Tease Read online

  Tease

  Nathalie Gray

  Gentlemen Inc., Book One

  Popular member of Gentlemen Inc., a global all-male escort agency, Archer has a week to transform overachiever police officer "Calamity Joan" into an exotic dancer. Morality squad undercover cop Joan Blair has a week to infiltrate a private club controlled by Montreal's organized crime and catch a world-renowned crook.

  Together, Joan and Archer have a week to discover what makes the other tick, what sets their blood to boiling, their body quivering, their heartbeat racing. A handful of days to gauge and tease the other. A fistful of nights spent white-knuckled through a carnal rush that will leave them on a precipice where a mere frisson can tilt the scales and a look melt a woman's heart…or break it in a thousand shards.

  A week to test each other's limits.

  A Romantica® contemporary erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

  Tease

  Nathalie Gray

  Acknowledgments

  Hello, Reader,

  Let me steal a minute of your time. I’ll try to be as brief as a French Canadian can be…doubtful, I know. I have someone very special I’d like to thank. His name is Ryan and he rocks. He does. Simple as that. He’s a professional performing artist and agreed to share his technical expertise with me, whose only gift is to smack villains and make spaceships explode—in my books, only in my books! He brought to this project discernment, integrity and good measure. Without Ryan’s generosity and time, Tease wouldn’t have been the same. I can’t thank him enough! I invite you, dear Reader, to enjoy Ryan’s performance in a famous all-male dance revue, his future innovation in the fitness industry, and his present and future appearances on the covers of romance novels. May they be plentiful!

  Prologue

  Established more than twelve years ago, Gentlemen Inc. is a global male escort agency that caters exclusively to a female clientele, offering a wide range of services at home and worldwide. At Gentlemen Inc., we understand some needs transcend the regular fare offered elsewhere, be it for a chic affair or a show of force.

  Wish to make a splash at a corporate or social event?

  Need a bodyguard on your travels?

  Require someone to show a belligerent ex-flame the door?

  All our escorts are multilingual, pleasing to the eye, cognizant in proper etiquette from various regions of the globe and well versed in martial arts or other close-protection protocols.

  Give us a call. We at Gentlemen Inc. look forward to meeting your every need.

  Chapter One

  Archer only acknowledged his cell phone on the fourth beep, when it became clear he wouldn’t be able to keep the tasty woman in his arms and would have to answer the damn thing. He released her nipple with a wet pop, licked his lips then winked.

  “Keep that position, my dear, it’s good for the abs.”

  She chuckled and stuck out her tongue—that wicked, wicked organ—at him as she made herself more comfortable on the red exercise mat covering his gym studio. More like a red and black dojo. Except for the six firemen’s poles set in two rows of three. He doubted martial arts enthusiasts used those.

  His dick bouncing like a dowsing rod looking for water and finding a whole ocean, Archer jogged to the stainless steel counter along the wall, grabbed the annoying little thing and mashed the “Show Me the Goddamn Message” button.

  Oh. The boss.

  A message from Adriano always meant lots of lady fun and lots of money. Two things Archer loved to mix, even if both already filled his life.

  “I’m sorry, ma belle, I’m gonna have to take this one.”

  The “belle” in question, his star pupil—for this month anyway—shrugged and stood, her muscled legs twitching as she rubbed her belly with that satisfied grin women who’d had a good ride wore. The subtle half grin, the indolence darkening of their eyes. She gathered her few clothes strewn about the mat and passed him with a sound smack on the ass.

  “See you next week, Archer. You owe me a free lesson.”

  He kissed the air in Raphaëlle’s wake, enjoyed her scent for a few seconds and sighed as he accessed his cell to show Adriano’s entire message. It’d be worth the intrusion and giving up on his enthusiastic sex partner. One of many. Adriano’s messages were always worth much more than what they’d interrupted.

  The small screen flickered acid green then displayed the message.

  From: Adriano

  To: Archer

  Subject: Lady Joan Blair

  Buongiorno, Archer,

  It has come to my attention the Montreal police force is preparing a sting operation to raid a “private house” fronting as a discotheque in your region…

  Archer shook his head. Adriano always had a way with words. “Private house.” A brothel, dammit! A bordello. Didn’t Italians have a word for those? Anyway.

  If you accept the task, I will make contact with them, drop your name in the right ear. They intend to use one of their female officers, one named Joan Blair. They already managed to get her an audition on amateur night this Saturday. I have e-mailed you a file with the pertinent information on the Lady. Your task will be to ensure she is accepted at the club, get her inside to complete her mission. You will act as her manager.

  I will make the appropriate deposit once you contact me with your decision.

  Arrivederci.

  AdL

  While he read, he gradually lost his hard-on but chuckled in anticipation nonetheless. Things would get interesting. Not that being the only pole fitness instructor in town wasn’t!

  Ever since a guy with an Italian accent had contacted him last year with some crazy—or so he’d initially thought—proposition to become a member of Gentlemen Inc., the man’s all-male escort agency, Archer had had a pretty good spike in his yearly income. But it wasn’t a good deal only because of the money and mystique of working for a faceless, mysterious man only known to him as Adriano—or AdL—it was also the kind of tasks given to him that made Archer’s adrenaline peak. He’d been tasked to escort women, Ladies—every instance of the word “Lady” came with a capital L in Adriano’s messages—to social events he never would’ve known existed or been allowed to attend, despite his own connections and social status. As per Adriano’s instructions, the Ladies in question never knew initially he’d been tasked to their “case” and only learned the truth when he gave them the golden card. Weird procedure, sure, but for the kind of fun and money Gentlemen Inc. generated, Archer would play along. Hell, for his last task about a month ago, Adriano had paid him ten thousand dollars just to show up at a wedding and pretend to be a certain woman’s boyfriend. The ex, some arrogant hotshot lawyer, had nearly suffered an attack of apoplexy when he’d seen the two of them together. If at first she’d been stunned, upon seeing her ex’s reaction, the Lady had played along with gusto. She’d also been very, very grateful afterward. So had Archer.

  He had no idea why Adriano acted as a Don Juan, Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes all rolled into one wacky affair. He must be loaded. All he knew was that Adriano was Italian, from the old country too, and sent his messages from Internet cafés all over Europe. His money wires came from Geneva, Switzerland, so untraceable. Archer’s best friend, a tech-savvy forensic accountant, hadn’t been able to pinpoint the elusive, rich, probably crackpot of a boss despite some pretty thorough research. It was still a sore spot with her. For when his officially recognized one-fifty-four IQ and all-round genius friend Mel set her scalpel-sharp mind on something, she never let go. She still periodically asked him if he’d received any news from Adriano so she could start searching again. He’d make sure to send Mel an e-mail about this latest task. Hell, helping a cop infiltrate a private club. That’d be a riot! He’d make Mel’s day.

  Archer snorted a laugh as
he thumbed the buttons in reply. His message to Adriano was characteristically short.

  To: Adriano

  From: Archer

  Subject: Re: Lady Joan Blair

  Same account number as usual.

  * * * * *

  “Goddammit,” Joan muttered as she tried to keep the pyramid of cookie bags from dissolving into an episode of public embarrassment. Another.

  Despite valiant grab-and-put-backs and some imaginative scooping using her elbow—both hands were already busy with her own stuff spilling out of her basket—Joan neatly destroyed another grocery store end-of-aisle pyramid. Her greatest skill. That and putting her size nine-and-a-half feet in her mouth. Sometimes both at once.

  “It’s okay, I’ll get that,” said a woman too old to work as a store stocker. Divorcée on her second career? Owner covering for a sick employee? Joan enjoyed trying to figure people out.

  “Sorry,” Joan replied through an apologetic grin. “The more I try to be careful, the quicker I knock these down.” She pointed with her chin at the Mount Everest of chicken sandwich sauce cans across the aisle. The other woman smiled tightly.

  Joan felt like comforting the woman and telling her she had no intention of getting anywhere near the fragile-looking building of canned goods. She offered a quick “Thanks” instead and hightailed it out of the aisle before she knocked something else over. At least it hadn’t been glass jars.

  At the cashier, a pair of good-looking dads or coaches in hockey jerseys exchanged amused looks as she deposited her basket on the conveyor belt and tried to disentangle the celery from the folding handles. Damn things.

  Joan was still picking torn leaves out of the handle hinges when it was her turn to pay. She would’ve helped bag her things but both men looked very keen to do it for her so she let them. They did a better job than she would have anyway. Bread never looked the same when she was the one bagging. After depositing a buck in their decorated can, she smiled at them—oh, they were so laughing at her—and exited the store with the tight walk of someone who knows more than one pair of eyes is staring at them.

  You’re used to it by now, Murphy, it’s nothing new. Pretend no one is watching. Or just keep telling yourself “Cute and cuddly, boys, cute and cuddly” like those mafiosi Madagascar penguins.

  Her friends back at university had given her the nickname “Murphy” and it’d stuck, even now at thirty-one. It’d stuck because it still applied. If something could go wrong and Joan was near, it did. Nowadays, her colleagues called her either Murphy or Calamity Joan. She preferred the latter. At least it was a girl name. Wasn’t Murphy a guy? Um.

  Of course the cell phone started playing the free download version of Pink’s latest track in all its mono glory. Joan cringed as she dropped one of her bags to retrieve the phone from her belt. She should splurge and get herself some ringtones instead. Pink just wasn’t the same through an Atari 2600 Space Invaders sound system.

  “Blair.”

  “We got it, Murphy,” Chantal said, her French Canadian accent twisting the moniker into something exotic and fruity. Mer-fay. “They went for it. Budget and all.”

  After her partner’s announcement, Joan felt as though her heart had stopped for a full three seconds.

  “They did?”

  Damn, don’t make it sound as if it’s so surprising. Of course they went for it. Her plan made sense. Risky—outrageously risky in fact. And expensive too. But it made sense and it would work. It had to.

  “They even found you a trainer. Some connection of a connection of the lieutenant’s. Long story. You start tonight. Want the address?”

  “Whoa, whoa. What do you mean ‘I start tonight’? What trainer? Who’s my trainer anyway?”

  Her partner of four years sighed in the phone. She must have been rolling her eyes again. She did that a lot.

  “You think you can just knock on the club’s door, smile and say ‘Allo, let me in so I can slap some tie-wraps around your wrists, you villain?’ Come on, get a pen, I’ll give you the address. I hope he’s cute.”

  “My trainer will be a he?”

  Chantal’s laugh sounded ominous and way too delighted.

  “I’ll be learning to shake my ass with a guy? What’s that word you say all the time again?”

  “Crisse,” Chantal replied. Phonetically speaking, Joan logged it as “krreess”.

  “Yeah, him and his twelve buddies too,” Joan groaned.

  “Your ass is much nicer than mine and it was your plan, genius.”

  “But I thought I’d be learning with a girl, not a guy. Ugh.”

  “I feel your pain. Now I’ll give you the address so I can get ready for a hot date with my men. We’re going out for pizza then renting a movie. It’s a wild, wild night at the St-Pierres’, bébé! Try not to break a leg, okay? I don’t think your plan would work if I have to learn to be a stripper.”

  Joan tried to imagine her short-fused, lanky, tomboy partner in a stripper outfit and came up blank. Her brain refused to entertain the notion. Joan would probably have to pour bleach into her eye sockets if Chantal ever decided to take her clothes off in public. Chantal St-Pierre was funny, an excellent cop with twelve years experience, and one smart cookie but cute she was not.

  She noted the name George B. Archer and address on the back of a recipe card she’d torn from the pad near the vegetables section—of course she’d sent the rack tumbling down in a shower of little paper slips. The trainer lived in a nice neighborhood. Too nice for her cop’s salary. George. Probably some perverted old fart in a basement plastered with posters of naked chicks with shiny fake boobs. That’d just be too much. Maybe her plan wasn’t so hot.

  I can do this, she said to herself as she picked up her bags and rushed to her old and beloved 1991 BMW. Her silver bullet.

  Nice parking job, woman. Good thing she didn’t own an SUV.

  She stuffed the bags pell-mell into the trunk, slammed it shut too hard in her excitement then slid behind the wheel.

  “I can do this,” she repeated out loud, this time for extra moral support.

  Her grandiose plan was setting up the sting op inside infamous prostitution kingpin and international human trafficker Claude Laramée’s private club The Quicksilver. The bosses had gone for it. Of course they would. It made sense. Desperation had undoubtedly played a large part as well.

  Laramée may have been one oily fish, but he had a weakness—women. After months of trying at his front door, so to speak, they’d discovered they could sneak in by a window. When established methods had failed, the Morality squad had had to come up with inventive ways to attempt an arrest on that particular crook. Half of her couldn’t believe what she was about to do. And they treaded on thin ice too, with both INTERPOL and the federal government breathing down their necks. Should the Montreal police fail…it’d not only be her face in the unforgiving spotlight but her bosses’ as well. Try explaining the monstrous cost of their little stunt to the Receiver General if they didn’t get Laramée. Ouch.

  Even if Joan had inherited none of her mother’s grace, she’d at least received the good looks and her dad’s height, so yes, she was fit enough to fake the part of an exotic dancer, at least for a night, and infiltrate Laramée’s club, make a visual tag then wait for reinforcements. Her bosses had joked about her not being able to wear a wire for the mission unless it was taped to her thong. Har har. Chantal had laughed so hard she’d snorted pop all over the conference table.

  But starting tonight? Dammit.Or as Chantal so aptly put it, crisse.

  She drove home, took a shower, remembered to put the groceries into the fridge only when she was getting behind the wheel again to meet her “trainer”. She’d decided to wear a gym suit. She probably wouldn’t take anything off on the first lesson but would need to make a few moves, if only to stretch. Black yoga-style stretch pants, a hot pink cami that stated No Pain No Gain in silver glitter across her boobs, seamless black thong—she suspected her ass would be weighed and measured an
d judged tonight. Panty lines just wouldn’t do. Joan went for sports sandals since she wouldn’t need running shoes to take off her clothes. Ha!

  The idea of taking most of her clothes off at Laramée’s club, in front of strangers and under subdued lighting, didn’t affect her all that much. She’d never been shy. What scared her was she’d have to make a decent enough impression of a dancer to get accepted at the club’s amateur night in the first place. And coordination wasn’t exactly her strength. But she wanted this mission, she needed it actually, to not only boost her own self-worth and to convince the Powers That Be she could do undercover work but also to stop this callous pig.

  Joan slowed when she neared her destination. Westmount, man, whoa. She couldn’t even afford the garbage cans from this neighborhood. Well, it was officially a city since the merger. Neighborhood, city. Whatever. A native of Vancouver, Joan had never understood Montrealers’ love-hate relationship with Westmount, part of its own collective. Chantal had once explained how it used to be an enclave of wealthy Anglophones among the poorer, French-speaking population. Joan still didn’t get it.

  She slowed then stopped in front of a stone house with twin half turrets and vines clinging to the gray façade and around the double garage doors. Her heart in her throat, she parked the car in the empty driveway, walked up to the front door but noticed a tiny brass plaque that read Fitness Studio with an elegantly carved arrow pointing left. So she backtracked, walked around the garage and spotted a gleaming wooden door partly hidden behind a massive rhododendron bush. Another plaque and a tiny, round doorbell. Very chic. Not at all “perv in a basement” style.

  She pressed it, took a step back then crossed her hands behind her, rolling from the balls of her feet to her heels. After the standard ten-second wait, she was about to ring again when the door opened.