Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set

by Jill Elaine Hughes

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I sneered. “Why do you think I’m hightailing it out of Washington on a moment’s notice?”

  “I don’t blame you a bit,” Dexter said, his expression grandfatherly and kind in the cab’s rearview mirror. “Where you headed? I hope it’s somewhere nice.”

  “St. Lucia,” I answered, checking my reflection in my mirrored compact. “One of those all-inclusive luxury resorts. I had a bunch of airline miles built up on my credit card that were set to expire if I didn’t use them soon. I cashed them in at the travel agency and it was almost enough to cover the entire trip! I only had to pay two hundred dollars out-of-pocket, and everything is paid for once I arrive. I even got an upgrade to a suite.”

  “Sounds pretty ‘sweet’,” Dexter replied, shooting me a wink.

  “Yes, I think so too,” I said.

  The taxi stopped at a traffic light. I zipped my purse shut and rolled up the car window. I didn’t want to risk anyone important walking by on the crowded sidewalk and overhearing what I planned to say next. “You know Dexter, I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day about knowing a lot of important people. I was kind of wondering if you could tell me exactly what you meant by that.”

  Dexter gave me a small nod in the mirror just as the light changed, but said nothing more. His eyebrows raised in a manner I could tell meant he wouldn’t give me more information unless I greased his palm a bit. Hardly a surprise. From senior senators all the way down to cab drivers, nobody got anything in Washington unless a little cash was exchanged under the table.

  Well, more like a lot of cash. I’d withdrawn a thousand bucks from my savings account in anticipation of just such a possibility. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use all of it, but even if I did—and it helped me get hold of exactly the high-level officials I hoped to use to bait my trap—I’d consider it money well spent. I took a couple of twenties out of my pocketbook and passed them over the front seat. Dexter tucked them into his pocket without a word.

  “Well, I could start out by hooking you up with the editor-in-chief over at the Post,” he said. I pick him up almost every morning at his townhouse in Georgetown and take him into the office. “Given what’s happened over the past couple days, I bet he’d love an opportunity to get an exclusive interview with you.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I always thought the Post was above delving too deep into the sordid personal details of Washington sex scandals. Hell, what with all their Pulitzer Prizes and highfaluting reputation, the Post probably wouldn’t cover sex scandals at all if they didn’t have such a big impact on elections here in the States. It’s not like Europe, where nobody cares how many mistresses their politicians have.”

  “True,” Dexter replied. “But I think the Post might have an interest in you because your position in this whole scandal is, shall we say, unique.”

  “All right,” I said. I scribbled the name and number of the resort I’d be staying at in St. Lucia and handed it over the seat to Dexter. “Go ahead and see if you can set up the interview. The Post can call me at the hotel and we can do a phone interview.”

  “Will do.” Dexter smiled slightly. He didn’t seem overly pleased with himself. I wondered how often he brokered these kinds of backseat deals. By his blank expression, probably often—it certainly wasn’t the expression of someone who was nervous about taking illegal bribes in the back of his licensed taxicab. I noticed then for the first time that Dexter wore an expensive watch—a Patek Phillipe just barely visible underneath the cuff of his ordinary work shirt.

  If a cab driver could afford a forty-thousand-dollar watch, chances were good he made his living from something other than cab driving.

  “All right, so you know the editor-in-chief of the Post, but what else have you got? “ I asked. “Anybody big on the Hill? What about White House staff? Know anybody there?”

  Dexter gave me a tight-lipped grin that indicated I wouldn’t get any more information without some more palm-greasing. I reluctantly handed over another twenty, but Dexter kept his palm out. Clearly the information I was seeking came only at a premium. I peeled twenty-dollar bill after twenty-dollar bill off my fat roll of cash. Dexter finally was satisfied enough to pocket the dough and start talking after I’d greased his palm with almost six hundred bucks. For that kind of haul, Dexter’s inside information better be worth it.

  “I can hook you up with just about anybody you’d like on the Hill. Congressmen, senior senators, whoever. I have contacts in both parties. White House staff will cost you a little extra”—at this, I tossed another fifty bucks over the seat, which Dexter immediately pocketed—“and I can arrange that too.” Dexter pulled the cab onto the entrance ramp to the freeway that led to Dulles Airport, which I’d chosen to fly out of over Reagan National specifically because Dulles was more than an hour away from downtown Washingon—giving me plenty of time to grill Dexter for the information I needed for my crazy plan to work.

  Dexter finished merging onto the freeway and gave me a quick glance over his shoulder. “But before I give you this information, I’d appreciate it if you can tell me a little bit about what you plan to do with it.”

  I sucked in my breath. How much could I reveal? Dexter seemed trustworthy, but given our illegal backseat transactions, I figured it was just as likely he’d sell any information I gave him to somebody else. But I probably had to risk it; it was evident I wouldn’t get what I was looking for otherwise. “I’m thinking about inviting certain high-profile persons around town to come visit me in St. Lucia for some political conversation and—ahem—entertainment,” I said, trying to be as vague as possible. “I’m hoping to cultivate some new relationships with folks on the Hill, since I’ll be needing a new job and all. I’ll consider working with elected officials, government staffers, and the media. Wherever I think my, umm, unique skills might fit in the marketplace.”

  “I see,” Dexter chuckled.“And these relationships you’re looking to cultivate. Will they be with persons of the male persuasion or the female persuasion?”

  I swallowed hard. “Both.”

  Dexter chuckled again. “All right. And I assume you’re going to want all of this to be happening exclusively on the Q-T?”

  “Yep.”

  Dexter cleared his throat and brazenly thrust his open palm behind him across the back seat. I reluctantly placed several more bills in his hand. I couldn’t keep this up for much longer, or I’d be flat broke.

  Dexter pocketed the cash. “I’ll be sure the right people get the information you’re looking for,” he said. “I’ll take care of getting them to the airport, too. Though they’ll have to pay their own airfare down to the Caribbean. But it’s so nice down there this time of year, I’m sure none of them will mind. Especially if you give them a receipt for their taxes. You could always make the event into an offshore charitable fundraiser.”

  I blinked at this. Dexter was a clever Washington crook indeed. And yet he seemed so kind and gentle on the surface! I wondered what other crooked shenanigans he got away with. “I’ll take that into consideration,” I said.

  My stomach lurched a bit; at this point I knew I was crossing into dangerous territory. After so many years in Washington, I wasn’t naïve about how things really got accomplished around town. Bribes and backroom dealings were the norm in the hallowed halls of our government. But this was the first time I’d participated in those bribes and backroom dealings myself. I couldn’t help but feel a little dirtied by it all.

  We were approaching Dulles Airport. Dexter drove the last few miles without speaking; he turned up the volume on his radio, which blared the obnoxious kind of early-80s country-and-western music that I couldn’t stand. But I didn’t figure I was in any position to complain given the huge favor he’d just done for me. If you could even call it a favor, that is. With as much money as I’d put out, it was more like me doing him a favor.

  Dexter pulled the cab into the Kiss-n-Fly driveway in front of the terminal. He
helped me with my bags and shook my hand after I gave them to a skycap to check in. “Pleasure doing business with you, Miss Rand,” he said. “Call me again anytime you want to work together.” He headed back to the idling taxi, then paused and turned back to me. “Or if you ever just want a ride.”

  With that, Dexter drove off.

  I headed into the terminal, feeling a more than little nauseous.

  Chapter 15

  My cell phone rang when I was standing in the ridiculously long line to get through airport security. I was in the midst of taking off my shoes so I could run them through the X-ray machine along with everything else I owned. I nearly knocked over an elderly woman standing behind me as I fished the phone out of my overflowing purse while balancing on one leg.

  “Hello?”

  “Jasmine, I need to talk to you.”

  It was Rodney Doyle.

  Since there were a half-dozen federal security officers standing only five feet away, I suppressed the urge to hurl my cell phone across the terminal along with a string of obscenities. “Ha,” I seethed, clenching the phone between chin and shoulder as I worked the buckle on my left shoe. “I don’t even think so, Rodney.” My voice dripped ice cubes. “I’m hanging up now.”

  But I didn’t. No matter how much I wanted to deny it, I couldn’t ignore the face that Rodney’s voice pulled at my groin. My belly went soft and melty, and my phone attached itself to my ear and didn’t want to let go.

  Rodney cleared his throat on his end of the line. “Jasmine, I thought you were going to hang up.”

  “I, ummm, am. In a minute.” The TSA inspector who ran the X-ray scanner was giving me a dirty look. I’d been so struck dumb by Rodney’s call that I’d completely forgotten to put my belongings into the scanner.

  “You’re holding up the line, miss,” the inspector growled at me. “Let’s move things along, shall we?”

  I glanced behind me and saw at least three dozen angry travelers, all tapping their feet and checking their watches. Not a good sign. Rodney had had me on the phone for less than a minute, and he was already screwing with my world.

  And if I let my guard down for one instant, pretty soon he’d be screwing me.

  “Jasmine, are you still there?” Rodney actually sounded worried. The two-faced jerk.

  I tossed my belongings onto the scanner, and walked barefoot through the metal detector. “Yes, I am,” I replied. “Unfortunately.”

  “You seem to be having a hard time hanging up on me,” he chuckled. “I suppose that’s because you find me so irresistible.”

  At this, the bile rose in my throat. “No, I suppose it’s because I find you so shockingly repulsive that I just can’t turn away. Sort of like watching a car crash on the side of the highway.” My coat, purse, and shoes cleared the inspection and the TSA officer handed them back to me. I sat down on the hard plastic chair provided at the end of the security line to put on my shoes. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m at the airport and I need to go catch my plane.”

  “What the hell are you doing at the airport?” Rodney boomed.

  I ground my teeth. The man was really full of himself. “None of your goddamn business.”

  I made a move to shut off my mobile, but before I got a chance Rodney interjected. “Jasmine, I called to tell you that I’m very, very sorry about what happened in the papers this morning. And I also called to tell you that I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  I wanted to believe him; I really, really did. But I just couldn’t. “You’re lying,” I seethed. “How can you not know what’s going on at your own newspaper?”

  “It’s complicated, Jasmine. That’s why I need to meet with you as soon as possible. To explain things.”

  I glanced at the departures monitor and saw that my flight had already begun boarding. “I’m sorry, Rodney, but there’s nothing you can do to explain away what happened. My Washington career and reputation is ruined, and it’s all because of something you asked me to do. That’s all there is to it.” I tried to sound stern, but in actuality I was choking up. And my groin and belly were as hot and melty as ever. Try as I might to be furious with him, I couldn’t deny the fact that Rodney had a profound effect on my body and soul—even when we weren’t in the same room together.

  “Jasmine, please—“ Rodney’s usually authoritarian voice was plaintive. It tugged at my heartstrings—as I’m sure he wanted it to—but I clamped down on that feeling as hard as I could.

  “I’m sorry, Rodney, but my plane is boarding. Good bye.” I pressed the END button on my cell before he could get another word out. I’d won this round.

  Or so I tried to tell myself.

  Because if I’d won, why did I feel so miserable?

  The delightful warm, melty feeling that Rodney had stirred up in my lower half went cold and damp as day-old soup when I boarded the plane.

  ****

  The plane touched down in St. Lucia two hours later. The all-inclusive resort where I planned to stay was near Marigot Bay, on the other side of the island from the airport. I hailed a battered taxi driven by a coffee-colored Rastafarian with bleached-blonde dreadlocks. He gave me a blinding white smile as he tossed my luggage in the trunk and held the cab door open for me like an Old World gentleman.

  “Where going, madam,” he lilted in an island patois I couldn’t help but find sexy.

  “Silken Sands Resort, at Marigot Bay,” I replied.

  “Yes, madam,” the driver lilted. “I know where ‘tis.” He pulled the rattling cab onto the island’s only highway, homegrown reggae blaring on the taxi’s ancient tape player.

  “You have no been here before?” the driver shouted over the bouncy island music.

  “No, I haven’t,” I replied. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Yes, madam, ‘tis,” he laughed. “If you don’ mind me sayin’ so, madam, you be very uptight. Relax. You be in da islands now.”

  “You’re right,” I said, stretching out full-length on the cab’s backseat, which had no seatbelts (or any other safety features, for that matter) to hold me down. “I am very uptight right now. Which is the whole reason I came here, in fact.”

  “Same reason everybody come here, madam.” The driver turned down the reggae a bit. “My name is Milton, madam. I take you anywhere on da island you wanna go. There nothing here I don’ know about. You want to take island tour? I charge you only 10 US dollar extra.”

  “Just the resort is fine, thank you.” I’d already gotten into enough red tape engaging in extracurricular activities with an American cab driver back home; I wasn’t about to expand my horizons in that department while abroad.

  “As you like, madam,” Milton chirped. “Whatever you do while you here on St. Lucia, just take it nice and easy. That is da island way.”

  It seemed it would be hard for me to do anything but take it easy here on the island. Milton’s lilting voice was like a soft Caribbean melody in itself; if he was anything like the rest of his countrymen, this trip would be the ultimate in relaxation.

  The only problem was, I didn’t plan to spend much of my trip in the company of laid-back, nice-and-easy St. Lucians. All the guests to my luxury suite would likely be a bunch of Washington insiders who were even more uptight than I was. If my plan worked at all, anyway. If it failed, I’d just end up spending the week alone.

  After almost half an hour of driving past vegetation-choked ravines and grubby island shantytowns, the taxi finally rumbled into the circular driveway that led inside the luxury Silken Sands resort. Milton brought the taxi to a stop in front of the resort’s elaborately carved glass entranceway, and helped me with my bags. “You are here, madam,” he said as he deposited my luggage with a wink in front of a very attractive young bellboy. “You need anything to help you take it easy during your stay, you give a call to First Elegant Lucia Taxi Service. Concierge here know me by name. He be my cousin.”

  With that, the good-looking Rastafarian gave me a bow, and was gone with a swing of his d
readlocks.

  I was a little mystified by what Milton meant; one didn’t usually associate rides in dilapidated taxis taking it easy. Was he coming on to me, perhaps? It was hard to tell; these islanders were so laid-back and sensual in their speech and mannerisms that I thought I might have mistaken Milton’s everyday behavior for flirting.

  There was no mistaking the young bellboy’s behavior, however. The lascivious way he looked my body up and down with his glistening golden eyes made his intentions pretty clear.

  I didn’t quite know what to think. I’d never been ogled in public before. I just wasn’t the type of woman who turned heads.

  At least I wasn’t in the States. Maybe here in the islands, a slightly overweight, mousy thirtysomething woman was what every man fantasized about.

  Or maybe the bellboy was just angling for a bigger tip.

  Or maybe talking to Rodney back at the airport had so moved sex to the forefront of my brain to the point that every red-blooded male I laid my eyes on looked like a potential sex partner.

  In any case, I needed to make a beeline for my suite and spend a nice long while getting to know my vibrator.

  I checked in at the front desk, and a pretty young woman with a golden complexion and reddish cornrows handed me my key. The very attractive bellboy loaded my luggage onto a brass-handled cart and gestured down a hallway that led onto a lush private courtyard filled with palm trees and hibiscus. A parrot with golden plumage sat in the low-lying branches of one palm tree; it squawked “Welcome to Silken Sands” in its screeching bird-voice as I strolled past.

  The attractive young bellboy glanced over his shoulder as he led me through the courtyard. “That is Beulah, the resort parrot. She is quite intelligent. I have taught her to say many things.” I was surprised to hear the young man’s voice come out as a smooth, educated British accent instead of a bouncy island patois. It was a deep, masculine-sounding voice, too—the kind of voice one would expect to hear from a middle-aged, corpulent English country gentleman, not a slender, sleek young Caribbean thing barely out of his teens. He sounded like a British cross between Barry White and James Earl Jones.