What About Love (Club Decadence Book 6) (2 page)

His friends, all older than him, used to be the same way. Topping a bevy of different subs, pushing the limits of BDSM play, especially in the daring clubs in Europe when they’d been on leave. In the past few years, however, they’d all settled down into monogamous—or what he called monotonous—relationships, ready to kick the ass of another Dom that dared look their sub’s way. He got that. If he had a steady woman, he’d be protective too. That’s why he usually limited one-on-one encounters to a single night, or engaged in threesomes and group play. There was no risk of attachment that way, no commitment, no strings or ties, no matter how silken they might be. He planned to keep it that way, too.

A soft groan from the bed drew him instantly to her side.

Hazy green flecked brown eyes blinked up at him. Her voice was a dry rasp and reedy thin as she managed one shaky word. “Hurts.”

“I know, darlin’,” T murmured as he leaned over her, stroking her hair back. He wanted to take the pain away and see her back to her usual vibrant self. “Try to lie still. The nurse will be back in a minute and we’ll ask her about something for pain.”

Clearly puzzled, her brows knitted together and she glanced around. “Where?” she croaked. “How?”

“You’re in the hospital. You were injured.”

Her eyes flew wide and shifted to him. “T. My god! It was Stapleton at the courthouse. He stabbed me.” She tried to sit up, but fell back, hissing as her hand pressed against the bulky bandage over the knife wound in her side.

“Easy, darlin’. Lie still or you’ll hurt yourself further.” He turned to Sean and demanded, “Go see what’s keeping the nurse.”

His friend nodded and at once, was on the move and out the door.

The few words she uttered and the movement, or maybe it was the pain, seemed too much for her as she slowly lapsed into unconsciousness once more. Right before she drifted away, she murmured in words almost too soft to make out, “You and Sean, you saved me. I remember…”

T would never forget holding her hand in the ambulance when her heart stopped, pressing the wad of blood soaked gauze to her gushing wound as Sean started CPR, or being pushed aside as the emergency room personnel took over, listening to Sean, who was still giving compressions, recap her status as they wheeled her into a trauma room. The images, sounds and smells of that awful time were all imprinted in his permanent memory.

There was something else etched in his mind and emblazoned on his heart from that day.

“Now I’ll never know what it would have been like to love you.”

To hear the heartfelt regret murmured in what she surely thought were her last words on this earth, expressing feelings for him that were so profound, she felt the need to share them as her life slipped away yanked at his icy heart. It was worse that she was right. She wouldn’t ever get a chance to know, even when she recovered because he couldn’t go there with her.

Angie Hixson and Antonio Minelli would never work. She wanted more than he could ever give. She’d told him once that she was interested in more than merely playing with him. She wanted the whole package: a husband, 2.5 kids, a big dog, a house with a huge grassy yard, and the requisite white picket fence. That was for Angie and his friends, not him. Not after…

He shook off the bitter memories that gnawed at his psyche like a festering wound. The past would stay in the past, and Angie would need to stay at arm’s length. He couldn’t ever go there again. It had nearly destroyed him the first time, and he’d sworn to never let anyone get that close again.

Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’m sorry, baby. You deserve your dream, but it will have to come from someone that can love you better than me.”

With one last caress—the backs of his fingers brushing down her cheek, his forefinger tracing along her jawline and over the fullness of her lips—and one final lingering look, he said goodbye, ignoring Sean’s call and the pain in his gut as he walked away.

Chapter One

Three months later…

Movement and gunshots off to her left had her twisting and returning fire. She lined up a shot as one of the gunmen ran toward the alley across the street. She fired again. Wide left, another miss—dammit! She ducked, running quickly to the brick half-wall up ahead. Crouching low, she took a deep breath, preparing to fire over the top. Tires squealed as a car took the nearby corner on two wheels and came racing down the street toward her.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she waited. On one, she planned silently, three—two—one. She popped up and fired again.

The tires, take out the tires,
her trainer’s voice seemed to scream in her head.

Moving objects always kicked her ass. So, when she took aim, she prayed that of the four bullets left in her clip at least one of them would find rubber and take out the car.

A quartet of reverberating shots later, she reached for her second clip right as a buzzer blared and lights came on overhead. She watched in frustration as the hologram flickered and disappeared. Shit! Not getting to the second clip meant she’d failed, again.

Licking her lips nervously, she peered up at the control room where she knew she’d find Dan Ogilvie, her instructor. She grimaced seeing he wasn’t alone at the wide window. Side-by-side he stood with Cap Rossi, owner of Rossi Security, Inc., her new boss. Crap! Both big men stood with their arms crossed, staring down at her. Not a good sign.

Dan shifted forward and the intercom came on. “Stow your gear and come up for review, rookie.”

She wanted to scream with her frustration. This was the twelfth time she’d run this simulation, and each time she’d failed miserably. Stationary shooting—short and long range, AR15, M16, Ruger Mini-14, low light, no light—if her target was standing still, all pretty as you please, she could nail it, dead to rights. If it was moving, however, well, as Dan had so eloquently put it several times, she couldn’t hit the broad side of a slow moving Hummer, with four flat tires, running on fumes while driven by his eighty-nine year-old cataract riddled grandmother.

In his early forties, Dan, or Dano as everyone called him, was usually patient and unflappable. It was one of the reasons Cap had selected him as a Rossi trainer. That wasn’t the case when it came to the simulator and Angie, both of which had him at his wits’ end. He’d spent hours with her, trying first one technique, which failed, then another, also unsuccessful. He’d consulted with Cap about it, but the boss didn’t seem worried, stating Lil T could fix her when he got back. That’s when she’d learned that T had been tagged first to train her. Out of town when she’d come on board with Rossi, T having taken over bounty cases for the newly married and honeymooning Dex Russell, Cap instead assigned Dan to instruct her in the “Rossi way”, which suited Angie just fine.

Although she owed T her life, having a hand—quite literally—in keeping her from bleeding to death that awful day she’d been stabbed, before that, they’d had a weird sexual tension. Mostly on Angie’s part who had a not so unusual sexual response to the drop dead gorgeous Italian man. From the moment she laid eyes on him, her girl parts had awakened and demanded attention. The fact he’d propositioned her to play with him at the club, thinking her a submissive of all things and finding her attractive enough to offer, hadn’t diminished those feelings.

T on the other hand ran hot and cold. She didn’t understand the man. One moment being sexy and charming, the next scrutinizing her as if she was a bug under a microscope. And he’d been at the hospital. Though the memory was foggy, she knew for certain it had been him. Mara had confirmed it for her. He’d kissed her forehead and touched her cheek tenderly, hadn’t he? Mara hadn’t been there when he said goodbye so it could have been merely a pleasant morphine induced dream. He basically disappeared after that, work ostensibly taking him out of town, except to Angie, it seemed manufactured, like he was avoiding her.

So, with T unavailable, being assigned to Dan was a good thing.

Looking up at him now, his face grim with disappointment, she heaved a sigh and slowly climbed the stairs to face the music.

“You took out the five year old with the ice cream cone again, Hixson,” Dan admonished as she opened the door. “And the priest, you put a bullet in his chest, while the thug with the facial tattoos and the assault rifle, him you let mosey on down the street like he had corn for sale.”

“Yeah, but he had such a nice smile.” Imprudent, sure. Nevertheless, she couldn’t resist a smartass remark to lighten the mood.

Dan’s face flushed so red that she thought his head was going to explode. “Ten minutes with a paddle, Cap,” he ground out, “that’s all I’m asking.”

“I think, my friend, that you’re about to get your wish.”

Her eyes darted to her boss, surely he wouldn’t allow Dan to spank her. They were Doms, but this wasn’t the club, and she for damn sure wasn’t a submissive. Cap’s somber expression implied that he probably would.

Quickly, she apologized. “I’m sorry for being flip. It’s out of frustration. I’ll work harder.”

“You’ll get it. You’re not the only one who’s had trouble with the simulator.”

Hearing that, Dan shot Cap a surprised glance as if to ask “who?” which told Angie he was humoring her for some reason.

“Sit down.” He pulled out a black leather chair for her and waited.

Dragging her feet, the death knell of her career ringing ominously in her ears, she sat where he indicated. She wasn’t going back to the force. Maybe she’d get her P.I. license as she’d originally planned prior to coming to Rossi. Mentally adding up expenses versus her dwindling savings account, she waited for Cap to give her the ax.

“I’ve got an assignment for you, Angie.”

Her head shot up in surprise. “Anything, sir,” she blurted out, ready to show him he hadn’t made a mistake by hiring her.

Cap’s lips quirked at her eager response. “Hang on, now. I want you to go into this with both eyes wide open. This particular mission requires some special training, some of which you might find objectionable.”

She frowned. When she’d taken this job, she’d learned what Rossi was all about. Sure, they took bounty cases, skips as they called them, hunting down fugitives who’d jumped bail. They also did personal protection, surveillance, security consultations and installation of alarm systems for sensitive businesses. What she didn’t know until coming on board was that on occasion they also took government contracts, most of which were dangerous, like the two year Mendoza Cartel investigation. In addition, some were covert operations, referred to by Cap as black ops, which were under the radar operations wholly funded by the government. If things went wrong, or right for that matter, Washington fully denied it and claimed the mission to be unsanctioned. He’d sworn at the time that black ops missions were exclusively managed by their elite team—the six owners and a few specially trained ex-military operatives, which included two former Navy Seals, an Army Ranger and three ex-Marines. He also said they were scaling back on those types of cases, considerably. Mendoza an exception because it was personal and happening in their own backyard, so to speak.

Now she wondered what special training he was speaking of, but it didn’t really matter. She’d signed on with Rossi because she wanted a challenge, tired of the bullshit and corruption at the SAPD. She also wanted to be treated as an equal among the highly-trained Rossi men, which had not been the case at the department. Although a detective, she’d never been one of the guys, thrown a bone here and there to keep her quiet, the high-profile cases having gone to the men. She’d been involved with the Mendoza investigation solely due to Cap—demanding from more powerful men than Stapleton—that she be a part of the task-force, leaving the chief no choice except to comply. She had the opportunity, in light of her dismal performance just now, to prove she was deserving of a place on Cap’s team. Whatever it was, she’d do it.

“I’ll do whatever it takes, Cap.”

His brown eyes glimmered, clearly amused by her enthusiasm. “Although I appreciate your eagerness, and it’s true that you’re the only one on my staff with the unique attributes for this assignment, you probably want to wait and hear what it entails first.”

*****

Having delivered his fugitive into police custody, T arrived at Rossi to check in. Three months on the road reminded him too much of the service, being on duty and staying alert constantly. He’d also forgotten how exhausting living out of his SUV could be, or the endless barrage of cheap motels and greasy spoons. He was glad to be home.

As he walked down the hallway, he noted the time—half past four. The place looked deserted. Although not a typical nine-to-five business, he was surprised there was no one around other than the receptionist. Everyone else must be in the field, which meant business was booming, not a bad thing at all. He headed for the surveillance room knowing someone would be there.

Rick Spencer was pulling his time, which they all did by rotation, no one able to stand it on a routine basis except Jack their full-time night-shift man. He blew through the door, though his former chief—second-in-command to Cap—didn’t flinch.

“Saw you come in, man. Welcome back.”

T grunted as he flopped into one of the high back, swivel chairs while surveying the wall of high definition monitors. Rick reached out and punched a button on one, time stamping something he’d found notable and entering it into the surveillance log. While surveying the screens constantly, he asked, “Productive trip?”

“Collected three skips the first month; they were a breeze. The last one had half a brain and gave me a run for my money. It was a nice change.” T scanned the locations on the screens. Megan’s bakery, Club Decadence and the downtown clinic where Jonas’ sub Lexie worked were under constant surveillance. There were a dozen other live feeds for ongoing cases at various locations around the city under 24-hour watch—Rick brought him up to speed on those—the rest of the monitors captured Rossi entrances and key areas.