The Spy Who Seduced the Queen of the Underworld

She carried the gun in her stocking, strapped to her thigh. It was the only possible hiding place beneath that dress without the bulge showing. The metal was warm, heated by her own skin, pressed between her long, firm thighs.

It wasn’t a big pistol. A flat automatic, nickel-plated, with mother-of-pearl grips and a twenty-two caliber. A small weapon, almost a toy, except for what it could do at close range. The grip pointed forward, ready to be drawn the moment the situation called for it.

Mariela trusted her reflexes. She had spent six years training them for nights like this.

The dress was short, scandalously short, and exposed a good part of her thighs, right down to where the cold barrel began. The neckline, deep and generous, drew all the attention elsewhere. It was a deliberate calculation. As long as the men in that room looked at her breasts, they wouldn’t look at her legs. And as long as they didn’t look at her legs, they wouldn’t find the gun.

She crossed the room swaying her hips, moving with studied slowness. The room was full of second-rate thugs and their women, dressed in scraps of fabric or outright naked. The air smelled of sweat, cheap perfume, gun oil, and the brillantine in the slicked-back hair of the goons.

It smelled, above all, of heat. Of desire held in check, ready to overflow.

At the back of the room there was a dais, and on the dais a red velvet divan, and on the divan, presiding over that circus of criminals like a bored empress, sat she.

Valeska.

She was slight, young, with mulatto skin like dark caramel. Her figure would have drawn attention anywhere in the world, but in that clandestine gathering of gangsters what imposed itself was not her beauty, but her eyes. Black as jet, hard, without a single grain of innocence. Those eyes were the ones that ran the organization. Those eyes were the ones that had signed more death warrants than any judge in the country.

Mariela advanced toward the dais without the slightest hesitation. She crossed the room like an icebreaker splitting a sea of half-naked bodies in two. The thugs stepped aside in her path, intimidated without knowing why. The women drew up their long, bronzed legs to let her pass, looking at her with a mix of envy and something fouler.

Almost all of them fixed their eyes on her thighs. And she, feeling the heat of steel pressed between her legs, remembered with every step the real reason she was there.

Time seemed to move slowly in that stifling room. All the room’s attention swung between the blonde moving forward and the mulatta waiting. The tension between them sparked before they even touched. They looked at each other from a distance, and those nearby swore they could hear static crackling in the air.

At last she reached the dais, to the divan where the boss was waiting for her.

I’m not going to kill her yet, Mariela thought. Not before I find out where she keeps the names. And not before I taste what she’s hiding under that dress.

It was a lie she told herself to justify what her body had already decided. The mission came first, always. But desire had started speaking louder than discipline.

Valeska folded her legs and left a space open on the divan, a silent invitation. Mariela sat down beside her, barely brushing the dark skin with her own, letting the heat of the other woman’s body seep into her completely.

—I hadn’t seen you around here before —the mulatta said, in a deep, languid voice that hid an edge.

—I just got to town —Mariela replied—. They told me this was the only party worth attending.

—They told you right. —Valeska tilted her head, studying her without hiding it—. Though they didn’t tell me someone this beautiful would be coming.

They greeted each other with their hands, but neither of them let go. They kept them joined longer than necessary, stroking each other with their fingers, measuring, testing how far the other would go.

A voluptuous woman, barely dressed in a thick mesh net that left her completely naked, approached with two glasses. Her dark, hard nipples showed through the weaving of the net. She set the glasses down on a side table and withdrew without saying a word, like a shadow trained not to disturb.

—To the newcomers —Valeska toasted.

—To generous hostesses —Mariela answered.

They drank without looking away from each other. The liquor slid warm down Mariela’s throat, loosening the last knot of caution she had left. Around them, the party carried on: couples seeking each other in corners, hoarse laughter, the clinking of glasses and the rustle of clothes dropping to the floor.

Between the two of them, the necklines seemed to open a little more with every minute, as if the simple tension of looking at each other were enough to undress them. More than half their breasts was already exposed.

Valeska was the first to move. She spread her thighs and trapped Mariela’s waist between them, pulling her against her supple body. She wore a crooked, amused smile on her thick red-painted lips, the smile of someone used to getting everything she wanted.

—I’ve been watching you since you walked through the door —she murmured—. Are you going to stay there sitting, or are you going to do something about it?

Mariela pressed her breasts against the mulatta’s slim body. And at last their lips met in a long, hungry kiss that tasted of alcohol and risk. Their tongues crossed without shame, lascivious, trading saliva and heat while the entire room ceased to exist.

Valeska’s hands did not waste time. They slid down Mariela’s back and seized her ass, kneading it hard, sinking fingers into the firm flesh. They went a little higher, dangerously close to the garter, dangerously close to the hidden automatic.

Mariela held her breath.

If she finds it, I’m dead.

But the hand stopped a centimeter from the metal, distracted by the curve of her thigh, and moved back up to her waist. Mariela let the air out slowly. There were dozens of guns in that room; one more didn’t mean much. What would truly have given her away was the federal agent badge she had left locked away in her office, miles from there. Being undercover in the heart of that organization was playing with fire every second. One mistake and no one would ever find her body.

But right then, with Valeska’s tongue tangled in hers, it was hard to remember why that should matter.

—You smell like danger —the mulatta whispered against her mouth—. I love it.

—You have no idea —Mariela replied, and kissed her again to shut her up.

Someone on the other side of the room had decided the tension had gone on long enough. A collective sigh of relief ran through the room when the boss and the stranger started devouring each other. If the queen of the underworld was occupied, everyone could be occupied. The party became something else. Clothes fell. Bodies sought each other out. The whole room turned into an orgy, and from the moans that began to fill the air, this was not the first time it had happened within those four walls.

Mariela barely noticed. All her attention was on the woman holding her between her thighs.

She slid her fingers downward, slowly, tracing the edge of Valeska’s dress until she found the thin red lace thong that barely covered her. The fabric was damp. Soaked. The mulatta wanted her as much as she pretended to want her, and somewhere along the way the line between pretense and truth had blurred.

—Dare you —Valeska panted.

Mariela pushed the lace aside with two fingers. The flesh beneath was burning and slick. She knew exactly what to do, how to find the precise spot, how to draw slow circles that would strip that powerful woman of the control she cared so much about. She caressed her with the patience of someone who knows haste ruins everything.

Valeska threw her head back against the divan’s backrest. Her chest rose and fell faster and faster. For the first time all night, the hard black eyes lost their edge and clouded with pleasure.

—More —she ordered, and the order sounded almost like a plea.

Mariela obeyed. She sped up the rhythm of her fingers, varying the pressure, reading the other woman’s body like a familiar map. Valeska was hot-blooded and did not take long to give herself away. Her hips began moving against Mariela’s hand, seeking it out, demanding more. Her gasps turned hoarse, urgent.

—Don’t stop —she moaned—. Don’t you dare stop.

She didn’t stop. She brought her to the edge and held her there, suspended, until the mulatta broke over her fingers with a long groan that blended into the other sounds in the room. Valeska’s whole body went rigid and then slack, trembling.

The rest of those present took that sound as a good sign and went on with their business, oblivious to the small drama unfolding on the dais.

Valeska was not the kind to remain in debt. As soon as she caught her breath, she slipped the straps of Mariela’s dress off her shoulders and sought out her breasts with her mouth. The hard nipples disappeared between her greedy lips, and Mariela felt the first genuine shiver of the night run down her back. That one was not faked. That one was real, traitorous, dangerous.

The mulatta rose and, with feline agility, managed to get herself on top of Mariela on the divan. She hiked up her dress to the waist, exposing the thong and the edge of the garter that held the gun, without noticing it. Too drunk on desire to focus on anything other than the white skin in front of her.

She buried her head between Mariela’s thighs. And the agent, who had entered that room with a perfect plan and a clear mission, found herself arching her back and tangling her fingers in the dark hair of the woman she had come to destroy.

They devoured each other like she-wolves. They sought each other out like lovers who had spent years waiting for that night. Pleasure dragged them both equally, and for a handful of minutes there was no mafia, no badge, no mission, only two bodies chasing the same ending.

When Mariela’s orgasm hit, it was the only thing all night she didn’t have to fake.

***

But every night has an ending, and this one came in the most abrupt way.

The room’s doors flew open with a crash. Law enforcement stormed in, shouting orders, bringing down the thugs who tried to reach their weapons. The operation Mariela had been preparing for months was finally falling on the entire organization.

The chaos was immediate. Naked women running, men sprawled on the floor with their hands behind their necks, shots fired into the air to impose silence.

Valeska took a full second to understand. When she did, she turned her head toward Mariela, her black eyes sharp again, this time with pure rage.

—You —she spat—. It was you.

Mariela was already standing and lowering her dress. She pulled the small nickel-plated automatic from her stocking and showed it without aiming at anyone, just so the boss would understand who she had been playing with all night.

—I’m sorry —she said, and she almost meant it—. It’s my job.

They cuffed Valeska without her ever stopping looking at Mariela. There was no fear in those eyes, only the memory of Mariela’s fingers and a silent promise neither of them would ever voice aloud.

Maybe it wasn’t a satisfying ending. Pleasure rarely fits with justice, and that night the two had crossed in a way impossible to undo. But evil would have its punishment, and desire, its memory.

Mariela tucked away the gun, straightened her dress, and left the room without looking back, taking with her the taste of the most dangerous woman in the city.