In a Bad Way

by Karin Tabke

  “No, but it’ll be safer for her this way than her flying solo,” Maddox responded.

  Maddox set down the thick file folder he’d been holding on to on the coffee table and stepped back as if his nearness distressed her. “It’s your call, Miss Fuentes,” he said.

  “I said, I’ll do it.”

  Flynn scrubbed his hand across his face, exhaling loudly.

  Izzy hurried to reassure him and herself that she would be careful. “I won’t do anything stupid, Flynn.”

  Giving her a pointed look, he said, “It’s not you I’m worried about.”

  His words stung deep. Damn it, the hot rush of tears burned her eyes. When had she become so vulnerable?

  Realizing how harsh he sounded, Flynn quickly reassured her. “You misunderstood, Pink. I’d chop both my nuts off if would change your mind.” He traced the line of her cheek with his fingertip. “I’m worried about what Boris or Andre would do to you if they suspect something.”

  “Ryker,” Justin intervened. “We’ll have an army of UCs inside during the hours Miss Fuentes is on the job.” He moved around the sofa, stepping closer. “We’ll put the word out on the street at those times for all units to be on alert. Have them pay particular attention to the area without giving anything away.”

  Arms crossed over his chest, Flynn stared down Maddox, who wasn’t in the least bit intimidated. “This isn’t my first rodeo, Ryker,” Maddox said. “I haven’t lost a CI yet.”

  Izzy grasped Flynn’s forearm and looked up into his stormy eyes. “I don’t need your permission to do this, but I’d like your blessing.” Heat rose in her cheeks. “I don’t want to make the video with anyone but you.”

  Letting out a long breath, Flynn acquiesced. “You don’t have a choice in that, Pink. One, no one else is going to touch you and two, Andre has seen me and expects me to be your mark. So you’re stuck with me.”

  “So we’re all agreed then?” Justin asked. Everyone nodded, including Flynn, who Izzy desperately wanted to be in on this, if only because if he gave his seal of approval somehow she’d feel like she wasn’t in imminent danger. Secondly, she wanted him around. He could say what he wanted, and act like he didn’t care about her, but she knew he had a higher stake in her safety than the other two.

  Not that Justin and Maddox didn’t exude a supreme command presence that left her feeling dizzy. But in her eyes, they weren’t Special Agent Ryker.

  “Let’s get the video wrapped up, and go from there,” Justin said.

  Maddox nodded and said, “Miss Fuentes, your cell phone?”

  Izzy retreated to her bedroom to get her cell phone and heard raised voices in the room behind her. When she returned with the phone, the three men stood angrily glaring at each other.

  “Okay, boys,” Izzy said. “Play nice or I’m sending all three of you home.”

  She handed Maddox the cell phone.

  “Miss Fuentes, if you wouldn’t mind showing me the way to your bedroom.”

  “Not going to happen, Price,” Flynn said stepping in front of him.

  Maddox turned angry eyes on Flynn. “Do I have to call your SAC and have you removed?”

  “Make the call,” Flynn challenged.

  “Ryker,” Justin said moving between them. “We’re just going to establish the date, location, and players, and then let you two do what you need to do privately.”

  Flynn stepped past them both, caught Izzy’s elbow, and proceeded to the bedroom.

  Pulling her into him as they entered, he lowered his lips to her ear and said, “Relax, it’s not going to be like Saturday’s video, just follow my lead once we start rolling, okay?”

  The warmth of his breath on her ear shot straight to her nipples and beyond. Not trusting her voice, she nodded.

  Once they were all assembled, Maddox turned on the camera, and began to video himself. “This is Inspector Maddox Price, San Francisco PD.” He stated the date, time, and location before turning the camera on Justin.

  “Lieutenant Justin Barbieri, SFPD, joint task force liaison.”

  When the camera turned to Flynn, he briskly identified himself. “Special Agent Flynn Ryker, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Lastly the camera turned to Izzy. “Isadora Fuentes.” She looked at Flynn, then at the camera, and said, “Classified informant.”

  Flynn shook his head, but Maddox grinned as he turned the camera back to himself. “The purpose of documenting the date, location, time as well as involved parties preceding the bait video is to establish that the content is sanctioned by the joint task force of Operation Bullwinkle. All acts contained in this video are staged, but willfully consensual for the purposes of the operation. Any props used during the filming of this video are placebos.”

  He handed the phone to Izzy. “Miss Fuentes, to ensure fluidity and the validity of the video if it’s challenged in a court of law, please refrain from turning the camera off until such time as the act is complete.”

  “Okay,” she said, gingerly taking the cell phone and placing it on her nightstand in the exact same position she had put her original phone Saturday night.

  Taking a deep breath, she slowly exhaled as her eyes rested on Flynn, who stood silent at the foot of her bed. She didn’t hear the door close when Maddox and Justin left them alone. At Flynn’s continued stare, her skin warmed. Her nipples tightened beneath the thin fabric of her top. His jaw clenched as a curse slipped from his lips.

  Swallowing hard, Izzy wasn’t sure how to proceed. Flynn had been given the script. He told her to follow his lead, but he just stood there.

  Should she start the act that wasn’t really going to be an act on her part, because she craved Flynn’s hands on her again, or wait for him to come to her? When he still didn’t move, her heart thudded with the intensity of a runaway freight train. Fighting the tremor that threatened to go through her, it occurred to Izzy that maybe Flynn didn’t want her.

  Maybe it was better that way. With a shaky breath, she sat down on the edge of the bed in view of the camera. Mustering up all of her bravado, Izzy moved back onto the mattress, and then slowly, rose up on her knees. Crooking her finger at him, she said, “Come here, Special Agent Ryker.”

  When he still didn’t move, her stomach did a slow, hard roll. Humiliation swept through her. She wasn’t going to beg him, damn it! Mentally she counted backward from ten. When she got to one, if he hadn’t moved, she was going to go tap Justin or Maddox for the job! Her belly did another slow roll. As hot as those two were, she only wanted one man. The one standing at the foot of her bed who didn’t want her.

  Closing her eyes, she bit her bottom lip. Ten. Nine. Eight. Heat flushed her cheeks. Seven. Six. Her chest rose and fell sharply as emotion clenched her resolve. Five. Four. Three.

  Warm breath caressed her cheek.

  A rush of heat flooded her veins. “I hate that I can’t stop wanting this,” he rasped inches from her.

  Biting back the cry that struggled to escape, Izzy opened her eyes and this time the cry escaped. His blue eyes glittered intensely. His nostrils flared like the predator he was. The way his features tightened with unleashed power stirred her soul. Every inch of her cried out for succor.

  A strong arm slipped around her bare waist and yanked her hard against his chest. His lips hovered just above hers. “I can’t get you out of my head,” he said, anger edging the words.

  Swallowing hard, Izzy held his stare. Despair swirled in the blue depths of his eyes. Desire she couldn’t ignore. They had a cosmic connection. Neither one of them wanted it, they’d both fought it and they’d both lost. He had been no more able to erase her from his mind than she had him. Still, they were where they had begun two nights ago. Nothing had changed except the date and time. Izzy had no hope that once this video was shot, he wouldn’t walk out the door again.

  So let this charade play out, and when it was over she would double her efforts to put this man out of her mind. Closing her eyes, she mentally prepared herself for t
his. Slowly she opened them, holding his intense gaze. Sliding her shield firmly back in place, she smiled seductively.

  “I’m so happy you came home with me,” Izzy breathed, running her hands up his hard chest. Damn, he felt good. “I want to do bad things to you, Special Agent Ryker.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Izzy tugged Flynn’s tie, loosening it. Leaning into him, she pressed her lips to the base of his throat. His fingers dug into the small of her back. His other hand slid down the back of her thigh. The effect went straight to her core. She didn’t want to respond to his closeness the way she did. She wanted to feel nothing. But when both of his hands slid down to her ass and grasped her, pressing her into his erection, her breath hissed from her lungs at the contact.

  “I want to do bad things to you, too, Wild Style,” he whispered.

  When he lowered his lips to hers, she turned away, not wanting to give that part of her to him. His fingers tightened against her skin.

  Laughing, she shook her head in an attempt to shake off the fever that burned through her. Moving back onto the bed, she pulled him with her. “Kissing is for suckers, Special Agent Ryker. I want to get down to business,” she said, her voice low, but challenging.

  As he leaned over her, she grabbed his shirt and pulled it apart, the buttons popping off. It took monumental control not to slide her hands along the hard planes of his bare chest. Closing her eyes so that her desire wouldn’t be captured in the video, she turned away from the cell phone’s camera.

  Flynn lowered his nose to her cleavage and inhaled her scent. Her heart thumped against her rib cage as her body flushed with a soft sheen of perspiration. A whimper escaped her lips.

  He looked up at her, his blue eyes fierce with desire. Trembling, she tried to control her reaction to his touch. Even knowing they were being filmed, she couldn’t.

  Brushing his lips across her ear, he softly said, “Relax, baby, you can do this.”

  Biting her bottom lip, she nodded, then turned to the camera with a sultry pout and said, “You have too many clothes on.”

  He grinned and moved back off the bed and stood, taking his shirt and tie off. Tossing them onto the floor, he leaned over her and said, “I have something I want you to try before I strip you down to those heels.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small clear vial with white powder in it.

  “What is that?” she asked, surprised. The guys hadn’t said anything about a drug video. But then it made more sense, didn’t it? A sex video didn’t go nearly as far as a fed snorting coke with a stripper did.

  “Bolivian blow. Primo shit.”

  “I’ve never done drugs—wait, aren’t you a cop?” she asked, catching on quick.

  Flynn smiled and traced a finger down between her breasts. “It’s a nice little perk of the job.”

  “Where did you get it? What if you get caught? Would you go to jail?”

  Taking the vial between his teeth, he pushed her back into the mattress. His strong hands slid along her thighs to her hips. Dropping the vial to the bed beside her, his lips trailed from the bottom of her bikini top to her belly button. He looked up at her and said, “You ask too many questions, Wild Style. Just relax and trust me.” He nipped her skin. “I’m untouchable.”

  Squirming beneath the heat of his lips, Izzy, tried to remind herself this was fake. The blaze in his eyes was fake, his gentle reverent touch was fake. It was all for the camera.

  “You taste like bubble gum,” he said, licking around her belly button ring. “I just want to eat you up.”

  “I want you, too,” she moaned, fighting her body’s impulse to undulate.

  He grinned. “Soon, Wild Style, just as soon as we kick things up a notch.” He picked up the vial and opened it. “Don’t move, baby.” Then, expertly, he drew a line of what appeared to be cocaine along the top swell of her right breast. “I don’t know what looks sexier, you or the coke.”

  He reached back into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and slid out a bill. With his shield in plain view, he set it down next to her cell phone. Rolling the bill up, he leaned over her, put it to his nostril and then snorted the line. He jerked his head back like he had done it one hundred times before.

  Rubbing his nostril, he looked down at her and drew a line on the inside of his left forearm. Handing her the bill, he said, “Your turn.”

  Taking the bill, she looked up at him and said, “I’ve never done coke before.”

  “There’s a first time for everything, sweet cheeks. That’s primo powder right there, doesn’t get any better.” He raised his forearm to her. “Go ahead, I have plenty more where that came from.”

  She did. When she was done, he took the bill and tossed it to the floor, then pulled her hard into his arms, and said, “Now, real slow, take everything off, except the heels.”

  Izzy hid her surprise. Surely he wasn’t going to take it that far. Was he? Without blinking, Flynn said, “Do it now.”

  Nodding, she reached behind her neck to unhook the bikini top just as Flynn moved back against the nightstand, knocking it and everything on it over.

  Putting his finger to his lips he shook his head, then said, “Now take the bottoms off.” Quickly he tossed the pillows off the bed onto the floor where the cell phone lay screen down.

  Izzy looked at Flynn. “Is it covered?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Get dressed.”

  “But Boris is going to want to listen.”

  “We’ll leave it running where it is. If he jacks you up about it, tell him you tried to get to the phone, but I wouldn’t let you off the bed. When you could get to it, I was gone. He won’t care once he sees what’s on it. He’ll think he hit the jackpot at Caesar’s.”

  “Okay,” she said feeling oddly out of place in her own bedroom. More odd, she felt let down. She had really wanted to go there with Flynn, even if they were being recorded. She knew then she had to backpedal fast and far.

  Flynn picked up his torn shirt and tie.

  “I’d offer you one of Charlie’s shirts, but you’re too big,” she said lamely, knowing she should just exit the room.

  He shrugged the shirt on. “It’s not a big deal.”

  Once he was dressed, Flynn stood immobile for a long minute staring at her.

  The heavy silence and his penetrating gaze made her more uncomfortable. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll change, I don’t want Justin or Maddox to see me like this.”

  “It’s nothing they haven’t seen before.”

  Her head jerked back and tears stung her eyes. “You’re not a very nice man, Flynn.”

  Jamming his fingers through his hair, he shook his head, and clamped his jaw shut. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You’re right, you shouldn’t have. I’m sorry that you have such a nasty side to you. I thought you were better than that.” She moved to walk past him into the bathroom, but he caught her arm and pulled her back around to him.

  “Look, Pi—Isadora, I’ve never—damn it, I’ve never been in this situation before. I don’t know how to handle it. Obviously.”

  “What situation are you talking about, Flynn?”

  “This,” he said, motioning between them. “Thing between us.”

  “What thing?”

  “The 'I can’t stop thinking about you’ thing.”

  She straightened and pulled her arm from his hand. “This thing,” she motioned between him just as he had, “between us, was over for me the minute you drove away from my house last night.”

  Marching into the bathroom, Izzy shut the door firmly behind her, and locked it. Not because she was afraid he’d come in while she showered, but because she was afraid if he asked her to come out, she would. And she couldn’t. Not to him, a man in so many ways like her father. She was good enough to fuck, but not good enough to go public with. All he saw was a cocktail server with big tits who happened to tickle his fancy at the moment.

  No, as much as she was drawn to Flynn, she wasn’t going to sacr
ifice her self-worth only to be objectified by him.

  She didn’t know who she was more disappointed in—him for being so much like her father or herself for falling for him, knowing he was cut from the same cloth.

  Leaning up against the door, she exhaled loudly.

  “I’m not like him, Pink,” Flynn said from the other side of the door.

  “Yes you are.”

  “Open the door.”

  “No.”

  “Are you afraid of me?”

  “I’m afraid of my weakness for you.”

  “I’m just as weak for you.”

  Izzy squeezed her eyes shut. God help her, but she wanted to open the door and let him in. All of the way. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Will you give me another chance not to be such a dick?”

  Izzy smiled, but her heart ached because she knew the answer. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you are who you are and I am who I am. I know how you truly feel.”

  She turned and opened the door. He stood there so big and strong and…vulnerable. Her heart broke; she wanted him so much at that moment. But she was already one man’s dirty secret; she wasn’t going to be another’s.

  “I don’t want to be your dirty little secret, Flynn.”

  “You wouldn’t be.”

  “I don’t believe you. Besides, it doesn’t matter if you took an ad out in the Chronicle telling the world you’re my guy, because it would be a lie. We both know it.” When he didn’t argue, her heart fluttered. She had challenged him to fight for her. And he hadn’t. “I want you to stay away from me.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Find a way.” She reached past him, grabbed her robe from the coatrack, and slid it on, quickly tying the sash. It was the same sash she had used to tie Flynn’s hands to her headboard.

  Heat shot through her at the memory. God, that had been a glorious night. Moving to the pile of pillows on the floor by her bed, she knelt down, and slipping her hands beneath the pillows she found her iPhone. Feeling for the On/Off button, she pressed it. After a few seconds she withdrew the phone and handed it to Flynn.