That hollow place in her chest, the one that belonged to Tony, opened with a great lurch, echoing with cries of pain and regret that sent physical offshoots into her body.
Stop. She mentally shook herself and whispered, “Must not feed the dragon of grief.”
“What’s that?”
“Sometimes I wonder if the world survives off pain. If it secretly eats the electric impulses that shock our human hearts.”
His face paled. Too honest? Too dark?
“My father used to talk about how the world was alive,” he said, “a great snake that had swallowed us, a literal living hell. Claimed we’re all being tested to see if we can escape and go to heaven. Me, I think that’s an excuse, a way to let pain shut you down. And to do that is to blaspheme the beauty of this world and the gifts we’ve been given. The grace.”
Usually she hated when people used her name as a pun. Not this time. His words felt like an invitation, like he was reaching out. She wanted to reach back, needed… Maybe it was time to live again. Live with the pain. Maybe in spite of it.
Stop it. Of course he’s reaching out; he’s trying to cultivate me as an asset.
Feeling foolish, played, she sent him a lethal look. A look she hoped hid her fear, her hope, her confusion. “You pretend to care. You genuinely seem to care. But you barely knew my brother. And though I know you’ll deny it, and this has to be a game we play”—a game that she knew well and couldn’t completely fault him for—“we both know you were using him to get at my family. And now, you’re trying to use me.”
Chapter 18
Standing in the back corridor of Club When? Dusty felt the biting chill of Gracie’s words. Not with her “barely knew my brother” comment, but with the “using her” line.
A server came through the exit side of the kitchen double-doors in a puff of fried onion smell, eyed the two of them, and went on her way.
Part of him sorely regretted not being able to explain why he was here. That he was trying to save people. Her included.
“Your lack of trust seems a shame considering I saved your life in Mexico and all. Apparently, you’ve forgotten.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t forgotten. Not that first moment I saw you. Not how you helped save my life. Not how you helped us all get safely away, bundled me into the SUV, and went back and buried my brother.” She turned and pushed through the steel swinging door with a whispered, “I’ll never forget.”
The door swung back and forth as he stood there, dumbstruck. Damn, she’d done it again. Her honesty. It blew him away. Somehow drew him close and kept him apart from her all at the same time. He followed her through the doors.
The kitchen was newer than he’d expected and bigger. Stainless steel sinks, fryers, and large stainless-steel cooking and prep area. Must be part of the expansion she’d talked about.
After Gracie introduced him to her kitchen staff, she led him into a small, pristine, poorly lit office with no windows. A few photos of family and the like, some official-looking framed licenses. A large wooden desk with a single chair behind and one in front of it. Not even a file cabinet.
She shut the door behind him, and he heard her inhaling deeply. Was she sniffing him?
He pivoted toward her, raised an eyebrow. As the skin on her cheeks blossomed with red, she ducked her head and tried to move past him. “I’ll get your money.”
Naw, he wasn’t letting that go. He stepped in front of her. “How do I smell?”
She shrugged. “Not awful or anything.”
The heat in her face grew three shades darker, a take-me-against-the-desk red. Or that might just be his warped interpretation. “Hot in here?”
“It’s an office adjacent to a kitchen, what did you expect?”
He leaned toward her. “That’s not the heat I was referring to.”
Wide, angry eyes snapped up at him. “Yes. I get it. I’m desperately attracted to you. You’re hot—scorching. I can feel you when I’m alone at night, naked, in my bed. And that makes me afraid, because I’m pretty sure you’re using me. Just like you used Tony.”
Her honesty was as sudden and disarming as a tsunami. He swallowed. He wanted to be straightforward with her, wanted to tell her something that would make her less suspicious, less afraid. But right now, that felt wrong.
And since the invite was there, he bent down, slow enough to let her know his intention.
She closed her eyes and lifted her lips. He brushed his own slowly across hers, and she made a sound that called to every primal response in his body. His hands snatched out and pulled her against him, fisting a handful of her sundress, dragging it up high enough to get his other hand on that fine ass.
The kiss deepened. And…the woman was wearing a thong. He squeezed the round globe of her ass. Best day ever.
Chapter 19
On tiptoes in her ground-floor office, Gracie moaned against the lips of the hottest man she’d ever met. Electric tingles danced across her tongue. Her entire body hummed, thrummed.
Such a good kisser. His sure, skilled lips drove away inhibition. Drove it away and parked it on the moon. She needed to get closer. She needed him under her.
Ugh. Why wasn’t there a couch in here?
Desk. Right behind him. She pushed against his chest. For a heartbreaking moment, he misunderstood. He pulled back, dropped her dress, took his scorching-hot hand from her butt, tried to take his lips away.
No!
She grasped his shirt with one hand, kept his lips to hers, probed his mouth with her tongue. He moaned, deepened the kiss again. Yes. That. So good.
She pushed him again. He got the message this time and let her steer him backward until he hit the desk. He sat on the edge to keep from falling.
She kept up, never losing contact with the expert sweep of his tongue. She could not get close enough, not have enough of him near her.
Bracing her hands on his shoulders, she lifted up and straddled him.
He didn’t miss a beat. His hands snaked around to grip her butt again, held her against his hard body. Fast learner.
She slid her hands up and under his T-shirt, running her hands up and down the silk-skinned muscles of his back. So many muscles. So hard. Speaking of hard…
She lifted for a second, reached between them, unbuttoned his shorts, and freed his cock. She stroked the tip of him. He groaned. “That feels good.”
He was big.
She tried to get her hand deeper into his shorts, get all of him, but it was impossible. She made a frustrated whimpering sound. He smiled against her lips, lifted her up with one hand, pulled his shorts down with the other. Their lips never lost contact.
He sat back on the desk. She dropped onto his arching body, like she’d missed him for a hundred years. A thousand. More. She rubbed her wet core against the length of him. The soft, saturated silk of her thong barely kept them apart.
He moaned into her mouth. “That feels amazing. Slick. Hot.”
It did. She ground against him, and his lips took hers with fevered need. Their breathing picked up, creating a different kind of music, hot exhales.
He felt so good. The hardness of him. She moved faster, a frantic, pulsing action that made him suck in a breath. He tried to pull back. “Gracie…”
She was so close. The coil of energy building, teasing with the pressure. She kissed him with a fiery intensity, begged with desperate moans in the back of her throat.
“I’ve got you,” he said. He helped her along, using his hands to bounce her ass in a way that increased the heat and friction between them. Oh. That felt so good. The tension, like the rhythm of their bodies, built to absolute madness.
He whispered about how hard he was and how good she felt, and all the ways he intended to have her.
She gasped with his dirty promises and moaned with the absolute need for him. And she came, right the
re in her office, her core slick against him, the electric current throbbing through her, releasing waves of pleasure.
Chapter 20
Dusty sat on her desk, Gracie—hot, sweet, and wet—straddling him. His orgasm hit him so fast and excruciatingly good he arched against her, gliding her sleek wetness back and forth against his cock. It wasn’t until the last shaking bit pumped out of him that he realized where he was, what they’d done.
Damn. He hadn’t come from dry humping since he’d been a teen in high school. That’s what a woman hot enough to burn flesh and a six-month dry spell got you. Embarrassing.
And yet a good time had been had by all. Then and now.
Breathing heavily, but always a gentleman, he whispered to her about how good she felt, how good she made him feel, and how he still very much wanted to see her naked.
For a moment, her head tucked into his shoulder, her breath hot against his neck, she almost purred, but then she put a hand on his chest, pulled away.
“Uh. Thank you, Dusty.”
“And thank you for allowing my hands to make the acquaintance of your sweet ass.”
He squeezed said ass. Incredible. Did not want to let go.
She blushed and avoided eye contact. “So I’ll get you your money now.”
He snorted.
She seemed to realize what she’d said and began to stammer. “I mean, you know, for bartending the other night.”
Reluctantly, he released her, lowered her feet to the floor. Woman knew just the temperature of water to throw on him. Cold.
He took some tissues from a box on her desk and a minute to clean up, pull up his boxers, cargo shorts, and zip himself into respectable.
She watched him do all this, straightened her dress, licked her lips once. Her face was a soft, satisfied pink. Her eyes a warm shade of green. Lord, but that had been fun. She didn’t seem to want to talk about it, skipped over it like you would roadkill.
She moved behind the desk and sat. He turned to her, realized he could barely stand, put his fists against the desk for support. Damn.
She opened a locked drawer in her desk. Was she…? “Gracie, I’m not a proud man, but if you pull out money right now, I will lose my shit.”
She closed the drawer, picked out a candy from a dish on her desk. A dish packed with watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers. He noticed her hand tremble as she unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth. “What do you want?”
He wanted another shot at her. One where she didn’t climb him like a monkey and dismantle every bit of self-control he had. He shrugged, trying for casual. “You need a bartender. I need a job.”
Her head snapped up. Her eyes widened. “You want to work in my bar?”
“No. I want to work with your family.” Get access to your momma.
Her fine red eyebrows crashed together, weighted, it seemed, with heavy suspicion.
“Hear me out,” he continued. “I left my job to go undercover with that scumbag Walid to help with your family’s vigilante activities—”
“That was Tony’s ball of wax.”
“For someone so honest, you sure do lie a lot.”
She made a stunned sound, as if he’d goosed her.
Huh. Maybe he could’ve been a little less direct. “Look, I cleaned up a bunch of your family’s mess in Mexico. It raised questions at the bureau and got me fired.”
He paused to let that sink in but got no reaction. She just watched him expectantly.
He exhaled. “And since I know your family does the kind of work I believe in—the kind that changes lives—and since I know they can afford my fees, I’m trying to find a way into your organization. But since you’re not the trusting type, I figured we could start small.”
She scoffed. “Don’t mistake my lack of self-control for a lack of intelligence. You’re investigating my family. Looking into something that doesn’t exist.” Her eyes darted down and away. Her face heated to a powerful red, a lying-through-her-teeth red.
Well, that made two of them. Despite the smell of their honesty, cum, and sweat thick in the air. How fucked up was that? “Gracie, why would I tell you I’m ex-FBI if I’m undercover investigating you and your family?”
“I wondered.”
“Got an answer?”
She bit her lip. Damn, that was sexy. He shut down the replay of the last ten minutes. Not easy.
He bet she did have an answer, and it was probably pretty accurate. Her cyber skills and family connections were good enough to penetrate any cover he could’ve come up with. That’s why he’d gone with a truthful lie.
She leaned back and stared at him like he was seven layers of chocolate cake and she was on a diet. “Fine. With everything going on, it’s better to have you where I can see you. We can call it probation. See how you do.”
He processed what she’d said. Couldn’t help the big ol’ Southern grin. “Probation sounds like one step away from where I’d like to be. I’m happy to take you up on that offer. And any other offer you might want to make me. Boss.”
He winked at her.
Her face heated again, but this time with genuine embarrassment. He couldn’t help himself. He laughed, a loud burst that prodded a smile out of her. A beautiful smile. A we-both-know-the-truth smile and I’m-still-one-step-ahead-of-you. Was she?
“When do I start?” After all, he had a cruise to help finance.
Chapter 21
Nearing midnight on Sunday, surrounded by the steady quiet of her clean upstairs office, Gracie worked on identifying her enemy.
It was late, but her schedule was tied to the bar, so it didn’t feel late to her. Even if she’d been tired, she couldn’t have slept.
She’d managed to hack into the offshore account that either John or El or both had funneled money into. It was registered to an LLC. The company was a shell. Impossible to trace. So far. But the money had been used to purchase Bitcoin. And that Bitcoin had disappeared into the dark web.
So, that sucked. It didn’t necessarily mean they, or even one of them, had hired a hit man, but if she’d been an average person, without siblings who were assassins, she might go to the dark web for a hit man.
Maybe she should close the club.
No.
Closing the club would bring Momma and Leland around faster than she could say Benedict Arnold. And they didn’t mess around. They’d discover the looming threat on her life, including what she had on John and El. And any investigation would definitely lead them to Dusty and her letter.
Her shoulders slumped. Momma would not take any of that lightly. There would be anger and attack and retribution. But the problem wasn’t just about her writing a letter; the bigger problem was she had no idea how all of this might impact Ty.
The ungodly loud sound of her phone playing the Legend of Zelda theme blasted through the quiet office. She rubbed at her eyes, picked up. “Yeah.”
The voice on the other end was a whisper with a soft Spanish accent. “It’s Cee.”
Cee was calling her? The kid hated her. And it wasn’t like she was into random acts of forgiveness. Not with her background. Cee had grown up in El Salvador. She’d lost her father, her only living parent, a few years ago. She’d been thirteen. Her uncle had inherited her father’s Salvadoran wealth—and her. He’d squandered the money, sold their house, then sold Cee to a human-trafficking cartel. She’d been fourteen.
Justice had rescued her nine months later. “Cee, isn’t it late for you? What are you up to?”
“I’m in North Philly.”
“Philly!” Okay, stay calm. This is not how to get your new teen sister to open up. “Are you okay?”
“Can you come get me?”
“Of course. But tell me what’s going on so I don’t have a panic attack the whole way over.”
A long pause. “I fight with Momma. And deci
de to go on my own.”
“You ran away? From campus?” Impossible. Sure, she and Justice had done it—fifteen years ago. Security had grown more sophisticated since then, and after the drone attack Cee now lived in one of the tightest security zones in the country. “How?”
Cee sighed. Oh, sure, this was annoying for her. “Took out my chip and left it in my room. I hid in the trunk of a car leaving school.”
Ouch. She’d removed the GPS chip from her own wrist? Kid was creepy. And brilliant. She’d learned from the League in months what it had taken others years.
Momma had even had her IQ tested and discovered this kid, rescued from an illegal brothel, might be one of the smartest humans on the planet. Still, maybe because of that, she was also one of the most traumatized.
“Okay. Text me the address. Are you in a safe spot?”
A hot sigh. “I’m not a child or an idiot.”
Temper. Temper. “Well, you got one of those right.”
Gracie hung up, pushed her chair back, grabbed her car keys. As she exited her office, the steel door shut behind her with a clang that sounded final. It locked automatically with a whirring of steel pins sliding into place and a beep. Like all doors on this level and the one leading up to this level, it was blast proof.
She marched down the hall and turned the corner to her apartment to change into her mission gear and concealed carry. Not just because she’d been recently shot at, but because this was no ordinary kid.
Chapter 22
Sitting at the table by the foot of his bed, Dusty stared at his laptop screen. He’d been staring intently at Mack’s message for the last few minutes. Made no sense. According to Mack, a DC agent had been looking into the information Dusty had compiled on the Parish family, specifically Gracie Parish.
Why would this guy want to know about her? She was a side player in all of this, not a principal. Up until Mexico, she’d seemed the Parish kid most distant from her family. And though her file contained more information now, including the fact that she had a kid, nothing there explained this guy’s interest.
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