by April Hunt
The peek-a-boo window snapped closed and, a moment later, the door opened. The barest hint of music wafted toward them as the bulky man ushered them into a cramped foyer. “Let me see the cards.”
Charlie handed them over, her smile never wavering.
“Your sponsor?”
“Sarah. She said we could use the cards to see if the place fits our needs before we decide to put in our membership papers. These places have been either hit or miss with us.”
Mountain Man gave them another cursory look before nodding. “Sinful Delights will be a hit. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of any complaints, and I’ve been here since we opened. You’re first-timers, correct?”
“Virgins.” Charlie smiled, saddling up to Vince. “At least in some ways.”
The man didn’t even bat an eye. “So here’s the deal; your free passes don’t allow you a free pass from house rules. You don’t follow them, you’re out. Rules are: “No” means fuck the hell off. You don’t pressure. You don’t stalk. No video or audio recordings. If we find them, they’re dust and you’ll be blackballed from every fantasy club coast-to-coast. Front room’s for observation and the crowd. If you go in the back, prepare to be approached.” He gave Charlie an approving scan. “And you, hon, will get approached.” He slid a look to Vince. “If you’re not into sharing—”
“I’m not,” Vince growled.
The bouncer nodded and produced a set of red plastic bands. “Anyone wearing green bands is up for anything, or at least is willing to be propositioned. Red means don’t bother asking. If a green band approaches you looking for some fun, flash your band and they move on. If they don’t, find the nearest employee, and we’ll take care of it.”
The bouncer snapped on their bands and pulled out a small gold key. “And lastly, for your locker.”
“Locker?” Vince frowned, reluctantly taking the key. “What is this, an amusement park?”
“No cell phones beyond this point. You put them in the locker and you get them back when you’re done for the night. Now last, I need to look at your driver’s licenses.”
“Surprised you don’t have a goddamned metal detector,” Vince grumbled, handing over their phones and IDs.
“We do. It’s embedded in the frame of the front door. You were already cleared.” Once satisfied they weren’t in possession of any recording devices, the bouncer jotted something on a list and handed back their identification. When he opened the inner door, he finally smiled. “Have fun…and welcome to Sinful Delights.”
Six deployments, not counting special assignments, and Vince thought he’d seen it all. Boy, was he fucking wrong. He enjoyed a bit of kink as much as the next red-blooded male, but these people took the kink and slipped it into a damn knot a few dozen times over.
The deeper into the club they went, the more imaginative people became. Thick, heavy curtains cordoned off the more “active” part of the club, a setup that made him give thanks.
Half-naked, horny people surrounded them, yet there wasn’t a single twitch in his pants. But one glance at the woman at his side and little Vince practically saluted the flag. He touched her arm and guided her to their right, where a large group of people huddled around a small, circular stage.
On it, a man, wearing nothing but black leather pants, circled around a naked woman. In this place, that alone wasn’t cause for an eyebrow-raise, but the long, silky rope he weaved around her body in an intricate latticework of webbing, was.
“Wow,” Charlie whispered. “That’s…I don’t know if I have the right word for that.”
“Shibari,” he answered reflexively.
Charlie’s eyes widened before her mouth slid into a suggestive grin. “And you know this how?”
He shrugged. “I read—and no, not porn. It’s a form of ancient Japanese art. It can look incredible when done right, or painful if done by someone who hasn’t studied it their whole life.”
Charlie’s head swiveled back to the show, and he knew how she felt. The guy on stage, whoever he was, had definitely learned from someone skilled.
Vince scanned the room, looking for something—anything—out of the norm when his gaze stopped and rested on a lithe brunette. Her hair was twisted into an intricate braid, keeping it off her face, but there was no denying who it was.
Brushing his hand down Charlie’s arm, Vince gently guided her attention toward the other side of the room. “Two-o’clock. Brunette in black leather. You’ll know her when you see her.”
She surveyed the room and came to an abrupt stop. “What the bloody hell is Tina doing here?”
“Looks like your cousin isn’t as uptight as you’d like to believe, sweetheart.” Judging by the waving arms and pissed-off body language, Tina Franconi’s conversation with the tall man in front of her wasn’t a happy one. “I feel a little sorry for the poor fuck she’s castrating right now. I’m starting to see a family resemblance.”
Charlie nearly neutered him with her glare. “I’m nothing like Tina. You couldn’t have insulted me more if you said I smell like I bathe in garbage.”
Across the room, Tina stormed away, leaving the poor fuck to watch her make a dramatic exit toward the hallway in the far back corner of the club.
“Well, isn’t that interesting.” This time, Charlie aimed Vince’s attention at the man Tina had left behind.
Brock-fucking-Torres.
The DHS agent studied Tina’s departure a beat longer before turning and stalking away in the opposite direction. Charlie’s gaze bobbed back and forth.
“I know what you’re thinking, and no. No way in hell, English. Like glue, remember?” Vince growled, reading her mind.
“It’s going to have to be stretchy glue, because we need to follow them and we can’t do it attached at the hip. There’s no way the two of them being here is a coincidence, and even if it was, they can’t stand each other.”
“Well, they didn’t exactly look friendly. Maybe they didn’t know the other was a member.” At Charlie’s continued glare, Vince cursed, knowing she was right. “Goddamn it, fine. I’ll take Torres, but if someone even threatens to get in your way, you lay them out. You hear me? You don’t question. You don’t warn.”
“You worry too much, Mum.”
“Damn straight I do.” Vince caught her hand before she stepped away. “We’re only here to watch tonight. If we draw too much attention to ourselves, we’re never going to find out what’s going on here.”
“I’m always the picture of low-key.”
Gripping the back of her neck, Vince pulled her into an automatic kiss, and despite being given no warning, Charlie not only accepted it, but returned it with a vengeance. Her tongue touched his, instantly disintegrating any will to stop.
It was a husky, “Can I get in on the action?” spoken from a leering man two feet away, that brought Vince back.
“Fuck off.” Vince flashed his red band, and like the bouncer said, the guy nodded and walked away.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Charlie scolded him playfully. “We’re here to make friends.”
“You don’t need any other friends except me.” Something in his tone must’ve alerted Charlie to his seriousness because she gave him a probing look. “Now’s not the time to hash it out, English. You follow Tina and be careful. We’ll meet up at the bar.”
Chapter Fourteen
With her cousin in her sights—and Vince out of it—Charlie tried dragging her mind off Vince’s lips and onto the job. Hell, onto reality. Before this assignment, his broad chest and their verbal sparring matches had been an entertaining hobby.
Ogle. Verbal assault. Retreat. Repeat.
It had become their thing. At no point in time had she felt like she was putting her goal of becoming an Alpha field operative at risk. But working together side by side, seeing more of the man behind the gun?
When she least expected, snippets of what life could be like being with a man like Vince snuck their way into her subconscious. She didn’t know what
to do with those kinds of thoughts. It unnerved her, more than leaving Miami twelve years ago with nothing but a few changes of clothes and her laptop.
That meant she needed to drift into survival mode: focus harder on the assignment.
Less time sucking face with her partner and dwelling on the fine art of relationship statuses meant bringing home the abducted women.
“Head on straight, Sparks,” Charlie murmured to herself as she followed Tina through the club.
Her cousin stopped to chat every few feet, a regular social butterfly among a crowd of salivating horny wolves. After ten minutes, the crowd thickened, and following at a distance became near impossible.
“Want to find an empty space, sweetheart?” A pair of wandering hands slid over Charlie’s ass. When she didn’t answer, the deep voice came again. “Or we could go have some fun in the back. I have a friend or two who would fucking kill for a taste of you.”
Charlie barely spared him a glance and held up her red band. “Sorry. I’m not the to-be-shared type.”
“I don’t see him here. It’s not like he’d know.”
Charlie turned toward the stranger, one arse-grope away from being impolite. His heavily oiled dark hair and overabundant use of self-tanner prevented him from being labeled gorgeous. Tall and well built, a gym membership no doubt held a special place in his wallet.
And there wasn’t a speck of sexual interest coming from her girl bits.
Forcing a disarming smile, she kept track of Tina in her periphery, watching as she paused to speak to one of the security staff and disappeared down a long corridor. “Like I said, I’m a taken girl, and my man isn’t one to share.”
He trailed his hand over her bare arm. “Maybe he’s afraid you’ll find something better.”
“Sorry, love, but there is no better.” She let out an internal sigh when she realized it was the truth.
No big scenes, she reminded herself, which meant breaking the guy’s fingers was a no-no.
His gaze flickered from her cleavage to over her shoulder, and as suddenly as he’d appeared, he stepped back. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. You and your man have a good time.”
“Was it something I said?” Amused, Charlie watched the guy disappear like someone had set his pants on fire. “Huh. Maybe I do smell like garbage.”
“No, you smell fucking edible.” Vince’s chest warmed her back, his arms sliding around her waist. “I leave you alone for a few minutes, and you’re already trying to replace me.”
“As if anyone could take your place.” Charlie turned into his hold. To everyone around them, it looked as if they were hugging affectionately. “You need to teach me how to perfect your Fuck-Off face. I want to scare people off as easily as you do.”
“Sweetheart, you scare people just the same,” Vince joked dryly. “Brock gave me the slip. I searched the club, and he’s nowhere to be found.”
“And now so is Tina.” She nodded toward the corridor and the guard dog standing in front of the entryway.
“Wonder what Daddy Arturo would think about his little girl spending a night out at a place like this.”
“I think she spends more than a night here. It was like she knew everyone, from the clients to the staff, and stopped to talk to all of them. I’ve seen her do it a million times at Arturo’s parties—playing hostess.”
“Hostess at a sex club. Wouldn’t that be an interesting talking point on a resume.”
Charlie snorted. “Like she needs a resume. Arturo will get her anything—including any job—that she wants. I hate to say it, but we’re not going to get anything else tonight. And I really hate to say this, but we need to contact Sarah again and find out how we put our application in for membership. And then I need to start looking into the other missing girls, see if any of them may have a link to this place.”
“You’ve got something else on your mind,” Vince guessed accurately. His fingers started playing with the bare patch of skin at the small of her back.
She nodded, grim, as she thought about her next words. “That Tina and Brock being here is way too…coincidental.”
“Yeah, coincidences give me a rash.” Vince grimaced, shifting his balls in the leather pants. “Or maybe it’s these fucking pants. Either way, you’re right. We should draw straws to see who has to prep Stone about the bill.”
“Aw, Navy.” Charlie gave his chest an affectionate rub. “We don’t have to do that. That honor is all yours. I’ll even let you do it when we get back to the room because, after seeing all these…Sinful Delights, I feel like I need a shower.”
* * *
Hot water. Cold. Tepid. All the varying degrees in between. Since squirreling herself away in the hotel shower, Charlie had tried each and every one and ended up with the same result: prune-y skin, and not a damn clue as what to do next.
The second she and Vince had hit their room, she’d dialed up Logan. In a combined effort searching all reported disappearances in the Miami area, she quickly realized that unless someone broke the speak-to-no-one mantra, the chance of linking Sinful Delights definitively to more than Tif Jansen’s disappearance was slim to nil.
Charlie tipped her head back against the shower tile and closed her eyes. In a rare moment of klutziness, her foot slipped, and her balance evaporated. Knocked off its perch, the corner tray stand dropped onto her foot.
“Bloody freaking hell,” Charlie shouted through the pain. Standing one-footed like a flamingo, she bent over to inspect her throbbing toe and, on the way down, her arse smacked against the glass door.
The damn thing sounded like an incoming train as it rattled itself open, but it was nothing compared to the bursting bathroom door. It flung open, smacking against the sink and showcasing a very tall, very armed, and very foreboding Vince.
Butt naked and shocked to be staring Vince dead in the eye, Charlie stood frozen. Neither of them moved. Or blinked. Or hell, even breathed. After what felt like an eternity, Vince’s attention dropped to her breasts, snapping Charlie from her statue-like position.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” She slammed the sliding shower door closed, making it shake again.
“I heard the crash…” Vince sounded stunned. “And I thought—”
“You thought what? That someone broke into the suite without you noticing and then strutted straight into the bathroom?” She scrubbed enough steam from the door and glared through the clear spot. He’d yet to drop his gun from his at-the-ready position.
“I don’t know what the hell I thought,” Vince muttered. He scrubbed his palm over his face.
Five excruciatingly long seconds passed and he still didn’t leave. “Why aren’t you going, Navy?”
“Fuck if I know,” he murmured.
Vince slowly slid the door open, giving her time to stop him if that’s what she wanted. She didn’t. Nothing stood between them, certainly not her clothes. It was the two of them and an insane number of bad ideas flying through her mind.
Maybe their wall interlude hadn’t been enough to burn this heat out. Maybe they needed more, just one time to put them both out of their misery. Then they’d go on with their lives as if nothing ever happened—except she’d never heard of that working. Ask Penny. Or Elle.
Charlie took a deep breath, warding off the worst of her sudden nerves. Heat radiated from every inch of Vince’s body, but his eyes? His lustful gaze lit her body up like the stroke of a match and she knew fighting it wouldn’t do either of them any good.
Charlie stepped deeper into the shower, making room. “What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?”
Vince’s chest expanded as he took a deep breath. Once. Twice. He grabbed the back of his shirt and tugged it over his head in a way that only men made look easy. Lord have mercy. She’d seen him shirtless countless times…in the gym, on an operation. Sometimes she wondered if the guys on the team even owned clothes, they walked around headquarters half-naked so often, but only Vince made her throat dry.
&nb
sp; The elaborate ink of his tattoos seamlessly moved with his muscular arms as if they’d always been there, one image blended into another. And then there were those small rod piercings through each nipple.
Vince reached for the buttons on his pants, but he didn’t rush. He took his time undoing them one at a time, and when the last one popped through the hole, he dropped his pants and underwear to the ground. Strike that—he wasn’t wearing underwear.
“Bloody hell.” Charlie braced her back against the wall.
“Like what you see?” Unlike his decorated top half, Vince remained untouched and natural from the waist, down. And huge. And hard.
He crowded into the shower, and then he didn’t move. He didn’t lean closer, or touch her. His gaze traced up the length of her body, and by the time he reached her breasts, she felt like she’d already been devoured six times over.
Near panting, Charlie watched him slowly reach for her breasts. Their weight rested in his palms before he dropped his mouth to one tight bud, giving it a hard suck and then pulling back enough to roll the tip between his lips.
Charlie clasped the back of his shaven head. “Sweet Lord.”
Vince slowly slid his mouth up her neck, her jaw. An inch away from her lips, he paused, meeting her gaze. “Are you sure about this? Because I’m telling you right now, I don’t do half-ass when it comes to women in my bed. And I’m not so sure I can do soft and gentle either.”
“Good. Because I didn’t ask for either of those things.” Charlie ran her tongue over the seam of his lips. “Less talk, more action.”
Vince’s gaze remained lasered to her as he flicked her nipple with the tip of his tongue. Yeah, she’d asked for this, but it was almost too much. Too much attention. Too much pleasure. Vince leaned his body against hers, anchoring her to the wall as he continued to torment her in the best way possible.
Charlie’s eyes drifted closed and she focused on breathing. In and out. Slow and deep.
“Eyes on me, English,” Vince demanded softly.