InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity 9: Subterfuge ❯ Damnation ( Chapter 5 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Hidden deep in the shadows near the northeastern perimeter two-foot thick, ten foot high brick wall that surrounded the obscenely large property belonging to one Zel Roka, Valerie Denning scowled up at the grappling hook that had gotten lodged between the perfectly set bricks—very good for aiding her plight of scaling the wall.  Not so great when she needed to retrieve the equipment in her backpack.  After a moment of deliberation, she shook her head and stifled a sigh before grasping the stout rope once more to rescale the wall.

At least she’d still had the thing, which had surprised her.  She’d tried mountain climbing a few summers back but had figured out quickly enough that it wasn’t really her thing.  Oh, it was all right, and she hadn’t minded the physical workouts, but she’d signed up for the course after her fiancé had mentioned that they ought to take up a hobby like that—not entirely surprising since he had been talking to an investor who had mentioned that he climbed and that maybe Marvin ought to accompany him sometime . . .

Not that Marvin—Valerie’s fiancé—was the kind to do any such thing, and she’d known that at the time.  Still, she’d rather hoped that he’d take a liking to it, but when it became obvious that Bill Blackman had no real interest in underwriting Marvin’s research, Marvin’s interest in the sport had all but dissolved, too.  That was just before Marvin had decided that he needed to broaden his network.  Having already approached most of the better known philanthropists in New York City and the outlying areas, he felt that he’d have better luck if he took his proposal on the road, and like the dutiful fiancée, Valerie had smiled and agreed.

It didn’t really bother her so much—something that Madison had never understood, not that Valerie could blame her.  It was hard to explain to someone like her, why it was that Valerie wasn’t too upset with the arrangement.  True, she sometimes went weeks or even months without seeing Marvin, and most of their conversations were fairly short in duration, but it wasn’t like Valerie was sitting around, doing nothing but pining herself away, either.  After all, she had a career of her own—a career that kept her quite busy, too.

Sparing a minute to catch her breath once she reached the top of the wall, she crouched there for a moment before carefully tugging the grappling hook loose and methodically stowing it in her knapsack.  She’d have to let herself drop to get back down again, a prospect that she had to admit was a little daunting.  She’d be all right, she figured, as long as she didn’t try to land on her feet—and as long as she didn’t land on that knapsack.

She dropped the bag off to the left so that it wouldn’t be in the way when she hit the ground.  That done, she turned over onto her belly and lowered herself over the side once more.  There was a slight ledge, so she was able to hang onto that, at least for a moment, as she drew a deep breath and pushed off just enough so that she wouldn’t hit her head on the way down.

Landing flat on her back in a thick bed of lush grass, she lay perfectly still for several seconds as she struggled to catch her breath again.  Nothing was broken, she decided as she cautiously moved her arms and legs.  If the wall had been any higher, though, she would never have tried to get down that way.

It had surprised her, she had to admit.  A man as spoiled and pretentious as Zel Roka had comparatively little in the way of security installed around his home.  There were a handful of cameras along the wall, but most of those were on the outside at about fifty- yard intervals.  Gross negligence, in her opinion, especially since the area where she’d climbed over was pitch black in the shadows.  Rolling her eyes as she sat up slowly, she had to wonder if her opinion of him could possibly get any worse . . .

'Don’t be stupid,' she told herself grimly as she pushed herself to her feet and retrieved the knapsack.  'Of course it could.'

The next problem was crossing the wide expanse of yard.  Bathed in the bright light of the full moon, there was nothing to provide any sort of cover, and even if she skirted around the perimeter, sticking to the shadows, she’d still have to chance crossing the yard somewhere.

Face scrunching up in a frown of concentration, Valerie shook her head and started moving.  She was his attorney, for God’s sake!  She had every right to be here, and if he didn’t like it, well, then he was free to find someone else who was willing to put up with his ration of crap, wasn’t he?

Yes, he certainly was, and maybe some small part of her even wished that he would.

Maybe.

Giving herself a mental shake, Valerie heaved a heavy sigh as she asked herself yet again if there wasn’t really something incredibly wrong with her for putting herself through all of this.  After all, Zel Roka didn’t seem at all contrite and even thought that the entire situation was funny, didn’t he?  Maybe sitting in the big house for a little while would be good for him.  At the very least, it could serve as a wakeup call for his overinflated ego . . .

‘Focus, Valerie.  Crucifying your client in your own mind isn’t necessarily a good way to approach a new case, is it?’

This time, the sigh that slipped from her was resigned, at best and outright hopeless at worst.

Focus.

Right.

That meant she needed to get moving.

It didn’t take long for her to reach the relative cover provided by the shadows falling around the mansion.  The arrogant man didn’t even have security cameras out here, and she wrinkled her nose as she carefully pushed her way through the thick branches of the bushes outside the windows.  She figured that she’d be better off to make sure that he really was misbehaving before she stomped in there with all guns blazing.

The living room window was open, and what was meant to be a quick glance stopped her short as her mouth dropped open, as a livid flush shot to the surface of her skin as she stared in almost comical horror at the debacle unfolding inside.

“Oh, my God,” she muttered, pressing a hand to her mouth as her eyes widened in complete disbelief at the scenario laid out before her.  Sure, Madison had told her what he was doing, and yes, she’d certainly believed it—at least she thought she had.  Maybe, she realized as she tried to make herself back away, maybe she hadn’t honestly believed that even he could be that completely debased.  Seeing it happening, though . . . ‘I-it’s like a train wreck,’ she thought wildly.  Good Lord, she just couldn’t look away . . .

Bottle blonde identical twins, all right, with extremely large, extremely fake-looking breasts, damn it.  One was bouncing up and down on the disgusting man’s penis while the other was straddling his head, keening like a puppy as she writhed and fondled her breasts.  “Ooh, yeah; ooh, yeah,” she squeaked.  Zel was sprawled on the floor—his hair was jet black today—lifting his hips in a steady rhythm, though how he could possibly keep it up was beyond Valerie.  The woman on his face leaned forward, licking at the other one’s nipples as her breasts bobbed obscenely.  It was completely disgusting, wasn’t it?  Completely, utterly, insanely . . .

“Don’t give yourself a black eye, honey,” Valerie grumbled under her breath.

He was moaning and groaning and carrying on, too, which only managed to add to Valerie’s overall disgust with the entire affair as the other twin leaned forward, as the women felt up each other’s breasts, their tongues flicking out to lap at each other.  “That’s it . . . suck those titties, baby . . .” he murmured.  Valerie smashed her hand over her mouth to keep from snorting out loud despite the marked flush that she could feel burning her skin.

Zel reached up, burying three of his fingers into the nearest twin.  She squealed and bucked wildly, showing absolutely no shame as she rocked against him.  Valerie thought that she heard him chuckle but wasn’t sure since it was hard to make out anything over the din the women were making.  The girl riding him leaned back, bracing herself on her hands while the other one jiggled her palm against her twin’s clitoris to make her come.  “Oh, baby!  Oh, Zel! Ooh, you’re so big!  So huge!  I’m gonna come!  I’m gonna—I’m gonna—I’m gonna . . .!”

She crumpled to the side, her breathing labored and harsh as she huddled on the floor.  The girl Zel was fingering yanked the condom off of him, drawing him in completely as Valerie shook her head in disbelief.

‘Dear God, he is huge!’ she thought, unable to repress the complete astonishment that the woman was actually able to take him in completely.  Something like that couldn’t possibly be natural, could it?  Had he had some weird surgery to make his penis larger or something?  And why wouldn’t she put that past him, anyway?

Even as she wondered that, though, he unleashed a loud growl, lifting his hips and thrusting himself deeper into the poor girl’s mouth, and she swallowed fast as he jerked her head down hard.  From her vantage point, Valerie could see dribbles of semen escaping the woman’s lips despite her efforts to swallow all of it.  With one last, long groan, he collapsed on the floor, stroking the blonde’s hair as she and her sister licked him clean.

Her twin, finally having recovered from her own orgasm, nudged her aside to help clean him up.  Valerie clutched her stomach and narrowed her eyes.  ‘Hussies!’ she thought with a mental snort.  ‘No wonder he didn’t want to . . . Oh!  Eww!  Eww, eww, eww!  You’re sisters!  That’s entirely the reason that men are still no better than dogs!  What does he think this is?  A porno?’

But they did.  Sidetracked, maybe, by the taste of come on each other’s lips, the girls were on each other like white on rice.  Zel chuckled and stood up, retrieving a glass of wine off the table where the remnants of dinner had been abandoned, and he stood back, watching the girls as they writhed on the floor.  One of the girls had her face buried between the other’s legs while the one being serviced whined and squeezed her own breasts.  “Ooh, yeah! Ooh, baby!   Ooh, yeah!” she squeaked, bringing to mind a really bad porno.  “Right there, Cassie!  Fuck me, fuck me!  Ooh!”

Rolling her eyes, despite the vivid flush that was darkening almost painfully with every second that ticked away, Valerie glanced at Zel again, half afraid of what she’d see.  He stopped beside the girls long enough to ruffle Cassie’s hair before wandering over to the cold steel bench sofa nearby.  He slumped on it, legs out straight before him, stroking himself with a slight grin—completely smug—gracing his lips as he sipped the wine and took in the scene.  He shifted his gaze toward the windows once, and Valerie nearly gasped as she ducked, squeezing her eyes closed as her knees protested the landscaping rocks under the bush.  Slowly, slowly, she peeked in the window again.  Zel was busy watching the girls’ antics, and he didn’t look like he’d noticed her.  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she told herself, pressing her hand against her chest as her heart hammered against her ribcage.  ‘He’s got the lights on in there, and it’s dark out here . . . he can’t see me . . .’

“Here,” Zel said, setting the glass onto the table beside him and tossing a neon pink double ended dildo on the floor beside the girls.  “Let’s see what you can do with that.”

Face contorting in absolute horror as her mouth dropped open, Valerie couldn’t help the disapproving grunt that slipped from her, either.  The twins were more than happy to oblige him, arranging themselves in a strange mass of writhing bodies and limbs as the obnoxious sounds of their puppy-panting filled the air and rang in her ears.  The longer she watched, the more appalled she was, and yet she couldn’t quite bring herself to look away, either.  Zel drained the last of his wine and sauntered over to the girls.  Somehow, they managed to fuck each other as they sat up, one of them latching onto his penis as the other lapped at his balls.  It didn’t take them long to coax him back to hardness, either.

‘Nasty, nasty . . . He’s just disgusting,’ Valerie fumed, shifting slightly as a dull throbbing registered in the back of her mind.  She wasn’t turned on by what she was seeing; God, no . . . It was the single most deplorable act she’d ever born witness to!  Men like him should be dragged out at dawn and shot, damn it!  Still . . .

Still, as much as she hated to admit it, there was something kind of erotic about it, too . . .

With a roughened growl, Zel pulled away from the girls to retrieve an unopened condom off the floor.  The girls whined in protest, but the porno-whiner didn’t waste any time pushing her twin down to reciprocate.  In a dazed sort of horrified fascination, Valerie watched as the girl buried both her tongue and her fingers inside her sister.

With a chuckle, Zel knelt behind Porno-Whiner and jerked her back hard, unleashing a shriek from her even as Zel shoved her head back into Cassie’s crotch.  Fucking her so hard that the crack of skin meeting skin managed to drown out the mewling whines of the girls, he also managed a stream of dirty talk that was bad enough that Valerie could feel her own face flaming, and as much as she hated to admit it, she felt as though her body was unraveling, a series of tiny explosions that only served to set off a deep-rooted ache.

She was breathing heavily, herself, her hands shaking as she stared through the window.  The girls were screaming in earnest now, each of them driven forward by Zel’s thrusts like a really twisted perpetual motion machine, and Valerie gasped, jumping back only to collapse against the side of the house when she saw it: his eyes staring directly into hers with an unfathomable expression on his face as he continued to fuck the twins.

‘Oh, God . . . I have to get out of here . . .’ she thought, pressing an icy palm against her forehead.  Too bad her legs wouldn’t move.  ‘He saw me, didn’t he?  He saw . . .’

‘Of course he didn’t see you, you goose,’ her conscience piped up.  ‘How could he have seen you?  Think about it: it’s dark out here, you know.  Besides that, why in the world would he have been looking at you when he’s got those two in there?’

That reminder drew a loud, albeit inward, snort from her.  ‘He’s such a pig . . .’

‘A hot pig,’ her conscience agreed.  ‘A really, really hot pig . . .’

She heaved a disgusted sigh, crossing her arms over her chest as her expression darkened.  Women like those two were the kind who based their worth on how many guys they slept with, weren’t they?  That they would degrade themselves in such a way was proof enough, as far as Valerie was concerned.  ‘Just wanted to sleep with the rock star, huh . . .?’

‘You know, you were almost that bad when you were younger,’ her conscious pointed out reasonably—too reasonably.

Valerie wrinkled her nose and stubbornly shook her head.  Her wild days were well in her past now, and even though she would be the first to admit that she’d done more than her fair share of really stupid things, she also knew damn well that she had entirely too much self-respect to denigrate herself like that now.  Leave it to a man like Zel Roka to single out and prey upon girls like those—girls who hadn’t yet learned that there was more to life than just being some rock star’s plaything . . .

‘Now you sound completely preachy,’ the voice in her head stated.

Maybe she did, but still . . . as disgusted as she was by the appalling display, she couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for those girls, too.

The front door opened a few minutes later, and Valerie ducked.  The sounds of the women’s voices were easily discerned, and Valerie scrunched down a little more when the flicker of headlights approached.

“Are you sure you have to make an early night of it?” one of the twins asked, her pout obvious in her tone.

Valerie shifted slightly so that she could see through the network of branches, and she smothered a gasp as she slowly shook her head.  Zel laughed, the jerk—the very naked jerk.  He didn’t even have the decency to get a pair of pants on before he’d strolled outside, and dark or not, that was just a damn stupid thing to do, in her opinion.  His property wasn’t nearly as secure as it ought to be, was it?  What if some paparazzi had scaled the wall like she’d done?  That’s all the idiot needed—his penis, plastered all over the morning’s papers . . .  “Sorry, ladies . . . I’ve got an early morning interview tomorrow.  Gotta be my best, right?”

A very large, very tall, very intimidating looking black man got out of the car but didn’t shut it off, loping over to the group with a wide, broad grin as he chuckled under his breath.  “Need somethin’, Roka?” he drawled, revealing a very thick southern twang and not much in the way of stereotypical African-American accent.

Zel chuckled as his girls whined a little more.  “Ladies, this is Bone.  He’ll take you home.  Hell, he’ll even check out your place to make sure no one broke in and is lying in wait to molest you while you were gone.”

The one named Bone chuckled, too.  “Take them home, eh?”

“Please.”

One of the girls uttered a small, ‘hrumph’.  “Can we stop and get some beer?” she asked in a plaintive tone.

“Oh, I think that could be arranged, ya,” Bone replied.  “Roka, you know about that, right?”

Zel nodded once.  “Yeah, I knew about that.”

Bone shrugged.  “I figured . . . Now, ladies . . . y’all ready to go?”

They seemed reluctant to leave, of course, but they did, linking arms with Bone as the latter led the way to the running car.  The girls stopped long enough to blow kisses at the miscreant rock-star before ducking into the vehicle.  Bone gunned the engine, swinging the car in a tight circle before screeching out of the driveway, leaving a lingering stench of burned rubber in the balmy night air.

Zel didn’t move to go inside, though.  Standing on the porch until the car sped through the gates and out of view, he heaved a sigh and slowly shook his head.  “So, V, you gonna stay in my bushes all night or you want to come inside?”

She squeaked out an indignant yelp that she cut off abruptly as she shrank back into the shadows as far as she could.  He couldn’t know that she was there, could he?  Of course not!  That was ridiculous, wasn’t it?

He sighed and shuffled off the porch, taking the few strides necessary to separate himself and her before he reached out, grabbed her wrist, and tugged her out of the foliage.  “You suck at black-ops,” he pointed out with a lazy grin.

“I wasn’t spying,” she blurted suddenly, glad that the darkness hid her blush from his entirely too-perceptive eyes.  He stood in a shaft of moonlight, though, and damned if the bastard wasn’t grinning from ear to ear.

“Yeah, you dropped something, right?” he supplied helpfully.

“I-I—Yes!”

He nodded.  “How’d you get past security?”

She snorted, clutching her knapsack against her chest.  “What security?  Your so-called security is sorely lacking, Mr. Roka!  What if I’d been some tawdry photographer out for a good scoop?”

He laughed.  Threw his head back and laughed . . . “Bone would have caught ‘em . . . Bone’s a Bone of many talents, if you know what I mean.”

“He didn’t catch me,” she shot back, raising an eyebrow in contention.

“Oh, he caught you.  He also knew that you’re my attorney, so he let it pass.  By the way, why don’t you just use the front gate next time?”

She snorted in a completely irritated sort of way.  “For your information, I was testing your security, Mister Roka!  Otherwise I would have used your—your gate!”

He wasn’t buying it, and she knew that he wasn’t.  That didn’t stop her from straightening her back proudly, tossing her head in a completely defiant way full of bravado that she was far from feeling.  “That still don’t answer why you were hiding in my bushes,” he pointed out calmly.

“I wasn’t hiding,” she shot back, narrowing her eyes in a fulminating glower.  “I dropped my . . . my . . . my earring!”

He arched a black eyebrow.  “Oh, well, if that’s the case, let me see if I can’t help you find it, V.”

She heaved a sigh as he stepped past her and knelt down to inspect the area for the earring that was still fastened to her ear.  Remembering that a moment too late, Valerie made quick work of unfastening the left one and dropping it in what she hoped was a discreet manner.  “I think I’ve told you, Mr. Roka, my name is Ms. Denning, and I’ll thank you to remember that, please.”

“So don’t thank me,” he said, holding up her earring.  The small diamond glinted in the moonlight.  She stared at it for a moment then snatched it out of his hand, pausing long enough to blow it off before she pulled the backer off again and stuck it through the hole in her lobe.

“You know something?” he said as he stood up and brushed off his hands.

“What?” she asked grudgingly.

“Well, assuming that I let it slide that I noticed that you were wearing both of those before I started looking, if it just fell out of your ear, then you’d better be a little more careful.  I mean, if the hole in your ear is big enough to let the entire thing with the backer still on slip through . . .”

His grin was downright gloating as he crossed his arms over his chest.  “Are you calling me a liar?” she squeaked angrily, though if she were completely honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she was angrier that she’d been caught than because she’d lied to him, in the first place.

“No-o-o-o,” he crooned then laughed when she uttered a low growl.

Valerie heaved a frustrated sigh then turned on her heel, prepared to make a grand exit by stomping away in a complete huff.  Zel was faster, slipping an arm around her waist and drawing him firmly against his chest.  “Give it up, V . . . I know damn well that you were watching . . . and I know damn well that you liked what you saw . . .”

She froze, unable to move, unable to think as a completely unfamiliar and savage jolt of desire shot through her.  “Wh-What?” she breathed, swallowing hard to force down the sudden thickness that was blocking her windpipe.

He chuckled in her ear—throaty, soft—vastly disturbing.  “You know, I never would have thought that  you’d be so fucking hot under your business suits,” he went on.  “I can’t believe that Maddy didn’t fuck the shit out of you . . .”

With a gasp as he ground his hips against her back, she jerked back to throw him off balance then yanked herself out of his grasp, whipping around to glower at him.  “You’re disgusting!” she bellowed, her anger igniting once more.  “Nasty, gross, sick!  Let me tell you something, Mr. Roka: women were not put on this earth just to fornicate with you!  You have to be the vilest, most loathsome bastard alive, and—and why the hell are you laughing?”

And he was laughing—laughing so hard that no sound was actually coming out of him.  Shoulders shaking, body quaking, the only sound that gave testament to his obnoxious behavior was the airy breaths that escaped with every guffaw that rattled out of him.

Valerie was in the middle of contemplating the idea of beating him senseless when his hand shot out again, and he turned around, heading for the house and dragging Valerie along behind him.

He was still laughing when he closed the door and slumped against it inside.  She might have protested a little more, but the huge poster mounted on the short wall across from the door had drawn her attention.  Zel Roka in nothing but a pair of underpants that he was holding down just a too low, he wasn’t smiling in the picture, but he didn’t have to be.  All the muscles—she’d have thought that the image had been airbrushed if she hadn’t seen him with her own eyes—all the rises and ridges . . . and the way he was posed, the underpants didn’t actually cover him, either.  Half of his penis was showing, the other half was delineated so well in the tight undergarment that absolutely nothing was left to the imagination, and for several seconds, Valerie stood, transfixed, caught somewhere between abject disgust and a deep appreciation of the artistic quality of the photograph . . .

“Ah, the one and only time in my adult life that I’ve ever worn a pair of those,” he quipped.  “Wanna see my house?”

She blinked at the incongruous statement and question, still a little too bemused to object when he took her hand again and led her to the left.

The wall the print was mounted on wasn’t as tall as the room and wasn’t as wide, either: an open air foyer, she supposed.  He led her down four steps into a small alcove.  The length of the room was nothing but a configuration of windows that ran from floor to ceiling.  A number of plants were displayed around the room, and in the middle of the darkly stained hardwood floor—teak, maybe—were two off white chaise lounges, richly upholstered in padded velvet.  They looked comfortable—really comfortable.  Zel chuckled again but didn’t bother turning on a light.  “I meditate in here,” he said.

She shot him a quick glance and shook her head.  “You meditate?  Ri-i-ight . . .”

He chuckled again and shrugged.  “No, I do . . . I’m a real mess if I don’t.”

She snorted but didn’t answer as he took her hand and dragged her up the steps into the main living room again.  Wrinkling her nose since she’d seen quite enough of that particular room through the window, she was vaguely surprised to see that the room had been straightened up though the remnants of dinner still sat on the table nestled in the far corner near the window where she’d watched.

This room, too, had the same hardwood floors though a huge plush area rug covered a lot of it.  Rich burgundies and greens with accents of blues and golds, the rug was Oriental in style and undoubtedly very, very expensive.  A thick light brown fur rug graced the hearth near a gigantic fireplace.  On the far side of the room near a wall that seemed to be nothing but a configuration of windows flanking two huge lead glass doors stood the strangest looking metal sculpture she’d ever seen.  So chaotic that it appeared to be little more than wires and strips in no real order, she stared at it.  The longer she stared, though, the more her perception of the piece changed.  There was an understated quality to it, almost erotic, very evocative . . .

“Cool, eh?  A friend of mine made that,” he said, staring at the sculpture in a wholly appreciative way.  “Want a glass of wine or somethin’?”

Shaking herself out of her reverie, Valerie turned away from the sculpture and shook her head.  “No, thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” he replied, stopping at the table beside the steel bench sofa to retrieve his wine glass before sauntering off toward the table to refill the glass.

Lip curling as she thought of those women eating dinner with him before they took turns being used by the odious man, Valerie was abruptly reminded exactly why she’d come over here.  Taking a deep breath and interrupting Zel’s babble about the different things that took up space in the large room, she whipped around to face him, only to stop short when she remembered a moment too late that the unsalvageable man was still very, very naked.

“Mr. Roka, will you please put some clothes on?” she demanded.

He blinked and glanced down at himself before casting her a cheeky grin.  “I could, or you could just get naked with me,” he suggested a little too hopefully.

Valerie sighed and counted to twenty then on to fifty for good measure.  “I don’t think so,” she replied icily.  “I didn’t come over here for a . . . social call.”

“Right, right,” he agreed indulgently.  “You came over to crawl around in my bushes.”

Sucking in a breath so sharply that it whistled, Valerie resumed the mental count before she dared trust herself to speak to him again.  “I came over here so that you could read and sign my contract,” she insisted, digging into her knapsack for the papers that she’d grabbed almost as an afterthought.

He chuckled again but moved away, swiping up the tattered jeans that were carelessly tossed on the floor.  He tugged them on but didn’t bother to fasten them.  Valerie figured that was as much of a concession as she was likely to get.

“I still don’t see what the big deal is,” he said as he moved toward her again.  “I’m at home, for fuck’s sake . . .”

“Don’t make me add a naked clause to it,” she shot back.

She sighed.  She was really starting to hate that sexy grin of his; damned if she wasn’t . . . “I got it; I got it . . . you sure you don’t want to see the rest of my house first, V?”

“I just want you to sign the contract,” she pointed out.  “Now if you’ll just—” Cutting herself off abruptly as he tilted her chin and dabbed at her cheeks with a tissue—she’d forgotten that in one of her more inspired moments, she’d smeared black greasepaint under her eyes for the mission.  Fingers warm and infinitely gentle, he didn’t smile as he worked, but he did look amused.  “Your eyes are brown,” she murmured.

He blinked, his gaze slowly coming to rest on her.  “Yeah, so?”

“They were green the other day.”

He smiled a real smile—a true smile—a smile that lacked the hint of a smirk or even the slightly mocking overtone that she’d caught glimpses of before.  The effect was astounding, and for several moments, all she could do was stare.  “Contacts,” he admitted with a shrug, letting his hands drop away.

“Afraid to let people see you as you really are?” she challenged.

He chuckled.  “Let me see that contract, V.”

She shook her head, wondering if she hadn’t struck a little too close to home.

He glanced at it, flipping the pages so fast that she knew that he hadn’t read them.  Narrowing her gaze, she crossed her arms over her chest, ready to growl at him the moment he said something stupid.

To her surprise, he shuffled over to the large desk near the wide French doors and scrawled his signature on the last page.  “Here you go,” he said, refolding the docket as he ambled over to her once more.  “Signed, sealed, and delivered . . . I’m assuming you didn’t want me to sign it in blood . . .”

Caught off guard—she really hadn’t expected him to give in without an argument—she took it and stashed it into her knapsack again.  “Look, I understand that you’re used to a . . . more decadent lifestyle,” she began.  He opened his mouth to say something, and she held up a hand to stop him.  “Do you really have to drag Maddy into this, though?”

Zel shrugged as though it were of no real consequence.  “She offered,” he said simply.  “Besides, it ain’t like fucking me is really that bad a deal . . . but I guess you saw that for yourself, huh?”

Valerie heaved a sigh, snapping her mouth closed on her retort.  It didn’t really matter what she said, did it?   Something told her that Zel Roka wasn’t about to listen to reason.

“I tell you what,” he said suddenly, his eyes lighting with suspect inspiration.  “If you don’t want me to fuck Maddy, fine . . . if you’re willing to do the job for her.”

Valerie’s mouth fell open in complete shock.  Just when she’d thought that he couldn’t get any worse, that he couldn’t be more outrageous, there he went and proved her wrong.  Reacting before she thought it through, she took the few steps that separated them, hauling her arm back and cracking the palm of her hand across his cheek.  “You’re the sickest, foulest, most miserable bastard I’ve ever, ever met, Mr. Roka!  I don’t care if you rot in prison!  For that matter, I hope to God you get slammed with the maximum sentence allowable by law!  Forget the contract, damn you!  Find yourself another attorney, because I quit!”

He didn’t say anything as she stormed out of the house, despite the slow smile that spread over his features as he slowly, methodically rubbed his cheek.  She hated him, didn’t she?  Really, really hated him, and for reasons that he couldn’t explain, the idea that she hated him . . . was intriguing.  Oh, maybe she honestly believed what she said, but he knew the truth, didn’t he?

She’d wanted him.  He knew she did.  Her scent had been more prevalent in his mind than the twins he’d been fucking at the time.  Hell, he’d known the very instant she’d managed to scale the fence, and even though it did bother him on a certain level—how the hell had he gotten so accustomed to her in just one meeting?—he didn’t question it, either . . .

“Valerie Denning,” he murmured to himself, lifting the cloth he’d used to wipe her cheeks clean to his nose, breathing in the scent of her as he closed his eyes for a long moment, as his smile widened dangerously.  “Game on . . .”