by Meli Raine
“Uh, yeah,” Silas says, glaring at Drew. “They do.”
We disembark and split off, Silas taking me to a car with Duff at the wheel. I chuckle to myself. If nothing else, these guys are predictable.
“Duff,” I greet him, climbing in the backseat. “We have got to stop meeting like this.”
“You stop taunting everyone into trying to kill you and you’ll never see my face again.”
“Your face isn’t so bad, Duff.”
“You go blind suddenly, Jane?” he jokes. His eyes meet Silas’s in the rearview mirror. “Where to?”
Silas tells him an address.
Duff’s eyes widen, eyebrows up. “There?”
“You got a problem?” Silas says in a menacing voice.
“No, sir.” Duff shows more emotion in his suppression of his reaction than I think I’ve ever seen. What is this private club Silas is taking me to?
Whatever it is, we’re there quickly. D.C. traffic is different from LA and San Diego. It’s still thick, but it moves differently. Either that, or Duff knows his way around here better. I don’t care.
I just want to rest. If Silas found a truly safe place for me, my nerves need to experience it.
I can’t wait to get there and let my body do what it needs to do most.
We pull into a narrow alley, Duff moving the SUV so slowly, it starts to feel creepy. The street itself is bumpy, like old cobblestone. We’re driving behind a line of small bars and bistros, restaurant staff sitting in haphazard folding chairs with ashtrays on milk crates, staring at us before turning away quickly.
“Can’t we go in the front door?” I ask Silas.
He doesn’t answer me.
Finally, the SUV stops. Silas gets out. I follow him. We enter a small Italian restaurant that smells so strongly of garlic, I’m convinced they double as a vampire-killer training center. It’s too early in the morning for that much garlic. I don’t have my phone, but a glance at a clock in the kitchen tells me it’s nearly eleven a.m.
Any staff here is doing prep work for lunch.
All the hallways are dark, painted in colors I can barely make out as Silas takes me through what feels like a long, crooked maze. We go down half flights of stairs, narrow channels, then up other stairs, the path dizzying. Impossible to remember the way out.
Maybe that’s the point?
Safe is complicated. Looks like this private club is, too.
“Is this some secret place where all the politicians’ bodyguards bring their clients when they need to make sure no one can hear them primal scream?”
Silas stops fast. I bump into him from behind, his muscles tight, bones so heavy.
His back rises and falls, expands and contracts as he breathes, clearly pausing but ready.
“Silas?” I ask in the silence.
“Let me get you to the club and explain.”
“Explain what?”
“You’ll see.”
We turn a corner and there’s a doorway, wide with double wooden doors, the arch high and regal. Two men in black suits, white shirts, and black ties are wearing earpieces.
“Is this a CIA club? For congressmen? What is this place?” I whisper as one of the guys looks at Silas, nods, and opens the door. He knows Silas on sight.
How often does he come here?
Pulling my hand, he leads me into the club, which is big, with a tiered-floor structure. I look up and see two more levels, railings dotted with people leaning against them, couples mostly.
I look to my left to see thick curtains, drawn back with ties, framing about five alcoves on each of the four walls of the room. In some, there is a doorway leading out, in some there is a booth.
No. Not a booth.
A platform. Is that a –
“Is that a bed?” I whisper as I realize a couple is on what I first thought was a booth’s table. The woman is nude.
Except for a diamond necklace and earrings.
My eyes adjust, trying to make sense of what I see. The platform is covered with a thick, rich, green velvet material, the curtains almost luminescent. People walk by, drinks in hand, and stare.
As a man crawls over her body, his face on her breasts, her mouth, her elbow.
“This is the safest place on earth,” Silas assures me as he pulls me into an alcove and turns me away from viewing the others. “Not a single damn person in here wants anyone to know they’re here. Lips are sealed.”
I look around his broad shoulders at a couple in a small booth to our left, where the man is elegantly, gently stroking the woman’s exposed labia. “Not all of them.”
Silas follows my focal point and keeps his face neutral. “You’re going to see a lot of that here.”
“You brought me to a sex club?”
“I brought you to the safest place I could think of.”
“A sex club?” I can’t help but raise my voice.
His finger covers my lips in a shushing gesture that sends every inch of me vibrating.
“I had an assignment here,” he says, his voice low and deep, lips brushing against my ear as he holds me close. I can’t take my eyes off the couple having sex right here, in public.
Enjoying themselves.
Enjoying being watched.
“You worked here?”
“The owner suspected clients were being surveilled. She was right. I weeded out all the moles, all the electronic recording devices, all the security breaches. I know the Margin of Error is clean.”
“Margin of error?”
“That’s the name of this club.”
My mouth twists into a smile. “That is quite a name for a sex club.”
“Fuala doesn’t mess around.”
The man is now on top of the woman, his long tongue reaching between her legs, her knees spreading wide, thigh-highs edged with black lace at the tops, her mouth open in an expression of pleasure that shows no inhibitions.
Only arousal.
My body can’t watch that and not get turned on.
Silas senses it, moving closer, his erection pressing hard against my thigh. “You’re aroused, aren’t you?”
“So are you,” I say, embarrassed.
He rubs against me, just enough to make me moan and press into him, ready to find a private room, needing the release as I watch the man on the platform lift up from licking the woman and thrust into her – to applause from spectators.
“What do you want, Jane?” Silas asks, making it clear what he assumes I want.
“I want you – but not like that,” I say firmly, my words hard to speak, but the conviction is clear.
His hand moves up the length of my back until it reaches my neck, fingers in my hair. He whispers, “I would never share you with anyone like that. No one else gets to see you. Only me.”
“Only you,” I whisper, the ache between my legs turning into an unfathomable pulse.
“I didn’t bring you here to fuck you, Jane,” Silas says, his hushed tone and warm hands forcing me to listen. His mouth takes mine, his tongue strong and commanding as he kisses me until I’m on tiptoes, hands at his neck, his stubble brushing against my thumbs, my belly fluttering with need.
“You brought me here to be safe,” I say as he breaks the kiss and pulls me close. I move my thigh, wanting him in me, the physical proximity without being filled by him turning into one big tease.
“I brought you here because I made it safe,” he amends. “No one can hurt you here.”
“Except for you.”
“You want me to hurt you?”
Oh, that question. Part of me wants to say yes. “I want you to fuck me, Silas. I need you. I can’t bear another minute without you over me, riding me, pinning me down.” My words make him bigger. More present. Every syllable out of my mouth makes him more real. More powerful. More attractive.
Just more.
“Can I get you two a drink?” The cocktail waitress interrupts us with a question that turns my carnal need into a vicious anger until I turn and realize it�
��s Glynnis, in costume, in her role. She’s making her station known.
“We’re fine,” Silas says tightly.
“If you need anything from the outside, let me know. I have a secured connection at the edge of the club. Drew will keep in touch via me,” she says quickly, then leaves.
How much of this is in character for him? How much is real? Having a member of Drew’s team invade our very private conversation breaks the spell. A high-pitched cry and a deep groan fill the air as I look over and see the man and woman making love are climaxing. It’s cruel. My body can’t help but respond to what I see, and I start to shake from frustration, nerve endings and biochemical processes all stoked by Silas’s musk, his taste, his cock straining against his trousers.
“Is there a private room we can use?” I ask through gritted teeth, barely able to form the words, my legs unsteady, my pulse a bass drum. Suddenly, I don’t care if Silas is playing a role. I don’t care if this isn’t real. All of that can be sorted out later, after I’ve had his mouth between my legs, after I climb on top of him and move against him, wet and ecstatic, our mouths connected in kisses that never end until we orgasm together, after I come and come and come until I’m soaked and spent, until all the confusion and chaos around me turns into white noise that doesn’t have distinct edges.
Until I don’t, either.
Silas takes my hand and draws me down a hallway, to a doorway, into a private room where he crushes me against the wall, all lips and tongue and hands and fingers that are never enough, will never be enough, but it’s more than I had moments ago and oh, God, yes.
Right there and there and soon my panties are in a pool at my feet and he turns me around, his hand on my neck, and he’s thrusting up inside me, his hands rough against my breasts, my body grateful. Thankful.
So greedy because I want this and more, exponential craving tripling inside me by the second but now his hand is over my mouth, his knee widening my stance, my back pushing against him to take him deeper inside until he goes so deep, I begin to shudder, clamping him in place, going blind as I come, shattering against the wall as his palm covers my collarbone, hot, wet kisses against the nape of my neck punctuated by feral grunts and a hot torrent inside me as he spills himself.
It’s still not enough.
“You are killing me,” he rasps against my bare shoulder, my shirt torn by the intensity of our movements, cool air playing with the skin exposed.
“If that was death, bring it on,” I whisper back. He doesn’t laugh.
Tap tap tap.
“What the hell?” he says in an alarmed voice, clearly unaccustomed to anyone knocking on a door in this strange place. He quickly pulls out and zips up, rushing to the door, opening it a crack.
“Drew. Now,” Glynnis says. I hear the hushed tone but she can’t see me.
“Got it. Give me a minute.”
“Don’t have a minute. Drew needs you now. Won’t tell me the message.”
That means it’s really, really bad. But who the hell am I kidding?
It’s all bad, all the time.
Fear spikes through me, mixed with a charged feeling that permeates the room. What was arousing and sexual moments ago converts to a perverted terror, one that can’t be right because how can I orgasm and seconds later be in fight-or-flight mode?
And all in a sex club?
“Stay here,” he orders, in the hallway already. “Whatever’s going on, I need to know.”
“You’re leaving me alone?”
“You’re safer in here for a few minutes than out there.”
“I thought you said this place was safe?”
“It is. But no place is one hundred percent safe. Margin of Error is as close as you’re going to get.”
“Why can’t I go with you?”
“Because then people will know you’re here. Your face is plastered all over the newspapers, the gossip sites, the internet.” He fishes a key out of his pants pocket. “I’ll lock you in.”
“You’ll what?”
“Do you trust me?”
The man’s fluids are inside me, making my inner thighs slick and slippery, his taste in my mouth and his heat still on my skin. “Of course I do.”
He closes the door.
The lock tumbles shut.
And then I find myself completely alone, in a private room in a sex club I didn’t know existed until half an hour ago.
A sex club where Silas once worked.
This is my life.
This.
Silas
Son of a bitch.
My head is swimming as I navigate the dark halls by memory, muscles pivoting as I turn in the maze. Fuala designed it this way on purpose. Adds mystery. Adventure. A sense of the forbidden.
Plus, it makes intruders easy to spot.
I knew Glynnis would be my point of contact here at the club, but I didn’t expect Drew to interrupt me so soon.
And certainly not so soon after a quickie with Jane up against the wall like that.
I’ve never touched a single person in this club before. Not sexually. Not intimately. Aside from a handshake or a friendly hug when I left my assignment, this place never involved human contact.
Jane just changed that.
Damn fast.
If I weren’t summoned by Drew, I’d be back in that room with her for round two. Everything is unraveling at lightning speed. Even here I suspect she’s not as safe as I assured her. Locking her in that room was an act of desperation.
Desperate men get sloppy.
As I move to meet with Glynnis and get Drew on the phone, I can smell Jane on my hands, feel her juices all over me, the scent of her hair taking over. Every part of me is running on instinct and adrenaline now. Not like the fear I feel in her. My sharpness is honed. Polished. Acute and telescoped into a pinpointed vigilance I know all too well.
Welcome to my default.
I am home.
Anyone gets in my way, they’re dead. I won’t operate outside the law unless I have to.
Protecting Jane means I have to.
Therefore, my actions are moral.
A flash of red hair and there’s Glynnis, standing in the alley behind the garlic-filled kitchen of the restaurant next door, holding a secured line.
“Corning’s disappeared,” Drew snaps before I can say a word.
His default is activated, too.
“What about Monica?”
“Right here with Harry, me, and Lindsay. We’re at some endorsement lunch. I’m in a goddamned small talk vortex and Corning’s disappeared.”
“You tell Lindsay about Mark?”
“Not yet. As soon as this is done, we’re going back to our hotel and Mark will meet us.”
“Good luck.”
“I didn’t call you to process feelings, Gentian. We’ve got an eye on Monica, but the press is all over Nolan Corning’s disappearance. Hasn’t been seen for twelve hours. Speculation’s all over the place with these money-laundering stories pouring in. Two more in the last hour. Some of the pundits are blathering on about suicide. Search and rescue is about to be initiated in the lake near his home. One senator is on suicide watch. I assume you’ve been occupied and don’t know.”
“Yeah. Occupied,” I mutter.
“Corning’s not the type to off himself. None of these guys are. That would require remorse or something close to it, and they’re not wired that way.”
“What should I do?”
“Keep Jane safe. I may bring Lindsay there tomorrow if it gets worse out here. Wait – hang on.” Drew talks in the background to someone else, and immediately shouts a string of profanities.
“GENTIAN!” he screams into the phone. “Corning’s been located.”
“Where?”
“IN YOUR LOCATION. Is he a client? What the hell is Fuala thinking? Just spotted heading in the front door. Where are you? Where’s Jane?”
I toss the phone at Glynnis and sprint.
Because Jane is all alone.<
br />
And because someone screaming in this place is presumed to be happy.
All of the body’s systems fall into one beat when you think someone you care about is about to die and you can save them. The gears turn in different combinations, but it all boils down to the same end result: saving someone from death is an act of goodness.
Killing can be, too.
I should know.
To save Jane, I may have to kill Nolan Corning.
But first I have to beat him to that room.
The guys guarding the club’s doors part as I barrel down the hallway, knowing me, respecting me. We can debrief after the fact. You can’t simultaneously act on instinct with your body and activate your speech centers.
Doesn’t work that way.
Right, left, right, then I’m down the hall and –
Pain.
Fireworks.
Nerve explosion.
Blackness.
My knee cracks harder than the blow to the back of my head, and then there’s a carpet against my cheek, a wet pool under it, and only one final thought:
No.
Hell, no.
Chapter 20
Jane
No.
The more I put it all together, the less sense this makes. I’m locked in a room in a sex club in D.C. Mark Paulson is Lindsay’s half brother. Alice had a private investigator follow Monica Bosworth, who had meetings with a famous narco-trafficker while her husband was sleeping with his assistant. Got her pregnant.
So Monica went out and did the same with someone who worked for Harry?
Actually, when I think of it that way, it does make sense.
If you’re a cold, scheming, selfish bitch like Monica Bosworth.
I can’t shake this feeling that I’m in more danger here than Silas realizes. All of my senses are on high alert, but that’s nothing new.
That just is.
The surprise sex with Silas leaves me off balance. Unmoored. Freakishly sated and horrifically vulnerable. We just had sex up against a wall and seconds later he was called to duty. Locked me in a room alone.
In a sex club where he once... worked?
Who do I really trust? As the seconds tick by, Harry’s warnings start to plague me, pelting stones at me, like a crowd of jeering onlookers. The bedrock certainty inside starts to slough off, boulders rolling down a sheer cliff, stripping off in chunks as gravity moves forward, unbound.