Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (20 page)

“Yes.” The word came out rough, breathless, and just short of sounding like a growl. He wanted to close the distance between them, replace her hands with his own, but first he wanted to taste her. “Stop.”

Her hands stilled and he glanced up again to find a wicked smile tilting her succulent lips. “What’s the matter, handsome, too much?”

Jackson shook his head as he reached for her right hand. “It’s not enough.”

He brought her fingers to his mouth, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes as the sweet scent of her arousal permeated his senses. He licked her fingers, opening his eyes and locking his gaze with hers as he sucked the digits into his mouth and reveled at the salty warm taste of her feminine juices.

Her free hand snaked around him to cup his nape. He eased her fingers from his mouth, took a half step toward her, and captured her lips with his. Hers parted on a sweet sigh, her tongue immediately darting into his mouth to tangle with his.

God save him. Watching her, smelling her, tasting her, kissing her was driving him to the edge of a nuclear explosion.

She gripped his bicep with her free hand and nipped his bottom lip. Incensed, he clasped her trim waist and lifted her onto the countertop, her hands moving to delve in his hair, her fingers fisting the strands. He felt her legs start to rap around him and barely managed to catch them before they clamped him in place.

“Damn, Mal, you’re so fucking hot.” Head spinning, cock aching so badly he thought it might kill him, he pulled back and stepped out of her embrace. “I think you need to cool off a bit.”

Her eyes narrowed as suspicion and a keen warning raced through her expression. “I thought you wanted me hot.”

Yeah, that warning was telling him he damn well better not walk away. He didn’t have the first intention of doing that yet.

“Close your eyes.” He reached blindly behind him for the handle of the freezer door. He continued to watch her as he reached in, grabbed a piece of ice from the ice bin and returned to her, leaving the freezer to close of its own accord. When he brushed the ice cube over her already taut nipple, her eyes popped open in surprise and she gasped.

It was then that he finally allowed himself another taste, this time a quick one to her bare flesh. He leaned down, grazed his tongue over her nipple then brushed it again with the cube of ice. He alternated a lick and then a brush of the ice, on first one nipple and then the other, until she was panting with her back arched and her breasts pushed out for him.

“Jackson,
please
.”

He smiled, pushing her knees farther apart as he trailed the ice cube down her abdomen, watching her shiver from the chill and anticipation. When he touched her pussy with the ice, he thought she would vault off of the countertop. She was so unbelievably hot, and the ice so cold, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam coming off her body.

Satisfied that he had her teetering close enough to the edge, he tossed the ice cube in the sink and kneeled to bury his face in her pussy. He licked her smooth lips, drove his tongue in the warm, sopping wet opening of her vagina, and her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him to her, driving him deeper. The mere taste of her arousal had his body whirling in wickedly delicious torment.

He reached up and grabbed her wrists, pulled her hands from his hair, and held them as he withdrew to lick and suck her clit. She groaned loudly, her breath so rapid he was almost afraid she would hyperventilate.

“Jackson. Oh, God, Jackson, please.”

He knew what she wanted, knew what was about to happen. He could feel her inner muscles tightening around his tongue. He drove his tongue as deep as he could, licking the walls of her channel, thrusting in and out of her until he felt her explode around him. Cum rushed from her pussy in a delectable wave that he fervently lapped up, not wanting to waste a single drop.

Slowly, he stood between her legs and lifted his gaze to hers. She looked worn-out, satisfied, and thoroughly amused.

“That wasn’t fair,” she whispered.

“What you did to me last night wasn’t fair,” he countered, and watched as the memory coupled with puzzlement moved through her expression. What part of last night wasn’t fair? He could see that question in her eyes.

Was it the part about her sucking his cock but not allowing him a taste.

Yes.

Was it her taking free rein to touch but only allowing him a little here and there?

Definitely.

Was it the way she had sneaked out of his bed and out of his apartment without so much as a good-bye?

Hell. Fucking. Yes.

He would let her decide the appropriate question and figure out the answer.

“That’s what I’ve fantasized about.” He skimmed his hands down her sides, loving the feel of her curves, of her heated flesh against his. “At Chef Jackson’s we would rate a dessert like that off the charts.” He kissed the smile playing at her lips. “You’re fucking amazing.”

“I could say the same about you.” She turned her head, leaned forward, and rested her cheek on his chest. “Take me to bed, Jack. Carry me. I don’t think I could walk right now if my life depended on it.”

Jackson scooped her into his arms. She snuggled closer against him as he carried her to her room and slowly lowered her onto her bed. Already half asleep, she curled onto her side and moaned softly.

Jackson pulled the sheet over her, tucking it around her, and smiled. He could have told her in one simple word what he really fantasized about. Her. No matter the setting, no matter the scene, it was always her in his dreams.

It always will be.

“I love you, Mal.” He leaned down, brushed his lips to her temple, and walked out of the room.

Mallory awoke seething. She rode on that tide of anger as she dressed, fixed a cup of coffee, and headed for FBI HQ. The weather outside was picturesque, the sky radiant with the vibrant pink and orange hues of the rising sun. Light traffic moved easily through the streets. No angry horns blasted, no strings of cursing broke the serenity. It was a peaceful, early Saturday morning in Waterston, giving the city time to breathe after the hustle-and-bustle grind that came with every day of the workweek. That tranquility came in total contrast to her current mood and only made it worse. It should have been storming with traffic at a gridlock and road rage running amok. That would have suited her today just fine.

Topping off her morning of fun, the elevator jerked as it reached her floor at HQ. The sudden jolt jostled the coffee cup in her hand and splashed the java on the pale blue breast jacket she wore with her chocolate-brown skirt. She growled as she stepped off the elevator, the sound gaining her curious looks from a couple of agents walking by. Neither agent spoke as their gazes locked on the new stain on her jacket. Smartly, they chose to ignore it and continued on about their business. Yes, when she was in a bad mood, everyone at HQ picked up on it quick and they scurried to find a way out of the line of fire.

She stopped by the blessedly empty employee lounge, snatched a handful of paper towels, and blotted at the coffee spot the best she could as she continued down the hall to find Mason Sharp. He sat in front of a monitor viewing codes in a room he and the other self-proclaimed geeks used as their office.

“I’ve got something for you, Sharp.”

He turned, a slight frown of irritation marring his movie-star handsome face as he looked up through stark hazel eyes and spotted her. He looked less like the stereotypical geek than anyone she had ever met. He was also the best, and he absolutely hated having his concentration broken.

Too bad, so sad. You can swim in the angry sea right along with me today.

“You and everyone else at this bureau.” He turned back to his monitor. “You’ll find what I’m working on now very interesting.”

Somehow Mallory doubted that. The jumble of letters and numbers she saw on the screen didn’t mean jack to her. “I might if you tell me what the hell it is.”

“Encryption.”

“Duh, I know that much.” Her sarcasm earned her a sideways look. Yeah, she was a being a bitch. He would get over it. “From what, where, and who?”

“Cooper has the answers to all of that. What I can tell you is that it pertains to Alec McIntyre.”

Centipedes of hopefulness and apprehension crawled up her spine. “Alec? He’s alive?”

Alec McIntyre had been labeled MIA at the bureau since the op that had taken out Ving Kim Phay in Cambodia six months back.

“Don’t know. Cooper dropped this off to me yesterday with the instructions to decode and keep my lips sealed. Highly confidential. I probably shouldn’t have even told you it has anything to do with Alec, but I know he’s a good friend of yours and Cameron’s.”

Everything about Alec’s last undercover op had been highly confidential. She knew only that it had taken him years to infiltrate Phay’s Cartel as deeply as he had before he disappeared.

“Cooper won’t stop looking for him.” She admired her boss for that. Adam Cooper was a pit bull when it came to his agents. It didn’t matter what order came down from above, if he had an agent missing, he would move heaven and earth to bring that agent home.

“I’ll tell you two things. One, this shit here is some of the best damn encrypting I’ve ever run across. I’m having a hell of a time trying to crack it. Two, and it’s just a guess, McIntyre is triple-D status. He’s out there somewhere. It’s going to take more than a big bad drug lord and his team of goons to take that man out.”

Triple-D status—dedicated, dangerous, and deadly. It’s what they called agents like Alec in the bureau, and if anyone deserved the tag, Alec was the man.

“Is this top priority or…” She let her question trail off, hating to ask but knowing she had a job to do of her own. She had wanted to go through the information on the hard drive herself, but she knew, if there was anything to find, Sharp would be better at discovering it than her.

“Cooper didn’t label it as such, but it was heavily implied. Why? What do you have?”

Mallory placed the USB device on Sharp’s desk next to his keyboard. “I need you to see what you can get me off of this, and I want you to do it. I don’t want it passed down.”

Mason Sharp wasn’t the only technological analyst and hacker they had. He was simply the best one.

He picked up the device and turned it between his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. “Anything in particular I’m searching for?”

“Auction information, odd transactions, anything that might pertain to the missing women on this list.” She pulled a printout from her handbag with the names of the strippers they believed had gone missing before Lexie Stratus’s disappearance and placed it on his desk.

Sharp studied the list. “Sex trafficking?”

“We believe so. That’s a copy of the hard drive from the computer at Stardust.” Mallory sighed. “I don’t know if it will turn up anything, but we need all the leads we can get.”

“Sure thing. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks, Sharp.”

“Hey.” He turned full around in his chair as she started to walk out. “Ditch the pissiness next time you come into my room.” His voice sounded stern, but the teasing glint in his eyes gave him away.

“Next time I come to see you, I’ll make sure I’m packing a whole a lot more.”

His chuckle followed her out of the room.

* * * *

“The guy is in on it.” Cameron propped his right ankle on his left knee and leaned back in the chair in front of Jackson’s desk. “Which explains why we haven’t gotten wind of anything outside of the normal misdemeanors going on at Stardust.”

The extensive background check on the Stardust stripper found dead in the abandoned warehouse had revealed a relationship between Erin Griffin and Officer Kenneth Reese, part of Waterston PD’s undercover task force that frequented the premises of Stardust and other clubs in the area.

“Ten to one, he’s our informant now.” Jackson absently tapped a pen on his desk. “Question is who fucked up, Griffin or Reese.”

“Did Reese kill Griffin himself, or the people he’s working for?” Tarantino took the question further. The agent took the vacant seat in front of Jackson’s desk and propped his elbows on his knees.

“Whoever he’s working for would be my guess,” Jackson said.

“He was getting out of line, maybe threatening to pull out or demanding a bigger cut of the profits,” Cameron speculated. “So they killed his girlfriend to get to him, show him they mean business.”

“Looks to me like they should’ve killed him,” Tarantino commented.

Jackson shook his head. “They need him. He’s keeping the heat off their backs, keeping their operation a secret.”

“They hit him where it hurts and it backfired,” Cameron said. “He turned on them anyway. Instead of keep him straight, they pissed him off.”

“Why not turn himself in?” Tarantino asked with a sideways look at Cameron. “He had to know we would make the connection between him and Griffin. He gives us the body, but it doesn’t put us one step closer to finding who killed her. If he came in, told us everything he knows, we would have the fuckers.”

“And we would have him,” Jackson pointed out. “A BOLO has been issued. He’s gone into hiding now, likely from us as well as whoever is behind this.”