A French Whipping

by Nicole Camden

  “So, you’re taking me to Jessie’s place, aren’t you?”

  Jessie was a former intern at Accendo who’d decided to open a gourmet wood-fired pizza place. Blake wasn’t certain, but she thought Roland, Nick, and Milton had given the girl the start-up capital.

  “You’ve been there?”

  Blake gave him a duh look. “Of course I’ve been there. Her pizza is fucktastic. Almost as good as an orgasm.”

  He stopped walking suddenly.

  Blake covered her mouth to stop herself from laughing. His face! God, she didn’t know why she’d said it; it had just popped into her head all of a sudden. She didn’t want to be awkward with Nick, she wanted to be herself. His friend and his lover.

  “Sorry.” She attempted to look sober, but a snort of laughter escaped her all the same.

  His eyes were narrowed, like he wanted to remind her that there was a serious threat and that she needed to be careful. She folded her arms over her chest and waited patiently for the lecture she was sure was coming.

  What she got instead was dragged into a kiss that knocked the hat off her head and the breath out of her lungs. He kissed her, holding her head firm and still while he plundered her mouth with his tongue. When he was finished, when he’d thoroughly tasted her and she hung limp and moaning in his arms, he released her.

  “We’ll get it to go,” he said and knelt to pick up her hat.

  Blake took it numbly, wishing she could just push him against a wall somewhere and hop up on his cock.

  “Okay,” she agreed, because she didn’t want to be arrested, but when she took his arm to continue walking, she let her hand oh-so-casually brush the front of his pants.

  He missed a step. Ha! Not as blasé as he seemed. His cock was rock-hard beneath his jeans.

  “Poor baby,” she said sweetly, not looking at him. “That must be uncomfortable.”

  He smiled for the first time since the previous evening. “You can be a serious bitch. I like that about you.”

  Blake blew him a kiss. “I like that about me, too.”

  Her smile lasted only a few moments longer as she remembered that she’d nearly lost that part of herself somewhere along the way. Just before Phillip had beaten her up and kicked her out of the house, she’d stopped cracking jokes, stopping talking much to Nick, Roland, and Milton, stopped everything that made Phillip retaliate. Of course, with someone like that, it really didn’t matter what you did. She’d learned that the hard way. Lifting her chin, she squared her shoulders and squeezed his arm. She’d come a long way and he’d stayed her friend. They’d all stayed her friend. She wasn’t sure why exactly, but they had, and she would do anything for them.

  Ten minutes later, they were walking into a small, crowded storefront with a discreet wooden sign hanging over the door that said JESSIE’S. Below it was a rough-cut symbol of a pizza.

  “You know who loves this place? Shane.”

  “He does?” Blake didn’t spend a lot of time with Milton’s driver and her future bodyguard, but he’d never struck her as the trendy pizza type.

  “Oh, yeah. Shane loves to eat. He writes a blog about new restaurants in the city.”

  “Really? Wow.”

  “Yeah, he’s the reason Milton knows all the best places to call for delivery. Regina doesn’t cook, either, so if it wasn’t for Shane, they’d both starve to death.”

  Blake chuckled. “You can’t talk. All you know how to make are salads and smoothies. I think Roland is the only one of you who knows how to cook anything.”

  They made their way through the various tables where young people and tourists crowded and devoured slice after slice of heavenly smelling pies. In the center of the room, an enormous brick kiln had three separate half circles that flickered deep red from the wood that burned almost constantly throughout the day and evening. A high bar framed the kiln on three sides and chefs in aprons prepared the pizzas behind a short glass shield while people at the bar sat and watched.

  “We order over there.” Nick pointed toward a line that wound through the tables almost to the entrance.

  “I know.” Blake sighed, looking at the crowd.

  They joined the line, Blake still holding on to his arm as she read over the chalkboard menu above the cashiers.

  “Mmmm . . . Prosciutto and pear with goat cheese and balsamic reduction. I haven’t tried that one.”

  “That’s not pizza,” Nick argued. “That sounds like dessert.”

  Blake disagreed. “It sounds fucking delicious.”

  “You probably think everything on that menu looks delicious.”

  Looking over it again, Blake struggled to find something she wouldn’t eat. “I’m not that fond of pineapple on pizza.”

  “I guess I can keep sleeping with you, then.”

  Blake punched him in the arm with her free hand. “Nick. You made a joke. I’m so proud.”

  “Nick, what are you doing in line?”

  Blake turned to see Jessie, her dark hair gathered in an unruly bun, coming toward them wearing her chef’s apron. She had a large nose with a scattering of freckles, an olive complexion, and an eyebrow ring.

  “Hey, Jessie.” Nick smiled at her warmly. “This is Blake. A friend of ours.”

  “I’ve heard of you.” Jessie smiled and held her hand out to Blake. “The bosses talked about you sometimes. I’m surprised we never met.” Her eyes flicked over the scars on Blake’s neck, but her gaze remained steady and friendly.

  Blake shook the other woman’s hand, surprised to find herself trusting the genial warmth she saw in Jessie’s eyes. “Me, too,” Blake agreed. “God knows what the boys had to say about me.”

  “Nothing bad.” She shook her head. “They love you.”

  “The business is still doing well.” Nick pointedly changed the subject, glancing around at the crowd in the restaurant even though it was late for lunch, nearly two o’clock.

  “Yeah,” Jessie agreed with a laugh. “I never get to go home and my feet are killing me, but things are going really well.”

  “I’m glad. You deserve it.”

  “No, you deserve to come and sit at the reserve table, as you well know. None of the bosses have to wait in line.”

  Blake gave him a sidelong look. “You were going to make me wait in this line when you have a table waiting?”

  Nick shrugged. “I guess not. Lead the way, Chef Jessie.”

  Smiling, the woman did, stopping here and there to check with a diner about the service.

  The reserve table was in the corner next to the prep station, a little out of the way of the flow of traffic. A server actually came and took their order and brought them drinks. Nick had water, Blake ordered a beer.

  “You can’t drink water with pizza. It’s beer or a Coke. Preferably beer.”

  “You can stop giving me a hard time,” he informed her.

  Blake wasn’t so sure about that. There were still small lines of tension around his mouth, but she didn’t actually want to annoy him. She wanted to kiss him, she realized. And not a kiss like the one he’d given her outside. She wanted to kiss his cheek and lay her head on his shoulder. But that seemed so . . . sweet.

  Hesitating, uncertain why the idea bothered her, she smiled at him instead. “All right. I guess we’re not taking this to go.”

  Nick shrugged. “Downside of the reserve table.”

  “That’s okay,” Blake murmured, taking a sip of her beer. “We have all night.”

  He didn’t say anything, but beneath the table his hand stroked her thigh.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, but, after a quick squeeze, his hand fell away. “We need to talk about a few things.”

  Ugh. Gack. She didn’t want to talk about anything. She wanted to pretend that everything was okay, that she and Nick were a normal couple having a fantastic lunch before they went
back to his apartment and fucked like bunnies.

  “Okay.” She sipped her beer again. They did have things to talk about, plans to make, especially if she was going to stay with him for a while. Stay with him. Somehow it hadn’t felt quite real until this second.

  “First, Roland and I are going to make sure Keenan is caught. Can you think of anything—anything—that might help us find him?”

  Blake blinked. Find Keenan. She never wanted to see Keenan again. That was stupid, though. That was scared Blake. Smart Blake knew that the best way to stop worrying about Keenan Shy was to make sure he went to jail and stayed there. Odds were it had been too long for him to go to jail for her near-strangulation, but he’d committed other crimes.

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “I’ll tell you everything I remember, but Roland knew him as well as I did. Better.”

  “He said you might not have anything new, but I thought you might have heard something.”

  Frowning, Blake remembered that Maura—Detective O’Halloran—had requested that Roland contact her. There were also the letters, but she didn’t want to mention those, not to Nick.

  “Do you guys have any proof that Keenan was behind the theft at Accendo?”

  “Nothing concrete, but Roland thinks that we will soon.”

  “There’s a Boston PD detective, Maura O’Halloran. She thinks that Keenan is responsible for the murder of a young couple from the West End. He shot them in the head and stole their car, leaving their daughter in her car seat next to their bodies on the side of the road.”

  “When was this?”

  “She contacted me and Roland a few weeks after—” She pointed to her neck. “But apparently he did it the same night he left the country.”

  “So Roland already knows about this?”

  Blake nodded. “But Maura’s been working it as a cold case for the past ten years. She checks in with me every few months. She might know more.”

  Nick frowned. “She sounds . . . dedicated.”

  “No.” Blake shook her head, wishing she didn’t have to tell him the next part. “The couple who was killed was her little brother and his wife. Their daughter, Maddie, lives with her now. She just turned eleven.”

  10

  KEENAN HAD KILLED two people. Nick didn’t feel any better about Blake’s safety knowing that, even if it had been ten years since he’d been in her life.

  While they’d waited for their pizza, he’d called Roland and given him the detective’s contact information.

  “I remember her,” Roland had muttered. “Blake was still in the hospital and she kept insisting on asking her questions. Her father was a detective, as well.”

  “Why didn’t I know about this?”

  “It was after I convinced you to leave the hospital. You’d been there for three days without leaving. She came right after that.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t hear about it at some point.”

  “We were all trying to recover from what had happened to Blake and from the theft of the game software. Graduation was coming up, and Keenan was nowhere to be found. Jack even hired a private investigator, but he couldn’t find him.”

  Jack Chandler was Roland’s stepfather, a former state representative, and a very decent man—the complete opposite of Roland’s actual father, Cliff “Crawly” Cozen. Crawly had taken Keenan in as a kid, shortly after Roland’s mom had left and married Jack, taking Roland with her. Roland had spent every summer with Crawly and Keenan, though, as part of the custody agreement.

  Keenan had been a fascinating person, full of confidence and charm, the kind of person who could manipulate anyone into just about anything. Only a few people knew about his temper or his complete lack of conscience when it came to getting what he wanted. As far as Nick could tell, that had always been more money, more power, more control.

  Nick glanced at Blake as they left the restaurant. She seemed calmer today, less uncertain, but he hadn’t forgotten the look on her face as she sat in his living room, debating whether or not to tell him about Keenan. Apparently she still wanted to keep fucking while she was staying with him.

  Staying with him. Blake. In his house. In his bed. He felt his heart rate increase and fought the urge to tell her he needed to go for a run. She would be there when he came home from work. She’d want to go to dinner and the movies and not just eat salad and work out in the gym upstairs. His whole life would be filled with Blake, but she wasn’t really his, could never be his. He wouldn’t be able to escape the feelings she engendered in him.

  “So what do you need from your apartment?” he asked instead. It was something to say.

  “Not much.” She seemed to want to reassure him, patting his arm. “I can get it.”

  “No.”

  “Nick—”

  He stopped. “I don’t want you to go back there right now. Just in case. I’ll have Shane go by and pick up whatever you need.”

  “Shane isn’t going to want to go through my underwear drawer.”

  Nick hadn’t thought of that. He didn’t want Shane—or any other man—anywhere near Blake’s underwear.

  “All right. I’ll go myself. Later. For now, let’s pick up a few essentials.” He turned around, away from the direction of his apartment and back toward the marketplace. He took a few steps and stopped when he realized that she wasn’t following him.

  He stepped back to her and lifted up her sunglasses so he could see her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She was frowning, her eyes troubled. “I don’t want you to buy me things, Nick. That’s not why—”

  “Shut up.”

  Her mouth dropped open. He dropped a kiss on her open lips, just because they were there and he could, at least for the time being.

  When he ended the kiss, he slid her glasses back down to her nose. “I have more money than I could spend in thirty lifetimes. I will buy you anything I damn well please because I want to. If it makes you feel bad, you can help me with something for the kids at the hospital.”

  She didn’t say anything for a long moment, but then she closed her mouth and sighed. “You know I’ll help you with something for the kids. I was thinking of stopping by and checking on them, but it’s already three o’clock.”

  Nick reached out and took her hand. “I actually sent some of the developers from Accendo over there after lunch—the gamers, mostly. It’s part of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “They’re playing video games with the kids?”

  “They are,” he agreed. “They were thrilled to get to leave work and help out.”

  “You sent them.”

  “Well, I asked them if they wanted to.”

  She went to her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him as thoroughly as he’d kissed her earlier. Unable to help himself, he kissed her back, letting his hands rest on her hips.

  The shoppers in the marketplace wove around them, some of them giggling. One kid said, “Get a room,” and laughed with his buddies.

  Nick eased back, not wanting to draw too much attention, and heard someone say, very distinctly, “She’ll never be yours.”

  Pulling Blake’s hands from around his neck, he turned to identify the speaker, but the crowd was thick with people who’d taken off work early on a sunny Friday afternoon. Everyone was wearing hats and sunglasses. He leapt onto a nearby bench and looked around but didn’t see anyone he recognized as Keenan, or anyone else he recognized, for that matter.

  “What’s wrong?” Blake asked from behind him, looking around herself.

  “I heard something,” he muttered. He could’ve sworn he’d heard Keenan’s voice. She’ll never be yours. Keenan had said that to him once ten years earlier, when he’d caught Nick staring at Blake one night after they’d been hanging out.

  “What was it?”

  He cou
ld have imagined it, he supposed. It wasn’t like the thought hadn’t flashed through his head every time he’d seen her. He jumped nimbly down from the bench. “Come on—my car’s at Accendo’s garage. We’ll go to Newbury Street instead.”

  He knew she liked Newbury Street. It’s where she dragged him to shop for Christmas presents every year.

  “Nick, first, you don’t buy ‘essentials’ on Newbury Street. Second, what the hell happened?”

  “I thought I heard Keenan.”

  She tried to stop, but he pulled her along back toward Accendo, still tensed and searching for any sign of a threat.

  “Are you sure?”

  Nick shook his head. “No. He hasn’t contacted any of us for ten years. I may have imagined it.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  Nick didn’t stop walking, but he slowed down a little. “He hasn’t—has he? Contacted you?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “He hasn’t, but Nick, he was always . . .” She trailed off for a moment, visibly shuddering. “Patient. Even when he was angry.”

  Yeah. Nick remembered that about him.

  “So, we’ll take my car instead, pick up a few things, get some dinner, and go back to my apartment. I’ll go by your apartment tomorrow with Roland.”

  “Are you sure?”

  They’d reached the parking garage where Nick had left his Subaru that morning. Nick wasn’t certain what she was asking, but he was sure he didn’t want her in danger, and he was sure that he wanted her in his bed again . . . even if she wasn’t really his, even if it was only for a short time.

  “I’m sure.”

  Four hours later, Blake realized she’d gone a little overboard. Full dark had fallen by the time they arrived back at Nick’s apartment, and the backseat of his Subaru was full of packages. He parked in the garage and took his private elevator up to the apartment. She was carrying several shopping bags in each hand and Nick held even more, including bags with their take-out Chinese food.

  He’d insisted that she buy new clothes, makeup, toiletries, shoes, and underwear while he waited patiently and carried the accumulating packages. The only store where he’d offered any input had been a lingerie shop, where he’d selected several pieces after she’d suggested, loudly, that he pick out something he’d like.