Cuffed & Claimed

by Lori King

  And she’d never looked at another bad boy. She’d learned her lesson. Since she’d been in Chicago, she’d played it safe and dated only bankers, stock brokers, accountants, and the like. Not one of them had lit her fire, but none of them had broken her heart, either.

  Was that why her nipples were suddenly pebble-hard and she could feel a tingling down low, a place that none of the safe guys she’d been dating had been able to arouse? She was over bad boys. Over them! She had learned her lesson the hard way.

  It was probably just his resemblance to Scott effing Easton, a man she had thought was the love of her life.

  Dammit, she wasn’t that hard up. She had her trusty vibrator and a job she loved, and she was working with the sister she loved even more. Life was good. She even liked her sister’s boyfriend, Rick. She didn’t get their lifestyle, as they called it, but she hadn’t seen Maggie look so happy, well, ever. To each his own. Or her own. Cat wasn’t interested in a man that tied her up and beat her ass, although… Scott hadn’t been a Dom, but he had definitely been pretty forceful in bed. He knew what he wanted, and he seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing exactly what Cat wanted, too.

  And unlike some of the men she’d dated before and after him, Scott had also known how to find a woman’s clit and what to do with it when it was located. She smiled at the thought. That man’s mouth tongue knew how to do wicked, wicked things to a woman. She’d never been multi-orgasmic until she’d met him.

  He was long out of her life, and good riddance, too. No matter how good he was in bed, that didn’t make up for the fact that he was a criminal. This hottie, on the other hand… Cat was a modern woman. Why should she deny herself?

  Of course, maybe once she talked to him she’d find out he was just an ordinary uneducated thug, and her arousal would depart. Scott, for all his faults, was extremely intelligent. They’d had a meeting of the minds, not just of the bodies. Or so she had thought,

  But on the other hand, did it matter if he wasn’t someone she might want a relationship with? Maybe that was actually a good thing. No reason she shouldn’t take a walk on the wild side again. Only this time, it would be just about sex. He probably wasn’t as talented with his tongue as Scott. But maybe he was trainable.

  She chuckled to herself. She must be horny and hard up to be fantasizing about a complete stranger just because he reminded her vaguely of her ex. Didn’t mean she couldn’t look and enjoy the view. But her fantasy of approaching him and hitting him up for a one-night stand had to remain a fantasy. Just because he looked hot, and like Scott, from a distance… he was probably dirty or smelly or had the IQ of a parsnip. And even if he was an okay guy, she’d hate herself in the morning for using him.

  She watched as he pulled out a cell phone. He spoke into it briefly and then tucked it back into his jacket pocket. What was this hottie doing loitering in the alley? And why was he watching the back door of her restaurant? Clearly, he was up to no good. Damn. What was it about her and criminals? Stupid fantasies had distracted her from what she needed to do.

  She pulled out her cellphone, her thumb hovering over the emergency call button, when the back door opened and Rick came out. Rick Curtis, Maggie’s fiancé. He was a nice, boring CPA who was a partner in a small firm, but who also helped out at the restaurant when he had time. In the last six months, he had pretty much taken over their bookkeeping for the restaurant, which had thrilled and endeared him to her. She hated paperwork.

  She almost called out to him, but there was something that held her back, something almost furtive about his movements, like he didn’t want to be seen. She watched Rick greet the stranger with one of those weird half-handshake, half-hug things men did that ended with them pounding each other on the back. Then he took an envelope out of his pocket and gave it to the stranger. In turn, the stranger handed Rick something too small for her to make out from where she stood.

  She watched as the stranger tucked the envelope into the inner pocket of his jacket and had to suppress a gasp. Was that a gun in a holster under his right arm? No, it couldn’t be. She was imagining things.

  But she wasn’t imaging the exchange. What had just changed hands? And more importantly, what was Rick involved in? She watched as her soon-to-be brother-in-law smiled and patted the stranger’s shoulder before hurrying back into the restaurant.

  The stranger then swung a long leg over the saddle of the big motorcycle, started to don his helmet, but then paused to look around as he pulled his phone out of an inner pocket. She backed up quickly, hoping he wouldn’t see her.

  Of course, she wasn’t that lucky. He looked her way as he held his phone to his ear. Then he lowered his glasses and stared right at her. His eyes were light against his tan skin and dark hair. She froze in place. She knew that her face reflected her feelings of shock. His expression was impassive, not showing recognition, curiosity, nothing. She couldn’t hear him, but she could see his lips move as he spoke briefly into his phone before putting it into his pocket.

  Then he looked her up and down. He looked like he wanted to say something to her, but then his face hardened and he looked angry. Cheeks flaming, she took a stumbling step backward.

  It was only then that she realized they weren’t alone as she bumped into someone. There was a third person in the alley right behind her, but she was concentrating so hard on the hot stranger that she hadn’t heard his approach.

  “Miss Catherine? Are you all right?” The words were respectful even if the expression wasn’t as he reached out to steady her as she stumbled. Tomas Onyschuk, the chef at Night and Day. His sandy blond hair was thinning and his pale blue eyes always looked a bit watery. He wasn’t a bad looking man, but there was something about him… it was all she could do not to pull away from him. He was trying to be nice, so she steeled herself not to flinch, but he had always given her a mild case of the creeps, and she didn’t want him touching her.

  She tried not to let her distaste show, but sometimes she suspected he knew it and deliberately made a point of touching her whenever he could.

  She looked over at the man on the bike, the one who reminded her so much of Scott. The stranger on the motorcycle gave Tomas a hard look before turning his attention back to Cat. His face wasn’t expressionless now. He was, she suddenly realized, blazingly angry. Suddenly he laughed and shrugged. Then he then pushed his glasses back into place, donned the helmet and then he was speeding down the alley and away from Cat, without a backward glance.

  Cat took the opportunity to pull free of Tomas’s gasp.

  “Thank you, Tomas, I’m fine now.” He just watched her silently. “I’m fine, Tomas. Just getting some fresh air. You can get back to work. I’ll be in shortly.”

  Tomas looked at her, and she had to suppress a shudder. He’d been working at Night and Day for almost three months. He seemed to work hard and she had no reason to complain, yet she had never warmed to him. Rick had hired him when the last chef had quit in a temperamental snit and left them desperately short staffed. The assistant chef had just left to spend three months at cooking school in Paris.

  Then Tomas smiled. It wasn’t an improvement. He knew she didn’t like him touching her, and it had amused him to put her into a position where she had to accept it

  “Whatever you say, boss. Why are you here so early, anyway?”

  She wanted to snap that she was the boss, and she could come in whenever she wanted. But she didn’t say the words out loud. Instead she explained, “I’m cooking for my sister’s book club today.”

  “But I always do that!” He sounded angry.

  “Yes, well, I’ll take care of it today.” She had to force herself to smile and add. “I know how busy you are. You can get start getting ready early for the evening crowd.”

  He just looked at her.

  “It’s a lovely afternoon. I’m just going to get a little air. Why don’t you head in, and I’ll be in shortly.”

  It wasn’t until the door closed behind him that she could breat
he again. She had to lock her knees so as not to sag against the dirty fence.

  What was wrong with her? Obviously, that stranger wasn’t Scott. She was imagining the resemblance. Clearly, she needed to get laid, and soon, if she was fantasizing about a stranger who bore a vague physical resemblance to a man she hadn’t seen in almost four years.

  But that wasn’t the main thing to worry about right now. Why on earth was a man with a gun skulking around an alley with Rick?

  3

  Three hours later, everything was ready. She had made a variety of finger foods, enough to feed an army and please both carnivores and vegetarians. She also made a special cake, or rather two cakes, decorated with a pair of icing handcuffs. She shook her head as she put the finishing touches on it. Then she grinned. It was a damned good thing she loved her sister so much. There was no way she’d be making a bondage cake for anyone else.

  Cat had been distracted, worried, even a little afraid for her sister. Why was a man with a gun meeting Rick secretly in an alley?

  Her sister claimed to be happier than she’d ever been, and Maggie had been happy for her. When Maggie had first started talking about him, Cat had been thrilled. Maggie deserved to be happy. She’d had crappy luck with men. But then she met Rick, and he loved and supported her, helped her gain back the confidence her ex had cost her. But back then, the sisters had been living in different cities, so she just knew Rick from Maggie’s stories.

  Then Cat had moved to Chicago. Rick had been so very welcoming. Cat had thought he was handsome and kind, if a little dull, but he loved her sister and she loved him. He was a CPA and got excited talking about numbers, but he was there for her sister, supporting and encouraging her. He had even gotten involved in the restaurant, doing the books and pitching in wherever else he was needed, from greeting guests to bussing tables when they were short-handed, and still trying to get the business up and running.

  Cat had even envied them even if Rick wasn’t her type. She was single and it wasn’t easy to meet eligible men in the city, especially when she had a job that kept her busy Tuesday to Saturday night. With Maggie working during the day, they didn’t get to spend as much time together as Cat would have liked.

  But her sister was happy, and that made Cat happy.

  At first.

  Things had been changing the last few months. Maggie had fallen in with a bad crowd. It had started innocently enough. A book club had outgrown the restaurant where they used to hold their meetings and they were looking for a new place to hold their meetings. Their private room usually sat empty during the day, so Maggie had offered it up for Saturday brunch. The club had liked it so much that it was a standing booking. Each Saturday, ten to twenty people came to eat and talk books. Dirty books. The Kinky Book Club lived up to its name, according to her sister.

  Maggie had quickly joined the club and had raved about it until Cat had finally come to a meeting. Maggie didn’t have to cajole her very hard. Cat had thought the idea of her prudish little sister talking about dirty books was hilarious, and couldn’t wait to meet the members of the club.

  That’s when she got the shock of her life. It didn’t take long to figure out that these people weren’t just talking about kinky sex. They belonged to a sex club devoted to BDSM and had enticed her sister and Rick to join them. Maggie had assured her that it was all safe, sane and consensual, and Cat had believed her. But she’d always been uncomfortable with the idea of consensual beatings. Sure, they sounded sexy in some of those kinky books, but in real life… surely assault was assault, but Maggie had assured her it wasn’t like that. She and Rick had an agreement as to what he could and couldn’t do to her. And he made her happy. Cat couldn’t deny the truth in that.

  Cat shook her head and agreed to keep out of her sister’s sex life. Maggie was an adult, and Rick seemed to make her happy, but how well did Maggie really know him? It was his friend and co-worker at the accounting firm, Amanda, who had brought the Kinky Book Club to their restaurant. What else were Rick and his friends into? What else would they drag her sister into?

  And now seeing Rick in the alleyway, so furtive with the armed man on the motorcycle. Maybe he and his friends had enticed her sister, taken advantage of her trusting nature. Now Maggie wasn’t just a member of the book club; she and Rick joined Club Hades as well. Cat shivered. Club Hades? What kind of name was that?

  And now the man with the gun? And the meeting behind the restaurant. She tried to convince herself that she was imagining things. After what happened in Seattle when she’d been oblivious to her boss’s criminal activities, not to mention her boyfriend’s, she was hypersensitive about such things. Surely she was just projecting and there was a good explanation for what she’d seen.

  While she iced the cake, she argued with herself. Rick loved her sister. She didn’t doubt that. But she couldn’t convince herself that the meeting she had seen was innocent, no matter how she tried. Rick was up to something, and she would wager it wasn’t something good.

  She should have known something up when she spotted Alexandra Jones at the book club meetings. She’d started coming to the meetings almost two months ago. She was calling herself Lexi, but Cat recognized her.

  Lexi was an investigative reporter specializing in long-term undercover assignments, and Cat was a big fan of her writing. She hadn’t thought anything of it at first. Maybe the woman was into the lifestyle as Cat and Rick called it, but what if she was working on a story? What if Rick and his friends were into something illegal and they’d lured Maggie into it?

  And now Rick was sneaking around meeting a man with a gun. A hot, sexy man, but that was irrelevant. Just because he was sex on a stick and made Cat’s private parts vibrate at the thought of him, didn’t mean she was going to sit back and let her sister get mixed up in something bad.

  Enough was enough. Her sister had gotten herself involved with something that was scaring Cat. She sighed. Big sis to the rescue, starting right away. Tomas could manage the restaurant tonight. She’d stay upstairs and mix and mingle, and begin to figure out a way to make her sister see the truth and get away from these people, even if she had to hire someone to kidnap and deprogram her.

  Taking a deep breath, she arranged with the chief server to start sending up the finger foods and let her know she’d signal when it was time for the cake. Then she walked up the stairs. Maggie was there in the thick of things, laughing at something someone said, but the moment she saw Cat, she hurried over.

  “Please tell me you are going to join us! I thought you were going to hide in the kitchen all day!”

  “Of course I am. You said that there was going to be a special announcement at today’s Kinky Book Club meeting. How could I miss that?” She could have easily missed it. In fact, she was terrified at what the announcement could be, and was ready to grab her sister and pull her out of the restaurant to freedom.

  “It isn’t exactly a regular meeting. That was yesterday, but all of the members are attending. We just have to wait for a few more people, including Rick, before we begin. You may have noticed that there are more people than normal at the book club brunch meeting. Usually, it’s only the submissives, but today is special, so their Doms are also joining us. That’s why we decided to have a late lunch instead of the usual brunch.” She grasped Cat’s arm, “Rick will be joining us too, since it is his announcement we are celebrating. I can’t tell you how excited I am, and I’m so happy you could be here with us for it. Now you’ll have to excuse me while I greet some more guests.”

  His announcement? Maybe he was getting a promotion at work or something. He was an accountant. Maybe he’d made partner and she, Cat, was worrying for nothing, and they hadn’t set a wedding date yet. Hell, that wouldn’t have been a reason to invite the Doms. Doms. Her sister knew and consorted with Doms. And considered herself a submissive. What the hell was happening? She had to figure out how to save her sister before it was too late.

  * * *

  Cat stopped a passing
waiter and grabbed a glass of champagne. Champagne! This wasn’t going to be good, not at all.

  And then she saw him, and started choking as the drink went down wrong. He’d clearly used the last few hours to clean up. He’d shaved. At first, she thought he’d also gotten a haircut, but then she realized that he’d just tied it back. He had also changed into a very nice suit, one that seemed to be hand-tailored to his body and which showed off his lean build and long legs. In fact, it was so well tailored that she wouldn’t have noticed the bulge from the gun he wore under his right armpit if she hadn’t been looking for it.

  The color suited him as well. It was a silvery gray and he paired it with a black shirt and silvery tie. His eyes, she could now see, were a pale blue gray and seemed to see right into her when he turned his gaze her way. He was even sexier all cleaned up. She felt butterflies in the pit of her stomach and a strange tingling in her girlie bits. Damn, she hadn’t been so attracted to a man in years.

  But what was he doing here? His interaction in the alley with Rick had seemed furtive, even criminal given the gun he carried. She studied him closer. He didn’t exactly look like a criminal, but what did a criminal look like? This afternoon she would have called him a thug. Now, he looked no less dangerous in his suit. Shark. Now she’d call him a shark, she decided, as she let her gaze rove over his sharply-dressed body, up his long, muscular legs, pausing at an impressive bulge, over what seemed to be a flat midsection, up to broad shoulders until she was looking at his face.

  His face and his amused gray eyes. He held up a glass that held a clear amber liquid and raised it, tipping it in her direction as if in a toast. Quickly, she turned away, her heart pounding and her respiration shallow. She considered heading back downstairs to the safety of her kitchen when she saw Rick’s head appear as he came up the stairs. When he saw her, he smiled and hurried the rest of the way up to the private room.