Dungeon Games (6 page)

His hand was at the exposed portion of her thigh, skimming up toward her pelvis. Even more disconcerting was the little nest his arm and chest made. He’d situated her so she was oh so close to his body, her head naturally resting against his shoulder, nestling into his neck until she could smell the soap on his body, the clean smell of his skin. She brushed her forehead against his cheek, feeling the roughness of his whiskers against her.

“I like you like this, Karina. Soft. Sweet. I even like the way your jeans hold your legs together. I’d bind you up and then I would have to work to get at your pussy, but don’t think I won’t. I could tie you up so tight and I would still find a way to get inside you.”

He was almost there. She couldn’t stop the way she shivered in his arms because it was so much more intimate this way. She was so close to him. His cock pressed against her still-sensitive backside. His lips hovered above hers. All it would take was a slight twist of his head and his mouth would cover hers, his tongue licking along the seam of her lips as his fingers played in her pussy.

“We can work together, Karina. We can make this work,” he murmured as he turned his face down.

Like gravity calling to her, she moved with him. Her legs opened as much as they could, her lips turning up to meet his.

They could make this work. They could be good for each other.

A loud knock cracked through the air.

Karina was jarred back to reality and practically jumped off his lap. Her heart was pounding, her whole body aching for something that wasn’t going to happen. Oh, god, she’d been just about to spread her legs and let a man who didn’t even like her inside. Years and years of chastity and faithfulness to her husband’s memory had almost blown out the door.

Tears blurred her eyes. She’d almost kissed another man.

Derek caught her around her waist before she fell over. “Hey, baby, it’s all right. The door’s locked.”

She shook her head. “Don’t. You can’t call me that.”

She’d been Kevin’s baby. Sometimes she could still hear him calling her baby and telling her everything would be all right. She forced back tears. She’d been naked with Doms at Sanctum, but none of it had touched her the way the last few minutes with Derek had. Not in all the floggings and spankings and demos had she ever once laid in the Dom’s arms and reveled in how he smelled and how his arms had sheltered her.

For just a few seconds, she’d felt safe.

Derek stepped back and his face went to that blank mask she knew so well. “Of course. You should get dressed, Karina. I’ll be at your place tonight at six to go over the specifics of the case. If Sean and Liam have to leave, call me and I’ll arrange to leave here early. I don’t want you alone.”

She managed to get her jeans up and with shaking hands, pulled the zipper. What had she just done?

Derek reached over his desk and pulled a box of tissue. He handed it to her with the politeness of a stranger. “You’re crying.”

She probably looked horrible. She wasn’t a pretty crier. Unlike a lot of other women she knew who could look gorgeous when they teared up, she inevitably went a blotchy red and her face puffed up. She grabbed the box, taking a couple of tissues. “Thank you.”

“Derek! I know you’re in there, lover. Open the door,” a feminine voice demanded.

Karina felt her eyes go wide as she looked back at Derek.

It seemed to be his turn to go red. “It’s my ex and she is most certainly not my lover, Karina, so wipe the indignation off your pretty face and you might want to flee. She’s a raving beast underneath all that Prada.”

She huffed a little. She knew exactly what she looked like when she’d been crying. “You don’t have to be mean. I know I look terrible.”

He frowned and his hand came out to force her to look at him. “You’re beautiful when you cry because I know you mean it. You cry like a woman, not a manipulative little girl. It pleases me, Karina, and at least for the next few weeks, I hope that means something to you. Now go home and don’t look her in the eyes. She’s like Medusa. She will turn you to stone.”

And
she
was apparently impatient. There was another volley of knocking. “Derek! I’m not kidding. Quit fucking whoever you’re fucking and open the damn door.”

“She sounds lovely.” Karina forced herself to stop shaking. It wasn’t Derek’s fault that she felt so damn guilty. He’d done everything he should have done. He’d given her every out. Well, he’d also threatened to take her off the case, but she could almost forgive him for that. He was an old school “protect the women” kind of guy. It was just she was pretty sure up until today, he hadn’t considered her a woman.

God, he’d made her feel like one.

She winced as she caught sight of his previously pristine slacks. “Oh, Derek, I am so sorry. Your pants are…”

He looked down and she was deeply surprised to hear him chuckle. There was a stain on his pants from her arousal. She’d made a hell of a wet spot. Derek always seemed so staid. She’d expected him to get angry, but he merely righted his shirt and readjusted himself. “Next time I’ll remember just how wet you get, Karina.”

The knocking became a staccato nuisance.

“Hold your freaking horses, lady. He’s coming out in a minute.” Whoever his ex was, she was rude.

Derek frowned her way. Derek didn’t do rude.

Karina shrugged as she made her way to the door. “Sorry.”

“Remember what I said about the eyes.” His voice seemed so much warmer than before. “And I’ll expect you to be waiting for me, Karina. I’ll call and get your dinner order and pick it up for us. We have work to do.”

In for a penny… “I’ll cook.”

His face twisted slightly as though he was trying not to contemplate something horrible. “You will?”

Bastard. So he didn’t think she could possibly cook. Well, she wasn’t going to defend herself. Sometimes showing was way better than telling. “Yes, I will. Dinner is at seven.”

She opened the door, expecting to see some gorgon of a woman, but the female who was pacing outside Derek’s door was petite and perfect, with a fashionably slim figure and icy blonde hair that likely never went frizzy. She wore a gorgeous suit that managed to be both business-like and deeply feminine. There was a fragility to her features that would have every man in a two-mile radius panting after her. It was easy to see this was a woman who spent an enormous amount of time on her body. She likely spent hours on her hair and makeup and the perfect nails on her gorgeous hands. A pampered woman who tried to please the men around her with her looks.

Karina didn’t bother to look at her own nails. Unless she was going to Sanctum, she didn’t bother with things like makeup and nails. Her hair was in a ponytail because her job often had her running after people or running from them.

She would bet the woman in front of her had never chased a bounty through a junk yard or gone through someone’s garbage to figure out if they were hiding a kidnapped kid in their house.

This was the woman Derek had married, his ideal. She was so far from Karina that they weren’t even playing in the same league.

He really was looking for a delicate flower he could take care of. Karina wasn’t petite and fragile. She’d been on her own for a very long time. She would never be more than a convenient good time for Derek Brighton.

“Is there a problem?” Delicate Flower asked, staring at Karina like she didn’t have a brain in her head. She’d placed a hand on her slender hip and frowned Karina’s way like she was a bit of refuse someone had forgotten to take out.

Karina shook her head. “Not at all. He’s all yours.”

The ex-Mrs. Brighton’s perfect lips curled in a Cheshire Cat grin. “He always is. You should probably know that before you go and lose your sad little cop heart to the big bad lieutenant. He has a bad habit of fucking below his station, but he always comes back to me.”

And just like that Karina’s insecurities were swept away in a tidal wave of pure pissed-off. She didn’t like mean girls. Mean girls made the world a worse place. “I’m not a cop. I’m a PI.”

Cool blue eyes rolled. “Like I care, though that’s way worse.”

She strolled into the door of Brighton’s office and slammed it in Karina’s face.

Karina suddenly knew what she would do with her afternoon. But first she had to figure out what the ex-Mrs. Brighton’s name was. It wouldn’t take much. The good news was, she was a damn fine hacker and she definitely believed that karma at times needed a good shove in the right direction.

If the delicate flower liked to play Medusa, maybe Karina could take on the role of Perseus. It was really for the good of all womankind that she slay the gorgon.

“Hey, Keller? Can I use your computer?” She walked up to the sergeant who hired her from time to time to check out his daughter’s dates. Dani Keller unfortunately had a bad-boy complex that got her in trouble every now and then. She was a sweet kid. Karina had been more than happy to help keep her that way.

“Sure. You gonna fuck with someone?” He stood up, offering her his seat.

“I would never do that,” Karina assured with a smooth smile.

She was a good liar and this would take her mind off the very dangerous door she’d almost opened with Derek.

It was a door that had to stay closed.

Chapter Three

“God, Derek, are you slumming or what? Tell me you weren’t actually doing something sexual to whatever it was that just walked out of your office.”

Just the sound of her voice made his blood go a little cold. He’d had a massive erection, but the sound of her voice was like reverse Viagra. His dick damn near curled up on itself. The Ice Princess, Queen Bitch of the World, strode into his office.

Karina hadn’t been cold. She’d almost melted his skin when he touched her. It had been a revelation. He’d expected her to tease him, to use her beauty to its best advantage by attempting to manipulate him, but there had been zero artifice in Karina’s argument. It was unexpected and utterly refreshing. There had been a sweetness in the way she’d settled herself over his lap, offering herself up to him.

He’d spanked Karina and felt more in those few moments than he had in the last several years.

“Derek? Are you listening to me?”

He’d kind of hoped if he ignored her she would go away—like a dinosaur that couldn’t see you if you didn’t move. It was a pipe dream so maybe honesty would work. “No, I’m not listening to you. I’m thinking about how close I came to getting inside Karina. It’s five years after our divorce and you’re still responsible for my not getting laid.”

He sat behind his desk with a long sigh.

Maia’s eyes narrowed. “Well, it looks like she left her mark on you. Jeez, Derek. What happened to your pants?”

He couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face. Actually it felt more like the goofy grin of a teenaged boy who finally got his hands on a boob. It was stupid. She wasn’t his type, wasn’t anything close to what he wanted in a permanent submissive much less another wife, and yet the thought of her biting that lip while she decided whether or not to submit to him got his blood hot all over again. “Don’t worry about that. Why are you here?”

Maia frowned and turned to look at the closed door as though she could see through it. “You’re really fucking that low-grade PI? Derek, what the hell is wrong with you? If you’re that hard up, I will find you a date. We have some very submissive interns. I swear, there’s a pretty brunette who pees a little when you yell at her. I’m sure you could train that out of her. Her father is a circuit court judge. He can help you out enormously. She’s got nice tits and they’re totally real.”

And Maia would know because she’d very likely slept with her. Maia didn’t discriminate when it came to her sexual partners. She was an omnivore. Derek was certain she’d probably sleep with a goat if she found one attractive and it could help her career.

“I’ll take a hard pass. Why are you here besides the fact that you outed me to brass?” It didn’t look like it was actually going to cost him his job, but then she hadn’t known that, had she?

It surprised him a little since Maia was a bitch from hell, but she’d never been truly malicious with him. Yes, she’d cheated on him on a regular basis, but she’d strangely always had his back when it came to work. They’d always been a successful team. He’d just wanted so much more than to be a team member.

Well, and he’d also kind of wanted to not be cheated on with every man he knew.

Maia’s face softened as much as the Botox in it allowed as she leaned against his desk. “Brass is all a bunch of perverts, Derek. Trust me, successful people all tend to be perverts. Unsuccessful people, too. And the ones who aren’t are fooling themselves. I have enough on the chief to ensure that you move up when you want to move up. All you have to do is say the word and I’ll make it happen.”

And that was Maia to a
T
. Always making a deal, always working an angle. She would likely be the Dallas District Attorney before she was forty. “I’ll handle my own career, thank you. You had no right to go to them. You should have come to me and asked me if I wanted to be involved.”

She shook her head with a long-suffering sigh. “And if I came to you with four dead girls, one of them a cop in this precinct, are you telling me you would have turned down the assignment so no one would know you like to spank subs? Should I have gone straight to Ian? I’m totally not going to do that because he’s an asshole.”

“No. I would have gone to them myself. I would have offered my services.” She was forever cutting his balls off. Even though he hadn’t touched her since long before the divorce, she was still making decisions for him, decisions that shouldn’t be hers.

“So I saved you a step. Chill out. You’re acting like I tried to kill you when all I did was give you the biggest opportunity of your career. Can’t you see how good this is going to be? For both of us?”

And just like that it all fell into place. “You’re handling the case.”

She shrugged a little. “I did put together the team. I do know the lifestyle. I outed myself, too, Derek. The DA thinks this case would best be handled by a female, and I was going to make damn sure I was the female. Besides the only other chick who can handle a case like this is Marian Greeley, and she’s sixty-five with a face like a horse. She is so not ready for TV. She would likely say the girls had it coming because she’s a dried up old prune who thinks sex is evil. It had to be me. It’s best for the victims. So, see, I didn’t shove you out alone into shark-infested waters. Consider me your life jacket.”