Shayla Black - Theirs to Cherish

“I’m trying to decide if it’s good or bad that we haven’t run into anyone in a uniform looking for Callie,” Thorpe said suddenly.

“I’ve had the same question, but I have to think it’s good.”

“I know she managed to leave the airport without a hitch, but how do we know someone hasn’t already found Callie and . . .”

Captured her? Killed her? Sean swallowed. Fuck, Thorpe was all but reading his mind. But he didn’t want to voice any of those fears. “We just need to keep looking. Stay strong and be persistent. We have one thing going for us that no one else does.”

Thorpe lifted miserable gray eyes to him, looking like the gloomiest day. “What? Give me anything to feel good about.”

Sean was no cheerleader, but in this case, he refused to believe anything except they’d gotten a jump on the asshole hunting her down for one reason alone. “Callie isn’t just a case to either of us. She means something. Hell, everything. We know her desires, her habits, her secret yearnings. She can’t bury all those parts of herself forever. When she needs . . .” Sean nodded, willing Thorpe not to lose faith. “When she comes up looking for a sense of home or connection or affection—whatever—we’ll be waiting.”

But twelve hours later, he was losing hope. They’d hit even the worst of the worst places downtown. Terrible, seedy, dirty, filled with the dregs of humanity. He couldn’t picture Callie here. She’d shine too bright, be too beautiful. No way she could hide here for long.

As they continued pounding the pavement, they stumbled across a motel with a blinking turquoise neon sign that proclaimed it Summer Wind. Given the fact that this was Vegas, it had to be a nod to one of Sinatra’s classic tunes, but its faded façade made Thorpe stop in his tracks.

“Callie’s favorite season,” Thorpe murmured.

“‘Summer’ was her safe word, too.” Sean swallowed, hope brimming.

Thorpe zipped a sharp stare in his direction. The knowledge looked like it hit the big Dom right in the gut. “It fits. We have to look here.”

It was a crapshoot, but Sean totally agreed.

The place looked beyond run-down. It had to be cheap. But it seemed like the first place in over twenty-four hours that made sense for Callie to have come.

He and Thorpe pushed their way inside. Wow, it was easily one of the crappiest motels he’d ever seen. The windows hadn’t been washed in the last two decades. In the lobby, the carpet beneath his feet was sticky. The air reeked of cigarettes, vomit, urine, and cheap disinfectant. Rent by the week or the hour—apparently the management wasn’t picky about how long anyone stayed as long as they paid.

Inside stood a woman who was probably in her late thirties but had lived so damn hard she’d easily be mistaken for fifty. She lounged against a scarred white Formica countertop permanently stained yellow, wearing a thrift store castoff of a tank top that showed cleavage wrinkled from too much sun. The woman’s lined lips wrapped around a slim smoke and she sucked in hard before blowing the smoke his way with a bored stare.

“You two looking for a room?” Her voice rattled from her lungs. “If you need more than an hour for your ‘business,’ you might have to come back. We’re pretty full up.”

Beside him, Thorpe choked, looking ready to throttle the woman. He sliced her his most displeased Dom face. In seconds, the woman lowered her cigarette and stared at him warily.

Sean stepped between them, shooting Thorpe a glare that told him to be fucking reasonable. “No. We don’t need a room to share. Or any room at all.” He reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out his badge. “FBI. I’m looking for someone.”

The bleach blonde with the gray roots looked ready to piss her pants. “I swear I told Johnny to be careful who the hell he hired. Who is it, the new repairman? I suspected he might be a con man, but I didn’t know.”

“Focus, woman,” Thorpe snapped. “We’re asking the questions. You will answer us precisely and honestly. You will not speak unless spoken to. If you’re dishonest, we’ll have problems, you and I. Is that clear?”

The woman gave a rattled bob of her head. “Um . . . yeah.”

Thorpe turned to him with a grim smile. “Proceed.”

The situation wasn’t funny, but Sean repressed the urge to grin. Thorpe had gotten the woman’s attention, that was for sure. After a handful of words, she couldn’t wait to give him a healthy dose of respect. He supposed Thorpe’s commanding presence was one reason so many subs sought him as a Dominant. And it was probably one of the reasons Callie had latched on to him. Deep down, she needed to believe that someone watched over her, looked out for her, and would rein her in if she’d gone too far. She ached to know that someone could save her if push came to shove. But Callie was so damn headstrong that whomever she turned to would have to truly exert his control before she’d heed it. Thorpe would have no problem doing that. He’d relish it.

The thought niggled at his brain as he withdrew a recent picture he’d printed of Callie, one he’d clandestinely snapped on his phone at Dominion. She wore a little Mona Lisa smile, her full, rosy lips somehow taunting and affectionate at once, tempting him. Her eyes glittered with life and vitality. Her glossy black hair shone against her pale cheek. Inch after inch of the most unspoiled skin he’d ever touched drew his stare all the way down to the hint of her cleavage. His memory supplied the rest—sweet pink-berry nipples, flat belly, slender hips, sleek thighs, snug pussy. Sexual power in a petite dynamo of a female.

Thorpe nudged him. “Get on with it.”

Pulled out of his musings, Sean nodded, then sat the image down on the counter in front of the desk clerk. He held his breath.

Her eyes flared with recognition, and she looked at him, suddenly in a hurry to be forthcoming. The apprehensive glance she slid Thorpe’s way explained why. “Yeah, I know her.”

“And? Go on. When did she check in?” Sean demanded.

“Two days ago. Middle of the night.”

Bingo! “Go on.”

“She was dragging a red duffel. I think she’s a blonde now.”

He and Thorpe exchanged a glance. She’d disguised herself, as they’d suspected. But his excitement was reflected in the other man’s gray eyes. They were finally getting a lead on Callie. Sean’s heart pumped. His skin tingled. Hell, even his cock engorged. Instinct told him they were close.

Thorpe braced his hands on the counter with deceptive calm. He stood tall and imposing. His mood stretched tighter than wire suspending a bridge. The woman’s jaw went slack as she stared up at him, blinking so rapidly, Sean was surprised her false eyelashes didn’t take flight.

“You’ll tell us everything you remember,” Thorpe commanded. “Now.”

The woman bobbed her head again. “Sh-she asked for a corner room near the stairs. I happened to have it. She asked about a place to eat and somewhere to find work. I sent her across the street to the diner.”

The one that had seen better days decades ago and had a collection of homeless drunks littering the parking lot.

“She’s waitressing there?” Thorpe barked.

“N-no. My cousin Marty runs a club about two blocks down and he’s always looking for pretty girls, so I sent her there.”

“Did she go?” The Dom’s voice dripped ice.

“Yeah. She’s working until two a.m. Marty . . . um, called me to thank me about an hour ago. After less than three shifts, she’s already a customer favorite. He called her a gold mine.”

Thorpe gritted his teeth, and Sean could only imagine what was running through the man’s head. Probably the same what-the-fuck thoughts dashing through his own.

“The name of the club?” Thorpe wasn’t sounding any warmer.

The brassy blonde swallowed and stared up, almost pleading silently for Thorpe’s leniency. “G-glitter Girls. Go out the door, take a right and head—”

“What the fuck kind of place is that?” Thorpe cut in with a growl.

“I know exactly where it is.” Sean discreetly elbowed the Dom as he smiled at the clerk. “What’s her room number?”

She focused on him and softened. Sean shoved down his fury to send her a gently encouraging expression. If good cop-bad cop worked, he was all for it.

“Two-seventeen,” she murmured. “Out the door, to the left, then up the stairs. It’s right at the top.”

“Key.” Sean held out his hand.

“I-I’m really not supposed to—”

Thorpe raised a menacing brow, promising retribution if she continued to protest. The woman jumped to action, reaching under the desk with trembling fingers to extract a key. She dropped it in Sean’s hand, then cut her gaze to Thorpe, her eyes pleading for approval.

“Is her room paid?” the Dom demanded.

“Through tomorrow night.”

Damn, had Callie intended to skip town in another twenty-four hours or less?

“Very good. You can consider her room vacant in the next hour.” The smile Thorpe bestowed on her then was brilliant, praising as he tapped her chin gently. “Thank you for your help . . . Your name?”

She lapped up that smile like a kitten with fresh milk. “Doreen. Sir.”

If anything, Thorpe’s smile widened. “You’ve been very helpful, sweet girl.”

“I tried,” she breathed with a wobbly smile.

Sean tried to hold in his astonishment. Instead, he leaned across the counter to the clerk and slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the counter between them. “And you never saw us, Doreen.”

She looked at him blankly, then back over to Thorpe. All the man did was send her an expectant stare, and she nodded vigorously. “Never.”

Sean palmed the key and turned to Thorpe, still holding the woman all but hypnotized. “Let’s go.”

THORPE turned to him as they made their way out of the motel’s disgusting lobby and headed for the Jeep. “So where’s this club?”

“In a minute. We’ve got to clear her room first.” Sean inclined his head toward the stairs to the upper level of the joint.

“Fuck whatever’s in her room. We need to get to Glitter Girls now, before she gets away again.”

Sean glanced at his watch. “I want to reach her, too. You know that. It’s not quite one, and she’s working until two, so we’ve got some time. But we can’t leave behind any trace of Callie that anyone looking for her could find. If there’s no trail, there are fewer followers.”

Thorpe gritted his teeth. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t either, but what are our other choices?”

It annoyed him, but Sean had a point. Thorpe conceded with a sigh. “All right. The good news is, it will probably take five minutes or less since Callie won’t have spread her stuff out. Hell, she was with me nearly three months before she put anything in a drawer.”

Sean stared at the upper story of the motel as the chilly desert wind whipped through his light jacket. “Let’s make this quick.”

Nodding, Thorpe followed Sean and darted for the stairs, taking them two at a time until he reached the cracked cement level. The rusted railing had once been painted a bright blue, but had faded and chipped over time. The blue drapes with their blackout backing in each of the room’s filthy windows looked dirty enough to be a breeding ground for bacteria and insect eggs. A few doors down, a man and a woman were arguing at the top of their lungs. In the distance, a gunshot sounded, then tires screeched.

Thorpe knew why Callie had chosen this place, but he still wondered what the hell she was doing here. There had to be someplace else out of the way that wasn’t quite so ghetto-gutter.

In the moonlight, he approached the first door at the top of the stairs and barely made out the tarnished brass numbers.

“Callie chose the corner room, the one with stairs in either direction,” Sean commented.

“Obviously, she’d scoped the place out in advance.”

“Clever, clever girl.”

As they charged toward the room in question, Thorpe tossed him a nod. “You know she is. Don’t underestimate her.”

“No.” Sean shook his head. “I’ve made that mistake for the last time.”

They hit the door, and Sean shoved the key into the lock, then pushed it open. As soon as he did, Thorpe squeezed past him and flipped on the light. He wished he hadn’t. The carpet looked some indiscriminate color that might have been beige once. The walls were covered in faded oak paneling. The ceiling showed signs of water damage. A dilapidated swamp cooler controlled the room’s temperature—sort of. The drapes were a faded blue floral that would make even a great-grandmother cringe. The bedspread was a cheap polyester imitation of polka-dotted and zigzagged stripes. The light fixture in the bathroom was minus its decorative cover. A roach crawled across the wall above the mussed, unmade bed.