Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel (6 page)

“Trapping me here?”

“Not at all. You can open the door. It will just set off the alarm.” He bent over her, kissed her forehead. A friendly gesture that he turned sensual by cupping the back of her head, mouth lingering as he murmured against her flesh. “Sleep, Celeste. It’s all right. You pleased me in every way. All I want you to do is rest here so I know you’re safe. All right?”

“Once my brain clears, I’m not going to let you treat me like a child.”

He chuckled. “Darlin’, trust me. I’m not treating you like a child. And you damn well know it. Sleep tight.” He pulled back enough to meet her eye to eye. “The alarm will deactivate at 6:00 a.m. and you can slip out of here while I’m still asleep, since I’m going in mid-morning. But eventually I’ll come looking for you. This isn’t a one-night stand.”

“What if that’s what I prefer? What if I’m done?”

“Well, you can tell me that when I find you. I’ll tell you you’re a liar, we’ll fight about it, and then we’ll have makeup sex.”

“There are lots of movies about cops who are psychotic stalkers,” she said darkly.

“A taste of your pussy would turn any sane man into a stalker. Can’t hold that against us. But I’m big enough to stay first in line.”

He rose and gazed down at her, his lips flattening from a smile to serious firmness. “And you know we’re not done. We’re just beginning.”

A man who gave a woman terrified of intimacy an escape route was either making things easier on the both of them, or had lost his fucking mind. Leland heard her get up at 5:45 a.m., marked the tiny shifts as she found her shoes and slipped them on. A few more footfalls and rustlings in the front room told him she was seeking her underwear. Her panties were in his room, tucked under his pillow where the musky scent of her arousal alone had damn near compelled him several times to break all the promises he’d made. If she was brave enough to come get them, all bets would be off.

A longer pause told him she’d probably figured out where they were. He could almost hear her teeth grinding as she debated it, but then the alarm, damn it all, deactivated promptly at six with a chirp, swaying her decision. He heard the door open with a squeak then close. Leaving the bed, he padded to the living room window and watched through the crack in the curtain to be sure she made it safely into her car. Though the autumn day was likely to warm up thanks to Baton Rouge humidity, he could tell the air was chilly now from the way she moved. The bolero jacket she’d worn last night fit her slim body nicely, but when he glanced toward the couch to see she’d left his sweatshirt behind, he wished she’d taken it. He didn’t like her being cold. As she turned the ignition over and pulled out onto the street, the cast of the street light through her window showed him that her eyes were locked straight ahead, her pretty mouth tight.

Since they’d met in the convenience store, he’d been intrigued by the complexity of her body language, the minute shifts in her expressions that suggested so many thoughts and emotions. He could make some good guesses at the head games she was playing with herself right now. He suspected she was a submissive who’d had a brief brush with the lifestyle, had been intrigued enough to be scared shitless by it, and had studiously avoided it ever since because of whatever was keeping her so tightly wound and self-protected.

Though he wanted to figure a way past her shields, he respected the desire to self-protect. Give a cop the choice between walking into an ugly domestic violence fight where husband and wife were armed with everything from pistols to a child’s wooden building blocks—which could cause stitches if hurled with enough force, by the way—or visiting a therapist for an evaluation, each one would take the bullets and brightly colored toys without a blink.

The reporter thing had nearly been a deal breaker. Would have been, if he hadn’t come up behind her and heard her saying the kind of things he and his own guys thought about the matter. If he wasn’t dedicated to the code of law, he’d happily dig a giant hole, shove every media weasel right into it and bury them up to their necks. Oh, and dump a cauldron of fire ants on them. Not that he had strong feelings about it or anything.

What had cinched it, though, was her reaction to the bratting question. She’d understood exactly what he meant, and had responded in a way hard for the Dom in him to resist.

“The Dom in him” made it sound like a separate thing, rather than a vital need like the beating of his heart. He hadn’t dated since he’d accepted that a submissive orientation was a must-have for whatever woman caught his attention. BDSM people respected privacy because confidentiality was critical to many of them, so he still went to a club or play party on occasion to hang out, have a drink and watch, but he hadn’t found what he wanted there, either. As a result, he’d made a conscious decision to bide his time, wait and see if someone would ever ping his radar.

Celeste Lewis had, like an incoming missile.

There were people in the vanilla world who knew one another in and out, who found all the pleasure they needed in the simple intimacy of coming together in their bedroom. He guessed he was the BDSM world’s version of that. He was seeking a woman with whom he could explore every corner of her submission to him in the comfort of their home. Their own private world that would never get too limited, because it was as limitless as their feelings for one another.

It made him sound like a sentimental dumb-ass, but the great thing about being built like a brick wall was he could love Hallmark movies, kittens and walking in the rain, and no one was going to say shit about it to him.

Celeste was a good-looking woman who he suspected saw herself as average-looking, despite the nicely toned body and lush breasts. If she didn’t have all that fire inside her, she might have been right. But that fire gave her gold-brown-green eyes a glow, enhanced by the thick lashes. He liked a woman’s hair, long or short, and hers had elements of both. The short shaved style on neck and sides let him tease the delicate bones of her nape, the sensitive shell of her ear, the erogenous occipital bone area. Yet those lustrous strands on top that tumbled over her brow and framed the right side of her face, teasing her cheek and jaw, gave him something to grip. They would let him pull her head back and expose her throat when he wanted to bite and suckle on her thundering pulse, remind her she was helpless in his hands, helpless to every crazy, nasty, over-the-top thing he wanted to do to her.

Yeah, she’d had an effect on him. Letting her leave this morning without pinning her against the wall and fucking her senseless had been difficult. He’d wanted her to leave with wobbly legs and his come slipping down those lovely thighs, because he sure as hell wouldn’t give her back her underwear. But she was freaked out. Time to give her a little space, then he’d work on reeling her back in, see how that went. He was pretty sure he’d made enough of an impression to establish a tether between them. She was a submissive who’d responded to the Dominant in him, and wanted more. Needed more.

If she’d avoided the Dom/sub thing this long, though, despite her obvious craving for it, he might merely be the first one who’d gotten under her defenses in a while and been able to draw those needs back up to the surface. While he wasn’t interested in being a damn gateway drug for her back into the lifestyle, that wasn’t something he could control. Any more than he could stop her from leaving this morning.

Patience, timing. He usually didn’t have a problem with those things, but in truth, he’d missed her as soon as she left. When he picked up the sweatshirt and detected her scent on it, he took an extra whiff of it like a bloodhound figuring out which direction he needed to go to chase her down.

Hell, it had been a long time since he’d had this kind of reaction to a woman, that hard coil of need in the chest and the gut, a mix of pleasant anticipation and urgent need that would continue to twine together until he saw her again. As he headed toward his shower, he was grinning like a fool, just anticipating it.

§

Roll call and writing up the day’s work list in his tiny cubicle started the day, but sergeants didn’t spend too much time hanging around the district home base. Unless the lieutenant needed to update him or chew on his ass about something, or one of his squad needed a one-on-one, most days it wasn’t too long before Leland was out on the street, monitoring the District 1 communications on his unit radio and scanning the frequencies for the other three on his portable.

He checked in on his officers, going wherever additional help or guidance was needed. Since certain resources were limited, he was one of the few who had a beanbag shotgun in his trunk, a useful aid for putting someone on the ground in a nonlethal way. Important, since the budget for more beds at the mental health facilities had been slashed. A few weeks ago, Leland had brought the weapon into play for a schizophrenic who refused to stay on his meds. The guy had secured a handful of knives to protect himself from his family members, whom he thought were invading aliens.

Leland was also trying to increase his presence in key areas for his squad because gang activity was up this month. Baton Rouge didn’t really have organized gangs like the Crips out in Los Angeles or that kind of shit, but it did have loose affiliations of guys who decided they were a “gang,” with drug-related crimes being their primary activity. Two had evolved enough to give themselves names, not that they’d hit the FBI’s gang register anytime soon. The MoneyBoyz and the Reigning Kings. Christ, like a bunch of kids playing form-a-secret-club, which followed, since a lot of them were in high school or barely out of it.

Unfortunately, the problem with them getting an identity was it made them cockier, more aggressive. They were doing shit to intentionally step on one another’s toes and that was never good for anyone.

Case in point. The crime scene he was approaching now was a laundromat robbery and assault. He expected it had been done by the Reigning Kings, probably because the owner had been brave—or foolish enough—to report that they’d set up a dealing point in the alley next to the store. The majority of violent crime in Baton Rouge surrounded drugs, so though the city was known to have a high crime rate per capita, if you weren’t dealing, supplying or doing drugs, or hanging out or having to live in the places where that happened, life was little different from any other place with a far lower crime rate.

Dope dealers killing and stealing from other dope dealers wasn’t something that broke his heart but, like any cop, he was all too aware of how that activity could quickly involve innocent bystanders. Like the store owner who’d been trying to do the right thing.

He’d stop in to check the scene, make sure everything was going as it should and see whether his guys needed an extra set of hands. With approval, he saw they’d secured the area properly. Billy Johnson, a rookie, was riding point on the barricade, along with a veteran, Mike Carter. Mike had been part of his district for quite a while and Leland knew he was a good man. There weren’t too many people milling outside the proper range of the scene, but he made special note of at least two who were, just as he was sure Mike had.

Two Reigning King members, a pair of kids likely still earning their street cred, were lounging against a light post, smoking. If any uniform headed in their direction to question them, the kids would melt away like shadows. Or feed the cops total bullshit.

He saw one or two citizens in the doorways of businesses across the street. The ones with creased brows and concern darkening their eyes told Leland they lived close by. All of them would know the store owner. Even so, they stayed where they were and kept their peripheral vision on the gang members. Nobody wanted to be perceived as being too sympathetic.

When he looked back toward Mike, he saw the man stiffen. Leland immediately followed his gaze back to the two kids. He blinked, sure he wasn’t seeing what he was seeing, but no, he was not hallucinating.

Celeste Lewis was strolling up to the two young men with a cardboard tray full of coffee.

He was too far away to intercept her, so he made himself stay in the car, watching. Logic said they weren’t going to do anything in front of a trio of cops. They also wouldn’t be packing heat under their oversized shirts, because if a cop had a justifiable reason to believe they were carrying, they could get searched and hauled in. Gang members weren’t exactly the types to go through the legal channels to apply for a concealed carry permit.

Even knowing all that, he didn’t like her being that close to them. Let alone Goddamn chatting with them.

Whatever she said had them glancing at one another, shifting. One said something that looked a tad belligerent, and she shrugged, responded with a shake of her head. She handed them both a cup from her tray and asked a question. The shorter of the two boys stole a look at the other one and then gave a quick nod. Fishing white sugar packets out of her coat pocket, she handed them to him. When she cocked her head at the other boy, he shook his head, made a motion at her to go away, but Leland noticed he kept a firm hold on his own cup. So did Celeste. With a suppressed smile but an even look, she said something else, then stepped off the curb to cross the street.

She was wearing a snug camel-colored coat, black slacks and blunt-heeled boots. She had the lithe, athletic movements of a woman who worked out for more than her waistline. He wondered if she played any sports. She’d shown she was pretty sports-savvy last night, but that wasn’t the uppermost thing in his mind as he watched her. The belted coat emphasized her generous breasts. He’d kept his attention mostly below the waist at his place, but that just made him fantasize all the more about closing his hands around those curves, snaking his tongue in the cleavage to tease and caress, moving over to suckle her nipples into swollen cherries. Her pussy would get all wet like it had on his couch. While she was gasping and arched into his mouth, he’d work his cock right into that tight fit.

The erection he was unwisely creating instantly went on hold when she approached the barrier and extended another coffee to Carter. He took it, which gave Johnson unspoken permission to do the same. The rookie leaped for the coffee like a puppy leaping on a ball. She chatted them up a few moments with the same ease she’d talked to the two boys. Then she wandered over to the curb about twenty feet away. She had a cylindrical tote slung over her shoulder which, as a football fan, he should have immediately recognized. His little Girl Scout pulled out the stadium chair, unfolded it and sat herself down, clicking open her tablet to make some notes.

She obviously was used to working the streets and talking to his men. What bugged him was their comfort with her, which suggested it was a two-way street.

Leland got out of the car, his brow drawing down, his mouth set in a thin, hard line.

They’d seen him pull up, but when Mike saw his expression, he spoke a word to Johnson. The rookie went back to his position on the perimeter with a furtive look. Leland lifted the tape and ducked under it, then gestured Carter to him.

“I wasn’t aware you were our public information officer now, Mike.” He spoke low, but kept his eyes pinned on his man. He was aware Celeste’s head had lifted when he got out of the car, but he didn’t look her way. Not yet.

“No, Sarge. It’s not like that.” Carter shifted uncomfortably. “Celly was approved to do some ride-alongs last year when she did an article on the BRPD, so we know her. She’s at a lot of the crime scenes, because she has that blog. If you’ve seen it,” he added lamely as Leland’s expression didn’t alter.