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The woman’s hair tangled around his rough fingers, but her mouth slid, silky and warm, over his cock as she deep throated him again and again. Tears leaked from her eyes onto his pants legs, wetting the material. Martin “Mansa” Diako hummed in pleasure, equally derived from the blowjob, the tears, and the frantic movements of the tiny figures on the screen in front of him. Those granular images in a hazy black-and-white palette told him the game had begun in earnest—his enemy had been dealt the first blow, and though not lethal, it was nonetheless effective. After all, nothing caused more chaos than the unknown, the unexplainable.
He had his ghost to thank for that.
A strangled moan from his lap pulled his attention downward. The woman was a mess, just as he liked them. He stroked a heated cheek with his free hand. “You are doing well, cherry. More now,” he murmured and held her still for an even deeper invasion. A choked gag escaped her throat, sending a fierce tingle down to his balls.
Not yet. He clenched his jaw, forcing the urge of completion away, wanting to draw out the lazy thrusts into her throat awhile longer. He wanted her sobbing from the pain in her jaw before he finally let himself go.
She was not far from that edge when the door to the study opened and Kivuli entered. Most men who walked into Mansa’s presence automatically dropped their eyes to the floor, either out of respect or, more often, fear. Walking into a room where another man was receiving a blowjob? Look away.
Not Kivuli. His black, dead gaze landed on the woman kneeling between Mansa’s knees, her head bobbing over his lap, and...nothing. No reaction, no emotion. Not even the hint of embarrassment at seeing another man’s erect penis. Nothing. Often Mansa wondered if his enforcer was a eunuch, unable to feel the surge of lust Mansa so often enjoyed. A curl of disgust settled in his gut, just above the woman’s competent mouth, but he shrugged it away. Whatever Kivuli was, it made him a cold, efficient killer. A shadow, undetectable to the enemy, to Andre’s murderers—the perfect weapon.
The tall, lean warrior approached the deep leather armchair where Mansa waited, silent as always, the scent of herbs and incense moving with him. From his belt hung a small pouch, one Mansa knew held the black muthi of the ghost, the herbal mixture obtained from a sangoma to make him invisible. Witch doctors. Mansa did not believe in such things; he believed in his own power, his own might. His ancestors were dead by his hand, their strength surrendered to his knife long ago. He pulled at the woman’s tangled hair with rough fingers, savoring the evidence of the empire he had built. Everything he needed was at his fingertips.
Everything except his heir.
Remembering why he was here, in an unfamiliar house and not in his compound on Dhambi Isle where safety was ensured and everything he could want waited at the snap of his fingertips, tensed his body in a way that had nothing to do with the pleasure surrounding his cock. Andre had been groomed from the second of his birth to inherit Mansa’s kingdom—not for many, many years, of course, but Mansa would have controlled that just as he controlled all around him. No son of his would do to him what he’d done to his own father. That memory sent a frisson of pleasure down the length of his cock to the tip, buried in wet heat. His father’s blood spilling through his fingers had been equally wet, hot. His sisters, brother. All of them... Magnificent. Only his ma had been spared his determination to take over his father’s domain, build something more than the small pirating operation Kam Diako had been satisfied with. The name Mansa had taken for himself now held true—he ruled the largest fleet of pirate ships in the seas surrounding the African coasts; he owned an entire island stronghold in the middle of paradise. He controlled it all.
Andre would not—because of Deacon Walsh and his team. Plans Mansa had put in place twenty years ago had been shattered with a single gunshot. And now they would pay; they would all pay. Mansa would see to it personally. He would ensure his reign and reinforce his power until the new heir was chosen from the crop he’d bred in secret. In the meantime...
“Your mission was a success, ja?” He waved a hand toward the screen where the drone’s feed still ran. The UAV hovered at a high enough altitude to be unheard by those on the ground, low enough to give them viable surveillance. “Already Walsh and his compatriots scramble like rats on a sinking ship, and with a mere warning shot over the bow. Excellent.”
Without a word Kivuli handed over a slender manila folder.
“And what is this?” Mansa asked. Why the urge to force Kivuli to speak always rose, he didn’t know. Perhaps it was the alpha in him recognizing the alpha in another. Kivuli followed his own path, which was one reason Mansa had come to trust him. A man like him would never want the burden of an empire. He was too much of a lone wolf.
Still, he waited for a response. Kivuli gave one, but not the one Mansa wanted: a nod, not a word. Mansa grunted and opened the folder. As the intel spilled into his hand, the woman at his crotch paused in her movements. He used the photos he clutched to slap her lightly across the face. “Keep going, cherry.”
She squeaked, cringed. The barest edge of her teeth scraped the sensitive column of his erection.
“Jy fokken moer!” He slapped her hard on the opposite cheek. The crack of his knuckles against her cheekbone calmed the rise of his anger.
“Watch the teeth, cunt. Remember what you’ve been taught.”
A careful glide of the slave’s tongue along the vein lining the underside of his cock allowed his attention to return to his lap and the images waiting there.
Deacon Walsh. A black-and-white photo of the man walking down the front steps of his home had hatred swelling in Mansa’s throat. This was the man who had killed his heir. Mansa intended to guarantee that Deacon Walsh lost everything and everyone he loved before he died a slow, painfully inventive death.
Kivuli cleared his throat, more to prepare his voice for infrequent use than to show deference, Mansa was certain. “The house and grounds match the satellite surveillance we obtained. Security is top-notch, as expected. In addition to the teammate, Fionn McCullough, we’ve managed to ID the other men our informant captured on film. Walsh has hired a prominent firm in Atlanta to provide backup security at his home.” He reached for the photos, hand brushing the top of the slave’s head as he flipped to one halfway through the stack. His expression remained blank. “I obtained detailed information on each of them.”
Of course. Kivuli expected results; his team would’ve had answers before he returned to report to Mansa. One more reason to ignore the man’s idiosyncrasies—nothing inspired subordinates faster than sheer terror, and Kivuli excelled at sheer terror without even trying.
Resisting the urge to shift under the weight of that dead stare, Mansa glanced back to the folder. “What firm?” he asked, rifling through the images.
“JCL Security, headed by Jack Quinn and Conlan James. They specialize in personal safety situations.”
Mansa grunted. Smart man. Not that the extra manpower would keep Walsh or his child safe. The entire private army employed by GFS could not keep Mansa from his objectives in this godforsaken country.
His attention turned to the next surveillance photo. Slurping sounds rose from his lap, the only break in the quiet as he read the accompanying information.
Each photo showed a fit male in his prime, trained in all the latest hand-to-hand techniques, no doubt, given the intel on JCL Security. Most weaponry was concealed, though Mansa knew it existed. These men with their warrior backgrounds would not go into a fight unarmed. They were—
His breath caught as he flipped to an image near the bottom of the stack, every muscle tensing at what it revealed. Blerrie hell. This team member was no fit male, but a woman—a small, beautiful, and, as he looked closer, intriguing female. The image was grainy, much like the drone feed, but he could see that she was clothed in the same pseudo-military gear her teammates wore, only her arms and neck bared. The fatigues couldn’t hide her feminine build, however. And that short, starkly blonde hair resting in shaggy hanks along her neck...there was something about it, so light as to be almost white in the dark photograph...
He knew that hair, he was certain of it, but the woman wasn’t one he’d had the pleasure of meeting. He would remember. He never forgot a face or a grudge; his enemies knew that fact even better than he did.
He never forgot a grudge...even after the payback. And only one woman, a woman with white-blonde hair flowing down her back, had ever made him work for payback. He’d possessed Nora with the same steel hold that he possessed his island and his fleet and his other slaves.
He’d possessed her until she escaped him, and then he’d killed her. But not her daughter.
He drew the photograph closer. Kivuli must’ve been right out of her sight; the close-up contained more detail than some of the others, as if he was standing next to her, seeing the tension in her body as she pointed to the fence in front of her, the intelligence and challenge in her seemingly fragile face. The chin, the cheekbones, the eyes—all confirmed his suspicions. There was no mistaking that face. He’d watched it for too many years crying beneath him to not be certain.
“Who is this?” he demanded without lifting his eyes.
Kivuli stepped forward. “Elliot Smith. Second in command of the team JCL assigned.”
Elliot Smith? Mansa doubted that was the name she’d been born with. What had his rebellious cherry called the babe she’d clung to for the three years before she escaped? He’d only tracked its growth as a commodity; she’d been number fifty-seven, not a name.
“She’s not Elliot Smith.” He gave his enforcer a smile that made most men soil their pants. “Find out everything there is to know about her. She comes first. Everything, Ghost. Do you understand me?”
Kivuli nodded sharply. Without permission he turned to exit the room.
“Kivuli.”
The man stopped, turned, gaze still unreadable.
“What of our other plans?”
“On schedule.”
Mansa dismissed him with a jerk of his chin. Long moments passed after the door closed, filled with the faint ticking of the clock and Mansa’s breaths as he stared at the close-up of the blonde he held in his fist, memories of years past spilling from the vault of his mind.
His Nora.
His property. And now Elliot Smith was also his property.
The slave stirring between his legs brought him back to reality. Grip tightening on the picture, he pushed his free hand into her tangled hair and shoved down, forcing himself deeper and deeper.
Smith looked so like her mother.
He remembered the first time he’d shoved himself inside the tiny woman, claiming her virgin cunt for himself. His hips surged of their own accord, mimicking the act he pictured so vividly, and just like that the need to release made itself known. He pulled forward on the woman’s head as he forced his way in, spilling hard to the chorus of her gagging shrieks and the memory of a long-ago slave’s screams filling his ears.