by Frost, E J
“Okay, put them on. Let Daddy see.”
I hold the phone out as best I can while stepping into the shorts and pulling them up my legs.
“Socks and shoes,” he says. I retrieve them from under my suitcase and slip them on.
“You ready?”
I nod. “I just need to brush my hair.”
“Good girl. Do you wear it up when you fly?”
“No, but I spray some oil on it so it doesn’t dry out during the flight.”
“Do that now. Prop the phone on the dresser.”
I find a way to angle the phone between the dresser’s oval mirror and a long leather case on the dresser top. His horsehair brush feels good against my scalp, and it makes my hair gleam, even before I spritz on the Argan oil.
“Can I bring this brush with me?” I ask, holding it up to the phone.
“Only if you want to be paddled with it.”
I do. I tuck it into my suitcase and twirl around so he can see that I’m ready.
“Happy, baby?”
“Happy that I’ll see you in ten hours,” I say.
“Happy that I’ll be fucking you in ten hours and two minutes?”
I giggle. “That’s still inside the airport.”
“That’s right. I’ve got the handicapped bathroom all picked out.”
“Daddy!” I chide, but I love the idea he’s so hot for me he can’t even wait until we get back to the hotel. “I’ll be thinking about you the whole way.”
“Yeah? You want to wear something on the plane to help with that? There are more toys in the dresser.”
“I don’t need to wear anything on the plane, sir. I’ll be thinking about you anyway. I don’t want to come. I want to be so crazy when I get there that you can bend me over the sink in the bathroom and, um, put it in without any foreplay at all. I want you to be so rough with me, Daddy.”
“Fuck, you’re killing me, baby doll.” He moves the phone down his body to his groin. He’s put his pants back on, but I can see the bulge along his left thigh. “Look at that. How am I going to interview this fucking widow with that sticking out of my pants?”
I giggle. “You could console her in her widowhood.”
“Behave yourself, you and your dirty baby mind. Last thing I want to do is remind her of sex.” He moves the phone so I can see his face again. He hasn’t shaved and dark stubble frames his mouth, defines his sharp jaw. He rubs a hand over it. My skin aches to feel the bristle. “Word from the cruise company is that she wasn’t on the cruise with her husband.”
“That’s awkward,” I commiserate.
“Fucking understatement, baby doll. Not only has her husband died, but she may have found out he was having an affair and was into kink, all at the same time.”
“If she wasn’t on the cruise with him, how much is she going to know, sir?”
“No idea. I never assume anything going into an interview. Tabula rasa, do you know what that is, baby doll?”
“Uh-huh.” I nod. “Blank slate. Do you prepare questions or just go in and see what the person says and where it leads you?”
“Both.” Logan gives me a lopsided grin over the phone. “I start by seeing what the person says and where it leads. If they don’t cover my questions, then I’ll loop back to them. I usually learn more if I let them talk, though. Any cop will tell you that it’s the people who haven’t done anything wrong who are the most eager to justify themselves. If I just let them talk, they usually tell me what I want to know and more.”
I smile at him. “You’re a good listener, too, Daddy.”
“Yeah, but porn stars and guys with undescended testicles don’t unload their life stories on me. Guess I’m just not as approachable as you are, baby doll.” He sighs. “I’m going to have to go, Emmy. She’ll be here in a few minutes and I need to wash up. I know every hand you shake has had a dick in it, but shaking with the hand I whacked off with five minutes ago is probably pushing it.”
I giggle. “Probably, Daddy. I’ll sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ while I wash the vibrator and think of you.”
“Good girl. Blow me a kiss, baby doll. I’ll see you soon, but not soon enough.”
I blow him ten kisses, which makes him smile, although he looks a little strained. Jet-lag maybe. He waves before the connection goes black.
Wondering what I can do to ease his jet-lag when I see him, other than kiss his feet, which he seemed to really like, I go to wash the vibrator.
For Olivia, who restored my faith.
Chapter One
Logan
Widows are the worst part of my job.
Worse than the pain in a client’s eyes when I tell them it’s a family member who has fucked them over. Worse than the three times I’ve been shot at. It’s the uncomprehending grief of the recently widowed that always threatens to rip the heart out of my chest. Their loved one was there yesterday, or two days ago, or ten. Now they’re not. It makes no sense. After being there for years, sometimes decades, the person is simply gone, and the widow has to keep on living as though their world hasn’t just dived headfirst into an empty concrete pool.
Regina Black, or “Reggie” as she asks me to call her, is the same as every other widow I’ve met. She looks hollowed out by grief. Scoured by it. She’s still tan and put-together in a dark brown, linen skirt-suit. She goes through the motions of being okay. But it’s there in her empty eyes, the pallor under her tan.
I want to hug her. Stroke her artfully tousled, bottle-blonde hair. The way I would comfort my baby doll, or any submissive who came to me hurting and needy.
But Reggie Black’s a stranger, a stranger who’s threatening a lawsuit against my client. So, instead, I shake her hand and show her to the circular couch in the suite the cruise line has booked for me at the M Hollywood Hotel. I offer her bottled water, which she takes with a trembling hand.
As I watch her shake, my arms and chest ache. A dull physical pain. I’ve always felt this way around women who were hurting. Long before I realized I was a Dom. Way back when I was a kid.
As Reggie Black drinks her water, I remember racing down the hill by our house in Morecambe to pick up my little sister when she’d fallen off her bike and skinned her knee. Mum and Dad waved from the top of the hill, encouraging her to get up, try again. I cradled Lizbeth on my lap and picked the gravel out of her knee and kissed it better until I got an erection and had to move her off me for fear she’d feel it and freak out. Mum always praised me for being such a good big brother to Lizbeth, but the dirty truth was that I protected and cared for her because something deep in me demanded it, the same something that filled my wet dreams with images of bending my sweet little sister over the edge of my bed, tying her hands behind her, and deflowering her while she sobbed and screamed my name.
I shake myself out of my thoughts. I have a baby girl I can do any filthy thing I want to now. She’ll be with me in less than ten hours. I can wrap her in my arms and cuddle her and take all the pain that I can’t take from the woman sitting across from me. With Reggie Black, I have to be cool and professional.
I flip open my Moleskine notebook to a fresh page, uncap my pen, and set them on the coffee table between us. “Mrs. Black, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
She puts the bottle down on the table, crosses her legs and clasps her hands around her knees. I can always tell a woman’s age by her hands, and Mrs. Black’s hands are slender and smooth, the blue veins that will be prominent in another decade still buried under a layer of tanned, taut skin. Early thirties. Twenty years younger than her husband.
“My lawyer advised me not to come today,” she says. “Are you recording this?”
“No. I’d have to tell you if I was. But I’d like to make notes, if I may?” I pat the open notebook.
Her bloodshot eyes flick to it; she nods. “You said in your email that you didn’t believe it was food-poisoning. You said you want to find out what really happened to my husband. Is that right?”
; “Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s what I do,” I say. “I’d like you to help me, but if you’d prefer not to talk about recent events, I understand. If all you can give me is background, that would help, too.”
She lifts her chin so the cords in her throat stand out against her gilded skin. “My husband went on what I thought was a routine business trip to Mexico. He came back Sunday afternoon two weeks ago. We were supposed to meet friends for cocktails and dinner at eight, but by seven he asked me to cancel because he said he felt terrible. He went upstairs. I heard him being sick. By the time I went upstairs with the antacids, he was lying on the bathroom floor without a pulse.” She takes a deep breath and releases it. “That’s what happened.”
Most of that’s in the reports the cruise line provided me. She omitted that she tried to resuscitate him for fifteen minutes before she called an ambulance. Thinking of her terror as she pushed on her husband’s chest and tried to force air into his unmoving lungs for fifteen minutes hurts so badly that my stomach cramps around the breakfast I just ate. But her pain’s not material to my investigation, so I just nod, keeping my eyes on her face, my gaze gentle.
“Other than vomiting, did he complain of anything else?” I ask.
“A headache. He didn’t say he had chest pains, or I’d have taken him straight to the ER. Bill had a minor heart attack six years ago. I wouldn’t have taken any chest pain lightly. He knew that.”
Which is probably why he didn’t say anything about it. All of the other victims reported chest pains, profuse sweating, and a racing pulse along with the headache and nausea. “Had he had food poisoning before? Was he allergic to anything?”
She shakes her head. “Not that I knew of.”
“What about his lifestyle? Did he exercise? Drink? Smoke?”
She arches a well-groomed brow many shades darker than her hair. “I think you know more about his lifestyle than I do.”
I nod and clasp my hands between my knees, hoping to look non-threatening. “I’m sorry you found out this way. It must have been a shock.”
“You could say that.” She stops staring me down, picks up the water, and takes another sip to steady herself. “I mean, I’ve read Fifty Shades like everyone else, but I had no idea my own husband was into . . . what do you call it?”
“Kink.”
“Kink? Like a bent cord?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “And that’s what this cruise was all about, right? Kink . . . kinky sex?”
“Yes.”
“God, I had no idea.” Her soft, red mouth twists bitterly. “I feel like I’ve lost Bill twice over. How could I have been married to the man for nine years and not known about this?”
I spread my hands. “Many people feel they need to hide it. Fifty Shades aside, kink’s not widely accepted. Maybe he worried it would have hurt his marriage to you, or his career, or his friendships. There are lots of reasons.”
“Are you?” She presses her lips together before continuing. “Are you part of this lifestyle, Mr. Logan?”
“Yes,” I say simply.
A hint of color rises to her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I had no business asking that. I’m just so angry. At everyone, and everything, associated with Bill’s death. At this lifestyle of his. But I know you didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m sorry . . . I’m taking it out on you.”
“No problem.” I accept her apology the way I’d accept a bottom’s who’d misbehaved. Only I’m not going to be able to spank Reggie Black into forgiveness, no matter how badly she needs it. “Going back to your husband’s habits, did he exercise? Drink? Smoke?”
She shrugs. “He golfed occasionally. He wasn’t really much for exercise, and I nagged him about his weight, I’ll admit. I tried to get him into low calorie beer.” She gives me a fragile, broken smile. “He called it horse piss. He liked his craft beers, and his gin. But he wasn’t really a big drinker. A couple of beers a week and a few gin and tonics on the weekend. He never smoked cigarettes . . . well, he never smoked that I knew of. I guess he could have been doing two packs a day, for all I know.”
My chest clenches, hearing her doubting everything about the man she was married to.
“Mrs. Black, can I offer you a word of advice?”
Which she’ll probably ignore, but her glaring, grating pain makes me ask anyway.
She frowns at me, but she nods.
“Finding out a secret about a loved one can be painful,” I say. “And I can see finding out about your husband’s alternative lifestyle has hurt you. But that doesn’t mean he was a different person from the man you knew. We all have secrets.”
“Do you . . . keep your kink or whatever a secret?”
She keeps throwing it back to me, invading my privacy, as a way of assuaging her grief. I’ve seen it before. I try not to take it personally.
“No, not anymore. But I certainly never told my parents while they were alive.”
She sighs and curls in on herself, her shoulders sagging, and I have that overwhelming urge to hug her again. And to put her over my knee.
“I don’t understand why Bill thought he couldn’t tell me. Did he think I wouldn’t understand? That I’d, what, reject him?” She loses the battle against the tears welling in her eyes and they streak down her cheeks for a second before she pulls out a tissue and blots them away. “God, I’m sorry. That’s not why you’re here. What can I tell you that will help you find out what happened to him?”
“What did he tell you about the business trip? Who was he going with? Where was he going? Who he was meeting?”
She shakes her head, but not in denial. I think she’s trying to remember conversations that at the time probably seemed inconsequential.
“It was a business trip like a hundred other business trips,” she says haltingly. “Bill was in recruitment. He travelled frequently to meet new clients, or new candidates. This trip was longer than most, but he went on longer trips once or twice a year.” She steeples her hands and presses them to her lips but continues speaking around them. “Those longer trips, they probably weren’t business trips at all, were they?”
“They could very well have been,” I say, trying to keep her on track. “Was he travelling with anyone?”
She nods. “He had two assistants. Jay and Chrisjean. One or the other usually went with him.”
“Did either of them go on this trip with him?”
“Both, actually. He was annoyed about it. Chris was supposed to be accompanying him because she had the contacts with the Mexican telecom companies, but she had some family thing come up, so she had to fly back early. Jay went out for the last few days of the trip. I know he was there because I spoke to Bill every day at noon. A ‘nooner,’ he used to call it.” Her smile is so sad, the ache in my gut redoubles. “No matter where he was in the world, he’d call me every day at noon. He put Jay on to say ‘hello’ during the call from Puerto Vallarta.”
I make a note. “Could you give me Jay’s full name?”
She does and I write it out.
“And Chrisjean?”
She gives me that, too.
“Could you tell me about Jay and Chrisjean? What kind of relationships did they have with your husband?”
“Sexual relationships, you mean?” she asks, arching that dark brow at me again.
I rub my fingertips against my palms to quell their twitching. A hard spanking would give her the emotional catharsis she needs, help her start processing her grief so she’s not striking out at strangers every five minutes. And I’d feel so much better after delivering a spanking. Her pain’s twisting me in fucking knots.
“No, I don’t mean sexual relationships, unless you knew your husband was having sexual relations with his assistants,” I say evenly, although it’s an effort.
She has the grace to blush. “No, he didn’t. Or I don’t think he did. I don’t know anymore. He had a previous assistant, Rosario. He was involved with her before we
were married. But he let her go and hired Jay when our relationship got serious. Jay was his protégé. They were very close. Bill was grooming Jay to take over. He used to say, ‘five more years and I’m out; Jay will be ready.’ Of course, he’s been saying that for seven years, but that’s Bill. He never could let go of his work. Chrisjean’s a recent hire. Maybe a year, eighteen months, something like that. Bill wasn’t sure whether she was going to work out. He said she was unreliable. He was angry about it, actually, during the trip. He mentioned it several times during our nooners and again when he got back.”
“Did he mention what the family problem was that made her leave the trip early?” I ask, bending over my notepad and scribbling.
“No. Bill was good like that. He understood that people had lives outside of work. He didn’t pry into other people’s problems.”
“Mm-hmm.” Or he valued his privacy, given what he was doing with it, and didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to pry. I ask her a few more questions designed to relax her. Details of her husband’s company, his working hours, their trips together. Then I get to the questions I know will upset her most. “Did your husband ever take drugs?”
“What do you mean?”
“Recreationally.”
She shrugs. “Doesn’t everyone?”
I don’t. I don’t tolerate it in my bottoms, either, and have broken it off with two of them because they wanted to continue stuffing junk up their noses. I should be all the high my bottoms need. “What did he take?”
“Ecstasy at parties. Viagra, sometimes. Oxy when he overdid it on the golf course. Pot to relax, things like that.”
That’s a lot, at least in my book. No wonder her lawyer advised her against this interview. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure she just scuttled her whole case against the cruise line by admitting her husband used drugs.
