Tarnished Steel Read online

  “Oh, sweet mercy,” she moaned when her orgasm began to rise and swirl inside of her like a filling pool of electric lava.

  “Oh god, I’m going to come, oh please let me come,” she begged and her body’s dance, which was sensuous and slow, became more urgent and forceful.

  Her hips now rocked against him instead of rolling, grinding her clit with fervent desire. Rather than milking her breasts, she pulled at her nipples, stretching them, and threw her head back as the delicious ache ran through her abs and inflamed her clit with ardent hunger.

  “Oh, fuck yes! Hank! God, you feel so good!”

  She came forward, her hands gripping his thick shoulders, feeing his chiseled muscles and the tension building in them. Her incited body left all sensuous pretense and began to fuck his cock. Her abs rolled and she squeezed his cock with the muscle walls of her pussy as her hips fucked up and down, driving him into her.

  “God yes! Oh god, yes! Fuck, Hank! Fucking give it to me! Fuck! I need it!” she screamed at him.

  Hank grabbed her hips with his powerful hands and began to drive his cock into her with his ass and hip muscles.

  The sudden power she felt from him set her off. She growled and cried as she thrashed and pounded back into him. The orgasm only seemed to enrage her body. It wanted more, much more before her climax. “Fucking sweet mother! God, I need it. It’s fucking right there!”

  The agony of pre-climax seethed through her body, and she fucked Hank with desperation now. Her hands were claws as she raked his chest and shoulders. Hank was mercilessly pounding into her, his hands gripping her like steel clamps, and she could feel his cock becoming harder.

  “Do it Hank! Fucking do it! I need you!”

  Hank’s climax filled her and sent her whole body into climax as well. Her cries were wild and hungry. She rose up and humped at his cock viciously, riding the climax, and the blissful agonies churned inside of her.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Cyn woke close to three in the morning in an empty bed. Hank was gone.

  She got up and padded out to the living room, and then peeked outside to see if his bike was still there, but it was gone as well.

  “Hmm,” she growled.

  After a drink of water, she crawled back into bed and fell asleep, wishing he would have woken her to say he was taking off instead of sneaking out like a thief.

  She woke at eight in the morning to the smell of bacon frying in her kitchen.

  “Just as sneaky coming back in,” she smiled.

  She got up and, since there was the possible threat of bacon splatter, got into her sleeping t-shirt before going out to say good morning.

  He was in straight cut blue jeans, running shoes, a blue button-up shirt with a collar. She nearly didn’t recognize him. His hair was brushed to a shine and pulled back into a very manly pony-tail. His cheeks and chin were freshly shorn. Hell, he made Larry look casual.

  She came up behind him and put her arms around his waist, giving him a hug. “Glad you decided to sneak back in.”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I went home and played a few racks on my pool table. That always eases my mind. Helps me focus.”

  “Been up all night, then?”

  “Yes, but I plan on sleeping most of today. Day off, completely. Planning on several in fact. Need some serious downtime,” he told her.

  She tried not to get all girly-attitude with that statement, by which he obviously meant that he was going to want solitude during this downtime.

  “I get like that,” she told him, reminding herself as well.

  “Everyone does. The ones who don’t do something about it are the ones who wind up screaming like mad men in divorce courts and taking automatic weapons to work.”

  Divorce courts? Was that one of those Freudian slips?

  If he was thinking marriage already, then maybe he should get some time alone, and her, too.

  “I’ve got a ton of work today and tomorrow, so it’s probably best anyway. Though I am just down the road. You might want to take a break from yourself and pop over,” she added, hoping it didn’t sound too needy.

  “That would be nice, yes, but I think I’m going to take a break from the club for awhile. I just got back, and look at the mess.”

  Her instincts told her there was more to it than that, but likely in the area he wouldn’t talk about.

  “Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usually slow anyway,” she said. “Not missing much.”

  “I might have some work to do on Thursday and Friday. It could stretch into the weekend if everything goes right,” he told her.

  Oh god, he’s going back! Whatever it is that he’s into, it’s starting Thursday.

  She knew it like she knew her own name.

  “Yeah, well,” she said into his back, struggling not to cry, “You can’t just sit around all the time playing pool. You’ll get flabby, and then I won’t want you anyway.”

  He put a hand on her clasped ones in front of him and said, “I will be coming back, lass.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She lost it. The tears were in free fall.

  Fucking asshole! Why did he have to say that?

  Her phone rang with Daphne’s ringtone, and she left him to pick it up. “Hey, baby,” she said.

  “He’s dead! The police are here! They say he’s dead!”

  “Don’t move. I’m on my way, baby. I’ll be right there.”

  “He’s dead!” Daphne screamed.

  She dressed with the phone to her ear, listening to Daphne wail and cry and tell the cops to fuck off, that she wasn’t talking to them, that she needed Cyn.

  “Call Larry!” Cyn shouted at Hank. “Call him and tell him to get his ass over to Daphne’s, right now!”

  To Daphne, she said, “Tell the cops your lawyer is on the way, and to back off!” Daphne sounded like she took great pleasure in relaying that message to the police and getting them out of her apartment.

  “I’m dressed, baby, and on my bike. I’ll be there in five. Hang up, baby. I’m on my way,” Cyn said.

  “Please!” Daphne begged.

  “I’m coming,” Cyn told her. Then she broke the connection, put her helmet on, and thundered out of her drive, reaching sixty by the first bend.

  In less than five minutes, she was pulling up to the downtown store where Daphne rented an apartment upstairs. Cops were everywhere, and she spotted at least two detectives. One of the officers tried to stop her from going up.

  “You going to arrest me?”

  “Well, I’m—”

  “Not doing shit!” she told him, and she took the stairs two at a time. Her phone rang as she entered the apartment. It was Larry.

  “Where are you, Larry?”

  “As it happens, close by, actually. I’m on the freeway heading back. Did he die in the apartment?”

  “No, somewhere else, but there are a lot of cops downstairs looking to search this place and interrogate Daphne.”

  “Neither of which is going to happen. How is Daphne feeling about me coming over? I was on the tribunal last night. She may not want my help.”

  “Daphne?”

  “Yes?”

  “Larry wants to help. He’s going to keep the cops out of here and help you with the questions. Is that alright? Will you let him help?”

  She put a knuckle between her teeth, and then nodded. “I don’t have anyone else.” She sounded defeated.

  “I heard her,” Larry said, “and I understand. I'll help her find someone else after I handle this first mess. Tell her that. Also, I’m off the freeway and coming up the main road now. Be there in three,” he said, and he broke the connection.

  Cyn pocketed her cellphone and went over to Daphne, who looked at her like a wounded child. Daphne asked, “Wasn’t breaking him enough? Did he have to kill him too?”

  Cyn looked at her in shock. She means Hank! Oh shit, she’s thinks Hank did this!

  Read on for a sneak peek at the sizzling sequel, Tempered Steel

&nb
sp; CHAPTER ONE

  Cynthia was waiting on the stairs of Daphne’s apartment for Larry to show up. She wanted to tell him that Daphne didn’t want the police inside the house. Derrick had done a lot of crystal the night before and she had no idea what had been left out. There was no time to really clean.

  “Doesn’t look good, having your friend lawyer up like this,” said one of the detectives. “Looks—”

  “Looks fucking great,” Cyn told him, cutting him off. “Let me ask you something: Have you ever see anyone’s case improve by talking to the detectives without a lawyer present? No, you haven’t. Not one. That’s why they always stop those reality TV shows when the lawyer is asked for. So fuck off.”

  “She’s not really a sus—”

  “Of course she is! The girlfriend or wife is always the first suspect. Look, go try your bullshit out on someone who might listen to it. Alright?”

  “What’s your name?” the detective asked, pulling out his pad.

  “Don’t answer that,” Larry said from behind him. “You’ve got nothing to do with this, and he has no grounds for asking except that you called him on his bullshit.”

  “What, not even her name?” the detective asked with a laugh.

  “Not a damn thing that doesn’t absolutely require an answer from her or Daphne,” Larry informed him, his face like that of a lion guarding its territory. “What do you have here, six cop cars? You’re using intimidation tactics on a woman who just lost her partner of over ten years. You will not get in her house without a warrant. You will not talk to her unless I am present. You will not see either of us without scheduling a time through my office. Is that clear? Because harassment and intimidation are two of my biggest peeves.

  “Now,” Larry told him, “you can go. I’m going to talk to my client, and we will come down to the station at the time you arrange through my office, to make a statement. Not to answer questions, not to be interrogated. A statement. That’s it. Unless you are going to arrest her now, and please say you are going to arrest her now. Please,” Larry told him.

  The detective was furious, but he kept his mouth shut, took Larry’s offered card, turned, and walked away.

  “As for the rest of you,” Larry said, raising his voice, “if I come back down here and see one of you here, I’ll not only file departmental complaints but raise charges of harassment. I hope that’s clear to you, because I’m willing to clear my calendar for the rest of the year with this one.”

  Cyn watched the cops and detectives get in their cars and pull out of the parking lot.

  “Holy shit, Larry,” she said as he came up beside her. “I think you just became my hero.”

  “Does that make me sexier?” he asked with a smile.

  “You were sexy before. Ever have two girls give you a spontaneous blow job?” she joked, and then glanced upstairs. She said more seriously, “Probably not going to happen for a while, though, Larry. She’s really torn up. Her insides are shredded. I’m really glad you kept them from talking to her right now.”

  “The BJ can wait. It would probably kill me, anyway. Let’s deal with the real victim first,” Larry agreed. He continued upstairs, Cyn following.

  “Larr,” she whispered before they got to the door.

  “Yes?” he asked in quiet tones as well.

  “She thinks Hank did this.”

  “Shit. Thanks.”

  Larry continued inside and found Daphne sitting at her dinner table, looking out the window. “You made them all go away?”

  “Yes, Daphne, I did. We still need to talk to them, though, but only at the station, and only with me present. You don’t need to answer questions right now, or worry about interrogations or them coming to your house. In fact, if a cop even stops you on the street, you call me. Because I won’t stand for that, at all.”

  “Alright,” Daphne said.

  “Now, we need to prepare a statement.”

  “Can Cyn stay here? Please?”

  “Yes, Cyn can stay. But there are two things I take very seriously in this world. One is the club. The other is the client-lawyer relationship. What you say to me will never leave this room through me. To put it bluntly, I won’t even tell Knight if he says I’ll lose my patch if I don’t tell him. And he knows it, too. Cyn is a good person, a great person, and I really like her a lot, but her relationship with you is not protected by law like yours and mine is. It would be very hard, and I would fight them every step of the way, but they could make her answer or go to jail for contempt of court. Which means she stays there until she answers. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Daphne said. Then she looked at Cyn, “I want you to stay, but, if you want to go…”

  “I’m here baby, I’m right here.”

  “Okay, so what is my statement?” Daphne asked.

  “They’ll want to cover at least last night up to this morning. Where you were, what you were doing, things that were said, what time you went to sleep, and what you were doing this morning before you answered the door.”

  “Last night? Should I tell them about the banishing?”

  Larry thought that one through. It was apparently a fine line between client and club, Cyn decided. “If you want to tell them in that much detail, you can, and I don’t think anyone will be upset with you. There was nothing illegal or even immoral going on. But you could also say that you were at the club, weren’t having a good time there, and left, bringing you home at, what? Ten?”

  “About 9:45,” Daphne said. “I checked the clock when I came in, hoping I could go straight to bed.”

  “So, then what happened?” Larry asked, turning on a tape recorder.

  Daphne eyed the tape recorder, but she told her story. “When I got up here, after Cyn dropped me off, Derrick was doing a needle of meth. When he does that, he does a lot of it, so he wasn’t going to sleep, I knew that, and he probably wasn’t going to want sex, either, since he never stays hard when he’s on meth.”

  “I asked if he wanted to talk, and he said he had business to do and now he could do it. He said that we were going to move out of here alright, but not because of the club. And then he laughed, and I really didn’t like that. It wasn’t a funny laugh, like a joke. Not like that at all. Then he told me to go to the bedroom, that he had a phone call to make.

  “So I went to the bedroom, but, hell, I could be in there with the door closed and the pillow over my ears right now trying not to hear this conversation and still be able to tell you everything. But I went, because I didn’t want to wait outside.

  “He got on the phone about a half hour later and he tells the person on the other end that he has a ton of information about what he is doing, everything, he says, and if he wants it, then it will cost $100k.

  “Then he goes outside, and I can hear him talkin, but can’t make out the words. But he is back only five minutes later and he’s really happy. I ask what is going on, and he says he has a meeting to go to, and that I’m not coming. He’ll be back around sunrise. Then he says we are going to pack up and put our stuff in storage and ride out of here in style.

  “I asked him what is he doing? And he says it’s none of my business. He was just evening the score, that’s all. ‘He had his way tonight, now it’s my turn,’ is what he said. So, I think, Hank, he’s going to see Hank with something else he has, something more, or maybe he’s going to tell someone else about him. Anyway, he’s happy, and he’s going through stuff and pulling out files and putting them in a file box and flipping through things. And now I know that the crystal is really kicking in, because he’s tweaking hard on his filing shit, which he does from time to time.

  “Anyway, I was going to wait up until he went to his meeting, thinking he was going to leave soon. But midnight arrives and I say, ‘It’s midnight, Derrick.’ And he nods his head and keeps up with the filing. So, now it’s either do a bit of tweak for me, or go to bed, and I’m just exhausted so I go to bed.

  “Then I wake up to the knocking and the cops are there, that
one detective you talked to outside, and he tells me that Derrick has been murdered out in a clearing somewhere, and then he starts in with the questions. I freak out and call Cyn, who keeps me on the phone and then tells me to tell the police to leave because my lawyer is on the way.”

  Daphne laughed. “And they did, it was funny as hell. Cause here I was so fucking scared of them and they just leave.”

  “Did they say anything else about Derrick’s murder?”