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JETT - FOUR YEARS AGO
It wasn’ta stretch to play a go-go boy. I loved sex, and I was proud of my body. Win-win. Not that my bosses at ESP knew either of those things.
Fortunately for them, I was also only twenty-three, so I could pass easily as a dancer in a gentleman’s club.
Unfortunately for me, I was new enough at the agency to not have a choice in my assignments. Might as well enjoy it as much as I could.
I rolled my hips at my mark—Ronald Gillen, cargo-smuggling union boss and all-around shitheel—and felt his eyes follow the curve of my ass and thighs in my booty shorts. Loud club music flooded my system and loosened my already warm muscles.
I bit back a laugh at the thought of telling a younger Jett Marian that one day he’d be paid good money to shake his assets for men in a gentleman’s club. Talk about a dream job. After two particularly shit breakups in college, I’d determined that playing the field was a thousand times better than being in a relationship. And the past several years had only proven me right.
Some old guy reached over and pinched my ass before shoving a twenty in the waistband of my jock and making a lewd comment about how I’d look even better on my knees for him.
Okay, so maybe not all of it was dreamlike. In fact, after spending the past four nights dancing in expectation of Ronald appearing in this club, I was ready to get the information I needed from him so my professional dancing days could be over.
I made a big production of licking a finger and trailing it down my bare chest, regretting it a moment later when I realized my fingertip still had leftover glitter eye shadow on it.Blech.
“Such a pretty boy,” Ronald murmured, eying me over his fat cigar. “Are you new here, sweetheart?”
“I came especially for you, Daddy,” I teased with a flirty grin before turning and leaning over, moving my hips from side to side so he could get a peek of bare cheek at the edge of my shorts. I reached back with one hand and ran my fingers along my skin just under the edge of the fabric while holding on to the pole with the other hand. “You like what you see?”
My goal was to get him into a private room for a lap dance where I could distract him while getting close enough to scan his phone with the device embedded in my leather bracelet.
He was with several other men, half of whom were obviously more interested in the women dancing around the room, while the other half either lasered their attention on me or were too busy courting Ronald’s favor to pay attention to the dancers at all.
I turned around to face him and leaned the top of my back against the pole, moving my hands down my front and into the top of my shorts. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, pushing the shorts down enough to show the jock underneath them and a hint of pubic hair.
When the Ecumene Stability Project had recruited me out of college a little over a year ago, I’d gone through the kind ofintense training program used by the CIA, MI6, and Mossad—which made sense, since the massive global intelligence agency had a budget larger than all of them put together. Among other things, that training had honed my body into a tool—efficient, strong, ready for anything.
Including luring alcoholic old men into private rooms.
I just needed to seal the deal.
I bit my lower lip and slowly dragged my gaze up from Ronald’s black leather wing tips to his crotch and lifted my eyebrows in pleasant surprise as if I saw something impressive there.
I did not.
My tongue came out to wet my lips, and I exhaled, keeping my eyes on his crotch for another moment before sighing and whimpering a little. Then I continued my perusal up over his beer belly to his chest and thick neck. I forced myself to imagine letting this man do dirty things to me, and the image was horrifying enough to heat my cheeks.
Which was exactly what I was going for.
I blinked at him innocently and turned away in faux-embarrassment for having been caught looking. More ass-shaking and pole-humping, then I’d face him again and play with my nipples. It was important to have a plan.
“He’s a pretty one, isn’t he?” I heard Ronald say to someone in his smoke-roughened voice. I wasn’t sure why I was surprised he sounded like a New Jersey dockworker when that was literally what he was. Or had been before moving up to union steward.
He was the guy who managed the list and the line, knew every ghost container on every ship, and accepted envelopes of cash to get favorable movement for all three.
Ronald Gillen was a small fish. A known quantity. Which meant ESP allowed him to keep doing what he was doing.
The man was also an easy mark.
He kept two phones, and neither used biometric security measures—no FaceID or fingerprints for old Ronnie. In fact, he’d once been overheard saying, “They ain’t chopping my finger off to get in the damned phone just to see Sheila’s nagging texts about being late for dinner.”
I’d learned his passcode by simply standing behind him in line at Olivo’s Deli two weeks ago, and it happened to be his daughter’s birthdate.Dumbass.
I finished my spin and lowered into an open-kneed squat in front of Ronald when I saw a new man in his group. He was tall and fit, dark-haired and sexy as fuck. Even though he looked like he was only about thirty, the man oozed money.
