by Sophie Oak
Hell yeah he’d noticed. Juliet Kirkman liked stilettos. And she definitely seemed to have a problem with Nat.
“I’ll have Logan dig up everything he can on her.”
Whatever happened, he wanted to keep an eye on Juliet.
* * * *
Nat sniffled a little as she walked into the ranch house owned by Jack Barnes, his partner, Sam Fleetwood, and their shared wife, Abigail.
It was a place she knew well. She often stayed out here with their two kids, Olivia and Josh, when they travelled or needed a night out. She also made house calls.
Sam Fleetwood’s eyes widened and a big grin crossed his face as he walked in from the kitchen. “Nat! Damn, it’s good to see you. You’re an angel from heaven, darlin’. Did Jack tell you what I did to my shoulder?”
Ranchers, Nat had discovered, were a veritable goldmine for the massage therapist profession. They were always pulling muscles.
“She’s not here to work.” Chase stalked in. He’d been brooding since the moment Juliet had walked into the café.
Nat swallowed down bile. God, how was she going to stay here in this town? Even with all the amenities at the spa, she had to go into town sometime. She couldn’t just stay out there. She wasn’t dumb. She knew how this town worked. Juliet had money and power. If she wanted to, and it seemed like she did, she could make Nat’s life unbearable. Nat had heard the rumors about Abby Barnes’s childhood in this very town. She’d been run out of Willow Fork. She hadn’t been allowed to shop or buy gas because she’d pissed off a powerful family.
“Natalie, sit down.” Chase’s low rumble brought her out of her thoughts. She looked up and he was pointing to a chair, a plush little sofa she’d sat in many times before reading a story to Josh or Olivia. She really did feel a little light-headed. She started to move toward it, but both Ben and Chase took places on the couch. They were really big men, gorgeous bookends with broad shoulders leaving no real room for her. She stopped.
“Sit down, Natalie,” Ben commanded. He patted the seat beside him. “Jack, I think she could use some lunch. We didn’t even get to order.”
Natalie looked around, but then thought better of it. She was a little worried that they would simply pick her up and place her where they wanted her. They seemed to enjoy lifting her up and proving just how freaking strong they were. She wasn’t exactly overweight, but she wasn’t tiny either. But when Ben picked her up and hauled her to his chest, his arms surrounding her, she felt delicate and fragile and more than that, it felt all right to be both because he would take care of her.
It wasn’t a good idea to think like that. Those types of dreams would just get her in trouble. And she didn’t want to get involved with a damn Dom, much less two. She sat between them, attempting to hold herself apart, but their hips touched hers, her legs sliding against theirs, making her wonder what it would be like to be tangled with them.
A big hand reached around, sliding under her hair and cupping the back of her neck. Chase. Heat flashed through her. Another hand, this time Ben’s, found her right knee, settling possessively there.
“Daddy, why are those men touching my Nat like you touch my momma?” Josh asked, his little mouth a firm, stubborn line. Josh had trouble with boundaries. He didn’t have a single issue sharing his toys or his treats. He would give those up in a heartbeat. People were another matter entirely. Josh was deeply possessive and protective of anyone he loved. She’d once watched a three-year-old Josh slug a five-year-old who had thirty pounds and a half a foot on him because the other boy had said something nasty to his sister, Olivia.
Josh had a little crush on Nat. He liked to hold her hand, and once he’d asked if he could marry her when he grew up. Of course, given his family life, she hadn’t been surprised when he’d promised to find them a third, too. Given how her life had been going up until yesterday, she might still be single by the time Josh was old enough to get married and settle on a friend to share a woman with.
She tried to pull away because the last thing she wanted to do was to upset Josh. Two big hands tightened on her.
“Josh, son, I think we should go and have a talk. Why don’t you help me find Benita?” Sam put a hand on Josh’s shoulder and they walked into the kitchen.
Nat turned to her two crazy cavemen while Jack Barnes settled into the seat across from them. “You didn’t have to do that. He’s just a kid.”
Barnes chuckled a little. “I don’t know about that, Nat. Josh is a little precocious to say the least. And he’s sure he’s going to marry you. He’s even talking to little Jared in his preschool class about potentially sharing you one day. Yeah, that was a parent-teacher conference I never expected to have.”
“The kid needs to understand that you’re taken,” Chase said as though he was talking about an actual real adult rival and not a kid who had trouble with tying his shoes. “He needs to learn not to horn in on other men’s women.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nat shot back. “He’s four.”
Chase shrugged. It seemed to be his go-to move to indicate he didn’t give a shit. Chase shrugged a lot. “He needs a woman closer to his own age. Like a fetus, perhaps.”
Ben smiled, a little uptick of those gorgeous lips. “We’ll give him the number to Dani’s womb.”
“How about you two tell me what kind of trouble Nat’s in? We just got back into town this morning from visiting my daughter. Why the hell was Juliet screaming at Nat?”
Before Nat could reply, Ben was talking. “Her husband was found dead in Nat’s massage room out at the spa.”
Jack leaned back, a thoughtful look in his eyes. He didn’t seem particularly surprised that Stan had met a bad end, but then Jack didn’t put his emotions out there for all to see. The only time she really saw the man get soft was with his wife and kids and Sam Fleetwood. “And now everyone thinks Nat was having an affair with him and potentially killed him. Were drugs involved?”
“Interesting that’s your first question,” Chase said, his hand stroking her neck. He needed to stop doing that. She kind of wanted to lean against him and purr. “What exactly do you know about Stan Kirkman and drugs?”
“I know the rumors, Chase,” Jack replied. “We stay pretty much to ourselves out here. We’re isolated and we like it that way, but I had to fire a ranch hand a few months back because I caught him doing drugs. Word was he’d gotten it out at Kirkman’s warehouse. I didn’t really investigate. Just called Stan to let him know he had some trouble.”
Yeah, Nat could hear that conversation. It would have been a deeply unsubtle threat to clean his shit up or have Jack on his ass. “Was it heroin?”
The thought of all those drugs sitting there just waiting to be pinned on her made her nervous. Someone had tried to frame her for murder. It was unreal.
A slight shake of his dark head indicated a no. “Meth. It’s easily made right here in the sticks. It’s the redneck drug of choice.”
“Do you think Stan was dealing?” Ben asked.
“I think if he wasn’t, he knew what was happening and probably took a kickback. I don’t buy that his furniture store is doing that well. Juliet is driving a new BMW and Stan had just ordered a Porsche, but I’ve heard that sales were down. They’re either leveraged to the hilt or Stan has some other form of income.”
“Possibly a little of both. I think Juliet wants people to believe she’s doing better than she is. The tag was still attached to her designer suit and the $12,000 Chanel watch she was wearing was a fake,” Chase said.
“How on earth could you tell?” The whole event had occurred so fast she didn’t even remember what color Juliet’s suit had been much less that she’d been wearing an expensive watch.
“I noticed the watch when she smacked you, sweetness,” Chase answered in a grave monotone. “Trust me, that sight is burned into my brain.”
“And you know a lot about designer watches?” Jack asked.
Ben took that one. “Chase has a photographic memory. We work
ed a smuggling case for a designer a few years back. He studied designer clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Trust me. He can spot a fake from a hundred yards away.”
“Christa was talking about an underground club. Have you heard anything?” Chase asked, obviously dismissing the whole photographic memory thing.
A fierce frown crossed Jack’s face. “Yes, I have. It’s one of the reasons we just got back from Deer Run. I wanted to talk to my brother about how to shut that shit down. He actually told me to call you two in. Lucas knows how our sheriff works. If we don’t have a ton of evidence, I don’t think the sheriff will even investigate. I was going to call Julian to see if he would loan you two out.”
Ben’s hand moved on her leg as he sat up. “Why are you so worried about this, Jack? Aren’t you being a little hypocritical? The Club, for all its elegance, is really nothing but a more opulent underground sex club.”
“The Club doesn’t have missing girls,” Jack stated flatly.
Oh, crap. She’d heard some rumors. There was a young college girl who had supposedly gone out to meet friends and never returned. “You’re talking about Michelle Nelson.”
Jack scrubbed a hand over his face, a weary gesture. “Her uncle is one of my hands. He says she’s gotten involved in some nasty stuff these last few months, but he doesn’t think she would run off. That’s the explanation the sheriff is pushing. Another girl named Hannah Wells is missing, too. Now it was well known that Hannah was into meth. I think that little club is running drugs and Stan was involved. I can’t get into the club. No one will even talk to me about it. I’ve managed to figure out that to get an invitation you need to see a man at a bar, but they shut down the minute I walk in the door. I don’t even know if I’ve found the right one. They’ve started popping up all over the unincorporated parts of the county in the last couple of years.”
“You are a little intimidating,” Chase said. “You’re kind of worse than the law around these parts. It’s not so surprising that they don’t want you around. The question is just how secret is this club?”
“No one will talk about it. If it’s anything like other clubs, it’s likely easier to get in if you bring a submissive female with you,” Jack said.
Nat went cold. She knew where this was going. She’d been around long enough to know that submissive females were prized in the BDSM world. Ben or Chase would have to go into that club and they would need a female with them. They would need an experienced submissive.
Ben stood, pacing. “I’ll call Julian. He can send someone down.”
Chase’s hand stroked the back of her neck, a soothing sensation. She could feel him trying to settle her down because she just knew he’d already accepted what Ben had not. “And who will he send, brother? Tara? Darin won’t let her go. Marcy has a new Dom. She won’t leave him. Those are the only two I would even dare to take undercover with me.”
Ben’s face fell. “Kitten?”
That wasn’t going to happen. “Kitten would just as likely walk off with the drug dealer if he promised her spankings. That would be a disaster. Someone at the spa likely killed Stan. With all the locks and protocols, I would be very surprised if someone just happened to walk in off the street and managed to find the right room and killed Stan with no one seeing him or her. If there’s a connection between the underground club and the spa, then you need someone from the spa to go in with you, but she would have to be in disguise. And you have to keep it perfectly quiet or you’ll tip someone off.”
“But Ben and Chase have been seen around the resort,” Jack pointed out.
“I barely put in an appearance last night before my little sweetness here sent me straight to the back of the bar. I only talked to Logan, Kitten, and the brat, besides the waitress,” Chase said.
“How did I send you to the bar?” Nat asked.
His hand slid down her spine, causing her to shiver. “You drove me to drink because you’re all damaged and shit, and I couldn’t just do what I wanted with you.”
He never prevaricated. She knew she shouldn’t ask, but it just came out. She was so much more impulsive around him. “What did you want to do?”
“I wanted to put you on your back and fuck you so hard everyone in that damn dungeon would know that you’re my little bit of sugar.” He frowned. “It wouldn’t have helped me. Ben wasn’t in the dungeon at the time. He would still have tried to take my treat.”
He was back on that again? God, she couldn’t take another fight. She needed to talk to them, to tell them she wasn’t going to choose.
Ben winked her way. “I didn’t try, brother. I got that treat. I’ll get it again.”
“Not until I’ve had a taste. I demand equal time.”
“Done.”
Nat felt her mouth drop open. That didn’t sound like fighting. It sounded like negotiations.
“Can you two figure out who gets fun time with your girlfriend later? Has anyone thought about the fact that Nat hasn’t bottomed in years?” Jack asked. “She might not be able to.”
“I can do it.” The words came out on a whisper. Yeah, that wasn’t going to make anyone believe her. But someone had tried to frame her, and she wasn’t going to sit idly by. Gretchen was too weak. She would never send Gretchen or Kitten in. The other subs were either from the area or knew a lot of people. She didn’t get to town often, and she doubted if anyone would recognize her the minute she put on a wig and covered up her hair. She was perfect.
And she wouldn’t let Ben and Chase go in without her. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t going to stay with them, that she couldn’t stay with them long term. She couldn’t stand the thought of them being in danger.
“I can do it.” She sounded stronger this time. “But we might need to practice a little.”
Chapter Eleven
Three days later, Chase opened the door, impatience in his every move. Three long days of taking it slowly was making him utterly insane.
Damn it. What was that woman doing to him? He was never impatient. Bored. He was bored almost all the time, but never impatient. Now he was anxious and definitely not bored.
He’d spent his days behind a two-way glass watching as Chris Linwood and Callum Reed interviewed employees. He would have preferred doing it himself, but he had a cover to try to maintain, so he’d given the job over. He’d checked the IDs on every car that had been allowed in the gates of the resort. He’d run checks on everyone who’d had an appointment at the spa for the last two weeks.
Nothing. Just a hysterical Gretchen, who couldn’t seem to get through a simple interview, and two other therapists who had perfectly good alibis.
And that fucker Tate, who was starting to annoy him. Tate had answered every question with a question of his own, all of them about Natalie.
The only fun he’d had was watching Cal scare the holy hell out of Juliet Kirkman. And even that had ended in misery when he’d discovered she’d been at the funeral home and surrounded by relatives the night that Natalie’s apartment had been ransacked. She was a bitch, but she hadn’t broken in.
And then there was Natalie.
For three days, he’d been a gentleman. He’d followed Ben’s lead and gotten Nat comfortable with them. He’d talked about his expectations of a sub. Ben had asked her about her former D/s play that hadn’t involved hardened criminals. Even her therapist had come down and had a long talk with Nat while Ben and Chase spent their days at the resort getting their cover down. As far anyone knew, they were businessmen looking to make some investments and have a little fun in the dungeon.
Jack Barnes had been busy, too, allowing Natalie to watch him and his submissives while he studied her reactions. Jack wasn’t sure about taking her in, and Chase was worried, too.
And he was so horny he just might die. Three days of getting Natalie used to his touch while keeping his dick out of her was making him crazy, but today they were moving into the playroom. Today, they were going to play.
Logan frowned as he walked in, carrying
the bag Chase had requested he retrieve from Dallas. Logan had been fine having Kitten along for the drive, but he’d promised revenge for forcing him to spend time in a small enclosed space with Georgia. Chase rather thought the dude protested way too much. And he’d also kind of hoped that Georgia would stay behind in Dallas, but no, she sulked into the ranch house following Kitten. Kitten smiled brightly.
“Chase, if you don’t tell that backwoods idiot that he isn’t the boss of me, then I’m going to scream. He’s horrible. He’s constantly in my business.” Georgia rounded on the deputy, barely coming to the middle of his chest, but that didn’t slow her down. “You’re an asshole. Capital A. Little s. Another little s.”
Logan growled a little, causing Georgia to back up. She nearly tripped on her ridiculously high heels. “I’m getting a little tired of the bratty attitude, little girl. I think you might need a time-out. You won’t like it. I promise you.”
Fucking hell, the sexual tension between those two was heavy. Logan wanted his bratastic sister? Chase stared for a moment, trying to come up with what he felt. Nausea. That was what he felt because he was fucking thinking about his feelings. Nat had done this to him.
“Chase, kill him now.” Georgia had backed up but her heels dug into Jack Barnes’s beautiful hardwood floor, and she seemed unwilling to give the deputy another inch.
The deputy. Who had a job. And was coming out of his fucked-up period. Everyone had a fucked-up period. It was just a matter of time before life really messed up a person’s head. Logan had already faced it. Logan had been smart enough to reach out for help. Logan was almost on the other side.
He could totally pawn Georgia off on Logan. Damn straight. It was the perfect freaking plan. Logan wanted to fuck his sister? Well, Logan was the type who took his responsibilities seriously. Fucking a friend’s sister would be serious to Logan. Chase stared at Georgia with a critical eye. She was actually quite pretty. She had some nice curves on her.
“You make a lovely couple.”
