Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
By Shelly Bell
An Excerpt from The Bride Wore Red Boots by Lizbeth Selvig
An Excerpt from Rescued by the Ranger by Dixie Lee Brown
An Excerpt from One Scandalous Kiss by Christy Carlyle
An Excerpt from Dirty Talk by Megan Erickson
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
PUFFING ON HIS Cuban cigar, the Senator reclined in his chair, a tumbler of scotch on the rocks in front of him. He stared down the two men sitting on the other side of his desk, daring them to repeat the words that had just been uttered.
Sweating profusely, FBI Agent Seymour Fink tugged on his tie, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the buttoned collar of his shirt.
For a moment, the Senator considered retrieving his gun from his desk drawer and shooting the agent in the head, but he couldn’t risk getting blood or splatters of brain matter on his tuxedo. After all, he had an important dinner to attend in an hour and didn’t want to disappoint his wife.
He downed the rest of his drink and then shook the ice in the glass the way he’d like to shake the mobster who was fucking with him. “Tell me what you’re going to do to fix the problem,” he said calmly, unwilling to allow this minor bump in the road to waylay his plans.
There were only a few problems in the world money couldn’t solve, and this was not one of them. His men were loyal to him because he paid them to be loyal. They believed in his cause because he paid them to believe in his cause. The whole goddamned US of A was manipulated by money, making it possible for great men like him to become even wealthier.
But he was different because unlike most men, he cared more for this country than he did money.
“Do, sir?” Using the sleeve of his suit jacket, Agent Fink wiped the sweat from his brow, cigar smoke circling around his head like a boa constrictor. “I’m not certain we should do—”
“You listen to me, you little prick. There is nothing that will stand in my way.” The Senator hurled his tumbler against the wall above the fireplace, shattering the glass into a million tiny pieces. “Do you understand me? I’ve got your balls in a vise underneath my blade, so let’s try this again. What are you going to do to fix the problem?”
These agents had been instrumental in helping him to get the charges against Anthony Rinaldi dropped in exchange for the mobster’s valuable foreign contacts. A few months ago, the FBI had arrested Rinaldi for the extortion and kidnapping of Danielle Walker and, in the process, had discovered the bodies of thirteen young women buried on his property. But thanks to Agent Richard Evans and Fink, vital evidence had disappeared from the FBI’s possession, helping the judge in the case, a man all too easy to blackmail due to his expensive cocaine habit, to render his decision in dropping the charges. In exchange, Rinaldi had brokered a deal with a Congo mafia leader, and an item found exclusively in the Congo region was about to arrive in the United States. Now that the ship had sailed and all the components were successfully in place, Rinaldi’s usefulness had come to an end.
Seymour swallowed convulsively. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Don’t pull that bullshit now. You knew when I approached you that lives would be lost for the greater good,” the Senator said. He handed off his cigar and nodded to the other agent, a bruiser of a man whom he’d chosen not only for his twenty years of service to this country but for his lack of empathy. Agent Richard Evans understood the risks involved in his job, the three bullets he’d taken in the chest a testament to that fact.
Evans pinched the fat cigar between his fingers and, in a flash, locked his partner’s head under his arm, pinning Fink’s hands to the table and singeing the top of one with the foot of the cigar. Fink screamed, his smaller body thrashing wildly as he fruitlessly tried to escape from his partner and the pain he was inflicting.
The acrid scent of burnt flesh overpowered the cigar’s sweet one, a smell he would forever more attribute to power.
By the time Evans released him, Fink’s skin had turned pasty white, his shirt completely drenched from his sweat. He breathed heavily, nodding. “Consider the problem solved, sir. By this time tomorrow night, Rinaldi will be dead.”
The Senator leaned back in his chair and smiled.
God bless the USA.
Chapter Two
TOURING THE DUNGEON located in the basement of a private mansion, Rachel Dawson ignored the decadent sights and sounds of sex going on all around her and kept her eye on the prize. After working her ass off to gain entrance into Benediction, the prestigious sex club owned by Cole DeMarco, she was finally here.
Sure she was the only woman in the room dressed in pants . . . scratch that. A couple Dommes or Dominatrices or wanna-be-Matrix characters were wearing black vinyl pants and wielding whips that would make Indiana Jones proud.
Although it was early in the evening and most of the upstairs fantasy rooms were still vacant, she’d gotten to play the role of voyeur as she’d observed two different scenes. The “teacher” bending the “schoolgirl” over his desk and smacking her with a ruler had titillated her, but Rachel had remained a removed observer, her body not engaged by the fantasy.
But the ménage in the other room had hit her every button as if someone had plucked the fantasy right out of her head. Three men grappled for control in a tangle of hands, mouths, and cocks on a bed of red silk. After two of them managed to pin the third to the bed, he surrendered with a look of erotic bliss as he opened his mouth and accepted a cock while his legs were spread and his hole breached by one of the largest cocks Rachel had ever seen.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the scene, imagining herself as the one pinned to the bed. Then she remembered she wasn’t at Benediction to fulfill her fantasies or to act as voyeur. She was there to do a story about BDSM, and for that, she needed to go to the dungeon.
Unlike the fantasy rooms, the dungeon was packed. In here, the sights, smells, and sounds of passion and pain seduced her senses. The potent scents of leather, musk, and sweat teased her with the promise of sex. Everywhere Rachel looked, people indulged in their kinks without judgement or recrimination. She had read all about BDSM, done plenty of research online, and spoken to her friends, but nothing could have prepared her for what it would be like live and in Technicolor.
Her mouth grew dry at the sight of a naked woman suspended from the ceiling by rope and flowing white sheets, twirling as if she was an acrobat in a circus act.
Who had bound that woman? Was he here tonight? She studied the space, equal parts relieved and disappointed that she didn’t find him.