Page 4 of Broken Saint

2

Rock

Six weeks ago

Sitting in the dark corner of a casino bar on a Saturday night was not my idea of fun. But it was what the job called for, and I was nothing if not dedicated to my work. A deep sigh filled my chest. The woman I'd been waiting for had yet to show, and it looked like, for the first time in weeks, she was going to break her pattern and not come in for her nightly drink.

Which meant I could have gone home to my shitty apartment hours ago with some fucking takeout and a beer or three. When exactly was the last time I'd gotten home before midnight?

I didn't want to actually state the answer because in truth, it had been a long damn time. The sex trafficking case I'd finally resolved a few months ago had consumed my life for years, and I'd forgotten what my normal life was supposed to be.

Taking down one crime family out of Seattle and their foreign counterpart hadn't changed much though. Being a mob hunter was pretty much like playing a sick and twisted game of whack-a-mole. You take one down and two more just like them pop back up, and so and so on. That was never going to make for a "normal" life.

I should have taken a fucking vacation.

A trip to some tropical island where I could have found a hot chick in a bikini to ride my dick for a couple of weeks might have been nice. Or maybe taken a face plant into some pussy and gorged after a long drought. I'd certainly deserved it.

What had I done instead?

Picked up a new case the next morning. This one seemingly revolved around a mafia boss right here in Vegas. This town had no shortage of those fuckers. Couldn't walk down the street without tripping over one or two of them.

Anthony Cullotta. He made Frank Mazzeo almost look like a choir boy. His transgressions were a mile long, and getting longer every day, after an apparent truce between his family and the Rossi family in Italy. Something big was brewing, and it made everyone nervous, from top brass down to the field agents.

My network of confidential informants weren't always the most reliable, so I had to take a lot of the information I received with a grain of salt. But the FBI had eyes and ears everywhere so it wasn't too difficult to piece together a decent picture of how the network worked. Proving it all in a court of law, however, was an entirely different story.

Which is how I ended up sitting in this overpriced bar in this particular hotel. Romeo Rossi's son had taken up at least part-time residence in The Sinclair, a luxury boutique hotel that catered to a lot of the world's elite, including those right here in Vegas. As for Vincent, Romeo's secret son, he claimed he was nothing more than a boxer, but if rumors of his upcoming retirement from the sport were true, there was a good chance he'd be moving into the family biz any day now.

And I intended to be here for the show.

With my thoughts circling that dark drain, my glass empty, and no waitress in sight to remedy the situation, that was when she finally walked into the lounge and made her way across the room.

Known simply as Nova, she led a very public life, and it didn't take much to learn everything about her. From her meteoric rise as a new clothing designer in New York to her arrival in Las Vegas to open an exclusive store in the brand new Sinclair hotel and casino. He could only imagine how lucrative a partnership like that would be.

If that wasn't enough, she had throngs of fans across social media who couldn't seem to wait to see what she wore anytime she left her top floor suite. Her outfit of the day posts were viewed, liked, and shared hundreds of thousands of times per day.

While I got the effect of social media on her life, it wasn't what drew me to the woman or why I looked at her pictures. I enjoyed a woman in nice clothing as much as the next guy, but clothes weren't usually high on my radar. Unless those details somehow intersected with my work, I rarely noticed.

Tonight, she wore a short black dress that matched the color of her long inky hair. She'd chosen to leave it down, and the long tresses floated down her back to her waist like some kind of fucking veil. The dress, though, it was hard to tear my eyes off it. Not when it fit her so tight there wasn't a chance in hell I, and every other fucker in this place, wouldn't notice every single curve of her perfect body. And they were luscious. Since the first night I'd seen her, those curves had given me all sorts of ideas. Especially when it came to how my hands would grip her as I pulled her tight against me. Every memory of her became instant spank bank material.

That dress alone pulled a low groan from me that couldn't be contained.

Not to mention the fact she absolutely could not be wearing a bra with that thing.

Which left me no choice but to imagine her nipples rubbing against the fabric with each step she took. And the idea that those little gems were as rock hard as my cock nearly did me in.

That dress stopped well above her knees, showcasing the strong, tan legs that carried her across the room to a stool at the bar. Her favorite spot to sit and people watch, since she never actually met anyone here. Men and women alike approached her, some even asked for a picture. But none were ever invited to stay.

And did I mention the strappy gold heels that would look good in the air and draped over my shoulders as I fucked into her?

I scrubbed my face to relieve some tension. Her presence had an effect on me I couldn't explain. If she was just a beautiful woman, I might have seen her differently—this town had plenty of those—but this woman had a complexity to her that not many did. It made for an even more enticing allure.

The dread of coming here tonight flipped instantly to something else. Excitement? Yes. Desire? Fuck yes. More importantly though... Knowledge.

As she bent her head to the bartender to order her drink — a martini, dry, no olives — I made up my mind. Tonight would be a night neither of us ever forgot.

Asking her out on a date appealed on a strangely surreal level. Mostly because I didn't date. Small talk and flirtation were not my forte nor did they interest me. You needed a man broken in an interview? I was your guy. You needed someone to dig deep to uncover the darkest secrets a man possessed? Also me.

In my book, attraction meant only one thing. Scratching an itch and then moving on.

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