Page 19 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions (Till Death Do Us Part #7)

Chapter Nine

Holly

I barely tasted the sweet and tangy flavor of my drink. My entire body was focused on the special agent crowded around me.

After we’d watched the agent and his partner outside my high school the day Christopher’s body had been discovered, Jason had gotten a dossier on him.

Special Agent Shawn “Mal” Mallory was thirty-seven.

He’d graduated from the University of Juneau with a Bachelor of Criminal Justice in 2007.

He joined the FBI, living in Quantico, Virginia, from 2008 to 2011, when he finally received his requested transfer back home to Alaska.

He’d been working out of the field office in Juneau since, but traveled all around the state for various cases.

He’d often had to visit the other FBI headquarters in Fairbanks.

His current department was Violent Crimes, though he’d worked in the White Collar and Organized Crime divisions over the years.

What I found most impressive was his need to solve a case because he’d gotten the right criminal over solving the case to close it.

He’d filed more than one report over the years to complain about a fellow agent jumping to conclusions or harassing a suspect without substantial proof.

That took a lot of balls, in my opinion.

The morning after my attack, Jason had found me barricaded inside the drama department’s pillory.

I’d been bloody, cold, and in such a state of shock that I didn’t fully remember being taken out of my bondage.

I recalled the ambulance ride. Atelihai Valley was small but we had a hospital that was shared with other towns inside the peninsula.

Parker Shah and Cordelia Young were the two responding EMTs who brought me to the hospital. Dr. Peter Sorgin and Roberta Quinn were the emergency room doctor and nurse team who admitted me.

Principal Hagley and Sheriff Renfrew had seen me before my own parents had. They persuaded all four of the medical staff members to pretend my injuries were not so horrid, to lose my rape kit, and/or forget my existence. All for a fucking high school hockey tournament.

One look at Agent Mallory’s dossier and I’d known in a heartbeat that he never would have stood by and allowed my attack to go unpunished. But I also knew that that punishment would be within the limits of the law.

As I stared into the agent’s dark green eyes, I understood why he had a reputation at work for being a hard-ass.

There was a natural confidence in him that I’d trained years to get.

It was obvious why Jason had taken one look at him outside my old high school and knew from a distance that this man was a Dominant.

It oozed off of him like a cologne of pure sex appeal.

I was a sexual submissive. I’d learned that about myself years ago when I’d first talked to Jason about wanting to try to have sex again.

The first time I’d come to the club I’d been so enamored with the pole dancer on stage that I’d barely registered the submissives on their knees or the Dominants standing over them.

It had taken a few times of me visiting after I’d turned twenty-one to fully register the significance of where I was and what Jason was trying to show me.

I knew immediately that being a Domme was not for me.

It wasn’t because I wasn’t strong enough or didn’t have the spine.

Being Dominant was about so much more than giving orders or showing strength.

Jason was showing me the courage it took to kneel .

The option to let go and give myself over to someone else so entirely that I gave them the honor of my body in exchange for pleasure. A true power exchange.

When I’d explored my sexuality, though, I still needed Jason’s presence.

While I’d never been up in the private rooms before, I had had a few trysts with Doms in dark corners or been flogged against the wall.

Jason made it clear to any Doms that approached me that I was not to be bound or taken from behind.

And yet, I’d allowed this special agent before me now to bend me over the dance pole and fuck me from behind with only a simple sentence spoken between us.

The fact that I’d orgasmed with him still baffled me.

Jason had called me out a few times for faking an orgasm just to end the experience with a Dom instead of using my safe word.

Submissive though I was, I was not a brat. I knew plenty of subs who were. I saw them being defiant because they and their Dom got off on the punishment that would follow. Punishments were not my forte. I took pain because I could but I did not get off on it.

So then why had I taken a drink when the moisture growing between my legs told me how much I wanted this man to fuck me again?

He clucked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, shaking his head slightly. “Naughty Little Owl. Your ass is going to pay for that small sip in a big way.”

I lifted my head up. The Dirty Shirley had done nothing for me anyway, but he didn’t need to know that.

Swiveling the stool around, I put my back to the bar.

He also didn’t need to know that I had two knives in my belt at the small of my back.

They blended in with the leather, but he was trained to notice such things.

Shawn Mallory was a big guy. Muscle to muscle, he was larger than Jason’s more compact build.

I was able to turn myself around with my right knee crossed over my left leg without him needing to stand up from his crouched position.

It put our bodies extremely close together and my right knee brushing his groin. His bulging groin, I noticed.

His white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealed the hint of ink beneath.

The maroon tie around his neck was loose and damn if my palm wasn’t inching to grab hold of it.

Black slacks, boots, and a belt adorned his lower half.

I did not see a gun or a badge anywhere on his person, which was likely because of where we were.

Weapons were not allowed inside the club, nor was anything that could be considered identification.

I was breaking the rules by having the knives inside my belt, but what Valentino didn’t know didn’t hurt him.

“Who said your hand is going anywhere near my ass?” I asked him. I specifically left off the title of ‘Sir’, since he was neither my Master nor my lover. Also, there was a part of me that seemed to enjoy seeing that shadowed jawline tick.

Perhaps there was a bit of a brat in me after all.

He leaned closer and I caught a hint of mint on his breath. “Who said it was my hand I’ll be using?”

Our noses were right in front of the other and it wasn’t until his just barely brushed the hooked nose of my mask that I remembered I was wearing it.

I knew from catching my reflection in my rearview mirror that I was wearing my blonde wig but I couldn’t remember what color contacts I’d put in.

Regardless of color, they weren’t my own.

He wasn’t looking at me .

Since the day Jason had walked me out of that fucking asylum my parents had dumped me in, I’d been wearing colored contacts and wigs. It was how I was able to walk in and out of my victims’ lives without them knowing I was around. After today, I wondered if that had even been necessary.

Christopher might have recognized my face the first day I’d revealed myself in the bunker, but he hadn’t remembered my name. None of them had, or they would have corrected him.

Jason was the only person who called me by my name and even that was shortened to ‘Hols’ most of the time. I had no friends to give a fake name to. All my family was dead. Really, the only place who had a name for me was this club and they called me ‘Dani’.

No one saw me .

I truly was forgotten.

Ironic, because it was all I wanted in high school. To be invisible, to fade into the background. To be left alone with my books and my studies. What would my life be like now if that fucking day had never happened?

Why did it bother me so much that this man wasn’t looking at me ?

Despite my mask, he clearly saw the change in my demeanor.

He immediately stood up. In the span of a second, he went from being domineering and provocative to protective and defensive.

He was searching all around, using reflections and his peripheral vision to check for the danger that had triggered me while keeping his gaze on mine.

When he registered that there was nothing but him that could have prompted my reaction, he took an intentional step back.

Holding his hands out to the sides in a universal sign of showing he was unarmed and not a threat, he said in a cool, smooth voice, “I apologize, Little Owl. I will not touch you or hurt you. You have my word.”

He didn’t understand that it wasn’t his promise of punishment that had triggered me, but the depth in which he was staring into my eyes. But it wasn’t like I could explain that to him. Saying “it’s not you, it’s me” was clichéd and so fucking lame.

I also couldn’t let him believe he’d done something wrong.

Sure, he was the special agent that was currently investigating two of the murders I’d committed and would likely have a third on his hands soon, depending on what Jason did with Sam’s body, but that wasn’t a reason to be cruel to him.

I’d initiated our flirting, if you could even call it that, when I’d taken a sip of my drink.

And as soon as he’d seen the change in me, he’d backed off. There’d been no hesitation on his part, nor had he tried to coax me back to where we’d been. He’d moved to protect me until he realized he was the cause. Well, not really him.

Fuck, I was such a head case.

I slowly stood up off of the stool. Wow, he was tall. Even in my stiletto boots, he still had several inches on me. There were thirteen inches between us without my heels.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I told him truthfully. “It was the way you were looking at me, like you could see into me .” My cheeks reddened and I looked away. “No one’s ever bothered to look before.”

I heard his boots on the vinyl planking slowly approach.

He bent so his face was in front of mine, even with my head turned.

Carefully, he raised his hand. He moved like a trainer trying to tame a wild horse.

I watched him hesitate just before touching my skin and understood he was waiting on a signal from me.

I lowered my arms, not realizing I’d had them circled around my middle, and nodded to him. His calloused fingers trailed from the left side of my chin to my right before gently guiding my head to face forward again.

We stood like that for a long moment, me looking up and him looking down. His dark green eyes to my fake shading. It was as if he was trying to prove to me without words that he was looking. Maybe it was wishful thinking that he liked what he saw.

He dipped his head lower. A small gasp escaped my mouth.

As a general rule, I didn’t kiss the guys I was with.

It was too…intimate. I didn’t want to be that close with a man.

Fucking was one thing, but a kiss? The couple of times I had kissed guys, when I’d first tried dating, it had ended badly.

I’d killed one because he’d gotten handsy without my permission.

In my defense, who grabbed a girl’s pussy on the first date during a first kiss?

A dead man, that’s who.

But I wouldn’t learn what it was going to be like to kiss Special Agent Shawn Mallory. At least, not today.

A shadow fell over me and I flicked my eyes to the left to see a very pissed off Jason standing next to us.