Saving Brigit
The Passionate PIs 2

The cab came to a halt and the driver swiveled in his seat to stare. “Here?” His brow knitted, he pointed at the building before which he’d stopped. “Not here.” He shook his head as though in denial that anyone, much less a Western woman alone, could have indicated this address.

“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Afraid was the operative word.

Buck up. Rashid is no doubt already here, just as he said he would be.

As was custom, she supposed, she’d paid for the cab ride at the hotel, with the concierge performing the bargaining. She opened the door and stepped out. Heat from the day had abated somewhat, but to a San Franciscan like her, the air was still quite warm. The jersey blouse and slacks she’d thrown on after her shower clung to her. Her flat-heeled shoes settled firmly on the street, but the dirt was so hard, she doubted even heels would have made an impression. That didn’t seem to affect the amount of dust swirling through the air, though. A sudden gust sent paper up into a corkscrew of grit and dirt, tap-dancing across the street in front of the cab. An odor of grease and fetid material chased after it.

Thia glanced back into the cab, wishing she could get in and ride away from this place, but the driver had started pulling away as soon as her feet hit ground and she stood up. The door slammed shut with the cab’s forward movement, and suddenly she was alone in the scariest place she’d ever been in her life.

Silence fell over the street. Not even a dog barked. At the sound of scuttling, she looked over and saw a rat run along the building. It stopped, turned to her, and reared up on its hind feet. Involuntarily, she took a step back into the street. It dropped to all fours and ran on.

“This is how many Pakistanis live while you in the States eat chocolate and worry about when you’re getting your manicures,” a man’s smooth voice said from the darkness. “How do you like it?”

“I don’t care much for chocolate, Omar.” Her words would have had more effect if she’d been able to keep a quiver from her voice. “I came, as you said to. Can we go and find Brigit now?”

“Soon, Mrs. Williams. I can promise you’ll see Brigit soon.”

Turning toward the sound of the voice, she searched the darkness for him. Her nails cut into her palms. Her knees threatened to fold at any minute. She’d never been so frightened, yet she had to be here. She had to do what she could for Brigit. Gone was any thought of adventure or excitement. The embassy experience had quashed any flair of excitement, and Rashid had opened her eyes to how dangerous—not exciting—her trip was. Her one goal now was to do what she could to gain Brigit’s safe return home.

The tip of a cigarette glowed a few yards away. She pictured him there, smoking and knowing how scared she was, enjoying her fear. Well, she wouldn’t let him know how scared she was. She took a step forward and then another.

“Why are you standing there? Shouldn’t we be going?”

“Just checking to be sure you really did come alone.” He chuckled. “My cousin at the hotel didn’t see the man you dined with. Who was he?”

So, Rashid had been right. “The man I told you about, the one who helped me get around the city today. Everything is so different here.”

“Did you not take him to your bed? American women are quick to spread their legs, I’ve found.”

“How dare you,” she said sharply. “What about Brigit? I want to go to her. Now.”

He took another drag on his cigarette. The tip grew bright red and then faded to a rust-colored burn. “She spread her legs for me two, three times a day. She fucked like a slut, in any position, anytime and anywhere I commanded her.”

“I don’t want to hear—”

“I tied her up, you know? I treated her like the bitch she was, and she loved it.”

Thia stood her ground. Her only movement was to slip her cell phone from her slacks pocket. “Take me to her,” she said firmly. “Right now or I’ll call for help.” She held up the phone.

He laughed. The bastard laughed, and the sound rolled through the street like a bowling ball rumbling down a rippled lane toward the pins. Thia glanced over her shoulder, then nervously up and down the street. There was no one. How could the road be totally empty when, minutes ago, Islamabad had appeared as busy as San Francisco on a mid-week workday?

Where is Rashid?

The laughter abruptly stopped. He dropped his cigarette. She heard the brush of his shoe as he crushed it out, and then he stepped forward.

She saw the man she’d come to think of as her enemy for the first time. No wonder Brigit had been attracted. His dress was casual, loose, light-colored pants and an open-necked shirt hanging outside the waistband. He was of average height and stocky, though he carried his weight well. His olive complexion was clear, and what looked like laugh lines marked the edges of his eyes. If she hadn’t known what he’d done—or suspected it, at least—she might have passed him on the street and thought him sexy in a dark, mysterious kind of way. Now she looked at him as she might a roach. He should be stepped on and crushed beyond recognition. If he’s harmed Brigit, I’d do it, too. I’d kill him right where he stands.

“It seems you did come alone.” He leaned against the building, jammed his hands in his pockets, and regarded her coolly.

“I said I would.” She shrugged. “Besides, who would I bring? I don’t know anyone here.”

“Doesn’t matter. You won’t be here much longer.”

“What?”

“And where we’re going, you won’t need even what you have on.” He looked her up and down with a critical eye. “I’ll be able to redeem myself by bringing you to him.”

“What are you talking about? Him who?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Brigit is there, though I doubt by now she’ll want you to see what she’s become.”

He pushed away from the wall and came close enough for her to smell the tobacco on his breath and the hint of male excitement.

He ran the back of his finger down her cheek. “How about a sample, huh? You’ve got long legs and fuller tits than Brigit. We could do it right against the wall and let the rats watch.”

A shiver ran down her back. It took all of her willpower not to slap him. But what if she really was out here alone? Rashid hadn’t shown himself yet. If you slap him, could it get any worse than not slapping him?

“With you? I don’t see that happening.”

For some reason, that struck him as funny. Bad breath hit her as soon as he began laughing.

“Might as well with me. You won’t find any better where you’re going, and you can be sure you’ll spread your legs there. Often.”

He grabbed her breast and squeezed hard. She cried out and tried to step away, but like lightning, he’d reached behind her and grasped her bottom, keeping her from escape.

Instead of fear, Thia was seized with a burst of anger. “Let go of me, you son of a bitch.”

And he did. She almost fell backward with his sudden release. Then she saw the reason. Rashid stood behind Omar, pulling back his head by the hair and scraping the tip of a long knife at his throat.

“The lady doesn’t want a goat’s prick like you to touch her.”

ADULT EXCERPT

“You know very well I never do things by half. If I aim to please, I do so with my whole heart.” She trailed her finger along his jaw and down his throat. “If I aim to kill, I do that also with my whole heart.”

“And which do you have in mind for me tonight?”

She brushed his lips, whispering close. “You have no need to ask. No one makes me feel like you.”

An old line, but what male didn’t feel an iota of pride at hearing it?

“And I know I make you feel the best, too,” she added.

“Do you intend to test that claim?” he asked.

In answer, she climbed out of thelow-slung car and strutted to the front, where twin beams glared against the white wall of the garage.

She reached behind and suddenly the wide cummerbund belt that had snugged her waist dropped to the floor. What Rashid had thought a gown was really a skirt and lacy, short-sleeved top. In seconds, she stood in only a scrap of white lingerie, and then that, too, was on the floor.

Elena’s only concession to opulence that evening had been her jewelry, the same she wore every time Rashid saw her. A diamond tennis bracelet adorned her wrist. Around her neck she wore a simple gold chain from which hung a pendant shaped like a crescent, wide at the top, tapering to a point, and set with small but stunning stones. Her ears boasted diamond stud earrings. Against her dark skin and illuminated by the headlamps, the jewelry sparkled like stars in the desert night sky.

Rashid stared, his groin heavy and full. Her body was as beautiful now as it had been when they’d first made love. They’d come together on the ground behind a boulder after an attack in a Russian patrol. The smell of gunpowder had hung in the air. So had the coppery odor of death. They’d coupled in a burst of passion that shared fear, pride, and the joy of still being alive.

He opened the passenger door and stepped out. By the time he reached the front of the vehicle, she’d kicked off her heels. Her body defined the word perfection. After all these years, her smallish tits remained firm and high. Her waist showed no thickening, and her hip bones protruded slightly. His sex pulsed in excitement and familiarity, but he didn’t move closer, just watched.

Elena tipped her chin, pride and desire warring in her eyes. She ran the palm of her hand up from her narrow hip to her breasts where she stroked the rounded flesh and tweaked her nipple until it pointed straight and hard.

“Do you still desire me, Rashid?” She licked her lips.

“You know I do.”

“Then why do you stand so far?” With amazing dexterity, she scooped her breast up, dipped her head, and swiped her tongue across her nipple. It gleamed in the light.

Rashid’s heart thudded in his chest. He wanted to suck her tit like a baby. He wanted to take her tongue into his mouth and feel its exploration. He wanted her hands on him and his on her as his dick took control of her body. But still he stood his ground.

“I like watching you.” His cock strained in protest, but if he’d learned anything as a fighter and then a mercenary, it was patience and discipline. When it came time, he would find his release that much sweeter. And so would Elena.

She pouted. “All you want to do is watch?”

“Right now, yes. Touch yourself.” He stepped back out of the circle of the headlamps and into the shadows, seeming darker with the concentration of light in the two focused beams.

She moved out of the line to the center of the BMW. Stretching out on the hood, she raised her heel to the bumper. With one hand, she continued massaging her breast. With her other, she reached toward her nether lips.

She was a study in shadow, a moving picture of darkness and light. Dust motes danced in the headlights. A moth flickered around the beam. Rashid narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the woman sprawled on the hood of the little sports car.

He saw her fingers part her pussy lips, ripe and pink and dewy with her woman’s moisture. Slowly she plowed the furrow, dipping her finger into her honey pot and pulling the honey up to the top of her lips where the wet pearl of her clit peeked out.

She groaned. Rashid had to work at stifling a moan of need himself. When she closed her eyes and took her finger, glistening with cream, to her mouth, he loosened his trousers and stroked his cock.

He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he imagined how her mouth worked her finger, sucking, licking, tugging it in for another taste of herself while her other hand pulled at her nipple.

Back her hand went, two fingers disappearing into her pussy, setting a steady rhythm. Rashid matched with strokes of his own, spreading the cum on the crown of his shaft, over the tip, and down the length.

Elena’s clit, swollen and extended, seemed to throb before his eyes. The whimper from deep in her throat called to him.

He remembered the first time he heard that sound, and the second and third and every time they’d been with each other since. Twenty-two years of coupling should mean more than remembering a few sighs, shouldn’t it? Once he’d thought they might spend their lives together, but even in the heat of that fantasy, he’d known he didn’t love her, would never love her. Still, their history bound them in a way many married couples weren’t. They’d faced the enemy together and lived to celebrate. That wasn’t a bond lightly discarded.

Her breathing turned ragged and shallow. She was close to completion. He wished he could see her face, watch her eyes widen with the sensations carrying her body away. Instead, he stared at her fingers sinking into her body, thrusting, pushing, then swiftly rising to caress her clit, bathing it in cream. Her hips rose off the car hood, inviting her fingers to go deeper, and he saw her strain to reach depths no woman could find for herself. With a grunt of frustration, she set a fast pace along her slit, stretching to her tight anus, back to her clit.

“Ah, ah!” She sucked in a breath.

Rashid strode forward. He cast a huge shadow against the back of the garage, like a giant about to ravage the innocent laid out for his pleasure. His manhood felt like a giant’s, thick and pulsing, and aching for release in Elena’s body.