Seduction Squad: Tainted Read online

  My thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Paolo. My Chief Steward ran the boat like clockwork. He also did a lot more than that. It was hard to tell from his expression, but I was certain he disapproved of my nocturnal activities. Screw him. I didn’t pay the guy for his opinion.

  “How many?”

  “Eight.” He picked up my jacket and tie and draped them over his arm.

  “The recruiters have been busy.” Sometimes they only found four or five women whose looks matched the very precise list of physical attributes I gave them. I glanced at my watch. “Usual time?”

  “Yes. The preparations are under way.” He might be critical of my lifestyle, but Paolo was meticulous in his planning. “Is there anything I can bring you, sir?”

  “Nothing, thank you. I ate before I left the office.”

  Paolo moved toward the door, turning back before he reached it. “Another letter arrived today. I left it on your desk.”

  After he had gone, I made my way from the bedroom through to my office. There were fourteen suites on board The Dark Side. This, the master suite, consisted of a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom, office and the other room. That was its official title among the crew. The Other Room. It was as good a name as any.

  The letter Paolo had referred to was the only item on the desktop. It looked the same as the others I’d received. Expensive, heavy-duty, cream envelope. The sloping, black handwriting. Same postmark.

  I opened it and quickly scanned the contents of the one page, unsigned, hand-written document. It contained the same non-specific, gory threats as the previous six letters. Another detailed warning about how I was going to die. I placed this letter with the others in the top drawer of my desk. The writer was going to regret every vile word.

  Flopping down into the chair behind my desk, I looked out at the view as we left the New York skyline behind. Even though I owed my success to this city, I still struggled to call it home. Being here on board The Dark Side felt more comfortable to me than being in my Manhattan apartment. Maybe it was because I stopped pretending when I was here. Stopped trying to fool myself that night ten years ago hadn’t totally fucked me up. Admitted I was a mess who still got hard every fucking day thinking about the girl who had called me Uncle Theo for eight years of her life.

  Chapter Three

  Christie

  The bathroom in my suite was the height of luxury, with a tub large enough for four people. I sank back into scented warmth and tried to unwind, even though the very idea of tranquility in this place, in these circumstances, almost made me laugh out loud.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had relaxed. It certainly hadn’t happened since my father’s arrest. My life had been turned upside down that day, and it hadn’t gone back to normal afterward. I was the daughter of Senator Oliver Mason, the man who preached hellfire and brimstone, honesty and decency. The man who had been convicted of fraud. Once tipped as a future presidential hopeful, his public disgrace had come as a complete shock to the public. And to me. Locked in his prison cell, my father had been largely protected from the press frenzy that had followed. I, on the other hand, had been swept along on a tide of speculation and spite.

  It was one of those impossible situations. Even people who had loved him before started to join in with the whispers. And there were plenty of people who didn’t love him. He was a big man with big views. And, no matter how hard I had tried to carve out my own life, I had always been Senator-Oliver-Mason’s-daughter. It was how I was introduced to people. If my clothing line had a success, it was reported as “CM Fashions, owned by Christie Mason, daughter of outspoken Senator Oliver Mason...”

  And now I was disgraced-Senator-Oliver-Mason’s-daughter. I was tainted. And the man responsible for my father’s disgrace and my shame? He was the owner of this luxury yacht.

  Uncle Theo.

  My lips twisted into a sour little smile. The last time I’d called him that name, his cock had been inside me. Briefly, it was true. As soon as I’d said those words, we’d both frozen with shock. He’d paused with me suspended above him, his bulging head penetrating me, his huge girth stretching me. I squirmed at the memory. Always did. Even now, it made me feel corrupt. I was embarrassed and horny in equal measures.

  Remembering how I’d tried to force him to continue. Tried to hold him inside me by tightening my muscles. How I’d begged him not to stop. The look in his eyes as he’d lifted me from him. Like something in him had died. How he’d turned away adjusting his clothing. The coldness in his voice when he told me to go.

  Just get the fuck out of here, Christie!

  That was the last time I’d seen him. But he’d continued to touch my life. I don’t know what happened between him and my father, but they had gone from being stepbrothers, business partners and friends to bitter enemies. Ten years of long-distance feuding. My father’s decline had matched Theo’s rise.

  “Theo Ward is out to get me.” My father had said that just before his arrest.

  “Theo did this.” His last words as they took him down to the cells. He killed himself later that day.

  Now I was out to get Theo Ward. I had nothing to lose. After the scandal of my father’s disgrace, my business had taken a nosedive into oblivion. My social life had died along with it. Invitations had dried up, friends had stopped calling, acquaintances...well, I didn’t seem to have any. I had gone from socialite to outcast in a single, tarnished bound.

  I learned about the Seduction Squad from my father. We had never been close, but we had made those prison visits count. For the first time, we had really talked to each other. And we had touched on the subject of Theo. The man whose life was so closely entwined with ours. I hadn’t gotten the whole story, but my father had finally mentioned his name.

  “Bastard is bulletproof. Even the Seduction Squad can’t get close.” My father’s voice had been bitter.

  “Seduction Squad?”

  He had clammed up then and it had taken some time to pry the details from him. He said it wasn’t the sort of thing a man discussed with his daughter. Eventually, he told me. Over the years, my holier-than-thou father had used the services of a unique organization to find out his enemies’ secrets. That organization was known as the Seduction Squad.

  Even though I was shocked to discover this hypocritical side of my father, I was fascinated. To someone brought up protected from anything remotely erotic, it sounded so glamorous. The Seduction Squad were the modern-day equivalent of Mata Hari, the infamous spy who used her body to entice powerful men to part with secrets. The squad was based on the sixteenth-century team known as the Escuadrón Volante, or Flying Squadron. Working on the orders of the French Queen, Catherine de’ Medici, they were a hand-picked team of beautiful courtesans who had ensnared the most influential men in the land.

  The Seduction Squad was a private company. Governments, businesses, even wealthy individuals such as my father, paid its manager, a woman known as the Signora, millions for the services of its members.

  Moderation had never appealed to me. If I was going to get my revenge on Theo, it was going to be absolute. I was going to make him pay for that night ten years ago and for the pain I had endured ever since. He was going to regret ruining my father out of petty spite and causing his death. And it turned out the Signora had a very lucrative contract lined up...one that could only be fulfilled if she could get an operative on board The Dark Side.

  I knew now, of course, that being part of the squad wasn’t glamorous. My induction had been grueling and gritty. I had learned my new trade from an experienced sex worker and a trained assassin. There had been times when I thought I wouldn’t make the grade. Times when I hoped I wouldn’t.

  After a particularly hard day, Jake, the squad’s Head of Security, had taken me to one side.

  “You look like the princess who has escaped from a fairy
tale, but no matter what I throw at you—kickboxing, pistol shooting, assault course—you come out on top. What is it with you? Do you need the money?” The squad paid well and the Signora looked after her girls.

  “No. I have an old score to settle.” I had smiled. “But when I’ve done that, the money is going to help.”

  At the end of my training, Jake had handed me a graduation present. It was a T-shirt with a picture of a cute kitten holding a bloodstained machete between its paws. The words Killer Pussy were embroidered underneath. “Only Seduction Squad members can understand what those words really mean.” He had unzipped his jacket to show me he was wearing the same design. “And me, because I live with one.” Although they were totally professional when they were together, I had discovered from some of the other girls that Jake and the Signora were an item.

  I had brought the T-shirt with me on this cruise, even though I figured I wouldn’t get a chance to wear it. It was a reminder of what I had been through to get here.

  There was still plenty of time before I needed to dress in the clothes that would take me back in time. I sank lower in the water, sliding my hand between my legs. Closing my eyes, I pictured Theo’s face. His looks had a devilish edge, like a fallen angel or a hell-raising rock star. With pale skin and thick black hair that always managed to look tousled...as if he—or maybe someone else—had been dragging impatient fingers through it. His features were carved from granite with a determined, stubbled chin and cheekbones so chiseled they should be illegal. But it was his eyes. The memory of those onyx depths, so dark it was impossible to distinguish between the pupil and iris. If the eyes were the window to the soul, the bleak, beautiful intensity of Theo’s gaze held its own warning.

  Remembering those eyes, I stroked myself to a quick, shuddering, and hopelessly unsatisfactory orgasm.

  Chapter Four

  Theo

  They say you can’t turn the clock back, and only a fool would try. I guess I’m that fool.

  Everything about that night was imprinted on my mind. It wasn’t meant to happen, of course. She was my stepbrother’s daughter, for fuck’s sake. I thought of her as my niece. It didn’t matter that we weren’t actually related. Even when the boundaries only exist in your mind, you don’t cross them.

  When Oliver Mason’s father died, his mother married my dad. My own mom had left us soon after I was born. Oliver was twenty and I was three when our parents married and, because of the age difference, we didn’t really get to know each other. I never thought of him as my brother. He was a distant figure in my life. When I was eighteen, I set up my own business and, because I was successful and he was avaricious, Oliver took an interest in what I was doing. We grew close, you could even say we became good friends. I became “Uncle Theo” to Christie for the next eight years.

  I conjured up an image of her face. Of softly curling blond hair, wide blue-green eyes fringed by long, spiky lashes, and gold-tinted skin with a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her upturned nose. And that mouth...too wide for true beauty, its lower lip was a plump satin cushion, its upper lip a perfect bow. That mouth still haunted many of my dreams. You might call them my fantasies.

  When it came to Christie, I couldn’t think of her face and not progress to a vision of her body. She was petite—so tiny I felt I could span her waist with my hands—with small, high breasts, killer legs and a tight ass. You are remembering her eighteen-year-old body, I reminded myself. But I knew she hadn’t changed. There hadn’t been many pictures in the media of her during Oliver’s trial, but those I’d seen had shown me the same Christie. The one who could make my heart beat faster and my cock throb like a bastard.

  I knew what a shrink would say about how I planned to spend my evening. About how fucked up it was to try and recreate that night. Over and over. To give it a different ending. I was like a porn addict, acting out his favorite storyline. Only in my case, the pictures were all in my head. The Other Room was a replica of the bedroom I’d occupied in Oliver’s house ten years ago. The girls the recruiter found for me were all Christie look-alikes. The party? One girl got to join me in my fantasy. She got to be Christie for the night.

  I got to be me. The sad fuckup who hadn’t moved on with his life.

  The difference was, this time I didn’t lift her off my cock when she called me “Uncle Theo.” I didn’t tell her to “get the fuck out.” I didn’t walk away from the only good thing I’d ever known.

  You’d think changing history would feel good, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong. It feels like crap. Turns out fake-taboo doesn’t come close to the real thing.

  Oh, I got it up for my Christie-alikes. I had a good time. I orgasmed. I enjoyed it enough to keep doing it each time I came on board The Dark Side. But I never lost my grip on reality. I knew it wasn’t her I was fucking. It was a game. And I was still a loser.

  It was a game I was about to play again.

  “I’m ready, Paolo.” I pressed the speaker button on the intercom next to the bed.

  Selecting which girl I was going to spend the night with had become the most exciting part of the whole process. I had given the recruitment agency a precise list of physical attributes. They did their best to stick to them. Sometimes they got it right. Sometimes they were spectacularly wrong. The clothes were easy. Like I said, every detail was imprinted in my memory. Although Christie had been eighteen, I had a rule that the women who came onto the boat must be over twenty-one. I might be fucked up, but I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t going to risk the recruiters getting it wrong and sending me someone who was too young.

  Christie had gone out to a party that night. I’d been up in my room when I heard her come home. Earlier than I expected. I’d experienced a sense of relief that I knew I had no right to feel. At least she wasn’t being pawed by some panting, pimply kid who wanted to get inside her underwear...

  The door to my room had opened and she’d walked in without knocking. I’d been sprawled in the chair by the window. Just as I was now.

  “Hello, Uncle Theo.”

  “You shouldn’t be here, Christie.”

  She had moved closer, standing between my knees.

  “Maybe not. But you want me to be here, don’t you?”

  Paolo’s knock interrupted my memories. “Your visitors are here, sir.” He still maintained the pretense that this wasn’t about him bringing me a group of women so I could decide which one I was going to fuck.

  “Show them in, please.”

  I remained in my seat as Paolo ushered the eight identically dressed women into the room. It had to be done this way. If I’d seen them one at a time, I wouldn’t have known which of them to choose first. There were four days until we reached our destination and my guests came on board. That meant I was going to have four of these women. I wanted to do it in the right order, starting with the one who looked most like her.

  Paolo closed the door as he left and silence descended. He briefed them on the rules before they came into the room. No talking. No drawing attention to themselves. Wait for me to make my selection. It was a bit like a medieval slave market, but they were getting well paid for their services and a cruise on The Dark Side wasn’t exactly a hardship.

  In all the years I’d been doing this, none of the women had ever broken those rules. Tonight was a first.

  Almost immediately, one of them stepped forward. I was about to ask her what the fuck she thought she was doing, but as soon as I looked at her, my chest constricted in shock.

  “Hello, Uncle Theo.”

  Chapter Five

  Christie

  When I first walked into the room, the blood was thundering so loudly in my ears, I felt sure I was going to pass out.

  The room itself was the first shock. Theo had his own room in my father’s Tennessee mansion and this was it. Every item of furniture was here, in
the same location. The only thing that grounded me was the slight sway of the boat and the distant thrum of the engines. It was a reminder that, if I pulled back those heavy drapes, I would see darkened water instead of a sweeping valley leading down to a vast lake.

  The next shock came when I saw Theo sprawled in the armchair. Exactly the way he had been sitting that night, with that familiar, jaded look in those heavy-lidded eyes. Theo didn’t look at the rest of the world, he looked through it. He wore black pants that clung to his muscular thighs and a crisp, white shirt with several buttons undone. I could see dark chest hair in the V of that shirt and my nipples hardened. My breasts actually ached to feel that hair rubbing against them once more.

  It was as if the other seven women crowding into the room with me didn’t exist. To hell with this “don’t speak to him” crap. What if he didn’t recognize me? I wasn’t going to take that chance. Taking a breath to steady my nerves, I stepped forward.

  “Hello, Uncle Theo.”

  For a moment, nothing happened. He didn’t even blink.

  Then in one lithe movement, he was on his feet.

  “Christie?”

  He closed the distance between us, coming close enough so I could breathe in his scent. He was using the same cologne he always had. But it wasn’t that. I could smell his freshly laundered shirt. It took me right back to a time when all I wanted to do was climb inside one of those shirts with him. I smelled clean masculine flesh. And him. Just being near him, breathing him in after all this time...

  Feeling slightly dizzy, I swayed toward him.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “That’s not what you say next.” I attempted a pout. It didn’t work. My mouth refused to follow the instructions my brain was issuing. I hadn’t factored in the impact of his nearness. “Your next words are ‘You shouldn’t be here, Christie.’”