The Consequence Read online

  Deep sobs erupted, filling her chest before escaping her lips. Hot, sweaty, with every nerve ending in her body on fire, Katy hung helpless in the enigmatic Captain’s arms, knowing there would never be another man on the planet that she trusted enough to do what she had just allowed Simon to do.

  As their breaths finally fell into a normal rhythm, Simon softly asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” she murmured. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His fingers deftly untied the string binding her wrists, and as she worked the kinks out of her shoulders he helped her by rubbing them. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

  Shaking the hair from her face, she smiled sheepishly. “You didn’t do anything to me I didn’t want you to do.”

  “I wish you could have seen the way your ass pinkened each time I spanked it or the way your pussy swelled and glistened with each stroke of my hand.” He caught her lips in a slow kiss. “I’m getting hard again just thinking about it.”

  “Next time, I get to tie you up.”

  “Not going to happen,” he adamantly said.

  She sat back and cocked her head. “I trusted you not to hurt me, Simon, don’t you trust me?”

  “I trust you, Cinderella, it’s just not my thing.”

  “Have you ever tried it?” She prayed he had not.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever spanked a woman before?”

  “You’re my first.”

  She smiled sheepishly. “And you liked it?”

  “I loved how excited it got you.” He smiled. “Have you—”

  “No, I’ve never come close. I’ve never trusted a man the way I trust you, Simon.”

  he shrill ring of the telephone on the kitchen counter yanked them back to reality. When Simon made no move to answer, Katy nudged him.

  “Whoever it is will leave a message or call back,” he hoarsely said.

  When Simon’s deep voice on his voicemail message instructed the caller to leave a message, the frantic voice of a female did just that. “Simon, it’s Mom. Amanda is here and she’s threat—”

  Simon was up and answering the phone in an instant. “What’s going on?”

  Katy could hear the frantic tone of his mother’s voice but not the words. “Ok, settle down, let me talk to her.” Simon’s voice was calm, but measured.

  Suddenly cold, Katy smoothed her skirt back into place and wrapped her arms around herself. Her gaze caught and held Simon’s worried eyes. “Amanda?” he said. Striding toward Kat, he pulled her into the protective embrace of his left arm. That he kept her close to him despite what was going on made her feel wanted and secure.

  “Amanda, stop!” he commanded. “Stop now or I’ll have you 5150’d before you can take two steps out of there.”

  “How dare you!” Amanda shrilled.

  “Try me.”

  He tightened his grip on Kat. There was silence on the other end of the phone, then Simon’s mother spoke again.

  “Simon,” she said. “I need you here.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “Okay. Give me a few minutes and I’ll head over.”

  Katy felt as if the air had been kicked out of her lungs. She didn’t want him to go, but she didn’t want to be selfish either.

  Simon nudged her chin up to look at him. “My mom is fifteen minutes from here. I’ll be back before you know it.” He kissed her soundly on the lips, sprinted up the stairs, and came back down a few minutes later dressed in worn blue jeans, a white tee shirt and running shoes.

  “Don’t go anywhere, princess!” he said over his shoulder as he left the house.

  Two hours later, Simon had not returned and he had not called. She felt foolish. She called a cab, and as they headed north on 101 toward the city, her foolishness turned to anger. This was not how she wanted her life with Simon to be. Always at Amanda’s beck and call. And this was all Amanda’s doing. The wily sister-in-law knew Simon’s mom would call him and he’d leave Katy in order to come running. So who had him now?

  Another hour later Katy stood in front of her building. Still no call from Simon. It had been three hours since he’d left. So much for being right back.

  Overnight bag in hand, bypassing the elevator, Katy walked up the stairway to her apartment. Just as she was about to open her door she remembered the mess the feds had left her apartment in. Not what she wanted to come home to. Expelling a long breath she unlocked her door and prepared to roll up her sleeves and get to work. Instead, she stopped short. Everything in the foyer was in its place. As she walked through her apartment, she smiled. Her entire apartment was spotless. Everything exactly where it should be.

  Only one person had access to her apartment and that same person knew her way around it almost as well as she did. Rosie was the best. Katy jumped in the shower. When she stepped out, dripping wet, she checked her phone; no call from Simon. Scowling, she dried off, threw on a pair of yoga pants and a tee shirt then headed down the hall to her friend’s apartment.

  Rosie’s husband Elliot answered with a smile. “Hello, doll,” he brightly said, reaching out and giving her a big hearty hug. For such a slight man, Elliot gave hugs that rivaled a bear’s.

  “Hi, Elliot,” she said. Smiling against his shoulder, she hugged him back. “Where is that crazy woman you married?”

  He laughed and stepped back. “She’s down at the Co-Op Market, she’ll be back soon.” He ushered her in and closed the door. “I was just fixing myself a chai, would you like one?”

  “No, thank you. I just popped in to thank Rosie for cleaning up my place. I was dreading coming home to that mess.”

  “She was happy to do it. But she cursed your ex every minute she was in there.” He chuckled. “I can’t ever remember my wife wanting to do such gross bodily harm to a person before.”

  Katy shivered wondering how she could have been so blind and foolish. “He deserves it. And he’s going to get his due. Do you know where Rosie put my laptop?”

  “It’s in the potato box in the pantry under the stacked newspaper. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Fix your tea, Elliot, I’ve got it.”

  After digging through the mountain of neatly stacked newspapers, Katy smiled as she pulled her aluminum foil, saran wrapped laptop from the bottom of the box.

  “She thought if the feds came busting in here they’d think it was something other than the obvious,” Elliot explained, rolling his eyes.

  “I should have never asked Rosie to take it. I wasn’t thinking how it could compromise you. I’m sorry.”

  “Not to worry, doll. You’re like a daughter to us. Feds mess with you, they mess with us.” He smiled and raised his tea cup. “Now tell me how you really are.”

  Katy inhaled deeply, and then slowly let it go. “Angry, confused, in love and frustrated.”

  “Whoa, go back to the in love part.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Elliot, I’m sure Rosie told you all about my hot cop. He drives me crazy!”

  “Want me to have a talk with him?”

  “It’s not him; it’s his crazy, widowed sister-in-law. She’s got a thing for him and she’s using her daughter to control him and it’s driving me up the wall.”

  “A good man stands by his family, Katrina.”

  “I know,” she groaned. “I want to be mad at him, I am mad at him, but I’m madder at her.”

  “Tell him how you feel then give him some time and space to come to his own conclusion on how to handle it.”

  “I did, sort of. At least the telling him how I feel part. Not so much the giving him some time and space, but that’s not what he seems to want from me.”

  His grey eyes softened. “Rosie says he’s as dominant and high strung as a stallion. A man like that needs his head and your patience. Pull him back and he’ll bolt for sure.”

  Katy giggled. Stallion? Leave it to Rosie. “He’s um, high strung for sure.” And dominant. Warmth sluiced through her veins. She mi
ssed him. Damn Amanda! Maybe Katy needed to have a heart-to-heart with the wily widow?

  Tucking her laptop under her arm, Katy kissed Elliot’s cheek. “Thank you, Daddy, for the advice. And for keeping an eye on my laptop. And for your amazing wife.”

  “Anytime, doll,” he said.

  Two minutes later as Katy walked into her apartment she heard the Hawaii Five-O ring tone she assigned to Simon. Rushing for her phone, she tripped on the edge of the living room carpet and nearly face planted into the wall. By the time she had recovered, the ring stopped.

  She had several texts from him.

  The first one was ten minutes ago. Where are you?

  Two minutes after that one: Answer the question.

  A minute after that one: You’re pissing me off now.

  Five minutes later: Is this your way of punishing me?

  Damn it Kat, pick up!

  Her voicemail chirped.

  Katy listened to the message Simon just left. “Katrina, I have enough bullshit to deal with at the moment, I don’t need you playing evasive games with me right now. When I call you, I expect you to answer.” He hung up.

  For a long minute Katy stood staring in disbelief at her phone. The simmering anger from his texts overflowed with his voicemail. Was she expected to be at his beck and call? She wasn’t some trained bitch to drop whatever she was doing when he snapped his fingers, damn it! He was the one who left, said he’d be right back and here it was nearly four hours later and he was just now calling her?

  Bull. Angrily, she texted him: For your information, Simon I was down the hall NOT ‘punishing’ you. Excuse me for not taking my electronic leash with me!

  That was all the explanation he was going to get. She tossed her phone onto the sofa, picked up her laptop and strode into the kitchen where she set it down on the table and began to unwrap it.

  She ignored the chirps of her cellphone alerting her to numerous texts. Grrr, finally she got up, strode into the living room, picked the cell up from the sofa where she had tossed it, and without looking at what he wrote she texted: NOW I’m punishing you. Not for abandoning me, but for your bullying texts and voicemail!

  A minute later Simon’s ring tone alerted her. “Hello,” she curtly said, wishing she had the will to completely ignore him.

  “Where are you?” his deep angry voice demanded. Just hearing him, despite her frustration, sent shivers bouncing along her skin. She envisioned him standing in his kitchen, his tight ass wrapped in those snug jeans, barefoot and shirtless. Her body parts tingled. It was hard to stay mad at Captain West.

  “My kitchen.”

  “Why did you leave?” he softly asked. His husky voice had changed from angry to concerned and with it she melted a little more.

  “Why didn’t you come back?” She threw at him.

  “I had a lot to straighten out.”

  So did she. “I have a lot to do to prepare for Veronica.”

  “Liar.”

  Running her fingers through her damp hair, Katy sat down on the sofa. “Simon, I do have a lot to do, and so do you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think—I want us to take a few days to collect ourselves and regroup.”

  “I’m collected.”

  “I’m not.”

  “So you’re going to turn into Houdini again?”

  Her spine stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means when the going gets tough, Katrina Winslow disappears.”

  “Don’t even pretend to know me that well, Simon!”

  “I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “You’re arrogant to think so!”

  “Am I?”

  “Knowing how I like to come doesn’t mean you know the essence of who I am.”

  “Oh, there you are very wrong, princess. Knowing how you like to come exposes your essence.” His voice dropped several octaves. “And I love your essence.”

  “It’s just sex.”

  “It’s much more than sex, don’t try to pretend it isn’t.”

  “Ok, it’s really good sex.”

  “Is that all I am to you then, a good time?”

  She wanted to be so much more to him. “You know you’re more than that.”

  “Then let me up.”

  “Go home, Simon.”

  “Where you are is home.”

  er heart lurched against her chest. Katy closed her eyes fortifying herself against Simon’s potent persuasion. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t use words like that to get under my skin.”

  “I mean them. Now buzz me up or I’ll kick this damn door in.”

  He would too. She buzzed him up.

  She couldn’t remember if she locked her front door or not. Just as she walked toward it, Simon strode in with a garment bag over his shoulder and a small leather duffel in his right hand. He tossed both onto the Dante divan, shut the door soundly behind him, locked it then turned cagey eyes on her. “When I tell you to stay put, you stay put.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  He stalked closer, like a panther watching, taunting, anticipating his prey to bolt so that he could chase it down and ravish it.

  “I can. You know why? You like it.”

  “Not in everything.”

  “No, just everywhere that counts.”

  Warmth infused her nether parts. “Don’t touch me, Simon,” she cautioned as she backed up. She needed to know she could control him and herself.

  “I’m not going to lay a finger on you.”

  Her chest rose and fell in shallow heaves. She swallowed. “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  She swallowed hard again. “Good, because I have work to do.”

  He looked past her to the laptop. “You’re breaking the law by having that.”

  “So arrest me,” she challenged.

  His green eyes blazed. “I should.”

  She held out her arms, wrists together. “I dare you.”

  “Do you want me to cuff you and take you in?”

  “Cuff me, maybe...” She hid her smile when Simon’s eyes dilated at her words. She didn’t know why she taunted him except that she never had a real say in what happened between them. Even sadder, she wasn’t sure she even wanted one and that couldn’t be healthy.

  “Taunt me with one and I’ll do both.”

  She shook her head and dropped her arms, disappointed that he didn’t turn her around, hook her up, bend her over the sofa and have his way with her. The image her mind conjured, of him roughly taking her from behind as she dug her nails into the sofa fabric, shook her. Breathless she said, “No you won’t.” If he did, it would only prove that when it came to sex with Simon West, Katy was powerless to resist him. Did it matter that she was angry or hurt? Apparently not.

  “When it comes to you, Cinderella, I never know what I’m going to do until I do it.”

  “Me either.” Sucking in a deep breath she exhaled in a slow measured breath.

  He smiled his wickedest smile. “It seems like we have the same problem when it comes to keeping our hands off each other.”

  “I hate that even when I want to smack you, I want you to pin me up against the wall and…” Her cheeks heated.

  He moved in so close the warmth of his body cocooned her. But he didn’t touch her. “And what?”

  Digging her fingers through her hair, Katy moved away from him. “Everything, damn it!” she cried. Then softly, “Everything.” Feeling vulnerable by her addict-grade attraction to him, she whirled around and heatedly said, “I don’t want to end up like Amanda!” Oh, my God, she’d actually said that.

  He scowled. “If you mean a widow, I’m not planning on dying any time soon.”

  “Oh, my God Simon, that’s not what I meant! I don’t want you to drop me like yesterday’s news. Ever! I don’t want to grovel or become a pathetic excuse for a woman when you do.”

 
His eyes darkened to a stormy jade. “I didn’t drop Amanda because we were never a thing to start with.”

  “What were you then?”

  “She was a one night stand that turned into a two night stand. I never made her one single promise. She knew from the start I wasn’t looking for a relationship.”

  “Just a hook up?”

  “Yes.”

  “You seem to hook up with a lot of women who can’t accept that you’ve moved on, Simon. I don’t want to be part of that club.”

  “So you think you’re going to cut me loose before I do it to you?”

  She cringed at his abrupt words. But she made a spur of the moment decision and nodded. “Yes.” She did not want to become an Amanda clone. And she would, hell, she already was one. Ha, and here she’d thought she had come so far in the self-respect department. She’d regressed.

  He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her hard against his chest. “The hell you are. We’re going to ride this one out together, princess, and if that ride takes us around the world and we’re still crazy about each other then we’ll go again and again until we both want off.”

  “What if I never want off?”

  He stared at her. When he didn’t respond, she put it all on the line.

  “I want a family, Simon, not an E ticket ride at Disneyland.”

  Slowly he grinned. “Stick with me, kid, and maybe I’ll give you both.”

  Katy’s belly plummeted. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, I want what you want and I’m willing to give it a shot, but I don’t want to rush things.”

  “But what if someone better than me comes along?” Ugh, did she just say that? How embarrassing.

  “There’s no one better for me than you.” His grip loosened and his big hands slid down her back to rest on her ass cheeks. “Now, if you don’t back up and crack open that laptop, I am going to pin you against that wall and do everything to you.”

  She returned his smile. “Maybe that’s what I want you to do.”

  “Maybe I do, too, but right now, I want to help you put together the information you promised Veronica.”