He’d stopped trying to silence her, so she stopped pressing against the door.
“You keep telling me that I need to return to my life before I knew you, but I didn’t have much of a life until I met you. I know I didn’t want to be there at first, but now that I have a choice, I want to be with you. Please don’t send me away, Daddy.”
He didn’t talk for a few miles. The tenor of his expression turned pensive. “You said you had a friend who was a Daddy Dom and other friends in the lifestyle.”
Oh, shit. She scrambled to smooth over the space between truth and cover story. “More like an acquaintance. I haven’t seen him in a long time. He spends all his free time with his little, which I understand. If you wanted to hang out with other women, I would have a problem with it.”
“How did you meet him?”
“It doesn’t matter. Daddy, I’m thirty-nine years old. I’ve seen and done a lot in my life, and I don’t have anything to show for it. When I’m with you, I have a purpose. I feel like I’m wanted, like I belong. I know, if you leave me at that rest stop, I’m never going to feel like this again.” She injected a little vibrato into her voice, which wasn’t hard because she forced herself to think about how she felt when he kissed her. No man had ever made her insides liquefy the way he did.
The car slowed suddenly, and Brandy realized the moment of truth had arrived. This was the rest stop—either the last of her journey with an enigmatic man who’d saved her life, or the start of bringing down the largest criminal organization in the world.
He slid into a parking spot and cut the engine.
She undid the seat belt and leaped onto his lap. Throwing her arms around his neck, she buried her face in his shoulder. “Daddy, please don’t leave me here. I want to be with you. I want to be your little or your brat or whatever you need me to be.”
His embrace closed around her, and he stroked her hair back from her face. “Firebrand, I hate seeing you like this. With all you’ve gone through, the only time you’ve ever begged is when you were afraid. Are you really so afraid to go home?”
“Home is with you.” She pressed her body closer. The jacket prevented him from feeling the weight of her breasts, so she didn’t have that weapon in her arsenal. She thought about her ordeal and what it would be like to go home—to hug her parents and brother and brother-in-law, to see her work family again—and she mustered up a few tears.
Leaning back, she peered at him with tear-bright eyes.
His resistance melted. She saw it in the defeat in his eyes, and she watched as determination replaced the sense of failure. His fingers threaded through her hair and gripped her head. “I’ll do my best to do right by you, Firebrand, but I can’t promise a happy ending. I can only promise that I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe and happy for as long as I can.”
With that, he kissed her. Emotion poured from him, and she opened on a soft sigh of wonder that she definitely wasn’t faking. He swept her away with his kiss and the strong arms holding her as if she was the most precious, most important thing in the world to him.
It ended slowly in a series of smaller smooches on her cheeks and forehead.
“Ten minutes.” His voice came out ragged and heavy. “I’m leaving in ten minutes, Firebrand. I want you to walk away from me and really think about what you’re asking. If you still want to come with me, then meet me back here in ten minutes. If you don’t, then no hard feelings, little one. I can’t offer you much more than what I was able to give you before. Think on that before you decide to throw your lot in with the likes of me.”
He pressed one more kiss to her forehead, and then he shooed her out of the car.
Brandy headed for the building. This one was a little busier than the last one. People smoked near the trash cans, and kids ran around in the snow. Inside, people stood in a cluster near a vending machine, and the bathroom was doing a fair amount of business—probably because half of it was closed for cleaning.
Brandy spied a familiar figure almost immediately. Avery Forsythe was the first person Brandy had recruited to work on her task force to hunt down The Eye. Avery was a dedicated agent and a spectacular profiler. Though their hair and eye colors were different, Avery and Brandy were very similar. They were the same height, had the same body type, and both ran an eight-minute mile. Neither of them rushed into anything, and so when Avery pushed her into a closed restroom, Brandy braced herself for a tongue lashing.
The bathroom door closed, a lock clicked into place, and Brandy found herself engulfed by agents. Liam and Jed squeezed her between them. Avery pushed them aside to get in on the action. Jordan hugged both of them.
This was her team, her disbanded special task force, back together in one spot. She knew they’d stop at nothing to get to her.
Before they could smother her, she said, “I’m okay. I swear I’m fine.”
Avery pulled away, grasped Brandy’s arms, and shook her friend. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“No. I’m fine.” Brandy’s eyes widened. “You don’t have a second team out there arresting Bull, do you?”
“His name isn’t Bull,” Jordan said. Until she’d met Bull, Jordan had been the tallest, biggest man she knew. Like Bull, he was a gentle giant who had danger simmering just below the surface. Shaggy black hair skated across Jordan’s shoulders, and thunder echoed in his dark eyes. “It’s Lukas Xuereb. Until three years ago, he was a well-regarded veterinarian. His brother and mother passed away, and then he sold everything and went off the grid. We have nothing on him.”
Brandy knew something tragic had happened for him to end up where he was, and now she knew why he’d been swayed by her story of having no family. She set that aside to focus on business.
She motioned to Jed. “Set a timer for eight minutes.”
He fiddled with his phone as he protested. “Brandy, we came here to talk sense into you. Of all people, you know better than to rush into an undercover operation. You’ve had no time to research or study.”
“Mal and I developed a cover years ago. I’m resurrecting it now.” She faced Avery. “I know Malcolm told you everything. I’ve spent the last six weeks with this man. I know him. I’m comfortable moving forward.”
Then she appealed to Jordan. “We’ve been after these fuckers for two years. They blew up your fiancée’s house and tried to kill you both. We’ve chipped away at their operation from outside, and now we have a chance to take them down from the inside. I’m not asking for permission. Unless someone in authority said otherwise, I’m still the head of this task force. I’m doing this.”
Liam stepped forward. He held up a small, microchip-sized thing. “Tracker. If it stops transmitting, we’ll raid as quickly as we can. We don’t know where you’re going or what kind of cover we can find, but we’ll be no more than an hour out at any given time.”
Jed lifted her foot and took her tennis shoe. He hid the tracker in the lining. She didn’t have any jewelry, and Bull would look suspiciously on any she acquired, so that tried and true method was a bust.
Liam handed her a pen. It looked like an ordinary pen one might get from a hotel or bar. It was something she could find on the floor. “Microphone.” He showed her how to activate the passive listening device. “Once you get where you’re going, turn it on and keep it on. Battery will last two months.”
Lastly he handed her a phone. She stared at it, longing for a sure method to communicate with her team. “He knows I don’t have a phone. He doesn’t even have one. Well, he has the one he hid, but I’m not supposed to know about it.” She handed it back to him.
“Yeah. I got the phone’s history. No calls. He uses it to access cloud storage. We’re working on getting a warrant. Rescuing you took priority over that.”
Avery took the phone. The next thing Brandy knew, Avery had her hands up Brandy’s shirt, hiding the phone in her bra. It was tiny and easily camouflaged as a bit of side boob.
“Did you raid Redemption Center?”
&n
bsp; “It’s happening right now,” Jed said. “Over two hundred agents are there. Every one of them volunteered. You’re beloved, Boss Lady.”
She squeezed his hand, returning the sentiment. “My plan is infiltration, gather data and evidence, and blow it up if I can. Do we have a warrant for using a recording device?”
“Yes,” Avery supplied. “DOJ is fully behind the operation. Additionally, Judge Legato-Rossetti stands ready to call in favors in whatever jurisdiction we need.”
Brandy chuckled at that. Katrina Legato-Rossetti was Malcolm’s sister and Keith’s wife. She’d worked with Trina a lot when the judge had been a prosecutor. “Good. I’m assuming you’re all back on the task force now?”
“Of course,” Jed said. “We’ll be following you in the same formation we’ve been using, switching out cars in every state, and when you get to where you’re going, we’ll set up a base of operations. How long do you think you’ll need?”
Brandy shrugged. “Two weeks. Six months. It depends on what kind of access I can get. Bull was called up, but I don’t know what that means for him or for me.”
“What’s your safeword?” Jordan asked.
“The heat index is out of control. What did you name the op?”
Liam grinned. “Operation Blinded.”
Jed’s watch beeped.
Brandy swept her gaze, meeting that of each friend for a moment. “I love you all. I trust you implicitly. Thank you for doing this.”
Avery hugged her. “I still think you’re fucking nuts.”
“Yeah.”
Jordan guided her through an access door to the restroom that was open. She emerged and hurried to the car to find it empty.
She glanced around, wondering if he’d changed his mind. She turned to find him behind her, sitting on a metal bench that had to be freezing his ass. A slow smile spread over her face even though she noted Jordan’s presence over Bull’s shoulder.
He rose, his hands stuck into his pockets. “You’re sure about this? Firebrand—you don’t have to come with me. If your life has been full of bad circumstances and bad decisions, coming with me isn’t going to change that pattern.”
“You’re still trying to talk me out of it.” She hugged her arms to her chest. “It’s not going to happen. I want to be with you. For the first time in my life, something finally feels right.”
He closed the distance and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m not promising anything except that I’ll die to keep you safe.”
She lifted her face, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. As he guided her to the car, she caught Jordan’s scowl over Bull’s shoulder.
Chapter 8
The snow set in as soon as they crossed into Indiana, and by the time they made it to Iowa, it had turned into a blizzard.
Brandy peered through the windshield at the huge, driving flakes making it nearly impossible to see the lights on the car ahead. The wipers were not able to keep up with the rate of snow accumulating on the windshield. “Please tell me we have funds for an early hotel. I think we’ll die if we stay out here much longer.”
With a frown, Bull exited the freeway into a populated area. He pulled into the first hotel he found, but they were booked solid. Five hotels later, Brandy found herself in the lap of luxury. The honeymoon suite at a hotel-and-casino was one of the only rooms available in the area. She didn’t feel sorry for her team tailing her because she knew they’d appreciate staying in one of the expensive suites on the same floor so they could keep an eye on her.
The suite had an expansive living area with a huge set of windows overlooking the rest of the city. The glow of lights was indistinct and blurred. The storm seemed to be right on top of them. Bull turned on the television, the sudden noise startling Brandy. She’d become used to not having a screen in her life.
She unpacked some of their toiletries, using the ruse to hide the small phone Avery had hidden in Brandy’s bra in her box of tampons. When she joined Bull on the sofa, she noted the expanse of the storm. Mother Nature was dumping buckets on the Midwest. The places it had already visited were stuck under more than a foot of white powder.
“That looks really bad,” she noted.
Bull grunted. “We’ll have to make up the time on the back end.”
She set a hand on his thigh. “You’re still not telling me where we’re going?”
“Arizona. You won’t have to worry about a blizzard there.” He seemed to study her hand. It looked small on his leg. He traced a fingertip along her fingers and the back of her hand. “You can still get out of this, Firebrand. They don’t know you’re coming.”
She tucked her legs under her and leaned her body against his arm. “You’re my Daddy. Where you go, I go.”
He kissed the top of her head, and then he rose. “I’m going to get some ice. Clean out the bathtub, little one.”
She figured he was actually going to contact someone at Willowlands to let them know he was caught in the storm ravaging the nation’s breadbasket. Tonight was going to be momentous. She knew sleeping with him would cement their bond in his mind, and for her part, she desperately wanted the gentle affection he offered.
She hadn’t lied about not having a serious relationship in a long time. In her line of work, her entire focus was on making her country a safer place. Her personal life had become a casualty. Though she knew this wasn’t a substitute, for one night, she wanted to forget her solitary existence and give herself to someone who looked at her with genuine affection. Perhaps he didn’t love her—their relationship had been too fraught so far for anything lasting to develop—but he cared about her.
And she cared about him. Though her ultimate goal was to bring down The Eye, her mind was on the lookout for a way to cushion the blow it would deal to Bull. Maybe she could get him to testify in exchange for immunity or some kind of leniency? They’d given better deals to worse criminals. With his job—Brandy suspected he was a fixer—he had to know where the bodies were buried.
He returned before she finished cleaning, and he joined her in the cavernous bathroom. Leaning against the counter, he watched her scrub with a washcloth.
“Firebrand, you said you wanted to belong to me.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“But I don’t want to rush you into anything.”
She peered over her shoulder and arched a brow. Getting to her feet, she grabbed for the shower head to rinse the tub. “You’re not rushing me, Bull. We’ve been dancing around it for a while now. I want it. You want it. We should have sex.”
“It seems fast.”
She dried her hands and set them against his chest. “So buy me dinner first. Woo me. Entice me. Romance me.”
“Lukas.”
Jordan had told her Lukas’ name, so it wasn’t a surprise. However she had to behave as if this was the first time she was hearing it. “What?”
“My name is Lukas Xuereb. You were right—I dislike when you call me Bull. That name is soiled, and you, my sweet little one, are pure.”
“Lukas.” She said his name a few times, letting her tongue get used to the feel. “I like it, Daddy. It fits you a lot better.”
He touched her face. “What’s your name, Firebrand?”
She glanced away. “I like what you call me. It fits me best.”
Hooking a finger under her chin, he gently urged her to face him. “I wish to know your name, little one. Don’t worry—you’ll still be my Firebrand.”
“Brandy.” The name slipped out, past her careful cover identity. She closed her eyes briefly against the shame of her mistake. “I mean, it’s Brittany. Brittany Sorrel. But maybe you could call me Brandy because it’s like Firebrand in disguise?”
He chuckled, the rumble starting low in his belly before rolling from his mouth. He kissed her forehead. “Brandy, it is, my beautiful, fiery woman.” He hugged her to him and kissed the top of her head. “I’m so very grateful that you’re mine.”
“So am I.” Brandy closed her eyes. In the safet
y and security of his embrace, she meant it. When he held her, she forgot to be an FBI agent. She pushed away the responsibility of her mission for this, their first night together, and she gave herself to him. He led her back into the living room, and he spread a clean towel on the floor.
“Get on your knees.” He issued the order softly. Submission was hers to give, not his to take.
Moving as gracefully as she could, she knelt, careful to make sure her stance was perfect. The sweats and T-shirt she’d been wearing all day was not an outfit she would have chosen for seduction, but Lukas didn’t seem to notice. He focused on the way her hands were clasped behind her neck, the placement of her shoulders, and he spent some time checking out her breasts. This pose thrust them forward, but his gaze had never before lingered on her chest.
It did now, and she felt her breasts swell, begging for his touch.
He ran his fingers through her hair. She closed her eyes, and her body swayed closer to his touch.
“Firebrand, open your eyes and stay still.”
She opened them. “Yes, Daddy.”
“What’s your safeword?”
Another safeword? She’d best stay away from anything having to do with heat. As she thought, confusion marred her brow for all of two seconds. Then she smiled. “Macaroni and peas.”
He chuckled. “Macaroni and peas. The stoplight system will also work. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, little one, so you might have to bear with me a bit.”
“I’ve never done this, so I’ll ask that you bear with me as well.”
“Fair enough.” He stroked a knuckle along her cheek. “Right now, I want you to think about what you’re feeling.”
She thought for a moment. Though she’d knelt for him daily, this was the first time it was indicative of a consensual relationship. “Peaceful and a little nervous. Anticipation.”
“Now think about how this is different from the first time you knelt for me.”
Re/Deemed (Doms of the FBI Book 8) Page 9
