King of Clubs (Aces & Eights Book 2)

by Sandra Owens

  Was it Peter? He was too far away for her to see his features, and a ball cap covered his hair, so she couldn’t tell if he was blond like Peter. The man’s size and build were similar to her former brother-in-law’s, though.

  She slammed the door behind her, locking the knob, and then she slid the dead bolt closed. Leaning against the wood, she put her hand to her chest, taking several deep breaths. When she was calmer, she put her eye to the peephole, keeping it there for a minute, but no one approached the door.

  But she’d be damned if she was taking any chances. Dropping her purse and Court’s sandwich on the dining room table, she went to the guest room and dug through her tote bag until she found her gun. For five or so minutes, she paced the confines of the living room, unable to sit. Had that been Peter watching her?

  At the sound of the door locks being turned, she backed up against the wall, holding up the gun. If it was him could she shoot him? She didn’t know. If he advanced on her and she couldn’t pull the trigger, then having a gun would only make the situation worse if he took it from her. She lowered the gun because she really didn’t think she could shoot anyone, even Peter. The door opened, and by a nervous reflex, she lifted her weapon.

  “Whoa!” Court said, coming to a stop in the doorway and putting his hands out to his sides, palms out. “Easy, G.G.”

  “Thank God it’s you,” she said, dropping the gun onto the dining room table. Her heart still beating as if she’d just crossed the finish line of a marathon, she ran into Court’s arms. He held her against him, and all she could think was that she was safe.

  He kicked the door closed, then picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his hips as he carried her into the living room. “Did you lock the door?”

  “It locks automatically,” he said as he lowered them to the sofa, her across his lap. “Talk to me, Lauren. What happened?”

  “I thought I saw Peter . . . in the corridor after I came back from dinner, but now I’m not sure. He was at the other end of the hall, too far away to see clearly, and had on a ball cap.” She chewed on her bottom lip, starting to feel embarrassed because she’d probably overreacted. Before panicking, why hadn’t she stopped to think about whether Court’s building was secure?

  Court picked her up by the waist and set her on her feet. “Come with me.”

  She followed him to a closed door that she’d thought was a linen closet. He took her index finger, running it down the side of the wood molding framing the door. “Feel the button?”

  “Yeah. It’s like a little bump in the wood.”

  “Press down on it.”

  When she did, the door swung open. “Wow. That’s cool.”

  “And once inside, there’s a dead bolt you can lock behind you so if anyone on the other side discovers the button you just pushed, they still can’t get in.”

  She walked into the windowless room that was not a linen closet, not even close. Spinning in a circle, her jaw dropped. “Whoa,” she murmured. “Now I know where to come when the zombie apocalypse happens.”

  On the wall in front of her was a cache of weapons, handguns, rifles, and even what she thought was an assault rifle. A shelf held a small supply of bottles of water and boxes of protein bars, along with a first aid kit. The bank of monitors on a third wall caught her attention, and she walked over to them.

  There were five monitors, each showing scenes from around the building, but the one that interested her showed the hallway outside his front door. “Can you back the tape up?”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “At the opposite end from here.”

  He touched the screen of the one she was looking at, and it switched to a different camera. “In that area?”

  She looked at him in amazement. “Yes. Do you have cameras all over the place?” At his nod, she laughed. Couldn’t help it. “Unbelievable. James Bond has nothing on you.”

  “Each of my brothers has a room like this. It’s a safe room, bulletproof door and all that. I’ll show you some other things in a minute. First, let’s find your dude.”

  “He’s not my dude.”

  “Roger that. About what time did you see him?”

  She thought about it. “Maybe ten minutes before you got home.”

  “Okay. Let’s take a look.”

  A few seconds later, he had the man on the screen. They both leaned their faces closer to the monitor. She shook her head, really embarrassed now. “It’s not him.”

  “No, it isn’t, but he’s also not one of my neighbors, and I don’t like that he’s watching you.”

  She didn’t either. “You know what all your neighbors look like?”

  “I know the face of every resident in the building.” He straightened, glancing at her. “In my line of work, you want to know who belongs in these hallways and who doesn’t.”

  “And he doesn’t?” In his line of work. Another reminder of the kind of life he led.

  “Don’t know. He could be visiting. I’ll call down to Jorge in a minute, see if the dude signed in.” He pulled a rolling chair out and sat, and then his fingers flew over the keyboard. The man’s face zoomed larger, boxed in by lines.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Running a facial recognition program.”

  Wow, it really was like being in a room with James Bond and his toys. The printer fired up, spitting out three sheets faster than her printer could even think about turning itself on.

  She picked up one. “I’ve never seen him before, but he does remind me a little of Stephan and Peter. He has the same blue eyes they do.”

  “If he’s in a database somewhere, we’ll find out who he is. While we wait to see if we get a hit, let me show you some things.” He pointed to the smaller monitors. “These are always on, and will switch every ten seconds to a different view in and around the building. If you’re ever here alone and something like this happens again, come in here.” He moved the mouse, hovering it over one of the squares showing a camera view. “If you want to keep it on a particular view, just click on it and the camera will stay there.”

  When he lifted his hand, she put hers on the mouse, bringing up different areas of the building. “You’re just full of surprises,” she said.

  “My front door and the door to this room are solid steel, impossible to shoot through.”

  “Really? They look like wood.”

  “Yes, really.” He smiled as if pleased with himself. “It took some experimenting to achieve the grain effect. The same for both Nate and Alex’s doors. A bullet won’t penetrate them.”

  “That’s definitely good to know.”

  “Now to impress you.”

  As if he hadn’t already. She followed him to the built-in shelves holding supplies, where he showed her a light switch. “Flip it on and off three times, pause long enough to take two breaths, then back on.”

  No light came on when she did it, but at the end of the sequence, the shelves moved aside. Lauren yelped, jumping back. When Court laughed, she punched him. “You could have warned me.”

  “More fun watching your reaction. This was originally a closet, but now it’s an escape hatch. Go down to get to Alex’s condo, and up to Nate’s.” A light had come on automatically, and he pointed to a buzzer. “Before you descend or scale the ladder, push this twice. It’ll let my brothers know that you’re on the move. If you don’t warn them, either one will probably shoot you when your head or feet poke through.”

  “Good God, all this is kind of freaking me out. You really are afraid the day will come when someone will come for one of you.”

  Although she was already worried about his being a federal agent, she’d not understood until now how dangerous his job was. Yet even though her mind was terrified by the risks he took, her girly parts thought he was the hottest thing on planet Earth and were humming their mating song.

  Considering he and his brothers went after the worst of the worst, Court thought there was a high probability that the day would
come when someone would seek revenge against the Gentry brothers. The thought of his brothers being the target of some dude or gang wanting vengeance had kept him up nights. He’d come up with the idea of an escape hatch for all of them, and had then expanded on that idea with the safe rooms they each now had.

  Not wanting her any more scared than she already was, he only shrugged. “Not really afraid, just playing it safe.” He grinned. “More like it was fun to, as you accused me of, play James Bond. He was a cool dude.”

  She eyed the ladder. “So after pushing the buzzer twice, I just climb down or up and, poof, after going through a hatch, I’m in either Alex’s or Nate’s condo?”

  She lifted her eyes to meet his. “Is it weird that all this is kind of turning me on?”

  Well, if he’d known that, he would have shown her his James Bond room long before now. “Is it weird that all this turning you on is turning me on?” He trailed a finger down her spine. “I mean seriously getting me hot.” The way the gold flecks in her whiskey-brown eyes shimmered as she stared up at him sent all his blood south.

  “Court.”

  It was the way she whispered his name, as if it meant something special to her, that had him backing her up to the wall in the damn closet. “Lauren,” he answered, pushing his body against hers, aligning them so that his erection settled into the vee of her sex. “Tell me to stop before I take you right here.”

  She stayed silent, but her eyes shimmered with a challenge. Do it, they said.

  “So be it,” he murmured as he covered her mouth with his. From the first day he’d laid eyes on her, he’d wanted her. He’d had her and then he’d lost her. She had ruined him. He couldn’t enjoy any other woman, and during the past six years, that had fucking pissed him off. But here she was, back in his life, and he both wanted to punish her and tenderly love her. How did one go about achieving both those goals?

  “Sometimes you make me crazy, G.G.,” he said as he expertly stripped her of her T-shirt, jeans, panties, and bra in the confines of his closet.

  “Bad crazy or the good kind?”

  “I’m still working on figuring that out.” Christ, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. “I’m going to worship every inch of you.”

  She tugged at his shirt. “Not fair. I want to see you.”

  Since he’d always thought of himself as a fair man, he pulled a condom out of his wallet before shedding his clothes, dropping each piece carelessly onto the floor as they came off.

  “Much better,” she said as she wrapped her hand around him.

  “Ah,” he muttered. He slid a finger inside her, stroking her. “You’re ready for me, Gorgeous Girl. This isn’t going to be pretty. No finesse. I’m too desperate for you.” And there was anger fueling him—that the man in the hallway might have been stalking her.

  “I don’t want pretty. It’s not what I need right now.” She grabbed his face, pulling it down to hers.

  They were in agreement then. Their tongues dueled, and when her fingers dug into his hair, he broke away. “Give me a minute,” he said when she tried to meld their mouths again. He ripped the condom open with his teeth, then rolled it on. He trailed his hands down to her bottom, lifting her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around him, gasping when he slid home.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The word came out breathless, flowing through his veins like a drug whose side effect was to steal any control he might have had. She was so hot and tight he couldn’t hold back.

  “Like that,” she said as he urgently thrust into her. She clamped her teeth down on his shoulder.

  He jerked at the sting of her bite as lust crashed through him with the force of a tsunami. She’d turned him into some kind of primitive barbarian who had to claim his woman right here, right now.

  A low moan began in the back of her throat, growing deeper as she tightened her core muscles around him. His climax hit at the same time as hers, and she clung to him as she shattered.

  The air left his lungs, and he couldn’t get it back. He slid to the floor with her landing on his lap, both their chests heaving as they struggled to breathe. “That was . . .” What? He couldn’t think of a word strong enough to adequately describe what had just happened.

  “The best sex ever?”

  He leaned his forehead against hers. “Yeah, that.” They’d lost six years, but damn if he was going to let anyone tear them apart, not this time. Unless she did the tearing apart by deciding to run after all. But she’d said she was ready to stand and fight, so he let her have a little piece of his heart again. Not all of it. He wasn’t ready for that yet.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, snuggling her face into his neck.

  “My brain is mush right now. No thinking going on.” He didn’t know how to explain his fear that she would leave him again. The computer dinged, telling him the program had found a hit on the man in the hallway.

  “As much as I’d like to relocate to my bed and spend the night continuing this, I’m going to have to go clean up and get ready to head to the bar.” He lifted her to her feet, then pushed himself up. “I’ll be back in a minute. Looks like the computer identified our mystery man.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Lauren glanced at the monitor, but no name was scrawled across the screen. She scrambled into her jeans and T-shirt, while keeping a wary eye on the computer.

  “Please let it be someone who was just visiting one of Court’s neighbors,” she said to the machine. It was surreal. One minute she was luxuriating in the afterglow of the most incredible sex of her life and the next she was pacing in a safe room, waiting for Court to tell her the man’s name.

  Her life was out of control. That was all there was to it. She’d let this happen by sticking her head in the sand, assuming Stephan would forget about her. Considering she’d heard nothing since that first letter shortly after he’d gone to prison, she supposed it was a reasonable assumption. It’d been a stupid one, though. The day he’d be free again had seemed eons away. When had time started moving so fast?

  “Let’s see who our man is,” Court said, coming back into the room.

  She moved behind him, her hand on his shoulder, as he sat in front of the computer. The man’s face came up on the screen, along with his name and background information. Her heart dropped to her stomach at reading the name.

  “Vadim Popov,” Court read aloud. “You ever hear that name?”

  “No, but if he’s Russian, that doesn’t bode well, does it?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences. I need to go, but I’ll take a closer look at him after I get to Aces and Eights.”

  She didn’t want him to leave, wanted to tell him that she only felt safe with him, but she was afraid he’d think she was a big baby.

  “Why don’t you come with me,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Bring a book. You can hang out in the office.”

  “I was supposed to go down to Madison’s, but I’d really like to go with you. We need to tell her to be careful if she leaves her condo.”

  “Give her a call. See if she wants to come. You can keep each other company. Can you be ready to go in twenty minutes?” At her nod, he said, “I’m going to eat the sandwich you brought me. If Madison wants to go with us, tell her we’ll come down and get her.”

  “Court,” she said as he reached the door, “thank you.”

  He stopped, strode back to her, put his hand around the back of her neck, and covered her mouth with his. After a lingering kiss, he lifted his head. “Everything will be all right, G.G., I promise.”

  She put her fingers on her tingling lips as she watched him walk away. She’d known all those years ago that he was a good man, but she hadn’t known then just how amazing he was.

  As she and Court rode down in the elevator to collect Madison, who’d definitely wanted to go, she let her gaze roam over Court’s mighty fine body. He wore black jeans and a black T-shirt with an Aces & Eights logo on it. On the pocket was the king of cl
ubs card. She’d noticed already that each brother’s Aces & Eights T-shirt had a different logo. Alex had the jack of hearts on his, and Nate had the ace of spades.

  “You need a queen of diamonds,” she said. “You know, you each have your own card on your shirts. Who’s the queen?”

  “The bar’s the queen and a bitch queen she is.”

  “You don’t like Aces and Eights? I think it’s really cool. You know, that the people who come there have no idea you and your brothers are FBI agents. It’s kind of surreal, if you think about it.”

  “I like it most days. Other times, I think it’s the worst idea Nate ever had.” He knocked on Madison’s door. “Soon enough someone’s going to connect the dots, and it’ll be time to move on.”

  “You’d leave the FBI?”

  He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Never. Why? Does it bother you that I’m a federal agent?”

  “I think it’s hot that you are.” Except that his job was dangerous, so it did bother her. It scared her to think of why he had to carry a gun every day. She bumped her shoulder against his upper arm. “Although I’ve yet to see your handcuffs.”

  He put his mouth next to her ear. “G.G., one more word and I’ll have to use those handcuffs on you for getting me all hot and bothered when my sweet sister-in-law’s about to open her door.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes, and that was a word.”

  “Hey,” Madison said, swinging her door open.

  “And just so you know, she’s not all that sweet,” Lauren said.

  Madison pulled the door closed behind her as she stepped out into the hallway. “Who’s not sweet?”

  Lauren smirked at her friend. “You.”

  “Am, too.” She leaned around Lauren to look at Court. “Ask Alex. He’ll tell you I am.”

  “So not going there,” Court said. “Ladies, after you.”

  She linked arms with Madison, managing not to jump when Court, walking behind them, squeezed her butt.