“I don’t think we’ll have a problem getting you in once the current madame is out.” Donovan looked thoughtful. “I assume Smithe has my background set up so that it shouldn’t be too big of an issue getting on as one of the handlers.”
“You’ll have to rough yourself up a bit, Donovan.” I appraised him and tried not to smile. “You don’t look like a hard-core prostitute handler.”
“And you don’t look like a hard-core madame,” he said, his tone dry but almost amused.
“All it will take is a little wardrobe change and just the right made-up look.” Georgina, my best friend and fellow RED agent, was brilliant at helping me with that kind of thing. Plus she currently wasn’t on an undercover op. “Yeah, makeup and adding about four inches to my height.” Thank God for stilettos.
The corner of his mouth quirked in one of his rare smiles. He look so incredibly hot and sexy that I instantly wanted to jump his bones.
If he took me hard and fast, we could do it in a few extra minutes . . .
I caught my breath as Donovan read the desire in my eyes. His gaze darkened and I heard the lock click as he reached behind him. The floor-to-ceiling blinds were drawn and it was just me and Donovan.
He moved toward me with clear determination. He wanted me as much as I wanted him.
I shoved my chair back and it rolled across the tiled floor with a clatter as I stood. When he reached me, I was in his arms before I could catch my breath.
Our mouths met, his taking mine hard and fierce. I returned the kiss equally as fierce. He always tasted so good. Felt so good. Smelled so good.
He raised his head, his expression primal, his eyes changing to a deep cobalt blue. “Right here, Steele. Right now.”
“You talk too much.” I reached for his belt and started to unfasten it.
Donovan pulled up my top and jerked down my bra so that it was beneath my breasts
Cool air met my nipples and I gasped from the delicious sensation. Donovan grasped my hips, lowered his head, and covered one of my nipples with his warm mouth. I gave a low moan when he sucked hard on one nipple.
As much as I wished they were, the walls weren’t soundproof and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to hold back whimpers and moans of pleasure.
I finished unbuckling his jeans and had the top button undone with a twist. His long, thick cock felt like satin-covered steel when it escaped the tough cotton. If we had enough time I’d have gone down on him because I wanted to taste him so badly.
Instead, I continued to gasp and moan as I kicked off my running shoes then unfastened my own belt and jeans. I shimmied out of them, but slow enough so that my holstered weapon didn’t hit the floor too hard. Still, it and my two cell phones thumped as I kicked the jeans aside.
Donovan raised his gaze to meet mine as he picked me up by my hips and set me on the edge of the desk that was cool beneath my ass. Thank God for keeping my desk bare.
He pushed my thighs wide and gripped me with one hand while he grasped his erection in his other.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry.” I wiggled on the edge of the desk, closer to him. “You can’t be inside me fast enough.”
Donovan smiled his most dangerous smile and entered me in one hard thrust.
Jesus. I wanted to cry out at the exquisite pleasure of him inside me and it was almost impossible to keep from letting myself let it rip. The feel of his jeans and holstered gun and phone on his belt added to the eroticism of the moment.
I clung to his biceps as he began pounding in and out of me so deep and incredible that I felt like saying to hell with it. But I did like my job a whole lot.
“Come, Lexi.” Donovan’s words came out in a growl. He called me Lexi when we were intimate even though I always called him Donovan, and it turned me on. “I want to feel you around my cock when you climax.”
He didn’t have to tell me another time because I was already there.
A rush of pleasure rocketed through me, expanding from my core to my fingertips, my toes, my scalp. It was hot and molten and felt beyond fantastic.
My head almost ached from clenching my teeth so tightly to keep from really crying out. His continuous thrusting movements drew my climax out and I enjoyed the ride.
He came with a harsh but low sound and his cock throbbed and pulsed inside of me while my core continued to clench him.
His breathing was rough and hot against my hair as he rested his chin on my scalp. While he stayed inside me, I pressed my cheek to his T-shirt and heard the fast beat of his heart.
I tried to catch my breath well enough to talk. “We did order our agents to be in the conference room at three.”
“Unfortunately,” Donovan murmured against my head.
We adjusted positions and I tilted my head back to meet his gaze. “The team needs to move now. We’ve got to get on it.”
Donovan rubbed his thumb across my cheek. “Trust you to follow great sex with work.”
I grinned. “Hey, but we had sex first. Priorities, you know.”
He gave me one of his adorable and rare smiles as he drew out of me and adjusted himself before zipping up. After he moved far enough away, I slid off the desk and climbed back into my jeans before slipping my running shoes back on.
When we made sure each other looked decent enough to not appear like we’d just had sex in my office, we sat down to get to work.
My core still felt sensitive, but I forced myself to be the senior agent I was. A senior agent who had just fucked her fellow senior agent.
I took a deep breath as I queued up the op on my large computer screen. I turned it slightly so that Donovan could see it from where he now sat in a chair in front of my desk.
“Twenty-four hours after the meeting,” I said, still trying to catch my breath, “our team better be fully prepared and standing at the gates to board the plane to JFK to put Operation Little Red Riding Hood in motion.” I cocked my head. “Once we get our claws into enough meat to get Hagstedt, we shift to Operation Big Bad Wolf.”
Donovan studied me with his damned incredible blue eyes but no discernible expression on his harsh but handsome features. I knew he hated it when I took control and didn’t ask his opinion. But even after working so many months together, I couldn’t help my natural inclination to make decisions on my own.
“We’ll change things up a bit and bring Kerrison in on Little Red to replace Jensen,” Donovan said in a way that sounded like he considered his statement a done deal. “She’s new, but from everything I’ve seen she’s got what it takes, and the fieldwork will be good experience for her.”
I didn’t let my surprise show that he’d recommended the new agent, and that he wanted her on the inside with me. “That’s not a good idea, Donovan. Kerrison’s untrained and not ready for this kind of undercover op.”
Donovan gestured to my glass wall that would give a perfect view of the CC if the blinds were open. I pictured Kerrison sitting in front of her monitor, her long sunset-red hair pushed over her shoulders. “She’ll be perfect for decoding any messages that might come your way when we get you two on the inside,” Donovan was saying. “Plus, we can really use Jensen in surveillance.”
Of course he was right. If Kerrison could decode anything as fast as she’d taken care of today’s intercepted communication, she’d be an incredible asset on the inside. Marti Jensen was top-notch, but she could be used on the surveillance and raid team just as easily.
Still, I found myself pushing it. “I know I wouldn’t have a problem with Jensen avoiding the kind of attention the bastards might try on her. If anyone got rough with her, she knows how to take care of them.”
“Kerrison can do the job.” Donovan met my stare with a solid look. “Martinez can prep her on using the same bracelet Jensen would have worn, and he can size a ring for Kerrison. It won’t take him long to brief her on the narcotics contained in the jewelry that will keep any sonofabitch away from her if she’s forced to use them.”
Donovan’s words bro
ught me to a halt. “During Cinderella, you told Oxford you didn’t want to put me in the kind of danger I ended up in. As if a woman can’t hold her own.” I cocked my head as I studied him. “And now you’re ready to let a junior female agent throw herself into a pack of wolves?”
Irritation flashed across Donovan’s features. “You know I think all of RED’s agents, female or male, are equally capable.” He was quiet for a moment as his eyes held mine and his tone softened. “But Cinderella—from the beginning I had a bad feeling about that op.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I held my palm to my T-shirt, over the Chinese symbol meaning “dragon” tattooed around my belly button.
That op had gone bad. Real bad.
“We came up lucky with what Rublev got through to us.” I figured I’d change the subject super-fast since thinking about what was beneath that dragon tat wasn’t something I liked. “What she’s doing isn’t pretty. And it’s dangerous for her to be taking chances like she did to get that intel.”
Jenika Rublev had been a willing prostitute in a cathouse in Nevada, but I still didn’t like the fact that she was having sex with men—and sometimes women—to feed us intel from the inside. Even though I’d been the one to go to her and offer her the assignment and the cash.
“Rublev made the choice, Steele. She jumped at the hundred grand to put aside for her twins’ college education,” Donovan said. “Not to mention part of it will help her get out of that Nevada shithole. Once this op is over, RED will make sure the job they land for her in the private sector will be damned good paying, too.”
I sighed. “She was a lucky find.”
When Donovan came up with the idea of searching for a Russian prostitute to work as a cooperative, I hadn’t been crazy about it. But I’d still contacted some of RED’s branch offices until I hit pay dirt in Nevada. I should have started there instead of LA and New York City since prostitution was legal in some parts of Nevada. One of the Las Vegas agents recommended Rublev. Wasn’t sure exactly how the agent was familiar with the prostitute, but from the way he talked about her, I had my suspicions.
“Rublev can take care of herself.” Nick leaned back in his seat. “She’s been doing that since she emigrated from Russia.”
“I suppose.” I rested one forearm on the desk and glanced at the monitor, which had the beautiful prostitute’s dossier next to Kerrison’s. “She did say that the madame at her Nevada cathouse made sure her working girls knew how to de-ball any man who tried to get rough.”
If I wasn’t mistaken, Donovan winced at the de-ball comment. Men.
Rublev had turned to prostitution when she came to America and couldn’t find a job in the sinking economy. She brought in good money in the cathouse, so she had stayed with it for the past two years to care for her twins and to be able to set some money aside.
Fortunately for this op, Rublev looked barely seventeen even though she was twenty-two. These bastards liked their girls young. We’d shipped her to Russia with her own fictitious background—using our Moscow contacts—hopefully to be chosen as one of a group of girls to be taken to a New York “modeling agency.”
It had been close, but Rublev had made the “modeling agency”’s cut. She’d been sent with a group of nineteen other girls to a so-called gentleman’s club. We just hadn’t known which one until two months ago when she’d gotten word to us that she was at the Elite Gentleman’s Club in Manhattan.
Pay dirt.
“Instead of going with everyone tomorrow, Saturday, you’ll head out at nine PM on Sunday,” Donovan was saying, drawing my attention fully to him. My skin prickled like a porcupine starting to bristle. He was giving me an order? “You need to be with your family for Sunday supper,” he continued. “Zane said Ryan is in port. It might be a while before you see all of them again.”
Heat crept from my body to my neck and to my face. There I was, barreling through life as usual and Donovan had been the one to remind me of the most important day of the week for my parents as well as the rest of us. With Ryan on leave from the Marines, all five of my brothers would be here as well as my sister.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
We spent the next forty-five minutes laying out plans for our backup team, surveillance, and every detail down to making sure our fictitious personal rap sheets were perfect.
We added a rap sheet for Kerrison that included being busted with me for her part in running the club. She’d managed the finances for that part of the business, which included taking cash from the customers paying for sex.
When it was time to head to the conference room, both Donovan and I stood, and I walked toward him. He wrapped me in his strong embrace and gave me one of his amazing kisses before we left my office.
No doubt about it. I was addicted to Nick Donovan.
CHAPTER TWO
Dasha
Beneath Dasha’s palms, the clear plastic pole burned hot as glass heated in a forge. While she pole-danced, thundering techno music in the main floor of the club made her head pound from the inside out. Her mouth hurt, her lips quivering from forcing herself to smile so she wouldn’t be punched by her handler.
Dasha, Yulia, and the blond girl, Jenika, who had become Dasha’s friend, were onstage. The three of them writhed around the poles mounted along a narrow raised strip of the stage in the middle of the “gentleman’s club.”
A whorehouse, a prison, was what Dasha called it. Two months of being in the depths of hell. But she had learned to never say anything loud enough for one of the handlers to hear. The harsh man had punched her the one and only time she had referred to her life as it now was. What she was.
pocTyTka. Prostitute.
Strobe lights flashed in the smoke-hazed room, making the glitter inside the clear pole sparkle in the colored lights. Jenika said it looked like fairy dust. Dasha thought it looked like poison ready to seep through the plastic and kill her. Maybe death would be better than this.
But if she killed herself, Matushka and Otets would be murdered. If she tried to escape, if she tried to talk to anyone, they would murder her parents. First one. Then the other left alive in case she tried something else.
The handlers had either beaten or abused each girl, making it clear that someone they cared for would be killed if the girl tried to escape, contact the police, tell a client, or kill herself. Each girl had been presented with photos of their loved ones to prove to the girls that they had no choice but to obey.
Dasha barely kept back tears as she tried to do what Madame Cherie instructed the girls to do—act like she was having sex while rubbing herself up against the pole. “Be sensual,” the madame would say.
Be a good whore, Dasha always thought.
“Show us those tits, girly!” came a slurred, drunken man’s voice.
Dasha raised her head and saw that the man was staring at her. His bald scalp shone beneath the lights as he raised a fistful of cash. Shame crept through her like a thousand Russian ratsnakes. From the leer on the man’s face, she feared he would be the one crawling on top of her in a back room after this song was over. A shudder racked her body hard, but she tried to make it look like part of her dance.
More men shouted at her to take off what little she had on—the strip of cloth covering her nipples and her G-string.
Jenika could act like she enjoyed being a prostitute while Dasha struggled to wear a fake smile. Jenika always met several men’s gazes as she danced, her blue eyes giving the invitation for something more, something erotic. She danced like the madame had constantly worked to teach all of the girls over the past two months. Jenika had tried to help Dasha with her performance, but Eddie always interfered.
Eddie was Dasha’s handler, and he acted as a bouncer when the girls danced. Dasha glanced his way. His muscles flexed as he crossed his arms over his huge chest.
When Dasha slowly started to take off the thin material, revulsion crawled up her body to her throat and threatened to make her throw up on the stage. It didn’t matter
how many times she had stripped in front of leering men over the past weeks, she always had the desire to puke.
Sometimes women watched them dance, too. Sometimes women went with her to the back rooms and made her do things that made her as sick as when she was with a man.
Dasha tipped her head back so that she wouldn’t have to look any man in the eye as she swallowed down the frothing sensation in her throat along with the taste of bile. She flung the bra onto the stage while men whistled and shouted horrid things they wanted to do to her.
“Come ’ere girly,” came the same man’s voice as her nipples hardened from the cool air being pushed down from the fans above the stage. How she hated her body’s natural reactions. “I’ve got somethin’ for ya,” the man called out louder.
“Show us that fuck-me look, Jewell baby,” another man said.
Jewell was her stage name. Jewell was her whore name.
Dasha forced herself to look at the man, hold his gaze, and dance toward him as he rubbed his crotch with his free hand. She almost stumbled in the high, thin heels she had to wear every night. Her movements were stiff, awkward, but the men in the room didn’t seem to care. Man after man called out for her to take off the G-string, too.
When she reached the side of the stage, the man with the handful of money stuck a few of the bills in the front of her G-string. He shoved his fingers down hard enough that his fingers brushed her trimmed pubic hair.
“That’s it, baby,” he said as more men pushed dollar bills through whatever spot on her G-string would hold the cash.
The stench of male sweat, sour beer, and cigar smoke nearly gagged her now that she was so close to the men.
Someone gave a hard jerk on one of the ties on her G-string and Dasha gasped. The tiny bit of cloth started to fall away. Dasha stumbled back and the men shouted louder and louder as the last barrier dropped from her body and the cash floated across the stage.
Shame made her insides sick, like she was filled with slick crude oil. The shame and horror would never end. This nightmare would never end. If she tried to escape, the men promised they would kill Mother and Father.
Cheyenne McCray - [Lexi Steele 02] Page 3
