“Linen cupboard. She’ll have a bad headache when she wakes up.” The woman’s voice and eyes openly taunted Requiem.
“Who are you?” she repeated, menace mixed with danger.
Silence.
Requiem’s leg swept out and smacked the side of the woman’s nose, snapping her head to the right with the momentum. A satisfying spurt of blood spattered across her white kimono robe.
Still she didn’t speak. The woman ran lazy eyes over Requiem’s nude form with a hint of appreciation before focusing higher, meeting her furious gaze. Finally her amused lips parted. “I am someone confirming a theory.” She wiped her nose and examined the blood on her fingertips. “I see you’ve lost none of your edge.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Requiem’s tone became low and dark. She tightened the ends of the twisted towel, snapping it straight and relaxing it. Anyone with any self-preservation instincts would have scuttled back.
Her prey did not. Instead she tilted her head back, studying Requiem. “A woman making a garroting cable out of a towel wants me to believe she knows nothing about killing?” came the sceptical response. “That she’s not Australia’s most infamous assassin, Requiem? A woman who police can’t find for years? Not that they’re looking too hard. I mean, I found you.”
“I’m a cellist,” Requiem said with a sneer. She bent down and viciously flicked the woman’s bloodied nose. “Vienna.” Flick. “Philharmonic.” Flick. “Orchestra.” Flick. She gave her a withering look. “Anyone around here could tell you that.”
“I don’t think so.” The woman’s laugh was light, sounding genuine despite the blood soaking her swelling nose.
Requiem studied her in confusion. Her face had to be hurting like hell, yet she was still smiling.
“Well, you’re not just that, are you?” the woman continued. “I know you killed dozens of underworld scum before you ran off here.”
“Last chance.” Requiem yanked the towel in her hands so taut that her sculpted biceps, honed by two-hour workouts every day, stood out in sharp relief. Her voice became terrifyingly soft. “Now—Who. Are. You?”
The smile widened. “A recruiter.”
Requiem threw the towel to the floor and squatted in front of her. She wrenched the upper half of the woman’s kimono apart with force. Beneath the garment she wore a simple white bra, and Requiem rapidly inspected her for surveillance wires, running her fingers under the bra and around to her back. She felt lower, patting down her groin, thighs, and calves. Finding nothing, she slid her fingers up into the woman’s long black hair, pausing behind her ears. Still nothing.
In annoyance, Requiem pushed her away so hard that the woman fell back in a sprawl. Then she pounced.
“Now, let’s start again,” she said coldly, bracketing the woman’s knees with her thighs. “Who the hell are you, and why are you here, invading my space?”
Rather than answer, a slow gaze raked Requiem’s body. Something familiar about the way she studied her niggled at Requiem. When the woman finally spoke, her voice was breathless.
“Invading your space? Says the naked assassin with her cunt in my lap?” An elegant finger traced across Requiem’s muscled stomach, swirling across a small scar above her hip. She arched an eyebrow.
Requiem glanced down at her nude state, then at the finger. “Distracted, are we?”
They both watched the finger drop a little lower, edging towards her neatly trimmed dark hair, and Requiem hissed in a breath of surprise. It had been so long since she’d played with her prey. And even longer still since one of them had the temerity to toy with her back. She’d forgotten how heady it could be.
Arousal shot through her when the dancing digit slid a little lower—merely a fingertip, a fingernail, away from her clit. A prickling sensation shot down Requiem’s spine, a warning as sharp as a knife’s blade, and Requiem wrenched the hand away and jumped to her feet. She picked up her clothes and said with a growl, “Fine. You have your space. Now talk.”
Even with distance from the woman, Requiem’s heart thudded in awareness, her body tightly strung. The base, raw emotions were almost overwhelming. This was what she used to do. This was the real game. The absolute power. Her body ached to feel it again. Requiem’s mounting excitement in her lower gut told her just how close that wandering finger had come. How close the woman would have been to discovering the effect she’d had on Requiem. And that would not do.
The woman sat up casually and leaned back on one arm, a picture of relaxation. Like one of those perfect specimens on the cover of a yoga DVD, all poised class and easy beauty. “I am someone who needs your unique skills, and who understands that you’re available and most likely ready for a change.”
“Not interested.” Requiem slipped on her bra and slid her black boy shorts up her legs.
The woman teasingly began to fiddle with her own robe, widening it. “You haven’t even heard my pitch.”
“Still not interested.” Requiem pulled her pants up with sharp, snapping actions, and almost groaned when the seam hit her groin and shot a bolt of arousal through her. She reached for her shirt, casting her intruder a withering glare. “No pitch can win me over.”
“Really? You’ve been based, or should I say, tied down, in Vienna for three years, I believe. You must be bored by now. Are your little concerts enough? Do you still feel the thrill in your blood, the need to hunt? What if I said the targets were exceptionally vicious and you’d be doing society a favour? These men are the worst of the worst. The challenge of just getting to them would be exciting. Can you honestly tell me what you do now is satisfying enough? Or have they tamed you, Requiem?”
As she spoke, the woman shifted to allow a view of her smooth, flawless legs, all the way up to her white panties. Requiem frowned as she gazed at the ample skin on display. Her heartbeat lifted again, but this time it was not just arousal heightening her senses.
No scars. At all. No wounds, nicks, or cuts.
Who the hell was this woman who seemed to have underworld connections and yet skin this flawless?
“You’re just an amateur,” she said with a dismissive glance. “Playing with fire. What do you know about satisfying me? How could you know? Who have you been talking to?”
“There are stories—more like legends, now—that float around Melbourne, of a female assassin, lethal and sleek as a panther. A predator who hunted, fucked any woman who crossed her, and loved the darkness. Lived it, breathed it. Killed in it.”
“Sounds like a tall tale to me.”
“Is that so? Shall we test that?” The woman shrugged her robe off her shoulders, dropping it to the floor, fully revealing her sheer white bra. Dark, plump nipples were clearly outlined, erect, straining beneath the silk. “Your needs would be fully catered to, of course. They would be part of the remuneration package. And if I don’t meet your requirements, well, we have other women who’d greatly enjoy taking my place.”
Requiem studied her, fighting her arousal. She could all too easily imagine having the woman spread before her, crying out for a release that Requiem would take enormous delight in denying her. She should be denied—for her presumption in thinking she set the terms. For presuming she could have any place at Requiem’s table.