Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (10 page)

“Good call.” Cooper picked up a pen from the desktop and toyed with it between his fingers as he leaned back in his chair. “You’re instincts are good, Graham. Keep your head clear and focus on what you remember. If you talk to this woman again, you’ll know it.”

Keep his head clear. As in keep Mallory out of his thoughts.

Nice way to discreetly imply what you really mean, sir.

“If there’s nothing more, I’m going to wrap up a few things in my office then head home to get ready for my new job.” She had some paperwork to complete from another assignment and she needed a shower as well as some time to get into what she thought of as her club mode before seven o’clock.

“You’re both free to leave.” Cooper straightened, replaced the pen on his desk, and returned to whatever he’d been working with on the computer when she’d interrupted him.

Mallory snagged the uniform and walked out the door, hearing Jackson’s soft footfalls directly behind her. She let him close Cooper’s door and didn’t look back as she made her way down the hall to her own office.

“Mal.”

Her step faltered when he softly said her name. She took a deep breath as she turned, readying herself for the detonation. He stopped close enough to her that his familiar, musky scent surrounded her. It seeped into her flesh, wound through her system, and teased every erogenous zone in her body.
Sweet hormones
, she wanted to play scratch and sniff with this man.

“Be careful tonight.” His hand brushed hers so gently she might have imagined the touch. No way could she imagine the electric fingers of sensation that sizzled up her arm. “And use those earrings at the first sign of trouble.”

She knew he was thinking about her last club assignment, how she’d confessed to the team that she had allowed herself to be taken from the club, had waited until the ringleader exposed his hideout before she had alerted the team.

“You be careful, too.” Emotion tightened her throat as she gazed up at him and saw things in his eyes she didn’t want to see. He was the only man who’d ever awakened a desire in her she had to fight so hard to control. The only way to fight it, the only way to control it, lay in her continued ploy to get him where she wanted him…beneath her, against a wall, in the backseat of a car. Who the hell cared as long as his cock was buried deep inside her sopping pussy. Only then would she be able to get him out of her system.

She flatted her hand on his chest and let it slide down, absorbing the feel of his rock-hard body beneath her palm. “I’d hate for something to happen to this body before I finally get to play.”

He closed his eyes, sighed, and slowly shook his head. When he looked at her again, the frustration and pain twisting with something she didn’t dare define in his eyes took her breath away. He held her gaze a moment longer, took a step back, and walked down the hall.

She winced as the door to his office closed with a loud thud. It was past time to stop this dance, to change the game. It needed to happen soon or they were both going to wind up hurt.

“To call or not to call,” Cameron said aloud in his best Shakespearean-era imitation as he stared at the number in his recent call log. “That, my friends, is the million dollar question of the night.”

He shouldn’t make the call. Every fiber of his being screamed for him not to do it.

Every testosterone-driven cell in his body screamed exactly the opposite.

Call Adrien instead
, a voice in his head whispered.

Yeah, like that would help. Except, it might. He’d tried calling Adrien last night, but the man hadn’t answered. As a matter of fact, Adrien’s number was right there on the screen in his recent call log above Thaddeus’s. Talking with Adrien always put him in a better frame of mind as long as he didn’t dwell on how badly he wanted to fuck the other man. Which was exactly why he hadn’t been able to walk away like he told Adrien he was going to do the last time he had seen him.

Right, it had nothing to do with your feelings for him.

Cameron cursed the persistent voice in his head that obviously didn’t have a clue about shit and touched the icon to call Adrien without looking at the screen. Two rings and a voice that stopped his heart answered.

“Hello?”

Shit, fuck!
Cameron pulled the phone from his ear, his eyes widening as he stared at the display. The screen didn’t say Bingham, A. with the number below it. It showed only a Silver Springs number. Thaddeus’s Silver Springs number.
Double shit, fuck.

“Hell-
o
?” Thaddeus said again slowly as Cameron put the phone back to his ear. “Silence can be great sometimes, but it gets a bit awkward on a telephone, especially when I don’t know who I’m supposed to be talking to.”

“It’s Cameron.” He closed his eyes and rested his forehead in his hand, pressing at his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

“Wow. Well, hello there,” Thaddeus said on a half laugh of surprise. “What can I do for you?”

Hang up on me. Stop me from making a huge mistake. Tell me to fuck off.

He didn’t say any of that, though. Instead, he said the first thing that came to mind.

“I was wondering if you had already made plans for dinner tonight.” He was?

Oh, hell.

“I, um, no, I haven’t.” Thaddeus sounded flabbergasted.

Cameron could relate. He felt pretty stunned himself. Jesus, what the fuck was he doing?

“Actually, I just got out of the shower,” Thaddeus went on, and Cameron so didn’t need to hear that.

Images of Thaddeus’s rock-solid body, naked with remnants of his shower beading on his tanned flesh, flipped through Cameron’s mind like an X-rated slideshow.

“You weren’t headed to bed, were you?” Oh, yeah, and thinking about that was really going to help him turn off the personal porno starting to play in his head. “Your first competition in the firefighter challenge is tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Thaddeus confirmed. “Nine a.m. I’ve been in the gym. You know, trying to keep up my stamina and all that?”

And the mental pictures just keep on coming.

Cameron’s porn flick rewound to before Thaddeus’s shower. He saw the other man flat on his back on a weight bench, shirtless with beads of sweat scattered over the hard planes of his pecs and abs. The muscles in his arms grew taut as he lifted the weight bar, brought it down within an inch of that mouthwatering chest, and pushed it up again.

“What did you have in mind?”

Thaddeus’s question snapped Cameron from his reverie.

Honey, you so don’t want to know.
“I’m not sure exactly.” He ran through the restaurants he knew of near Jackson’s apartment. “Do you like Chinese? There’s a great little Chinese restaurant about two blocks from where you are. It’s within walking distance, or I could swing by and pick you up.”

“Or you could park here and we could walk together,” Thaddeus countered.

“Or I could park there and we can walk together,” Cameron repeated, already hearing the nails being hammered into his coffin. He shouldn’t do this. He
knew
he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Suddenly, a thought popped into his head that just might provide a safety net for the evening. “Why don’t you ask Terri to come, too. There’s no sense in her sitting around Jackson’s apartment alone.”

“She has her own date.” Thaddeus laughed, and Cameron’s hopes for protection plummeted to his gut. “The girl works fast. She met this guy at lunch today, another firefighter at that. We went to the High Noon Cafe Jackson told us about. Anyway, we were walking out and she plowed into this guy who was walking in. Instant attraction. Since she’d already eaten lunch, he asked her out to dinner. They left here about an hour ago.”

“Then I guess it’s just you and me.” Lord save him, because it damn sure looked like no one else was going to.

“Great. I’ll meet you downstairs in, what, a half an hour, or do you need more time?”

“Half an hour is good. See you then.” Cameron ended the call and slouched in his chair. “What the fuck did I just do?”

He’d asked a guy on a date. That’s what he’d done.

His phone vibrated in his hand. He glanced at the screen and closed his eyes on a sigh. And fate, being the naughty bitch that she was, chose that moment for Adrien to return last night’s phone call.

He ignored it, raked a hand through is hair, and got to his feet. There was nothing left for him to do here at the office tonight. Mallory was undercover at Stardust with Tarantino watching her back, Cooper was doing whatever it was Cooper did, Jackson was tracking down leads, and he’d taken the surveillance footage to their analyst in hopes the agent could turn the darkness to bright and pull out some sort of photo of the woman driving the Impala. That left him with nothing to do except wait.

And go on a date.

“I’m so fucked.” Any other time, that’s exactly what he’d be looking for. And maybe it was tonight. Maybe Jackson was right.

Yeah, and maybe a cosmic blast of energy would destroy the earth before he got to Thaddeus and end all his indecision and misery. Hey, it could happen.

* * * *

The beat of the music pulsed through Mallory’s body as she wove her way through the tables of Stardust. Smells of alcohol, colognes, and arousal permeated the air. She walked confidently in her five-inch stilettos, adding an extra sway to her hips for the benefit of the men watching. She had applied her makeup thicker than usual, purposely accenting what she had been told were her best features, her eyes and cheekbones. She had left her hair down, allowing it to flow freely around her face and down her back. The uniform hugged her every curve like a second skin. The bodice left enough of her breasts exposed for a tantalizing view. The skirt rode so high, if she bent her knees, she was in danger of showing off the thin, black, satin-and-lace thong she wore beneath.

She knew she looked hot. She might be on an assignment with seedy, testosterone-crazed men eyeing her every move, but a small part of her that was all female enjoyed the attention. She smiled as heads turned when she walked by their table. It was good for business, good for her character, employment security for Jacqueline. It was, after all, the first step in infiltrating the club and finding out what went on behind closed doors.

She took several drink orders as she made her way to her destination, her attention on constant alert, observing every customer, every action, picking up on tidbits of conversations. Years of training, coupled with a keen innate instinct, told her approximately how many people were in the bar, who she needed to watch out for, and the best route to the front and back exits. She filed it all away in her memory as she settled into her role.

A plump and balding man at the table by the stage where she stopped grabbed her ass as she attempted to hand him his drink order. She had been expecting it, time number three in the last hour, definitely someone to watch out for.

Three strikes and you’re out, bud.

She tightened her grip on the tray in her left hand and held his drink in front of him. “Why don’t you wrap your hand around this instead of my ass, darlin’.” She put a butt load of sweetness in her voice with a dash of flirtation and accented it with a heavy Southern drawl.

“But your ass feels much better,” he said in a drunken slur and squeezed her right cheek.

A warm breeze caressed the bottom curve of one bare cheek and she knew her skirt had hiked up far more than she wanted it to. She shifted her stance, but the skirt stuck where it had positioned itself like glue.

“I bet it does, but we have a rule here at Stardust, no touching the staff,” she reminded the man sweetly. Sasha, the barmaid, had told her the man was a regular patron of the club when he had first walked in. He knew the rules but, hey, why not push it with the new help?

“Now, wouldn’t you rather sit here and watch the next beautiful woman hit the stage instead of having our bouncer over there toss you out the front door on your nose?” She flicked a pointed glance at Bruno, a fitting name for a bouncer in her opinion, then smiled at the man.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” He squeezed her ass again before taking his drink from her hand.

Mission accomplished, at least for now. “Well, now, we don’t want it to be the last, though, do we?” The volume of the music increased as the next stripper sashayed onto the stage behind her. She raised her voice. “Now, behave yourself and enjoy the show.” She gave him a flirtatious wink and moved away from the table, discreetly pulling down her skirt with her free hand as she walked back to the bar.

“Nicely played,” Sasha said, evidently impressed. She was a petite woman in her late twenties with an hourglass figure, chin-length golden blonde hair, wide green eyes, and a silver bar with black balls on each end through one brow. “I couldn’t hear what you said, but it was obviously firm yet polite. It appeared to work, too. A couple of waitresses have gotten fired for decking that dickhead.”

Had they been fired or disappeared like Lexie Stratus? Out of the corner of her eye, Mallory saw Tarantino lift his beer to his lips. He sat on the barstool closest to the waitress station, turned toward the stage, his posture relaxed. Inside, she knew he was in full alert mode, cataloguing everything he saw and heard as he watched her back.