“Yes,” Richard said. “Uma Kerrigan was in the middle of constructing it when—” He frowned. “Do you know who Uma Kerrigan is?”
“No,” I said.
“Yes,” Dad and Corbin said.
“She was a beauty queen who married well but divorced poorly,” Corbin said.
“Hm.” I wondered how Corbin felt about saying those words. Any woman who married him was marrying well. It had surely made him a target throughout his life. Just another little difference between us.
Richard nodded. “She got almost nothing in the divorce. Her husband allowed her to keep this place, but she didn’t receive enough money to finish it properly. Critter’s was supposed to be a high-end bistro.”
That was… difficult to imagine.
“Instead, she ended up having to finish it with whatever she could. The security system was secondhand and old as hell.”
I nudged one of the boxes with my elbow, trying to get a sense of the weight inside. Not heavy. “I’m guessing a lot of people know your security sucks,” I said.
“We don’t exactly advertise it, but yeah. It would be impossible to keep it a secret.”
“Any burglar worth his salt would take one look at the cameras and know the system is subpar,” Corbin said. “Why hasn’t she upgraded?”
Richard opened a drawer and pulled out a tape. “Believe it or not, she doesn’t share her business strategies with me.” He then picked an ancient one-piece TV-VCR combo up off the floor and inserted the tape.
The screen was split into quarters. The picture quality was so bad that I couldn’t tell if I was looking at an interior or exterior shot.
“As you can see, even when it was working, it was useless,” Richard said. He slapped his palm against the side of the screen, but it didn’t help the photo quality.
“What are they covering?” I asked.
“Front door, back door, and two angles of the parking lot.”
“I didn’t know there was a second entrance.”
“It’s for deliveries.”
Corbin leaned over and ejected the tape. “I can clean this up,” he said. “Did you stop recording completely, or are there other tapes?”
Richard froze, then looked dubious. Finally he said, “The recording logs automatically. The four camera feeds compile on the screen, and the top box records the compilation. We have to let it run to satisfy the insurance contract.”
“I’ll take those tapes, too,” Corbin said.
Corbin carried two plastic bags full of booty out to his SUV, and Dad asked Richard a few questions about Kelly’s brief term of employment.
Richard confirmed that Booze the Bear had been stolen sometime between closing of one night and opening of the next day. Since the last employees tended to leave around three in the morning, and the cleaning crew came in at six, that left a smallish window during which Kelly—or someone else—could have stolen the bear.
“And when the bear was returned?” I asked.
Richard fussed with his tie. “Same time frame. The night shift didn’t see anything, but the pieces were dumped shortly after the cleaning crew arrived.”
“Photos?”
He consulted his phone. “This is what was sent to me,” he said.
They were the same pictures I’d already seen in the file: the mascot quartered, its stuffing spilling out like goofy entrails. No wonder the cops had laughed.
Corbin returned.
When he caught my eye, he nodded. Apparently, he believed we would find what we needed on the tapes. Or maybe he’d picked up on something else.
Either way, he thought we were done, and I had to agree.
At the office door, Dad paused. “What about the shift lists?”
“I photocopied them yesterday. They’re behind the bar.”
“I asked for them when I first arrived,” Dad said. “They aren’t there.”
Richard shook his head dismissively. “They’re there.” He followed us out of the office and took a final look around, as if verifying that we couldn’t have seen anything untoward.
And I wondered, again, what was inside the boxes.
“Wait here,” Richard said once we were through the kitchen. He walked behind the bar and glanced around, frowning.
I recognized the look on his face when he located the folder. It was an “I work with idiots” expression.
“Thanks for coming out,” he said as he handed the folder to Dad. “You’ll notice business is quiet for a Thursday night. People are a little freaked out.”
“What’s in the boxes?” Corbin asked.
Richard looked at him blankly. Then, “You mean in the office? Glassware. That stuff is always breaking, so we’re upgrading to something more durable.”
Was that a clue? I didn’t know—I was exhausted. Corbin was probably even more tired.
Maybe a good night’s sleep would clear things up.
We said goodbye to my father in the parking lot.
Corbin started the SUV but didn’t pull out. I watched Dad’s sedan roll up to the intersection, saw the brake lights flash red. Then the road and the night swallowed him up.
“What did you make of that?” I tried to ask, but I was yawning so hard that I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Nothing but hunches and theories,” Corbin said. He finally pulled out of the parking space. Instead of heading in the same direction Dad had gone—toward the highway—he drove straight.
“I thought I was in charge,” I said.
“You are. That’s why you get to pick which hotel we stay at.”
“Hotel? You know there’s nothing fancy nearby, right?”
He nodded. “Aren’t you interested in talking to the employees when the manager isn’t around? Besides, I’m curious to know what the morning shift made of all this.”
I was so tired, I didn’t complain.
We stopped at a drug store for a few toiletries, though I barely brushed my teeth before tumbling into bed.
In the early morning, I came wide awake. Maybe I’d heard a noise, or maybe it was the pattern of streetlight glow seeping in around the curtains. Or maybe it was the time difference.
Corbin was immobile beside me, but something about the way he was breathing…
I gave his shoulder an experimental poke. “Are you up?”
He rolled over in a fast, graceful motion to grab my wrist, but when he spoke, his voice was thick with sleep. “You should know better than to jab your cold fingers into a slumbering man’s back.”
“I’m wide awake,” I whispered.
“Well, I’m not.” He pulled me toward him, turning me as he did so that I was nestled against him.
I snuggled closer and wished we were in our own bed.
Was his cock getting hard? I rocked against him, and he bit my neck hard enough to make me squeal.
A moment later, the alarm on his phone began to ring.
It was like a flip had been switched.
Corbin pulled away, threw back the sheets, and turned on the lights.
“Time to get up,” he said, silencing his phone. He was already pulling on his jeans.
“Why?” Even though I was awake, I hadn’t anticipated having to jump immediately out of bed.
“Work.” He gave me a sexy grin.
9
“First ones here,” I grumbled as we pulled into the Critter Chomp parking lot. The employees wouldn’t be showing up for another thirty minutes.
“That was the idea.” Corbin backed into a spot that was relatively hidden from the road. We wouldn’t be missed by anyone entering the parking lot, but we wouldn’t be attracting attention from passing cars.
If anyone happened to go by. The town was dead.
We hopped out; neither of us had bothered to pull on our coats. I was shivering so hard that my teeth chattered as we took a quick walk around.
There wasn’t anything to glean that I hadn’t observed last night, so after a couple of minutes I ran back to the warmth of the truck.
<
br /> “Anything?” Corbin asked when he returned a moment later.
I shook my head.
“When we finish here, I want to take a look at those tapes, clean up the distortion.”
“You really think you can clean them up?”
“No, actually. But I have another idea.”
I pushed the button to let the passenger’s seat lean back. “Is it a secret?”
“I don’t want to get your hopes up.”
When I didn’t say anything else, he sighed and added, “Often you can learn as much from what’s excluded as from what’s included. I probably can’t remove the distortion, but I might be able to determine which of the video feeds they’re trying to hide.”
“It looked like a problem with the recording. Are you saying it’s not?”
“For this particular security system, that’s unlikely. If it was just a single tape, fine, but all of them? No, it doesn’t work like that. Someone wanted to corrupt one or more of the feeds.”
“Why not knock the camera out with a rock?” As soon as I said it, I realized the reason. “Because what they were hiding wasn’t a one-time thing.”
“And possibly not related to the case you’ve been hired to investigate.”
“Huh.” I leaned back in the seat and propped my feet up on the dashboard. “That raises an interesting ethical dilemma.”
“Or you can parlay it into a second job. You know what I noticed when we were walking around out there?”
“What?”
Corbin raised his armrest and leaned toward me. “It’s impossible to see inside this vehicle.”
“You already knew that,” I said. “Or is the dark window tint a fashion statement?”
He reached over and grabbed my hip, his muscular forearm solid against my lower abdomen. It was a possessive, hungry gesture. He’d been thinking about this for several minutes, and now he intended to fuck me.
And I intended to let him.
Arousal spiked through my veins.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” I said.
His grip tightened, and then he was unbuttoning and unzipping my jeans and pulling them down.
I was likewise reaching for him, jerking at his belt. I’d been craving this since the moment he’d pulled me against him in bed. Since last night.
Since forever.
Greedily, I unbuttoned his jeans. No underwear. The smooth, taut skin of his cock brushed against my hand, and I wrapped my fingers around its pulsing girth.
I started to get out of my seat, but Corbin’s arm stiffened. “No,” he said. “Stay where you are.”
Flattening his palm, he skimmed it over my stomach and stopped just a stroke away from my pussy. I squeezed his cock, hoping that would motivate him to touch me.
“Are you horny?” he wanted to know.
“Yes.”
His hand slid a tiny bit lower, and I groaned.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Do you deserve to come?”
Oh, no. He was in one of those moods, where he was going to make me work to get fucked. Because with Corbin, it wasn’t enough for me to be desperate for him. It wasn’t enough for him to know that anything he demanded, I would obey. Happily.
No, he wanted me to beg.
“I don’t know,” I said. Then I thought, why not try something totally different? “I know I love you.”
He laughed. He actually laughed. “What would you like to hear? That I love you? I do, baby, but that’s not the question. I would love you even if we could never have sex again. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. To make you happy. To keep you safe. You know that.”
I shivered. The message he was getting across—and doing a very good job of it—was that his affections had no bearing on what he planned to do to me sexually.
My heart was pounding. I felt exposed and a little embarrassed about my immature ploy.
“I know you love me,” he said quietly. “And I’ll remind myself of that in a few seconds when you’re cursing me out.”
His hand pressed against my body, his fingers stroking a slow path toward my clit.
When they passed over my nub, I gasped.
Arching, I tried to heighten the contact. A deep tremor ran through me, then another one.
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.
He’d done so much. Too much. Corbin was a killer. There was a coldness in him that I would never feel comfortable with.
But I loved him. And goddamn it, I wanted him inside me.
“C’mon,” I moaned. “Please don’t torture me. I’m horny, Corbin.”
He only grunted. Like he wasn’t scary enough, he had to go and do the whole dominant thing.
“Pull up your shirt.”
I did as he said. Guessing that he wanted to see my breasts, I unhooked the front closure of my bra.
The cups fell away. Cool air caressed my skin.
“Play with your nipples.”
I brushed my fingers over my breasts. My nipples were stiff.
“Pinch them.”
I took them lightly between my fingers.
“Harder.” He stopped touching me.
Disappointed, I started to protest.
“No. Squeeze.”
I squeezed.
“More,” he demanded.
How could he even know how hard I was or wasn’t squeezing? I nearly stopped altogether.
“That’s not good enough.” He grabbed both of my hands and pushed them between my legs. I whimpered.
Then his large, warm hands settled over my breasts. “Don’t move your fingers,” he warned. “You’re not allowed to orgasm until I give you permission.”
“And if I do?”
In the dark, I couldn’t really see the look he was giving me.
But I could sense his disapproval.
“If you do, then make it a good one, because I won’t fuck you for a month.”
10
I swallowed. Would he really do that?
It wasn’t worth the risk to find out.
“God, I love your body,” he said. “The way you feel, the way you smell.”
A spasm shivered through my pussy as his thumbs stroked the tops of my nipples, making them even harder. Then he was squeezing.
At first gently, then hard.
As the pain built, I arched on the seat, pushing my breasts into the hands of the very man who was hurting me.
“I wish I had a pair of clamps right now,” he said. “I would love to fuck you while you’re arched like that, making that little hissing whimper.”
Hissing whimper?
But I was making some crazy sound, I realized. It was how I was dealing with the pain.
Because if I started screaming, I wouldn’t be able to stop. Too much pain, too much pent-up sexual frustration.
Too much teasing.
He eased his grip, and I sagged against the seat.
“Do you deserve to come?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Why?”
Oh, right. I knew what he wanted. “I deserve whatever you want to give me.”
“Much better.”
But that didn’t stop him from pinching my nipples again.
Oh god, oh— “Fuck!” I was writhing on the seat, my eyes squeezed shut as I tried to endure the torture.
I was an exhalation away from pleading for mercy when he stopped. Slowly, he released my nipples, then caught my breasts in his hands and kneaded them gently. Just as slowly, pleasure spread where there had once been pain.
And my pussy was dripping wet. I could feel it against my thighs, against my fingers.
“Would you like to masturbate while I pinch your nipples?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” I said quickly, and he moved his hands away.
“Then you don’t deserve to come.”
I groaned.
“Unless you can change my mind.” He threw down the challenge cas
ually, but I was surprised. Second chances were rare.
I leaned over the space separating the seats and felt for him, for his cock. He was as hard as if he’d been jerking himself off, about to orgasm.
After licking my fingers, I rubbed them over his cock’s head.
Corbin made a sound halfway between a grunt and a groan. And suddenly it wasn’t just about getting the release I needed.
I wanted to surprise and please him.
Expecting he would stop me, I slowly bent over the gap separating us.
But he let me do it.
His shirt was soft against the side of my face, and the heat of his body warmed my cheek.
As the head of his cock brushed against my lips, he stroked my hair, each caress firmer than the last. He wanted me.
Being wanted by a man like Corbin… There was no better feeling in the world. He was demanding. He could have any woman who struck his fancy. And he was completely willing to kick me out of his bed if being together wasn’t right.
He always put me first. Always thought of me before his own pleasure.
A moan built in my throat as I accepted his swollen tip into my mouth. I closed my eyes to taste his salty flavor.
Slowly, I began to take him deeper. Corbin was long and thick, and if my throat wasn’t relaxed, I would end up gagging, panicking.
“Just the head, baby,” he murmured.
Apparently he didn’t feel like choking me.
I wrapped my fingers around his substantial girth and squeezed as I slowly pumped my fist. In my grip, he felt like warm metal covered in silk.
The head was more than enough to handle. He filled my mouth nicely. I pulled up so I could run my lips over the sensitive spot where the shaft and tip met.
“Get over here,” he said. “I want to kiss you while you’re coming.” His voice rasped into a growl. “I want to feel you coming while I’m hurting you.”
My pussy clenched and got even wetter.
How he would hurt me, I didn’t know, and I didn’t waste my breath asking. For Corbin, half the fun was watching my frustration and apprehension.
“On my cock. Now.”
But it wasn’t enough to issue the order. As I was adjusting my balance so I could scoot over, he leaned across the seats and pulled my jeans all the way off, removing my sneakers at the same time.
Destroyed by a Dangerous Man Page 5
