observed, oral wasn’t really sex.

She was dressed as nondescriptly as possible, in jeans and a sweater, clothes that nonetheless showed off the fact that this was a woman with a very nice figure indeed. (Damn it, she wasn’t the type of woman to dress like a bag lady, and this was a
Mantaray! A bit last season, but still enough to make her feel a part of the several million dollars she was now worth.) As she ordered a gin, she realised that her phone was making a buzzing sound and she pulled it out. There was a text message from Maarten, offering his apologies and telling her that he’d meet her in the morning.

Cursing under her breath, she phoned
him back. Funny, she thought. The message had only come through a few moments before but it was switched off. What the hell was Maarten doing? She’d visited his room and banged on the door but there was no answer. In frustration, she called up his room number and left a short message.

“Something wrong?” It was Handsome, sitting a few seats away. His face looked concerned, sympathetic.

“Oh, nothing much,” Karla replied, keeping up her Danish accent for the time being. Almost unconsciously, she thrust out her chest a little and curved her back as she picked up her drink. Fuck Maarten, she told herself silently. “I was just stood up, that’s all.” She’d go on the hunt for that little prick after she’d enjoyed her drink and perhaps endured a cigarette and a couple of lungfuls of carbon monoxide.

“Well, he’s a fool,” Handsome remarked. “Here’s to the next, better catch.” He raised his glass as a toast and Karla joined him with a half grimace. Any catch was going to be better than Maarten Kropp.

She observed Handsome from the corner of her eye. He was even more well-made this close up than she’d first thought. His shirt must have been Armani and he was dressed in a pair of casual trousers that, like his shirt, complimented a pretty powerful-looking physique underneath. At the same time he wasn’t crashing into her space in the way that more neurotic guys were always doing. Confident, self-assured. If she wasn’t his particular fish, there would always be plenty of others in his net. She raised an eyebrow at the thought.

“So, where are you headed?” she asked as casually as possible.

Handsome looked back at her, his blue eyes full of humour. “Ostensibly I’m flying out to New York in the morning, but in truth I just love the atmosphere of these nameless, Heathrow hotels that I’m drinking myself into a stupor all on my own.”

His accent was crystal cut
—a posh boy. That explained a lot of the self-confidence. She’d slept with plenty of men who had the looks and body, but once you scraped a fingernail under their very fine skin they would immediately start to unload all their various insecurities on you, something that was very dull.

“That sounds like a plan,” Karla replied, a tiny bit more flirtatiously than she had intended. “Business or pleasure? I mean, your trip tomorrow. Drinking in a hole like this
must
be serious business.”

He laughed at this and glanced downwards, slightly self-deprecatingly. “Business, I suppose, though I always try to mix a little pleasure with anything I do. What about you? Returning to Sweden or Norway?”

“Denmark,” she corrected, impressed nonetheless that he’d hit the right part of Europe. “Yes, tomorrow. To see my Aunt Elsie. That, I’m afraid, is always business.”

“That’s the problem with families,” he mused, lifting up his glass and swirling what looked like scotch around a little. “I’m afraid that’s why I tend to avoid them as much as possible.”

She slyly looked at his hand as he said this. No wedding ring. Not that that meant much, as she knew from experience, but at least it indicated there was not going to be a wife hanging around to complicate how she was going to spend the next hour or so.

“I’m
Franka,” she said, extending a hand.

“Simon,” he replied, taking her fingers firmly into his and pressing slightly
—not too much, but enough to extend that sense of self-confidence. “What am I thinking?” he asked. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Let me buy it,” she replied. “I’m not quite the weak and feeble woman I look. We Danish women were raiding farms and monasteries while you Brits were still trembling in your homes.”

“If they were all like you, they were a force to be reckoned with.”

They chatted pleasantly for less than half an hour before Karla let Simon invite her to his room. She had considered dragging him to hers, but that could be awkward if Maarten showed up. As it was, they fell on each other in the lifts as soon as the door closed. This guy was huge, towering over her as she pressed herself on him, and her fingers enjoyed the sensation of his firm, hard
pecs and biceps as they ate each others’ mouths.

She was still attached to him, sliding her fingers into his hair and pulling his face down to hers, as he fumbled with his room key, kicking the door open once the light flashed green. Then, with a sudden, fluid motion that surprised her, he scooped her into his arms, lifting her up from the floor to carry her into the room.

It was pleasantly if anonymously furnished, but as he placed her on the bed Karla had no interest in whatever passed for corporate decoration. Instead, pulling one leg up slightly onto the bed, the heel of her shoe digging into the sheet that covered it, she watched with a feral look in her eyes as Simon stood in front of her. He was smiling as he tugged at the hem of his shirt with the fingers of each hand, letting it roll upwards to reveal first the rolling undulations of his washboard abdomen, followed closely by a flat, thickly muscled expanse of pecs and shoulders. His arms bulged as he dragged the shirt over his head, tousling his hair as he did so, and she felt herself begin to flood and open between her legs. This was going to ease her tension much better than any cigarette.

“I thought we’d taken all the best stuff when we came pillaging all those years ago,” she said, licking her lips slightly. “I can’t believe we didn’t come back sooner.”

With a grin on his face, he came towards the bed and leaned forward, the strong pillars of his arms on either side of her. “Well, my little Viking goddess,” he said, “I think it’s time the pair of us went plundering.”

He kissed her again, his tongue sliding between her smooth lips and she sucked him as his fingers came up to her sweater, pulling it upwards so that her breasts were released to the air, still confined for the moment by her bra. She only reluctantly let him go as he dipped his head down to her cleavage, prising the edge of her bra sideways so that her nipples, stiff and lustful, sprang free. Flicking his tongue along them, he pressed his face into her smooth flesh as his hands moved downwards, expertly undoing the buttons to her jeans.

When he stood up, Karla stared at him with a kind of madness in her eyes. As he started to drag her trousers along her legs, pulling off each of her shoes in turn and throwing them casually to one side, she kicked her legs, trying to pull them free of the frustrating denim. All the time she watched him. Damn! Unlike most business men there was no sleekness to his flesh, the beginnings of fat on even the best of them that indicated too many hours sitting in meetings or at a desk. He had only just dragged her trousers off and already her knickers were soaking.

As he reached up to those ruined panties, she lay back and lifted her buttocks into the air, letting him slide the cotton across her hips while she played with her own nipples, squeezing and pinching them as her lower half was stripped. She waited for him to come up to her mouth and kiss her, but instead he took hold of her ankles in his powerful hands and pushed her legs back and apart as his head dipped back down once again, this time a manic grin on his face.

“Oh, god. Oh, yes!” For a second Karla’s accent slipped and she bit her lip, silencing herself as she felt his mouth come into contact with her. For a moment, he nibbled and nuzzled her gently, pushing his nose into the downy fur on her pubis, letting his tongue softly slide along her wet slit. Then, as he teased her clitoris, one of his hands moving from her ankle to where she was open and soaking for him, she groaned and clutched his hair, forcing his head down harder between her legs.

He was good! Damn he was good! This was a man who knew how to eat pussy. There was none of that relentless jabbing with a tongue as though he was doing her a favour, forcing her to come as quickly as possible so that he didn’t have to endure a fish supper for too long. No, this man was a gourmet, dining on her, stroking her gently with finger tip and tongue before slipping into her, hungrily devouring her while he gripped onto her thigh with one hand. When she looked down, the glimpse of those shining, bright blue eyes staring back at her intently was enough to make her start to orgasm. She bucked and ground against his face, forcing her wet stickiness onto him, and he savoured every morsel of her.

“Oh god!” she yelled, all pretence of being Danish forgotten in that moment. “Yes! Yes! Fuck me! Oh God! YES!” Her legs writhed and kicked before wrapping around his head, dragging him into her. His tongue was an evil thing, slithering around, his lips drinking her up, and when he eventually pulled back, wiping his mouth with a raw, rough motion, his eyes were glittering.

“First course,” he said wickedly. “Now let’s really get started.”

His hands moved slowly to his belt, unbuckling it and letting the clasp fall to one side as he unbuttoned his trousers. She saw the skin, smooth and clean-shaven like the rest of his buff body, his pubic bone and then a swelling of thick flesh. Down another button, and then another.

“Jesus H. Christ,” she groaned, pulling herself upwards on the bed when at last he sprang free, hard and solid. “Look at the size of that thing!”

He gave a lopsided, arrogant smile, and as she struggled to pull herself free of her sweater and bra, he kicked off his trousers and shoes before coming forward onto the bed. As he drew himself alongside her, she placed a small hand on his chest.

“Wait,” she gasped. “I’ve got to taste that fucking thing.”

He leaned back, luxuriating in his own beauty as she lowered her head along his chest, his belly. She could smell the perfume of his body, a faint note of cologne mixed with the more primal musk of his skin. Letting her hand fall to his loins, she groaned as she realised her fingers couldn’t even fully close around the circumference of his shaft. She was soaking from where he had kissed and licked her, but now she felt her juices trickling down her thigh as she began to stroke him.