The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  “—tell her to go to hell?”

  That was from Frankie, who so far, did done nothing but lean against the door.

  Ian frowned, animosity reaching the center points of his eyes. Marisela caught sight of Ian’s hand, which had tightened into a ball.

  Frankie looked no less angry, his hands pressed into his jacket so tightly, Marisela wondered if his fists were going to rip through the pockets.

  Okay. Anger crackled between the two men, yet neither one breathed a word of discord. What was that about?

  Ian tore his gaze from Frankie and focused his attention on her, his calm demeanor forced, but absolute.

  “We have no idea how Jessica will react to her mother, but all our evidence so far points to a potentially joyous reunion.”

  Suddenly, Max was beside Ian, causing Marisela to yelp. She glanced aside, embarrassed, while the mysterious Max handed Ian a manila folder, which he presented to Marisela. Inside was a letter, written in what was obviously a child’s hand. Marisela had to read no more than the first few lines to know that the child wanted her mother.

  Dear Mommy,

  Where are you? I miss you. Why haven’t you visited me?

  She flipped the file shut and held it over her shoulder, but Frankie waved the papers away. He likely didn’t give a damn about the emotions of the case—which is precisely why Marisela didn’t read beyond that first impassioned plea. She couldn’t let her heart make this decision. Not when her life would be at stake in an arms dealer’s nasty, violent world.

  “So our job is to retrieve Jessica in Miami?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” Ian replied.

  “Then what exactly?” Frankie didn’t even try to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  He pushed off from the wall and stormed to Ian’s desk. Slamming his palms flat on the polished teak, Frankie leaned forward just enough so his dark eyes were level with Ian’s cool blue.

  “Tell her straight, Blake. She needs to know what she’s putting at risk. She needs to know she has a lot to lose.”

  Ian cleared his throat, but Marisela saw his spine harden, as if he’d rather die than back down one inch to Frankie’s rough demand.

  “In Miami, you’ll infiltrate Perez’s organization and finesse an invitation to his private enclave in Puerto Rico. Once there, you will contact Jessica, take her, and then utilize one of five exit strategies my team has created for a clean escape back to the mainland. Once you reach Florida with Jessica in your custody, I have assurances from the federal government that they will enforce the custody order Elise compelled the court to issue after the kidnapping.”

  Marisela listened, her mind swirling as she sought to put all the pieces together. “You want us to steal her back?”

  “Yes.”

  “From an international arms dealer who has access to an arsenal equal to the United States Army?”

  “Probably better than the U.S. Army, truth be told.”

  “And we’ll be undercover?”

  “Clearly,” Ian answered. “Several Titan operatives will be on call as backup. Some of my best people are already in Miami setting down the groundwork. But this operation depends on you and Frankie. Perez trusts no one and he trusts non-Hispanics even less. We have created a cover for you that will at least garner you a face-to-face introduction. Once you’re in, the rest of the team will follow your lead. You have two weeks to retrieve the girl. One week to train, one week to complete the mission. That’s our time frame.”

  Marisela listened carefully, but her attention had not strayed far from Blake and Frankie’s standoff. Neither man had moved an inch, save for the occasional twitch of the eye or tick in the jaw. It was a real, old-fashioned Wild West showdown, without the guns or the hot, noon sun.

  Bored with their testosterone-enhanced animosity, Marisela grabbed Frankie by the back of his jeans and tugged him away from the desk.

  “I need a few minutes to think,” she said. “Just me and Frankie.”

  Ian stood. “Of course.” He glanced at his watch. “The Oceanus must depart in no less than one hour.”

  Marisela nodded. “One hour it is.”

  “Please, avail yourself of anything in my office that will make your stay more pleasant.”

  “Wait!” she said, suddenly wishing Blake hadn’t ordered her to leave her cell phone so she could call Lia and tell her…what? That some rich dude on a yacht bigger than city hall wanted her to go undercover with Frankie and steal back the daughter of a man who sold rocket launchers and surface-to-air missiles to killers like Osama bin Laden? Not likely. “I left my bag on the side of the warehouse, stuffed under the—”

  “—already been retrieved,” Max replied. “I had the steward leave your bag in your stateroom.”

  The boss and his manservant left, closing the door behind them. Frankie crossed his arms and stared at her, as if he expected her to make a decision instantaneously.

  “I want in,” she said.

  “Of course you do.”

  She stretched, wincing when she raised her injured arm too far over her head. “Why do you say that as if you know everything about me?”

  “Because I do, Marisela, I know you think you’re a different person now, but you aren’t. You saw that baby and you wanted to scoop her in your arms and play dress-up for three hours.”

  “So? I like babies.”

  “This one ain’t no baby no more, don’t forget that.”

  “She’s still a child stolen from her mother.”

  He nodded. “That’s true. But don’t sign on to this mission because you think it’s a good cause. Don’t sign on because you think your life is boring and this is just the thrill you need. And don’t sign on for the money.”

  She stepped back, her eyes wide. “Then why the hell should I sign?” she asked, annoyed that he’d figured out her motivations so easily.

  A grin spread over his face, a bright curve amid dark, swarthy skin. “So you can be with me for the next two weeks.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him to go fuck himself, but realized she’d used that parting shot with him once already, with no discernable effect on his big head and cocky attitude. Instead, she matched his smile, then sidled up to him and slid her good hand around his waist. “Ooh, Frankie. What girl could resist a temptation like you?”

  Frankie laughed. “You.”

  “Damn straight. And don’t you forget it.”

  * * *

  “So, Max, think she’s in?”

  Ian eased onto the leather couch in his stateroom, giving a cursory glance out the porthole as the crew prepared the Oceanus for voyage. If Marisela Morales didn’t agree to join this mission, there would be no need for a slow trip to Miami so she and Vega could train. In fact, if she didn’t agree, there’d be no mission at all.

  The current scheme to inject Marisela and Frankie into Javier Perez’s dark world of violence and retribution had only a sixty-seven percent chance of success, according to his top operatives. The scheme exceeded their normal risk-ratio, but these weren’t normal circumstances. The generous retainer would solve only part of his problem. The profit margin on this operation would be tight, in light of his current financial situation. He needed the million dollars Elise Barton-Ryce had offered to find and retrieve her missing child—and the additional two million she’d extract from her trust only after young Jessica was safe in her mother’s arms.

  Ian snorted. Safe wasn’t the word he’d associate with a viper like Elise. The poor kid was probably going from bad to worse—but that wasn’t his concern.

  For now, he had only Marisela on his mind.

  “She wants to take the offer,” Max said, depositing a glass of iced Scotch on the table beside Ian before beelining for the computer on Ian’s desk. He keyed in a few codes, then waited while a complicated schematic crisscrossed the screen. Max was a man of many talents, but give him something to blow up, he was like a child with a Gameboy. Ian didn’t know if he was reviewing the blueprints t
o Perez’s jet or triple-checking the controlled explosion Titan would detonate in Miami to further their cause. Either way, he toyed and fiddled every spare moment with every piece of information they’d gathered, upping his knowledge and perspective the way gamers accumulated points and higher levels.

  “What makes you so confident about our newest operative?” Ian asked. Even though Max was only a decade older than Ian, the man possessed a wisdom that Ian had come to rely on, as if those ten years between them had been stuffed with a half century of knowledge, experience, and heartbreak.

  “Why would she say no?” Max replied, his brow arched as if the answer were so simple, he didn’t know why they were bothering to discuss the matter.

  “She might be killed.”

  Max shrugged, then slid his finger on the touch screen to change the perspective of the plans he’d been studying for over a week. “She strikes me as a very resourceful woman.”

  Ian seized his Scotch. “Resourceful women can die.”

  “So can you. So can I. We all make our choices, Mr. Blake. Sometimes, death is beyond our control. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of a war zone or crossing the street.”

  Max’s nonchalance came as no surprise. What alarmed Ian was not his assistant’s assessment of Marisela and her courageous nature—he concurred—but that he couldn’t shake a disconcerting sense of dread on the woman’s behalf. Why did he care if she lived or died? He didn’t make a habit of sacrificing his people for the bottom line, but most came out alive. Most, but not all. Still, they knew the potential risks. He imagined that each and every one of Titan’s field agents had signed up precisely for that edge of excitement that challenged Fate to do her worst.

  Marisela was the same as the rest.

  The same, and yet entirely different.

  She wasn’t a former cop. She wasn’t a former spy. And she only had a week to train for an assignment that none of his best people were qualified to handle. And yet, somehow, she’d gotten under his skin.

  The woman was a walking testament to temptation. She dressed a little raunchy and swayed her hips with attitude, demonstrating that she could bring any man to his knees, any time. Unlike other females in Ian’s not so distant past, Marisela Morales didn’t hide who she was. She was right there in his face, her sensuality too potent to ignore.

  But if he had any sense, he’d turn away right now. Stick to business. Strictly business.

  “Are Dionysus and Pan in Miami?” he asked.

  “They’ve made contact as directed,” Max answered, his fingertips flying over the keyboard. “Perez expects his assassins in one week.”

  Ian nodded. One week. If she agreed. The future of his company once again rested in the hands of a beautiful woman—only this time, Ian would be prepared. He’d learned his lesson with Eris. Betrayal wouldn’t sneak up on him. Not this time. Not ever again.

  Dirty Little Secrets: Chapter Nine

  “I can take you, you know that, right?”

  Frankie’s inky gaze pierced Marisela’s from only a few inches away. His lashes captured the sweat dripping down from his hair and her senses swam from the scent—decidedly male and infinitely determined. He had her exactly where he wanted her—and she could blame no one but herself.

  “You could try,” Marisela countered brashly, her own skin glistening, the moisture adding a barely perceptible slip to her position on the mat. Her arm, treated by the Titan physician, ached, but the liquid bandage and cloth wrappings held firm. Frankie had her pinned to the mat, her wrists shackled in his iron-banded hands. He’d gotten the drop on her for the first time in three days and the triumphant look in his eye guaranteed he wouldn’t release her any time soon.

  He shifted his body so that his trim abs slid over hers, his legs locked across her knees so that she couldn’t move. She supposed she should feel embarrassed about falling victim to his attack, but she wasn’t so sure she didn’t appreciate her position. Frankie Vega might be an arrogant, infuriating prick most of the time, but he pulled the attitude off with such delicious style.

  “And now that I have you,” he said, his stare sweeping down her body with pure sexual appreciation, “what am I going to do with you?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “You could try to seduce me, but you’d need your hands for that.” She tugged at his hold, but barely managed an eighth-inch of movement.

  “I don’t know. My tongue is fairly talented, remember?” He swiped a lick over her lips and an electric current shot straight into her veins. Oh, yeah, she remembered his tongue. Intimately. “Besides, if I let go, you’ll try to kick my ass for dropping you.”

  “There’s that ‘try’ again.”

  He chuckled, hot and deep-throated, like the bass undertones of a sensual Spanish ballad, right before the guitarist increased the tempo to a frenetic pace. Baritone and primitive, the sound rippled through her, igniting the tickle in her belly that she’d been fighting since she’d signed on with Titan.

  Frankie had warned her that working for Titan wouldn’t be like the movies, but nothing she’d experienced so far convinced her otherwise. She was cruising to Miami on a two hundred-foot luxury yacht with gold-leafed fixtures in the bathroom, feasting on the most delicious, exotic foods she’d ever tasted and training with a man whose sexuality shimmered off him just like his sweat—raw and plentiful.

  Besides, the most dangerous thing she’d encountered so far was Frankie and his magnetism. And now that he had her trapped, alone, in a main dining room that had been converted into a world-class gymnasium with sweet sea air teasing her nostrils and the vibrations from the engines and the waves rocking beneath her, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to escape.

  “Enjoying yourself?” she asked, sliding one leg free. “Because I’m getting bored.”

  Frankie grinned, then stretched languidly over her, making sure every inch of her body made contact with his and diverting her countermove. What had started as a practice session of kicks and punches had turned from purely physical to innately personal.

  Training-wise, Marisela deserved a taste of this prone position for letting her guard down. She knew better, but he’d worn down her resistance. For three days, they’d been together nearly every minute—it wasn’t entirely surprising that their old rhythms had reemerged. In the mornings, they ran laps around the deck, catching up on the gossip from the neighborhood. In the afternoons, they swam in the lap pool, pushing the limits of endurance. After lunch, they punched the bags and weight-trained, awakening muscles Marisela hadn’t used in a while. At night, they studied codes and code names and acquainted themselves with the highly technical gadgets and gizmos dispensed to all Titan operatives. They also memorized the life and times of Javier Perez from the scant information other investigators already in the field had gathered through secondary sources and long-distance observation.

  She and Frankie would be the first agents to infiltrate the arms dealer’s organization. Yet despite their intense preparation, the key factors of this mission were still one big fat unknown. With so much going on, could Marisela be blamed for failing to resist a man that she’d found irresistible since puberty?

  “I could think of more interesting things to be doing while on top of you,” Frankie mused, writhing against her, “but you aren’t ready yet.” He straddled her and sat up, but didn’t release her hands.

  “Not ready?” she asked, disbelieving. “For what? For sex? Try ‘not interested.’ Been there, done that. Last week, as a matter of fact.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” he said, his voice a throaty growl. “And believe me, vidita, neither have you.”

  No, she didn’t suppose she had. “Is this your revenge?”

  “Not by a long shot. I’m just taking a breather, wondering how long I can stand to feel you so wild and willing beneath me.”

  That did it. Frankie could tease and antagonize her all he wanted, but calling her willing went one step too far.

  She bucked once to throw off his balance, t
hen a second time to plant her feet close to her lifted knees. With the power of her hips, she twisted, unlocking her wrist from his grip. She dipped under his arm and threw her weight over his until he was the one with his back to the mat.

  Ordinarily, she’d finish this move with a head butt and a knee to the groin. Instead, she kissed him.

  Their mouths were salty, their lips tinged with the moisture of perspiration, power drinks, and desire. His tongue slashed into her mouth with hungry power and she matched his ravenous need taste for taste. Though she’d placed her hands firmly on his shoulders, he could have easily moved out of her way. But he hadn’t—and she was glad.

  Her spandex workout pants strangled her blood flow as the throbbing between her legs intensified. The telltale trickle of sensual cream seeped from her sex, announcing in no uncertain terms that she wanted Frankie physically even if her heart and her brain ordered her to back down. Ever since that night in the club, she’d experienced a powerful lust she wasn’t sure she wanted to fight anymore. Not when there were so many other things to rail against.

  He yanked his face away. “What’s this?”

  “A kiss, cabrón.”

  “You just said, been there, done that.”

  “Don’t you know when I’m just trying to be tough?”

  His grin stoked the fire burning deep in her belly. “Yeah, I do.”

  She sat up on her haunches and despite the way the sports bra adhered to her skin, she yanked it over her head, freeing her breasts to his appreciative gaze. Her nipples were dark and hard and practically crackled for his touch.

  “Let’s go, then,” she said. There was only one way to douse this flame. The old-fashioned way.

  Frankie chuckled, but spread his hands benignly over her midsection. Then, in slow, possessive strokes that aroused her at the same time that they kept her at arm’s length, he proved how talented his hands truly were. “Just like that, you want to screw me?”