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“Got a call there was a disturbance in here,” the burly officer remarked. “Excuse me, Sir—I’m going to have to ask you to release him,” he added, talking to Courick.
The big Kindred glared down at him.
“Only if you promise he will be punished. As you know, the World Council has ruled that any Kindred warrior is within his rights to kill a male he catches hurting his female and thisscum…”He gave the asshole Dom a shake, like he was no more than a rag doll. “Hurt my female and drew her blood!”
Addison couldn’t help it—despite the situation her heart fluttered. It was the third time that Commander Courick had referred to her ashisfemale! But the police were clearly more interested in keeping a killing from taking place.
“Okay, you have my word we’ll book him,” the officer said. “But please—we don’t need a Rage Killing here tonight! You wouldn’tbelievethe paperwork it causes.”
Reluctantly, Courick lowered the asshole Dom and then released him. The man fell to the floor, choking and gasping. His skin—which had turned nearly gray—began to recover a more normal color.
“All right—so what happened here?” The female police officer asked. “Start at the beginning, please.”
5
COURICK
It took nearly an hour to get out of the club because the police insisted on taking statements then and there. The bastard who had been hitting Addison—whose name turned out to be Cam Derson—kept claiming that she had “asked for it.”
Addison refuted this firmly and explained how she had met him at the club the weekend before and about the scene gone wrong, where he had hit her and refused to stop when she shouted her safe word.
Courick frowned as he listened to this. Apparently a safe word was a word that someone could shout when they were being beaten or hit that would make the one who was doing the beating stop at once. Only the male who he’d caught hitting Addison had refused to stop.
That thought—and the image of her bent over the bench with her rounded bottom bruised and bloody from the bastard’s ruthless whipping—still brought the Rage to the forefront of his mind. He’d wanted to kill the other male when he saw her in such pain! The red curtain of fury had dropped over his eyes and he would have had no problem choking the asshole to death if the police hadn’t stopped him.
To his relief, Addison said nothing about Courick’s sudden appearance at the club. She pretended that he had been with her all along and had been in a different part of The Torture Palace when the man who had attacked her approached.
This was more or less the truth. In fact, Courick had lost her—probably because she had stopped to change into the outfit she was wearing. He had been wandering around the club looking for her when he’d heard her panicked cries over the loud bass thump of the music.
He was just glad that he’d gotten to her before things had gotten worse—though he was still trying to absorb the strange surroundings. Why would she come to a place like this? He had seen many people submitting to torture here tonight—and others torturing them. Why would she want this for herself? Did she bear some kind of guilt she wanted to work off?
Courick could understand that—at least a little. After his mate had died, he would have been happy if someone had chained him up and beat him. The guilt he felt was intense—it might have been good to have an outlet for it. The pain would have felt good…it would have felt likeatonement.
But what pain or guilt did his tiny, curvy assistant bear? Why did she want to come to this club? And why was she wearing the lacy, light green dress which looked like something a female much younger would wear? He glanced at her from time to time, but there were no answers forthcoming.
His eyes kept returning to the back of her dress, which was now splotched with blood. He would have to see to her wounds, he decided. He would use the med kit in his ship.
In the end, they led the human male away in cuffs—afterthe female cop had lectured the moderator about being more careful about the people The Torture Palace let into their club. The moderator apologized to Addison and promised that her abuser would be blacklisted from now on and never allowed to come back. Then he left as well, which meant that the two of them were alone.
“All right—not that I’m not grateful but what the hell are you doing here?” Addison demanded, looking up at him.
“Following you,” Courick admitted—there was no sense denying the obvious. “I wanted to find and punish the one who hurt you,” he added. “Although…now I see this is a place where people come to get hurt on purpose.” He frowned. “Why doyoucome here, Addison?”
“That’s none of your business!” she snapped, immediately on the defensive. “And it’s not your business to follow me or defend me, either. You’re my boss, not my boyfriend!”
Courick frowned down at her.
“Maybe youneeda male defender if you’re going to come to a place like this! At any rate, you’re leaving it now.”
“What? What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I never said I was leaving.”
“Addison, you’rewounded.”He nodded at the bloody splotches on the back of her light green dress. “You need to come with me so I can tend your wounds.”
“Tendmywounds?”She looked up at him uncertainly. “No, really—you don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do—and I’mgoingto,” Courick informed her. “Now are you going to come with me or should I throw you over my shoulder and take you out of this place that way?”
He could see the uncertainty and indecision in her lovely green eyes. She was nibbling her lush lower lip as though considering if he would really carry out his threat.
