Chapter 17
Indulgence.
Fairchild thought the restaurant could not have been more aptly named.
The space was large with enough seating to service hundreds of guests at a time, but the dim and carefully placed lighting somehow gave every table an illusion of intimacy, a decadent darkness that Fairchild could almost feel brushing up against her bare skin.
There were, of course, the usual restaurant sounds, the mingled clink and clatter of silverware against porcelain, the low murmur of sultry conversation, but these ambient noises were largely smothered beneath the sound of live music coming from a dais in the center of the room.
A piano, the instrument was apparently called.
Technologically primitive compared to the electronic music with which Fairchild was familiar, and yet, somehow, surprisingly refined.
Music, however, was not the only form of entertainment at Indulgence.
All throughout the restaurant, upon smaller, more brightly lit stages, nude performers mated to the music, their thrusts and moans following the cadence of the piano like a dance.
Servers, scantily clad in leather and lace, gathered the drippings, which would be used, so their waiter had informed them, as a glaze for some of the restaurant’s more decadent desserts.
Fairchild decided she would pass.
She was dressed now in a skimpy but elegant black sequined number that left her feeling far from comfortable.
She would have much preferred a tank top and a pair of broken-in jeans, something that would have allowed her to slouch and sit with her legs apart.
But she had a role to play now, that of the well-bred and tastefully horny socialite, and it was a role she was determined to play to the best of her abilities.
It helped having her teammates with her for support.
The flavor of all three of them still lingered on her lips, and her fingertips were still tingling from the countless orgasms they’d bestowed upon her back in the suite.
Even a long, hot bath had not been enough to cleanse away the raw warmth they had deposited between her legs.
She ran a finger around the rim of her water glass and looked at each of them in turn. They looked good in their expensive evening attire. Almost as good as they looked naked.
Almost.
Reece had ordered for her. Normally, Fairchild would have been annoyed by such a controlling gesture, but tonight she was grateful to be spared the cognitive load of selecting from a menu that may as well have been written in Old Terran.
Dutton had been in charge of selecting a vintage wine.
And Nash, well… Nash was scarfing the brioche they’d ordered as an appetizer like a man possessed.
How anyone could eat the way he did and not put on weight, Fairchild would never understand, though she did find it oddly attractive.
Her attention, however, was only half on her team. While they waited for the food and made small talk, she continually kept one eye on the empty table a few spots away. The one bearing a small, calligraphied placard that read: Reserved.
Slayn’s table.
It was, in fact, the best table in the place, strategically selected to provide the best view of the restaurant’s entertainment, while also offering clean, quick access to all of the exits.
So where the hell was he? Based on Reece’s reconnaissance earlier that day, Slayn was supposed to be arriving at six o’clock, but the table still stood empty. Apparently the bastard liked to be fashionably late. Typical.
“Madam?”
A waitress was standing beside her, dressed in a strappy leather outfit that looked better suited for an orgy than a restaurant. She was holding an ancient-looking bottle in her hands, and she had poured a small amount of ruby liquid into Fairchild’s glass.
Fairchild intuited that she was now expected to taste it. She knocked it back in one, and felt the warmth of the alcohol pervading her system, easing some of the tension she’d been feeling.
As for the taste, it tasted like… wine.
Why was she the one who had to make a decision about this? Dutton was the culinary expert of the bunch. Fairchild glanced across the table at the soft-spoken Merc, and he gave her a subtle nod.
“Very nice,” she said, aiming for an authoritative tone. “It’ll do.”
The waitress filled her glass, then sauntered around the table filling each of the males’ glasses in turn. The woman made a big production of leaning over to show off her ample chest, and Fairchild felt a twinge of jealousy, but the emotion was short-lived. Something else had caught her attention.
A large entourage was making its way across the restaurant, winding in and out between the tables and the stages with their writhing performers.
Fairchild noticed the guards first. Half a dozen of them.
Big, suited men like the ones she had seen outside the hotel earlier.
She didn’t need Dutton’s specs to know they were packing heat beneath the jackets.
Then she saw the man at the center.
He looked exactly like the pics in his dossier. Same tanned skin. Same immaculate coif of black hair. Same contemptuous sneer. He was a full head shorter than the guards who surrounded him, yet there was an aura of authority about him that left no question as to who was in charge.
Slayn. Victor Slayn.
Fairchild’s heart strained inside her like a dog on a chain.
It took every bit of self-restraint she could muster to keep from leaping out of her seat and rushing the bastard.
His guards looked tough, and well-trained, but if she played it right, she could maneuver past them and break Slayn’s neck before they had a chance to gun her down.
A foot touched her own beneath the table. It was Reece. When she looked at him, she caught the message in his eyes. Easy, Fairchild. Not here. Not now.
He was right, of course. If she attacked now, it would put her whole team in danger. She didn’t particularly care about losing her own life, but it would be a breach of mercenary honor to endanger her teammates as well.
Besides, what had Dane taught her? Never pull the trigger til you’ve got a clean shot. She would wait until Slayn’s death was a certainty. Then, like a lioness, she would make her move.
Fairchild took a sip of her wine and carefully shifted her attention to the final member of Slayn’s little retinue—a hard, stone-faced woman with short, platinum-blonde hair.
She was taller than most of Slayn’s male guards, and her muscular frame was wrapped in a tight, black bodyglove.
Whether she was there for pleasure or protection, Fairchild couldn’t say, but she had a feeling it was both.
After all, she’d been told Slayn had a type.
Slayn took a seat at his reserved table.
The blonde sat beside him. The other men sat too, but they were obviously not there to enjoy themselves.
Their eyes were continually scanning the restaurant around them.
Fairchild was careful not to meet their gazes, but she continued to watch from the corner of her eye.
Slayn called a waitress over and gestured to one of the female performers on a nearby stage.
The waitress relayed the message, and the performer immediately stopped what she was doing.
She leapt down from the stage and went directly to Slayn’s table.
She did not, however, take a seat. Instead, she crawled under the tablecloth.
A moment later, a pleasant smile spread across Slayn’s face.
The big blonde stroked his shoulder and watched his lap with apparent enjoyment.
Well then.
Fairchild took another sip of wine.
A movement from the other side suddenly grabbed her attention.
Someone was approaching her table. A man, small and slight, in a somewhat disheveled tuxedo.
He didn’t look like much of a threat, but that didn’t mean anything.
Fairchild played it cool, but on the inside, she was ready to move at a moment’s notice.
She could sense that her three teammates were doing the same.
The man propped himself against the table and smiled. “Evening,” he said, his breath boozy enough to singe her eyelashes. He seemed not even to notice the three big men she was sitting with.
“Good evening to you too,” Fairchild replied, keeping her tone cool but not icy.
“I saw you sitting over here,” the man said, “and I just had to come say hello. You’re the most delicious-looking morsel I’ve ever seen.”
Fairchild was surprised he could see anything at all, considering how unfocused his eyes seemed to be.
She noticed Reece starting to tense. Now it was her turn to send him a silent message. A soft brush of her foot against his shin. Chill.
He chilled. Slightly.
“Thank you,” she said to the stranger, smiling just enough to be polite without leading him on. Unfortunately, he was in no state to pick up on such nuances. His grin widened.
“Perhaps after you’ve finished your meal, you’d like to join me up in my suite.” He swept his gaze around the table, acknowledging the men for the first time. “Your, ah, friends are more than welcome to come and watch.”
Fairchild managed to keep her disgust off her face. At least she thought she did. Even Reece and Dutton managed to keep their tempers under control.
The problem, as usual, was Nash.
With neither hesitation nor warning, the youngest Merc sprang to his feet, tipping over his chair in the process. He seized the drunk man by the lapels of his dinner jacket and lifted him off the ground. On the table, Fairchild’s wineglass tipped, staining the white cloth red.
“How dare you talk to her like that!” Nash roared. “She’s mine! She’s ours!”
People were looking. Everyone was looking.
Slayn was looking.
This was bad. Real bad. Fairchild knew she had to act, and fast. She bolted up, taking care not to tip her chair as Nash had done, and she quickly moved around beside him.
“Darling,” she said, injecting her voice with a sweetness she wasn’t feeling. “You’re causing a scene.”
To make sure she got his attention, she stabbed the end of her high-heeled shoe into the top of Nash’s boot, grateful to have finally found a use for her highly impractical footwear. It seemed to do the trick. A glimmer of realization flickered across his face. He lowered the man back to the floor.
Reece and Dutton had both risen from their seats, and they were watching her intensely. So was Slayn. Fairchild could sense him watching in the corner of her vision. His woman was watching too, and so were his guards.
But it was Slayn she was worried about.
If he thought she was off-limits, it would put the entire mission in jeopardy. Fairchild’s mind raced as she tried to think of something, anything, to fix this mess.
“You’ll have to excuse my partner,” she said, carefully smoothing the rumpled lapels of the drunkard’s jacket. “Sometimes he can be a little, ah… overprotective.”
Apparently, she had the magic touch. All the fear drained out of the little man’s face, and he stared up at her with an expression of abject horniness that was almost pathetic.
“It wasn’t my intention to offend,” he said apologetically. “I merely assumed you and your partners were swingers.”
“We’re mostly exhibitionists. Suite Q312 if you would like to watch.”
She said it loud enough for Slayn to hear.
“I see,” the little man answered, looking slightly dejected. “And you’re only exhibitionists? You don’t ever share?”
My, he was really pushing his luck, wasn’t he? Had he already forgotten the way Nash had lifted him off the ground a few seconds ago? But then, booze did that to people. So did an overactive sex drive. Anyway, Fairchild was glad he’d asked. It was the perfect setup for her not-so-perfect plan.
“Oh, we’re not quite that strict,” she said, pitching her voice so Slayn would be able to hear her. “Whenever we go on holiday, my partners give me one free pass. They let me go to bed with one man of my choosing.”
The little man smiled, heartened by the prospect that he still had a chance. He didn’t, of course, but Fairchild let him think so out of pity.
He started to leave, then hesitated.
“Oh!” he said. “Since you and your friends are exhibitionists, you must be in the big competition, right?”
“Competition?” Fairchild asked.
“Don’t you know?” the man said. “Tomorrow night, in the Grand Auditorium! It’s a competition to see who can put on the best live performance.”
Fairchild glanced quickly at Reece. He gave a subtle nod.
“Oh that,” she said. “Of course. We wouldn’t miss it for the universe.” And then, as sultry as possible, she added: “I love performing live.”
The little drunk man grinned and nodded, and expressed five or six times how intensely he was looking forward to it.
Finally, with a bit of gentle prodding and some verbal jiu-jitsu, Fairchild managed to send him off in the direction he’d come from.
She suppressed a sigh of exhaustion and started to sit down again. Her teammates did the same.
As her butt hit the cushion of her chair, she accidentally glanced in the direction of Slayn’s table. He was looking directly at her, and for a moment, their eyes met. He lifted his glass in a silent toast, then drank deeply, eyes smoldering above the brim.
Fairchild couldn’t hide the fire of hatred that suddenly roared inside her. She managed to keep it away from her mouth and her brows, but she knew it was blazing in her eyes.
She hoped Slayn mistook it for a different kind of fire.
His eyes rolled back, the lids fluttering briefly, and he carefully set his glass back onto the table.
The blonde was leaning into him now, whispering something into his ear.
She had one hand resting on his shoulder.
The other was in his lap. Slayn’s mouth twitched, and a slow smile spread across his face. He sighed.
A moment later, the performer emerged from beneath the table, wiping her chin.