Elite Metal-ARE-epub (5 page)

“This video was captured last week in the Métro de Paris during their rush hour.” Poppy tapped at the younger man.“ This is Benson Maverick. Our mole. Here he is, selling the information we later learned was your identity to one of Red Wolf’s men.”

The video continued to play. Maverick stood up and walked away, leaving the briefcase behind. The older man “woke up” several minutes later and left in the opposite direction with the case in hand. The video stopped, cuing back to the beginning and Poppy stared at Steele.

“Benson is the liaison for under covers within the CIA, and was the handler for Venus, the informant for Operation Phoenix. We believe he sold Venus out to Red Wolf’s organization, who in turn fed her false information about the uranium deal in Moscow with the intention of taking out not only Venus, but also the Elite Recon teams.”

“What happened to Venus?” he asked. He didn’t want to care. He’d told himself hundreds of times he didn’t care. But…

“She died,” Alayna answered in a soft voice.

“And you know this how?”

“We…were very close.” Her lashes fluttered but she refused to look at him. “She was found on the banks of the Moscow River, several miles downstream from the docks where the Elite Recon teams were ambushed. Someone ran her off the road.”

Steele remained silent and turned his focus back to Poppy. Many times over the past couple of years he’d wondered about the operative whose intel had sent his teams on a suicide mission. Hatred and anger usually followed, which resulted in many hours spent in the gym with a punching bag until his knuckles bled. The anger kept him going at times, kept him waiting for the day when he could face the woman and look her in the eye to tell her exactly what she did and who she got killed.

Now that was gone. With a few softly spoken words, Alayna stripped away his hatred, leaving him with …nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Not entirely true. Pity remained, and he didn’t want to pity the woman he’d believed sold him out. He had been on the short end of that stick. He and Chrome and Titanium. He didn’t want to feel bad or sorry for her. But he did. And that just pissed him off.

“So.” He glared at Poppy. “Is this Maverick guy a money grubbing asshole or is there more?”

“More,” Poppy answered. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a money grubbing asshole, but digging deeper into his past, we discovered Benson Maverick is a cover. He was born Alexandre Korovin and is a distant cousin to none other than, Vladimir Babikov.”

“Red Wolf is keeping the business in the family, I see.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “If he’s the man who set up my team, why hasn’t your ghost squad taken him out?”

“We just recently learned the information and Warbucks thought it fitting to give you this opportunity. Both of you.”

Steele wondered what the hell the gorgeous chick had to do with any of this. Didn’t matter though. “Where’s Korovin now?”

“On his way to Las Vegas. Where you two are headed shortly.”

“Vegas? Did he decide to take a vacation?”

“Yes and no. He’s combining business with pleasure by meeting with some of Red Wolf’s contacts at a private event at the Mandalay Bay. The grandson of his third in command is turning twenty-one and celebrating in style. Korovin has been known to spend time in some of the local clubs while in Vegas. That is where you and Alayna come in.”

“Clubs?” There was something about the way she said the word and the sudden stiffness to Alayna’s posture that lifted the hair on his arms. “What type of clubs, because I don’t dance, sugar.”

“The Purple Curtain.”

“The S&M club?” he asked with a raise of his eyebrows.

Oh yeah, he’d heard about the most exclusive sex club in the city. It was the poster child for sin and decadence and had been on his bucket list to play inside those secret walls before the mission. But one needed serious green to pass those velvet ropes, and Mac Johnson didn’t have the scratch.

“Are you saying you want me, us? Oh…” He glanced over at Alayna and even in the near dark saw the flush of pink crawling up her neck as she stared down at the tabletop. In shock. The thought of having her bound and beneath him sent blood rushing right to his cock. “Did you know about this?”

She shook her head. “I knew about the marriage, but not the—”

“Marriage?” Chills ran down his spine, diminishing his desire. “What marriage?”

“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Reid on your recent nuptials,” Poppy exclaimed and placed three velvet covered boxes before them.

Two were square and the long, narrow box between them reminded him of a viper staring at him, ready to strike.

“For this mission you are Jonathan Reid and his new bride Vera away on their honeymoon.” Poppy laid out a folder and flipped it open revealing plane tickets for a red eye to Vegas that evening. “You own a cycle shop in Dallas and are the head of a motorcycle club that is rumored, but never confirmed, to have ties to heroin dealers across the border in Mexico. People will expect you to be rough around the edges, even dangerous, and therefore expected to be where you shouldn’t be. You are to spend time in The Purple Curtain, as a Dom and his slave, and once you make contact with Korovin, detain him and bring him in for questioning. Warbucks wants to know how deep the leak goes.”

“And if I want the fucker dead?”

“Once Warbucks gets what he wants. You are free to do whatever you wish to Mr. Korovin.”

Revenge for his brothers and have this beautiful woman under his command? His arousal returned tenfold and before he thought better of it, he picked up the velvet box closest to him and lifted the lid. A shiny solitaire diamond in a silver setting winked at him in the glow of the computer monitors.

An invisible band wrapped around his chest and squeezed as he held out the ring to Alayna. “I believe this is for you,” he choked out.

Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she reached for the box, then looked up at him with eyes large and smoky with both uncertainty and longing.

His cock hardened further as she slid the ring onto her finger, and he reached for the long box. Inside lay a collar made of braided leather in black with a ruby circle in the center. On either side of the ruby were silver circles, large enough to snap the latch of a leash onto.

Alayna gasped and the rise and fall of her chest picked up as she gazed at the collar in his hands. The tip of her tongue swept across her full lips and his cock kicked in response ready for the touch of her mouth.

Fuck it all. He may have found the mission to finally kill him. But hell, what a way to go.

“Can you do this, Alayna? Can you submit to me?” With the stakes this high, he was going to push her past the point of no return if it got them their man. “Do you want to continue?”

She glanced at the ring on her finger then straightened her spine as she looked him in the eye.

“I do.”

Chapter Four

The little missus was pissed.

Steele didn’t know why he found her temper so funny. The entire situation was more serious than a funeral, but he found it difficult to keep the smile off his face as he watched “the wife” fidget and turn in the seat next him.

Wife. Damn. Even though it was pretend, he never thought he’d have that word associated with him. The Marine Corps had been his wife, and only allowed time for a mistress now and again, besides, he liked his woman naughty then gone. The good girls wanted all of his time. They wanted babies and vacations to Disneyland and only agreed to sex on the weekends, holidays and anal for his birthday.

What he wanted was a woman who’d part her thighs with just a glance from him. Someone who’d drop to her knees and allow him to take her to the heights of pleasure. Then wave at him with a smile as he set off for his next assignment. He was a simple man. When he was tired, he slept. Hungry, he ate. Horny, he fucked. Simple.

Could that be considered barbaric? Maybe. Chauvinistic? Abso-fucking-lutely. Which was why he never lied and led a woman on to think he was able to give more than a night of ecstasy. That wouldn’t have been fair, and there wasn’t a woman he’d ever been with that could say he hadn’t be honest and delivered on his every promise.

But here he was, “married” to a woman who kept glaring daggers in his direction as she shifted on the cushy airline seat.

“What’s crawled all over your hide, sweetheart?” he asked close to her ear to be heard over the roar of the jet engines.

Her brows rose until they disappeared into the fringe of her bangs? “Are you kidding?”

She glanced to the sides and behind them and leaned closer. At this late hour, the plane was only half full with rows of empty seats between them and the other passengers.

“We are only ten minutes into this mission and already you are going off book,” she said in a terse murmur.

“How so?”

“You’re supposed to own a motorcycle shop. Shop owners cannot afford to travel in first class. We should be in coach.”

“That’s what has you riled? Sorry, sweetheart, but you do not want to see me squeezed into a tiny coach seat. I’ll be cranky and irritable and ready to slap some ass.” He smiled widened. “Unless you want to be the ass I slap?”

She let out a frustrated sigh and turned to face forward with her arms folded tight. Why didn’t it surprise him that even with a fake marriage, his honeymoon started off with his wife giving him the cold shoulder?

“It makes sense.”

She glared at him again. “What does?”

“Convincing Poppy to upgrade the seats to first class.”

“How do you figure that, we’re supposed to be blending in?”

“No. We’re supposed to be celebrating our honeymoon. I’m going along the lines that my shop is ridiculously successful and I want to spoil you.”

He’d be damned if he started off an already delicate mission cramming his frame into the ice cube tray of coach. Having his new bride pissed was definitely not the way to start it off as well.

What would Zinc do? If this were Z and Ally, how would he have gotten her to forgive him and bring a smile to her face?

Steele lifted the arm rest between them then held his arms open. “Come here.”

She did a double take. “What?”

“Come here. A married man wouldn’t want his new bride angry at him. He’d want her in his arms all of the time.”

Her lips parted as she blinked at him several times. “And you have experience at being a married man?”

“Nope. I’m just going on instinct. So take your seatbelt off, and your shoes. Tuck lost long legs up against the seat and come here. Pretty please, wife…”

Her gaze traveled up and down his chest as a flurry of emotions swirled in her dark eyes so quickly, he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She flicked her tongue across her lips in that way he’d noticed she did before making a decision and finally relaxed her arms.

The shoes went first, then the seatbelt. She shifted closer in the seat to lay her cheek against his sternum. As his arms closed around her, a weight lifted off his shoulders and his first easy breath in a long time eased past his lips.

* * * * *

Under her ear, the solid
thump thump
of Steele’s heart brought tears to her eyes.

Adam Steele in the flesh, after all this time. How many nights had she tossed and turned, wondering what she’d say to him if she ever got the chance to meet him in person?

Sorry was not even close to conveying how guilt-stricken she was over the failure of Operation Phoenix. Because of her, several men and one woman lost their lives. It didn’t matter she too almost died there on the banks of the Moscow River or how, like Steele and the other survivors, she was unable to return to her previous life. Risk had gone hand in hand with her job, but Steele and the other recon teams had been the unfortunate ones. An unlucky lottery devastated their numbers.

No greater reminder of her purpose on this mission existed than the piece of metal resting on his chest. The letters on the dog tag hanging around Steele’s neck were worn down, as if rubbed away, but she could still make out the name. Zachary “Zinc” Daniels.

For Steele. For Zinc. For all of them. She had to make it right—take out that bastard double agent Korovin once and for all.

“You’re shaking,” Steele’s voice rumbled above her. The deep timbre sent shivers along her skin. “Are you cold?”

How could she be cold when the man generated heat like a furnace? “No. Just processing.”

He tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. “Having second thoughts?”

Second thoughts? She couldn’t have second thoughts when staring at his handsome face? She had gazed at his photo so often in the last week. She knew every plane and angle by heart. The thick brows over brown eyes that always appeared to be squinted in thought, and the square jaw line that reminded her of a cartoon super hero. The goatee was new, grown after he left the Marine Corps. Underneath the bristles was a dimple in his chin she wondered what it would feel like to bathe her tongue with it.

Yes, the man was sexy, but any fantasies she may have spun about him mattered jack shit nothing. She owed him. She owed his men, and if she had to walk through hell to repay her debt, she’d do so without a moment’s hesitation.

“No. No second thoughts,” she whispered.

He drew in a breath and his gaze narrowed with what looked like hunger and confusion. “Do I know you? Have we met before?”

“No.”

“But you know me.”

“Just what I’ve read about you from Warbucks.”

“Have you met him?”

“Who Warbucks? No. No one meets Warbucks.”

“And yet you’ll do what he says? Why?”

“The same reason as you. Korovin has to be stopped. And Red Wolf most of all. No matter what.”

He gazed down at her several long seconds then ran his hand down the length of her braid. He pulled her closer. “Rest, little wife.”

Rest. As if she could sleep surrounded by him. The man was as hard as a rock with muscles packed on top of muscles. As they were seated earlier, she’d been able to make out a new tattoo through the white of his t-shirt. He had been inked with the evening before upon acceptance of his mission. Only a day old, and the image of a motorcycle engine with wings and flames already healed nicely.