Buch lesen: «My Royal Surrender»

CHAPTER ONE
Z

I GAPE AT my outfit in the gilded full-length mirror—if a fishnet chemise, red leather G-string and matching choker with the word slave bedazzled across the front in black crystals could be described as an outfit.

“Oh no. No. No. No. Not a chance in hell.” My vigorous head shake doesn’t budge a single strand of thick hair from my lacquered topknot. “I can’t step out of this room. Look at me! I’m practically naked.”

It’s not as if I’m a prude, either. On the rare occasion that I’m granted R & R, I’m more than happy to rock a skimpy bikini. But the French Riviera isn’t waiting outside these walls. Feather and I are in downtown London, and I can’t appear in public without proper knickers. I might be undercover...but I deserve proper underwear.

“But, love, that’s the whole idea, innit?” Feather, an avant-garde designer on the payroll of the British Intelligence Agency, smooths her asymmetric skirt while fluttering an impressive set of false eyelashes. “It’s the perfect cover. One look at your jubblies and no one in the Lion’s Den will imagine you’re a kick-ass secret agent. They’ll be too busy wanting to reach for a paddle. You look well fit.”

“Oh, joy.” My gaze connects with hers in the mirror and my whiskey-brown eyes narrow in mock ferocity. Feather’s bright blue lipstick matches her eyes as she winks.

I don’t return her saucy smile because lighthearted tone or not, Feather isn’t joking. And while ridiculous, this situation isn’t remotely funny. The Lion’s Den is London’s most notorious kink club, and in less than an hour I’ll be walking through its depraved black doors, all my goods on full display.

This is what I’ve wanted. Plotted for. Dreamed of.

But in these dreams, I was always fully dressed.

“Come on.” Feather clicks her tongue like a scolding schoolteacher. “Don’t be a brat.”

I exhale a frustrated breath, but damn it, she is right. I have to suck up my reservations for the good of the mission—and in this case that means going undercover to help British Intelligence as a BDSM aficionado. It’s a far cry from last week, when I sported a chic Chanel suit and nude Louboutin heels while running the Hong Kong office for the Order, a top-secret international agency whose mission is simple: protect the world from itself. Order agents are carefully curated and come from all nations and walks of life to prevent wars, dispose despots and foil terrorist attacks. Sometimes we help out partners such as the CIA, Mossad or, in this case, my home country of jolly old England.

No one in mainstream society knows the Order exists, and it’s better for everyone that way.

I’m a trained assassin, fluent in seven languages, an expert in poisons and knife play. I’ve worked my currently bare arse off to become a powerful, take-no-shit woman. Not someone who enjoys wearing a collar and parading about like an overprimped lapdog.

“I was instructed to pass along the final mission briefing after you were dressed.” Feather hands over a sealed manila envelope. It’s marked with a black marker slash—Z. That’s how I’m known in the Order. All agents are assigned a random one-or two-letter name, our true identities protected even from those we work with. The name I was born with, Lora Summers, only daughter of a Cornwall couple whose boat sank off the coast of Calais, doesn’t exist anymore. My records were purged right down to my birth certificate.

I’m a ghost. I’ve been one for years.

To work in the Order means to sacrifice the individual for the good of the group. Husband. Children. Simple Sunday mornings doing crosswords and eating leisurely breakfasts. Lives civilians take for granted, little acts of normalcy, have been denied me for the better part of two decades. But as I enter my early forties I can’t help reconsidering my place in the world.

Maybe it’s a midlife crisis, but the thought niggles like an itch that I can’t scratch.

What if I want a new life?

“I’ll fetch you a glass of cab sav,” Feather mutters, the pucker between her plucked brows revealing a twinge of annoyance at my recalcitrance. “I know it’s your favorite, and you need to loosen up before the Dom arrives.”

My heart skips its next beat as the room’s temperature seems to rise ten degrees.

The Dom. The Dominant. The man who is supposed to play the role of my master.

I try to snort and roll my eyes. As if.

Feather snickers and I know I’ve played the part she expects. Agent Z is a wordly badass.

Little does she know.

As Feather clicks out the hotel room door in her high-heeled boots, I rip open the envelope with shaking hands. The mission brief is printed in a pale green ink, sourced from the Nightshadow plant found only on the southern coast of an islet off Sumatra. The Nightshadow ink will fade in a few more minutes...leaving the paper utterly blank and these words undectable.

Mission: Lion’s Den

Posing as “King” and “Princess,” you and your assigned partner will infiltrate the Lion’s Den and attempt to connect with club owner Dante Price. When not presiding as the ruler of Britain’s kink underworld, Price allegedly smuggles arms to terrorist cells throughout Central Asia in return for heroin. We need concrete proof to get an arrest warrant. This means gaining his trust and being believable in your respective roles. Please note that sex acts (real, not simulated) and BDSM role-play are to be expected and embraced for authenticity. Both you and your fellow agent have been cleared for sexually transmitted diseases as per Order policy, and your hormonal birth-control shot is up-to-date.

It’s not until I finish reading the mission that I taste the metallic flavor of blood. I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek so hard that I broke the flesh.

The sight of Dante Price’s name will do that to a person.

Me more than most...

Dante Price is the baddest of bad guys. He makes a business out of chaos, profiting from human misery. Now he is mine for the taking. Not that this is a surprise.

I’ve waited to get him for years. It’s finally time, and I’m ready. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy. In fact, this will be the hardest mission I’ve ever done in more ways than one.

“Fuck me,” I mutter, dropping the note to the floor.

“Sorry, love, it appears that will be my job,” a deep voice growls from my left, and just like that the balcony door slides open, and in steps a blast from my past. The moment I’ve been waiting for with equal parts anticipation and dread.

He’s over six feet tall and built like a swimmer, all broad shoulders and a trim waist; his flat abs are shown off to perfection by the tight tee over a pair of faded, low-slung black jeans. His close-cropped dark hair is flecked with strands of silver that match the small, sharp spikes gleaming along the arms of his leather jacket.

“Max?” My voice is nothing but a squeak. Not exactly the sultry, bored intonation I’d been rehearsing for weeks in anticipation of this encounter.

“Agent X,” he corrects coolly, his icy expression traveling my exposed body. “Nice to finally meet you in person...Agent Z.”

“I...” A lifetime flashes past me in the span of seconds. This powerful silver fox with the wolfish expression was my first lover. After falling for each other at Frasier Academy, the Highland boarding school we both attended once upon a time, we stole away for a weekend to France. Maybe a cramped bed at a dodgy inn isn’t the most romantic place for two teens to lose their virginities, but it was for me and Max—because it was us.

Before words like duty and mission replaced hope and love.

“Right. Well. You and I are going to have some serious catching up to do.” He mutters the understatement of the year before glancing at his Rolex with a frown. “But that little reunion will have to wait. We’re going to be late if we don’t leave now.”

It’s only then that I register the tic in his jaw. The quiet, suppressed fury.

He is seriously pissed about this situation, and I can’t blame him.

The room seems to spin, but I don’t falter or faint.

He disappeared at eighteen, breaking my heart into a million tiny pieces. It wasn’t until ten years later, well after I became Agent Z, that I discovered the full story of what happened to him. He had been recruited by the Order, as well.

I should have stayed away. But just over three years ago, I emailed him from the Hong Kong office, a short, perfunctory message on an arrest for a sex trafficker from Belgium.

He responded, asking a few clarifying questions, and we struck up a conversation of sorts.

And against every bit of my common sense, I eventually asked for a meeting. He had no idea I was Lora from Frasier Academy. He just knew me as Z. And I made damn sure he never saw my face. At my request, he wore a blindfold to every one of our meetings. I wore one, too. Mostly. It was for protection. So we couldn’t betray each other if we ever fell into the wrong hands.

And so we began our torrid little affair.

In this way, I was able to have my lover back. He never recognized my voice or my body. I had more curves with age and made sure when I spoke to him it was only ever in a husky whisper.

I deceived him.

Now he knows the truth, and I don’t have time to explain. Tonight we are assigned to a job where we are to revel in desire, where I’m to serve his every command. And from the way his nostrils flare as he opens the door, holding it for me, I realize that I’m about to be literally and figuratively fucked.

“Ready, Princess?” X asks.

But his expression is hard. I would bet he doesn’t take deceit lightly. If the tables were turned, I’d be hell-bent on revenge, and I wonder with a tinge of both fear and desire if he feels the same.

“Of course, Your Highness,” I drawl. “Lead the way.”

X

My molars crush against each other as we slip into the Jaguar limousine; any more pressure and they’ll shatter. The driver, a junior agent who can barely grow peach fuzz, closes the door behind us before reappearing again in the driver’s seat.

“Pardon me for saying so, but I’m quite looking forward to this assignment, Agents X and Z. Your missions are legendary, both of you.” His enthusiasm is mixed with his northern English accent. “I mean, X, that time you drove a Rolls-Royce onto the top of a train and then had to jump off? With an Edenvale prince in the car with you, no less!”

I open my mouth to cut him off, but the bloke barely takes a sip of air before rambling on again.

“And Agent Z—you wing walked from one plane to another, entered the aircraft from the storage hold and landed the beast after both the pilot and copilot had been poisoned. And you got them to the hospital in time to save them!”

I raise a brow at this, turning my attention to Lora. I mean—Agent Z.

The woman who has been fucking me—and with me—for years.

“That was you?”

She simply shrugs.

The rook—the Order’s name for agents in training before they earn their crow’s-feather tattoo—opens his mouth to speak again, but I press the button to close the soundproof partition.

“Thank you. That will be all for now,” I say as the tinted glass slides shut, his eager young profile disappearing before he can protest.

The kid doesn’t realize this gig isn’t all about catching bad guys. It’s about learning that the world isn’t black-and-white, but merely shades of gray.

And the scantily dressed woman beside me is the grayest of gray characters.

Z stares out the window as we pull away from the curb, and I stare at her thigh-high black stiletto boots, the smooth-as-silk skin of her legs barely covered by the black netting of her—hell, I don’t know what you call it, but whatever it is, it shows off every dip and swell of her curves. Beneath it, she’s covered by a leather G-string and ruby-red pasties that form an X over each nipple as if she’s marked them just for me. Coincidence—or another one of Lora’s attempts to further toy with me? It doesn’t matter. She looks bloody fantastic, and though I would never admit it to her, it will require little effort for me to play my part tonight. We’re the same age, and if I saw her on the street I wouldn’t imagine she was a day over thirty. Whatever genetics are in her lithe body deserve a prize.

Fuck her for fucking me all those times and knowing it was me.

“You never struck me as the type who played games,” I say with practiced nonchalance. If she thinks I’m going to give her a big dramatic performance, she’s got another think coming. She’s played me with ice-cold precision for years, so I’m dialing the temperature to Antarctic levels.

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t peel her gaze from the window.

“And you said you loved me and disappeared without a trace,” she snaps. “Potato, po-tah-to, Max. You were playing your little spy games years before I was even recruited—years when I didn’t know if you were alive or dead. Don’t try to tangle with me or I’ll tie you in knots.”

“X,” I say, my jaw tight. “I’m Agent X now. You want to know what happened when they ripped me from my life at Frasier? Max Vandenberg died a thousand deaths until nothing of him remained. All that’s fucking left is X.”

She finally turns her head, her dark eyes meeting mine. “If you ever really loved me,” she says coolly, “you’d have known it was me even with the blindfold. But you didn’t. You never had a clue.”

As if choreographed to her words, the car rolls to a stop.

The driver knocks on the partition. I tap out Morse code in response, permitting him to open the partition.

“King... Princess...we have reached our destination. Welcome to the Lion’s Den.”

I straighten my spiked jacket over my T-shirt and open the door to the dark alley that hides the club’s entrance. I unclip the leash from my belt and turn to Z, tossing it onto the seat next to her.

“Should be as easy as jumping from one plane to another,” I taunt. “Or as lying to a lover.”

A muscle ticks in her jaw as she lets loose a soft growl.

“Careful, love,” I tell her. “You’re the sub, remember? You need to sell it.”

She sneers at me as her knees fall open and she clips the leash to a ring on the crotch of her G-string.

I grab the free end and give her a slight tug, imagining the cool metal sliding against her folds.

My cock goes rigid, traitor that it is. But I take satisfaction in Z’s slight squirm against the leather seat.

“When I say come, you come,” I tell her, then lead her out of the car. It takes every ounce of effort not to allow my mind to wander to the dalliances we’ve shared over the years. The vise grip of her pussy on my cock. Goddamn it, she’d open so wide for me. She gave me everything except for the truth.

For the seconds we stand next to each other, she leans close and whispers in my ear. “If we make it out of here alive, I’m going to kill you.”

I chuckle, though I know it’s only partly a joke. Agent Z’s reputation with the blade is legendary. As is her talent for escape. No one can capture her.

“I look forward to it, Princess.”

And then I stride farther into the alley, the slack on the leash the determiner of how many paces she’ll walk behind me.

Yes, we’re playing our assigned roles, but it also allows me to case our surroundings and for her to have my back should I miss anything.

Not that I ever do.

I count the doors, none of them lit, and stop at the fifth one—an indistinct black door recessed in the nondescript redbrick rear wall of the building.

A camera above the door clicks and whirs as we approach. Then the door falls open, revealing a dimly lit stairwell.

I wrap the leash around my hand and give it a soft pull.

Z sucks in a sharp breath and my nostrils flare. Fuck. I capture the scent of her erotic aroma.

“Tell me what’s on the other side of that ring,” I say, because it’s either that or throw her up against the wall and take her bareback, thrust my cock in her to the root, make her milk every last drop of come out of me and see if that gets my head on straight.

She grits her teeth. “Make me.”