Enforcer Ensnared (8 page)

As technical
gear had
a tendency to last only a matter of weeks,
sometimes months, field officers were not strongly encouraged to frequent the
building, nor did many want to. There were only so many monotonous gatherings
an Enforcer could stomach attending before the entire building made one feel
faintly nauseated.

On the other hand, most
Mages didn’t have their own brand-new computer systems at home. Add in that the
business network was linked up to any number of legal, quasi-legal and a few
little-known, outright-illegal databases, and in situations like the one Blade
and Flame found themselves stranded in, HQ became rather tempting.

Besides, now and then
most everyone had to at least pop into the office to run searches, print data
and crunch numbers. It fell into the “necessary evil of the job” category as
far as Blade was concerned.

To his knowledge Blade
had never seen Flame within these walls. Walking in with her by his side
somehow managed to feel simultaneously like a momentous occasion—rather like
admitting to all and sundry that something had grown and blossomed between
them—and so comfortable and right that it struck him as odd that this was the
first-ever time and not the hundredth.

The building was
practically deserted due to the advanced hour, with many of the lights turned
off and the offices closed down for the night. Both Blade and Flame, however,
had keys to all the communal offices and business centers.

With little difficulty
and only passing half a dozen people, who nodded politely and waved to
acknowledge their existence, they reached an empty office with three networked
computers, a printer, scanner and hopefully access to everything they would
need.

“Okay.” Flame heaved a
sigh of relief as she switched on all three of the computers. Together they
checked they were all working properly and networked with each other. While
they booted up, Flame warmed up the scanner and printer, dimmed the lights to
reduce the glare on her eyes and quickly typed in commands with astonishing
speed and proficiency.

Impressed, Blade lowered
himself into a seat and linked his hands behind his head. In his mind’s eye he
looked like a lazy ass, the epitome of the powerful man watching his little
witch doing all the work. He was only teasing her, but had to admit privately
to himself that watching her work at the monitor was just as intoxicating as
watching her deal with a complex series of explosives or negotiate her way
through a particularly nasty security system.

In his eyes, she was
perfect and gorgeous.

“And here I thought I was
the only Enforcer chained to my desk with mountains of paperwork and data
searches to perform,” he teased. “I think you type faster than I do.”

Flame tugged her
sunglasses down her nose. She laughed silently at him with only her gaze and a
tiny smile twitching the corners of her lush mouth up.

“Chained to your desk?”
she repeated, disbelief dripping from her tone.

Blade grinned,
unrepentant, and shrugged a shoulder. “Feels like it sometimes,” he defended
himself. “After a big break, all you want to do is catch up with friends, maybe
have a drink, rehash every detail and brag a little. Yet I end up coming around
here, sitting down usually alone and typing up endless series of reports and
paperwork.”

“Ah.” She pressed her
glasses back up to protect her eyes and nodded. “That I understand. Nothing
gets the blood pumping and magic singing in your veins quite like a good bust,
eh? I always feel horny as anything afterward too. A drink and a good run in
the gym usually help, though, when a
studly
, eager
and inexhaustible wizard isn’t on offer.”

“Well I’m always on offer
for you, sweetheart.” He leered, caught once again by the soul-deep truth to
his words and feeling embarrassed.

Flame took the offer and
the compliment graciously. Her jaw tilted toward him and he thought she might
have cast him a sideways glance, but it was hard to tell with her glasses. His
attention was diverted back to their work as she passed through the Enforcers’
firewalls and typed in password after password to enter their system with
almost unrestricted access.

“You’ve got my number
too,” she pointed out a little too casually for him to fully believe she was
unaffected. “It’s not like you couldn’t call me in a similar situation.”

Blade tapped his fingers
on the desk for a moment, then after a short hesitation replied, “Well, an
easier way would be if we continued working together…” He let his words trail
off and left the suggestion out in the open for her to digest.

“You mean
your
thought about the team going into business for itself?”
she clarified.

He jerked his head in a
quick affirmative.

Again Flame looked at him
through her glasses and let her hands fall away from the keyboard of the
computer, taking him seriously.

“It would need work,” she
finally said, “and a thorough pooling of our resources. It’s not a stupid idea,
especially if the others go for it and are interested in making it work. I’m
not sure it would be something we could make successful right away, though.
Maybe if we started it up after we all return to work, begin part time and let
the business grow until we’re all struggling to juggle both,
then
make it full time. It wouldn’t be an immediate plan but a longer term
one—that’s how I can see it becoming profitable for all of us.”

“We’d definitely all need
to speak together about it,” Blade agreed. “It’s not something that we could do
just with two or four of us, especially since we’d need Will, Julian and Chase
in on it—otherwise we couldn’t merge the two areas together, obviously.”

She reached out to
squeeze his knee though his pants. “Definitely something to think about,” she
congratulated him, and they leaned in simultaneously to kiss tenderly.

Blade cupped his hand
around the back of her head, his fingers threading through her silky long brown
hair. Hungrily they deepened the kiss, their tongues parrying and tangling
together as teeth grazed over each other and their bodies shifted closer. Flame
pulled back with a slight jerk, her gaze drawn to the long bank of windows
where anyone walking past could look in on them.

Her pale skin flushed
lightly and she pressed a hand to her warm cheek. Blade snickered.

“Embarrassed,
sweetheart?” he teased her lightly. Nothing could have forced him to admit that
his ego felt marginally stung.

“Not really,” she
replied, which helped Blade to relax. “Sage knows that we’re…well, we’re doing
whatever it is we’re doing. But I’ve made it a habit not to be a source of
gossip and innuendo around here. Some bantering and teasing, gossip and rumors
are to be expected. On the other hand, anything too solid and it could hurt
your career and how seriously people take you. Besides, my private life is
private.”

“Point made.” Blade
cleared his throat, shifted in his chair and turned to face the console nearest
him. “So shall we start with
Sarke
?”

Flame cupped his cheek,
which sent small thrills of pleasure through Blade’s body. Her thumb lightly
stroked his skin and they kissed once again, more chastely this time but still
with enough heat to have Blade’s cheeks feeling warm and his cock twitching
hungrily to show its approval.

This time when they
pulled back they both were breathing heavily.

“
Sarke
,”
Blade repeated huskily. His fingers shook a very little as he entered the main
Enforcer record base and searched for David
Sarke
.
Flame opened a few tabs to begin consecutive searches in other databases and
they talked jargon between themselves for a few minutes as they tried to
synchronize which engines they were using to seek known associates.

“We should also check
records on
Sarke’s
annex,” Blade said when they had
both run dry on ideas. “We know he paid the utilities, but if we can follow the
company name he held it under we might be able to discover connections to his
investors.
Sarke
was by no means poor but he didn’t
have the funds to run this without significant help.”

She’d already opened
fresh windows and begun the search, easily following his train of thought. “And
he might have an apartment or some other place he could be hiding out listed
under the same name,” she added. “If we can physically find him, half the
battle will be won. Convincing him to hand over his partners will be easier if
we have him and leverage against him.”

For the next couple of
hours they worked tirelessly. Their exchanges were simple and mostly related to
names that came up as they checked with each other for consistencies or people
who recurred. The list they compiled of possible accessories was not especially
long—a little over half a dozen names—but as they printed more and more
information to sift through the following morning, the connections became
stronger.

Blade’s eyes were gritty
and burned from exhaustion. They itched when he finally stood to stretch the
kinks from his back. He did a few simple exercises to get his circulation
running strongly again, then went to the small stationery cupboard and removed
a handful of manila folders, dropping them onto the desk next to Flame. With a
marker, she wrote out the name of an individual of interest on each one.

They had followed up on
every lead they could manage for now, and as Flame printed the last of their
pages Blade powered down their computers. As the machines went through their
shutdown checks, Blade returned to their papers.

Meticulously, he sorted
the half ream of printed files they had collected and put them into their
relevant folders so the corresponding data sat neatly in each area. When he had
finished, he rubbed his hands over his face. Now they’d collated what they
could manage to discover, exhaustion washed over him in a nearly debilitating
wave. In a few hours’ time it would be dawn, and time to get back up and
re-read the files they had created.

“I’m stuffed,” he
commented as he smothered a yawn. “Let me grab a satchel to put this in and we
can head back to my place and catch some sleep before we have to meet up with
Jarred.”

“I need to go to my
place,” Flame said.

Blade felt an unexpected,
small sinking in the pit of his belly at her words. He felt his face fall a
little and he struggled to put an understanding look on his face and search for
words that weren’t simply,
No. Don’t.
Stay with me.

“I’m out of clothes,” she
added. “I’ll just need to grab a fresh bag,
then
we
can go back to your place.”

Blade felt grateful his
skin was such a dark-brown color. Blushes and flushes of heat didn’t really
show up on him.

“Sure thing,” he agreed,
“that sounds fine.”

Despite her words, she
didn’t move from her chair. Instead she stared at him, seeming to search his
face for something.

“You looked worried,” she
finally commented with a small frown creased between her thin brows. “What did
I say?”

Blade debated for a
moment between brushing it off and just telling her—admitting his growing
attraction to her. Finally, when she repeated with a far sharper, “What?” he
settled on
honesty.

“I thought for a minute
there you didn’t want to stay with me. I totally understand the need for space.
I don’t want us in each other’s pockets twenty-four-seven either. But…my
feelings for you are only growing, Flame.”

Blade paused to scan her
face, to read the small mannerisms that were quickly becoming as well-known as
Sage’s or his own in the mirror. Flame appeared deep in thought. The words
bubbled up out of his chest and fell from his lips before he could stop them.

“The bond, the connection
I feel with you is only getting stronger, more potent as you ensnare me and we
spend more time in each other’s company. I became worried maybe you didn’t feel
the same about me when you sounded so eager to get back to your place.”

Flame’s full lips tilted
upward into a smile and she stood and stretched sinuously before taking two paces
to where Blade sat. Straddling his legs, she climbed onto his lap and cupped
her slender hands around his jaw.

“I’m not going to tie you
down in marriage or move into your house, Blade, but I’m not being casual here
either. This isn’t some random sexual discovery for me, not a one-night—or
one-week—stand where I plan to cut all ties and go on my merry way as soon as
we’re done. I’m not sure what we are—it’s too soon for me to really think hard
about it. But it isn’t casual, it isn’t random and it isn’t just because you’re
a sexy beast who makes my knees wobble and my pussy soaked.”

Blade heaved a sigh of
relief as his hands came around to cup her firm ass through the denim of her
jeans. His shaft had hardened at her words, at the husky, sexy tone of her
voice as she described how he made her feel. Pulling her closer so their bodies
could rub together, he ground himself against her, thrilling at the contact
through the material of their clothes.