Free The By-Pass Control by Mickey Spillane Page A

they were put. They didn’t seem quite as determined as you. What really happened to him?”
    “Killed, sugar. I know how, but not why.”
    “And this Louis Agrounsky?”
    I shrugged. “A name. Nothing more. It’s ended here now.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    “Why?”
    The fragrance of her perfume was a gentle thing like flowers in the night. Gently, her fingers touched my face and I felt her lips touch my hair. “Because I won’t see you again.”
    “Afraid of the fly, spider?”
    “I haven’t had time to weave him into my web.”
    My fingers hooked into the soft texture of her hair and I brought her face down close to my own. “It wouldn’t do you any good, baby. I could always break loose.”
    “It would be a great fight.”
    “Would it?”
    “Not really,” she said. “You’d win in the end.”
    “I always do, kitten,” I told her.
    She smiled, her mouth wetly pink and inviting, offering itself to be taken. I touched her lips with mine, the warmth of her a subtle radiance I couldn’t resist, a quiet ember that flamed into a wild heat stirred by the frantic quest of her tongue.
    The glass fell from her hand and tinkled in fragments on the floor. Almost in slow motion, she tumbled from above me into my lap, a tremulous abandon hardening her body into firm complexities of muscular curves that rose and fell under my hands, quivering with each touch.
    Her voice was a demanding sob, whispering to me, her breath a sweet thing that was at one with her lips as she reached out for me and when I held her face in my hands and looked at her there was a wetness to her eyes like a beggar’s plea and she said, “Tiger ... now ... please.”
    Camille Hunt was an animal in her own right, a wonderful, primitive thing suddenly released from the constraints of civilized bondage and her own hands stripped her naked in her yearning for fulfillment. Her skin had the glossy texture of satin, tanned by the sun and striped with ribbon bands of a bikini. The swell of her breasts and hips, the hollow of her stomach and the luxuriant sweep of her thighs burst upon my sight like the clashing of great cymbals and I reached out and let my fingers bite into the resilient flesh and dragged her down beside me.
    And suddenly time seemed to disappear, events jumbled themselves into a kaleidoscopic pattern that had no meaning at all and the only sounds were the short breaths of savage desire, the sigh, the gasp of success and the moaning demand of even greater achievement until it all was finished like a parachute collapsing over inert jumpers who have known the thrill of the free fall and lay in the pleasure of survival.
    I looked at my watch, shook her awake and felt the edge of anger gnawing at myself for letting any time out of my grasp at all. Outside the day had turned into night and the lights of cruising cars threw a brief glow against the windows that bore the trickling stains of a light rain.
    “Camille ...”
    She turned in my arms, her voice drowsy. “Tiger?” she said softly.
    “Have to go, doll.”
    “Don’t.”
    “No choice.”
    Her eyes came open, the sleep still in them. Very gently she smiled up at me. “My web isn’t very strong, is it?”
    “Too strong.”
    The tips of her fingers crossed my mouth. “I know,” she told me. “Will you ever come back?”
    “Like the moth to the flame.” I got dressed quickly, found a blanket in her bedroom and threw it over her and watched while she tucked it under her chin with a contented grin.
    “You got the job,” she laughed and closed her eyes.
     
    Someday I was going to find out when Ernie Bentley slept. He had a wife at home but he never seemed to make it there. Something going on in his test tubes or under his microscope was always too fascinating for him to leave. Any industry in the world would be glad to give him a top-ranking position in their organization, but he preferred the setup Martin Grady offered him and the freedom of unlimited experimentation