Brazen (B-Squad #1) (2 page)

Beep.

None of the bricks gave way to reveal a secret compartment, which only left one option… He looked down at the fake logs piled on the hearth. He squatted down and lifted the faux wood shell shaped like four logs. Then, his entire body went tense. Hidden away under the logs were two short sections of steel water pipe sealed off at both ends with brass caps. A trio of wires came out of one end and toward both a small battery and a beeping timer.

Beep.

Taz set the faux wood shell down on the floor. The timer had just over a minute on it. “It’s a motherfucking pipe bomb.”

“Can you disarm it or do we need to evac?” Bianca asked.

Beep.

He leaned down, noticed the frayed edge of the wire leading into the pipe. A fake fuse or was the whole setup just a hoax? He took a closer look. The caps weren’t tightened. The wire didn’t actually connect to the battery, it went under it. Grinding his teeth in frustration even while breathing a little easier, he surveyed the device again just to be sure.

Rolling back on his haunches, he unsheathed the knife strapped to his ankle and sliced the wire. The beeping stopped and the timer froze at twenty-eight seconds. “It’s a fake.”

A wave of relief rolled through the room, followed by an immediate uptick in frustration. He couldn’t blame anyone for that. After six months of tracking down Gidget Harms and the mystery man behind Genie’s Wish, and coming close but not close enough each time, the case was beginning to get to everyone.

Only he and Bianca had been in on it since the beginning at Bisu Manor, where he’d gone to participate in an orgy involving Ft. Worth’s rich and powerful and had instead found love. Bianca's search for Gidget at manor that night had brought them together, exposed the Genie’s Wish drug ring, and had almost gotten them killed when they’d gone in to plant cameras and listening devices for the DEA. Since then, they’d started the B-Squad, formed an uneasy alliance with the DEA and had raided half a dozen sex parties, gambling dens and fight clubs that had proven to be testing grounds for the drug in search of Gidget.

They’d saved lives, no doubt about it, but Gidget and the mystery man behind it all remained just out of reach. It was enough to make him wish he could remember some of his grandmother’s Roma curses that she promised always worked like a poisonous charm.

“That prick is playing with us,” Bianca said, irritation leaking from every syllable.

He nodded and stood. “Seems like it.”

“I can’t wait to track this bastard down,” said Marko, the grim look on his face leaving little doubt as to what he’d do once he had the man behind Genie’s Wish.

“You’ll have to get in line behind me.” Taz worked his jaw back and forth as he gave the fake pipe bomb one last look.

And they would—even Bianca. He loved the men who he’d grown up with and called his brothers even though their family trees didn’t share even a single branch. He’d come to appreciate Bianca’s friends, who she’d known since they all went to that reform school for rich girls, which is what she called St. Bernadette’s. God knew, he’d lay everything on the line for Bianca—and had already, taking a bullet for her during the Bisu Manor operation. Still, no one was coming between him and the man who’d fucked with the people he loved.

That guy was a dead man walking.

“Hey, I found something.” Duke help up a scrap of paper. “It was caught in the filing cabinet.”

His brother brought it over and handed it to Bianca. She held it up to the light. It couldn’t be more than a few inches long and an inch or two wide, but the words on the torn corner of a printed page was clear.

Indulgence Reso—

Reservation #68—

Look forward to your arrival tomorrow and hope that yo—

For the first time since he’d heard that damn beeping, Taz smiled. It wasn’t friendly. It wasn’t nice. But then again, he’d told Bianca before that he wasn’t one of the good guys.

* * *

Yasmin closed her laptop and smiled despite her annoyance at the woman weeping beside her. This time had been a dry run to make sure the software would work as expected. Next time, however, Bianca and the B-Squad wouldn’t be so lucky.

B
ianca wasn’t about
to go on a rescue mission without her brass balls any more than she’d leave her SIG SAUER in the armory.

She picked up the giant jawbreaker-sized orbs of solid brass from the top of the dresser. As far as good luck charms went, they were a bit…unusual, but so was just about everything in her life. The light streaming into the bedroom from the skylights dotting the ceiling in the large open-concept loft reflected off the metal balls as she rolled them in the palm of her hand.

They were hard, eye-catching, and had an impenetrable surface that gave no hints about what was inside. Grinning to herself, she shook her head. They were just like the man who’d given her Iron Man’s nads as a gag gift for their six-month dating anniversary.

Good thing, Taz made up for his lack of romantic gift-giving skills with other talents that involved full-body massage and orgasms—lots of mind-melting, knee-buckling, toe-curling orgasms.

She glanced up at the door to the oversized bathroom as the sound of the shower running continued. It was the only room in the loft with walls, otherwise it was just exposed brick, ceiling-to-floor windows and a private elevator that led down to the expansive garage for the Devil’s Dip Gym. She didn’t have to close her eyes to imagine how good Taz would look right now with water streaming over the hard planes and defined muscles of his body. Without even trying, she could smell the sandalwood of the soap he used on his tawny brown skin. She bit down on her bottom lip, trying to distract herself from the naked man she’d fallen for so hard and fast that she was surprised she didn’t have a love concussion.

The shower turned off.

Temptation tugged at her. She checked the time on her phone.

They weren’t needed for the briefing for another thirty minutes and Taz hadn’t even begun to pack for the mission to rescue Gidget. Their equipment, guns and ammo were already stowed on the private jet that would leave in a few hours to take them to the Indulgence Resort. But unless he got packing, Taz would be buck naked while they were posing as the fabulously rich and newly married Trey and Bethany Alderson. While she loved having him like that, this was the last lead they had as to Gidget’s location and nothing could take priority over finding her.

Bianca wouldn’t fail her friend again.

Taz strolled out of the bathroom in a haze of steam. A white towel sat low on his hips and the wet ebony waves of his hair made his mossy-green eyes stand out even more than usual against his brown skin. The air of barely constrained danger and never-questioned dominance as natural to him as his confident strut when he crossed the open space toward her. She caught a glimpse of his full lips curled into a sexy smirk moments before he walked behind her as if he wasn’t thinking the exact same lusty thoughts that she was.

He could have her anyway he wanted and the cocky bastard knew it—but then again, the reverse was just as true.

They may not have shared their darkest secrets with each other, but all of those skeletons were in the past and they were about the future. Taz. Her. The B-Squad. She formed a fist around the good-luck brass balls. They’d find Gidget, destroy the drug kingpin and the world would be theirs. There was nothing standing in their way.

Taz wrapped a sinewy forearm around her waist, yanking her backwards against his hard chest. “It’s not polite to play with your balls so much.”

Desire licked her skin, making her feel as naked as he was. Water droplets from his chest dampened the back of her black tank top. Her mouth went dry. Her panties went wet. And her heart went into overdrive.

“Like you know anything about being polite,” she said, her voice breathy and low.

His fingers dropped to the button of her jeans. “I’d rather stick with what I’m good at.”

She looked down at her phone lying next to the suitcase.
Fuck—and not in the good way.
“We have to leave in less than half an hour and you haven’t even started packing.”

“I’m a dude.” Taz kissed and nibbled along the exposed column of her throat, sending delicious shivers of want through her. “It takes me five minutes to scoop things out of one drawer and put them into a suitcase.” He suddenly dropped his seductive hold and moved to stand next to her, his attention focused on the matching set of luggage spread out over their king-sized bed. “Oh God, tell me we aren’t using these obnoxious things.”

She glanced down at the six-piece set of limited edition Louis Vuitton suitcases she’d borrowed from one of her Sutherland cousins. They were expensive, ostentatious and beyond over the top, which was exactly what made them the perfect accessory for going undercover at any exclusive resort to find Gidget and take down the mystery asshole who’d kidnapped her.

Taz reached into a half-filled suitcase and pulled out a bright green scrap of material. The swimsuit was on the high end of the itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-polka-dot-bikini scale. It looked even more ridiculously tiny when being held in Taz’s strong boxer’s hands that could do—and had done—serious damage. The contrast between the delicate, ultra-feminine string bikini and the strong, very male hands holding it was enough to make her giggle.

He pivoted, giving her an eye full of his eight-pack abs and the precarious hold the white towel had on his lean hips, and held out the bikini like it was nuclear waste. “You can’t wear this.”

Annoyance snapped her spine straight at his high-handed declaration. “Why not?”

He glared at her, not even bothering to hide his bossy alpha-hole tendencies. “You
do
realize this mission is work?”

She huffed out a sigh and rolled her eyes.
Men.
“What, you want to work this undercover gig as newly married Mrs. Alderson in your old gold boxing robe with Taz ‘Tasmanian Devil’ Hazard embroidered on it?”

The sexy idiot grinned at her as if she’d just uttered the most brilliant thing ever. “That’s one way to make sure no one gets the wrong idea.”

She hip-checked him. Hard.

He smiled down at her as though she was just the cutest thing ever and dropped a possessive hand to her waist, pulling her against his brick wall of a body.

Bianca glared up at him even as her nipples puckered and warm desire made her lungs tight. “Shove the caveman back in the closet. If Mrs. Alderson needs to do a little skin flashing or flirting with the resort guests or staff to get the intel we need to find Gidget, then you’re just going to have to suck it up.”

The twenty-minute warning went off on her cell phone. The high-pitched beeping bounced off the loft’s high ceilings and ricocheted back down, a shrill reminder of what was at stake on this trip. She wiggled out of Taz’s grip, giving herself some breathing room. The tip leading them to the Indulgence Resort was their last lead. The scrap of paper with a partial reservation number was all they had after the trail had gone ice cold in Phoenix.

The drug kingpin who’d taken Gidget six months ago had been hoping to snag Bianca instead—why, she had no idea. No matter how much digging she and the B-Squad team had done, they hadn’t been able to figure out who was behind Genie’s Wish or why he was targeting Bianca and her friends from the now-defunct St. Bernadette’s Academy for Young Ladies, AKA St. B’s Reform School for Rich Bitches, where the moneyed sent their very bad daughters.

She’d thought the nightmare that had been St. B’s ended after three girls killed themselves and the authorities raided the school before shutting it down and arresting most of the administrators, many of whom were still in jail. Now, more than a decade later, St. B’s specter was back and pointing them toward paradise in the Pacific Ocean.

The Indulgence Resort was a string of five small private islands in the Pacific, a few hundred miles from Hawaii. Instead of hotel rooms, guests stayed in individual luxury bungalows. It was exclusive, expensive and exhaustively hard to get into. It was a miracle Elisa had managed to pull off a last-minute reservation, but the woman had connections that spanned both sides of the legal line and she’d used every one to make it happen.

The resort’s isolation provided an ideal if unusual location for the mystery man to continue the tests on the effects of the latest, more vicious version of Genie’s Wish. At least that was what they’d been hearing whispers about from Vivi’s DEA contacts. The newest iteration of the drug that had simply amplified users’ lust, greed or fury now directed it, turning the users into puppets who weren’t even aware that someone else was pulling the strings.

Resolute, she grabbed the phone and turned off the reminder alarm. “We’ve gotta go soon.”

“We’re going to find her.” He dropped her bikini back into the suitcase, pivoted, and then reached into his drawers, scooped up the contents and dumped them into the empty suitcase next to hers. “Packing done. Let’s do this.”

How he managed to look so confident standing with only a towel wrapped around his hips, she had no idea. But he did. That just made the urge to poke his oversized ego too tempting to ignore.

She glided a finger down his bare chest, loving the way his jaw hardened as he attempted to maintain his iron hold on the control he valued almost above all else. “You forgot something.”

“What’s that?” he asked, his voice strained.

She hooked her finger around the towel and tugged it free. “Pants?”

“Kitten…” Whip quick, he grasped her waist and lifted her up so she fit snugly against his hard cock. “I know you love me best naked.”

Damn. He had her dead to rights on that one. She wrapped her legs around his waist and took his face between her palms. “I love you any way I can have you, but yeah, naked is my favorite.”

She lowered her mouth to his and showed him just how much. When their lips met, it wasn’t soft and gentle—it never was with them. It was all fire and passion and immediacy. They’d burned fast and scorching hot from the first time she’d walked into the Devil’s Dip Gym he owned. They’d fought it, but the heat won out.

He slid his hands down to her ass, cupping it, as she rocked against him. Even fully clothed, her body ached from the sweet torment of touching him. She couldn’t get enough. She had to taste him everywhere.

Somehow over the blood rushing in her ears, she heard the elevator ping. Fuck. It was the only entrance to the loft and no one ever thought to call ahead first. Of course, if they were on the approved list, all they had to do was punch in the code and scan their thumbprint to get in. The approved list was short—only Taz’s brothers and her girls—but right now everyone was working around the clock on the mission to bring Gidget home.

The number two above the elevator doors lit up.

And that’s what happened when you lived on the third floor of the building that housed the Devil’s Dip Gym on the first floor and the B-Squad Investigation and Security headquarters on the second—you never left work behind.

She broke the kiss. “If that’s one of your brothers for something stupid, I’m going to shoot them.”

“Not if I get to my gun first.” He released his hold on her ass, letting her body slide against his before her feet touched the floor, and then grabbed his towel and tied it around his waist.

Bianca spun around just as the elevator doors parted. Because of the loft’s open layout, there weren’t any walls between the bedroom area and the elevator on the opposite side of the loft, so she had an unobstructed view of the woman who strutted on four-inch heels out of the elevator and into the living room. Blindingly beautiful with long, blonde, artfully waved hair and a face that would make fashion photographers weep with joy, she wore a calf-length trench coat.

“Honey, I’m home,” the woman called out as she took off her sunglasses, revealing her murderously cold blue eyes.

Bianca went for her SIG SAUER on the nightstand next to the bed. Taz grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could take a step. His fingers bit into her flesh and pain shot up her limb.

“Taz,” she called out, wincing.

But he didn’t react. All of his attention was focused solely on the woman.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked, his voice vibrating with fury.

“Is that any way to talk to your wife?” The woman smirked. “You know, I’ve missed you, Honey Bear.”

His hold slackened just as the earth shook beneath Bianca’s feet and she stumbled back.

“Your wife?” She reached out, holding on to the dresser to steady her stance, the hurt squeezing her lungs keeping her from passing out in shock. She and Taz had been together for six months and he was
married
. “How long have you been married?”

The woman admired the rock on her ring finger. “Five years next Tuesday.”

Bianca was damn glad Taz had stopped her earlier from getting her gun, because otherwise she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t have shot him right in the center of his cold, black heart.