The Dare (The Chronicles of Katrina One)

by Karin Tabke

  “Hey, love,” Rosie squealed throwing her arms around Katy’s neck. Rosie was like a dog that way, Katy could be gone for a day or a month or in this case four days, and Rosie enthusiastically greeted her as if she had been gone for a year.

  “I was just checking to see if you were home yet. I have to talk to you, sweet-pea. And you’re not going to like it.”

  Exhaling loudly, Katy’s shoulders slumped. As if she needed more bad news. “Can’t it wait, Rosie? I’m exhausted.”

  Rosie cocked her head sideways making a clucking sound. She was in great shape for her age, which Rosie never divulged but Katy figured to be in the neighborhood of sixty-ish. After contemplating Katy’s request, Rosie shook her head, grabbed Katy’s elbow and guided her down the hall to her apartment door. “No can do. This info is too hot to keep the lid on.”

  Katy allowed herself to be half dragged half pushed toward her apartment. “Because the world will come to an end if you don’t share you gossip with me tonight.”

  Rosie shook her head. “I wish it were gossip.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a string of keys, inserted one into Katy’s door and pushed it open. Holding the key up, Rosie smiled. “Sleeping with the supe has its perks.”

  “I’ll remember that.” If it had been anyone other than Rosie, Katy would have been angry. But Rosie was like family.

  Katy walked through the threshold and calmness immediately infiltrated her being. She was home. Her retreat from the world. “Set your bags down, we have to talk. But you have to promise not to kill the messenger, okay?” Rosie nervously said.

  “I could never kill you.”

  “Wait until you hear this!”

  She pushed Katy down into the Dante chair in her circular marble floored foyer and leaned over her, tilting her chin up so they looked directly into each other’s eyes. Katy blinked. “Hear what?”

  “I hate to tell you this, but Evan has a wife.”

  Katy felt as if she had been kicked in the gut again. Not this time because she was hurt, she was over Evan, but the hurt and humiliation that went along with how and when they broke up still stung. It would for a long time. “I know.”

  Rosie gasped and stood up straight. “And you kept seeing him knowing he was a cheater?”

  Standing Katy shook her head. “I didn’t know until two nights ago. Then I kicked him to the curb.”

  “I’m so sorry, sweet-pea. I really am,” Rosie soothed patting her shoulder.

  Katy walked through the foyer into the short hallway then into her small but highly functional gourmet kitchen and dropped her purse, cell phone and portfolio on the kitchen table, then headed for her bedroom. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Eliot saw him and a blonde coming out of Kuleto’s last week while you were in New York. He watched them being all kissy-huggy-face while they waited for their car, and well, Elliot being Elliot, he wrote down the license plate number and because he has access to secured sites for tenant background checks, he ran the plates. Came up registered to a Melinda Anne Scott and Evan Dryer Scott of Menlo Park. She matched the Mrs.’s driver’s license picture.”

  So the blonde in the hotel room was his wife. Lucky for Evan she hadn’t shown up a day earlier. “Remind me not to break any laws around you two,” Katy dryly said but wondered, was a threesome with a cop breaking the law? Her body flushed as she thought of Simon. She hadn’t stopped thinking of him all day.

  “Ohhh, I know that look! Did you meet someone else already?”

  “I’m done with men, Rosie. I pick lousy ones. And I’m tired of getting hurt.”

  “You just haven’t met the right man yet, sweet-pea. Did I ever tell you how many lovers I had before I met Elliot?”

  “Surprisingly no,” Katy chuckled. Rosie never held back details. The more sordid the better.

  “I stopped counting after thirty.”

  “You stopped counting after thirty? Oh, my God, Rosie!”

  “Most of them were frogs. A few had prince potential but I never settled for any of them because I knew they weren’t the one for me. But I knew the minute Elliot walked into my restaurant he was the one. I told him so too. It took about a year before he believed me. And that was thirty-one years ago.”

  “I can’t believe you had sex with over thirty men!”

  “How else was I going to know if we were compatible? If you aren’t compatible in the bedroom, chances are you won’t be out of it.”

  Katy swallowed loudly. If that was an indicator, she and Simon were soul mates. “Sex isn’t everything in a relationship, Rosie.”

  “If you’re not getting good sex, it ain’t. But once you have great sex, there’s no settling for less.”

  Then Katy was doomed to be disappointed for the rest of her life. Simon had ruined other men for her.

  She turned on her bedroom light and tossed her suitcase onto her bed.

  “We’ll talk more later, Rosie. Right now, I’m exhausted.”

  “You look like you’ve been crying, sweet-pea. I’m sorry about Evan. He seemed like such a nice man, although Elliot thought he was a bit of a bore.”

  “Elliot was right.” She hugged her friend goodnight and told her to lock up after herself. When she heard the front door open and close, Katy stripped and took a long hot shower.

  Afterward, as she stood naked looking at herself in the steamy mirror, she touched the small bruises along her jugular, compliments of Simon. Her body trembled, and despite her anger at him, her nipples tightened and her womb constricted with desire. God she was going to miss the crazy sex with that talented stud. She wrapped herself in a big fluffy robe. She was going to miss his warmth and his deep voice. Goose bumps erupted along her arms and chest, ending at her nipples as she heard the deep husky timbre of it in her imagination. Dragging her feet into the kitchen, she warmed a can of soup and stared at her cellphone on the table while she ate in silence.

  Piercing green eyes that looked past her beige exterior to her core, flashed before her. A deep-seated loneliness gripped her. She choked on a noodle. There was more to Simon, the hot cop, than met the eye, and damn if she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to get to know all of him better.

  Hating the fact that she kept glancing at her cellphone, Katy scolded herself. It wasn’t like Simon had her number. Even if he did, he wouldn’t call her. He had gotten what he wanted and as much as she wanted to be angry that he took what she was offering, she couldn’t stay mad because if she had it to do all over again knowing how lonely she would feel without his larger-than-life presence beside her, she would. In a heartbeat.

  “You’re pathetic, Katrina Winslow.” She turned on her cell, still blinking that she had a text. Her belly dropped as her brain registered the symbolism of the icon identifying the sender of the text. It was the set of handcuffs Simon used on her.

  Hand shaking, she tapped the view icon. The time of the text was roughly fifteen minutes after she left the hotel that morning. It read: Did you think I’d let you get away?

  ational bestselling, award-winning author Karin Tabke isn’t just another author with steamy stories to tell, but a cop’s wife who has “seen it all and heard it all.” Some of the hottest stories come from behind the blue wall of law enforcement rather than from in front. Married to a street cop, now retired, Karin is intimate with both and proves it with her sizzling tales of hot cops. Not only are her cops hot, but so are her sexy knights and bad boy werewolves. Karin’s Blood Sword Legacy series is a must read for anyone who loves tales of yore when men were men and women were women, and love did conqueror all. Her dark, erotic Blood Moon Rising paranormal trilogy is best described as “Sons of Anarchy meets Rise of Lycans”. Her L.O.S.T. series (w/a Karin Harlow) is paranormal romantic suspense at its “chilling and sizzling”* best. You don’t want to miss any of Karin’s deliciously edgy tales of danger and passion!

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