Giving it Up (Brewhouse #1)

by Holly Dodd

  “It’s fine. I just came looking for you to tell you I didn’t really feel like hanging out with you tonight. And I don’t think we should pursue anything in the future.”

  Jo’s words held a finality to them that whipped my head her way. “Wait, what?”

  “You had a fucking date tonight,” the girl squealed. Her hand tightened, threatening to tear my cock off, and I grunted at her grip.

  What the fuck was her name. Shit, it was bugging me. Usually it didn’t, but I had a feeling I was supposed to know it.

  “I’m kind of hung up someone else. You’re…well. You’re not what I’m looking for,” Jo said.

  I shook my head. “Are you fucking with me?” I was kind of relieved though. Mia had been shoving me at her all week. As if giving Jo her fantasy would absolve her of lying to her supposed BFF. Then again I wasn’t surprised. Her and Kevin were stupid for one another.

  Kind of like how I was with Mia. Only that was one-sided.

  I managed to get my pants pulled up, just barely when a screech blew through my life and upended my whole world. “Licia?”

  I didn’t even need to see who stood behind Jo. “Fuck, Mia.”

  I knew she hadn’t come looking for me. She’d seen Jo come in and went looking for her bestie. The same best friend Mia had been pushing me on all year. Still, I didn’t want her seeing me like this. It was one thing to know that I was a man-whore, it was another thing to see it up close and personal.

  Then what she said caught up with me, and my brain vibrated in my ears. Licia? Oh shit no. Oh no.

  I glanced down as the girl, who’d just been tonsil-deep on my dick, popped up like a loon. “Hey, sis.”

  I thumped my head on the wall. Hard. Wanting to wake up from this nightmare unfolding around me.

  “You’re Mia’s sister?” I remembered little Alicia now. Thin and with braces, she’d been a blip on the radar back during that first summer. Compared to Mia, everyone and everything faded away. She was my whole world. Had been ever since my family moved into their neighborhood. I’d turned into a cliche. The All-American jock who’d lost his heart to the girl next door. Only she didn’t want anything to do with me outside the bedroom.

  A sick feeling churned in my gut. There was no way Licia didn’t know who I was. No fucking way. She turned her cat-shaped eyes to me, and the deceptive glitter in them told me I’d hit the nail on the head. She’d known who I was. Known all along she was going down on Mia’s ex-fling. The only reason Licia had known was because she’d walked in on us one afternoon. “Yep, don’t you see the resemblance?”

  I’d been distracted, my head wrecked by thoughts of Mia. As it always was when I was around her. Now that she’d mentioned it I could see it in the shape of the face, the color of the eyes. Hadn’t I thought she looked enough like Mia that I could pretend she was her for awhile?

  Jo said something but my whole focus was on Mia. I stepped towards my heart, imploring her to listen. “Mia wait, please.”

  Mia turned to me with rage cloaking her. “Don’t. Just don’t. My little sister? Fucking hell, Regi.”

  I flinched away and dragged a hand through my beard. It wasn’t long enough to tug, but I wished it was. What a colossal fuck-up. “I didn’t know.”

  Whatever remaining hope I’d had that Mia would come back to me, would remember the promises we’d made the summer before college, went up in a puff of smoke. I would never forgive myself for being the cause of the hurt and betrayal simmering in her eyes. She looked ready to cry. No matter what bullshit life threw at her, my Mia never cried.

  My heart cracked and fell out of my chest. The love of my stormed away from me, dragging my bitter, broken heart behind her.

  I inhaled a shuddering breath. Jo shook her head at me and trailed after Mia.

  There was no coming back from this. I blinked back the burn of tears, completely forgetting Licia stood beside me.

  “Now that they’re gone we can continue,” she purred as she rubbed her breasts against my arm.

  I flung away from her, my body recoiling in disgust. ”What the fuck is wrong with you. You knew exactly who I was.”

  Licia tipped her head back. Folding her arms around her midsection, her stance grew defensive. “Yeah, so?”

  There was something so wrong between Mia and her sister. I shoved both hands through my hair and pulled in frustration. “Don’t you have an iota of loyalty towards her?”

  “Don’t you talk to me about loyalty, Regi O’Connell. She isn’t loyal to me, why the hell should I be loyal to her,” she said with a sharp hiss.

  What had happened between Licia and Mia? Back when she’d been younger, before college, they’d been a solid family unit. And now her quest for revenge just cost me everything. Not that Mia would ever be mine. She’d said no when we were younger, and every year since.

  “Stay away from me.” I shoved past the girl and into the bar, hunting my sobriety with the sour promise of alcohol. And a lot of it.

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  Excerpt of Theirs to Take

  Want more? Check out the first chapter of Holly’s novella, THEIRS TO TAKE. Available on Amazon now!

  Chapter One

  “My ass is hanging out of this skirt,” Josie murmured against her wrist. In case anyone observed her out-of-character motion, she’d used a fake-out move, like scratching her nose. In the nest of gaudy plastic bangles banding her arm was a cleverly concealed microphone.

  “It’s a fine ass from here, Smith,” replied Kent. He’d been her backup since she earned her badge. A ten-year veteran of the Spokane Vice Squad, he monitored her whereabouts. If she got into trouble, he came charging in with gun blazing. If the proverbial shit hit the fan, he called in the cavalry.

  “Think it’s Playboy worthy?”

  “Hustler, all the way. Playboy is for boys. What you got only a man can handle.”

  She laughed. “It hasn’t brought me any company.”

  “Give it a little shake. They’ll come running.”

  “Right, because my ass is a dinner bell? Thanks, Kent.” He was such a perv. But in a good way, like a middle-aged accountant who knew he could look but not touch. And he looked a lot. Rolling her eyes and giving a subtle shake of her head, Josie went radio silent again. The brief interlude had eased the stress winding up her spine.

  A week was a long time to pretend to be someone else.

  When Josie considered law enforcement as a career choice, it came with the understanding that she would go undercover at some point. Life as a police(wo)man revolved around three things: surveillance, which was monotonous as hell, riding a desk, or being the sweet in a honey trap.

  Since she was young and fresh, she was the sugar. Mostly because

  she looked harmless. Who expected a five-foot-nothing girl to be capable of taking down a man twice her size? The hard truth was most men who worked and played on the wrong side of the law suffered from what she called “the asshole effect.” They believed they were pimps and gangsters, and that women were baubles.

  When she settled on Vice Squad, the scale tipped and her odds of being at the heart of a sting fucktupled. Over a year on the job and she already lost count of how many times she’d played the junkie, the prostitute, or the escort.

  This time was only marginally different.

  For the past week, she had been “Candy,” her bleached-blonde alter ego, and prowled a seedy stretch of pavement in Spokane Valley, searching for a serial killer. In the meantime, she’d caught a few Johns, ten so far, shipping them to the DA for processing and plea deals. It was a two-pronged quest by Mayor Rondel to clean up Skid Row—a dilapidated five-mile stretch alongside E. Sprague—and to get a lead on a killer who had been hunting society’s detritus for the past three years.

  Ever since the infamous Robert Lee Yates murder spree in the late 90s, Spokane was a little sensitive and a lot suspicious when prostitutes started turning up dead or missing. Josie wanted to get the killer off the st
reets, but logically knew he wouldn’t get caught. Not for a long time.

  Fanning her fingers along her wig, she lifted her wrist again to triple-check the intel with Kent. She hated the notion of wasting time, and hoped this wasn’t a wild goose chase to make it look like the PD was doing something to appease the locals instead of handling the problem. “Are the profilers sure he’s hitting this week?”

  Criminal profiling was a fringe science to her. Sure, they had the data to prop up their theory, but a few unsubs—the FBI shorthand used to describe the unknown subject they were searching for—defied labels.

  “He hits every six months like clockwork,” said Kent. “If he doesn’t take a girl soon, he’ll be off his schedule. Either way, at the end of the week you can join me in the car again. I have doughnuts.” “Tease.” She laughed and lowered her wrist.

  The profile Quantico gave them made sense. The perp was most certainly male. Most serial killers were white men in their late twenties to thirties. Half the men who came down looking to score fit that demographic. Yates “worked” on the Row for thirteen years, and only got caught when his last victim escaped.

  So, unless this new predator did something idiotic, he would continue hunting. Most on E. Sprague Avenue didn’t talk to police, and if they did, they made terrible witnesses. Drugs. Booze. Mental problems. Too many bore a rotted memory brought on by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and exacerbated by a steady diet of cheap liquor and drugs.

  Josie sighed and leaned against the graffiti-scarred front of the building behind her and hitched her knee up. Her feet were killing her. In her real life, she wore flats, but she had to play her part. That meant a slinky dress which made it near impossible to carry a concealed gun, though she’d hidden a knife in a sheathe along her inner thigh, and strappy sky-high stiletto heels that had made her toes numb over the past couple days.

  Gazing down the broken street, her attention skipped over the mounds of trash in the gutters, and locked on the gaggle of legit streetwalkers. She nodded, giving a subtle chin bob. They were standing directly across from Papadore’s Market, which would piss off the owner. Papa was a small Italian man who wielded a broom with aplomb. She gave it five more minutes of them “loitering” before he stormed outside and screamed at them. At least his tantrum would energize the evening. It was barely 8 PM. The Row didn’t start hopping until closer to midnight.

  Glancing away, she knew the attention of the hookers was on her. Their glares were weighty, hard eyes narrowed against mascara-caked lashes and a haze of cigarette smoke. They smelled a rat in their chicken coop.

  Dwayne, their pimp, was a bona fide informant. He made all the right moves to help her cover, told them he’d hired on a new girl. But they weren’t stupid. You couldn’t survive on the Row and be stupid. They knew something was up. Mostly because Josie went to her own home when dawn broke instead of squatting in Dwayne’s apartment like most new girls.

  Part of her rankled that she had been forced into working with Dwayne. But on the scale of sex-crime masterminds, he was low on the totem pole. He wasn’t a trafficker and didn’t deal in drugs and guns on the side. He was quaintly old school, the modern version of a 70s pimp. She wouldn’t be surprised if he came strolling down the Row dressed head to toe in velvet. Unlike most pushers, he protected his girls, though he was an equal opportunist when it came to doling out punishment. Men. Women. Children. More than a few bore welts and bruises from his fists.

  Him laying hands on his prostitutes, and supplying them whatever drugs they wanted, made him scum in Josie’s eyes. Sometimes, though, you had to blur the lines and muck around in shades of grey to get at the heart of evil. She didn’t like it, and she felt dirty every time Dwayne walked by to check on his stable. The fact that he slapped her ass made her want to shove her stiletto heel up his.

  The growl of a muscle car caught her ear. The Jaws theme music flashed through her head as an apple red Mustang, shiny and sleek, cut a corner and rolled down the street. Dah dun. Dah dun. It matched the sudden leap of her pulse hammering in her ears. Her foot dropped with a click and she smoothed her dress down her thighs with a sinuous wriggle.

  It was him. Oh, God. Would he stop this time?

  Since Josie had claimed her square of weed-choked pavement in Dwayne’s territory, the man in the Mustang drove by daily. Josie wished she could say he stood out like a wolf among lambs, but he was surprisingly unflashy when compared to a few of the drug dealers working in the Valley. Though he drove an obvious car, it wasn’t like the pimped-out Lexuses or super-sized Cadillac SUVs that trolled the avenue.

  This man was subtle. When he drove down the avenue, he slid the window down and browsed the girls. He wasn’t lewd about it. Just silently appreciative: a buyer checking out the wares. Josie was a prime cut of meat.

  The first time she’d met his icy blue-grey eyes when he idled in front of her, she’d shivered. Not out of fear, but out of some primal reaction that made her skin tighten all over her body. His attention stole her breath and professionalism, leaving her burning with shocking, forbidden lust.

  He was trouble with a capital fucking T. She’d been waiting for a week, wondering if he would ever pick a girl up. Just so she would know for sure he was a criminal and force him out of her mind. Only he hadn’t. It became impossible to ignore her body’s sensations. She was hot. Itchy. She wanted to hop into his car and see where the night took them.

  Her reaction now, just seeing his car, was purely Pavlovian. Shamelessly, her nipples stiffened, thrusting against the hot pink and orange halter-top that molded over her breasts. Her thighs squeezed around the newly kindled warmth flaming between them. He was a man who bought hookers, for Christ’s sake. Yet, no amount of scolding could shut her body down. When it came to him, her cunt had a mind of its own. It wanted him to touch her. Fuck her. Own her.

  The other part of herself, the officer who swore to protect-and-serve and uphold the law, knew that if he crooked his finger and began the party dance, she’d have to bust him. And that just made her sad. Why was a man as good-looking as him paying for pussy? It didn’t make sense. Then again, people huffing gasoline and snorting cocaine didn’t make sense to her either. She’d long ago given up trying to figure out the criminal mind.

  The Mustang eventually made its way down the street, and then maneuvered to a stop against the curb directly in front of her.

  Her heart hitched in her throat as she met his smoldering stare. Where was the shame? Where was the fight? God, she was practically drooling over him.

  Biting her inner cheek, she looked away. Not that it helped. His appearance was scorched on her retinas.

  He wasn’t model good-looking. If he were, she wouldn’t be this wound up over him. Josie didn’t like the pretty boys. He was rugged in a way that made her think of Jax from Sons of Anarchy, or Tom Hardy. She could easily see him in some motorcycle club. He stirred her sexual interest like he was a damn pussy whisperer.

  He wore his dark brown hair a little long at the nape. His skin had a soft glow that spoke of genetics and working outdoors. Though she hadn’t seen him out of the car yet, he looked tall and solid. A big guy that would tower over her diminutive frame. He was just the type of guy that Josie had a weakness for, during those times when she stopped being a cop and embraced her feminine side.

  As he gazed up at her from his car window, Josie’s breath caught.

  This John looked at her and saw all female. Not because her tits were on display, but because he looked into her eyes and saw her. All the darkness. All the desires. All the hidden parts that his mere presence called to the front. It took all of her focus not to lick her lips as he hooked his muscled forearm against the window and leaned out.

  “It looks like you got a bite,” Kent murmured in her ear. All jovialness disappeared. He was in cop mode now. “Think this is the unsub?”

  Josie ignored Kent. She didn’t want to consider that Hot-and-Sexy was a serial killer. Josie was snared. And a part of her didn’
t want free.

  She wanted him to tug on the hook and reel her in.

  A slow, half-smile flickered to life over the stranger’s face. His light eyes glowed like a light had been clicked on.

  “Get in,” he said.

  Yessss. Desire burst like fireworks over her skin, hot shivers that raced up and down her arms, before dismay snuffed out the heat.

  Goddammit. She glanced down the block at the gaggle of call girls. Beyond them, though she couldn’t see it, was the unmarked sedan where Kent sat cloistered. He was listening to every word the John said to her. Now that he said those two little words, Kent would be focused like a laser beam on the Mustang. He was probably scouting out the license plate with a pair of binoculars. There was no way she could warn Mustang Man off.

  She knew the role she had to play. No matter how hot this guy was, he was breaking the law.

  On my honor, I will never betray my badge.

  Throwing an extra shimmy into her step, Josie walked around to the passenger seat and slid in. Charcoal-grey leather was silky soft against the back of her thighs, and molded to the contours of her body. She almost moaned as the nighttime chill clinging to her skin melted. A slight hiss of static crackled in her ear. Odd. She hoped the hardware wasn’t fritzing out now that she’d gotten a bite.

  Luxury couldn’t distract her. She had a script to adhere to. “So, you want to party?” She used her best sex kitten voice, the one that made the guys back at the bullpen laugh.

  The key to a sting operation like this was to not entrap them.

  Defense attorneys had a field day when they suspected a honey trap was in play. She let him do what he would have done, and probably had at some point, without any interference from her. It was just his bad luck, and those that came before him, that the hooker they picked up was an undercover cop.