Читать книгу Naked Sushi - Jina Bacarr, Jina Bacarr - Страница 8

Chapter Two

Damn. I couldn’t see.

Groping helplessly, I fumbled around, trying to turn off the alarm, my panic mounting. Screeching, raw sounds grated on my ears, sending my passion into a nosedive.

No. No.

I pushed the button again, but the noise wouldn’t stop. I pushed another button, then another, but the damn thing kept shrieking like a video game villain gone berserk.

“What the fuck—” yelled the stud in black sweats, slipping out of me and then pulling up his pants.

“I can’t turn it off,” I cried out, frantic.

He pulled his baseball cap down lower. “Sorry I can’t help you, babe. Gotta go.”

Before I could pull up my jeans, he grabbed the file along with the copies from the exit tray and started for the door.

“Wait!” I yelled. “I didn’t come yet.”

“I owe you one,” he said, kissing me on the cheek. Tender-like. That surprised me. Then he saluted me with the tip of his cock—I mean, cap—before he raced out the door. I noticed then his hair looked weird, askew. It didn’t hit me until later he was wearing a dark wig under that cap.

“You can’t leave me like this,” I moaned, sinking down to my knees with my jeans squashed around my ankles. “You can’t.”

I squeezed my pubes together, but the unbearable ache in my groin wouldn’t go away. And that noise. I couldn’t stand it. I hit the machine with my fist, expecting it to blow up in my face. I didn’t care if it did.

To my surprise, the noise stopped.

The room went deadly quiet. Like a tomb.

I let out my breath and wiped off the sweat running down my cheeks, my neck. The silence was worse. My passion refusing to die, my ego suffering, my mind telling me I must withdraw, retreat. Forget him.

I couldn’t.

I wanted to cry.

I was caught up in a web of fantasy that had crossed over into my real world, and I didn’t want to escape its spell. I wanted to remain in this sexual wonderland like I was Alice.

Still groggy, frustrated, I noticed the stud had dropped the original file on his way out but taken the copies with him. Curious, I reached over to grab the sheets of paper spread out on the floor.

No sooner did I wrap my fingers around the official-looking documents than Ms. Sims, Mr. Briggs’s office manager, burst through the door, yelling, “What the hell are you doing in here?”

The Wicked Witch of the West.

In person.

She glared at me through her glued-on lashes. You’d think she’d never seen nude buttocks before when she saw me scrambling to pick up the papers scattered everywhere. My bare ass was up in the air, my thighs still wet with excitement.

I didn’t get along with the tall, skinny woman with the perennial Vogue smirk on her lips. Ms. Sims—no one knew her first name—always wore black, including black jet earrings that dangled to her shoulders. I swore under the gaudy fluorescents her skin had a green-gray tinge. She’d never liked me from the day I was hired. I was the only programmer the agency had in their job bank who could write the code they needed, so she was stuck with me. And she knew it.

“I was working late on that commercial spot—” I began, pulling up my jeans.

She ignored my explanation. “How long have you been using the copy room for your trysts?”

“Pardon me?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you were sleeping with the whole department,” she said, twitching her nose at me like a squirrel. “On company time.”

“That is so not true, Ms. Sims,” I protested, waving the papers around in a circle. “The guy flirted with me and then kissed me. It went downhill from there.” I didn’t tell her that I came on to him, never dreaming where it would lead: straight to paradise until the machine went wonky.

“I warned Mr. Briggs this would happen if he hired a female programmer.” “That has nothing to do with it, Ms. Sims,” I said. “I’m a good employee. I’m always here on time, and I work late. I even put the toilet paper on the spool in the girls’ bathroom the way you like it.” Over, not under. Ms. Sims liked to be in control of everything, even where you took a pee.

She pushed her dangly earrings off her shoulders and then motioned for me to hand her the documents. “Let me see what you were working on.”

“These papers aren’t mine—” I insisted, handing her the wrinkled sheets of paper.

“Then whose are they?” She grabbed them out of my hand, nearly tearing them in half.

“The new video game designer,” I insisted. “I found him in here making copies.”

“You’re lying. He doesn’t start until next week.” She held the papers flush against her flat chest so I couldn’t see them.

“What?” I blurted out, disbelieving. My thighs quivered and not in a good way. I’d been played, but by whom?

“No more excuses, Pepper. I want answers. Now!” she screeched.

“I—I...” Nothing came out. I swallowed hard and squeezed my butt cheeks together until they burned. Of all the low-down, dirty tricks, this was the worst. The geeky types I work with must have sent the stud here to punk me. Oh, my God, what if they’d set up a hidden camera in here? What if my big moment had already gone viral on the internet? Oh, shit, I was had.

“Admit it,” Ms. Sims said, prodding me. “You sneaked a man in here and had sex with him while you copied confidential documents.”

“I did not copy any docs,” I said, trying to convince myself it was just a practical joke. It couldn’t be anything else, could it?

“Then what were you doing with Mr. Briggs’s—” she cleared her throat “—tax returns. They’re not for your eyes or anyone else’s.”

I shook my head, not getting it. Why would this prankster make copies of my boss’s classified information? Unless—

Red and blue lights flashed on and off in my brain like a squad car was chasing me. It all made sense. How the stud was surprised to see me, asking me if I was security, and reaching in his sweats for what I bet was a gun. Then sweet-talking me into letting him kiss me while he felt me up. Checking me for a weapon, I bet. And I unbuttoned my jeans flap to help him. Talk about dumb chick moves. That was the dumbest.

“That guy was a thief,” I said under my breath. That statement knocked the wind out of me.

That was only the beginning of my downfall.

I leaned against the copier and tried to zip up my jeans but couldn’t. Wetness greeted my fingers along with a pungent smell both sweet and musky. Panic filled me.

What if the condom had broken?

With that disturbing thought racing through my brain, I vaguely heard Ms. Sims babbling on about how she’d come back to the office to get her cell phone. When she heard the alarm go off, she ran to the copy room. A tall man wearing a baseball cap and black sweats knocked her down and rushed past her. When she opened the door and found me with my jeans down, she assumed I had invited him in.

I tried to explain to her what happened, but she wouldn’t listen to me. That didn’t surprise me. She had this thing against hiring girls who wrote code.

That was just the excuse she needed.

She fired me.

The bitch.

* * *

FBI Special Agent Steve Raines had a plan for this evening’s mission—pick the old-fashioned lock on the back door of the Victorian mansion with the skills he’d learned as a kid from his older brother and then sneak upstairs and copy the documents he’d been angling to get his hands on for months.

After he got what he came for, he’d scram out of there before the spiders knew he’d disturbed their sticky webs.

It should have been routine.

It wasn’t.

He never expected to meet up with a sexy redhead who had a come-hither look about her that steamed up her glasses and made him hard. At first, he wasn’t bothered by her intrusion. If anything, he was turned-on by her unexpected appearance. In his line of business he spent many lonely nights camped out in the wet and the cold, doing surveillance. Strip-searching her was an entirely pleasant experience and one he’d enjoy doing again.

He doubted he’d ever have the chance.

Things got sticky when she came on to him like gangbusters. She’d given him no choice but to have sex with her or blow his cover.

The question was, how was he going to explain his indiscretion to his boss?

“Did you get the docs from Briggs’s office?” Jordan asked him, her fingers tapping on the phone at the other end. Patience was not her virtue. Never had been, though she knew how to hold ’em when the target was in sight but not close enough for a sure kill.

This was not one of those times.

She wanted answers. Now.

Steve had stopped at the drive-through for coffee and then pulled into a dark alley and parked his old Buick behind a large trash Dumpster. For several long minutes, he studied the copies he’d made with a pen flashlight before dialing her on his cell. Special Agent in Charge Jordan Parks played hardball with her agents the same way other women picked out shoes: she liked the ones that dazzled her eye.

Still, she was tough and ran her operations lean and mean. She got the job done or she never would have lasted in this business. He admired her for that, but he wouldn’t let her tell him how to run his mission. As long as he came through with the intel, he knew she’d let him play ball his way.

Except that tonight he’d scored in one way and fouled out in another.

“Well, Steven, I’m waiting,” she purred. Or was it more of a growl? “Did you get the documents?”

“Not exactly—”

“Exactly what do you mean?”

“I had them in my hand, when she showed up.”

“Who?”

“This redhead. She works there and caught me copying the docs.”

“Night crew?”

“You could say that,” Steve said evasively. He wasn’t sure who she was, but he’d sure as hell find out.

“You’re losing your touch, old boy.” He heard her smirk. “What happened? Did she suck you up with her vacuum cleaner?”

She emphasized suck. Steve said nothing. He was used to her bad jokes.

“No. She’s funny and very pretty—”

She cut him off. “Did you get rid of her?”

“I...well, you see...” He stalled, remembering how surprised he was to find black lace covering her bra when the buttons popped off her shirt. His hands ached to unhook her bra and cup her big breasts, but he was a man in a hurry. He’d frisked her to make sure she wasn’t private security packing heat. “I made love to her.”

“I imagine she couldn’t resist your charm,” she snarled.

“It works on you every time.”

“Can it, Steven. You’re the best-looking field agent I have, but the FBI didn’t hire you for your looks.”

He let that pass.

“Believe me, Jordan, you haven’t seen this girl.” He whistled under his breath. “She’s sensational.”

He’d never forget how she’d ground her butt into his groin, teasing him, making him crazy. Dry humping him until he couldn’t take it any longer. To knock him off balance? He had to find out. He’d slid her jeans down over her smooth skin and grabbed her ass. A more perfect ass he’d never seen. And one that gave a guy all kinds of sinful thoughts. Damn, he was going ballistic over this chick.

Why? Because she’d touched a nerve in him.

For all her brave talk, he swore she wasn’t as easy a lay as she made out.

Maybe it was the glasses, which he found sexy, that gave her the innocent air. In the end it was his job to make sure she wasn’t a threat to him.

“Listen up, Steven,” Jordan was saying, “we’ve been trying to bring in this corporate sleazeball for months and get him to talk.” She paused, no doubt to gulp down her coffee. Black. Always. “And now you’re telling me when you get the chance to get the goods on him, you let your dick do the talking.”

“You’ll have my full report in the morning, Jordan,” Steve promised, knowing he faced another sleepless night. He hadn’t copied the whole file, but what he had seen didn’t advance the investigation. Frustrated, he downed the last of his coffee. This case was keeping them both up late. Briggs had drawn the attention of the FBI when his bank reported that he split up large financial transactions into smaller ones and then tried unsuccessfully to take his name off them. They needed evidence to prove he was structuring the transfers to evade reporting them. It didn’t stop there. It was the why that had them baffled. According to their sources, Briggs had made several unexplained overseas trips. Not to mention extravagant dinners at posh hotels, yet Pepper said her boss was cheap.

Steve’s gut told him something bigger was at stake than tax evasion. He’d put out feelers on the street and had a few nibbles. What he’d learned so far wasn’t pretty. He suspected Briggs was involved in money laundering. All he needed was proof.

“I want to see you in my office first thing in the morning,” Jordan finished with a yawn. “Is that clear?”

“Anything you say, ma’am,” Steve said, signing off, knowing she hated him calling her ma’am.

“Seven o’clock sharp,” she insisted. “Before breakfast.”

“I’ll bring the beer,” he said, grinning. “You bring the doughnuts.”

Then he hung up.

He pulled the baseball cap down low over his eyes to take a quick snooze, planning his next move. His balls tightened. Damn, he couldn’t concentrate. How could he even think? He couldn’t forget his encounter in the copy room with the redhead. There was something about that girl that got under his skin.

He intended to find out more about this Pepper. Who she was, where she came from. And why she was working late. That made her suspect in his eyes. She knew something, but what?

He intended to get a full report on her.

Pepper. Smooth, round ass. Sweet, sexy bod.

A perfect fit for his dick.

Are you as hot as your name? he’d asked her.

You bet she was.

This case just got a whole lot more interesting.

* * *

This was one goddamn screwed-up night.

I’d barely zipped up my jeans when the Wicked Witch of the West made me pack up my things and give her back the key to the girls’ daisy-wallpapered bathroom. We were the only two who used it since the company wasn’t big on hiring females unless forced to do so. All the other employees were guys. No receptionist up front. Nobody answered the phone when customers needed tech support since all the calls were routed overseas.