"Ringo,.John.-.Posleen.05.-.Cally's.War.-.Cochrane,.Julie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

"Oh? Well then you've got excellent taste in teams. What do you do?" she asked.
"I'm a corporate troubleshooter. Basically, I travel a lot," he said.
"That sounds like an interesting job. Trouble ever shoot back?" she teased.
"Not if I do it right." His grin tightened. "So, what do you do, Sarah?"
"I'm a legal secretary." She grimaced. "Not very exciting, but it pays the bills. You said you travel? It's got to be great to, you know, get to go places." She looked up at him and took another sip of her stout.
"Just one hotel after another. Whups, game's back." His eyes focused on one soft hand wrapped around her pint glass. "Nice nails for a secretary."
"What?" She looked down at her immaculately manicured hand as if trying to figure out what he meant. "Oh yeah, the typing thing. Nobody has to type much anymore. They mostly want you to talk clearly. And you've gotta organize stuff and be good with details. That kind of thing."
"But still, there has to be some?" He took her hand in one of his own, meeting her eyes and holding them as he gently kissed her fingers.

"Well, a little." She smiled. "There's kind of a knack to hitting the keys just right so that your nails go in the spaces between the keys." She suddenly pulled her hand clear and pointed into the tank. "Did you see that? Shinsecki just sticked Schmidt right in the face! God, look at his nose, ohmigosh, the refs are going to have trouble breaking that one up." She clapped her hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide at the spatters of blood on the ice between the two combatants.
"Yeah, looks like he broke his nose. That's gotta hurt," he said. They watched the fight, the other players circling like sharks while the referees waded in trying to pull the two apart, one getting a probably inadvertent elbow in the face for his troubles.
"My God, the things we do for a little excitement, right?" She shuddered and gulped her drink.
"I dunno," Worth shrugged, turning towards her. "I enjoy the game, but I really watch it more for the strategy and the competition. The fights, I guess that's part of the darker side of human nature that's in all of us, really."
"You think so?" She tilted her head up at him, taking another drink. "I think that's more of a guy thing, the aggression thing. I thinkЧ" She flushed a bit, taking another fast gulp. "I think there's something just a little bit submissive, deep down, in almost every woman. I mean, I don't want some guy to drag me around by the hair or to spend the rest of my life washing his socks and underwear, but I think most women prefer a guy who can, you know, kinda take charge. And I think that men are, well, like that." She shrugged. "Like I said, a guy thing."
"That's very . . . perceptive of you." He looked at her intently, holding her eyes. "I'll bet you're very good with people." He could see the pulse at her throat beating rapidly. She licked her lips and was oddly still, as if frozen by the tension between them. He leaned over and claimed a slow, tantalizing kiss, pulling back when he realized his hand was tangled in her hair at the nape of her neck, his jeans were awkwardly tight, and they were still in a very public place. For his preferred games, public wouldn't do at all. Besides, there was the warning from his control. She could be a very pretty piece of bait. Either way, if he had anything to say about it he was going to have one hell of a time making sure.
In the tank, the game had restarted after the referees finally got Schmidt and Shinsecki separated and sent Shinsecki to the penalty box. Zurich was clearly in a mood to take out their indignation on the ice. Montreal was now down by six and beginning to show signs of being rattled by the humiliation.
He noticed her glass was getting low and ordered her another drink, and spent most of the rest of the game teasing her thigh with one hand under the bar. By the time Montreal was down by nine he was starting to get bored with the slaughter and interested in more personal pleasures.
"Got a question." He leaned over and breathed against her ear. "You said you liked a man to take charge? I'm going out the front door. Don't follow. There's a back exit between the restrooms. It says an alarm will go off, but it won't. If you really meant what you said, wait five minutes and then leave the bar, come out the back door and I'll be waiting. You want me to take charge?"
She nodded rapidly. "Yeah, I think I'd like that."
"Okay, then that's what you do. You do that, and I will." He walked out of the bar without looking back, hoping she was tipsy enough and horny enough to do as he'd asked. He wanted her, bad, but he hadn't lived this long by being seen leaving bars with his victims. The night air smelled crisp as he walked past a couple of other bars to the parking lot, the crispness underlain by the almost imperceptibly faint tinges of stale urine, vomit, and sex that always linger in the streets outside popular establishments dedicated to the nightlife. The adrenaline rush was hitting his system and he wondered, as he always did, whether he had set the hook and played the line in just right. Would she come to him, or would she get away?
The timing was perfect. Just as he got the car pulled up to the curb in back, hidden from view on one side by the bar, on another by the large dumpster out back, she came tottering out the small back door. Another plus for him, the light was burned out back here, and he only saw her by the scattered illumination from his own headlights as she stumbled slightly, on a bit of loose gravel maybe, and opened the passenger side door.
She lowered herself with exaggerated care into the passenger seat of his low-slung Detroit Raver, while he pretended to be searching for a music cube. His nerve endings were sizzling with a mixture of triumph and anticipation that sent a chill down his spine as the door to his car clicked shut behind her. The beat of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" shuddered through the frame as he pulled out into Chicago's Friday night traffic.
* * *
Worth disentangled the blonde from around his neck long enough to get them from the elevator to his warehouse loft apartment. He pushed open the door and paused a minute to let her get the full effect. It had taken large chunks of even his generous salary to outfit the room in the vintage '70s "contemporary" style he preferred. Still, he was proud that he had managed to obtain every necessary item of furniture in black leather, glass, and chrome, set off nicely by flawlessly white shag carpeting that he'd had to order custom-made. Three walls were covered in faux-oak panelingЧeven for him, real oak was scarce. The fourth was covered in floor-to-ceiling black velvet drapes. The free-standing wet bar that ran parallel to one of the oak walls was topped with poured black marble and had faux-oak cabinetry that exactly matched the walls.
Matching red lava lampsЧoriginal, not reproductionЧilluminated the room and provided a necessary hint of color. Track lighting emphasized the Dali and Escher originals on the walls. The scent of pine air fresheners mingled with but did not quite mask a faint odor of stale sweat, sex, rust, and leather.
She stopped still for a moment and looked around the room, blinking rapidly. She favored him with another of those blindingly perfect smiles of hers and quickly buried her face in his neck, shuddering softly against him. God, she must be really hot to trot. . . .
"You want a drink? I'm having a martini." He smirked. "Shaken, not stirred, of course." He walked over to the wet bar and began pulling down various bottles off the glass shelves at the back.
"Why not?" She laughed, dropping her purse on the couch.
He poured her drink and handed it to her. "Cheers."
She took a sip and set the glass down on the chrome and glass end table, slinking up to him and sliding her hands up his chest. He wrapped his arms around her again and trailed his lips up her jaw to nibble lightly on her ear. He felt her knees buckle slightly and shifted his weight to support her as her hips seemingly involuntarily thrust against his. He felt the heat tighten in his groin as he buried his face in her hair and inhaled the clean, fresh scent of it mingled with her own soft musk.
His fingers trembled slightly as he unbuttoned the silk blouse, carefully, tenderly, savoring the opening strains of this overture that would end in so much sound and fury. Gently, now, building the trust that led them willingly into the trapЧthe purest and most exquisite test of his art. His hands slid inside and teased along the line of her spine and the soft, perfect skin of her back. He rubbed her jaw with his own, glad that he'd had an afternoon shave, and took her mouth, delving deep into the moist and the heat. God, he could drown in this woman.
Her slender fingers with those exquisitely feminine nails were playing with the hair at the nape of his neck and he felt himself breathing faster, impatient with the need to restrain himself and tease her into the next move. He drew one finger very lightly right up her spine before cupping his hands under her butt and pulling her, hard, against him as she shivered.
"So where's your room?" She nuzzled up to his neck and bit his shoulder softly.
He slid one hand up from her ass and tangled it in her hair, pulling her head back gently, nibbling the tip of her nose and shaking his head.
"Nah-ah. Bedroom is plain vanilla. C'mere." He took her hand and led her over to the velvet-draped wall, pressing a switch at the side and grinning as the drapes parted to reveal a wall set with four steel rings and a three-inch seat of obviously adjustable height.
"Once you try this, you'll never want to do it in a bed again. It's incredible." You won't be around to want anything, but that's not my problem, he thought.
"You're not gonna hurt me, are you?" She looked at him nervously.
"Never. Cross my heart." He cupped her face gently, his eyes holding hers. "That would just be no fun for me. My pleasure comes from pleasing you."
She melted against him as her knees gave way, and allowed him to maneuver her back onto the seat.
"Oops. This'll work better with the jeans off." He pulled some black silk scarves out of a pouch at the base of the wall and looked up at her, going down on one knee to help her off with her jeans and panties as he trailed a line of kisses down her hip bone and inner thigh.
After she kicked them free, he stroked the silken length of one of her legs as he tied her to the rings. Nice legs. Nice everything. Be a real shame to waste it. He unfastened his own jeans and put a hand on either side of her head.
"You know you're helpless now, don't you?" he purred.
She nodded and moaned softly as he took her. It didn't take long. She blinked bewilderedly as he backed away and fastened his jeans.
"Are . . . are we done?" She twisted a wrist against the tightly tied scarf and winced. "Can you untie me now? These things are starting to chafe a bit."
"Oh, we're not done, sweetness, that was just act one. Who sent you?" He walked over to the bar and took another swallow of his martini.
"What? Nobody . . . Is this a role-playing game? Because I'm not too good at those. . . ."
"Yeah, right." He grinned nastily. "So what's your name, sweetness?" He paced back over to the wall and yelled in her ear, "Who. Sent. You!"
"Ow!" She tugged harder at her wrists. "I'm not having fun, I want to go home now. Untie me, dammit!"
"Sorry, sweetness," he stepped to the side wall and slapped a switch, "act two's a command performance. Now, you tell me who sent you and your real name, or act two's gonna be real fun for me and no fun at all for you . . . unless you're into that sort of thing." His voice sounded oddly hollow. "Who sent you?"
"I'm . . . I'm Sarah Eileen Johnson," she stammered, eyes about twice their normal size, "and I'm a legal secretary for Sinclair and Burke's. Nobody sent me, I swear to God. Uh . . . please let me go. If you let me go now I promise I won't tell anybody ever, everything will be all right, please . . . please let me go!" She blinked rapidly, probably at the changed sound of her own voice.