Solid Gold Seduction (The Drakes of California) (14 page)

Chapter 32

“O
h my God! Will you marry me?” Warren had just taken his first bite of Charli’s home-cooked meal.

“No,” she replied with a giggle and a smile of appreciation at his remark. “I refuse to accept a proposal delivered around a mouthful of food!”

They bantered lightly. Warren continued to rant and rave about the perfectly cooked medium-rare steak, creamy whipped potatoes, fried corn, rolls and a trio of roasted vegetables, carrots, turnips and brussels sprouts.

After a light dessert of vanilla-bean ice cream, Warren and Charli made quick work of cleaning up the kitchen before settling into Warren’s smartly decorated living room. It was a skillful blend of opulence and comfort, in soothing shades of cream, tan and brown with splashes of primary accent colors in pillows, vases and art.

“I know I said it before, but I really love your place. I know that everything in here is new and expensive, but it doesn’t feel stuffy and cold.” She gave the room one more look before turning to Warren. “It fits you.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Thanks.” It was so nice, he did it twice. “Umm. I’ve missed you.”

Charli hid her nervousness behind a teasing tone. “You see me every day.”

He ran his finger over her thin top, ran his thumb back and forth across her nipple and watched it quickly come to life. “I’ve missed what I can’t see.”

His touch made her body thrum and turned the shy girl bold. “I’ve seen your downstairs. Why don’t you show me what is—” she nodded toward the staircase “—up there.”

Warren simply smiled, stood, took her hand and led the way.

* * *

Outside, two men dressed in black from head to toe slowly crept toward the building that housed Warren’s office. They came from the back, making use of the cover that the trees and vines laden with grapes and leaves provided, crouching behind them before using a collapsible ladder to easily scale the six-foot fence. Cedric was the first man over with Richard right behind him. Within minutes, two other men joined them near a gate that Cedric unlocked. The four men crept along a rarely used back road toward the cordoned-off area protected by security guards, near where the mine shaft helped to keep them hidden. Using a mound of dirt both for cover and leverage, they crawled up far enough to see without being seen and tweaked their game plan.

“Okay, y’all can see that there’s one dude over there,” Cedric whispered as he pointed to where a man lounged near the temporary fence surrounding the holes, the fence that the men had penetrated from behind. “And another dude is patrolling the perimeter. It takes him about ten minutes to walk the whole thing, fifteen if he stops and smokes a cigarette and talks on the phone like he usually does. There’s another guard normally keeping the front locked down. He hangs near the driveway mostly. And then there’s the joker guarding the office door. JT, I want you to stay and keep an eye on these two fools. All right?” JT nodded. “You see anything out of the ordinary, or one of them heading toward where we are, send me a quick text like we planned.

“When we get by the office, I’ll keep watch on the guard by the drive. Sam, you handle the guard by the office door and, Richard, you need to work that lock as quickly as you can.”

“Man, don’t talk like you’re schooling me,” Richard said through clenched teeth. “This isn’t my first time on the wrong side of the law.”

“Maybe, but when was the last time your ass stole some gold?”

“Stealing is stealing, it don’t matter the product. I’m not a rookie, son. Back up off me.”

The third guy, Sam, interrupted their little power play. “Look, y’all, we don’t have time for this! We’ve got a job to do.”

Richard and Cedric glared at each other for another second before Cedric continued. “Sam, I want you to go first, a little ahead of me and Richard, handle that guard and send the signal. Are you sure you can take him?”

Sam flexed his bulging biceps. “Man, I’m going to knock that fool smooth out.”

“Soon as the coast is clear, send that text. Me and Richard will be waiting by the stables to scoop up the goods while you continue to keep watch outside. Everybody cool on their assignment?”

The men all nodded. “Good,” Cedric said. Anybody have any problems, hit me up on the cell right away. Anything go down, somebody gets noticed, we all pull out and meet up later at the spot.” He looked each man in the eye. “All right, then. Let’s go get this money.”

Cedric crouched down and watched Sam’s stealthy movements as he crept beyond the outer edge of the area where they knew motion lights were placed. He knew that his homeboy would go counterclockwise to the guard’s movements, placing himself next to the office when the guard most likely to cause problems—other than the one at the door—would be the farthest away. Once a minute or so had passed, Richard and Cedric followed a similar path to the one Sam had taken, except instead of heading straight to the office they crept toward the stables. While Richard did a quick check to make sure no two-legged animal was on their side of the building, Cedric positioned himself under the stable’s overhang, totally hidden against the outer wall. While waiting for Sam’s signal he took a deep breath. For now he was safe; no eyes were on him.

None, that is, except that of the long-range camera attached to the stable roof, outfitted with spy-vision night scope and aimed squarely at where he was hiding.

Less than five minutes passed before Cedric’s phone lit up beneath his shirt. The guard had been immobilized. He stood and joined Richard, who’d remained near the edge of the building, watching for movement. Silently, quickly, they covered the distance between the stables and the office. Having honed his skills while serving time, Richard went to work on the office door locks and within seconds they were in.

* * *

“This house is stunning.”

“I’m glad you like it.” Warren had finished the upstairs tour and now he and Charli were cuddled in his king-size bed.

She reached between them and massaged his dick. “This is pretty stunning, too.”

“Hmm, you think so?”

“Yes,” she said, sitting up and throwing back the covers.

“What are you doing?”

“Judging beef is my business, you know.” She continued talking casually as she straddled him, as if they were discussing her latest livestock buy. The only hint of her devilishness was her saucy demeanor as she looked at him, and the way she tossed her hair away from her eyes. For a moment she simply stared, took time to appreciate this magnificent, toned specimen, his dark skin highlighted against stark white sheets. “I have an eye for good color and yours is...” She gave his hardening manhood a squeeze. “Spectacular.”

Of course...one good squeeze deserved another.

“Another quality one looks for is nice muscle.” Sliding her hand up and down the length of him, she cooed, “This piece right here is thick—” she bounced his shaft against her hand a couple times “—weighty.” And then alternated between pulling and squeezing. His sex became as hard as steel. She cocked a brow. “And firm.”

Her clinical analysis of his body was driving him crazy. When she scraped a nail across his mushroom tip, he almost whimpered.

“Of course,” she continued, “the final and most important test of any good grade of beef is...” She became silent, smiling, rubbing his dick as she looked at him.

“Is what?” The question came out in a hoarse tone.

“The taste.” She wet her lips, lowered her head and took the tip of him into her mouth.

He hissed and from the corner of her eye she saw his hands grab the sheets.

She raised up her head. “You okay?”

“Perfect,” he eked out between gritted teeth.

The taste test continued. “Did I tell you that I love mushrooms?”

His head moved from side to side. For the life of him, he couldn’t speak. Not a word.

“Well, I do.” She outlined the perfect mushroom at the tip of his penis with her fingernail before repeating the process with her tongue. “Very nice.” Once again, she took him into her mouth, the assault shifting between tongue and tugs, nails and nips, while fondling his delightfully soft sac.

“Baby, I—I—I can’t take it...”

She chuckled, the throaty, knowing laugh of a woman fully in control. “Then let’s go to part two of this inspection.” She lifted up and poised herself over him. “Oh, yes,” she breathed, settling slowly down on his rock-hard cock. “This is an amazing—” she slid up “—grade A—” she slid back down “—prime—” she gyrated her hips and he joined her “—piece of meat.”

“You know,” he panted, meeting her stroke for stroke. “That as soon as we finish with this part of your inspection...I’m going to do mine.”

“I’m counting on it, cowboy.”

He squeezed her juicy butt cheeks, grabbed her hips and helped her get to know every single inch of his prime grade-A beef.

Chapter 33

W
arren’s ringing cell phone woke him out of a deep sleep. He’d first awakened a couple hours before, when Charli had insisted on slipping out of the house around 2:00 a.m. He looked at the clock. It was seven-thirty.

“Yes.” He answered the call and put it on speaker, his voice gruff as his head hit the pillow and he closed his eyes.

“Sorry to wake you, Warren, but we’ve got a problem.”

Warren’s eyes flew open. “What kind of problem?”

“A break-in.”

He rolled out of bed in an instant. “Where?”

“The office building.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Less than ten minutes later Warren, wearing a T-shirt, sweats and slip-on sandals, reached his office. Standing just outside the door was Johnny, the head of Warren’s security detail, and another of the guards on duty last night.

“Where’s Dennis?” Warren asked.

“He’s at the hospital. He’s okay,” Johnny hurriedly added. “Took a pretty hard knock upside the head and has a concussion. But he’ll be released by the end of the day.”

Warren turned toward the office door.

“Don’t touch anything,” Johnny warned. “We don’t want to mess up fingerprints, fibers, DNA or any other type of evidence.” Johnny used a paper towel to push the door wider so that they could enter. “They got into your office,” he continued, over his shoulder. “Obviously they were looking for the gold that’s kept here.”

“Did they find it?” Warren asked, able to deliver a slight smirk despite the circumstances.

“You know what the security room is made of,” Johnny answered, smiling himself. “Not even the heaviest door ram could penetrate that many inches of steel. There are scratches around the lock where the thief obviously made a valiant effort at trying to get in. No such luck.”

They’d reached Warren’s office. He looked around. Fortunately when it came to his professional domain, he liked a minimalist look. Most of the books had been pulled from the shelves, and his file cabinet had been broken into. “They took my golf clubs,” he noted, looking at the now-bare corner.

Johnny noted pieces of broken porcelain behind the desk.

Warren followed his line of vision. “There were a few gold nuggets in that jar, worth about fifty cents, maybe a dollar.”

“Anything else missing that you can think of?”

“No.” Warren continued to look around. “Oh, wait. I did have two fairly large chunks of gold sitting on that bookshelf. So I guess they got me for, oh, a few hundred maybe.”

Johnny gave Warren a sympathetic pat on the back as he passed him. “I guess I’ll go and look around the place, check the stables, the horses. Maybe it wasn’t someone after the gold. Maybe it was just some kids trying to vandalize—saw there was nothing here and moved on. But I guess we should get the police out here and make a report.”

Warren turned to look at him. “Do you really believe that?”

“Not for a second. Just don’t want to have you worrying, boss. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Johnny, you are absolutely right.”

* * *

Charli was humming a tune by Adele as she sat astride Butterscotch looking at the cattle. She’d led a group of them to the stream while Griff was at the house helping the men there to fix the roof. Bobby and the other men were busy doing their various chores. It was a typical yet beautiful September morning, one even more special to Charli because of how she’d spent a good part of last night—in Warren’s arms.

Her phone vibrated against her side. She pulled it out of its holder and as if she conjured him up, saw his name on her screen. “Hey there, cowboy.”

“Hello, Charli.”

There was no sexy in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“We had a break-in last night.”

“A break-in? Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Someone found out or figured out that a small amount of the gold is sometimes kept here, in the office building. They tried to get it.”

“Were they successful?”

“No.”

He sigh was audible. “Good.”

“I take it that nothing is out of place over there? Nothing’s missing?”

“Not that any of us has noticed. Hold on a moment.” She placed the call on hold, whistled for Bobby who was nearby. “I’m going over to the Drake place,” she told him, then turned her horse in that direction.

“I’m back, Drake. So they didn’t take anything?”

“They broke into my office. Took my golf clubs, those tiny nuggets I showed you and a couple larger chunks that were sitting on my shelf. That’s about it. Can you come over here?”

“I’m already on my way.”

By the time Charli got there, the police had also arrived. One officer looked around while another took the report.

“We have security cameras,” Warren said to the officer beside him, after detailing the other information.

The officer’s head shot up. “Well, let’s have a look.”

Warren, Charli, Johnny and the officer squeezed inside the room the thieves hadn’t bothered with but probably could have gotten into, the room filled with screens from six security cameras and holding expensive photography and video equipment.

“This obviously wasn’t a random robbery,” the officer said with a quick look around. “They only broke into your office, and missed all of the valuables in here.”

A look passed between Johnny, Charli and Warren. These three knew exactly what the thieves had wanted.

The group huddled around the screens and after designating a person to view each one, with Warren and Johnny each looking at two, they began the tedious process of going through footage.

“We can adjust the speed so that it fast-forwards,” Warren said, turning a series of knobs. The pictures were a bit grainy but the night-vision cameras had lived up to their price tag. And after about ninety minutes of searching the previous night’s footage, shadows appeared on screen number four.

“I think I have something!” Charli shouted.

Warren paused the tapes and rewound the one for screen four. “That’s the one over the stable,” he muttered.

Four heads moved as one toward the screen.

“I think I see two figures,” the officer said. “One crouched, and the other standing near the edge of the building.” He pointed toward the figures.

“Too dark to make them out, though,” Johnny said with a sigh.

They watched. Waited. Soon, the two men by the barn crept closer to the camera as they headed toward the office building. As the lead man stepped from beneath the overhang, his face was lightened by the light of the moon. Illuminated just enough to enhance his facial features.

As one, four heads moved closer to the screen.

“Any idea who it is?” the officer asked.

Warren shook his head, squinting as he looked. “Wait, I can isolate a part of the screen and blow it up. Hold on.” He messed with a few more knobs. “Dang, I haven’t played around with this board too much. Oh, here it is. Here we go.”

He moved a rectangle over the area where the man sat, cropped the picture and then, using another knob, began to increase the picture’s size. As it did, the face became clearer.

“I still can’t tell...” Warren’s words died as he tried to recognize the subject.

“I can.”

Three pairs of eyes looked at Charli.

She looked at Warren. “It’s Cedric.”

Warren frowned. “Are you sure?”

Johnny asked, “Who’s Cedric?”

“Ma’am, do you think you can make a positive ID?” the officer queried.

Charli crossed her arms and looked at the officer. “I am positive that the man in this picture is an old acquaintance of mine. He’s a local and knows this area very well. His name is Cedric. Cedric Martin.”

“You’re sure about this?” the officer asked.

Charli gave her signature curt nod. “Positive.”