by Jane Henry
“You said I can dom you at the club, and now we’re here.”
I press one arm across her lower back, pin her legs against mine, bring the belt back, and lash it against her ass. She screams, louder than I’ve ever heard her. She’s taken a whipping from me and not screamed that loud, so I suspect this has more to do with anger than pain.
Jesus, I can’t deny it feels good to whack her rebellious ass. I give her another hard spank, then another. Her screams raise in pitch and she’s fighting me hard, but I’m stronger, and it’s easy to master her. I take in a deep, calming breath. If I’m punishing her, I can’t lose my control. I see my purpose with utter precision.
“You’ve thrown up your walls and defied me. You’re refusing to communicate with me. And if you don’t want this, you tell me now. You safeword.”
My range of motion with her over my knee is limited, but the belt meets its mark. The rise and fall of my belt is almost methodical, a rhythmic swish and thwap between her cries and flinching. My erection presses up against her belly, but I press on. I’m not done until she caves. At the sixth smack of the belt, I drop it on the floor. This isn’t getting me where I need to be. In one swift move, I shove down her leggings and bare her before I raise my hand and smack my palm against her bare skin. She cries out but it’s more subdued this time and ends on a whimper.
With hard, measured strokes of my palm, I know the moment the brat goes right out of her, as she goes from fighting me and screaming to sniffling, wet drops dampening my pants. She holds onto my leg but her body slumps over my knee. I pause, running my palm over her scorched ass, hot to the touch, smoothing her beautiful curves. I’m not angry at her anymore. Minutes pass as she cries softly, and I rub out the sting, massaging her punished bottom. I gather her hair and move it off her neck, inhaling the scent of vanilla, before I run my fingers along the soft, satiny skin. Jesus, she’s beautiful.
“C’mere,” I murmur softly, releasing the grip I have on her lower back, lifting my leg off hers, and turning her around across my lap. I pull her into me, my eyes closing as she burrows into my arms and sobs against my chest. “Baby,” I whisper, tucking her into me as tightly as I can hold her. I rock her, holding her so close she has to push her head up for breath, and when she does, her eyes meet mine.
“God, I needed that,” she whispers. “I don’t know what the hell got into me. I just… suddenly… I was…”
“Shhh.”
“You want me not to talk, sir?”
There it is. Sir. My arms tighten around her and my chest warms with the simplest gesture of submission.
“Talk all you want, doll. You just don’t have to.” And isn’t that what this is about? I’m offering her a chance to lean on me, to give me her fears and uncertainties, and trust me with her heart.
She relaxes against me as if she’s falling asleep, and a soft smile plays on her lips. I bend down and brush my lips against hers.
“Sometimes I think I need to just be reminded of how things can be,” she says. But as I hold her, her body suddenly stiffens. “Zack?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“How did you know I was here?”
Dammit. I release a shuddering breath. Beatrice fucked up when she flipped out on me. But I fucked up by hiding from her. I need her to trust me, and I might have screwed that up royally. I can only tell her the truth and hope she knows I love her.
My grip on her tightens. “I was tracking you, baby. Only so I can keep you safe.”
Her body goes rigid and her eyes meet mine, widened in disbelief. She pushes herself off my lap and rights herself, pulling up her leggings.
“Define tracking.”
I rake a hand through my hair and huff out a breath. “I’ve had a man on you, making sure you’re safe.”
Her jaw drops.
Shit. This is not how I wanted to tell her.
“Without telling me?” she whispers.
“I… yeah,” I say with a sigh. “I just needed to keep you safe, baby. It has nothing to do with not trusting you or anything.”
She gestures to the bed and to the floor where my belt still lies. “You just spanked me to tears,” she whispers. “You just… and you…” Her voice trails off. “You want me to trust you, and yet you were fucking tracking me?”
I get to my feet, my voice rising with hers. “Beatrice, it isn’t like that. Listen, baby.”
But she shakes her head and holds up her palm. “Don’t,” she says, her voice cracking, like the snap of branches in winter. “Don’t, Zack,” she whispers, wiping her eyes. “Please. I’m leaving.” She shakes her head, gold tumbling on her shoulders. “Call your men off.” She closes her eyes and her head falls back if she’s steeling herself for what she says next. “And whatever you do, don’t you dare follow me.”
She turns on her heel, marches to the door, and slams it with a bang that reverberates within the chambers of my heart.
“Luciano.”
“Yes, sir?”
I’m sitting in the bar area at Verge. I need to connect with man I’ve had on her. Diana peeked her head in a little while ago, smiling sadly at me, and I can only assume that she saw Beatrice as she left the building. Tobias darkened the doorway briefly, as I was dialing my phone, but when I didn’t return his look or speak to him, he left, too. I’m grateful they don’t want to talk to me. I’m doing what I can to keep my shit together as I pull the team off Beatrice.
“You’re relieved of your duties.”
“Sir?”
“There will be no need to monitor Beatrice’s safety from now on.”
“I see.” There’s a brief pause, and my gaze wanders about the vacant bar area. Where is she now? Where did she go? What is she feeling?
“Then you don’t want to know where she’s gone or what she’s doing,” Luciano says.
My jaw clenches. “No.”
“All right,” he says in a singsong voice, as if he’s taunting me. What the fuck is this?
“Luciano, you have something to tell me, you fucking tell me. Then we hang up this phone and I reassign you.” I clench my jaw and stare at the picture frames on the wall, unseeing.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he stutters. “It’s just that less than a minute ago, she got into the car of a man I’m tracking now.” I hear the sound of an engine accelerating.
“Right.” I stand, walking without seeing around the bar, my mind teeming with possibilities. The right thing to do would be to let her go, to trust that she’s with a friend or someone she knows. She’s with a man? Who is he? Is it someone she’s known for a while? I pace the floor, torn between asking the obvious and respecting her privacy. “What of it?”
“This is the fourth time he’s crossed her path. I don’t know who he is, but he’s no harmless bystander.”
Fuck. I need to know. I recall the guy I saw when we left the cake shop, dark hair and eyes behind shades, vaguely familiar. I stare at the pictures on the wall above the loveseats, my mind racing as if putting the pieces of a puzzle together. It’s right here. There’s something right at the edge of my memory involving Beatrice and her family.
The knowledge hits me with a flare of recognition like sun breaking through clouds on a summer day, blinding and vivid, the picture frames tipping me off. The man I saw outside the cake shop I’d seen before, but not in person. I’d seen him in a picture frame on the way upstairs from her father’s man cave. Her foster brother.
“Luciano, run the background of a foster child who stayed at Beatrice’s parents’ home, and get back to me as soon as you have any information.”
But there’s no sound on the other end of the line.
Chapter 15
I fling open the door to Verge and walk into the brisk autumn air while brushing away tears. How could he do this? And to reveal this after breaking down my walls like that? I close my eyes and stomp my feet, pretending it’s to keep me warm, but I know better.
“Bea?”
A man’s voice calls out and shak
es me out of my stupor. I blink, looking around me, and see a cab at the curb, the door flung open.
“Carter?” I haven’t seen him in so long I barely recognize him. God, he looks like shit. His eyes are bloodshot, and though he wears a hooded sweatshirt, it hangs loose on him, like an elephant skin. Still, he smiles, and the little girl in me who misses him smiles back.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was thinking about you, and driving on my way to lunch,” he says, “and there you are.” When he smiles at me like that, the grin splits his face in two and makes my heart squeeze.
I wrap my hands around my belly as if to protect myself but I’m not myself. I don’t even know what I think about what’s happening with Zack. Just when he’s brought me back to where I’m happy, curled up on his lap and holding onto him like he’s my life preserver, he dashes cold water on me, reminding me that he’s an overprotective bear who’s stifling the hell out of me. It’s so not cool that he had someone fucking tracking me without my knowledge. He wants me to trust him but hell, how can I if he doesn’t even trust me?
I shiver in the brisk fall air as Carter steps out to greet me, embracing me. I think it odd that he does. He was never one for physical affection. It should be nice to see a familiar face at a time like this, when it seems as if my world is crumbling around me, but I fight the desire to turn tail and run. I’m not sure why.
I agree to join him for lunch but when I’m sitting in the back of the cab that smells like stale coffee and cigarettes, I wonder if I did the right thing.
No, I tell myself. You’re just used to telling Zack everything. Just let it go.
“So good to see you,” I say. “And what a nice surprise that you’re here. How are you?”
“Fine,” he says, but his smile is sad now. He turns to look out the window. “I hear you’re engaged.”
Shit. How could I have forgotten about that? Everyone in the world thinks I’m marrying Zack, and now I have to not only break up with him, I need to tell the world we’re not engaged anymore and we were never fucking engaged to begin with.
For fuck’s sake.
“I’m not engaged,” I blurt out, ignoring the way he whips his head around to look at me.
“You’re not?” I expect him to blink in surprise, but instead his gaze darkens like sudden storm clouds rolling in on a summer day. He curses under his breath, and I startle to see little flecks of spittle form at the corners of his mouth. What the hell is this?
“No,” I whisper. “I just broke up with my—with Zack.”
Something is wrong. Something is terribly wrong.
My heartbeat races and I look wildly out the window. Where are we going? Waves of nausea swirl in my belly, and I reach for my phone on instinct. I pat the side of my bag where my phone goes, but it’s empty. With frantic, rapid movements I rifle through my purse, only to see that my phone is missing.
“You’re not engaged,” he repeats. Why does the sudden knowledge incite such fury in him?
“No, Carter. Why… what’s wrong?” I look wildly about the inside of the cab, looking for my phone, but it’s not here. I peer through the screen that separates us from the driver. It’s getting dark out, and I have no idea where I am. Neon signs flash past our windows, and still we drive on.
“Call my phone?” I ask him.
“You won’t find your phone,” he says lazily with a sigh as he looks out the window. “And I’m sorry, Beatrice. I never would’ve gone through with this if I’d known the engagement was off. Jesus.”
I shiver, trying to keep my head clear, even though I’m dizzy and breathing is becoming difficult.
“What are you talking about?” I ask in a whisper, not trusting myself. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She told me you were engaged,” he says, his voice tight like bow strings ready to snap.
“Who? Carter, what the hell?”
He just shakes his head. I grab at the divider to get the driver’s attention, desperation clawing at my chest. “Hey. Hey!” My voice is high-pitched and sounds distant. “Pull the car over. Now! Let me out!” But the driver, an anonymous man wearing a black, rimmed cap and a long-sleeved black t-shirt, doesn’t even turn to look at me. “Hey! This is kidnapping! I told you to let me out, so let me the hell out of here.” The cab moves faster, the engine accelerating so quickly my head snaps back.
Shit.
“Carter, this is illegal. I have no idea what you’re doing, but you need to let me the hell out of here.”
He shakes his head, his eyes distant and cold. “It’s too late for that, Bea. Way too late. Did you know your boyfriend had a tracking device on your phone?” He laughs. “It’s why I had to get rid of it outside your little club.”
He tilts his head to the side, as the car moves so quickly my stomach churns. “And you’re okay with that level of control?” He shakes his head. “She’s right. He’s so wrong for you. It’s too bad you didn’t realize that before it was too late.”
“Who? What the hell are you doing?”
Bile stings the back of my throat and I fight the desire to vomit. How much does he know? Was he aware of the conversation I had this morning with Zack?
Everything around me seems suddenly too vivid, too clear, the stains on the back of the seat in front of me, the worn plush fabric beneath my hands as I push my palms down to steady me, the sound of Carter’s breathing.
“I was always nice to you, Carter. I never hurt you. I don’t understand why you’d do something to me.” I swallow the lump in my throat, memory after memory of the time I spent with him when he was younger flashing in my mind like a movie reel on fast forward. Is this what people mean when they say their life flashed before their eyes? Does this mean I’m going to die?
Why?
I’m not the girl with millions anymore. I know nothing that would make me a target for anyone.
He doesn’t answer me.
The light around us vanishes, and we’re suddenly plunged into darkness. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, trying to steady my nerves, before my lids flutter open and I look wildly about me. Talking has done no good, so now it’s important I keep my head about me. Irrationally, I expect Zack to come flying around the corner any minute to save me, but the knowledge that he won’t makes me choke out a dry sob. He’s gone. I pushed him away. The tracker on my phone is useless, and whoever is orchestrating this knows too much. I have to find a way to safety on my own.
The cab pulls to a stop, and I can’t see where we are, as it’s pitch black wherever we’ve parked.
“Stay calm, Beatrice,” Carter says, then his hand is on my wrist, pinching me so hard it hurts. I pull away, but he only grips harder. My door swings open, and the driver is standing there. He reaches for my other hand, Carter releases me, and I’m yanked out into musky, dank air. I blink, looking up at the driver’s face, my breath going out of me as I stare into the familiar lewd grin of Judson Tolstoy Hayes.
Chapter 16
“We can run back reels on her exit and right outside our door, but no more than that, Zack.” Diana paces Tobias’s office, wringing her hands, while Tobias runs through the security cameras by his desk, and I alert my buddies on the force to get their asses over here and help me get my girl back.
“I knew something was wrong,” Diana wails. “She hasn’t been herself lately.”
I turn to look at her, taking a deep, cleansing breath so I don’t snap. I’m angered at her dramatics, even though I know they’re justified. I want facts, and now.
“Tell me what you know.”
Diana blinks up at me, her gaze swiftly meeting Tobias’ but Tobias is scrolling through security feed.
“Diana.”
Tobias looks over and realizes she’s hesitating. “For Christ’s sake. Spill, woman,” he barks out.
Diana looks pained as she speaks. “She said she wasn’t into the whole 24/7 thing and that maybe… maybe she outgrew the dynamic.”
I wave
an impatient hand in the air. “Yeah, I know that. I mean tell me anything else that was out of the ordinary. Anything at all.”
She frowns. “That was out of the ordinary.”
I anchor my hands on my hips, my mind teeming with possibilities and ideas. She has a point, and it’s partly why it’s baffled me. Beatrice loves submitting to me, and yeah, I get that she might not want rules and a more serious dynamic, but I wouldn’t have pursued this relationship with her if it hadn’t been such a good fit. She’s feisty as hell, but I love that about her.
“Go on.”
“It was after the whole fake engagement thing,” she says. “Zack, c’mon, she was different after that, wasn’t she?”
Hell yeah she was. I nod, listening, impatient as I’m ready to fucking raze New York City to find Beatrice and I don’t have patience to talk about this shit.
“Her parents putting all that pressure on her, and then people congratulating you on your engagement that wasn’t really one anyway? And then when her brother called…”
“Her brother,” I repeat. My suspicions are confirmed, then. Luciano was tracking someone before his phone went dead. Her brother’s the one who was stalking her, and fuck if he isn’t the one now who’s involved in this.
I whip out my phone and call into my office. I need her parents on the phone, now.
Chapter 17
We’re in some sort of dark alleyway. Judson has me by the arm, gripping so tightly I can feel my bones rubbing together, and the muscles burning.
“You’re hurting me,” I hiss. “Let me go. God, when Zack finds you, he’ll kill you. He will kill you.”
He laughs mirthlessly. “Ah, if I let you go, you’ll run or do something stupid. Before I do so, we need to have a talk, you and I, just the two of us. And if we don’t, then I may have to hurt you.” A slow, sinister smile, like a snake coiling, curls his lip upward. “But maybe you’d like that. My men say you like to be hurt. Don’t you, Beatrice?”
