Fallen Angels 05 - Possession (20 page)

“Don’t ask me to clear your head for you,” Duke growled. “Because I’m going to use that bathroom stall you’re hiding in to do it.”

Every night around two a.m., the Iron Mask’s entrance line got shut down, and that meant that he had a good hour to deal with a dwindling number of ever more intoxicated and compromised brilliant thinkers—like this wiry guy who’d decided he was going to be cool and do coke out in the open on one of the tables. Confronted, he’d dodge-balled around the security staff and locked himself in here.

The sound of a giant inhale through a deviated septum suggested that Einstein with the powder fixation was going for some more nose courage.

Maybe he’d do another line and end up levitating right up and out.

Of course, it could be worse. At least Fleet-foot hadn’t picked one of the private bathrooms—because then Duke would have had to hard-shoulder through a locked door in front of the patrons. As it was, the guy had gunned for a public facility, and picked the middle of the three bays that were opposite the urinals.

Out of the corner of his eye, Duke caught sight of his reflection in the mirrors over the lineup of sinks. Jacked forward on his hips, he was unaware of having curled up a pair of fists, but there they were.

“On the count of three,” he barked. “You come out, or I’m coming in after you. One—”

“Duke.”

The sound of his boss’s voice cut through his aggression. Slightly.

Twisting on his hips, he looked over his shoulder at Alex Hess. “I’m handling this.”

“No, you’re not.” She jerked a thumb at the door she’d come through. “Out.”

“I got this.” He turned back around. “Give me—”

Alex materialized in front of him, moving impossibly fast, and the force of her presence was like getting popped in the face with a crowbar. In a quiet voice, she hissed, “Here’s the deal. You’ve been walking that line tonight, and if you go any further with this? You’re going to hurt him.” As he opened his mouth, she put her palm up. “My turf, my rules. Don’t make me escort you the fuck out of here, because I will. If you kill someone on this job? I’ve got the CPD so far up my ass, I’m stirring my coffee with their badges.”

In all her buck-stops-here anger, her gray eyes seemed to glow, and it wasn’t like he doubted that she’d physically relocate him if she had to. The boss lady was usually right and always in control—of herself, and of others.

But come
on
.

Duke shook his head. “This is no different than any other night.”

“And the fact that you don’t recognize where you’re at proves my point. Now back off.”

Abruptly, the room became preternaturally clear, everything from the bright shine of the black tile on the walls, to the white veins in the black marble floor, to the sound of the wheezing coming from that middle stall.

“You’re going to kill someone,” Alex said roughly. “I can see it in your eyes. And you’ve got to trust me on this before you do something both of us are going to regret.”

“Fucking hell,” he muttered.

When she just cocked an eyebrow, he peeled off, stalked to the door, and punched his way through—

Hello, peanut gallery of meatheads.

Immediately outside the loo, a crowd of security staff had gathered, the bunch of them standing in a half-moon orientation, like they were ready to catch the fallout of either him or the blowhead or the boss coming out of the enclosed space.

Cursing under his breath, Duke ignored them all, and marched to the back of the club, shoving through the staff-only door and then pacing up and down the empty corridor between the offices and the locker room.

The air was cooler here, and he took some deep breaths, the lingering perfume and body oils from the working girls doing some kind of aromatherapy on him.

He was on his second round trip down and back when Alex came through the door he’d put to use. “My office. Right now.”

Ah, shit.

Duke walked over with her, but didn’t sit down once they were shut in together. Picking the far wall, he leaned up against the concrete and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

Alex parked it behind her desk. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Great. He couldn’t wait to hear this.

“We’re giving you a couple of nights off.”

He looked up. “That’s ridiculous. I’m—”

Alex cupped her hand by her ear. “Not going to argue with me? Fantastic. Good choice.”

Duke scrubbed his face so he didn’t start yelling and thereby prove her damn point. “I don’t need—”

“To waste either of our time trying to convince me otherwise? Man, you are getting
so
smart. I really respect where you’re at.”

As he resumed glaring at the floor, he could feel her staring at him across the desk.

Abruptly, she picked up the one living thing in the room: a small plant in a green-colored plastic pot.

“You see this?” she said. “You know who gave it to me? A nice guy named Detective de la Cruz. He paid me a visit here a little while ago, and you wanna know whose health plan he’s on? The CPD’s. Again, nice guy. But I didn’t want this fucking plant, and I reallllly don’t want him to come back—most certainly not because we had bodily damage of a permanent variety happen in one of my fucking bathrooms by one of my cocksucking bouncers.”

“I can keep it together.”

She put the pathetic ivy or fern or whatever it was back down. “It’s my own damned fault. I didn’t realize this, but you’ve worked the last twenty-five nights that we’ve been open in a row—I shouldn’t have asked you to come in last evening. You’re just too dependable, and frankly, too good at your dumb-ass job. Unfortunately, you’re also getting burned out. It happens. Those idiots out there will drive you demented.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “This is not subject to compromise or discussion. At all. You either do what I say, or, as much as it pains me to say this, I’m going to fire you.”

Duke felt his temper flare even higher … but he knew better than to argue. She was holding all his cards, and she probably wasn’t being all that unfair. Damn her.

“Can I finish out tonight?”

“As long as you relax? Yeah. But then it’s two shifts off.” Duke turned to go. “I didn’t say I was done with you.”

“What,” he asked the closed door.

“You have a visitor. I put her down the hall in the interrogation room.”

Duke cranked around. “Visitor?”

Alex offered a sly smile. “Blond. Five-eight. Looks out of place here—which I can’t help but think recommends her. In fact, maybe if you spend a little time with the female? You’ll get in a better mood.”

Duke blew out of the boss lady’s office and strode down that corridor. When he got to the door of the room they “talked” to people in, he didn’t knock, just opened wide.

And there she was, standing in her sensible shoes, hands in the pockets of her jeans, eyes shooting over like she was out of her element, her comfort zone … and her mind.

At least in her opinion.

Duke would beg to differ, however.

Dropping his lids, a sense of purpose calmed him out so much better than the chain-yanking of his boss.

As he shut the door, she lifted her hand awkwardly. “Hi. I…”

He put his finger to his lips and
shhh
’d her. Then he went over to the monitoring equipment in the far corner and reached waaaaaay up, disconnecting the unit that was mounted on the ceiling.

Facing off at her, he drawled, “I’m assuming you don’t want this recorded.”

“Ah…”

As she clearly searched for words, it was obvious she hadn’t been playing when she’d said she didn’t do shit like this.

No problem. He was going to take care of everything.

Closing in, he already had her naked in his mind, naked and up on the table in the middle of the room, her legs spread for him as he kissed her so hard, she fell back on the scratched surface.

He didn’t say anything as he reached for her, slipping a hand around the base of her neck and pulling her forward by the throat.

She put her palms out to his chest and held him off. “Don’t you want to…”

“What? Talk?” His eyes locked on her mouth. “That’s not why you came. That’s not why I asked you here.”

In the recesses of his mind, he found it strange that he was so sexed up over this female. But he wasn’t wasting time on that one. She was here. She was not going to say no. And he needed this with a desperation he not only didn’t understand, but knew better than to question.

He wanted her willing, however.

And that meant he was going to have to seduce her into the fucking.

He moved his hand up so that it plowed into her hair, and then took her by the waist. “I saw your car earlier. You came by the front of the club, didn’t you.”

She swallowed hard. “I wanted to see…”

“Me.” He leaned in, putting his chest against her breasts and his mouth next to her ear. “You wanted to see me again, because you couldn’t believe you were thinking about meeting me here. You couldn’t believe that while you were watching that singer … I was the man on your mind.”

He moved his hips in, brushing his erection against her before he backed off to measure her reaction.

Oh, yeaaaah. That’s what he wanted: Her lids closed briefly and her lips parted—so she’d definitely felt what he’d wanted her to.

“I knew you were going to come,” he said, “for me.”

That was when he kissed her, shifting fast and taking over, gathering her hard and bringing her in tight to his body as his mouth found hers. She was stiff against him, but that didn’t last. As he licked his way into her, she went loose all over, and man, that was good—just as good as the way she tasted.

Talk about transformation. All that pent-up frustration he’d been riding got rechanneled into lust for her, and the heady surge of erotic power was his first clue that this casual hookup was going to be different. But then he didn’t think of anything much else. She was the perfect receptacle for his burn, her tongue meeting his, her spine arching her forward, her arms shooting around his shoulders to hold him in return.

When she pulled away briefly, he knew what she was worried about.

“No lock on the door,” he told her. Because the last thing the club needed was an accusation of false imprisonment. “But the thing opens inward, so if you want privacy, I can fuck you up against it.”

Her eyes widened, as if she were trying to figure out whether the coarse language offended her or turned her on even more.

When she brought his mouth back down to hers, he took that as a “wow, what a great idea to body-block everyone out of our little piece of privacy.”

Roger that. Duke maneuvered her against the panels and went for her turtleneck, yanking it free of her waistband so he could slip his palms onto the smooth, warm skin of her torso. In response, she put her arms up, and he didn’t wait for further instruction; he swept the shirt up and over her head, tossing it aside.

Nice bra.

Little girlie for his tastes, but he so didn’t mind that lace on her in the slightest—through the peekaboo weave, he could see her tight pink nipples, and as much as he was enjoying what was going on with her lips, he wanted at all that, too.

No reason to bother removing those fragile cups. He nuzzled his way south, kissing her throat, her collarbones, the smooth plane of her sternum—and then going on to her breast. Extending his tongue, he went for that nipple, licking at the tip of it, sucking it in, running his lips back and forth against the combination of lace and flesh. And she liked the attention he was paying her. Her hands dug into his hair and tugged at his head—not to push him away, though. Hell, no. She was holding him to her.

He didn’t need the encouragement.

Man, he loved the way she smelled—as well as the fact that she’d showered before she came to him: The undercarriage of her hair was just a little damp, and on her skin, a faint fragrance lingered. No heavy lotions and stuff for her, not like the working girls here at the club. Delicate soap, something natural and clean.

Looks out of place here—which I can’t help but think recommends her.

At least he and his boss could agree on one thing tonight.

Easing back, Duke hooked both of the straps at her shoulders and braced himself to see her properly. Pulling downward and caressing her upper arms as he went, he revealed what he had been attending to.

“Fuck …” he breathed.

Talk about perfect. Nothing but creamy skin and those tight little nipples he could now get to without anything in his way.

With every inhale she took, her breasts swayed ever so slightly…

The groan that boiled up out of him sounded like the growl of a beast—and wasn’t that pretty damn accurate. At the moment, he was feeling about as civilized as a panther.

And this sweet-smelling female who was now half naked in front of him?

She was going to be his meal.

Cait was out of her mind, and she wasn’t going to do one damned thing about it. The man who had just kissed her like no one else ever had was now taking off her bra—and for once in her life, she wasn’t freaking out over the mole on the breast on the right, or the fact that maybe she wasn’t precisely symmetrical, or … all those other real or imagined things that had previously come to mind when she’d been getting naked in other circumstances.

The only thing she cared about was getting his mouth on her without any barriers—

“Fuuuuck,” he said deeply.

Well, now. Wasn’t that an entire thesaurus worth of compliments—a you-are-so-beautiful-totally-hot-freaking-awesome-blowing-my-mind all rolled up together.

And then he growled. Like, actually let out that sound she’d only read about men making.

She didn’t have any time to dwell on it, though.

With a surge of his powerful body, Duke dropped down and licked at one of her nipples, his attention turning to a suckling as he snaked a hold around her waist and bent her backward. As he went for the other one, her body got torqued into a completely unnatural position, but she didn’t care. Not with those lips tugging at her, not with his soft hair once again in her grip, not with that erection of his pushing into her hip.