AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dean watched another blush wash over Kimberly’s creamy skin and reminded himself he was supposed to be a professional. Hewasa professional, dammit, just not the kind of professional the gorgeous woman sitting across from him believed him to be.
He cleared his throat. Kimberly exactly fit the mark. He opened his notepad and clicked his pen. Time to focus. He waited until she collected herself and smiled a shy greeting in return before he went on.
“Before we start, I wanna thank you for filling out the disclosures online ahead of time.”Thank you very much, because it meant you didn’t read the fine print that said everything you tell me can be used in a court of law if this case is brought to trial.“I have them printed out here so I can get your signature in hard copy as well.”
He handed over the documents, and she dutifully signed and initialed without even checking to see if they were the same papers she hadn’t read online. Dean inwardly shook his head and hoped his poker face held true. She passed them back with trust in her sparkling green eyes that had guilt biting at his conscience. He was a forensic psychologist, dammit, not a clinical one, and it ate at him to be seeing people like this. People going on blind faith that his only agenda was to help them.
They deserved that to be true—the woman sitting across from him definitely deserved that as well—but this was the plan the bureau had come up with, so this was the part he was playing.
All of the five missing women had sought mental health treatment or was on some form of antidepressant when they disappeared. Three of them had seen therapists in this building, the other two in one across town, so he opened shop in this one while another agent took up post in the other.
There were more crossovers, but the strongest in his mind were the rumors that this was connected to the BDSM club outside town. Yet until those solidified from gut instinct into something tangible and traceable, the therapy route was their strongest lead.
“I don’t really know where to start,” she told him with a flourish of her elegant fingers. “Do I like… tell you my deepest, darkest fantasies, or what?”
Dean gulped.God, yes!
“Well, this is your session.” He reached for professionalism like a runner after the finish line. “You talk about whatever you want to talk about. Sometimes, for some people, the first few sessions go down easier if they’re treated like an icebreaker. Pretend we’re on our first date, and tell me about yourself. What you like. Where you work and grew up. That kind of stuff. Then, if you feel comfortable with that, we move on from there.”And I get to do my damnedest to tap dance around any of the real pain that drove you to seek professional help, so I can still sleep at night. And hopefully avoid spending an eternity in hell.
CHAPTERTWO
Dean lethimself into his house and went straight to the fridge. “Wanna beer?” he called out without looking.
“Nah, got one, thanks.” His longtime partner and even longer-time best friend held up his still frosty bottle in way of greeting, and Dean closed the fridge, then joined him on the couch. “Hard day?” Sam Grayson asked sardonically, and if the son of a bitch followed with“Wanna talk about it?”Dean would grab a throw pillow and hit his nearest and dearest in the face.
“Asshole.” He’d come to dread his sessions with Kimberly, not because of what she had to say, but because she’d taken him at his word and treated their first session just like it was a first date. She’d flirted and smiled and told him about growing up surfing on sandy beaches and going to cosmetology school. She’d been engaging and charming and funny as hell, and he’d felt like the slime under her shoe for lying to her about why he was there.
“It happened again, man.” Dean took a long, much-needed pull off his beer. “There’s no question about it. The woman is flirting with me. Don’t look at me like that; you should have seen the way she was dressed for our session today. One of those long-sleeved sweater dress things with knee-high boots.Spiky-heeled, knee-high boots. Blonde hair all piled on top of her head, looking like the slightest tug’d send it all tumbling down. And she had on red lipstick again—fucking fire-engine red… and glossy. Now, I ask you, who comes to therapy decked out like that, huh?”
He hit Sam on the arm when the dumbass opened his mouth as if he’d been asked a real question.
“No one—that’s who. People go to their therapists dressed in sweatshirts and holey jeans. And house shoes. I got one girl… she wears her house shoes to her appointments, not fuck-me boots. Kimberly is going to cost me my case, my job, and my license. I’m only one man. I can’t take this kind of prolonged pressure. I mean, jeez, man, she looked as luminous and goddess-like as Adele sitting across from me today. How the fuck am I going to be able to keep resisting her?”
“Man,” Sam said with a sage shake of his smug, superior face, “you’ve got a serious hard-on for this girl if you’re comparing her to Adele.”
Dean nodded like the doomed man he was and took another swig. “I’m seriously fucked, Sam,” he told him. “She brought up BDSM today.” Sam almost choked on his beer.
“She what?” He demanded. “You’re shitting me.”
“Not even a little, Sammy.” Dean assured him as echoes of her words threatened a return of the perma-erection he’d had since she walked into his office and confessed to him that she’d always wanted to be tied up. Not to mention how curious she was about flogging and having a Master or Dom. Dean would never tell Sammy any of the things a client-real or otherwise-told him in the confines of a session, but for the first time in his career, he wanted to. Her curiosity and obvious submissive cravings had taken something Dean already considered a Herculean endeavor and turned it into an Atlas like penance now. He felt as if he needed a confessor.
“She’s so obviously a sub, Sammy.” Dean told him. “But it’s just as obvious how green she is too. God, I wish I’d met her anywhere else man, I really do. It’s not like she even comes to me for therapy! She comes to me to vent about her clients. Says it’s the only place she feels like she can bitch about them and never have to worry about it coming back to bite her in the ass. Aside from one spat I helped her work through with her mother, that’s all she ever talks about. Gossip, hair color choices and which celebrities are the absolute worst. You’d be shocked by the way.” He added just to watch Sam’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. “Enough about my lack of progress. How ‘bout you? Any luck with your new client?”
Sam shook his head and scrubbed both hands over his face as if he could wash away the day. “No. She fits the profile, but nothing she told me today brought up any red flags or leads worth tracing.”
“It’s gotta be the club. We need to get into The Lion’s Den. Waiting for one of our clients to get snatched is like fishing without bait and just hoping the fuckers jump on our line. We’re not even in the water. We’ve gotta get out of the boat.”
“Agreed. In fact, we finally got the go-ahead from Cas.”
Dean looked at his partner with brows raised in surprise. Oliver Caspian was their superior, and they’d both been pushing hard for this step over the last few weeks. Sam and Dean eyed each other and felt the missing women in the room between them like phantom spirits. “Looks like we’re ready for plan B.”
Sam sighed, long and loud, finished his beer, and reached for the folder on the coffee table. The file was labeledThe Lion’s Den, and it was everything they had on the BDSM club outside of town.
“Plan B.” Dean took half the papers from the file while Sam started digging into the rest. “’Bout fucking time.” Neither of them needed the refresher. They’d both scoured over every scrap they had on this case since they’d been brought on, but they both settled in and read everything again anyway. There could be no screwups or mistakes once they took this step. The people on the other side of the line they were about to cross didn’t fuck around, and the FBI spent years establishing undercover ops like this. Once in, they weren’t getting back out until they saw this through.
They had a sex ring to infiltrate.
CHAPTERTHREE
