“No.” She sucks in a wobbly breath. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”
“That’s okay. Think about it. That’s not my kink, either.”
Her voice drops to a whisper, but I don’t miss a word of what she says next. “I’ve been called a lot of names over the years.”
Rage rises fast and swift inside me. “And you didn’t like them.”
“No.”
“How do you feel when I call you princess?” I find and hold her gaze. Whatever her answer is here, it’s okay. I repeat that out loud. “If I’ve hurt you with that, I’m sorry.”
She smiles slightly. “I like it. It’s…hard to explain.”
“Sure. I get that.”
“What do you like?” She licks her lips, then takes another drink. “Wait, can we get refills before you answer that?”
If she needs liquid courage for this conversation, I’m probably dragging her in way over her head. But I’m not going to touch her tonight, not more than a hug and a kiss goodnight when all is said and done.
So I go and get the bottle of Jack, and a bowl of ice cubes so we can refill from the coffee table beside us.
Grabbing the bottle, she tops up her own drink, then wiggles it at me. “More?”
I hold out my glass. “Bring it on.”
She smiles. “Only if you tell me what you like.”
“I like you. I liked last night.”
“You made me stop.” She pouts.
I wait until she pours my drink, then I put my glass down, lean in, and gently pinch her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger. “I like this lip,” I growl. “And I would like it if you would listen to me.”
Her eyes flare wide, then she pulls back and laughs.
Laughs.
And I fucking like that, too.
“Is that why you called me a brat?”
“Maybe on some level.”
She chews on her bottom lip. “Tell me more.”
“I like being aggressive. Consensually so. I like being pushed, and I like to push back. It feels like fire in my veins. I love the little sounds you made when things got rough. I’d like to play with those limits and see where you get the most pleasure.”
“I don’t know how I feel about all of that. I’ve spent a few years trying my damnedest to be healthy and not indulge in my worst instincts. No offense.”
“None taken. If you just want to have hot vanilla sex, without doing a deep dive into secret dirty desires, that’s okay, too. But I’ll keep some clear boundaries up when I feel like we’re getting into fuzzy areas where consent and conversation really matter.” I grin. “Which honestly should be all of it, but sometimes my dick thinks for me. I’m human.”
“Aren’t we all.” She swirls her drink around in her glass, then drains it in one big, must-definitely-burn kind of gulp. “So is that what you want? To be more aggressive with me? To pin me down and hurt me?”
24
Taylor
I don’t mean it to sound like a challenge, but that’s how it comes out.
“Is that what you want me to do?” he asks evenly. “It would be hot if you want me to do it, sure. And not if you don’t.”
I snort. “That’s too good to be true. You can’t be that flexible.”
“You want to know what I really want?” He tops up his drink and leans back, taking up way too much space with how good-looking he is. “I like it when kink flows beyond the bedroom. When it’s foreplay and aftercare, when it’s cuddling with an edge, because the dirty stuff is just a part of who you are. It’s a part of who I am, and when I meet someone like you who seems to spark in the same direction. I like that. A lot. The details of how we fuck are secondary to that.”
“That feels like the PG-13 explanation.”
“There’s nothing PG-13 about how I want to cuddle with you.” Something deep in my belly zings at the rich, low promise in his voice. “Or how I might, for example, have done today’s shopping trip differently.”
Now he’s got me hooked. And excited, and nervous. Inside me is a weird mess of fluttery feelings and I think I like all of them. Even the nerves.
Maybe especially the nerves. “How so?”
“When you took off to go look at bathing suits, for example.” He reaches out his hand. “May I?”
I put my fingers against his, and he tugs my arm forward until he’s got my wrist circled. My pulse jumps at the warm, sure contact.
“What would you think if when you turned away, I caught your wrist like this and stopped you? Tugged you close to me, touched your chin, your cheek. Some gentle caress. And then I might whisper in your ear, You forgot to ask me if you could go.”
Fuck.
Every part of my body tightens up, gets heavy. “That’s…”
He watches me.
I swipe my tongue against my lower lip. “Ah… Okay. So that’s hot. I feel turned on when you say that, here, now. The idea of it is hot. But I don’t know how I feel about it actually happening.” I search his face. “Would you actually stop me from going shopping?”
“Fuck no. No. But that pulse, that momentary control thing…I think it’s hot, too.” He shrugs. “It’s just an example.”
But when he drops his fingers from my wrist, it doesn’t feel like an example. And I feel bereft, if only for a second, like something really interesting has been snatched away.
He bumps his knee against my foot. “Okay, here’s another one.”
I lean in, eager for more. “Gimme.”
“Since you liked your trip to Walmart so much today—”
“Like is a very strong word.”
He blinks innocently at me. “You don’t enjoy your Bag Balm?”
Actually, I really like it. That’s not the point. “You want to take me to Sephora next time?”
He ignores that. “Since you liked getting out of the house, I considered—for a brief, hot second—taking you to a thing tomorrow night. And then I realized it was a bad idea, for a bunch of reasons. One of those would be that I think our chemistry is too obvious. McBride has picked up on it.”
I wince. “Really?”
“Sarah’s cool. It’s fine. But my sisters are more obnoxious.”
His phone conversation from yesterday. My brain stutters over the new facts, rearranging what I’d thought he’d been talking about—having to break a date—with what it actually was. A family obligation. The logic record in my brain skips and screeches.
“What?”
A ruddiness climbs his cheeks. “I know it’s really not appropriate. I promise I don’t take women home to meet my mom after making out twice. But that’s just…another example.” He trails off, and it’s kind of weirdly endearing how embarrassed he looks.
“Because your family would see that we like each other?” God, that sounds so high school. Is that where I’m at? Entry-level, teenage-emotions level of kink and relationships?
“Because this thing I’m talking about—kink, power exchange, me being in control—it’s who I am. And the PG-13 level stuff is some of my favorite parts. There’s a lot of that in a social setting, and as dorky as it sounds, my family is a good chunk of my social life.”
That doesn’t sound dorky. It sounds sweet, and so far from my realm of understanding that I can’t even imagine it.
And he’s still talking. “It’s always a big fucking crowd, and I’ve taken women before. Which sounds wrong. I mean, I’ve taken dates sometimes as a one-off…which sounds even worse. It’s no big deal. My family never thinks I’m going to settle down…”
This time when he trails off again, and I burst out laughing.
“Wow. That hole just kept digging itself, didn’t it?”
“I’m good at a lot of things,” he growls. “Explaining family dynamics and admitting how my sisters think I’m a fuckboy and it’s kind of okay is not one of them.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Are you a fuckboy?”
“No.” He pauses then doubles down on that. “No. No.”
>
“That sounds like a yes, Luke. It sounds like you are admitting that you are a kinky fuckboy, and this conversation just took a very honest turn.”
He pokes his tongue into his cheek, looking adorably drunk and honest. I think this might be my favorite Detective Vasquez yet. “Fine. I like sex. I have sex. I’m honest about that. I don’t really have relationships, because of my job.”
“Mmm.”
“Come on, Taylor. You get it.”
“I haven’t had sex for three years. What do you think I get?”
His mouth drops open.
And then closes.
Good. Now we’re both having record skips in the brain.
The woman he was talking to about canceling plans was a sister. For fuck’s sake, neither of us are good at this communication thing.
“Three years?”
I wave my hand. “I had a lot of fuckboy sex before that, don’t you worry. I mean, you know about a lot of it. Some of it was on the evening news.”
“That does win top fuckboy status between the two of us,” he says dryly.
“Well we can’t all be discreet fuckboys, now can we?” I tilt my head sideways. “When was the last time you…”
“A few months ago. And a few months before that. Last year I had a casual relationship that was off and on for most of the year. She came to Sunday night dinner twice, but then not again, because it wasn’t really our dynamic. The relationship before that one was the closest to what my family would like to see me have, but it was crazy messy in other ways. We worked together.”
“Another cop?”
“A lawyer, an assistant district attorney who didn’t love how I sometimes do my job, and that came home with us. We lived together briefly when I sold my house, before I bought this one. It proved we weren’t compatible.”
And would we be compatible? What would our dynamic be? So many questions. And then there’s the whole way-too-fucking-soon element. “I don’t know how I feel about meeting your family. Plus won’t they recognize me?”
“Sure.” He frowns. “Are you worried about your safety, or me being embarrassed by you?”
“Both?”
“They know I’m a cop. I trust my family with my life. They would never expose you to any danger. And there’s nothing about you that I’m embarrassed about, Taylor.”
“My past.”
“Is in the past, right?”
“There’s a video of me…” I’m not going to describe it. He’s aware. The whole world is aware.
“There are millions of websites full of videos of people doing that same thing. And I’m pretty sure every adult in my family has done that thing, too. Not that I want to see it. I bet they don’t want to see you do it, either, so they’re not going to watch that video. And I only want to see you do it to me, so we’re all good on leaving that thing in the past. Clear?”
No. Not clear at all. And yet, I believe him.
“Anyway, I know we can’t go to tomorrow night’s dinner.” He studies me over his glass. That’s supposed to be my move. I return the look, and he chuckles. “But if you want to know what I really want, that’s it. Social stuff, where we subtly flirt about power exchange all night long, in public. And it gets you all worked up so you ride my hand like a banshee when we get back. Plus I like the idea of getting to know you better.”
“And then hurting me?”
“You’re stuck on that.”
“Yeah. Because you said that I want it.”
His right eyebrow slowly curves up.
I smile. “And you might not be wrong.”
A wicked grin spreads across his face.
Oh, lord. I drink, and then I drink again. When my glass is empty, I lean my head back and stare at the ceiling. “You have a nice house,” I finally say. “I don’t think I said that when I first saw it, and I should have.”
“You looked kind of horrified.”
“It’s small.”
“We can’t all have mansions.”
Mansions are overrated anyway. Full of filth and terror—and not the good kind like Luke seems to be promising. “That’s okay.”
He appears above me, and I realize I’m still staring at the ceiling. Which means Luke is standing over me. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“You’re suddenly drunk.”
“Yeah.” I try and snap my fingers at him. “That is what happens when one drinks whiskey, Detective Vasquez.”
“True.”
“Do you like being hurt?”
He shakes his head and smiles. “Prefer to dole out the spankings rather than receive them.”
“Okay.” I lick my lips. “Can I ask you for something?”
“Anything.”
“Can you find a way for me to see my sisters?”
His smile blurs a bit. All of him is blurry now. Maybe I’m crying.
He disappears, and then reappears beside me because he’s knelt down next to me. I’m definitely crying. He wipes my cheek. “Give an inch and you’ll take a mile, won’t you?”
I clumsily wave my hand at his face. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask.”
“Yes, princess. I’ll find a way for you to see your sisters.”
The next morning, I wake up where I last remember being, still on the couch. I hear clattering in the kitchen and the events of the night before flood into my mind. The nightmare. The talking. The drinking.
Oh, God, my head.
Nobody has ever seen me have a nightmare. Nobody except Luke, now.
That realization makes me want to pull the blanket over my head and go back to sleep.
The clattering stops, and then a strong pair of legs clad in snug denim appear in my field of vision. “Good morning.”
He doesn’t sound hungover at all.
Wincing, I look up. All the way up, because he seems extra tall today. “Is it?”
“I think so.” He sets the glass of water in front of me. “Do you need a painkiller?”
I make a face. “I need to brush my teeth.”
The corners of his mouth twitch, and he gestures to the stairs.
Gingerly, I push up, relieved to find out my head doesn’t fall right off. Then I climb off the couch and go upstairs to sort myself out.
When I come back down ten minutes later, he’s sprawled in my spot on the couch. “Good morning,” he says again.
Suddenly I feel shy. It’s a strange and foreign feeling.
He stands and moves closer, coming to me when I clearly can’t come all the way to him. He brushes his fingertips along my jaw, from my ear down to my chin, and then lifts my face up. “I said—”
“Morning,” I whisper, cutting him off.
“That’s better.” He leans in, soft and gentle, and kisses me right on the mouth. It just about knocks the wind out of me.
If talking about kinky hurt-y sex late at night means romantic kisses the next morning, who wouldn’t want that?
“You’re being sweet.” I tap my fingers against his chest. “Why?”
He laughs. “Oh, so suspicious.”
“Always. Born and bred.”
“Because you make me sweet,” he murmurs, tangling his fingers in my hair. “And you taste good, and I want to stretch out this feeling for as long as possible before I accidentally say the wrong thing and you’re hissing and spitting at me again.”
“I’ve never spit.” I sigh happily and give in to the warm, intoxicating caresses. “Tell me nothing is happening today.”
“It’s Sunday. Nothing is happening.”
“Good.”
“Except—”
I groan.
“Sorry. You said I should tell you that, so I wanted to do as commanded. But it’s not really true. I have a list of questions from McBride. Background stuff, not on the record.”
I groan. “Okay.”
“Just to fill in some holes. And then, if you’re a good girl…” He nips at my jaw, making me gasp.
“Are you bribing me with
sexual favors in exchange for being a police informant?”
“I am if you’re into that.”
I am now. “Okay, officer,” I say breathily. “What do you want to know?”
25
Luke
It would be too fucking easy to sink right into that role-play. Pin her down and “question” her until she screams my name. Sadly, McBride actually did send a list of questions, so we need to be semi-serious as we go through them. I get the email on my phone, then sprawl on the couch with Taylor curled up on my lap.
It’s wild how comfortable I’ve gotten with having her here—on my lap, in my house, in my life—in a few short days.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ve learned that secrets destroy me. So…bring it on. I have a lifetime of shit to unpack. What’s one more set of squirm-worthy questions?”
“Hopefully, these won’t be so bad.”
We start by confirming how long she’s lived at her address, if she’s had any neighbor changes in the last six months, and the date she started working as a peer counselor at LAST.
“Why do you need to know that?” she asks after she tells me the information.
“Sometimes a change in behavior can grab someone’s attention. Any life change is worth making a note of, looking around at that time. Did you meet someone new? Rebuff any attempts to date you? That kind of thing.”
She shakes her head. “Nothing like that. I put out a pretty strong not interested signal into the universe.”
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