Sweet Seduction Stripped (Sweet Seduction, Book 7) Read online

  Jaxon leaned over and swiped the touch-pad, making the image on the screen disappear. If only I could do the same with my brain. Then he brought up another screen, with a series of balances and figures that I quickly recognised as a bank account. The name at the top said Anscombe Securities and Investigations.

  "Now," he said, turning and resting his butt against the desk's surface, looking down with that darker blue in his eyes. I hated that shade. I longed for the pale blue I'd fallen for.

  Or a vivid green.

  No, that wouldn't do either now.

  "Time for you to earn your keep," Jaxon added.

  I looked up at him and then back at the screen, and felt my face blanch. He wanted me to steal their money. To wipe their bank account as easily as he'd wiped mine.

  "I can't do this, Jaxon," I admitted. "I don't know these guys."

  "You know 'em well enough to enter their bitch's café." I flinched at his crude words. Jaxon swore a lot, but I hadn't ever heard him call a woman a bitch before. "You know enough to share a drink with their IT man." Did he mean the coffee at Sweet Seduction or the beer at the Irish Pub? "You know enough that they're killers, baby. That they've been doing this for a while. Help the law, Amber. Sort this shit out."

  "The law?" I demanded, pushing back from the desk and standing up. "What would you know about the right side of the law?"

  I didn't see him shift. Like before, when he punched Derek Marks' nose in the club, the back of his hand hit my cheek before I registered it had moved. I spun around and landed in a heap on the floor.

  "Why do you make me into this person, baby?" he cried, and through tear filled eyes I saw him pull at his hair as though in as much pain as me.

  I clutched my throbbing cheek, panted through the ache, and stayed very, very still.

  Jaxon started pacing, mumbling to himself, but I caught every word, so silently and fearfully I remained statue like on the floor.

  "Been doing this shit too fucking long. I want it over. I want it done. Can't keep doing this. Can't keep hurting like this. Can't do it no more."

  To my utter horror, I felt something within me ache for him. He seemed tormented. Truly worn down and wrung out.

  But I couldn't make myself go to him. I could not do that.

  He turned and spied me crouched on the carpet, my hand hiding the bruise that must have been already forming on my right cheek by now. He groaned, took a step forward, making me whimper and scrabble backwards, and then he was on his knees, his head in my lap, cheek to my stomach, arms wrapped securely around my waist.

  "Baby, baby, baby. I'm so sorry, so sorry. I've been under so much stress. But we're almost there. It's almost over and I promise we'll get away after it's all done. Go some place hot and tropical and I'll be your cabana boy, shower you with treats, rub lotion all over your sexy as fuck body, be at your beck and call. I promise, baby. Just bear with me. A few more weeks and we'll ditch this place and start all over again. Fresh and clean and with a new life stretching out ahead of us, and with none of this filth at all."

  There was so much to take from that long winded, desperate, frantic rumble of words that I didn't know where to start. He thought I'd stay after that? Even if I didn't know what he was capable of, I would never stick around a man who used his fists on the woman he supposedly loved.

  But that was a bit of a moot point now, because I did know and I needed to get out.

  Damn him. And damn RiC3.1415 being part of this world too.

  But I didn't have a choice now. I needed an escape route and Ric would damn well provide it. He was the only chance my father had as well. Not Jaxon, the man I'd been sleeping with for over twenty months. Not his twisted perspective on the fucked up shit he'd been doing and why. Not his lies, but ASI's.

  One devil worse than the other, but I would use them and lose them, and I would fucking survive.

  "It's all right," I said, my voice scratchy, my tone nowhere near the convincing concern I'd been going for. I cleared my throat. "It's OK, Jax. We'll get through this." Much better, even if I felt sick to my stomach and dirty as hell touching the man.

  "Baby, you're perfect. I knew that the moment I laid eyes on you up on that stage. Fucking perfect. But when I knew how clever you were, I lost my ever loving mind."

  I wasn't clever enough to see any of this coming.

  "And now you own my heart, Amber Lane," he went on. "You know that right, baby? You own my fucking heart and it bleeds for you. Every fucking day you do some fucked up shit, it bleeds out."

  Not a lot to say to that. His voice was cracked with the emotion he felt. No words could soothe that ravaged pain.

  "If you ever go near them again, I don't know what I'll do, baby. Please don't make us find out."

  There wasn't enough room inside me for more fear. For more turmoil and emotional upheaval. I was spent. Exhausted. About to fracture into a million pieces. Code unravelling before my eyes.

  "Say you won't," he pleaded. "Say you'll stay with me forever."

  I nodded.

  "Say it!" he growled, and that switch flicked just like that.

  "I'll stay with you forever, Jax. I promise."

  "That's it, baby," he purred, laying kisses above his earlier neck bruise as though he hadn't just had a near breakdown and slapped me senseless to the floor. "Now prove it," he added.

  Prove it?

  He pulled back, lifted me up in his arms with ease, and settled us into the chair before the laptop.

  "Do your magic, baby, and I won't put a bomb in that cunt's little chocolate store."

  He meant it. His words too even, too controlled, too real. He'd blow up Gen's café just to prove a point. And there was nothing left of the connection we'd once shared to believe he didn't have it in him.

  He'd destroyed us as much as he was promising to destroy Sweet Seduction.

  "Where do you want the money?" I said numbly.

  "Nah, baby. You got it wrong. We're giving those arseholes a present. A gift, so to speak."

  "A gift?"

  "Yeah," he said with obvious satisfaction. "A gift from an old friend of mine."

  He reached forward and brought up a second screen, another bank account, this time in the name of a company I didn't recognise: PaP Holdings. It meant nothing to me.

  "How much?" I asked, just wanting to be done with this.

  "Oh, I think the whole lot, don't you?"

  I stared at the screen. There were several million dollars in there. In US currency. Not only did he want me to wipe out these PaP Holdings people, he wanted me to do it through international electronic borders, implicating ASI.

  "Now," Jaxon said, rubbing his hands up and down my arms, tenderly. He laid a kiss on the back of my neck. "Do it so it can't be traced, baby. You can do that, right?"

  "And if I can't?"

  The rubbing stopped. He gripped my throat instead, pulled me flush against his chest, and tipped my head to the side so I could see his hard eyes.

  "If it's detectable, we get to see a big boom."

  I wanted to call his bluff, but I was certain he didn't have one.

  This man was crazy, out of control, and extremely lethal. And I had shared my life with him once.

  "Untraceable," I repeated.

  "There's my girl," he whispered, dark satisfaction in his tone. He released his grip on my throat with a stroke of his fingers to soothe. It took everything in me not to shudder.

  "It'll take a while," I murmured, starting to type on the keyboard, for now just useless code.

  "How long?" he demanded.

  "You want it done clever?"

  "It's what I said, isn't it?"

  "Then a couple of hours."

  Silence. I could feel the tension throughout his entire body, the hardness of his thighs, the steel in his arms, the marble in his torso. Solid. Immovable. But a hair-trigger away from exploding.

  "Do it!" he growled, lifting me off his lap and placing me back in the seat.

  He moved arou
nd the desk and sat down. I'd been hoping for him to leave me alone in the room, but that would have been too convenient. My life was no longer a casual walk in the park

  His eyes lifted to mine as he picked up the receiver on his desk and pressed a button. I half watched the screen as I entered more code, and checked the security on the two banks I'd be breaching, while I kept a wary eye on my foe.

  "Bryan," he said into the mouthpiece. "Got a job for you." A pause followed as Bryan, who I could only think was the Bryan I knew in C&C IT, answered. "My office. Want you watching what Amber's doing. You might learn something."

  The phone clunked down in its cradle and my heart rate increased. Maybe Bryan would learn something, but what Jaxon hoped he learned was me screwing him over before I succeeded. He didn't know what the hell I was typing, but Bryan definitely would.

  OK, you crazy, delusional, murdering fuck. I see your IT geek spy named Bryan, and I raise you an IT geek god named Ric.

  I waited for him to turn his attention to his own computer and slipped the bug out of my jeans pocket, placing it on the underside of the desk frame, just to the edge, so it blended in with the black of the metal struts to the side. It was limited in visibility, but with the glass surface of Jaxon's über sleek desk, it could work.

  Then I scrubbed my useless code and got to work. I typed furiously, but with as much of a casual flare as I could muster. It wasn't easy. Jaxon kept leaning back in his seat and eyeing me, scrubbing at his jaw contemplatively, and adjusting himself in his chair. He'd always been turned on when I worked hard at my computer. Sometimes he'd make me do it naked and afterwards...

  I pushed the memory from my mind and concentrated on what I was doing. It would take Bryan no more than five minutes to get here from the IT side of the building. If he'd been in the office we shared at all. Jaxon may have phoned his cellphone, in which case he could be here soon, or later. No way to tell.

  I re-routed seven times, then backtracked, a smile spreading my lips at Ric's signature touch. The smile dimmed when the picture of him in camo flashed before my eyes, making the code I was typing suddenly disappear.

  Cursing internally, I'd just managed to run a chaos cluster code to hide my tracks when a knock sounded out and Bryan opened the door.

  "Where do you want me, boss?"

  "On her," Jaxon responded, aiming a finger at me. "She so much as types the wrong thing you tell me. She so much as does anything that could implicate C&C you shout out. Got it?"

  Bryan looked uncomfortable, but nodded, pulling up a chair and sitting himself down to my right. The bug was just in front of him, by his elbow as he placed it on top of the desk. If he looked beneath, where his arm rested, he'd see it.

  And knowing Bryan, he'd recognise the device for what it was.

  Sweat ran freely down my back, beaded across my brow as I smiled at Bryan. He'd always been nice to me, not that I thought for a moment he wasn't fully aware of who he worked for and what they did.

  He looked at the screen after returning my smile tentatively and his eyes widened fractionally.

  Jaxon stilled. The room expanded with the pressure of a threatening explosion and Bryan said, "Fuck, you are so good at that, Amber. Those bastards will never trace a thing."

  I smiled, finished the line of code I was on and watched seven point two million US dollars get routed through fourteen countries, eight currencies, and one hundred and six bank accounts. Before it landed in the Bank Of New Zealand, Newmarket branch, under the account name of Anscombe Securities and Investigations. I couldn't bring myself to attach a reference.

  I leaned back in my chair trying to hide my rapid heartbeat and desperate need to suck in air, then lifted my determined gaze to Jaxon's.

  He held my stare for several seconds, while Bryan watched on silently, aware we were having a battle of wills and not wanting to get sucked into that fucked up mess.

  Then Jaxon said, voice low and ominous, "A couple of hours, huh, Amber?" Oh, shit. I should have taken longer. I'd told him it would.

  He grinned, that same lust-filled, wicked - now I knew evil - grin. "I guess we both lied," he whispered.

  Oh, dear God. Sweet Seduction. And Ric's friends.

  Chapter 13

  Just Take Fucking Care, Yeah?

  Eric

  Her scream kept repeating in my head, even though it had been long fucking minutes since Harding had frightened Amber enough to make her react. With the bug still in her jeans I hadn't been able to see what he was doing at the time, but I heard everything.

  Every-fucking-thing.

  And now I had eyes to go with the words; Amber performing like a seasoned veteran spy. Brilliantly.

  "I guess we both lied."

  One hand flew over the keyboard activating a universal company-wide page, while the other hit the panic alarm to the side of my desk. A clanging whoop-whoop went off, red lights flashing like some b-grade sci-fi movie scene in an underground bunker.

  ASI HQ wasn't underground, but it sure as hell was going into lockdown, stage one: We could get in and out, but only with advanced security checks in place.

  "Answer the fucking phone," I muttered, staring at several different images on the multiple screens in front of me at once.

  Amber pale as shit, the guy sitting next to her, which I assumed was the one called Bryan, and Jaxon Fucking Harding glaring across his desk at my girl.

  Sweet Seduction full to the brim with free-loading customers, Gen and Kelly rushed off their feet behind the counter, no one answering the motherfucking phone.

  The corridor outside control as several ASI operatives, who happened to be in the building at the time I shut and locked the doors, waited for me to get my shit together and let them in.

  I stared at the split screens a few seconds longer feeling a type of rage and fear I hadn't allowed myself to feel in way too long. My hand actually fucking shook as I hit the release on the door to my back.

  Six people stormed in, none of them saying a single word. We'd done this shit too many times lately to get all crazy-arsed verbal when it hit the fucking fan.

  "Bomb threat to Sweet Seduction," I managed to say, my hands fisting as I watched Harding rise slowly from his chair, ordering Bryan to leave, and rounding the desk to approach Amber.

  Panic. Pure unadulterated panic. I'd forgotten what the motherfucking emotion felt like until right then.

  I heard Nick behind me barking orders. "Koki, Brook! On your bikes, Sweet Seduction ASAP. Jason, you go for Dom and Drew, I don't want them anywhere near that shop until we have Gen and Kelly out. Ben and Abi! Eyes on fucking Harding and C&C."

  Finally the phone answered in the my ear.

  "Sweet Seduction Café," came Gen's sweet voice down the line. "We have coffee, chocolate..."

  I cut her off.

  "Code red, sweetheart. Evacuate."

  A slight pause, then, "OK, Eric," and the phone disconnected. That woman had come a hell of a long way.

  I watched the screen as she said something to Lucas and Kelly at her sides, Kelly going to the front doors on the shop and opening them wide, pinning them back, Lucas checking the toilets and music cave out the back, and then Gen announcing that everyone had to leave.

  I hadn't given her a reason. She, and the others, had just acted. My heart clenched, they were as much family as those standing at my back. I heard her say, "Gas leak," to a customer, and my lips quirked at the sides.

  The semi-smile fell as my attention was pulled to C&C. Harding's back to my camera lens, Amber completely hidden behind his too big frame.

  I was gonna puke. That acidic shit in my gut was churning something fierce.

  Then he said, clear as fucking day over the bug's mike, "Your fingerprints are all over that transaction now, baby. You're the one who's screwed ASI. If Nick Anscombe wants revenge, who do you think he's gonna go for? Sure, he'll come after me, but he's a thorough little fuck. He'll also target the person who hit enter on the computer that linked him to PaP."

/>   He started laughing. Amber was silent. I moved the camera, trying to get a shot of the computer screen on the laptop she'd been working on, but the angle was all wrong.

  "Where do you want the money?"

  "Nah, baby. You got it wrong. We're giving those arseholes a present. A gift, so to speak."

  "A gift?"

  "Yeah. A gift from an old friend of mine."

  I shook my head, brows furrowed, but I didn't have time to think about what exactly Harding had made Amber do. I could guess for now and it wasn't the emergency; the thing making my body rigid with pent up anger, my heart palpitate with utter fear, and my head ache with horrific possibilities. That was all for Amber, my Dancer. I needed her out of there.

  She'd said he was unstable, but having heard it for myself I felt chilled. The guy at the pointed end of his anger when she first arrived at the strip club proved how fucking loose a unit Jaxon Harding was. To hell with Nick's evidence. To hell with pinning Harding down. Amber Lane was all I could think about.

  Danc3r.

  My girl.

  I swiped a tablet off the desk's surface and spun in my seat. I was two paces towards the door of control when Nick quietly said, "Where the fuck do you think you're going, Shaw?"

  Koki, Brook, Jason, Ben and Abi had already left. It was just me and the bossman.

  "I've gotta get her," I admitted, too wrung out to lie now.

  Nick held my steady gaze carefully. It felt like it took for-fucking-ever for him to speak.

  Then he pulled his cellphone from his pocket, swiped at the screen and brought it to his ear.

  "Adam?" he said into the device. I started jumping from foot to foot, my free hand fisted the other tapping the tablet against my thigh. "Meet Ben, Abi and Eric at C&C. We've got a retrieval."

  I let a relieved breath of air out, suddenly feeling light headed.

  "You armed?" Nick asked, shoving the cellphone in his pocket and walking towards the chair I'd just vacated.

  "Yes," I managed on an explosion of air.

  "Got back-up clips?" he demanded, sitting down and moving the joystick to get a better angle on the screen at Sweet Seduction.

  "Nick," I warned, needing to go, needing to get to her, needing this fucking conversation to end.