She leaned over him, holding the phone to his ear until he could pin it against his shoulder.

He cleared his throat to stop from laughing. “Hello?”

“You stupid son of a bitch! Tell me that woman doesn’t have you handcuffed to her bed!”

Mace should have been mad his sister yelled at him like a child, but with Dez kissing his neck and rubbing his nipples, he found it really hard to care.

“Is there a reason you called, because she’s getting awfully insistent. And I must obey all her commands.” Dez snorted as she moved down his chest. His sister became deathly quiet.

“What the hell does that mean, Mason?”

“That I’m the bottom to her top. The sub to her dom. The slave to her master.” Dez began laughing so hard she rolled off Mace and right out of bed.

“Please tell me you’re kidding?”

“I can’t. I can’t tell you anything. Not unless she tells me I can.”

He stifled his own laughter as Dez’s became more intense.

He could hear Missy’s attempts to calm herself down. “Mason Rothschild Llewellyn…I will talk to you another time.”

“Well, only if she’ll let me talk to you another time—” He heard the click from the other end.

Okay. Even he had to admit that was one of the best moments ever. He released the phone, grabbed it with his teeth, and tossed it across the room.

“Get your ass up here, Desiree. Now.”

She crawled back up onto the bed, but she laughed so hard she’d begun to cry. She barely managed to get back on his chest. Then she buried her head in his neck, her entire body shaking with laughter. Christ, he could be like this until next Tuesday. He wasn’t even sure she’d be able to find the key to let him loose. He shrugged. Looked like he’d be bed shopping come December twenty-sixth.

Chapter Eight

M ace woke up to a cold, wet snout in his ear. He growled and snapped. Dez’s two dogs charged out of the room, leaving a lovely trail of piss in their wake. Great. Something else he had to clean up himself. Mace sat up and glanced at the dresser. Her badge and gun were gone.

Dammit, where was that woman? She kept disappearing on him. He knew she wasn’t in the house. He always knew when she was around. He could sense her, feel her. So the question became where the hell did she go this time?

Sliding out of the battered bed—the bed frame another replacement he had to make—he quickly found something to clean the floor and then jumped in the shower. He just finished washing his hair, which now reached to his shoulders, when it suddenly occurred to him where Dez may have gone.

The one place where she could get herself killed.

Dez watched as Mace stormed out of her house, down the front steps, and headed…somewhere. Maybe he decided to bail. Thinking he could finallymake a run for it. Ah, who the hell am I kidding? She knew Mace wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. If she wanted him gone, she’d have to do it herself. Part of her wanted to make that happen too. Before she got in too deep. Another part—the one attached to her heart—kept telling her to back the hell off. Her heart wanted Mace to hang around for as long as she could keep him. But how long could she keep him once she started working again? When she got late-night calls about a murder they wanted her on? Or when she had to leave in the middle of dinner? Or she missed his birthday? How long would he put up with that?

She remembered her ex-husband’s words as clearly as if he were saying them right in her ear at that very moment. “You just aren’t pretty enough to put up with this kind of shit, Desiree.”

Mace spotted her SUV. He stopped and stared at it. She found it fascinating to watch him move. He’d been right, of course. She always knew he was a predator. That he wasn’t quite human. She’d known it deep in her bones.

He sniffed the air, then spun around, his eyes locking on her. With a growl, he stormed over to her as she calmly sipped her coffee.

“You’re making me crazy!”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t ya think I know that?” Mace sat down on the stoop beside her, his thigh barely touching hers. She suddenly wanted to crawl into his lap and let him hold her, but she had never been good with public displays of affection. Mostly because she didn’t know how to do it.

“I thought you’d gone back.”

“Gone back where?”

“To that club from last night.”

“The one with the hyenas?” Had the man lost his mind? “Wow, I didn’t know I had ‘stupid idiot’ tattooed on my forehead.”

He smiled and she immediately became wet at the sight of it. “Not stupid idiot. Big, bad cop.”

“No way, cat. They tried to kill me once. Why would I push my luck? Besides, vice squad’s raiding them as we speak.”

Mace closed his eyes and gave a deep sigh. “You didn’t.”

“Oh, I fuckin’ did.” She took another sip of her coffee. “They can probably only close it for a night or two, but it will still give me such joy.”

“You’re crazy.”

“There’s no hard evidence of that.”

Mace suddenly lifted her arm up and stretched out, his head in her lap. He placed her hand on his head. “Stroke away, baby.”

She put down her coffee and started laughing. It seemed she didn’t have to know how to show affection. Mace would command her. Actually, that kind of worked for her. If she wasn’t in the mood, she could always roll his ass down the stairs.