She frowned. “And I turned into a bridezilla who wouldn’t even listen when my best friend tried to save me.”
“She’s going to get spanked for that,” Dominic said.
“Annabelle? Why on earth would you spank her?” Kinley asked. “She meant well. Besides, I don’t think Eric, Kellan, and Tate would like that.”
“It’s not Annabelle I’m planning to spank. But to your point, we went to visit her on the job because we thought her help would be valuable. Having lawyers on our side was a perk, too. You wouldn’t believe what those three put us through before we were even allowed to sit down and talk to Annabelle.” Dominic shook his head.
“Why didn’t you just go straight to her?”
Law scowled. “Because we honor the rights of other Doms, and it was obvious they’re planning to stake their claim on her.”
“Doms?”
Riley finally looked up. “Dominants. BDSM. You know.”
“BS what?” Kinley asked, wearing a look of pure confusion on her face.
Dominic raised a dark brow, almost amused. “I thought you read romances. Doesn’t every female walking the face of the earth have a deeply romantic vision of BDSM by now? It’s a catch-all term for bondage, dominance, submission, and masochism. It’s what we started teaching you yesterday.”
“I’m the submissive. And you three are the Dominants. And Annabelle is a submissive, too? Does she know that? Because I think she would have told me. I know she would have told me if she had three Doms. She tells me everything. She called the other day to let me know she was out of sugar. I was three states over so there was nothing I could do, but she told me anyway. She would have mentioned if there was some backside slapping going on.”
“Oh, something’s going on there,” Law swore. “They haven’t claimed her yet, but they’re definitely watching over her. In our world, that means they have certain rights. One of those is the right to protect her. After we took you, they completely forbade her from doing or saying anything that might give the appearance that she was an accomplice. Annabelle was allowed to talk to us shortly after we arrived here only because she was beyond worried about you and about to lose her mind. Other than that, the lawyers made sure to leave everything to us. Her men don’t know you well enough to trust that you wouldn’t want a little revenge and throw Annabelle to the wolves if everything went bad.”
“She’s my best friend. God, she’s just about the only person in my life I can trust now.” She sniffled. “After everything that’s happened, she’s my only family. I would never hurt her. And if those three lawyers think they can take all kinds of rights and stuff without giving her anything back, then they should know that I have a shotgun. I don’t know how to use it, but I can take a class. In fact, I just might shoot my sister first. I’ll need a little practice.”
“Whoa, there, warrior princess,” Law said with a laugh. “If we do this right, your sister is going to jail. You’re going to have to be satisfied with seeing her in an orange jumpsuit. Is your sister bisexual by any chance?”
Kinley threw up her hands. “I have no idea. I wouldn’t put anything past her at this point.”
“Well, she should think about shifting her orientation if she’s not because I suspect she won’t be lonely in prison.”
Dominic watched Kinley, studying her. She looked so young and innocent without a hint of makeup on her face. She was wearing a light sweater and a pair of those blinged out jeans she’d brought with her. She’d obviously foregone the bra, and since Law had been supervising her all morning, Dominic assumed she’d followed the no-underwear rule. Otherwise, they were going to spank her and hard because he had no notion how else to defuse the tension clogging the room.
The anxiety blended with the light hum of sexuality and hung over all of them. The hard truth was they would soon have to leave this place and reenter the real world—where Kinley had a completely different life and they worked all over the globe. Dominic had no idea how—or if—their relationship could work, and he was pretty sure that neither Kinley nor Riley did, either. Law, he suspected, would tender his resignation before leaving her, but he wasn’t thinking of the long term. Kinley was actually about to be out of money. Her charity’s funds would be tied up in court for years most likely, and she would be involved in a whole lot of legalities. Law couldn’t take care of her and all those expenses if he was working as a mall cop.
They had to convince her to come with them.
Starting now.
“The other day, you asked me for an exchange, pet. Are you still interested?”
Kinley turned to him, frowning. “What?”
“An exchange. You offered information for sexual knowledge. I want to teach you about our lifestyle and what it can offer you.”
“I don’t think this is the time, Dominic.”
“We don’t have anything else to do while we wait on the feds, unless you want to watch Riley play with his keyboard all day.”
Riley’s middle finger shot up. “I’m doing more than playing with my keyboard.”
“All right,” Dominic conceded. “Tell me, what can you really accomplish by examining all these files now?”
Riley groaned. “Not as much as I’d like. I need to get into Jansen’s systems, but he’s protected himself. They’re shut down right now. I hope to fuck he’s not destroying them as we speak.”
“We can’t do anything about that until the feds get back to us. So we need some way to occupy our time,” Law drawled. “Any ideas?”
He thrust his hands in Kinley’s hair and lowered his lips to her, kissing her hard. He winked at her as he came back up for air.
“I’m not sure I can figure out what he was transporting with the information in front of me.” Riley sounded really disappointed about that.
Dominic understood. “But we’re not leaving here until we’ve pieced everything together with the feds and we think the case is pretty tight. Until then, we’re holed up, pet, and I can’t think of anything I would rather do than take you up on your offer.”
Law rubbed her arm, his whole body relaxing. “You gave us the information we need.”
“Not exactly. Riley found it,” she pointed out.
“On your tablet. So now it’s our turn.” Dominic had some very specific things he wanted to teach her. “Unless you’re still sore. If that’s the case, we can simply talk for a while.”