STORY EXCERPT

Donna felt it when they slowed and turned into what she guessed was a driveway. The SUV stopped for a moment before pulling forward again, and she realized they’d driven into a garage and the door was being rolled down.

Once the garage door had closed behind them and the driver had shut off the engine, the men got her out, holding her arms and helping her, not roughly, she realized. Patiently, not yanking or dragging her. They waited for her to get her footing under her before leading her through the garage.

“Step up one step,” Phone Guy said.

She did, now feeling tile under her shoes instead of concrete.

Then they pulled the hood off her head.

She blinked, startled. They were in a house.

A very nice house.

Not exactly the kind of grimy lair she would have expected for kidnappers.

Somewhere in the house, the sound of the front door opening and closing sounded and she heard two people talking, a man and a woman.

They got her seated on the couch, her hands still bound behind her. She realized Phone Guy was blond and had gorgeous, dark blue eyes a totally different shade than Ginny’s. The other guy had curly brown hair and hazel eyes. He was a couple of inches taller than Phone Guy’s six feet, and was holding her computer bag.

The driver, the large black man, settled into an easy chair. And now the woman she’d seen, and the man with the tablet, entered through another doorway to join them.

Brown Hair handed the man with the tablet her bag.

Donna protested, even though she couldn’t do anything with her hands still bound. “Hey, that’s mine!”

“I know,” Brown Hair said, evenly meeting her gaze. “You’ll get it back soon enough.”

Tablet Guy dug her laptop out and set it up on the coffee table. Apparently, her password was no match for him, because his fingers flew across the keyboard without him bothering to ask her for any information.

He checked something against his tablet. “This is it.” Then his smile started to fade, replaced by a frown.

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.

“Oh…crap.” He seemed to be searching for something for a couple of minutes without talking before he looked straight at Donna. “Tell me about holyrollingfraud.link.”

“What?”

“The website you run. Tell me about it. How are you accessing it?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t run any websites.”

“Look, despite you trying to use an anonymizer, we still tracked your MAC address. It was used to send an e-mail in response to a request for information about licensing one of the Reverend Silo clips.”

“My what address? I don’t have a Mac. Duh, that’s a PC, genius. What kind of computer guy are you if you can’t tell the difference?” She belatedly realized she was snarkily rambling in her fear. “Besides, I can’t afford a Mac on my salary. And Reverend who? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” She shifted position on the couch, trying to give her chafing wrists a break.

Now the five people exchanged a wary glance. “Uni, give me the sat-phone,” Tablet Guy said. “I need to call Bubba.”

Uni—at least now she had a name for Blue Eyes—produced a phone and handed it off to the guy. Tablet Guy took the phone from Uni, her laptop, and his tablet, and disappeared down a hall. The sound of a door closing filtered through to the living room.

The woman took over. From her stance with her hands on her hips and feet apart for stability, even though she wore jeans and a blouse, Donna suspected she was law enforcement. She walked over to stand in front of Donna.

“What is your name?”

“Okay, seriously? You people kidnap me and don’t even know who you kidnapped? You realize my family is broke, right? Please, just let me go!”

Brown Hair dug through her bag. “Hey! That’s mine!” Donna protested.

He came out with her wallet. “Donna Epperson,” he said when he read her license.

She briefly struggled against the wrist restraints, until they started cutting into her flesh. “Why did you kidnap me?”

“We haven’t kidnapped you,” the woman said.

“Really? Because I think this is the definition of a kidnapping.”

“At least she didn’t try to bite any of you,” the black man said with an amused smile. Everyone seemed to think that was funny, for some reason.

Hell, the kidnapping had been so quick and obviously well-planned that Donna hadn’t even had time to think, much less fight back or bite.

“Donna,” the woman said, “you can call me Chief. Your computer was identified as the one being used by the person who is posting the videos of Rev. Hannibal Silo.”

This had to be a dream. Maybe she stepped off the curb and a car hit her and she was in a coma or something. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I work at the First Atlanta Commerce Bank. I’m one of their head tellers, and I’m going to lose my job if I miss work! I’m the head teller for this afternoon’s shift. I don’t own a website. I don’t even know how to own a website! I’ve worked at the bank for the past six years, and you people are going to cost me my job!”

“Just calm down,” Brown Hair said. She had to admit he was cute.

Great. My luck, I meet a cute guy, and he’s kidnapping me.

She didn’t want to start crying, because none of this made any sense and she didn’t want to give these wacky strangers the satisfaction of seeing her cry.

She’d started out her Monday morning the way she did every Monday morning. No, working at a bank wasn’t her life’s dream, but she was happy enough with what she did. The security she had from her job. The independence. The benefits.

The unshared bedroom in a decent enough apartment with two friends she dearly loved and got along well with.

She had no complaints in general.

And now…

Now this.

Maybe they thought she was someone else. Well, no maybe about it. All that nonsense about websites and video clips.

That was it. They thought she was someone else.

Maybe they’ll let me go since they obviously screwed up. “Please, whoever you’re looking for, I’m not them. Just let me go, and I swear I won’t say anything!”

The guy named Uni was about to say something when they heard a door open down the hall.

Tablet Guy reappeared, looking unhappy. He had her laptop and tablet, but he wasn’t on the phone any longer. “Good news, or bad news?” he asked his compatriots.

“Bad,” they all said at once.

“Whoever is running the website was piggybacking a connection through her laptop. She’s not the right person.”

“See? I told you—”

Brown Hair held up a hand to silence her, but focused on Tablet Guy. “What’s the good news, then?”

“We can use her computer to bait both the person we’re really looking for, and the people looking for them.”

“What?” Donna added her voice to everyone else’s that time.

Tablet Guy continued as if everyone understood what he was talking about. Then Donna realized they did know what he was talking about. She was the one in the dark.

“I found evidence where our unsub fish has been piggybacking through her computer quite a bit. He’s left trails here and there.” He looked at Donna. “What is your schedule?”

“What?”

“Your schedule. Do you go to that coffee shop all the time?”

She gave up trying not to cry. “Look, please, just let me go!”

ADULT EXCERPT

Victor went to get them towels while Donna went into the bedroom and changed into her swimsuit. Which, truth be told, might be admittedly stupid on her part, considering she was really hoping to get laid.

 She pulled her bathrobe on against the chill in the air and joined the men on the lanai. Steam drifted up and off the surface of the warm water. Over in the corner, where the hot tub was, even more steam floated off it.

The men were already in the pool, waiting. Taking a deep breath, she shrugged off her robe and let it fall onto the concrete deck. Then she jumped into the deep end and bobbed to the surface, pushing her wet hair back off her face.

The men swam over to join her. She wasn’t sure if she was happy or disappointed that she couldn’t get a good look at their…equipment.

Two sets of eyes intently focused on her. Victor’s smoky hazel gaze and Uni’s dark blue orbs. In this light a midnight blue, like deep waters.

“So…” She felt incredibly lame and not at all vampish like some of the heroines in the books she devoured. “Swimming.”

Both men smiled, identical in their simmering heat and yet completely different at the same time. “Swimming,” Uni said. “Or…floating and talking.”

“Or not…talking,” Victor added. “Can do lots of things in a pool.”

She gulped.

Another brief impasse before she could form words again. “Look, I know you guys aren’t here for long and can’t make me any promises. But I’m clean and have a five-year, if that makes any difference.”

The men exchanged a guarded, knowing glance before moving in closer. “What do you want to happen?” Uni asked in a low, throaty tone that made her clit tingle.

“Besides not dying? I’d like to have a little…strings-free fun. It’s been a damned long time—”

“Since you had a boyfriend,” Uni finished with a sexy little smile. “You said that earlier.”

“I don’t just sleep around,” she said. “Don’t get the wrong impression about me. I don’t have much time for relationships anyway with my job schedule. And…now all of this happening. In the world. Time might be…short.”

Victor eased his way behind her. “Life is short indeed,” he said. “I wish we could make you promises, but the last thing we want to do is hurt you.”

“We don’t randomly sleep around either,” Uni said. “Haven’t been with someone else in over a year. But we can’t offer you long-term right now.”

“I know. I get it. I’m a big girl. I’ll settle for a few nights of fun before going back to my life. Just…there is a promise I want you to make me.”

“What?” Uni asked.

“Don’t lie to me. I get it if you can’t tell me something, but just say that. That it’s classified or whatever. But don’t lie to me.”

“That is a promise we can keep,” Victor said. “I swear.”

“Okay. And maybe keep me in mind…after. I want to believe you guys will fix all this crazy. Come find me after it’s over and let’s see what happens. I mean, we might find we hate each other. Then again, we might…have more than just fun together.”

“I will promise you that,” Uni said.

“Me, too,” Victor said. “Absolutely.”

That eased her heart and mind. She wasn’t just being a slut, and from what she’d learned today, she suspected they were men of their word when it came to stuff like this.

She draped her arms around Uni’s neck and drew him in closer. “Then let’s quit wasting time and have some fun,” she said.

Behind her, Victor moved in, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and pressing against her back, pushing her into Uni. Uni reached down and drew her legs around his waist as his lips closed over hers. Between her legs, she felt his stiff and generous cock rubbing against her clit through her bathing suit. Behind her, she felt Victor’s shaft pressed against her lower back and feeling every bit as large as Uni’s.

Wow. Closing her eyes, she savored his slow, sweet, burning kiss. The tip of his tongue lightly traced the seam of her lips, not rushing, gently teasing. Behind her, Victor started kissing the top of her left shoulder, slowly nibbling his way toward her neck and making her moan.

“Ever have two cocks before, baby?” Victor whispered in her ear.

Uni lifted his mouth from hers so she could answer. “No.”

“Your call,” Victor said. “We’ll do whatever you want to do.”

She’d read about that permutation in books before. “I’d like to try it but I’ve never done anal before.”

Uni widely smiled. “Oh, baby. We get to pop your cherry. I promise you, we’ll go slow and you’ll enjoy every second of it.”

Victor slid the left strap of her bathing suit down her shoulder, kissing his way across her flesh. “Might make you never want a single guy again, though,” he teased.

“Yeah, well, you’re promising to come back later, so maybe I’m good with not wanting a single guy again.”

Uni slipped a hand around the back of her neck and kissed her again, taking control this time, the simmering heat flashing over to a rolling boil as her lips parted for his. Before she realized it, the men had eased her out of her bathing suit and tossed it out of the pool. This time when she felt Uni’s cock rubbing against her clit it was flesh against flesh. Ditto Victor’s behind her, against her ass.

She whimpered with need as she dug her heels into Uni’s ass and tried to rub her clit against his cock. It felt sooo damn good having someone—two someones—to get her off and not her own hand and sexy thoughts or scenes from a book.

“Aw, someone’s horny,” Victor teased. He pulled her hair away from the back of her neck and nibbled, sucking, licking, only adding fuel to the fire.

Uni lifted his lips from hers and stared down into her eyes. “Rub yourself against me, baby. Work that first one out for us. We want to hear what you sound like when you come for us.”

His gaze never left hers as she arched her back, flexing her hips, rocking rubbing, trying to generate enough friction against her throbbing clit to make it over the edge.

Victor reached around her, even as he kept nibbling on her neck, and cupped his hands over her breasts. He started rolling her nipples between his fingers and that triggered her orgasm.

She was still coming as Uni shifted position, his cock easily sliding home inside her, deliciously stretching her and keeping her release going, surging through her.

“That’s it,” he said, his lips just over hers. “Such a good girl. Gonna wear you out tonight and make it up to you for the scare we put you through earlier.” Instead of fucking her, he reached between them and found her clit with his fingers and started rubbing it.

Victor’s hands changed position, one of them gliding around and down her back, between her ass cheeks, gently probing there. She started to tense up except Uni rolled her clit between his fingers just right and sent her into orbit again.

“Don’t worry,” Victor softly spoke in her ear. “This is just a little warm-up. We’ll be using plenty of lube and going slow for the real thing.” He rubbed the tip of his finger around her rim, teasing but not breaching.