Deep Cover

by Kimberly Van Meter

  When he’d been on Bliss, his body had ached to move, as if his bones tingled with the need to feel tension. That’s why sex had been so sublime. Every sense was heightened to the point of almost madness, and in between that space was the ultimate high.

  If Bliss were legal—and didn’t cause your heart to explode after taking it too many times—the world would collapse because no one would want to ever do anything but screw and dance.

  Shaine made a purposeful drive-by, catching Raven’s eye as he walked, even allowing his gaze to linger as if he were appreciating the view and then kept walking.

  Shaine knew his covert flirting would get noticed, and, sure enough, Raven openly stared at him with interest.

  An hour later, Shaine was sitting at the bar when DJ Raven sidled up beside him with an interested smile. “I’ve seen you before,” he said.

  “Yeah, I was at the warehouse party,” Shaine answered, motioning to the bartender for another drink and whatever Raven was having.

  “Apple martini,” Raven supplied, and returned to Shaine with an apprising stare. “I thought I recognized you. You went home with that sassy blonde who came with baby Capri.”

  “Yeah, good memory,” he praised as he took a drink of his beer. “Were you friends with Capri?”

  Raven shrugged, flipping his pink, purple and blue weave over his shoulder, his gaze roving the crowd, looking for a conquest. “Baby-girl was like a drop of rain, refreshing, sweet and doomed to evaporate in the heat of the sun.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She was addicted to her vices,” Raven answered with a dramatic sigh as he returned to Shaine. “I tried to tell her to slow down, but she wasn’t going to listen to anyone but that little voice that told her she needed more.”

  Shaine shook his head, not surprised by the grim picture Raven was painting of the young, troubled girl. “She seemed a nice kid. It sucks that she’s gone.”

  “True, true. She was a good little soldier.”

  That statement pricked his interest. He smiled quizzically at Raven. “What do you mean?”

  “C’mon now, you’ve been around the scene long enough to know who runs this town. Capri was his favorite. And she was rewarded like a good girl. The only problem was that she didn’t know how to keep her hands out of the cookie jar.”

  “Are you talking about that El Escorpion character I’ve heard about?” he asked incredulously, trying to seem like he didn’t buy that story. “Sounds like an urban legend.”

  “El Escorpion is very real, baby-boy,” Raven said solemnly. “And you never know who is working for him, so watch what you say. The walls have ears, if you know what I mean.”

  Shaine shrugged, smothering the spark of excitement at stumbling on the first real mention of the shadowy character. “So was Capri dating the guy or something?”

  “You sure have a lot of questions for someone who wasn’t all that interested a few moments ago.”

  “Just passing the time,” he said, tipping his beer for a quick swig. “I have a night off and I needed a different scene other than Lit.”

  “Copy that. Lit is filled with overprivileged trust-fund babies who have too much money and not enough sense. And they tip like shit.”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed. All that money and yet they are the stingiest with it.”

  “Funny how that works,” Raven remarked drily, sipping his martini, allowing his gaze to travel up and down Shaine’s body. “So how do you like working at Lit?”

  “It pays the bills.”

  “That’s it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s enough for me. And I like the people. Angelo seems cool. The girls are hot and the drinks are good. I’m a simple guy—that’s pretty much all I need.”

  “Angelo,” Raven repeated, exaggerating the name as if contemplating something heavy. “That man...ugh. So full of himself. You’d think his piss was the fountain of youth or something. He likes to play like he’s in charge but he answers to the boss, just like everyone else.”

  “Do you mean the owner of the bar or someone else?”

  Raven seemed to realize he let too much slip and waved away Shaine’s question. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just sour grapes right now. Angelo is a greedy SOB and he always has been. Nothing is going to change on that front.”

  “I like him,” Shaine replied, wondering what secrets Raven knew about Angelo. “So, is he, like, some important big shot with this Scorpion character?”

  Raven smiled and caressed Shaine’s cheek. “You have the most exquisite cheekbones, baby-boy. And those eyes. I could stare for days into those peepers. Tell me...are you available for the night or are you taken?”

  Bold and to the point. Shaine grinned, saying, “Taken for now, but you never know what could happen.”

  He purposefully left it open-ended. Hope loosened more lips. Raven smiled around his glass. “Aren’t you the coy one. Maybe I’ll see you around when you’re not taken.”

  “Maybe so.”

  Raven finished his martini. “Careful who you play with, beautiful boy. Some people are better at games than most.”

  Raven sauntered off, melting into the crowd.

  Shaine finished his beer, intrigued by the bits of information Raven had spilled.

  Was Raven talking about El Escorpion? Angelo? Or someone else entirely?

  Hell, maybe he was talking about himself.

  Could Raven be El Escorpion? Raven had access to the party scene in a way that would go unnoticed. The DJ slipped in and out, kept to himself and served as a conduit for Bliss traffic. What better way to see and hear everything than by being seemingly part of the machine?

  Digging into DJ Raven’s past seemed like a good place to start.

  * * *

  The adjoining door opened and Shaine walked in, interrupting Poppy’s morning coffee. She glanced up, surprised, but not entirely unhappy to see Shaine.

  He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all. His eyes were bloodshot and he had that jittery look about him that screamed, I’m tired as shit but I can’t sleep.

  When Shaine went straight to her coffeepot like a zombie in need of brains, Poppy just smiled and continued to read through her emails on the laptop.

  Shaine joined her and after a few restorative sips of the hot brew, he said, “Thank God, you have coffee.”

  “You look like you had a rough night. Business or pleasure?”

  “All business. I might’ve found a lead worth chasing down.”

  That caught her attention. “Yeah?”

  “I went to Grind last night and sparked a conversation with DJ Raven. Seems the guy knows more than he lets on. He let a few tidbits slip that make me wonder if DJ Raven is our guy.”

  “How so?”

  Shaine shared the details of his night and what he’d found out. Poppy agreed with Shaine; there were definitely some leads to chase down.

  “Let’s run him through the system and see what pops up.” Poppy closed her email program and pushed her laptop to Shaine, where he promptly logged into the FBI database to run a background.

  “All we have is an alias. Hopefully, that’s enough to grab on to something if he has a record of any sort.”

  They ran the search but nothing came up.

  “Of course it couldn’t be that easy,” Poppy grumbled. “Let’s get in touch with our Miami PD contacts and see if they know him by any other name. Maybe the locals know more than the FBI database.”

  Shaine nodded and sipped his coffee, exhaling as he settled into the chair, the tension bunching his shoulders easing. Poppy tried not to put much store in the fact that Shaine was more relaxed around her, but she couldn’t help the warmth tickling her belly that had nothing to do with her dark roast.

  “So, how’d you get DJ Raven to cough up some leads?” she asked, curious.

  “I flirted with him.”

  “Ha! I wish I could’ve seen that!”

  “Hey, whatever works. But he left me with a warning.”

&
nbsp; “What’d he say?”

  “He told me to be careful, that some people play games better than most.”

  Intriguing. A thrill of excitement chased Poppy’s spine. “That’s an interesting warning. Do you think it was benevolent or malicious?”

  “No clue.” Shaine smiled wearily. “So how’d your night go?”

  “Angelo invited me for a drink after the bar was closed.”

  “Did you take him up on his offer?”

  “Of course. And I got to enjoy a shot of some very expensive whiskey.”

  “How was it?”

  “The whiskey was great. The company, not so much. He was coming on to me pretty strong. I tried to lead the conversation into areas that were useful, but he was more interested in getting into my pants than actually talking.”

  Shaine nodded, but his jaw flexed. Poppy knew from experience that Shaine was trying to hold something back.

  “Just say what you need to say, Shaine,” she said with a short sigh, knowing full well what was going through his mind.

  “I’m good,” he replied with a brief smile. “Please continue.”

  All right, that was your chance, she thought. “I asked him about Brandi and he said she had the wrong idea of their relationship, pretty much implying that he was available even though he’d told you that Brandi was his girl and Brandi has told everyone that she and Angelo were a thing.”

  “It could be a classic player situation,” Shaine said. “So what’d he try with you?”

  “Oh, he was pushing pretty hard. Saying that I deserved the finer things in life and that I deserved someone who could take care of me.

  “That kind of line would certainly work with Capri, who yearned for someone to take care of her.”

  “Exactly what I thought,” Shaine agreed. “DJ Raven said something to that effect as well, saying that Capri had been a good little soldier, which leads me to believe that Capri knew more than was safe for her.”

  “Honestly, she was the perfect pawn. She had that angel face and sweet disposition. No one would look twice at Capri, unlike Raquel or even Brandi who are nothing but hard edges. Capri was soft and sweet and people liked her right away.”

  “But once she outstripped her usefulness or became a threat to the operation, she was easily cut down. Raven said that Capri couldn’t keep her hands from the cookie jar. I don’t know if that means she was skimming money from the operation or she just was addicted to Bliss.”

  Poppy thought of the car Capri drove. “It could be both. I know Capri loved tripping on Bliss. That poor girl wore a happy face but had a sad soul. Bliss made her forget for a short time.”

  “Makes you wonder what she’d been running from that she thought being a dancer for Lit was a step up,” Shaine mused.

  Poppy had wondered the same. “Best guess is she was molested at a young age, taught that her only value was in what she could provide for others and then was abandoned, leaving her to fend for herself much too young.”

  “She was in foster care, so her home life must’ve been pretty bad.”

  “And the fact that she fled her foster home makes you wonder if things were bad there, too.”

  Shaine nodded. “My brother Silas worked a case where the foster parents were worse than the parents the kids were taken from. Reading that report was like walking through a nightmare.”

  “There are many great foster parents out there, but my guess is that Capri hadn’t been lucky to land with one of the good ones.”

  Poppy drew a deep breath, hating the ache in her chest when she thought of Capri and how it’d ended for her. Why was she so shaken up about one broken girl? The world was filled with them and yet Capri was the one that stuck like a splinter in her heart.

  “We have a debriefing at ten this morning. Are you going to make it? You look dead on your feet.”

  He rubbed at his eyes and yawned, but denied needing any sleep. “I’ll be fine. Just need a shower and more coffee.”

  “And then a full shift at Lit? You’re insane. We need you with a sharp mind, not fuzzed out because you’re exhausted,” Poppy said, rising to pull him from the chair. “You’re going to take a nap.”

  But instead of pushing him through the adjoining door, she led him to her bedroom where he went without protesting. In fact, he seemed grateful and tumbled onto her bed, crawling to the pillow and cuddling her pillow. He went straight to sleep and was gently snoring before she could even blink.

  The wild array of dark hair swept across his forehead, making him look younger than he was.

  He was beautiful. Poppy sighed. At least that much hadn’t changed.

  For a long moment she watched him sleep, overcome by nostalgia and the sharp pinch of regret.

  Maybe if she hadn’t left so abruptly they could’ve figured things out.

  But even as she recognized that leaving had been a reaction to extreme pain, she also knew that staying wouldn’t have worked out, either. Shaine had been adamant that she no longer work undercover and it’d been anathema to her to even consider such a dictate.

  For one, no one dictated to her.

  For two, she required full support from anyone who professed to be in love with her.

  So, yeah, leaving had been for the best.

  Even if she did miss seeing that man in her bed.

  She knew the smart thing to do would be to gently close the door and leave him be, but her feet were moving in his direction and she wasn’t stopping herself.

  Poppy climbed into the bed beside Shaine and cuddled up against him, wrapping her arms around him, just like she used to.

  Immediately, Shaine sighed in his sleep, the sound going straight to her heart.

  She missed him so much.

  Poppy hadn’t planned to sleep, but her eyes began to droop and she dropped off.

  She wasn’t sure of the time, but she awoke to the pleasurable sensation of hands touching her in intimate places and she knew without a doubt that it was Shaine.

  Instead of stopping him, she followed his lead. Their hands touched and explored with drowsy abandon. This had been their thing—sleep sex.

  They used to laugh about it, but the fact was, sometimes they’d woken in the middle of the night, lost in each other, and it’d been glorious.

  This was no different.

  Shaine knew just how to touch her, how to make her shudder with pleasure almost instantly.

  His kiss, the feel of his fingers delving, testing, teasing...

  Poppy arched into his touch, sinking into a happy place that didn’t concern itself with rules or impropriety.

  In this place, there was no guilt or shame for indulging in a simple pleasure, just exquisite wonder.

  “Shaine,” Poppy moaned, loving the way his name on her breathy sigh felt like home. “Yes...”

  Shaine rose above her, those beautiful, soulful eyes staring down at her with desire and something else that made her want to cry.

  They moved together, their breath shallow as they each worked to reach their climax. With Shaine it’d never been difficult, and within moments, Poppy crashed into her release, crying out as her body clenched around him.

  “Poppy,” he gasped, losing himself, spending as he shuddered with his climax.

  He collapsed against her, pressing tiny kisses against her collarbone before rolling away, his breathing harsh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, covering his eyes with his hand. “I didn’t mean...”

  “Shhh.” She stopped him, not willing to let him shoulder the responsibility of what’d happened between them. “I’m not complaining.”

  He looked at her, his gaze soft. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  But he still appeared as if he were shouldering a mountain of guilt and she couldn’t have that.

  Poppy purposefully kissed Shaine, showing him with her actions that she neither regretted what’d happened, nor blamed him in anyway. “See? No complaints.”

  Shaine relaxed but som
ething still troubled him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I know there are still things between us that we should probably talk about and that this doesn’t change anything.”

  Reality was a buzzkill, but she knew he was right.

  “Sex is a great stress reliever,” Poppy said, trying to make light of what’d happened. “Don’t read so much into it.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” he said, rising on his elbow to stare down at her. “You don’t have to pretend that this was just two people relieving stress. You were never cavalier about sex.”

  It was true. In the beginning of their relationship, in spite of crazy chemistry, Poppy had held Shaine off for months, trying to run away from the attraction they’d felt for one another. Just falling into bed with each other hadn’t been on her radar.

  “I liked that about you,” Shaine admitted softly. “You were different.”

  “In high school, I was accused of being a prude,” Poppy shared with a small laugh. “If they could see me now...”

  “I like that you knew you deserved better. I liked having to work for it.”

  Poppy blushed. “Well, I might’ve made you work extra hard.”

  “You were worth it.”

  “Stop,” she said, blinking back tears. “I can’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Bare our souls.” She rolled away, irritated at herself for climbing into that bed with Shaine knowing that it would only complicate matters. “I don’t regret the sex, Shaine. But I can’t pretend that everything is as it was because it never will be. We live separate lives and I’m good with my life. I’ve moved on as I’m sure you have, too.”

  Shaine’s disappointment was evident as he climbed from the bed and dressed. “You’re right,” he finally said. “There’s no point in scratching at what we’ve both buried. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember why things didn’t work out.”

  It wasn’t hard for her. She was reminded every time she awoke in sunny California—endlessly sunny California—when she longed for an East Coast winter season.

  She was reminded every time she closed her eyes in her empty bed that the person she most wanted beside her was the one person who’d broken her heart in the most grievous way possible.