Lone Star 02 Read online

  “Let her go!” Ki shouted, and began racing toward the scene.

  “My purse!” the woman cried. The little fellow had taken it. He’d tucked it under his arm as he began to run toward the cable cars. The big one released the woman in order to confront Ki’s charge.

  “What have we got here? A hero, is it?” the big man laughed. He was dressed in tattered denims, his shirt sleeves rolled up to display the knotted masses of his muscles. His hands were large, his splayed fingers grimy and padded with calluses.

  Ki saw that the woman, brandishing her umbrella, had set off after the other robber. Ki attempted to swerve around the larger man, in order to pursue the one who had the woman’s purse.

  “Oh, no you don‘t,” the big man laughed, crabbing sideways, to block Ki. He was bald, and wore a thick black beard, and had one gold earring in his right ear. His smile revealed a mouthful of gold teeth that matched the earring. “My friend will do the lady right proper,” he nodded. “And I’m going to do you,” he growled. He rushed forward, his fists balled, windmilling right and left.

  Ki brought his own hands up to distract the robber’s attention, and then executed a mae-geri-kekomi, a forward foot-thrust. His ankle-high, black Wellington boots allowed his foot the proper mobility. His foot-strike caught the man squarely on his bearded chin. The fellow’s knees buckled, but he shook off the effects of the kick and aimed a roundhouse right at the side of Ki’s head.

  Ki sidestepped outside the swing. He clamped his right hand around the other’s outstretched wrist, and slammed the heel of his left into the other’s elbow. There was an audible crack, and then the big man fell to the floor, howling in agony.

  “Oh, God! Oh, you broke my arm!” The robber’s face, beneath his beard, had gone white as a sheet. He writhed about, cradling his elbow and moaning.

  “You!” Ki commanded, pointing a finger at the porter. “Stay with my luggage.”

  The porter nodded. “Yes, sir!” He himself had grown a shade paler as he looked down at the big bruiser crumpled on the floor, and thought about how he had so impudently sassed the soft-spoken, rather thin-looking gentleman who had put the lug there.

  Ki was already in the midst of the empty, currently out- of-service cable cars. There were at least thirty of the cars scattered about on a crisscrossing network of track. He peered under the first few, his frustration rising. The one who had the purse could be hiding anywhere—assuming he was even still in the building...

  “Over here!” came a woman’s shout.

  Ki hurried around the side of a pink cable car emblazoned with the words HYDESTREET. He saw the woman who had been robbed bent over at the waist, prodding beneath the car with her umbrella. “He’s under here!” she declared triumphantly.

  Ki had a moment to admire the woman’s shapely backside before she straightened up and hurried away. The robber slid out from beneath the cable car, the purse still clutched in his left hand, and that deadly length of pipe still in his right. He was dressed in denim pants and a floppy canvas jacket, and was about five nine, but his wiry body was far from puny. Ki knew that this one would be twice as quick as his larger, lumbering partner, and that would make him twice as dangerous.

  “I’ll bash your head in,” the purse-snatcher snarled. “Then I’m gonna do the same for you, lady,” he warned the woman.

  Ki had grown weary of the game. He reached inside his jacket and extracted one of his shuriken throwing blades from the sheath sewn into the lining of his garment. The four-inch, hiltless blade flew from his fingers to pin the pipe-wielder’s loose sleeve to the wood-paneled side of the cable car.

  The pipe fell from the surprised man’s fingers and rolled out of sight beneath the car. Dropping the purse, the little man shrugged out of his jacket and ran off, leaving his garment hanging the way a lizard leaves behind its severed tail.

  Ki wiggled his blade out of the cable car’s paneling, letting the robber’s jacket fall to the floor. He slipped the shuriken back into its sheath, and then bent to retrieve the lady’s purse.

  “Thank you so much,” the woman enthused. “You have been so kind, so brave—”

  “I am glad that I could be of help,” Ki said, bowing slightly. Now that the woman was speaking normally, and not in a series of frightened exclamations, Ki could detect a European accent. The woman’s voice was lilting and quite pleasant, as was the rest of her. She was wearing a tightly fitted, high-necked dress of dark blue velvet. It emphasized the elegant lines of her body. Her hat was cut from the same velvet as her dress, and was perched on her mass of auburn curls. The hat was tipped at a rakish angle that made her look quite cosmopolitan, and more than a bit daring. That daring look was only heightened by the lascivious sparkle in her catlike eyes as she looked Ki up and down.

  “I must go now—” Ki began.

  “No! Wait!” the woman exclaimed. “I mean...” Her white gloved hands rose to her rouged cheeks. “I mean... I do believe that with all this excitement, I’m beginning to feel faint.” Her long lashes began to flutter as she swayed toward Ki, falling into his quickly outstretched arms.

  The warmth of her this close to him, and the sweet scent of her perfume, made Ki himself feel like swooning. This close to her, Ki could see the faint crow’s feet around her eyes, and the slightest hint of a burgeoning double chin. She was in her late thirties, Ki reckoned, but still a lovely woman. She had about her that fecund ripeness, that promise of bursting sweetness, that only the most mature, late-summer fruit can have.

  “Perhaps my hero would like a kiss in reward for his valor?” she murmured.

  Ki gathered her in his arms, and pressed his mouth against hers. She tasted vaguely of cinnamon; there was a hint of tobacco. Her kiss was heady, as intoxicating as wine. Her thighs, beneath her velvet dress, locked about Ki’s leg. One dainty, white-gloved hand dipped to stroke him, bringing him rapidly erect within the confines of his trousers.

  “I wish to thank you more profusely,” she breathed into his ear. “We are alone here. We could slip into one of these empty cars—”

  There was no denying the urgency in her husky whisper, and there was no denying the randy, bucking urgency Ki himself felt in his loins. He swept her off her feet and into his arms, and strode with her toward the pastel-pink Hyde Street car.

  “You are so strong,” she warbled, nuzzling her upturned nose and full lips into Ki’s neck. “I hope you are strong down below, as well...”

  Inside the car, a canvas tarp had been draped across several rows of seats. The effect was that of a makeshift tent; the sheltering tarp would afford them some measure of privacy.

  Ki unsnapped several seat cushions and scattered them on the floor beneath the tarp. The woman had set down her purse and umbrella, and had peeled off her white gloves and her dress as well. Now she stood before Ki in just her black corset, silk stockings, and high-heeled, high-buttoned shoes. She tugged down on the corset, to allow the lush, creamy globes of her breasts to bounce free. Her large, pink nipples stiffened, as if in anticipation of Ki’s approach.

  Once more she fell into his arms, moaning as Ki sucked first one turgid nipple and then the other, shifting quickly from right to left, and then back again, pausing only to skate his moist tongue about the dark rosettes that framed those delectable, fleshy nubs.

  “Hurry,” she begged. “Undress, and then let us scurry into the cozy nest you have built for us.”

  As Ki shucked his suit jacket and pulled loose his tie, she got down on all fours to crawl into their canvas-roofed hideaway. Ki himself let loose a soft moan as he watched her fine, round buttocks, lewdly jutting out from beneath the bottom of her tight corset and the tops of her stockings, wiggle and jiggle as she disappeared, headfirst, beneath the tarp.

  By this time, Ki was down to just his longjohn bottoms. He heard a gasp, and then a sigh of satisfaction, and looked down to see her head poking out from beneath the canvas, her wide purple eyes taking in his broad, sinewy shoulders, corded arms, and washboard-rip
pled belly.

  Ki crawled in with her beneath the tarp. The air was already rich with the flowery scent of her perfume and the musky fragrance that no chemist can duplicate, but which comes only when a woman is aroused and ready for her man.

  “We do not even know each other’s names,” Ki mused as she planted kisses across his chest.

  “No names, liebling—I mean, darling. It is always more exciting for me when it is—how do you say it?—ungenannt. Anonymous.”

  “But—”

  “No more questions,” she hissed, her lips moving down his belly. “Questions and familiarity spoil it for me.”

  And then her lips moved down past his belly, to encircle and warmly, wetly enclose the tip of his throbbing erection, and then no questions seemed important or, indeed, even possible. He intended to hold off, but her head began moving up and down, and she reached between his legs to tickle, palm, and finally squeeze him. His intentions faded against the intense, shuddering rush of his orgasm.

  She swallowed it all greedily, and sat back on her haunches, licking her lips the way a cat licks its whiskers after finishing a saucer of cream. Her look of smug satisfaction turned to one of startled amazement, however, as Ki gently pushed her back and moved himself between her legs. He was still as hard as a rock.

  “Oh, liebling, you are an incredible man!” she gasped as Ki penetrated her. She locked her legs around his waist. “Hard now, darling. Very hard,” she breathed into his ear. “I want to feel it against my backbone!”

  Ki set himself an easy, steady rhythm, his supple hips working like a bucking mustang’s. As she raked his back with her fingernails, he thrust harder, enjoying the small squeaks and squeals of pleasure/pain he was eliciting. He was normally a quite gentle, quite tender lover, but there was something about this mysterious feline female, some innate cruelty that brought out a matching cruelty in him.

  Her moans and tremulous sighs were coming ever faster now. Ki slid his hands down to her upraised legs in order to caress her feather-lightly with his palms, enjoying the silky variations in texture as he went from her stockinged thighs to her bare backside.

  “Soon I shall come,” she sighed, her tongue moist and hot in his ear. “But you must hurt me. I need this!”

  “I cannot—” Ki managed as he felt his own orgasm rising within him. “I will not do—”

  Suddenly she dug her nails into the tender skin of his armpits. The sensation was not one of painful pleasure, but almost of excruciating agony. Her touch was not the touch of a playful lover, but of a cougar unsheathing its claws. Gritting his teeth to keep from crying out, Ki instinctively struck out. His palm came smacking down, hard across the tautened flesh of her right buttock.

  She yelped in pain and slid her legs even higher up Ki’s back. Then she yelped in a quite different manner as she convulsed into a series of shattering orgasms that left her lying limp.

  Ki withdrew as soon as her legs relaxed their scissors-hold around him. He had not come, and no longer had the desire to experience his personal pleasure with this woman. Her predilection for pain did not shock, but merely saddened him. He was an experienced lover, and had been trained in the sexual secrets of the Far East. While it was not particularly to his taste, he was well aware that there was nothing at all unusual or uncommon in the incorporation of the fantasy of pain into lovemaking. But there was a vital difference in the spicy passion evoked by the teasing spank, the tickling scratch, the gentle nibbling of teeth, and that dark surge of emotion generated by the bruising fist, the skin-shredding claw, the maiming bite.

  Now Ki gazed into the violet eyes of this woman as the last echoes of her pleasure faded from her wet center, and she began once more to comprehend the material world. What he saw in her eyes, suddenly glittering like ice, was not only cruelty, but evil as well. He shuddered as a chill crept along his spine like a droplet of freezing water. Evil.

  “You see how it is with me, liebling,” she said matter-of-factly, as Ki slid out from beneath the tarp to begin dressing. “You see why I love only strangers, and never, never twice. In my work, I command many people. I control their very lives. This I enjoy. But when it comes time to make love, I find that it is Iwho must be taken in hand... brutally,” she snarled. “But only for that instant,” she warned, leaving the tarp and reaching for her dress.

  Ki said nothing, but only watched as she raised her arms above her head to slip on her garment. The cherry-red imprint where his palm had landed still glowed in stark contrast to the milky paleness of the rest of her buttocks.

  That was all right, Ki sourly thought to himself. Droplets of blood were still oozing from his armpits. The sting and color would fade from her backside long before the lacerations she had inflicted upon him would heal. But of course, that was the way she had planned it. It was what she had counted on, trusting that he would not, could not go too far for her liking. For her sake, Ki hoped that her ability to evaluate the personalities of her sexual partners remained canny. Otherwise she might one day find herself with a body as scarred as her soul.

  She fixed her hat in exactly the same saucy tilt as before, and bent to pick up her umbrella and purse. The snap on the latter came undone as she rose, so that the purse’s contents spilled across the floor of the cable car. Ki, finished dressing, stooped to help her gather up her things. The purse’s contents included coins and paper currency, both domestic and foreign, a gold pillbox engraved with the initials G.K., and the woman’s Prussian passport, which had flopped open. She snatched the document quickly from Ki’s hand, but not before he’d gotten a glimpse of her name: Greta Kahr.

  She was scowling as she tucked her purse under her arm, gripped her umbrella, and took her leave of the car. “I owe you one favor for helping me with those robbers. Here it is. Do not attempt to find me, liebling. Never again can I make love with you.” She tottered down the steps of the car and walked quickly away.

  “I do not wish to find you,” Ki muttered to himself. “And as for making what you call ‘love’ to you, who would ever want to?”

  He set his Stetson on his head and left the cable car. He fully expected to find the porter still guarding his luggage, and he was not disappointed. The man chattered on excitedly about how the police, and then two stretcher-bearers, had come to take away the hoodlum whose arm had been broken. There had been enough witnesses to what had happened so that the police considered it an open-and-shut case of a good Samaritan coming to the aid of a lady in distress.

  “Did you get the other one, as well?” the porter asked as he loaded Ki’s luggage into a waiting hack.

  “Yes, I did,” Ki replied, hoisting himself into the cab.

  “And I bet you got something from the lady, right?” the porter asked shrewdly. “A nice bit of reward, eh?”

  Ki tossed him an extra few coins to make up for the time he’d spent waiting. “I certainly got more than I’d expected—and more than I’d bargained for,” he added quietly.

  Ki latched the hack door closed. He was not smiling as the cabbie flicked his whip above the horse’s head, and the hack lurched on its way.

  Chapter 2

  The Starbuck Building was of granite, and stood on bustling California Street. It was as massively forbidding as a mountain. The huge institution’s halls were paved with marble, and its bannisters and fluted gaslight fixtures were of polished brass. Interior doors paneled with frosted glass lined the corridors, which were decorated with costly sculptures and oil paintings in gilded frames, imported from Italy and France. The hushed murmur of countless voices filled the still air of the place, combined with the staccato clicking of typewriters and the metallic rasping of hand-cranked adding machines.

  Jessie had dim memories of skipping up and down these marble-floored hallways long ago, a fine handmade doll imported from the Japans clutched in her arms. But then she had been just an oblivious little girl. Now she was an adult, and as she listened to the sound her own heels made as they clacked along the corridors, and as she s
pied the dignified, pinstriped suited gentlemen who were all standing in their office doorways gazing at her as she passed by, Jessie found herself rather intimidated by it all.

  Until she reminded herself that she owned the place, and that all of these people worked for her.

  She and Ki were fifteen minutes late for their appointment with Arthur Lewis, the man who, under Jessie’s auspices, ran the Starbuck interests up and down the West Coast and in the Orient. Ki, for some mysterious reason he refused to divulge, had been extremely tardy in arriving at the hotel with their luggage. Jessie had planned on changing out of her green tweed traveling suit before going to see Arthur, thinking it a bit too rustic for the occasion. When Ki had finally arrived, it was already close to two-thirty. Jessie had been forced to scramble to unpack her trunk. Fortunately the services offered at the exquisite Palace Hotel were simply unbelievable. A uniformed employee had whisked away, and then quickly returned, freshly steam-pressed, the light blue linen dress and matching shawl she was now wearing. The service had also cost the unbelievable sum of forty-five cents, but Jessie, who had been taught early on by her father that money was to be enjoyed but not wasted, had already promised herself that the various treats only to be found in a big city like San Francisco were too good to be denied.

  Jessie was certainly not angry with Ki for his delay, whatever the reason, but she was concerned with his subdued, saddened manner. She wished there were some way she could coax her companion into unburdening himself to her, but she knew her wish was futile. Ki kept his thoughts to himself. Perhaps it was seeing San Francisco again after so many years that was making him sad...

  Arthur Lewis’s pink-faced clerk ushered them right through the executive’s outer office and into his private study. Both Jessie and Ki were relieved to see that the stuffy European trappings so apparent in the rest of the building were absent here.