He held me in place with one hand on my shoulder and, with one surge, entered me. “Take me. All of me,” he ordered, his beard abrading my neck.
I was dizzyingly full. It felt so good. It was too much and yet somehow exactly right. There was nothing between us. I was fully possessed by him.
It was raw, real, and God help me, I wanted more. And Lucian gave it to me. When he released the first hot rope of come inside me, I obediently followed him, careening over the edge. I had no other choice.
“God. Yes, Sloane. My Sloane.” He groaned as he came and came inside me, detonating a release like no other.
Maeve: So Party Crasher Kurt and I talked and we’re going to try again.
Me: Hallelujah! I can’t wait to tell your kids about how Auntie Sloane made out with Daddy Kurt once when Mommy Maeve was being a dumbass.
Maeve: Maybe it’s best to leave that out of the conversation.
Me: Aha! You didn’t automatically dismiss the idea of having kids with Kurt! I knew you LIKED him liked him!
Maeve: Your little sister colors are showing.
Me: I can’t help it. Your happiness makes me happy. Also, I just had a bunch of orgasms…so…
Maeve: Same, girl. Same.
Me: High five.
43
The Takedown
Lucian
No one leaves here until we have a game plan,” I announced.
Sloane sat contentedly in my home office, dressed in pajamas, eating the burger and fries I’d had delivered. She’d tamed her “sex hair” into a long, loose braid that she wore draped over one shoulder. With her legs tossed over the arm of the chair and her bare feet wiggling, she was the picture of relaxed.
Meanwhile, behind my desk, I was a roiling cauldron of rage.
The team I’d assembled wasn’t helping my mood.
“This’ll be fun,” Nolan said, plowing into a platter of chicken fingers.
“Speak for yourself,” Lina complained. “My fiancé had just invited me to join him in the shower when I got the summons.”
“So what kind of dirt are we looking for?” Nallana the private investigator demanded, shoveling two pieces of pizza onto her plate. She was dressed in a cocktail dress and leather jacket. I realized I had no idea if this was her off-the-clock look or another undercover getup.
“Yeah. It would help to know what we’re looking for,” the only member of the cybersecurity team who’d bothered answering her phone asked around the mouthful of Twizzlers she’d just shoved into her face. She had platinum hair worn long on top and shaved on the sides. Her name was something like Pasture or Great Plains.
“Anything that will force the FBI to move on Hugo now. Not a month from now or a week from now or even forty-eight hours from now. I want him in custody by noon tomorrow.”
Nallana let out a low whistle. “That’s a tall order. Prairie’s right. We need some kind of direction.”
Prairie. So close.
“Your ‘direction’ is to do whatever it takes to get me something we can use. I don’t care if you get arrested in the process. Find me something,” I said on a near snarl.
The doorbell rang.
“Want me to get that?” Sloane asked tentatively.
I shook my head. “Grace will get it.”
I wasn’t letting Sloane out of my sight until Anthony Hugo and his entire organization were nothing but rubble. And then I was going to force her down the aisle. The woman had defended me not just to a crime boss who threatened our lives but to my own mother. And when this was all over, I was going to show her exactly what that had meant to me.
The door to my office opened, and in walked Maureen Fitzgerald, still in her dress from earlier. “Well, this looks like an interesting party,” she observed.
“Is that…” Prairie began.
“The most successful, notorious madam in Washington, DC?” Lina filled in. “Yep. I like your shoes.”
“Thank you,” Maureen said with a feline smile. “Here’s a little party favor for your team.” She dropped a two-inch-thick folder on top of the pizza box. Nolan reached for it, but Maureen laid a manicured hand on top of the folder. “I trust I can count on your discretion.”
“Oh yes, ma’am. Absolutely nothing but discreet around here,” Nolan promised.
“Good,” she said, removing her hand and sliding her arms free of her wool coat. “Are there any chicken fingers left?”
“So we’ve got three more shell corporations nailed down thanks to Maureen’s girls’ intel,” Nolan summarized, stifling a yawn. “First two have about $2 million apiece scattered in offshore accounts. Prairie is digging into the third now.”
“Keep digging.” A few million dollars wasn’t enough to have the FBI knocking on Hugo’s door in the morning.
Lina joined us. “Update time?”
“What have you got?” I asked her.
“Security has informed everyone the offices are closed for the next two days. Petula is rescheduling all in-person meetings and shifting what she can to virtual. Grace beefed up security everywhere, including your mother’s and Sloane’s mom’s. Nash and the Knockemout PD are on high alert and keeping an eye on things back home. Nallana called. She’s squeezing a few street-level sources, looking for intel. Rumor has it he’s got a big shipment due in from South America by the weekend.”
“That’s too far out,” I reminded her.
“Maybe Hugo was just yanking your chain about the forty-eight hours?” Nolan suggested, yawning again.
“Is this crisis interrupting your beauty sleep?” I asked dryly.
“A, it’s four in the fucking morning. And B, the wife got me up for a 6:00 a.m. yoga class today… Yesterday. Not all of us run on no sleep and the tears of frightened children,” he pointed out.
“You got up before dawn because your wife asked you to. Hugo said I had forty-eight hours to deliver everything the feds had on him or he’d start with Sloane.”
“Start with as in…” Lina trailed off, and we all turned to look at the little librarian who was sitting on the floor frowning over fanned-out paperwork.
“I’m not letting that happen,” I said.
“Does Blondie believe you’re in it for the long haul yet?” Nolan asked as Sloane shoved her glasses up her nose.
“Not yet. But if it takes killing a man in cold blood to prove it, I’ll do it.”
“Let’s keep that as option B,” Lina said. “I hear they’re not as lenient with conjugal visits anymore, and judging from Sloane’s sex hair, you two have a lot of ground to make up.”
I left them and crossed the room to her.
She looked up at me as I crouched down. “You have that line between your eyebrows you get when you’re concentrating,” I observed, running my finger over the spot in question. “You should get some sleep.”
“And miss all the fun?”
“When this is over, I’m taking you to a private island where we can drink pi?a coladas naked on a beach so I can teach you what fun is,” I decided.
Sloane grinned at me. “Since when is Lucian Rollins an expert on fun?”
“Since he almost came in your mouth when you were on your knees.”
“Very flattering. But I need you to put away your party hat for a second and get out your broody-master-of-the-business-and-political-universe beret for a second, Lucifer.”
“What do you need?”
She wet her lips and glanced down at the papers in front of her. “Something Hugo said tonight has been bothering me.”
“Everything the asshole said should have bothered you.”
She shook her head. “The thing about the fire. About me not learning my lesson from the arson. At first I thought it was just him letting us know he’d been watching me. But I started thinking what if he was connected somehow?”
I sat next to her and helped myself to a swig of her lukewarm root beer. “Connected in what way?”