HER BUYER Read online

  “Here?”

  “Why not?” She flashed me a playful grin. “Isn’t thank–God–we’re–alive–sex a thing around these parts?”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever done that,” I admitted, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the door was locked and clambering on to the bed so that I was on top of her. I ran my hand down her body, and she squirmed against the bed, which creaked dangerously below us. We both giggled, and I felt my heart flip in my chest as I looked down at her. She looked gorgeous, even after everything she’d been through.

  “We’ll probably have to make this quick,” I glanced at the door. “I don’t want anyone disturbing us.”

  “The words every woman wants to hear,” she teased, as I covered her mouth with mine again and kissed her to keep her quiet. She wrapped her arms around my waist, and I used what little leverage I had with my cuffed hand to shuffle down her pants a little and trace my fingertips over her skin. Shit, she was just so…tantalizing. Everything about her seemed to cry out for me to touch it, and who was I to resist?

  She reached down to my pants and shoved them down my hips, wrapping her fingers around the base of my cock and squeezing lightly. I let out a groan at the sight of her small hand around my quickly–growing erection, and slipped my own beneath her shirt. I found her nipples already gratifyingly hard, and pinched and twisted at her sensitive skin until I elicited a satisfying groan from between her lips. I leaned down to kiss her once again, and we continued to grope and grab at each other like a pair of teenagers for a few minutes longer. It felt, in some ways, like we were discovering each other all over again, starting from scratch with a pair of bodies that knew nothing of the tragedy of awfulness we’d seen over the last few days. I just wanted her, and she just wanted me, and I intended to make the most of that in every way I could.

  Before I knew it, the two of us were both as naked as we needed to be from the waist down. I slipped my free hand between her legs and cupped her warm, welcoming pussy. She was already wet, and shivered slightly at my touch, just as she had been back in the woods. I glanced up at her just as a small moan escaped her lips, and grinned as I once again reached into her pocket for a condom and produced one within seconds.

  “How many of those things do you have in there?” She demanded, sitting up and taking it from me as she realized that I couldn’t do this with just one hand free. She planted a kiss on the top of my dick as she leaned down to sheath me, and I fought the urge to thrust my cock into her mouth and feel her soft, wet tongue over every inch of my erection.

  “I get the feeling that it’s never going to be enough,” I replied, running my fingers through her hair and steadying myself as the touch of her hand send shivers all over my body. Even still, she had this effect on me. Her touch seemed to send electric shocks through my system, my entire body bowing to her caress. As soon as she had rolled the condom on, all romantic thoughts about the sweetness of her body next to mine vanished from my head, and she laid back, parted her legs, and grabbed me by the ass to pull me closer. I ran my free hand up her naked thigh and over her butt, grabbing it and tilting it so that she was positioned only an inch or two from me. Then, with one swift motion, I pushed myself inside of her.

  “Shit!” She hissed through gritted teeth as I entered her, and I had to fight the urge to do the same. She felt gorgeously tight around my erection, her body welcoming me at once, spreading to accommodate my girth in seconds. She went to kiss me once again, but I pulled back a few inches, holding myself away from her, teasing her with my proximity. I loved the way her eyes widened and her breath came a little quicker as I moved into her again, and I wasn’t about to miss that. But soon enough, she caught the back of my head and drew me in close, kissing me hard, as though she was punishing me for taunting her like that.

  It didn’t take long till I found myself on the edge. If I thought our last fuck had come at an intense time, I had had no idea what would come next. Her body was already growing tense beneath mine, and she had hooked her head over my shoulder to keep herself steady. Her breath was coming quickly, hot against my skin, and I placed my hand against the wall above the bed for leverage, fucking her harder and harder until–

  We both let out the same noise at the same moment, one of utter and complete relief. I thrust deep into her one last time and held myself there, savoring the feel of her cunt contracting around my cock over and over again. She did her best to keep her voice down, but I would have been surprised if we didn’t attract at least a couple of sharp looks from the corridor outside. Hell, we couldn’t be the first people to fuck in a hospital bed, especially after everything we’d been through. I slowly withdrew myself from her, and tossed the used condom in a trashcan at the end of the bed. She watched as I went, giggling at the sight of me trying to navigate the room with my hand restrained.

  “You know, I think I prefer you with both hands available,” she remarked with a lift of her eyebrow. I rolled my eyes at her.

  “You think?” I shot back playfully.

  She held her hands out to me, her expression changing slightly as the glow of the moment began to fade away.

  “Come here,” she ordered softly, and I happily slid into bed next to her, tucking her in the crook of my arm and pressing my nose into her hair almost absent–mindedly. I closed my eyes, and did my best to put everything that had come before and after this moment behind me. I had no idea what the next few days would bring, but I knew that they would have all been worth it, if only for this moment.

  Chapter Twenty–Two

  “You ready, Angel?” The prison officer raised his eyebrows at me. I knew he was surprised that I was still coming back. Fuck, him and me both. I had fully expected to drop out of my little vanity project as soon as I got the chance, but here I was, six months after the trial, still visiting, still trying, no matter how difficult things got and how much I found myself wanting to run away and hide when I was on the bus over here. Every time, I found myself second–guessing my decision. Shouldn’t I have just given up by now? I was visiting a criminal, for goodness sake. I was a cop! Wasn’t I meant to keep all the people who mattered to me firmly on the outside, just for the sake of keeping things on the straight and narrow? I’d kept these visits from all my colleagues, as I knew they thought I was weird enough as it was without coming out swinging with “oh, by the way, not only did all that other stuff happen that I lied to you about, but I’m visiting one of the perpetrators in prison. Sorry I didn’t mention it earlier, could I get a coffee if you’re going out on a run?”

  Not that I was allowed back to work for a long time after it all went down. As I predicted, there was so much red tape to go through that I thought I might drown under the weight of it all. I had to explain everything, and there was so much that it made my head spin to try and recall it all. I had to tell them why I trusted Breaker, too, and that was pretty hard to put into words “Because he was really good at fucking and I knew he was the person I wanted to be with after he saved me from that sex–slave auction”? Yeah, I put it down to the drugs in my system, because that made a hell of a lot more sense than the truth of the matter.

  They were happy to overlook some stuff, though, because at the end of the day, my story had ended with one of the most notorious criminals in the city dead in his own club, with police free of any real involvement beyond me. Raven had let him burn in there, and the firemen hadn’t been quick enough to get him out of the building alive. I shuddered when I thought about the horror of his last moments, but it was hard to feel overly sympathetic about his end when I considered what he’d put hundreds of women through over the years. No–one would have come out and said it out loud, but there was a general air of “good riddance” over his death. No–one was going to miss him, that was for damn certain.

  Raven confessed to all of it, without a second thought, as soon as she’d recovered enough to be let out of the hospital. Well, not that she went by Raven anymore. She took up her old name, Rose, and insisted that it be
used on all her official documents for when she put in her confession and every scrap of information she could remember from working at that place for so long. She’d been there almost a full decade, first as a captive and then as an assassin. She admitted herself that the only reason she got involved in the business of killing was to find some way to take control of her situation, and that she wished there had been some other way out. And I wanted to blame her, God knows I did, but I just couldn’t find it in my heart to hate her, even after all these months. Even after the confession that she had been the one to kill my father.

  As I made my way into the meeting room, I had to close my eyes for a moment to steady myself, the memory of her confession rocking me on my feet for a moment. Up until six months ago, I had never truly considered the fact that my father might have been killed by someone, by anyone. Who would lay a hand on him? I knew, intellectually, that as a hard–working cop he would have plenty of people who wanted him dead, but in my heart I just couldn’t bear to consider it. I was still reeling from what Thaddeus had told me in that room as I hovered my fist over his face when she came out with it and told us the truth. That had been the hardest part. I had asked to be there, through the two–way glass, when she was being interrogated, and I swear to God she shot me an apologetic look before the words came out of her mouth. I had to cover my face and stare at the ground just to get through it, but I made it. I heard her admit, in great detail, what she’d done, and I found something of a release in the words as they came out of her mouth. It was another part of my life that I could put to rest, especially since I had other things to be focusing on in the months since Thaddeus had died and Rose had been arrested.

  I was a big part of the task force who were delivered the duty of taking down the rest of Thaddeus’ group. I did my best to recall them all, glad I had thought to commit their faces to memory when I had the chance. Most of them hadn’t made it that far, probably hopeful that they would hear from Thaddeus at some point and would be invited back into the fold to start their sick, twisted little games all over again. I was the one who got the break the bad news to them, and it was deeply, deeply satisfying. All of them – his bodyguards, the bartender, the auctioneer, no matter how much he begged and pleaded and tried to convince me that we’d had a deal – all of them ended up in prison with life sentences. I was tempted to push for more, especially after we got to interviewing the women they had held captive, but knowing they were off the streets was enough for me.

  Of course, that was the other thing. Our best course of prosecution was from the witness testimonies of the women they’d kidnapped and sold into slavery, and, since most of them had fled the scene of the fire and any records had been destroyed along with the club, we were left with nothing. Until, of course, I thought to go back and dig out my father’s old case file.

  He had done so much work on this stuff that it actually made my head hurt a little bit. The file had been locked since his death, as Thaddeus closed the doors to any more potential intruders and the opportunity to find out more was cut off from the cops. But when I opened it again, a smile bloomed across my face – because I knew I could, at last, finish what my father started. Or at least, go a little way to bringing the kind of justice he wanted to the city.

  The file was packed full of testimonies, identifications, information, and details, all of which matched up with what Rose and I had been through. That was enough to put them all away and, even though I was too nervous to appear in court with the people who’d done me so wrong, I was proud when they news came through that they had all been given at least a couple of decades apiece. Good. Let them rot in there.

  I remember getting home that evening, and flopping down on the couch. Breaker glanced up at me from the book he was reading. He had offered to come with me to court, but I had turned him down, knowing that I had to face this all on my own.

  “How did it go?”

  “They all went away,” I sighed with a satisfied shrug. “Not surprising, really.”

  “That’s amazing,” he leaned over to me and pulled me against his chest playfully, rubbing his chin against my hair affectionately. He hadn’t really had a place to stay after the apartment he’d been living in had burned down, so I’d offered him up my apartment. I could tell even then that he was taken aback by my forwardness, but all this experience had taught me was that I couldn’t hold back on what I wanted. And what I wanted was him.

  “Yeah, it is,” I nestled into his chest, inhaling his familiar scent and letting my head fall flat against him. I fell silent for a moment, and, at once, Breaker figured out that there was something amiss.

  “What is it?” He asked, pulling back so he could look at me. “What’s bothering you?”

  “I just…” I propped myself up on my elbows so I could look him in the eye. “What’s next, you know?”

  “Angel, you just took down one of the nastiest gangs in the city,” he pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to take some time off before you run off to find another project.”

  “I know, I know,” I conceded. “But they can’t be the only ones in the city, can they? It’s a big place. And the thought of that kind of shit happening to other women…”

  I trailed off. It didn’t bear thinking about. Both of us sat there in silence for a moment as we let it sink in, and the acceptance of what I had to do next crept upon me, solidifying itself from the vague half–idea I’d had the day before we went into court for the first time.

  “I have to keep going,” I shrugged, as though it was obvious. Breaker frowned at me.

  “Huh?”

  “We’ve got the taskforce there,” I went on, my voice picking up steam as I got more excited. “It doesn’t have to stop here, my father wouldn’t—“

  “Angel,” Breaker cut me off, his voice kind but firm. “Give yourself a minute. You have the whole rest of your life to do this, but you need to deal with what happened to you first.”

  I sat up on the couch, and stared off at the wall opposite us. He was right, of course. Funneling all my energy into the task force and getting rid of the last remnants of Thaddeus’ gang had been cathartic for me, but I knew I was carrying scars from what had gone down in that place, scars that I knew weren’t going to fade without time and energy and effort on my part. This had been a way to distract myself from the inevitable, from the knowledge that I would likely never walk the streets alone again without glancing over my shoulder to check on who was following me. Breaker put an arm around me, and pulled me down close to him, pressing a kiss to my cheek.

  “Besides, I need someone to keep an eye on things for me,” he joked, and I managed a smile. “Make sure they’re not going to sell me out down at the station.”

  I giggled, and lay my head against his again, relaxed. He was right. I knew a lot of people down at the station still didn’t trust Breaker as far as they could throw him, and they were probably right to feel that way. I know I would have, in their position.

  As a way to avoid a prison sentence, he’d come on board as an informant, and was currently working his way into one of the gangs all the way across town, one that we were trying to investigate for sex trafficking based on the tips we’d received from some of the women my father had spoken to. After everything he’d seen– and all he’d seen me go through – he was as committed to taking down these sorts of criminal rings as I was.

  His reputation preceded him, and he told me that he still had people asking him how he’d managed to “tame” me into the docile little creature that so many people had seen at the club. He found it hysterical, and would often recount the lies he told people to convince them of my obedience. I looked forward to taking them down, and showing them precisely what a good girl I was when I was slapping them in cuffs. It was the perfect life, for him, as he got to mesh the part of him that still craved a more deviant lifestyle with the one that didn’t want to end up in prison. The one that wanted to be with me.

  “You’re right,” I sighed
. “Again. Fuck, I hate when you pull off shit like that.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to take down every bad guy in the city once you’re better,” he assured me. “Your father would want that. He’d want you to take care of yourself first.”

  “Yeah, and I doubt he’d want me dating an ex–con like you, so I don’t think we should linger on that thought too long,” I shot in his direction. He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged.

  “Well, pinch of salt,” he replied, and leaned in to kiss me. Our lips met, and I smiled into the embrace; even after all these months, he still made me burn like no one else on this Earth. He pulled back and smiled at me softly, his eyes gentle and deeply un–Breaker like for a second.

  “I love you,” he murmured.