“Harvey wouldn’t like me spoiled.”
She patted him on the cheek, running a sharp nail along the jagged scar that furrowed his face. “He did that. And the eye. He talks of it. When he sleeps, racked by hor-rors, he talks of you. He knew you’d come back one day. Knew it. You’re his walking nightmare, Ryan Cawdor.”
He didn’t speak. The knife was still poised, like a honed nemesis, ready to descend and hack at his manhood. She was very beautiful. Ryan corrected that thought. She had once been very beautiful. Now she was raddled by the jolt.
“You can’t move. I could do anything to you, dear brother-in-law. Anything. I could rape you. Use that cock
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of yours, then cut it off. I could kiss you. Make you kiss me. Make you use your tongue on my body. Would you like that, brother-in-law?”
She was leaning across him, her breath running faster. The front of her dress gaped open, and he could see her breasts, the nipples erect with desire.
“What would you like, Ryan?”
“I’d like you to die, and take your husband and that sick little bastard of a son with you.”
He waited for the thrust of the knife, but nothing hap-pened. Ryan had closed his eye, and he opened it when he heard her laugh. She had sat back on her heels, the velvet dress hitched up between her knees, showing a smooth expanse of pale thigh.
“You talk big for a helpless one-eyed man, Ryan Caw-dor.”
“Why’ve you come?”
Rachel’s dark eyes were almost invisible in the half-light. “I wanted to see you. Wanted to see you before that sottish husband of mine had you thrown to his boars or his dogs or whatever unoriginal way of chilling he picks.”
Ryan didn’t reply. There was nothing to say. He’d read pulps where the captured hero talks to the mistress of the villain and uses his charms to persuade her to release him. Life wasn’t at all like that. Steel cuffs held him helpless, and the chain around his throat made it impossible for him to move. Tomorrow they’d come and take him to Harvey, and then he’d be dead. The best to look for was a quick passing, which was why he’d tried to provoke the woman into wasting him with her knife. That had failed, and there wasn’t anything else left.
“Don’t want to talk?” She was becoming more ner-vous, hands moving, head turning from side to side. He
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recognized the symptoms from the dinner table. The woman needed more jolt.
“Need a snort,” she said, voice as taut as a bowstring. “Need something to rest my mirror on. You’ll do, brother-in-law.”
She took the knife again and slit his clothes, opening the jerkin and pulling it back across his flat, muscular stomach. Then she cut through the crotch of his trousers. Placing the knife on the floor, she tugged his trousers over his thighs. She touched him, very gently.
“Oh, my dear relative, I’ve cut you. A tiny ruby that glistens here. Should I kiss it better for you, Ryan?”
Despite the effects of the jolt on her appearance, Rachel Cawdor was still an attractive, skilled woman. Ryan tried to pull away from her, fighting for control.
She laughed. “Very good, Ryan. But I shall win. Like all men…” she began, then bent once more to her task.
When she lifted her head again, the woman was grin-ning. “There, brother-in-law, that wasn’t so awful, was it?”
Ryan didn’t reply, feeling soiled by the contact, certain on ly that he would kill Rachel Cawdor if he was given half a chance.
“Bad loser,” she said. “While you’re here like this I might give myself some…” She stopped, and her body suddenly twisted with a violent shudder. “Oh, the cramps are… First things first.”
Rachel took out the little brown bottle and uncorked it. Holding the mirror in her hand, she looked round the room for somewhere to set it, eventually placing the chill metal on Ryan’s stomach. She cut the powder into finer grains, then formed it into several narrow lines.
“Forget the fucking, after all,” she breathed, breasts rising and falling. “This is…”