Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (Vikings Underground #2)(2)
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

“Why, Carlos?” Joe asked. “You aching to wear high heels and a woman’s thong?”

“Hell, no.”

Rhea cleared her throat to get Joe’s attention. “So how do we prep this?” she asked.

Ace smiled. “Me and you are meeting with a coach to learn about bondage and dominance. You’re going to be the mistress and I get to be your slave.” He looked to be enjoying this way too much.

“You really are a perv, aren’t you? Admit it?”

Ace laughed.

Joe rubbed his head as if they were starting to give him a migraine. “Since the two of you are going to be extremely intimate over the next few days, why don’t you leave early and have dinner together tonight so you can discuss the case and get to know each other before you actually get nak*d.”

Now she was the one developing a migraine at the prospect of what this assignment entailed. “Thanks, Joe,” she said sarcastically.

“Anytime, Rhea. Hell, I’ll even let the two of you put it on the company card.”

She gave him a droll look. “You’re just so damned generous.”

Ace indicated the way to the door with a tilt of his head. “Are we taking him up on it, Rhea?”

Rhea took a deep breath as she fought an urge to run in the other direction, but this wasn’t about her and Ace and his obnoxiousness. It was about stopping a cold-blooded killer who didn’t care whom he hurt.

For that, she was willing to do anything. Even put up with the most arrogant male in existence.

She looked at Tee. “I do get to beat Ace, right?”

“He’ll be your slave for training. I say make him cry for mercy.”

Ace looked completely undaunted by the prospect. “Beat me, hurt me, call me Ralph.”

“Yeah, call you Ralph. I’ll be lucky if I don’t ‘ralph’ from the sight of you nak*d all right.”

“Ooo,” Ace said in an appreciative tone. “Swift on the uptake, Stevenson. I’m impressed.”

Before she could respond, Ace returned to his cube and grabbed his jacket. Rhea went ahead and shut down her computer while Joe headed back to his office.

Tee opened up the folder again and sorted through the papers until she found one in particular, which she handed to Rhea. “This is the dossier for Bender. Memorize it while you learn to beat the crap out of him.”

A distinct, evil glimmer in her eye said Tee would enjoy being in Rhea’s position. “If you want this so badly, why aren’t you doing it?”

“Because he doesn’t have a thing for short Vietnamese women. Wish that he did though.”

“Me too. The thought of going in, in nothing but a teddy doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll cover you.”

And they would too. BAD always took care of her own. “I know.”

Tee stepped back as Ace rejoined them.

“You two have a nice night and get friendly.” Tee handed a small business card to Rhea. “First thing in the morning, I’m having the instructor meet you at your house where I’m sure you’ll feel a little more comfortable. In the meantime, I want you two to get into character early. This is the address for an adult store here in Nashville. Head over and stock up on toys.”

Ace gave that wicked grin of his as he gave Rhea a once-over that made her stomach tight. “I’m definitely up for it.”

Rhea was completely unamused by his humor. “You better be down for it.”

She took the card from Tee, then looked up at Ace. “You are really enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely. So what’s first?” Ace asked playfully as he took a step toward her. “Dinner or sex?”

“Excuse me?”

He took the card from her hand, letting his fingers brush hers in a warm caress, and smiled like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “C’mon, Rhea. Have you ever been to an adult store before?”

Hardly. Kinky sex had never appealed to her at all, and she’d heard enough tales from her odder friends to know she had no interest in haunting adult stores for the aids they provided. “Have you?”

He looked completely unrepentant. “I’ll plead the Fifth to that.”

“I knew you were a pervert.”

“Hey, it’s not my fault the customers took me along whenever my dad made them watch me.”

Rhea shook her head as Ace stepped back, then led the way from their offices toward the elevator bank.

Ace’s father, Alister Cross, was a renowned director who had won several Academy Awards. Ace’s grandfather, Osker Krux, owned one of the largest movie studios in the world, and Ace’s younger brother was an Academy Award–winning special FX guru. Ace himself had once been a stunt double before he’d gone on to work for the Secret Service.

“You know, I’ve never understood why you’re a BAD agent anyway. Why didn’t you follow your family’s business?”

He shrugged. “Movies are boring. Actors are fake and I figured if I wanted to live my life on the edge, I might as well be doing it for real. Why take a chance on dying from a blank gone bad when I can dodge real bullets intended to kill me and save the world?”

In a weird way that made sense to her, and she actually managed a grudging respect for him.

“What about you?” he asked as they waited on the elevator. “What made a respectable CIA agent follow Joe to a shadow agency that has no known ally?”

“I respect the hell out of Joe and Tee and their agenda, and I didn’t like all the rules of the CIA.” That’s what BAD was best at. No rules to bind their hands. Each agent was licensed as a civilian contractor. They were funded under the Treasury Department and hidden away as a federal insurance agency, which in an ironic way they really were. Only “insurance” took on a whole new meaning for them.

In reality, they were an antiterrorism special task force that no one other than the president knew about. The individual agents answered to Joe, and he answered to the head man alone.

No one else knew they existed and they all liked it that way.

The elevator doors opened.

Ace stood back to let her enter first. She didn’t speak again until they were enclosed inside and he’d pressed the button for the lobby.

“Besides,” she said, continuing their conversation, “I like the different kinds of agents we have. You guys are a lot more fun than the other agencies.”

He laughed at that. “Yeah, we’re not your average crew.”

Rhea smiled as she watched Ace from the corner of her eye. Even though he worked her last nerve into an apoplexy, she had to admit he was incredibly sexy standing there with his hands in his pockets while he looked up at the floor numbers overhead. Something about him was absolutely irresistible.

Too bad he knew it.

His presence was mammoth in the elevator, or then again, anywhere. He was one of those rare men who possessed an aura that was intense and all-encompassing.

As much as she had tried to stay angry at him for his pomposity, there had always been a tiny part of her that was attracted to him. A really tiny part.

When he was silent and serious, he was actually breathtaking, which had always made her wonder just how many hearts he’d left broken.

“So tell me, Ace. When was the last time you went out with a woman on a date?”

He looked at her. “A real date or an I’m-pretending-to-be-someone-else-and-am-prying-you-for-information date?”

“A real date.”

He let out a low whistle. “Probably a year. What about you?”

She sighed wistfully at the painful truth. “Three years, at least.”

“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “Our job doesn’t exactly lend itself to dating, does it?”

“No. I’m never sure what to say when they ask me what I do for a living. Most guys are heavily intimidated by the thought of dating a federal agent.”

He snorted at that. “I tell women I’m a federal agent and they laugh and think I’m handing them a line. So I usually make up bullshit about being a salesman or something.”

The door opened. Rhea walked across the lobby as she continued to smile while thinking of Ace in a bar with some giggling woman who had no idea just what the man was capable of. He was incredible in the field. He could speak a dozen languages fluently and held no fear of anything.

While in the Secret Service, he’d been shot three times and had brought countless criminals to trial. She was actually amazed that Joe had been able to pry Ace loose from their clutches. He’d been a celebrated hero to his group.

“You want to ride with me?” he asked.

She shook her head vigorously no. “You can ride with me. I’ve seen the way you drive.”

“What?” he asked, his face a mask of innocence. “I have a perfect driving record.”

“Only because you charmed your way out of the last three tickets you got,” she reminded him.

“Those were minor speeding offenses.”

“Sure they were. And I’m a three-armed alien.”

Her words seemed to only amuse him. “Fine, Cha-Cha. You drive.”

She frowned. “Cha-Cha? As in Shirley ‘Cha-Cha’ Mul-downey?”

“You know racing?” he asked as if surprised by her knowledge.

Rhea nodded. It wasn’t something she ever really mentioned to anyone, but then the topic seldom came up. “Are you kidding? She’s the first and only female Top Fuel Champion in NHRA history. When I was a kid, I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. My father was an old friend of her crew chief Connie Kalitta, and I actually have her autograph. Oh, I love that woman!”

“Then why is it you now drive like an old lady?”

She scoffed at that. “Old lady, nothing. I can J-turn a bulletproof Lincoln limo with the best of them.”

Ace chuckled at her reference to agent training where they all learned how to handle a variety of vehicles under stressful circumstances. One in particular that all BAD agents had to pass was the ability to jump into anything available and drive it out of any possible danger including heavy artillery fire, grenade and bomb attacks.

He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “You still drive far too cautiously for my tastes.”

Rhea shivered at the unexpected sensation of his breath on her skin and did her best not to think of other, much more intimate things that would cause him to be so near her.

And she had the distinct impression that he wasn’t really talking about the way she handled a car.

Unwilling to go there, she led him to the parking deck where she had her red Mustang parked.

Ace didn’t say anything as they got in and headed out.

“Do we really have to go to the sex shop?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“That depends. You got any whips and chains at home? And if you do, I will definitely have to change my opinion about what Agent Rhea Stevenson does on her days off.”

Rhea groaned. “The only chain I have is the small gold one around my neck, and as for whips…Do half-empty containers of Cool Whip count?”

“It does for what I have in mind.”

She let out a tired breath. “Does everything I say to you have to do with sex?”

“Since you’re supposed to dominate me, baby, yeah.”

Ace watched her stony face while she wove her way through traffic in a much more sedate way than he would have.

Rhea was a hot woman with a cool exterior that he’d wanted to melt for quite some time. But then business and pleasure didn’t mix well. He knew that better than anyone and yet he couldn’t help wondering what the petite brunette would taste like.

What those lean, supple limbs would feel like wrapped around his.

She was beautiful. Not so much in her looks, but in the way she could make him feel better by doing nothing more than smiling at him. She was extremely quiet and seldom said much even when her phone rang.

While in the CIA, she was supposed to have been one of their best field agents.

But in the last three years since BAD had come together, she hadn’t taken many field assignments. Most of her work was done online, making Ace wonder what she’d be like undercover.

In more ways than one.

He’d always had a theory that silent, quiet women were much more uninhibited in bed. But since he hadn’t known that many who were quiet, he’d never been able to test his theory.

She glanced over at him. “What are you thinking?”

Ace fell back into his standard male reply. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? Then why do you look like the cat eyeballing the canary?”

He gave a wicked grin at that. “Okay, so I was thinking of you dressed in black leather, wielding a whip over my nak*d ass.”

She didn’t look at him as she made a left turn. “I think I like ‘nothing’ better.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, stunned and excited at her words. “You really want to whip my nak*d ass?”