#2 Dangerous Games (7 page)

And Morganna was just waiting for Joe to find a viable candidate to push the bastards into drugging her?

Clint's outraged anger edged higher.

"And you think you could handle working with, a full Dom?" He shook his head. "You can't keep from arguing over a damned grocery list. There's no way in hell you can pull it off."

"Of course I can." She waved the furious retort away with a graceful flip of her hand. "I can be a very good actress when I need to be."

"You've lost your ever-lovin' mind." He stared back at her. His southern drawl had slowly eased over the years of learning other languages, being in other nations, but at times of stress it slipped out. And his stress level was nearing stroke stage.

"For God's sake, Morganna, the private rooms are just for the more extreme acts. I know you're not blind." And that wasn't even counting the underground club-the sexual extremities there had been known to make even him uncomfortable.

"Stop acting like an outraged father." She stared back at him defiantly. "I don't have to ask your permission to do this."

His fists clenched in an effort to control himself, to hold back the lust and the anger and the driving need to protect her. Even if that protection was from herself. Or him.

"Most of our agency Doms won't fool with her past the first hour," Merino snickered as he sat down.

"Morganna has a bad habit of trying to tell them how to do their jobs. I believe she even informed one of them that her vibrator was more fun to play with."

Clint watched her face flush as she lifted her eyes, staring at the ceiling rather than the five men now currently discussing her sex life.

"A woman can't fake walking with a plug up her ass," Clint snapped then, seeing the shock as her eyes flew back to his. "Just as she can't fake her demeanor after leaving one of those rooms with a real Dom.

Half the time, I've never used the room." He watched her closely as he delivered his next piece of
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information. "Have you ever fucked in the middle of a crowd, Morganna? Sat on your Dom's lap and had his cock slide up your pussy? That's what we're talking here. Not playtime, dammit."

He saw her flinch, then watched the heat that filled those dark stormy gray eyes. It turned her on, almost as much as it turned him on.

The agents watching them weren't unaffected.

Clint turned to Merino and glimpsed the lust in several of the agents' eyes. Some Doms shared their women easily and with pleasure. Clint wasn't willing to share this woman, but would Morganna's sexuality allow her to let another man touch her?

The need to know consumed Clint, even as the knowledge that he would kill the bastard who took her in front of him filled his mind.

Clint's gaze flew back to Morganna. She was watching him with dazed lust, the kind that filled a woman's eyes when her sexuality was at its peak, the need to be touched, taken, filling every particle of her mind.

And she needed. He knew she needed.

"Fine, you want to be my sub?" He narrowed his eyes as he watched her. "Let's see how submissive you can be. Come here." He lifted his hand, waving his fingers back toward himself in invitation.

Morganna arched her brow mockingly even as fluttering warnings of danger vibrated in her stomach.

Clint was not a man to be played with when he had that look in his eyes. Cold ice-blue, like Alaskan waters, freezing her to the pit of her soul with trepidation.

He wouldn't hurt her ... well, not without pleasure being involved. But that look meant she was not going to like what was coming.

"I don't think so." She stood her ground, and so help her, if he got out of that chair and came after her, she was going to throw something at him.

Joe snorted from where he sat. "See what I mean? She's too confrontational to be a sub."

"Says who?"

"That would have earned you a ball gag," Clint said.

"You'd have to be willing to die to put it there first." She smiled with chilling politeness as he paced to the other side of the room, one hand rubbing at his neck as he glared back at her.

"You guys are taking this way too seriously." She shook her head as she stared back at them. "We've caught three of the dealers. Craig will score as soon as we get another Dom in."

"Until you get to the part where we can't find a Dom willing to work with you," Joe reminded her. "We haven't been able to find a suitable couple familiar to the scene, either. And whoever is supplying this shit seems to smell damned agents. Which leaves us where we are. We have two more months left to find a break in the case before we're going to be forced to abandon it."

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Morganna clenched her teeth at the thought of that. "We have a list of suspected players-"

"Enough!" Clint's voice sliced through the room as she turned back to him. How did she know he would be the one to protest? "Just to begin with, the players would more likely put a bullet through your head.

Hence tonight's attack. In case they didn't, though, just how the hell do you think you're going to fake disinterest in me?"

She let her gaze rove over his body this time. Her mouth watered at the sight of that bulge in the front of his jeans. She forced herself to move on, lifting her brow disdainfully as she reached his gaze once again.

"I should point out, Morganna, at this moment, you are showing anything but disinterest," Joe pointed out drolly. "Bang, baby, you're dead."

"Who says there can't be attraction? Just because a woman is reluctant doesn't mean she has to be uninterested," she snapped back at him. "You're trying to make this more complicated than what it is."

"We're trying to make this safe," Joe argued.

"I can't believe you're trying to argue with her." Clint shook his head in exasperation. "I learned better than that years ago. No, Morganna!" His voice sliced across the room, causing her lips to flatten in frustration as she glared back at him.

"Damn, she's not arguing with him," Craig muttered moments later. "He's good."

Satisfaction glittered in Clint's gaze. One of these days, she was going to learn to ignore that tone of voice.

"Our original problem hasn't been solved," Joe pointed out. "You're getting no place fast this way. No dealers means no suppliers. All we have are the three men we caught last week, none of whom seem to know shit about where the lab is located. All we have is this monster drug Fuentes created, and women who are going to keep dying while those fucking videos are going to keep selling."

"Your original idea is a good one." Clint clenched his teeth as he pushed his fingers through his hair.

"Your problem is your female agent."

"That's your problem," she broke in.

"You're pushing me, Morganna," he said as she smiled innocently, batting her eyelashes just because she knew it pissed him off. She received a glare in return.

"I'm just waiting for words of wisdom to spout from your golden lips." She smiled innocently. "Figured you'd take offense."

He ignored her, turning to Joe instead. "They won't sell to someone they can't vet thoroughly. Your men are good men, but I'm betting they weren't a part of the scene before two years ago."

"Not in this area." Joe shook his head firmly. "We pulled several in from New York and one from California, though. They have solid reputations in the bondage community."

"But whoever is testing this drug here is damned careful," Clint pointed out. "You need someone he knows, someone he can vet easily. Someone known for his dominance as well as the fact that no one has
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ever said no to him. But also a male careful enough to want to dose his woman himself, to be sure she stays safe. Pull in a female agent strong enough to work the part, I'll work with her."

Morganna felt the slow, steady burn of betrayal begin to consume her. He wouldn't do this to her, surely?

"This is my assignment, Clint."

"You're not involved." The edge of command in his voice vibrated through the room. "I have six weeks'

leave. Pull her off the case and I'll work with you."

"You can't do that," she cried out painfully.

She turned to the agents she had worked with for the past year and with a sense of failure realized she had lost. "Do you really think you can find an agent experienced enough to say no to him?"

"Willing to fuck and willing to submit are two different things, as you point out, Morganna," Joe argued.

"A man wanting submission is not going to settle for just a roll in the sheets. Especially a well-known Dom."

"Morganna, arguing over this isn't going to help," Clint replied in return. "They need a dependable Dom that fits into this area more than they need you at present. My terms are that you go off the case."

She blinked back at him in shock and pain. "You can keep using Craig to push for the drug." She turned to Joe for support. There was none. "He's been there long enough, Joe. Anyone who knows Clint knows he's a SEAL. They'll never go for it."

"Anyone who knows me knows a hell of a lot more about me than you do, Morganna," he pointed out, his voice soft. "I don't take no for an answer. It would be in my character to take what I want. However I had to."

"This is so bogus." She forced back her pain, her knowledge that she was losing, as she turned to Joe again. "You're going to go along with this, aren't you?"

It was there in their faces. They would hear any argument she had, but they had what they'd wanted all along, a local Dom they could trust.

Six months wasted, and this was what she had to show for it, Clint walking in and throwing her out.

She dropped her arms as she stared back at all of them, aware of Clint's waiting stillness, the tension that zapped around him.

"Morganna, it's better this way-" Joe met her gaze, his eyes narrowed, his expression thoughtful.

"Save the apologies," she snapped, catching the satisfaction that shimmered in Clint's eyes. "I've had enough of the five of you. I'm going home. I'll lodge my protest with the commander Monday morning."

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"We're not finished," Clint reminded her, his voice dark, furious, as she turned and stalked to the door.

As she gripped the door handle she turned back to him, a bright, false smile tipping her lips.

"Oh, you mean the fucking thing?" she asked with false innocence. "Thanks, but no thanks. See if your pretty little submissive agent can give you what you need, because I'll be damned if you have anything I want."

WHAT HAD GOTTEN INTO HER? Clint cursed in four different languages as he followed Morganna's cab at a sedate distance until it pulled up on her street. He continued on to the alley behind her house, turned off his truck lights, and pulled into the back driveway he knew was never used.

Would she be pissed enough to look to see if he was sitting there? He doubted if she would see him if she did. The overhang of the old garage Reno's father used to tinker in before his and his wife's deaths would hide the vehicle from the second story, and the lawn furniture directly ahead of Clint would shield him from the back unless she turned on the porch light.

He rolled down his window, listening as the front door slammed and lights flipped on through the house.

Why couldn't he just leave it alone? he asked himself as he stared at the house. Joe Merino and Grant Samuels had promised to take watch out front on her tonight; it wasn't like Clint needed to be there. Still, he couldn't help himself.

He watched as the kitchen light flared and her silhouette moved through the room. Graceful, slender.

Clint leaned his arms on the steering wheel as he sighed wearily.

He hadn't expected that steel core of defiance that lit her eyes tonight, and he sure as hell hadn't expected his response to it. Morganna had been able to make his dick hard for eight years now. But. she had never really tested his control until tonight. Tonight he had been close to taking her against the door of his apartment with no consideration for her comfort.

She moved from the kitchen, the light blinking off behind her. Minutes later, the light flared in her bedroom. Unlike in the kitchen, her silhouette lasted for only seconds before she closed the heavy curtains, blackening his view into the bedroom.

He leaned back in the pickup and stared back at the house thoughtfully. He was going to have to call Reno. Despite her accusation that he simply tattled on her for the hell of it, that wasn't exactly true.

Reno and Clint had made a pact years ago. They knew their sisters and knew the trouble they could get into if left unattended. Both men swore the two girls, precious to them, would never lose themselves as so many other young women had.

The two men ratted to each other in the spirit of love and protection, Clint thought with a grunt as he pulled his cell phone from the holder at his hip.

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Bullshit. If Reno wasn't around as a buffer, then only God knew what Clint was going to end up doing to that sweet, hot little body of Morganna's. And in doing so, he would end up breaking them both.

THE ISLAND OF OAHU, HAWAII

Raven answered the cell phone on the third silent vibration, casting a wary glance to the bathroom as she kept her attention on the sound of running water.

"Hey, Clint. What's up?" she answered cheerfully.

Her brother's number popping up on the caller ID couldn't mean anything good.

"Hey there, Sis. How's the honeymoon going? Have you killed him yet?" Clint's voice was smooth, real smooth. It was a dead giveaway. He was madder than hell.

"Oh, like any other honeymoon." She pretended indifference. "Lots of time in bed and a little sightseeing.

Reno is balking over the snorkeling and doesn't want to hike into a volcano. Go figure."