Cuffed & Collared (17 page)

When she finally moved her foot from his crotch, the fog lifted from his mind. He slowly became aware of the noise of the restaurant, the people nearby. With a quick glance around, he tried to gauge whether anyone had known what they were doing. No one seemed to be staring at them or smirking. Apparently, he had managed to hide what had happened, and knowing he had, he felt another measure of pride.

Taking a sip of water, he noticed his hands shook a bit. “That was a dirty trick,” he observed in a thick voice. He took another swallow to clear his throat and steady his breath.

“I know,” Regan admitted with a sly smile. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Are you mad?”

He gave her a well-satisfied smile. “With you? Never. It’s a good thing, though, that I’m wearing a suit coat to hide the evidence of your control over me.”

The bill was placed in front of him before she could respond, and he paid it quickly, wanting to get out of the place and have a chance to show his appreciation for Regan’s attention. He did have to adjust his jacket to hide the wet spot on his pants, and the naughtiness of it all caused his cock to stir once more. Damn, if he wasn’t a goner where Regan was concerned.

Escorting her out of the restaurant, he led her into a remote corner of the building. He used his body to press her up against the worn brick, knowing she complied because she wanted to, not because he could make her do anything.

Bracing his arm above her head, he bowed his face over hers. “I’ve been thinking about you pretty much since you left my bed. Every time my ass stung or a muscle ached, I thought of you, and I wanted more. You saw how easy it was to make me hard with your touch and make me come. Christ, I’m getting stiff again already just having you near and talking about it.” He watched as her gaze slid down to where his pants bulged. “Please tell me when I can see you again.”

She shifted her gaze to his, and there was a bright gleam there that told him she wanted him, too. Seeing it, his control broke, and he dropped his lips to hers. He wrapped her in his arms and slanted his mouth so that he could invade her with his tongue. The sweet and salty taste of peanuts met him as he assaulted her with quick, hard strokes. Only a couple of bites from her teeth made him slow down and draw back.

He didn’t go far, however. He kept his forehead pressed against hers, panting from his effort and restraint. But he wasn’t the only one affected by the kiss. Regan breathed hard, too. Her hands clasped his waist with her fingers digging into his flesh. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, boy-o.”

“I’m sorry, Mistress. I want you too much, and by my estimation, I’m being very restrained.”

“Ah, but it’s my opinion that counts,” she corrected him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he agreed with a short laugh. “Please, Regan, when can I see you again?” He didn’t even care that he practically begged.

She didn’t answer right away. She kept him waiting, wondering, until she finally put him out of his misery. “Tomorrow night I have something to do. Maybe we can meet Wednesday night, depending on how the investigation goes. Frankly,” she blew out a breath, “if we don’t get a lead soon, there won’t be anything for me to do about the case at that point.” She gave him a hard look. “I wonder, though, if either of us really appreciates what we’re getting into.”

Kyle slowly moved his head back and forth. “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. I do know that I want you, and I’m willing to do whatever you want in bed.”

“Whatever?” she asked in a low voice. “I’m not so sure.”

“I’m serious, Regan.”

“Maybe it’s time for both of us to find out if we’re serious about this lifestyle.”

“Try me,” he challenged.

“Move away from me,” she ordered in a matter-of-fact tone.

He complied instantly and was rewarded with soft, sweet kiss. “I’ll call you,” she promised and walked away.

He felt suddenly unsteady, whether it was from the controlled orgasm in the restaurant or with new unspent need he couldn’t tell. He leaned against the building. What was he doing? What had he promised? What would she do?

It didn’t matter. He pulled himself upright again. He could take whatever she did to him, and he would enjoy it. To pretend otherwise would be weak, and Kyle Ramsey was not a weak man.

****

Tuesday night, Regan jogged up the front steps of the house that was a second home to her. The Gallagher sisters, Sheila and Maeve, had been as close as twins, and had made sure they lived within a block of each other after they both married cops and started their families. Daire had come first, but Regan had been only a few months behind, then came Ronan and Finn. Maeve hadn’t been able to have more kids, but the Callaghan boys had been more like Regan’s brothers than cousins. They had treated her like another brother as well, always including her in their plans and assuming that she was, like they were, going to be a cop. Nobody had ever laughed at the idea or told her she couldn’t do something because she was a girl.

Her Callaghan cousins meant the world to her and as tired as she was from long frustrating days in her investigation, not to mention her intense encounters with Kyle, she’d promised to come over and help with the side project they all tackled from time-to-time.

Aunt Sheila and Uncle Rory had been murdered, gunned down on the streets of Boston, some eight years back, and so far no one had been charged with the crime, much less convicted of it. It was a cold case, and the only people who still investigated it were their sons and Regan.

As much as she would have loved to go home and gets some sleep, or visit Kyle, Ronan had asked her to come over and look at some new evidence. She wasn’t going to let them down by begging off. Besides, there was no clear lead in the serial killings, and she was afraid she had jumped too fast into the deep end with Kyle. A night off from seeing him was a good thing. She couldn’t even keep her hands—or foot—off him in a restaurant, for Christ’s sake.

She rang the bell and offered up a smile to Daire when he opened the door.

He narrowed his eyes at her even as he stepped to one side. “You look exhausted.”

“It’s nothing. I’ve caught a difficult case, is all.”

“I heard. A serial killer?”

“Looks like. The FBI has been called, and they’re a major pain in my ass. I spent most of the day going over the evidence we have with their profiler, who by the way, is convinced we’re looking for a man. Says women are too rare.”

She shrugged off her bomber jacket and slung it over the back of the couch. When Aunt Sheila had been alive, she wouldn’t have tolerated it, but the boys were more casual about their home. Or rather Daire’s home. Finn and Ronan had moved out. Speaking of whom, they were both sitting at the old dining table. Pieces of paper and photographs were laid out all over the surface.

“Virtually all serial killers are men,” Ronan stated without looking up from what he was staring at.

“I am aware. This one is a woman. I’m sure of it.”

“Want a beer?” Daire asked.

“No, thanks. It’ll put me under given how tired I am. I’ll take a Coke if you have it, though.”

“Yup, be right back.”

Finn glanced up at her with a frown. God, the guy still looked like he was in high school. No wonder he’d been picked to go undercover a few months ago as a homeless teenager. “You should go home and get some sleep.”

“Naw.” She brushed off the concern and sat down across from him. “I’m good for a few hours yet. What have we got here? None of this looks familiar. Where did it come from?”

Every once in a while, she and the boys poured over documents, pictures, and anything else they could find from Uncle Rory’s personal belongings, as well as poked at the official file. They hoped against hope that something new would jump out at them to make sense of the murders. This stuff on the table, however, was not anything she’d seen before.

Daire put a tall glass of soda with ice in front of her before taking his seat at the end of the table. He looked down the length at Ronan. “You want to field this question?” His tone told her something was up.

She looked at her middle cousin, the one who could charm the birds out of the trees and had an angle for everything. He gave a very un-Ronan-like sheepish grin.

“It’s a box of stuff we took out of Mahurin’s house. Diego found it. The CSI folks missed it, but not so Diego. The man has mad skills at finding people’s hidey-holes of stuff.”

Regan turned her gaze to Daire. “Are we talking about something that never made it to the evidence locker?”

Her cousin grimaced. “Yes.” He took a swig of his beer. “Ronan and Diego knew if they turned it in, chances were it would disappear before they had an opportunity to go through it.”

Regan frowned back. Fuck, yes, she knew it. Her uncle had known there were bad cops back in his day, and she was as sure as she could be that it was those same bad cops who killed her aunt and uncle to keep him from exposing them all. They were still there, more than one, as near as she and her cousins could tell. Someone had tipped off the head of the prostitution ring that Finn had infiltrated and nearly gotten him killed. There were people in high places that had been in the guy’s pocket according to what he’d bragged to Finn, thinking he was going to kill the young cop before he could tell anyone.

Ronan and his partner, Diego, had found evidence that their father’s old partner, Mahurin, had been one of the dirty cops. The guy had been tipped off by someone at the station and had died trying to escape them. They were pretty sure Mahurin had killed or orchestrated the killing of a snitch named O’Malley. It was the video O’Malley had imbedded in his computer that led them to Mahurin and now Mahurin’s stash of information could lead to others.

Her tiredness fled with the excitement of the find.

She leaned over to peruse a picture near her. It was oldish-looking, and one of a guy handing a package off to another. “Hard to see faces in these,” she observed with a squint of her eyes. She looked over at Ronan. “Mahurin died weeks ago. Why didn’t you call me over to look at this stuff before?”

Her cousin looked away guiltily. “Didn’t want anyone else to get into trouble.”

Daire snorted. “Don’t feel bad, Regan. He didn’t tell me or Finn until last week.”

“I didn’t want to get anyone else in trouble,” Ronan repeated through gritted teeth.

“Fuck that,” Regan said without heat, although she was pissed that he’d kept her out of the loop. “We sink or swim together on this. It takes more than one set of eyes to see things. You know that.”

“I had Diego helping me,” he muttered around his bottle of beer.

“Oh, yeah? Where is he, then?”

“Cassidy has to work late tonight. We make a point of at least one of us picking her up to drive her home whenever that happens.”

Regan grunted in response. Overprotective men could be a pain in the ass. Sweet, of course, but annoying. Cassidy Barnes, the new ME in town, had two men to hover over her. It was weird, but her middle cousin was in a three-way relationship. She picked up another picture and stared at it.

“Where’s Michael?” she asked of Finn. Michael was Finn’s partner, and while the man worked vice, he had a keen pair of eyes and good cop sense.

“Craig’s started school, and Michael’s making sure he does his homework and gets to bed on time.”

Craig was Finn and Michael’s foster son, one of the boys they’d rescued from the prostitution ring. “How’s he getting along?”

Finn’s eyes brightened, and he smiled. “He’s doing really well. He’s made new friends, quirky kids. Michael and I refer to them privately as the Breakfast Club. They’re good kids, though. Craig’s really worried everyone will find out what happened to him. Hard enough to be a gay teen, but one who was forced to sell his body to strange men?” Finn shook his head. “I think even if by some chance kids do find out, his friends will stick by him.”

“That’s good. High school is hell on Earth. I’m glad he’s fitting in okay.”

Regan had known for years before Finn dared to come out that her baby cousin was gay. She was glad he was secure in who he was, although she worried he’d jumped in too deep with his boyfriend, moving in and raising a troubled teen. Still, he looked happy whenever she saw him, and there was no denying that Michael was not only a good cop, but a good man for Finn as well.

Looking at her two younger cousins and thinking about their somewhat unconventional relationships, she thought of her own with Kyle. What they had together was outside the vanilla world she’d been raised in. She wasn’t comfortable with it, and yet it made her happy and satisfied. Who was to say what was normal, anyway? Perhaps she was overthinking the whole thing and, worse, worrying about what people might think. Maybe Ronan and Finn had some insight she could benefit from. Did she dare bring it up with them?

Too unsure of the reception she’d get, she sucked on her drink and pushed pictures and papers around. She wasn’t really seeing anything, because she was too distracted with her thoughts. Finally she decided to “man up” and broach the topic of her new-found Domme side. She waited until Daire left to use the bathroom. As the oldest, he was more straight-laced than the other two. She supposed so much responsibility at a young age would do that to a person.

She drained her glass and took a deep breath. “So, um, I’m hoping for some advice.”

Ronan and Finn both stopped what they were doing and stared at her as if she had two heads. Well, no surprise. She rarely asked anything of them or from them. She tried not to squirm under their scrutiny.

“The thing is,” she fiddled with her glass, not meeting their gazes. “I’ve met this guy while on assignment. He’s not a suspect or anything, although he did find one of the bodies.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I won’t bore you with the details about how we hooked up, but he and I have been doing this BDSM thing.” She sneaked a peek at them. Their eyes were wide, and Finn’s mouth was open.

“You let him tie you up?” her little cousin asked, his voice almost a squeak.

“You let him beat you?” Ronan’s tone was harsher, more menacing, as if planning out Kyle’s murder.

Rolling her eyes, she said, “No. I tie
him
up, and I beat
him
.”