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  She took another sip. Chelsea wasn’t much of a drinker, but the drink was subtle and delicious, and the burn as it went down was pleasant. She surreptitiously glanced down the bar in both directions, making sure she wasn’t being watched when she made her call. Unfortunately, she found nearly all of the patrons staring at her.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” the man on her right said.

  She stared straight ahead, her heart pounding, willing him to turn away.

  Instead, he leaned in closer. A wave of bilious breath clouded her face as he grinned. He was missing several teeth, and his greasy gray hair hung around his face. “I said, hey, sweetheart,” he said in a louder voice. “Buy you a drink?”

  “I already have a drink,” she said tightly.

  “Buy you the next one,” the man said, and then he put his hand on her thigh, kneading her flesh through the denim of her jeans. “And I’ll throw in a kiss for free.”

  Then he fell off his barstool.

  CHAPTER SIX

  When Chelsea spun around on her stool, she realized the man hadn’t fallen at all, at least not without help. A second man was standing over the one on the floor, who was clutching his middle and moaning.

  Ricardo.

  He had been there all along, but she hadn’t spotted him because, instead of his usual fine bespoke clothes, he was wearing a simple white T-shirt that highlighted his sculpted body. Jeans every bit as worn as hers hugged his splendid ass and strong legs. His hand-tooled belt was secured by a silver buckle, and he wore black ostrich skin boots. She might have recognized his gorgeous body if she hadn’t been so nervous; his face had been hidden by the man on the next stool.

  The sputtering man on the floor had the attention of everyone in the room—but no one moved to help him. Evidently he was not well regarded here.

  “I’ll take care of the trash,” Ricardo said, addressing the bartender who was watching him carefully. “And I’d like to buy the house a round.” He peeled off a few bills and tossed them on the bar. Then he bent and grabbed the fallen man’s collar and dragged him to the door as if he were hauling a bag of garbage. At the door the man managed to find his feet and bolted out the door.

  Ricardo came back to the bar and took the seat the man had vacated.

  Something stirred inside Chelsea.

  She abhorred unnecessary violence in all its forms…didn’t she? But what Ricardo had done to the man (and she wasn’t sure exactly what that was, other than it obviously hurt) seemed entirely justified. And no one else in the bar appeared to mind.

  As the bartender set a glass with an inch of amber liquid in front of Ricardo, Chelsea’s certainty of moments ago faded. Instead, she remembered the last conversation she’d had with Ricardo before he left to avenge his friend, when he had asked her to look inside her heart, to accept what she knew deep in her soul.

  “Tell me, Chelsea…” he had asked. “The time we have spent together, the things we have done. Could you do those with a man you do not trust?”

  “Top shelf?”

  The bartender was staring at her impatiently.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, the man’s buying. Do you want your next one with the top shelf bourbon?”

  “You might as well,” the man to her left said. “Top shelf here ain’t all that much of a stretch.”

  The bartender glared at him. “Keep that up and your next drink’s not going to be here,” she said.

  Chelsea waited for Ricardo to say something to her, but he ignored her, watching some infomercial playing silently on the television bolted above the bar. Her second drink came, and she took a bigger sip of the first. The bar was too warm, and her shirt was sticking to her back.

  “So what’s this all about?” Chelsea finally said, irritated. “Is this your idea of playful variety or something?”

  Ricardo turned, very slowly, to face her. “Were you speaking to me?”

  She blushed, her irritation turning to anger. “I don’t like it here,” she said in a low voice. “These people are—they’re disgusting. Can we please just go?”

  Finally, he was looking directly at her. Around them, conversations had resumed; the bartender was at the other end of the bar, serving the last of the free round. The mood seemed to have improved significantly. Someone put money in the jukebox and heavy metal music spilled out.

  His gaze fell to the pile of black fabric on the bar. Then he looked away again.

  So he wasn’t going to talk to her unless she played his stupid little game? She picked up the fabric and wadded it into a ball. “I’m not in the mood,” she snapped. “I’ve had a long day at work, which was harder than it needed to be because I was missing some paperwork that was back at my apartment which you and Smith won’t let me go to.” And my friend the private investigator says you’re every bit as bad as the FBI thinks, she added in her mind. “I’d really just like to go wherever it is you’re going to make me go. If I could get a salad, I would appreciate it. And then maybe you could just leave me alone with the television remote until you’ve decided I can go back to my job again.”

  This time he raised his eyebrow at her, still saying nothing. She recognized that look—it was the one he’d given her in the past when she pushed back, and it delivered a shiver up and down her spine.

  “Okay,” she said with slightly less confidence. This was the right thing to do. Never mind the mind-blowing nights they’d spent together. Never mind the fact that when he wasn’t disappearing to murder people or steal things or whatever he did when he wasn’t with her, she was pretty sure she’d never meet someone she longed for the way she longed for him. “I know how this goes. This is where you offer to call me a car service and my own personal bodyguard and a vault full of cash and wish me a nice life, right?”

  Never mind that all he’d ever done was chastise himself for getting involved with her and offer her protection far away from him. It still made her angry somehow and—to her shock and mortification—sad. Sad, like tears were going to roll in a minute if she didn’t turn this around…that kind of sad.

  “You know what? Fuck it. Never mind. I’ll find my own way back. I’ll just…” She groped under the bar for her purse, but all she felt was empty air. She slid off the stool and peered underneath: still nothing. Someone had stolen her purse! Also his fault, for bringing her to this—

  He tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked up too quickly, banging her head on the bar, only to see that he was holding her purse.

  “I thought it best to hold it for you,” he said. “Given your track record.”

  Her mouth dropped open. How dare he! The night she’d lost her purse while she was with him, she’d been startled by paparazzi and terrified out of her mind. Now he was implying she’d been careless. She grabbed the purse’s strap and pulled, but he held on. She used both hands and tugged, but he calmly pulled back, hauling her close to him.

  “I’ll scream,” she threatened. “I’ll tell everyone in here that you’re trying to rob me.”

  One final twist of his hand took all the slack out of the leather strap, pulling her practically into his lap. He put his mouth next to her ear and whispered, the heat of his breath teasing the tiny hairs along the nape of her neck.

  “You’ll pay for disrespecting me, putita. Now get in the bathroom and put on that dress, or I’ll rip that shirt off you right here in front of everyone.”

  Then he released his grip on the purse and she stumbled back onto her bar stool. She stared at him in shock, but he merely picked up his drink and sipped. The man on the other side of him leered over his shoulder, clearly enjoying the show.

  He wouldn’t…there was no way…

  Her pussy was soaked, just thinking about it. He obviously didn’t believe she was serious about leaving. Because he would never allow her to walk out of this bar and straight into danger.

  Ricardo always protected her. He had gone to great lengths to ensure that nothing bad happened to her.

  She shiver
ed with arousal and stroked the shimmering pile of black silk. It had been three whole days since he had touched her, since he had used her so deliciously hard in the hotel suite high above Los Angeles. Long enough for her to forget how easily he could provoke her. To forget how desperately she wanted more.

  “Now,” he rumbled.

  She walked as though she were sleepwalking, clutching the dress against her body, staring straight ahead of her. She opened the door marked with a W and a crude drawing of a stick figure in a skirt and found herself in a tiny stall covered in graffiti. The sink was filthy, the toilet worse. The light fixture flickered and flies buzzed around the ancient looking cake of soap.

  Chelsea pulled her shirt over her head.

  She stared at herself in the mirror, at her hard nipples pressed against the fabric of her bra, her lips parted and hungry, her face flushed with need. She kicked off her boots and shucked off her jeans, doing her best to keep them from touching the floor. She hesitated only a moment before tugging off her panties and bra; having been the recipient of Ricardo’s gifts of clothing before, she knew that the dress would have been tailored to fit precisely, with no room for underpinnings.

  The dress was cut simply, a high-necked sheath with a low back that dipped almost to her ass. As she was smoothing it into place, the door opened a bit.

  Chelsea shoved it shut. It figured that the only other woman in the place would want to use the bathroom at the same time as she did. “Just a minute,” she snapped.

  The knob turned and this time she wasn’t able to keep the door closed.

  Ricardo squeezed his way in.

  “I—what are you doing?” she asked.

  “Checking on my property.”

  “The dress is—”

  “No. I am not talking about the dress but about you. You’re my property.” He reached a hand to her waist, traced the fit of the dress, sliding his fingertip under the fabric. He turned her in a gentle circle, using his hands on her hips, murmuring his approval. “You’ll need these.”

  He handed her a pair of stiletto heels whose uppers were little more than thin strands of leather cord knotted together. Gratefully she pulled them on, avoiding contact with the disgusting floor.

  “Now get on your knees and service me.”

  Chelsea looked desperately around the room. It afforded privacy, that was true, but little else in the way of comforts. Wadded tissues were stuck to the floor, along with a sticky substance whose source she didn’t dare guess at.

  “Please,” she whispered, despite the throbbing ache in her cunt, her desperation to touch him mounting with every passing second “Not here. Take me somewhere. Take me—”

  She stopped, having been about to say “home.” But they didn’t have that luxury. Neither of them had a home to go to, other than the little apartment where she’d been holed up with Smith.

  “I’ll take you with me as soon as you earn it,” he said. He slid his hands up the dress to where her nipples were outlined against the fabric, thumbing them with his fingertips, sending sensation radiating through her body and making her moan. “You can pleasure me in here, or you can let me show you off out there. Your choice.”

  “Show me…?” she whispered. Was that all it would take? Oddly, she felt slightly disappointed: all he wanted to do was parade her through the bar wearing the dress and heels? She had thought…but no matter what she might have expected. She would do anything to avoid having to touch the floor, to avoid brushing up against the disgusting trash can and graffitied walls.

  She made her decision. “Out there.”

  He nodded, seemingly unsurprised. “Fine. But before we go, I have a gift for you.”

  He reached into his collar and brought out a leather band. It was expertly crafted, the stitching along the edges of the butter-soft leather even and tight, the buckle sculpted of silver. But it was too large to fit her wrist and much too small to be a belt, and she looked at him questioningly.

  “My property,” he murmured, betraying his own excitement in the tenor of his voice. “You’ll wear my collar.”

  Then, very gently, he lifted her hair away from her neck and slid the band around. It glanced teasingly against her skin, settling against her collarbones until he picked up the ends and clasped them. He slid the buckle slowly over the end of the band until it was just short of tight and fastened it. Then he turned her in his arms so she was facing the mirror.

  She gasped.

  Chelsea had always known that men enjoyed looking at her. It had been a painful knowledge, having its roots in the early trauma of the photo sessions with Roy. In time, she learned to use her looks to get the attention she wanted when she wanted it, but she never would have called herself beautiful.

  Until now.

  Her hair fanned out over her shoulders, and her eyes blazed with lust and excitement. Her lips were swollen and ripe, her skin pink with heat and need. The dress was merely a backdrop for the collar, she saw now. It clung to her body like a second skin, the neckline leaving a perfect slim crescent of skin under the collar. And now she saw something she had missed before: a silver plate attached to the front of her collar was engraved with his monogram.

  “I have never collared a woman before you,” Ricardo murmured. “I doubted that I ever would in my life. But after Boris died I…” he paused, collecting himself before he could go on. “I was forced to consider that I could lose you. I will not allow that to happen. And it has…hastened this pronouncement, Chelsea. I love you. I do not say that lightly.”

  Then he kissed her—the softest brush of his lips, the faintest stroke of his tongue. She melted against him, longing to lose herself in the embrace, but he held her off.

  “And now you shall show all those other men that you belong to me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He opened the restroom door and stepped aside, holding it open for her. He took her hand and held it as a dancer might lead his partner and she stepped through, the narrow skirt of the dress making it impossible to take any but the smallest steps.

  One of the men glanced over and saw her and did a double take, nearly falling off his stool. Then he let out a wolf whistle that silenced conversation. All eyes turned to see what had caught his attention, and the bar went silent except for the raucous, tinny music coming from the ancient jukebox.

  Then the song ended and the silence was total.

  “Well, fuck me,” one of the old men growled. “I ain’t seen pussy like that since ’Nam.”

  Chelsea’s hand tightened on Ricardo’s arm. Surely he would punish the man for disrespecting her like that? She knew the power in his muscular arms, his large hands; she both feared for the man’s safety and—in that unfamiliar, dark place inside her where the taste for vengeance lived—was excited by the prospect of seeing him thrown to the ground. Not injured—she only wanted him humiliated as she had been.

  Except…

  The way her body was responding was not the agony she might have expected.

  Long ago, in that dank little room where Roy Huber had forced her to pose, where the flash of his camera had felt like a hammer to her soul, she’d had no protector, nowhere to turn. Each time the camera clicked she felt like a tiny piece of her was taken, as though she was slowly being worn down to nothing. Her body ceased to be her body, her “special, private places”—the term her mother had taught her before she got so sick and had to stay in bed all day with the medicine that made her eyes glaze over and stole her ability to speak—were no longer special. In fact they were no longer hers: the camera stole them from her. Occasionally Roy Huber would show her one of the pictures he took, and all Chelsea saw was a stranger, a little girl she had never seen before, huddled in misery.

  Here, in this bar, she did have a protector. Ricardo would never allow any harm to come to her. He had made that promise from the start, and Chelsea believed him. But the proof was also in his hand on the small of her back, his watchful eye, the fear and respect he commanded in other men witho
ut saying a word.

  She was wearing a beautiful dress and heels that made her taller than nearly every man here. Her relentless workouts had made her feel strong and capable. She could fight, she could run, she could choose what happened to her.

  And so far, she chose to stay. The feeling of all those eyes on her was…intoxicating. It wasn’t that she was attracted to them. It was that—

  “You may choose,” Ricardo said. “You will allow one man to approach. To honor you.”

  She whirled around, open-mouthed. “To do what?”

  “Whatever I decide. Chelsea, please do not forget, you have your safe word. This is all in your control.”

  The first night they had spent together, Ricardo had given her a word—magnolia—and promised her that if she uttered it, he would immediately stop whatever he was doing. At the time, she’d been startled by the coincidence, as she had grown up on Magnolia Drive. But since then she had come to understand that it had not been a coincidence. Ricardo, with his seemingly limitless resources, had known everything about her before he ever caressed her.

  Now he wanted to display her. As with so many of the new experiences Ricardo introduced her to, she didn’t understand intellectually why anyone would enjoy them. But her body already knew. It already yearned.

  “I can’t choose,” she said, to buy herself time. “You choose.”

  His hand went to the back of her neck; his fingers found the collar under her hair. He pulled, just hard enough to cause her to gasp. “Querida. Really, have you forgotten so much? Do you really think I will allow you to give me orders?”

  “N-no,” she whispered, and the pressure was released.

  Several of the men were murmuring to each other, their gestures indicating what they were discussing, the things they wanted to do to her. Even the bartender was leaning back against the liquor shelves, her arms crossed, a predatory grin on her face.