Soul Rest: A Knights of the Board Room Novel (13 page)

He settled back, but not by much. His hand rested on her thigh, his other forearm propped on the headrest above her. “We can do that. What’s your safe word, Celeste?”

“What word would make you feel safe, Celeste? You can’t afford for there to be men who stand fast, who protect, who love with all they are. Who don’t leave. Who take honor, commitment, and responsibility seriously. You can’t afford to trust your fate to the hands of another, not for a moment.”

It was like a fist reached into her chest, wrapped around her suddenly cold heart and squeezed it like a grape. She yanked herself out of the memory of that night at Club Surreal, away from the Dom with the knowing eyes, whose words had stripped her raw. He’d accurately guessed what word should have made her feel safe. A word she'd wished had represented safety, but never had.

“I don't want a safe word,” she said sullenly, ignoring the fact she’d brought it up.

“Not an option,” Leland responded. “I'll give you one. ‘Byline.’” But here's the thing, Celeste. When you use it, everything stops. Period. We're done.”

Did they read from the same playbook? The Dom at the club had set the same line in the sand. “So that's it for you and me? Game over, everything? Your way or no way?”

“No.” He didn’t appear to take offense at her belligerent tone. If anything, he seemed to become more patient. She wanted to hate him. Someone that made her need him this much, this fast, needed to be hated. “It means the session's over and we're on a cooldown period,” he said. “The first time you do it, we won't have another session for a week. The next time you do it, it will be two weeks. Third time, three. After that, no more chances. Fourth strike is game over.”

She blinked at him, sure he was joking, but she knew he wasn’t. “This isn't dating,” he reminded her. “There's a structure to this, and I set the framework. When a sub like you uses her safe word, typically at first it's a way to cry wolf, yank a Dom's chain, control the situation. You're trying to control your downhill slide.”

“That’s usually a good survival technique. Alligators could be waiting at the bottom.”

“True. But maybe something else is waiting down there as well.”

“What?”

“You have to trust me enough to find that out yourself. Ruins the surprise if I tell you.”

Was he teasing her, trying to get her to lighten up? She wasn’t biting. She sneered. “So you set all the rules, everything.”

“Pretty much. And not really.” He reached out and stroked those long strands of hair out of her eyes, touched her nose. “You can be a brat all day long, Celeste, whatever you need. But no crying wolf.”

“What if I'm just scared?”

“Then you tell me that.” His eyes did that sharpening thing, like gold struck by sunlight, and she realized he hadn’t been teasing her at all. “That's what I'm trying to teach you. To trust me with what's inside.”

“Will you take the cuffs off my hands now?”

“You owe me one more orgasm. Then we’ll talk about that.”

No. She couldn’t possibly. When he reached for the vibrator controls she was prepared to beg. But he was just placing the remote control into the console. Reaching over her, under her, he unfastened the Velcro and removed the thong, carefully working it out of the clasp of her buttocks, away from her soaking wet pussy. Then he pushed her leggings all the way down to her ankles. He was folded over her lap while he did that, his chest against her bare thigh. She thought of his back, wide and strong under her palms when he was first kissing her at the mall, and she wanted to be holding on to him again.

She couldn’t ask for anything right now. What was he doing? Her brain was simultaneously on overdrive and overloaded, exhausted from an array of conflicting emotions. In some distant corner, she realized she was relying on him to know where to take this next.

He straightened, gave her that penetrating look. Closing his hands on her knees, he spread them out as far as the hold of her clothing at her ankles would allow. Reaching over her, he eased the seat back, taking her down so she was gazing at the ceiling of the truck.

“Didn’t have enough of eating your pussy the other night, so I’m going to enjoy another meal there.”

She was so sensitive that the first touch of his mouth, the slight prickle of his evening shadow, had her crying out in protest. She fought his hold and found she couldn’t match his strength, not even to move an inch. As he teased her with breath and tongue, the deliberate rasp of his beard over her clit and labia, discomfort started turning into another one of those agonizing spirals upward. He straightened when she was starting to move against his face and replaced his tongue with his fingers, holding her gaze as he slid two thick fingers inside her, pushing his thumb up under her clit hood, making her cry out as he worried that over stimulated bud.

“Drives you nuts, doesn’t it? Feels terrible and good, all at once. You want me to suck on it instead, stroke it nice and slow? Rock you to climax like a baby? Take care of you the way a Master should? Like you’re my baby, all mine?”

Her gaze clung to him, desperate.
Yes.
Why couldn’t she form the words? Why did such things bring a jagged lump to her throat too sizable to speak around, a wall she couldn’t get past? She parted her lips, swallowed. “Tell me,” he said, low.

“Byline,” she said.

§

It took every ounce of self-discipline Leland had to remember the rules, to draw back and do what he needed to do. The problem was, she’d given him a glimpse of what lay behind the wall. He’d only been half teasing her in the mall. When he’d considered finding his forever sub, he’d usually fantasized about someone sweet as a kitten, a woman he could cuddle and cherish as well as spank and restrain, collar. Punish her for minor infractions in a way that would be fun for both of them. But with Celeste he was realizing he wanted one he could tame, that came to him wild and fierce, who learned to trust his touch and care. Behind her angers and fears, he could see that kitten cowering and spitting in the shadows. All he wanted was for her to trust him enough to curl up in his palm. Maybe she’d hang on to it with her claws at first, thinking he’d drop her, but eventually she’d learn he never would.

He guessed a man could imagine all day long what he wanted, but Fate sent him what was needed, and laughed its ass off when a guy discovered getting what he wanted was going to be about as easy as making a touchdown across a bed of nails in bare feet.

So he pushed down his howl of protest, his knowledge that he could use her body’s responses and her emotions to make her forget she’d ever said that safe word, and instead gave her a short, impassive nod. “All right.”

Taking napkins from the console, he pressed them against her bare cunt. She kept herself smoothly shaved, a vision sure to torture his dreams tonight.

“What are you doing?” Her voice had a little break in it.

“Ssh.” He wasn’t in the mood to talk just yet. He pulled the leggings back up onto her hips and ass, lifting her up as needed to bring the skirt down over them. Her ass might be skinny by his standards, but it had a nice shape to it he was beginning to deeply appreciate. He forced himself not to linger too long with it. Adjusting the satin bra cups over her beautiful breasts, he pulled her shirt back into place. Only then did he release her cuffs.

He anticipated her reaction, fortunately, because otherwise he might have a nice shiner. He caught her thrown fist, then the other wrist when she tried to strike at him with that hand. When she struggled, snapped at him, he gave her a little shake. “Stop it,” he said sternly. “It’s done, Celeste. No reason to fight. Session’s done. Just you and me, not Master and sub.”

As it penetrated, he made his tone milder, though his heart was wrenched by her lost expression. She was definitely advanced material for a Master. He was glad for the years of experience he had. It helped him see that she could speak her safe word to protect herself and yet still be caught up in the haze of lust and emotions that had tangled her up in her submission to him, brief and sweet though it was.

When she eventually pulled back, wanting to draw in, reestablish her space, he allowed it, seeing she was back with him. She cleared her throat, cleared it again. He found the bottle of water in the takeout bag, opened it and offered it to her. Her hands were shaking so badly, he helped steady the bottle as she held it. Her hazel eyes watched him as he stroked her cheekbone.

When she lowered the bottle, he removed his hand, but only after a caress of her temple with his knuckle. “Enough water?”

She nodded.

“Okay. Hold on to it, just in case.” He screwed the cap back on for her before he put the truck in drive. Thanks to the circuitous route they’d taken, they weren’t far from The Mall, and it didn’t take long to be back there. She told him where her car was when he asked, but beyond that they didn’t speak. He was giving her time to collect herself, and himself time to think things through.

There was a space open by her car. He took it, came around to open her door. She sat there, unmoving, staring straight ahead.

“So that’s it.”

“For a week. If you want to continue, then we’ll get together after that.”

She turned her gaze to him. “So it’s your way or nothing,” she repeated.

“Yeah. But the point is you have to choose to give me power over you, darlin’. You called it done tonight, and I’m respecting that. Are you okay to drive? Do you need me to take you home? I don’t want you driving if you don’t feel up to it.”

“I can drive. What if I don’t want to do anything after a week?”

“That’s your choice, too. I won’t play mind games with you, Celeste.”

“Yeah it is. It’s a mind fuck,” she said bitterly. “You’re trying to make me feel guilty so I’ll come chasing after you, like I’m some desperate badge bunny who will beg for your cock—”

She bit back a startled yelp as he closed his hand around her throat. He could damn near wrap his fingers all the way around that slender ivory column, and what got him hard as a rock all over again was her reaction. Though her hands lifted to block him, they never made it all the way up to pry at his fingers. They stopped midair, hovered, and then settled nervously in her lap as her gaze fixed on him. Her lips were parted in a way that told him his collaring her throat had silenced that harpy tongue, confusing her mind. He tightened his fingers infinitesimally, testing her and tormenting himself, and she swallowed against his hand.

“First off, eventually you will beg for my cock. That’s a given. Your eyes were doing it tonight when I was jacking off in front of you, and it made me want to fuck you like it was my last act on earth. Second, you can be as much of a brat as I know you need to be, but you will not strike out at me for respecting your safe word. Respecting that respects you, protects you, allows you to protect yourself. A man who understands that, who puts you first, doesn’t deserve the kind of trash talk you were just dishing out. Does he?”

She shook her head, a quick jerk. “No, sir.”

It was a sub’s instinctive response, no thought or taunt to it. Christ, she was trying to kill him. He withdrew, took a breath. “We’re out of scene now. No need to call me that.”

A ghost of a smile flirted around her mouth, at odds with her sad and confused eyes. “Could have fooled me, Sergeant.”

He sighed, helped her out of the truck. As he put his hands to her waist and she slid down, her arms went around him. He gave in to her unspoken need, holding her close. She buried her face against his chest and he bent his head over her protectively as he rubbed her back. “It’s all right, darlin’.” He propped his chin on her head. “What is your full name, anyway? The real one. In case I want to look up that juvie record.”

She snuffled a snort against his chest, though her shoulders remained tense, her body quivering with nerves. “Esther Celestial Lewis.”

He blinked at that. “Precious as the stars.”

She stiffened like a board and pulled away. As he watched her with a frown, she retrieved her coat. Shrugging into it, she fished out her keys to unlock her car. Her set face didn’t turn his way until she was in the car and he’d closed the door for her. She rolled the window down after she started the engine.

“The stars aren’t precious,” she said dully. “There are millions of them and they all look the same, because they’re light-years away. Too far gone to reach. Good night, Leland.”

“A country-western bar?” She stared at her text screen. “He wants to take me to a country-western bar.”

She tapped out a return text.

She didn’t deign to respond to that. She was aching for him. Literally. When she woke Saturday morning after that amazing climax marathon, all her muscles had tightened up, and she was barely able to walk. She discovered a text on her phone from him after she struggled into a sitting position in her bed.

She hadn’t responded to that, but she wondered if her text made him smile. As she hobbled to the bathroom, all her muscle groups were screaming at her to lie down and die. Just let her body petrify, rather than suffer through movement. Nine climaxes. Thank God she hadn’t told him the truth, that she’d used her vibrator or hand to get herself off several more times than that. If he’d known it had been over a dozen times instead of nine, he would have killed her with forced orgasms. When they sent him to prison, he’d have so many female groupies writing to him, rock bands would be jealous.

Once she could sit in front of her computer, she checked to see if her life had been in jeopardy. No conclusive proof of death by orgasm, but the graphic urban legends got her all worked up again. Unbelievable. Was this like the four-hour erection thing? Permanent arousal? Did she need medical help? She double-checked on that, along with death by masturbation, and found that debunked as well. If you believed the Internet.

But her worries on that score weren’t why she didn’t go for relief via her vibrator or the shower head. He hadn’t said she couldn’t masturbate, but she didn’t. Because he hadn’t said she could.

She’d fight him in person, tell herself she wasn’t going to go out with him again when she was alone, but she was obeying his unspoken commands in absentia. It was all part of her lovely mess of contradictions. A submissive who wanted to be a submissive so badly she fought it like a trap. She’d given up trying to understand the paradox, but part of the problem was she sensed he did. It made her want to be with him as much as she didn’t want to be with him.

The country western text had come in after her shower. To keep her mind off her libido and the possibility of more texts, she opened her files and went to work, since this was obviously going to be a work-at-home kind of day. She couldn’t face getting out of her bathrobe.

She received feeds from a variety of news sources. As she scrolled through them, her usual routine, she frowned and stopped on one.

Tina “DeeDee” Morgan found stabbed…

“Ah, damn it.” She’d bought DeeDee coffee one night, paid the price of a blow job to sit with her, get her impressions of life on the Baton Rouge streets, since Celeste was doing a series about it at that time. She remembered the woman had a wry sense of humor, very little education, a mild drug habit and pretty eyes. Plus double-D tits; hence the nickname. Celeste also remembered DeeDee was twenty-three. She’d been working the streets for six years.

The article was typically sparse, as was the police incident report. Unlike Loretta Stiles’s murder, no reporters other than her would have shown up on scene for this one, and the night of the crime, Celeste had been with Leland, eating nachos and watching sports. She didn’t regret that, but regretted the delay in catching the incident report. She’d been following up leads on Loretta and the drug trade series since, and DeeDee surely deserved better from her.

Something about the information niggled at her, though, telling her she’d read something else this week that was connected. Loretta’s death seemed important to it as well. She read a crap ton of material every day, stuffing her head full of details, but they had a way of sorting in her head over time that had more than once led her in the right direction. So now she sifted through her thoughts and more files, trying to jog it loose. Where was it?

It wasn’t until she’d made her second cup of coffee and had taken a couple more aspirin that it hit her. Despite thinking she was a little crazy, she called up the latest animal control summary report and found what she was seeking.

Animal control had been called out because a lady claimed someone had killed her dog. She’d found the dog in the same cul-de-sac where DeeDee was found a week later. Placing a call to animal control, Celeste lucked out and found her usual source working the Saturday shift. Leslie pulled the detail report and shared. It wasn’t a shooting, the animal control officer had been sure of that. He’d guessed the dog was hit by a car, but when Leslie got him on the phone and she and Celeste talked to him together, he was able to recollect the extent of the wounds and the blood. Stabbing? Beating? Upon reflection, the officer and Leslie guessed it could be stabbing, but Celeste could tell she was leading them to a conclusion, which meant she had nothing.

Thanking Leslie and promising her they’d get together soon for coffee to discuss the upcoming calendar, since Celeste offered free advertising for any animal welfare events the shelter pursued, Celeste next placed a call to the woman to whom the dog had belonged.

“I don’t understand.” Alana Ferrin became a little teary as she spoke to Celeste. “She was such a good dog, wouldn’t hurt anyone. I had her for company, not to be a guard dog. She didn’t really bark that much, except to get someone to notice and come pet her. I never had any complaints from the neighbors. She’d never gotten out, but the gate was open, like someone let her out. The police thought maybe neighbor kids did it and then she got hit by a car, but on a cul-de-sac? Who’s going so fast they’d hit a dog on a cul-de-sac? Unless they did it intentionally. And it doesn’t make sense. It was five miles away from my home. I wouldn’t have found her at all except someone down there was nice enough to look at her collar and call.”

Her voice broke. “She was just a kind, good dog. A lot of shifty characters hang out at that cul-de-sac. The graffiti and needles, all that garbage. I know one of them did it, but I don’t know why, except it was just pure cruelty.”

“Ms. Ferrin, I don’t want to upset you more, but did she look like she’d been hit by a car?”

“It’s so hard to tell. The officer said a dog can be hit by a car and not have an obvious mark on her. But she had wounds. In her side and chest. She was all bloody. Oh God.”

“I’m so sorry.” Celeste hated the part of the job where she had to push like that. “You sound like you were really good to her. I hope some other dog is lucky enough to be adopted by you.”

“Thank you.” Alana sniffled. “But it will take a while. I just feel…it’s like I’ve been wounded down to the soul. Someone who would do that to my Lacy, they’ll do that to a person. People just don’t understand that. If you’d mistreat an animal that way, something’s terribly wrong with you.”

When Celeste ended the call, she sat back in her chair, frowning. It could be a complete coincidence, true. Yet she believed in being thorough, so she did some more digging and hit gold. The kind that sent a cold tingle up the base of her spine that told her she’d found something that didn’t gel. Or that did.

Alana Ferrin lived a few doors down from the Stileses.

Scrolling through more animal control reports, she found another incident report in the Stileses' neighborhood and was back on the phone to Leslie, requesting another detail sheet. When it came through on her computer, Celeste clicked it open and frowned. A week before Loretta’s death, animal control was called out to retrieve a dead dog on the street. The neighbor had insisted on animal control instead of sanitation, because the dog appeared to have been dumped in that condition, not run over. The officer who wrote the report was more detail oriented, noting that the animal had puncture wounds. He’d taken several pictures. This dog was on the thin side but not unhealthy, a shepherd mix. She didn’t have tags or a chip, so she hadn’t been claimed, but she did have a collar with faded pictures of dog bones on it.

Alana’s dog had tags. Otherwise she likely never would have found her pet, all that distance away. What if the dog in the Stileses neighborhood had come from another part of town…like in the area of town where DeeDee was killed? It sounded ridiculous, even to Celeste. Serial killers were far rarer than the abundance of crime dramas about them. However, the ones who existed did seem to have a tendency to establish patterns, signatures that had significance to them.

Well, it could be her dumbest hunch of all time, but she might as well check it out. Printing out the description of the dog, she put it in her to-do files for Monday and turned her attention to her other work. However, for the rest of the weekend, a part of her mind kept chewing on it. At least it gave her an alternative to thinking about Leland, though that subject kept her mind just as engaged—and was just as puzzling.

On Monday, by the time she headed for the area where DeeDee had been found, she’d about convinced herself she was looking for submarine races in the desert. But as she drove up and down the nearby streets, Celeste discovered what she was seeking. Getting out, she went to a scarred light post where a paper sign was showing the effects of an earlier rain, part of it already torn away. Pushing it up, she looked at the fuzzy picture of the lost dog noted there. Sadie. Black-and-brown shepherd mix. The description was written in a child’s scrawl.

She wrote down the address, wondered if she could figure out a way to verify it without letting the young owner know Sadie hadn’t fallen into kind hands. Because it was entirely possible Sadie had. Black and brown shepherd mixes weren’t unique. The dog picked up from the Stileses' neighborhood would have been disposed of by now, no way except the officer’s photos to tell if she was Sadie, and she sure as hell wasn’t showing that to a child. Plus, a connection between two dead dogs and two murdered women, both a week apart? A lot of “ifs.” She tried to scoff at the idea, but damn it, the spidey sense was tingling.

Celeste got back in her car and drove to the cul-de-sac where DeeDee had been found. A couple of working girls leaned on a broken chain-link fence in the empty lot, a trio of young men not too far away, one sitting on a bucket while two others stood around him. She recognized the subtle signs of their gang affiliation. MoneyBoyz. While they were acting like three kids with not much to do, they were waiting for customers to come by. It was a popular spot for transacting drug business.

She’d asked Alana to pinpoint as exactly as she could where the dog was found on the cul-de-sac, so she stopped her car next to that spot, which was fortunately on the opposite side. It was possible she wouldn’t get any crap from the boys if she did her business quickly and acted like she had every right to be there.

The graffiti on the curb was extensive. While a lot of artists looked for vertical surfaces like the sides of buildings, most of them had a compulsive need to create, so she saw some promising artwork, despite some of it being praises of the MoneyBoyz, marking their turf. Like a colorful puzzle, it was all interlocking letters and swirling pictures. She moved along the curb, doubled back, noting the drug paraphernalia, used rubbers. She also stayed mindful of how conversation across the cul-de-sac had died off. Crouching down, she pushed some trash off the curb to get a better look at something that didn’t fit.

Rough childish letters had been scrawled over a piece of graffiti art, like a to-do list on top of a magazine ad. The letters were dark brown, nearly faded from rain. She took a picture of it with her camera phone, and then traced them on the rough ground. The first four letters could be…dead. Then…yeah. She sat back on her heels, a hard knot tying itself below her rib cage. She wasn’t mistaken. Bitch. Dead Bitch.

She shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. It could be paint or a marker, done by some insensitive asshole, making a caustic comment about finding DeeDee’s body here. Or a more recent spat between hookers where one had scribbled it to start a fight. If it had been left here with the dog, it could be days old, since the dog was found a week before DeeDee was killed. But with all the trash covering it since then, and the rain hadn’t been a downpour…

“Yo bitch, why you hanging down here? You wantin’ to suck some dick for money?”

She’d stayed too long. Slipping her phone back into her pocket, she rose and faced the two males who’d come over to see what she was doing. They weren’t much older than Darryl and Sean, but the hardened looks on their faces said they were far deeper into the life than the other two boys.

She produced her card calmly. “I’m Celly Lewis. I’m a reporter. You’ve probably seen me around the neighborhood before. I was following up on a dog that was killed here.”

The taller boy scoffed. He might not yet be a man, but he had the frame of one, nearly six feet with broad shoulders and big hands. Despite the cooler weather, he wore a wifebeater over sagging jeans and he had several tats on rippling biceps. He looked strong and mean. His companion was slim, sporting a gold earring and LSU shirt over his jeans and high tops.

“You write stories about dead bitches?” The taller one said. “You don’t get much action, do you?”