Undercover(30)

“Your wish is my command, Freka. What would you like?” Ash kissed her lips softly.

“One of those, with lots of frosting.” She indicated a frothy-looking concoction, and Brandt winced.

Ash laughed. “I’ll be right back. Brandt, would you like anything?”

“A mulled purri juice would be nice.”

Ash disappeared into the store, and Brandt pulled her close to look into her eyes.

She smiled and reached up to brush the backs of her fingers over his chin. “So handsome. I like looking at you.”

He tasted her lips because he needed to, needed to connect and know she felt the same. “I want all of you.”

Her eyes closed for a moment before opening again, that deep blue looking into his.

Ash came out then, holding a bag in one hand and Brandt’s drink in the other. “Let’s go. I find myself very hungry.”





Chapter 17

“I’d like to say for the record, I’d much rather be back in the cottage with my cock deep inside a warm, willing pussy.” Ash had been annoyed since Sera had grumpily slapped his hand away and buried her face in the pillow that morning when the men had awoken to leave.

Brandt snorted. “Don’t take it out on me. You’re the one who kept her up until nearly dawn licking frosting off all her best parts.”

“Yes, well, that was quite pleasant. But I wanted to fuck her before we came out here, too. She slapped my hand away.”

Actually, she’d slapped his hand away and told him she’d shoot him in the head if he didn’t let her go back to sleep. Good thing she’d added that bit about the shooting through the link. He’d forgotten how she could be without enough sleep. Ash smiled at how bloodthirsty she was.

“This would be a lot better if she was here,” Brandt said.

The conversation certainly would have been. Ash hated this sort of gaming outing. Casinos and gaming halls were not entertaining to him in the least. Men with more money than sense losing more of both than they could afford.

And he’d have appreciated her take on the whole situation. When they’d returned to the cottage the night before, sex had pushed most discussion from the schedule, but they had gone over, just briefly, the increasing evidence pointing to Giles Stander and Perry as well as the very real belief that Owen Alder and his connections with weapons runners might be the key. Whether Kira was involved was still a big question. Rina and Delia’s comments the evening and day before about Kira weighed against her. But Ash, while convinced of Kira’s general worthlessness, didn’t know if she was a traitor.

Brandt sipped his drink. “She’s not, so deal with it. She slept in and then got a massage before heading out for a late lunch with her new friends.”

“Lucky her. And that masseuse better have been female.”

“Ash, you actually sound jealous over a hired woman. Have you fallen so very low since we parted ways?” Kira insinuated herself at Brandt’s elbow.

“Kira, behave yourself,” Brandt warned her.

The wives were on this outing, which meant Kira was there and had been skirting around them all day. Giles Stander had been glaringly absent from the gathering, and all Ash wanted was for Owen to stop parading around and get to the damned point. He had a woman waiting back in the cottage, and he wanted this op to be over so he could get back home and start a real life.

“It’s so like you to play with your food,” Ash said without heat. He was bored with her blasé nastiness. It was her second nature to be a bitch, and all he could do was be fucking glad she’d set him free. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

“You’re lowering yourself, and because we used to be married, it reflects on me. It’s pathetic that both of you are involved with her. I expect that sort of thing from a woman of her status. But you two are born better. Ash has always shown poor judgment. He has a taste for lowborn women. But you, Brandt, how do you think a woman of marriageable status will look upon this,” she sneered as she waved a hand between Ash and Brandt, “thing you’re doing?”

Brandt actually growled low in his throat, and Ash touched his friend’s shoulder. “I see Owen, let’s go and speak to him, shall we?” With that, he got up, turned his back on Kira and walked away.





Brandt leaned over to his sister and narrowed his eyes. “Be careful where you tread, Kira. Cease with this troublemaking and communicating back home. It’s none of your concern. It seems to me, you have a bit of your own trouble to deal with.”

“What do you mean?” Her gaze, which had glittered with malice, slid from his.

He’d known her and covert work long enough to see the slight alarm in her eyes. He had to know if she was involved.

“I mean, the company you keep isn’t as upstanding as you portray. If you invite closer scrutiny, you should be sure you can withstand it.”

“Are you threatening me? My own brother?” She tried to recover by using her aloofness against him, but he waved it away.

“No, Kira. I’m warning you. If you have anything you’re worried about, you know you can come to me or to Father, right? We’ll protect you, help you. But there are some things the farther you get into them, the less we can do. These people Perry is involved with, do you know what they are?”

He stood, hoping she’d take him seriously and confide in him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brandt. I’m going to find my husband now.” Her body stiffened.

“You do that, Kira.”

He shouldn’t have said as much as he had, but she was his sister. He had to think if she was involved, she couldn’t know or have really thought out the consequences.

He saw Ash with Owen and headed in that direction.





Sera awoke alone and smelling of frosting. She smiled as she stretched, still a bit sticky from the late hours when Ash had teased her with his tongue until she’d begged. He’d tried to wake her up for yet more sex before he and Brandt had left, but she’d not gotten nearly enough sleep and smacked his exploring hands away. She remembered vaguely sending a threat through their mental link, and he’d smacked the bare cheek of her ass in warning. And promise.

Not like she’d complain. Sometimes a girl simply needed to misbehave, because the punishment was so delicious.

Loving being alone, despite all the cameras and spy equipment—damned nosy little deviants, the Nondalese—she ate a leisurely breakfast before taking a long bath and heading out.

Her chaperone stood back and let her shop without interference. She’d purchased plenty of things for herself but wanted to pick up gifts for Brandt and Ash. She also grabbed a pair of earrings for her mother. She’d send them home once she returned to Borran.

The clerks in the shop gossiped about her, not knowing she understood Nondalese. It wasn’t anything too awful, some commentary about what Ash would be like in bed, a bit of sniffing about fucking your way into comfort when some women worked and didn’t demean themselves. It was something Sera felt an affinity with, but after taking on this assignment and having met some of the other concubines, she understood them more. Understood the lack of choices that had brought some of them to the lives they led.

In truth, she felt much less sorry for those who thought it a business arrangement than those who truly loved the men they served. Those men weren’t Ash and Brandt, and while she was sure many of them showed their women on the side some measure of warmth and affection, it wasn’t official. And in their world, it wasn’t enough protection.

The vagaries of fate meant women without official status would be bound to lose any position they had when their protectors got bored or died. Sera shivered, glad this was all a ruse. She wasn’t a concubine, and she had a career to sustain her no matter what happened.

The wide avenues on their level of the city were lined with foliage: large trees, planters overflowing with beautiful flowers. Up there, life was good. A slow-moving trolley ran up and down the middle of the avenue, ferrying people where they needed to be. No other vehicles but the trolley and bicycles for deliveries ran, so the streets were open and safe. In the quiet, birds chirped, and the sounds of people laughing and mixing at the various outdoor cafés and small greenbelts rang through the air.

It was as if those dark, dank and suffocating levels of the city didn’t exist. The workers for the upper level were housed in a level a few down, not nearly as bad as the others but not this good, either. So, if trading your body to a rich man got you into the sunshine and fresh air, was it really so awful? Could she really make such a harsh judgment?

She’d had rock-solid moral opinions, and the last ten days had challenged her severely. She’d been forced to look at herself and examine her own reactions to Ash and his marriage, and it wasn’t comfortable.

“Sela, darling, whatever are you up to?”

Sera turned from the window of the shop to face Rina.

“Hello. I’ve been shopping before I went to your luncheon. You look lovely as always.”

Sera kissed her cheek.

“Well, do come along with me then. I’ve received a communication from Tifrit. They’re all still playing, so it should be some hours yet before they return. He believes I have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for him to appear.” Rina rolled her eyes.