He moved so fast, Brenna never had a moment to fight back. One minute she stood facing Detective Martinez, the next…she could feel him all along her back. He’d grabbed her arm, whirled her around, snaked a heavily veined forearm about her waist, and dragged her against his hard-muscled body, his erection pressed firmly against her ass.
Then he cupped her breast in his hand, just like that. Boom, he was touching her intimately. And she liked it. Loved it.
Brenna gasped. God, his hands were hot and enormous, covering her whole breast. His harsh exhalations on her neck sent shivers down her spine.
Cat and mouse, she reminded herself. This is some sort of game to him.
“What the hell are you doing?” she snapped.
He didn’t answer with words. Instead, he took her stiff nipple between his thumb and finger—and gave it a cruel squeeze.
“Ouch!”
She wriggled for freedom—with no luck. His hold was unyielding, absolute.
“Get your hands off me!” she shouted.
“You didn’t like that?” His silky question taunted her as he relaxed his grip on her nipple.
“No. Let me go, damn it!”
“Ah, I understand,” he breathed into her ear, strumming the pebbled tip with his thumb.
Back and forth, over and over, until tingles leapt and sizzled within her breast. Her knees nearly buckled. Her stomach jumped with a bolt of thrill. He most certainly did understand if just the soft pad of his thumb against her nipple made her wet.
Against her better judgment, a moan escaped her.
“I’ll bet you need it harder.”
Before she could protest, he squeezed her nipple with even more force than before. She yelped, her body going rigid. She blindly lashed out with her feet, trying to connect with his shins, instep—anything to make him let go.
“No! It hurts. Stop!”
Instantly, he released her and stepped away.
“Not your cup of tea?” he drawled.
“You bastard! I didn’t ask you to—to grope me. That’s got to be against rules or regulations or something. I’m going to call, find out who your boss is, and have your balls on a platter.”
That little smile tilted the corners of his mouth again. “I’m sure they’ll be happy to talk to you. Of course, they’ll ask you about Curtis too. And they may not be as patient as I am. They might just take you right down to the station and see if you’d rather talk from behind bars. Aiding and abetting is a crime.” He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
He didn’t even wait for her reply. Instead, the infuriating, gorgeous man stepped around her, leaving her gaping.
At the door, he turned around. “Oh, and when you talk to Curtis, tell him he’d better show up to the courthouse on Monday.”
Then he left, and she stood there and in stunned silence, torn between ogling the scrumptious view of his backside and worrying that he’d call a whole passel of cops…who’d be a hell of a lot less kind if they suspected she’d lied.
* * * * *
When Cam dropped by the trailer, Thorn could see he was agitated. And sported a hard-on he couldn’t miss.
This ought to be interesting.
He smiled at the thought and perched the corner of his ass on the rickety metal table in his six-by-six kitchen. “So what happened?”
Ducking to enter the little trailer, Cam slammed the door behind him and crossed the room, shooting him a glare of pure venom. He reached for the fridge, took out a longneck, and tossed half of it down his throat. “Damn it!”
“I followed you and tried to watch through my binoculars, but once you went inside, nada. So spill it. What went down? Any good news?”
“She’s lying about virtually everything.”
“Shit. I was hoping for some good news. She looked freshly fucked when she opened the door.”
Cam glared, and Thorn kept his grin to himself. Yanking the chain on the man’s temper was just too easy. “She’d been exercising. Did you notice that she greeted me with a gun in her hand?”
“Hmm. Missed that. Too busy looking at her tits.”
Gritting his teeth, Cam shook his head, then he drained the rest of the bottle. “She told me her name and the fact she’s from Texas. She admitted that she knows Lawton. Those are the only things I believe. After that, the truth got murky. She claims she’s Lawton’s mistress.”
Thorn crossed his arms over his chest. If there was one thing he’d learned to appreciate about Cam over the last few years, it was the man’s instinct. He’d risen through the ranks fast to become detective because he paid attention, could think with cool logic, and because he just seemed to understand people and see under their surfaces in a way Thorn envied and couldn’t possibly duplicate.
“What makes you think it’s bullshit? Lawton does like them young and hot. She qualifies.”
“She was nervous, not only like she was hiding something. Nervous like she was confused. She tried to dodge me with flirtation. When it didn’t work, she tried a bit of the ice princess routine, but she fumbled with it.”
“Like, she’s not that type?”
“Yeah. But the kicker… You’re sure Lawton is into giving pain and wants women who can take it?”
“With what I saw last year, no question. He made sure when he fucked the bitch that he was causing her loads of pain. Floggers, nipple clamps, the whole nine yards. And she was lapping it up.”
“Then the woman I just talked to isn’t his mistress. She is not into pain.”
“How’d you figure that out?” He drilled, wishing like hell he’d been a fly on the wall, watching Cam press the pretty liar for the truth and lose his control… He got hard just thinking about it.
“You’re not getting details, pervert. I’ll just say that, at one point, she wanted my balls on a platter.”
“Holy shit, you go alpha on her?” Now that was a sight he’d pay money to see. Cam alpha. Who’da thunk it?
Despite his teasing yesterday, Thorn knew his pal did real well with the ladies. The few he knew Cam had taken to bed all sighed and swooned and flushed when he entered a room. They were fucking starstruck. He damn near laughed watching them try to get Cam’s attention. They used words like “gentle” and “patient” and “perceptive”. But Thorn had long suspected Cam had a kick-ass alpha side that some woman would bring out someday—when she rattled his cage enough.
And Thorn did love to see Cam with his cage rattled.
Cam looked away with a guilty expression. “I pushed her a little.”
“She made you hard as hell.”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m not proud of it. But I proved that she’s not into pain. Does it automatically mean, though, that she’s not his mistress? I mean, she is living in his fortress of fornication.”
Thorn laughed. “Yeah, but if she isn’t into pain, then she isn’t Lawton’s little honey. I think Lawton needs to dish out pain to get off.”