Seduction Squad: Captured

by Amanda Stewart

  I studied his face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a more handsome man, with an edge of intensity to his looks that saved him from mere beauty and tipped him over into something fiercer and rougher. What a pity we hadn’t met under different circumstances.

  The problem was, of course, that I couldn’t give Jake the information he wanted. I could lie to him, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t work. He wasn’t going to blithely accept what I told him without checking it out. If I lied, Jake would kill me. If I told him the truth, Ricky would kill me. And Ricky could do much worse things to me than kill me. I suspected I was disposable to Jake anyway. He was likely to be instructed to get rid of me once he had everything he needed.

  No, I had to find a way out of this that didn’t involve parting with any information about Ricky. I needed to find a way out that relied on my best assets. The ones I use every day. I was between a rock and a hard place. And, from what I’d glimpsed in the bathroom, in Jake’s case, it was a very hard place.

  “Can I lie down, even though I can’t go to sleep?” I eyed the bed longingly. Beds are my place of business. I’m at my best there.

  Jake shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”

  I lay on my side, propped on one elbow, looking up at Jake as he leaned against the wall. “What do you call that thing you do with your hair? A dread bun?”

  His lips quirked in amusement. I experienced a strong desire to feel those lips against mine. “I’ve never thought about it.”

  “Can I touch it?” My own mouth curved into a smile at the unintentional double meaning. “Your hair, I mean.”

  “No, Inge, you can’t. I know what you’re trying to do.”

  I opened my eyes very wide. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Spare me the seduction crap.”

  I laughed up at him. “What did they tell you about me to make you so scared?”

  I sensed he was fighting an internal battle. I knew he wanted me. Men do. It’s how I rose to the top of my profession. It’s also why I hold some of the world’s most delicate secrets in the palm of my hand...and other, more intimate parts of my body. It was why I was so surprised this was all about a slime ball, drug-dealing villain like Ricky Villacruz and not an international politician or a senior military commander.

  “They told me you’d attempt to fuck your way out of this.”

  “And you’re not tempted to let me try?”

  “No.” Those sad eyes stayed on mine, but something shifted in their sherry-brown depths. Something dark and aching.

  “You’re a liar, Jake.” I kept my voice soft and persuasive. “You are so fucking tempted I can smell it.”

  “Shut up, Inge.”

  I collapsed onto my back, covering my eyes with my forearm. The mattress shifted with Jake’s weight as he knelt on it to pull my arm aside. I smiled up at him. “No sleeping. No sex. What can we do?”

  “Tell me about the Seduction Squad.”

  I considered this. Could I do that without giving too much away? I patted the mattress next to me and saw Jake’s eyes darken again. Saw him grappling with his demons. I knew it wasn’t really me he was afraid of. It was himself. If I pushed him too hard, would I find out why? Did I have any choice? From the minute he grabbed me on those hotel steps, I was a dead woman. May as well die fighting—or fucking—as with a hood over my head waiting for a bullet in a silent room.

  After a minute or two of deliberating, Jake joined me, lying on his side and maintaining a prim but small gap between us. I tried not to let my relief show. Seducing a man across a distance of several feet was tough, even for someone with my talents.

  “You found me. You said you already know all about the Squad. Who told you about us?”

  “I know a little from my commander, but I want to hear it from you.”

  Commander? There was a formality about the way he said the title that interested me, particularly as he clearly wasn’t military. Paramilitary? That could be even more dangerous than a formal group. Whatever organization Jake was working for, this commander had a strong hold over him.

  “We screw famous men for information.” That wasn’t all we did, but it was all I was prepared to divulge. If Jake was telling the truth when he said he knew the rest, he was treading on dangerous ground. We don’t share our secrets.

  We were the Seduction Squad, but the name was misleading. Yes, we were the modern-day equivalent of Mata Hari, the infamous spy who used her body to entice powerful men to part with secrets. The Squad itself was based on the sixteenth-century team known as the Escuadrón Volante, or Flying Squadron. Working on the orders of the French Queen, Catherine de’ Medici, they were a hand-picked team of beautiful courtesans who had ensnared the most influential men in the land.

  Run as a private company, governments, businesses, even wealthy individuals, paid the Signora millions for our services. But our squad was about more than sex. Before we took our places as fully-fledged members our training was long and intense. At the end of it, there was nothing we didn’t know and couldn’t do. The most high-class prostitute would blink in amazement at our repertoire...and so would the most highly paid assassin.

  “Sometimes what they tell us is political, sometimes it’s professional. We get paid a lot to do it. What more can I tell you?” I kept my voice low, intimate. The tones of the bedroom.

  “How you came to be part of it.”

  I turned on my side, mirroring his body language, one knee pointing toward him. The dark intensity of his gaze pinned me in place. “The easy answer to that is money. But I could probably earn as much, and be in a lot less danger, if I just turned tricks.”

  “So why don’t you?” His voice had become an unconscious echo of mine. A mellow murmur. I decided Jake wasn’t used to women. Was that due to restraint or shyness? I wondered if it was part of the reason he’d been chosen for this job. Someone had decided that aloofness would work in his favor, would mean he could maintain a disciplined distance from me. The shadowy person who was calling the shots might be right. Either that, or when that wall of frigidity broke, it would do it with cataclysmic force.

  “I didn’t start out as a whore.” Why did that matter all of a sudden? I laughed. It didn’t matter. To all intents and purposes, I was a whore. A deadly one. “Believe it or not, I was an undercover cop posing as a hooker when I was recruited to the Squad.”

  Jake blinked. “You’re kidding me.”

  “That was what I said when they approached me.” I took advantage of his surprise and moved closer.

  “How did they recruit you?”

  “The Signora, the woman in charge of the Squad, picked me up in a bar one day, asked me if I was interested in getting off the streets and earning more money. The rest is history.”

  He shook his head. “I still don’t get how you made the move from cop to—” he gestured to my body “—what you do now.”

  I smiled. Our faces were inches apart. “Would you believe me if I said I’m good at my job...and I like what I do? I enjoy exploring a new man’s body. Sex with a stranger is exciting. Finding out what makes him hard, what he feels like all the way inside me that first time, what his balls taste like...”

  Muttering a curse, he closed the remaining space between us. Fisting a hand in my hair, he placed his knee across my body. His lips were deliciously warm and slightly hesitant as they explored mine. I fought to control my breathing, as the blood thundered fast and furious through my veins. It would be so easy to let this get out of control. It was time to go with my instincts. To play this man the way I play them all. I drew back, gazing into those sorrowful eyes.

  “When it’s not work, I like to be forced.”

  Chapter Six

  Jake

  I stared down at her. “I like to be forced.” Where the hell had that come from? How deep inside
my head had she managed to get?

  Before I could say anything, Inge bucked wildly beneath me, taking me by surprise. I was unprepared for the sudden onslaught as she came at me, clawing at me and slapping my face. Her whole body went into the attack, her feet kicked out at me and her knee came dangerously close to my erection. As I leaned over her to hold her down, she reared up, biting my lip.

  “Inge, what the fuck...?” I caught hold of her hands, pinning them at her sides and using my superior strength to keep her down.

  She squirmed beneath me. “Isn’t that what you want, Jake? Don’t you want to force me? Deep down, isn’t that what you want more than anything?” She was panting, her cheeks flushed, my blood smeared across her lips.

  And the words made something in me break free. Something dark that I’d suppressed for as long as I could remember. Did I want to force her? Fuck, yes. I wanted it so much it was choking me. Inge had read my mind, spoken my hidden thoughts out loud. Now my cock was pulsing hard and hot inside my jeans and I was in agony. Need coursed through me, stretching my body so tight I was in danger of exploding into a thousand tiny pieces.

  I erupted into action, flipping her over onto her stomach. Holding her arms behind her back with her wrists pinned together in one of my hands, I tugged her sweatpants down around her thighs with my other hand. Ignoring her struggles, I freed my cock, my huge, throbbing cock—the cock that had been aching for this day for as long as I could remember—from my jeans.

  “Keep still or, so help me, I’ll hurt you.” I barely recognized my own voice in the growl that left my lips.

  As if something in that sound told her we’d crossed a line, Inge stopped fighting, stopped protesting, and went still. I stared down at the globes of her perfect ass. Those beautiful clenched thighs. I had done it. Overpowered her. She was at my mercy. Just as I’d pictured when she’d been naked in the bathroom. This was the dream I’d never allowed myself to have. The part of myself I’d never acknowledged. The fantasy I’d always believed made me a sick bastard. I was so fucking hard it almost brought tears to my eyes.

  With a groan that was somewhere between triumph and despair, I lunged at her, driving my erection between her thighs. As soon as the head of my cock touched her soft flesh, my whole body shuddered wildly. Like a kid who’d never been near a woman’s body, I was unable to control myself. Gasping out an incoherent sound, I came, my cock spurting wildly before I even got close enough to penetrate her. The speed of my ejaculation shook me. I had never come so fast, so hot, so deliciously without being in the grip of a tight cunt.

  I collapsed on top of her, forcing Inge facedown into the mattress. The enormity of what had just happened hit me as the rush of my orgasm subsided. Inge wriggled, murmuring a protest and I moved my weight off her, feeling the sticky mess of my semen coating the back of her legs.

  She turned so that she was lying on her side and I scanned her face, expecting to see fear. I had just thrown her down and subdued her. If I hadn’t ejaculated too soon, I’d have forced myself into her. Instead of the terror I’d anticipated, all I saw was quiet satisfaction. Job done. She had played me like the professional she was. Done what she’d promised. Gotten inside my head, found my darkest fantasy and made it come true.

  “You manipulative fucking bitch.” My jaw was so tightly clenched I could barely speak. “‘I like to be forced’? What the hell was that all about?”

  Her smile was serene. “It was about giving you what you wanted.”

  “Like fuck it was.”

  “No? You’re not fooling anyone if you pretend that wasn’t your perfect fantasy, Jake. Or close to it. Perfect would have ended with you forcing my legs apart and coming inside me while my cunt was still tight and dry.” Her eyes slid down my body. “And you are getting hard again just thinking about it.”

  I threw myself away from her and off the bed, ignoring the pain as I forced my newly erect cock back into my jeans. I grimaced as my fingers came in contact with the damp stain of my release. My hands shook with a combination of anger and need. I had to get away from her. That throaty voice was more than I could take. The things she was saying were too close to what was in my head. I could see it. Feel it. If I stayed there another second, I would do it. And to hell with the consequences.

  When I reached the bathroom, I leaned over the sink with one hand covering the mirror. The face I could see through my splayed fingers was the face of a stranger. Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, features rigid with shock.

  Didn’t you always know this day would come?

  Inge didn’t know—how could she?—that by probing my mind she had released a Pandora’s box of memories. I saw a boy, a frightened kid, cowering under a bed as the men came for his family. Dragged out from his hiding place, he had been forced to watch the torture, rape and killing. Forced to march with the rebels, to swear his allegiance to the unit, to be part of the mindless violence.

  That boy was always with me, even after the dirt, dust, blood and pain were gone. But I had learned to keep him hidden, buried deep in the recesses of my mind. The violence I could deal with, keep it in reserve for when I needed it. But the urge to take a woman by force? Even though I had never been part of that, had been too young, they had made me watch. The images had stayed with me, haunted me. Destroyed that part of me other people called human.

  It wasn’t the memory of the rapes that aroused me. Sexual violence? Subjecting another person to physical and emotional trauma? That disgusted me. Even more so because of the horrors I had witnessed. But the desire to restrain my partner, to forcefully penetrate her mouth, vagina or anus, was overwhelming. And I couldn’t separate those two sides to my subconscious. What if my fantasy was triggered by past experiences? What sort of monster did that make me?

  My fears were the reason I’d never had a relationship with a woman. For me, sex meant finding a hooker and pounding myself into her as fast and as hard as I could. Getting the urge out of my system before it became destructive.

  Now Inge had come along and within a few hours of knowing me, she had seen me for what I was. Had seen the warped, twisted side I tried so hard to conceal. Exposed to that expert gaze, there had been no hiding place. The past sixteen years melted away and I was back in the Zimbabwean veld, feeling the sun beating down on my head and the pressure of the gun against my temple.

  There was no way I could explain any of this to Inge. How could I tell her who I was when I didn’t understand it myself? But I owed her some reassurance that she was safe. Safe? I choked back a bitter laugh as I thought back to the meeting with the commander.

  “What do I do with the girl once she tells me where to find Villacruz?”

  The commander’s smile had been cold. Cruel. The way it had been back then. “Anything you want...as long as you end it with a bullet to the head.”

  “Anything you want.” No. I wasn’t letting my thoughts go there. I had risen above this. Had made myself better than those animals who captured that boy. Who paraded me around their camp like an animal on a leash. Who taunted me for being both black and white.

  Splashing cold water on my face, I studied my reflection again. Drawing a breath, I walked back into the bedroom. Inge was curled up on her side in the same position she had been when I left her. She was sleeping like a baby.

  I looked down at her for a moment or two before pulling the blanket up and lying beside her.

  Chapter Seven

  Inge

  I studied Jake’s face as he slept. Followed the sweep of his dark lashes as they fanned his cheeks. The broad, arrogant nose with its silver ring. The contrastingly full lips framed by that oh-so-sexy beard and mustache. Who was this man? A man who had me completely at his mercy? Who had told me I couldn’t sleep, yet had let me slumber? Who refused to accept he could have a kink? It was more than a lack of acceptance, I reasoned. He had been devastated by what had happen
ed between us. I hadn’t just touched a nerve; I had cut him to the core. Caused him to question his very existence.

  Because he came too soon? I shook my head. It wasn’t about that. My “I like to be forced” tactic had been a shot in the dark. Intended to break down his iron barriers. I knew enough about men and had seen something in him that resonated with me, told me he was a control freak. So I had pushed that particular button to see where it took us. And it had worked. In spectacular style.

  I bit my lip at the memory. All that power and passion locked up inside him. I felt a thrum of desire starting deep in the pit of my stomach, as unexpected as it was unwelcome. I don’t do this. I don’t get horny. Not for the men I work with and certainly not for this one. But the feeling was unmistakable. There was nothing poetic about it. I was wet and I wanted to be fucked. Filled. My clit throbbed with the need to be touched. So much it hurt. The craving for the weight of a man on top of me was overwhelming. How long was it since I had last felt this way? I couldn’t remember. How inconvenient that my body’s memory for these feelings should return now, and be directed toward this particular man.

  Jake muttered something incomprehensible and opened his eyes. Those amazing eyes. Like golden pinwheels with flecks of brown and hazel within their depths. He blinked uncomprehendingly at me for a moment or two, then frowned.

  “You let me sleep,” I said as I smiled into those eyes.

  The softness in my voice had the effect of deepening his frown. “I was tired.” His voice was gruff.

  “Why do you want Ricky Villacruz?”

  He appeared to weigh his options. Would he lose anything by telling me? Apparently not, he decided. When he decided to tell me, I wasn’t sure what his decision said about my future. Was he telling me because it didn’t matter? Or because he was going to kill me anyway? “He double-crossed some people I know, including my commander.”

  I nodded. There it was again. That change in his manner when he spoke of his commander. It was as if once Jake spoke his name, the man was in the room with us. It intrigued me. “That sounds like Ricky. He’d sell his grandmother if he thought he could make an extra buck or two.”