Victim of Revenge (Deep Desires)

by Liza Mitchell

  Again, an order. He was not in a position to be giving orders.

  The doors opened and Carey pushed by him. It didn’t matter what floor she was on; she couldn’t be in that six-by-six box with him anymore. She might forgive him.

  She stepped out into the hallway and turned around, getting her bearings. You’ve got to be fucking kidding.

  “Perfect choice,” Dawson whispered in her ear as he wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and led her toward his office.

  “Know this: the only reason I’m coming peacefully is because I’ve faced enough embarrassment for one day,” she snapped.

  They walked down the hall together, and Dawson nodded to people as they passed, smiling amiably. They turned a corner into the waiting area outside of his office, and she tore her arm from his grip.

  “DA Carter!”

  Carey jumped at the sudden interruption.

  “Sweet, Carey, you’re here too. His secretary said that he was in court with you, but I didn’t realize you were together, you know? I thought you’d gotten out of this side of the business.”

  She turned around and smiled, actually grateful for the rescue. “Hey, Sloane, how’ve you been? Come join us. We’re catching up.”

  “Sloane, I’ll have to talk to you later. I’ll take the case file, but I don’t have time to talk.” He glared at Carey, barely acknowledging the other woman in the room.

  “Nope. We need to talk. All of us. Now.” Sloane pushed past Dawson and let herself into his office. Carey didn’t even try to hide her grin. He was fuming, his mouth set in a thin firm line, his hands in fists at his side. Fuck, it felt good to see him wound this tight.

  She met his eyes before following Sloane, and her heart stopped. Skipped a beat? He looked like he wanted to destroy her, devour her. Her chest tightened, and she was pretty sure she’d forgotten to breathe as her grin slid into a sly smile. This whole situation was killing him. If—or when—he ever got permission to come back to her, he would make her pay. Warmth spread throughout her chest as she turned and joined Sloane in his office.

  “What the hell is going on?” Dawson barked.

  “Do you want the long story or the short story?” Sloane asked, completely unfazed. That bitch was tough as nails. She had to be in her line of work. She worked in IT hunting down vile humans on the internet—which meant she spent her day watching nightmares come to life online.

  “Short story. I have business with Carey.”

  “This involves Carey too. Someone is fucking with us. And by us, maybe I just mean law enforcement.” She dropped her file down on the desk and opened it up, fanning out the photographs inside. “Taylor, Detective—”

  “I know Craig,” Dawson said gruffly as he pawed through the pictures.

  Sloane just rolled her eyes and carried on. “She was on vacation. She got this strange poem and a bowl full of severed humbs with an USB drive.”

  “What?” Dawson finally focused on Sloane.

  “Yeah. She brought the drive and thumbs back here over the weekend. Marc has been working on the thumbs and the poem while I analyzed the disk. These photos,” she said, pointing to the folder, “were on the drive. There are a dozen crime scene photos, and then photos of us. You, me, Carey, DeWitt, and Taylor.”

  Carey moved closer to the desk, but Dawson dominated the situation, shuffling through the pictures until he came to the ones of their colleagues.

  “Where did they come from? Who sent them?” Dawson asked.

  “There’s more,” Sloane continued.

  “Fuck, Sloane, this is not something you turn into a short fucking story. Just tell us everything!”

  Carey moved past them and fingered the papers on the desk. Dawson’s reaction surprised her. She could hear some genuine panic in his voice. Maybe it was because she was already beyond emotionally drained from the day, or maybe she was just so used to hearing crazy things criminals did—either way, she wasn’t quite as concerned as he was. Someone was taunting the police, sending them old crime scene pictures. Big deal.

  “I received a case from a CI this past week. Someone is selling access to a snuff film livestream. I gained access and have been watching the feed of the victims in line to be killed. There’s eight of them.”

  “What the fuck does this have to do with us?” Dawson snapped.

  “I’m getting there,” Sloane growled, finally losing her cool facade. He fucking deserved worse. He was probably being an asshole just to get rid of Sloane and get a moment alone with Carey. “Marc has been working with me, and he noticed all of my victims’ thumbs were missing. We think that we may have been able to match up a few of severed thumbs from Taylor’s crime scene with my victims. Obviously loosely, just based on age and race. But that can’t be a fucking coincidence.”

  Carey finally came across a picture of her. It was one of the crime scene photos. She was in the background, bent over, placing a marker by a piece of evidence. The scene was in the woods. A clearing in the woods. It looked familiar, but obviously it would be; she’d worked that scene. Unfortunately, she could think of more than a dozen bodies that had been found in the woods while she worked for Lakeside.

  “So Taylor is on vacation, she finds a poem and a bowl of thumbs,” Dawson said, his voice slightly calmer. “Meanwhile, you’re here, working on a case that your CI brought you with people missing thumbs.

  “A confidential informant. Not my confidential informant,” Sloane corrected.

  He nodded. “And there’s also this external drive. With crime scene photos and pictures of me and Carey?”

  “Not just the two of you. Half a dozen people, all spread out through different departments. Taylor, me, the two of you, and Detective DeWitt. I’ve tried to find him to give him the information, but I haven’t been able to track down where he’s working.”

  “He’s a U.S. Marshal now. That might be hard. Okay, and tell me more about the people in your case about the murder livestream. Let’s not dull it down with ‘snuff.’ If they’re dying, it’s murder.”

  Carey was listening intently, taking it all in, but still looking through the pictures Sloane had brought. There weren’t just photos of the people she’d mentioned. There were dozens of photos, of each of them. She hadn’t gotten to the ones of her, but she’d already skimmed through pictures of Taylor and Sloane. Whoever had taken them had been stalking all of them for years. There were pictures of Taylor as a beat cop, and she was a detective even before Carey had left the county. What could possibly be that important to whoever had done this that he’d spent years obsessing about it?

  Sloane took a deep breath to answer Dawson’s question. “They’re in an abandoned building. The rooms are all identical; bare floors, no windows, no furniture, one entrance. I haven’t seen the captor’s face. He must feed them when they’re not on screen—the feed rotates between the rooms and only shows one person at a time.

  Marc noticed the injuries to their hands, otherwise they appear unharmed. Only one person shows signs of infection, so he wants to keep them alive, at least to kill them. I think he must have cauterized the wounds and have some medical training because one out of eight is really good for an amateur, and Marc said the thumbs were cut neatly and at the joint.”

  “Or a butcher, experience with animals and butchering,” Dawson added.

  “Yup,” Sloane continued. “So I had a call out to local law enforcement with information on my victims to see if they matched with any missing persons reports and haven’t heard any word back yet. But, like I said, Marc ran the thumbprints through the FBI’s NGI database, and we may have some hits. And they are all over the place. Age, sex, race, nothing in common.”

  “They have to have something in common,” Carey said, turning around. “Even if that something was that they had a regular schedule and were convenient. There’s something that ties them together.”

  “We haven’t found it yet,” Sloane said, shaking her head.

  “Is there a promised date and time
for these murders on your livestream?” Dawson asked.

  “No, and he promised a dozen deaths, and he hasn’t added anyone new in the days that I’ve been watching, so hopefully we still have some time.”

  “What ties us together?” Carey asked.

  They both stared at her without answering.

  “It’s not a rhetorical question. Think about it. We all know that a perpetrator doesn’t pick his victim at random. He might say it’s completely random, but even if all he wants is a woman he’s attracted, to there’s no randomness to choosing the grocery store on a less-traveled side street, with poor street lights, and finding that one brunette who looks for her keys too long.

  “So what ties us together? Those pictures are years’ worth of documentation. He’s been planning for years, and we have days, maybe weeks, to find him before he kills those people. Why us? Why them?”

  Dawson looked at her, mouth agape. “You know how many times I heard you say, ‘the science speaks for itself’ or ‘my degree is in forensics, not psychology?’ Canter has taught you a lot since you left.”

  “He sure has,” she said with a wink.

  His jaw tensed, and the muscle just below his ear flexed rhythmically. She smiled and returned to the photos on the desk. If he insisted on keeping her here, she would definitely make him work for it.

  “Sloane,” Dawson said through gritted teeth. “We’ll keep these photos. Try to figure out the crime scene. Can you email me what Marc found on the prints that may belong to your victims? Maybe Carey and I can figure out what ties all of us together.”

  “Keep the file. I’ll be in touch,” she said as she left his office.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ____________

  CAREY

  Dawson closed the door behind her and turned around to face Carey. “Close that. We have something to settle.”

  Carey leaned against his desk. “I don’t know what you think we have to settle. You emailed me from your work computer, and I was the one forced to resign, because your head is filled with fantasies of me begging for your cock.”

  “You did beg for it, Carey,” he said closing the distance between them.

  “You’re delusional. That never happened.”

  “When we kissed, your body begged for more.”

  “Please. We shared a kiss and dry humped like virgins. There was no begging on my part.”

  He stepped closer. “If you’d ever given me a chance, if you’d ever returned my calls, I’d have given you everything. You wouldn’t need to beg.”

  He stood inches from her, his gaze pinning her in place. She continued to glare at him, though she felt her resolve waning. The close proximity. The smell of his cologne. The memory of the damned email. Heat rose to her cheeks and pooled in her core. She rocked against the desk, trying to distract herself. “This is not on me. You fucked up, and I lost my job.”

  “You seem to be very successful in the private sector. I know Canter turns away more cases than he takes. It’s been years. Forgive me, and I’ll give you that cock you begged for, right here, right now.” His voice was low, and his hand traveled to her hip.

  “You are so damn full of yourself.” She squared her shoulders and stared him down. Despite her posture and glare, she knew her cheeks and chest were flushed. Dawson smirked at her. Apparently he remembered her tell as well. Her fucking traitorous body.

  There was a fire stirring in her core. And his arrogance only kindled it. Years ago, this back and forth was what had led to their make-out session. They both fed off the battle. She didn’t think any woman had ever turned Dawson down. No woman would be crazy enough to turn him down. Except for Carey.

  But what was stopping her now? She didn’t have a job to lose. She was just clinging to a grudge. He had derailed her career. It wasn’t an unsubstantiated grudge.

  He leaned forward, caging her in, trapping her. He looked at her as if she were his prey, and she’d be damned if she made anything easy for him. She might be really fucking turned on, and his arrogance might be to blame for that, but she refused to give him that satisfaction.

  “Carey,” he said, closing the distance between their mouths. “Forgive me. You’ll never regret it.” Dawson’s lips pressed against hers as his knee pushed its way between her legs. His hands moved from the desk to her back and pulled her against him. His tongue demanded entry into her mouth, and she sighed, shivers running through her body. It had been so long.

  But she wasn’t desperate.

  She pushed him, forcing him away from her. “I’ll tell you what. You can have your forgiveness if you can actually make me beg for your cock. You’re so confident in your skills, in my attraction to you, in our fated… whatever. Make me beg for it, Dawson. Make those words, ‘I need your dick,’ leave my mouth, and you are forgiven.”

  That would show him. There was no way this arrogant, conceited man would get on his knees and work for his absolution.

  But that’s exactly what he did.

  He reached behind him and locked the door. The click of the deadbolt rang throughout the office, an echoing response to her challenge. A grin spread across his lips—she wanted to smack that smirk right off his face—and he sunk to his knees in front of her. His hands slid over her thighs, and he hooked his thumb underneath the hem of her skirt and began to push it up her legs.

  “Stop. Not here.” She planted her hands on her thighs, preventing him from exposing any more of her.

  His chest rumbled. “Move your hands or I will.” He didn’t even bother meeting her eyes. His gaze was fixed squarely on the shadowed space between her legs.

  She didn’t move.

  “Afraid I’ll have you screaming in here?”

  Maybe.

  His hands pushed against hers. She locked her elbows, but she was no match for his strength.

  “Afraid you’ll be mine before I let you leave this room again?”

  Maybe.

  He pressed his mouth against her thigh, kissing and nipping, creating a red trail along her sensitive skin.

  “Afraid you’ll love every minute of it?”

  Dawson had her skirt around her waist, and his hand moved to her panties, dragging them back down her legs. He slipped one of her knees over his shoulder and kissed the soft, plump curve of her inner thigh. He made his way to her pussy and paused, blowing gently on her lips. She hissed quietly, and he finally looked at her, a wicked smiled stretched across his face.

  “I haven’t even touched you yet.”

  He leaned forward and ran the tip of his tongue along her slit, barely grazing her skin. His licks were slow and teasing, slowly delving deeper and deeper between her lips.

  His thumbs spread her open, and he continued to taste her agonizingly slowly. He stubbornly refused to make contact with her clit, and her fingers itched to grab his hair and pull him to the place she needed him to be. That wouldn’t be begging for his cock, but she bit her lip and kept her hands at her side, refusing to give him any sort of satisfaction or indication that she was, indeed, losing her damn mind under his touch.

  Honestly, his arrogance could have gone two ways—he could have been justifiably confident or overcompensating. As it turns out, it was the former. Soon she would be forced to bite her tongue and not her lips.

  He lathed his tongue over her entrance, flattening it against her and drawing it along her throbbing pussy and up to her clit. Along the way, he dipped just the tip of his tongue between her lips.

  She slammed her palms against the desk and curled her fingers over the edge. Her long nails dug into the unsealed wood. She bent her knee, digging a heel into his back. Dawson laughed. It infuriated her that he knew his tongue was fantastic. She dug her heel into his back with more force, sinisterly trying to stop his feeling of triumph. Instead, a feral growl rumbled between her legs, sending a fresh wave of heat through her.

  “Fuck me,” she groaned.

  “That was too easy,” he laughed, sending puffs of cool air over her sensitive
lips.

  “It’s an—” She paused, unable to complete the entire sentence. A whimper escaped her mouth as he lavished her clit, drawing circles around it with his tongue and flicking the peak. “Expression. I wasn’t begging for your cock.”

  “Yet.” His thumbs traveled to her center and stopped just shy of pushing their way inside of her.

  He sucked and nipped and flicked her clit while his fingers teased her mercilessly. They threatened to dive into her, to give her some relief, but refused to enter her.

  Her hips moved with his tongue, grinding against his face. Her breath hitched and her entire body tensed, just seconds away from coming. Her breath grew ragged, and she twined her hand into his hair, unable to stop herself.

  Dawson suddenly turned his head and pressed his lips against her inner thigh, going back to where he’d started this very encounter, before he stood up and pressed the length of his body—and his cock— against her. His tongue forced its way into her mouth, coating her in her own cream.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss and rocking her hips against his thigh. Trying to find something—anything—she could grind against. She was seconds away from breaking and desperate to just fucking get off.

  He put his hands on her hips and pushed her away. Her chest was heaving, and she was lost in a fog of need... she needed more. She needed him.

  “Say it,” he commanded.

  “What? What?” she asked, trying to catch her breath as her hands tugged at the lapels of his coat.

  He leaned in and gave her a worthlessly chaste kiss. “You can’t fucking think? Beg for me. Beg, Carey.”

  Her head slowly cleared. As she calmed down, her need was replaced with frustration, then anger. “That’s the point, Dawson, I don’t fucking need you,” she said as she tugged her skirt down.

  “Don’t lie to yourself,” he said, fighting her hands, trying to stop her from putting herself together. “All of this bullshit aside, I know you haven’t been with anyone, you haven’t so much as gone on a date since you left here. You want me, Carey. You’re meant to be mine. You know it.”