Releasing Raven [Braden Security 4] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  “I’m glad you feel that way, but I’m ready for the main course now,” Raven answered him back, closing her eyes after seeing too much in the brown eyes looking at her so intently.

  “Well you’ll just have to be patient with me, I’m not finished with my appetizer yet.” He moved his body down hers, taking her lingerie off her as he went. Finally when the last item was thrown to the floor, he made himself comfortable between her legs. Opening her up to his gaze, he could see that she was glistening in her excitement. Taking just the tip of his tongue out, he swiped it through the essence of her. As her hips lifted to get closer to him, he put a hand over the top of her mound and held her down as he quit teasing and made a meal out of her. He made sure that with every swipe of his tongue that he ended with teasing her clit.

  Brad could hear the moans getting louder with his every swipe and he kept it up until he knew that she couldn’t handle any more without going over. Hurriedly, he moved up her body and took her moans into his mouth with a deep open kiss. Taking his cock in hand at the same time, he nudged it half way into her. Her tight grasp on his cock almost made him go over himself.

  Knowing that he was hanging on by a thread, he lifted his mouth off hers and waited until she looked up at him, then pushed deeply into her until her grounded out on her cervix. He could feel her sheath spasm with her release and he was lost. The feeling of her gripping his cock as she exploded made him rear back and, grasping her hips, he started pounded into her, trying to get as deep inside her as he could. The feeling was almost painful as he felt his balls tighten and finally the boiling cum exploded out the tip of his cock.

  Brad felt like a puppet with no strings as the cum and tension left his body and he collapsed down on top of Raven, gasping for breath. Brad felt himself coming out of his pleasurable fog and realized he was sprawled on top of Raven. Pulling out of her, he moved to her side and worried that maybe he had been too rough with her. Raven lay silently beside him with her eyes closed. Reaching a hand out, he took her chin and moved her face toward his, saying in a worried voice, “Are you okay? I’m sorry, I lost it. Did I hurt you?”

  Raven opened her eyes slowly. She didn’t want to let go of the feeling of contentment that she felt at that moment. She felt at peace with herself and for once, she didn’t think about her disability. Brad’s lovemaking was off the charts. A silly grin appeared on her face as she looked into Brad worried one.

  “I’m great, never felt better. I don’t think I could go back for seconds right now, even though the buffet is still tempting.”

  Brad laughed at her as he plopped his head down on the pillow beside her. “I agree it is tempting, but I think we better get some real food if we want to keep up like this. I don’t know about you, but my strength is low right now.”

  Rolling off the side of the bed, he picked his pants off the floor and put them on. Looking at Raven still sprawled naked on the bed with her silly grin still on her face, Brad felt a sense of completeness come over him. He felt contented, like he was where he was supposed to be for the rest of his life.

  “I’ll go and see what’s for supper. Don’t get up. I’ll bring you a plate back here.”

  “Okay,” Raven answered back, not moving an inch, still savoring the effect of her orgasm.

  He had a hard time leaving the room and going to the kitchen. He wanted to stay cuddled beside her and pour his heart out.

  Going to the kitchen oven, he turned it off and grabbed a tea towel and opened it up and took the wonderful smelling casserole out of it. Digging plates out of the cupboard, he spooned the thick mac and cheese casserole onto them. Grabbing two bottles of water out of the fridge, he found a tray and carried his bounty back to Raven. She had managed to sit up with a pillow supporting her back against the headboard and the sheet wrapped around her tightly. He could also see she now supported a blush on her beautiful face that hadn’t been there when he left the room.

  Laying the tray down on the bedroom dresser, Brad sat on the bed beside her. “I like you in red, but there is no need to be embarrassed. It’s just me, Brad, and if anyone should be embarrassed it’s me. I went after you like it was my last meal.”

  “You’re not mad that I set this all up? I had second thoughts after it was done.”

  “No, I’m not mad. It just saved me time finding a way to get you in here. Feel free to greet me like this anytime.”

  “Really! It wasn’t too much?”

  “Yes, really, and I wouldn’t have changed anything. Let’s get something to eat. I’m starving, you really know how to make a man work up an appetite.” Brad reached out and brought the tray and laid it across Raven’s lap. Both picked up their forks and dug in. After their hunger was mostly satisfied, Raven asked.

  “Did you learn anything today when you went back to the office?”

  “Well, James does have a plan. They are sending Chase in, you met him today in the conference room. He’s going to some charity fundraising tonight.”

  “What do they think he can find out there?

  “All the politicians and upper crust will be attending and sometimes they let their mouths flap after they have a few drinks. That’s what we’re hoping will happen anyway.”

  “I wish him good luck. Les will probably be there tonight. It’s hard to believe he had anything to do with this mess. I can see him being manipulated into it, though. He doesn’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Let’s hope some of those manipulators are in attendance tonight.” Brad took the tray and put it back on the dresser, walked around to the other side of the bed, took his pants back off, and slid into bed. Pulling Raven into his arms, he settled her with her back to his front and held her tight.

  “Let’s get some sleep.” Brad kissed the top of Raven’s head and heard her give a contented sigh as he closed his eyes. He hoped that Chase found out something tonight, he hated having charges hanging over his head.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Brad woke up the next morning to the sound of hard pounding on Raven’s front door. Groggily, he reached for his pants, put them on, and, after making sure that Raven was still asleep, he walked to the front door, rubbing his hands through his hair and yawning. The pounding was still going on and now he could hear Angel on the other side calling his name. Opening the door, he just managed to miss being hit by Angel’s fist as he was going for another hit on the door.

  “What the fuck, Angel? Stop making that racket. Come in.” Brad stepped out of the way and Angel walked into the hall.

  “Why didn’t you answer your cell? James has been calling you for the last hour. He got worried that maybe you had been picked up again and sent me to find you. I looked at your house and then came here.”

  Brad moved around Angel and into the kitchen, Angel followed him. Brad set the coffee maker going and took a seat at the table. Gesturing to Angel, he told him to take a seat.

  “So what’s lit a fire under James? It’s only eight o’clock.” Brad yawned again and slouched back in his chair.

  Impatiently, Angel took a seat across from him. “I don’t know, but he wants us both at the office as soon as possible. Chase must have found something important. Get dressed, man, and let’s go.”

  “Call James and tell him we’ll be there shortly, I have to get Raven up and I would like some coffee.”

  “Okay, I’ll call, you go and do whatever you have to.” Angel took his phone out of his pocket.

  Both men turned toward the sound of Raven’s chair coming down the hall. In a few minutes Raven appeared. She had taken the time to put a robe on and comb her hair.

  Wheeling the chair close to Brad, she asked, “What’s up? I heard the tail end of the pounding on the door. Is something wrong?”

  Brad put a hand on top of hers on the handle of her chair, “No nothing is wrong. Angel just likes to make a grand entrance. But they might have found something. I have to go to the office. James has called a meeting.”

  “Has James found s
omething?” Raven turned to Angel.

  “Don’t know for sure. The sooner we get down to the office, the sooner we’ll know,” Angel told her and dialed James’s number.

  Brad and Raven listen to Angel tell James he had found Brad and everyone was okay.

  “Get down here. I have Chase and Gabe and Anthony sitting here waiting,” they could hear James tell Angel over the phone.

  “Got it.” Angel shut his cell.

  “Well you heard him.”

  Raven turned to Brad. “What are you waiting for? This could be your break. Get dressed and go with Angel and find out.”

  “I’m not going to get any coffee, am I?” Brad got up from his chair as they both shook their heads no at him. Walking into the bedroom, he took his shirt and put it back on. If he couldn’t have coffee, he knew a shower and change of clothes was out of the question. Picking up the tray from last night, he took it back to the kitchen and laid it on the kitchen counter.

  Moving over to Raven, he crouched down in front of her. “Are you going to be okay if I leave? I can call James back and tell him to wait.”

  Raven reached with a hand to Brad face. “No, I’m fine, this is important. Just hurry back and tell me what they found out. I’m going to hope that it is something that will clear your name.”

  Brad leaned forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I hate leaving like this.” Brad straightened up and ran a hand down Raven’s cheek.

  “Hurry back, you never know what I’ll have on the menu for today.” Raven grinned up at him.

  Brad laughed and looked at Angel “Let’s go. And hurry, I have to get back here as soon as I can. I don’t want to miss any meals.

  Angel got up and looked at both of them. “Now you’re in a hurry. Let’s go.”

  On the way to Angel’s truck, he asked Brad, “I guess Raven must be some kind of cook, for you not to want to miss any meals.”

  Brad just gave Angel a sly look, as he jumped into the truck. “The best. You’ll never know how good.”

  Angel just gave Brad a strange look and started the truck and backed up and drove down to the office.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Walking into the conference room, Brad saw the coffee carafe first on the table and poured himself a cup before taking a seat and looking at the other guys sitting at the table.

  “Well nice of you to drop in. You look like you just crawled out of bed,” James told him from the head of the table.

  After taking a sip of his much-needed coffee, Brad looked at James over the rim. “And that’s because I was woken up out of bed by this big guy”—Brad nodded his cup at Angel—“pounding at the door. He made so much noise I think he woke the whole neighborhood.”

  “Why didn’t you just use your key and go into the house? We all still have them from living there,” James asked Angel.

  “I did, but Brad didn’t sleep at his house last night.”

  “Oh, well that explains the rumpled, but satisfied look he’s walking around with.” James kidded Brad.

  Brad blushed a little as he straightened in his seat, as all the guys turned and looked at him. “I thought you had us rush here for something important. Are we just going to sit around and gossip like we were back in high school?”

  “No, you’re right,” James said, putting his cup down on the table and turned to look at Chase, who also looked like he could have used more sleep. At least this morning his clothes fit him, even though they weren’t his usual style.

  “Did you have a hard time fitting in last night? You have been out of circulation for months now,” Angel asked Chase.

  “No, I just lifted my nose to match theirs and wrote a few checks. Brad’s name and Braden Security came up once or twice, but I made it known that I though all of you were beneath me. Who does manual labor to make money these days? After a while, you would have thought they were my best friends. Don’t forget you have to reimburse me for those checks.”

  “Sure, what else did you find out?” James said impatiently.

  Chase gave a yawn. “Well I think I found out something very interesting last night. God, those guys like to party when nobody is around. As one of their inner circle now, I was invited to the after party. After the place was empty, a few of the men sat around a table and the booze kept flowing, but also the blow was being passed around amongst them.”

  “Do you mean what I think you’re talking about?” James asked.

  “If you’re thinking about cocaine? Then yeah,” Chase answered back.

  “They were all as high as a kite. I don’t think they knew what they were talking about half the time. Some of their conversation got really weird and secrets that I didn’t even want to know about came out. But one subject they all seem to talk about, was a girl named Cindy. They all went on and on about how hot she was. As I listened and pretended to know what they were talking about it came clear that they were talking about the intern at Les’s campaign headquarters. “

  “Were they talking about Carlos’s niece?”

  “One and the same. It seems that she came around a couple of month ago, with contribution to all their funds. That got her in with all the big shots and invited to all the gatherings.”

  “How did the cocaine get into the picture?”

  “Well is seems she handed out small doses of it to a few of them, to help with the tension of running a big campaign. It didn’t take long until they were all using it a bit. She supplies them all at no cost. She told them it was her ongoing contribution. Her uncle and father were and had been high-powered executives and if they watched and didn’t take too much, it could sooth their nerves and made them think clearer.”

  “Did Les take any?” Brad asked

  “When I left, his driver was helping him out of his seat to take him home. He was wasted.”

  “God, Raven is going to hate knowing this. But I’ll have to tell her.” Brad sat back and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Was the mayor there, or any of the current members of council?” James asked.

  “No, they all left before this started. It was mostly the newbies and wannabes.”

  “Shit, we are going to have to do something and soon, we can’t have coke heads running the city.”

  “So how does this help Brad?”

  “The driver that was helping Les was Jim. I know from the pictures, you made me look at before I left. It’s the same guy from Raven’s gym,” Chase answered

  “Shit, that must be how the drugs got into Raven’s chair. We were coming back from the gym that day. He’s the only one that had the opportunity to do it.” Brad pounded a fist on the table in front of him.

  “Grant, didn’t you do a background check on him?” James asked Grant, ignoring Brad’s anger.

  Grant pushed his glasses up and looked up at James from his Blackberry. “Yeah, I did. Nothing came up. Just the usual jock stuff, native of the city, went to high school and to college on a scholarship from football, had a knee accident which sidelined his dreams of a career. He has worked at the gym for the last ten years. No arrest or other activity that would put him on our radar.”

  “How the hell did he become involved in all this then?”

  “Well I think his girlfriend is the cause of all this. They keep it on the low, but with some more digging, I found that Cindy hooked up with Jim, just before joining Les’s campaign. I don’t think any of this setup was done on the spur of the moment. The players were all chosen with the goal to take Braden Security down, and Brad just happened to be the easiest way in.”

  “So now we know all this, how are we going to take them out and clear all our names? Any suggestions?” James asked, looking at the men surrounding him at the table.

  “We might have one,” Gabe said from his seat halfway down the table.

  At James’s nod for him to continue, Gabe went on. “As you all know we went down to the center to volunteer our help. The kids took to us right away when we started talking
about our experience in the army. Tony had the foresight to bring some of our weapons and survival kits with us. The kids were fascinated and opened up to us right away. All but a small group kept to the sidelines like they were too cool to be interested and just watched from the side. These kids were the ones that fed the cops lies about Brad. We tried everything to get them to join us, with no luck.”

  “So how did you manage to get them to talk?” James asked.

  “We didn’t. We caught a break when the little brother of one of the guys in the group approached us. He’s a smart kid, he took me to the side and asked if we could help his brother. He told us that his brother had gotten into some trouble and didn’t know how to get out of it. He wanted to help and thought that since we had served our county he could trust us and would know what to do. We told him we would help and he arranged for a meeting between us and his brother. The meeting took place late last night, after the gang parted ways. This gang seems very tight-knit and in each others’ pockets so we had to bide our time. Anyway it seems that this guy is having second thoughts about going along with the rest of the gang.”

  “What about the other members of his family? Maybe we can approach them? They might be able to make him see reason,” Angel asked Gabe.

  “No need. His mother has been told she has cancer. As the only breadwinner in the family, she sat the kid down and told him that he has to start being the man in the family and find himself a job. He will have to support all three of them, because in a few months she is going to have to go into treatment and won’t be able to work. This kid loves his family more than the gang and doesn’t want to be involved in anything that would hurt his chances at getting a half-decent job. He spilled about how he and the other members were approached and offered money to tell their story about the drugs. They are supposed to get another payment if it goes to court and they are brought in to testify.”

  “Can we count on him to make a statement? You know he would have to rat his friends out and that could be very dangerous for him and his family,” Brad added.