Wild Ways (17 page)

The swirling sensation in her chest swept away her words, her breath, her thoughts. She ran her fingers over the contours of his chest, down the ridges of his stomach. But then she needed an anchor, so she tightened her fingers over his shoulders, nails digging in.

“Mmm, so are you, Mollie.”

She loved the sound of her name on his lips, with his own breath catching. He stroked her breast with one hand, kissed her, and thrust in perfect rhythm. She wasn’t sure if the birds she heard singing were her imagination. Everything was perfect in this moment.

He wrapped his hands beneath her bottom and lowered her to a nearby patch of grass. He lifted one of her legs, and she hooked it over his shoulder. This time he drove into her, sucking away her breath. He looked gorgeous, infused with pleasure, hovering over her in what looked like a low push-up. The intensity in his green eyes only increased the building pleasure inside her, looking at her as though she were the most beautiful creature on earth.

He made those delicious sounds, more guttural than what he’d uttered while eating or even when he’d gotten himself off. Groans, softly uttered words in Spanish that sounded as though they were wrenched from his very soul. He pushed her shirt up, exposing her breasts, and lowered his mouth to one of them. His tongue was hot as it laved her. He sucked and licked before moving to her other breast. She watched, oddly fascinated by the sight of his mouth moving over her skin, and beyond, their bodies moving together. His flat stomach, muscles rippling with his movements, pelvis thrusting against hers.

No, more than fascinated. Aroused. All of it swirled inside her, the freedom of this impulsive act in the woods, of being free … the orgasm shuddered through her, rocking her to her core. She clutched him, as though she might be blown away by the gust of feeling inside her. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and let his own wave of pleasure wash over him. His breath pulsed over her skin as it sawed in and out. He pulled her into his arms and collapsed as he turned so that she was on top of him.

He let his gaze draw down over her as he caught his breath. “You totally took me off guard,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said in her own breathlessness. “I had no intention of …” She shook her head, because she still couldn’t believe it, even as she lay partially naked with him still inside her. “This. You woke something in me last night. I wanted more.”

He placed his hand on her collarbone. “Taking pleasure fills your well. You’ve been depleted a long time.”

“I’ve never filled this particular well. Sex was sex. It was never like this.”

A touch of male ego showed through his smile. “I’m happy to fill your well
anytime.”

She covered her eyes. “But I feel so guilty, having
fun
while my sister goes through God knows what.”

“You suffering does not help her. If you’re starving and crying and denying yourself any kind of pleasure, how could it possibly affect what’s going on with her?”

She rearranged her bra, then pulled her shirt down. “It doesn’t, when you put it that way. Still, it just feels …” Not wrong. Not bad. She couldn’t assign those words to what they’d done. She disengaged, found her pants and shoes, and shook them out.

He yanked up his jeans and zipped them. Then he reached down to help her to her feet. “Just let it feel good, Mollie.” He swiped up his shirt and pulled it over that gorgeous chest. Then he took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “Consider it as necessary as eating, drinking, and sleeping. Because it is.” He gave her a kiss, drawing her lower lip between his teeth and tugging before releasing her. “It definitely is.”

The problem was, she was starting to see
him
the same way.

They rolled into Chicago, grabbed a quick bite, and stopped at a drugstore to buy two cans of dark brown hair spray. She applied it in the parking lot, nearly choking on the fumes. But a quick check in the restroom mirror showed just enough of a difference in her looks. Before long, they were winding their way through a part of the city that wasn’t particularly nice. Mollie tried to hold on to the beauty of the woods in her mind. Peaceful. Invigorating. Beautiful.

Sexually awakening.

No, she didn’t want to think about that, or especially how she’d begged Julian to make love to her. What was happening to her? He definitely had woken some part of her she hadn’t even known existed. That part was nice, actually. Scary, but nice. Her body had never felt so alive.

The part that was even scarier? She was falling for this incredible, sensual, protective warrior. Not in the way she’d ever “fallen” for the few men she’d dated, either. Julian did not fit into that comfortable rescue-me prototype that drew her, but draw her he did. The same way, perhaps, that he’d admitted she had drawn him back at the gas station. He hadn’t drawn her then. She had noticed he was gorgeous, but only in that scary-biker-please-stop-looking-at-me way. Now he looked at her with hungry intent, and she felt all warm and gooey inside. And aroused.

You can have sex all you want, enjoy him while you have him. Just don’t get attached, because he’s going to leave. They all do. Keep your walls up
.

Hell, she was trying. Every time she found some reason to distrust him, it was a relief. Then he explained himself and
poof
, there it went. And something else grew stronger, deeper.
But he was part of a team that killed innocent people. Maybe he’s trying to make up for that by helping you. Maybe that’s all you’re about, assuaging his conscience
.

Yes, there was that blessed wall again. It allowed her to unwrap herself from him.

“You all right?” he called back.

“Fine. My back’s just stiff.”

“We’re almost there.”

To where Di might be. Mollie’s stomach was a twist of knots and tension as they drove past their destination. Chase had called with the name of Hidden Assets. Damon James owned it and had been implicated in an undercover sting four years ago along with two other members of the Kings of Chaos. Charges had been dropped against James, but his name had gone into the database of known gang members.

“Hidden Assets,” the sign proclaimed, but the graphics made it clear that the assets inside would not be so hidden. They pulled around the side to the half-full parking lot. Julian found a strategic spot, as usual, with the bike ready to exit without any additional maneuvering. She climbed off first. Julian got it up on the kickstand and dismounted as well. They hung their helmets on the handlebars.

Julian flashed her a smile. “Ready for our role?”

“I think I’ll be better at it than I was last time.”

He pulled her flush up against him, running his hand down her back to her behind. “Now you’re easy with me.”

“Very. Maybe too easy.”

“Don’t let it scare you. Go back to the woods, and be that woman here.”

“Because we’re a horny couple who likes to go to strip clubs to get aroused by watching women dancing naked.” She couldn’t quite get her head around that. “Do I want to know what the friction means?” She was staring at one of the signs on the front of the building. “Yes, I do. I want to know what to expect.”

“It means that if you get a lap dance, she will probably grind into your lap. And sometimes the girls will let you touch their boobs or their ass.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close as they reached the door, where a big bruiser of a man waited to collect the so-called entertainment charge.

Their plan was to attract as little attention as possible. Coming in as a couple
would garner them some attention, but it wasn’t all that rare. At least that’s what Julian had said. Because obviously he’d been to this kind of club before. She really didn’t want to think about him having a lap dance with some busty, curvy chick in a G-string.

They walked into a large room with lots of neon lighting. The place was busy, about eighty percent filled. Colored stage lights shot across the room. Music pounded, a rock song where the lead singer welcomed them to the show, singing “ladies and gentlemen.” On the stage, a woman with long blond hair danced with a pole, or around a pole, or whatever it was called. She rubbed her lace-covered bottom against the pole and then bent over. Groups of men, from their early twenties to probably midseventies, sat around the stage with their folded bills at the ready. The dancer’s string held so many that it looked like ruffles at her waist.

This place was so out of Mollie’s comfort zone, and lately, that was saying something. She instantly knew the dancer wasn’t Di. She was curvy, but the girl onstage had double D’s at least. The dancer watched as Julian led Mollie to a small table in the corner, where they settled in next to each other. Or, more accurately, she was probably looking at Julian.

Mollie scrutinized the waitress, too, as she approached to take their drink orders. Not her sister either. This was going to be a nerve-racking evening, full of peaks of hope and valleys of disappointment. She had to hold back the questions she wanted to ask their doll-faced server.

Julian took the beer she handed him a few minutes later. “Thanks, beautiful,” he said, flashing her his gorgeous, white smile. “We’re from out of town, in for my straitlaced brother’s wedding. Do you have any redheads dancing tonight?” He grabbed a hank of Mollie’s hair, wrapped it around his hand, and brought it to his mouth. “I have a thing for redheads, and my girl won’t dye hers for me. But she’ll let me have a lap dance with one, just to shut me up.”

The server rolled her eyes as she probably took a mental inventory. “The only redhead I’ve seen around here worked last night, but she’s not on tonight. There have been a lot of new girls coming through in the last few weeks, so who knows? Stick
around and check out all the girls.”

Last night? Could Di have been here twenty-four hours ago? The thought killed her.

The server smiled. “I could make a request. The girls can choose different wigs.”

Julian shook his head. “My girl offered me that, too, but I like the real thing.”

As soon as the server departed, Mollie leaned close to Julian. “She might have been here last night. Where is she now? Where do these girls stay when they’re not working?”

“That’s something we can’t ask without raising suspicion. And we don’t want to do that.” He nodded toward the groups of men sitting at tables and at the bar with black vests. Their designations weren’t discernible in the gloom, but they already knew someone affiliated with the Kings owned this place. It wasn’t a stretch to assume club members would be here.

The woman onstage now cat-walked on the floor along the edge of the stage, allowing the men to plant more tips—and plant their hands on her behind and legs. A bouncer hovered nearby, but obviously that kind of touching was allowed because he stopped none of them. She rose, sent air kisses to the crowd, and strutted off the stage to the applause.

The next dancer looked spacey as she wobbled on impossibly high heels, taking in the crowd with a trace of trepidation. She worked too hard, it seemed to Mollie, constantly seeking the feedback of the crowd.

Julian pulled out his cell phone and held it out so she could read the text message, too. It was from Chase.

Have a new lead on Brick down in St. Louis. Brought two J-men to do recon. Risk is one, ready to interrogate once we’ve established the target and maneuvered him into an ideal position. The other one has particularly useful skills as well
.

“Risk was our team interrogator,” Julian said. “He’s better than me at extracting information.”

“Will he torture Brick?”

Julian chuckled. “I have heard agonized screams coming from the back room where Risk was, uh, questioning a bad guy.”

“It’s not that I want Brick hurt. I think that
he
thinks he loves Di.”

“But you’d be okay with some force, if necessary. I’d better let Risk know the dude would rather be shot than give up information. That’s where he threw me.”

Mollie watched another girl who wasn’t Di dance around the pole, then give the men plenty of opportunity to tuck those tips. Mollie glanced over at Julian, gratified that he was concentrating on his text and not the woman. She leaned close to him again. “The waitress said there were a lot of out-of-town girls coming through. Maybe some of those missing women?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.”

She thumbed through the pictures of the missing posters on her phone, burning the faces in her memory. Julian picked up his phone again, and she saw a text from Rath.

“He’s heading this way in your car, should be here tomorrow morning.”

She felt both relieved and worried. Would that free up Julian to leave?

They watched five more girls dance, none of them Di or the missing girls, as far as Mollie could tell. “Julian, I need to talk to these women, find out where they stay.”

“How are you going to do that without looking like a cop?”

“I’ll go in the back room and pretend I’m one of them.”

Julian shook his head, his brows furrowed. “No way. You don’t go out of my sight.”

“Well,
you
certainly can’t go back there. Look, it’s a great opportunity. There are new girls coming in all the time, so the appearance of someone they don’t know won’t be unusual. I’ll go back, see all the girls at once, and ask questions. No, I won’t be obvious. I’ve learned a lot from watching you. You have great finesse.” Mollie knew that firsthand. “I’ll say I’m there to learn tonight, observe.”

“It’s too dangerous. I’ll have no idea what’s going on.”

She lifted her phone. “I’ll keep in touch with you. This is our best chance to get answers. Don’t you want to be done with this?”

“I want to find your sister, yes.” He seemed to contemplate the possibility. “Go back for a short time. Don’t go anywhere but where the girls are.”

“Yes, sir.” She held back the urge to salute him. “I’ve seen them coming and going from the back corner by that curtain. I’ll wander to the bathroom, then walk back like I belong there.”

She leaned forward and did something very couple-ish: tunneled her fingers through his soft, thick hair and kissed him. Yes, she was hungry for everything about him. She swept her tongue over his, then along the edge of his teeth, before straightening. She made herself walk away, enjoying the slight surprise on his expression.