Shayla Black - Theirs to Cherish

“She rebuffed you.”

“Instantly,” Thorpe confirmed. “If I wanted to talk about BDSM or work, she was all ears. The second I asked anything personal, she clammed up.”

“When did she finally let you close?”

“I found the first chink in her armor at Christmas. God, Callie loves it. Decorates everything in sight. I praised her wildly, and she started softening.”

“I didn’t see anything in her file about that.”

Thorpe shrugged. “I only have sketchy details about a sliver of her time before she came to Dominion, but it was obvious to me that Callie enjoys Christmas because it’s a holiday for family.”

“I’m guessing that since she doesn’t have any, she adopted everyone at the club as her own.” Sean closed his eyes. “See, this is why I could never picture her as a hardened criminal. Even if she planned to run off with that Holden prick, Callie wanted a sense of belonging. A woman like that would never kill her loved ones.”

“Precisely. I was shocked that first holiday season with Callie. She fancied the place up, organized a party, made everything run like a well-oiled machine . . . then stood in the corner and watched like a little girl with her nose pressed to the glass.”

Frowning, Sean shook his head. “Then she has come a long way. Callie teases most everyone at Dominion now. I guess I have you to thank for the change. I hate to admit it, but you’ve taken good care of her.”

With the sun glaring through the back window, Thorpe flipped his wrist up to stare at his watch, uncomfortable with the man’s praise. How much more could he have healed Callie if he was capable of actually fucking trying?

“How long does it take to fly from New Orleans to Vegas?” Thorpe spit out. “Three hours? Four? Shouldn’t she be there by now?”

“I’d ask the bureau to track the flight, but . . .” He looked vaguely uneasy.

The truth hit Thorpe. “You’re doing this under the radar, aren’t you?”

“I’ve said enough.”

“Look, we’re not best pals, but we both have a vested interest in finding Callie. We’ve got hours of driving ahead of us and we’re in this shit together. So you better be honest with me or I’ll leave you on the side of this damn road and find her without you.”

Spreading his knees and staring out the window, Sean sighed. “As my grandfather would have said, some of the higher-ups are a dodgy lot. They’ve always acted a bit evasive about this case, but over the past few weeks, something’s changed. I can’t put my finger on it. I just have this gut feeling that if I gave them any indication Callie has fled, it would open up a can of worms I might not be able to close. I think they’d start a full-fledged manhunt. They might even insist that I arrest her. I can’t do that.”

And if Sean couldn’t arrest her, Thorpe didn’t think he’d turn her in, even for a two-million-dollar bounty. He might be wrong . . . but he didn’t think so.

“Shit!” Thorpe didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Can you lean on them, find out anything?”

“I’ve tried. Often, agents are at the bottom of the information totem pole. Politics are always on a need-to-know basis, and they think I don’t need to know.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“Right now, I don’t have the energy. I just want Callie back, a decent meal, and a good night’s sleep—in that order.”

Thorpe wanted that, too, along with a passionate, grinding slide into Callie’s undoubtedly tight pussy so he could hear her cry out in his ear while she dug her little nails into his back, just as she’d done to Sean. He didn’t like another man fucking her, but he liked the fact that he’d never had the pleasure of feeling her himself even less.

Listen to him whine . . . He wasn’t in her best interest. Whatever Mackenzie’s flaws or agenda, the fed loved her—enough to risk his job for her. Thorpe couldn’t fault Sean for that.

“So, about the ex-wife, Melissa . . .” Mackenzie began.

Thorpe choked, then took a swig of cold coffee to recover. “Nothing to say about her.”

“She left, so you’re bitter? Or gun shy?” Sean probed.

“Where the fuck do you get off questioning me? We’re talking about Callie.”

“I’m trying to understand you. Your bad experience with the lousy ex is the reason you kept Callie at arm’s length all these years, right?”

No, but he wasn’t spilling all his demons for Sean. “There’s a significant age gap, too.”

“Which is more your hang-up than hers, I’d bet. What else?”

Thorpe glanced at his crappy burner phone, wondering where Logan’s call was that Callie had reached Vegas all right. If Logan didn’t call in five, he’d ring the former SEAL. But whatever he did, he wasn’t replying to Sean.

“So it’s mostly your own fear.” The fed supplied his own answer. “I guess that makes sense in a chicken shit sort of way. But one thing has me stumped. Why decide to get possessive after I entered the picture? You’re off relationships because of the ex, so you tell yourself that you don’t want Callie. But you don’t want anyone else to have her, either. You’ve got your head up your ass, Thorpe. It’s not fair to her.”

Sean’s words echoed Lance’s and rang a little too true. Damn it if he didn’t want to punch the man. “None of this is any of your fucking business.”

“It is if you want to know anything else in Callie’s file.” Sean gave him an expectant smile.

Thorpe rubbed his broad forehead, wishing he could massage away the beginnings of his headache. He really wanted to toss Mackenzie from the vehicle, but that wasn’t in Callie’s best interest. She had to be priority number one. “At first, she’d barely talk to me. After she’d been at Dominion a few months, I used her for a teaching demo. Of course I was attracted to her from the beginning, but Callie was a pure novice. I didn’t know if she was truly submissive or was pretending because she needed a job. I found out quickly that she was. Our chemistry was . . . not like anything I’d ever experienced. It shocked me.”

“So you backed away?”

“No. I should have, but Callie was far more submissive than I’d dared to hope, not to mention addicting. It wasn’t long before I used her for every demo. It was the only excuse I would give myself to touch her. She still kept her distance more often than not, but damn, the way she responded to me . . . I was very seriously considering breaking my own rule about never taking an exclusive sub.

“Then I was watching some silly news program one day. They showed a picture of Callie at sixteen, the same one you have on your phone. It all clicked. I hoped I was wrong, so I invented a new excuse to touch her and see if she had a scar on her hip where that bullet got her.”

“And when you found it, you cut off all but the most professional contact.” Sean didn’t phrase it like a question. He knew the answer.

Though Thorpe didn’t like being transparent, he supposed his motives weren’t that hard to deduce.

“Yes. She was always going to leave me. It was just a matter of when.” As soon as he’d had to stop touching Callie, Thorpe realized just how attached to her he’d become. And it had scared the hell out of him. He’d punished her by being an absolute bastard.

God, didn’t he sound like a pussy, afraid of his own emotions?

“You didn’t want to endure heartache again after your divorce.”

Sean didn’t know the half of it.

“Something like that. But seeing you with her . . .” Thorpe let out a deep breath. “I realized then that all my attempts to deny my feelings had been a fucking waste. Happy now? Can we change the subject?”

“Almost.” Sean cut a stare over at him. “If we find her, are you going to be willing to risk your heart for her? Because if you’re not, you shouldn’t bother fighting me for her. We both agreed that she’s not meant to be alone.”

Thorpe wasn’t sure what the hell he was going to do. He wanted to fight for her . . . but what was best for Callie? “You’re not entirely prepared to handle her.”

Sean crossed his arms over his chest. “What does that mean?”

“If you’re really a Dom, you haven’t been one for long. You’re a bit too lenient with the girl. Sometimes, she’s a handful because she wants your attention. You give it to her and let her top from the bottom.” Thorpe tsked at him. “I’ve also noticed that you’re not comfortable with all the equipment in the dungeon. If we find her, are you going to be willing to expand your boundaries to be what she needs? If not, you should leave her to me.”

That made Sean indignant. “Fuck you. I may not have been an acknowledged pervert for two decades, but I’m more than willing to ‘expand my boundaries’ to hang on to Callie.”

“Pfft.” Thorpe rolled his eyes. “You’ve been at this . . . what? Less than a year?”

“Actually, I got interested a couple of years back, went to a few clubs in Florida with some friends. But long-term undercover assignments didn’t exactly leave me a lot of time to get my kink on.”

Thorpe opened his mouth to drop Mackenzie with a scathing remark about wannabe Doms, but his phone rang. They both pounced for it, but he was closer and pressed the button to answer the call. “Logan?”

“Put it on speaker,” Sean demanded.

“Can you both hear me?” Logan asked.

Feeling a supreme irritation that damn near choked him, Thorpe hit the speaker button and laid the phone on the console between them. “Yeah.”

“I’m here,” Sean advised. “Is Callie with your friend?”

“I put her on the plane. One of the flight attendants says she remembers seeing Callie napping at the very back. There was no way she could have gotten off that bird in midair. But Elijah said she never met him in baggage claim, like I instructed her to.”

“You don’t know where she is?” Sean growled.

“She’s missing?” Thorpe echoed his incredulous tone.

“Yeah.” Logan sounded somber. “But that isn’t the worst news. Elijah spotted some dude in a uniform he’d never seen flashing Callie’s picture to the passengers just as they cleared the secure area of the terminal. The guy asked a lot of questions.”

Thorpe’s veins ran icy with foreboding, then he snapped his gaze to Sean. “Uniform? Like military?”

“That’s the impression he gave me, yeah,” Logan confirmed. “But not one he’d ever seen. That, along with everything else, sends up a big red flag for me.”

“Me, too. How is this possible?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.” Logan sighed. “I didn’t tell a single other soul besides Elijah and you two that I’d put her on the plane.”

“Thorpe and I haven’t been out of one another’s sight since.” The fed’s expression said he didn’t like any of this.

“And Elijah wouldn’t talk. He’s tight. Besides, I didn’t even tell him who she really was,” Logan explained. “Callie didn’t mention anything about being hunted by anyone else when she told me why she wanted to leave Dallas. Could the feds be after her, Mackenzie?”

“If they were, I should be the first to know. Even if I was out of the loop, they wouldn’t come after her in some uniform.”

“You’re right,” Logan agreed. “Everyone Elijah talked to from the flight seemed wary or shaken after the uniformed dude left. Whatever mess that girl has gotten herself into, she’s in way over her head. You’ve got to get to Vegas and find her before this asshole does.”

SEAN thanked God that Thorpe had rich friends when they landed in Las Vegas a few hours later. After Logan’s pronouncement that Callie was at large somewhere in Sin City, he and Thorpe had both been ready to crawl out of their skins. Two minutes later, Thorpe had placed a call to Xander Santiago. Sean remembered him, his brother, and the pretty blonde sub they shared from their visit to Dominion over the previous summer—mostly because Callie had left the club with the other woman and disappeared for damn near twelve hours.

That turned out to be a bonus. Because Callie had taken such good care of Xander and Javier’s wife, London, the billionaires had been more than willing to lend him and Thorpe their plane. It had been fueled up and jetting to Amarillo, Texas, in no time. They hadn’t waited long at all before the small luxury plane arrived to spirit them away to Vegas.

After a fitful catnap in midair, they touched down around noon. As he tossed his carry-on over one shoulder, Sean raced Thorpe to the exit and down the airstairs. Thorpe had shoved some necessities of his own in a briefcase and now clutched it in his fist as he sprinted for the parking lot. Anything they needed and hadn’t packed they could buy—except time. And every moment that ticked by they spent away from Callie made it less likely they would find her at all, much less before some uniform who already seemed half a step ahead of them did. At the twenty-four-hour mark, it was likely the trail would grow cold, and they’d already eaten up half their time on fucking travel.