Lethal Affairs (17 page)

That was certainly not the case this time.
She paused the DVD when it reached the part where Koster had been able to isolate and enlarge the woman’s image to faintly show the ill-concealed tattoo, or birthmark, or whatever it was, above her left breast. Her only distinguishing characteristic, and it wasn’t much to go on.
Hayley took a long swig of her martini and opened the first of Manny’s boxes. She carefully removed his personal items and set them aside. What remained was a handful of videotapes and at least a dozen audiotapes. Her heart started beating faster when she found the cassette labeled “Frankie the Fox, Part 1.” Sorting through the others, she was relieved to find one bearing the words “Frankie the Fox, Part 2.”
She stuck the first tape in a portable boom box and set it to play, then leafed through the numerous case files in the other box until she came to one labeled “Castellano, Angelo.”
Manny’s voice came on. It sounded somehow more professional than she remembered. Sharper. More alert. Without the slight slur and frequent pauses his drinking had caused.
The first part of the tape was pure police procedural, with Manny stating for the record the time, date, and place of the interview, and eliciting the witness’s name. Next came a recitation of Frankie’s duties within the Castellano family. As she listened, she began to go through the case file.
What stood out was a plain piece of yellow notebook paper—a handwritten list of names and phone numbers—about a dozen in all. Beside a few were cryptic notations in Manny’s nearly illegible scrawl. She recognized only two of the names. One was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company based in New York, and the other owned a major-league baseball team. Manny’s description of his “short list of suspects” sprang to mind.
Men with influence. All with one thing in common. Gambling.
But she knew it might not be that at all. It could as easily be a list of Manny’s sources. All cops had them, just like reporters. Powerful contacts used for information or favors. Or the list might be something else entirely.
She folded the paper and stuck it in her purse. As soon as she got to work in the morning, she’d start making phone calls.

When Domino first reached the surveillance apartment, she turned up the speakers transmitting audio from the bugs in Hayley’s apartment. She kept the room dark. Then she picked up the high-powered digital zoom and focused on Hayley’s living-room window, only to get a magnified image of Hayley’s ass, clad in skin-tight, pink satin briefs, as she bent over one of the boxes she’d taken from Manny’s apartment. The image was so unexpected Domino dropped the device, fumbling for it as it clattered noisily to the floor. “Damn!”

By the time she brought it to her eyes again, Hayley had turned around and was headed to the window with a martini glass in her hand, and now all she could focus on was the faded slogan emblazoned across Hayley’s T-shirt, which was so damn tight it showed every inch of those beautiful breasts.
Newspaper Reporters Do It Daily,
it said, and Domino felt a warm rush of arousal in her groin.

The Organization had certainly prepared her for a multitude of situations, but never quite like this. She knew she should have been looking for clues to the contents of the boxes, should be formulating some plan to protect Hayley and keep her from getting in any deeper.

But watching her there at the window, with a sexy half smile on her face as she stretched, made Domino’s stomach twist in the most exquisite torture. All she wanted was to hold her. Kiss her. Touch her everywhere, in every way. She wanted her so much her entire body hurt.

It started to rain, light enough that it didn’t obscure her view, but it apparently chased Hayley back inside, for she abandoned the window and sat on the couch. She reached for a remote, then became engrossed in her television, but no audio was coming from the transmitters in her apartment except the occasional clink of her glass on the coffee table or other incidental noises.

After a few minutes, Hayley opened one of the boxes from Manuel Vasquez’s apartment and pulled out a number of video and audiotapes. Domino stiffened and gripped the scope tighter.

About the time she reappeared, to sit back on the couch, a man’s voice—Hispanic—came over her speakers.
From the initial minutes of the recording, Domino ascertained it was Vasquez, interviewing a jailhouse witness named Frankie the Fox about the murder of Angelo Castellano. It meant nothing to her, and she almost relaxed.
But twenty minutes or so into the tape, all of that changed.
“Let’s get to the hit,” Vasquez said. “How far away were you standing when the shooting started?”
“When he fired the first time, I was probably thirty yards from them,” Frankie replied. “Angie was just going down.”
“Did you get a good look at the shooter?”
“No, man. I wasn’t really watching him, you know? It all happened too fast. I mean, it took me a second or two to even realize what was happening, and by then, he was just…gone. Like a ghost or something. I couldn’t move, and I was looking at Angie—at his
head
. Shit, man. It was all over the wall.” Frankie continued after several seconds. “Besides, it doesn’t mean crap if I did or not ’cause they’re always masquerading as someone else. But I can tell you straight off the bat he was EOO.”
“How are you so sure?” Vasquez asked.
“The way he did the job. I know their moves and shit. I mean, fuck—I was one of ’em for a while. The way he pulled it off was standard EOO procedure. All cool and calm, like it was any day’s work. No distractions or hesitations. He was there with a purpose, and once he finished the job, he casually walked away like he knew where the nearest escape route was. Know what I mean? Real organized shit. No moblike macho bullshit. Just calculated, perfection kinda thing.” Domino heard a snort of bitter frustration. “I could’a been one of ’em, you know? But the fucks never gave me a chance.”
“I want to hear more about this EOO. You’ve told me it stands for Elite Operatives Organization,” Vasquez said. “Did you ever get to see the inside workings of this place?”
“You asking if I ever been there?” Frankie said. “Yeah, I was there. A couple of times.”
“So you know where it is?”
“Sure as fuck I do.”
What followed was only static. Domino watched through the zoom scope as Hayley ejected that tape from her player and rifled through the others on her coffee table.
The next words she heard over her speaker, Hayley’s barely audible “Part two, where are you? We’re just getting to the good stuff,” got Domino moving. She grabbed her jacket and bolted out the door.
She had only the short distance to Hayley’s to figure out what she was going to do. Detect. Identify. Resolve. How could she explain why she was showing up after midnight without any warning?
She had to stop Hayley from listening to any more. And she had to figure out a way to look at all that material herself, without Hayley knowing about it and before she had a chance to hide it somewhere. Because it sounded as though there might be something very damaging to the EOO on those tapes.
The more Hayley learned, the more determined Pierce would be to silence her. All Hayley needed to do was make one call about this, and the Organization would know from the tap on her phone what she was up to.
And Domino would have to start explaining why she hadn’t been reporting in as expected all night, why she wasn’t keeping to protocol.
She was one of the EOO’s most resourceful operatives. A plan came to her as she knocked on Hayley’s door, the one obvious solution that would satisfy everything she needed to accomplish.

Domino couldn’t help herself. She let her gaze travel up and down the length of Hayley’s body, drinking in all the exposed skin. The zoom scope was good, but up close and personal was definitely better. From this distance, the rigid bumps of Hayley’s nipples through the thin shirt were readily, beckoningly apparent. “I…I had to see you.” It was the truth. But she felt so fucking torn about what she was about to do, she felt like she was dying inside.

“
Had
to…did you?” Hayley repeated, her smile growing as she let her in.
She took a few steps into the room and quickly assessed that Hayley had shut off the audio tape, but Manny’s boxes were still on the coffee table and a handful of files lay open on one side of the couch.
And there, frozen on Hayley’s wide screen plasma TV, was Domino, caught from above, in the bottom of the frame as she was about to leave the garage. The top of her head, all blond wig, her features indistinguishable from that angle. At the upper part of the picture, four men lay dead or dying.
She turned to Hayley, showing nothing of what churned inside her. Looking into Hayley’s eyes, she could almost see her mind turning over questions about why she was here, why she hadn’t called, what had changed since her abrupt departure that morning. And she had no adequate answers, so she did the only thing she could.
She closed the distance and pressed Hayley up against the nearest wall, finally allowing the fierce attraction that had been tugging them together to have its way. “Yes. No. Needed to,” she said, her voice husky with arousal, and her heart soared at the instant dilation of Hayley’s pupils as their bodies came together.
She roughly cupped Hayley’s ass as Hayley’s arms encircled her neck, and then they were kissing, the exchange heated and furious with need. Domino’s control slipped away, and she was lost.
Hayley’s hands caressed her back, nails digging in. Hayley’s breath hitched in excitement when their lips parted, and their bodies started to move as one, rocking pelvis to pelvis, breast to breast. For several blissful moments, she was only Luka, her sensations unmarred by thoughts of duty or guilt.
But Hayley slowed their frenzied coupling to look in her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice had a sweet, open vulnerability that made Domino’s heart clench. “I want you, Luka. I…I’m falling for you.”
Domino came undone.
Don’t!
she wanted to scream. Frustration and despair roiled up in her, like a sudden storm at sea, and she lashed out, her fist impacting the sheetrock wall behind Hayley’s shoulder and leaving an impression.
Hayley didn’t flinch, but confusion washed over her face.
“Don’t say that.” Domino’s words came out sounding almost angry, and she averted her eyes and fought back tears, not from the pain in her hand, but from her ache of longing, brought dangerously and uncontrollably close to the surface for the first time in her life. “You can’t fall for me. You can’t fall for a lie.”
“A lie?” Hayley gently cupped her face, ensuring she couldn’t look away this time. “What’s going on with you, Luka?” she asked when their eyes met. “What hurts so much?”
She couldn’t answer these questions without further deceit. And she wanted no more lies between them tonight. Those already there would haunt her enough.
“No more talking, Hayley.” To stem her inner tide of torment, she reached for the light switch next to Hayley’s shoulder. Darkness, that’s where she could see the best, focus the best, distance herself, and make whoever she was with anonymous. There she didn’t have to fear what someone else might see in her eyes.
She told herself Hayley wanted only sex, and she knew how to cope with that. Hayley tried to kiss her again, and instead she lifted Hayley’s T-shirt to kiss and lick her stomach, stroke her back, hips, thighs firmly and purposefully.
Pure sex wasn’t the comfortable and mindless retreat from emotion she hoped it would be, that it always had been. She didn’t really want this with Hayley, and Hayley didn’t deserve it. But she couldn’t surrender to the unfamiliar. And it was still exciting beyond belief to touch that sweet, soft skin.
Her hands left Hayley’s ass and moved up to cup her supple breasts. Her heart was thudding hard in her chest. Soon she would feel the wetness she knew was there and held her breath in anticipation. Still on her knees, she started to remove Hayley’s panties.
“Stop.” The near-whisper didn’t immediately register in Domino’s haze of lust and arousal. She didn’t react; her head moved lower.
“Luka, please stop.” A little louder, but still gentle. More plea than command.
This time she froze.
“Not here,” Hayley said in that same slow, breathy voice. “Not like this.”
She rose and stood silent before Hayley, who stripped off her jacket and threw it toward the couch. Then Hayley took her hand and wordlessly led her to the bedroom.
The lighting in the cozy room was romantically subdued; two small lamps shone on nightstands cluttered with books and clippings.
Almost automatically, as they crossed the threshold, Domino switched off the light. Hayley turned it back on. “No, Luka. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I want us both to remember everything about this night.” She smiled and squeezed her hand. “All good things are worth taking your time. Make every moment last and count—isn’t that what you said?”
She smiled back. “I see you’ve been taking notes.”
“Occupational hazard,” Hayley replied, leading her to the bed. She pulled back the covers, then faced her.
Domino stood transfixed, uncertain and unsure. She wanted to turn the lights off again. When she didn’t move, Hayley slowly stripped off her T-shirt, then stepped out of her briefs and stood before her, naked.
Domino held her breath.
Such beauty.
Sculpted by the master, perfectly proportioned, Hayley had smooth skin unmarred by blemish or birthmark, each curve and valley begging to be touched. They had been so frenzied the night before, she was happy for the chance to study Hayley’s body leisurely.
Her breasts were round and high, her rosy aureoles in stark contrast to the ivory porcelain that surrounded them. Her thin waist curved nicely into full hips, and the hair at the apex of her thighs was a perfect reddish blond triangle.
Domino remained rooted, unable to meet Hayley’s eyes, trying to keep from shaking. Hayley caressed the side of her face.
“Look at me.”
She slowly turned until their eyes met. “Do you have any idea how much I want you?” Her voice was thick with need.
“As much as I want you,” Hayley replied.
“Show me.”
“I intend to.” Hayley loosened her belt slowly, drawing it out provocatively and tossing it aside.
Domino reached for the buttons on her own tailored black shirt, but Hayley stopped her hands. “No. Let me. I want to enjoy every second of showing you.”
Every nerve ending in her body poised in anticipation. Her heart pounded in her ears. Deafening.
Hayley took a few seconds with each button, working top to bottom, pausing as she freed each one to kiss the skin beneath. When she finished she pulled Domino’s shirt from her jeans and slipped it off her shoulders, pausing when she spotted the two-inch scar above her left breast. A flicker of concern crossed her face, and her fingers trailed gently over the thin white line, then she kissed that, too, before she straightened to toss the shirt on a chair.
Then Hayley strolled around her, leaving kisses along her arms, back, shoulder blades. She unfastened her black silk bra and kissed her way around the other side, until they faced each other again and Domino was naked from the waist up.
“Beautiful,” she whispered. “God, Luka. You’re beautiful.” She admired her breasts before trailing her fingers lightly down Domino’s inner thighs as she stooped to help her out of her boots.
When she rose again, her fingers followed the same tortuous path, moving upward atop the inside seam of her jeans, but dug in more firmly this time and crossed over her sex as they inched toward the button at her fly.
The feel of Hayley’s fingers on her abdomen as she unfastened the clasp and slowly unzipped her jeans made her tremble. Not from nerves, but from wanting to take control and wrap Hayley in her arms.
She didn’t associate the words
slow
and
deliberate
with her past sexual experiences. But as eager as she was to touch Hayley, as hungry and heated as her body felt, she was as determined as Hayley to make it last. It wasn’t only their first time together, but her first real experience with true intimacy. And probably also her last.
Hayley slid the jeans slowly down over her hips, taking her black thong with them as she slipped them off and tossed them atop the shirt.
She reached for Hayley then, and as they came together, their bodies melded along the full length in an almost liquid way, every centimeter of flesh joining. Hayley’s face pressed against her throat, and she closed her eyes and arched her neck when Hayley’s soft nips and kisses punctuated the wisps of warm breath against her skin.
Hayley moaned in satisfaction, a long, sustained sound from the back of her throat, and Domino experienced the vibration as an internal caress. “So good,” Hayley sighed as she ran her hands over Domino’s thighs and cupped her ass. The muscles there clenched when Hayley’s nails raked them, urging their pelvises tighter together. “So good. God, Luka, you excite me so much. So damn much.”
The jasmine of Hayley’s perfume, mixed with the clean undertones of citrus from her shampoo, filled her nostrils, overloading the last of her heightened senses. All her life she had been taught to view each situation from a purely rational perspective, but now her surrender to this onslaught of sensation made her suddenly weak.
As though she could sense this—or perhaps it was because she felt the same—Hayley separated from her long enough to pull them both onto the bed, Hayley on her back, with Domino’s body covering hers, and they kissed—taking their time, building their excitement with teasing strokes, deep tongue thrusts, and nips and sucks at swollen lips.
She pushed one muscled thigh firmly between Hayley’s legs, and then they were moving together. Torturously slow at first, so they could appreciate each brush of breast against breast and gyration of groin against groin. But when Hayley’s nails raked across her ass again and started digging half-moons into the flesh, keeping the rhythm of each thrust of her hips, she quickened the pace until the pounding of their bodies against each other matched their rapid, loud exhalations.
Hayley’s wetness coated her thigh, and her clit hardened. A guttural, animal sound escaped her, and she anchored one hand around one of the brass bedposts, the other around Hayley’s ass, so her frenzied pumping could benefit them both.
“Luka, you’re going to make me come.” Hayley’s voice was strained, and the declaration produced even more slick moisture along Domino’s thigh. “Inside.
Please
. I need you inside me.”
Domino’s clit got harder still, the sweet pain there almost unbearable.
She slipped the hand she had on Hayley’s ass between their bodies as she slowed the thrust of her hips. And then she found the warm and welcoming folds of Hayley’s sex. Her clit was so swollen and sensitive she cried out when Domino skimmed her thumb over it, and she was so open and wet that when Hayley’s hips rose, demanding more, she easily pushed three fingers inside.
The driving rhythm of their bodies resumed, her hand matching each move, stroking Hayley deep as her thumb thrummed over her clit.
Hayley bit her shoulder as she roared to climax, tightening in spasms around her hand, and Domino’s heart was thumping so hard against the walls of her chest she could have sworn Hayley could feel it too.
“Oh, yes, oh, yes, yesssss!” Hayley’s hips rocked madly, rising high off the bed as she came, and then she slumped back against the pillows, clutching Domino as she fought to regain her breath.
She was on fire, more aroused than she could remember, her physical excitement enhanced by her growing feelings for Hayley and by Hayley’s responsiveness to her touch.
“I want so much to make you feel what you make me feel.” After Hayley whispered breathily, she tongued Domino’s ear and suckled her earlobe.
And then Hayley was moving beneath her, no—
writhing
beneath her—and the pressure for release built into a hard knot at the base of her abdomen.
“Hayley…
please
.” She spoke eight languages and had used them to become so many people in so many situations, she could never remember them all. But she could find no words to tell Hayley she was ready to burst from the longing for her touch.
“Soon.”
Hayley’s hands moved purposefully from her ass to her waist, guiding her, urging her up until she was on her knees, straddling Hayley, looking down on those beautiful breasts, the nipples rigid as stones.
Hayley’s hands roamed her body, caressing every inch of her— up her sides, then raking down her back to roughly massage her ass, then over her thighs and up, lightly skimming the flat plane of her stomach to finally find her breasts, lingering there to cup and caress, pinching her sensitive nipples lightly until she felt the sensation in her clit.
She gritted her teeth, fighting the urge to touch herself, the need to come so overwhelming her hands shook. “Hayley.”
As if sensing her desperation, Hayley took her wrists and guided her hands to the cool brass bedposts. As she gripped them, Hayley’s voice beckoned, “Look at me, Luka.”
It was easier than she expected. She looked down into Hayley’s eyes, the pupils so huge and black with arousal the irises had disappeared.
“I want to make you come so hard,” Hayley said, guiding her by the waist again, pulling her forward until she was on her knees over Hayley’s face.
Hayley’s hands wrapped around her thighs, and she pulled Domino’s clit to her mouth, teasing her with quick strokes of her tongue.
She groaned and gripped the bedposts tighter and pushed down into Hayley’s mouth, but Hayley only skimmed her tongue even lighter along the length of her sex, making her harder still, but no closer to release.
The ecstasy was so excruciating that she wanted it to continue as much as she needed it to end.
Hayley worked her as she hadn’t believed possible, bringing her to the precipice again and again with rapid strokes of her tongue and sucking her to the limit of her endurance, only to back off just enough to keep her there without plunging over. Soon she was dripping with sweat, every muscle tensed, every nerve ending singing out for satisfaction. She was breathing harder than she did after running a mile.
She was an inch away from begging, crying for mercy, when Hayley took her clit into her mouth and shattered her, left her weak and gasping and unable to support her own weight in the trembling aftermath of her orgasm.
She collapsed onto the bed, Hayley’s body became her blanket, and they lay there, wrapped in a tangle of arms and legs, until her breathing returned to normal.