Hooked on a Feelin' [Clandestine Affairs 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Clandestine Affairs 5

  Hooked on a Feelin’

  Overweight and short on confidence, Sorrel Lang’s family and her grasping ex are all over her when she comes into a large inheritance. She makes a living as a successful slogan writer in advertising, but someone is stealing her ideas, so she calls on her dad’s old friends at the Clandestine Agency for help.

  Vasco Blaine and Tyler Dafoe suspect a member of her family is behind the thefts. They persuade Sorrel to hang out with them at their gym, where they introduce her to hot, sexy loving. Sorrel adores the things they do together but is suspicious of their motives. Why would two such hunks take an interest in someone as out of shape as she is?

  When she discovers the gym is losing money and overhears the guys talking about approaching her for a loan, their motivation becomes clear. Or does it…

  Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 49,798 words

  HOOKED ON A FEELIN’

  Clandestine Affairs 5

  Zara Chase

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  HOOKED ON A FEELIN’

  Copyright © 2014 by Zara Chase

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62741-646-7

  First E-book Publication: April 2014

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  Table of Contents

  Hooked on a Feelin'

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About the Author

  HOOKED ON A FEELIN’

  Clandestine Affairs 5

  ZARA CHASE

  Copyright © 2014

  Chapter One

  Raoul sat with his legs propped on the desk in front of him, his cowboy boots in danger of knocking expensive high-tech equipment to the floor. He was too unsettled to care. He and Zeke had just spent the day on horseback, helping the ranch hands to move stock to the summer pasture. He was physically tired, but mentally fucked. He didn’t know what the hell the matter with him was.

  Or rather he did.

  Zeke opened a couple of bottles of beer and passed one to Raoul.

  “Thanks, bud.”

  “No problem.”

  Zeke threw himself into the chair in front of Raoul’s desk, upon which his feet joined Raoul’s. Neither man said anything about the memories bugging them both as they made inroads into their beverages of choice. Anniversaries were always tough. In a few days’ time it would be the third anniversary of the day when they had foolishly not stopped Cantara, Raoul’s wife but the woman they both loved, from undertaking a doomed mission to help the Palestinian peace talks along. Raoul and Zeke, Special Forces Green Berets at the time, and supposedly the best there was—ha, what a joke—had barely escaped with their lives. Cantara had not been so lucky. Neither man had recovered, or found a way to move on. The shrinks would tell them it was cathartic to talk about it.

  The shrinks didn’t know shit.

  “Wanna go into town tonight?” Zeke asked.

  “Nah, things to do.”

  “I can see that.”

  Raoul sighed, removed his feet from the desk and pointedly logged onto his e-mail. Zeke shrugged and chugged back a swallow of beer without instigating any of the sarcastic banter that usually flew between them. Whoever said time was a great healer knew even less than the shrinks did about managing grief, loss and, most of all, guilt.

  “Anything interesting?” Zeke asked, aware Raoul would he sifting through the usual pile of crap that came into their investigation agency on a daily basis.

  “Same old, same old.”

  Raoul deleted one request after another, wondering how so many people got to hear about them, and what it was they thought they did. It was not as though they advertised their services. Marriage counsellors they were not, and yet half the US Armed Forces serving abroad seemed to want them to check up on erring spouses, off the rails teenagers, and other domestic disharmonies.

  He was on the point of deleting the last message in his inbox when something gave him pause. They dealt with military personnel only, or their direct families, but something about the name Sorrel Lang rang a vague bell. Sorrel wasn’t exactly a common name.

  “Something?” Zeke asked, when Raoul sat forward and read the e-mail through for a second time.

  “Not sure. Do you remember a Josh Lang? He was an army captain we came across when we were in Afghanistan, I think.”

  “Yeah, a good guy.”

  “Not anymore. S
tepped on a land mine.”

  “Shit!”

  “This is from his daughter, Sorrel. She says her dad copped it just over a year ago.”

  “That’s tough. I’m surprised we didn’t hear about it.”

  “Me too.”

  “Presumably she heard of us through her old man.”

  “Seems that way.”

  “What does she want?” Zeke asked, walking round the desk to read over Raoul’s shoulder. “Advertising slogans?” He scratched his head. “She writes advertising slogans and someone’s stealing them before she can pitch them. Industrial espionage ain’t exactly our line.”

  “I liked her dad, so did you, and I do remember him talking a lot about his little girl. That’s why the name stuck in my mind.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In Seattle.” Raoul leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “I guess it can’t hurt to send someone to take a look-see, if we have anyone in the area.”

  “We do.” Zeke had a photographic memory when it came to the location of their operatives—all ex-military in one guise or another—all disillusioned with the system and happy to work for the Clandestine Agency. As its name implied, the agency operated beneath the radar and its operatives administered their own brand of justice, without reference to the pen pushers or any rules other than those governing their own consciences. “Blaine and Dafoe are in Port Angeles. They run a fancy gym-cum-boot-camp down near the harbor.”

  “Right.”

  Raoul scrubbed a hand down his face as he Googled Sorrel’s name. He found a professional-looking website proclaiming her to be an ad slogan writer of some renown. There were examples of her work, some witty enough to make Raoul chuckle, and testimonials from several established businesses in the Seattle area and beyond.

  “She does designs to accompany her slogans,” Zeke said, still peering over Raoul’s shoulder. “A bit like individual logos for each campaign. That’s kinda neat.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t see any great mystery here. She’s making a mark in a competitive field, which means she will have made enemies. Someone’s obviously hacked her computer. She needs to get better online security, is all.”

  “Doesn’t sound to me like she’s that naïve. She wouldn’t last long in advertising if she was. It’s pretty cutthroat, by all accounts.” Zeke straightened up and reapplied his attention to his beer. “Can’t hurt to put the guys onto it. We owe it to her dad’s memory to put her mind at rest.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Raoul flipped through his phone contacts and called Blaine’s cell.

  * * * *

  “Okay, guys, you did good. Now take five.” A dozen sweat-drenched bodies fell to the ground, alternately sighing with relief, groaning, panting, and wiping brows. “Remember to rehydrate.”

  Vasco Blaine ran an eye over his motley collection of victims, just to reassure himself none were on the point of actually expiring. They came to the boot camp to be bullied into getting fit, learning to eat better and drop some weight, but it wouldn’t be good for business if they died in the effort. An easy-paced three-mile jog around the Olympic National Forest on their third day of a two-week course had already sorted the men from the boys. Vasco knew that half these guys would drop out on one pretense or another before the course reached the halfway point. Their loss. They’d paid up front and Body Language had a no refund policy.

  “Geez, Vasco,” puffed one of the two women in the group—a forty-something divorcee in a tight Lycra top two sizes too small for her who could lose twenty pounds and never miss it. “I thought you said this would be fun.”

  Vasco flashed a smile, well aware what her idea of fun would be. She had been coming on to him and his partner Tyler since joining the course and was pretty thick-skinned when it came to taking no for an answer.

  “This time next week you’ll be able to cover that distance with ease, Lauren. That I can guarantee.”

  “If you say so, honey.”

  “It sure is pretty around here,” one of the men remarked. “I’m starting to get all this communing with nature shit.”

  “Every activity you can think of is covered,” Vasco replied.

  Lauren’s face lit up with a mischievous smile. Vasco was saved from the come-on line she was probably working up to when his cell phone rang. He was surprised to see Raoul’s name flash on the display. It had been a while.

  “Excuse me, guys,” he said. “I need to take this.”

  Vasco wandered a little way away from his group and accepted the call.

  “Hey, Raoul, what’s up?”

  “How you doin’, Vasco?”

  “Got fresh meat jogging around the forest.”

  Raoul laughed. “Sounds like fun.”

  “You have no idea.” Vasco rolled his eyes. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”

  Raoul explained he was forwarding an e-mail request for help from a lady in distress.

  Vasco grinned. “My specialty.”

  Raoul’s amused grunt echoed down the line. “How did I know you’d say that? Anyway, Zeke and I knew her old man. He didn’t come back from ’Stan.”

  Vasco closed his eyes. “That’s rough.”

  “Yeah well, I just sent Sorrel an e-mail and said you’d be in touch.”

  “Sorrel? That’s a pretty name. Tyler and I will get right on it.”

  “I don’t think it’s a big deal, but let me know if there’s anything in it, or if you need anything from me.”

  “Will do.”

  Vasco cut the call and returned to his group. Most of them had recovered sufficiently to at least sit up and bitch to one another about aching muscles. What the hell did they expect? Most of those muscles hadn’t been used since before the invention of the wheel.

  He was cautiously optimistic about the way the business he and Tyler had set up after getting out of the military was shaping up. Finances were tight and it would be several more years before they could hope to turn a profit on their investment. At the moment that was a very distant hope. There were a lot of other, well-established fitness emporiums in the area and they were having to offer crazy cheap deals to attract business away from the competition. Profit margins had been pared to the bone. If it didn’t take off soon, they were sunk.

  Vasco and Ty had put all their savings into the business, taken out a substantial business loan and negotiated subsidies from the city to get Body Language off the ground. They had jumped through all the necessary hoops and, overall, found it was a satisfying way to try and make a living. They felt they were making a difference, even if it had taught them more than they needed to know about the frailties of human nature.

  They were both fitness freaks and felt something needed to be done to combat the slovenly eating and exercise habits of Joe Average. They quickly discovered that the lure of the gym with its state-of-the-art, ruinously expensive equipment wasn’t enough to keep people involved once the first fit of enthusiasm faded. Even the offer of inexpensive personal trainers failed to keep members coming back once they realized exercise was hard work that required commitment and there was no fast-fix app to make it happen.

  And so Vasco had the bright idea of the boot camp. They required clients to sign up for a full two-week initiation course. That meant taking time off work or, in some cases, being told to attend by employers concerned about their employees’ sedentary lifestyles. It was early days but so far the course boasted a fifty percent graduation rate, which exceeded Vasco’s expectations. A few of those graduates were now regular members of the gym, converted to the benefits of regular exercise, and with their bodies starting to show it.

  In spite of their crazy busy days, trying to build on the initial success of their venture, which was now into its third year, and stave off a growing band of creditors, he and Ty still missed the buzz of being front line soldiers. Raoul was right. The cry for help he’d passed on didn’t sound like any big deal, but they would check it out just the same and see if there wa
s anything they could do to fix things.

  “Okay, guys, let’s get up on our feet, do a few stretches and make sure we’re supple so we can jog back to the bus without injuring ourselves.”

  Groans and insults flew, but the group followed Vasco’s lead and dutifully stretched their hamstrings, followed by a few gentle lunges and torso twists.

  “Right, let’s do it.”

  Vasco set an easy pace, not much faster than a brisk walk, and didn’t break a sweat. His group, on the other hand, were soon strung out behind him in a straggling line, some of them really struggling. To their credit, they all made it back to the bus parked in the visitors’ lot, even if they were again dripping and gasping for breath.

  Lauren slid onto the seat beside him, pressed up against him way too close as Vasco drove the group back to the gym. He slammed on the brakes at one point to avoid rear-ending a truck that stopped dead in front of him. Lauren lurched even closer and slapped a large hand on his thigh.

  “Sorry about that, guys.”

  Vasco steered around the now stationary truck, ignoring Lauren’s hand until it crept dangerously close to ground zero. He shifted his position, forcing her to remove it without making a big deal out of it. He reminded himself of the size of their bank loan and fell back on charm and tact to fend off her suggestive remarks and increasingly determined efforts to pry into his private life. They needed these courses to work, and Lauren’s employer had already sent several clients their way. She was something important in the managing partner’s office and he needed her to return to work with glowing reports about Body Language. Her company was on the up and up, but didn’t have gym facilities of its own. Vasco lived in hope of selling them on the idea of corporate membership before any of the competition got in ahead of him. To do that, he had to keep Lauren sweet.