Owning Jett (Made Marian Legacy #3)

Chapter 1

JETT - FOUR YEARS AGO

It wasn’t a stretch to play a go-go boy. I loved sex, and I was proud of my body. Win-win. Not that my bosses at ESP knew either of those things.

Fortunately for them, I was also only twenty-three, so I could pass easily as a dancer in a gentleman’s club.

Unfortunately for me, I was new enough at the agency to not have a choice in my assignments. Might as well enjoy it as much as I could.

I rolled my hips at my mark—Ronald Gillen, cargo-smuggling union boss and all-around shitheel—and felt his eyes follow the curve of my ass and thighs in my booty shorts. Loud club music flooded my system and loosened my already warm muscles.

I bit back a laugh at the thought of telling a younger Jett Marian that one day he’d be paid good money to shake his assets for men in a gentleman’s club.

Talk about a dream job. After two particularly shit breakups in college, I’d determined that playing the field was a thousand times better than being in a relationship.

And the past several years had only proven me right.

Some old guy reached over and pinched my ass before shoving a twenty in the waistband of my jock and making a lewd comment about how I’d look even better on my knees for him.

Okay, so maybe not all of it was dreamlike. In fact, after spending the past four nights dancing in expectation of Ronald appearing in this club, I was ready to get the information I needed from him so my professional dancing days could be over.

I made a big production of licking a finger and trailing it down my bare chest, regretting it a moment later when I realized my fingertip still had leftover glitter eye shadow on it. Blech.

“Such a pretty boy,” Ronald murmured, eying me over his fat cigar. “Are you new here, sweetheart?”

“I came especially for you, Daddy,” I teased with a flirty grin before turning and leaning over, moving my hips from side to side so he could get a peek of bare cheek at the edge of my shorts.

I reached back with one hand and ran my fingers along my skin just under the edge of the fabric while holding on to the pole with the other hand. “You like what you see?”

My goal was to get him into a private room for a lap dance where I could distract him while getting close enough to scan his phone with the device embedded in my leather bracelet.

He was with several other men, half of whom were obviously more interested in the women dancing around the room, while the other half either lasered their attention on me or were too busy courting Ronald’s favor to pay attention to the dancers at all.

I turned around to face him and leaned the top of my back against the pole, moving my hands down my front and into the top of my shorts. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, pushing the shorts down enough to show the jock underneath them and a hint of pubic hair.

When the Ecumene Stability Project had recruited me out of college a little over a year ago, I’d gone through the kind of intense training program used by the CIA, MI6, and Mossad—which made sense, since the massive global intelligence agency had a budget larger than all of them put together.

Among other things, that training had honed my body into a tool—efficient, strong, ready for anything.

Including luring alcoholic old men into private rooms.

I just needed to seal the deal.

I bit my lower lip and slowly dragged my gaze up from Ronald’s black leather wing tips to his crotch and lifted my eyebrows in pleasant surprise as if I saw something impressive there.

I did not.

My tongue came out to wet my lips, and I exhaled, keeping my eyes on his crotch for another moment before sighing and whimpering a little.

Then I continued my perusal up over his beer belly to his chest and thick neck.

I forced myself to imagine letting this man do dirty things to me, and the image was horrifying enough to heat my cheeks.

Which was exactly what I was going for.

I blinked at him innocently and turned away in faux-embarrassment for having been caught looking. More ass-shaking and pole-humping, then I’d face him again and play with my nipples. It was important to have a plan.

“He’s a pretty one, isn’t he?” I heard Ronald say to someone in his smoke-roughened voice. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised he sounded like a New Jersey dockworker when that was literally what he was. Or had been before moving up to union steward.

He was the guy who managed the list and the line, knew every ghost container on every ship, and accepted envelopes of cash to get favorable movement for all three.

Ronald Gillen was a small fish. A known quantity. Which meant ESP allowed him to keep doing what he was doing.

The man was also an easy mark.

He kept two phones, and neither used biometric security measures—no FaceID or fingerprints for old Ronnie. In fact, he’d once been overheard saying, “They ain’t chopping my finger off to get in the damned phone just to see Sheila’s nagging texts about being late for dinner.”

I’d learned his passcode by simply standing behind him in line at Olivo’s Deli two weeks ago, and it happened to be his daughter’s birthdate. Dumbass.

I finished my spin and lowered into an open-kneed squat in front of Ronald when I saw a new man in his group. He was tall and fit, dark-haired and sexy as fuck. Even though he looked like he was only about thirty, the man oozed money.

Not just money, old money.

Power.

His presence seemed to suck all of the air out of the room and set everything to vibrating.

What the fuck was Locke Maris, the heir to the Maris shipping fortune, doing in a place like this, meeting with a corrupt union boss?

His eyes flicked over me with zero interest, which was no surprise. He probably had a pretty wife or girlfriend at home. I was a little impressed he didn’t seem interested in the dancing women nearby either, though. Maybe he was loyal. Or maybe he was simply focused on something else at the moment.

Like whatever he was here to talk to Ronald about.

Was he aware of Ronald’s petty grifting? Was he involved in it? In charge of it?

Maris was a much larger fish than Ronald or any of his known associates. And now he was in the middle of my op at the fucking Candy Bar.

I needed to get into Ronald’s phone to figure out why.

As I sank further into the squat, opening my knees and rolling my hips, I met Ronald’s eyes and winked. “Please,” I mouthed in a flirty way, tilting my head subtly toward the private rooms.

He tilted his chin up in agreement, then said something to Maris, who quickly shook his head and spoke again.

Ronald lifted his eyebrows and made a joke I couldn’t hear over the music.

They exchanged a back-and-forth before Ronald finally arranged for a private dance with me.

I hopped down from the platform and made my way to the private room, not realizing until it was too late that the man following me wasn’t my fucking mark… but Locke Maris himself.

“Oh, uh…” I glanced behind him, trying to stay in character as a flirty dancer looking for a heavy tipper. “Just one person per VIP dance, baby.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Do you see anyone else?”

“I thought your friend wanted the dance,” I tried.

“Apparently not. And neither do I. If we could get this over with quickly, there’s a hundred bucks in it for you.”

I blinked at him, trying to look stupid and confused instead of annoyed and frustrated. “Why hire a private dance if you don’t want one?”

Maris smiled coldly. “Because my friend, as you called him, thinks forcing me into a lap dance with a male stripper will give him the upper hand in the conversation we’re about to have.”

It was clear from his tone that Ronald had miscalculated. Badly.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest, suddenly less capable of hiding my annoyance. “I’m not a stripper, asshole. I’m a…” I gritted my teeth, wanting so badly to say highly trained intelligence operative. “Dancer.”

Maris sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can you just get on with the dancing, then? Better yet, don’t. We can sit in here for the duration of a song and call it good.”

Well, that wasn’t happening. If this asshole was going to spend time in a private room with me, I was going to do my best to hack his damned phone instead. Which required getting close to him.

“No can do, baby,” I purred, stepping closer and fingertip-walking my way up his chest to the cleft in his chin, which I tapped lightly. “I’m required to give you a dance. So, sit your sexy fucking ass down.”

He did not look amused, but he sat anyway. I moved over to the music system keypad and selected two songs without asking his preference or how long he wanted the dance for. Let him cut it off early if he noticed the song change. Two songs would give me more time.

If the man wasn’t attracted to me, though, this was going to be next to impossible. No horny haze of distraction to take advantage of. And he’d most likely balk at my touching him.

“You want to pretend I’m someone else, baby?” I asked with a grin, moving my hips and shoulders as the opening notes of Ginuwine’s “Pony” came over the sound system. “Go right ahead.”

He sat back and studied me, large hands open and easy on his long thighs. “You’re not going to give me the little talk about not touching?”

My heart rate picked up, but I forced myself to shrug easily. “Maybe I want you to touch me.”

This was unfortunately true.

As I moved closer, I caught the expensive scent of him. I saw a few little imperfections like a spot he missed shaving and a scar in his eyebrow that made him even hotter somehow.

There was no doubt, Locke Maris was a tasty treat. And if he ever wanted to touch me… well, I was no saint. I’d let him touch the fuck out of me.

For free. Repeatedly.

“That’s not going to happen,” he said. The words came out easy. Informative. Not snappy or emotional.

“Suit yourself,” I said, raising my arms above my head and shimmying my hips. “But I’m planning on touching you unless you tell me not to.”

He tilted his head at me before nodding toward the door. “Are you his type?”

“Whose type? Your friend?” I moved between his open knees. Of course I knew he’d met Ronald, but my goal was to act stupid enough to not be suspected of hacking the man’s phone if he caught me attempting it.

“My associate. The man with the cigar.” Was there a hint of calculation or amusement in his eyes? It was hard to tell.

“I don’t know, but I thought he was into me. Would have liked to dance for him privately,” I said with a wink.

I danced closer, placing my hands against the wall on either side of his face before leaning in to whisper in his ear. “But I’m happy to be dancing privately for you, even if you haven’t had your sexual awakening yet, sweetheart.”

The low rumble of his laugh made my dick suddenly feel strangled in the jock I wore under these shorts. As far as I could tell, the man’s phone was in his inside jacket pocket.

“Let’s get this jacket off,” I urged, smoothing my palms over his chest and pushing the jacket open. The firm muscles of his chest were impressive. “In case you get… hot.”

Thankfully, it really was warm in here. He allowed me to pull the jacket off and set it on the sofa next to his hip, where I’d be able to reach it when I got onto his lap. The music’s bass pounded through the room and our bodies as I locked eyes with him and moved to the beat.

I ran my fingertips down his chest again and across his broad shoulders before moving his knees together and kneeling up on the sofa on either side of his thighs.

He relaxed back into the velvet cushions and lifted an eyebrow. “You’re determined to dance for me despite my lack of interest,” he said.

I pursed my lips and then tapped them with a finger as I leaned back and ran my other hand down my chest to my abs to draw attention to them. I had fucking V-cuts for god’s sake. He could at least envy them, even if he didn’t want to touch them.

“How much will you give me if I can make your dick hard?” I teased, gyrating over his lap without sitting on it, then moving off him again to slowly unbutton my shorts.

He huffed out a laugh. “You? Make me hard?” He pretended to think on it before rolling his eyes. “A thousand dollars. In cash.”

My own eyebrows shot up. “A cool grand just for making you hard? Deal.”

His dark eyes met mine. “You’re awfully sure of yourself. I bet high because it’s not happening. Unless you bring one of your lady friends in here.”

Well, now he’d triggered my obstinate stubborn streak.

I grinned and began a sultry striptease, pulling my shorts down enough to reveal my white cotton jock. After four nights of dancing here, I’d learned that many men had a secret locker room fantasy. And so far, this athletic jock had a 100 percent success rate on making men lose their fucking minds.

“Challenge accepted.”