Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (6 page)

Jackson shook his head once. Those were all things he’d noted were different when he’d finally started thinking with the brain in the head on his shoulders rather than the one between his legs. “The only thing I saw before she blindfolded me was the car, a blue Impala with dealer tags.”

“That should be easy enough to trace,” Mallory said from her place on the leather sofa against the sidewall of the office. “Dealer tags are good for thirty days. We’ll pull up a list of all the blue Impalas sold in the last month, then start narrowing it down.”

Cooper looked at Mallory. “Do it.” His attention switched back to Jackson. “What about the name, Lexie Stratus?”

“It doesn’t mean a thing to me, boss. My hunch is she works, or has worked, at Stardust. I wouldn’t think she’d be a customer considering the vast majority of the club’s clientele are men.” Then again, his hunch could be way off. It sure as shit had been all night long.

Cooper’s gaze flicked over Jackson’s shoulder. “Pull her up, Kell. Get me everything you can find on this woman. I want to know who she is down to her fucking shoe size. And check with our guys at the PD. They’ve had a task force working the clubs in that vicinity for months. See what they’ve turned up.” He picked up a soda can near his keyboard and leaned back in his chair, studying Jackson as he took a sip.

Here it comes.
Everyone had ignored the question when Cameron put voice to it first, but Jackson could see it now in his boss’s vivid blue eyes. The man was a stickler for perfection and details. He wouldn’t rest until he knew everything.

“Go through it again. Just the parts about the woman, what you picked up about her, what made you comfortable enough to go with her without question.”

“I thought she was Mallory.” Jackson didn’t flinch, didn’t sigh, didn’t let his gaze waver from his boss’s eyes. He heard Mallory’s quick intake of breath across the office, but he didn’t look at her. It took every ounce of training, skill, and willpower he possessed to come across calm, cool, and collected, knowing those five simple words had just revealed more to his team leader and colleagues than he’d ever wanted to admit.

Cooper put the soda can quietly back on the desk. For a moment, Jackson swore his gaze lessened in intensity. He let a full ten seconds pass before he spoke again. “You judged her to be the same height as Mallory.”

He didn’t ask the obvious. Why would Jackson think Mallory would pull a gun on him, kidnap him from his parking garage, take him to a secluded place in the woods, more than likely because he’d already guessed. The man hadn’t made it to his high-level position in the FBI by being stupid. He didn’t miss anything when it came to the job or the members of his team. The man’s extensive observational skills had already uncovered the powerful effect Mallory had on Jackson’s senses, the way her mere presence could cloud his better judgment.

His judgment had gotten clouded tonight, all right, and it hadn’t even taken her presence to do it. The simple thought of her had been enough.

“Yes, sir, same height and close to the same build. Her breasts brushed against my arm. They were smaller, firmer than Mallory’s.”
And please don’t ask me how I know that.
Jackson continued speaking before his boss had the chance to ask. “She was left handed and wore a ring on the third finger of her right hand. She wore perfume. I didn’t recognize the fragrance. It had a soft scent, not too potent or floral.”

“What about her voice?” Cooper asked. “Did she sound like Mallory?”

“She spoke in whispers, or close to it at least. I didn’t really get a good bead on her voice until we were in the woods, but yes, she sounded a lot like Mallory, at first, in any case.”

“What else?”

As in what else had he left out? What else could he tell his team that would not only lead them to catching his good-Samaritan kidnapper but would also humiliate him further?

“She was wearing thin gloves. Not latex. Something soft. I doubt it will do any good to dust my Beretta and cell for fingerprints, but I’ll turn them over to the lab anyway.”

“Good enough. Have you had any dealings with any women in your apartment building, anyone who might fit the sense description you’ve come up with?”

Dealings? As in any women in his apartment building he’d had sex with? Jackson shook his head. “Most of the tenants are older couples. There are three who I can think of offhand who aren’t, but I’ve never done more than share a passing glance and a curt hello with them.”

“Check them out, as well as any other woman you’ve been in contact with recently. Whoever she is, she knows you by some association, well enough to know you’re an agent, possibly better than that. She knows where you live and where you park. She knows that building well enough to know the areas the security cameras reach and where they don’t. She’s got the inside track on us right now. I want to know how.” Cooper paused and flicked a glance to his left. “Cameron, get with the manager of the apartment building. I want the security footage. This woman obviously knew how to stay off camera, but she had to get into that garage. Maybe the lighting was good enough to catch her behind the wheel of the Impala when she pulled in.” He waited a beat then added, “Go.”

Cameron and Kell moved for the door.

Jackson started to push himself to his feet, noting in his peripheral vision that Mallory did the same, when Cooper stopped them.

“You two, stay.”

Shit.
Jackson knew he should have seen this coming. The boss didn’t do heart-to-hearts often but, when he did, watch out.

Cooper got to his feet, walked to the window behind his desk, and waited for the click of the door as it closed behind the other agents. “Fraternizing is not forbidden in the bureau. Some team leaders frown upon it. However, you both know there are several agents in this office alone who are romantically involved or even married. I’m your team leader, not your babysitter or your sex therapist. If you two have something going on, I’m not going to say a word about it. But you can both bet your badges I will say something when it causes one of my two best agents to lose his head and forget everything he’s trained for.”

He turned around, looked from Jackson to Mallory and back again. “I don’t know what kind of games the two of you are playing. Apparently, some pretty steamy ones, if what happened tonight is any clue. Get your head right. Next time, it might not be just your life you put on the line, Graham.”

“Yes, sir.” Jackson got to his feet, waited for Mallory to walk out the office door in front of him, and followed her out, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Why do I feel like I was just dismissed from the principal’s office?” Mallory asked softly, a slight trace of amusement in her tone.

Jackson fell into step beside her. “You weren’t. I was.” He probably owed her an apology, too. After all, it wasn’t her fault he’d immediately assumed she was playing a sex game with him tonight.

Except, damn it, it was her fault. She’d been the one to start chasing after him years ago. Sure, he’d been attracted to her. Hell, he’d wanted her with every ounce of his being. But he’d refused to act on it, to even
think
about it because she was both a coworker and his best friend’s little sister. She had been the one who couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“You really thought it was me tonight?”

And she still can’t.

“Wow.” She laughed, a quick burst of air that sounded half disbelieving and half flattered. “Talk about giving me credit for creativity. I don’t know whether to thank you, handsome, or laugh my ass off.”

“I’m glad you find it so amusing,” Jackson said dryly and pushed the door open to his office down the hall from Cooper’s. He flicked on the overhead light and headed for his desk.

“You didn’t answer Cameron’s question, you know?” Mallory, of course, followed him inside, closing the door behind her and proving for the second time in as many minutes that she couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“I believe I answered it plainly enough when I told Cooper I thought the woman was you.”

“But why?”

Jackson sat down behind his desk and bumped the mouse to his computer to pull it from sleep mode. He didn’t look at Mallory. He didn’t need to. Her shapely, golden legs had carried her into his office, bringing with them the scent of strawberries and pheromones that radiated straight to his cock enough times that he didn’t need a refresher image.

“Remember my fling in Silver Springs?” His fingers flew over the keyboard as he pulled up a list of every tenant with an address in his apartment building.

“The first or the second?” She walked around his desk and perched her delectable ass on the edge a mere half inch from where his right arm rested.

His grip on the mouse tightened as the heat from her closeness wrapped around him like an erotic blanket. He slid her a look out of her corner of his eye. “There was only one.” Only one that led to penetration sex, in any case, and the only one that had any pertinence to this conversation.

“With Angelina, your brother’s wife.”

Jackson returned his attention to the computer screen, to the list of names he’d pulled up. “I’m not going to ask how you figured that out, and she wasn’t his wife at the time but, yes, with Angelina.”

“What does she have to do with tonight?”

“That night with her started the same way tonight did,” he answered her absently as he scanned the list. Bob and Nancy Smith, George and Marsha Timmons, Jean Cooley, Deborah Forsythe…all men and women above the age of fifty except for the last. He made a mental note on Deborah Forsythe, though the picture in his memory of the woman was as far from his good-Samaritan kidnapper as a woman could get. Short, overly plump, and the raspy voice of a three-pack-a-day smoker, she definitely didn’t fit his sensed profile of his kidnapper. Could his senses really have been that far off?

No, not possible.
Still, he’d have to check her out.

“She kidnapped you?” Surprise and sheer amusement laced Mallory’s tone.

“She got the wrong twin, but yes, she kidnapped me.”

Bert Alcove, Sarah Sweeney, Mitch and Allison Brinkley…not all over the age of fifty but either married, male, or not fitting to the profile. He added Sarah Sweeney and Allison Brinkley to his mental list. If his memory served, Sarah was too tall and not overly plump but built heavier than his kidnapper. Allison, on the other hand, just might fit.

He thought about the ring, distinctly knew it had been on the kidnapper’s middle finger of her right hand. Had she touched him with her left hand at all? No. Her left hand had been otherwise preoccupied with the gun she’d been holding.

“What a way to spice up a relationship.” Mallory’s hand brushed his arm as she put her own arms behind her and leaned back on the desk. She made a sultry
hmm
sound and whips of arousal slashed at his cock. “Very creative. Apparently, it worked and got her more than she bargained for.”

“She got the idea from a book,
Sex Games
, or something to that effect.” He pretended ignorance, though he knew damn well all about the book. Angelina had sent him a copy as a gift. The book now sat on a shelf in his living room.

Mallory leaned in, angling her head until she blocked his view of the computer screen. She was so close he felt her breath fan his lips, smelled the remnants of the drink she’d had at Cinderella’s. If he shifted a fraction of an inch he’d be kissing her.

Christ
, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to push everything on his desk to the floor, lay her back, and ravage her.

“Is that what you want, Jackson?” she asked softly, her tone dripping with ecstasy and promises of so much more. “Are those the kind of games you want to play?”

Jackson stared into her eyes, drowning in their deep blue sea, and he almost did it. Fuck niceties. Fuck what would happen come morning. Fuck the control that had kept him from taking what he wanted, what she blatantly offered him for so very long.

He reached for her, tunneled his fingers through her satiny autumn-leaf colored hair, and cupped her nape. Victory sparked in her eyes, igniting the challenge that was never far away.

“Do it,” she whispered. “Kiss me. I dare you.”

Desire stole the oxygen between them, making it hard to breathe, even harder to think. Sanity teetered on the brink of explosion. If he kissed her, he wouldn’t stop with her lips. His mouth watered to taste so much more. His tongue pulsed with the need to lick his way down her neck, her throat, to delve beneath the material of her blouse and find the swell of her ample breasts. He wanted to taste every inch of her, to feel her writhe beneath his tongue as he painted a path down her body that would lead him to her pussy.

“You’re wet, Mallory.” Need made his voice husky, dark, thick. Surprise flashed though her expression. He’d never spoken to her so bluntly. “I can smell you.”

“I’m always wet around you.” She tried to close the distance between their mouths, but he’d tightened his hold on her hair, preventing her from moving. Calculation swirled with frustration in her eyes. “Touch me, Jack. Taste me.”

“Not at the office.” He brushed his lips to the tip of her nose and forced himself to pull back before he took it any further. “And not tonight.” He released his hold on her hair and pushed away from his desk. She didn’t reach for him, didn’t try to stop him, but he saw a flash of anger move through her angelic face.