So naturally, when he reached for his cock to unload some stress, a generic woman with, say, one head, two tits, four limbs and a pussy simply wouldn’t do. Caroline floated into his head in those moments and he’d long ago given up the fight to keep her out.

Now there was something more, something unexpected. Turned out the Caroline he’d mooned over for twelve years was long gone, vanished with the years. The beautiful girl had been replaced by an even more beautiful woman, mature and stunning, intelligent and classy, a woman who wore sadness like a shroud, utterly irresistible.

The girl had been very pretty, like a million other upper-class girls, with a sunny smile showing off ten thousand dollars of orthodontics, wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of clothes. She bathed regularly and had someone to wash and iron her clothes for her. Lots of girls in those conditions look pretty.

The woman she’d turned into, though, knocked the breath right out of him. She was like some sad princess longing for her lost kingdom.

Jack remembered every second she’d been in his arms as he reached down for himself, gave one, long experimental stroke.

The hard-on had to go, right now. There was no way he could go down to dinner in this condition, she’d kick him right out. Please God, he thought, let me get through the evening without embarrassing myself.

To be really sure his dick would stay down, he should park himself in the shower under cold water and jerk off a couple of times, just to get rid of the fierce, itchy arousal he felt. His skin prickled with the desire to touch her again, only not for comfort this time and not dressed for cold weather with layers of clothes between his skin and hers.

No, he wanted to touch her and see whether he could make that smooth ivory skin turn pink with desire. He wanted to watch it happen, watch the flush cover her breasts, while he kissed them. He wanted to touch her sex, feel himself making her wet, ready for him.

Caroline was downstairs, right now. Waiting for him. She wasn’t a memory, a photograph, an image in his head. She was a flesh-and-blood woman, more beautiful even than in his dreams and she was downstairs cooking a meal for him.

He’d see her every day, as much as he wanted. It was impossible to think that he wouldn’t get her in his bed. His cock swelled even more at the thought.

His fist was working hard now, pumping, as the images of a naked Caroline spread out on a bed just for him filled his head. He wanted to know what sounds she made when she was turned on, feel her heels and nails digging into his back, feel her cunt pulling at him as he stroked inside her…

It was all so much more intense now that he’d seen her again, felt her, smelled her. Now that he had so much more sensory input as he imagined fucking her, hard. For hours.

If she were here right now, he’d take her in the shower, kissing her all over first in the steamy heat, making her ready. Entering her with his fingers first, oh so gently. He was big, and she had to be ready for him. He wanted her wet and soft and open for him. When his hand told him she was ready, he’d lift her, hold her legs apart, start pushing inside her…

Sometimes it took Jack a long time to climax but he’d been semiaroused since he’d seen her, and when he imagined entering her, parting her tissues with his cock, he groaned.

The image filled his head with unbearable heat—the two of them in the rose-scented cabin under the pounding water, as he pounded into her. He could see them, could almost feel her softness against him, and it set him off.

Red-hot needles pricked down his spine, and he started spurting violently, hips jerking in time with his fist. He came and came, leaning one-handed against the shower stall, until his knees were weak and it felt like he’d emptied himself of every ounce of moisture in his body.

He watched himself, the red, hugely swollen head of his cock emerging from his fist, coming in huge spurts against the glass cabin, disappearing instantly in the water streaming down the sides. His lungs ached, his skin felt too tight, his head was a balloon that could burst any moment.

For a moment, the climax wiped out all thoughts from his mind as he was reduced to his animal senses. After coming, he was usually relaxed and refreshed—a little like going for a good, sweaty run. Sex was nice physical exercise with a nice little payoff at the end.

Nothing like this. This felt like dying—as if everything he was came shooting out of his cock, leaving him weak and disoriented.

As strong as the orgasm was, though, it wasn’t quite enough. When Jack’s knees could support him again and he walked out of the shower stall, he was still semierect, still wanting her. Every cell in his body was turned on, damn it, attuned to the woman downstairs. He looked down at himself in disgust, big flag waving at half-mast.

His dick was so sensitized, the cooler air of the bathroom outside the shower stall felt icy cold on his skin. It missed the warmth, the fantasy that his fist was Caroline’s cunt.

At that thought, his dick went straight back up into a full erection.

Fuck.

How could he go down in this condition? Well, only one thing to do—wear a chastity belt. Or his tightest black jeans, which was the same thing. A hard-on would have no place to go in those jeans, he knew from painful experience. If he started swelling, his cock would meet stiff denim, and the pain would make it go down again. That was the plan, anyway. He hoped it would work.

He couldn’t stay in the shower forever, jerking off until there was nothing left in him. It would take all night and probably all day tomorrow.

Jack unlocked the padlock on his bag and dumped all his clothes out. There weren’t many clothes, because he’d had to travel light. The only clean clothes he had left were a pair of sweats, the black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. He hadn’t even thought to pack an extra pair of shoes, so the boots would have to do. Monday, he’d buy some clothes.

He dumped the last of the items in the bag on the bed. Fifty thousand dollars in ten bricks of $5,000 each. His toolkit. Another Glock with five magazines of ammo, and a cloth bag. Luckily, he still had his security pass, so he’d been able to check his weapons at the airport.

He took a small screwdriver out of the toolkit and checked the baseboard until he found an air vent close to the chest of drawers. Bending, he checked it out. Perfect. Tiny flakes of rust spotted the four screws holding the vent grate to the metal plate in the wall. The grate hadn’t been removed for years to judge from the buildup of soot and rust. Unscrewing the vent took time and some muscle, but eventually he had the screws lined up on the floor and the grate removed.

He checked his watch as he put the items from the bag far enough back in the vent so they wouldn’t show even if you were looking for something. He had no idea who cleaned the rooms, whether it was Caroline or a cleaning lady, but he didn’t want them stumbling onto the Glock, or the ammo, or—Jesus! — the contents of the cloth bag. They should be safe enough in the steel tube. It would only be until Monday.

Monday he was going to open a bank account, deposit the cash and the cashier’s check for eight million dollars and register for a safe-deposit box for the contents of the cloth bag.

He checked his watch—7:25. He’d be on time for dinner.

One last thing. Crouching, he opened the cloth bag and emptied its contents onto the hardwood floor, the dull, irregular rocks rattling as they spilled out in a stream.

Jack studied the jagged mound. Except for the odd glitter as the light caught a natural facet, the rocks could have been pebbles from a riverbed.

Instead, he was looking at at least $20 million in uncut diamonds.

He knew he was looking at rocks that represented human suffering on an unimaginable scale. They’d been mined by slave labor—men and boys who toiled under the tropical sun from first to last light on a cup of rice, immediately shot in the back of the head when they grew too weak to work. An entire country was tearing itself apart because of dull rocks just like these—over eighty thousand people killed over the past year in Sierra Leone. Countless others had had their hands, lips and ears chopped off by the drugged-up baby soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary Army.