"Van Lustbader, Eric - Linnear 05 - Floating City" - читать интересную книгу автора (Van Lustbader Eric)

Rock pulled the loaded cart himself seven miles to his temporary camp. Though he had been on the plateau for three years, he did not yet have a permanent home; that luxury would only come in time, a perquisite of acceptance and trust For the present, however, he needed to make it

difficult for the assassins to find him; it was part of the game, yet another demonstration of his skill.

Mai toid him that she came from a farming village high in the mountains, "at the top of the world," as she put it By which she meant amid the poppy fields.

He could see that look in her eyes. He recognized it because he had seen it so many times before throughout Southeast Asia, and because he was so attuned to the Asian mind. It was his size. He was six foot two. In the States that was medium tall; here in Asia it was gigantic. Rock laughed to himself. He could see right into her mind. She was wondering if all of him was that big. Soon she would find out.

While she tended to the deep purple bruise on her leg, Rock made dinner, a stew utilizing the fresh meat he had brought back. When die pot was simmering, he set about scraping the Inside of the hide to prepare it for tanning. While he worked, he wondered about her long nails, something one would never see on a farm girl. His sixth sense— what the Japanese, under whom he had studied hand-to-hand combat, called haragei, the divine energy—began to flood his mind with the clarity of insight.

When he looked up, he saw Mai standing naked just outside the flap of his tent. He stared at her, thinking, This one is special His hands and forearms were covered with blood. He could feel himself getting hard. It had been some time since he had been with a woman, but seeing Mai, he knew that it wouldn't have mattered if he had had sex an hour ago—he would still be hard.

He dropped his enormous Marine combat knife onto the red underside of the skin and stood up. He saw Mai's gaze lower from his face to the place between his legs. He stood out a country mile. Then she turned and went inside the tent. Rock followed her, bent over slightly from the fierceness of his erection.

Inside, she was kneeling in the dimness. She beckoned him on, then held her cupped palms in front of her breasts. Rock unbuckled his belt, and she did the rest. She held him tenderly in both hands.

Her head bent, the cascade of her lustrous hair fanned his naked thighs, the flutter of a nightbird's wing. She

touched him first with the tip of her tongue, then laved him with the flat of it. At length, she used her lips.

She engulfed him, and as he watched with slitted eyes her cheeks hollow, Rock had that flash of insight that the Shan call the Ruby. He knew by her skill and her expertise who she must be. He knew where she had come from, and who had sent her. He knew what he must do.

She sucked slavishly at him. One hand gently squeezed his scrotum, the other snaked between his thighs to probe his other opening.

Rock bent over and, encircling Mai's tiny waist, slowly inverted her until her breasts pressed against his lower belly, her thighs resting on his shoulders. He feit as vibration her moan as he plunged his face into her humid mound.

She tasted of mango and spice. He tongued her while her loins tensed expectantly, then ail through the spasms caused by her contracting muscles. And again.

She sucked all the harder, moaning for him to come. Rock put her on the floor of the tent and entered her. It was not easy. He was very big, and she was small. But, gradually, she accustomed her engorged flesh to his.

Rock began to stroke long and hard, feeling her thrusting up on him with what seemed genuine desire. Even as his eyes began to glaze, he was in touch with haragei, connected with the treachery and deceit spun like a web around him.

He was about to come, and he let her know it, grunting and thrusting even harder. Felt her lifting her right hand from his shoulder where it had been gripping him with sweaty abandon. Saw, out of the corner of bis eye, a bright gleam, like a darning needle, the metal jacket fitted over one long nail, its tip dark and lustrous with poison.

He grabbed for her hand, but he misjudged her quickness, or his willpower was not quite strong enough, and he began to ejaculate into her. He lost his hold on her wrist, saw the nail, curved like a scorpion's tail, blurring in toward the side of his neck and his carotid, knew he'd be dead within seconds.

Devoid of conscious thought, afloat in the void of haragei, he smashed his elbow into her face, feeling with some satis-

faction the crack of bone, feeling the heat of her inner tissue, the smell of her blood like a rose bursting open.

Then he had her right wrist and, taking hold of her forefinger, plunged the poisoned nail into her solar plexus.

The next morning, he made the steep, grueling ascent into General Quan's territory. It had rained during the night, and the day was hot, unusual at this high elevation. Rock was sweating by the time he sighted the first of General Quan's patrols.

He put down his bundles, set himself against the bole of a tree, and ate a bit of dried fish in the cool shade. He took some water from his canteen. When he was finished, he set about making a fire, hanging up his stewpot. He poured the contents of one of his bundles into the pot.

By that time, General Quan's patrol had spotted the smoke from his fire. They were coming, AK-47s at the ready. There were five of them, he saw. Perfect. He began to whistle the Doors' "Light My Fire."

Wild Boy got out his rocket launcher, fitted the pieces together. When the patrol was in range, he loaded, fired, and took three of them out in a brilliant blaze.