by Chloe Cox
“You’re on after me, honey,” Kris said as she shut her locker. “Try not to make me look too bad, ok?”
Bette laughed as Kris went out on stage to her favorite song, literally Welcome To The Jungle. But then she was alone in a locker room full of women she didn’t know, women who probably knew her ex as the creepy guy who…
Bette didn’t want to think about it.
Instead she got out her phone and snapped a quick, patented Silly Selfie to send to Lizzie. It was one of their things—who could make the ugliest, funniest face. It was enough to remind her what she was doing all of this for. And it wouldn’t be forever. Eventually she would get her degree, and she could go into practice, and Lizzie would have the sort of nice, normal life she deserved.
But as Welcome To The Jungle hit its final few bars and Bette slipped on her heels, it wasn’t really the mindset she needed.
No. In the few seconds she stood behind the curtain, there was one thing that came to mind.
One Dom.
Spencer freaking Cole.
She couldn’t see the faces of the men out there, not with the way the stage lights were angled. That helped. Because as Bette stepped out onto the stage, she could only see one man.
She could only see the look on Cole’s face, just before he’d entered her.
And thank freaking God for that, because she might have been afraid, otherwise. There was something about discovering all these things in such a short period of time—that she really was a submissive, that her ex-husband really was as scary as she thought he was, that the world was not kind to women like her, so long as men like Bob Faulkner had anything to say about it—that had left her feeling raw, maybe even fragile. Like she’d taken in so much new information, and it was overwhelming.
But Cole.
Cole made her feel…
He made her feel safe. Safe, and wanted. More than any other woman on the planet. Like nothing could harm her, nothing bad could happen, in that bubble that Spencer Cole created for her. In that place where she was his.
So Bette Liffey got up on that stage, and she danced her heart out. She made it through the whole shift on the high from remembering what Cole had felt like, inside her. On top of her. Every dance. Every song.
They were all for him.
And then, when she was done, she came back to a text from Cole waiting for her.
Just an address. And a time.
And Bette smiled bigger than she had all night.
Cole ignored the greasy fried chicken in front of him and watched the woman across the table nervously pick at a plate of French fries. She sat with her elbows on the table, shoulders hunched over like she was just waiting for somebody to come along and take a swing at her even though this time of day, the only people in the diner were Cole and the staff.
“I can’t believe I let Kris give you my number.” She shook her head once and threw a nervous look over her shoulder before focusing tired eyes on Cole. “Yeah, I worked at one of Mark’s clubs for a while. I’m not going to tell you which one.”
“I didn’t ask.” Cole pushed the ketchup toward her. “Why did you quit? There’s better money in dancing than waiting tables.”
The stripper-turned-waitress wore a black t-shirt with the name “Mary” embroidered above one breast. Mary wasn’t the name Kris had given when she texted Cole the info he’d asked for, but he’d known Mary was the one by the way she’d taken one look at him, closed her eyes, and let out a long, defeated breath upon seeing him come through the diner’s door. A woman who had good reason to duck law enforcement could spot one coming.
Mary squeezed out a puddle of ketchup and dipped a crinkle cut fry but didn’t put it in her mouth. Instead, she said, “I got clean once already. I don’t need to be around that stuff. Plus the crowd took kind of a turn.”
“Drugs?” He’d already figured that.
“And women.” She sighed, scrubbed her face again, cast another anxious look around. “Some of the new girls are, like, really young. I didn’t want anything to do with any of it.”
Figured that, too. But it was Mary’s body language that really had him amped up, because everything about her posture, her actions, gave credence to his other suspicions.
Mary was shrinking in front of his eyes. Rounding her shoulders closer, no longer even putting on the pretense of eating. She fidgeted with the corner of a napkin, picked up a fork and put it down again, started casting surreptitious looks at the big digital clock mounted over the register.
“Listen,” she started.
Cole cut her off. “Drugs and young women. Know where the women were coming from?”
But she was already shaking her head. “I was not dumb enough to ask that, believe me. Look, I have ten hours left in a twelve-hour shift and the dinner rush is coming soon.”
“Twelve hours is a long shift.” Could explain the exhaustion darkening her eyes, but he doubted it. That kind of weariness came from experience, not lack of sleep.
Mary shrugged. “There are worse things,” she said.
He bet she knew all about them, too.
“Bring me the check,” Cole said. “I’m leaving my number on it. And you will call me, Mary, if anyone gives you any trouble. I am not going to let anything happen to you. Understood?”
For a second, something like a smile flashed across Mary’s face. Then the door behind him rang open, and she was up and working.
When she brought the check, Cole didn’t even look at the total. He scratched his cell number there and left cash, enough for the untouched meals, and tip big enough to make up for twelve hours being on your feet.
He was going to take down Mark Duvall if it was the last goddamn thing he did.
As Cole drove away from the diner, he let the long empty road across the lake fall endless behind him, and he fucking brooded. He had a hunch. He didn’t like it. But he had it.
There had been rumors about social workers on the take, but they hadn’t been anything specific, just part of the general sense that everything was up for sale. And it wouldn’t be the first time people in the system had abused their power. And Mark Duvall was getting vulnerable women from somewhere. Probably many places. And he’d be careful, he’d keep plausible deniability. But it didn’t change what the man was doing.
Cole kept thinking about the way Mary’s muscles had jumped under her skin. She was wound tight, expecting the worst.
A little like Bette.
Only Bette…Bette was different. Bette looked back when he looked at her.
He knew it would be different after they’d had sex, but he didn’t know how different. The second he’d seen that need in her eyes, the second she’d begged to feel what he could make her feel, something had switched over. It had been beyond D/s. Beyond the cool, controlled place where his usual Dom instincts came from.
It was just animal.
He’d needed to be inside her. To take her. To feel her come around him, to see the look in her eyes and know he put it there. It was the fact that she needed it too that brought him over the edge. She’d brought him to a wild place inside himself, and now the beast was out, and Cole wasn’t putting him back in.
He wasn’t worried, but he was cautious. Bette still kept herself hidden. Still lied, by omission—he could see it in her eyes, her body language. There was something she was keeping from him, and the fact that she was keeping it hidden made her ashamed. So was this thing even real? Could he really fall for a woman he knew nothing about?
For a woman who lied?
The drive didn’t actually help. But he knew what would, and she was waiting when he pulled into his driveway, her loose, knee length skirt ruffling with the slow, easy sway of the porch swing.
His sub was early.
Bette looked over when he closed the car door, meeting his eyes across the roof, and the fog around his investigation dissipated. Here was a woman he could do something about, one who needed what he had to give.
While they stared at ea
ch other, the humid air sizzling between them, Bette dragged her foot on the porch to stop the swing and stood. For a moment, her skirt clung to her thighs and the triangle between.
Every muscle in his body woke up. The beast might not be going anywhere, but neither was the Dom.
“You’re early,” he said, climbing the steps to his own porch.
Bette smiled.
“I guess I was eager,” she said.
Cole inhaled deeply, the sight of her drawing him forward. He’d planned to ease her in to the evening. Make some food, watch a better movie. Get her talking before he fucked the ever-living daylights out of her. But plans changed.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said.
Wordlessly he grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards him. He pulled her forward, bending her over, and placed her forearms on the railing. She looked at him over her shoulder, and the temptation to take her then and there, in full view of the neighborhood, was almost too damn much.
Instead he grabbed her from behind, his palm resting on her swollen lips, pressed together while her thighs were nearly closed. He lingered there a moment, watching her eyes get heavy. Then he pushed aside whatever underwear she was wearing with his thumb, and dipped it inside her. She was dripping wet.
“Good girl,” he said, and let her go. “Don’t pout, or I won’t let you come all night.”
“Yes, Sir,” she said. This time with a smile.
“Get your bag.”
“Where we going?”
“I’m going to feed you before I fuck you,” Cole said. “We’re getting take out.”
Bette bit her lip, grinning. “Take out? I’m wearing something not so comfortable under here, you know.”
“Good. Think about how I’m going to take it off after the movie.”
She groaned. “Another movie?”
“Horror this time,” Cole said.
“Oh good, so something light,” she said. And slipped her arm in his.
It was so damn easy, between them. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he drove by memory to his favorite gumbo shack, and there was no denying it. He wanted her. Not just her body. He wanted all of her. He wanted to see who she really was.
That wasn’t something you could just command a sub to do in a scene. The very nature of giving a command changed a response, charged everything with that D/s energy. It revealed its own truths, but it was never the whole truth of a person. As his ex-wife had proven.
But he knew, for a certainty, that he was going to know her, one way or the other.
21
Bette was the kind of woman who thought out loud, questions and confusion and shared laughter drifting through the air like the caterpillar’s smoke rings. They were all over the car. It all felt so easy. Which was why Cole let his guard down long enough to be surprised.
A street festival forced them to detour through a rougher section of town. But the back of Cole’s neck prickled when he spotted an unmarked police car pulled up on the sidewalk, blocking the mouth of an alley.
He recognized the plates. And the car. And the maneuver of blocking a path of escape.
“What?” Bette abruptly straightened. She picked up on everything.
His foot was already on the brake. As he jolted to a stop, he snapped his arm across her chest to protect her from the jolt against her seatbelt. An instant later, he threw his car door open. Bette started to reach for her own door. He speared her with a single look. “Do not leave the car.”
She lowered her hand back to her lap immediately. Gun and badge in hand, Cole got out and strode around the unmarked car, eating up the ground between the two big cops and the pair of kids they’d cornered in the alley.
One of the cops drew his hand back. He said something to the kid, too low for Cole to hear past the fury roaring in his ears, and then he hit the kid hard with the back of his hand.
“FBI,” Cole barked. “Stand down!”
For a split second, the tableau froze. Then the cop with the backhand turned his head and Cole’s suspicions were confirmed.
Mascolo. And Turnbull.
Duvall’s guys.
Cole couldn’t get them or their boss on any of the big charges—yet. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to let them get away with this sadistic shit, either. Even if it did escalate the situation.
He gave the order.
“Nobody move a goddamned muscle,” he said. “Or you’ll all get taken in.”
Bette didn’t move—not at first. She didn’t have to because she could see everything from where she sat, and what she saw set her pulse off like a rocket.
Two plain-clothes cops, like detectives on a cop show—except they were bullying the crap out of two kids. Two boys. They were so young, and the expressions on their faces…
Both of them scared, both of them trying to look brave. But they were children. And those were grown men. Beating on them.
And then she looked at the cops, and something inside her went ice cold. She knew them. From somewhere. She knew them.
Didn’t she?
Fingers shaking, she fumbled free of her seatbelt and ducked down onto the floorboard. Whether Bette was just freaking out at the sight of so much ugliness or whether she actually did know them and just couldn’t freaking remember, she didn’t care. She just knew, in her bones, that she didn’t want them to see her.
So she hid. While Cole…
Cole went right out there and took control.
It was almost worse, being able to hear and not see. She tried to take comfort in his voice as she listened to the sounds of Cole’s shouted commands, loud and clear through the sliver space left by the window she’d opened when Cole had let fly for her on Lake Pontchartrain Drive. She’d always loved the wind in her hair. Cole had laughed while she’d made it into a big thing, swinging her hair around like she was in a shampoo commercial. Now, instead of the wind, she got…well, fear, basically. Fear, and angry male voices.
“Fuck off. This isn’t your jurisdiction,” one of the not-Cole cops said.
“You do not want to get into a jurisdiction measuring contest with me,” Cole said. “It’ll hurt.”
The cop with the mouth on him spat a curse, then said, “Wave your federal dick around while you can, Cole. Won’t last much longer, all that freaky shit we’ve heard about you.”
Freaky shit?
“Faulkner, you slime,” Bette breathed. She twisted to peek at the side mirror just in time to see the two cops back off. They stalked back to their unmarked car, and Bette had just enough time to duck back down as they peeled out, as if gunning the engine was somehow the last word in an argument.
She waited what felt like forever, but was in fact just a count of five-Mississippi, and sat back up like a normal person. She forced herself to breathe.
And then she looked for Cole.
And what she saw…well, hell. You could hardly blame her for what she did next.
There were two tween boys, right in the middle of that age where they’re trying to prove their manhood to everyone they met, with their backs up and their shoulders squared and faces angry, all of it trying to hide the fact that they’d just been scared out of their minds. And Cole, with his towering presence and his natural air of authority, asking questions.
It was not going well.
Which, none of this was her job. And she wouldn’t in a million years think to interfere with Cole. It was just…she kept looking at those boys. Their faces.
So she got out of the car.
“Nothing’s on the record,” Cole said. “Nothing goes anywhere. It all stays up here.” He pointed at his head.
It didn’t matter.
“I’m not telling you shit,” the larger boy spat out.
Inwardly, Cole seethed. These kids were pissed off, rightly so, but he was trying to help them. Too bad they didn’t believe him.
“Those cops hassling you,” Cole said. “They are bad guys. I won’t promise they’ll go down today, but I do pr
omise you I’m going to take them down.”
The smaller one—Christ, he was wearing a Spider-man shirt—looked to his bigger friend, maybe a cousin or a brother, his eyes wide and looking for permission, maybe. He wanted to talk. Wanted to take comfort in the protection Cole was offering. The bigger kid said something under his breath, and the moment faded.
“Just tell me what they did,” Cole said.
Wrong thing to say. The kid tensed up like he was ready to take a punch.
“Fuck you,” he said. His voice shook as he said it.
And then, suddenly, both of them looked over his shoulder.
Cole knew what he would find as he turned his head. He didn’t know why she’d done it, but somehow, he knew.
Bette.
She’d gotten out of the car. And it looked like she was trying to do a bit more than that.
Cole didn’t react. He waited. He still stood between Bette and the boys, and between the boys and the exit to the dead end alley. But where the boys had been wound as tight as those sharp metal springs that could take an eye out from a yard’s distance, now?
Well, they weren’t relaxed yet. But their eyes were fixed on Bette, that was for sure. Cole couldn’t tell if they were in love or if they wanted a mother to take care of them, and he was pretty sure they didn’t know, either. But whatever it was, he wanted to see it play out.
Bette looked them head on, in the eyes. Like they were worth talking to.
“You boys ok?” she asked, gentle as could be. And she reached out.
The young one looked like he wanted to cry again. The older one did, too, for about a split second. Then his eyes flashed back up at Cole, and his face hardened.
“Bitch, don’t touch me,” he said.
To her credit, Bette barely flinched.
“Apologize,” Cole said.
It was the tone that did it. The kid didn’t mouth off, but you could tell he was fighting it.
“One more chance,” Cole said. “You will apologize to Ms. Liffey, because she deserves your respect. And then here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to go make a phone call to make sure the guys who hassled you don’t come back. You’re going to talk to Ms. Liffey, as much as you feel like. And then we’re going to get some burgers, because I’m hungry, and looks like you are too. Is that understood?”