by Shelly Bell
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
By Shelly Bell
An Excerpt from The Bride Wore Red Boots by Lizbeth Selvig
An Excerpt from Rescued by the Ranger by Dixie Lee Brown
An Excerpt from One Scandalous Kiss by Christy Carlyle
An Excerpt from Dirty Talk by Megan Erickson
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
PUFFING ON HIS Cuban cigar, the Senator reclined in his chair, a tumbler of scotch on the rocks in front of him. He stared down the two men sitting on the other side of his desk, daring them to repeat the words that had just been uttered.
Sweating profusely, FBI Agent Seymour Fink tugged on his tie, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the buttoned collar of his shirt.
For a moment, the Senator considered retrieving his gun from his desk drawer and shooting the agent in the head, but he couldn’t risk getting blood or splatters of brain matter on his tuxedo. After all, he had an important dinner to attend in an hour and didn’t want to disappoint his wife.
He downed the rest of his drink and then shook the ice in the glass the way he’d like to shake the mobster who was fucking with him. “Tell me what you’re going to do to fix the problem,” he said calmly, unwilling to allow this minor bump in the road to waylay his plans.
There were only a few problems in the world money couldn’t solve, and this was not one of them. His men were loyal to him because he paid them to be loyal. They believed in his cause because he paid them to believe in his cause. The whole goddamned US of A was manipulated by money, making it possible for great men like him to become even wealthier.
But he was different because unlike most men, he cared more for this country than he did money.
“Do, sir?” Using the sleeve of his suit jacket, Agent Fink wiped the sweat from his brow, cigar smoke circling around his head like a boa constrictor. “I’m not certain we should do—”
“You listen to me, you little prick. There is nothing that will stand in my way.” The Senator hurled his tumbler against the wall above the fireplace, shattering the glass into a million tiny pieces. “Do you understand me? I’ve got your balls in a vise underneath my blade, so let’s try this again. What are you going to do to fix the problem?”
These agents had been instrumental in helping him to get the charges against Anthony Rinaldi dropped in exchange for the mobster’s valuable foreign contacts. A few months ago, the FBI had arrested Rinaldi for the extortion and kidnapping of Danielle Walker and, in the process, had discovered the bodies of thirteen young women buried on his property. But thanks to Agent Richard Evans and Fink, vital evidence had disappeared from the FBI’s possession, helping the judge in the case, a man all too easy to blackmail due to his expensive cocaine habit, to render his decision in dropping the charges. In exchange, Rinaldi had brokered a deal with a Congo mafia leader, and an item found exclusively in the Congo region was about to arrive in the United States. Now that the ship had sailed and all the components were successfully in place, Rinaldi’s usefulness had come to an end.
Seymour swallowed convulsively. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Don’t pull that bullshit now. You knew when I approached you that lives would be lost for the greater good,” the Senator said. He handed off his cigar and nodded to the other agent, a bruiser of a man whom he’d chosen not only for his twenty years of service to this country but for his lack of empathy. Agent Richard Evans understood the risks involved in his job, the three bullets he’d taken in the chest a testament to that fact.
Evans pinched the fat cigar between his fingers and, in a flash, locked his partner’s head under his arm, pinning Fink’s hands to the table and singeing the top of one with the foot of the cigar. Fink screamed, his smaller body thrashing wildly as he fruitlessly tried to escape from his partner and the pain he was inflicting.
The acrid scent of burnt flesh overpowered the cigar’s sweet one, a smell he would forever more attribute to power.
By the time Evans released him, Fink’s skin had turned pasty white, his shirt completely drenched from his sweat. He breathed heavily, nodding. “Consider the problem solved, sir. By this time tomorrow night, Rinaldi will be dead.”
The Senator leaned back in his chair and smiled.
God bless the USA.
Chapter Two
TOURING THE DUNGEON located in the basement of a private mansion, Rachel Dawson ignored the decadent sights and sounds of sex going on all around her and kept her eye on the prize. After working her ass off to gain entrance into Benediction, the prestigious sex club owned by Cole DeMarco, she was finally here.
Sure she was the only woman in the room dressed in pants . . . scratch that. A couple Dommes or Dominatrices or wanna-be-Matrix characters were wearing black vinyl pants and wielding whips that would make Indiana Jones proud.
Although it was early in the evening and most of the upstairs fantasy rooms were still vacant, she’d gotten to play the role of voyeur as she’d observed two different scenes. The “teacher” bending the “schoolgirl” over his desk and smacking her with a ruler had titillated her, but Rachel had remained a removed observer, her body not engaged by the fantasy.
But the ménage in the other room had hit her every button as if someone had plucked the fantasy right out of her head. Three men grappled for control in a tangle of hands, mouths, and cocks on a bed of red silk. After two of them managed to pin the third to the bed, he surrendered with a look of erotic bliss as he opened his mouth and accepted a cock while his legs were spread and his hole breached by one of the largest cocks Rachel had ever seen.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the scene, imagining herself as the one pinned to the bed. Then she remembered she wasn’t at Benediction to fulfill her fantasies or to act as voyeur. She was there to do a story about BDSM, and for that, she needed to go to the dungeon.
Unlike the fantasy rooms, the dungeon was packed. In here, the sights, smells, and sounds of passion and pain seduced her senses. The potent scents of leather, musk, and sweat teased her with the promise of sex. Everywhere Rachel looked, people indulged in their kinks without judgement or recrimination. She had read all about BDSM, done plenty of research online, and spoken to her friends, but nothing could have prepared her for what it would be like live and in Technicolor.
Her mouth grew dry at the sight of a naked woman suspended from the ceiling by rope and flowing white sheets, twirling as if she was an acrobat in a circus act.
Who had bound that woman? Was he here tonight? She studied the space, equal parts relieved and disappointed that she didn’t find him.
Some of the BDSM stereotypes were in full force and effect on this Friday night, but as she looked around, she noticed a few people dressed casually in T-shirts and jeans. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as easy as she expected to deter
mine if a person was a Dominant or submissive. Considering two of her closest friends were submissives and members of this club, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Neither one of them fit the profile of what Rachel imagined when she heard the word submissive. That was only one of the many reasons she’d decided to do an exposé on the southeast Michigan BDSM scene.
“Where is Cole?” she asked Danielle, her escort for the evening. “I thought you said he was down here.” Even though Cole had married her friend Danielle a couple of months ago, he hadn’t agreed to give Rachel a full-access, no-question-barred interview until last week. Apparently, he hadn’t completely trusted her.
She rolled her eyes. Yeah, whatever. She was a reporter. What did trust have to do with anything? Facts were facts and the story always came first. If he didn’t have anything to hide, he shouldn’t worry.
“I lied,” Danielle said, rubbing her pregnant belly. In her second trimester, she was just starting to show. “I figured if I didn’t take you down here first you’d spend the entire time in Cole’s office doing the interview.”
Stopping to watch as one woman had her boot kissed by the naked guy kneeling at her feet, Rachel tossed her long black hair over her shoulder and smiled. She’d look awesome dressed in leather with a whip in her hand. She sighed. Tonight wasn’t about her sexual needs. It was about work. It was always about work. And that’s just the way she liked it.
Never willing to show weakness, Rachel tried not to flinch at the sudden cracking sound of the whip being wielded. “I would’ve come down to the dungeon eventually. After all, I’ve been waiting a long time to see it.” Ever since she’d covered the murder of submissive socialite Alyssa Deveroux more than a year ago.
Jaxon, the widower, had been the prime suspect and a longtime member of Benediction. After Rachel followed him and his attorney, Kate Martin, around for several days, she found she actually respected Kate. Somehow when it was all over, they became friends, Rachel’s first since childhood. Most women were offended by Rachel’s blunt and often tactless comments, but not Kate. Rachel had found a kindred soul in Kate, a tough woman who wasn’t afraid to get her hands a little dirty for the sake of her career.
With Kate into the BDSM lifestyle now and a member of Benediction along with her boyfriend, Jaxon, Rachel had been waiting for the opportunity to learn what really happened here. The exposé seemed like the perfect opportunity to do some exploring of the alternative sexual lifestyle.
Danielle commandeered Rachel by the elbow and led her away from the whip scene as if she sensed Rachel’s discomfort. “If you had come for the open house last winter, you would’ve seen it a lot sooner.”
They didn’t go far before a scene caught Rachel’s eye. On the floor, two women wearing nothing but black collars, cat ears, and long tails licked and rubbed up against each other as a man reclined on the couch and patted them on their heads. She’d read about pony and puppy play, but kitten play was a new one. She found it odd that the man wasn’t participating in the scene other than to caress the top of their heads and watch.
Ready to explore some more, she continued walking through the dungeon. “I had a bigger story to work on that night.” Mobster and ex-Benediction member Anthony Rinaldi had been arrested for kidnapping Danielle and her stepmother, as well as the murders of thirteen young women. All the local reporters were following up different angles and salivating for an exclusive. If she was ever going to land a prestigious investigative reporter position in New York, Rachel had to find something to wow them and prove she was more than just a pretty face. Just because she had big breasts didn’t mean she deserved any less than the men who found their way to the coveted investigative reporter spots in the New York or California television markets.
“It was your choice to forgo the chance at seeing Benediction in order to cover the Rinaldi case,” Danielle said, bringing them to an area with loveseats and chairs.
“Come on, the arrest of Anthony Rinaldi was the story of the year.” Rachel winced, realizing how harsh she sounded. After all, Danielle had been one of his victims. “No offense.” She shrugged one shoulder. “I had to cover it. But now I’ve got the time to do this exposé the justice it deserves, and in order to do that, I need to know everything that goes on here.”
Danielle harrumphed. “Knowing the kind of reporter you are, I doubt there’s a kink or fetish out there you haven’t come across in your research.”
She scanned the room, checking to see if there was anything here other than the kitten play that she didn’t recognize. Nope, nothing she hadn’t seen on the Internet.
A petite Asian woman spanking another woman over a bench.
Another woman using a cane on the buttocks of a very large man who wore a spreader bar between his legs and a metal ball stretcher around his purplish-red scrotum. Ouch, that looks painful. Rachel grimaced and quickly turned away.
A beautiful redheaded woman was on her hands and knees, a fucking machine plowing her pussy with a giant dildo as a leather-clad man stood over her and watched with a stern expression.
Sprinkled throughout the space were a few different flogging scenes, but one in particular caught her eye. The man held a flogger in each hand, raining the falls in a figure-eight pattern onto the woman’s reddened back. Light moans flew from her mouth as she arched up to meet the strikes, the couple completely in tune with one another.
Her gaze continued to bounce among the various scenes, until she spotted him.
Holding dark ash-colored rope taut between his hands as he talked to a woman wearing a latex dress that just barely covered her nipples, he appeared completely in his element. She must have said something that amused him because he threw back his head and laughed. Rather than the suit and tie she normally saw him in, he was wearing ripped jeans and a simple black Henley. Since she’d last seen him a couple of months ago, he’d grown out his light brown hair from the buzz cut. The half-naked woman raked her fingers down his shoulder, drawing Rachel’s attention.
Had his arms always been that sinewy?
As she answered Danielle’s question about her research, an unfamiliar flurry of butterflies whipped around in her stomach. “I like to be thorough. And since I barely sleep, I have plenty of time to do some reading at night,” she said, ripping her gaze away from him. Just the sight of the damn man gave her indigestion. She sucked in a quick breath to kill those pesky insects wreaking havoc on her insides.
Her hands covering her stomach, Danielle plopped down in one of the oversized chairs. “You need to do something other than work.”
Working was as vital to Rachel as breathing, but it wasn’t the only thing she did. It was just the most important. “I do. I go out with you and the other freaks for drinks every Thursday night.” A group that also included Gracie, Lisa, and Kate.
“Other than that. You don’t have any hobbies, you never date—”
Rachel perched on the arm of Danielle’s chair. “I don’t need to waste my time dating when I can have sex whenever I want.” Her cell phone had a list of men’s names to rival any little black book, every one of them available to her at a moment’s notice.
“That’s probably true, but when’s the last time you slept with someone just for the sake of having sex and not because you need some information for a story you’re working on?”
Rachel sunk her teeth into her bottom lip as she mentally went through her sexual Rolodex. Huh, maybe Danielle had a point. “Jacob Parkman, ten years ago. His parents played bridge with my parents every Sunday, and while the rest of my family was outside playing in our yard, Jacob and I were ridding ourselves of our pesky little V-cards.” Last thing she heard he was a precious-gems jeweler and had five kids with one on the way. She smiled, remembering him fondly. He was a good man, but not for her. “That was two minutes of foreplay and eighteen seconds of intercourse I’ll never forget.”
Danielle’s jaw dropped. “You lost your virginity while your parents were at the house? Are they ultraliberal or something
?”
She laughed. “No. Just oblivious.”
Without looking, she felt a presence standing directly behind her, her body humming as it always did whenever he was in the same vicinity.
Danielle looked over Rachel’s shoulder with a wicked twinkle in her eye. “Logan, you remember Rachel.”
Rachel had met Logan a year and a half ago through their mutual friend Kate. Having just finished her report about a mother who killed her two kids and then stored their bodies in a freezer, Rachel hadn’t been in the mood to socialize. But she hadn’t wanted to disappoint Kate, so she’d gone out anyway.
Rachel had heard only good things about Logan and was eager to meet him. But after Kate had introduced them, he ignored her most of the evening, acknowledging her only to argue with her on every little comment she made. After an hour of it, she’d decided to keep her mouth shut, not wanting to ruin her friend’s night. She’d spent the rest of the evening observing the way Logan smiled at Kate . . . spoke to Kate . . . lit up for Kate.
That night, she’d realized Logan was in love with Kate.
And that he didn’t like her.
She stood and faced him, ready to try to play nice. She gestured to his hands. “Still playing with ropes I see.”
“Still pretending you’re not curious about them.” His expression didn’t change, but she heard the smirk in his voice.
“I’m not curious. I got over playing cops and robbers when I turned seven.” She tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “And by the way, I always did the tying up.”
He chuckled. “Of course you did.”
“Why would you say ‘of course’?”
He inched closer, the spicy musk of him reaching her nose. “Because you’re a control freak.”
She crossed her arms and took a step toward him, so close she had to tilt her chin up to look into his copper-colored eyes. “If the shoe fits . . . ”
He tossed the rope onto the small end table beside Danielle’s chair and wrapped his hand around the top of Rachel’s arm, the heat of his fingers searing her skin. “No, there’s a difference between me and you.” He lowered his voice. “I find serenity in control while you wouldn’t know serenity if it bit you on that finely shaped ass of yours.”
