White Collared Part Four: Passion (11 page)
Read White Collared Part Four: Passion Online
Authors: Shelly Bell
It had taken her several months of counseling to overcome her anger at Nick and choose forgiveness. Until then she had drifted in a sea of uncertainty as to whether she wanted to practice law at all after graduation. Once she had started to heal, she allowed herself to remember his final request. At first she didn’t understand why he’d risked everything by drawing up the complaint, but slowly she came to realize that unlike Miles Joseph, Nick hadn’t been evil. He’d had a conscience that drove him to make amends for his crimes.
In his eyes, he’d provided Alyssa with mercy when he’d killed her, giving her one last taste of the extreme masochistic pleasure she’d craved. The law didn’t agree and mostly she didn’t either, but there was a slim part of her that sympathized with him. As Alyssa’s Master, he’d believed he was the sole person who could give her what she needed, and in that regard, he’d triumphed where Jaxon had failed.
His greed had been his downfall from the beginning. If he hadn’t sent Stephanie to Joseph in his blackmail scheme and instead earned his spot at Joseph and Long, her death wouldn’t have stained his soul. But he’d built the entire foundation of his career upon shaky dominoes, and when he’d initiated his revenge against Joseph, the first domino toppled, bring the rest down with it. There was no other way for it to end.
Kate wiped the tears from her cheeks and nodded to Lisa to take another question. For the next twenty minutes, she described the harrowing details about the case and its current developments. Whenever a reporter asked something personal about Kate, Lisa interrupted with a firm “next question.”
“Can you tell us about killing your father ten years ago, Katerina Martini?” The reporter stood in the back and threw out the question as casually as all the others.
The rest of the audience stirred with excitement. Lisa moved to the microphone, but Kate held up her hand and silently told her friend she’d answer the question. It had been inevitable that some other reporter would eventually unearth her past, and she’d already told Lisa and Logan about it. Like true friends, they hadn’t blinked other than to console and sympathize with her loss.
Her gaze locked onto Jaxon as she touched her bruised hip to ground herself. “It’s true. Ten years ago, I went hunting with my father and my gun accidentally discharged, killing him. He was my rock and I miss him every day. But I no longer let the incident or the inquiry into it by the police and the media define me. To do so would be a disservice to the man who expected great things from me, and I refuse to disappoint him. I may have changed my name to Kate Martin, but inside, I’ll always be Katerina Martini, and I’m proud of who I’ve become.”
Lisa’s eyes shone as she stepped up to the microphone. “One last question.” She pointed to a woman in the middle near Jaxon.
“Now that you’ve graduated and taken the Michigan Bar, what are your professional plans? Do you intend to stay at Reaver, Markson, and Long?” the reporter asked.
Kate slid a glance over at Logan and smiled. “No. While I’ll always appreciate how much I’ve learned from interning there, I’ve decided to go into private practice with Logan Bradford. We want the freedom to choose our own cases and to offer criminal and civil representation to those who truly need it. We’ll be offering our services on a sliding fee scale and hope that those with an ample bank account will offset any losses we’ll incur. Of course, we have to wait until we’ve been inducted into the Michigan Bar.”
It hadn’t been an easy decision, but when she’d thought about what truly mattered to her, the answer became clear. She wouldn’t follow in Nick’s footsteps. She’d forge her own path. Through her contacts at Benediction, word had already spread that in the fall, Kate and Logan would begin providing legal services to the alternative sexual lifestyle community. She’d heard too many tales about men prosecuted for domestic abuse even though their partner had consented and those who’d lost their jobs when their employer learned of their alternative sexual practices. Until the law changed, someone who understood the dynamics of the lifestyle needed to represent those people. Turned out Anthony Rinaldi’s idea hadn’t been a bad one. She really would be counsel to the kink.
So far Logan had thoroughly enjoyed learning about kink and BDSM through his free membership at Benediction. They just made sure they didn’t go on the same nights.
As Kate moved back from the podium, the same reporter asked a follow-up question. “What will you do until the fall?”
Jaxon’s chair was empty.
She missed him already.
Ready to leave, she responded with a smile. “I’m going home to the UP. There’s a fishing pole with my name on it and a bunch of fish just waiting for me to catch them.” The reporters laughed as she switched back to her Yooper accent.
She mouthed her good-bye to Lisa and went behind the tent, continuing on through the woods for a couple of minutes until she reached the nature preserve’s parking lot and the running Hummer. Breathing easy for the first time in an hour, she hopped up and slid into the passenger seat, sighing from the blowing air conditioner and the scent of pine enveloping her.
Jaxon sunk his fingers into her hair and tugged her forward to claim her mouth, licking at her with his urgent tongue as if he was starving for her. Although they’d made love in the shower only a few hours earlier, she grew slick between her thighs, the pounding of her heart in synch with the beat inside her pussy. She whimpered as, all too soon, he drew back and shifted the car into drive to make their clean getaway.
He set his right hand on her knee. “Does my beautiful Katerina need another orgasm already?”
She tamped down her urge to shove his hand between her thighs. “Only if it pleases you, Jax.”
“Fuck yes, it pleases me. I live to make you come. But we have a long drive ahead of us, and I need something to keep me occupied.” He smacked her leg. “Pull up your skirt and expose your greedy cunt for me.”
Twelve hours until they reached her hometown. He’d better not expect her to hold off her climax until then. Just thinking about displaying her pussy as they drove up the highway caused her juices to coat her inner thighs. She yanked up her skirt and leaned back in her seat, spreading her legs as much as she could in the small space.
Jax popped open the middle console and pulled out a cordless Silver Bullet vibrator. “Slide this inside you and don’t come until I tell you to.”
She bit her lower lip as she took it from him and plunged it into her clenching pussy. The toy buzzed against her inner walls. Her head fell back, and she sucked in a breath, squeezing her eyes shut in an effort to ward off the impending climax. All these months of perfecting her ability to stave off an orgasm and still she could do it only half the time.
But oh how she loved the punishments.
He gripped her nipple between his fingers, pulling and twisting it until she cried out from the exquisite pain. The vibration inside her whirred to its highest speed, massaging her pussy with its cold, smooth metal. She hovered right on the edge, the muscles in her lower abdomen stretched tight like a rubber band, but it wasn’t enough to fall over the cliff. Breathing hard, she held back her orgasm and waited for permission. The sound of the cars whooshing past roared in her ears. Could they see her writhing in blissful agony?
Damn, that thought pushed her even closer to the edge. She shook her head as if clearing her mind.
“I smell your aroused cunt from here and it’s making me hungry. Get your finger good and wet and give me a taste.”
Her pussy throbbing with the need to come, she swiped her finger up her slit and held out her hand to him. “You don’t play fair.”
“I never said I did.” He sucked her finger into his hot mouth and groaned low in his chest. “Now rub your clit but don’t come.”
The bastard was setting her up to fail just so he could punish her.
She muttered an expletive. As soon as her finger pressed on her clit, she detonated, her body quaking from head to toe and her teeth sinking into her lip so hard that she tasted blood. A million stars exploded in Technicolor behind her eyelids. She drifted on the high for a few minutes, in that space between sleep and consciousness, until Jaxon’s hand slapped her thigh.
“You came without permission. Now, how shall I punish you?” He pretended to think it over, but she knew from the gleam in his eyes that he’d planned this in advance. “I have an idea.” He lifted the lid to the center console and pulled out two pairs of handcuffs. “Below your seat, you’ll find two D rings on each side. Cuff both your ankles and keep your thighs spread. I think I’ll spend the next twelve hours seeing how many times I can make you come.”
Title or not, this man was her Master and knew her almost better than she knew herself. The “punishment” would keep her mind off the fact that she was going home for the first time in seven years.
A town of demons waited for her in the UP, but with Jaxon by her side, she’d not only face them, she’d stake them through the heart and banish them to their proper place in hell.
She hooked her ankles to the D rings. “Thank you for my punishment. How can I ever repay you, Jax?”
He laced his fingers with hers and brought her hand to his lips, pressing a tender kiss to the inside of her wrist. “You already have, Katerina.” His eyes sparkled and his lips curled into a sensual smile. “Now it’s my turn to repay you.”
SHELLY BELL
writes sensual romance and erotic thrillers with high emotional stakes for her alpha heroes and kiss-ass heroines. She began writing upon the insistence of her husband, who dragged her to the store and bought her a laptop. When she’s not practicing corporate law, taking care of her family, or writing, you’ll find her reading the latest smutty romance.
Shelly is a member of Romance Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.
Visit her website at ShellyBellBooks.com.
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White Collared
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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HITE COLLARED PART FOUR: PASSION
. Copyright © 2014 by Shelly Bell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JUNE 2014 ISBN: 9780062336842
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062336859
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