Author: Tiffany Reisz

Rookies.

Nora rolled her eyes as she lifted her handcuffed wrists and pretended to scratch her ear. Most days she cursed her unruly black hair for its mass of waves and curls that took an hour to tame. But she loved it on days like these.

With a quick flick of her fingers she removed a hair pin and surreptitiously bent it into the perfect shape. In less than five seconds she'd popped the handcuffs open just as Detective Cooper dropped into the chair behind his desk.

Flashing her dark green eyes at him, Nora threw her booted legs up onto his desk, crossed her feet at the ankles, and tossed the cuffs at him.

Cooper hadn't walked the beat in years, but he still had his street reflexes. The wickedly handsome detective caught the cuffs with the tip of his fingers.

“Seriously, Nora.” He held the handcuffs up. “Do you want to get locked up?”

She cocked her head to the side and smiled at him.

“Isn't that the question I usually ask you, Coop?”

With a groan, Cooper rubbed his forehead. She’d never seen a black man blush so thoroughly before. Part of her wanted to crawl over his desk and kiss him just to make the public humiliation complete. A petite but stacked white Dominatrix in red leather knee-high boots, a red and black mini-skirt with a matching corset crawling across the desk of a six-foot-tall tough-as-nails police detective and giving him a kiss on the tip of his nose? The temptation to out Detective Cooper as a secret male submissive nearly overwhelmed her. But she restrained herself. Number one, she liked Cooper and wouldn’t do that to such a nice guy. And number two, she was a professional. No freebies for anyone.

“Nora...” He sat back in his chair and studied her with a mix of half-hearted disgust and barely disguised amusement. “You can’t take off the cuffs yourself. It’s considered resisting arrest.”

“Then tell your damn rookies that when they arrest a professional Dominatrix they might want to cuff her hands behind her back instead of in front.”

“Would that have really stopped you?”

Nora thought about it a moment.

“Probably not. But it would have slowed me down. Can I go now?”

“In a hurry?”

“Places to go. People to beat. And you and I both know I didn’t do anything wrong. S&M is not illegal in the state of New York.”

Cooper opened a file nearly as tall as his coffee mug—her file.

“The maid who stopped by the house to pick up her cell phone and heard ‘gut-wrenching screams,’ as she called them, would beg to differ.”

“The maid wasn’t paying to get the shit beat out of her. My client was. Only he can press charges, and he won’t because he’s scared of me. He pays extra to be scared of me. So I’m going, right? You’re letting me go, aren’t you? Say ‘yes, Mistress.’”

Cooper sighed heavily.

“Coop…say it,” Nora ordered.

“Fine. Yes, Mistress. You’re free to go,” he said as Nora pulled her legs off the desk and started to stand up. “The boss man is outside waiting on you anyway.”

She collapsed into the chair again.

“Cuffs, put them on me. Now. Slammer. Lock and key. Never let me out. Please please please, Coop. This is me begging you. Record it. You’ll never hear it again.”

“That bad, eh?”

Nora put on a pout, and sunk deeper into the chair.

“He’s going to yell at me.”

Cooper rolled his dark eyes at her.

“Nora...grow up. You’re a Dominatrix. Have some dignity.”

“But he’s got the sexy French accent and the whole ‘I’m very disappointed in you’ thing, and I just can’t handle that right now.”

Nora turned pleading eyes to the detective.

“Go. Out.” He waved his hand at the door. “Scoot before you embarrass me even more.”

With a growl, Nora rose out of the chair and glared down at Cooper giving him her best Dominant stare.

“We still on for Thursday at eight?” she asked.

“Oh, hell yes.” Cooper broke into a smile.

She grabbed her toy bag from the floor by his desk and flung it over her shoulder.

“Later, Coop. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“We figure out what that was yet?” he called out after her.

Nora hit the police station hallway.

“Nope.”

As soon as she walked outside a raindrop hit her forehead. Not wanting to ruin her leather she skipped nimbly down the front steps toward a silver stretch Rolls Royce idling in front of the station. A driver stepped out and opened the door for her. Throwing herself inside, Nora landed across the lap of a man reclining on the wide back seat.

The man raised his eyebrow and looked down at her as she pulled herself into a sitting position. Slowly the Rolls pulled away from the curb and still the man didn’t speak. Fine, if he wanted a staring competition, he’d get a staring competition. Nora locked her eyes on his and waited. She could do this forever if she had to. After all, there weren’t many men in New York, hell, even the world more fun to stare at than Kingsley Edge. Long dark hair held back tonight in a ponytail, deep brown eyes, olive skin...In his long military coat, embroidered vest, and riding boots he looked so damn handsome she wanted to slap him for it. But she refrained. Kingsley would like that too much.

“What?” she demanded when he still hadn’t spoken after a whole thirty seconds of their staring contest.

“Ma cherie...I do not know what to do with you.”

Even worse than being handsome, he had that fucking French accent she had to put up with.

“Do with me? I didn’t do anything other than my job. Not my fault the maid overheard the ambassador screaming like a banshee.”

“You broke the skin.”

Nora shook her head and looked out the back window. Behind them she saw an SUV with a nice, normal-looking husband at the wheel and a perfectly plain wife pointing out something from the passenger seat. Their two-point-five kids probably sat in the backseat with little baggies of Cheerios and their crayons. Normal people, Nora told herself. Normal people did not have these kinds of conversations with their bosses.

She was so glad she wasn’t normal people.

“He tips better when you make him bleed.”

“You went too far tonight,” Kingsley said, crossing one long leg over the other. “I want to know why.”

With reluctance Nora turned her eyes back to his.

“I’ve just been...stressed. Guess I took it out on His Ambassadorness.”

Kingsley reached out and rested his hand on her knee right where the top of her boot met her thigh. The feel of his fingers on her skin caused her to take a quick breath, a quick breath that Kingsley clearly heard.

“Stressed, ma cherie? Or frustrated?” He let his hand trail an inch higher up her leg.

“Frustrated,” she confessed. “I work all the time, King. I don’t have any time for...myself.”

Nora’s stomach tightened as Kingsley’s low sensual laugh filled the back of the car.

“How old are you?” Kingsley asked.

“You know how old I am.”

“Answer me.”

Nora exhaled noisily.

“Thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one years old...and the most beautiful woman in New York. There’s no reason you should be sleeping alone.”

“Other than the fact that a certain someone works me constantly so I can’t get a single day off.”

In a good week Nora could make ten to fifteen thousand dollars off her rich and kinky clients. In two years Kingsley had turned her into the most in-demand Dominatrix in America. Some clients flew in from across the country or even in from other countries for a few hours of her time. With Kingsley getting fifteen percent of every penny she made, he kept her dance card as full as possible. And she was starting to get sick of it.

“You exag-”

“I haven’t had sex with someone other than myself in two months.”

Kingsley’s eyes widened in shock. If Kingsley went even two days without sex...no, pointless train of thought. Kingsley would never go two days without sex.

“Two months? Quelle horreur, ma cherie. Surely there’s something I can do to make it up to you...”

“A day off would do. Or two. Or...”

“Or...?”

Kingsley brought his other hand between her knees and eased her thighs apart.

“King...” Nora said in a warning tone, a warning Kingsley didn’t heed. He brought his mouth down and kissed her bare thigh. Slowly he pushed her skirt higher with his mouth.

“I’m at your service, Maîtresse,” he whispered against her skin.

Nora groaned at the back of her throat. Damn that man. All of New York’s Underground considered Kingsley Edge their King of Kink. Sexy accent, handsome face, beautiful body, mysterious past...he was born to be the perfect Dominant and would have been but for one small thing—secretly he was a Switch.

Just like her.

“Your orders, Maîtresse?”

“Just keep doing that. I’ll think of some orders in a minute or two.”

He slipped her panties down her legs and Nora’s thighs fell open.

“You don’t let me do this with any of my clients,” Nora reminded him as he parted her folds with his fingertips. He kissed her clitoris gently at first and then with greater force and hunger.

Kingsley paused for a moment to answer, “I hadn’t planned on paying for this.”

“Good. Because I’m out of your price range.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and pushed his head back down. When Kingsley laughed his rich French laugh into her, Nora gasped. One booted ankle landed on the back of the seat in the window. There. That would give Mr. and Mrs. SUV behind them something to talk about.

Nora clung to the leather interior as Kingsley pushed two fingers into her and found her g-spot. She clenched around his hand as her hips rose up. He worked all the magic his French tongue had on her. The muscles in her lower back tightened. The pressure built hard and high. After a few minutes of the Kingsley Edge treatment, she came with the force of two miserable months of celibacy behind her.

Panting, she lifted her head and watched Kingsley sit up and run the back of his hand over his wet lips. She wanted to kiss him, to taste herself, to thank him for the pleasure and the attention. But he was her boss. And she’d hardly thank the man for one orgasm when he was the reason she’d gone two months without.

“Lovely,” Nora said as she pulled her leg out of the back window. “But that only makes up for about a week.”

Kingsley gave her his best French pout.

“Fine. Two weeks then. But it’ll take more than a backseat...” Nora paused, realizing she of all people couldn’t come up with the female equivalent of blowjob, decided to make one up, “a backseat v.j. to make up for two months of nothing.”

Kingsley sighed as he sat back and adjusted his trousers. Clearly he was in the mood to knock out another week or two.

“Please...” Nora stared at him and let the mask of the infamous Dominatrix fall off her face. “I’m tired, King. And I’m...” She couldn’t quite get the word out. Kingsley had said “frustrated.” The more accurate term would have been “lonely.”

He studied her face in silence. He must have seen the truth in her words, in her eyes. She sensed his resistance give way.

“You are a dangerous woman, Nora Sutherlin. This is the last time I employ someone more manipulative than I.”

“I learned from the best.” She smiled at him, a shallow hollow smile that covered the loneliness they both felt for the one man who could twist them both around his perfect fingers. But she wouldn’t think about him today. Or ever again.

Nora said nothing more as she watched Kingsley wrestle with what little was left of his conscience.