Carter experienced a sudden rush of compassion for this buxom woman.
But then he remembered that she was the daughter of one hood and the widow of another. She ran an international information business that dealt in death and terrorism as if they were commodities like toothpaste or breakfast cereal.
And she knew damned well what she was doing.
"There are a lot of women, Naomi, who would give anything to have a body like yours," Carter murmured softly.
"Yeah, I know," she sighed. "They should have the trouble this body has gotten me into."
He reached out to her, and she came quickly into his arms. Her body felt massive, both solid and soft, both firm and pliable. The lips were warm and full as well as moist and easily parted.
He could not help but contrast this quivering, yielding woman in his arms with the hellcat she would become if she knew the real reason he was in her bed and she was in his arms.
He let his lips linger at length and then, when he lifted them from hers, a low, mewling sound came from her throat.
"Nice, so nice."
"It'll get better," he growled, her body starting to do things to his.
He slid his head down, resting it on the soft exposure of her breasts, cupping them to pillow his face. He felt the spark of desire being kindled in him as she reached behind herself and unzipped her dress to the waist.
She shrugged out of her shoulder straps to reveal the overflowing creaminess of her breasts. Carter's thirst for them increased as she reached behind to unfasten her bra. "Wonderful," he muttered, fondling them, testing their snowy softness, lowering his head to gently kiss their pristine whiteness.
She shivered pleasurably under his touch, her eyes half closed, her pink-ringed nipples beginning to rise. "Oh, Nick, squeeze me. Squeeze me as hard as you can."
He complied, squeezing the massive breasts until he was certain he would hurt her, certain that she would cry out in pain at any second.
But her only response was a series of deep moans and little cries of pleasure. "Oh, yes, Nick. More!"
Carter gave way to the growing hunger inside his belly and fastened his mouth to her swollen nipples.
"Yes, yes, bite me. Bite me hard!" she rasped hoarsely, her hands guiding his lips from nipple to nipple, her breathing ragged.
He fed his hunger in silence as she wriggled the dress the rest of the way off her body. Then she was attacking his clothes with quick, deft hands.
Soft moans came from deep within her, and she sank further and further into the mattress, mashing his face to her breasts. After what seemed an interminable time, she emitted a long moan and shuddered, gently pushing him from her.
"Wait, honey."
Carter caught his breath and steadied his senses as she slid from the bed. He watched the pantyhose slide down her long legs. His blood quickened at the sight of her in the filmy panties that only made a gesture toward covering the wide expanse of her flaring hips.
Then, with her breasts swaying pendulously and a quick smile playing across her lips, she stripped the final garment from her sumptuous body.
The legs were heavy and powerful, the hips ample and polished with a film of perspiration. Her belly was rounded provocatively and still showed the imprint of the elastic in the panties.
"Okay?" she asked timorously.
"C'mere.
She slithered to him, and Carter rolled between her thighs.
A strangled cry erupted from her lips at the moment of possession. Almost immediately, her mouth opened and her breathing became ragged as her face flushed.
He paused for a moment, and she shuddered at the delay. When he moved again, she met him with a great surge of her massive body. Her hips moved against him hungrily and expertly. Her arms tugged him deep into the circle of her warm flesh.
It was a fiercely contested coupling. Carter knew that she was trying to prove something to him, but at that point he cared little. She had goaded him with her body to match her sensual frenzy, and he responded, finding her sudden pagan abandon contagious.
With a growl from deep within his chest, he drove her ahead of him toward the end. Her passion was reaching the stage of delirium as she redoubled her efforts, jerking and bucking, trying to consume him completely.
At last, in one monumental convulsion, her lusty body collapsed in a quaking mass of satiated flesh. Carter held to her, not stopping until, seconds later, the end came for him as well.
He waited several moments, then rolled to her side.
"Naomi…?"
Silence.
He moved back to her. The pulse was even, the breathing normal and steady.
She was out cold.
He pulled on his trousers and padded into the living room. He flipped the main lights on and off once, waited a few seconds, repeated the action, and then noticed that Gordo's big body was rubbing against his legs.
The third cabinet he opened in the kitchen gave him a handful of dog biscuits. He dropped one into the Doberman's gaping maw and returned to the living room and front door.
Al Garrett was waiting with a frown on his round face. He wore the uniform of one of New York's finest.
"Any trouble?"
"Naw, told the doorman I had to check the roof. Peeping Tom complaints from some residents of other buildings. Jesus."
"He's like a big baby," Carter said, sticking another biscuit between Gordo's gleaming teeth. "He wouldn't hurt a fly."
"Oh, yeah? Let's hope he won't hurt little fat men dressed up like cops."
"C'mon, this way!"
The master bedroom suite-cum-office was locked. It took Carter fifteen seconds flat to pick the two locks on the door, and they were inside.
"Wow," Garrett exclaimed when Carter flipped on the lights, "this ain't no home computer center."
"The lady's no hobbyist." Carter said. "Let's get to it."
A moment later, Garrett had the room humming. "Kill that telex. We don't need it, and it might wake her up."
Carter knew that nothing was going to stir Naomi Bartinelli, but he killed the clacking machine anyway.
Al Garrett went to work with a couple of screwdrivers and some black boxes on the back of the machines.
He pulled off a plate, behind which was a plastic-enclosed scrambler. "This is her security system," he explained as he worked. "I'll rig it so we can bypass it right at the source — here — and then with the additional modem I'm going to install, we can intercept as well as decode everything she sends or receives."
"What do you have to do?"
"Cut and resolder these wires, and then put in the alternate modem. Shouldn't take more than a half hour."
Carter lit a custom-blended cigarette and paced.
Twenty-five minutes later, Garrett was finished in the back of the machines and was sitting at the console, his fingers flying and his eyes darting from one screen to the other.
"I think I've got it."
"How long till you can break her system?" Carter asked.
"Three days, maybe less if she runs a lot of traffic."
"Good. Anything else?"
"That's it."
They shut the system down, resecured the room, and moved back to the front door.
"You'll call the man?"
Garrett nodded and moved away down the hall.
The man was David Hawk, head of AXE, whom Carter knew would be waiting in the Dupont Circle offices of AXE's front, Amalgamated Press and Wire Services.
Carter closed and relocked the door, then headed back to the bedroom.
In his mind he was already composing the sad story he would tell Naomi Bartinelli in the morning over breakfast.
"I shouldn't be gone more than three weeks, maybe four. I'll call you the moment I get back to New York. Perhaps we can take a little time off together somewhere."
But as he rolled wearily into bed beside her, Carter knew that the only time off Naomi Bartinelli would be taking would be spent in a federal prison for women, courtesy of the FBI.