35 Seven
I waited in the dark of the underground garage, perched in the back seat of the redhead's Mercedes. I didn't like being back at this apartment complex, but it was the easiest place to ambush the mark since Viper only needed a second to break into their security system.
Practice made perfect.
The car smelled like something sweet and fruity and a little suffocating. I didn't know why, but the scent of Kimmy's apartment came to mind almost immediately. Her place smelled like vanilla and all those other baking scents.
It smelled like home.
I shook it off, telling myself not to think about her while on the job. She'd become very distracting. The night I'd spent on the couch of the hotel suite was torture. I couldn't sleep. The thoughts of her being on the other side of the door drove me nuts.
It's been too long since you let some steam out, I'd told myself in the privacy of my mind.
Still, the image of her—those huge eyes and those teasing pink lips—wouldn't let me be in peace.
I couldn't understand it. She wasn't a good match. She was weak and a little paranoid and probably terrified of every shadow. Her self-defense skills were laughable at best. I'd never be with someone so…unreliable.
Wait? What?
Get a fucking grip, Seven!
Be with a woman?
Where are you getting these stupid ideas from?
You don't get to be with anyone. Period.
You're an operative for the Bureau.
You don't do things civilians do.
I forced myself to stop rehashing those ridiculous couch thoughts. Tried to concentrate on something else, but the garage was dull. The only sound was the sound of rain. It'd been pouring since the morning. You could hear it from inside the car, the light pounding on the concrete walls.
Kimmy's face swam into focus. I cursed under my breath, ground my teeth, pressed the handle of the knife into my palm, let the cold edge remind me where I was.
In the rearview, I could see myself, a silhouette with no face, the bandana over my nose and mouth, and the hood up.
Standard intimidation protocol, but I liked how it stripped the scene down to just the basics. Predator. Prey.
Viper and I had been observing the redhead's activities for a few days now. His intel indicated on Thursday, she took a taxi once more to Club Dionisius to meet with the target. However, she always used her own car for personal errands.
She showed up in the parking lot a few minutes after eight. Her attire was obviously meant for a dinner date, validating Viper's information that she was involved with someone outside her club engagements. She yanked the driver's door open and slid into her seat without a second thought.
As the engine coughed and caught, I eased the blade up and pressed it to the soft place between her jaw and the tendon at her throat. I didn't intend on hurting her, but this was the proven way to get information fast. I had no time to waste.
She went rigid. No scream. Just a full-body freeze, eyes wide. She looked for me in the rearview mirror.
"Don't do anything stupid," I said.
She kept both hands on the wheel.
"Understand?" I asked.
She swallowed, slow and deliberate, like every millimeter of movement could cost her. Then she nodded.
"You're going to tell me about Club Dionisius and Caius Valmont."
Her face went ashen in the mirror.
"I'm dead anyway," she squealed. "If I open my mouth. I don't care if you kill me now."
I pressed the tip of the blade a fraction deeper. "You do care because no one else will take care of your sister after you're gone. Certainly not Valmont."
Her face broke at that. Not much, just a tightening around the eyes. But that was all I needed.
I waited.
"What do you want?" she whispered.
"I told you what I want."
She hesitated before speaking. "Can you guarantee my sister's safety?"
I kept the knife where it was. With my free hand, I reached into my pocket and slid the envelope forward, letting it drop onto the passenger side. "Check inside."
She reached with her left hand, dragged the envelope into her lap, thumbed it open.
The silence was squeezing the air out of the car.
She slowly sifted the contents. First, the passport.
She flicked through the pages, saw the new photo, the new name.
Her breath hitched, the tiniest sound. Then the rehab paperwork—legit, signed, dated, for a rehab center across the country.
Her jaw set. Last, she flipped to the stack of bills, rubber-banded hundreds.
She looked at my reflection in the rearview, finally. She looked hard.
"Insurance is taken care of as well," I said. "The facility is real. If anything happens to you, she's taken care of."
Her eyes flicked down to the envelope, then back to me. "How do I know this isn't bullshit?"
"You don't," I said. "But you can call the facility and the insurance tomorrow morning and verify."
The silence drew out. Her right hand crept to the collar of her coat, tugged it higher. Her sleeve slid up. That's when I saw the bruises—angry, dark, ringed around her wrist. Not old, either. Less than a week.
"Did Valmont do that to you?" I asked.
She hesitated. "It's consensual."
"Sure."
"It pays for my sister's care."
I made a sound, almost like a chuckle. "Clearly, it pays for more than that. You drive a sixty-thousand-dollar car and you live in a place with a doorman."
She slid the sleeve back in place to cover the bruising and said nothing.
"Valmont's dangerous. He'll use you up and dump you the second he's tired," I supplied. "Maybe next year. Maybe tomorrow. I wouldn't rely on whatever arrangement you have with him to keep you going financially."
She looked in the rearview again, staring into the mask. "Are you a cop?"
"No."
"A reporter? Is that why you're hiding your face?"
"I'm doing my job," I told her. "Punishing those who deserve it. I'd hate for you to end up with no income to cover the rest of your lease."
Her shifted her gaze to the envelope again. "What do you want to know?"
"Everything."
She exhaled, then let the facts spill. How the club used rotating security, how the real fun happened in the back rooms, how Valmont liked to keep things interesting. Names, dates, logistics.
I asked questions when I needed to.
She talked about the other girls, the schedule, the other men who came through and what they liked, about the occasional drop-offs in the nearest ER.
I listened to all of it, storing each useful word and filtering out the noise.
When she finished, I pulled the blade back and tucked it away.
"You need to run," I told her. "Leave town before it's too late."
She looked at the envelope in her lap again, then at the rearview mirror. It was clear she was debating in her head.
"You will end up like one of the other victims, beaten to half death, and tossed in front of the ER. And no one will care. You won't be able to file charges either. You don't understand who you're dealing with."
"How do you know?"
"I just do."
I slipped out the back, making no sound as I moved between the rows of parked cars.
I waited until her taillights faded up the ramp, then walked to the far end of the garage where my bike waited.
I thumbed the earpiece. The line crackled.
"Viper, you there?"
His reply was instant. "Always, boss. You got something?"
"Keep an eye on the mark for now. I need to know when she leaves town or if she doesn't."
"Ditto." Pause. "I got something for you too."
"What is it?"
"Solid intel. Bale guys broke into your girl's apartment last night. Good thing you got her out in time."
My girl? I had a momentary brain freeze.
"Boss?" Viper called.
"How's the place looking?"
"Couple of dishes broken and a closet ransacked. Nothing serious."
"You think you can get a cleaning service there?" I didn't want her to go back to the messy apartment whenever it happened.
"What are you talking about?"
"Fuck, not the in-house one. Just regular cleaning service off the Internet."
"I see." Viper clicked his tongue. "Sure thing. It's a no-brainer."
"Thanks."
"You're catching up on all those missed Thanksgiving dinners?"
"What are going on about?"
"You're awfully grateful lately."
"Fuck off." I clicked off the line, got on my bike and sped out of the garage.
I made it to the compound just past midnight.
I didn't want to be there, but going back to the safe house was a risk I couldn't afford—not for myself, but for her. If Bale guys were onto me, I needed to stay away from Kimmy as far as possible.
She was the worst kind of nightmare I'd had.
The way she looked at me with those huge pleading eyes and all those words she'd been whispering, words no one else had ever cared to say to me, ignited a storm within me. It twisted and churned inside, a powerful force I could no longer ignore. And tonight, I finally understood its true nature.
It was desire. Not the metaphorical one but real—physical—need to own her, to make her mine in any way possible.
I yanked my door open and stepped inside, then locked the deadbolt and braced my hand against the door for three full breaths.
You better get your head checked, Seven.
She is the client. What the fuck are you thinking?
The inner voice was persistent, but somehow the more it tried to persuade me to stop thinking about her, the more I wanted to shut it up.
I stripped off the jacket and let it hit the floor. My hoodie, T-shirt, jeans, and boots followed. I removed the earpiece and tossed it on the crate.
I padded barefoot into the shower, punched the temperature up to hot.
The pipes knocked, then the water fell hard, as if it hated the idea of being let out.
I got under and let it burn my skin, hoping it would distract me from thinking about her pink mouth and the way she'd teased her bottom lip right before I left.
At that moment in the safe house, I'd wanted to feel that mouth on mine.
I'd already memorized everything there was to memorize about her face—the way her lips pressed together before she spoke, how she sometimes bit the inside of her cheek when she was nervous, the flick of her tongue when she said my name, the way she looked at me, full and open and raw, when I was in one room with her, even the tiny divot between her eyebrows when she concentrated.
None of that belonged to me. None of it should have mattered. But in the dimness of the bathroom under the hot stream of water, it was all I could think about.
Something of mine.
She was something of mine regardless of how I'd come to know her.
My blood boiled under my skin and shot straight to my cock.
I closed my eyes and tried to shut off my brain. But the images kept coming. Fuck. This was harder than I thought.
I braced my forearm against the tile and palmed my cock, feeling how hard I was already. My body didn't know what to do with itself. My heart slammed against my ribs.
I'd jerked off thousands of times before. But it'd always been clinical, more a release valve than an urge. With no solid imagery to back it up.
This was different.
I thought about all the times we met in person.
I thought about her hands, the subtle curves of her body.
I imagined her tongue wetting her lips and her mouth taking me, then the pressure and the heat of it as she sucked my cock.
I pictured her straddling my lap, that pale blue satin dress I saw her wearing the first time we met bunched at her hips, bare thighs gripping my waist. I imagined her reaching down, guiding me inside.
The thought made my knees threaten to go.
I bit down on my own arm to keep from making noise.
You're one twisted motherfucker.
You're fantasizing about the things that will never happen.
I stroked myself with hard, fast pulls, the friction sending shards of light up my spine. I'd never let any of my previous Bureau-approved hookups see me like this. Never let myself think about it, not really. I'd always shut off all emotions before it could get this far.
But there was nothing to stop it now. My whole body locked up, every muscle tight as wire. I saw her in my head—her hair, her eyes, the tiny, gasping sound she'd probably make when she came. I saw her fingers claw at my back, pulling me closer, not letting go even when it hurt.
When I came, it was with a violence that shocked me. I slipped, hit the tile with my shoulder, felt the noise reverberate through my bones. The world blinked white, then red, then went hollow and gray.
I sagged against the wall, chest heaving, the steam still shooting from the showerhead. My cock twitched in my hand, sensitive and raw. The water washed everything down the drain, leaving nothing behind.
I took a deep breath and spent a full minute trying to ground myself. Then, gazing at the ceiling, I pondered whether Father might watch a recording of me jerking off later.
Despite assurances that there were no cameras in our private areas, I had serious doubts.
Just to be an asshole, I raised my hand, shoved the middle finger at the possibility of the unseen cameras, and silently mouthed, "Hope you enjoyed the show. Fuck you."