by Nadia Aidan
Katherine frowned. “Is that it?” She’d hoped LVPD would be able to get something—anything.
“For now it is. The good news is that Aaron was able to pull a few strings since you’re a friend. He sent all the notes to CSI to see if maybe we can get a lead on either the handwriting or the polish used to write the notes.”
She glanced between Seth and Joshua. The expressions on their faces told her all she needed to know. “You don’t think they’re going to find anything.”
Joshua shook his head slowly. “I doubt it. Handwriting is like fingerprints. For starters, this guy’s handwriting would already have to be in the system for us to get a match, which I doubt it is. Our perp has been pretty clever so far. He doesn’t leave his prints behind so we can’t identify him. I’m sure he knows at some point we’d run the handwriting. I’m betting he was careful as he wrote it out so that we couldn’t trace it back to him. I’d say we’d have better luck with the polish.”
Polish, likely nail polish, which could be purchased at practically every dollar store and supermarket in the city. They were nowhere.
“I gotta get back to my office. Stick close to her, Kyoto.” Joshua winked at her, “I know I would if I were in your shoes.”
Katherine shook her head. “You’re shameless, you know that?”
He flashed a wicked grin. “And if you ever want to find out just how shameless, give me a call.”
Seth grunted while she chuckled softly and rolled her eyes. Shameless indeed.
“Wait up, Romeo,” Seth called from behind her before Joshua could leave. “I need to go over a few things with you before you head back downstairs.”
Seth stopped at the door before he walked out. “Don’t leave your office until I get back—”
“But—”
“Michelle has strict orders from me. If you leave your office before I get back she will page me—”
Her eyes rounded. “What?” He hadn’t left her office, or her side for that matter, since they’d arrived that morning. If he had his way, she wouldn’t be able to pee without him. This had to stop. “This is crazy, Seth. You’re overreacting and completely overstepping your position.”
His gaze darkened, but if he was mad, he didn’t let it show. She bit back a snort. Typical. Seth always kept himself on a tight leash, whereas she could barely keep the fury off her face.
“I thought we were clear this morning before we left your place— You’re the boss, Katherine, but until we catch this guy, I’m the one in charge.”
She wanted to hurl her shoe at his head, but he walked out before she could pull it off her foot. Bastard.
He was loving that he now had the upper hand, that he was now in control. Katherine leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Things had been tense that morning as she prepared for work with Seth hovering around her. His very presence in her home unsettled her, but it was the way he watched her that had her heart pumping faster.
He’d stared at her intensely, intently, as if he was searching for something, and she knew exactly what that something was. He was looking for even the tiniest clue that she remembered their brief conversation from the night before.
Oh, she remembered, all right.
He’d thought she was drunk, and she was, but not so far gone that she would have a blackout. She’d known exactly what she was saying, what she was doing.
She hadn’t set out to taunt him, but when she’d glimpsed his arousal, she couldn’t stop herself. She would never have dared say the things she’d said had she been sober—had she not been able to blame her impulsive behavior on the wine the next day. Seth had undoubtedly done the same and chalked up her strange actions to the alcohol, and it was probably the best for both of them that he did.
What she’d seen in his eyes before he’d stormed out of her bedroom had been the same look she’d glimpsed in his eyes that night three months ago. Had she been sober, he would never have let her challenge go unanswered, she knew that for certain.
Just as she knew if he ever discovered that she’d lied, that she knew more about his dark desires than he thought she did, he would make her pay. And the worst thing about it was that she wanted him to.
* * * * *
Seth waited until he was in the hallway and they were alone before springing his question on Joshua.
“Has Katherine mentioned to you that she may be aware of how we spend our time after work?”
Joshua’s eyes rounded and he glanced both ways, as if someone might hear them even though the hallway was completely empty. “No. And I’ve never said anything either,” he added quickly.
“I know you haven’t,” Seth reassured him, “but I think she may have found out anyway.”
“How? You think Aaron?”
“No—”
“What about—”
“I don’t believe anyone’s talked to her,” Seth ran a hand across his face, “but something she said last night at her home makes me think our boss has been snooping—”
“Or moonlighting,” Joshua quipped.
The younger man thought he’d just made a joke, but Seth wondered if Joshua was on to something. Seth just needed to do a little digging and he would have his answer.
“What are you going to do? You can’t just come out and ask her.”
Seth shrugged. “I doubt I’ll do anything. What we do is not a crime, and how we spend our time after work is our business.” Seth turned and headed down the hallway toward Katherine’s office. He needed to get back before she got tired of waiting for him and decided to make a break for it. “Besides, if boss lady is curious, I am more than happy to enlighten her—”
“Kyoto,” Joshua warned, but Seth ignored the young man’s stern look. Katherine had started this, not him.
“Get back to work, Diaz. I’ll see you later.”
As he walked toward Katherine’s office, Seth mulled over what Joshua had said. Moonlighting? Maybe. Maybe his cold-as-ice bitch of a boss wasn’t so cold and uptight after all. Maybe she enjoyed the sting of leather against her flesh, her wrists bound in silk. When he got a moment, he would ask Sonya, the Red Velvet Rope’s manager and one of the owners, to pull the records for the past few months. If Katherine had visited the club, he’d find out. But he had no idea what he’d do with that knowledge if he discovered she’d visited the club and seen him and Joshua. Even worse, he had no idea what he’d do if he discovered his taskmaster of a boss was a true sub, because he certainly knew all the Dommes in the city, and she wasn’t one of them.
He ran his hand through his hair and blew out a short breath. If Katherine was a sub then that changed the entire game—but first things first, he had to find out the truth, and then he’d decide what to do after that.
He stepped into Katherine’s main office but barely took a step before Michelle blocked his path. Pretty, sweet, efficient, OCD, and completely type-A Michelle looked as if she was about to unravel at any moment.
“I was just about to page you. I’m so sorry. She slipped out while you were gone. She must have used her elevator.”
He settled his hands atop the young secretary’s shoulders. “Thank you, Michelle. It’s fine,” he said in a soothing voice, trying to ease the storm of worry in the poor girl’s eyes.
“I’ll just wait for her in her office.” Seth strolled inside, closed the door and locked it for good measure. He didn’t know what he’d do to Katherine when she returned, but whether she realized it or not, what she’d said last night had changed things between them. Hell, he hadn’t realized it himself until now. Katherine knew about him, knew who and what he was, and still she’d taunted him, teased him last night. Katherine loved to provoke him and he never reacted, but this time was different.
The restraint and control he was so known for began to loosen, unleashing a dark current of need and lust tinged with the edge of domination. The sexual tension beat through his body, making him restless, and his cock hardened within the confines of his pants. He closed his eyes,
his breaths jagged and uneven as he imagined every sinfully erotic punishment he could bestow upon Katherine until he had her complete, irrevocable, sweet surrender.
With desire hammering harder and faster inside him, he crossed the room to her couch. She couldn’t have gone far and she wouldn’t be gone long. He sat down on the black leather couch in her office with a direct view to her elevator and waited.
* * * * *
Katherine knew she was in deep shit the moment she saw him—all corded fury sitting on her couch. His normally even temper was gone, and she could feel the sensual beast lurking just beneath the surface. Something was different about Seth—very different. She recognized the look in his eyes and her heartbeat quickened at the promise of erotic punishments blazing in the depths of his golden gaze.
“I can explain,” she said in a rush, “I just went to the basement to pull a copy of the most recent financial log—”
“What? You couldn’t have someone bring it to you?” He stood. “Or fax it up here? Email it to you? Michelle could have even gotten it for you.” He stalked over to her. “But no, you had to leave your office because I told you not to. Because you wanted to prove that you could and you couldn’t resist rubbing it in my face because you knew it would piss me off. And you live to piss me off, don’t you Katherine?”
Oh God. That look in his eyes—it was growing more intense by the second. She swallowed. He came to a stop before her but she held her ground, thrusting her chin in the air even as her stomach did tiny flip-flops.
Her defiant gesture didn’t go unnoticed—he lifted one brow above those arrogant almond-shaped eyes of his.
“What am I going to do with you, Katherine?” He inched closer. “What do you think I should do with you? What would you like me to do with you?” His voice dipped low. “To you?”
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“No? I think you do. Last night, you said some things—do you remember what you said, Katherine?”
She shook her head quickly. “I was drunk, I don’t remember a thing.” She spun around to face her desk and started toward the other side so that he wouldn’t glimpse the lie on her face, but he stopped her before she could take even one step.
He spun her back around, trapping her against the edge of her desk with his body.
“Seth—”
“Shhh.” He placed a finger to her lips, halting her words. “I think you remember everything you said last night. Every. Single. Word.”
She sucked in a breath, fighting for air when his hands slid beneath her skirt, past her stockings and garters to the bare flesh of her thighs. She should have been outraged. She should have slapped his face at his audacity and demanded he take his hands off her right now. She did none of those things as she bit back a ragged moan and liquid heat pooled between her legs, her breasts now full and heavy with the weight of her desire.
He watched her, his eyes never leaving her as his hands worked their way higher and higher.
She fought for her sanity as she struggled to gain control of the situation and made one last futile attempt to stop him.
“Seth, I-I—”
He immediately silenced her with the press of his lips to hers. His mouth was insistent, demanding, not coaxing but forceful as he pushed his tongue inside to claim her. She shuddered against him, unable to battle the desire pumping through her veins. He tasted of all man and sin as he stroked his tongue in and out of her mouth, tasting her, devouring her. Oh God. She felt as if she were in heaven. She wrapped her arms around him, her pussy clenching with tiny tremors of need when the hard bulge in his pants dug into her belly.
His hands made their way to her ass and he cupped the rounded globes, rocking her against his erection as he rotated his hips, grinding against her. She lifted her legs, wrapping them around his waist, now mindless with pleasure as the bulge in his pants brushed against her swollen clit.
He kept the pressure against her clit, his heavy cock digging into her, against her, and her legs started to shake as her body began to tremble.
He wrenched his lips from hers to stare down into her face, his dark gaze boring into her.
“You’re close, aren’t you?”
She nodded, unable to speak.
He worked his hips harder and faster, his hot erection pulsing through his pants against her wet flesh. “I want to see you come, Katherine. I want to see you come right here on your desk against my cock.”
“Oh God,” she moaned, her breathing ragged. His words sparked something deep inside her and she gasped as her head fell back.
He kissed her neck, his lips brushing against her throat when he whispered, “That’s it, baby, come for me, drench my cock with your pussy juices.”
His words triggered her release and she was powerless against the onslaught of pleasure as she exploded into seemingly thousands of tiny little pieces. Coming on a hoarse cry, she buried her face into his shoulder, her body quivering against his.
He held her until she quieted, but now that her climax had passed she wasn’t sure what she should do. What had gotten into her? Hell, the both of them? It was as if something invaded their bodies, to the point where they lacked any sense of reason, any measure of control.
She lifted her head, afraid of what she would see in his eyes.
He smiled down at her. “Better?”
She nodded numbly, her mind still cloudy after her orgasm.
“Good, because now that I’ve pleasured you, it’s time that I punished you.”
“What?” Her eyes snapped open wider as he scooped her into his arms. Her foggy brain cleared instantly, and when he settled onto the couch with her draped across his lap, her ass high in the air, she soon understood what he meant by punishment.
“Seth Kyoto—release me right now,” she demanded as she struggled wildly against him, but she was no match for him. He simply flattened his hand against her back and held her down while he worked her skirt up her body until it was bunched at her hips.
“Seth, stop this right now.” She bucked against him, and then became desperate when she still couldn’t get out of his grasp. “I swear I will fire you—”
“You can fire me, but that still won’t stop me from spanking you.”
To emphasize his point he brought the palm of his hand down against her bare ass. She screamed in response as tiny needles of pain fanned out across her backside.
“I suggest you bite your tongue unless you want Michelle to know what I’m doing to you in here.”
She twisted around long enough to shoot angry knives at him with her eyes. “I hate you.”
His smile was arrogant but he said nothing. Instead he whacked the hell out of her ass, forcing her head back around. By the seventh whack she was whimpering in pain, with her face buried in her hands to keep from crying out. And yet, beneath the sharp edge of pain hovered something else, a physical reaction that she didn’t want to examine too closely.
She lost track of how many times he slapped her ass. It felt like forever, though it couldn’t have been more than a minute. She breathed a sigh of relief when he stopped, his hand gently massaging her flesh instead of striking it. His soft touch soothed her, causing the dull throb of pain to give way to a slow ache between her thighs.
He turned her over so that she was seated on his lap and cupped her face, his fingers tender as he wiped away the crystalline droplets on her cheeks that had fallen against her will.
“Do you promise to obey my commands from here on out?”
She pursed her lips into a tight line. He may have spanked the hell out of her ass, but she still didn’t think she would ever be able to promise that, even if it meant he’d spank her again.
“I’ll only punish you again,” he said as if he’d heard her thoughts.
“Well, you’ll just have to do what you have to do, now won’t you?” she snapped before she could stop herself, before she could remember who she was talking to.
His eyes darkened as his hands
tightened around her thighs and she watched him warily. She hadn’t meant that as a challenge, but Seth would never it see it that way.
“You have a meeting in twenty minutes so you should probably freshen up.” He lifted off the couch, standing them both to their feet.
As she walked over to her private bathroom, she thought she was off the hook, that he’d let her comment go, but his next words revealed she was very much mistaken.
“We’ll finish this tonight,” he said and she stared after him as he slipped out of her office, the door closing behind him with a purposeful thud.
Chapter Three
Katherine could get used to this, she thought with a wry smile. Seth, preparing dinner, that was. Him in her home? Guarding her every move? She could do without.
After dinner, they cleaned up the kitchen, and much like during dinner itself, and on the drive to her home, they didn’t speak much. Seth wasn’t known for many words in the first place, but beneath the silence was a layer of tension that had been there from the moment he’d left her office after what she had decided to call the episode.
“You can relax, you know?”
Startled, Katherine dropped the plate she’d been washing back into the sudsy water, causing some of it to splash across the front of her shirt.
“That’s what I’m talking about. You’re nothing but a ball of nerves.”
She glanced sideways at Seth, a curse on the tip of her tongue. He stood beside her, drying off the dishes, his body so close her skin warmed from the heat of him. She wanted to say he was the reason why she was tense, but that would be revealing too much—besides he already knew that.
He knew his very presence unnerved her—that she was on edge, wondering and waiting for him to finish what they’d started in her office, wondering and worrying about what he would do to her when he did. She shivered. The anticipation was driving her crazy and he knew it, relished it, enjoyed that he now had her on edge, and apparently planned to keep her there.