Repeat Offender

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Which was immediately what Lynn’s eyes focused on, I was sure.

  That or he was studying the B on Black. I wasn’t too sure. But if I was a guessing woman, I was thinking he was looking at my bra.

  Unless the man was gay, then there was no telling what he was looking at.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” Lynn said, eyes moving from the hole to my face. “But yes, this man is a piece of shit.”

  “Really?” I asked. “What’d he do?”

  Lynn flexed his fingers and my eyes were drawn to where they were hovering right around his hips, which then had me taking in other parts of his anatomy that were close to his hips, which then in turn had him clearing his throat because obviously I’d missed whatever it was that he said.

  “Umm, what?” I asked.

  The man with the dog chuckled.

  “Seems you still got it, Joke,” dog man said.

  “Fuck you, Laric,” Lynn countered. “I haven’t ever lost it.”

  I had no clue what they were talking about.

  “Who’s Joke?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  “Joker, please,” the man hanging from the chains pleaded. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “We tried that, and you didn’t want to play.” Lynn, also known, apparently, as Joker, growled as he looked over his shoulder. “Bruno, get her a chair and let her watch. Maybe she’ll learn something interesting.”

  He found me a chair, which happened to be one of those zero-gravity ones that you could lean all the way back in and kick up your feet.

  I sat down and did just that, watching with not a whole lot of hidden interest.

  “Does anyone have any popcorn?” I asked curiously.

  Bruno snorted from beside me, and I turned my body slightly so that I was facing more toward the Laric dude.

  “Hey, you got that kitten on you still?” I asked, hiding my nervousness with the hope that he had a kitty I could pet.

  “Yeah,” he said, opening the leather pocket of his vest and pulling the cat out of it. He handed it to me with a raised eyebrow. “You’re weird.”

  “I’m me,” I countered. “And it’s not every day that you get to see Stuck-Up Suit beating the shit out of someone. At least tell me he deserved it.”

  Honestly, if Bruno hadn’t been here, I’d be a whole lot more scared right now.

  However, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Bruno wouldn’t be involved in shit that was bad. At least, not what he considered morally bad.

  This man in front of me, now getting the very well-placed jabs to the torso from the mayor, had done something wrong. And I had no doubt in my mind that he’d done something wrong.

  “Tell me,” Lynn ordered as he backed off. “The stuff that you weren’t going to tell me earlier, but now you’re rethinking.”

  He wasn’t even winded.

  How was that possible?

  He’d been hitting the man for a solid five minutes.

  He wasn’t even sweating!

  “He’ll kill me,” the man squealed. “The mayor…”

  “I’m the mayor, and I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me. And I know a lot more inventive ways than just shooting you in the back of the head,” Lynn growled.

  Jesus Christ, I was getting turned on!

  The mayor was beating the crap out of someone, and my nipples were pebbled!

  I shifted in my seat and tried to distract myself from the way I felt by petting the purring kitten in my hands.

  “Fuck!” the guy sobbed. “Dave said that if I could keep my mouth shut, he’d pay off my mortgage. If I couldn’t, he’d make sure I burned right along with my house.”

  “You sold your soul to the devil so he would pay off your mortgage?” Lynn asked, sounding disgusted.

  “It was for more than that, okay?” whiney guy cried. “He took my girlfriend, and I wanted her back.”

  “Your girlfriend left you,” Bruno piped in from beside us. “Either tell us something good, Tant, or Lynn’ll get back to what he’s good at.”

  I looked at my childhood friend then, surprised to sense all that anger.

  “Dave Jackson wants his position back,” Tant said. “I owe some hefty shit on my mortgage. Have two reverse mortgages on it, and the mayor, ex-mayor, knows that. He offered me loan forgiveness if I acted as the go-between with Dave and a guy that lives out of town. Somewhere in Louisiana. We meet at a gas station, I get information, and I relay it back to Dave. That’s it.”

  “What kind of information?” Lynn asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

  The kitten jumped out of my hands, and I couldn’t even muster up the desire to reach for her, I was so entranced with what was going on.

  The guy swallowed, knowing that what he was about to say wasn’t going to go over well.

  “He gives over kids’ names and addresses.” Tant swallowed hard.

  My stomach all but dropped at his words. Kids’ names and addresses. I wasn’t really sure what was going on, but if I had to take a guess, this was some child sex trafficking ring.

  Lynn reared back and hit him, square in the jaw.

  One hard, fast stroke like a striking cobra.

  Tant went out like a light.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  I was so turned on.

  And so going to hell.

  But that was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.

  “Laric, deal with that,” Lynn grumbled, pulling his brass knuckles off and cleaning them with a rag he pulled out of his pocket. One of those embroidered handkerchiefs with his initials monogrammed into it. “Get the rest of the information out of him, find out the guy’s name that is getting him the names and addresses. And then deliver him back home safely with a warning.”

  I had a feeling I didn’t want to know what kind of warning would be administered.

  His sharp green eyes turned to me then, fire still lighting them inwardly with something that looked extremely close to excitement.

  He reached blindly for something beside him, but I couldn’t break the eye contact. He had me thoroughly hooked.

  “You’re coming home with me,” Lynn said as he pulled his white button-up shirt on over his shoulders. “We’ll discuss the rest later.”

  He gestured for me to walk with a flick of his head, no words shared at all.

  My eyes must’ve flashed in response because he started to chuckle as he led me to his bike.

  “I’m not getting on that.” I started shaking my head.

  “You are,” he countered.

  When I went to pull away, he picked me up, tossed me over his shoulder, and started to walk toward his bike.

  “One of you bring her shit,” he called out. “See you back at the house.”

  I glared upside down at the two men, my hair falling around me in waves.

  And, because I could, I flipped both of them off, focusing longer on Bruno who was looking at me with not a small amount of regret on his face.

  Laric was just amused, so I gave him that.

  This was kind of amusing, if it were to be happening to someone else that wasn’t me.

  But when he sat me up and deposited me on his bike, I blamed the head rush for the reason I didn’t immediately try to jump off.

  Then, when his big, muscular body was deposited between my thighs, I froze for an altogether different reason. One that had my vagina pulsing with need.

  Then he started the bike.

  And I forgot that I wanted to be nowhere near his bike.

  Why? Because apparently a Harley Davidson, pressed up against a hot guy, was like being on a massive vibrator.

  “Dear, sweet baby Jesus.” I prayed that I wouldn’t get off on a kidnapping.

  Lynn, sensing that I was uneasy, said, “It’ll be okay.”

  No, no, it wouldn’t.

  And the orgasm I nearly had proved it.

  CHAPTER 6

  I’ll have a café mocha vodka valium latte, please.

>   -Coffee Cup

  LYNN

  “Ummm,” I heard said as I finally shut the bike down. “Where are we?”

  I looked at the house that I’d just had built.

  “It’s my lake house,” I answered as I swung my leg off the bike.

  Her eyes were wide as she took it in.

  “It’s big,” she said, her eyes taking in everything.

  The front of the house wasn’t really all that special.

  I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was still pretty. But the back was where it was at.

  “Four thousand square feet or so,” I said. “Not too big. I don’t want to have to clean this motherfucker, so it isn’t as big as I wanted it to be.”

  Her eyes took in the cedar beams that were holding up the rather large front porch. “I don’t even think I could fit my arms around those beams.”

  She was right.

  She probably couldn’t.

  “You need help up?” I asked when she continued to sit on the bike.

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m thirty-two years old. I think I can get off a bike.”

  Yet still she didn’t move.

  “Are you sure?” I teased.

  She rolled her eyes and pushed herself up off the bike, her legs wobbly.

  “I’ve never been on a bike before.” She licked her lips, her eyes going cagey as she looked away. It was the blush, though, that let me know just what, exactly, she was thinking about. “How long ago did you build this place?”

  “It was finished about a month ago,” I answered. “I don’t really have anything in it yet because of all the bullshit that I’m having to do in Kilgore.”

  “All the bullshit mayorly duties that you signed up for when you ran for mayor?” she countered.

  I shrugged. “I knew what I was getting into. I just had no clue how much petty bullshit came with the job. I mean, it’s like the adults in the town can’t figure out how to make a simple decision. Either it’s right or it’s wrong. Don’t waste my time on the easy stuff to decide.”

  I gestured with a chin lift for her to walk in front of me up the front walk, and she huffed out in exasperation.

  “Wouldn’t a kidnapper be a little cagier about where he was taking me?” she asked. “You could’ve at least put a blindfold on me so that when I escaped, I wouldn’t know exactly where I was. And you were supposed to take my phone and my watch. Both of those have cell service.”

  “Do you want me to take those things instead of trusting you?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure why I trusted her. Honestly, if anything, I should be taking away her cell phone and her watch. She’d seen me beat the crap out of a man. That could definitely play a factor in getting everything accomplished that I wanted done. However, I looked at her and somehow knew that she wouldn’t tell.

  “Not really, no,” she answered as she came to a stop at the front door.

  “It’s open,” I murmured from close behind her.

  She reached forward and depressed the button on the door that would let her in, then gasped two feet past the threshold when she got a good look at the back part of my house.

  Every single inch of it was windows. Thirty-eight feet at the highest peak, it tapered down in a farmhouse style. The back deck extended thirty feet out, and beyond that all you could see was the lake.

  It’d been my dream house when I’d been younger, and now it was my reality.

  Even if I hadn’t actually stayed a night in it since it’d been done.

  I would be staying the night in it tonight, though.

  At least until I was one hundred percent certain that Ms. Broussard could keep her mouth shut.

  I brushed past her as I walked farther into the foyer, and that one little slice of contact was enough to make my dick hard.

  Jesus, what was it about this woman?

  “Wow,” Six said from behind me. “This place is amazing. I can’t even tell you. Just wow.”

  I grinned and walked to my fridge that was in the all-in-one large, shared room with the living, dining and entryway. “Would you like something to drink?”

  She walked farther into the room and came to a stop next to the bar-height counter that separated us.

  “Uh.” She looked at me. “What do you have?”

  I opened the fridge door and stepped back, showing her.

  “Ice water from the tap, too,” I said.

  She licked her lips, her eyes taking in my practically bare fridge.

  “So it’s either I have cooking wine, ketchup, or ice water?” she teased.

  “So which will it be?” I asked curiously.

  “I’ll have the ketchup,” she joked.

  I rolled my eyes and closed the fridge, walking to the cabinet next to the fridge for a glass. Only, there weren’t any in there. Or the next one. Or the next.

  “You’re really bad at this kidnapping thing,” she said. “You should know the house that you take your kidnappee to.”

  I finally hit pay dirt in the cabinet next to the stove.

  “Why would they be that far away?” I grumbled to myself.

  She answered, though.

  “Probably because you paid someone to do this for you, and instead of doing it yourself so you could have things where you wanted them, you chose to let them put them where they wanted them. Which, might I add, where they’re at is actually a good place. Right next to the sink and the dishwasher.” She paused. “You probably don’t wash your own dishes, do you?”

  I did… sometimes.

  “I use paper plates when I eat,” I admitted. “I wash my own forks and coffee cup, though.”

  When it was still there the next morning and I needed it, that was.

  “So wonderful of you,” she said. “I can get my own water.”

  I handed her the cup and allowed her to do just that, my eyes taking in her every move.

  Today she was wearing all black except for a hint of purple here and there. Her boots, though? Those were bright purple with sparkles. Her shoelaces were also purple with sparkles. Oh, and let’s not forget the purple bra that I could see through her shirt when she moved just right.

  Her eyes, though, weren’t purple like they were the other day. Today they were brown.

  “Do you wear contacts?” I asked curiously.

  It was obvious those purple eyes from the other day were cosmetically enhanced by contacts. Today, though, there was something about her brown eyes that had me thinking that they were her original color.

  “Yes,” she said. “Obviously.”

  My lip twitched at the corner.

  “So what’s your original color?” I wondered. “Brown?”

  She scrunched up her nose. “Do you think that I would pick a boring color like this? Of course, it’s my natural color.” She tilted her head slightly, then pulled her hair away from her face. “My natural hair color is brown, too.”

  My brown-eyed girl.

  God, I loved the shit that she gave to me, even if she hadn’t actually intended to give me it.

  The door beyond where we were standing slammed, and suddenly Bruno rounded the corner. He had a backpack over one shoulder. When he saw us standing in the kitchen, he walked straight to us and deposited the bag onto the counter.

  “Did you look through it?” Six asked accusingly.

  “Yes,” Bruno answered, not bullshitting her. “I had to make sure that you didn’t have any ulterior motives on why you walked into the clearing today.”

  “No ulterior motives.” Six left the backpack where it was. “Just needing to unplug for a bit. That’s what I always do. Go for a walk.” She leaned her hip against the counter. “Are you the man that co-owns the land with her?”

  I shook my head. “I own the land I was on free and clear. I don’t share it with anyone. I think the land that you’re talking about belongs to Wyett Villin? If that’s the case, she shares her land with my neighbor. I don’t know his name right off the top of my head, though.”

  Or
, more importantly, I didn’t want to give her the name of the man that owned the land. There was a reason that her best friend wasn’t telling her. I didn’t know why Wyett hadn’t disclosed that Six’s father shared the land with Wyett, but I wouldn’t be opening that box of worms. It wasn’t my place.

  “Interesting,” she said. “Because that means that I’ve trespassed on your land a lot. It’s not that I mean to, but I thought that Wyett said something about there being fences that separated the property. That means that there isn’t one.”

  “There’s one small section that there isn’t,” I agreed. “It’s, from what I understand, about a quarter of a mile from where you walked out.”

  “Why isn’t there a fence there?” Six wondered.

  I shrugged. “There just hasn’t been one there since I bought the land. I’ll remedy that this weekend, though.”

  Six’s lips twitched. “That would probably be for your benefit.”

  It would indeed.

  “Can I get you something to eat?” I asked.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Are my options ketchup and cooking wine?”

  My lips twitched. “No. I was going to place a to-go order through the restaurant in town.”

  “Crockett’s Corner store?” she asked. “I just had them for lunch, but if you give me about an hour, I could probably go for another burger.”

  I looked over at Bruno, who nodded. “He’ll get it for us.”

  Six’s eyes went to Bruno, and they narrowed.

  Turning back to me, she said, “Do you have a shower I could use?”

  I eyed her up and down. “I do.”

  “Thanks,” she dismissed Bruno. “If you tell me where to go, I’ll find my own way.”

  Someone was pissed. Like, way pissed.

  “The only stocked bedroom besides mine is up on the second floor. Last door on your left,” I said softly.

  Away from windows, prying eyes, and us.

  Which worked for me because I had a few things that I wanted to talk to Bruno and Laric about.

  Not that Laric was anywhere in sight.

  But he would be once he was done with the tasks I’d asked of him before I’d left.

  For now, I’d have a long conversation with Bruno on what was going on.

  Because I felt like I was missing something.