Safeword (24 page)

With a little shove, he released me. When he turned to retreat again, something primal cut loose, and I launched myself at him with a growl. Slamming into his back, I took him down, narrowly missing the back of the loveseat in the living room. We grappled, and I wasn’t trying to cause him harm, but I’d be goddamned if I was going to sit back while he fought his inner demons without me. I managed to pin him on his back, my forearm across his chest as I straddled his torso.

“Stop running away. Let me in, Ben. Trust goes both ways,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. I wasn’t really afraid of him thinking of me as a burden. I only wanted him to think of me as an equal.

He grunted, planting a hand on my chest and pushing, but pinned as he was beneath me, he didn’t have the leverage necessary to unseat me. I changed my grip, placing both palms on his pecs, not budging.

“Let me in, Ben,” I said, pleading and strained with the physical effort. It felt wrong to be subduing him, but if I let go, he’d retreat again. “Trust me the way I trust you. Submit to the fact that we’re having this conversation whether you want to or not.”

He went still, limp as wet cotton, his breath whistling through his nose as he glared up at me. Both of us had become aroused, but the charged air, the importance of this conversation, the sheer need for me to get him to see what he was doing to me with every silent withdrawal dictated I ignore the heaviness in my shorts.

“This would have been so much easier if you’d just told me what made your day so hard you actually planned a vacation,” I said gently, not an ounce of accusation in my tone.

His nostrils flared and he lunged, grabbing the back of my neck and hauling me into a bruising kiss. When we broke apart, I tasted blood. Mine or his, I didn’t know.

“Now, let’s talk about it.”

His eyes glittered in the candlelight, and he swallowed several times before he could speak. “I’m terrified,” he admitted with difficulty, his bottom lip trembling. “Someone else is after you, and that bitch reporter just poked him with a big fucking annoying stick. He won’t punish
her
for it, though. He’ll come after
you.
So yeah, I want to take you and run away, protect you. But I can’t.” His voice broke on the last word, and he covered his eyes with a hand, hiding from me. “I can’t.” His chin quivered, and he lost the battle with his emotions.

I leaned on my elbows, lowering myself so I could pepper his face and hands with kisses. There are some who think a Dom showing vulnerability makes him weak, not capable of dominating a sub properly. I didn’t subscribe to that theory. In fact, I had the opposite opinion. A Dom who could recognize his inner turmoil is more capable of taking a sub into subspace because he understands the nuance of strong emotion, of helplessness, and what it does to a person. To me, a Dom able to admit he can’t control everything is more likely to avoid possible pitfalls in a scene. A Dom arrogant enough to think he can handle everything life throws at him is less likely to to recognize trouble when it starts, and therefore won’t stop in time, leaving his sub in a precarious position. Just as it takes more strength to kneel before another than to stand beside them, it takes more self-awareness and humility to know what one can’t control in order to avoid losing control altogether.

Ben’s tears humanized him, and in that moment, he had never been stronger.

I scooped my hands beneath his shoulders and hauled him into a sitting position, lifting myself out of his lap and scooting beside him instead, facing the opposite direction so our right shoulders touched, my arm securely around his waist. He twisted his torso and buried his face in the juncture between my neck and shoulder, his damp breath wafting over my skin. I held him like that for so long, I lost track of time.

Eventually, he quieted and pulled away, ducking his face to avoid looking at me.

“Oh no, you don’t,” I said, putting a finger under his chin to force eye contact. “We both needed that, babe.”

He stopped fighting me. “I know why I did, but why did you?”

“You’re not perfect, Ben. I don’t expect you to be, any more than you expect it from me. This is the first time I’ve seen you realize it, too. Now we can figure out how to be a team instead of a prince and his damsel in distress. Equals.” I rested my forehead to his. “Except in the bedroom. Then I’ll be your damsel to the lacy, frilly hilt.”

He laughed, wiping his nose with the back of one hand. I laughed with him, putting a palm to his cheek, caressing his cheekbone with my thumb. Even red faced and crying, he was beautiful to me.

“Let’s go to bed. I’m exhausted.” He grunted as he stood, and his knees cracked loudly, gunshots in an otherwise quiet room.

“Okay, old man,” I joked, slapping his ass playfully as we crisscrossed the room to blow out the candles.

Entering the bedroom, I nearly ran into him when he stopped abruptly. I froze, wondering if he’d seen something. Was there someone outside looking in at us? I turned sharply to the doors leading to the patio, seeing nothing.

“Ben? What’s wrong?” The hair on my scalp prickled.

He whirled and came at me, slamming me into the wall and mashing his lips over mine. His cock was rigid against my hip as he thrust against me, his movements desperate and jerky. I pulled away from the kiss to breathe, and he nipped my earlobe, none too gently.

“Mine,” he growled, palming my rapidly hardening dick. My mouth dropped open as pleasure ping-ponged through me. An affirmative grunt fell from my swollen lips. “You belong to me. Not that bitch of a reporter, and certainly not whoever’s leaving you gifts.”

“Okay,” I agreed, growing impatient with his shirt buttons and giving up, simply pulling it up so I could mouth his chest hotly, gnawing on his nipples in an effort to light him on fire the way he did me.

He captured my wrists and yanked me unceremoniously to the bed, throwing me down on my back. My shirt and shorts disappeared, as did his clothes, and we resumed our earlier grappling, albeit with a much different intent. If he needed to mark me as his after such an unsettling evening, I wouldn’t stop him.

Outside, somewhere in my city, someone was watching me, taunting me. Perhaps even right that moment. That person was responsible for the deaths of three cops. Increasingly aware of the fishbowl in which I swam, I had no problem with Ben staking his claim, or with shutting out everything else for a little while to be in our own private world.

§§§

“GAVIN,” BEN murmured in my ear. I grumbled, rolling away from him. “Babe, Myah’s here. You have to go.” His voice was grim, and I wanted to pretend not to hear so I could stay in my warm bubble, wallowing in the continued pleasant ache in my ass. But his words wouldn’t go away.

“Yeah, okay.” Flinging off the covers, I noted it was still dark out. “Where is she?” Ben was in pajama bottoms I hadn’t known he owned and one of my police academy T-shirts, his hair sticking up in the back. He looked alert. And hot.

“Drinking coffee in the kitchen. She said don’t rush, but it’s still important.”

So, no murder then. I sagged in relief.

“Okay, can you entertain her for fifteen minutes?” I brushed my fingers over my hair, grimacing at a crunchy spot before grinning at Ben. “I have to shower. You left your spunk in some very interesting places last night.” I gave him a closed-mouth kiss, sparing him my morning breath.

“You’re damn right I did,” he rumbled, pinching my butt when I turned to enter the bathroom.

When I emerged and entered the kitchen, Myah smiled and stood. “Thanks for the coffee, Ben. I’ll have to get myself one of those single cup brewers. I’d save a small fortune on Fourbucks’ lattes.”

I shrugged on my suit jacket by the front door, stuffing a tie in my pocket. Too early for the work noose.

Before Myah and I could cross the threshold, Ben caught my hand. “Hey, be careful.”

“Okay. Go back to bed.” I smiled and pecked his lips, then turned to my partner.

“Gag me,” Myah bitched as we walked to the car. “You two are disgusting. And before you say it, it has nothing to do with the ungodly hour we’re awake.”

“Says the newlywed.”

“We’re not married yet, but at least we have an excuse.”

“That makes it worse,” I said, buckling my seatbelt while she started her car. Mine was still at impound, presumably being examined. “If you’re this bad already, you’ll be intolerable by the wedding. Talk about gag me.” I faked choking noises.

“Nah, by the wedding, we’ll be over it.”

I was silent a long moment, studying her profile in the intermittent luminosity of passing streetlamps.

“Cole’s a lucky guy.”

She leveled me with a look. “Don’t get all mushy on me. I won’t be able to keep a straight face when I tell people my best friend and partner likes pain and is a total badass.”

Grinning, I looked out the car window, noticing where we were. She pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall on Brentwood Boulevard anchored by a major grocery chain store, the lights of the surrounding businesses lit by emergency-only illumination or dark altogether.

Save one.

Master Key Pawn was bright as daytime. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask Myah why we were getting up at three a.m. if it wasn’t another murder, and I’d been too busy giving her shit to ask what was going on. We hadn’t quite gotten this far south in our pawn shop search, so anything we learned would be new.

“Man, I’m slipping,” I muttered under my breath. “We got a lead?”

“Yes. Came into the call center two hours ago. Patrol checked it out, and then called me when it looked promising. I swear, you have something over them that they call me all the time instead of you.”

“Nah,” I said, freeing myself from the seatbelt and stepping into the cold March night. “They’re hoping to catch your sleepy sex voice. Now that it’s out you’re getting married, they know that’s all they’ll ever get out of you.”

She flipped me off, and then pulled open the pawn shop door, jingling a bell. A punk kid peeked out from the back at the sound.

“You the cops?” he asked. We held up our badges. “Back here.” He twitched his head in the direction we were to go.

We rounded the counter and entered the back office, a tidy little room with neat stacks of papers and files on one side of a desk and a huge flat panel monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse setup on the other side. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere to be seen. The kid, who sported a pea-sized silver stud beneath his pouty bottom lip and spiked, electric blue hair, took the seat behind the desk.

“Can we please speak to the owner? The guy who called in the tip?” I asked, earning myself a derisive sneer.

“I’m gonna forgive you only because I get that from everyone, not just authority figures. I’m Blaine Jansen, owner and operator of Master Key, and I’m the one who called you.”

Myah recovered first. “Very sorry, Mr. Jansen. You’re just... incredibly young to already own a business. Nice.”

“I’m twenty-six and have a business degree. I don’t want to wear a suit every day or have to work ten years before I get that third week of vacation.” Blaine smiled and his eyes swept over her as if seeing her for the first time. It was borderline lecherous, despite his gaze landing on the sizable rock Cole had put on her ring finger. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“This information?” I cleared my throat, getting his attention.

“Yeah,” Blaine said, pulling a folder from a drawer. “I saw the guy you’re looking for on the news last night, and it bugged me. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and when I get going on something like that, my brain won’t let me sleep. I finally dragged my ass here to look through the files, and I found this.” He passed the folder to me. “The driver’s license picture matches, but not the name, so I figure I got a fake, right? It must have been decent, because I can usually spot those.”

I stared, pulse racing at the copy of the license. I flipped a couple pages to the receipt. The guy had sold an iPod, a video camera, and a few XBox 360 games. The games could have been Stevenson’s, and the iPod could have been Halloran’s. The video camera could have belonged to either man, as both had one missing. No mention of a digital camera like the one missing from Stevenson’s house, or the video game system.

“You’ve got serial numbers to go along with these?” I asked excitedly, passing the papers to Myah, who sucked in a breath as she read the contents of the folder.

“Yeah, it’s all in there, except for the games. Those don’t come with numbers. But the other stuff, yeah.”

“Do you still have them for sale?”

Blaine shook his head. “Electronics sell quick. I can get you the names of the buyers, but there’s no telling what happened to them once they left my store.”

“Did he act a certain way during the sale to make you suspect stolen items?” Myah asked, passing back the folder. “We’ll need to take this, so if you want a copy for your records, go make them. We’ll need the originals.”

Blaine rolled his eyes, but he was apparently not surprised. “Okay. And no, he came in and asked me what I’d give him for the few things he had. Smaller stuff like this, it’s harder to tell if it’s stolen. People don’t bring in receipts when they don’t have to authenticate something. C’mon, you know how it works. Someone has papers only for big ticket or rare merch. But electronics have serial numbers, and I track that stuff like a good little boy. Nothing seemed odd. It’s all here.” He held up the file, and without another word, disappeared out the door. A few minutes later, he returned, handing us his originals and keeping freshly made copies.

Myah leaned forward, asking him more questions about the seller, his demeanor or anything else. Blaine quickly shut her down.

“Look, guys, I really have done all I can. I don’t remember much more than what he looked like, and I gave you what paperwork I have. I know it’s early and I’m the one who called you, but I have nothing more to tell you.” He flipped his wrist at the folder in Myah’s lap. “That’s everything. I’d really like to get back home and go to bed. Maybe I can sleep now.”

Disappointed, I stood to shake Blaine’s hand. “I’ll be honest, I doubt you’ll see the originals again. They’ll stay in the evidence locker as long as the case remains open. But if you fill in a request for the crime lab, there’s a chance. Ask for Cole DeGrassi when you turn in the request. He’ll do his best to make sure your paperwork is returned.