Conviction
Page 18
“You gonna keep up this P.I. work?” Tobias asks.
I nod. Myers pays me well, and I like the work he gives me. Nothing’s been as intense as the work I’ve done with Zoe, but that’s fitting.
She’s special.
“And you’re still on the force?” Tobias asks Zoe.
“Of course,” she says, the smile fading. “Why would I leave the force?”
God, I love her feistiness.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, tugging a lock of her hair that’s grown a lot longer since the short cut Beatrice gave her. “Maybe it’s time for you to settle down and get all domesticated. Wear aprons and bake me some pies.”
Her eyes flash at me but she can’t hide the way her lips twitch. The idea of Zoe baking me pies is ridiculous. I’m the one that does the cooking since I moved into her place, and she’s totally fine with that arrangement. Hell, Devin says I make the best tacos she’s ever had.
“Playing with fire,” Tobias says to me. Hell, he’s right though. That’s why I love her. She’s playing with fire.
“Gotta go,” I say, pushing to my feet. “We’re on our way to Devin’s recital.” Zoe stands, and I brush a thumb over the raised marks on her wrists she has hidden with a delicate ivory long-sleeved top. I know what’s beneath that top. Crisscrossed rope marks under her breasts and over her belly, wrists lightly pink but still bearing the mark of our play before we came here. I have a shibari demonstration later this week, and she’s allowed me to practice on her.
It wasn’t a hardship.
She loves my ropes, my cuffs, and the pain and pleasure of a spanking. Slowly but surely, I’m introducing her to more intense sessions, the marks on her body now testimony to the well of trust she’s let me build. One of the members here is a kink therapist, and Zoe has been going to her. It’s not easy. Sometimes she comes home from her sessions emotionally wrecked, but it’s not unlike her sessions with me. They bare her pain but make her stronger. I hold her and tell her I love her. Every time she goes, she’s that much stronger.
We leave Verge hand in hand, and head to Devin’s school. Zoe loves going with me to see Devin now. She isn’t Devin’s mom, and she never will be. But she’s a positive, loving presence in Devin’s life, and I fucking love her for that.
“You know, it’s been six months,” I tell her, when I cruise to a stop outside of Devin’s school.
“Yeah?” she says with surprise. “Wow. It seems... weirdly shorter and yet longer.”
I nod. I feel the same, as if I’ve always known her but we only just met.
I turn to face her and reach for her hand. It’s not a candlelight dinner and hearts and flowers, but Zoe’s not into that. She likes things simple and straightforward, so that’s what I’ll give her.
“Six months, and yet it feels like forever,” I say, letting the words hang in the air with meaning.
She nods. “Exactly.”
I suddenly need to say the words, so she hears the conviction in my voice and knows I mean this. “So let’s make it forever.”
Her brows arch and her lips part. Jesus, she’s beautiful. So fucking beautiful.
“Forever?” she whispers.
I can hardly breathe, needing her affirmation of this. “Yes,” I manage to choke out. “Forever. Will you be my forever?”
She grasps my hands and squeezes, then takes me be surprise when she bursts out laughing. “Yes. Hell yes.”
I join her laughter and take her mouth with mine.
Her answer is perfect. Just like her.
THE END
Bonus material
Chapter one from Deliverance (an NYC Doms standalone novel)
“You son of a bitch,” I hiss, intentionally keeping my voice low. Crazy, half-cocked, vindictive ex-lover isn’t normally my thing.
Hell, there’s a first for everything, though.
“Diana! Stop. This is stupid, and girl, you know I know stupid when I see it because I’ve done all the stupid in my life.” Beatrice pleads with me to think twice as she shuffles toward me, trying to place her small frame between me and the car I’m about to destroy.
“Stop the lecture.” My hands tremble as I hold the keys, glaring past my blonde-haired, blue-eyed bestie, and focusing my hatred on the silver Maserati. I march past Beatrice, and before I can change my mind, dig the tip of my key into the gleaming exterior with maniacal glee. Crouching down, I take grim pleasure in destroying the most beautiful car I’ve ever looked at. Sat in. Been fucked in.
“Did you tell Little Miss High and Tight your sob story?” I cackle to the car as if it’s my ex-boyfriend embodied. I’d only just met the guy a few weeks ago, my first real boyfriend since my ex-husband took off, but I’d managed to convince myself he was the one. My savior. My hero. With a particularly vicious swipe, I lose my footing and nearly sprawl onto the snowy sidewalk, but I catch myself on the bumper. Wind whips at my hair, icy snow lashing my bare skin, but I hardly feel it.
Tequila for the win.
“Diana,” Beatrice cajoles. “You’ve had too much to drink. God, woman! Get ahold of yourself! You’ve done it, okay? You’ve done enough. I shouldn’t have let you out of the car. This isn’t you. You’re too smart to pull this teenaged shit. Just get in the car and I’ll—”
“Leave me alone.” I love this girl to death, but I don’t trust myself not to shove her out of my way if she tries to stop me. I scrape the key once more, so deep it feels like fucking nails on a chalkboard, but I like knowing the damage will be severe. “You don’t know what it’s like to walk into your bedroom and see some bitch with her lips wrapped around your boyfriend’s cock.”
Scrraaape.
“You don’t know what it’s like to see betrayal in the eyes of the man who said he loved you.”
Scraaaape.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” my voice catches on a dry sob, so I underscore my angst with another cut of the key, “to have to explain to your son that the bastard who promised to take him to the drive-in movie theater was a lying piece of shit who’ll never come back.”
Scrape, scrape, scraaape.
Sitting back on my heels, I eye the destruction with triumph.
Beatrice talks to me like one might speak to a rabid animal, her hands outstretched in a gesture meant to calm. “I may not know those things, but I do know that—” She freezes, her voice now panicked. “Oh. Oh, shit. Diana, stop. Oh my God. We have to go.”
But before I can respond, the deep growl of a man’s voice right behind me—a voice I do not know—makes me nearly stumble.
“What the fuck are you doing to my car?”
Shit.
His… car?
I turn, my cheeks hot despite the freezing cold, to stare into the terrifyingly furious face of the biggest man I’ve ever seen. He towers over me, even wearing my tallest spiky heels, and the involuntary step I take back helps me see him better. Everything about him is dark, with his swarthy skin and nearly-black hair, but it’s his eyes—black as coal beneath thick, heavy brows, that pin me in place. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can barely think.
His jaw, covered in thick, dark stubble, tightens when his huge, muscled arms cross his expansive chest.
In any other time or place, I’d find the man sexy as fuck. But now?
“Your car?” I whisper.
“My car,” he says in a low growl. “What are you doing to my fucking car?”
I blow out a breath and close my eyes.
I’m screwed.
Deliverance is now live in the Amazon store.
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About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Jane Henry pens stern but loving alpha heroes, feisty heroines, and emotion-driven happily-ever-afters. She writes what she loves to read: kink with a tender touch. Jane is a hopeless romantic who lives on the East Coast with a houseful of children and her ver
y own Prince Charming.
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Other titles by Jane you may enjoy:
Contemporary fiction
NYC Doms
Deliverance
Safeguard
The Billionaire Daddies Trilogy
Beauty’s Daddy: A Beauty and the Beast Adult Fairy Tale
Mafia Daddy: A Cinderella Adult Fairy Tale
Dungeon Daddy: A Rapunzel Adult Fairy Tale
The Boston Doms
My Dom (Boston Doms Book 1)
His Submissive (Boston Doms Book 2)
Her Protector (Boston Doms Book 3)
His Babygirl (Boston Doms Book 4)
His Lady (Boston Doms Book 5)
Her Hero (Boston Doms Book 6)
My Redemption (Boston Doms Book 7)
Begin Again (Bound to You Book 1)
Come Back to Me (Bound to You Book 2)
Complete Me (Bound To You Book 3)
Bound to You (Boxed Set)
Black Light: Roulette Redux
Sunstrokes: Four Hot Tales of Punishment and Pleasure (Anthology)
Westerns
Her Outlaw Daddy
Claimed on the Frontier
Surrendered on the Frontier
Cowboy Daddies: Two Western Romances
Science Fiction
Aldric: A Sci-Fi Warrior Romance (Heroes of Avalere Book 1)
Idan: A Sci-Fi Warrior Romance (Heroes of Avalere Book 2)