It was like the mesh, a rising tide in blood and muscle. He tore at her clothing, unseamed the canvas jeans and forced them down to her knees, got his hand inside the slip of lace cotton she wore beneath. She gasped at the touch, already moist. With his other hand, he pushed up the sweater, forced it over the swell of the breasts and fingered loose one of the profiler cups. The breast sagged into his hand. He buried his face in the flesh, as if drinking water out of his cupped palm. His mouth slurped up the nipple, sucked it to the roof of his mouth. In the tight trap of her cotton panties and inner thighs, his fingers worked the moistness apart. She shuddered, groped vaguely at the swollen lump in his trousers, finally got both hands on his belt and opened it. He flopped out, tightened to fully erect in the cool air. She laughed, short and throaty as she felt the length of his prick, ghosted an open palm up and down the underside of it.
Four months in Florida jails, nothing female you could touch. He felt himself sliding down the long hard slope of it, made his mouth unfasten from her breast with an effort of will, left the fingers of his other hand where they were and squatted, trying to pull one of her boots off. She saw what he was trying to do, laughed again, shook her leg impatiently up and down, stamping the air, angling her foot to get it loose. No luck, the boot stayed on. He caught a glancing blow from her knee in the side of his face. Grunted and shook his head.
‘Oh, shit, I’m sorry.’ She stopped, bent towards him. His fingers slipped loose, damp. ‘Look, stop, wait.’
She twisted away, something that was almost judo, pushed him upright and against the wall in her place. She tore her jacket off arm by arm, stowed it in a wad at his feet and dropped to her knees on it. Wide, split-mouth grin up at him, and then she bent over the head of his prick and sucked it in. Her curled fingers slipped up and down the shaft. Her mouth moved. His hands slapped flat on the shadowed wall at his sides, crooked as if he could claw into the evercrete with his nails. He thought then that was it, grabbed the moment, but something had hitched up inside him, would not let go. The orgasm subsided, rocked away, just out of reach.
She felt the change, made a muffled, querying noise and went to work in earnest, mouth and fingers, he felt himself climbing the curve again, but knew again he would not make it. His hands uncurled, came loose from the wall, hung there. He stared at the shadows.
‘Hey,’ she said softly.
‘Look, I’m—’
‘No, you look.’ Sudden instruction in her voice, it hooked his gaze downward and she grinned up at him. With her left hand, she gathered her exposed breasts up and together. She gripped his shaft hard in the other hand, pushed the glans back and forth in the press of her cleavage. He felt something leap violently in his chest. She grinned again, bent her head and spat gently, drooled spit onto the head of his prick and then, still gripping hard, pushed the wet-gleaming flesh back between her breasts, rubbed it there, in and out, in and out, for the ten or twenty more seconds it took before he felt the furious heat come raging up through him, no hitch now, no stopping…
And out.
He made a noise like a drowning man hauled back aboard, like the sound he’d made the day the rescue ship hailed Felipe Souza for the first time, and he sagged back against the wall, then slid down it, as if shot. He felt her fingers let go, stickily, felt her gathering her disordered clothing together, and put out his hand.
‘Wait.’
‘We should go, it’s—’
‘You’re going. Nowhere,’ he said unsteadily. ‘Stand up.’
He pushed her upright again, where she’d been, against the wall, and this time he crouched, slid hands up the insides of the long thighs to part them, pulled the scrap of lace cotton firmly to one side and sank his tongue in her as deep as it would go.
Back at the apartment, he did it again, this time on the bed where he’d seen her asleep that morning. Pulled up close to breathe her scent, one hand raising the cushion of her buttocks up so the lips of her cunt met his mouth like a mismatched kiss, the fingers of his other hand deep inside her and the breadth of his tongue lapping up against the rubbery switch of her clit. He felt a carnivore itch rising in him, a deep thirst that was only partly slaked when she bucked and flexed across the bed and clamped hands and thighs around his head as if she could push him by sheer force inside her.
She flopped, panting, face rolled sideways, eyes closed, gone, and he gathered her under him and slid into her to the hilt of his newly swollen-tight erection. Her eyes flew open, and she said oh, just that single sound, lightly, delightedly, fresh hunger rolling on the edge of the syllable.
And then it was like the hard evercrete steps they’d taken up to Moda, steep and stiff breathing and no speech at all on the long, steady climb together to the top.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘He did what?’
Norton glowered out of the screen at her, disbelief and anger struggling for the upper hand on his face.
‘Ended up in a fight with Névant,’ said Sevgi patiently. ‘Relax, Tom, it’s already happened. There’s nothing anybody could have done.’
‘Yes there is. You could have refused to let him have his way.’
‘Let him have his way?’ She felt the faint stain of a blush start in her neck. All the places Marsalis had bitten softly into her flesh were suddenly warm again. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means Marsalis suddenly decides he needs to fly out to the other side of the globe, and you just lie down for it. Our cannibal friend is killing people in America, not Europe. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that Marsalis is looking for a way to get home without fulfilling his contract.’
‘Yes, that occurred to me, Tom. Quite a while ago in fact, back when you were happy to stick him in an unguarded New York hotel for the night.’
Pause. ‘As I recall, I was going to put him up at my place.’
‘Whatever, Tom. The point is, we hired Marsalis to do a job. If we aren’t going to trust him to do it, then why did we bother springing him in the first place?’
Norton opened his mouth, then evidently thought better of what he was going to say. He nodded.
‘All right. So having beaten up Névant, what does our resident expert want to do now?’
‘He’s talking about Peru.’
‘Peru?’
‘Yes, Peru. Familias andinas, remember. He got leads from Névant that point back to the altiplano, so that’s where we need to go.’
‘Right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So, Sevgi, you think we’re actually going to do any investigating at all in the places the crimes are being committed? You know, I was never a cop, but—’
‘Fuck it, Tom.’ She leaned into the screen. ‘What’s wrong with you? This is the twenty-second century. You know, global interconnection? The integrated human domain? We can be in Lima in forty-five minutes. Cuzco a couple of hours later at worst. And back in New York before the end of the day.’
‘It is the end of the day,’ said Norton dryly. ‘It’s past midnight here.’
‘Hey, you rang me.’
‘Yeah, because I was getting kind of alarmed at the silent running, Sev. You’ve been gone two days without a word.’
‘Day and a half.’ The retort was automatic, but in fact she wasn’t sure who was closest. Her sense of time was shot. Crossing the Bosphorus seemed weeks in the past, New York and Florida months before that.
Norton didn’t seem disposed to argue the toss either. He glanced at his watch, shrugged.