Bullet Proof: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) (3 page)

The waiter leaned down and whispered something in Amelia's ear. Her eyes narrowed and her blood red lips flattened for an instant before the annoyance fled from her face. She and Oliver shared some sort of silent communication that couples who've been together a long time seemed to have, and they both stood.

"I'm so sorry, but Oliver and I must take care of something." She tucked that errant hair that had slipped from Bianca's topknot again behind her ear. "Don't run away with your Kitten just yet."

Without waiting for a response, she slipped her arm through the crook of Oliver's elbow and they strode off toward the foyer. The overhead fans turned on around the salon, obviously on a timer, and the scent of roses grew heavy. Something to distract from the smell of sex blanketing the room just as the piped-in jazz mingled with the sounds of heated moans? He didn't remember that from other trips he'd made to the manor, but obviously the Davies-Smythes were open to innovation as well as orgies.

Bianca tensed on his lap, telegraphing her next move as surely as if she'd written it in neon.

He clamped his hand down hard on her thigh before she could jump up from his lap and ruin everything. "Just because they're gone doesn't mean we're not being watched, Kitten."

He stopped her from turning on his lap by pushing her into a standing position, spinning her around, and bringing her back down so she straddled him. The move brought her barely covered center up against his hard cock and, giving in to temptation, he slid his hands up the outside of her smooth thighs to the high, round curve of her ass and pulled her against him. White-hot pleasure shot through him right to the base of his spine.

She dropped her head, touching his forehead with hers, and rolled her hips, not bothering or not able to keep quiet her sweet little mewl of pleasure. Her heat seeped into him, trapping him in the moment, and the urge to strip her bare and fuck her in front of everyone sucker-punched him. God, if only he could. But this was supposed to be a lesson for her, not a release for him.

So how come you're the one being schooled, chump?

"Who's watching?" she asked, her voice like warm syrup, smooth and sweet against his skin.

"The waiters. The regulars. The staff." He moved his hands to her hips and shoved her away just enough to put some air between her heated core and his hungry dick before he lost his tentative hold on sanity. "Some reporters finagled an invitation a few months ago. Needless to say, that was not appreciated, and newcomers are greeted with suspicion."

She toyed with the buttons on his tuxedo shirt as she shimmied forward so her soft, wet center again pressed against his hardness. "I don't remember seeing anything about this place in the news—and I'd remember."

"Exactly." Beguiled by some sort of lust spell he couldn't explain or break, he worked his hand back down her thigh and to the outside of her dress, where he walked his fingers up to the zipper at the nape of her neck. "The Davies-Smythes have friends in high places who take care of things for them. What in the hell are you up to that has you here asking about their art collection?"

The zipper's metal tab felt cool against his overheated fingers. He shouldn't. He did anyway. Slow. Patient. Deliberate. He inched the zipper down, loving the appreciative moan she made as her dress gapped loose.

She sighed and closed her eyes, total bliss written all over her beautiful face. "It's a long story. What I need is to find out who their dealer is. Better yet, if we can get a look at their collection, I can find out if it's here. That'll get me one step closer to finding Gidget."

"If what's here and who is Gidget?" He fought to stay focused on the problem at hand and not the horny, pliant woman who'd just tugged his bowtie undone.

"Later." She slipped his top button free.

In a desperate move to stop this before he had her on her knees in front of him with his cock down her throat, he grabbed her wrists and jerked them away from his shirt. Over her shoulder he saw Amelia and Oliver striding across the salon.

"Fuck, they're coming back," he said, not recognizing the nearly out-of-control need in his own voice. "No more questions, Kitten, not if you really want answers."

"This isn't a game." She nipped at the corded muscle along his throat. "Gidget's been missing for two weeks."

"As soon as we leave, you're not getting away from me until you answer everything." Or they were too sated for him to care anymore.

Oliver and Amelia halted beside the banquette. They didn't sit down. Taz looked up at the other couple but didn't bother to remove his hand from inside Bianca's unzipped dress or push her away from where she'd laid her cheek on his shoulder as her fingers went back to work on his shirt buttons.

Amelia looked pissed beneath her normal cool veneer. "I'm so sorry, but we have to cut our visit short tonight. Perhaps we could meet again to continue our talk of art and..." Her gaze went to where Taz's hand disappeared behind the silk of Bianca's dress. "...other things."

"Sounds perfect." He nodded his head. "I think Kitten is a little overwhelmed by her first trip to Bisu Manor anyway. It's probably best if I take her home."

"Lucky girl," Amelia said at the same time that her husband responded, "Lucky you."

He stood, drawing Bianca up with him and turning her around so she faced the other couple. The movement shifted her dress so it slipped off one shoulder, exposing the creamy upper curve of one full breast. The material was stopped from slipping all the way down by the stiff peak of her hard nipple. One tiny yank and the silk would slide the rest of the way down. His cock twitched and his balls tightened at the idea.

Amelia and Oliver were equally entranced by Bianca's dress's precarious situation. Now was the perfect time to ask one last question while all of their blood had joined his in heading south.

"My accountant suggested a few private art dealers for me to check out tomorrow, but I'd love to add your dealer to the list if you don't mind sharing his or her name."

"We don't use a dealer." Oliver blinked as he tore his gaze away from Bianca. "There's nothing quite like the hunt when it comes to women or art, don't you agree?"

"Most definitely."

Unable to stop himself, Taz looked at Bianca as she stood flush with desire and on display. She hadn't made a single move to fix her dress. She was either the world's best actress or was totally turned on by her accidental almost strip tease. He had about ten seconds before he wouldn't be able to resist taking the tease out of strip and whipping the dress off to feast on her decadent curves and secret wet places.

"Goodnight." The word rushed out as he let his hand drop lower so he cupped the firm globe of her ass and steered her toward the front door, praying the valet had parked his Porsche close by.

* * * *

The cool, late fall Texas air ruffled the loose hairs around Bianca's head, tickling her sensitive earlobes and dancing across the bare expanse of her upper back. Her dress hung off one shoulder, sending a deliciously naughty shiver through her. Especially when Taz continued to stroke her ass while they stood in front of Bisu Manor and waited for the valet to bring his car around.

This wasn't her. Well, it was, but it hadn't been for a while. She'd locked up the restless girl always on the prowl for the new, the fun, and the risqué six months ago, right around the time she'd decided to change her life for good.

Her first stop in Operation Make Bianca a Bulletproof Badass had been to her friend Bayleigh MacKenzie's upscale lingerie shop to get a recommendation for a trainer who could remake her into Lara Croft. Bayleigh asked Cade, her husband and a private security agent who did God-knew what all over the globe to save people, for a name. His call? Devil's Dip Gym run by one Taz Hazard. It was where Cade trained along with several of the MacKenzie Security guys. They'd tried to recruit Taz to be a part of their team, but the former boxer had always turned them down.

"Why won't you work with the MacKenzies?" She blurted out the question, obviously having lost her mental filter along with her inhibitions at Bisu Manor.

Taz's hand stilled on her ass. "Being one of the good guys is not my thing."

The valet had the shitty timing to pull up at that moment in a silver convertible Porsche with its top up. The car had to be from the 50s or 60s and had been lovingly restored. The beauty looked like something James Bond would drive. Standing there in a tux, his undone bowtie hanging around his neck and first few buttons of his shirt open, Taz would make one panty-dropping Bond.

"So why help me out in there?" she asked as the valet got out and hustled around the back of the car to open the passenger door.

Taz guided her down the front steps to the car, giving the valets a good look at her naked back and the black silk top string of her thong before helping her inside the low-slung sports car. She should hate that. She didn't. It was like the part of her she'd shoved into the closet had finally gotten a chance to come out and play in the moonlight. Settling back into the leather seat, she fastened her seatbelt.

Leaning in the car, he flipped open her gown's high slit and slid his hand up her inner thigh, watching her face as she melted against him. "Maybe I was just trying to get in your pants."

"You could have had me in every position in the Kama Sutra in that room, but you didn't. Instead, you tried to get information for me." She barely had enough control not to scoot down the seat so his calloused fingers brushed against her slick, panty-covered folds right in front of the valets and anyone else who happened by. "Why?"

Instead of answering, he withdrew his hand and shut the passenger door with a resounding
thunk
, leaving her alone to listen to the blood rushing in her ears and the increasingly louder voice in her head wondering how it would feel if he finally touched her skin to skin without anyone watching. All the teasing had left her half crazed. She was a woman with a healthy sex drive, but this whole night had been ridiculous. Part of it was Taz, no doubt about it. The man was beyond sexy, but there had to be something else to it. An answer hovered on the edge of her consciousness just out of reach, then he opened the driver's side door and sat down behind the wheel and all thoughts of why she was reacting this way lost out to thought about how she could get him between her legs.

"I took a cab here. You can drop me off at—"

He cut her a hard look. "We're going to my house. Now, it's my turn to ask the questions." His knuckles were white as he held onto the steering wheel and drove out of the driveway. "Who is Gidget and what does her disappearance have to do with the Davies-Smythes’ art collection?"

Where to begin? She barely knew herself.

"Gidget is someone I knew from boarding school and I don't know what her disappearance has to do with art. It's just the only thing I have to go on." She clasped her hands together on her lap, the gnawing hunger for him settling into the more normal level of desire she felt every time she saw him as opposed to an all-consuming need that turned her into a lust zombie.

"When was the last time you saw Gidget?" he asked, combing his fingers through his dense black curls that flopped forward again despite his attempt to manage them.

"The day I left St. B's."

"St. B's?"

She grimaced as her stomach turned the way it always did when she had to think about her worst memories. "St. Bernadette's Academy for Young Ladies, known among the inmates as St. B's Reform School For Rich Bitches Who Done Wrong."

He stopped at a red light and turned to her, confusion clear in his light green eyes. "You haven't seen her since rich people high school?"

"Yeah." She shrugged, posturing despite the guilt creeping up her spine.

"What makes you think she's even missing?"

"We have the same maid."

He snorted and rolled his eyes. "Of course you do."

"We keep up on social media, but after I left St. B's, I lost track of the girls I hung out with." And there it was. You weren't supposed to lose track of the people who'd seen you through something like St. B's, but she had. She'd been too wrapped up in herself to find out how the others had faired once free of St. B's clutches.

The light changed and Taz turned left into a fast-gentrifying neighborhood that was a mix of residential and commercial with the organic hemp vendors next door to an apartment building. "Okay, walk me through this. Start with why you believe Gidget is missing and why you haven't gone to the authorities."

Bianca took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders in preparation to roll out the story, glad to be able to tell someone who actually gave a shit—and for all his denials, Taz did. She'd seen the way he talked to up-and-coming boxers at his gym, mentoring them. He was a pain in the ass, but he wasn't an asshole.

"Constance, that's our maid, mentioned in passing that one of her clients hadn't been around for a while and she needed to bring the client's French Bulldog with her when she cleaned my apartment. Of course I recognized Oui Oui—that's Gidget's dog—right away from her Instagram. I asked Constance about it and she told me that the police blew off her missing person report because Gidget isn't exactly known for staying in one spot long or for being particularly fond of authority figures. When Constance got ahold of Gidget's parents, they said they couldn't cut their trip in South America short. So that left me."

He made a right turn, keeping his eyes on the road. "And where does the art come into play?"

"The last picture she posted on Instagram was a painting, one that the Davies-Smythes recently acquired, according to the Ft. Worth society gossip. I tried to talk to them to find out who they bought it from or if they even still had it, but couldn't get past their social secretary. Then I heard about the parties."

"So you figured you'd what, interrogate them on their home field to see if they had someone you haven't seen in years locked in their basement or knew who did?" His voice rose from the low bass that made her clit tingle with every syllable to a gruff, gravelly rumble that pressed a whole different set of buttons.