“It’ll be done,” Nico said. He looked at Locke. “I’ll have Damian contact you if he can’t get in within twelve hours. Then your team can take a crack at it.”
Max looked at Carlos. “Get Damian the names of the women you want to send in so his people can put them on the cleaning schedule in the system.”
“Will do.”
“And Carlos?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Get them in there ASAP.”
“Let’s meet again in forty-eight hours,” Max said to everyone around the island. “By then we should have some data from the surveillance that’ll help us find a way in and out.”
“Mind if I take some screenshots?” Locke asked, indicating the building plans still spread out on the island. “I’d like to get a jump on things.”
“Will the data be secure?” Max asked.
“You have my word.”
“Go ahead.”
Abby was surprised Max had agreed, but she wasn’t under any illusions: he was learning to work with the Syndicate, grudgingly becoming a team player, but they were also running out of time.
The reality of it caused a knot of fear to form in her stomach. Being under the gun heightened the possibility of making a mistake. It made people desperate.
And sometimes foolish.
Twenty-Two
Max was relieved when everyone left. He was still getting used to having Carlos around all the time. Having his house full of people — to say nothing of someone he didn’t know like Locke Montgomery — wasn’t exactly his idea of a good time.
Abby was rinsing beer bottles for recycling when he returned to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway to the living room, taking in her slender shoulders, the delicate slope of her neck, the wisps of flaxen hair that had come loose from the knot on top of her head.
Looking at her was almost painful, a reminder of all he had to lose.
She looked up as if she sensed his presence. “Everybody gone?”
He nodded, his heart in his throat.
“Don’t be mad,” she said.
He crossed the room. “I’m not mad. Exactly.”
He couldn’t remember ever really being mad at Abby.
She gave him a small smile. “So you’re, what, almost mad? Kind of mad?”
“You know I don’t want you involved, especially now.” He was walking a fine line and he knew it. She’d made it clear in the past that they had to be partners, that he couldn’t treat her like the little girl he’d once known. But protecting her was a mandate, an urge he couldn’t resist even if he wanted to.
And he didn’t want to.
He shook his head. “You should have been a lawyer.”
She turned away and opened the cupboard that held the bin for recycling, then dumped the empty bottles into it with a clatter.
“I’m not going to make the case for you.” She reached for a dishtowel to dry her hands and turned back to face him, the island between them. “I’m giving the Syndicate information I already have about the hotel, information that will help you get in and get out. It’s not costing me anything. I’m not risking anything. Let me help.”
“I don’t like it.” He was aware that he sounded not only stubborn, but vaguely childish.
“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry about that part. But have you thought about where I am in all this?”
“That’s all I’ve thought about,” he said.
“I’m not talking about physical danger.” She paused. “I’m not even talking about revenge for my dad’s death.”
“Then what are you talking about?” he asked.
She came around the island and stood in front of him. “I won’t be going into the Tangier to get Jason.”
“Damn right.” Just the thought of it sent a surge of adrenaline through his body that made him want to start hitting things.
“But you will,” she said. “And that means I get to sit here and wait. Sit here and wonder if it’s going to end the way it did the last time you met Jason at the Tangier, if maybe this time, it’s going to end with you shot — or worse.”
“It isn’t,” he said.
She shook her head. “You don’t know that, Max, and that’s okay, but at least be honest about it. Only one of you is coming out of that hotel alive — you or Jason. I know that. And if you do make it out alive, we still have to worry about the FBI.”
“Once Jason’s out of the picture, the FBI won’t have a case,” he said.
“That may be true,” Abby said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m scared.”
The admission squelched the heat of his frustration, and he reached out and pulled her into his arms. She rested her face against his shirt, and he kissed the top of her head.
“We don’t have to do it,” he murmured against her hair. “We could walk away.”
She leaned back and looked up at him. “Walk away? From the Syndicate? From Jason?”
“From everything.”
The words were like shards of glass leaving his mouth. The last thing he wanted was to let Jason off the hook, to leave Nico high and dry in Vegas. But he would do it if it meant Abby feeling safe.
He would do anything if it meant Abby feeling — being — safe.
“I don’t want to walk away.” Her eyes flashed. “I’m not letting Jason win, not after everything he’s done. The time for that has past. He has to pay, and you’re the only one with a personal interest in seeing it done. Besides, I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to run. This is our town. We might have shared it with Jason once, but not anymore.”
He ran the back of his knuckles against her cheek. “Then this is what has to be done.”
“I understand that,” she said. “But don’t ask me to go shopping or have my nails done or sleep until it’s all over. I’m not asking to be there — ”
“It’s a good fucking thing because — ”
He didn’t get the rest of the words out before she held two fingers to his mouth.
“I’m not asking to be there, but let me help where I can. Let me feel useful. Let me feel like I’m fighting too, even if it’s just by telling you what I know.” She smiled. “And there’s a satisfying irony in it, isn’t there?”
“In what?”
“In using everything I know about the Tangier — about Jason — against him.”
Max shook his head. “You’re pretty devious underneath it all, aren’t you?”
She sighed. “I just want some control, Max. Over something. Anything.”
He kissed her tenderly on the lips. He’d been careful with her since her father’s death, not wanting to push her, wanting to give her plenty of time and space to grieve. He’d showered her with every comfort he could think of — baths and warm clothes and home-cooked meals and her favorite takeout and holding her when she fell asleep on the sofa and when she cried herself to sleep — and had avoided touching her in an even remotely sexual way.
But the slick heat of her mouth opening under his lit the kindling in his body that was always waiting for the match of her kiss. It had been days since he’d felt her naked skin slide against his, since he’d explored her body with his tongue.
He wasn’t the only one who had missed it. He felt her urgency in the way she ran her hands up his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck. The way she pressed her body against his when she slipped her tongue into his mouth, making it clear that this time, she wasn’t looking for a foot massage or a comforting peck on the forehead.
It felt like forever since he’d explored her mouth so thoroughly, since he’d sunk into the softness of her body, felt her silken skin against his palms.
He’d expected to take it slow, but the demands of her mouth made it clear she wasn’t interested in slow.
Not tonight.
His cock was so hard it was painful when she finally broke away, breathless, from their kiss.
She stepped back and started for the hall.
“Where are you going?” Max
said behind her.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “Are you coming?”
He heard the words she’d spoken earlier in their conversation.
I just want some control, Max. Over something. Anything.
He started after her. “I’m definitely coming.”
If it was control she wanted, it was control she would get.
Twenty-Three
Abby’s skin tingled as she started the shower, her body humming in anticipation. Sex had been the last thing on her mind over the past few days, but she should have known her desire for Max wouldn’t stay at bay for long.
She’d rested. She’d recovered. She’d grieved.
Now she wanted him inside her.
She turned around to find him standing in the doorway.
Steam filled the bathroom as she lifted her T-shirt over head and tossed it aside. She reached back to unsnap her bra, keeping her eyes on him as she dropped it to the floor. Then she unzipped her jeans and slid them off her hips along with her underwear, watching the spark in his eyes catch and build.
She pulled the elastic out of her hair and felt the strands drop soft and dry onto her bare shoulders.
The room filled with steam as she pulled him inside by the waistband of his pants. Her nipples, already hard, brushed against the cotton of his shirt as she lifted it over his head. She had to resist the urge to gasp when they came in brief contact with his skin as she knelt in front of him. After days of purely platonic contact, she was starving for him, her skin hungry for the familiar sensation of his body and hands and mouth.
She reached up to unzip his jeans, then dropped down and sat back on her heels to pull them off. His cock sprang free, rock hard and standing at rigid attention. A rush of moisture flooded her pussy at the sight of it, her body remembering the drive of him into her, the release guaranteed in his capable hands.
She leaned forward, holding his shaft and leaning her cheek against its taut smoothness. It was soft as satin, the skin stretching tighter as he swelled in her hand.
He was breathing fast, and when she stood, his eyes were half closed, his lips parted. She kissed him, running her tongue along his lower lip, and took his hand.
“Come on. The water’s ready.”
He followed her into the shower without question, and she was surprised to find she liked this compliant Max. He was always so forceful, so commanding, and while she was usually more than happy to take orders from him in bed, she couldn’t deny the power of ordering a man like him around.
It wouldn’t last for long — he would never allow it for long — but he would let her have her way now and then when she had the need.
And tonight, she had the need.
They stepped into the walk-in shower, and she slid her arms around his neck and tipped her head back against the water. She closed her eyes, savoring the sensation of his cock against her stomach, his strong hands on her hips as water streamed through her hair and down her back.
She wanted to stretch the moment, make last the vacuum in which there was no death and betrayal, no grief or loss, no invisible forces pulling the strings of her life. She’d been buffeted by the winds of disaster for too long. Now she wanted to harness its power instead, use it to sail into a future of her own making.
One where she would be in control of her destination.
She lifted her head and looked at him, the hunger in his eyes sending another shot of heat to her center.
He leaned down and covered her mouth with his, nipping at her lower lip and tugging her hips more fully against him. He stroked her mouth lazily with his tongue, taking his time as his hands cupped her ass.
She sank into the kiss, parrying with his tongue until the heat at her core flared, hungry and wanting.
“Your turn,” she said, swapping spots with him so that he was under the water.
She kissed his way down his chest, taking each of his nipples in her mouth and tugging until he groaned, lapping at the water sluicing down his muscled pecs and running like little rivers over the hard plane of his stomach.
She knelt at his feet, looked up at him, and took his cock in her hands. It pulsed against her palm and he leaned his head back into the water pouring from the shower head.
She lowered her mouth to his tip, circling it with her tongue before sucking the crown and stroking his shaft.
“Jesus, Abby…”
His hands rested on the top of her head as she slid her mouth slowly down his length, not stopping until she’d taken every inch of him, until he was hitting the back of her throat and then some.
He sucked in a breath and she massaged his balls while she held him there, letting her throat open to take him even deeper.
It wasn’t just for him. Her pussy was wet with desire, with need, with power.
She wrapped her hand around the base of his shaft, stroking while she moved upward with her mouth, circling the tip with her tongue before plunging him back into the moist heat behind her lips.
He moved his hips, telling her how he wanted it, his hands still on her head, the pressure firm enough to let her know he wanted her to keep doing what she was doing.
She matched the rhythm of his hips for a few seconds, letting him get used to it before stopping at the swollen crown, lingering over the fat head with her tongue until he growled with frustration.
She took her time giving him what he wanted, dipping her tongue into the hole in his tip, licking drops of semen from it before sinking his shaft back into her mouth in one motion.
“Fuck…” he gasped.
He slid his fingers into her hair and tugged. Her pussy pulsed, her own orgasm fluttering in her belly even though he hadn’t done anything more than kiss her.
All she needed was the knowledge of him, the memory of him between her thighs, the reminder that for the time being he was allowing her control, but when push came to shove, he would fuck her until she screamed.
Her body’s response was Pavlovian, and she picked up the pace of her rhythm, sinking her mouth onto him while she held onto the base of his shaft and massaged his balls, dragging him between her lips faster and faster until he took her head in his hands and forced her to stop.
She looked up at him, his cock still between her lips.
He closed his eyes and groaned, as if the sight alone threatened to send him over the edge.
“Get up here and let me fuck you, Abby.”
She laughed a little, withdrawing her mouth and sucking on the tip one last time for good measure.
She got to her feet and put her arms around him, leaving kisses on his chest.
“You didn’t like it?”
She barely had time to get the words out before he spun her around so she was facing the tile wall behind the shower head, water rushing down her back.
He positioned his hips behind hers, rubbing his shaft back and forth through the cheeks of her ass as he reached around her body and plunged his fingers into her.
She moaned.
“You’re so fucking wet, Abby. So hot.”
She pressed back against him and he chuckled.
“Who’s impatient now?”
This was how it would always be between them. The push and pull. The tug-of-war as they vied for control in and out of the bedroom. Her willing submission in the end.
“Shut up and fuck me, Max.”
The tip of his cock slid between the folds of her sex, bumping up against her clit. It was like putting jumper cables on the already primed battery of her orgasm.
She thrust her ass against his hips and he pulled back far enough to position himself at her entrance.
He leaned over her back and kissed his way up her neck, sending shivers down her spine, then bit down on her earlobe.
She shuddered and he drove into her hard and fast.
She cried out as he tunneled through the swollen tissue of her channel, holding onto her hips, burying himself so far inside her it almost hurt.
“Give it to me,”
she gasped. “All of it.”
He spread her ass cheeks and pushed into her another inch.
“Oh, god…”
The pressure was intense, crevasses of need opening up in her body — her mouth, her ass…
She wanted him everywhere all at once.
He slid slowly out of her, teasing her like she’d teased him, letting his cock hover at her opening as his hands traveled up her back. She tried to push back, forcing him to sink into her again, but he shifted just enough that she didn’t get anywhere until he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her onto him as he plunged into her again.
She moaned, dropping her head, coherent thought slipping away as sensation obliterated everything else. This was where she wanted to be — in the animal space of physical need where there was no room for thought.
He dragged out of her an inch at a time and drove into her again, still using her shoulders as leverage to push all the way into her. He was getting bigger and harder, his expanding shaft pushing against the boundaries of her channel until the pressure was almost unbearable, a perfect match to her almost intolerable pleasure.
He stroked into her again and again, his rhythm an earthquake in her body, sending shockwaves to every hidden corner.
She rocked her ass against him, using his rhythm to work the pressure building at her center.
“You going to come for me, beautiful?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“Me too.”
He reached around and slid his hand between her thighs, his thumb finding her clit like a heat-seeking missile. He stroked it in time with his cock, boring through her pussy with more urgency.
His breath came fast behind her, a match to her own, both of them racing toward release as he fucked her hard and fast, driving ferociously into her before pulling out just long enough to reach maximum penetration when he plunged into her again.
The orgasm was clamoring between her legs, spreading outward, the rest of her body almost numb as she pushed back onto him, intent on only one thing.
She closed her eyes, oblivious to everything but the stroke of his cock, the completion of it, filling the empty spaces that were always waiting for him.
Surrender to Sin (Las Vegas Syndicate Book 3) Page 11
