Poker Face

by Cindy Dees

  He planted a hand on the back of Christian’s head and urged him deeper, being careful not to force the guy to gag.

  But damned if Christian didn’t jam his mouth down on Stone’s cock, swallowing him deeper and deeper until he had to be partway down the man’s throat. It was tight and hot, and Christian’s throat muscles worked convulsively around his cock.

  Stone’s eyes drifted toward the back of his head as waves of pleasure threatened to consume him.

  Christian retreated at the last possible second before Stone came. Acute disappointment… and relief that there would be more of that… swept over him.

  He licked the thick vein along the underside of Christian’s cock and relished the groan it wrung from his lover. He did it again. Christian’s hips pushed forward a little, and he took more of Christian’s cock into his mouth. His asshole flexed in anticipation at the idea of taking all of Christian.

  He’d never been to bed with another man who seemed accustomed to being in charge most of the time, and it was an interesting give-and-take as they each experimented with relinquishing control, and then wresting it back. It wasn’t a dominance fight, per se, but it did turn competitive from time to time.

  Who could make the other come closest to an orgasm without exploding? Who could make the other one cry uncle on tickling or on a blow job that became too intense? Who could exhaust the other physically, first?

  The upshot of it was that they were as well matched physically as two human beings could be.

  They ended up settling into shared, mutual blow jobs, lying on their sides facing each other, head-to-foot. They matched rhythms, sucking off each other together, fucking each other’s mouths hard, arching their pelvises into each other’s faces simultaneously, groaning as one.

  They even came at the same time.

  It was sexy as hell, shouting around Christian’s cock as Christian spurted into his mouth, and he returned the favor.

  Afterward, they shared shots of whiskey that Christian rolled out of bed and poured for them. As for Stone, he was too sated and exhausted to move. They lay in bed in the dark, breathing heavily together.

  The salty taste of cum and the smoky taste of the whiskey blended into an intoxicating effervescence that relaxed him and threatened to knock him out.

  He probably ought to think about how Jack was going to react to Pere’s call and prepare a few noncommittal responses that would extract him from an uncomfortable conversation the most quickly. But he was too damned relaxed to think about such things. Tomorrow morning would be soon enough to resume real life.

  For tonight, he just wanted to go to sleep with Christian’s taste and scent on him. To wake up for once and not be alone.

  He gratefully settled into a state of mental emptiness that was utter and complete. And he’d never felt so emotionally full before. His body felt drained, his soul shredded, his mind blown.

  He was wrecked.

  And he was a new man.

  Chapter Five

  CHRISTIAN WOKE up slowly, groggy as hell. Which was odd. He hadn’t had much to drink last night, but he felt hungover. Maybe not odd. He’d gotten drunk as hell on Stone Jackson. For the first time in his entire life, he felt well and truly understood—body, heart, and mind. He and Stone were simpatico unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. In some ways, they were so much alike it was eerie. But in others, they were different enough to create a fascinating tension between them.

  The man had a gift for stripping away the layers of his mental self-defenses, laying him bare, and then devouring him whole. And yet he felt as if Stone had given himself back in return. A fair trade. A soul for a soul.

  The sex hadn’t been that adventurous, truth be told. But Christ, it had been intense.

  No wonder he felt so exhausted this morning, like he’d run a couple of Iron Man triathlons last night. It felt so damned good to just lie here, utterly relaxed, the cool air-conditioning blowing across his naked skin, his limbs tangled with Stone’s until he wasn’t sure where he ended and Stone began.

  A cell phone rang, and Stone jolted awake.

  “Relax. It’s mine,” Christian murmured. He rolled across Stone’s chest, pinning him down and enjoying the feel of chest hair against his stomach as he reached for the far nightstand. Stone was rousing slowly. Last night knocked him out too, huh? Awesome.

  He put the device to his ear. “What’s up, Travis?”

  The security man was as frantic as he’d ever heard him. “He’s gone.”

  Christian lurched and turned to sit on the edge of the bed, and Stone stared up at him in gathering alarm. “What do you mean, gone?”

  That brought Stone bolt upright beside him.

  Tucker talked in a rush. “Gone. No sign of Jack or Chesty. Suite’s empty. Poof. Disappeared.”

  Stone must have heard the ex-Marine, for he snatched Christian’s phone out of his hand. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t move. We’ll be there in sixty seconds.”

  Stone tossed the phone at him, snatched up his own cell phone, and dialed with one hand as he yanked on underwear, khaki slacks, and a black polo shirt.

  Horror, hot and pure, poured over and into Christian, filling his eyes and clogging his throat. He’d taken one lousy night off the job and disaster had struck. He’d dared to steal a moment for himself, and fate was punishing him for it now. Son of a bitch.

  “Martin, it’s Stone. Senator Lacey has disappeared. Did he talk with Peregrine? Did my quitting trigger this? If so, I’ve got to help find the guy. Did he give Pere any idea where he might have gone? Or are we looking at a kidnapping?”

  Sweet baby Jesus. Kidnapping? Christian’s mind hadn’t even gone there until Stone said it. Had Jack fallen prey to foul play? God knew, he had plenty of enemies. Or was this the work of whoever’d been threatening him?

  Christian’s mind spun off into all sorts of hideous scenarios while he yanked on his own clothes. How in the hell was he going to explain this to the public? Or should he cover it up until Jack was found? The wrong handling of this crisis could completely tank his career—

  Not that his career was the priority, of course. The first order of business was to locate Jack. Rescue him if necessary, and make sure the man was returned safe and sound.

  He glanced up in dismay at Stone. God, this could wreck Stone’s career too. This was what the guy had been talking about when he said bodyguards had one failure in their entire career. Lose one principal on your watch, and you were finished.

  He got it now. He and Stone were both done if they didn’t fix this mess fast.

  Which was the cherry on top of this sundae of suck.

  “Talk to me about Chesty,” Stone snapped at him as they threw on shoes and socks.

  “Porn star. Been around the biz for a while. Professional on the set. Smarter than she looks. A sweet girl from all accounts. Apparently can deep throat a twelve-inch dick. Hence the career success.”

  “Not what I was going for, but okay. Is she the type to blackmail Jack? Participate in kidnapping him? Capable of violence?”

  “As far as I know, no to all three.” He stood up grimly. “But everybody’s got their breaking points, don’t they?”

  Stone’s gaze snapped up to his, dark and guilty. “Correct.”

  Apparently this was their breaking point. Both of them were castigating themselves for leaving Jack to his own devices last night.

  Swearing under his breath, Christian raced for the door. The phone conversation with Martin—likely Martin Wylde, cofounder of Wild Cards—wound down.

  Stone was on his heels. “My boss says Lacey was shockingly unconcerned at this morning’s cancellation of the security contract. Bad news is he said nothing about leaving Miami. Good news is the Wild Cards, Inc. computer guys have picked up no chatter to indicate that a kidnapper might have taken him.”

  “You have people who would find something like that?”

  “Oh hell, yes. We put a close watch on every client. Regular web, deep
web, and dark web.”

  “What’s the dark web?”

  “The places the really bad actors hang out and not the wannabe posers.”

  “I’m sorry about this—” he started.

  “Save it, Christian. Not your fault the bastard disappeared. I’m the one who quit the job and left the man underprotected.”

  “Jack doesn’t let Tucker stay in his suite when he’s got a girl with him. He surely wouldn’t have let you stay with them last night.”

  “If we’d had any idea that a kidnapping was on the table, Travis and I could have stood guard outside the door.”

  “Jack wouldn’t have allowed it. I guarantee it.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I know my boss.”

  They raced down the long hall to Lacey’s suite, and Christian let them in with his key. Stone stopped just inside, presumably to prevent the disturbance of any evidence. Tucker was standing still in the doorway to the senator’s bedroom and didn’t move when they came in. Oh, right. Stone had told him to stay still. The man could by God follow an order. Christian squeezed in behind Stone and closed the door.

  “What have you got?” Stone asked Tucker from his position.

  “They had sex in the bed. His cell phone and wallet are gone. Toothbrush and razor still in the bathroom. No clothes missing. Nothing out of place. No sign whatsoever of a struggle.”

  “His laptop?” Christian asked.

  Tucker glanced over his shoulder into the bedroom. “Don’t see it.”

  “May I look around the living room for it if I don’t touch anything?” Christian asked Stone.

  “Yeah. You can move now, Tucker. And touch whatever you want. There won’t be any fingerprints or hairs lying around. If he was in fact kidnapped, pros did it.”

  “How can you tell?” Christian asked as he moved into the large room, lifting newspapers and stacks of briefing papers, hunting for any sign of the senator’s thin, brushed-aluminum laptop.

  “No struggle. Tucker knows his shit. If nothing’s out of place, then nothing’s out of place. Lacey either walked out of here or was carried out carefully by a pro.”

  Christian spotted the computer under a briefing about an upcoming vote in the Senate Commerce Committee pertaining to imports of Cuban sugar. “He didn’t take his laptop with him. Either he wasn’t planning on working, or whoever took him didn’t care about his personal files.” He looked over at Tucker. “Have you called Jill yet?”

  “And told her what? Her husband and his porn-star girlfriend have gone missing?”

  Christian winced. He really liked Jill. He and Tucker both did their best to shield her from the worst of her husband’s excesses. This was a freaking nightmare. The moment he told Jill he’d lost her husband, she was going to fire his ass. And he would completely deserve it. Heart heavy, he pulled out his cell phone.

  STONE WATCHED resignation settle on Christian’s features. He had to give the man credit. He was willing to man up and face the consequences of what he believed to be his mistake.

  “Not so fast,” he murmured, putting a hand over Christian’s phone. “Give Travis and me a little while to find out what we can.” He knew from bitter military experience that the more information you could give a loved one about how their family member had disappeared or met their demise, the better it went. Questions and unknowns ate at a person’s soul like nothing else.

  Christian nodded reluctantly.

  “Does hotel security have anything on his departure?” Stone asked Tucker.

  “Nope,” the security man replied. “They were the first people I called. The Imperium’s surveillance is so porous that he slipped right through it.”

  Hell, Lacey had been sitting in this very room, listening, when he’d complained to Tucker about how easy it would be to slip unseen out of the hotel by the stairwells. He didn’t think the senator had been listening to his comments, but maybe he had been, after all.

  “Have you tracked the GPS in his cell phone?” he asked next.

  Tucker shook his head. “Not yet. I haven’t called the police to ask them to locate his phone.”

  Stone snorted. “It doesn’t take the police to track a phone if you have the right contacts.”

  He made a quick call to a friend who owed him a favor. After a short pause, the guy announced that Lacey’s phone was turned off. Of course, it was. Either the kidnappers knew not to make such a rookie mistake, or else Jack didn’t want to be found.

  Frankly, he favored the theory that the bastard had taken off with his porn star and was getting a kick out of fucking with his staff.

  “Thanks, man,” Stone muttered to the contact. He reported to Tucker and Christian, “No joy on the cell phone’s location. It’s turned off and its locator function is deactivated.” He thought for a minute. “Did any of the emails or letters Lacey’s received threaten a kidnapping?”

  Tucker answered, “Negative. They were all death threats.”

  The Wild Cards analysts had already combed through the letters at the start of this job and the threats had mostly revolved around shooting Lacey. Which was a specific threat and specifically not kidnapping. A stalker could always change their end goal, but it would be unusual.

  Stone had been briefed to be ready for a direct assault—shooters were likely to barge into a public space, guns blazing, and try to make a big, public statement. A sophisticated and unseen kidnapping was not the letter writer’s likely MO.

  Frowning, he widened the net of possibilities they had to consider. “The girlfriend, Chesty,” he said abruptly. “Anyone got a real name, address, or cell phone number on her?”

  Tucker shook his head. “She legally changed her name. I have no idea what her birth name was.”

  Stone made another call. “Martin, it’s me again. I need an original birth name, address, phone number, anything you can get me on a porn star who goes by the name Chesty Hills.” A pause. Then dryly, “No, I’m not going over to the straight side of the force. I have to find her ASAP. We think Jack Lacey may be with her.”

  Christian smiled faintly, but the expression disappeared so fast Stone wasn’t sure he’d seen it.

  On top of his acute anxiety over his boss’s disappearance, the guy was clearly experiencing severe morning-after regret. He knew the feeling. His life was all about keeping moving, staying in motion, never letting anything bad catch up with him.

  Last night had been an anomaly. He’d actually slowed down. Physically and emotionally, he’d come to rest in Christian’s arms. He’d been so damned tired of the rat race, and it had felt so good just to stop. To be in one place, one headspace for a few hours. And not to be alone.

  He yanked his attention back to the crisis at hand. If Jack had taken off for shits and grins without telling Travis where he’d gone, Stone was going to break him in half, client or not. Christian and Travis worked their asses off for Jack Lacey. He owed them both better.

  A voice in his ear announced, “I found your porn star. And may I say she’s, umm, improbable? Are those things real?”

  “I have no idea,” Stone snapped.

  “Hey, if you’re gonna go straight, I say go big, mate. You ready to copy some information?”

  Stone picked up a pen and yanked a piece of hotel stationery out of a drawer. As Martin gave a name, address, and phone number, he scribbled it all down. “Got it. And I’m not dating her. The client is, fuck you very much.”

  “The married senator? What a naughty, naughty boy.”

  Huh. That was one way to describe it.

  Stone disconnected and punched Chesty’s phone number into his cell. “Service provider says the device is not turned on.”

  Christian blurted, “So she got grabbed too?”

  “We’ll have to swing by her place to be sure she and Jack aren’t just drunk or passed out there before I definitively declare this a missing person scenario.”

  “Don’t the police want someone to be missing for a couple of days before the
y’ll take any official action?” Christian asked nervously.

  “There are ways around that. Particularly for a VIP,” Stone answered. They made eye contact, and he tried to send a silent message of reassurance to Christian. They would figure this out. And if Jack was still alive, they would get him back in one piece.

  Tucker headed for the door. “I’ll drive,” he declared.

  The three men raced to the parking garage and piled into the SUV. Tucker drove west through Miami to the Doral address where Chesty lived under her birth name, Chelsea Jenkins.

  The address belonged to a modest, newly built cottage that was about as far from porn star as Stone could have imagined. He would bet a million bucks the neighbors didn’t know how Miss Jenkins made her living.

  A quick walk around the house to bang on all the doors and peer in all the windows made it abundantly clear that Chesty and Jack Lacey were not in residence.

  The trio climbed back into the SUV, and Tucker spoke grimly. “I’ve got no training in kidnapping recovery. This is out of my league. Now what? Call the FBI?”

  Stone shrugged. “I’m not technically on this assignment anymore. Wild Cards, Inc. pulled its contract early this morning and refunded Lacey’s money.”

  “When did that happen?” Tucker demanded.

  “Last night after Jack disappeared at the party, I called my boss. He agreed to terminate our services for the senator.”

  “Why?”

  Stone threw a withering look at Travis and didn’t bother to answer.

  “Yeah, I know,” Tucker grumbled. “He’s an asshole. But my kid is one semester from done with college, and then I won’t need this lousy paycheck. I can tell Jack Lacey to fuck off, and I can retire.”

  Stone replied, “I’ve worked for plenty of assholes. But Lacey’s complete unwillingness to listen to any advice from me or follow any instructions whatsoever is what caused the Wild Cards to pull the contract. The man didn’t give a damn that someone was threatening his life. You know as well as I do that he’s a sitting duck if there really is someone out there with serious intent to kill him.”