Dirty Ties

by Pam Godwin

  “Goddamn, I can’t…ff-fuuhh—” His words garbled into something inaudible, smothered by gasps.

  He grasped the base of my braid, slid his hand to the rubber-band, and looped the tail around and around his wrist. The follicles bit at my scalp when he ran out of hair, his hold tightening against my head.

  Bucking his hips, his movements staggered. He was close. I renewed my efforts, sucking with hard pulls, bringing him closer, closer, but I wouldn’t let him come. Not yet—

  He yanked my head back by the braid. His cock slipped from my mouth, and I stared up into the dark expanse above me.

  His breathing stopped. His body went rigid. The silence was deafening.

  Dread crawled over me. I couldn’t explain it, but something was wrong.

  He untwisted his wrist from my hair, yanking in his haste to disentangle it. “Put your helmet on.” His biting tone sped up my pulse.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  The sound of his zipper reached my ears with painful finality. A lump crept into my throat as I fumbled for the helmet. When I found it, I shoved it on and climbed to my feet, righting my pants. Had I done something to piss him off? Maybe he heard someone on the other side of the doors?

  As I retraced the last few seconds, the lights flickered on and the doors opened.

  No one was waiting in the garage. He removed the metal card and darted out as if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

  No explanation or good-bye. Not even a backward glance or a fuck you.

  I zipped up my jacket, my chin quivering with shock and rejection. Maybe I stupidly hoped he’d come right back. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to confront the emotion burning up my cheeks, but I reached for the button to hold the doors open.

  That was when I noticed it, one button in particular, the only one lit up.

  88. My floor.

  My face caught fire, and my fists clenched. All that time, he had access to my condo? Not only did he know where I lived, he had a fucking key to get in.

  My heart stopped, my breath strangling. If he knew my floor, did that mean he knew who I was?

  I did the only thing I could. I ran after him.

  If Benny would’ve wired x-ray vision in the helmet like I’d asked, I would’ve discovered Kaci Baskel’s identity in the alley. I would not have followed her, wouldn’t have resorted to night vision after her mouth was wrapped around my cock. Fuck!

  Anger fueled my steps, and my fists burned to smash something. What the hell was I thinking? I’d been clumsy, careless, and now…

  My teeth slammed together. I was so goddamned hard. My dick throbbed in its leather trap, aching to punish her deceitful mouth until she choked, to pound her ass until she couldn’t walk.

  Losing control, dickhead. Pull your shit together.

  “Speaker on.” My quiet command unmuted the cellular connection with Benny. So much easier than pressing the button beneath the helmet. “Need an update.”

  “First off,” she growled through the speaker, “I wasn’t done configuring the settings on the master key before you ripped it out of the elevator.”

  My fists clenched. Yeah, I knew my mistake as soon as I’d removed it and the single button for the eighty-eighth floor lit up. Benny had warned me about that, since the device replicated the nearest key card, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. Still wasn’t.

  Tension tightened my face, pulling on my jaw. Dammit, I hadn’t wanted Miss Ducati to know I could sneak into her condo, not before I knew who she was and certainly not now that I knew she was Kaci Baskel. I also didn’t want to explore why I’d intended to trespass. “What else?”

  “Trump security just found my hack on an encrypted channel.” She groaned. “Crap, cameras are back up.”

  Shit. Benny dominated cryptography, but even the best hackers could be bested. She was just one person, working alone, so she relied on technologies already developed, hacking and cloning them. Like the facial and license plate recognition software. Casinos had been using that shit for years. She simply borrowed it. Same way she’d remotely borrowed the codes on the RFID key card in Kaci Baskel’s pocket.

  Goddammit, it all made sense, the reason she wouldn’t show her face or give me her name, why she wouldn’t invite me up. Thankfully, I’d muted the connection in the elevator. Benny hadn’t been able to hear or see just how close I’d come to fucking Kaci.

  I lengthened my strides, zipping up my jacket and pulling the flashlight from my pocket.

  “Logan, you’re coming up on a—”

  “I fucking know where the cameras are.” I aimed the flashlight, shining the beam at the eye of the lens mounted on the ceiling.

  The high-powered light would blind the camera’s sensor as I passed. The helmet concealed my face, but my attire was recognizable. I didn’t need an outbreak of surveillance footage advertising Evader’s visit to Trump Tower. And now that I knew who lived here, I definitely didn’t need Evader associated with Trenchant.

  My stomach hardened into a painful knot. She was no longer the mysterious Ducati woman I looked for after every race. She was one of them. A top executive. Daughter of murderers. Wife of the enemy.

  Venom tunneled through my gut. My blood boiled, and my lungs labored for air. I’d never felt anything like this…this overwhelming surge of emotion, but it was undeniable, sinister, fucking cruel in its assault.

  She’d let me stick my fingers in her cunt, my fucking dick in her mouth, and she belonged to another man. Sweat gathered beneath my jacket and slicked my hands. Not just any man.

  Collin Anderson was the celebrated face of Trenchant, the son of a powerful family. Did that mean he was as evil as his parents? How could he not be strategically tied to their corruption?

  I had no evidence of his guilt or his innocence, which angered me as much as the notion that she would slide into bed beside him tonight wet with arousal that had been stimulated by another man. By me.

  “Seriously, Logan,” Benny grumbled. “What were you thinking?”

  “Piss off,” I snapped, jerking the light at the next camera, my head dizzy, my jaw locked.

  All I could see was a thick braid of blonde, bright eyes, and an ethereal face. A face that had threatened to bring me to my knees in the elevator. I hadn’t needed to look at the photo that flashed on my visor, didn’t need to read the name displayed by the facial recognition software.

  The moment the night vision illuminated the arches of her cheekbones, the gentle slope of her nose, her heart-shaped lips, I knew. I knew every graceful line and curve etching her features and framing her huge, devastating eyes. Eyes that had blazed green through the infrared scope, but under a normal lens were vivid blue, as rich and complex as sapphires.

  I’d tracked her public appearances on the Interwebs for eight years, watched those eyes mature with age, darken with secrets, and harden with lies. Her hair always smoothed back in a pretentious coil on her head, her curves hidden behind prim suits and high necklines. An effigy of sexy, untouchable wealth.

  The online photos hadn’t come close to capturing what I’d gazed down on in the elevator. Even with her hands on my ass and her mouth hovering over my cock, she had the kind of regal allure that couldn’t be replicated in magazines or on screen. When she’d stared up at me, her braid had been an unraveling mess of seduction, her beauty bare of make-up, staggering, haunting.

  A headache erupted behind my eyes. I passed another camera and angled the flashlight as Benny’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Tell me you didn’t put your dick—”

  “My dick, my fucking business.” The malice in my tone whipped through the garage, but I didn’t want to hear her goddamned ragging or the pangs of truth in it.

  I wasn’t ready to regret the full-body bliss that had been Kaci Baskel. Her sharp wit, the heavy weight of her tits, the grip of her cunt, her sinful mouth, all assets in her seduction that’d had me demanding an invitation to her bed. I would’ve fucked her with my helmet off, my mout
h on her lips, my cock jerking inside her, entwined in the dark.

  Stupid, knowing her connections, but I still ached to fuck her. And that, I would regret. I could never forget who she was.

  My pulse elevated and my ears roared as the stunning, blonde source of my anger pounded the concrete ten feet behind me. I needed to erect some un-fucking-friendly walls by the time she caught up and keep all the other shit locked down until I got out of there.

  Holding the beam on the final camera, I stepped between the bikes and removed a button-sized tracking device from my pocket. Same tracker I slapped on her helmet in the park. The one I peeled off when I removed her helmet in the elevator. I hadn’t wanted to lose her when we bolted from the park, and I didn’t want to lose her now, though the reasons had changed.

  Shifting my body to block her view of my hand, I wedged the tracker between the windshield and dashboard of her Ducati. I snapped my hand back just as she was sweeping past me.

  She slammed to a stop on the other side of her bike and bent over it, likely checking to see if I’d tampered with it. Her leathers were straightened and zipped, but I knew what was beneath. A ripped tank top. Hard nipples. Drenched panties. Fuck.

  Her visor locked with mine, no doubt hiding a glare to match her rigid stance. “What did you just do?”

  Something I should’ve done years ago. I’d never thought to track her, had always been focused on her parents. She was the second phase of my plan. The part where I would walk into Trenchant, force them to hire me, and name me the new CEO, all in order to oversee her activities, as well as all the other dirty ties at Trenchant Media.

  I didn’t give a shit about the job, but the top-level access would make it easier to string together all the loose ends. Until then, I didn’t know if Kaci was included in my plans to destroy Trenchant. It wasn't like I was gunning to destroy her, but I couldn’t help but lump her in with the rest of her vile family.

  Flashlight aimed in one hand, I straddled my bike.

  She moved to my side, fists on her hips, helmet cocked at the beam of light. “What are you doing with that?”

  “Ignore her,” Benny barked.

  I held the light and shoved my key in the ignition, attempting a brush-off, but my mouth moved anyway. “The light washes out the cameras.”

  “Good.” Kaci lowered her arms and nodded. “That’s good.”

  Yeah, wouldn’t want her husband to find out she was a cheating, fucking whore. I fired up the bike, the engine spitting a growl between us.

  “Wait.” She held out her hand, palm up. “I want that metal thing.”

  “Need to go, Logan,” Benny said with urgency. “Guards will be checking on that elevator any minute.”

  I didn’t respond, didn’t want Kaci to question, again, who I was talking to.

  “I don’t know what happened back there.” Kaci shoved her raised palm an inch from my chest. “Or what made you run, but you can’t have a key to my condo.” She shook her hand at me. “Whatever that thing is, hand it over.”

  That thing was an RFID reader, and from three feet away, it transmitted the security codes from her key card. Codes that Benny hacked to control the power in the elevator. And this wisp of woman was out of her mind to think she could demand anything from me.

  “No.” I raised the kickstand with my boot and backed up the bike.

  She walked alongside, her hand reaching out and gripping my bicep. “Why?”

  Her voice was soft, almost too soft beneath the din of the bike, but I’d been listening for it, fucking straining to hear her. Worse, I couldn’t bring myself to jerk away from her touch.

  “Logan,” Benny shouted. “Slap the bitch and burn rubber.”

  I slammed my teeth together and stopped the roll of the bike. I’d forgotten Benny could hear both sides of the conversation.

  Keeping the flashlight leveled, I reached up, hit the button, and killed the connection. To Kaci, I said, “I’m not giving you shit.”

  Her hand tightened on my arm. “I meant, why are you acting like this? What did I do?”

  Seriously? I clamped my fist on the handlebar’s grip. She should be asking her husband that question. Of course, she didn’t know I knew she was married. Hell, maybe she didn’t care. Fidelity wasn’t exactly a trait that ran in the family.

  She straightened her back, standing taller beside me. Her helmet tipped down, her thick rope of hair curling around one breast, taunting me.

  I needed to shut her down and deliver a direct punch that would persuade her to forget all about Evader. “You give lousy head.”

  Her hand jerked away and clutched at her stomach. “Liar.”

  Christ, the hurt in her voice tightened my chest. I should tell her to go fuck herself and convince her I was a belligerent asshole. Which I was. Because her mouth had damned near destroyed me. She didn’t just know how to suck my cock, she’d fucking owned it.

  And she knew it.

  What she didn’t know was, during that dark, heated moment in the elevator, I’d seen her face. I knew her identity, her family, and all their dirty little secrets.

  Without warning, her hand shot out and gripped my balls, her thumb pressing against the stiff proof of my lie. “The truth, Evader.” The sad desperation in her tone clashed with the angry clutch of her fingers.

  “Remove your fucking hand.” Grip me. Jerk it hard.

  She tightened her grasp, shooting a flood of heat through my cock. She had me by the balls, and in what was clearly a moment of insanity, I fucking loved it.

  I hated her for that, for making me want her, which inflamed the urge to demean her, to call her a slut, to tell her I knew she was an unfaithful wife. She deserved the full wrath of every searing thought, every pound of forbidden pleasure she’d ignited.

  But from her standpoint, Evader didn’t know who she was, and it would stay that way. I didn’t want her questioning how I knew or anything about the technology I used. I needed her to forget about Evader altogether.

  I grabbed her wrist and used it to force her back. “Guards are coming.”

  As she looked around the empty garage, I tucked down, hit the gas, and gave it full stick. Bolting forward, I shot up the ramp, the tear of the engine vibrating my fury.

  In the rear-view cam, she stomped her boot, her tits bouncing beneath the jacket, her hands balled at her sides. Then she raised an arm and flipped off my back.

  Fuck her anger. She had no right to be pissed. I slammed my fist against the handlebar. Fucking whore.

  Two guards lifted their heads as I zipped around the corner. I shined the flashlight in their faces, which was absurd. They’d seen me. At least they didn’t have me on video.

  The garage door rose, its sensor picking up my approach. I darted beneath, and as I merged into traffic, the nauseating plunge of regret crashed in. The shaking in my hands. The erratic thump of my pulse. The image of her body beneath her leathers. The knowledge that I’d touched another man’s wife. I shifted my ass on the seat, unable to dull the discomfort between my legs.

  I would see her again. Soon, in fact. But not the way I’d seen her tonight. Next time, there would be no helmets, no spark of recognition on her part. She wouldn’t even know my voice.

  Really, I had no idea how our next meeting would go. I’d collected enough evidence to turn in her family. And maybe I had enough money to fight their team of crooked lawyers and put them behind bars.

  But they didn’t deserve the justice of the legal system.

  What about her? What was her involvement? Her access to the racing network was spectacularly unnerving and unexpected. What did she gain from it? Did she know who I was, how I was connected to her?

  Impossible. Very few people knew Maura Flynt had a son. Not even Trent Anderson. But he would.

  In five days, we would meet for the first time. He expected a meeting with Logan Smith, an interview candidate for some VP position with a resume of fake experience.

  But he would get Logan Flynt, a ghost f
rom his past with a satchel full of blackmail.

  Soulless. Not that a building was capable of deep feeling, but everything about this place, from the cold marble and fancy lighting to the wrinkle-free cushion beneath my ass, aspired to impress. And failed.

  The modern display of wealth chilled the fucking air, stiff and lifeless like the puppets who wandered the halls. The entire executive floor seemed to be waiting for my next breath so it could suck the moisture, the taste, the goddamned effervescence from my being.

  Even Trent Anderson’s pretty assistant, Alicia Murphy, gave me the heebie jeebies. Her painted-on smile and straight brown hair were flawless. She sat behind a hunk of imported wood, she and the desk polished to a glossy shine. The kind of shine that tried too hard to hide the imperfections beneath.

  Was the pretentious decor a representation of the real Kaci Baskel? Tedious, predictable lines to match her tightly-wrapped hair and rigid suits?

  Well, that was why I was here. To break down Trenchant’s mighty walls and determine what her role was within them. To do that, I was prepared to put up some repulsive pretenses to act in the company’s best interest. Didn’t mean I had to like it.

  The easy route would’ve been to take out the entire family—Kaci and Collin included—from a safe distance. But if they were clean? I flexed my hands. Destroying innocent lives would make me as evil as the ones who destroyed my mother’s.

  I leaned back in the chair and forced my fingers to relax on my thighs. What I really wanted to do was tug at the necktie and free the button strangling my throat.

  Meeting Trent wasn’t what had my nerves buzzing and my hands sweating all morning. It was the possibility of seeing her, breathing her in, and pitching head over feet into memory, drowning in the sweet scent of her cunt on my fingers, the velvet lilt of her voice through the helmet, all the lingering sensations from an encounter that had chased my thoughts for five days.

  Every detail about that night had been unexpected. She was a wild card, and that fucking terrified me.