Duke: Alpha One Security: Book 3 Read online

  Duke was a few feet away now, and his hands came around from behind his back. The next several seconds occurred in a blur too fast for me to follow. All I know is, one moment Duke was two or three feet away, hands behind his back, and then he was pressed up against the car, fist through the open window, the other guy’s shirt in his fist, pistol against his temple.

  “This ain’t personal, kid,” Duke said. “I just need your ride.”

  “A’ight, a’ight,” the black guy said. “Ease off, man.”

  “Put it in park and show me your hands, and I’ll ease off.”

  His hands went up, he shoved the shifter into park, and then Duke let go of his shirt, yanked open the driver’s door and hauled him out of the driver’s seat. Scrambling to his feet, the kid backed away, hands up by his face. “What’re you gonna do with my ride?”

  “Take it downtown,” Duke answered. “Like I said, this ain’t personal. I don’t even plan to keep it. I’ll park it somewhere as safe as I can and put the keys under the mat. It’ll be LoDo, somewhere near Decatur Street.”

  “Man, it’s as good as gone, you do that.”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately for you, that’s the best I can do. I’m trying to be nice, here, kid,” Duke said. He glanced at me, and then gestured at the car. “Get in, Fancy.”

  I quickly rounded the back end of the car and settled into the passenger side. The interior was cloudy with pot smoke, thick and acrid, giving me an instant contact buzz. I rolled open the window and waved at the smoke, trying to clear it before I got totally high.

  Duke kept his gun trained on the erstwhile owner of the car as he backed away, toward the open driver’s door. He paused halfway there, went back over to the driver and snatched the blunt from his mouth. And, to my stunned disbelief, took a big drag on it, held it, and then let the smoke out in a slow exhale, then handed it back.

  “Good shit.” Duke turned away, moseyed confidently back to the driver’s seat. And, of course, the second Duke turned his back; the owner of our new ride stuck his hand behind his back, reaching for his waistband.

  “Duke!” I shouted, meaning to warn him.

  I might have saved my breath, though, because Duke didn’t even bother turning around. He already had his pistol up without looking, trained on the kid as he opened the driver’s door.

  “Don’t do it, kid,” Duke said, settling behind the wheel, right hand aiming the gun across his body, left pulling the car door closed. “You won’t even get a shot off.” He said this as he pulled the car into gear.

  The kid kept his hand behind his back, probably on the butt of his own gun, but he was hesitating, staring down Duke. Or, trying to.

  Duke gestured with the barrel of his pistol. “Hands up, kid. You got exactly three seconds or I’ll put a hole in your skull.”

  His hands went up slowly, reluctantly, realizing discretion was, in this case, the better part of valor.

  Duke started to lower his gun, but then jerked it back up again. “We really are lost, though. Which way to LoDo?”

  “Man, you for real? Jack my shit, and then ask me for directions?”

  “Which…way?” Duke demanded.

  “Crazy white mothafuckas.” He pointed behind himself. “That way. Go straight, turn right when that street ends, and then you’ll see signs for the highway.”

  Duke mashed the accelerator so the engine roared and the car bolted forward, pushing me back against the seat.

  Thirty, maybe forty minutes of awkward silence later, Duke pulled into a fenced off, pay-to-park lot and paid the fee with cash he’d found stashed in the glove box.

  After parking, Duke led the way across the street to the intersection and turned right, then followed that street for two more blocks, shouldering through the occasional groups of pedestrians—most of them locals on their lunch breaks. We entered a nondescript apartment building, four stories, fairly new. It wasn’t a nice enough building to have a doorman, but there was a desk with an old, overweight security guard behind it, ostensibly watching the camera monitors.

  He looked up, saw Duke and I, and lit up. “Dan Stephens! Nice to see you again, sir.”

  Duke took the security guard’s hand and shook it vigorously, roughly clapping the older man on the shoulder. “Bruce, my man. How’s the missus?”

  “Ah, you know how it is. She’s an ugly old bitch, but I’m too old and fat to upgrade, so I hang on to her.”

  “Bullshit, Bruce, you know you love her.”

  “Got me there, Dan, got me there. Thirty-eight years next week I’ve been married to her, so I guess I like her okay.”

  “Got any big plans for the big three-eight?” Duke leaned up against the desk as if he had all the time in the world, content to shoot the shit.

  “Nah. Been saving my paychecks to take her to Jax’s, but that’s about it.”

  Duke managed to work up a surprisingly convincing look of embarrassment. “So, my girlfriend and I popped into town on a whim, you know how it is, and I…well, I sort of forgot my keys back in LA. Can you help a brother out, Bruce?”

  “I really shouldn’t.”

  “You know me, Bruce. Ain’t like I’m a stranger, right?”

  “I know, but—”

  “Come on, buddy. We just need to get off our feet for a while, you know what I mean? Been traveling most of the day, we just wanna kick back for a minute.”

  Bruce eyed us, and then sighed heavily. “All right, I guess I can let you in. Just…don’t tell anyone and don’t make a habit of it.”

  “My lips are sealed, buddy,” Duke said.

  We took an elevator up to the third floor, Bruce ambling and shuffling down the long, low-ceilinged hallway to a unit in the far back corner. He jingled through a huge set of keys, found the correct one, and unlocked the door to what I assumed was Duke’s apartment, although he’d called it a “stash spot”, whatever that meant. Stash, like drugs? He’d taken a hit of that black guy’s blunt but, despite that, he didn’t seem like the type to keep an apartment just for stashing drugs.

  Bruce unlocked the door and pushed it open, then pocketed the keys. “There you go, kids. Have fun.”

  Duke clapped Bruce on the shoulder yet again. “You’re a real life saver, Bruce, you don’t even know.”

  Bruce waved a pudgy, veiny hand as he shuffled back to the elevator. “I know, Dan, I know. I’ll see you around.”

  Duke pressed a palm to my lower back, gently nudging me into the apartment. I went in, and Duke closed the door behind us.

  “So, Dan Stephens.” I meandered into the apartment, which was about as sparse and spartan as you might imagine a commando’s backup stash spot would be. Meaning, a futon on one wall and a stack of moving boxes in the corner, and nothing else.

  He shrugged. “The whole point of a stash spot is that it ain’t connected to you. Dan Stephens ain’t much but a fake ID and bank account.”

  I stood in the center of the empty living room and finally asked what was on my mind. “So, um. What exactly do you keep in this stash spot?”

  “Nothing much. My collection of women’s panties, porn, crack rocks…you know, the usual.” The asshole delivered this totally straight-faced, so I wasn’t entirely sure he was kidding.

  I stared at him, trying to read him. Which should’ve been easier than it was, but his expression wasn’t giving anything away. “I want to assume you’re kidding, but I don’t know jack shit about you, Duke. Hell, I don’t even know if Duke is your real name.”

  He let out a huff of laughter, shaking his head. “Okay, I get that we don’t know each other, but do you really think I’d buy an apartment under an alias just to store drugs and nudie mags?”

  “You called yourself the panty-master. How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

  He tilted his head to one side, looking perplexed. “That was a joke, Jesus.” He took two long steps, which put him in my personal space, his cornflower eyes bright and piercing and vivid…and intelligent. “I know I look—and sometimes
act—like…what did you call it? A commando from Central Casting? Yeah, I get why you’d think that. But you don’t survive in my line of work by being stupid, so don’t make the mistake of underestimating me, Temple.”

  I searched his eyes, and realized I’d been doing exactly that, underestimating, stereotyping him. He looked like a typical douchebag gym bro with more muscles than brains, and he even talked like one sometimes, but the way he was looking at me right now, something told me I was dead wrong in my estimation of Duke Silver.

  “Is Duke Silver really your name?”

  He nodded. “Sure is, honey.”

  “And what do you keep here?”

  He ignored my question for a long moment, remaining in my space, towering over me, staring down at me, filling my field of vision with his massive body, his biceps stretching the sleeves of his shirt, chest huge and broad and hard. Goddammit, he was sexy. Too fucking sexy for my good. That hair, fuck me, that hair. I wanted to rip it out of the elastic ponytail holder and run my fingers through it. Shit, I wanted to get a good grip on those kinky red locks and pull that craggy jawline of his between my thighs and ride that sarcastic, arrogant, dirty mouth of his. I wanted to feel those big bear paw hands of his on my bare skin. I wanted to see if he had abs to match his biceps. I wanted to get him out of those stupid fucking cargo shorts.

  “You keep lookin’ at me like that and you’re gonna make me think your sass is all show.”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like you want rip my clothes off and do nasty things to me.”

  I did my best to wipe my thoughts off my face. “You wish, soldier boy.”

  He held my gaze as he reached up with both hands and nimbly opened a button of my blouse. The shirt had never exactly been equal to the task of holding in my tits, even with a bra, but then that was the point, wasn’t it? Make ‘em look without giving ‘em anything to actually see. So then, when he flicked open that fourth button from the top, my tits kind of spilled out, only marginally constrained and concealed by a not-quite-sheer lacy maroon bralette. Yes, I know, my boobs are a little too big for a bralette, but dammit, they’re comfy and cute and I like them, and I don’t care if they don’t really do the job a bra is supposed to do. You’ll have to pry my bralettes out of my cold, dead hands, along with my yoga pants and my leopard print Tieks.

  I felt my nipples harden, and that was when he finally let his gaze break away from mine.

  “I’m not just wishing I could do nasty things to you, Fancy, I’m planning to.” He undid another button, and then another, and then the shirt was open completely.

  I willed myself to unfreeze, to slap him, to back out of his reach, to do something, anything. But my body betrayed my brain by remaining still. All I could do was stand there as he slid his palms over my shoulders and down my arms, brushing the blouse off along the way. His eyes were roaming and flicking, fixing on my breasts then moving up to my face. His hands, though. God, those hands were a tease. Hovering at my waist, not quite touching me.

  “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he murmured.

  Put your hands on me, goddammit. I stood stock-still and stared up at him, waiting, barely breathing. Willing him to make the move so I could claim all I was doing was going along with it.

  He didn’t, though. Didn’t touch me. He simply looked, his big chest rising and falling a little too quickly for me to believe he was unaffected.

  “You take my shirt off for any particular reason?” I asked, working hard at sounding casually sarcastic.

  “Yep.” He rubbed a thumb over the lace, across my erect nipple, sending a shiver through me. “I wanted to see your tits.”

  “And do you typically just take what you want without asking?”

  He brushed his thumb over the other nipple, sending another shudder through me. “Yeah, for the most part. But I don’t think you need to act all pissy, since you didn’t exactly stop me, did you?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance.”

  “Bullshit, sweetheart. I’m touching you right now, and you’re not stopping me. Nothing’s preventing you from taking a step backward, is there?” He pressed closer to me, his hand now closing over my lower back, just above the waistband of my skirt. “Even now, you can stop this, if you really want to.”

  “Implying that I don’t want to?”

  “I’m not implying anything, Fancy. I’m flat out stating it. You don’t want me to stop.” He pulled me against him, but he did it slowly and gently, giving me plenty of opportunity to put the lie to his words. Only, I couldn’t. Because I’m stupid, and he was right, damn him. “You want me to touch you. You don’t want me to stop.”

  I’ve always had a weakness for bad boys with an attitude. Some girls have a weakness for diamonds, others for chocolate, or boys in uniform, or dimples. And then there’s me. Is he an unmitigated asshole with a superiority complex? I’ll take him…for a couple hours. Assuming he can last that long; most can’t. If he’s shit in bed, he’s gone the second he pulls out—buh-bye. I haven’t had a guy stay for a second round in more than a year, and it’s no one’s fucking business how many single rounds there’ve been. Enough, just leave it at that. Or, maybe not enough. Maybe I just haven’t sampled a wide enough range of men to find one worth keeping around for a second fuck.

  What? Guys are the only ones allowed to be one-and-done horndogs with a one-track mind and short attention span? Fuck that. I like sex, and I don’t like clingy guys who want “more”, primarily because they’re only pretending to want more so they can get a ride in my private jet, or get stage-side tickets from my dad, or swim in the infinity pool at our place in Malibu they saw on the show. They think they can pretend to be in love with me, and they let me take them on exotic vacations and even buy them expensive cars, and then once they’ve sampled the perks of dating Temple Kennedy, they’re in the wind. Yeah, been there, done that, already burned the T-shirt. No thanks. Worse than the gold diggers are the ones who just want to get a pic of themselves with me so they can sell it to TMZ or whatever. Yeah, that’s happened a few times: take a guy home only to discover he snuck a pic or two and sold it. Or if they don’t have a pic, they have a story they told their bros and then somehow there’s rumors going around that I did anal on the first date (both true and false—true because I do like anal, but false because I’d never give that up on the first date, and nobody ever gets a second date with me, or even really a first, because I don’t date, so thus even though I like it, I don’t actually ever do it), or that I gave a BJ in the back of a club (false, I don’t give BJs, and I certainly don’t hang out in clubs), or that I like to ride around topless in my Aston Martin (again, both true and false—true because what’s the point in having privacy glass if you’re not going to go topless, and false because my car isn’t an Aston Martin, it’s a Bentley).

  Okay, so that was a lot of internal rambling. The point in all this is that Duke is a bad boy. Duh, like, obviously. The problem is that he was clearly created in a laboratory with the single specific goal of tempting me into doing something spectacularly stupid, like fucking him without an NDA. I know, it seems stupid, but I’ve been screwed by too many selfish assholes. I have a system, and it works. No sex without an NDA, they always bag it, no photos, and no dates. That way, I get the sex I need, and I don’t have to worry about the fallout, because if they break the NDA I’ll sue them into poverty. My system protects me from myself, because I have absolutely terrible judgement in men. Like, the worst. Line up ten guys, all hot, and I will unerringly pick the biggest douchebag in the line-up. My judgement is unerring in this respect.

  Thus, I don’t trust myself, or anyone else, guys especially.

  After the last asshole burned me, I signed off all guys. No boys. No sex. Nothing. I need to reset myself, try to rejuvenate my head and my sex drive and my anorexic sense of morality. Which means no sex. NO sex. NO SEX.

  I’m an idiot to think I can go three months without sex.

  But I’m sticking
to my guns, I’m holding onto my rules, because those rules are keeping me out of trouble.

  And Duke threatens this. I WANT him. Like, bad. I want to fuck him so many different ways it should be illegal, but I don’t dare. The second I give in, he’ll turn into a douchebag, like all men turn into douchebags after you fuck them, and sometimes they are douchebags while you’re fucking them. And I actually like Duke, so far. He’s honest to a fault about what he thinks and what he wants, doesn’t try to hide or disguise who and what he is, and also, he got me out of that house with the scary foreign dudes.

  I let out a breath, and step back; Duke immediately lets go, even though his eyes continue to bounce between my tits and my eyes. “Wrong again,” I said, lying through my teeth. “No more touching.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it.”

  “It is.” Not. My sex drive was really pissed off at me at this point, telling me I’m turning down what’s sure to be the ride of my life.

  Duke took one last look at my breasts, and then turned around, making for the bedroom. I snagged my shirt off the floor, slid it on, and buttoned it, going as far as buttoning it all the way to the second button from the top, meaning I felt a little choked, but if I didn’t show him cleavage, maybe he wouldn’t look at my tits as much, which would be good and bad, because I liked it when he looked at my tits, I want him to touch them again but I’m not having sex with Duke because then I’ll want to have ALL the sex with him, and that’s not going to happen, for the aforementioned reasons.

  There was only the one bedroom in this apartment, and the door was closed. Duke stood in front of the door, hand on the knob. He twisted the knob and started to open the door, then stopped and glanced back at me. “Try not to freak out, okay?”

  “Why would I—” I started, and then he opened the door and I cut myself off, because holy shit. “Oh. That kind of stash.”

  Guns.

  ALL THE GUNS.

  Like, literally, he could put a gun in the hands of an entire fucking army. There are so many different kinds of firearms in this room that I don’t even know what to do with myself, other than stare in shock. Machine guns, handguns, rifles, old guns, new guns, big guns, small guns, boxes of ammo, big clips and little clips, at least three different types of grenade, a fucking actual rocket launcher, three machetes, six big knives like Rambo used in First Blood…