Jake stepped in front of Adam as though he could protect his ass if Ian decided to cave his skull in. “Now, Ian, you told us to keep watch on her. Unfortunately we got to watch a whole lot more of her than we expected.”
“My private life is not Adam’s porno.”
“Hey, Ian, don’t blame him,” Jake said. “He was actually working on something else. I was keeping watch. I called him over. Alex, too.” Jake actually flushed a little. “And Serena might have been in the office.”
Oh, this was all her fault. Charlie had turned his entire life upside down and he’d gone from being the respected head of the team to porn star. Thank god he hadn’t fucked her. Because he’d really wanted to. He’d wanted to clear off his desk and spread her legs and force his cock deep. He’d wanted to make her moan and scream.
“Serena cried. She said it was really beautiful,” Adam explained.
“Did she take notes?” He was not going to end up in one of Serena’s pussy-ass Dom romances where the sub manipulates the hell out of the Dom.
“I believe she was too busy taking mental pictures,” Jake said. “She wants Charlotte to know that she really admires her breasts. Serena actually has a deep appreciation for the human form, whether it’s male or female.”
Jesse frowned. “Wait, are you guys saying Charlotte got like twelve kinds of nekkid and I missed it?”
Three different hands came out, slapping him upside the head.
“Damn it.” Jesse shook his head. “I don’t see what the big deal is. You guys see each other nekkid all the time.”
“I’m putting you in elocution lessons,” Simon said, seemingly unfazed by everything except his charge’s redneck speak. “Why did I get left with the backwoods version of
My Fair Lady
? It’s because I’m British, isn’t it?”
It was time to move past his porno. “Adam, give Simon everything you have on Chelsea Dennis. Now tell me what the plan is.”
“I’ve left a trail for the Russian to follow. I couldn’t make it too obvious or he might get suspicious,” Adam explained. “I used Charlotte’s credit card to book a room in a motel in Waco. I hired Karina to drive down in Charlotte’s car in a blonde wig. She leaves in an hour. She’s going to be passing several traffic cameras, and I told her to blow through at least one red light.”
Karina Mills was a Fort Worth-based PI they worked with from time to time. She was also a submissive at Sanctum. She was tough and thorough and tended to charge out the ass. Another thing to lay at Charlie’s doorstep. “So she’s checking in as Charlie and waiting for Zhukov?”
“Nah, I thought you would prefer one of us to actually do the takedown. Li is with her. Jake and I are on Avery duty. Li and Karina are going to settle in at the motel. We went over procedure. They’re going to keep the shades closed so he can’t take them out from a distance. I checked out the surroundings. There aren’t a lot of sniper positions. It’s a busy motel. He’s going to have to get up close and personal if he doesn’t want a bunch of heat on him.”
Meaning the assassin would be forced to break into the room. He would very likely try to make it look like an everyday, normal break in. He would steal some cash, maybe rape the girl. He would discover very rapidly that Liam O’Donnell didn’t appreciate his person being violated.
“Liam knows I want this guy alive, right?” He wanted to know exactly who had hired him and how far Nelson’s ties to the Denisovitch syndicate went.
“Alive, but fucked up, right? Because Liam apparently really wants to fuck this dude up. He claims he’s gone too long without a good fight,” Adam explained.
As long as the fucker was capable of talking, Ian didn’t care. “Tell Li to take out his frustrations on the guy, but I want him able to answer a few questions. It’s a good plan. You’re still hired. Go and set it in motion and then go and erase that fucking tape.”
“You know there’s not really a tape per se.” Adam seemed to get the gist of the nasty look Ian sent him. “I’ll take care of it. Why don’t you guys come with me?”
The four men walked out, all of them smiling behind their hands.
“Hey, Jesse’s right, you know,” Alex said quietly. “There wasn’t anything on that feed that you haven’t done at Sanctum a hundred times.”
Oh, but there was. He didn’t cuddle the subs afterward no matter what he told Charlie. Every encounter was negotiated, and the most aftercare he would give was praise for a job well done, some ointment on abrasions if he left them, and the occasional massage. Sometimes he would offer orgasms if he wanted the sub sexually.
But he didn’t cuddle with them afterward and he didn’t sleep beside them. He would never admit it. Not ever. He wouldn’t admit that he could fool himself during sex. He could close his eyes and pretend the sub under him was Charlie, but the minute he held them, the illusion was gone and he was hollow and empty again.
They didn’t smell like her, like lemons and sugar. They weren’t as soft as his wife. Their skin didn’t seem to sink into his. When his partners talked, they didn’t have her sweet sarcasm.
They hadn’t lied to him. They hadn’t betrayed him.
Fuck.
“I need you and Eve to come out to the house and stay with us. If this plan works, Li will bring the asshole out to my place for the interrogation.” That might solve one of his problems. Maybe if he knew Alex and Eve were there he would keep his hands off the girl.
Maybe.
Alex studied him for a moment. “All right. That should work out just fine. We’re having the house we bought renovated. It was supposed to be ready when we got back from Hawaii. We were going to stay in a hotel, but your place might be so much more fun. Might I ask why? You could handle an interrogation yourself.”
Well, he sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell Alex he needed help keeping his hands off Charlie. Alex seemed to be morphing into Oprah, and Ian was certain all sorts of mushy advice would follow. “I want Eve to work up a full evaluation on Charlotte and her sister. She can do it better if she’s watching them outside an interview.”
“Are you sure you want to treat her like a suspect? This might be the time to try to get to know her again.” Yep. Oprah was in the house.
“The only way I want to get to know that woman again is whether or not she’s telling me the truth.”
“That’s not what it looked like on that tape, man.”
“I am attracted to her,” he allowed.
“You’re attracted to a lot of women. You don’t cuddle them and rub your cheek against their hair. You don’t look peaceful when you’re close to them.”
He sent his best friend a hard stare. “Have you been reading Serena’s books? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Alex held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry. You’re not ready to talk about this. Eve told me to take it slow, and I’m pushing you.”
He had to get a few things clear. “I’m attracted to Charlotte, but I’m not going to let her play me the way she did last time. Maybe she’s here for all the right reasons, but she’s too late. I won’t let her in again. I might fuck her because it’s almost inevitable, but as soon as this plays out, I will dump her ass and I won’t look back. You guys seem to be waiting for me to have some grand revelation. Well, let me tell you something, Alex. I already had it. I had it when I realized she was willing to use me, to let my team suffer the consequences so she could solve her own problems.”
“She was trying to save her sister.”
“I would have saved her sister,” Ian nearly roared back, the betrayal so close to his surface. He forced his rage down. God, he didn’t want to do this, but no one seemed willing to let him be. “She was my sub and she trusted that fucker Nelson over me. We’re done.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that, Ian,” Alex said, his eyes grave.
Ian turned and saw Charlie looking right at him. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t have been able to hear what he’d said, but she obviously hadn’t missed the way he’d said it. Her face went soft as though she could offer him sympathy and peace from another room.
He felt himself go cold. Yes, that was better. Cold was infinitely better than the hot anger that threatened to overtake him. “Well, it’s the only way I can think about it.”
“I broke trust with Eve and we still made it.”
Ian rolled his eyes, turning away from his onetime wife and back to his best friend. “No, you were stupid. You didn’t listen to her and you both got hurt. Then you were stubborn for a really long time. It’s different. I knew fairly soon into the relationship that Charlotte wasn’t what she seemed to be, but I loved her. I knew she was in some sort of trouble, but I didn’t want to push her. I loved that woman more than anything I’ve loved in my life. More than Sean. More than my mother. I thought we had a bond. I married her because I thought she would turn to me. I gave her every chance to trust me. Instead, she let Nelson nearly kill her. She took a drug that probably had a fifty-fifty chance of ending her instead of turning to me. No. I will not trust her again. No. I will not let her back in. I know you think I’m missing a piece of myself. You think I’m a bastard and that somehow a woman is magically going to fix me, but you’re wrong. She was my shot and it didn’t work. We don’t all get to find our Eves. I understand if you would rather hang with the married guys. Women tend to get nervous around me.”
He hated the idea of losing Alex. Really hated it, but he didn’t let it show.
Alex sighed, standing up and putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m backing off now. Not from you. You’re my best friend and you have been for damn near my whole life. You can’t lose me. And Eve loves you. Grace loves you. I don’t know where these nervous women are because Serena really was taking notes and probably will put you in a book soon. You can rail at her and she’ll just smile at you. The only woman around here who’s scared of you is Phoebe, but then she screamed about a spider the size of a dime the other day. So I’m not too worried about her. I’ll go talk to Eve and tell her we’re sticking close to you for a couple of days to watch your back.”
He relaxed a little. “I don’t think you really need to watch over me. They’re after Charlie.”
“I don’t doubt they would love to take you out, too.”
“Whatever happens, you know that I don’t want Eve putting herself in danger. Maybe I should rethink this.” He was going in circles. He wasn’t thinking of anyone but himself. How could he really put his team in danger?
“Hey, we’re coming with you and that’s final. Eve can handle herself. She’s perfectly capable, and she knows when to duck,” Alex said with a smile. “They’ll be looking for your car. We’ll take mine to Sanctum and then go out to your place. I can get our bags from the hotel this afternoon and be back in time to get us out to the club. Is the backyard entrance to your place passable?”
There was a reason Ian had picked that particular location for his home. He owned several acres of the land around it and had long ago put in an alternative entrance to his place. It involved some country back road driving, but he could get inside undetected when he wanted to. “It should be fine.”
He would like the backup. The thought of being alone and responsible for keeping Charlie alive scared the shit out of him.
Alex winced a little. “I want you to know I’m sorry about putting you in a bad situation with Brighton. I’ll try to smooth that over, too.”
He held back a sigh but realized how much he would miss Alex and Eve if they weren’t in his life anymore. He was just starting to find a relationship with his brother again. Charlie was threatening to fuck all of that up. She was coming between him and the people he loved. She was forcing them to choose sides in this little war of theirs.
Maybe it was time to let her see just how hopeless this operation of hers was.
Alex walked out the door and Ian’s mind started working. He strode by the office she was sitting in, her eyes following him, but he paid her no mind.
He had an evening to plan. He got to his desk and picked up his phone, dialing a familiar number. “Ryan? I’m going to need you to do a couple of things before tonight’s play.”
Fifteen minutes later, he had most everything in place. At least this part of his world was running efficiently.
So why was his gut in a knot again?
Charlie sat down on the bench in front of the locker she’d been assigned. The locker room at Sanctum was far more plush and luxurious than any club she’d been in before. Certainly nicer than Cuffs, the rattrap she’d been stuck in for months while she was working on the op that finally brought her to Dallas. That place had barely had lockers, much less carefully crafted full-length wooden ones with hangers for clothes and drawers for anything else a sub would need.
The bathroom section of the room held several tiled showers, vanities with various expensive-looking soaps and lotions, curling irons and hair dryers.
The subs at Sanctum were treated like queens.
“The men’s locker room has a row of recliners and a big screen TV. It’s one big mancave. I’ve caught Alex and Ian hiding in there from time to time with a case of beer. They think because it’s a men’s locker room that I won’t go in. They’re wrong.” Eve had the locker next to her. She adjusted the corset she was in. “That was a very nice spanking. Do you need me to lace you in?”
Ian had handed her a small stack of fet wear before sending her into the locker room with Eve. She’d soon found herself in a cozy world where Serena sat in a comfy chair, her feet up and a computer on her lap, while Avery O’Donnell sat in an equally comfy chair beside her knitting away on what looked like a very tiny sweater.
It was weird.
“Don’t mind the pregnant twins,” Eve said with a smile.
“It’s just not what I thought Sanctum would look like and I’ve been to a couple of clubs.”
Serena perked up. “Did Ian take you?”
Avery looked up from her knitting. “Oh, was it in Europe? I so want to go back, but when I mention it to Liam he gets a little green and says our next vacation is going to be in an RV because nothing bad ever happens in RVs. Has he not watched horror movies?”
Eve grinned. “I think he’s never seen an actual RV, honey. So, fess up, Charlotte. What clubs did Ian take you to?”