Dirty Ties (13 page)

His fingers curled around the underside of my helmet. If I didn’t remove it soon, he’d probably do it for me.

He used the grip to hold me an inch from his erection. “Do you want to stare at it or suck it?”

I held onto my helmet. “I don’t know.” I did, more than anything, but I hadn’t thought this through. “I— I have a…career to protect.”

“A career, huh? Beyond auctioning stolen merchandise?” His head jerked toward the metal card in the slot, and in the next heartbeat, every button on the panel lit up.

Blood drained from my face. “How did you—” Oh my God, he had access to every floor. “That’s how you got through the garage door?”

“That was luck. Slipped in behind a Bentley.”

Yeah, that didn’t make me feel any safer. I started to stand, but his hands came down on mine, holding my helmet, and my body, in place. My heart pounded. “What are you going to do?”

He swiped a finger over his jaw—or along the edge of his helmet?—the movement done with blurring speed. “Yes.”

“Yes? That’s not an answer. Who are you talking to, dammit?”

His warm hands squeezed mine, using his hold to tilt my head back. “You want to wrap your mouth around my cock?”

The hard, heavy weight between us brushed against my exposed neck, coaxing a breathy rasp from my lips. “Yes.”

“You want to keep your face hidden?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the panel, his hands restraining the motion of my helmet. The floor dug into my knees, and my nerves volleyed between worry and excitement. He seemed to be waiting for something, and as the seconds passed, my worrying was winning out.

“What are—”

The overhead lights powered off, as did the panel of buttons. Pitch-black flooded the elevator. I blinked, shock locking my limbs as my breaths tumbled noisily through the dark.

“Does this resolve our dilemma?” His voice echoed around me, shivering my insides.

“Yes.”

“Yes. The answer to all of life’s problems.” Despite my grip, he yanked off my helmet and dropped it beside my knees.

Cool air tingled my cheeks as I jerked my chin to my chest, my shoulders bunching around my face. With the total absence of light, he couldn’t see me, and I couldn’t see him, but sweet Lord, I could smell him. Leather, a hint of soap, and the natural scent of his skin guided me toward his straining cock.

I kept my head down, gripped the hard muscles of his bare ass, and rubbed my cheek against his arousal. Pulsing heat gathered between my legs as my face and lips explored the steel of his cock wrapped in warm, satiny skin.

His hands slapped against the metal wall above me, his length growing harder, hotter against my mouth. With an eager lick, I swirled my tongue around the tip, the salty drip of pre-cum smearing over my lips.

He groaned, low and guttural, and his legs trembled beneath my arms. “Look at me.”

How did he know where I was looking? And why did he care? So he could turn the elevator back on? Or shine some kind of lamp— Shit! Didn’t he have a flashlight in his pocket?

Head down. Don’t look up.
I curled my fingers around his length and drew him into my mouth. After a few teasing suckles, a nip of teeth, and a caress of his heavy balls, I dug in my nails and squeezed his sac.

He shouted, but it was thick with arousal and rumbled into a moan as I swallowed the full length of him. When he hit the back of my throat, I balled my left hand, squeezing my thumb, a trick to disable my gag reflex.

How long had it been since I’d done this without a condom? I didn’t care. Hell, I wanted to drag my tongue over every inch of his unwrapped body. I wriggled my head back and forth, rubbing his cock against the back of my throat.

His body shook, and his ass flexed in my hand. I fucking loved it, loved that I could affect him as much as he affected me.

Jesus, he was so thick, the head of his cock cut my air, watering my eyes. My throat wanted to convulse, but I tightened my fist, eased back a little, and breathed through it.

The sounds of his sharp, uneven inhales surrounded me. I sucked harder, faster, letting saliva trickle out so I could slide my fist through it, pumping with a tight grip around the head and lapping at the tip.

“Goddamn, I can’t…ff-fuuhh—” His words garbled into something inaudible, smothered by gasps.

He grasped the base of my braid, slid his hand to the rubber-band, and looped the tail around and around his wrist. The follicles bit at my scalp when he ran out of hair, his hold tightening against my head.

Bucking his hips, his movements staggered. He was close. I renewed my efforts, sucking with hard pulls, bringing him closer, closer, but I wouldn’t let him come. Not yet—

He yanked my head back by the braid. His cock slipped from my mouth, and I stared up into the dark expanse above me.

His breathing stopped. His body went rigid. The silence was deafening.

Dread crawled over me. I couldn’t explain it, but something was wrong.

He untwisted his wrist from my hair, yanking in his haste to disentangle it. “Put your helmet on.” His biting tone sped up my pulse.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

The sound of his zipper reached my ears with painful finality. A lump crept into my throat as I fumbled for the helmet. When I found it, I shoved it on and climbed to my feet, righting my pants. Had I done something to piss him off? Maybe he heard someone on the other side of the doors?

As I retraced the last few seconds, the lights flickered on and the doors opened.

No one was waiting in the garage. He removed the metal card and darted out as if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

No explanation or good-bye. Not even a backward glance or a
fuck you
.

I zipped up my jacket, my chin quivering with shock and rejection. Maybe I stupidly hoped he’d come right back. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to confront the emotion burning up my cheeks, but I reached for the button to hold the doors open.

That was when I noticed it, one button in particular, the only one lit up.

88.
My floor.

My face caught fire, and my fists clenched. All that time, he had access to my condo? Not only did he know where I lived, he had a fucking key to get in.

My heart stopped, my breath strangling. If he knew my floor, did that mean he knew who I was?

I did the only thing I could. I ran after him.

If Benny would’ve wired x-ray vision in the helmet like I’d asked, I would’ve discovered Kaci Baskel’s identity in the alley. I would
not
have followed her, wouldn’t have resorted to night vision
after
her mouth was wrapped around my cock. Fuck!

Anger fueled my steps, and my fists burned to smash something. What the hell was I thinking? I’d been clumsy, careless, and now…

My teeth slammed together. I was so goddamned hard. My dick throbbed in its leather trap, aching to punish her deceitful mouth until she choked, to pound her ass until she couldn’t walk.

Losing control, dickhead. Pull your shit together.

“Speaker on.” My quiet command unmuted the cellular connection with Benny. So much easier than pressing the button beneath the helmet. “Need an update.”

“First off,” she growled through the speaker, “I wasn’t done configuring the settings on the master key before you ripped it out of the elevator.”

My fists clenched. Yeah, I knew my mistake as soon as I’d removed it and the single button for the eighty-eighth floor lit up. Benny had warned me about that, since the device replicated the nearest key card, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. Still wasn’t.

Tension tightened my face, pulling on my jaw. Dammit, I hadn’t wanted Miss Ducati to know I could sneak into her condo, not before I knew who she was and certainly not now that I knew she was Kaci Baskel. I also didn’t want to explore
why
I’d intended to trespass. “What else?”

“Trump security just found my hack on an encrypted channel.” She groaned. “Crap, cameras are back up.”

Shit. Benny dominated cryptography, but even the best hackers could be bested. She was just one person, working alone, so she relied on technologies already developed, hacking and cloning them. Like the facial and license plate recognition software. Casinos had been using that shit for years. She simply borrowed it. Same way she’d remotely borrowed the codes on the RFID key card in Kaci Baskel’s pocket.

Goddammit, it all made sense, the reason she wouldn’t show her face or give me her name, why she wouldn’t invite me up. Thankfully, I’d muted the connection in the elevator. Benny hadn’t been able to hear or see just how close I’d come to fucking Kaci.

I lengthened my strides, zipping up my jacket and pulling the flashlight from my pocket.

“Logan, you’re coming up on a—”

“I fucking know where the cameras are.” I aimed the flashlight, shining the beam at the eye of the lens mounted on the ceiling.

The high-powered light would blind the camera’s sensor as I passed. The helmet concealed my face, but my attire was recognizable. I didn’t need an outbreak of surveillance footage advertising Evader’s visit to Trump Tower. And now that I knew who lived here, I definitely didn’t need Evader associated with Trenchant.

My stomach hardened into a painful knot. She was no longer the mysterious Ducati woman I looked for after every race. She was one of
them
. A top executive. Daughter of murderers.
Wife
of the enemy
.

Venom tunneled through my gut. My blood boiled, and my lungs labored for air. I’d never felt anything like this…this overwhelming surge of emotion, but it was undeniable, sinister, fucking cruel in its assault.

She’d let me stick my fingers in her cunt, my fucking dick in her mouth, and she belonged to another man. Sweat gathered beneath my jacket and slicked my hands.
Not just any man.

Collin Anderson was the celebrated face of Trenchant, the son of a powerful family. Did that mean he was as evil as his parents? How could he not be strategically tied to their corruption?

I had no evidence of his guilt or his innocence, which angered me as much as the notion that she would slide into bed beside him tonight wet with arousal that had been stimulated by another man.
By me.

“Seriously, Logan,” Benny grumbled. “What were you thinking?”

“Piss off,” I snapped, jerking the light at the next camera, my head dizzy, my jaw locked.

All I could see was a thick braid of blonde, bright eyes, and an ethereal face. A face that had threatened to bring me to my knees in the elevator. I hadn’t needed to look at the photo that flashed on my visor, didn’t need to read the name displayed by the facial recognition software.

The moment the night vision illuminated the arches of her cheekbones, the gentle slope of her nose, her heart-shaped lips, I knew. I knew every graceful line and curve etching her features and framing her huge, devastating eyes. Eyes that had blazed green through the infrared scope, but under a normal lens were vivid blue, as rich and complex as sapphires.

I’d tracked her public appearances on the Interwebs for eight years, watched those eyes mature with age, darken with secrets, and harden with lies. Her hair always smoothed back in a pretentious coil on her head, her curves hidden behind prim suits and high necklines. An effigy of sexy, untouchable wealth.

The online photos hadn’t come close to capturing what I’d gazed down on in the elevator. Even with her hands on my ass and her mouth hovering over my cock, she had the kind of regal allure that couldn’t be replicated in magazines or on screen. When she’d stared up at me, her braid had been an unraveling mess of seduction, her beauty bare of make-up, staggering, haunting.

A headache erupted behind my eyes. I passed another camera and angled the flashlight as Benny’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Tell me you didn’t put your dick—”

“
My
dick,
my
fucking business.” The malice in my tone whipped through the garage, but I didn’t want to hear her goddamned ragging or the pangs of truth in it.

I wasn’t ready to regret the full-body bliss that had been Kaci Baskel. Her sharp wit, the heavy weight of her tits, the grip of her cunt, her sinful mouth, all assets in her seduction that’d had me demanding an invitation to her bed. I would’ve fucked her with my helmet off, my mouth on her lips, my cock jerking inside her, entwined in the dark.

Stupid, knowing her connections, but I still ached to fuck her. And
that
, I would regret. I could never forget who she was.

My pulse elevated and my ears roared as the stunning, blonde source of my anger pounded the concrete ten feet behind me. I needed to erect some un-fucking-friendly walls by the time she caught up and keep all the other shit locked down until I got out of there.

Holding the beam on the final camera, I stepped between the bikes and removed a button-sized tracking device from my pocket. Same tracker I slapped on her helmet in the park. The one I peeled off when I removed her helmet in the elevator. I hadn’t wanted to lose her when we bolted from the park, and I didn’t want to lose her now, though the reasons had changed.

Shifting my body to block her view of my hand, I wedged the tracker between the windshield and dashboard of her Ducati. I snapped my hand back just as she was sweeping past me.