Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters! They are owned by Janet Evanovich. Rating for adult situations, smut, and language.
Stephanie's POV
The interior temperature of the Cadillac Escalade had to have been about a hundred degrees and climbing. The fact that the truck was painted black and the freaking leather upholstery was black did nothing to cool me off. Since we couldn't have the truck running due to our surveillance position, turning on the A/C was just a pipe dream. Several feet in front of us stood the front door of a disheveled office building that had seen better days. Sitting here staring at the door, waiting for the bad guy to exit, was not high on my list of must-dos before I die. I'd rather have been shoe shopping at Macy's, or even afternoon-rendezvousing with Dickie Orr, my horse's-patoot ex-husband. Even attending a closed-casket viewing at Stiva's with Grandma held more appeal, since Stiva had installed central air conditioning. And, not to mention the cookies he always had set out.
My curly brown hair stuck to the back of my sweaty neck and my arms stuck to the leather seat. I almost asked to roll down the windows, but since the windows were tinted darker than the ones on the President's limo and required to keep our identities concealed, I quickly shut my mouth and accepted my fate. Several feet next to us, hidden partially behind a large azalea shrub, sat Tank and Bobby in a shiny black King Ranch Expedition. I could faintly see an outline of Tank at the wheel, holding a pair of small binoculars to his face and training them in the direction of the front of the building. They both had to be dying in there, with their windows rolled up and the engine off.
Several parking spots away from Tank and Bobby sat Hal and Woody, beating the heat in a black Navigator. I could see Woody in the passenger's seat, trying to put his booted feet up on the dash, and Hal's murderous look as he watched him. Hal must have barked something to Woody, because Woody immediately put his feet down and picked up his small battery-operated fan instead.
Fucker. I so desperately wished I had the brains to remember to bring my fan, but I was dragged out of my cubicle and into the Escalade so quickly I barely had time to grab a couple healthy snacks and water bottles to stuff into my shoulder bag. I had the privilege of sharing air space with Lester Santos, who was sitting less than a foot away from me, trying to pass time by sharing ridiculous limericks and riddles. We were all dressed in RangeMan black. I vaguely remembered one of the guys asking Ranger to switch our uniforms to a lighter color in the summer. I assumed the answer was no, because I haven't seen him in the building since, and our uniforms were still black.
Lester, who enjoys violent confrontations and run-ins with the Trenton P.D., had lost some wind from his joke sails when I snapped at him after hearing one-too-many of the dirty poems he'd made up. He was sitting quietly in the driver's seat, his wrist draped over the steering wheel and his right hand texting furiously on his iPhone. He was wearing mirrored-lens Oakleys, a black RangeMan t-shirt that was untucked and looked painted onto his outstanding body, and expensive-looking black boots. He looked up from his phone when Tank's voice came over our wires.
"How long have we been sitting out here waiting for Pancoast?" Tank asked, to anyone in general, because we were all connected to be able to hear each other's conversations. Lester reached around to his back where his two-way transmitter was clipped and turned the volume up on his earpiece.
"Uh, probably only twenty-seven minutes and six seconds, why?" Lester responded, a grin spreading across his face.
"No reason, just wondering if it's possible for a human to melt." Tank sounded frustrated. "By the way, Santos, you must have been leaning on the 'talk' button of your wire earlier because I heard some of your jokes."
"Good. Maybe you should take some of my advice," Lester retorted. Someone snorted. I think it was Woody.
"Advice? Santos, when was the last time you've been with a woman?" asked Hal.
"Actually, I'm with one right now, papa."
I pretended to grimace when Lester turned towards me and raised a perfectly-manscaped eyebrow.
"Bomber doesn't count," Bobby piped in. "I sure hope Bossman ain't listening in to this conversation."
"All in good fun, Brown. All in good fun." Lester chuckled and went back to texting.
"He's in Rhode Island, anyways," Tank reminded everyone. "Jimmy Scantezzi went FTA and shacked up with some broad he met at the train station. Last we heard he had high-tailed it to Providence, because he thought Ranger would never find him there."
"What a dickless sack of shit," laughed Lester, not looking up from his phone. "Scantezzi, not Ranger." Good thing he added that last part, or else I'd have gone into a graphic reminder of how non-dickless Ranger is.
"Steph, can you use your binoculars and try to see any movement coming from the windows?" Hal asked me. I immediately picked up my binoculars and leered through the cracks in the makeshift bed sheet curtains in the windows of the scummy building, squinting in the bright sunlight. No activity. The lights were on, but apparently no one was home. Didn't look like Albert Pancoast, pervert extraordinaire, would be arriving at his slum destination anytime soon.
"Sorry, nothing going on over there." I tried to reposition myself in the seat, but my sweat-dampened clothing was making it difficult to maneuver against the butter-soft leather. I noticed Lester watching me out of the corner of my eye. Well, what the hell? Had he never seen a sugar-deprived, hormone-overloaded woman before?
Ranger's new RangeMan stipulations were that I was to be off sugar completely for most of each day. The only time I was to be allowed something sweet was at ten o'clock each evening, and it was only one item of my choosing. Bastard. We all know what happens to me when I am deprived of sugar. Perhaps he did this purposely, to put me in a permanent state. A horrible thought entered my mind. Maybe he thinks I'm gaining weight and becoming unattractive? I shivered at the heinous revelation and immediately pushed it out of my brain.
I had the binoculars to my eyes again so that Lester wouldn't see me misting up. I vowed to follow the no-sweets rule as best as I could and hoped that by the end of the week I'd be able to button the top snap of my jeans again.
We were on Stark Street, and the RangeMan chit-chat that was filtering into my earpiece had stopped for awhile. Still no activity from the building, and the sun was beginning to go down. Stark Street's daytime hustle and bustle gave way to pushers and hookers, who walked the streets and sidewalks in homeboy rapper pants and stiletto-heeled boots. At seven, Lester received a call on his cell from Control about an anonymous tipster who phoned in Pancoast's whereabouts. He got on the two-way to alert Tank and the rest of the guys.
"Aiight," he began, sitting up in his seat and hitting 'talk' on his two-way transmitter. "Wake up, everybody. Pancoast is headed into Newark on a train coming out of NYC. Not sure where, but they think he's outbound from Brooklyn. The train departed five minutes ago. Let's hurry up and wait." Lester leaned his seat back slightly and took his sunglasses off, placing them upside down on the back of his head.
"How long does the train take to get into Newark? And did the person say how Pancoast will be getting from the train station back to his apartment?" asked Woody.
"I don't think so," Les answered. "We have to assume he'll take a cab, since he doesn't have a vehicle."
"It could be hours!" I whined to Lester.
"Steph's whining," Lester informed the guys, smiling. "I'd like to give her something to whine about."
My stomach flip-flopped and my face felt like it had gone up in flames.
"Geez, Lester. Give away the candy store, why don't you!" I snapped, trying not to let him see me cracking a smile. I was so embarrassed that I slunk down in my seat so I couldn't be seen, even though the dark-tinted windows shielded me from view.
The night had darkened quickly, and the sun going down didn't do much to help the heat. Street traffic and sidewalk traffic had gotten heavier up and down Stark. I adjusted my two-way wire and settled in for what I hoped to be not too long of a wait. Lester fidgeted in his seat, causing the leather to make a rubbing noise.
"I'm so bored," Lester sighed. "Steph, entertain me." He turned and looked at me expectantly, eyebrows raised.
"What would you like me to do, Les?" I asked him. I couldn't keep the annoyance out of my voice. His face lit up and suddenly he was reaching behind him to pull up a black Nike duffel bag that had RangeMan embroidered on it. Probably Ella did it on her embroidery machine.
"I forgot I had this!" he exclaimed. "Surveillance survival kit." He excitedly plopped the bag on his lap and zipped it open. "We've got trashy magazines…chips…soda…MP3 players…good CDs…a Tic-Tac-Toe book…" Lester pawed through the bag until he reached the bottom. "You're not gonna believe this one, but there's a half-empty bottle of hooch in here." To prove his point, he came up with an unlabeled glass bottle of amber-colored liquid. He twisted the cap off and gave it a sniff.
"How…what…when…" I was speechless. Ranger would no doubt do some skull-busting if he caught wind of the hooch in Lester's Escalade.
"I have no clue." Lester recapped the bottle and set it between us on the center console. "I think I know who put this in here, though."
"Who?" I asked. Maybe it was Ranger, setting him up to see if he'd actually have the balls to drink on the job.
"I bet it was Tank."
"No way."
"Who cares. Should we toast?" Lester asked, grinning in the darkness of the SUV, his white teeth glowing against his dark skin.
"Are you insane? Pancoast could come around the corner and we'd be too drunk to take him down!" I couldn't believe Lester was actually thinking about drinking that hooch, but crazier things have been known to happen to him.
"Naw. Just a couple sips each. We'll be okay. The guys won't even know a thing."
Twenty minutes later, my lips were numb and warmth had spread to areas I'd rather not mention. Great. No sugar and no Ranger to quell my raging hormones. We'd each drank six fingers of the hooch (equal to two double shots) and Lester's movements were lazier and his voice was deeper. I, on the other hand, was pleasantly relaxed and willing myself not to go after Lester's leg like a dog in heat. I guess I'd never thought of him that way before. I snuck a look over to the Merry Man in the driver's seat, who was slouched with his head back on the headrest and a huge smile on his face.
His pants were baggy and his untucked shirt was tight. His boots looked like they'd stomp the shit out of anything smaller than a cat. His jet black hair was faded neatly around the sides and back, and the top stuck out in thick, tousled spikes. His eyes were chocolate brown and framed by long, thick lashes. His lips were full and slightly crooked. He smelled faintly of Aqua Di Gio and sweat. He spoke with the slightest Latino accent and used words like 'mami' and 'la loca' and other panty-creaming phrases I couldn't understand. And I, Stephanie Plum, was thinking that he looked incredibly edible. What was with these guys of Ranger's? Did they have to pass an attractiveness test or something? I hadn't noticed that my tongue had slipped out of my mouth and was resting on my bottom lip as I stared at him.
I shook myself out of the stupor I was in and concentrated on staring straight ahead at Pancoast's apartment building door. Only my eyes were swimming and my mouth was watering, thanks to Les's hooch suggestion.
"You okay, beautiful?" he asked me, his voice even deeper than it was a few minutes ago. I could only nod, and nodding felt like it used all two hundred muscles in my neck. My body felt heavy and unsatisfied.
"I'm fine," I managed to say.
"Damn, we're tipsy," Lester remarked. "I seriously hope this guy doesn't show up now." He fidgeted in his seat again.
"Why are you so fidgety?" I demanded. "Why don't you go in the backseat if you're tired of being up front?"
"I think I'll do that." Lester hauled himself over the center console, all the while giving me a view of the third best ass in Trenton (first and second belonging to Joe and Ranger, of course). I swiveled in my seat to look at him. He was in the last row of seats, a bench seat, and was sitting in the middle grinning back at me.
"Feel better?" I asked him.
"Yeah. I can stretch my legs." With that, Les stretched his long legs in front of him and put his hands behind his head. "Why don't you come back here with me?"
"One of us has to be watching for Pancoast," I pointed out. "It might as well be me, since you're already on a break." Besides, if I went back there with him I may have been tempted to straddle his lap and suck on his neck…
"Hey, I wouldn't complain," he said, his smile crooked and his eyes twinkling. I realized I'd said that out loud. I felt heat rise to my cheeks and I turned back around and shrunk into the front seat, unable to hide the shit-eating grin that was spread across my face.
"If I come back there, you have to promise no funny stuff, Santos." I was still shrunken into my seat, dying to see another part of the SUV than just the front dash.
"Scouts honor." I turned around and Lester had his right hand up in a pledge. I hauled myself across the center console and stumbled to the back of the Escalade. When I managed to flop next to Lester on the backseat, he laughed and threw his arm around my shoulders.
"We are so dead," I whispered. "If Tank and Woody and them knew…"
"Ranger would have a cow," hissed Lester. "Drunk on a stakeout, AND not even paying attention for the skip. Yeah, I'd better start applying to Broadview Security and mall rent-a-cop jobs after he fires me."
"I'm not sure what he'd do to me, but I'd hate to find out." I shivered involuntarily at the thought. Maybe I'd get lucky and he'd mail me to Prague or someplace equally as dangerous. Anything was better than being lunchmeat for his healthy snacks.
"We can still see the front door," Lester pointed out. "And it's not like we don't have an eye on things."
"Yeah," I agreed, not sure I believed we were in any kind of a form to do a takedown. Lester removed his arm from my shoulders and bent down to adjust his boots. When he righted himself, he turned to face me and chucked me lightly under the chin. Les grew somewhat serious, but still smiling slightly.
"Nena," he said. "Were you shitting me about the neck-sucking?" He slung his right arm over the top of the backseat and stared at me intensely with his beautiful eyes.
"No," I laughed, playing it off. We both knew he didn't buy it for a nanosecond. "What would Ranger think?"
"Who says Ranger has to know?" Lester asked me, his eyebrow raised.
"I'm sure he's got this thing bugged out," I said. I looked around the SUV nervously.
"No. This is MY car. It's not his to bug out." Lester shook his head.
"Oh." I didn't know what else to say.
"Well, we'll just sit here and watch for Pancoast, okay?" Lester faced forward and rested his elbows on his spread-apart knees. He took out his earpiece, rubbed his ear, and put it back in.
"Um…"
"Um…what?"
"Okay, that's a good plan." I settled next to him, my panties in a bunch because I was in such a state over him, trying not to dissipate into a puddle of mush.
Ten minutes went by and the muscular Puerto Rican next to me didn't so much as budge. His breathing was relaxed and deep. His eyes were vigilant. His mouth was set in a line. I felt like I wanted to cry for some reason. Hal had come over the wire a few times to break the tedium, but other than that our vehicle was silent.
"Les?" I said quietly.
"Yeah, beautiful?"
"I was lying about the neck-sucking."
"I know, Steph."
"I just thought you should know." I turned my head to once again face Pancoast's door. I saw Lester watching me out of the corner of his eye. I watched him watch me out of the corner of MY eye.
Without warning, Lester grabbed me by the waist and hauled me into his lap so that I was straddling his waist. I felt his response to me underneath my hips.
"I'll probably end up regretting this later on," he said. He fisted his hand in my curls and pulled my face down to his and I felt his lips lightly on mine. I got a huge rush at the minimal contact and my tipsy self-control snapped. I kissed him hungrily, sucking his full lower lip into my mouth and I heard him groan when I let it pop back out. One of his hands gripped my waist and the other held my face to his, tightly wound in my hair.
"I don't think this is such a good idea," I whispered against his luscious mouth, and even as I said it I didn't give a damn what kind of idea it was, good or bad. I wanted a Lester-induced orgasm, and I wanted it now.
"Not at all," he mumbled back, before drawing my lip gently into his mouth. Sweet Jesus, this man can kiss. I couldn't believe how bad I wanted him. "Open your mouth for me, baby."
I did as he asked and when his tongue touched mine I felt a deep flutter awakening in my lower half. A gush of something warm and wet dampened my panties and I wasn't sure about it, but I think I may have ruined them. He pressed me tighter against him and I could hear him suck in a ragged breath as my hands slid inside his untucked RangeMan t-shirt and rested on his rock-hard abs. I felt the muscles beneath his skin flex as he fought to keep control. His hands were on my back and he found the stupid two-way transmitter clipped there.
"No way are we going to be interrupted by these goons," he barked. He unclipped my two-way transmitter and unplugged the receiver from my ear. He did the same with his and tossed them both into the front seat, along with his sunglasses.
"I'd kill them," I breathed. I had been working at trying to take off his t-shirt and had it lifted up over his head. It was damp with sweat and I tossed it aside carelessly and feasted my eyes on the ridges and dips of his body, the light brown skin completely hairless except for his underarms, his little pink nipples hardening under my touch. He was beautiful.
"Like what you see?" he teased, his voice deep.
"OH yes." I took his face in my hands and bent my head to get at his neck. The flesh there was soft and smooth, completely edible, begging to be marked up. I pressed my lips gently to where his pulse raced and he twitched beneath me. I took a small fold of delicious-smelling skin between my teeth and bit and suckled it until he took my hips and slammed them down onto his hardened crotch.
"Holy fuck," he gritted out. He pulled my face to his and kissed me, slow and deep, tasting the inside of my mouth completely and rubbing his soft, hot tongue up against mine. He tasted like a combination of bourbon and bubblegum. His smooth chest was clammy with sweat and I knew he was fighting the urge to strip me and impale me. He tore my stretchy RangeMan shirt over my head and flung it up to the front of the SUV somewhere. Next went my WonderBra, which was no longer doing it's job of making me look wondrous, but Lester didn't seem to care much. I arched my back and stuck my chest in his face. He had his mouth to my nipple and I was rubbing myself on the crotch of his baggy black cargoes, aching for release, feeling the incredible tendrils of undeniable pleasure course through me and settle at Ground Zero. He switched to the other nipple and continued his nips and licks until he had me rocking involuntarily against the hardness through his pants.
"I can't…I have to come, Les," I bit out. "Seriously." Quick as a cat, he had my pants undone and was sliding them over my ass in no time. I kicked off my boots and socks and was left in nothing but a scrap of black lace that used to be clean and dry.
"You ready for this?" he asked me, his voice so deep I barely recognized it. I felt his long, thick fingers through my soaked panties, centered over the throbbing wetness, gently pushing the crotch of the panties aside. I gasped when I was exposed to the air in the SUV and his fingers were warm and soft and stroking exactly where I wanted him to be. He had his face buried in my neck and I couldn't take any more of him delaying things. I took his hand and roughly shoved two fingers inside of me, crying out from the sudden invasion. Lester's guttural moan filled the air in the SUV and things unraveled from there. He mumbled his thoughts on the condition of my vagina in my ear.
"Fuck, Stephanie…Christ, you're so tight." Lester buried his fingers in me to the hilt and I gasped again when I felt him make the 'come here' motion over my g-spot, over and over again he hit it. I was so close and I knew I would go crazy when I came and I was squeezing my eyes so tight I saw spots and I felt Lester's mouth come down on mine. He kissed me deeply while his fingers did magical things, driving me insane with want for him. The spots in my eyes burst white light as I contracted around his wonderful fingers. A gush of hot liquid spilled out onto his hand and he became gentler with his strokes, drawing out my orgasm and nearly causing me to die of pleasure.
"Lose the pants, Santos," I breathed, my face sticky with sweat and afterglow. I helped him unbuckle his cargoes and slide them down, along with his boxers, and I watched him with completely lust-filled eyes as he took my tiny scrap of panties and tore it easily off me. He lifted my hips and sank me down onto him. He filled and stretched me to capacity and both of us were reduced to gentle sighs as the twin feelings of filling and being filled overtook us. I began to move, slowly at first, getting used to his size. He was hot and silky inside of me and I had to bite my lower lip to keep from screaming because the feeling was so fucking incredible. He murmured things against my neck and we became lost in each other and he couldn't take it anymore, so he began pounding up into me. I shifted my hips to take him deeper inside of me and he groaned, long and loud, sending chills up my spine and causing flecks of want and need to pool in my lower stomach.
He grazed my neck with his teeth and bit down hard, and I cried out and clutched his head as he sucked me until I was bruised. The rest was just a blur. I vaguely remember screaming his name as he kissed tears from my cheeks. I exploded again, from the inside out, quivering on the edge of release as a Lester-induced Doomsday Orgasm stole my breath and blew my brain from existence. He thrust through my contractions, setting off another round of them, and I heard his tremendous growl as emptied himself into me with my name on his lips.
"Fuck, beautiful," Lester groaned, panting and leaning his sweaty forehead against mine. "I've wanted this since I first met you."
"Really," I stated, smiling coyly. I pulled my forehead away from his and gently kissed his collarbone. He ran his hands up and down my bare back and massaged my neck a little.
"That was in-fucking-credible." Les kissed my mouth quickly before lifting me off of him and setting me down on the seat beside him. He must have missed the closeness with me because he hauled me back into his warm lap and nibbled at my lips until I opened my mouth for him.
"Mmmm," I mumbled into his mouth.
"Shit, Steph. I think we'd better get back to work," Lester said with a laugh. I nodded slowly, feeling slightly more sober. I was going to have to go commando, because Lester made rags out of my panties. I crawled around his SUV until I located my bra, cargoes, and stretchy little t-shirt. When I was dressed, I looked Lester over to make sure he was decent. He had his shirt back on and his cargoes buttoned by the time I was done dressing, so we stumbled up to the front seats and plopped down, cracking up because we were still slightly tipsy.
"Gum. We need gum," I said, frantically trying to find where Lester hid his pack of Bubblicious. I found some underneath his seat. "It'll hide the smell of the hooch."
"Good thinking, beautiful," Lester said, popping a new piece into his mouth and chewing. I tossed him his two-way and we both clipped the transmitters back to our belts and I heard someone calling my name as soon as the receiver was back in my ear. It was Tank.
"Yo! You guys okay in there?" he was saying. "Santos and Bomber, do you copy?"
"Sorry Tank, we've been having technical difficulties," I answered, settling back in my seat and giving Les a sideways smirk. He smiled back and settled into his seat.
"Okay. Is everything fine?" Tank asked, acting like he smelled a fib.
"Yep, A-ok." I stifled a giggle.
"Good. Bossman just got home and he says he'll be calling you."
"Ten-four, Pierre." I got the giggles uncontrollably and so did Lester.
"Yeah, yeah." Tank sounded mildly amused. My cell vibrated on the dashboard and I looked at the readout. Ranger.
"Yo," I said.
"Babe."
"How was your trip?"
"It was fine, but I want you and Santos in my office first thing on Monday morning. And tell him the Quaker Bridge Mall is hiring rent-a-cops."
Yikes! I guessed I'd be packing for Prague in the morning.
