Without Restraint

by Angela Knight

  No. Don’t panic, Alex. “I’ll say this one time: I have not been abused.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Amy said. Look what happened to her.”

  “BDSM play is just that, play. Abusers don’t ask their victim’s permission, they don’t set limits, and they don’t give a damn if somebody gets hurt!”

  “So you admit he is beating you?” Ken stared at Frank as if considering jumping the bigger man and pummeling him black and blue.

  Alex flung her arms wide. “You see any marks, Coach?” Forget the stripes on her ass; they didn’t show. “If there are no visible marks, there are no grounds for arrest if the abused person doesn’t press charges. Don’t try to bluff us with law we know better than you do.”

  “Send the file to the sheriff,” Frank said, coldly expressionless. “Or better yet, to Ben Tracy. He’s the detective investigating the case. I’ll give you his e-mail.” Pivoting with a military snap, he stalked to the end table, where a pen and pad lay, and started writing down the address.

  “I’m not sending that file to anybody, including Tracy. You think I want the whole damned world to know about this? Assuming the bastard doesn’t put it up on the damned Internet.” He turned to glower at Alex. “You’ve broken your mother’s heart. She’s at home sobbing her heart out.”

  Alex blanked her expression with the skill of five years as a cop. “She’s got no reason to cry. I’m fine.” Coach and Mom hate me now. They think I’m some kind of pervert bound for hell.

  “No, you’re not fine. I can see that just by looking at you. Come home with us, Alex,” the Coach said, his voice softening as he sensed the anguish she fought to hide. “Break this off before it’s too late. We’re afraid for you, honey. After what happened to Amy . . .”

  “I’ll say this one time: I’m not Amy Greer. And Frank sure as hell isn’t Steve.” At least she still had Frank. He’d help her get through this. While she didn’t know if he cared about her the way she cared about him, she did know he’d take care of her.

  That was what a Dominant did.

  The Coach moved closer. She stepped back, though pain flared in his eyes. “Alex, baby, please don’t do this.”

  “I’m not a baby anymore, Dad. And my sex life isn’t your business.”

  He squared his shoulders. “Alexis Eleanor, you won’t be welcome in my home as long as you’re with him.”

  Alex bit off the words despite the bitter, metallic taste they left in her mouth. “I. Am not. Going anywhere.”

  “Fine.” Ken stalked to the door with regal dignity. “When you come to your senses, call. We’ll be there for you.” He closed it behind him with a carefully controlled snap.

  * * *

  Ken Rogers controlled the impulse to peel rubber out of Murphy’s driveway. He was fifty years old, dammit. He wasn’t a teenager to indulge his temper.

  Or his hurt.

  He didn’t understand how the daughter he’d raised would voluntarily do some of the things he’d seen women do on those websites. Asking a man to spank her, even flog her with a riding crop? Put clamps . . . there?

  Before today, he’d have broken the nose of any man who suggested his little girl could get off on something like that. He and Mary had taught Alex to stick up for herself. He’d seen her do it repeatedly in high school. Once she’d beaten the snot out of a boy who’d bullied a younger kid she’d befriended.

  Then there was her outrage over the treatment Bruce Greer’s mother had suffered at the hands of his sadistic father. Ken vividly remembered comforting her after Amy Greer’s death.

  Beaten to death at the hands of the man she loved. Was there any greater betrayal?

  The tragedy had hit them all hard; Amy had been Mary’s best friend, and Alex had dated Bruce for months before the murder.

  How could she ask that big deputy to beat her after all that? It defied understanding.

  What was going on couldn’t have been as bad as the e-mail made it sound. Maybe Alex and Frank had done nothing worse than a little spanking.

  He and Mary had been friends with a couple who were into spanking. They’d claimed it spiced up their marriage. It had made no sense to Ken. He couldn’t conceive of hurting Mary even if she’d asked him to. He had no use for a man who’d raise his hand to a woman.

  Mary had been so crushed by the idea Alex could be into kink. So disappointed that the daughter she’d raised to be a good Christian had been playing sex games. Alex had wounded his wife to the heart. How could he ever forgive that, even from the daughter he loved?

  Another thing: look at the size of that bastard, Frank. Did Alex have any idea of the kind of damage a man like that could do? No amount of Krav Maga training could even those scales. She wouldn’t have a prayer against Frank Murphy in a fight. No matter what tricks Ted had taught her.

  Ted. According to the e-mail, it all came back to Ted, who’d evidently taught Alex more than Krav Maga. He was the one who’d gotten her into kink.

  Oh God, did Alex sleep with Ted? The man was supposed to be gay, but what if he were bi? For God’s sake, he’d been Ken’s age.

  Alex had worshiped the son of a bitch to such an extent, Ken had been a little jealous. She’d have done anything for Arlington.

  Ted beat his own lover. Had he beaten Alex, too? Was that how she’d become addicted to kink?

  What was Ken supposed to tell Mary? What was he going to tell the boys? Hell, he owed Andy an apology for the ass-chewing he’d given him after that disastrous dinner.

  Abruptly, Ken realized he was almost home. He’d been so lost in thought, he didn’t even remember the trip.

  Feeling battered, he pulled into the driveway and parked in the garage. He switched off the SUV’s engine and sat listening to the cooling metal tick as he tried to decide what to say to his wife. How he could tell her Alex had refused to come home?

  How could he tell her Alex had chosen kink over her family?

  Ken got out of the SUV feeling like someone had beaten him with a crowbar. Mary’s Mercedes sat in the other space.

  The good news was she was still at home. The bad news was there’d be no putting the conversation off.

  When he walked into the house, everything was quiet. No sounds of his wife indulging her Real Housewives addiction. No sounds of crying either, thank God.

  “Mary?”

  No answer.

  He walked into to the kitchen, but it was empty. The house was still. A chill began to creep along his spine.

  Upstairs, something thumped. There was a muffled sound. A female voice groaning in pain?

  Shit. He whirled and headed for the stairs. “Mary!” Ken was running by the time he hit the top step. He sprinted down the hall to the master bedroom he shared with his wife.

  And stopped in the doorway, staring.

  Mary lay on the bed on her side, her hands behind her back. A wash cloth was stuffed in her mouth. She made a sound behind the gag, a kind of high squeal of warning. The same sound he’d heard downstairs. “Mary, what the heck are you—”

  Her desperate eyes flared wide, staring at something over his shoulder.

  Ken whirled. Bruce Greer stepped out of the bedroom across the hall, some kind of weapon pointed at his chest. “Hi, Coach.” He fired.

  The Taser’s leads punched through his shirt and into his chest. Fifty thousand volts sizzled through the twin barbed hooks in his skin. Every muscle in Ken’s body instantly coiled in agonizing knots, like a giant full-body Charley horse. White fire exploded in his skull, but he couldn’t even scream. He toppled like a felled tree, his head bouncing on the carpeted floor.

  “You had that coming, you fucker.” The deputy holstered his Taser and pounced, rolling him over onto his stomach. Ken groaned, trying to jerk away, but his cramping muscles refused to respond. Metal clicked, and something cold closed around his wrists.

  Handcuffs.

  What the hell is he . . .

  “Now,” Bruce said, “we’re going to call your daughter.”

/>   * * *

  For a long, stunned moment, Alex stared at the door her father had just closed behind him. Frank’s chest ached with physical pain that intensified as she bent and began to sob.

  “Alex!” He pulled her into his arms. “Oh, baby, don’t cry like that. It’s going to be okay.”

  He only hoped he wasn’t lying.

  Despite his stinging eyes, Frank guided her over to the couch and sat down, pulling her into his lap. “Shhhh,” he said into her bright hair, encircling her in his arms. “Shhhhh.”

  “They . . . they think I’m a . . . pervert.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” Frank propped his chin on the crown of her head and stroked her back. “They may not understand, but they know you. You’re decent all the way to the bone. Nobody who knows you could ever think anything different.”

  “Mama . . . Mama b-believes I’m . . . g-going to hell . . .”

  “Alex, they love you. No damned audio file is going to change twenty-six years of love, no matter how pissed they may be now. Hell, Mom tried to cut my throat, and I still love her . . .” Okay, maybe not the smartest thing I could have said, he thought, about ten seconds too late.

  Her only answer was another of those heartbreaking sobs. Periodically she tried to talk, but she was crying so hard, he had no idea what she was saying.

  There was no point in trying to reason with her. It was probably best to let her cry herself out, then attempt logic again once she’d calmed down.

  Frank stroked her shaking back as her tears gradually soaked her shirt to the sound of her broken sobs. And did some thinking. There was no doubt her pain was genuine and wrenching—and she was suffering because of him.

  The question was, what was he going to do about it?

  God, she felt so painfully precious curled in his arms, even sobbing as though her heart had cracked like a cheap Christmas ornament. When had she grown so important to him? He hadn’t felt this intensely about Sherry, 24/7 submissive or not.

  He’d known Alex only a week, while he and Sherry had been together two years. It made no sense, yet there was no doubt that what he felt for Alex was far stronger. That was why her every sob felt like a knife driving home in his chest. If he didn’t know better, he’d think he was in love.

  Frank didn’t believe in love at first sight. Only the very young and impulsive tried to rationalize lust by giving it a pretty name. Unlike your average seventeen-year-old, he was no stranger to lust. Alex wasn’t the only pretty woman to stoke his desire by submitting to his need to dominate. By the time he finished swinging his single-tail, he usually had a hard-on up to his navel.

  This wasn’t like that. His feelings for Alex weren’t born in his balls. He admired her fierce need to protect the vulnerable, especially given that she was so vulnerable herself.

  Sometimes she scared the hell out of him with her willingness to fight abusive pricks like Donny Royce in order to rescue the man’s abused wife and kids.

  Sherry wouldn’t have put herself on the line for anyone, even children. But Alex—his beautiful, intelligent, courageous Alex—didn’t even hesitate.

  The question isn’t how could I love Alex, but how could I do anything else?

  The thought burst in his skull like a psychic IED. The shattering impact set off blinding lights behind his eyes and made the world spin around him.

  Frank stilled, holding her. By the time she finally stopped crying and pulled away, he knew what he had to do.

  “I’m sorry,” she croaked. “I just don’t know how to fix this . . .”

  “I do.”

  Alex looked up at him, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “What . . . what do you think I should do?”

  Frank looked away from her and made himself say the words. “Go back to your folks. I’ll ask for a transfer on Monday.”

  She looked at him like he’d slapped her. “What?”

  He lifted her off his lap and put her down on the couch beside him. He grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the end table and handed them over. She accepted them mechanically. “Your relationship to your parents is too important to you. You shouldn’t throw that away over a man you’ve known a week.”

  Alex wiped her face and blew her nose, then stuffed the wad of tissues in a pocket. “I’ll tell you what I told the Coach—my folks don’t have the right to dictate my love life. I’m an adult. I want to be with you . . .”

  “Are you sure?”

  Green eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Alex, the sex was good—but was it that good?”

  “What we have is more than sex, Frank, and you know it.”

  Of course he did. And that was why he had to protect her, even from himself. “They’re not going to accept me, Alex. But if you apologize . . .”

  “And do what? Go back to lying to them? Go back to pretending to be something I’m not?” She sprang off the couch and began to pace. “If there’s anything good about this nightmare, it’s that I don’t have to pretend anymore. They know what I am . . .”

  “You’re not a ‘what,’ Alex. You’re . . .” The woman I love. But he couldn’t say that, or she’d cut herself off from the family she loved.

  “I’m not a child, Frank! How many times do I have to say it? Women are supposed to leave their mother and father . . .”

  “And cleave only unto me? Are you sure that’s what you want?” Even if it was what he wanted. Desperately. But if he loved her, he had to do what was best for her.

  That was how it was with D/s. The top might control what went on in the scene, but the choice of whether to submit at all was the bottom’s. She could end it whenever she chose just by using her safeword.

  For all the talk of masters in BDSM, slavery was nothing more than a forbidden bedroom fantasy. That’s why people treated dominance and submission like a play, with scenes and certain definite roles.

  It wasn’t real.

  When the sub chose to end it, a responsible Dominant walked away. To do anything else was to take the first step down the slippery slope to abuse.

  No matter what her parents thought, Frank Murphy was not an abuser.

  * * *

  Alex stared at him, her chest aching with disbelieving pain. Now he wanted to end their relationship? Really? Now, when her parents had rejected her? When she was most vulnerable, most in pain?

  When I need him?

  “Alex . . .”

  “Whatever, Frank.” More for something to do with her hands than anything else, she scooped up the remote and started flipping channels absently.

  A scarlet banner splashed with the words “Special Bulletin” caught her attention.

  “. . . spokesman says a second Morgan County sheriff’s deputy has been shot and killed in the line of duty today. Major Dominic Jennings said the deputy was found dead near Rose’s Home Cooking at 348 Deersprings Road of I-85.”

  “What?” Stiffening, Alex stared at the television. “Not again. Goddammit, not again.”

  “It appears that the deputy and the sniper exchanged fire,” Jennings said in a taped segment, his dark face set. “We believe the killer was wounded in the encounter, judging from the amount of blood on the scene.”

  “Jennings did not identify the deputy,” the local anchor continued, her tone sober. “Master Deputy Ted Arlington was shot and killed by a sniper in what is believed to have been a hate crime . . .”

  “Oh, fuck.” Alex scrubbed her hands over her face.

  “Diane Gaffney.” Frank stared at the huge flat screen, a muscle rolling in his jaw as his teeth clenched. “That’s her favorite restaurant. We ate there every time we were anywhere in the area.”

  “And she was homosexual. Like Ted.”

  “She was afraid he’d get her.” Frank met Alex’s gaze. “And he did. The son of a bitch did. We need to get dressed and get over there.”

  * * *

  Bruce’s leg hurt like a son of a bitch. No surprise, given that Gaffney’s bull
et was still lodged in his thigh.

  Ideally, he needed to get it removed, but going to the emergency room was out of the question. They’d have to report it. And when the injured man turned out to be a deputy with a murdered cop’s bullet in him, they’d know exactly what he’d done. The only way he’d ever leave that ER was in shackles.

  Not an option.

  He’d bandaged the wound, but he was still losing blood. Like it or not, he was done. It looked like he’d be following the old man’s playbook after all.

  But first he had to settle accounts with the Coach, Mary, and Alex, all of whom had contributed to his father’s destruction—and his own. Before he ate his gun, there had to be an accounting.

  First, though, he had to get Alex to Casa Coach without bringing the SWAT team down on his head. He wasn’t going to be the victim of a sniper. That’d be just a little too much irony.

  Settling into the rocking chair beside the bed where his hostages lay, he ran his hand along his aching thigh. His uniform pants were wet through where the wound had bled. Luckily, the scarlet didn’t show against the black fabric. Reaching into his pocket, he closed his fingers around a hard, metallic shape. Ted’s badge. He took comfort in the reminder that he’d succeeded in killing two deviants already. Now he just needed to eliminate Alex and her parents, and he’d be able to rest.

  Mission accomplished, Dad.

  A muffled growl drew his attention. Boy, the Coach was seriously pissed. Ken and his wife lay on the bed back to back, arms linked, wrists cuffed. Getting them there was the main reason Bruce’s wound was bleeding again.

  After the first shock of the Taser, Ken had fought like a grizzly, kicking, writhing, trying to head butt. The coach had even attempted to bite him, for God’s sake.

  In the end, Bruce had been forced to choke him out in order to get him secured. Mary had screamed into her gag the whole time, even managing to plant a kick on his chin. Damn, he wished he’d thought to bring the shackles he kept in the trunk of his car. Too late now; God knew what the Coach and his wife would get up to if he left.

  But now the stage was set. All he had to do was play it right, and he’d get what he wanted.