by Chloe Cox
To Spencer Cole.
What the hell was she thinking? With who she really was? With what was at stake? All of it, all of it coming crashing in. And now he knew her name.
“I can’t,” she said, and she moved to pull away from him. His iron arms didn’t move, didn’t let her escape. Her heart pounded, and she could feel him looking at her, could feel him reaching for her, wanting to look into her eyes all over again. Jesus fuck, what had he done to her?
“Bette,” he started.
“No,” she said, and she pushed away, nearly falling out of his lap. She couldn’t look at him, not one more time. For a moment she was just standing there with her breasts out and skirt shoved up around her waist, her thong on the floor. Utterly mortified and afraid of what she’d done. How could she have lost herself for God knew how long, when Lizzie was out there somewhere, alone while she waited for Bette to find a way out of this whole fucked-up mess?
“Bette,” he said again, and this time it sounded like the beginning of a command. And she knew if he gave her an order, her goddamn body might follow it.
She turned back to look at him, one more time. God, he was sexy, reclined in that chair, chest bare, muscles rippling with every breath. With that concerned expression on his face. He was everything she’d ever fantasized about.
And he was also her enemy.
“Red,” she whispered.
And she turned tail and got the hell out of there.
8
Another red light. Mark Duvall’s car pulled farther ahead as Cole hit the brakes. Duvall had the devil’s luck, always one split second of a yellow faster than Cole. And every time Cole had to stop, like when he got stuck at an intersection, memories of Bette pushed against the edges of his mind. The woman was haunting him.
She was a true sub, not just a bottom who got off on spanking. He’d had to test it. Had to know if the liar who tempted him so much was really what he thought. And so did she.
Well, now Bette—he liked that, that she called herself that—now she knew for damn sure what she was. A sub, through and through. A bottom would have been furious at being denied an orgasm. But Bette? She’d taken it with all the subdued frustration of a true sub, one who accepted what her Dom had to give on a level that ran deeper than simply an obedient nature. She’d submitted to it like she needed the boundary he’d established. Discipline had freed her to relax and trust, surrender to the will of someone who would take care of her.
Right up until she’d accidentally told the truth about something, freaked out, and fled.
Letting her go in that state hadn’t been easy. Never in his life had he released a vulnerable woman to cope with something beyond her. He’d wanted to hold her, and fuck her, and show her what she could be.
But it was worse than that. So much worse. However much he wanted her, whatever he thought he saw in her, Bette was a liar. Whenever he couldn’t get her out of his mind, he remembered that simple fact: liar, hiding things. And he remembered his ex-wife, and what had happened the last time he let a sub slide on hiding things from him.
Cursing, he wiped his hand down his face. The light turned green and he floored it, forcing Bette out of his mind. A distracted cop was a dumb cop. And a dumb cop going up against Mark Duvall would be a dead cop soon enough.
The locals wouldn’t touch it, and the higher ups at the FBI wouldn’t sanction an official investigation. Hell, Cole hadn’t even gotten a new partner yet, after everything that had gone down in Chicago. He was in unofficial no-man’s land, and every time he made an official request, the response was the same: there was “no evidence” to justify further use of resources.
Of course there wasn’t any evidence. Duvall had at least two NOLA cops on his payroll that Cole was aware of, even without the resources for an official investigation. Mascolo and Turnbull didn’t bother to hide the fact that Duvall was their guy. Officially, they moonlighted as security for the shady king of NOLA’s adult entertainment sector. But where Duvall was concerned, records, paperwork, witnesses – they all had a habit of disappearing.
Cole had seen enough during his years in Chicago to know when someone was protected. That might have stopped someone else. But Cole didn’t scare easily. And he really, really didn’t like men like Duvall, who built their empires exploiting the vulnerable.
Now he tailed Duvall into a modest neighborhood outside town, swearing beneath his breath as traffic thinned, forcing him to slow and hang back. When Duvall’s car drew up in front of a nice white-and-blue house with a child’s bike on the front lawn, Cole turned down a different street and circled around to park in front of another low slung house. From there he had a view of Duvall’s destination, but Duvall wouldn’t have a direct line of sight to him.
Duvall got out of his Benz and walked up to the front door, where he knocked like a normal, polite visitor. Cole was trying to figure out what business a criminal had with the owners of a home like this when an older man opened the door and walked out onto the wrap-around porch. A woman of similar age followed, pulling the door partially closed behind her.
Frowns all around.
They exchanged a few words, tension apparent in the older couple even from where Cole had parked. Doms were good at body language. These two were not happy to see Duvall. Cole liked them already.
He watched intently, his breathing even, his mind sliding into that special place. Cole had often noticed how his Dom skills transferred to the rest of life. Turned out patience and control were pretty good assets on a stake out. Because most of it was boring as hell.
And that’s when something happened that made him sit straight up.
A little girl, maybe seven years old, emerged from the house. Her dark-blonde hair hung over one shoulder in a braid. She wore knee-length shorts and an oversized tee, but those details weren’t what struck him.
No, what grabbed him by the gut was her expression when she laid eyes on Duvall. Anyone who made a little girl look at him like that was not a good man.
Cole almost got out of the car. His hand was on the latch before he caught himself. While he watched, senses in overdrive, Duvall crouched down in front of the little girl. He said something to her that made the girl visibly draw in and then he opened his arms. She looked up to the older couple.
The woman pursed her lips. The man said something.
A moment passed as the little girl hugged herself and then she took a reluctant step forward. Duvall smiled, like he couldn’t see that the kid didn’t like him, or didn’t care, took a step forward…
And the kid balked.
The little girl took one step back, then another, her tiny lips pressed together and her chin dimpled as she shook her little head, just a little bit. The woman went into action, took the girl under her arm, turned her back toward the house. The man stepped between them and Duvall, shaking his head as Duvall’s expression grew dark.
Cole almost cheered. Almost.
Because he could read this situation even if he didn’t have all those Dom skills. Any law enforcement officer, current or former, could tell you what this was: a custody visit gone wrong. Maybe an unauthorized custody visit. Maybe something more complicated. But it still implied the same thing.
Mark Duvall, king of the scumbags, had a family.
Cole kept his cool, and kept watching to make sure that family made it back inside safely. The older man stood his ground, shaking his head and pointing back at Duvall’s fancy car as the woman guided the little girl back inside the blue and white house. Duvall looked pissed, but he didn’t get to where he was by losing his cool. There was a beat, and Duvall turned away, back to his car.
Cole looked for the little girl, but there was no sign of her. She was safe inside. For now.
Cole exhaled, but it did nothing to relax him. No matter what he did, there was a little girl tied up in Mark Duvall’s world. That alone would have bothered him, but he wasn’t naïve. He knew some bad men still loved their families; life was complicated, people were complicated, and
life was a rich tapestry. But this wasn’t one of those gray areas. The expression on that little girl’s face had told him that. And so had Duvall’s reaction.
That little girl knew danger when she saw it. And no little girl should have to deal with that. Not ever.
And Cole wasn’t proud of it, but it burned him up that a predator like Mark Duvall had a family. Because Cole had always wanted a family of his own. A wife, a couple of kids. But after what happened with his ex, he was careful. That wasn’t the kind of thing you rushed, or forced. Not if you wanted to do it right. He’d accepted it.
But sometimes there was no justice in the world. Certainly not for that little girl. Well, that was why Cole did what he did. And now there was a kid involved, a kid who was scared of Duvall. So it was time to turn up the heat, and take King Scumbag down.
Cole’s eyes burned as he watched Duvall pause, for just a second, in front of his Benz. And then he watched as Duvall took off his sunglasses, looked up and down the street, and then right across the street to where Cole was parked.
The bastard looked right at him, and smiled. He waved. And then pointed at something behind Cole.
Neck prickling, Cole glanced at his rear view and cursed at the sight of the car idling behind his at the end of the block, two men in the front.
Mascolo and Turnbull.
Cole had been distracted by the little girl. It was some kind of primal protective instinct, made him see red, put the blinders on. And it had gotten him made.
Duvall knew Cole was onto him. Had known. Wanted Cole to know that he knew.
Well, that was inevitable, and Cole had been waiting for it. Duvall had spread his money around so much he was guaranteed to get a tip off eventually. Cole watched as his target got into his car and pulled away, as the dirty cops behind him pulled out to join Duvall. Cole didn’t rise to the bait; it would take more than that to rattle a Dom. Besides, he had more important things to think about.
Like that little girl.
It meant he had a problem. Not just because now there was a little girl to protect. No, there was a bigger problem than that.
Because that little girl had a mother, somewhere. Maybe not in that house. But somewhere, there was a woman whose daughter was at risk. A woman who had had a family with Mark Duvall.
And Cole had missed it. It wasn’t in any of the public records. None of the witnesses he’d talked to had known about her—or they’d been too scared to mention it. It wasn’t anywhere. It was like this little girl was a ghost, and her mother never existed. Everything connected to Duvall had been scrubbed clean.
If he’d missed that, what else had he missed?
9
Bette kept her hand inside her oversized bag, clutching a pink can of pepper spray as she made her way through the warren of twisting hallways and storage rooms that made up the basement of the world’s weirdest, most out of the way government building. The pile of concrete, located in the middle of nowhere, looked like the sort of place where you might store things you didn’t actually want anyone to know about. Which might actually be what they used it for—this was where Bob Faulkner had his office.
In the freaking basement.
And she knew the pepper spray was stupid, especially indoors. What, she was going to spray down the social worker in charge of making a recommendation to the judge about Lizzie’s custody?
Of course not. But it still made her feel a little bit better to hold on to it for dear life. Because she was about to go to her appointment with Bob Faulkner, and she was going to have to disappoint him.
And it wasn’t even all Bob Faulkner’s fault. Nope, Bette had been an absolute mess ever since…
Ever since Cole.
God, just the thought of his name, and she could feel his breath on her neck again. His hands on her body. In her body. And she had to stop, lean against the rough concrete wall, and collect herself.
She’d been perpetually turned on and perpetually freaked out ever since she safe worded out of her encounter with Cole. More accurately: ever since she’d told him her name. Because she really hadn’t meant to do that. She’d wanted to tell him everything – from what her favorite game was as a child to how she’d screwed up her life to what was happening with Lizzie and the custody battle – but she hadn’t meant to tell him anything. But then he’d done something to her and she’d been in this weird soft, safe place, and…she just had. And while Bette was used to not being able to trust anyone else, not being able to trust herself was a whole different ballgame.
Well, that wasn’t entirely fair. Bette Liffey already knew she couldn’t always trust herself. The honor of that revelation had gone to her ex-husband, Mark Duvall.
She turned the last corner and scrunched up her nose at the thought. Bette didn’t want her ex-husband to take up any more space in her brain, ever again. He’d already done enough. Instead, now it was Cole that she couldn’t get out of her mind. Spencer Cole. The man—the Dom—who was supposed to be a monster. A dirty cop, a bad Dom. But he’d been the opposite of that. He’d been…
He’d been everything Bette always wanted in a man.
But so was Mark, at first, she reminded herself as she paused at the head of the hallway. At the other end of it was the door to Bob Faulkner’s stuffy, messy, almost certainly moldy office. Faulkner and Mark couldn’t look more different—Faulkner was a leering sort of slob, while Mark was a well-dressed, cold-hearted snake—but for some reason Bette thought they would get along. They both had huge opinions of themselves, and tiny, tiny consciences.
Mark in particular had known how to play at being the perfect man. He’d swept into Bette’s life as the new owner of one of the clubs she’d worked at, and he’d talked about making reforms, keeping the club safe, treating everyone well. And he’d liked Bette.
He’d been nice to her. So nice that she’d ignored every red flag. What was it they said? When you wore rose colored glasses, all the red flags just looked like flags.
And he’d promised to be a father figure to Lizzie. That was what had gotten Bette, in the end. Lizzie had already been abandoned like a million times – by her own mother, who Bette’s father had cheated with, and then by their father, who dropped Lizzie off with Bette after three years of no contact with the announcement that “your mother won’t have her in the house.” At three years old, Lizzie’d had no one left but Bette. And Bette had been terrified. She’d had no idea how to be a parent. Instant family had seemed like a good idea at the time.
And in the end it had all turned out to be a front. Mark had just wanted a couple of accessories to the mask he already wore. The mask that kept everyone from knowing he was a monster.
But you always knew there was something off with Mark…
Bette paused. She was a mess, and she needed to get her head right before she went in there.
“Divine intervention would be awesome right about now,” she muttered. She was practically in front of Bob Faulkner’s door.
She needed a new plan. Because the old plan, as Bette now cringed to think about, had been for her to infiltrate Club Volare, get some sort of evidence of Spencer Cole’s misdeeds, and then give it to Bob Faulkner so he could…do something with it. And then, and only then, Faulkner would help her get Lizzie back from foster care.
Except now she’d been there. The club wasn’t some den of inequity. And Cole…
Well, Cole had been Cole. The Dom who’d protected her, even against herself. Who’d shown more care and concern for her than any other man in her life. Who’d shown her a part of herself she’d never had the courage to face before.
She just couldn’t betray that. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that Cole was exactly who she thought he was: honorable, strong, protective. A good man under a rough exterior.
And that meant the original plan was as screwed up as the dirty, twisty halls of the system that housed a man like Bob Faulkner to begin with.
She had no freaking idea what she was going to do.
/> “You’re just stalling now, Bette,” she whispered.
She took a deep breath, put her hand on the sticky doorknob, and opened the door.
“I wondered how long you were going to stand out there like an idiot,” Faulkner said without looking up. Sweaty, sloppy, and perpetually angry, he stared at her from under his comb over. He was licking his fingers clean of Cheeto dust behind that huge desk, covered in piles of paper work and used napkins. “And you’re late, Barbie.”
She grimaced at the nickname. She hated it. “The elevator was slow?”
Moving with surprising quickness for a man of his size, Faulkner jumped out of his chair and crossed the small office before Bette could react. She’d left the door open behind her, on purpose, but Faulkner reached around her—over her, his breath on her neck—to close it.
Then he smiled as he put his hand on her shoulder, low enough that his thumb grazed the top of her breast as he pulled her toward the guest chair across from his desk.
None of it was an accident.
Remember Lizzie. Bette forced herself to smile as she sat across from his desk, all bright eyed and bushytailed and hoping to be helpful.
She hated him.
He shuffled paperwork, made her wait, just because he could. Everything was a power play. Except where a man like Cole used the power he had over people to make something beautiful, a person like Faulkner seemed to get off on making people uncomfortable. Like he only felt powerful when he was making someone else miserable.
Finally he looked up.
“Well.” Faulkner folded his hands on his desk. “You don’t look the worse for wear after your little field trip,” he said.
Almost like he was disappointed. She didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t.
“Did you find Cole?” he said, irritated.
“Yes. I met him.”
“And? Did you get me anything good?”
Bette looked down at her feet, encased in sensible flats because she didn’t want to give Faulkner any ideas. She just couldn’t look at Faulkner while she thought about Cole.