I step out of the car and look up at the building in front of us, and I furrow my eyebrows before a smile crosses my lips.

“I know this place,” I say simply.

“I’m sure you do,” she says back with irritation in her voice as she marches toward the doors. “Don’t suppose you have your hands around this place too, do you?”

“No,” I admit, admiring the large building as I follow her at a slower pace. “I have no ties to brothels, Officer.”

She rolls her eyes at me and rings the doorbell as I approach.

“I must admit, I’m surprised to hear that you do, though,” I add, quirking an eyebrow at her. She doesn’t look at me, but she frowns, crossing her arm as she’s waits for someone to answer.

I’m mostly surprised because this brothel is outside the Las Vegas metropolitan area, meaning it’s outside her jurisdiction. She seems like she knows this place, but she can’t have been working vice here.

The door finally opens, and the smell of perfume wafts out to overwhelm us both. A middle-aged woman with red hair steps out and recognizes Nicole immediately, her face brightening up and her arms spreading out.

“Oh my god, Nicole, good to see you! Come here, honey,” she gushes, and Nicole meets her in a friendly hug.

“Hey, Krystal,” Nicole replies. “Is Mama Daisy in?”

“Sure is,” she says, holding the door open wider. “Come on in. Who’s your friend?” She looks me up and down apprehensively, then glances between the two of us.

“A friend,” she says curtly, and Krystal just raises her eyebrows, not looking like she wanted to pry further.

We don’t have to look for the house manager very long. Within a few seconds, a tall woman in a fetching white coat appears around the corner of the hallway and seems as happy to see Nicole as Krystal was.

“Nicky, honey!” she says, stepping forward and taking her hands, kissing her on each cheek. “Oh, here I thought I’d seen the last of you.”

“I’m not that easy to shake,” she says with a nervous laugh. “How is everything?”

“Honey, business is booming, but I won’t bore you with the details. What brings you back around these parts?”

As I step in after Nicole and Krystal closes the door behind us, I get a better look at the place. It’s classy, but not too over-the-top ritzy. I’ve never actually been inside. The walls are a dark purple, and the floors are black and shining. Dim red lights glow along the walls, and of course, it wouldn’t be a brothel without erotic paintings lining every bit of free space on those purple walls. The occasional lavish red curtain hangs here and there for dramatic effect, and in the main lobby beyond us, I can see a big chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

“Kind of a long story,” she admits, earning a sympathetic smile from the manager. “I’d love to catch up a little, but first, I was wondering if my friend and I could borrow a room for the night? I’ve got some cash on me, and-”

“Oh, go off with your cash!” Daisy says with a laugh, waving a hand. “Of course you can have a room, no charge. It’s going to be a slow night tonight, it’ll give the girls something to chat about,” she adds with a knowing wink in my direction.

“Thanks,” Nicole says warmly as Krystal hurries to get us a room key and tosses it to Nicole.

“Room 204,” she says briskly. “Come find me when the two of you have had a chance to settle in, hm?”

“Of course, Madame,” I say in a low rumble with a smile, and the manager giggles and winks at Nicole, who looks mortified.

“Come on,” she grumbles at me, and I follow her up the stairs.

“So,” I start once we’re trudging up carpeted wooden stairs to the second floor. The scent of perfume only gets stronger the higher we get, and the colors on the walls and paintings seem to pop all the more. “How does a woman like you get so cozy with a place like this? Do they know…?”

“No,” she says in a low but sharp voice, casting a glance over her shoulder. I meant to ask whether the brothel knows she’s a cop, and she picked up on that. “I knew this place before I took my current job.”

“My my,” I say as we reach the second floor and head toward our room. “You become a more interesting woman each time we speak.”

“Not like that,” she groans, and she sticks the key into the keyhole to get the heavy door open. “My best friend in college, Trish, she started working here for a while. I hated the idea, so I followed her and rented a room for a week to keep an eye on things.”

She cracks the door open, and the interior is everything you would expect. The bed is huge and covered in red sheets, the floors and walls are a richer hue of purple, and the bedframe is painted gold. There’s a sink in the corner of the room, and the place smells like a mixture of an expensive perfume store and a dive bar.

I shut the door behind us, and the solid click tells me it’s soundproof.

“Aw, you played babysitter?” I tease.

“Not exactly,” she says gruffly. “As you can see, I... kind of fell in love with the place. The people here are nice,” she admits with a smile as she crosses the room to the sink and splashes a little water in her face. “I decided that as long as my friend was being safe and sticking to the right people, I’d support her, and I ended up making a lot of friends here.”

“That’s very charitable of you, Officer Burns,” I say with emphasis on the last bit, and she winces.

“Seriously, keep quiet about that here. Please?” she asks, and I chuckle.

“Don’t want to lose your street cred, eh?”

“My friends and family are important to me.”

My teasing smile grows more sincere, and I step closer to her, lowering my voice.

“I meant what I said, by the way. In the car. I had nothing to do with your sister being taken. I was informed about it, though, after it happened.”

She furrows her eyebrows at me, and I take out the envelope I received in jail and spread out the contents on top of the drawers.

“See here,” I say, “these pictures line up to what’s written in the letters. It’s a coded message. I got it not long before the hearing. I assumed some of my men were taking initiative and acting without my orders. I never gave word to make this happen.”

She examines the pictures, narrowing her eyes. “What does it say?”

“It says your little sister has been successfully taken, that she is safe and being treated well, and she is being held for ransom at a secure location. The kidnappers have already made contact with you, and gotten their message across. This is not a ransom for money. It is a ransom for a favor. I thought that favor was to release me. Now... I’m not so sure.”

“That makes sense, but give me a reason to believe you.”

I smile. She never loses her edge.

“Besides admitting weakness and having no reason to lie to you? If I had her taken, I’d have no reason to keep her in hiding after what you did for me. I’m a man who repays his debts.” I smile wolfishly. “You lied on the stand for me. If it were in my power, your sister would be returned to you with a fat stack of cash for her trouble.”

“You’re a devil,” she says, smirking at me and turning to face me. I return it.

“A devil who’s grateful,” I say in a husky tone, and I take a step closer to her. She doesn’t step back, but her shining eyes look up at me meaningfully.

The adrenaline from the car chase is still pumping through our veins, and I know she can feel it in her pounding heart. We’ve both been through a lot the past couple days, and I haven’t had any privacy in jail.

The look on her face says a thousand words that all contradict each other. Part of her wants to shoot me, and part of her wants to kiss me.

“I’ve been taken advantage of too,” I say in a deep whisper. “And I don’t appreciate it. Through it all, one person has offered me help: you. The one person who I should hate the most,” I add, taking her chin between my thumb and forefinger.

Her lip curls up, and her eyes get lidded. “Thinking of taking your chance?” she asks. “Take me down right here in a soundproof room, get my gun from me, take the car keys, and rocket off out of state?”

“Not a bad plan,” I admit. “But I have a better one.”

I wrap my hands around her hips and press a kiss into her. She gasps, pressed back against the wardrobe, and I lean into her.

It’s hot and fierce, and as soon as we’re together again, it’s like something dormant comes back to life. The room is silent except for our groaning, but our bodies feel like they’re on fire.

She twists and squirms, and I think she’s trying to get away, but I realize she’s working her shirt off. I help her with the buttons and slide the blouse off, and I waste no time in getting her bra unhooked and tossing it aside as well.

With her breasts free, I pick her up and roughly toss her onto the bed a second before I’m on top of her.

There’s no need to take things slow or pace ourselves. We both know we want each other, and god knows I need the release. My touch on her is rough and animalistic. I grope her breasts as we kiss again, and my tongue invades her mouth. In jail, the touch of a woman is something that makes you long for release more than anything. It consumes your thoughts when you let yourself get idle.

“I thought about you while I was in there,” I growl once our kiss breaks and my mouth goes to her ear. “All that time, you knew you were the last person I was with. You liked that, didn’t you?”

“Maybe I did,” she gasps, a smile forming on that mouth of hers.

“And you call me the devil,” I growl, and I pinch her nipple. She gasps, and I reach around her back and slide my hand down until I feel metal.

Her eyes spring open when she realizes I’m holding her gun.

For a split second, the thought of taking advantage of this situation crosses my mind. She was right, it should be what I do. She took advantage of me in bed last time, so this is only fair payback. We lock eyes for a moment, then I slide the pistol out and set it on the nightstand.

“I’m surprised,” she says, a faint smile crossing her lips.

“I am too,” I say, and I silence her with a kiss. I put my hands to her face, cupping her head as I relish the feeling of her soft lips against mine, and I grind my cock against her skirt.

The feeling of her skirt against me alone is enough to set me off. My cock is rock-hard and threatening to burst from my pants as I grind against her until her skirt is bunched up past her thighs.

I reach down to her panties and tug them down. She thrusts her hips up to let me get them down past her knees, then off her legs altogether. Once they’re out of sight, I don’t even check to see where they ended up before I pull her whole body to the edge of the bed and shove my face between her legs.

My grip around her hips is tight, and I don’t give her a single moment to prepare before I bring my face to her pussy.

Her scent is heady and full of need, and I’ve never craved anything in my life like I’ve craved her. I let my tongue out and let it roll over the warm surface of her lips, and I taste that she’s almost ready.

“I’ve been on your mind too, it seems,” I growl, and she tries to clench her legs around my head.

“Fuck you,” she gasps, but there’s mirth in her voice, and I grin before I let my tongue touch her pussy again.

I go deeper this time, then deeper, and each time I part her lower lips with my tongue, I feel her body responding to me sweetly. She twitches and gets hotter, her hips twist this way and that, and her legs squirm, but my hands have an iron grip on her. I let her move, but only enough that she knows who’s in control.

Once I start really tasting the honey that she starts giving me, I can’t hold myself back. The tip of my tongue darts to her clit, and once it starts striking it, I don’t stop. I go again and again and again, pushing her soft lips apart to get to that sensitive nub that electrifies her every time I toy with it.

It’s like I have a key to turning her senses up, and I’m relentless with it.

It isn’t long before I feel her start to get tense, a tension that starts right above the nub I’m torturing and runs all the way up her abdomen.

I tighten my grip around her hips, and she puts her hands into my hair to hold on tight as she arches her back.

“God, god, Misha, ohhh!” Each word comes with a breath of pure desire, and each syllable pushes her closer to the edge. My tongue lashes out again and again until I feel the tension reaching its breaking point.

Nicole tosses her head back, and her legs wrap around my head as she throws her own head back and lets out a long, desperate gasp of release. My face feels wet, and I my chest groans as I let out a long, low rumble.

She hasn’t even finished coming when I stand up from her. She opens her eyes, panting and looking up to me desperately with pleading eyes.

I kick my shoes off, and my pants come next. My cock sticks straight out, bulging and ribbed with veins that long to be inside her.

I run my hand up and down my shaft, and I feel like a vessel that’s utterly full and ready to pour itself out. And the look in Nicole’s eyes tells me she’s more than ready to be that vessel for me.

I crawl onto the bed on my knees, and she crawls back until she’s at the headboard — a large panel with a red cushion to pad it. She puts her arms over her head and holds on tight to the fake gold as I reach her, clasp her hips, and enter her.

There’s no hesitation, no caution, and no inhibitions. I thrust myself up into her, raw, and she receives me like a welcome guest, slick and hot and wet as I remember her when she was Misty to me.

She lets out a delighted sigh as soon as I’m inside her, but I silence that with a hot, fierce kiss as I start bucking up into her.

My cock is swollen to the point that I feel like I could release at any second, all for her. The soft underside of my shaft runs smoothly against her wet insides, and I feel the tip of my cock grinding up against her in soft, sweet ecstasy. My whole body is coming back to life. Everything in this mountain of a body of mine feels like it hasn’t truly been out of jail yet until touching her.

And I’m going to make sure she knows she’s mine.

I start rutting into her like our lives depend on it. I’m holding nothing back. From the very start, I come in fast and hard, pounding her against the headboard in such a way that she gets shoved up against it with each thrust of my hips.

Every sit-up I did, every minute of exercise in my massive body, it was all thinking of her.

My hands work her hips as I thrust like a precise piston over and over again, but even so, she’s able to keep up, thrusting her own hips in tandem with mine. I get to know what she really desires, how much of her she wants me to take and ravish until we’ve had our fill of each other.

And the way she’s moving, I know she has one hell of an appetite for me.

My ceaseless thrusting starts to get her wound up again, and I feel her tightening around me. I start to let myself go without a second thought, and I’ve never wanted to release myself into someone so deserving and so passionate.

My head is swimming by the time we’ve reached the peaks of our tension, like two bolts of lightning crossing. I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s how fucked up my mind is after weeks on end without release, or maybe Nicole is just an astounding woman, but everything in my pounding body is working in perfect harmony and ferocity toward one goal: making her thrash and moan in ecstasy.

And seconds later, that’s exactly what I feel.

Nicole’s face goes red, her mouth falls open, and she loses her grip on the headboard as her whole body starts to shake and writhe. I hold her up and bring my lips to hers to kiss her passionately while she comes, and at the same time, I feel my balls tighten and fire run up my shaft as I start to release inside her.

The feeling of our two bodies pulsing together, coming to that beautiful, higher state of mind in a shared orgasm is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. So much seed spills out of my cock, burst after burst, that I’m even surprised at myself. Our hearts are beating faster than ever before, and my whole body feels like it was made for this.

We haven’t stopped thrusting. It makes my body burn, but it’s so sweet that nothing could stop me. Each thrust draws out our orgasms so much more, makes us both feel so relaxed and breathless that we could do it until we pushed ourselves past our limits.

After what feels like an eternity, the white-hot passion dies down, and we’re left with just the sound of our breaths as our kiss breaks.

My cock is still hard as a rock.

I slide it in and out of her a few times, slowly, letting her feel me between her legs in this state of oversensitive afterglow. She lets her head fall back against the wall, and she breathes deeply, mouth hanging open.

She looks like a masterful painting.

“I missed you,” I confess in a dark, husky tone, and her eyes flutter open.

“I missed you too,” she admits, shame and pleasure in her voice together as she smiles. She lets out a long sigh as I draw my cock out of her, and she slides under the sheets with me as we press ourselves into each other.

My lips touch her cheek, and I reach down to rub her clit with two fingers to wind her down.

She smiles, her body beginning to relax, a purr coming from her throat that’s cut off by a scream when there’s a sudden bang, and the room door crashes open.