Without a Net (23 page)

When the case was over, Ollie needed either an army of therapists or the balls to admit he might have been wrong about shade Doms.

The door opened while Ollie was fingering the whip Travis had used on him. He turned, and Travis stood there with a gym bag. “I have some stuff.”

Ollie used his hands to cover his cock. Now that the glow of sex had faded, standing around naked with a huge boner felt a tiny bit awkward.

“You can’t do that around Greyson. You’re right that he’ll spot signs we’re lying,” Travis said. “We play this game until we get hard evidence on tape, and that means that if you cover yourself, I’m going to have to pretend I’m the asshole who is participating in your capture and torture. Neither of us will like what I have to do.”

Ollie put his hands at his sides. “I get that. If you have to do something to maintain cover, you do it. My skin will recover faster than my ego will if Greyson plays us for fools.”

“I would prefer to avoid that, which is why we should make sure you can play the part of the cowed sub. I want you to remember that this is a part. I never want you cowed, and for all his games and stupid decisions around this case, Milan doesn’t want that either. The good news is that if I’m even close to blowing this, Milan will string me up and take over the mission.” Travis grinned. “I’d love to see my director’s face if Milan had to admit he’d taken us out of action. I would say that I’d love to see Darla’s face, but Milan versus Darla would be like watching a Doberman fight a Pomeranian. At least the director would bite back; Darla wouldn’t.”

“I’d rather close this case myself.”

“Don’t get all excited, Detective. This is an FBI case. You’re just along for the ride, so it’s my collar.”

“Unless Milan takes it away from you,” Ollie said in a nasty tone.

Travis looked up from the task of untangling a chain and leather something. “That’s true. That would embarrass both of us, so let’s avoid fucking up so he doesn’t have an excuse. Do you know how to put one of these on, or do you need some help?” Travis asked, holding up the complicated mass.

Ollie stared at it. The plug had an obvious use, and the plastic curve was probably for his dick, but he wasn’t sure where anything else went.

“I’ll help,” Travis said. He knelt down so fast Ollie didn’t have a chance to protest. Travis slipped a strap around Ollie’s waist and arranged buckles and adjusted lengths, and the whole time he was eye to cock with Ollie’s erection. The embarrassment made Ollie squirm, but he couldn’t move much because Travis was arranging the world’s most complicated chastity belt.

“So, um. How far back do you and Milan go?” This was officially the oddest conversation Ollie had every carried on.

“My first year of college.” Travis pulled out a tube of slick and quickly slathered some on the plug. “Spread your legs.”

Ollie closed his eyes and did as ordered. He was the one who had suggested this, so he couldn’t complain now. “Was Milan at your college?”

“He ran a shade club licensed for sex work in the same town.” When Travis pushed the plug into Ollie, Ollie went up onto his toes and silently cursed. He was too hard, and this was making him even harder. He craved Travis’s touch, wanted to beg for more at the same time he wanted to beg him to stop. Travis kept working. He threaded the end of Ollie’s engorged cock into a curving piece of black plastic.

“I don’t think that will fit,” Ollie warned.

Travis looked up and gave him a wicked grin. “Oh, I’ll get it to fit. Don’t worry.” Ollie’s cock hardened even more at that expression, and Travis let his hand linger over Ollie’s hip. Somehow that gentle touch commanded Ollie’s full attention. He could feel the ghost of Travis’s caress even after Travis returned to working the cock cage onto Ollie.

Desperate to change the subject, Ollie clung to the tall support on the spanking bench and tried to ignore the nearly overwhelming urge to hump Travis’s hand as the man slowly forced Ollie’s erection into its prison.

“Did you work there, or were you a client?”

“Neither. I couldn’t afford his subs, and in case you haven’t noticed, Milan only hires a certain sort of Dom.”

“Meaning?”

“He’d hire you before me.” Travis rocked back on his heels and looked up.

Ollie laughed. “Anyone who hired me as a Dom is an idiot. I don’t have a dominant bone in my body.”

“No,” Travis said, “but you like to make other people feel good. If making them feel good meant learning how to whip them, I think you could take up that challenge. Milan likes subs he can train up to be dominant. Some find a dominant side; others fake it when they’re with clients. I am too fucking alpha for Milan to hire me.”

Ollie thought back on the subs in the Happy Whip. Buck could dominate a sub. But if Travis was right, that meant Allemande had once been a sub. Ollie couldn’t imagine it, because Allemande was more like Travis; he oozed power. But then again, he worked for Milan, running the club, and Ollie suspected Milan was a demanding boss. He hadn’t thought twice about putting Allemande and the others into the middle of a plot to kidnap a cop.

Travis turned his attention back to the chastity device. “I would go to the club part and try to hook up with subs.” Travis concentrated on Ollie’s cock as he worked. “I got angry a lot as a kid, and I was big for my age. I found subs who said they wanted it rough, and when they changed their minds and safe-worded out, I got frustrated. I was in my first year of college and spiraling out of control when a campus cop who had taken me under his wing pointed me in the direction of Milan’s place. The first couple of subs—it was like heaven.”

“They let you do what you wanted,” Ollie guessed.

“They loved what I did to them,” Travis said. “And I thought the world was perfect. Then I got a sub I didn’t mesh with. He safe-worded. I tried to talk him into going forward anyway. He threw a fit and threatened me up one side and down the other. When I decided he was serious and cut him loose, he kicked my ass. He threatened to kick my ass again anytime I forgot that I didn’t have a right to any power that hadn’t been given to me. He then called in Milan.”

“To kick your ass again?”

“Maybe.” Travis huffed and paused in his work. “Probably. But Milan saw that I would be a good Dom if I could learn to control myself first. He taught me not to be an asshole and an abusive Dom, so what he did to you…”

“He never actually hurt me. I’m pretty sure he saved me from ending up on the ME’s slab.”

“That doesn’t mean he had a right to take your power,” Travis said firmly. “That’s the first rule he taught me, and I will arrest him when this is over.” He finally got the sheath down over Ollie’s cock, and Ollie’s eyes watered at the tightness of the fit. Hopefully it would be more comfortable once he lost his erection. Travis held the cage in place with one hand and reached for the straps dangling from the back of the chastity belt. Ollie could only stand with his legs spread while Travis pulled various bits taut. A plastic collar slipped over the sheath, and then the straps attached to that before Travis locked them to the front of the belt.

“I won’t testify,” Ollie said while Travis adjusted all the parts until the plug was pushed deep into Ollie’s body and his cock felt like it was being strangled.

“You may feel differently after some time, but even if you don’t, what he did is a crime.” Travis tugged on one strap, and Ollie hissed as the edge of the leather pressed into a tender spot. Travis loosened it back up and adjusted something to make the strap shift to the right. With a few last tugs, he stood. “It’s done.”

Ollie looked down, and his cock was absolutely gone. The collar of the sheath covered most of the area that would have been hair had Milan’s groomers not removed his body hair, and a number of straps led up to the belt. He’d worn bathing suits that showed more.

“I gave my power to Greyson,” Ollie said. Maybe that was why he’d rather be trussed up like a damn Christmas package than be naked in front of him. Ollie looked at Travis. “Hell, I didn’t have one hint of one suspicion. I thought Greyson was helping me, and if Milan had told me anything different, I would have run right to Greyson to update him on Milan’s attempt to corrupt me. Now that’s irony for you.”

“That’s being caught between two manipulative sons of bitches,” Travis said. “Milan had every reason to grab you to keep you from making a fatal mistake, but he didn’t have a right to train you as a sub or to put you in a position where you became bait in this game.”

“If this were a bad idea, your boss would have vetoed it.” Ollie figured Travis’s boss was not a woman who got talked into stupid plans.

“I didn’t say the plan was bad; I said Milan had no right to put you in the middle.”

That was true. “But I’d rather be in the middle than shuffled off to the side.” Ollie ran his fingers over the straps. The locks were built into the belt—the sort that used an electronic signal from a remote. He was locked inside this thing, and Travis held the key.

“The fact that you got screwed is the only reason I’m letting a local LEO into my investigation,” Travis said with a fierceness that made Ollie think the man didn’t share jurisdiction very easily. “And if you press charges against me, I will hire a lawyer and defend myself by throwing Milan under every bus I can find. But I won’t ever blame you.”

“That’s just it—I liked what you did. Both times.” Ollie reached for Travis, but he hesitated before actually touching him. Travis responded by catching Ollie’s hand in his. And yet he looked worried. Ollie continued, “And before you get on your high horse about how you didn’t have a right, Milan didn’t have a right to put me in that spot that first time. You have every right to use subs in Milan’s house.”

“That’s what I plan to tell my lawyer, anyway. I am glad you enjoyed what we did. Both times.” Travis gave Ollie’s hand a small squeeze. “Christ. The director is going to kill me when she finds out I had sex with you again.”

Ollie looked up from studying his bound genitals and stared at Travis. “I vote we don’t tell her.”

“Are you joking?”

When Ollie kept on staring, Travis’s surprise turned to horror.

“Oh, no,” he said, holding both hands up as though surrendering. “Nope. Sex gets me one more letter about questionable judgment. I already have so many of those that no one bothers reading the whole stack. If I intentionally leave information out of an official FBI report, my career will never recover.”

“Seriously?” Ollie was all about doing his paperwork right, but that seemed extreme.

“Yes. Damn, you locals don’t have your shit together. If my reports lose credibility because I haven’t done my job, my cases will fall apart. What the hell do they teach you in local cop school?”

“That the reports are like indexes, and if someone has a real question, they call up the video footage from our shoulder cam.”

“And if the camera is broken or the footage gets lost?”

“How do you lose automatically uploaded video saved on a server with redundant storage?” Ollie asked. He’d never heard of that happening.

“Okay, fine. But cameras break.”

A piece of the puzzle slipped into place, and Ollie felt like such an idiot. “Yeah, but if a camera breaks, the cop has to either come back to the station or get a captain to monitor the video feed to ensure proper procedure. But since this time the bad guy is the captain, I guess that doesn’t help much. Fuck. Why didn’t I think of that? A lieutenant doesn’t have the clearance to run a criminal organization without help from someone higher up.” Ollie’s legs felt weak, and he went to sit on the bench. Unfortunately that pulled all the straps tight. The edges dug into his flesh, the straps over his ass pressed unmercifully on his whip marks, and his cock felt like it was being bent backward. Ollie opened his mouth, but he couldn’t get the scream out.

Travis lurched forward, caught Ollie’s arm, and pulled him up off the bench. “That’s designed more for kneeling than sitting.”

Ollie kept his eyes closed as he rode the waves of pain, and not good pain. “I’ll make a note,” he said in a rough voice.

“And you shouldn’t blame yourself for missing that detail. You didn’t know anyone was dirty. You thought you were looking at discrimination, not a criminal enterprise set up in the department. If you’d known that last bit, you probably would have realized that a lieutenant couldn’t pull it off.”

Ollie slipped a finger under one of the straps and spread his legs as he tried to get it to sit more comfortably against his skin. “I still feel like an idiot.”

“I don’t partner with idiots, so you can stop that right now,” Travis said. Then he gave Ollie’s cock a hard look. “That is not going to get more comfortable. You have to learn to live with it.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.” The whole thing was so tight that Ollie felt like he had steel bands around his genitals. His cock was itchy, and he kept wanting to bear down and push the plug out. It was intrusive and confining and entirely too lewd. And he wanted one of his own. He needed to give up coffee shops for a month to buy one. “At least no one is getting a peep show, not even me.”

“If it’s too much, let me know.”

“It’s definitely too much, but I’ll get used to it,” Ollie said. “I don’t mind suffering for a good cause. Hell, I even modeled for the department titty calendar to raise money for charity, so compared to that, this is fine.” Ollie forced himself to stop playing with the straps.

“Then I hope you won’t be too upset when I point out that even a few hours out of bondage and you’ve changed how you walk. If we want to pull this off…” Travis gave Ollie an expectant look.

“I have to move like I’m used to being restrained. I expected that, but if you get it in your head to run off and leave me with Milan again, I’ll shoot you.”

“I’ll loan you my weapon and stand still while you do it,” Travis offered. “This time, I’ll be with you every step.”

Ollie took a deep breath. “Then let’s do this.”

Chapter Twenty

With his hands secured behind his back, Ollie knelt next to Travis, reading case notes on a tablet by tapping the screen with his nose for the next page. The evidence against Huda was shaky. A defense lawyer could make a case for simple incompetence in handling his department. The FBI needed something more concrete. And they had nothing against Greyson except rumor and suspicion. The only proof Greyson was involved was that his people hadn’t stopped Ollie’s kidnapping.