Fixing Justice (21 page)

Before stalking off in her direction, Drae tugged the cuffs of his shirt and adjusted his tie just as the security chief appeared with questions. It wasn’t but a couple of minutes later when Drae saw Tony Barnes appear and make a beeline for Victoria. Fuck. Just what he didn’t need.

Tension was rolling off of her in waves. Glad to have this assignment wrapping up, Tori had been trying to relieve some of the stiffness in her body when she heard a sound behind her. Expecting to turn around and find Draegyn stalking her as he’d done all day, she was startled to find a man she didn’t know bearing down on her with a look that made her shiver in revulsion.

Dressed in a double-breasted suit, the stranger carried himself with a smug superiority that instantly rubbed her the wrong way. Beside the fact that the tailored suit made him look like an Italian waiter, he also had jet black wavy haired that was severely slicked back giving him a phony air, setting alarm bells clattering in her mind. When he reached her and offered an introduction, she was dismayed to see a garish twinkle on his extended hand.
Ewww.
She hated a pinkie ring on a man. Wallace had worn one. It was an ugly thing with a family crest that he toyed with incessantly. Of course this douchebag, whoever he was, would be wearing a ring. She knew before he even spoke that he was a poser, plain and simple.

“Miss Bennett, I believe?” he hissed in a smarmy tone. “I have been remiss. Please permit me to welcome you to my hotel. I am Anthony Barnes.” His hand slid around hers, reminding her of a snake wrapping around its prey. She detested him on sight.
Be nice
, her inner voice coaxed.
Don’t bite his obnoxious face off just yet.
Knowing what little she did of this man, Tori understood immediately why Draegyn thought he was an asshole.

Confirming the introduction with a slight nod, she quickly reclaimed her hand and went so far as to push it behind her back, far from his reach. “Good afternoon, Mr. Barnes,” she said in a no-nonsense voice. Instinct told her the less said the better so she left it at that. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out he had an agenda; she’d been warned that may be the case.
God
, she thought. Men were so annoying at times.

True to form, he twirled that stupid ring on his short, stubby finger earning him a scowl of distaste. “I understand from my people that you’ve single-handedly saved the day. Or rather, saved the Justice Brothers’ bacon,” he added in an insincere way.

Mmm-hmmm
.
Quite an asshole
, she thought. She turned cold, businesslike eyes on the man trying to goad a reaction from her for the sake of his enormous ego. “I wouldn’t say that statement is entirely accurate although, yes. The system has been rebooted and is running as expected.” His eyes narrowed at her tone although he wasn’t stupid enough to respond in kind. Not yet, anyway. If she wasn’t mistaken there was still plenty of gamesmanship and maneuvering he intended to play out.

“Well, now that I have some time, why don’t you explain to me how this meltdown happened?” His tone sounded threatening, as if he was trying to intimidate her.
Bwah!!!
What a fool.

Subtly dismissive, she turned her back on him and leaned forward to indicate something on the huge monitor for him to look at. “As you can see here,” she pointed, “this screen shows all systems currently operating at one hundred percent.” When she straightened and looked back at him she had the unmistakable impression that he’d been checking out her ass.
What. A. Pig
. Irritated, Tori folded her arms across her chest and gave up trying to manage her normally short fuse. “It took some time, but we were able to pinpoint the exact cause of the problem. Apparently,
your
people modified a key code and didn’t let anyone know.”

“Are you telling me this supposedly state of the art system was hacked?” The accusation of incompetence on the part of the agency remained unsaid but was heard by her, loud and clear. Tori’s breath kicked up a notch as anger surged to life inside her.

“Your system wasn’t hacked, Mr. Barnes. An authorized user modified it internally. Nobody from outside your organization had access at any time.” She watched Barnes’ hackles rise her statement. He needed to blame someone and if it wasn’t going to be the agency, it would fall on someone else’s poor shoulders to deal with his wrath. Not only would he not be able to point a finger at Justice, the whole mess had been instigated by one of his own people.

Fuming, he turned angry eyes her way. “My security chief….”

She finished the sentence for him. “Is a brilliant man. I’m tempted to try and lure him away. A man with his skills would be an asset to the agency. There was no way for him or anyone to have found the problem until it was too late.” When he stepped back as if she’d slapped him, she knew the threat held weight. He might want to fuck with Justice, but he didn’t want to lose his head of security.

From the corner of her eye she saw Draegyn moving their way, rather like a storm cloud growing larger the closer it got. A shiver of awareness built in a part of her she hadn’t known existed before this morning. He was angry by the look of him and dammit if the thought didn’t excite her. Unless she was mistaken, Tony Barnes was about to get bitch slapped. She couldn’t help the sly smile that formed on her face.

He hadn’t been able to get to her fast enough. Knowing that Barnes was touching her hand, even if only in greeting, had him seeing red. Or maybe it was green. Anger. Jealousy. Fuck it. Take your pick. When he caught the sleazy motherfucker checking out her ass, it was all he could do not to race into the room and tear him limb from limb.

Just as he came around the partition he heard his little spitfire giving the oily businessman a verbal dressing down. She didn’t need him to fight her battles, something she’d made abundantly clear from the get go. He might have caught her at a particularly vulnerable time in her life but that didn’t mean she was completely down for the count. That aside, he’d never felt the compulsion to protect or defend a woman he was involved with. After the events of this morning, he was most definitely involved with Victoria Bennett, and nothing and nobody was going to upset or hurt her if he had anything to say about it.

“Barnes,” he barked, earning a startled jump from the man in his eyesight. Going swiftly to Victoria’s side, he laid a hand reassuringly at her back. “I see you’ve met our agency genius.” He wanted his choice of words to let Barnes and everyone else know how important she was to the agency. And to him.

Barnes sneered at his insinuation into the conversation, just as he knew he would. “St. John,” he muttered with clear distaste. “I should have known you’d be lurking in the shadows.”

The two eyed each other as old animosities flared to life. Drae snorted a brittle laugh, churning at the man’s tone. “Yeah, I just bet you did.” Absently running his hand up and down Victoria’s back, he looked down at her where she stood silently by his side. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint.” She bit her lip as humor lit up her expression.

“I’ve just left your man. He’s done an excellent job of developing a new protocol for your employees that will limit access to the security mainframe. I take it Miss Bennett has informed you that the problem in your system was
internal
? The call literally came from inside the house, Barnes. You better get a hold of that if you don’t want the same thing to happen again.”

Drae watched, satisfied that his words had hit their mark. Tony Barnes was sadly mistaken if he imagined that he or Alex was going to shrug off the incompetence of the other man’s employees. Not at the cost of the agency’s reputation. No fucking way. And as for Victoria, the fact that Drae had yet to remove his hand from her back spoke louder than words.

“Yes, well,” Barnes growled, clearly not happy. “I will discuss this with my staff. In the meantime, let me extend an invitation to the both of you. There’s a pre-awards event in the main ballroom this evening. You’ll be my guests. I’ll leave instructions to seat you at the main table. I think you’ll enjoy the night. Half of Hollywood is here.”

Drae gave him a menacing smile. “I think we may take you up on the invite. Sounds like an interesting evening doesn’t it, Victoria?” Before she could answer, Barnes waved them off as if he’d wasted enough of his precious time on them and simply melted into the scenery.

“That man is a tool bag,” she muttered at his retreating back. Her choice of words made Drae laugh. He liked how direct she was. He also liked that she didn’t have any problem snarling at him when he deserved it. Everything about this sexier version of Victoria turned him inside out. It excited him that she’d responded to his loss of control earlier with such passion.

Some time later after a final run through with the security team, they were standing near the elevator when she leaned against him briefly and elbowed him in the ribs. “Hey,” she chuckled.

“Hey, right back at you. What’s up?”

“Were you serious about attending the event tonight?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Might be tons of fun or boring as dry toast. Depends on who is in attendance.”

Tori thought back to the early, early morning. Before she’d been naked and whimpering in his arms. “Speaking of which, I saw that blonde actress, Stacey Adams checking in. She’s pretty much an A-lister. If Stacey is here in the hotel, so will other big name celebrities.”

Draegyn smiled at her. “Do you want to meet her?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Stacey Adams, of course. I could introduce you.”

Possessiveness roared through Tori’s senses. “You
know
her?”

“Yeah, I do. She’s quite a piece of work, that one.”

She tried for casual but when Draegyn said her knew her, a scenario worthy of a movie plot burst into her mind starring the man at her side and a very naked actress. She’d curl up and die if the perfect starlet had been in his bed. This was every nightmare she’d ever had. “How exactly do you know her?”

Guiding her into the empty elevator, Draegyn looked at her with a knowing expression.
Shit.
She was never very good at hiding her feelings. His blue eyes shimmered with an expression that bordered on hungry as he raked his gaze slowly over her body. Eventually he made it back to her eyes.

“We supervised security at the last Broadway awards show. She was a presenter. I helped the studio bodyguards get her in and out of the fan crush outside the venue.” His gaze pierced hers. She wondered if he could read her thoughts. “That’s all it was, sweetheart. Just business.”

He didn’t strike her as the sort to use endearments of any kind. The straight-forward explanation, clearly intended to set her mind at ease, reminded Tori that they were improbably more than just business associates now.

Silence reigned after that as the elevator ascended smoothly to their floor. A surge of excitement skittered across her nerves as they stepped into the foyer outside their suite and Draegyn placed a proprietary hand on her back. He wasn’t quite grabbing her ass, but it was close.

The minute they were through the door, Draegyn gathered Tori in his arms and settled her against him. She laid her hands on either side of his chest. He brought his hand to her mouth and ran his thumb across her full lower lip. “I want you,” he growled.

“I know.”

His mouth quirked into a half smile at her straightforward response. Brushing his lips along her jawline he told her, “I’m too old to pretend there hasn’t ever been anyone else in my bed, but I can say that there isn’t anyone out there who can lay claim to much more than the occasional fuck.”

She shifted back to look him square in the eye. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? ‘Cause it doesn’t.”

“Here’s the thing, Victoria. I don’t want to just fuck you, regardless of how this morning may have seemed,” he added as he held her in place. He leaned forward until his mouth stopped scant inches from hers. “Next time, and there will be a next time, and a time after that and a time after that - I’m going to eat you alive. Slowly. Until you can’t think, and all that’s left is you begging me to come inside you.”

She gasped at his audacity as a quiver of spine tingling awareness rocked her. One of his hands drifted over her bottom as his hips rocked gently against her belly. When his mouth claimed hers, the contact was so hot and fevered that Tori found herself gasping for breath. She folded like a house of cards in a windstorm. When his lips sucked and nipped their way down her neck she whimpered as the ache between her legs increased with each tug of his lips.