by Zoey Parker
“Yes, baby,” she said in her sleep, biting her lower lip.
I was already having an effect on her. I continued to gently stroke her silky smooth fair skin. I wondered who had sent her to meet me at Eden. She certainly came across as powerful and in control, but she didn’t seem like she was the boss of the operation. Or maybe she was. The thought thrilled me.
I lay with my elbow propping me up on my pillow so I could stare at the shape of her body under my covers. She had made herself vulnerable for me. She had truly enjoyed being controlled and held down in the bed. I had felt how it had thrilled her to hand her sense of power and control over to me. Her skin had trembled underneath me. The muscles around her tight little hole had contracted around me almost continually.
Either she was very convincing, or I had already started to break down her professional wall to get through to the real Sierra. Watching how things went with her in the morning was going to be entertaining. I could tell already.
If she was on a job, she would want to stick around for a few days to earn my trust while she continued to look for the diamond. In the meantime, I would continue breaking her down with sex and enjoying her delicious body. If she continued to willingly play along with me, I felt certain I could get her to abandon her original mission for me.
The real question was whether or not I could keep my wits about me long enough to be able to throw her away once I was through with her. Then again, I wondered if that would even be necessary. She seemed to be a pretty good match for me already. If I could just continue to work that angle, I figured I might not have needed to toss her to the side like I had done with so many others. Maybe the fact that we worked so well together would be her saving grace.
Then again, it could have all been an act. I would know in the morning.
I smiled as I let my head fall onto the pillow, laughing to myself. I was already starting to let my guard down around her, which was dangerous. By catching myself thinking about what was going to happen later or down the road, I knew she was already getting to me. She was good. She was damn good, both in bed and professionally.
Regardless of what she was trying to do, she was too valuable to let go.
I ran my hand behind her leg and slid it up to the bottom of her ass. I parted her and pressed myself against her. Oh, I couldn’t wait until we were both awake in the morning. I couldn’t wait to have another go at her, to see how committed she was to her job, and to please her again.
I left myself pressed against her and slid my arm back around her waist. She moaned slightly in her sleep and pressed herself against my body again before relaxing her muscles sleepily. I closed my eyes and buried my face in her soft red hair.
I let the night come to take me away to sleep. I had forgotten how nice it felt to fall asleep next to someone and feel their warmth against me. It was strangely comforting and calming. It was dangerous, I knew, but surely one night wouldn’t undo everything I had built with The Immortal Devils. One night in bed with a beautiful, cunning woman wouldn’t ruin my life.
Right?
I knew I needed to be careful with her. I needed to remember to stay in control of the situation and to stay in control of her. I had gone into Eden looking for a fun little power struggle for the night. I hadn’t expected to find what felt like it was going to turn into a real struggle for dominance with another person.
Luckily, she didn’t seem to bring any extra clothes with her, so I figured she would be gone pretty quickly in the morning after getting some breakfast and maybe a good round of wake up sex. I would send her way without any questions about where she was going or who she really was, and that would be that. She wouldn’t gain any additional information about the Sun Stone or my MC. She wouldn’t have anything to use against me, and she would be gone. Our night and morning together would remain that, just a night and morning spent together.
As sleep came closer, it got harder to make sense of it all, because I also knew that she would probably want to stay another night, and maybe a few more after that. She would probably snoop around while I was out of the house on business with the MC, trying to sell our valuable prize.
I grew excited again as I thought about letting her search for the diamond. It was a challenge for me and for my security team. It was a way to test my security to be sure she couldn’t locate the diamond. If anyone could find it, she probably could. She was just good enough to do it.
My sleepy mind decided I couldn’t let her go in the morning. I decided I had to keep her around to make sure she didn’t find anything. I decided to let her have her way for just a little while, because as she searched for the Sun Stone I would be able to take her any time I wanted her. I would be able to enjoy that tight little body again and again.
My drowsy thoughts eventually came down to a week. I would give her a week, I decided, to either find the diamond, get out, or fall for me. I laughed at the thought of winning her over to that point. That certainly would have been quite a feat, even for me.
It was on. . If she found the diamond, she would have to go, and I had to accept that it probably wouldn’t be pretty. If she gave up and left, that would have to be okay. If she fell for me, I had to be prepared to deal with the attachment.
I opened my eyes to check and make sure she was still in bed with me. My mind was working overtime thinking about her and preventing me from sleeping.
“You’re already in my head,” I whispered to her while she slept. “Either you’re really good or I’m slipping. Which is it, Sierra?”
She shifted in her sleep, but she didn’t wake up. I envied her. She had fallen asleep almost immediately. As comfortable as the bed was with her in it, she wasn’t comfortable in my head. I sat up and watched her long enough to be sure she wasn’t going anywhere.
Eventually, as if she had felt my eyes staring at her, she rolled over and placed a gentle hand on my cheek. She didn’t open her eyes as she lifted her mouth to mine and kissed me.
“Go to sleep, baby,” she said. “It’s okay.”
She stroked my cheek sleepily, barely awake. Her fingers lingered on my jawline as her body relaxed again and she drifted back off.
She tilted her face down and pulled her arms down in front of her. I felt her breath on my chest as she curled up against me. Once again, her presence was physically comforting, and I decided I needed to simply accept that if I wanted to sleep next to her.
Chapter Six
Sierra
I woke up between soft silk sheets with the weight of another body next to me in the bed. I rolled over to see Gunner sleeping with his back to me. I could see the muscles in his shoulders and upper back, toned and defined just under the skin. He was a living work of art, a sculpture or painting in the flesh. My fingertips longed to touch him and trace the texture of his back.
I lay in bed for a moment to listen to his breathing. It was still in that deep, rhythmic sleeping pattern. He was out, which gave me the perfect opportunity to snoop around his grand home, even though what I really wanted to do was stroke his flesh and wake him so he could take me again.
Who the hell was this man? I was seriously considering putting myself on the line for him and jeopardizing everything that had brought me to him in the first place. No, I had to keep it together. I was there to do a job, and it was time to get to work.
I slid out of his bed carefully, placing my feet on the soft carpet. I grabbed my dress and stood up to grab my purse from in front of the bed. I slipped through the double wooden doors of his room, completely naked as I stood in the hallway overlooking the room below. I opened my purse and pulled out a rolled up pair of panties and slid them on. Then, I pulled the dress down over my head, realizing I left my bra on the floor in his room, but I figured the dress would have to do.
It was my first time seeing his house in the light. The back wall, looking out onto the stone patio with its large in ground pool and guest house in the back, was almost all glass. The golden morning light flooded the room. I
saw the small, cozy living area he had arranged with three couches around a glass coffee table in front of a fire place with a flat screen TV mounted above it.
The TV was already on and turned to a news channel. I could hear the newscaster’s voice as it drifted through the house. It wasn’t up loud enough for me to hear what he was saying, but I could definitely hear the professional male tone. I figured it was simply a requirement of his house staff to have the TV on when he woke up in morning.
The wealthy did things like that. I didn’t have to understand why, especially since I had never settled down long enough to have my own house, TV, or staff. It just seemed over the top, but I wasn’t there to criticize or question his lifestyle. I needed to find the diamond, or at least figure out where he had it hidden.
Surely, he had an office somewhere in the house. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure he wasn’t standing in the doorway watching me, and tried to gauge how much time I thought I had before he woke up. I had to go with my instinct.
My instinct told me to hurry. Still, I froze. I didn’t know whether to start upstairs or down, so I took a leap of faith. I started down the stairs, and from there I crept across the marble floor to the hallway. I glanced into the kitchen and saw a couple of gentlemen drinking coffee and talking quietly over the counter. I slipped past the doorway quickly to avoid being seen. I needed to find his office.
I opened the first door I came to, and jackpot! I entered a dark, carpeted office. The walls were lined with bookshelves that held all kinds of things besides books. It seemed he probably only had enough books to fill one solid section of his shelves. The rest of the space was filled with picture frames, trophies, and other decorations and memorabilia. I wasn’t there to spy on him in the traditional sense, so I didn’t need to worry about all of that. What I needed to worry about was the laptop sitting right out in the open on the middle of his wooden desk.
I pulled his desk chair back and sat down carefully, wincing as the chair squeaked beneath my weight. I rolled it into place behind the desk as I opened his laptop. I knew I could have just found everything I was looking for, but I also knew that someone so concerned with privacy would probably have everything hiding behind a password.
No, there was no password. When I lifted the screen of the laptop, everything came right up. His email was even open for me already, but everything was encrypted. I couldn’t read the characters in front of me.
I opened another email and read it just fine. It was a joke someone had sent to his inbox. I passed it by and opened a few others. The only ones that seemed to be encrypted all came from the same sender. I opened their entire conversation and suspected it must contain the information I was hunting. Otherwise, why would it have been encrypted?
I forwarded the emails to myself quickly, hurrying so I wouldn’t get caught sitting behind his desk and fishing through his computer.
“There has to be something else,” I said aloud as I started opening desk drawers. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for—maybe a piece of paper with something written on it, maybe even the diamond itself—but I didn’t find anything. His drawers were empty. Everything had to be on his laptop.
I minimized his email window, bringing up his desktop screen. I searched over the icons on his desktop. I was looking for a file or a folder that would have had something in it to let me know what was in those emails.
I searched frantically, knowing that at any moment he was likely to pop around the corner and ask me what I was doing in there.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket to make sure I got the forwarded emails, and I was ready to just settle for that. I could send them off to Coyote and get her to decode the encryption if I couldn’t find anything else.
I put my hand on top of his laptop screen and started to close it. I wasn’t giving up. I wasn’t admitting defeat. I was simply covering my own ass. No excuse I could come up with would have explained why I was digging through his computer.
As I shut the screen, I stood up and started to walk back around his desk. That was when he walked in. I looked up and froze in my tracks, phone in hand.
I had been busted unless I could come up with a good excuse.
“Hey,” I said with a nervous laugh, trying to maintain my clueless composure.
“Good morning,” he said. He wore a white t-shirt that strained to cover his shoulders and chest, and a pair of plain white boxers that barely covered his packaged.
“Sorry, I was just looking for a phone charger,” I said, holding my phone up with its flashing notification light. “It’s almost dead, and I didn’t bring one with me. I figured you would have one in your office,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. I wasn’t sure if he was going to buy what I was telling him, but I also felt like I could count on him to play along. He definitely seemed like he wanted to keep me around a little longer for some more action.
“No, I don’t have one in here,” he said, “but I’m sure I can wrangle one up for you.” He walked in and closed the door behind him.
Whether he bought my story or not, he was definitely willing to play along, and I knew that I needed to play along as well with whatever demands he had for my body. As he approached me and took me in his arms, I felt my excitement growing damp in the clean panties I had just put on.
If I had been thinking clearly, I would have skipped the underwear, just as I had skipped the bra. Underclothes seemed to be rather unnecessary around Gunner. I was amazed that even through my obvious lie, he could still want me.
“I think you were looking for something else,” he told me as he put a hand behind my neck and pulled me to him for a kiss.
My excitement mingled with anxiety as he pushed me against the desk. He must have known I was there for the diamond. It couldn’t have been hard to figure out, but maybe knowing was part of this game we were playing.
He kissed me and pressed against me. He was already as hard as he had been the night before, and he was ready to go. I was ready to take him inside me again.
My mind reeled as I tried to understand how quickly things were moving. We had just met, and we had slept together almost immediately. Now he was kissing my neck and pulling my dress up again, against his desk this time. He’d just caught me snooping around and it wasn’t slowing him down one bit.
In fact, it seemed to excite him even more that I had something to hide, some ulterior motive for sleeping with him and luring him into bed with me in the first place. He seemed to get off on the challenge.
He was a beast, definitely unlike the other men I had worked before who just wanted a woman who could tame them. He wanted a woman he could tame for himself. He spun me around and bent me over his desk as he pulled my skirt up.
I was in too deep, and I was on the verge of panic, realizing I was on the verge of blowing the whole operation. My success depended on being able to keep it together, and if things kept going the way they were, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to for very long.
At the same time, I wasn’t about to try to stop what was happening. I wanted him as much as he wanted me. It was like he was made for me. Our bodies complimented each other sexually, and he was the first partner I had who had challenged me in bed the way I wanted to be challenged. He was challenging me again by abruptly throwing me over his desk.
He pushed my skirt up over my ass to reveal my fresh underwear to him. He grabbed my cheeks and pulled me against him. I could feel his erection reaching for me through his shorts.
I closed my eyes and grabbed the other edge of the desk. I regretted that this was for work, because that meant it would be over once I nabbed the diamond and took it from him. But if thing kept going like this, I might have abandoned my quest for it. He was well-off. He could support my lifestyle, and I could work for him.
If he kept triggering my ecstasy, I would do anything he wanted. He thrilled me more than I had ever been thrilled before, and I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t resist. If I had wanted to, I coul
d have taken control over the situation and used my denial of sex to make him want me that much more, but I wanted him too much to do that.
“I know what you really want,” he growled behind me.
“Yeah, that’s what they all say. You think you can do any better?” I taunted him.
He pulled my panties aside with one hand and grabbed my hair with the other. It was on, and I was about to get exactly what I wanted from him.
Chapter Seven
Gunner
I caught her red handed. She was stepping around my desk when I found her in my office. I was pretty sure she had just been snooping around on my laptop and had closed it just before I entered the room. She fed me some weak little story about looking for a phone charger and held her phone up, claiming the battery was low.
I knew better, but the fact that she was bold enough to lie to my face made me so hard I couldn’t resist her.