Sierra Cartwright - Doms of Dark Haven

Damn. The man was completely devastating in his tuxedo.

His hair, the color of midnight, flirted with his collar. His eyes seemed all the more electric against the dark clothing. “Show me,” he said.

“Show you?”

“Bend over.”

“Torin…”

“Bend over, Mira, and lift your dress.”

She questioned whether she should actually comply. They were on duty, and they needed to head out.

He waited her out.

Finally, with a sigh, she placed her pocketbook on the coffee table and then turned around, raised her dress, and showed him she'd followed orders.

“Lovely.”

Her insides tightened. Against her will, her pussy moistened.

“Your obedience will make tonight's punishment much less painful. Shall we?”

She stood and smoothed her dress into place.

She shook her head to clear it. He was already at the back door; his hand was on the knob, and he was waiting for her. Obviously he was better at separating business from pleasure than she was.

“Grand Hyatt?” he asked.

“We'll meet Inamorata in the hotel's kitchen.”

He snagged the vehicle keys off a hook and offered them to her.

“You want me to drive?”

“I assume you know how?”

She bit back an instinctive smart-ass reply to his smart-ass question and handed him the printout from Inamorata.

In the SUV, he turned on the GPS and programmed it for the hotel.

She remembered their ride home last night, with him keeping his temper caged while he drove home silently. Neither of them mentioned that, however. Now that they were on the road, they were both all business.

She had the valet park the car and took a deep, steadying breath before heading into the lobby. She saw Trace there. None of them acknowledged each other.

Torin cupped her elbow and led her toward the kitchen.

Ms. Inamorata was there in her pencil skirt, hair pulled back. She had surveillance equipment on one of the stainless-steel work areas, and she efficiently handed them each an earphone.

After a tech made sure all the wiring was secure and in place, Mira and Torin each went through a sound check.

Inamorata asked, “How's the partnership coming? Any trouble working together?”

Mira wondered if the woman could see something. “None,” Mira said.

She nodded crisply. “Hawkeye is usually right on in his assignments, but if it doesn't work out, feel free to ask for a new partner.”

“Not necessary,” Torin said.

“You're a couple tonight. Aimee will be arriving with Mr. Sinclair. She'll be his date for the evening.”

Mira had done her research while Torin showered. She'd already known Sinclair was a media magnate. He owned newspapers, magazines, a cable network, and he had a San Francisco hotel named after him. He wasn't popular with everyone, though, because of his politics. He was running for office, and some thought he was trying to buy the election and push his liberal agenda. That hadn't made anyone mad enough to want to kill him, though, especially in California. It was his testimony fifteen years earlier that had sent a mobster to prison that was the issue. Several other people had refused to testify and had gone to jail for contempt of court rather than take their chances. Sinclair was campaigning on his bravery, and it had been effective until said mobster had recently been paroled. It turned out that a decade and a half hadn't tempered his attitude any.

“Questions?”

Mira and Torin exchanged glances. They both shook their heads.

“Your first assignment together,” Inamorata said. “With luck, it will be an uneventful evening.”

“You have reason to believe it won't be,” Torin said.

“Rumors are Alberto Leone is in the city.” Inamorata showed them recent pictures of the man. “Bad shots, from a newspaper, I'm afraid.” She spread out a few more pictures on the stainless-steel table. “Other family members. Known associates.”

Mira and Torin studied the snapshots.

“I'm attending as a guest, like you two,” she said. “Cocktails are in fifteen minutes. Here's your official invitation. Our guys are manning the doors.”

She handed over the card to Mira, and without another word, Inamorata moved off.

“Suppose she's wearing a butt plug?”

Mira gasped.

“Let's go prepare to meet the man of the hour.”

For the first time, Torin struggled with an assignment. He wanted to make sure Mira was safe. Yet he knew she was fully capable of taking care of herself.

Hawkeye, Inc. had made sure of that. And Torin himself had had a hand in her training. She was strong, smart, resourceful. She didn't need him to look after her.

He was the problem.

He wanted her wrapped in cotton wool somewhere safe. The Leones were a tight-knit family who took care of their own. He didn't want Mira within a hundred miles of them.

She followed him to the lobby. He made eye contact with Trace before placing his fingers intimately in the small of Mira's back and guiding her toward the hotel's elegant ballroom.

A live band played forties music, and champagne flowed freely. Obviously no amount of money had been spared.

They went through the formality of having Hawkeye operatives check their invitation. He noticed that Inamorata was already in place. Outside of Fort Knox, this was one of the tightest places in the United States tonight.

He and Mira mingled. This was the nature of their jobs. Often twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes of boredom interrupted by five minutes of “oh, shit!”

And occasionally nothing happened to interrupt the boredom. Ideally that would be the case.

“We should separate,” Mira said.

When hell froze over.

From their vantage near the bar, he kept a watchful eye on the door and on the guests arriving.

The night showed no signs of getting interesting, which was fine by him. He was ready to bury his cock inside Mira's willing body.

There was a buzz of activity near the door, and he kept his gaze there.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the evening's emcee announced, “your next senator, Nathaniel Sinclair!”

Shouts of approval and loud claps filled the ballroom. The media magnate came in with a wave, Aimee at his side.

Sinclair made his way to the stage and said a few words of thanks. He seemed completely at ease, without a care in the world.

In a security nightmare, he left the stage and started glad-handing all the attendees. People queued up to meet him, and they blocked a smooth exit. Torin figured Aimee would unobtrusively move Sinclair toward safety and keep her body between him and the guests as much as possible.

“I'll be back,” Mira told him.

“Mira…”

“I want to meet him.”

She walked off.

Since he could scan almost the entire crowd and see the door at the same time, he remained in the same general vicinity.

He kept a surreptitious eye on Mira.

She stood in the line with several other women, and she appeared to join in the conversation.

He noticed that she took one of the women by the arm as if they were old friends. Mira started talking loudly. If he hadn't been so in tune with her expressions and reactions, he might have missed the subtle look she shot him.

As it was, he keyed his mic to alert the others and headed her direction.

“I'm sure I've seen your picture before,” Mira was saying.

The woman's stiff smile, obviously surgically enhanced, started to fade. “You're mistaken,” the blonde said.

“Are you a movie star? Can I have your autograph?”

Torin moved in, cutting off the woman from her other friends. “Everything okay, honey?” he asked Mira.

“I think this woman is a movie star!”