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Copyright © Aliyah Burke 2017. All Rights Reserved, Totally Entwined Group Limited, T/A Totally Bound Publishing.
“Darlin’, if you let me out of these handcuffs I can show you a really good time.” Beauregard Lee Jackson flexed his fingers and rotated his stiff wrists, trying to ease the pain leeching through them at the confines of the metal bracelets he wore. “I’m as much a fan of being tied up as the next man but this isn’t quite fair.”
He sat on the floor, hands behind him securing him to a wall pipe beside an old radiator heater, which thankfully wasn’t running.
Movement from the other room grabbed his attention with the swiftness of a rattler giving a warning about encroaching on his territory. So did the noise emanating from the same space. That was nothing more than the sound of a bullet being chambered into a sidearm. All thoughts of play and sex went out of the window in a flash.
The brunette who’d somehow managed to get him in this predicament peeked her head back around the corner, a smile showing off her overbleached, perfect, straight teeth.
She batted her lashes a few times before she shrugged and glanced down to something only she could see behind the wall. He bet the gun she’d just put a round into. At least it isn’t a shotgun.
“I’ll be right with you, lover. Have you figured out where you know me from yet?”
Looneyville didn’t seem like a good answer so he merely shook his head.
Seriously, I get it, I must have been drugged. But I’m no small man and ain’t no way that little thing carried me up here alone and secured me. She must be working with at least one other person.
Thoughts that didn’t make him any happier. He refocused his attention on the woman who continued to watch him and forced a smooth, sexy smile to cross his features. It’d worked before—he had every belief it would once more.
She clucked her tongue at him and waggled a finger. “Keep thinking. You should know me, easy. I’ll be ready for you in a moment.” A high-pitched giggle, which grated on his taut nerves, escaped her mouth before she vanished from view.
He had a good memory for people he’d met before. However, this one just didn’t seem like anyone whose path he’d crossed. But there were those days in college when he didn’t do much remembering of anything aside from his drink.
Doesn’t matter who she is if her plan is to pump me full of lead and give me lead poisoning. That’s not anything I need. Or want. I’ve still got things to do, women to see and people to kill.
“How about you give me a hint?” he asked, loud enough to cover the sound of him working on loosening the pipe she’d locked him to.
More tittering. She popped back into view. “Well, I can assure you, I didn’t look like this.”
“I would agree. I wouldn’t have forgotten anyone as beautiful as you.” The compliment slipped without thought from his tongue. He tossed them out without care or consideration. Always had, it was part of his nature. He was a flirt.
Her eyes narrowed before she disappeared from his line of sight yet again.
“So beauty is all that matters to you?”
“Not at all, but you are gorgeous.” The bar keeping him there loosened a tiny bit. “Now, come on. At least give me the state I met you in.”
There wasn’t any hint of a foreign accent in her tone so he wondered if she was from this country, but then again, he could have an accent on command so perhaps that wasn’t the best thought.
“I’ve even met our Grams.”
His blood slowed in his veins, much like being turned to tar. Fury raged within him. This psychotic bitch had him handcuffed, was putting bullets into guns, before she went and mentioned his grandmother, Mrs. Maybelle, as if they were discussing the weather? Fuck that. Don’t fuck with family. At least not his.
He swallowed and ensured that his voice betrayed not a single shred of the murderous intent within him. “A lot of people know Grams.”
However, most called her Mrs. Maybelle if they weren’t really close, or preferred to.
“True, but I’ve been in her house. Recently even. We had coffee and pie the other day. I believe it was a chess pie. I got the first slice. At her insistence. She told me she’d not made one in a while. I was glad to have it with her, it was delicious. She’s an amazing cook.”
Five days ago, Grams had made a fresh chess pie. He knew because he’d been on the phone talking to her and she’d mentioned it cooling.
Still not making sense. I’m not even in Georgia right now. I headed out West here to Albuquerque to take my vacation. He had a friend out there who he shared some mutually beneficial bedroom activities with and he’d come out to see her. She was good for a no-strings-attached hookup. And he didn’t want to be tied down with a simpering female who needed more than he cared or was willing to give.
