by April Hunt
“No, because you’re refusing to come out like some kind of prima donna. I’m giving you fair warning, Navy. If you don’t come out. I’m coming in.”
“I have the door locked.”
“And you think that’s going to stop me?” She let out an evil chuckle. “Oh, love, and here I thought we were getting to know each other so well. I’ll make you a deal…You let me see how the leather pants look, and I’ll show you my outfit.”
“I saw what you’re wearing.”
“You saw what I was wearing before you stepped into that little cubicle. But while you’ve been throwing a tantrum, I’ve since changed. It’s a little snugger, a lot shorter, and ridiculously more…freeing…than the other outfit. This one’s a keeper.”
Fucking-A. It was like she sensed his weakness. His hand barely touched the latch when she log-rolled beneath the door and stood, shrinking both the space in the room and in his leather pants. At least his mind shifted off the high likelihood of chafing his nuts.
Charlie’s knee-high boots covered more skin than the rest of her outfit combined. Her top, more glorified bikini top than leather halter, revealed her twinkling navel piercing, and her short shorts barely covered the bottom curve of her ass.
Vince’s mouth dried like the fucking Afghan desert. “That’s what you’re wearing?”
She gave her outfit a once-over, turning to look at her posterior in the mirror. “What? It’s surprisingly comfortable—a lot more than that cat-suit thing I tried on before.”
“Well, yeah. Because there’s not much fabric to confine you. You can’t wear that if I’m not allowed to bring my piece into the club,” Vince stated adamantly.
She grinned wickedly. “They had a whip out there for sale. I bet you could bring it in and no one would question it. Or maybe I’ll use it to complete my look…you know, accessorize.”
At his pain-filled groan, Charlie chuckled and instructed him to spin with a twirl of her finger. “Let’s see the goods. Strut.”
“The goods are dying from asphyxiation,” he grumbled, but did it.
Her gaze locked on him in an open ogle, and the attention made him that much harder. By the time he faced her again, he could’ve plowed a railroad spike into the ground with his dick. “I say we skip all this shit and wear jeans and tees.”
Charlie lowered her voice. “Anyplace that has a ten-thousand-dollar cover charge expects more than the everyday casual.”
He hated that she was right.
“We should change back until we’re ready to hit the club. Do you need my help getting out of those pants? I left my butter in my other corset, but I could probably come up with something else,” Charlie teased.
Invisible tension rose, something that was happening more and more frequently. And unlike before, when he could distract himself with a hard workout, ignoring his body’s reaction to her nearness was becoming damn near impossible. What was worse—he didn’t even try hard anymore.
At his silence, Charlie laughed and turned to leave, but the snug confines brushed her ass against his hard-on. Vince hissed, clamping his hands on her hips. Hell, he didn’t know if it was to prevent her escape or to pull her closer.
A few layers less and they would’ve been in prime position for him to take her from behind, something Charlie must’ve realized too because she froze.
Her suddenly erratic breathing matched his own and, for the longest time, neither of them moved. Hell, if he moved, he’d probably come inside these damn pants, and wouldn’t that be a bitch to clean the fuck up?
“We already had our stress relief, Navy,” she reminded him. “One and done, remember?”
Meaning they shouldn’t be about to rip each other’s clothes off. His head got it—at least the one on his shoulders. His other one? Not so damn much.
Vince dropped his mouth to her shoulder, needing to taste her skin as much as he needed his next breath. By the time he reached her ear, she was trembling in his hands. “Funny thing about stress…it comes and goes, doesn’t do the considerate thing and stay the hell away.”
“I have no intention of becoming that person. I refuse to be that person,” she stated, softly but firmly.
“What person would that be?”
“The one who, because she’s a woman and sleeps with a man, people think slept her way into her job…or that she shouldn’t be taken seriously.”
Vince manually turned her to face him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how hard I’ve worked to get here, and not wanting to ruin it in the name of tension release. There’s no way in hell I’m going down as the office tramp.”
“You did not just fucking say that.” He gripped her arms, knowing she could’ve broken free at any time, and demanded her attention—and then forgot what he was about to say.
The woman staring at him through Charlie’s eyes wasn’t the woman who loved busting his balls every day at headquarters. This one looked uncertain. Out of her element.
It took Vince a moment to get his head and his mouth online and working together. “First,” he said, barely keeping his voice to a faint whisper, “no one’s ever questioned your right to be here. You worked damn hard for the spot, and it’s yours. Secondly…tramp? For having a fucking life?”
“People objectify women a lot differently than they do men. It’s not like I condone it. It’s just how it is.”
“Well, fuck that, because you know everyone back home wouldn’t think that of you…at least, no one who mattered, and anyone who would can fuck the hell off.”
She smiled, but the humor didn’t reach her eyes. “Be careful, or you may give me the impression you actually like me.”
“I do like you…too goddamned much. It was never a matter of liking you.”
It was how much she affected him—and being unsure if he was willing to pay the price for it.
Charlie cocked up an eyebrow and took a small, hesitant step back toward the changing room door. “I guess that’s a good thing, considering we’re about to spend our night at a sex club.”
A sex club. With Charlie—the one person on this fucking earth his dick shouldn’t get within ten feet of.
Fate had a wicked sense of humor.
Chapter Thirteen
In between their shopping trip and now, Charlie had spent most of her time trying to dig through the files she’d found on Arturo’s computer. When that had yielded a jack ton of nothing, she’d changed her strategy to the first two military-linked abductions and their finances and, hours later and from the cab of their rental, she was finally making headway.
“Anything?” Vince kept half his attention on the back of the club.
They were splitting their time, staking out Sinful Delights and trying to find more leads. “Hold on a sec.”
Charlie pulled up the bank accounts and credit card statements for each of the girls and set them side by side, until her entire computer screen was one big sheet of deposits and withdrawals.
A loud crunch broke the looming silence. Charlie ignored it, until it happened again, this time hellishly closer to her ear. “Must you do that?”
“What? Eat?” He pulled another potato chip from the bag in his lap and deliberately chomped—loudly. “Yes, I must. I’m fucking starving. You had the chance to pick the poison and didn’t. Now you have to deal with it, sweetheart.”
“SEALs are supposed to treat their bodies like temples, not garbage disposals, love.”
“My body’s doing just fine.” He purposefully flexed his arms.
Even in the cab’s dark interior there was enough light for her to catch the fluid movement of his muscles before focusing back on her laptop. Sweet mercy, the man made her hormones go ape-crazy even while he binged sour-cream-and-yak-flavored chips.
“Why the hell are you so goddamned twitchy tonight anyway?” Vince asked.
“Other than the fact that I don’t like puzzles I can’t figure out? I can tell I’m close, and it’s driving me blo
ody crazy.”
Vince tossed the chips into the back seat. Maybe she shouldn’t have poked him about the chips, because now he was focused on her instead of clogging his arteries. “Although I’m sure that’s the case most of the time, there’s more to it than that. You’ve been a little off since we talked to Sarah this morning.”
Did she dare?
Did she tell him? All of it—or just enough?
If she diarrhea’d everything out into the open, she chanced Vince pulling the plug on going to Sinful Delights tonight. Delaying it increased the probability that the traffickers would make another grab and add one more victim to the tally.
“I’ve been here before,” Charlie finally admitted.
Vince, in mid-swallow, choked on his water. “Excuse me?”
Charlie rolled her eyes. “Not since it’s been a sex club. Get your mind out of the gutter. It used to be an underground club called Illusions. I hung out there. A lot.”
“Teenage English living up the nightlife, huh?” He peered over her shoulder at the computer screen. “What are you looking for now?”
“This.” Charlie brought up the map of Ocean Drive’s popular clubs and pointed to the screen. “As far as we knew until now, each of the three last abducted girls had been at different clubs, right? The pair of friends, from Pink. The second, from Poison Ivy. And even though Sarah said she and Tiffany Jansen started the night at Hot Lips, they ended at Sinful Delights.”
“Clubs all owned by your uncle—except Delights. At least, as far as we know.”
“Let’s think about this realistically. Arturo practically has the monopoly on nightlife here in Miami Beach. No overprivileged, twenty-something young woman is going to come to Ocean Drive and not go to one of his clubs. Chances that the missing girls were at one is pretty damn high.”
“So we find the metaphorical smoking gun that links all three.”
“We may have already found it.” Charlie nodded toward the screen. “Sarah said the regular cover charge for Sinful Delights was ten grand, right? Well, look at Ann Rittle and Genie Estevez.” Charlie blew up the bank statements from the first two military-related girls. “From Ann’s savings, ten grand gets withdrawn four days before she’s reported missing by her uncle, and when you compare it to Genie’s, it’s the same ten grand, but it’s a tally of a savings withdrawal and credit charge. I don’t believe in coincidences that blaringly bright.”
“If Genie charged part of the fee, wouldn’t it come up on some kind of report?”
“Wow. Smart and buff,” Charlie teased, bringing the next coincidence to her screen. “Sin Enterprises.”
Vince’s brow lifted. “Well, can’t get much clearer than that, huh? So what the hell is Sin Enterprises, and who the hell owns it?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s a shell company and, so far, I can’t tell who owns it.”
“And what the fuck does that mean?”
“It means if the real owner of the ‘company’ has a halfway decent computer geek on their payroll, it can be near impossible to find out who owns a shell company, or where the money’s being directed. It makes laundering money ridiculously—and scarily—easy.”
“Does your uncle have that kind of person?”
Charlie grimaced, hating what she was about to admit. “I was my uncle’s person until I refused to do his dirty work anymore.”
She waited for a judgmental comment, for the additional questions, but he surprised her by moving onward. “So maybe he found someone else.”
Charlie contemplated it a moment. “Always possible, I suppose. But then I think about his sham security system at the house, and how he hasn’t even changed the password to his computer. It’s not likely. Anyone with a lick of computer sense would’ve made those adjustments the first chance they got. And then there’s the added factor that Arturo doesn’t trust easily.”
“Will you be able to figure out the owner of the shell company?”
“Eventually. But we need to be prepared that Arturo may not be the one behind it all. I’m afraid if we go looking for bread crumbs that lead specifically to his doorstep, we may miss the real trail.”
Vince nodded. “You’re right.”
Charlie did a double take. “I’m sorry, what was that?”
“What was what?” Vince cocked his head, looking genuinely confused.
“You just agreed with me.”
“Because you’re right. Narrowing our focus decreases our odds of finding the person responsible. Casting a wider net takes longer, but it has a higher success rate. It’s basic search-and-rescue tactics.” He glanced up at the nondescript warehouse structure and watched as a leather-clad couple approached the back door. “Fuck. We’re really going to have to go in there, aren’t we?”
Charlie followed his gaze and chuckled. “Afraid so, stud. And if we can link more abductions with the same MOs, I see return trips in our future. And since we only have two free passes, that’s going to mean becoming official members. I wonder if that ten grand is for a person, or for a couple.”
With a groan, Vince scrubbed his hand over his face. “Stone’s going to shit a litter of kittens when he sees the bill for all this crap.”
Charlie signed off on her computer and stuck it in the back compartment. “Then I guess it’s a good thing we’re out of state.”
* * *
Vince’s specialty on his SEAL team had been blowing shit up—a little putty, a timer, and you sat back and watched the show. The closer they got to Sinful Delights, the clearer it became that this time around, he was the show—a freak one, dressed up in matching leather pants and vest.
Wrapping his arm around Charlie’s waist, he anchored her close to his side. “You seriously think people are going to be having sex in there?”
Charlie’s wicked smirk and eyebrow lift alerted him to the coming smart-ass comment. “No. I think they’re playing cards.”
“You’re making fun of me now?”
“Making fun of you would be saying that they’re playing Old Maid and the first loser takes a flog to the arse. Maybe that would be the winner. I don’t know, with this being my first sex club appearance, all the particulars are still a little fuzzy.”
As she pressed her lips together and fought not to laugh, his gaze shot down to her mouth. “Now you’re making fun of me.”
“Why yes. Yes, I am.”
Vince reflexively slid his hand over the large cherry blossom tattoo her half-top left partially exposed. “We need to get one thing straight before we go walking into that club. You stay within arm’s reach of me at all times. Glued to my fucking side, you got it? There’s no way in hell we’re chancing whoever’s behind the abductions setting his sights on you, and in that getup, that chance is pretty fucking high.”
Her brown eyes narrowed on him.
“Throw your daggers somewhere else. I know you can handle yourself. But we don’t know who we’re dealing with yet. It could one or two sick fucks, or an entire organization. I don’t want to figure it out the hard way.”
She looked reluctantly appeased by his explanation. “Fine. You’ll have a Charlie-sized growth on your hip.”
“Thank you. And besides,” Vince added, “if any perv touches you, I’m going to be forced to touch them. Then cops will be called. Arrests will be made, and Stone will be up both our asses for having to bail me out of jail.”
“Well, there goes my idea of jumping on the first man with nipple chains.” Charlie feigned disappointment. A moment before her hand clamped on his arm in excitement, her brown eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief. “We should get you some for when we come back! You can take out those barbells and put in some hoops. Add a clip and a chain, and voilà! A dog leash for your nips! I can lead you around the club like you’re my hairless poodle!”
“I’m not leashing my nipples together.” Vince confined his laugh to snort. “And I’m no fucking poodle.”
Her low chuckle sent a warm tingle to his dick. “Then you leave me with n
o choice but to get my bondage thrills elsewhere, Navy.”
He gently pulled her to a stop, suddenly not caring if she was joking or not. “Let’s get one thing clear right now. If you want to be hog-tied and blindfolded, you come the fuck to me. No way in hell am I going to stand by and let some twisted bastard do it—and that goes for inside this fucking club and out of it. Got it?”
Charlie’s eyes widened in shock—and heat? Hell, his offer took him by surprise, but not as much as realizing he fucking meant it. The idea of her putting that kind of trust into someone who wasn’t him conjured a flash of anger that took him a few minutes to get over. It took another to realize that it was because he’d never had enough emotional investment to want to slug some unknown, faceless man—not until Charlie had flipped things all the fuck around. Realizing just how much she’d come to affect his daily life was probably something he should’ve refrained from realizing until after they’d made their sex club drop-in.
Charlie laid her hand flat against his abdomen and, shirt or not, her touch seeped straight to his core. “Got it. But just so you know, I’m not into the whole blindfold thing, and definitely not hog-tying. This probably doesn’t come as much of a shock, but I’m not a particularly trusting person. No way would I put myself in that kind of position with just anyone.”
“And you shouldn’t…but you trust me.”
She studied him, her face blank way too long. Finally, she gifted him a faint nod. “You’re right. I do.”
Vince’s chest expanded, finally taking the breath he’d been holding. “Let’s get this over with.”
He threaded his fingers through hers and led them to the nondescript metal door of the large warehouse structure. No neon lights. No blaring advertisements. From the outside, it looked like a run-down, forgotten, and abandoned building.
“Here it goes.” Vince knocked.
A narrow slat slid open, the eyes behind it giving them a thorough once-over that turned into a second. Charlie slipped their black cards from beneath her top and flashed them, along with a charming smile. “We’re here for a trial run—told this was the place to let loose and have some fun.”