Wickedly covert, p.1
Wickedly Covert, page 1
Wickedly Covert
Wickedly Covert
J.F. Lowe
Seduction and Sin Publishing
Copyright
Wickedly Covert
J.F. Lowe
Published by Seduction and Sin Publishing
Copyright © 2022 J.F. Lowe
Edited by Bailey Macks
EBook ISBN: 978-0-6488818-9-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-6454991-0-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.
Warning: The contents of this book for a mature audience.
About this book
Funny how things had worked out, she went from hunting down him for killing her brother to him sitting beside her as the new recruit in the Bureau. Most would say it is their worst nightmare, but even a nightmare could not prepare them for this. A normal married couple, living a normal life in a normal suburb, working normal jobs...well, if you can call two undercover agents trying to bring down one of the world’s largest human trafficking rings “normal.”
Pose as a married couple, easy. Keeping things professional now that might be hard.
Chapter 1
It was a good day, Casey Anderson decided. The sun was shining, the bees were buzzing, and she was back on the job at the Special Crimes Unit. Vacations had always grated on her, and that was in the best of circumstances, when she was just chafing at the idea of the nation’s most wanted committing heinous acts while she was lazing about. But to say that the circumstances of her most recent vacation had not been ideal would have been an understatement of biblical proportions.
She forced her hands to relax on the steering wheel as she finally pulled into a parking spot at the Bureau. It wouldn’t do to let the past get into her head, not today. No, she was going to stride straight into the future and ignore all of that absolutely insufferable bullshit she’d gone through in the last year.
His name hung on her lips, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a curse. Just thinking about him made her blood boil, but at least she was blessed with a calling that let her channel that into something a little more productive. She’d go into the office with zest and verve, throwing herself into hunting down whatever sick bastard was on her plate this week.
But as she got out of her car and made her way down to the looming, nondescript building that housed the Special Crimes Unit, she saw a terribly familiar man leaning against the wall. Every ounce of him oozed casual nonchalance, but she saw the way that his eyes glinted when he finally noticed her. She knew just how tightly wound the man was, damn him, and just what it felt like when he finally let himself loose, double damn him.
“Ashton,” she said, plastering a painfully fake smile on her face. To most people, it probably looked pretty convincing, but Ashton would know better.
Sure enough, he noticed, but then he just grinned at her obvious distress. The way his arms were lazily crossed, the way that he took in her utterly professional attire with a single undressing glance, it was beyond infuriating.
“Casey, fancy seeing you back here so soon,” he said with a smirk, his wicked eyes boring into hers.
She held her tongue because responding was definitely the wrong move. She worked here, not him, but bringing that up was just going to sound petty and insecure, especially if things had gone well at Quantico for him.
And so she just decided to ignore the subject entirely. Besides, flinging barbs was easier.
“Have you figured out how to separate colors in the laundry yet?” she asked, her voice the very essence of sweetness.
Ashton winced. “Come on, it only happened once. Besides, I wasn’t the one who broke the dishwasher.”
Casey let out a slow, steady breath, struggling not to make it a hiss. It was remarkable, really, the way that utterly mundane domestic issues had a way of getting under her skin that all the wretched crimes of her job could not. It felt almost sacrilegious to care so much about the minor squabbles that stemmed from living together with a man for a few months, especially when standing in front of a place where hundreds upon hundreds of people were studying far more serious problems as she spoke.
And yet she couldn’t shake it, and so she strode right on past Ashton, heading to the unassuming glass doors that led to her salvation.
But to her irritation, he fell into step beside her, slipping inside without another word. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that he was just here to piss her off. The idea that she would have to work with him…
Casey shivered, and not out of disgust. It was far too difficult to work around the man, and he damn well knew it.
“Morning, Charles,” she said to the portly security guard that was sipping on his atrociously sugary coffee.
“Morning, Casey,” he said absently as he scanned her card.
“And how are the kids doing?” Ashton asked as his badge was scanned. “Did Lina’s recital go well?”
“Oh yes, it went wonderfully, Ashton,” Charles replied with a big grin, his face lighting up. “Have a good day, you two.”
And then they were through, heading deeper into the maze of offices and meeting rooms that made up the saner parts of the building.
“When did you get so chummy with Charles?” Casey grumbled, not tacking on the childish complaint that he was her security guard, as if she somehow owned him. It felt irritating to have someone else intruding on her life so completely, even if that person was Ashton. Especially if that person was Ashton.
“Oh, just while you were gone on your vacation,” Ashton mused, quickly opening a door before Casey had a chance to do it for herself.
She gritted her teeth, as much to block out her yearning for his scent as to bite her tongue.
“So you’ve already had a few days of active duty under your belt while I was away. Good to see you haven’t accidentally shot yourself yet,” Casey said as she hurried ahead to ensure that she got to open the next door. Of course, she was then left holding it as Ashton sauntered after her, failing to speed up as she’d anticipated.
“I think you’ll recall that my trigger discipline was quite good,” he whispered with a wink as he passed her.
Casey didn’t blush, but she most certainly did look around to make sure that nobody else had overheard that particularly lewd remark. Then again, it wasn’t like anyone else would have any idea exactly what that meant or the hedonistic night it referred to.
Leaning in close, she hissed right back at him. “If I recall correctly, that’s the night that you forgot to piss after and got yourself an infection.”
Unfortunately, Casey had lost track of time and they’d already found themselves in front of her superior’s office. At that exact moment, Carlisle stepped out with a bemused look on his face.
“Oh good, I thought I heard you two. If you’re quite done, come on in.” And with that, he turned around and disappeared into his office.
Casey and Ashton exchanged a look that was half irritation, half sheepishness and followed him in.
Carlisle’s office was fairly drab by most accounts, adorned with all the blandest furnishings imaginable. There was a touch of personality here and there, mostly in the pictures that he kept on his desk of his children, but for the most part, it was exactly the sort of place that one might expect to find filing cabinets upon filing cabinets full of boring documents. That was technically true, but only if one conceded that most of the details of law enforcement were fairly boring in execution while being exciting only in the grand scheme of things.
Casey and Ashton took their seats in front of Carlisle, which profoundly disoriented her. It took a moment to place the sensation, but then she recalled meeting Carlisle in a diner right before going to hunt down Ashton. And seduce him. And maybe arrest him.
Funny how things had worked out, and now he was sitting here beside her, a new recruit to the Bureau in front of his new boss. Hell, maybe she’d get to watch him getting chewed out. That could be fun.
But then she also had to contend with the fact that Carlisle had called both of them in, and it surely wasn’t for his own entertainment alone. With a sinking feeling, she realized that she might actually be asked to work with the bastard.
It wasn’t intentional, but she found herself staring over at Ashton as he sat in the seat beside her. At a glance, he appeared completely at ease, but she knew him better than that. His long, languid posture concealed a paranoid tension and the ability to leap into action at a moment’s notice, whether it be for violence or delights. For years, she’d fantasized about killing the man, and then when she’d finally hunted him down, things had taken a turn for the sexual. Of course, it helped that he definitely hadn’t been the man who had killed her brother, as she’d erroneously believed for years.
“So have you two been adjusting well?” Carlisle asked, folding his hands atop his desk and peering at his underlings intently.
Ashton and Casey both made the same noncommittal sound at the same moment, which should have tipped him off, but damn the man, Carlisle could be willfully obstinate when it pleased him, and so he just continued to watch them politely.
“It’s been… good,” Casey
“Quite good,” Ashton confirmed, surely holding back some equally big caveats.
“Great,” Carlisle said dryly as he glanced from one to the other, surely able to spot their sickly sweet sarcasm. “That’s exactly the kind of energy that I need you to bring to this assignment.” With that, he slapped down a pair of manilla envelopes before the two agents.
Casey could feel her heart sink. It was her worst nightmare, being forced to work alongside Ashton in a professional capacity. Well, at least she could take refuge in the fact that it would only be a job, and at the end of the day, she could go home and—
“Posing as husband and wife?” Ashton asked as he read his files, his eyebrows nearly meeting his hairline. Casey gasped, nearly tearing the binding of her folder as she opened it to make sure that he wasn’t teasing her.
“To infiltrate a human smuggling ring known as Black Rose,” Carlisle confirmed, reading the words that Casey scanned over and over, hoping in vain that they might morph into something else entirely. “A human smuggling ring which, you may note, is responsible for moving thousands across the border every year, selling them to God knows who. And they’re ramping up in scale as we speak.”
That was all it took for Casey to feel her priorities snap into place. Ashton fell into a distant second place of concern as she flipped through the files, reading about an organization that filled her with more loathing with every passing line. If there was something vile you could imagine, they had a finger in it. Black Rose chose the poor and powerless in other countries, enticing them with opportunities and promises that they had no intention of delivering. All they had to do was get on a boat and head to America. The old, the infirm, the young, the beautiful, they took them all, and they had a purpose for everyone. Organ harvesting, illegal adoptions to seedy individuals, and all the sex trafficking that one could ever stomach, all in one place.
“They’re ramping up, you say?” Casey asked as she processed a spread of heart-wrenching photographs. And those were the lucky ones that managed to get away.
“Yes, we have reason to believe that they’re planning on taking over some of their rivals within the next few weeks. The other organizations are reprehensible, but in relative terms, things are about to get a whole lot worse for a whole lot of victims if Black Rose takes the reins,” Carlisle said grimly, his eyes locked on one of the pictures facing him on his desk. He was almost certainly imagining his grandchildren being among the victims.
Casey flipped back through the dossier, this time trying to figure out how her and Ashton were to be involved. But as always, Ashton did just the right thing to tick her off, and so he was one step ahead of her.
“It says here that we’re supposed to act like a couple that wants to adopt a child,” he mused. “I’m not sure we can make the most convincing of prospective parents.”
Casey was about to give him some choice words when she saw the icy look in Carlisle’s eye. “Somehow, I get the feeling that they won’t much care how suitable your household seems,” he said, his voice deathly quiet. “Do recall the nature of their organization, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Thoroughly chastened, the pair applied themselves to studying the files once more. Or at least, they did for a few moments before Carlisle slid something across the table.
“And here are your tickets. You leave today.”
Casey and Ashton glanced at one another at the same time. The gravity of the situation was just beginning to set in for her. Not only was she going to have to spend time with this jerk again, but she was going to have to act like everything was fine, and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Fantastic,” Ashton said in a monotone that echoed her sentiments completely, which just incensed her all the more.
“Wonderful,” she added with the same utter lack of enthusiasm, just to make sure that he got the same message. Oh yes, this was going to be a grand old time.
Chapter 2
Ashton Malick was not feeling particularly optimistic about the future. On the one hand, he was being given a chance to make amends for his admittedly boorish behavior in the past, and he might even be able to save a lot of people in the process. On the other hand though, that was where the trouble was. Getting through Casey’s prickly exterior was going to be a problem, and it was going to be a trial not to bring up all the shit that she had most definitely done wrong. And on top of that, there was the little detail about being entrusted with taking down an entire human smuggling ring with only a woman that hated his guts as backup. A very sexy woman who hated his guts, but still.
“What the hell is he thinking?” the woman in question grumbled at his side as they made their way out of the building at a steady clip. There was no time to waste if the times on those plane tickets were correct, and if Ashton was sure of anything, it was that Carlisle was always correct.
“Yeah, unbelievable,” he said gruffly, mostly to cover up the traitorous note of giddy hope that threatened to break free. No matter how much the beautiful woman at his side irritated him, he was still hopelessly infatuated with her. Always had been, always would be.
“He wasn’t being serious,” Casey insisted as they stepped outside and straight into a brisk breeze. She shivered, and he had to fight back the urge to offer her his jacket.
Instead, Malick just sighed dramatically and shrugged. “He said we have to pose as husband and wife, and I’m definitely not gonna go against Carlisle’s orders. Are you?”
She pouted. The damn woman pouted! Didn’t she know what that did to his belly?
After a moment of acclimating to the chill, they hurried towards the parking garage. “Well, I definitely can’t defy him, not while I’m on my probationary period,” he said.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Casey asked with a snort. “Sending you back to Quantico for summer classes?”
“Prison, of course,” Ashton said with a chuckle. It was still hard to believe that he’d turned from a wanted outlaw to an operative from the government effectively overnight, but there it was, and that was that. “Any violations of my terms, they send me straight back.”
Casey huffed, looking pissed that he had to have an answer for everything. He could practically hear her berating him for it, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit that it got the blood pumping. Casey was hot, but when she was mad, she was hot as hell.
Of course, the last thing he wanted was for her to know that he felt that way, so he covered it up as best he could, just like he had for all the time they’d spent together in the last few months.
“Oh well, looks like we’ll have to live together for a bit now. Whatever will we do?” he said as they began to go up some stairs in the parking garage, taking two at a time.
And then she rolled her eyes. Dammit, he really shouldn’t have looked at her at that exact moment. For whatever reason, every time he saw that his memories were drawn back to a very particular night where they’d made up after an argument the best way they knew how. He’d made some silly comment while they got down to business, and there she had been, her face next to his cock as she stroked him, rolling her eyes and sighing before making eye contact and sucking him off to the best orgasm that he’d ever experienced.
His cock was so hard that he thought it might rip right through his pants. This was going to be a problem.
“What the hell are you up to, Ashton?” she asked suspiciously. Leave it to Casey to read his mind like that.
“Dunno what you mean,” he said under his breath, surreptitiously trying to adjust himself down there by taking three stairs at a time but accomplishing absolutely nothing.
“I mean, why the hell are you coming this way? I know that my car is the only one on this level.”
“Ah, about that,” Ashton said with a sheepish laugh as they came out of the stairs to an area of the parking garage where there was indeed only a single vehicle parked. “I figured that we might as well get started on all the domestic bliss stuff. You know, riding in the same car and all that.”
