Chapter 33
33
DAX
Thirty minutes after Max’s call, Fiona sauntered into the shop. I was accepting a large delivery of boxes from the mailman. As I distractedly signed for them, I looked her over. She was in one piece. Black jeans, white pullover with red at the collar and cuffs. Wearing the same outfit as in the photo Max texted.
The mailman pushed his dolly out the door and waved on the way out.
“Is your phone broken?” I asked as she came over. She was like a teenager who knew they did something wrong but if they acted natural, they might not get in trouble.
I was fucking furious, and she was definitely in trouble.
Ever since the convenience store robbery, I had the constant need to kiss her and spank her. That mix of emotions hadn’t changed in the time since. It was stronger now than ever.
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you answer it?”
“Because I spent eight-six minutes in the Highcliff kitchen sharing my secret recipe for potato salad.”
“You don’t cook.”
She threw up her hands. “Exactly! I know there’s potatoes in it and I had to pretend to look it up on my phone. I recited a recipe from that southern lady who always pronounces tin ‘foil’ like tin ‘fall’.”
My eyes widened. “You watch cooking shows?”
“Only when recovering from surgery,” she replied.
Shit. The brain tumor. I was supposed to be pissed at her but then I was reminded she almost died, and not from a bullet. But no, tumor or not, she was wildly impulsive and reckless, and I couldn’t let that slide.
“You were supposed to call me. That was the plan,” I snapped, teeth clenched.
“Your plan,” she countered.
“My plan? What was your plan?”
“To use the Highcliffs as a diversion.”
My mouth opened and closed.
“ Diversion? So you could do what?” I had a pretty good idea, since I had photo proof.
“Check out the pickle containers in the back. You were right, nobody would suspect the Highcliffs of doing anything shady. Which means I couldn’t rely on them.”
“You used them. ”
“Your plan used them, too. Mine just got results.”
I stepped up to her, took her arm and pulled her toward a display of stuffed animals with tentacles beside a shelf of what I learned the other day was called tentacle porn.
“Results? Are you crazy?” I hissed. My gaze roved over her face. Was she always this way or did the brain tumor mess with her? I’d heard people took on different personalities after such a diagnosis.
Had she always been this fucking fearless? The photo was taken of Fiona when she’d been snooping. She’d gone in just as she said through the back door off the alley.
She blinked up at me. “Why do you keep asking me that?”
I didn’t squeeze her arm. Or strangle her. Or shake some sense into her.
Instead, I spun us around and hauled her–barely willingly–toward the back of the store.
“You,” I said, using my free hand to point at a woman holding three books.
The woman’s head whipped around, and she stared at me, wide eyed. “Y…yes?”
“You know anything about romance books?” I asked.
Her eyes lit up and she smiled. “Of course. My favorite is second chance, but I’ve been really into motorcycle club–”
I held up my hand. “You’re running the shop.”
Her mouth fell open. “What? Me? I don’t know–”
I continued to the office in the back and hollered over my shoulder. “You know more about it than I do. You’ll do great.”
Pushing Fiona into the office, I entered behind her, then shut the door, cutting off the woman’s sputtering. Then turned the lock on the knob.
“Dax, what–”
I was on her in a flash, cupping her cheeks and kissing the hell out of her. Surprise stalled her for a second, but then she was kissing me right back.
Tongues, hands. I walked her backward to Hannah’s desk, bumping it and making everything clatter. Something fell to the floor.
All I could see, feel, taste, smell was Fiona. I had so much… feeling for her it needed an outlet. I didn’t touch a woman in anger.
I couldn’t yell at her because doing that clearly didn’t get anything to sink into her brain. I needed an outlet for this obsession and insanity.
I ripped her shirt off.
My hand cupped her breast. The other circled about her waist and?—
“What the fuck is this?” I asked, pulling something out from the back of her pants. Not her gun. A–
“Why do you have a package of drugs?” Jesus fucking Christ. “Fiona. What the hell?”
“That’s what they’re smuggling in the pickle containers,” she said, her attention focused on undoing my zipper, then pushing my pants and boxers down my hips .
I never expected to be distracted when a woman did that, but Fiona figured out a way.
“You took some of their stock?” I stared at the big bag of pills. “Are you crazy?”
Holy shit. She took some of the product. Based on the phone call with Max Pinter, his friend didn’t know any of it was missing. Yet.
Based on the photo he’d sent, his request for my help was very recent.
I was distracted, but I was a man. My dick sprang free, hard and ready, and she leaned forward and licked the tip.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” she asked, glancing up at me through her lashes, my dick right in front of her face. It was the prettiest fucking sight. Especially when she eyed it and licked it again.
My fingers tangled in her hair and tugged, tipping her head back so she looked back up at me. If she got any more of that sweet tongue and sinful mouth on my dick, I’d come embarrassingly quickly, but also, I’d lose the remaining functioning brain cells.
She got the answer she’d been snooping for. The pickle place really was a front for all kinds of shady shit run by all kinds of shady people. Shady people who were friends with my shady people who wanted me to fix their problem.
Her.
That was before she stole a package of… I glanced at the pills again, probably Fentanyl, from them. Now, they wouldn’t only want her fixed. They’d want her dead .
No one stole from these guys. Everyone–but Fiona–knew it was a one-way ticket to the morgue.
“You don’t steal from drug dealers! These pills are a shit ton of money. They’re going to want it back!” Okay, maybe I did need to yell at her.
“You don’t want me to suck you off?” she asked, trying to distract me. She didn’t get it. She didn’t get any of this.
She would. And I’d understand her before we left this office.
“That’s not how this is going, sweetheart.”
She frowned, because what guy didn’t want his dick sucked?
This was sex. Definitely. It was also time for me to get answers because she was fucking reckless. The only time we connected was when my dick was buried balls deep in her pussy.
Walls came down. The real Fiona came out from hiding. I could see her .
That had to happen now. I needed answers as to why she was so fucking bullheaded about going alone.
Why she didn’t trust me.
She got caught. She just didn’t know it.
There would be a mark on her head by sundown. I was going to have to fix this, too.
I picked her up and spun her around to face away from me, then I bent her over the desk.
“Dax!” she said, her hands slapping the wood.
I slapped her ass over her jeans.
“Dax!” she cried again .
“That’s for stealing drugs.”
I spanked her again.
“That’s for going solo.”
Another spank.
“We’ll deal with that later, but right now you’re going to tell me about how your partner was going to frame you,” I said, working her pants down over her hips, taking her panties with them. They gathered around her knees. Perfect. Her legs were trapped.
“What?” she looked over her shoulder at me. Eyes wide, filled with confusion. “ Now ?”
She didn’t give a shit about the pickle people. She cared that someone was doing something illegal. It could have been the craft night crew who were embezzling funds. If Fiona picked up a whiff of that scent, she’d have looked into them, too.
Her MO had been in place long before she came to Coal Springs.
I smacked her butt again, this time on her bare ass, so the sound was louder.
“Yes. Now.”
She’d mentioned in passing that the reason she liked to work alone was because her partner tried to frame her. Was that really it? It seemed a little deeper than that.
“You tell me the truth like a good girl, you get a reward,” I told her.
She tried to push up, but a hand on her lower back kept her in place.
Her eyes narrowed and she glared. But when I ran a finger down her slit, they went hazy. I put the digit to my mouth and sucked that sweet honey right off. She was always wet and ready for me.
Shit, I was close to coming.
“Partner. Framing. Now,” I gritted out.
“He doesn’t like me,” she snapped.
I smacked the other cheek and now she had matching handprints blooming on her skin. Her hips wiggled and this wasn’t all that much of a punishment if she liked it as much as I thought.
“Not good enough. Bad girl.”
Another spank.
“He’s lazy! He’s a jerk. He lets other people do the work and he gets the credit.”
My finger returned and circled her clit, which was hard and greedy for touches. “Good girl. What else?”
She turned her head and stared down at the desk. “He… thinks I’m too slow. Too methodical.”
Fiona was one of the most impulsive people I’d ever met. She jumped headfirst into everything. Like armed robberies and drug smuggling pickle stores.
“Too by the book.”
Ah, that made more sense. My finger slid down and into her, deep and with a little come-hither curl that I knew she loved. Now when she said my name it was moaned.
She clenched down around me, and I couldn’t wait to have that feeling around my dick. Scalding hot. Wet. Tight.
“That doesn’t explain why he would frame you.” Sweat broke out on my forehead trying to think and tease and not fuck.
I’d never interrogated someone like this before. Only Fiona.
“He’s buddies with our boss,” she added. “They need to close cases and my partner can’t do it on his own, so he gloms onto mine. They don’t care about a solid case.”
She was dripping for me and impossible to resist. I lined myself up and gave her my dick nice and slow as I praised her again. I had my hands on her hips, soft and lush. A perfect grip to keep her in place. “Such a good girl. Taking my dick so well.”
Her fingers curled and I felt her hips tip up. I sank deeper.
“But you do?” What was I asking? The edges on my thoughts were getting really fucking blurry.
“I… I do, what?” she couldn’t keep her mind on the conversation. I was barely hanging on, she felt so good. Tight, wet, hot. Perfect.
“You care about a solid case.” I gritted my teeth, and I pulled back, then slammed deep.
She thrashed her head, nodded. “It’s my job to put the bad guys away.”
That black and white thing again.
“Why? Why are you so stuck on that?”
I fucked her slow. Really, really slow.
Sweat dripped down my temple with my restraint. While my dick thought otherwise, this wasn’t about sex .
She bit her lip, didn’t say anything so I pulled almost all the way out and spanked her again.
“Why?”
“Dax! Just fuck me.”
“Nope. Good girls get fucked.”
“I’m a good girl,” she cried.
I ran my fingers over my pink handprint, proving that was debatable.
“Then tell me. Why do you have to make sure all the bad guys are put away?”
“Because they hurt you.”
My fingers flexed on her skin. Oh shit. She had the biggest set of lady balls ever, so it never occurred to me that someone could get to Fiona. But they had.
Someone hurt her.
Everyone got hurt by others, but not everyone got hurt. I may have been a fixer, snipped off one of Jimmy McFee’s fingers, and done all kinds of other shit, but I never, ever touched someone who didn’t have it coming, and especially not a woman.
“What else?” I said, sliding back into her, rewarding her for her words. With her legs together, she was tight as fuck. I set a hand by her head, so I was curved over her body. I kissed her bare shoulder.
“They tell you you’re worthless.” Her head dropped between her shoulders, forehead resting on the desk.
Fuck.
“They kill your mother.”
My lips stilled on her heated skin. What. The. Fuck ?
Someone physically and verbally assaulted her and killed her mother.
I imagined my own mother being killed by a drunk driver and I knew the anger. The need to make things right even when it was impossible. No matter how much fixing I did, my mother wasn’t coming back. Big Mike wasn’t going to be the goofy, fun dad I remembered from before the accident.
“Dax,” she begged, and I realized I stopped moving.
I had one question left, but I wasn’t going to ask it now. Not while she was sweet and pliant.
I pushed her over into her orgasm and I crooned to her as she milked the cum from my balls. “So good, sweetheart.”
She’d admitted more than I ever imagined. It was rough. When I found out who’d hurt her, it was going to be even worse. Until I made it better. Made the person very, very dead.
When we both caught our breaths, I pulled out, dropped into Hannah’s desk chair and pulled Fiona onto my lap. With her pants caught around her knees, she sat sideways, but I had my arms around her. Tightly. I held her close, tucking her head against my chest.
I kissed the top of her head. “You’re my good fucking girl.”
Then, she cried.