Love me darkly, p.6
Love Me Darkly, page 6
part #1 of Behind The Veil #1 Series
Squeezing his eyes closed, Mateo drew in a deep, slow breath. He couldn’t succumb to the rage boiling in his blood, heating him from the inside until he felt like a furnace roared in his belly. His teeth ground together, his jaw winding painfully tight.
“Okay,” Donovan said when Mateo merely stood there seething. “Message received. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
God damn it. Now, he liked Donovan even more.
“It’s fine,” he ground out, even though it was most certainly not fine. He had been so immersed in untangling the threads connecting the Seal of Azrael to his UNSUB, which might also connect him to Solstice and a potential human trafficking ring, that the mention of Mari and the unspeakable things that had been done to her seemed to come out of nowhere. He felt as if someone had punched him in the gut, hard enough to send the fist clear out his back, allowing all his grief and pain and wrath to pour out of him in rivers of red-black blood.
“What are you doing tonight?”
Donovan’s question hit him like a cold dash of water in his face. The abrupt change of subject was welcome, though, so Mateo latched onto it.
“Nothing. Probably going over more of the surveillance footage from outside Solstice. Why?”
“I was thinking … we may not have any new leads to go on until tomorrow. But if you’re anything like me—and our limited interactions lead me to believe you are—you’re not going to want to sit around waiting until then. So, let’s check out Solstice tonight.”
Mateo groaned. “I haven’t been to a club in … fuck, I don’t even want to say how long.”
Donovan laughed and nudged Mateo with his elbow. “Oh, my bad. You probably have an early bedtime or something. I know how important sleep is when you’re in your—”
“I will push you down these steps,” Mateo growled, though his voice was laced with humor.
“Think you can manage to stay awake long enough to help me do some recon? We can get a sense for who hangs out in the club. Might even see something useful.”
Mateo gritted his teeth. After a long and trying couple of days, the last thing he wanted was to hang around some nightclub full of drunk tourists and rowdy college kids. A solitary evening in his hotel room with a fresh bottle of Scotch had already been on his agenda. But then, his mind would never allow him to sit still. Every piece of new information that had been uncovered the last two days were like marbles in his brain, rolling around and knocking into each other and setting off ripples of ideas and assumptions that filled him from corner to corner. He would never be able to relax. Never be able to enjoy his Scotch. Never be able to find any kind of peace in sleep now that the case had been injected with new life. His need to know how it all fit together superseded his desire to be left the fuck alone.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll meet you there at ten.”
Glancing around the interior of Solstice, it didn’t take long for Mateo to remember why the clubbing phase of his life hadn’t lasted. Nothing was less enjoyable than being crammed into a dark room with hundreds of other people, paying outrageous prices for watered-down drinks, and risking disease inside the filthy bathrooms. The air around them vibrated from the bass of the music, which injected itself through Mateo’s skin and sank into his bloodstream. He was thrumming with anxious energy, his leg bouncing beneath the table he shared with Donovan. They had been here for barely half an hour, after having waited at the velvet rope outside for about fifteen minutes. The line of people waiting to get in was stretched around the building by the time they’d made it inside.
Apparently, Solstice was popular among tourists and locals alike. The room had already been filled wall to wall when Mateo and Donovan entered, yet they conveniently managed to find a place to sit. They had discussed their strategy, which involved sitting in a position where they could observe the VIP section to see who came and went. Mateo had already adjusted the settings on his camera phone so he could snap decent pictures in the dark interior of the club. If Darcy helped identify the VIPs, it might lead them to something important.
So, here he sat, drinking a barely acceptable Scotch and scanning the room with Donovan at his side. He had to admit that the setup made the crowd a bit more tolerable—two levels separated those dancing and socializing from those wanting to drink and relax. The dance floor took up the entire first floor, with two bars on either side. Flashing, colored lights cut through the dance floor at intervals, leaving beams of pink and orange through white mists of fog. Hanging over the dance floor was a round sphere meant to resemble the sun. Its LED-screened surface danced with swirling red, orange, and yellow light and prisms of black, as if the orb had descended from the galaxy itself. The lights of the sphere pulsed in time with the music, as if setting off a signal that sent the dancers below it into a frenzy.
Multiple sets of steps led to the second floor, which overlooked the first. It was on this second level that he sat with Donovan, in one of the several tables situated near the bar. Velvet ropes cordoned off the VIP section, where leather booths circled round tables. Only one section had been filled, but it was still early. From the looks of things, the group of women taking up the booth were here for a bachelorette party.
“See anyone yet?” Donovan asked, beer bottle halfway to his mouth.
“Not yet. You?”
“No. Do you think they’d use a back entrance?”
Mateo shrugged. “It’s possible, but unlikely. The kinds of men we’re looking for have made a lot of money selling women, and they’re not shy about flaunting it. They’re going to want their bottle service and a bunch of women fawning all over them. It’s still early. They’ll come.”
Finishing off his beer, Donovan slouched, his gaze sharp as he glanced around the room. His posture and expression might have fooled someone else into thinking he was simply bored, but Mateo knew better. His eyes missed nothing.
“How’s your Scotch?”
Mateo scowled into his glass, pissed he had spent so much on what might be the worst Scotch on the planet. “Fucking awful.”
Not that it mattered. The drink was only part of his cover for the night. The last thing he needed was to get wasted on what was essentially an undercover mission.
“Ask for something else.”
“We’re here to work, not get drunk.”
“Please,” Donovan huffed. “Our hands are tied for the night. Observing and snapping pics only. I could do that in my sleep.”
The man had a point and Mateo’s anxiety only heightened the longer they sat here. He had just made up his mind to go for that second drink when movement near the bar caught his eye. In his peripheral vision, he could see that the VIP booths were starting to fill up, the men from downstairs filing in and making themselves comfortable.
But he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her.
Her skin was dark-as-night, smooth and unblemished, gleaming like onyx in the colored lights of the club. Long, slender braids ran down her back, ending just above the swell of her ass. And what an ass it was, barely covered by a black leather miniskirt, round and firm and perfect. He let his eyes wander down her bare legs, tracing the sinews beneath that supple skin, the sculptures of her thighs and calves. She wore a pair of gold heels with delicate straps wrapped around her ankles.
Mateo went rigid when she flipped those braids over her shoulder, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a top. No, that couldn’t be right. It took him a solid thirty seconds of staring at her naked flesh to realize the shirt she wore was completely backless. The thinnest of straps held it up around her neck and at her waist. He didn’t think he’d ever seen something more striking than that bare back, the lines of her waist, the slight ripple of muscle and shoulder blades as she moved, seeming to react to the music.
His leg ceased its agitated bouncing. The music faded into a dull whine pricking the edges of his consciousness, and his vision narrowed to a single point. The gilt of a golden shoe, the gleam of a bared, brown leg, the very edge of an ass cheek showing from beneath her skirt as she leaned over the bar to talk to the man mixing drinks behind it.
Holy fuck.
Leaning toward him over the table, Donovan grinned. “If your eyes bug out any farther, they’re going to fall out of your head.”
Mateo snatched his gaze away from the woman, mortified that he’d been caught. He could argue that close observation of the people in this room was the entire point of this. But Donovan wasn’t an idiot. Mateo definitely hadn’t been watching the woman because he thought she was suspicious.
“My eyes were not bugging out.”
“Were, too. It’s okay, she’s hot. At least from behind… she could be a butter-face.”
“What the fuck is a butter-face?”
“You know, bangin’ body, but then she turns around and … well … ‘but-her-face.’”
Donovan erupted into laughter at his own joke, but Mateo didn’t respond. He couldn’t respond because the woman took that very moment to lift a tray of drinks from the bar and turn around. A breath escaped him on what could only be described as a wheeze. Donovan might have been right; he felt as if eyes might leap straight out of their sockets.
“I stand corrected,” Donovan murmured. “Definitely not a butter-face.”
That had to be the grossest understatement Mateo had ever heard. Her face was heart-shaped, framed perfectly by the braids that swung and moved when she began to walk with the tray balanced on one shoulder. High cheekbones slashed beneath a pair of eyes that appeared dark from this distance. She had the cutest button of a nose, and her jaw sloped gracefully into the point of her chin. Her mouth was luxurious, wide, plump and full.
He winced, looking down to find that his fingernails had gouged half-moons into his palms; he’d been clenching his fists so hard. Fighting to keep from following her around the room with his gaze, he focused on his hands. Specifically, the left hand, which had only recently lost the prominent pale mark of where his wedding ring had once been. He’d stopped wearing it months ago, but felt the weight of the jewelry as if it were still there.
“Finish your Scotch.”
Mateo sucked in a breath as if he’d just burst out from underwater. His chest burned as if he had forgotten how to inhale. “What?”
Donovan gave him a pointed look, then darted his eyes at the waitress. She now stood only one table over from them, smiling and nodding while taking drink orders. “Finish. Your. Scotch.”
Reaching for the tumbler in front of him, Mateo lifted the glass and drained what was left in one swallow.
“Perfect,” Donovan murmured, raising his bottle to get her attention.
Mateo’s tongue turned into a dead weight in his mouth as she approached, her gaze skimming over Donovan as if with mild interest. Then, she was looking at Mateo, the feathery arches of her eyebrows ticking upward slightly. She didn’t look away. God damn her, her eyes were velvety brown and almond-shaped and fringed with a heavy fan of curled lashes, and she wouldn’t stop looking at him.
“Hi,” she said in what could only be described as a purr.
The sound stroked, unwelcomed, down Mateo’s spine.
“What can I get y’all?”
Donovan shook his empty bottle. “Another Heineken, and a shot of Jameson for me. And … would you happen to know if your bartender has a better brand of Scotch back there? My friend here ordered one, but what he got made his face look … well, like that.”
She was looking at him again. Mateo met her gaze as if his head were on a swivel that she controlled. Those eyes of hers gleamed with amusement and her lips quivered as if she held back a smile. Apparently, something was amusing about his facial expression because she and Donovan exchanged looks as if sharing a private joke. At his expense.
“Was it that bad?” she asked, pushing her lower lip into a teasing pout.
Mateo bit the inside of his cheek and dropped his eyes again, determined to keep them down.
“Terrible,” he managed, his voice coming out harsher than he’d intended. From the corner of his eye, he noticed that her top was the same golden color as her shoes. It draped the front of her body, dipping low enough that he could see the curves of her tits.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “I don’t know anything about Scotch, but I can ask Rudy if he’s got anything better back there.”
Mateo went on scowling and trying not to stare at those tits. They were, quite simply, magnificent. Donovan gave her another charming smile.
“We appreciate it, Miss …”
“Melody,” she said with another smile.
“Thanks, Melody. I’m Jack, and this is Mateo.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Y’all from around here?”
“I am,” Donovan told her. “My uncle here is visiting from out of town.”
That, finally, got an outward reaction from Mateo. His head whipped toward Donovan hard and fast, while the younger man simply burst out laughing. He didn’t know why having his age pointed out bothered him just now. Letting his gaze move over Melody again, he estimated that she must be about ten years his junior. She was probably older than Donovan, but still closer to the young agent’s age than Mateo was.
“I am not,” he seethed, “this prick’s uncle.”
Melody giggled, collecting his tumbler and Donovan’s empty beer bottle. “Hang tight. I’ll be right back.”
Mateo had a hell of a time keeping himself from watching her walk away.
“She was checking you out,” Donovan said once she was out of earshot. “You’re insane if you didn’t notice.”
He had noticed. For the short moment Mateo had looked into Melody’s eyes, he had seen it. Curiosity. Intrigue. Attraction.
“This is work,” he reminded Donovan.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t mix business with pleasure.”
“Is that what you do? Fuck every piece of pussy that comes across you while you’re on a case?”
Donovan shrugged, not the slightest bit affected by Mateo’s sour mood. “Never anyone actually connected to a case. But clubs are fair game. You ought to ask for her number or something. Could be a nice distraction while you’re in town.”
Mateo refused to respond, unwilling to consider that idea for more than five seconds. It had only been a few days since the woman from the app, and a session like that was usually enough to last him for months. Besides, he didn’t want the waitress, no matter how gorgeous she was. He didn’t.
Melody returned, placing the beer and the shot in front of Donovan. Then, she rounded the table, reaching over Mateo’s shoulder to set a fresh tumbler in front of him. His senses were assaulted by a scent he couldn’t quite place. He only knew it came from her. Her hair or her skin. Some kind of perfume or oil. He made out vanilla and musk mixed with something spicy before she pulled her arm back.
“Rudy said this was the best he has. Something called Aberfeldy 12.”
Mateo lifted the glass and sniffed at its contents before taking a wary sip. It wasn’t the best Scotch he’d ever had, but it was smooth and far better than the crap he’d first been served.
“It’s good,” he said, finally looking her in the eye. It was the least he could do after she’d gone out of her way to find him a decent Scotch. “Thank Rudy for me?”
She smiled at him. A real smile that showed teeth. His stomach gave a violent lurch, followed by a twist.
“I will. Oh, and this round’s on the house. Our apologies for the bad Scotch. Wave me down if y’all need anything!”
She disappeared, leaving the air to Mateo’s right cold. Or maybe it wasn’t the air. It was him, coming down from what felt dangerously like a boiling point. He breathed a sigh of relief as the heat began to fade the moment she was out of sight. He wasn’t usually so easily distracted while on the job, and was annoyed with himself for reacting as if he’d never seen a nice ass or pair of pretty legs before.
“I think we got something,” Donovan said.
Mateo followed his gaze to the group of men making their way to the VIP section. Four burly guys trailed them, and he had seen enough like them to know they were the muscle. He and Donovan looked on as the men slid into one of the VIP areas, spreading out on the plush couches.
“Isn’t that our friend, Suede?”
Mateo narrowed his eyes, taking a slow sip of his Scotch while watching the three men. He spotted Tariq Hayes, aka Suede, right off. Over the neckline of his shirt was the neck tattoo he’d noticed from the mugshot. He sat on a black leather couch while his companions spread out into the matching armchairs.
Donovan retrieved his phone and held it like he was reading something. Mateo watched him adjust his angle and zoom in with a swift motion, before snapping one photo and then another.
“I’ll get these to Darcy right now. If their faces are in any of her databases, we can identify them. They definitely don’t look like the types of guys Suede would willingly hang out with.”
Donovan was right. Both men were white, and one of them looked like he might have at least twenty years on Suede. He was bald with a gray goatee and a hardened face. Their third companion was a compact man with a blond crew cut, giving him the look of a military man. They were as much a mismatched set as any Mateo had ever seen.
Mateo watched them, wondering what they discussed in their own little corner of the club. If their faces could be believed, this was business, not pleasure.
“You were right about these guys,” Donovan added. “Barely here five minutes, and they’re already popping bottles.”
Melody and two other waitresses approached the booth with champagne bottles and glass flutes. She smiled and chatted with the men much the same way she had with him and Donovan. But then, the other waitresses left, and before Melody could follow suit, the bald man reached out to grab her arm, pulling her onto the couch beside him. She flopped onto the cushions with a laugh, then turned to say something to Suede. He looked her up and down with an exaggerated sweep of his head, then gestured toward her while consulting the man with the blond hair. The two nodded as if agreeing that she looked incredible. She didn’t look uneasy, like a waitress who was just doing her job being hit on. She looked comfortable.
