Diane’s father had become overbearing and unreasonable since he had moved his mentorship. Being a doctor, a surgeon par excellence had been his only goal his whole life. Since his first ridiculous plastic Fisher Price doctor kit. Since spending hours playing operation. He’d been aiming for only one thing: surgeon.
And he was good. He knew that. His hands were sure and steady. He stitched up a throbbing femoral artery to save Nathaniel’s life. He’d been watching techniques in every operating theater he could get into. He had repaired a newborn’s brain and an eighty-year-old’s aortic aneurysm. He could drop into The Zone and repair anything perfectly. The same zone he could get to as a Dom, or if he were playing his violin. It was a rush. Not the same rush as sex, or music, but a rush that was amazing nonetheless.
Now, it seemed that his dream of being a surgeon was being taken away as much as his music and his dominance. And with the danger of losing Cece, what was left?
There were courses of action that had to be decided.
Music was the easiest. Just put time aside to practice.
Surgery was next. That was not as easy. That was getting away from Doctor Hamburg. He was bargaining with Killian’s career with his daughter. He wanted Diane married well—and by well, he meant money. Nothing more. Keep the Hamburg line alive in his daughter’s children.
Killian gagged a bit. Children with Diane. That wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t the kind of woman he wanted to have children with. So the answer there was to just not marry her, and to somehow distance himself from Doctor Hamburg.
Easier said than done. The man was starting to publicly question his abilities in hospital forums. It was going to grow from there. So he had to figure out how to stop it, or counter it.
As his thoughts wandered through different ideas of how to counter an established surgeon’s accusations, there was the sound of a key in the door behind him. He stood and spun in a single motion, forgetting that he was in his scrub pants and no shirt until that moment.
The door snicked open, and Diane stepped in. She saw him standing there and smiled, then let her lusty approval of his body show through.
Killian was boiling mad. “I never gave you a key.”
Diane’s gaze snapped up to his face. “What?”
“I never gave you a key to my apartment. Where the fuck did you get it?”
She stared, her face suddenly blank.
Killian walked to her. “I asked you where you got the key to my apartment.”
“I…made a copy.”
Killian could feel his temper boiling. “When the hell did you do that? I don’t leave them around for you to snatch and copy. So you’re either rooting through my shit, or you’re lying through your fucking crooked teeth.”
Diane slapped a hand over her mouth. “My teeth aren’t crooked!”
“Diane.” Killian couldn’t stop the Dom tone from bursting out of him. “Where. Did. You. Get. That. Key.”
She cleared her throat. “My father gave it to me.”
“What?”
“He came over to my apartment and gave it to me.”
“Your father? Where the hell did your father get the key to my apartment?”
“I don’t know! He told me it was yours and handed it to me. I thought...”
“Thought what?”
Diane stuttered. “That he got it from you.”
Killian had to walk away and take a deep breath. He never left his keys anywhere. He either had them on him or in his locker. Locked. The combinations to the lockers were on file in the hospital office. Also locked.
Holy shit. The implications were staggering.
He managed to get his anger under control and walk back to her. “Diane, the key, please. Now.” He held out his hand for the offending object.
She tried to stare him down, but he was having none of her crap.
“Now.”
Holding up the key, she smirked. Her whole apologetic demeanor changed, and she shed her sweet skin and turned into the snake she was. “This is by rights mine. We’re going to be engaged, and I’m tired of beating around the bush. You need to get me a ring, and we need to get on with our marriage.”
For a long moment, all he could do was blink at her. She’d managed to render him speechless.
“Diane. I will never marry you. Ever.” He wanted to throw on a shirt, something to get her eyes off him. He was not her property, and she didn’t even have a right to be looking at what wasn’t hers.
Twirling the keys, Diane smirked. “You really think that.”
“I’d rather die alone and loveless.”
She cocked her hip and stared at him. “All right, that’s enough. This has nothing to do with love, you moron. This is business. Daddy only has Courtney and me. There’s no one to carry on a medical tradition that’s been in our family for two centuries. Because, blood ew. And Courtney can’t sew a damn thing. She’s so much better with money. Daddy wanted me to seduce you and get you into the family. But I’m done playing.”
Killian stared at her. “What?”
“Oh, please. There is no way you’re going to go out of your way to make sure that I’m happy. You’re practical. You’re never going to throw money at me. You’re going to get pissed off at me because I like my lifestyle the way it is. High and wealthy. It’s not that you’re not absolutely smoking hot. But I have to think about me.”
“That’s about the only person you ever think about.”
“Fuck you, Kay.”
“No, thanks.”
“Christ, how high are your morals?! Marry me, knock me up twice, and we’ll call it a marriage. That’s all. Business and nothing else.”
Killian was truly aghast at what she was saying. “You’re serious.”
“Look. Daddy wants you in the practice. I am not opposed to having some rockin’ sex and getting on with life. Find a guy who doesn’t mind me sleeping around on him. I mean, monogamy? Passé.”
“Diane, I’m not buying you a ring, and I’m not going to take over your father’s practice. I am never going to marry you. I’m never going to have children with you. You would be a miserable mother.”
“You can have full custody of them! See, reasonable!” She walked toward him, swinging her hips. “Come on. Let’s work on them now and we can go shopping for my ring tomorrow!”
“I said no!” The brain that usually served him so well shut down and refused to process this. Business. Diane wanted to bed him and make it all about business. The business of making children and keep the family line alive. It went against everything he’d ever believed in and been taught about love and family and commitment. More than that—it went against everything he wanted in love and family.
Diane kept walking at him, swinging her hips and smiling. She started plucking open the buttons on her shirt and backing him up through the kitchen toward the living room. Killian was able to back up easily at first, but she started advancing faster and faster.
“Come on, Killian.” She tossed her shirt on the floor. “Just fuck me. There’s no obligation here. Get me pregnant. We can be done with this whole thing in three years.” She reached behind herself and unclasped her bra, letting it slide off her arms. “It can be fun. Friends with benefits.”
His knees hit the back of the couch, and he fell back onto the cushions. “Diane—”
She straddled his lap, shoving her breasts in his face. “Go ahead. Suck on them.”
“Diane—”
Reaching down between them, she palmed his cock through his pants. “Seems like a part of you is willing and ready for me.” Her other hand pulled at his scrubs to slip them down his ass.
His brain finally snapped back into place and heaved her off his lap, onto the floor. “What the fuck are you doing? Put your goddamn clothes back on!”
“Killian—”
He leaned and stared at her. “What you just did is legally attempted rape! Get your fucking clothes back on. Give me my key and get the fuck out of my apartment
!”
Throwing a hand across her breasts, Diane scooted backward on the floor. “You don’t want me because of that Cece bitch!”
“Cece has never had a damn thing to do with whether I wanted you or not. You are poison, Diane. You and your whole family, and everything you are.” He snatched the bra off the ground and reached for her shirt. “You have one minute to cover your tits and get the hell out of here. Tell your father whatever you want. But if you step one foot into my house again, I will have you arrested.” He threw the shirt and bra at her.
She had dropped the key on the counter, and Killian snatched it up, throwing it in a drawer.
Diane had managed to slip her bra on and was buttoning her shirt by the time he turned around. She was pissed and walked straight up to him. “You are an asshole. No one turns me down.”
“I do.”
“Enjoy your whore.” Diane snatched her purse off the table where she had dropped it. “I’ll make sure that you go down like Everett.”
The door slammed.
What?!
Chapter Eight
Cece picked through the books in the box. It was a painful box of books; there were two volumes that Everett had requested as interlibrary loans.
Her breath had caught when she saw them on the packing slip, but remembering what Morgan had said a few days before, she stayed in control. The two books were removed and put to the side for return.
It was hard to try to pretend everything was normal. All of the students—and staff—at the school gave her looks. Knowing, sidelong, disgusted, lustful, perverted. They ran the gamut. It was unnerving to see them. She wanted to tell all of them to go to hell, but that wasn’t going to help her at the moment. The itch to grab her whip before leaving for work was growing stronger with each nasty, unwelcome look.
Her eyes fell on the picture of Hannah on her desk. Garabaldi had been working around the clock to try and get her sister back. Cece had told him to let her case rot while he looked for Hannah. She wanted her sister to be okay.
She decided that no matter what it took, she and Hannah were going to leave their family behind and never look back—even if it meant they would be living in terrible hotels and cardboard boxes on street corners. Anything was better than suffering under the thumb of her brother and mother while her alcoholic father did absolutely jack shit to stop their tyrannical rule.
All she really needed was for Hannah to come back, to be found. She would take them both away from everything.
As she sat staring at the picture of her sister, there was a determined knock on the door. Smearing tears off her face, Cece called for the visitor to come in.
The door opened to reveal the library director. He was in the room in two strides and quickly closed the door behind him.
Cece’s stomach fell out. She very much wanted to vomit at that moment. “Doctor Thompson.”
She managed to get to her feet, but he waved her back into her chair. “Sit, Frances. I’m here as a friend.”
Cece couldn’t help the sardonic laugh that escaped her. “One of the few.”
“How are you handling this?”
“Which this are you referring to? The death of my submissive? The murder charges? My missing sister?”
“All of it.”
“The only thing I seem to be working through is the revelation that I’m a Domme.” She laughed without humor. “I need my sister back. I’ll deal with the rest.”
“Are you safe walking to and from your car? I can have security escort you if you’re not feeling it.”
“Thank you. I’m okay so far.”
Thompson sat in the chair. “So you’re really a dominatrix?”
“Domme, and yes. I am.”
He shook his head. “You are psychologically fascinating to me. You’ve always been so unassuming, but once I found out, a lot of your quirks fell into place. So you and Everett were a couple?”
“No, not really. That’s not always the way it works in a BDSM relationship. We were a Dom-sub pair, and we worked well with each other.”
“Polyamory.”
“Correct. We each took only what we needed from the meetings.”
“Did you ever date?”
Cece laughed. “We tried. It was an unmitigated disaster. As much as our…bedroom proclivities aligned, we sucked as a couple. He was much better as a friend with benefits.” Cece paused, and she felt her face lose the smile. “I hate talking about him in past tense. He shouldn’t be dead. He should be picking up Genie from preschool. He should be researching his doctoral thesis. Christ, I have all of his research…” There was no stopping the tears that spilled down her cheeks. “No one deserved what happened to him. No one should ever have to suffer the way he did.”
Thompson grabbed her hand across the desk. He wordlessly held it while she struggled to regain herself. “Do you know that apart from a few friends, you are the first person to talk to me like a human? The first person to willingly touch me? To not recoil in disgust?”
“You are a smart, capable woman who has some unique tastes in the bedroom. That’s it.” He patted the back of her hand. “People have called and told me to fire you. I don’t listen. Your sexual proclivities have nothing to do with your job performance. And you perform here admirably.” He sighed. “I just worry for your safety.”
Offering him a crooked smile, she answered, “I have a brown belt in jujitsu. Franz insists all of his employees learn self-defense and learn it well.”
“Franz? Dorn? Victor Walsh’s fiancé?”
“Same.”
“Why would…oh. You work at Club Imperial, too.” The look on Thompson’s face was hilarious as he pieced all the parts together. “Well. I would like to get in the door of that place.”
“Just come to the front and ask for Dusty Rose. I’ll make sure you get in.”
“Good gravy.” He narrowed his eyes. “Have you ever polluted my stacks?”
“No. Not the stacks.” Cece pointedly looked at the chair he was sitting on. Thompson let out a little “ew” then laughed when he realized she was just teasing him. Cece was glad he hadn’t sat on the couch.
Glancing at the cabinet, she sighed. “I don’t know what to do with his research. He’d been working on the thesis for eighteen months, and he was gathering his last few pieces of data.” She started shaking, trembling all over. There was no stopping it, no deep breath that was going to hold back the flood of horrible guilt, pain, and loss.
The sobs escaped her, and before she could try to excuse herself, Thompson was out of his seat, around the desk, and had folded Cece into exactly the kind of bear hug she’d expected from the burly, bespectacled director.
“It’s okay, Cece. Let it go.”
She wailed and railed against the loss of Everett in her life, his daughter’s life. In the world.
* * *
Menial little tasks in the library seemed like the best thing for her for the rest of the day, so Cece grabbed a cart full of reshelving and headed up the elevator. There was a full cart, so it would take the better part of the evening, and that would at least get her closing.
She still hated the Library of Congress system. She missed her Dewey decimals. However, there were advantages, and it made sharing with other schools easier if they were all coordinated.
No slime mold from Azerbaijan this time. Or was it Uzbekistan? Either way. No slime mold.
She slowly shelved the books, straightening the shelved as she went along, dusting and pulling some volumes for repair. These books, even the ones about slime mold, were her charge. She could always find the silence relaxing. Cece knew she had a noisy mind, and there were a few places to escape that. Her books were one, her ropes were another.
Dusting another shelf, she realized she also missed John Smith. His submission was near perfect, and she had been ready to start more intricate weavings, in new, more challenging positions. Even that had been pulled away from her. Not a word since the day Everett had been murdered.
> Cece pulled up short. Since literally hours before Everett was murdered.
Oh God, did he kill Everett? Had she slept with a murderer? Was she an unwitting part of some elaborate plan to frame her?
Cece choked on the vomit that rose in her throat. She was so horrified at the thought she never heard the footsteps on the linoleum behind her.
A fist twisted into her hair, pulling tight, jerking her backward into a hard chest. She gasped for air, shocked and stunned.
“This is her, Con.” The voice rumbled from deep within the chest she was stuck against.
“She is a hot piece of ass.” Another tall, dark-haired guy walked around to study her. “I’m gonna take that pussy for a spin.”
He unfastened his belt as Cece found her voice. “No! What are you doing? Let me go! Stop!”
The guy in front of her took firm hold of her face and squeezed. “You like it rough, bitch. I know you do. Shut up and take my cock.”
“Let go!” Cece twisted and managed to get a dead accurate shot into his balls. The Chest let go of her with a ‘whompf’ of air, and she started running through the stacks, screaming. “Help! Help!”
The guy who had unbuckled his belt was suddenly in front of her. Turning sharply down another row of books, he moved like lightning and caught her ankle with his own. Cece went down hard, her cheek and temple caught the shelf on the way down, and she blacked out.
When she came to, the attacker with black hair was kneeling between her legs and had pulled her pants and panties down. He leered at her and grabbed his angry dick, pumping it a few times.
“You’ll take this, and you’ll like it. Whore. All you kinky bitches like it rough. My guess is you’re just about to come now.”
“Let me go!” Cece screamed at the top of her lungs. “Let go! Stop! No!” They had her pinned; she couldn’t think of a single way to use her jujitsu to get them off her.
The dark-haired guy leaned down and licked her face from chin to cheek.
“Delicious.”
“Fuck off!” A new voice offered the swear in a quiet, controlled tone.
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