Sexual Games [The Heroes of Silver Springs 8] (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

Jackson crawled into the car and folded himself on the backseat. He grunted when the door hit his feet as she shut it, and pulled his legs in tighter. Another door opened and the scent of perfume followed her into the car.

Jackson drew his brows together behind the blindfold. Mallory always smelled like strawberries. She never wore perfume. He liked the scent, though. It wasn’t too potent or floral like most fragrances. He made a mental note to ask her what brand it was later, to tell her to wear it more often.

“So where are you taking me?” He could ask, though he knew she wouldn’t tell him. He probably should make his voice wobble a bit, too, make it sound like he was frightened, just to heighten the intent of the game. After all, he was being kidnapped by a total stranger.

As he expected, she didn’t answer him. He heard the engine come to life, heard the click as she put the car in gear, and felt them start to move. In the cramped space of the backseat and with the blindfold over his eyes, he could do little more than listen. He focused on the sounds around him. He heard cars passing by, heard the tires screech faintly on the pavement when she didn’t slow enough for a turn, but it was her audible, labored breathing that caught him by surprise.

Mallory Stone didn’t get rattled, at least not to the point that she let it physically show. Her training coupled with self-discipline and a smart head kept her steady and outwardly unfazed in sticky situations. He’d watched her come straight out of the academy and hit the club scene on assignments that sent other rookies running. She collected the intel, solved the cases, and moved on to the next assignment without blinking a beautiful sea-blue eye. She had proved herself a mover and a shaker in the bureau. She could handle herself in the line of duty better than some of the male agents he knew.

She could handle her own heart, too, masterfully keeping it under lock and key. He should know. He’d been waiting for that lock to bust for years. It was happening now and it was obviously scaring the shit out of her.

Please, don’t get so scared that you put an end to this. Follow it through, Mal, and let me take care of the rest.

Anticipation pumped with hope through his veins. What would she do when they reached wherever she planned to take him? The memory of his previous “kidnapping” resurfaced and he let it come, replacing Angelina with Mallory in the vision as he’d often done in his dreams since that night. He felt Mallory’s hands on him, skimming down his torso to the waistband of his slacks. She freed the button, lowered the zipper, and sank to her knees in front of him, taking his pants and briefs down with her. His balls tightened as her nails lightly grazed over his nut sac before palming it and rolling his balls between her fingers. He felt the moan rumble in his chest and fought not to let it out as she closed her pink glossy lips around his cock head.

Jesus
, he had to stop the image or he’d end up blowing his wad in his pants before she even touched him. He attempted to shift, to relieve some of the pressure behind his zipper, but the backseat didn’t afford him enough room. He wanted to say something, anything to ease the nervousness he heard in her breathing, but he didn’t want to ruin it. If he said too much, said the wrong thing, she would run. He knew that as well as he did his own name. Mallory Stone’s only fear was losing her heart. She’d come this far. She had to know she was putting that on the line. He’d spelled it out for her and left her no room for doubt about that. It was his job to continue to let her make the moves tonight. If he could pull it off, he’d finally have what he wanted.

Her.

What felt like hours to his tortured cock, but probably only amounted to fifteen minutes tops, passed before she finally slowed the car to a stop. She shut off the engine, got out, and opened the door at his feet.

“Get out.”

Jackson had heard her give orders before. Okay, so those orders had been on an assignment and not in the middle of a sex game. Still, her tone was different. It didn’t drip sex like it always did when she spoke to him. Then again, maybe it was his desire for her that made him hear that constant you-know-you-want-to-fuck-me in her tone because, hell, yes, he did want to fuck her. Every time he looked at her he had to work not to envision her bronze flesh naked and writhing beneath him as he thrust his aching cock into her sopping pussy.

He uncurled his legs, the move giving his rock-solid cock the necessary space to stretch further, and slid ungracefully out of the car. A gentle breeze greeted him as he straightened. He turned his head, not trying to see because that would be futile, but listening for new sounds, indications that would clue him in on where they were. Outside, obviously.
The lake, perhaps?
Desire looped through him like a ribbon of silk. The idea of making love to Mallory beneath the stars tied that ribbon securely around his stiffened cock.

“This way.” She took his arm above the elbow again and led the way.

“Where are we?” Fallen limbs and leaves crunched under his feet. Something brushed his cheek.
A low branch of a tree?
Crickets chirped in the distance. His mind reeled as possibilities of their location created a list he couldn’t check off without the ability to see.
Damn it
, he wanted this blindfold gone.

“You’ll see.”

The first dart of alarm shot through Jackson’s system. She’d stopped whispering, apparently no longer afraid of being overheard, and suddenly she didn’t sound like Mallory. She didn’t feel like Mallory, either. He’d been trained to notice everything, and now the mental notes he’d been subconsciously making started to take the shape of puzzle pieces looking for a fit. The hand on his arm wasn’t just soft and warm. It was covered in some sort of glove. Even through the material, he realized she wore a ring on the third finger. Mallory never wore rings. The breasts that had brushed his bicep when she’d taken hold of him and steered him the direction she wanted weren’t as pliant or large as Mallory’s.

Christ!
If he’d been thinking with his head and not his cock, he would’ve realized the obvious in an instant. This was
not
Mallory Stone.

The toes of his right foot connected with something hard on the ground and he stumbled, stopped, and started to turn. The sound of her pulling back the slide on likely his own M9 Beretta followed by the feel of the barrel as it returned to the small of his back sent an icy chill through his soul. She held the gun with her left hand, something else that should’ve immediately set off his internal alarm bells, and—
holy shit
—she apparently knew how to use that gun, too. Shock she might actually shoot him propelled him forward.

“Who the hell are you?” Just like that the anticipation in his veins morphed to adrenaline. Forget where they were. Getting away from here alive suddenly became his top priority. He could take her. He didn’t doubt that. They taught him more in Quantico than how to shoot a gun. A quick, low sweep of his leg to hers as he spun, coupled with a blow to her gun arm, and she would go down, sending the gun flying.

Hopefully before she gets off a shot.

“Someone who needs your help.” Her voice still wobbled with nerves. That could be both good and bad. A nervous person with a gun could find herself too scared to shoot or too trigger-happy to realize what she’d done until it was too late.

Jackson prayed for the first outcome because the second would lead to his certain death. Then again, if she really wanted his help, he couldn’t very well do that from a grave. “I don’t suppose it crossed your mind to ask?”

“Too risky. Stop here.”

Jackson gave a half-humorless laugh and stopped walking. “As opposed to kidnapping a federal agent?”

“No one saw. No one followed. You made it easy enough. Thank you for that.”

Yeah, no need to remind him how he’d willingly walked, hard-dick and full of hope, to her car. He’d let her take his cell phone, allowed her to freaking
disarm
him, and gotten into that car with a head full of images and a system surging with need for Mallory.

Fuck!
That woman might quite literally be the death of him.

“You can thank me by taking off this blindfold.”
And by not shooting me.
“I’m claustrophobic. All this darkness is freaking me out worse than that gun you’re holding to my back.”

“You’re handling well.”

“I’m a trained agent. We handle lots of things well.”

“That’s why I need you.”

Need. Jackson knew all about need, though he strongly suspected her definition of the word and his fit in totally different dictionaries.

“You’re in the middle of a wooded field on the wrong side of town. I suggest you don’t stay here too long after I’m gone.”

Jackson felt the gun in his back lower once more, felt her other hand reach around him, and realized she was returning his cell phone to his pocket and his sidearm to his shoulder holster as she talked.

“You’re just going to leave me out here?”

“You’re a trained agent. You’ll handle it well.”

Touché.
“Do I know you? Because you sure as shit seem to know a lot about me.”

She ignored that. “Don’t try to follow me. Don’t take off the blindfold until you can’t hear my car anymore. The club through the trees to your left is where you want to focus. Start with Lexie Stratus. Find her, Agent Graham. No one else will.”

“Who is she? What can you tell me about her? Who else is looking for her?” His questions fell unanswered in the night air, followed by a brief silence and then the sounds of twigs and leaves crunching as she left him where he stood.

He turned toward the sound of the car cranking. The black cloth covering his eyes turned a dark gray as the headlights hit him. He didn’t take off the blindfold, knowing she was still watching him, knowing one wrong move could still spell death or, at the very least, an exchange of gunfire he’d rather avoid. He waited until the cloth turned stark black again, until the sound of the car’s engine started to fade, and yanked the blindfold from his eyes.

He found himself in a wooded field just like she’d said. His gaze landed first through a group of trees in front of him where he saw a path barely wide enough for the Impala she’d been driving. He spun to his left, his attention latching onto the trees where she’d told him to focus. Though them, he saw the flickering neon lights that spelled out
Stardust
above a building that had surely seen better days.

He knew the club, a strip joint that catered to the slime balls and lowlifes of the area with more drugs going in and out the doors than a Rite Aid Pharmacy. The Waterston PD had an undercover task force that frequented the premises of Stardust and other clubs in the area, following up on leads to drug pushers and pimps. As far as he knew, none of those leads had turned over anything at Stardust beyond minor infractions of the law, and nothing that even remotely suggested anyone who hung around the place might be involved in a missing person’s case.

Start with Lexie Stratus. Find her, Agent Graham. No one else will.

Apparently his good-Samaritan kidnapper believed otherwise.

* * * *

Mallory Stone looked around at the midthigh skirts, low-cut shirts, and faces with heavily applied makeup and felt decidedly out of place. Six months ago, she could’ve come straight from the office to the club and fit right in. Then again, until six months ago she’d been on constant assignment. She’d worked undercover and frequented the clubs at all hours of the day and night, following leads and checking out the validity of tips. She still did, though lately her work had been done in the office, thumbing through intel that may or may not be pertinent to her team’s ongoing Operation Water Down.

These days, she’d scaled down her dress code, wearing more conservative attire around FBI HQ. She dressed like an agent in slacks or longer skirts, dress shirts and jackets. Today, she’d gone for a black skirt that fell just above her knees with a button-down solid white shirt and a black jacket tapered at the waist. Three-inch black heels completed her outfit and carried her confidently and surely toward the bar.

“What can I get for you?” The bartender was new, male, thirtyish, with no defining features to make a girl swoon, and greeted her with a too-wide toothy grin.

“Vodka and tonic.” Mallory settled on a barstool, saw his gaze move over her, and knew when he made the mental decision that she was old enough to be in the club. He might have carded her in her club clothes.

She curled her fingers around the glass he set in front of her and turned on her stool to take in the club behind her. Cinderella’s was a middle-class establishment in the middle-class part of town. It stayed off the bureau radar by maintaining a good reputation, with few fights and even fewer drug busts on the premises. Not much trouble broke out in Cinderella’s, which made it her favorite place to unwind after a long day at HQ.

Dimmed track lighting illuminated an open floor plan with a close scattering of tables surrounding an LED disco-style dance floor. At seven p.m., the crowd was still thin, the techno music playing from the raised DJ booth soft enough to talk over but loud enough to dance to. Cocktail waitresses dressed in uniforms that were both sexy and classy wove their way through the people holding trays of Jell-O shots and test tubes of the night’s special. In little more than an hour, those trays would be close to empty, the music blaring, and the dance floor packed with hot, sweaty bodies grinding to the beat.