Ice Storm - Anne Stuart [90]
He was a man who fucked in silence. And when he climaxed, long, hard, endlessly, inside her tight body, he heard his voice in the darkness. Calling her name.
Reno stretched out on the floor, a beer cradled in his hands, his eyes drifting closed as he listened to the sound of the storm outside. Tiny pellets of icy rain were beating against the windows, mixed with the noise of the video game Mahmoud was playing.
It had been a strange day.
He opened one eye, glancing at the kid. He was sitting cross-legged on the mattress Reno had dragged out for him. The second bedroom was crowded with discarded furniture, but he could at least get out the mattress. Mahmoud would have been happy enough sleeping on the hard floor—clearly he’d slept in far worse places—but Reno had a soft spot for the kid.
Besides, he probably wasn’t going to sleep at all—he was going to stay up all night playing video games. It had been love at first sight; one taste of Mortal Kombat and the boy was hooked. Reno had battled him for hours, opponent after opponent. Sometimes he let Mahmoud win, at other times he’d simply slap his character to the ground and rip out his spinal cord. Reno didn’t let himself dwell on the eerie thought that Mahmoud would have lived in a world like that. Well, the ripping out of spinal cords was not usually seen outside of a video game, but the blood had been real for him.
He looked relaxed, happy, with his newly spiked purple hair, rude T-shirt and ripped jeans that had cost more than a child soldier would make in a lifetime. And they’d figured out how to communicate, a crazy mix of French, English, Arabic, Japanese and video game terms. After two hours of silence Mahmoud had started talking, and he hadn’t stopped, as characters battled on the HD television screen and fake blood spattered.
Reno understood only part of it, but it hadn’t mattered. Mahmoud had needed to talk, and he listened. They moved from fight games to first person shooters, and Reno found himself hopelessly out-classed by a kid fifteen years younger than he was, something he wasn’t about to put up with. Older brother kindness could only go so far, and he moved him on to RPGs, fantasy role-playing games where Mahmoud could wander through enchanted forests, kill trolls, turn into a wizard and collect potions. The kid was in heaven, and Reno could retire to his bedroom in peace.
They’d already had a solemn exchange of presents, Japanese style. He’d given Mahmoud his most prized possession, his handheld game system that was still in beta mode, unavailable on the open market and so advanced it made PS3 look like an Atari. And Mahmoud had given him a string of beads, cracked, ancient, worthless. The beads had belonged to his foster sister. He’d taken them from her dead body, and had sworn on them to kill the man who’d murdered her.
He’d given them to Reno, along with his blood oath of revenge, finally letting go. And Reno, cold, unsentimental punk that he considered himself to be, had wrapped them around his wrist, knowing he would carry them with him until the day he died.
He could hear nothing from the floor below. He’d never even realized there was a closed-off living space down there—he was just glad Peter Madsen hadn’t decided to put him in it during his training period. England was bad enough; being in a prison wouldn’t help.
Madame Lambert had looked like a different woman than the cold, efficient robot she’d appeared to be the only other time he’d been in England. But then, that had been miles away from the plain, middle-aged cult follower that had been the first disguise he’d seen her in. Maybe the robot was a disguise as well, and the bloody, torn and troubled woman who’d been waiting for them with an unconscious man and a furious Mahmoud was the real Madame Lambert.
Normally Reno wouldn’t care. It was none of his business. But it didn’t look as if he’d be getting back to Tokyo anytime soon, and he held the firm belief that if he was going to do something, even if coerced into it, then he should do