His work tonight had hindered drug and sex traffickers. These busts had kept violent offenders, drugs, and dealers off the streets of America. A job well done.
But as he stuffed the still-grimy, more-brown-than-olive uniform into the washer, he thought of the family with the kid. Marcus wasn’t a big fan of kids or anything, but that little guy had been adorable. A social butterfly who spoke decent English and never stopped asking questions and touching everything. A kid who begged Marcus to pick him up, to let him ride in his truck, to touch his badge, to wear his hat, and reminded Marcus that he hadn’t gotten back to Texas to see his family or his own nephews for almost two years.
Hell, the kid had made Marcus laugh for the first time all damn week. Then he’d sent the family right back to Mexico where, if they stayed, the kid would probably end up being one of the mules Marcus arrested years down the line, smuggling drugs for one of the cartels.
The flutter of fabric caught his attention—a tear in his jacket sleeve. “Fuck me.”
These damn jackets were expensive, and he’d burned through his uniform allowance months ago.
He added soap, slammed the cover, and set the dials. He’d never be able to sleep now. Not with everything circling through his brain like this. So he trashed the dozen pizza boxes and half-dozen Chinese food boxes in his living room, cleaned his kitchen, and vacuumed the whole town house. He had a beer. He scanned the six hundred channels on TV. And he still couldn’t relax.
He really did need to get laid.
He pulled his laptop from the coffee table and opened a browser. He’d just look. The whole sexcam thing kind of made him want to squirm, the same way strip clubs did. But he wasn’t going to use the site, just…check it out.
Within five minutes, he understood everything there was to understand about camming, sexcams, and webcam modeling—it was all just a high-tech, paid peep show. They charged by the minute, the higher prices allocated to private chats, the lower prices to group chats.
And seriously? The women… Marcus would have to have a talk with Trigger about his standards if he thought a lot of these chicks were
hot
. There might be a handful that looked like models, but the rest… Ninety percent of them wouldn’t garner a second glance. At least not from Marcus.
Maybe he was too picky; his friends had always said so. Maybe he needed a vacation; he hadn’t taken any time off in years. Maybe…
Maybe he was just fucked-up.
He forced himself to click on one last URL from Google with a growing fear there was something legitimately wrong with him. At thirty-one, he might be a little older than the other guys in his team, but nowadays, he got hard just pulling on his uniform pants. It wasn’t like he didn’t
want
it.
His screen filled with two images. Active, live webcam images. Okay, that was a little more interesting than the stills—but in a way, that felt a little…perverse.
One woman, wearing nearly nothing, sat on a bed smoking a cigarette, looking blankly at a wall. Another, wearing some type of black lace bodysuit, was painting her toenails.
Really? Was that supposed to be sexy? And how was this different than picking up a hooker on the corner?
Hypothetical question. He
knew
how it was different—intellectually—but ethically?
He glanced at the clock in the upper corner of his screen—2-freaking-a.m. Maybe he’d try a run on the treadmill, if his legs could take it. Or maybe another shower—this time cold.
He lifted his hand to close the lid just as the images changed. The two videos of the other women shrank, and two more replaced them, one of which was a close-up of an eye, as if someone had the camera held right up to their face.
Marcus jerked back with a muttered “What the fuck?”
The eyeball shifted left, then right. And the bizarre situation made Marcus laugh. “Okay, that’s just freaky.”
In the other image, a woman lay on a bed in black bra and red panties. She was caressing a dildo, one that looked remarkably real with veins and ridges, which, for some reason, seemed even freakier.
This simply wasn’t for him.
He started to close his laptop and caught the sound of music over his speakers. His gaze darted back to the eye. Something about the lighting had changed, and he paused. The center’s amber starburst faded into bright moss green, all rimmed in a deep shade of blue. The sight reminded Marcus of a nebula, shards of color and swirls of light.
In the background, the deep voice of Theory of a Deadman’s lead singer murmured a song he couldn’t make out.
“What the
hell
is wrong with this thing?”
The woman’s voice cut into the quiet, startling him. He sat back, hands coming off the laptop, wondering if he’d somehow activated a connection he didn’t know about. The other cams hadn’t had sound. Then again, smoking, painting toenails, and fondling a dildo didn’t really generate noise…
The camera panned out, showing half of a young woman’s face, her mouth turned in a frown, brow furrowed in frustration. She was still looking directly into the camera and, Marcus almost believed, straight into him.
He took a slow breath, then tried a tentative “Hello?”
“God
dammit
.” The image jiggled and blurred and bounced, then a close-up of dark hardwood filled the frame. “This was a
stupid
idea. I can’t even get the damn camera to work.”
She’d obviously gotten it to work better than she realized. He searched for directions on how to use the site. At the bottom of the screen, it said a potential customer could chat with any of the girls for free, then ante up with a credit card number if they wanted more.
Marcus registered with a false last name and the e-mail he’d created for junk, then navigated back to the girl. He poised the arrow over the Chat Free button, but paused. She’d picked up the camera, struggling again, but this time, he could see her face and shoulders. And she was… Wow. She was cute. Or pretty. Or whatever…she was…wow. Her hair was long and dark. Her face sweet and smooth. God, she looked young. Too young. He liked a woman who was at least several years into adulthood, and this one looked about twenty—not far enough into adulthood to interest him in engaging.
His mind darted back to the women smuggled over the border earlier that night.
Get your head out of the fucking job.
He pushed thoughts of work aside and assessed the woman again. She wore a fair amount of makeup, and her eyes popped. Her lips shone. Her shirt was white and low-cut, and her breasts filled out every inch, her cleavage displayed in a way that made Marcus’s body tighten from shoulders to thighs.
“
Grrrrr.
” She sat back and slapped her thighs. “Perfect end to a shitty day.”
Her voice was deeper and smokier than he’d expected, and the sultry sound didn’t quite fit with that sweet face. It also made her seem older.
On the second screen, the woman playing with the realistic dildo pushed the toy into her mouth with a low moan. A burst of heat registered deep in Marcus’s gut, but his mind was 100 percent on the woman having camera issues.
Camera issues. That was something he could help with… Right? Not a sex chat. Just…helping. Yeah.
Before he’d thought it through, his hand moved, and he clicked the Chat button.
The image of the woman in white expanded and filled the screen. Everything else disappeared, and a small menu ran along the bottom. A gentle
ping-ping
sounded on both his computer and hers. Nerves skittered around his stomach. And a voice in his head whispered
you’ve done it now.
The sound seemed to surprise her as much as Marcus. She flinched and pulled in a breath, covering her mouth with both hands. Her eyes went wide, her body still as she stared at the screen. Anticipation spread through Marcus’s body in a slow, hot wave. This was just…bizarre…and entertaining in an I-shouldn’t-be-doing-this sort of way.
“Oh shit,” she whispered, fisting her hands at her neck, a look of utter panic transforming her expression with a sliver of vulnerability. “Oh,
shit
,” she said again, then fluttered her hands as if that would help her think. “Now what?”
“What the fuck?” Marcus asked himself softly. Was this an act? Because it was really cute. And doing weird things to his insides.
But over his ten years in law enforcement, Marcus had become excellent at reading people. He could always tell when someone was lying, could sense violence brewing inside someone, could evaluate rising stress levels before they broke. And he read this woman as a first timer. Which made her even more appealing.
His finger hit the mouse pad again, and the
ping-ping
repeated in stereo.
She licked her lips, repositioned herself so she was sitting sideways at the base of the bed behind her, and stretched out, leaning back on her elbows. She was wearing supershort jean cutoffs and a clinging white top that crisscrossed her breasts.
“Holy mother…” Marcus murmured. Everything inside him loosened and knotted at the same time.
Her body was tight and slim, her legs toned and tanned, feet bare. Then she tossed that coffee-colored hair over her shoulder, plastered on a hot smile, and tapped her mouse.
“Hi,” she said, her voice soft and deep with that hint of smoke that did crazy things to his belly. “I’m Tandi. What’s your name?”
The song in the background, “All or Nothing,” switched to “Heaven.” She was listening to one of Marcus’s favorite albums.
He hesitated and tried to focus. This situation suddenly seemed so completely ridiculous. “
Tandi?
Really?”
She laughed softly, shifting toward the camera. The simple act of watching her move spread a tingle of heat into Marcus’s groin.
Maybe there was something to this sexcam thing…
“Really. Who am I talking to?”
“Marcus.” Then his mind went completely blank. The way it sometimes did when an attractive woman approached him in a bar. So he forced words out. “I was just surfing through and…”
And what? Saw you fumbling?
“And liked what you saw, Marcus?” Her voice was terribly seductive, and, man, it had been a long damn time since he’d heard his name in a hot, sugary voice like that.
She rolled to her side and rested her head in her hand. Her breasts tested the stretchy fabric of her top, and Marcus’s mouth went from desert to oasis. “I definitely like what I see,” he murmured, his brain half-hazed. “But that’s not why I requested a chat.”
She bent her knees, easing her body into a soft curve, and slid her free hand over her hip and down her thigh. Marcus squeezed his hand closed, running his fingers over his palm, wishing he were touching her skin.
“Are you sure?” she asked sweetly. “I could show you a little more… Maybe change your mind…”
Two
She was
so
winging it.
Tova hadn’t been prepared to start working yet. Not tonight. It was two in the damn morning. She’d started her day with an organic chemistry midterm, continued with classes and labs until late afternoon, and begun her shift at the diner an hour later. She’d finally gotten home at midnight and spent the last two hours in a crash sexcam class with Carrie, her coworker at the diner, then set up her “model” account on the Playhouse Flirt website.
She’d only been trying to get the camera working before she’d planned on falling in bed because she had to get up in a few hours and do it all over again. But the damn camera was broken. Or defective. Or something. And she wasn’t ready to actually
perform
, for fuck’s sake.
Beyond that, she was
seriously
second-guessing this whole damned idea.
But she lifted her hand to her shoulder and let her fingers follow the edge of her top down her cleavage to the V, then started up the other side—because she never dropped out of something midstream. “Would you like to see a little more, Marcus?”
“I’m not here for…um…that.” Her shoulders would have slumped with relief—if she didn’t need the money so badly. “I mean, I was, but changed my mind, then saw you struggling with your camera and, you know, thought I could help.”
Her mind skipped, a flat rock on smooth water. “My…?”
The camera had been on this whole time? She’d been acting like a total loser on an international webcam?
Her heart, and her hope of success, sank. But she knew how to cover in front of an audience.
“Oh.” She forced a casual laugh. “Sorry about that. I just upgraded my camera, and I’m not the most technically savvy.” She eased her tone toward sultry and her smile toward flirty. “But I’m really good at other things. I’ll bet I could hike your interest level if you let me give it a try.”
She had to entice him from the free chat area into the paid private area. Then she had to get naked in front of some invisible guy. Touch herself. Act like she liked it. Keep him tantalized as long as possible and leave him satisfied so he’d come back again.
Tova’s stomach buzzed with so much tension, she thought she might just throw up.