#2 Dangerous Games (6 page)

Clint stilled behind her as the knock came again, harder this time.

"If that's your leather-clad Lothario, I'm going to kill him."

She whimpered as Clint's fingers slid from the aching depths of her pussy and he pulled her back as he stepped aside. He didn't give her time to recover, didn't give her the option to leave the room. He looked through the peephole as he released Morganna, pushing her slowly behind him as she stumbled, fighting to regain her balance, cursed, then swung the door open to face the four plainclothes DEA agents she worked with.

Joe Merino was no one's fool. She saw the knowledge of what had been going on behind the door
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narrow his eyes as Craig's muttered curse echoed behind him.

Joe flipped open the small wallet that carried his badge and identification. The DEA seal was clear, as were the others who stood around him.

"Clint, we need to talk." Joe's gaze flickered to Morganna before a tight smile curved his rough face. "If you don't mind."

"Well, well, well," Clint drawled, glancing at her over his shoulder. "It looks like your cavalry is here. Do you think they'll have my answers?"

CLINT WAS MORE FURIOUS THAN he could remember ever being in his life. And there were times he had been damned mad. It wasn't bad enough that he had learned the innocence that shone so bright in her eyes was false. No woman who embraced the submissive lifestyle could claim the degree of sexual innocence he had fooled himself into believing he saw within Morganna.

But added to that was the knowledge that she had managed to get herself tangled into a web so dangerous, it made his guts cramp in fear. Son of a bitch, he was going to kill Merino. If it was the last thing he managed to do in his life, the man was dead.

After the four men moved into the room, Clint gripped the side of the door and slammed it closed with a force that had Morganna flinching in surprise. His gaze sliced to her wide gray eyes, his jaw bunching with the effort not to put his arms around her, to hold her to him. To know she was safe.

"Buy insurance, Merino," he growled as he turned from Morganna. "Good insurance. You don't want your family to be out too much when they have to bury you."

Joe Merino's mobile lips kicked up in a cool grin as his brown eyes gleamed with wary amusement.

"Come on, Clint; chill out, man. I had no idea she belonged to you." He flashed, Morganna a chastising look.

"Oh God, does this sound like a trashy novel or what?" Morganna piped up, her voice filled with disgust.

"I want to hear the explanations. I'm going to assume you're working on the date rape case, and pray I'm wrong, because if I'm not, there's going to be hell to pay once Reno finds out," Clint ordered tersely

"Tattletale," she grumbled.

He ignored her, merely staring back at Merino with narrowed eyes.

Joe shook his head mockingly as he stared back at Morganna. "Does your family even know what you
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do?" he finally asked her.

She pressed her lips tightly together.

Hell no, they didn't.

Joe sighed. "She's a DEA agent, Clint. One of the best rookies we have. I don't know where that attack came from tonight, or who's behind it, but this is Morganna's first case and she hasn't had time to draw that kind of notice yet."

"It was probably a hit against him," Morganna said. "I keep telling him he's going to piss off the wrong person."

"You set her up as bait," Clint said, continuing to ignore her. Right now, it was his safest bet.

He couldn't believe it. Morganna working with the DEA? That wasn't possible. She couldn't pull something like that off without Reno's knowledge. And sure to God, Reno would have told him.

She couldn't be doing this. She was too soft, too fragile. A man protected women like her; he didn't allow them to be drawn into the middle of a nightmare.

"We're investigating the hit," Merino sighed as he pushed his hands into his slacks pockets and stared back at Clint consideringly. "I'm here out of consideration to you. Because I respect you. But Morganna is an agent with this force, Clint. I can't have you jerking her out of the arena every chance you get."

Joe Merino was one tough son of a bitch, despite the designer clothes he wore. He had resigned his commission with the SEALs five years before, after his wife's death, and gone to work with; the DEA instead. He was snake-mean when dealing with criminals and not much nicer when dealing with friendlies.

But he was a damned good agent, and Clint had once believed his judgment to be sound. Pulling Morganna in on this was not sound judgment. Because he should have known that even if Reno didn't kill him, Clint would. Agent or no agent, this was no place for Morganna.

He turned to Morganna, barely restraining the agonizing fear for her as she stared back at him. It tightened every muscle in his body and left him struggling to pull enough oxygen into his lungs to breathe.

She was deliberately risking her life. She was risking his sanity, his very survival, with this madness.

"You didn't tell me? Did Raven know?" He was surprised at the hurt that clenched his chest at the thought.

"Raven only knew that I was back in school until my actual graduation. Reno still doesn't know any differently," she finally revealed. "Come on, Clint, I didn't want to be jerked out before I even had a chance to graduate from the Law Enforcement Academy."

"You didn't need to be there!" he exclaimed, aware of the horror in his voice. "For God's sake, Morganna. Merino is going to get you killed."

She stared back at Clint in determination, defiant courage lighting her eyes. "I'm good at what I do."

He turned to Merino. "And what made you think you could place her in this kind of danger?" he snarled.

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"Reno will take you out for this, Joe, and you know it."

"Reno will accept it the same way you will-"

"Exactly, because I'm going to kill you first." Clint clenched his fists as he fought to restrain the need to kill the bastard now. "Slowly. Reno can have what's left."

Merino snorted mockingly. "Give it up, Clint. We approached you months ago about working this case because of your experience and your reputation on the BDSM scene.

You turned it down, so your opinion doesn't carry any weight here."

"I have a job, remember?" Clint pointed out sarcastically. "It does kind of require a steady amount of time."

Merino grimaced. "You're on leave for six more weeks," he pointed out. "We could wrap this up within that time with your help. Your reputation as a powerful Dom, combined with the reputation Craig has gained from chasing after Morganna this year, could give us the ace we need-"

"Forget it."

"Everyone knows her; they know you. Craig is considered new on the scene. He's barely been in a year-"

Clint swung his gaze to Morganna. "How long have you been involved in this?"

She lifted her chin, her eyes glittering in challenge. "The club scene, for more than three years now. The agency, six months."

Fuck. Fuck. "And I missed you at those clubs, how?" he demanded.

"I don't know." She shrugged her shoulders, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and drawing his gaze to the hard-tipped mounds. "I guess you just weren't at the right club at the right time, Clint. Or maybe you just weren't paying enough attention to me." Her eyes rounded in mock innocence. "I guess it could have been either one."

Either one? He turned from her slowly. He needed to kill; since he would never consider hurting so much as a hair on her head, that left Merino.

"Forget the insurance," Clint said softly. "I won't leave enough of you to bury."

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THE SETUP WAS ENOUGH TO make Clint clench his teeth and fight back an explosion he knew would land him in prison. Killing a cop was bad, even if the cop did deserve to die. And no one deserved it like Merino did.

Morganna had been working the case more than a year.

Fresh out of a Law Enforcement Academy that Clint hadn't even known she attended; hell, he'd thought she was in secretarial school. After graduation, she had gone to Joe and requested to be part of his task force. She knew the scene, knew the people, and she had the training he needed for an agent.

Clint was aware of the case. Two years ago, a new, specially synthesized date rape drug had come onto the market. A stimulant with the capabilities of rendering victims unable to remember anything but the haziest details while turning them into sex machines for hours at a time. It affected men and women; the powerful aphrodisiac also had the unfortunate side effect of killing the victim in many cases.

The sale of the drug had been controlled by the suppliers, resulting in the inability to identify where it had come from or who was using it. The majority of the women dosed with it disappeared for days at a time and, if they lived, turned up brutalized.

Many hadn't lived. But the videos made of their rapes had turned up to make millions on the black market. The sexual exploitation of those women was horrendous. Those who survived lived a waking nightmare of knowing the crimes committed against them were being sold, enjoyed. The resulting suicides hadn't been a surprise.

Not that women had been the only victims. There had been a few men, though those occasions weren't as numerous.

Clint managed to drag the details out of Merino once the other man understood that death was in his immediate future. Morganna's part in the case had been small. She had already been part of the club scene, evidently had been for years. She had been careful, though, staying home when Glint was in town or going to the less extreme clubs that he didn't associate with.

Diva's, Merlin's, and the Roundtable were his favorites. They were also the upper-scale, more expensive BDSM clubs on the eastern seaboard and just happened to operate in the same general vicinity of Atlanta.

Morganna didn't confine herself to the BDSM clubs until she began working with Joe's team. She played a very careful game of a woman hovering on the edge of submission. Or one fighting her Domme tendencies. Morganna was a dare to every male Dominant in those clubs.

Clint watched Morganna keep a careful distance from him as Merino and the others provided the details
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of the case. And through it, he learned that Morganna was the bait.

Several of the Doms who inhabited the clubs were sniffing around her. She hadn't settled on a lover yet, hadn't used the private rooms, other than Craig's for meetings, and she played the untouchable challenge.

Eager to step into the lifestyle of a sexual submissive, but unwilling to settle on one man to do so.

She kept a close eye on the dealers suspected of handling the drug, as well as informing Merino and his men if any of the women acted drugged or seemed to need help leaving.

In the months Morganna had been working with the team, two women had disappeared, turning up days later, dead. Several more had been rescued from their fate by the team's intervention, with only three arrests, and those just here lately.

So far, Morganna had been personally responsible for the arrests of the three men suspected of drugging and kidnapping the women and was now on the lookout for their supplier.

"They've targeted the BDSM community because of the more unrestrained sexual atmosphere and the participants' general secretiveness about the double lives they lead," Joe finished up. "If we could get the group drugging and raping these women here, then we could find the location of the lab or labs being used."

"The Fuentes Cartel created the drug." Morganna spoke up then. "Their stronghold was destroyed last year, but we suspect several of the family members survived. We do know from the intel we've received that the cartel is fractured now and only one lab is currently working. The drug hasn't hit the streets yet; so far, it's just being used for the underground rape videos and, we suspect, is being perfected."

Clint stared back at her, hiding the shock he could feel racing through his system as he watched her. She was speaking of the Fuentes Cartel as though they were your regular, run-of-the-mill drug runners.

They were killers. And the thought of them targeting Morganna had the blood freezing in Clint's veins.

"Do you have idea what you're getting into here?" he ground out. "Any idea just how fucking dangerous the Fuentes people could be?"

She stared back at him calmly. "This drug has to be destroyed, Clint."

"Not by you." God, she had no idea what she was getting into. "Not if Fuentes is involved."

"Fuentes' survival or lack thereof isn't the problem. The supplier and the source are. We can get the suppliers if we get a strong enough Dom in to appear determined to tame the shrew no matter the cost or moral objection." Joe cast a smug look toward Morganna. "So far, we haven't found one. Morganna isn't the easiest woman to work with."

Clint watched her expression closely. Of course she wasn't, and he would have killed any of the four men if they had convinced her to do what would have been required. If he didn't kill them anyway for involving her.

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"Are you aware of what they're asking you to do?" he asked her furiously.

She shrugged mockingly. "I'm just waiting on them to present a viable candidate."

The challenge she was presenting to the Dominants within the club was bad enough. Some of them had fewer scruples than an alley cat. But even worse, she was daring some bastard to attempt to drug her, to force her into submission.

Clint had followed the news reports of the women who had been drugged. Those found dead as well as those who'd survived. They had presented a challenge. Women who didn't bow to the submissive lifestyle but who enjoyed watching from the sidelines and socializing within the fringe clubs such as Masters provided.