Lover Unleashed - J. R. Ward [166]
“Yes.” She touched below her right eye. “Look at me, please.”
He was already locked on her face, and the extra focus just made her work easier; all she had to do was open the way into his brain and put a mental patch over everything that pertained to her.
As far as the human knew, her surgeon had come and gone alone.
She kept the man in a trance, and turned to Manuel. “You need not worry. His memories are so short-term, he will be fine.”
From far off, a howling sound rang out, high-pitched and urgent.
“That’s the police,” Manuel said.
“Then I shall go.”
“How will you get home?”
“In the same manner as I got out of your car.”
She waited for him to reach for her . . . or say something . . . or . . . But he just stood there with the cold, silent night air between them.
“Are you going to lie to them?” he asked. “And tell them that you scrubbed me?”
“I do not know.”
“Well, in case you need to come back to do that, I’m at—”
“Good night, Manuel. Please be safe.”
With that, she raised her hand and quietly, inexorably disappeared.
FORTY-THREE
As tricks went, this one was fucking weird. “So where’s your friend at?”
Karrie Ravisc, a.k.a. Kandy on the streets, had been doing the whore thing proper for about nine months so she’d seen a lot of shit. But this . . .
The huge man by the motel room’s door spoke softly. “He’s coming.”
Karrie took another toke and thought, Well, at least the one in front of her was hot. And he’d also paid her five hundred and set her up in this room. Still . . . there was something off here.
Weird accent. Weird eyes. Weird ideas.
But very hot.
As they waited, she lay buck-ass naked on the bed with all the lights off. It wasn’t totally dark, though. This john with the heavy wallet had set up a big boxy flashlight across the room, over on the cheapie dresser. The beam was pointed so that it shone on her body. Kind of like she was onstage. Or maybe a piece of art.
Which actually was less weird than some of the things she’d done. Shit, if prostitution didn’t make you think men were nasty, sick bastards, nothing else would: Aside from your run-of-the-mill cheaters and the types who were on power trips, you had fuckers with foot fetishes, and those who liked to get spanked, and others who wanted to get pissed on.
Finishing up her White Owl, she stabbed out the stub and thought maybe this spotlight thing wasn’t so bad. Some jackass had wanted to eat hamburgers off her two weeks ago and that had just been gross—
The click of the lock turning into place made her jump, and she realized with a start that someone had somehow arrived without her knowing it; that was the door being locked. From the inside.
And now there was a second man over by the first.
Good thing her pimp was right next door.
“Evenin’,” she said, as she stretched mechanically for both of them. Her breasts were fake, but they were good fake, and her stomach was flat even though she’d had one kid, and she was not just shaved, but electrolyzed.
All of which was how she got to charge what she did.
Man . . . another big one, she thought as the second guy came forward and stood at the foot of the bed. Actually, this fucker was huge. Absolutely mammoth. And not as in fat and sloppy—his shoulders were so square they looked drawn on with a ruler, and his chest formed a perfect triangle into his tight hips. She couldn’t see his face, given the light that streamed from behind him, but it didn’t matter as the first john stretched out on the bed next to her.
Shit . . . she suddenly found herself turned on. It was the size of them and the danger of the darkness and the scents. Jesus . . . they smelled amazing.
“Roll onto your stomach,” the second one demanded.
God, that voice. The same foreign accent as the guy who had set this up, but so much deeper—and there was an edge to it.
“You really want to see my ass?” she drawled, as she sat up. Cupping her DDs, she hefted them and then squeezed them together. “Because the front of me is even better.”
With that, she stretched one breast up and extended her tongue downward, licking