Illicit Temptation (Astoria Royals #3)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Trace

S hea sleeps soundly in her bed, knocked out from the multiple orgasms and taking my dick in her ass like a fucking champ. God, she’s tough. She can handle me. Every bit of me. My filthy desires, my dirty talk, and my carnal needs even when she’s in fucking pain.

Feeling like my world is tilting on its axis over the revelations we confessed, I complete my final nighttime walkthrough of the grounds wearing just my jeans. My dick still throbs in my pants and my brain is still wrapped in her confession about not having kids.

I truly don’t care if she can’t have children. I don’t know what this woman is doing to me. All these years I worried I wasn’t remembering correctly thinking all I needed was to live out one more fantasy with her. Get my fill and move on.

There’s no moving on for me. She’s it. She’s my forever.

This walkthrough is uneventful as usual. A thought hits me, remembering Shea had suggested I stay in the guest cottage near the pool. My brain tickles suddenly like the energy is pulling me that way to make sure it’s locked.

I hadn’t bothered checking it for two freaking months.

Crossing the back patio, I notice movement behind the fence that leads to the beach, and it stops me in my tracks. It’s a private pathway for residents on this block only. I see a dude passing by, but he stops and stands there, looking between the slats, fiddling with the iron handle to get in.

Heart pounding, I crouch down behind the bar near the outdoor kitchen. Fuck, I don’t have my binoculars. Just my gun and my phone. But my phone has ultra zoom. I snap a photo and by the time I’ve stretched it to see better and figure out who this is, he’s picking the fucking lock.

What the hell?

Shoving my phone into my pocket, I flip off the safety on my piece sitting on my hip. The cottage door sits to my right and is on the paved path to the house from the back gate.

Is this fucking happening? Is someone breaking into Shea’s backyard? Damn, I’d gotten as complacent as she is. I steady my breathing and watch for the shadow. When it’s close, I pounce. Keeping my voice down, I tackle the fucker. While struggling, the guy pulls out a knife from somewhere and slices my arm.

The pain doesn’t even register as I wrestle the knife away from him and hold it against his jugular. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Fuck you,” he answers, and it tells me everything I need to know.

An ordinary harmless stalker starts blabbering apologies. A jealous ex asks me who the fuck I am. This guy seems to know what he’s doing. Only he brought a knife and not a gun.

Guns can be traced and bullets leave behind evidence. Knives can’t. This guy is a professional.

Swearing, I lift him easily and drag him into the cottage. Which was bleedin’ unlocked. I get the door open, and my ops training assures me no one else is in here. I’ve gotten to the point where I can smell sweat and fear.

Kicking the door closed, I slam this guy down on the ceramic floor, pushing the breakfast table out of the way. “Tell me who sent you?”

Who he is irrelevant, he’s clearly working for someone. Furious, I punch him, his nose exploding with blood.

Great.

“Talk,” I yell.

He shakes his head, struggling to get out of my hold. I tighten my grip, but he reaches for my gun, the blood making everything slick. Grabbing my gun, so he can’t, I whack him in the head with the butt so hard the guy goes still.

Shite.

Loosening myself, I get up with my gun trained on his head. Stepping back, I watch him to make sure he’s just out cold and not dead. I can’t deal with a body right now. I quickly wipe sticky blood from my hands then clean my gun on my jeans. With it back in my pocket, I pull out my phone and launch my fingerprint app.

With a quick press, his prints are scanned, and I wait, terrified of who this is.

Beep: Matt Delano

He’s Italian. Typing the name into my phone under the images tab and adding some clever keywords, I see it.

A photo of Nico Scava. Behind him in a suit wearing a wire, is this guy. It’s Scava’s bodyguard. Or one of them. Someone on his security team. Did he draw the short straw?

I look around and mutter to the guard who worked here before me. “Soren, please tell me you left rope in here.”

After scouring a few closets, I find a duffle with rope, duct tape, zip ties, drugged darts, rounds of ammo, and a few more knives. No guns though. Smart. If he left registered guns that could have been stolen from a cottage he didn’t bother to fucking lock when he left, there would be bigger problems.

This hitman’s care pack is all I need. Including some bandages to deal with the knife wound. I clean the gash, thick from past scars and use liquid stitches. Then I wrap it up in gauze.

Ten minutes later, this fucker opens his eyes to find out he’s tied up.

“What’s going on?” he stutters and then notices me watching him,

“Good evening,” I say with my gun pointed right at his head. “Can I fucking help you?”

His eyes squint, trying to connect the savage who attacked him and the cordial fucker I turned into once I had him under my complete control. “Where am I?”

“You have questions for me? I asked you a question, and I got knifed.” I show him my arm.

“I have to get out of here.”

“You’re not going anywhere, mate,” I chuckle. “Is this your first gig?”

“Fuck you. Let me out of here. I’m a guard like you. There’s a code.” He did his homework, I’ll give him that.

“I agree. Except when you knifed me. Except when you broke into my w... Into my client’s yard. Now you get treated like every other scum.” I don’t care for this fucking chit-chat, so I get up and press the gun to his temple. “Why are you here? I know you work for Scava.”

His eyes close, and he mutters a curse under his breath. “I was told to get surveillance on Ms. O’Rourke. Mr. Scava wants to know who he’s marrying. And who she’s fucking. We know about Archer Crest. My instructions were to kill him if he was here.”

Scava is serious about taking Shea as his wife. That would be a fun war to watch. Blood Diamond Crest and Las Vegas Don Scava. Pay-per-view could sell tickets.

“Crest is history. I made sure of it.” But for me, not Nico Scava.

Delano looks me up and down, something finally clicking. I’m walking around shirtless, probably smelling like sex, and even some dried blood on my lips from eating her.

After a glance around the obviously unoccupied cottage, he says, “ You fucking her? I don’t blame you.” His voice gets low. “Guard to guard. Fucking the lonely MILF is hot as fuck, no?”

“Watch your fucking mouth.” I don’t even give this guy a chance to bond with me.

I scroll through my phone some more. “How about we make a deal, friend? I see you have outstanding warrants here in New York. All I have to do is bash you in the head again and drop you off at any police station.”

He gasps. “What? No.”

“Even if you’re not afraid of a few nights in Rikers, I’m guessing a guy with a record working for Scava makes you expendable.”

“What do you want then?”

“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go check into this motel.” I show him one on the North Fork, I found while he was passed out. “You’re going to hang out there. I don’t want you anywhere near Shea O’Rourke. But I don’t want you going back to Vegas too soon because Scava won’t believe you and he’ll send someone else. After a week or two, you tell Scava there are no signs of Archer Crest. No signs of any other man.”

I’m dying to claim her publicly, but that has too many unknown consequences at the moment. All of them ending with my head on a stick. Either from Scava or Kieran O’Rourke. Add in Lachlan when he’s done, and I’ll be demolished to dust.

“Mr. Scava was told Ms. O’Rourke would be in Las Vegas by June 30th,” Delano says, getting his balls back. “It’s April. I don’t see any sign she’s ready to pack up and move to Las Vegas.”

Did Lachlan know of this specific delivery date? We’ll be going to Dunbar well before that and my marriage to Shea will be blessed.

“What the fuck would I know about her marriage deal?” I snap. “I’m just her bodyguard.”

Delano’s face twists, debating to call me out on the fact that I look like much more than a bodyguard. “Mr. Scava has several guards ready to protect Ms. O’Rourke. She’ll be safe.”

Several guards. She’ll just love that. “And does Scava have a mistress?”

He considers if we’re still BFFs: Bodyguard Edition. “A few. That’s no secret. A few kids, too. But with whores and strippers.”

Fuck me. Do the O’Rourkes know this? It hits me. Kieran didn’t tell Balor. They know he’ll look into Scava, deeper than that clusterfuck with Eoghan two months ago. Balor will stand up to his brothers for his sister. He isn’t the tallest, the strongest, or the craziest. As far as I know, he’s never taken a life. But with his drones and his hooks into every cyber system possible, he’s the deadliest. His brothers fear him the most. They don’t want to cross him.

But once Shea is handed over, he’ll have little leverage to stop it. And Balor’s head is up his arse at the moment with a sweet girl who he fucked then wound up working for him. Plus, she has a piece-of-shit ex who abused her. Balor’s mind is occupied.

He and his drones are flying with us to Dunbar, but he’s waging a war on several fronts with an elusive cyber enemy.

Fuck, is that why Kieran did the deal now? Fury races through me. Reaching into the duffel I found, I take out a roll of duct tape. “Where’s your car, mate?”

“Two blocks away.”

“You alone? If you lie to me, to my face, my lubed-up dick slapping your mouth is the last memory you’ll have on this earth before I blow your head off and throw you into that ocean behind us.”

His eyes go wide. “My boss in Vegas is waiting to hear a status report from me.”

“When was your last check-in?” I know how these things work.

“This morning.”

“How often?”

“Every twenty-four hours.”

It’s coming up on ten p.m. “I’m getting your car for you. You’re gonna leave here and go to this motel and check in.” I shove my phone under his nose.

“Got it.”

“Keys?”

“Pocket.”

I cringe touching this guy, but I fish out his keys. “What kind of car?”

He gives me the make and model. A rental.

“Close your mouth.” I tape his mouth around his head so hopefully clumps of hair come out when he peels it off.

I lock him inside the cottage and do a quick perimeter sweep. The fucker wisely told me the truth. There’s no one else here. He didn’t come to hurt Shea. He came to gather information. He attacked me because I tackled him. I’d do the same on a surveillance job.

For a moment, I sympathize with him. We’re the same. Just working for different bosses. It’s not his fault he’s working for a man who thinks he’s got claim to my woman.

I roll his car in front of Shea’s three-bay garage. Once I’m sure all of her cameras are filtered out with stock video, I carry this asshole to his car. But I put him in the passenger seat and drive several blocks away. To be fucking nice, I find his rental agreement and with a pen, write down the name of the motel.

I pull down the tape so he can speak and slice the ropes.

“Here’s where you’re going, fucker,” I remind him and hammer home how goddamn serious I am.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, but...”

I use his knife to slice my finger and in blood scroll out: Or you’re dead.

“You’re crazy.”

“Keep that in mind, if you think about coming back here. Have a nice night.” I get out and leave him in the car.

Under a sharp moon, the crisp breeze reminds me I’m still shirtless. I hoof it back to Shea’s and pass the gate. I secure it with the lock code and if nothing else, this made Shea being promised to Scava fucking real. I have so much on my side, though. I’m technically her husband. I just have to get someone with the last name O’Rourke to bless our shite Vegas marriage.