Damaged Goods

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my friends and co-workers at my day job. Amber, Katie, Angie, Barb and Jenny: you have all been so amazing and supportive of me. You all make me feel important and special every day. Even though we work in a conservative place of business, none of you ever make me feel like I should keep my “spicy” writing a secret. In fact you all go out of your way to tell our customers and brag on me. You make me feel loved and grateful to be there. I don’t know what I did to be lucky enough to end up where I did, but I’m thankful for it and thankful for you all. I love each and every one of you.

Chapter One

The slut is dead! After all she did to everyone who ever met her, it’s a surprise we’re not having a party instead of this stupid funeral. Look at them all, crying. I wonder if they hated her as much as I did. Maybe they’re just faking it. She was a spiteful, money- hungry slut, and I’m glad she’s dead. I only wish she had suffered. I only wish that stupid bitch had seen it coming! I only wish I could kill her again.

Fatigue was burning a fiery crater through Brice Marshall’s brain. It was eleven o’clock on a Friday night, and here he was, hunched over crime scene photos, breathing the stale air of the detective’s den and trying to kill himself with microwaved coffee that was at least twelve hours old.

“Kent,” he muttered to his partner, who was seated at the desk facing his and looked just as bad as Brice felt. “It’s here. It’s always here. Why can’t we see it?” In a rare show of frustration, Brice shoved the file and photos to the floor. “Five days, Kent. Five fucking days and we’ve got nothing. Five days ago, someone hacked that poor kid to shit and we’ve been running around with our heads up our asses.”

“Mmmhmm,” was all the response Brandon Kent gave. He knew they’d been killing themselves looking into this. They hadn’t worked less than a sixteen-hour day since they got the first call.

They were good at what they did. They had the highest arrest rate in the precinct, and this wasn’t the only case they had on their plate. There were three other ongoing investigations that needed their attention and time. This one was eating at them like a cancer, though, and Kent knew one of them was going to have to call it. The case would never be over until there was an arrest. But when they had no leads or direction to follow, they were going to have to shift focus to a case that they had a better chance at solving while the trail was still hot.

“As much as it tears out my guts to say this,” Kent wearily began, “we may just have to tap out on this one.”

He almost didn’t move in time to miss the empty coffee mug that Brice chucked at his head. “Hey! Watch it!” he shouted. “I don’t want that any more than you. You know that! But it’s like you said—it’s been five fucking days and we got dick on this one.”

He held up one hand and started folding the fingers under one at a time with his other as he spoke. “We got no weapon.” Down went the thumb. “We got no fingerprints.” Down went the pointer finger. “We got no witnesses.” Down went the ring finger. “And we got no fucking clue as to a motive.” Down went the pinky, and he was left flipping Brice off as he said, “So fuck you and your coffee cup!”

Brice stared at his partner through bleary eyes. He knew that what Kent said was reasonable. He knew that he was right. It didn’t make it any easier to swallow. “I can’t, buddy. Not on this one. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t look at her and walk away. She’s mine. She’s been mine from the first.”

Brice looked down at the pile on the floor and thought it was fitting that the only two pieces of papers from the whole stack that weren’t upside down or obscured were photos of her. Amber Calkins smiled up at him from one with impossibly bright blue eyes, a sassy bob of glossy brown hair and a flirty little wrinkle on her pert nose. The picture was taken at a beach with the blue of the ocean surrounding her as she laughed into the camera. She looked fresh and vibrant and like she knew she had the world at her feet.

The other photo was from the crime scene. That lovely face with all its spunk and charm was mashed into a pile of filthy garbage. Blood-soaked clothes clung to what had been a great figure. Her arms and legs were outstretched. Either she hadn’t had time to try and block her fall or she’d already been dead before she fell. More of her blood saturated the garbage she lay upon; it had poured out of her slender frame like a flood to surround her in red the way the ocean had surrounded her in blue in the other photo. Over fifty stab wounds covered that tiny back. It didn’t seem possible that that many could fit in such a small space, but there they were. Her back had been reduced to what sickeningly resembled ground beef and Brice, a hardened homicide detective with over ten years on the force, hadn’t had a burger since.

From everything they’d been able to learn about her, she was a bright, good-natured and big-hearted twenty-year-old who liked driving her sporty car, buying ridiculous clothes for her ridiculous excuse of a miniature dog and working at the Surf-N-Slurp, one of those places where mostly twenty-somethings hung out to drink designer coffee and surf the web on the free Wi-Fi. Everybody liked her—even the boys whose hearts she’d broken hadn’t had anything bad to say about her—and nobody had any idea why someone would want her dead.

But someone hadn’t liked her. And someone had wanted her dead badly enough to stab her fifty times. That told them one thing—it was personal. It took an amazing amount of strength to do this, and stamina, the kind of stamina that only deep-seated hatred could provide.

“I know, man,” Kent said. “I know. But what about the Parker case? Or Dillon? Both those still need a lot of legwork, and I can’t believe I have to even tell you that. Look, we’re not getting anything done tonight. So let’s call it a day and head home.”

With ill grace, Brice gave in and, after putting his desk into something close to order, followed Kent out the door.

Chapter Two

Brice wasn’t in the mood to face his place. It was a nice set-up in a decent part of town, but it was also empty. He didn’t even have a ridiculous excuse of a miniature dog waiting for him. Just a dying plant that one of his sisters had given him and a fridge full of rotting leftover takeout.

Without reasoning the why of it, he headed for his cousin’s place. The restaurant was sure to be booked to capacity, but he was feeling just shitty enough to play the family card to get himself in. After a late dinner and a stiff drink, he thought he might just head to the restaurant’s connected nightclub and see if there was someone there who would make the empty apartment seem a little less empty. Even if it was just for the night.

“Detective Marshall!” Mike exclaimed once he spotted Brice walk into the lobby. “I didn’t know you would be here tonight! This is great!” Mike took hold of Brice’s hand and continued to shake it vigorously as he smiled up at the taller man. “I didn’t see your name on the reserved list or I would have saved you the private table.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Brice’s smile was more of a grimace and didn’t fool Mike for a second. “I don’t have a reservation. I know you guys’ll be booked solid, but can you squeeze me out a corner somewhere? I just need a meal that doesn’t come from a rolling cart or packaged in Styrofoam.”

Brice must have looked like he felt, because Mike didn’t hesitate. “Hey, boss man has rules,” he said as he led Brice toward a back corner table that was reserved for overbooking or when VIPs showed up unannounced. In this establishment, VIP was quite literally VIP—only top-ranking entertainers and politicians got this table. No B-list actors or self-absorbed heiresses got the treatment here, and definitely not just any cop off the street.

Mike added as he handed over a menu, “Boss has rules, and even if a Rockefeller walked in right now, he would give you this table.”

Brice wasn’t in his seat more than five minutes before a curvy little brunette slid into the chair across from his. She smiled up at him, blinked her big dark eyes and Brice knew two things—there was a God, and He was a man.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said. “Wanna run away with me?”

She leaned across the table and laid a soft kiss on his cheek. “You know my heart’s going to break the day you stop asking me that.” Her smile was as tender as the hand she laid over his when she asked, “Brice, what’s wrong? “

Brice smiled and gave her hand a good squeeze. “Nothing I can’t fix. Where are those men of yours? I thought they imploded whenever you were more than three feet away.”

Reassured by his genuine smile and the teasing, Riley replied, “Oh, I’m working on widening the radius. I can get up to ten now before the alarms start going off.”

Just then, Kincade Marshall came up behind Riley’s chair and slid his hands along the tops of her shoulders. “Personally, I think she only tests those boundaries because she enjoys the repercussions.”

With the last word, his hands slid up from her shoulders to encircle her fragile neck. Brice watched without any fear for her, knowing that his cousin would cut off those hands himself before he’d ever hurt her. It took only a second before Riley’s breath got shallow and her cheeks flushed as his cousin tightened his grip. When her back arched, Brice saw that her nipples were hard under her dress.

“I believe you’re right, Cade.” Brice deliberately focused on her breasts as he spoke to his cousin. “Her pretty nipples are hard. When was the last time you tanned that juicy ass of hers?” At Riley’s whimper, Brice’s gaze darted up to meet hers. He grinned at the look of both panic and anticipation on her face.

Riley tried to sound calm when she said, “Brice, for God’s sake, don’t encourage him. He’ll be trying to make me come right here in this seat if you do.”

Cade looked as if he could get behind that idea, but Brice took pity on her. “C’mon, Cade. Sit down and buy me a drink. You can torment your wife any time, and I haven’t seen you in a month.”

Cade first tilted Riley’s chin until she was looking up at him. “My sweet. Tell me before you go walking off, even in the restaurant.”

When he saw that Riley was about to argue, Cade tightened his grip even more, knowing just how much pressure to apply before it became pain. It dilated her lovely eyes with pleasure and earned him a compliant nod of submission. Then he sat next to her and placed one hand on her thigh.

Brice could tell by her sudden frozen posture that his cousin’s touch must be very high up on her leg. He guessed that the slightest movement would bring his fingers to where she was probably already wet and ready for him. Brice knew she wouldn’t move, though. She would wait—as she’d been lovingly taught over the last two years—until given the command. As a submissive, she was a dominant’s wet dream come true.

“Hey! Why didn’t I know you’d be here?” Trevor Wellington swooped in and delivered a solid punch to Brice’s shoulder, his version of a hug. Then he leaned over and kissed Riley. Not just a quick peck, but a full, open-mouthed, tongue-thrusting kiss that had Riley panting and all but melting in her seat. He pulled back with obvious reluctance and sat in the one remaining chair.

Brice looked at the three of them and thought that no matter how unconventional their relationship was, it sure worked for them. Two years ago, they had committed themselves to each other in a garden ceremony at the Marshalls’ summer home, and the three of them were as blissful now as they were then. They showed no signs of slowing down.

“You didn’t know because I didn’t know.” Brice sighed and settled in. For the first time in five days, he allowed himself to relax. “I drove here on autopilot. I think I was headed home for leftover Chinese, but when I stopped the car I was here instead.”

“Awful late to be having dinner.” Cade’s stare took in all the details. Brice thought Cade could probably see the fatigue and the stress he was wearing as plain as he saw the clothes on his back. “Why don’t we have dinner brought up so you can fill us in and crash after?”

“Well, as nice as that sounds, I was thinking about flexing my charm muscles in the club after dinner. Maybe find my own Riley for the night.”

Riley snorted inelegantly. “Brice. I swear, you can do a lot better than a”—finger quotes—“Riley.”

“No, he can’t.” This was spoken in unison by both Cade and Trevor.

Riley waved that off with an eye roll. “Seriously. All you are going to meet there is a quick, cheap thrill. You need a decent girl who’s going to love you and hmmphh.” Trevor’s hand over her mouth saved Brice from having to listen to the rest.

“Little One,” Trevor whispered, “don’t you remember where Cade found you?” Riley’s blush was instant and bright as flame.

“Yes,” she whispered back, and then she rallied. “But! I was new in town, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I came here. And! I thought it was only going to be a wild fling once I did realize it.” Her chin thrust up, and there was fire in her eyes as she faced off with Trevor and dared him to say different.

Before Trevor responded and the debate got into full swing, Brice spoke. “Riley, much as I appreciate your concern, ‘quick cheap thrill’ is exactly what I was hoping for tonight.”