Great Exploitations: Sin in San Fran (6 page)

At the top of the stairs, I found Rob’s polo shirt dotting the carpet. Halfway down the hall were his pants. Right outside the door at the end of the hall, his briefs. I had just put the phone back into my purse when two strong arms grabbed me from behind. My purse, with the phone safely inside of it, fell to the ground. Rob’s arms wound through my elbows, cinching them back so far I cried out.

“Why are you still dressed?” he hissed against my neck before nipping at it.

Shit. We were getting started and my only tool for getting it on video was at my feet, and my hands were literally tied. Putting myself back into character, I draped my head back over his shoulder to give him better access to my neck. “Because I thought you’d want to watch me undress.”

“Wrong.” His fingers tugged on my dress’s zipper. “I’d rather undress you myself.”

The zipper was down and my dress gathered at my feet before he finished his sentence. Like most of my Targets, Rob was adept at getting a woman out of her clothes. Years of practice had more to do with that than any actual talent. His mouth stayed on my neck as his hands skimmed up and down my body. Pressing into me, he directed me toward the bed in the giant master bedroom.

Yet another family photo was propped up on a nightstand, but a family photo staring me in the face while I screwed a leper of a man was the least of my worries. My purse and phone were getting farther away with every step, and I didn’t need to wonder if Rob was the kind of lover who took his time with foreplay. Everything I’d endured, everything
Mrs. Tucker
had endured, would be for nothing if I didn’t find a way to force the last piece into the puzzle.

As Rob shoved me the rest of the way to the bed, I noticed something. More like, I noticed something
missing.
Most men got hard at the idea of getting me into bed, but Rob Tucker was inches from
actually
getting me into bed, and the only thing hard about him was the elbow pressed into my back. Whatever kind of twilight zone I’d found myself in with that Errand was one I hoped I could permanently forget one day.

“For someone who seemed rather
eager
a few minutes ago, you’re certainly giving me a different message now,” I said.

That earned me a rather intense bite as he rammed me into the baseboard. I grimaced but didn’t try to free my arms. The only thing I was more certain about than Rob’s hold being powerful was that it was unbreakable.

“Maybe if you stopped talking and starting obeying, you could turn me on again.”

When he bit the sensitive skin of my neck again, I groaned in pain. That was when I felt him hardening against me. Exerting power and dominance while doling out pain was what turned him on, what got him off. It was a sick and twisted game . . . but it was also my exit strategy. That scrap of knowledge was exactly what I needed.

If getting and staying “alert” required physical violence paired with my submission, then that was exactly what I wouldn’t do. I guessed if I met him toe-to-toe at the physical dominance line, he’d go as limp as he’d been moments ago. What I knew of Rob Tucker—what I
hoped
I knew of him—also led me to the conclusion that somewhere close by was a magic purple pill that would help him along if I didn’t play nice. He might play dirty, but I played dirtier still.

“Maybe if you’d shut your mouth and start obeying me, you could manage to turn me on . . .
for once
,” I snapped, elbowing his chest. I braced myself for the hit, so when it came, it didn’t totally throw me off balance. It still hurt like a mother.

But I wasn’t in a game of who hit harder or most. It was a game of don’t-back-down. Spinning in his arms, I worked one of my arms free and returned the cheek-slapping favor before shoving him away. He stood there rubbing his cheek, looking as though the world had just flipped upside down.

I smirked. “I know this game, too. When you’re ready for more, come and get it.” A quick check revealed I was correct that fighting back was the opposite of an aphrodisiac for him.

“I think you’re going to regret that,” he said with a powerful glower.

I felt half as brave as I knew I looked, but that was still twice as much as I thought I’d be. “I don’t think I am. It looks like you’re having a not-so-hard”—I peaked an eyebrow as my gaze swept south—“time keeping your enthusiasm in the on position, so I’m a little confused. Are you more interested in hitting me or screwing me?” Seriously, when the whole thing was done and over, I needed to have my brain wiped of all Tucker Errand-related memories.

“Who says I have to choose? Why pick one when two’s more fun?” he answered cryptically, with just as cryptic of a smile.

Lifting my shoulders, I stepped forward. “I do.
I
say you have to choose. You can pick one, but if you pick the wrong one, I’m walking out the front door and you’ll never see me again. Hit me once, shame on you. Hit me twice, shame on me.” If the president of the United States couldn’t even get that gem right, what made me think I could tackle it while bare-ass naked in front of just as bare-ass naked a man who, in another life, could have been Hitler?

“You and that mouth again. I thought we’d worked that out.” He stopped advancing, but I was ready for that to change at any moment.

“No, you thought you’d
hit
that out.”

He waved dismissively. “Tomato, tomatoe.”

Resisting the urge to charge him with claws at the ready, I crossed my arms and leaned into the bed. “So? What’s the verdict? Are we or aren’t we? Because I might be attracted to you and all, but you’re not exactly the only guy who can meet my physical attraction needs.”

His face couldn’t have twisted any further with confusion. It was so overstated, it was comical. “I thought we had something more than physical attraction. I thought we’d been working toward something else. Something more.”

That
was comical. His idea of “something more” was exerting physical and mental power over me while I played the willing victim.

“You’re married. And you like to get rough. I have a rather big problem with both of those things. The only kind of relationship we can have is this one.” I gestured to the bed. “You can fulfill that need for me and I can fulfill that need for you, but that’s as far as you and I go.” I crossed my arms again, hoping to look as unwavering as I sounded. “Take it or leave it.”

Rob had gone from utter and total confusion to looking like he’d been whacked over the head with a brick. I didn’t suppose his wife, or any of his previous lovers, had ever spoken back to him and given him the sex-only ultimatum. The perk to him having no experience with that was that he didn’t know how to respond. At least not right away.

“I could put you in the hospital again, you know. Just like that,” he threatened, snapping his fingers.

I shrugged. “I don’t doubt you could. But I’ve got my attorney on speed-dial, witnesses who could vouch for me being with you tonight, and I’m not scared of pressing charges. The first one was a freebie, the second one’s going to cost you.”

His eyes narrowed in a more investigative kind of way than the angry way. “You had me fooled.”

He has no idea
. “No, Rob, you had yourself fooled.”

He took a minute to work that out, pondering whatever a creep like him pondered. Then his smiled curled up so high it was startling. “A physical relationship? That and that only?”

Nice try. “Not
that
kind of physical, and the other kind’s about to be off the table in three . . . two . . . and—”

He settled his hands on my hips. “I’ve worked too hard and too long on this relationship to not reap some kind of reward.”

I didn’t shove him away, but I didn’t pull him any closer either. “One week and a couple bouquets of flowers constitutes exceptional effort these days?”

His grip tightened as he pulled me closer. I eyed my abandoned purse down the hall and hoped I’d correctly predicted his next move. If there was no aggression to do the job for him, hopefully a magic pill was stuffed in some medicine cabinet.

“It is for a man like myself,” he answered.

I was about to argue when I realized he was right. For a man like Rob Tucker, a one-week relationship with a woman he’d just met was a notable effort.

“So?” I raised an eyebrow, waiting and trying not to stare at my purse.

“So . . . why don’t you lie down and get comfortable.” His eyes scanned the bed as he backed away from me . . . toward the bathroom. “I’ve got something I need to do before moving on to our extracurricular activities.”

As I turned toward the bed, I smiled. I couldn’t have managed the situation any better. “You’ve got something to do in the
bathroom
?” When it came to Rob Tucker, I was going to take every jab and cheap shot I could. Having “business” in the bathroom included.

“My office just so happens to connect through the master bathroom,” he replied.

Since his back was to me, I rolled my eyes. “Have fun with your
business
. Don’t keep me waiting too long.”

“Just get comfortable, and don’t go anywhere. This will take me a little while,” he said as he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door.

Yeah, it’ll take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes if that pill’s the fast-acting kind. Dealing with the
advanced
age of the Targets I generally worked with, I had more experience with those magic little pills than a woman my age should.

I waited a few more moments to make sure I was in the clear, then I flew across the bedroom and snatched my purse from the floor. I should have plenty of time to get everything set up and ready, but I wasn’t going to chance it. Rob seemed like the kind of man who might change his mind and come back swinging, hoping for a more natural solution to his erectile problem. Digging the phone from my purse, I scanned the room for the ideal place to put it. I wasn’t too worried about making sure it had a good view of the head of the bed because I could manipulate what positions we tangled ourselves into. The Kama Sutra had nothing on the ways I’d managed to contort my body.

My attention shifted to what must have been Mrs. Tucker’s dresser. How fitting . . . So many items were propped on that dresser that one more small one would easily blend in. If I did my job right, Rob wouldn’t be thinking about dressers or foreign objects or even be able to remember where he was when I was finished with him. As I hurried to the dresser, I double-checked the available memory on the phone to make sure there was plenty of space for several minutes of footage. If I was doing my job right, getting the evidence wouldn’t take longer than a few minutes.

After adjusting a couple pictures, I slid the phone in between them so that only the camera sensor was showing. As I finished placing the camera, I heard the telltale sound of pills tumbling out of a bottle. If Rob needed the same amount of time to pop a pill as I took to jimmy-rig a hiding spot for a camera—all, might I mention, while buck naked—he didn’t have a future in espionage.

After that, I waited. I waited so long, I found myself checking the window for the sunrise. I checked and rechecked my hidden camera. I ran across the room to check it from that angle. I jumped on the bed and checked it from that one, too. By the time I heard the bathroom doorknob twisting open, I’d been about to check the angle from the closet. Good timing, because if I wasn’t already manic, I was one more check away from it.

I waited until the door started to open to tap the record button. Then I glued on a smile and sauntered back to the bed. Game time. My skin nearly erupted in goose bumps when I realized that I was seconds away from sleeping with the most vile person I’d had the displeasure of meeting. So I reminded myself that in a mere few minutes, I’d never have to see said vile person again.

“The last guy who left me waiting that long never saw me again,” I said as I propped myself on the edge of the bed. A casual inspection of his below-the-belt region revealed that his problem had been solved, and he was already suited up as a bonus. The miracles of modern science . . .

His smirk was back in place as he approached. “But the last guy wasn’t me. I’m not the kind of man a girl can just walk away from. And to prove it, you’re still here.”

My fingers curled into the mattress, both from the
girl
reference (yet again) and his assumption that he was the one man a woman couldn’t walk away from. On the contrary, he was exactly the one man a woman should walk away from. Delusion was a powerful thing.

“No, Rob. The last guy wasn’t you.”

Out of nowhere, Henry’s face flashed through my head. That was the second time Henry had managed to materialize in the middle of my final seduction of a Target. Last time, it had unsettled me, but this time it somehow managed to ground me. To center me, even. Oh, dear god . . .

I put myself back into character, gave Rob a slow smile, and beckoned him closer. As he approached, I glanced at the hidden phone to make sure we were at a good angle. I adjusted my place on the edge of the mattress a few inches. Better to be safe.

When Rob was in front of me, he shoved my knees aside and stepped between them. The crooked smile that curved into place gave away just how much he enjoyed looking down on me. “You know I could be overpowering you right now? You know I could be holding you down and turning you into the same unrecognizable mess as last week, don’t you?”

Vile. Of the plethora of unsavory designations one could assign to Rob Tucker, that one topped the pile. God, I loved knowing he was going down. If it was allowed, I would have been in the front seat, all day every day, during his divorce trial. Pumping my fist every time Mrs. Tucker’s attorney stuck it to him. But it wasn’t time for fist pumps or victory dances yet. I had to play the part and finish the job.

Lowering my eyes, I forced out the words I needed to say. “I know that. Of course I do.”

He was barely touching me yet, but those words made him groan as if he was two thrusts deep into his orgasm. Without another word, he shoved me onto my back, collapsing onto me. He didn’t hold his weight carefully above me, nor did he enter me gently—not that I’d expected him to. Just because hitting was off the table didn’t mean he wouldn’t assert his dominance in other places.