by Lexi Ryan
STILETTOS, INC.
LEXI RYAN
Stilettos, Inc., 3rd Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Lexi Ryan
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A digital version of this book was published in April 2009 by Ravenous Romance, who published a modified print version the same year.
Cover Design by HOT DAMN DESIGNS
www.hotdamndesigns.com
For more information about the author, please visit http://www.lexiryan.com
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
Stilettos, Inc. was originally published in 2009. This revised edition has been thoroughly edited to reflect the change in my writing style. However, the majority of the story itself remains unchanged.
I’m thrilled to share Paige’s story with you. She’s the kind of heroine I can identify with. She’s smart and independent, but she needs to learn that accepting help from others isn’t a sign of weakness. I don’t have to be an empath to understand her impulse to take responsibility for “fixing” others’ problems.
The novel crosses a lot of genre lines—action, suspense, paranormal adventure, and of course, red hot romance—and I hope you’ll love it and will look for the rest of the Stiletto Girls’ stories in 2013.
I love to hear from readers, so drop me a note at [email protected]
Thanks for reading!
~Lexi
Dedication
___________________________
For Brian.
You make me laugh when I take myself too seriously.
For that (and all the rest) you are truly my hero.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Excerpt from Flirting With Fate
Books and Short Stories by Lexi Ryan
Chapter One
Washington D.C., January 20th, Inauguration Day
Paige Sykes pretended to tuck a curl behind her ear, engaging her microscopic two-way radio. “Any trouble brewing?”
A silver-haired uniformed Marine turned, narrowing his eyes at Paige.
Paige smiled innocently and batted her eyelashes.
A grin spread across his face, and his gaze made a slow and thorough perusal of her body.
Idiot.
If this was an example of her country’s “best and brightest,” they were in trouble. She could have been conspiring to take down the whole building, and a little flutter of lash had him drooling in his Scotch. She would never understand why men—mental weaklings who could be undermined by little more than a flash of inner thigh—held more top military ranks than women.
Paige and her Stilettos, Inc. girls might wear tight clothes and flash cleavage, but they always kept their wits about them.
“Plus five points,” Chrissie said in her ear, speaking low. “I just touched a guy who cheated on his wife last night.”
Josie scoffed softly. “Twenty-five points. I just touched a guy who’s going to cheat on his wife tonight.”
“How’s that twenty-five points?” Chrissie asked.
“He’s sleeping with her sister.” Josie’s voice swelled with the cockiness of a card player throwing down the trump.
Paige’s lips quirked. She couldn’t help it. The game may have seemed immature once, but it helped the girls blow off steam when the things they saw may have otherwise driven them crazy.
“Ladies?” Paige said, pulling them back to task.
“I’m not getting anything,” Josie said. “At least nothing more tragic than some serious hangovers and some regretful morning-afters.”
Every guest at President Winston’s inaugural ball was primped, smiling, and positively clueless. Someone else would go missing tonight—vanish to God-knew-where like the others. In one of her visions, Josie had seen the report come into their office, had seen that the inaugural ball was the last place the next disappearing Special would be seen.
Paige lowered her head. “Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe the future has already changed.” If luck was with them, it had changed for the better. “Chrissie?”
“Nothing,” Chrissie said. “Maybe we had bad intel.”
“Or maybe someone saw us here and changed his mind.” Rare defensiveness gave an edge to Josie’s voice.
“Don’t get snippy,” Chrissie growled. “You know your visions of the future change with the wind.”
Paige looked out across the room. Chrissie was easy to spot, even through the crowd, and even with her spiky, punk hairdo half tamed. Paige sighed. She could hardly worry about her partner’s conspicuous hot-pink sheath dress when the tattoos that covered the tops of Chrissie’s arms and the back of her neck made her stick out like a Marilyn Manson groupie at a church revival.
Just as Paige had done for the last hour, Chrissie was mingling, shaking as many hands as she could, brushing as much exposed skin as she could. The fact that most men were in uniform or tuxes and had their arms covered wasn’t ideal, but they’d worked with worse, and they could certainly make do now. Chrissie giggled with a tall-dark-and-handsome, then cocked her head, signaling for him to follow her to the dance floor.
“That’s my girl,” Paige whispered before tapping off her two-way radio.
In the opposite corner and just as easy to spot, Josie was following the same routine. Josie didn’t need a hot-pink dress for Paige to find her. The swarm of men who gathered around her usually gave away her location, and tonight was no different. Josie’s exaggerated hourglass figure was displayed in a deep red gown, and her long blond hair hung in fat banana curls past her shoulders. She laughed at something one of the men said, then pulled her hand from his grasp and touched the next.
“Excuse me, ma’am. May I have this dance?” The voice was deep, familiar, and very close to the exposed skin of her neck.
Paige turned and froze.
He was here—twelve inches away from her and as mouth-watering as ever.
When she’d last seen him, he’d been sprawled nude across a hotel bed in a post-coital coma, and she’d been sneaking out the door.
She’d known she’d have to see him again—SIA guys never seemed to stay out of her business—but she wasn’t quite ready. Not yet.
Careful not to give away anything with her expression—like the fact that she found this meeting completely humiliating—she gave a polite smile. “Darian Lorring, what are you doing here?” Even as she asked, he drew her hand into his.
The intensity of his feelings slammed into her.
Touching him was like slipping heated skin between cool silk sheets: her flesh bare, the scent of sex swirling in the candlelight around them.
He was hovering over her, that delicious male heat lighting her senses, his hands making her burn for more.
Her thigh
s flexed—then and now. She saw writhing bodies. Sweat. A tongue wetting a parched lip. She heard her name murmured in his thick, melodious timbre, heard her own responding groan of pleasure.
All of this came to her in a series of flashes and sensations within the span of seconds.
As an empath, her power allowed her to capture the essence of another’s thoughts and feelings. Which gave her the upper hand she preferred...in every instance but this one.
“Stop it,” she muttered.
He raised one hand in mock innocence, his smile showing off a single dimple. “Stop what?”
Another flash. His mouth on her neck, his hand on her breast, his thumb rubbing small circles against a pebbled nipple.
Touching Darian created a complete mess of her ability. While her power allowed her to pick up on thoughts and feelings—physical and emotional—his power allowed him to project thoughts and feelings—physical and emotional.
Add to that, Darian’s ability to project images and scenes so they’d play as vividly as recent memory in her mind, and she was left in a complete clusterfuck.
When she touched him, she didn’t know what was real. She was always left to wonder what he was consciously projecting and what his sincere emotions were, and she couldn’t trust her own.
Another flash of skin sliding against skin had her pulse kicking up a notch. For a moment she couldn’t decipher the source of the arousal. Hers? His? His. Yes. She was pretty sure it was his alone.
Paige looked at him now, her eyes skimming over him shamelessly—because, hell, after the things he’d been thinking about her, why not?
“I hate it when you mess with my head,” she said.
Darian raised a brow. “Who says I was messing with anything?” he murmured, holding her gaze while he lifted her hand to his lips. Hot and soft. The heat of his mouth traced up her arm and gathered in her stomach.
Tonight he was in a tux, and the body underneath could rival even the most conditioned Marine in the room. His milk chocolate eyes held hers. She wanted to lose herself there.
His arousal, not yours, she reminded her weak knees and pounding heart.
His dark, sometimes curly hair had been tamed into submission tonight, and he’d shaved his usual stubble. Darian was one of those guys whose five o’clock shadow made an appearance around lunch.
Her thighs flexed again, pressing together where he’d once given her beard burn.
“You’re not happy to see me?” His dimple flashed, causing her girly parts do a little dance.
Damn. She was here on a case. Another Special was supposedly going missing tonight. They needed to figure out who and stop it from happening, and preferably catch the perp in the process. The last thing she needed was to be distracted by eye candy. Even if the eye candy was of the really decadent, melt-in-your-mouth and make-you-come variety.
What had she been thinking about men being mental weaklings? All Darian had to do was flash that dimple and her mind and body were ready to wave a white flag.
Darian led her into a dance step that moved them toward the center of the dance floor.
She frowned. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have some paperwork to do? A desk to sit behind?”
He pulled her closer, lowering his head so his warm breath tickled down her neck. His lips brushed her ear as he spoke. “Contrary to what you seem to think, SIA agents do more than paperwork.”
She snorted. “Sure, as long as someone else is calling the shots.”
Darian studied her, then shrugged.
He worked for the Specials Intelligence Agency, the bastard redheaded stepchild of the DoD. No one acknowledged them. Most people didn’t even know they existed. And it worked better that way. They were the most powerful government agency and anonymity was an intrinsic part of that power.
When Darian had tried to recruit the Stiletto Girls to the SIA’s ranks, Paige had been elated. Luckily, she’d found out before she signed on that they only wanted her for the “Intelligence” part of the agency. Desk work. Research. No more ass kicking.
No, thank you.
And she’d told him as much. And then Darian had tracked her down on her vacation, and she’d slept with him.
Whoopsie.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again.
He shouldn’t be. The SIA wasn’t on this job. The upper-ups didn’t think it was wise to send a bunch of high-powered Specials after someone known to target…high-powered Specials.
Pussies.
“Maybe, I knew you’d be here,” he said, his breath against her ear like a caress, “and I wanted an excuse to hold you in my arms.”
If she were any other woman, she would have melted into him at that line. Even as herself—a woman who did not melt, not at all—she was tempted.
She sighed. “You know, I don’t have to be an empath to know when you’re full of shit.”
He chuckled and pulled back enough to rake his eyes over her face again. They swept down, lingering on her exposed collarbone, making her feel like he’d just discovered a whole new erogenous zone.
She swallowed.
He’d kissed her there. Put his lips against the tender skin. Then his tongue. Then, when his fingers were inside her and she arched under him, he’d nipped that skin with his teeth—carrying her up and over yet another orgasm and down again before he’d tended to the bite with more whisper-soft kisses.
Darian pulled her close again, his body warm and solid. Delicious licks of pleasure spiraled through her, but he wasn’t sending her images this time. He was behaving himself. It was her memory that needed a reprimand.
She craned her neck to look up at him. “You’d better back up a little. I’d hate to get makeup on your rental.”
“Rented tux?” he scoffed. “Only a Stiletto Girl would think that’s an insult.”
She narrowed her gaze and concentrated. She worked best with skin-to-skin contact, and the way he was holding her prevented that—not to mention most of what she read from Darian Lorring couldn’t be trusted—but even without it, he had enough of his body pressed against hers that she could tap into him.
She opened herself, pushed her mind beyond herself for a moment and...
Why was he here? He hid it well, but he was tense under his debonair, charming-devil façade. Tense, alert, and ready to spring into action.
He was here for the same reason she was. He was on the lookout for trouble. Did the SIA decide to take on the case after all? It wouldn’t be the first time an SIA unit was in her territory. Even though Paige and her girls had a reputation for getting jobs done effectively, efficiently, and quietly, the government wouldn’t trust them until their paychecks said Uncle Sam on the signature line. Which would never happen.
“Doesn’t a guy like you have a date or something?” she asked.
His gaze flicked down to hers. “There is this girl I like,” he said, “but she won’t return my phone calls.”
Paige looked away. Why had she slept with him? When Collin left, hadn’t she decided she was through with Specials?
As if to answer her question, Darian’s hand stroked small, light circles on her back. His touch inspiring all sorts of bad ideas.
He lowered his head again and trailed light kisses up the side of her neck. He wasn’t playing fair. Images poured over her.
His body hovered over hers. His hands explored her bare flesh. He was so hard and all he wanted was to sink his cock deep inside her, feel the heat of her sex squeeze him deeper. But first, he would explore her body. First, he would make her come with his hands. With his tongue.
This wasn’t a product of his imagination. He was projecting memory. The night they were together on Eden. But now she was seeing it—feeling it—from his angle. She saw her body as he looked down on her, saw her ivory skin, watched her breasts rise and fall, her nipples hard and beaded under his teasing fingers. She felt his cock throb, knew how badly he wanted to be inside her.
On the dance floor, he bit lightly
at her bare shoulder. In the memory, his hand slid between her legs and found her clit with his thumb.
Her breath quickened. Anyone watching them would have seen nothing more than a man trailing his mouth along a woman’s neck, but she felt more than that. She was wet, aching. Her clit throbbed against the memory’s touch.
She thought she felt something change in him for the briefest moment, but whatever it was blipped away in another rush of lust.
She fought to focus. That night had been incredible, but she didn’t intend on letting it happen again. Especially not tonight. “Jesus, Darian. What’d you do, eat a gallon of oysters for dinner?”
He threaded his fingers into her hair and pressed her head lightly against his chest. The warmth there vibrated with his chuckle.
The bud in her ear beeped softly. “We’ve got a party crasher,” Chrissie said.
Paige held her breath. Shit. Okay, so she’d been thinking about letting Darian in her pants again when she should have been thinking about finding their perp. And now there was a bomber in the building.
She’d always had hellacious-bad timing with men. That pretty much summed up why—with the exception of some regularly scheduled maintenance—she was planning to stay far, far away from them.
“Description?” Josie asked.
“Male, mid-thirties, blond and blue eyes—freaky blue eyes. The woman whose memory I first saw him in was spooked by his eyes.”
Paige’s breathing quickened. She remembered that guy. Hadn’t she touched him? She hadn’t felt anything but the same mild anxiety she’d sensed in every man and woman on security detail. She should have felt more if he were planning on blowing the place up. If not nerves, then the dark, clawing evil that filled every terrorist she’d ever touched.
She had to get rid of Lorring and confer with the girls.
“Where’s the party?” Josie asked.
Chrissie was silent for a moment, and Paige prayed that Darian hadn’t noticed how still she’d gone.