Cry Assassin (6 page)

But they had not been alone at the restaurant. There had been a third party at the table, an old man with wispy white hair and bloodshot eyes. His hands had been clawed with arthritis and in spite of the expensive suit and fur coat he'd worn, or perhaps because of them, he looked less like a man and more like a slavering feral animal consumed with lust when he looked at her. She looked like his first wife, he'd rasped, pointing at her with the wrinkled claw of his hand. He could still remember how his first wife felt, how she tasted.

The blatant lechery had made Eve sick to her stomach. She'd made excuses to leave and made a quick exit which had angered her father. He'd called her later that night to thunder at her, to berate her for being a selfish spoiled whore of a daughter. She'd not understood his rage then, she'd been far too hurt by his words to understand what had really happened. Her own father had been offering her to the old man as a form of payment for something and the old man had liked what he'd seen. Now, father or no father he wanted her.

“Cheer up, it hasn't happened yet,” Kirk drawled, breaking her reverie.

She looked up, her eyes moist with tears of hurt. “I'm sorry,” she apologized quickly, though she did not really know what she was apologizing for.

His smile was as masterful as it was reassuring. “If I do not wish for them to take you, they will not take you,” he declared. The words were boastful, but the tone he delivered them in was not. He spoke as if he were speaking a simple truth, as if the words themselves could be etched in stone.

“Don't get too cocky,” she muttered, remembering the men Vlad had sent. They were rough, terrible men who enjoyed her fear and had seemed to feed on even the small pain and discomfort inflicted on her when they taped her to the chair. She'd wondered if she were about to die, until the clean cut stranger with the commanding presence entered the room. The stranger who had turned out to be her unlikely savior, who even now protected her in the sanctum of his home.

A short laugh echoed around the kitchen. “Oh kitten, you do not know me well yet,” Kirk said. “Soon you will learn never to doubt what I tell you.” His laughter floated away as his expression grew serious once more. “But first, we have work to do.”

* * *

Kirk had a week to prepare for the shit storm that would await them when Vlad realized he was not getting his money or the woman. He had less time to prepare for the consequences of the extreme disobedience he intended to enact against the Commander. The Commander especially would not like what Kirk was about to do, not in the slightest.

Mulling his options over in his mind, Kirk watched his now willing captive as she drank her coffee in short sips. She was so delicate, a perfect flower. Could she do what she needed to do to survive? Yes. She'd had no qualms about threatening him with his own weapon. He could have punished her for that, but he had not. Even then he'd had an inkling that the harder side of her needed to be nurtured. He would punish her for disobedience, but for having nerve? Never.

“Listen Evelyn,” he began.

She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Eve, please. Only my father calls me Evelyn.”

“Eve,” he nodded. “Things could get worse before they get better. You're going to have to be strong.”

A spark of interest danced in her eyes. She had sensed that there was a plan. “What are we going to do?”

There was no point sitting around waiting for the Russians to find them. There was no point in staying here where his handlers knew how to find him. They had a few days up their sleeves and they had to make them count. He grinned wickedly, brimming with the daring of this new adventure which would put him at odds with both the lawful world and the underworld. “We're getting a six day head start.”

The announcement was the beginning of a flurry of activity. Kirk was a master of the quick exit and most of the things he needed were close at hand. Eve only had a handful of possessions in the first place and within the hour they were on the road with a bunch of cash he kept stashed away for a rainy day and all the fire power he could put his hands on.

Eve was quiet when they got on the road. He wondered if she was perhaps regretting putting her trust in him. She was probably just scared, he reasoned. She had good reason to be scared. He couldn't blame her. “It's going to be fine,” he reassured her, reaching across and squeezing her hand.

She looked across at him, her brown eyes filled with a sudden mistrust. “Why are you helping me?” The question was sudden, direct. He sighed with the weight of it. There were a lot of reasons why he was helping her. Some of them came from a place of chivalry, others didn't. All he really knew is that the idea of seeing Evelyn taken by the Russians, knowing what awaited her made his stomach churn. He removed his hand from hers and returned it to the steering wheel.

 “I've done a lot of bad things in my life, Eve. If there's a hell, I'm going there.” She nodded, seeming to believe him without question. “There's a lot I'll do for the right price, but turning a kid over to the Russians because her father is a fool isn't one of them.”

“You think of me like a kid?” The pout on her sweet lips made him chuckle. Here she was, being pursued because her body had caught the eye of a gangster and yet she still wanted reassurance she was attractive to him. Women, even the best of them had a streak of vanity. “I'm not a child,” she asserted crossing her arms over her chest as they whizzed through the open countryside, sitting right at the speed limit so as not to attract the attention of the authorities.

“No, you're not,” he agreed.

“So why call me one?”

He shrugged. “Because you're not far off being one. You're nineteen, at the beginning of life. You could do anything, be anything. I've made my choices, your father made his choices, but you haven't made yours yet. That makes you something of a kid.”

Her dark eyes flashed at him with some deep emotion, but he didn't consider it too deeply. He was more concerned with pulling off the road and changing the plates on the car. The electronic tracker installed by his handlers had already been ripped out and put on Mrs Kransowsky's Oldsmobile. The government could track that until the cows came home for all he cared.

Crouching behind the car and working on the screws of the license plate, Kirk considered his position. For five years he'd been a loyal agent, but if the Commander was going to push him into vile acts, then it was no different from any of the unofficial criminal positions he'd held as a younger man. He did not know what would happen when the agency realized he'd gone into hiding, but he was sure it wouldn't be good. Oh well. Resigning himself to whatever fate held for him, he screwed the last screws into the new plates, wiped his hands off, tossed the old plates into the trunk and got back into the car.

The sight that greeted him when he got back in was an interesting one. Eve had been wearing a knee length denim skirt, quite demure and non descript, just like he'd told her to dress. As he put his seat belt on, he happened to glance over and see that her skirt had managed to ride halfway up her thighs. A query rose to his lips, but he didn't want to offend her, so he simply started the car and drove out of the rest stop back onto the open road.

As they hit tar seal, Eve huffed moodily and pushed her skirt back down. She was mad about something. Had she deliberately pulled her skirt up to display her pale, curved thighs? Was she trying to seduce him in some adorably inept sort of way? He didn't know whether to be turned on or amused and quickly discovered that he was both.

Eve's mood continued to deteriorate as they drove. She became sulkier and sulkier. It made little sense to Kirk, but he knew he would have to address it sooner or later. Fortunately he'd made reservations for the evening at a little motel in the middle of the countryside, a location that would be difficult for either law enforcement or law beakers to sneak up on without being noticed. The moment they walked into the little room that would shelter them for the evening, the drama began.

“It's gross here.” Eve wrinkled her nose as she looked about with sneering derision. He knew she didn't mean that, it wasn't the most palatial of places, but it was a damn sight nicer than her apartment. “Do we have to stay here?”

“Yes,” Kirk said, putting his bag down next to the rickety old stand that held a television. Before Eve could open her mouth again, he took her by the upper arm and sat on the hard bed, pulling her over his knee before she knew what was happening.

“What are you doing?” She squealed angrily, wriggling around like a fish out of water.

“I'm addressing your behavior, young lady,” he said, his voice a deep rumble as he swept up the skirt she'd been so very keen to raise for him earlier. 

“I haven't done anything wrong!”

“You've been sulking since we stopped to change the plates,” he disagreed, landing a hard swat on her bottom. “I don't tolerate sulking, Eve. I don't tolerate games either.”

“What games?” She was feigning innocence and that little game cost her five hard slaps to each of her cheeks, five swats given with disciplinary ardor that painted the skin outside her panties red.

“I said I don't tolerate games,” he growled. Reaching between her legs momentarily he placed his palm under her pubic bone and shifted her into a better position for spanking. The movement flattened his hand across her soft mound and this time when she squealed it was not in pain, but in surprise. “If you want something, you tell me, understand?”

“Okay, okay,” she wailed, giving in quickly. “I'm sorry!” Clearly Miss Eve did not enjoy being spanked. He did not blame her, he knew very well that his palm fell with a force that could make grown men stumble. That energy unleashed on her pale cheeks was nothing to be sneered at.

He kept her over his lap. It was the best place for this conversation, it reminded her of her place, reminded her not to play games. “What were you playing at today?”

“I wanted you to notice me,” she mumbled the confession at the carpet.

He choked out a short laugh. “Notice you? Little girl I am risking my neck for you. I think I notice you.”

“As a woman, I mean,” she said, her cheeks blushing as she spoke softly.

He knew what was happening. She was bonding with him, more than that, she was imprinting on him. She was a young lady naive to much of the world and though she had seen much in the past days, she didn't know enough to be truly scared. Instead of making her quiver and hide, the danger was arousing her. Even as he held her there with the threat of more spanking implicit in her position, her hips were shifting in a muted rhythm that invited his hand back down between her thighs. She wanted him and he didn't think he could resist her. Didn't know if he wanted to. “You're playing a very dangerous game,” he purred, allowing himself to caress her bottom.

“I don't care,” she moaned breathlessly.

He peeled her panties away from her bottom and spied the sweet treasure nestled between her thighs. Almost reverently, he ran a finger over the lightly furred slit, feeling his erection grow in response to her breathy moan. She wanted it. She wanted it badly. She was like a young cat in heat, eager to mate, eager to welcome him inside. With a tender touch he caressed her, caught up in the beauty of her body.

She arched up to him, silently begging him to enter her, begging him to take her. Her whole body was burning with need, from her fingers that clutched at the bleached bedspread and his pants to her quivering thighs. Gently he slipped a finger inside her, stroking inside her tight passage. Her reaction was priceless, she moaned a throaty moan and thrust her hips up with sudden violence. He found his finger sliding in deeper, then stopping at a thin barrier. “You're a virgin.”

She looked at him for the first time, turning her head and looking over her shoulder. “Yes,” she admitted, squirming her hips back towards him, wanting more of his touch. He smiled and leaned down, dropping a kiss on her cheek as he withdrew his finger and focused his attentions around the outer regions of her womanhood. She was no less appreciative of this touch that skimmed around her clit and massaged just above the hood.

Lost in the wanton grip of pleasure, she worked her hips against his hand, letting out little cries of pleasure as he expertly caressed the folds of her moist pussy. His need was growing too, his cock strained against his pants, demanding to be set free.

If she wanted to be treated like a woman, wanted to tease and seduce, she'd get what she asked for. She whimpered in soft complaint when he slid her off his lap onto the floor between his legs, but not for long. Before she could ask what she was doing there, he'd freed his erect cock and guided her sweet mouth to it. Her lips parted willingly as he curled his fingers in her hair and brought her head down. “Oh god,” he groaned as his thickness slid into her silky mouth. So began an evening of mutual exploration and pleasure. He did not take her virginity. The shabby motel was not the place for such an event, but there was no harm in taking pleasure in one another's bodies and they did so until they lay exhausted in one another's arms.

He remained awake for some time as she slept sheltered in the curve of his body, the bare flesh of her behind pressed against his crotch. He could have taken her roughly, stripped her virginity away with passionate thrusts, but she trusted him implicitly, trusted him with her maidenhead and with her very life. The gift of her trust, given without fanfare or remark was more precious to him than all the millions in the world.

Running from the Russians and running from the law was the foolhardiest thing he'd yet done in his life. The odds of survival were low, of successfully finding a way to get the Russians off his tail and appease the Commander were even lower, but he was certain as he held Evelyn in his arms, feeling her bosom rising and falling with her soft breath that this was also the best thing he had ever done. There was more than love and lust in her touch, there was the promise of redemption, and he would not let that go without a fight.