Ice Monkeys Read online

  Uni’s fingers on her clit once again sped up, distracting her even more, pulling her body’s attention in too many directions for her to focus on anything at once. Before long, she realized Victor had indeed managed to work all three fingers inside her and was slowly pressing forward.

  Pulse pounding, she forced herself to relax, to breathe, to start rocking her hips against them, between them, wanting to get to the good part and realizing this was a fantasy come to life.

  Time seemed to slow, stall. She knew they had to have been there at least fifteen minutes with Victor slowly fucking those three fingers into her ass. Only once he could easily fuck her with them, and she was starting to once again eagerly fuck herself against them both, did he finally withdraw them.

  “Hold on, baby.” He rinsed his hand in the water and she looked to see him donning a condom, which he liberally slicked with lube.

  He stepped behind her and pressed the head of his cock against her rim. Uni’s hands dropped to her ass and he spread her cheeks for him.

  “Raise up a little on his cock, baby,” Victor said. “Not all the way off, but most of the way.”

  She did, him following her with his cock, but not breaching her rim.

  When he was satisfied his cockhead was firmly seated against her ass, Victor rested his hands on her shoulders. “Okay, baby. You’re driving now. You want to come, you need to fuck that sweet ass onto my cock.”

  Her lower lip caught under her teeth as she took a deep breath and started flexing her hips. She really wanted Uni’s cock back inside her pussy, and now that she knew she could take him, she wanted Victor up her ass.

  Carefully, she eased herself back, a little at a time, slowly rocking and unable to make herself do it. Finally, she took a deep breath and pressed back, hard, letting out a cry as both cocks pressed inside her, Victor’s pushing through her rim and sending shockwaves through her.

  “That’s it,” Uni said. “A little at a time. Go slow.”

  She had to catch her breath. One of Victor’s hands curled around her and found her clit and started playing with it as Uni reached up and started tweaking her nipples with both hands.

  It felt like forever as she rocked back and forth, making more ground each time, until, finally, she felt Victor’s thighs pressed against her ass. The feel of both their cocks inside her, pressing against nerve endings she didn’t even realize she had, felt amazing and intense.

  “There you go,” Victor said. “Now for us to keep our promise.” His hand sped up and then she tipped. Unable to hold back her cry, she closed her eyes as fiery pleasure surged through her, even more intense than anything yet they’d done to her.

  Victor and Uni took over, fucking her, drawing out the pleasure as their cocks fucked her. What started out as slightly uncomfortable quickly spiraled into more intense pleasure, raw sexual hunger that she hoped she got to feel again after these few days were over. She fucked herself back against them, hard, every slight pinch of them stretching her only spinning the pleasure out harder, faster, deeper.

  Then one last climax swept through her, feeling like it was churning the very depths of her soul as it took over and shrank the world down to these two men and what they were doing to her.

  “That’s it,” Uni said. “Just…like…that.” He thrust up inside her one last time before she felt his cock explode, pumping his juices inside her.

  “My turn,” Victor said, grunting as he grabbed her shoulders and fucked her hard, deep, finally burying his cock inside her ass. She could feel it throbbing, growing soft as he filled the condom.

  She winced as he pulled out. “Sorry,” he said. “Logistics.”

  Uni snickered. “My department.”

  “Wrong logistics.” Victor climbed out of the hot tub, quickly returning after disposing of the condom.

  They eased her into the water, snuggled between them, their arms around her.

  “How was that?” Victor asked.

  She didn’t open her eyes. “Pretty good…for a start.” Yes, she’d be sore in good ways in the morning. “Someone promised to let me suck their cocks and get them hard again for round three.”

  “Oh, baby,” Uni said, kissing her. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Late Monday night, Liang had long since fallen asleep on the other bed as the two adults sifted through the reports.

  A key difference being that this time they were together.

  And another key difference being that this time they weren’t terrified of the North Korean government finding out what they were doing and retaliating.

  “You realize this is it, right?” Rajesh asked her. “With what they’re showing? The results they’ve posted from the last round of test runs? This is absolutely the right track.”

  “But how can we be sure?” She looked scared.

  He wished he could take the fear away for her.

  “We can’t be sure until they do another round of testing. I think we need to be there for it.”

  “I meant how can we be sure they’re really who they say they are?”

  “I told you, I’ll go first.”

  “And what if they aren’t? If they take you, too?”

  He nodded toward where the boy was asleep in the bed. “Then you grab him and run like hell.”

  “I’m so tired of running.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. “I don’t know how much longer I can run.”

  Rajesh set his laptop aside and pulled her into his arms, holding her. Tense at first, finally her body relaxed against him as she started silently crying, now able to release the terror she’d held inside for over a year.

  Fear that her son would die.

  He gently rocked her, his face pressed into her hair. How he wished the world were different, that they’d met under far more pleasant circumstances.

  Rajesh knew from a reply to a message he had bounced around the world to Bubba that if he could make his way to the southern tip of Florida, he could be in the safe house in under two hours.

  No longer looking over his shoulder.

  That his safety was absolutely ensured.

  Getting to Key West would be relatively easy, just pay a fisherman with the right kind of boat enough cash to take him. It’d been over a hundred years since Cuba and the US had dropped their barriers to each other and people were allowed to freely travel back and forth the way they had been able to travel to Mexico and Canada and other countries.

  He would pay the captain for two trips, and tell them to wait for Julie and Liang. If it was a trap, he’d give her a code to run, and it was just lost money. Lost money would be the least of his worries if he was wrong.

  But he didn’t think he was wrong.

  Bubba had given him even more information, including a personal message from Riley Perkins, a quote she’d said to him when they were escaping from the internment camp and trying to get out of North Korea. It seemed like everything that could possibly go wrong had all gone wrong at the exact same time. It had helped cover their escape, yes, but had blown their plans to get the virus mutations nailed down before they ended the project.

  They’d been huddled in the back of a truck bouncing over horrible dirt roads and speeding away from the town. Disguised as North Korean soldiers, they hoped their ruse worked.

  “Why couldn’t this have been easy?” he’d rhetorically muttered, barely loud enough for her and only her to hear.

  Riley had worn a haunted look as she stared at the camp disappearing behind them. “It doesn’t work that way, Raj. ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’ Been that way even longer.”

  “I would think this was more a Macbeth kind of moment than a Hamlet one.”

  “It’s all tragedy. Even the comedy of it is tragic. You can’t tell them apart anymore.”

  There in the room, as he held Julie, he thought about the last message Bubba had passed him that afternoon.

  RP said to tell you this: This time it�
��s different. From battalions to breaches, as my friend Henry would have said. In the good way this time. We shall teach them how to war, for the game is afoot.

  Rajesh was convinced it was from Riley. Under threat of death, he couldn’t imagine the others suckering someone back in a second time. Not in the aftermath of what happened.

  Only Riley would know about their conversation in the back of the truck that night, about the quote she’d said. Or about how before every shift at the camp, during the testing phase, how she’d mutter a line from Henry V to him. “‘Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.’”

  Both of them had a love for the Bard. Those ancient classics had been among the few English language books available to them in print in the camp there in North Korea.

  Only Riley would know that, the last time he’d seen her before they all split up, she’d hugged him. They’d discussed working together online to find a cure.

  And she’d whispered in his ear, “‘The game’s afoot.’”

  Meaning the search for a cure.

  He wouldn’t let himself doubt it was her. Within forty-eight hours, or sooner, he could have the three of them to safety.

  He hoped.

  * * * *

  Once Julie was asleep in bed—and she’d asked him to share the bed with her, clothes on—he sent a quick message to Bubba.

  If RP can give you the right answer to this question before I wake up in the morning, I will agree to a meeting with your representative in Key West for Tuesday at sunset: What did RP say she saw before we climbed into the truck that night?

  Another answer only Riley would know. She had a Shakespearean quote for everything, it seemed. Her coping mechanism during the crushing fear and stress they endured, and he’d been the natural outlet for it with his shared love and knowledge of the plays, especially.

  He carefully climbed back into bed with Julie, wrapping his arms around her in mutual comfort and tried to go to sleep.

  When he awoke a little before dawn, with Julie still nestled tightly against him, he found his answer in his e-mail and his heart raced.

  RP said to tell you this: She saw more devils than vast hell can hold.

  Rajesh fought the urge to scream in triumph. Any other answer would have been enough for him to make the three of them move at that moment, to change hideouts.

  Riley could have given this Bubba guy any number of answers, or even Shakespearean quotes, that would have bought him and Julie time.

  Guess I’m going to Key West.

  * * * *

  Before Rajesh had bid a teary good-bye to Julie and Liang Tuesday morning after going out to arrange passage, he’d given her his room key and told her to change rooms.

  “What’s our safe code?” Rajesh drilled Julie one last time. She wasn’t a Shakespearean fan, so he’d had to make her memorize it exactly.

  “‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’”

  He nodded and pulled her in for one last hug, kissing the top of her head.

  She clung to him, not wanting to let go even when he’d started to relax his embrace.

  So he held her, tightly.

  “Once this is over,” he whispered to her, “I want the three of us to go away, someplace safe, and just be for a while.”

  She nodded. “I’d like that.”

  He closed his eyes, happy in that brief moment in time. They’d danced around the topic in their time together in captivity, all of them fearful their captors would use any deepened relationships against them. More threats, more leverage.

  “Say it once more.”

  “‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’”

  “Exactly that. Word for word. If it’s not, disappear again.”

  “What if you don’t come back?”

  He’d given her all his copies of his work and removed them from his laptop and tablet. If he was sadly mistaken, he didn’t want that information falling into the wrong hands. “I won’t have to. You’ll be coming to me.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  He kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes. “Have faith.”

  He made his way down to the docks. The fisherman didn’t ask him any questions when he saw Rajesh’s money. He was to take Rajesh to Key West and return and wait at the dock for up to forty-eight hours. If a woman and child came to him, he was to deliver them exactly where he’d told him to in Key West.

  If not, the money was his to keep.

  It was a long ride, choppy in the middle of the Florida Straits. Bubba had assured Rajesh, in the last messages exchanged, that he would be met by only one person, a woman. A pilot.

  That she would pick him up and take him to the safe house.

  If he saw any hint of anyone else with the woman in Key West, he would disappear and not only would they not find him, but they’d not find anyone else, either, because he’d warn them all of the trap.

  Not that he had direct contact to all the others, but better he bluff and say that.

  By two o’clock that afternoon, the boat had entered a channel at Key West and the captain was steering them toward a busy docking area. Even in an apocalypse, people were still fishing, the wealthy engaging in their hobbies down here at the southernmost bottom of the contiguous forty-eight as if the world wasn’t trying to blow itself apart.

  On the way in, the captain showed Rajesh a chart, pointing out where he could pull up to another set of docks where commercial fishing boats unloaded, less crowded by the rich tourists who could afford to be stuck in Key West.

  When they docked, an armed dockmaster met them, stick testing them both for Kite before allowing Rajesh off the boat. The captain pushed off, headed down to the fuel dock to prepare for his return trip.

  Rajesh had given the man enough cash to keep him quiet. More than the man probably saw in an entire year.

  He’d told the captain he and his family had escaped from Europe and were trying to get to family in the States, but he didn’t want to put his wife and child at risk until he was sure it was safe.

  The man had understood that logic.

  Wasn’t the first time the Cuban people had seen families struggling to escape the island and reunite with loved ones in America.

  Rajesh found the nearest hotel and checked in for the day, a place to store his bags.

  He wanted to be able to run, if necessary, if he spotted a trap.

  He still had two hours before the arranged meeting time. The woman would be wearing aviator sunglasses and have long, dark brown hair braided down her back. She’d be reading a book—a real book—of Shakespeare.

  Riley’s book.

  If she was the real deal, Riley would have left him a message inside the book.

  He hadn’t told them what he’d look like or be wearing. In fact, he went to a tourist shop and bought a T-shirt, loud, baggy board shorts, and flip-flops to wear to look the part of tourist.

  As the square filled for the daily sundown show, Rajesh took his position and started studying the crowd.

  Most everyone faced west, watching as the sun sank below the horizon. There was one woman there who, while facing the right way, had her head down. She sat on the edge of a planter and was reading. Her hair looked right, and she wore the sunglasses as described.

  He eased himself through the crowd to get a better look at her.

  She had her nose in a book.

  A book with a blue cover he’d know anywhere.

  Heart racing, he forced himself not to rush as he looked around.

  She appeared to be alone.

  When he stood next to her, he held his hand out for the book.

  It was a collection of plays. He turned to All’s Well That Ends Well, to a section he knew by heart, his pulse exploding in relief when he saw the passage there underlined and a smiley face next to it.

  Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none.

  Closing his eyes, he hung his head and allowed himself to cry with relief.

  The woma
n stood and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m ready to fly whenever you are.”

  He had to go get his things first. She helped him carry his bags, leading him through the streets to a floating dock where a plane was moored.

  “We’ll be there in just under an hour,” she said.

  “I won’t send my message until I see for sure,” he warned her.

  She nodded. “I know. I don’t blame you. Q, Sin, and Canuck told us what you guys went through.”

  “Who?”

  She tugged her face mask down so he could see her smile. “Our three mutual friends. Those are their code names.” She stuck out her hand. “Panda. I hate to tell you this, but you don’t get a choice on your code name. They’ve already dubbed you ‘Waldo.’”

  “What? Why?”

  “Old children’s books. It was a game called Where’s Waldo? Cartoon character you had to hunt for on the pages, his name was Waldo. Because you’ve been all over the world and no one knew where you were.”

  “Oh.”

  She gave him a stick test before they took off. Within an hour they were landing in dark water, but small blue lights guided her in. As they motored up to the dock, Rajesh felt fear thrum through him again as he spotted several figures waiting for them, several of them obviously armed.

  Out of the gloom, three smiling, familiar faces emerged to engulf him in hugs.

  “I see you got my book,” Riley teased, holding her hand out for it.

  He’d clung to it the entire flight, hoping he hadn’t been wrong.

  Another stick test, just a formality, before the commanding officer introduced himself. “Nice to meet you, Waldo. I’m Papa. Welcome to safety.”

  He noticed none of the guns were pointed at them. Not even everyone was carrying carbines.

  And Riley wore a handgun strapped to her hip.

  She noticed him looking and laughed. “Oh, yeah. They’ve been teaching me how to shoot.”

  “They…have?”

  She grinned. “It’s the real deal, Raj. We made it. They’re the good guys.” Her smile faded. “Julie?”

  He nodded. “I have to send the message.”