In Too Deep, Book 1, Part 1

[image: VitalikRadko]

It's here at last! I know that many of you have been waiting for this book to come out, and if I'm honest, this wasn't even going to be the next book I published after Castaway Wife. But the patrons here have convinced me otherwise. This will be released in three books over the next five-ish weeks, and then after that, published to Amazon and other marketplaces.

As always, please leave comments. I'll start a new chat in the Community, but leaving feedback after each part works, too. Enjoy!

Oh, and I did write a little bit of backstory in a free post. Check it out here.

Chapter 1 - The Gold Club

I'd never been inside a strip club before. I always told myself that I didn’t need them. That I had a beautiful wife at home. That it was a waste of time and money. As soon as I stepped inside the Gold Club and was greeted with the wealth of tight, naked flesh, I saw the appeal. The blonde on the stage closest to us could have been in Playboy, and the dancer on the far stage was equally hot.

“David, what did I tell you? Totally worth it,” Brandon Cruise said. “Top shelf pussy, right here.”

The statement made me cringe, but I had to admit that he had a point. I looked across the open space of the strip club, scattered with armchairs, low tables, and couches. Booths lined the wall, but most of the patrons occupied the chairs right up against the stages.

“Looks like all the good spots are taken,” Brandon said. “Come on, guys, follow me.”

Brandon led our contingent into the room. I looked back at the group—a bunch of guys from Taiwan who looked about as wide-eyed as I felt. I took comfort in not being alone in my bewilderment.

We’d just closed a deal and it had been Brandon’s idea to take all parties out for a celebration. I should have known that the celebration would have taken us to a place like this, but when everyone enthusiastically agreed, I wasn’t going to be the wet blanket.

Besides, it had been two months since I’d seen my wife, Amanda, and I had to admit that part of me was ready to change things up beyond internet porn. I would just make sure not to mention this little trip to her.

These past couple months had been the worst I’d ever experienced in my life—definitely the worst of our three-year marriage. When the FBI had approached her about going undercover, I didn’t like the idea. Hell, I’d hated it. We’d fought about it. Amanda was nervous about it, too, I could tell. She was tough—a tour as an MP in Afghanistan, not to mention working counter-narcotics in Miami and her brief stint at counter-terrorism here in LA. But she’d never worked undercover, and we both knew the risks.

Still, where I saw danger and peril, Amanda saw opportunity and a way to leave the world better off. She promised that she’d only do it the one time—that she knew the details of the case—details she couldn’t share with me due to clearance—and assured me that this was big. “If we can nail these guys, the world’s going to be a much safer place,” she’d said, her large blue eyes lighting up the way they always did when she talked about something she was passionate about. I could never talk her out of a thing when she got like that—I didn’t want to. It was that passion that I’d fallen in love with.

Amanda excelled at everything she put her mind to. UC work would be no different, I assured myself. Still, after two months without her and only a handful of quick phone calls, I missed the hell out of her.

"Check out the brunette over there," Brandon said to the group. He pointed to the far stage, where a dancer was starting a new set.

Brandon was right, she was the hottest yet, although I was biased since she reminded me of Amanda. They had the same near-black hair, same porcelain skin, same awesome body. She ascended the stage wearing a pair of silver hot pants and a matching silver halter top—neither of which did much to cover her creamy, unblemished skin. The small tribal tattoo on her tailbone was one of the few differences.

The MC announced her with the unlikely stage name of "Raven."

"Yeah, we should have sat over there," I said, getting into the spirit of the club.

A petite blonde with a tight little body came over to their table, wearing a see-through skirt and a bra that cradled her perky tits. "Evening, boys. I'm Valerie. Anyone want a dance?"

Brandon looked at the Taiwanese contingent. "What do you guys think? Want a spin?"

They nodded enthusiastically, drawing a wide grin from Brandon. To the dancer, he said, "How much?"

She took a seat in Brandon's lap, wrapping one arm around his shoulder. The other played with his collar. "Out here, it's $20 a dance per person, but if you want to pay for a private dance, I can give y'all a group discount."

Brandon laughed. "I'm sure you could, Valerie. Let's stick to lap dances for now, for my Chinese friends." I cringed at the labeling, glancing at the Taiwanese. They didn't seem offended, or maybe they were just too enraptured by Valerie. 

Brandon peeled off three twenties and passed them over to her.

Valerie just shrugged, took the money, and moved over to our first client.

"So what's your name, big boy?" she asked, straddling his lap

"Hao," he said, looking like he couldn't decide whether to ogle her or look away.

"How nice to meet you, Hao. I'm Valerie, and right now, I want you to stare at my tits."

Brandon laughed, nodding at me. This is how you celebrate, he seemed to say. 

I looked past the strip tease, to the brunette dancer on the far side. I was just in time to watch her shimmy out of her hot pants, leaving her in a black g-string that looked great against her pale skin. Like Amanda, she had a perfect, heart-shaped ass—the kind of ass that defied her otherwise slender curves.

The tramp stamp just above her lower back dimples was sexy, I admitted to myself, even though it was a little trashy. Amanda wasn't into tattoos, and she didn't have a high opinion of women who got them in that particular spot.

The stripper knew how to move her body, that was for sure. She didn't do any acrobatics on the pole or anything, but instead danced with it like an intimate lover as the clothes hit the stage. 

Her top went next, and I was surprised to see her full tits were real, hanging plump and round in a way that surgeons hadn't yet fully mastered. I'd been expecting implants, like most of the busty dancers here—but they appeared natural.

"Yeah, she's slammin'," Brandon said, following my eyes to the nearly naked brunette. "Bet she'd be fun to take into the back for a private dance."

I tore my gaze away from her, looking at Brandon. Coming to this strip club was bad enough. Going into the back for a private dance was out of the question. Still, I was curious. "What happens during a private dance?"

"Depends on the girl, and how much you're willing to pay." He looked at the brunette as she sauntered up to the edge of stage, squatting next to a group of guys armed with singles. Pulling the g-string out so they could stuff it, I didn't doubt that she gave them a peek at her pussy in the process. "I bet that chick puts out, though."

As she gathered her clothing and climbed off stage, I couldn't help but think how uncanny the resemblance to Amanda was. If my wife wore a little more makeup and bought a pair of platform stilettos like that stripper, they could have been twins. 

I closed my eyes and got my head right. Two months into this three-month undercover stint, I was seeing things. I swear, my neighbor’s dog was starting to look like Amanda.

This woman’s attitude was all wrong, anyway. The way she sauntered off the stage without bothering to cover herself, still wearing only the g-string and heels, was so brazenly sexual—so not my wife. Her tits were on full display as she crossed the room, hips swaying, everyone’s eyes all over her body. Amanda would have been slapping everyone she could reach.

Instead, she met everyone’s eyes with playful encouragement—go ahead and look, Raven seemed to suggest. I don’t mind.

As she passed by the VIP section, roped off in velvet and filled with the wealthy, she seemed to meet one man’s eyes in particular—a well-dressed man with great, salt-and-pepper hair and an equally amazing, groomed beard. A smile formed at the corners of her lips and was gone so fast I wondered if I’d imagined it. By the time she disappeared into the back room, I’d convinced myself that I had.

But the guy kept looking, his eyes lingering on the beaded curtain still swinging where Raven had passed. He rubbed his beard, lost in a calculating kind of thought. It didn’t sit well with me.

Maybe it was the fact that Raven looked so much like Amanda that in my slightly inebriated state, I believed it was her, but I felt a wave of jealousy pass through me. That man clearly wanted to fuck the stripper, and as he took his seat and stared at nothing, I knew he was imagining doing just that. 

It made me think of all the times that something like that had happened with Amanda. She’d always put them down with remorseless and reassuring efficiency. Raven hadn’t done that. Raven and that smile suggested that maybe, just maybe, this guy had a chance.

Jealousy stirred inside of me. It was a familiar sensation, one that usually arrived in those first few moments when a man hit on Amanda when he thought that we weren’t together—before he was shut down. Envy, protectiveness, territorialism—things that I shouldn’t feel because Amanda was the last person to tolerate it.

I watched for Raven for the rest of the night, but she never reemerged. Her shift must have been over. Or maybe she’d gone off with a client. 

It tied my stomach up in knots. 

I missed Amanda. That was the problem. Every other stripper I saw, I compared to Raven, which in turn made me compare to Amanda.

Two months down. Only one more to go.

Chapter 2 - Here...

Raven haunted me. I dreamt about her at night, thought about her when wondering where my wife was. I just couldn’t shake how much the stripper reminded me of my wife, but I just wrote it off as longing.

I kept lingering on that smile she’d shared with the man in the VIP section. I thought about my Amanda sharing a smile like that with another man, and felt vipers in my stomach every time.

I needed her back, but since I couldn’t have that, I tried doing the next best thing. I pulled out our old photo albums, going through our history hoping it would help me forget that she wasn't there with me.

We'd been together for five years, and married three of them. We met in law school, when we started dating. After, we both ended up both doing a Department of Justice internship. She went into the FBI, I followed a more bureaucratic career path. It worked. We got married and have been inseparable ever since. Until this undercover gig, anyway.

She's a study in contrasts. Tall with long, dark brown hair, porcelain skin, and deep blue eyes, the first time that I met her, I remember thinking, She's way out of my league. At the time, I thought that she was a model.

She was also brilliant. Duke undergrad. Columbia law. As if she hadn't been intimidating enough with those hips and deep cleavage, she was smarter than me, and wittier than me, and far more driven than me. She was Army ROTC in college to give her a leg up. Took a tour as an MP in Afghanistan because she wanted to serve her country. After clerking for a Federal judge, she joined the FBI as a field agent. All of that by the time she turned 27, when we got married.

I picked up a photograph of the time we spent in Miami, when she was with the aforementioned counter-narcotics division. She wore aviators, her dark hair loose and wind-swept across her face. She’d just busted a major drug shipment earlier in the day and we were out celebrating. This was before her supervisor had swooped in and taken all of the credit, when we thought this was the first big step to a major promotion. She was so happy. So proud. I missed her so much.

I threw myself into my own work, staying at the office well past normal hours. I started to hate going home to an empty house, to heating up leftovers and eating alone in front of the television while I worried about Amanda and where she was at that moment.

My mind filled in all kinds of horrible, dangerous details. The men she was going after were murderers. A gang. Or worse, a terrorist cell. I had no idea, and the truth was that she was more likely than not working some white collar connection—corrupt importers or money launderers. That got me thinking about her representing a sexy, competent lawyer, which was an equally troubling road to head down, if not for entirely different reasons.

But I didn't know any of the details, so I was left to wonder and worry. 

One evening, I came home from work around ten at night and Amanda was there, sleeping in our bed. It was about a week after the Gold Club visit, and for a second, I wondered if the woman in my bed, wearing Amanda's satin pajamas, was a hallucination. 

But she was warm when I snuggled up behind her. She smelled like Amanda. And when she stirred at my touch, turning to look up at me, her dark hair spilling over her pillow, I saw my wife.

"Welcome home," I said.

Her smile was tired, but familiar. “Hey, David. It’s good to be home.”

I kissed her softly. “Get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning.”

She just nodded and closed her eyes, already halfway there.

I slept well for the first time in over two months. Amanda had come home.

*

She was still asleep when I got out of bed, barely stirring. I let her go back to sleep.

Downstairs, I brewed us a pot of coffee, then went further and made us some bacon and waffles. I called in to work, took the day off. We had so much to catch up on.

Amanda finally came down close to 9:30. She’d always been an early riser. She never slept in. Never. But when she finally dragged herself downstairs, hair still mussed from sleep, she looked like she could go another 12 hours.

“Mmm, smells great, honey,” she said, scratching her head and yawning.

“I was going to bring it up to you. Breakfast in bed.”

Emotion moved through her. Her eyes shimmered. “This is...perfect.”

I poured her a mug of coffee, setting it gingerly before her as she settled in at the table. “Did you get enough rest?”

“No.” She laughed. “But it’s a start.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d be back yesterday. I would have come home earlier.”

“I didn’t know either until the last minute. It was a sudden kind of thing. Besides, I wouldn’t want to take you away from your girlfriend,” she said with a smirk. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m sure the three of us can work something out.” It felt good to joke with Amanda again, although while she did laugh, the mirth didn’t quite touch her eyes. “So you’re home for—”

“Just a couple days,” Amanda said. My heart sank even though I'd suspected as much. “Things are pretty fluid on this case.”

This was temporary. She’d have to go back. “But you’re safe?”

Amanda nodded. “As safe as I can hope to be.”

I worried for her, but she was putting on a brave face, so I would, too. “Can you talk about it at all?”

She shook her head. She started cutting her waffle, focusing on that more than me. “I can’t. Sorry, David.” She set the knife down and waved the air in front of her. “But let’s talk about something else. How are you?”

“Lonely.” I laughed to try and clear the tension, but it fell flat. “I miss you so much, Amanda.”

She set her utensils down and fixed me with a compassionate stare. “I know. I miss you, too.”

I heard the but, loud and clear. She’d started this thing, she’d finish it, and we weren’t even going to discuss it.

“Eat up. Get your strength back. We can get caught up then.”

Amanda picked a waffle slice in her fingers—her nails painted fire engine red, I noticed—and popped it into her mouth. Then she rose and walked around to my side of the table. “I think I’ve got my strength back enough to...catch up.”

Her hands went to the buttons that ran down the front of her pajama top. 

“Oh,” I said. Amanda was never this forward. She unfastened the first button of her top and her deep cleavage spilled into view. Something about the black satin of her PJs against her creamy skin triggered something in me. I stood, trapping her against the table, and kissed her passionately for the first time in forever. She was warm and soft, tasting like maple syrup and toothpaste. I wanted to laugh and cry all at once. I wanted to devour her whole.

She placed her hands on my head, pulling me back long enough to look me in the eyes. “I missed you so much. I missed this so fucking much.”

She was no stranger to the F-bomb. She was surrounded by it during her time working in the field, not to mention Afghanistan, but the way it rolled off her tongue here felt different.

She opened her shirt and let me drink in her tits, drawing me away from my questions. They were so full, so soft, so large on her otherwise slender body. And in that moment, her nipples were swollen into high, hard pebbles that begged me to notice them as she pulled the shirt off and tossed it to the floor.

I grabbed her tits, bending down to suck on those nipples before she reached down and dragged my own shirt over my head.

We fumbled with our pajama bottoms after that. She went for mine as I went for hers, getting tangled in our limbs. We laughed and she deferred to me, placing her hands on the lip of the table and lifting her ass up so I could pull her silken PJs off.

Her stomach was as flat as ever—if not a little more toned than before. Her thighs were taut, her hips round. But it was her pussy that I couldn’t stop looking at. Her pussy that I barely recognized. Where she’d always kept a trimmed thatch of dark pubes, she was completely bare.

Seeing that sent fire through my gut. The implications set explosions off in my world. I looked up at her, seeking an explanation, but she was already quick at work on my own pajama bottoms. She was hungry for sex. Explanations would have to wait.

“You’re so hard, baby.” She took me out, and I was. I couldn’t help it. Not with the long and lean naked body of this brunette babe right in front of me, legs spread, shaved pussy moist for cock.

I stepped up to her and together, I slid easily into her pussy. Welcome home, I thought as she molded around me. A perfect fit.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Oh, yes…”

She held me close, a hand on my shoulder, the other behind her, bracing herself. I leaned over her, kissing her neck and nuzzling her ear as I fucked her. She breathed hotly, her moans encouraging me. 

At first, I held back because it had been so long that I didn’t want to hurt her. But when she moaned to take her harder, I happily obliged.

“Yes! Like that. That’s what I need, baby,” she said. This was new, too. She never talked much during sex. “Welcome...me...home...yes!”

My cock swelled at her words. I could feel it grow inside her, harder and harder with each plunge. I found purchase on the table behind her, dug my feet in, and pounded her into the surface of the table as my excitement spilled over.

“Yes! Come, David! Oh, fuck, come! I want to feel you inside me. Please!”

I couldn’t have stopped myself even if I’d wanted to. I was already there, my balls slapping against her buttocks, feeling the unfamiliar grip of her smooth pussy lips. I rammed myself deep, then exploded with a long, drawn out groan.

Amanda held me close, pulling me back into a long, hard hug as she drew ragged, post-orgasmic breaths. I pulled back to rest my head on hers, looking at her. “You sure you can’t just stay? Forget all this undercover nonsense?”

She smiled warily. “You’ll make it worth my while?”

“Always.”

“How about I make these next few days worth your while?” she said. “Then you’ll have something to think about when I’m gone again.”

Pushing me back, she slipped off the table and directed me to take her place. I wasn’t sure what her game was, but let myself be moved. My cock had already begun to soften, wet with our combined juices.

“Think you can go another round?” she asked. She didn’t wait for my answer. Sinking to her knees, she took my cock into her mouth and sucked down on it. She’d never done that before—never blown me after sex. If the taste bothered her, she didn’t seem to react now.

That alone would have gotten me hard again. But her blowjob was incredible. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but they also should add that it makes the blowjobs even better. Holding me up with her right hand, she attacked me with her mouth, bobbing up and down with a ferocity I didn’t recognize.

I was hard after less than a minute of the onslaught, but it felt so good that I didn’t want to stop her. Amanda had other plans.

She dragged my cock through her soft cleavage as she rose. “Ready for round two?”

She pushed me onto my back on the kitchen table and climbed over me. Once again, I was enveloped by her familiar-yet-unfamiliar pussy.

“This for me?” I asked, touching her bare mound, now completely hairless.

“You like it?” she asked, rolling her hips along my length.

“Yeah, it’s sexy.”

She pushed her hand down between her legs, grabbing my fingers and directing them against her clit. “Feels sexy, too.”

I didn’t know if she meant it felt sexy for me, or for her, but I stopped questioning it. I rubbed her clit, now completely exposed to me, as she bounced in my lap. Looking around, I laughed as I realized we were still in the kitchen. We hadn’t been like this since we were newlyweds.

She leaned forward, placing her hands on my shoulders—which crushed her tits together into a mouthwatering sight. Her eyes were closed. Her head tilted to one side, causing her dark hair to spill over a pale, white shoulder. This is the image that I wanted to remember on the lonely nights to come, when Amanda was out there risking her life and I was alone in our home in the suburbs.

But instead, the perfection of the moment was robbed from me as Amanda slipped off the table and pulled me up. “Do it from behind, so you go deeper and harder.” It was another new development. Amanda always thought that doggystyle was demeaning and would never go for that. But there she was, both hands reaching for the counter, her long legs spread, her luscious ass ripe and inviting. And just above it, I saw the thing that would change everything: there, on her lower back, was a swirling, tribal tattoo inked in black.

I touched the tattoo, tracing the sharp swirls, like black flames. This close, I realized that they formed a perching raven, tail feathers down, heading looking back. I felt numb.

Was I dreaming this whole thing? It wasn’t the craziest of theories. My wife shows up, unannounced, in bed last night, then comes down raring to go like an oversexed newlywed. My subconscious connects the stripper from the Gold Club to my wife, and voila, here we were.

And yet, it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt fantastic, the way Amanda fucked me, rolling her hips back into me as I held her hips, using her hips like a...stripper...

“You like it?”

“I...I…” I stuttered. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s fake,” she said. “But pretty realistic, huh?”

In a sense, that comforted me. Amanda hadn’t gone out and marked her body like a stripper—she was just pretending to be one. My insides shriveled. I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t seen this design. The evidence had been piling up against me since I’d walked into that club a week ago, and I could no longer deny it.

“What’s your cover, Amanda? When you go back out there, who do you become?”

She sighed, pressing back, hips still. “You need to drop this. You know I can't—”

"I saw you. I know."

I felt her stiffen.

“I was in the Gold Club last week. I saw you.”

Amanda was silent a long time, unmoving until she abruptly straightened up and turned around. She didn’t even bother grabbing her clothing as she went to the sink and poured herself a glass of water. I caught a glimpse of Raven once again, so comfortable with her nudity. I expected her to deny it. She didn't bother.

“I wish you hadn't seen that.” She took a draw of her water, her back to me. I just stared at her naked back, at the tattoo, at the teasing glimpse of sideboob. 

My stomach sank at the confirmation. Incredibly, my cock didn’t sink quite so fast. Embarrassed, I lowered myself into a kitchen chair and chided myself for even getting slightly excited by the thought of my wife as a stripper. Even that thought sent a jolt through me. I masked it by pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers.

“So…that was you,” I said lamely.

When I opened my eyes, she was finally pulling on her pajama top, slowly buttoning it up to conceal her nudity. “We can’t have this conversation.”

We couldn’t. I knew the score. I really did. But all kinds of crazy shit was going through my head. Amanda grinding in some guy’s lap, naked except for a g-string, her body shimmering in the low light of the strip club’s backroom—

“Please, honey. Don’t go there.” Her words drifted to me, as if they’d traveled from far, far away.

Instead, I saw Raven, going down on her knees, taking a customer’s throbbing cock in her mouth—

“I can take care of myself. You need to know that.”

“I do. It’s just… that doesn’t make this any easier.” I smiled wanly up at her, but instead saw through her. Saw her on her stomach, legs splayed as another man rammed his enormous cock into her—

“Hey.”

She was there, before me, and that confusing mixture of crippling jealousy and heart-pounding adrenaline slowly faded.

But not fully.

Amanda was beside me, sitting in a chair. She took my hands in hers, her touch warm and familiar and real. 

“Look, I know that this is hard. And I really wish you didn’t know.” Her eye contact was startlingly direct. She wasn’t being timid or apologetic. This was hard for me, I realized. If there was regret, it was that I knew. Not at what she was doing. “But this is important, David. This is Big.”

I heard the capitalization of “Big”. I saw the fire in her eyes, the one that burned with a sense of justice. This is what made Amanda such a good agent. This is what drove her.

It helped—a little, anyway. This was a job. A means to an end. Amanda was still Amanda.

I let my heart do the talking. “I don’t want to lose you to this.”

Amanda’s face softened. She squeezed my hands. “You’re not going to lose me. It’s just my job. I can separate my real life from my cover. You have to trust me.”

“Of course I trust you. I’m just...dealing with it. You’ve got to admit it’s a lot.”

“I do. But if you trust me, you understand that I need to do this. These are very bad men. If I can do something to stop them, I have to do it.”

And right there was the Amanda I knew—the one that trumped everything else. Suddenly, I understood why she’d do something so counter to what she always stood for to bust the bad guys.

“Okay, I think I can understand that.”

Amanda smiled, but it was strained. I recalled the way she’d smiled at the men at the Gold Club, and all the scintillating promise that came with it. I buried it deep before I ended up blurting something that I shouldn’t have. Amanda saw my question anyway. She was too observant to miss it.

She touched my face, softening what I knew came next. “You know, there will always be things I have to do undercover that I would never do otherwise. But I know they have to be done. And I have to be okay with that. When I finish, I take all those things and I lock them in a box with my cover, and I don’t look back. But to do that—to do my job—I need to know that you’ll be there when I do return to my life. You are my life.”

Amanda teared up, although she didn’t cry. I felt the same, overwhelming emotion.

“I know. I love you, Amanda.”

Nodding to me, she stood and stretched. “I’m home for two days. Let’s not waste any more of it.”

Read part 2 now.