by Jenn Stark
An illusion that had included him hanging out with her in the locker room while she showered…the locker room and then the shower itself. Which worked out fine for her, because she didn’t trust that her apartment wasn’t bugged, or the public spaces of Lucy’s, or even the locker room. But standing underneath a blast of water, they could talk. And they did talk…a lot. It had proven to be the best possible arrangement for safety.
Maria jumped involuntarily as she heard Warrick slam the door of the locker room, announcing his presence. She fully intended to carry on her same conversational precautions with Warrick, making him stand bare-assed naked in front of her, to make sure he wasn’t wired, wasn’t carrying, wasn’t a threat in any way…and once she was assured of that, they could talk more directly.
But now that she’d seen the guy, she wasn’t so sure that was such a great idea. Jack had been a big lug, startling in his anger when he needed to be, but an oversized, rough-hewn teddy bear the rest of the time.
Warrick was no teddy bear. He was more like a wolverine with anger management issues.
“You good?” he called now, with his gruff voice.
“I’m good,” she shouted back. If Warrick had truly chatted with Jack and gotten the full scoop, he’d know that Jack no longer waited in the locker room for her but showered up close and personal, and he’d no doubt understand the conversational advantages of that arrangement. But showering next to Jack was one thing.
Warrick, on the other hand…
She steeled herself as she turned, peering out through the blast of water. Sure enough, he was heading toward her. And sure enough—
Oh, damn.
Maria reached out and fiddled with the hot and cold handles, turning the water into pounding jets. She didn’t hate herself enough to turn up the cold as high as it could go, but she regretted that decision instantly as Warrick strode across the open shower room in all his pure, unmitigated man-ness. He was completely naked, his six-foot-six frame somehow managing not to look monstrous because every inch of it was in perfect proportion. His massive shoulders and long, heavily muscled arms tapered into beautiful, long-fingered hands, his thick chest whittled down to a six-pack that would have made Jack howl with envy, the whole of it brushed with a spray of dark hair—and as her gaze dropped further, she turned away abruptly, staring up into the spray.
He was still aroused. Obviously aroused. Like, a lot.
“Sorry,” he said. His voice was low but still carried over the water, and to his credit, he sounded thoroughly embarrassed. “We could have—we could have waited until we got to your place. I could have checked for cameras there. There aren’t any here.”
“I don’t think so either,” she said. “But if there are, I wanted us to start our arrangement here. You suddenly showing up at my apartment would look suspicious otherwise, you know?”
Warrick didn’t respond, and she realized she was talking into the water, not his ears. She turned slightly toward him, keeping her gaze on his face. “Hold me—close,” she said. “Otherwise, I’ll have to shout.”
“If you’re—”
“I’m sure,” Maria snapped as she turned back forward, now embarrassed herself, though she knew her idea made good, solid sense. She wanted the protection of Warrick’s supposed interest in her—and he wanted her to stay close. A sudden, hot affair between them solved both problems, immediately. The Guardia men went through women like Doritos, and the few women gang members were every bit as active. None of them would think twice of Maria trading Jack for the newest stud on the scene, especially since Jack was in lockup. Still, Maria had been nowhere near this awkward with Jack—though, admittedly, they’d known each other a month before she made this move. She’d known Warrick, what…fifteen minutes?
Good Lord, what had she been thinking? Why had she been so sure, so bold? At least Charlie and Lou had merely seemed to like the guy, bro to bro. Here she was asking him to take his clothes off and hold her tight after barely having a conversation with him.
Maria’s cheeks burned, but before she could come up with another idea to dig herself out of this hole of mortification, Warrick’s arms closed around her from behind.
She expected to go stiff—with anxiety, fear, even latent PTSD from the assholes who’d tried to take advantage of her when she was young and stupid and running the streets. But even more so than she had around Jack, Maria felt completely and utterly safe with Warrick standing so close to her. As if she’d somehow merited her own guardian angel without anyone passing along the message. Probably because he was a Fed. A professional. Someone on her side, regardless of the way his body reacted to her—whatever it was, she was grateful. It’d been a long time since she’d felt anything close to safe, and she’d take it.
After the barest hesitation, she leaned back into Warrick’s body, feeling the hard length of him against her back, her hands naturally coming up to grasp the beefy forearms that crossed over her breasts. For as intimate as their position was, Warrick didn’t press in, didn’t cop a feel. He held her almost like he thought she was going to break. It was—incredible, if she was honest with herself.
And it was also very much beside the point. This man wasn’t her new boyfriend; he was a colleague. A cop—or a Fibbie—or some other special ops something that had been sent here for a reason.
Pull yourself together, girl.
“So this is how this is going to work,” she finally continued, tilting her head up so that the back of it rested high on Warrick’s chest. She shifted her stance under the water and felt the still super obvious evidence of his arousal against her ass. The rush of heat and need came unbidden, and she ruthlessly forced it down, struggling to focus. This man was a cop. A colleague. “We talk straight in the shower, and in noisy, crowded places. Maybe in my apartment, if we sweep it first. Otherwise, it’s all bullshit.”
“Noted,” Warrick rumbled over her head. “What do you need to know that I can tell you?”
The question seemed too carefully formed, and Maria hesitated. She needed to use this time wisely—they could talk more in the open, but it would be in code, nuanced. Brutal honesty here wasn’t merely a luxury, it was a requirement.
“Who the hell are you, for starters?” she asked. “Not your cover.”
The snorted laugh sounded rueful. “My name is Warrick, actually. I kept it because I don’t pull undercover work all that much.”
“Oh, great.” Of course, Maria had used her own name when she’d gone under cover, but there was a reason for that. She was a broken girl coming home—no one in this neighborhood would’ve ever believed she’d grown up to become a cop. As a result, she’d been instantly accepted.
He continued as if he didn’t hear her. “I was sent here to track down what exactly La Noche is cooking in that lab of theirs. Nothing more.”
“Fine. Then explain to me why Lou and Charlie are acting like you’re their most favorite long-lost buddy. Because they don’t do that.”
“As to Charlie, he and I had a nice long conversation on the phone before I arrived. I told him I was looking for Jack, and he gave me an earful. By the end of our chat, he invited me down to check out the club.”
“Really.” That was totally not-Charlie behavior. Then again, at least Charlie wasn’t standing in the showers with a naked stranger.
“As far as Lou’s reaction,” Warrick continued. “What can I say? I must have a friendly face.” The wry comment was so unexpected, Maria jerked her gaze up to meet Warrick’s eyes. This close, with water dripping off his chin, he took her breath away. He was not the most classically beautiful man she’d ever seen—this was LA after all—but he was easily top three in most memorable. His jaw and cheekbones were heavy, harsh, and his brows winged up in thick, arches over his straight nose that, unlike Jack’s, hadn’t been broken several times. But the most arresting feature about him was his eyes. She’d never seen anything like them—they gleamed at her with an almost golden cast behind their light brown veneer, so intense t
hat she almost forgot to breathe.
Which was a problem, because when she did gasp a response, she barely avoided taking in a mouthful of water. “Okay, what drug?” she managed, trying to get back on point. “What is it you think they’re making here?”
Warrick blinked as if that wasn’t the question he was expecting, but he shrugged. “You’ve heard of technoceuticals.”
Her eyebrows winged up. She had heard of them, kind of. Some sort superdrugs purported to do everything but help a man fly. The drugs were particularly popular among the fringes of society, well-heeled metaphysical gurus and Om-chanting healers. In LA, even up in her little burgh north of the city, they’d been fighting more traditional drug mixes—the heroin variants, fentanyl and carfentanil, as well as a million different degrees of laced marijuana. Maria hadn’t even begun to do the research on technoceuticals. But she’d been hearing rumors…
“I thought those were fakes.”
Warrick’s smile was harsh, and his eyes shifted dangerously, unnerving her. “Everything’s fake until the government has a use for it. Supposedly, Takio is cooking up a particularly vicious strain that has the powers-that-be worried. I need to find out more about it.”
Maria scowled at his pecs. They were really nice pecs. “Okay, so let’s say I get you in. What makes you think they’ll let you walk in and take a peek?”
He shrugged. The simple movement made his chest and shoulder muscles ripple in a way that made her blink rapidly. “Because we’ve got operatives in the Red Spider that will back up my story of coming out to check the merchandise, and we’ve let it be known through other unofficial channels that the Spider’s got a lot of money to burn on this drug, if it’s anything interesting. With the kind of cash we’re talking, I suspect someone in either Guardia or La Noche is going to want to talk to me.”
“I hope so.” Maria forced her focus away from his chest, met his eyes again. “Because if not, that friendly face of yours isn’t going to stay so pretty for very long.”
As Maria Santos gazed up at him, Warrick struggled to keep his body from spontaneously melting. This was a human, and he’d interacted with tens of thousands of them—he had been alive for millennia, after all. And yet, he couldn’t help but stare at this one as if he’d never before held a naked woman in his arms.
In his defense, it had been a while.
Now that he’d seen more of her, however, he confirmed his original assessment that Maria Santos was long, lean, and built for action, her arms tanned to a deep bronze that ended at her shoulders while the tan on her legs ended at her mid-thighs. The rest of her skin was slightly paler—and not flawless either. Scars crisscrossed her body, most of them so light that they had to have been received when she was barely a child, but the newer ones made up for their small numbers in their length and thickness. This wasn’t a woman who shrank away from pain. Her breasts were high and not as full as they probably should be, given her frame, but Maria also looked like she hadn’t eaten a real meal in weeks. Part of her undercover disguise?
All that merely added to her sensual appeal. Her thick ebony mane, streaming with water, framed a face uncompromising in its ferocity and beauty. And her long-lashed dark eyes stared at him above a long, straight nose and full lips—lips that were now tightly pressed together as she watched him.
He shrugged again, liking too much how it distracted Maria Santos. Liking everything about Maria Santos, in fact, far more than he should. “I’ll do whatever I need to do, if it gets me inside their operation,” he said.
Her lips twisted into a wry grin. “I’ll keep it in mind.” Still, she seemed to accept his explanation, which was a miracle in itself. “Okay, what do you know about the Guardia? Anything?”
“They’ve worked this area for decades,” Warrick replied. “At first side by side with La Noche, but that changed about fifteen years ago. Now their entire drug operation flows up through La Noche.” Another shoulder roll, another flicker of Maria’s eyes, a softening of her lips that made him long to feel them on his skin. “Jack gave me the name Cedo.”
She nodded. “Guardia’s head lieutenant. Bad news, but no more so than most of them. He’s at the top of the food chain, and he’s the one with access to the Citadel, which is where all the magic happens. You want to see La Noche’s drug operation, you gotta go through Cedo.” Her eyes narrowed. “What is it you think this drug will do, exactly?”
Warrick flashed a smile. “Frankly, we don’t know. I don’t even have rumors to go on, other than whatever it is, it’s bad. Suffice to say, though, we have a long-standing beef with Takio. I understand you do too.”
“I do.” Maria’s eyes went slightly cold, despite the fact that she remained warm and vibrant and soaking wet in his arms. “But I’m already embedded in this op, and I have been for a while. You’re only now figuring out Takio’s dealing designer drugs? Why?”
“Let’s just say he’s good at hiding in plain sight.”
“Yeah, he’s good at a lot of things.” Once again, Warrick heard the steel in Maria’s voice, noted the stiffness in her body as she sized him up. She still wore the gold cross around her neck, which kept him from completely rifling through her thoughts, but it didn’t take a demon’s touch to know this human had suffered a great deal at the hands of the man she knew as Takio Soldaro. But Warrick knew his true name.
Holkeri. The name sent a shiver of dangerous rage through him, rage he knew better than to give in to. He forced his jaw to unclench, his words to keep coming.
“Now that we’ve tracked him down, it gets easier. We need to place him with those drugs, with the dealers—with anything. With that hook, my guys can move in. Now that you’re this close, we’re going to do it fast.”
“What do you mean, fast?” This part was new to Maria, something Warrick hadn’t worked into his conversation with her handler, but it was critical. The longer he stood toe to toe with this particular demon horde, the more at risk he would be for being identified as something other than a high-level buyer from a cash-flush gang. He wasn’t worried about the humans figuring out his true nature, but the demons in this area were old. He could feel it when he first set foot in the neighborhood. You didn’t survive so long on this earth without developing highly acute survival skills.
One of those skills was being able to recognize a fellow demon when he was standing right in front of you. Especially a demon who was a member of the Syx, and more than likely here to take you out.
“I mean, the sooner we get into the Citadel, the better, and once we’re in, we’re going to have to move. Jack said he gave you all the details you need about what’s inside those buildings, but can you trust him?”
“Of course. He had the best memory of anyone I’d ever met. I’ve been into Buildings A and B a few times, and everything he said I’d see in them has panned out so far. The other towers are built on the same plan. D seems to be the important one, but I’ve never been in there.”
“Jack’s also an addict whose brain is suffering the long-term effects of a debilitating dependency on drugs,” Warrick countered. He wanted to believe Maria—he did. If he could, he could walk into the Citadel himself, based on the information Jack supplied him, both by answering Warrick’s questions and through his thoughts that Warrick had so easily read. But he couldn’t—Jack’s mind had been fraying even as Warrick had plumbed his memories. His intel wasn’t a lock. He needed Maria for that alone…not to mention her involvement had been a condition that the archangel Michael had insisted upon.
Maria shrugged. “So that means you need me for more than just your lookout. Good. But I still don’t get the rush.”
More improvisation. Good thing demons had no problem with lying, or this job would be a bitch to get through. “The rush is we have it on good authority that a third party is coming in, planning to take Takio out,” Warrick said evenly. “We need to get the information we want first.”
“No.” Maria had gone rigid in his arms, and for a moment, Warrick didn�
�t know what she was objecting to. She didn’t make him wait long for the explanation. “No one’s taking him out before I get to him. God owes me that.”
“He does, does he?” Warrick glanced again at the cross dangling at Maria’s neck. It had to have been blessed by…someone, somewhere along the way. He wondered if Maria even knew it. “He has a way of making you regret requests like that.”
“I won’t regret it.” Without another word, Maria pulled herself out of his embrace, their interview effectively over.
Almost, but not quite. Maria half turned away, then glanced back at him, her eyes so hard, Warrick was grateful he hadn’t succumbed to the desire to drop his gaze to her ass, which, even in his peripheral view, was as impressive as the rest of her.
“Something else, Warrick,” she said, leaning back close to him. “I’m happy to get you into the Guardia, stay by your side all the way to the Citadel, and do whatever it takes to convince everyone who’s anyone that you’re exactly who you say you are. But by God, if you take out Takio before I get my hands on him, I will make you regret it for the rest of your life.”
She turned on her heel then and stepped free of the shower, not looking back as she stalked out of the room. And, damned or not, Warrick watched her the entire way.
Chapter Six
Maria viciously toweled off in the locker room while Warrick wisely remained under the spray to give her a chance to cool down.
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew he was going to try to take this op out from under her. In the time-honored way of the Feds stepping in to screw the pooch irredeemably, Warrick was going to try to grab Takio for himself. The reason why didn’t matter. Fame, a vendetta for past wrongs, the war on drugs, she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to let him do it.
