Black Light: Cuffed (Black Light Series Book 5), page 1
Black Light: Cuffed
Measha Stone
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Also by Measha Stone
Black Collar Press
Let Us Know What You Think
©2017 by Black Collar Press
All rights reserved.
No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Black Collar Press
Black Light: Cuffed
Measha Stone
EBook 978-0-9982191-5-8
Cover Art by Eris Adderly, http://erisadderly.com/
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This story takes place in the Black Light world created by Livia Grant and Jennifer Bene. Measha Stone graciously accepted the invitation to play in our naughty world and we thank her from the bottom of our hearts for lending us her talent by joining the Black Collar family.
First Electronic Publish Date, April 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9982191-5-8
Created with Vellum
Chapter 1
Lawyers went into divorce litigation to avoid cases like this. Sydney Richards sat back in her plush office chair and tossed her ballpoint pen on top of the file. She wanted to drag her hands through her hair, but the tightly wound bun sitting on top of her head wouldn't allow for it.
Groaning, she pushed away from her desk.
This case would be the death of her sanity if she let it. And it didn't look like there was much choice. When life gives you lemons, make some lemonade, her mother used to say. Well, what the hell do you do when life hands you two dead girls and what looked like a rushed arrest?
"Sydney?" The door to her office opened and Denise poked her head in, scanning the room. Finding Sydney pacing along her bookshelves she finished stepping in and closed the door. "I just wanted to remind you about the charity dinner tomorrow night. You bought tickets at the Christmas party. It’s for the Women’s Shelters of D.C." She tapped her hand-held device with a steno pen. Most likely checking off the reminder from a to-do list. Which is why Sydney had Denise, she made to-do lists and checked things off of them. Sydney had multiple homicide cases that would keep her up at night.
"Tomorrow? Really?" A night of long speeches and elevator music was not how she wanted to start the weekend. “Is there an auction or anything like that being held at the dinner?”
“No auction, but there are, of course, donations being taken. Aside from the five-hundred-dollar dinner ticket you purchased — for yourself and a guest.” Denise didn’t bother hiding her smile.
There would be no guest.
“Do you have plans tomorrow night?” Sydney asked.
Denise laughed. "I may have failed to mention there’s going to be a band. The band Perry is performing."
“You don’t have to keep convincing me; I already don’t want the tickets,” Sydney said with a smile. Denise worked her ass off keeping up with Sydney’s schedule and all the last-minute changes like this one. “Take them if you want, and make a donation for me while you’re there. You have my card.”
“Are you sure you don’t want them? You’ve been working yourself to the bone this week,” Denise said.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Sydney replied. “Please take them, have fun.”
“Well, if you’re sure. I’d love to. Thank you!”
“Of course, you’ve worked yourself just as crazy as I have these past weeks, and I don’t see it letting up anytime soon. This Michael Stanley case isn’t sitting right with me.”
Sydney sighed and leaned back against the shelves. "Can you set up a meeting with the detectives that are working the case? If we are going to file the charges tomorrow, I need to ask them a few questions.”
"An email came in this afternoon. The lead Detective, Mr. Steinbeck, had a heart attack and is in the hospital. Permanent leave or something like that. Detective Tate took over as lead, he’ll be working with Detective Trainer from now on. I'll get it all set up." A quick nod and she was off.
Tate. Sydney's head jerked up at the sound of those four letters pushed together. She knew a Tate. A flash of renewed irritation and embarrassment rushed through her body and her face heated. Damn him. She wasn't going to blush thinking about that night, about those things he’d said. She was at work, and she needed to focus. She was an assistant DA for Christ sake!
"You okay?" Denise walked back in, holding a piece of paper in her hand. Sydney hadn’t moved an inch from where her paralegal had left her.
"Yes. I'm fine," Sydney said, finding her feet and moving back over to her desk to gather the files. "Just tired." Now there was an understatement. The case had been keeping her up nights for over a week. The detectives had kept her in the loop on most of their findings as they dug through the evidence, and most of it gave her nightmares.
Now they had made an arrest and she found herself digging through the rest of the reports slowly trickling in. From what she could see so far, there wasn’t much pointing to any one person, but Detective Steinbeck’s partner, Detective Trainer, had messaged her the day before saying he was taking Michael Stanley in for questioning.
By this morning, he’d managed to get an arrest warrant and put the man behind bars. It was now up to her to figure out what to charge him with and get the process going toward trial. Only, she wasn’t sure Detective Trainer had given enough thought to all the evidence.
Michael Stanley may have been the convenient arrest, but he might not have been the correct one.
The stress of having to prep for an arraignment when she wasn’t a hundred percent convinced of the guilt of the defendant weighed on her. Tension built in her body and her mind reeled with worries. Sending an innocent man to jail couldn’t happen, not by her hand.
"You want to grab a drink? The day’s long done." Denise gestured to the darkness outside the office windows.
"No, thanks." Sydney stuffed her files into her briefcase. She knew where she wanted to go, what she needed to do to get the stress and kinks out of her muscles. "I'm just going to go home and soak in a hot bath." The locks snapped closed on the leather-bound briefcase.
"That sounds nice, too."
Sydney noticed the somber expression cross over Denise's face as she turned to leave, her shoulders a little more slumped than usual. They hadn't gone out for an after-work drink in months, not since Sydney had found herself a new playground. One she could rely on to keep her identity from leaking outside the doors for all of D.C.'s elite society to examine and use against her. She had a real shot at becoming district attorney if she could just keep her nose clean, and win a big case.
Like the Michael Stanley case.
She didn’t need distractions. And the memory of something dark and delicious that would never come into the light was only a distraction.
One evening meant to be a fun, voyeuristic escape quickly turned into a blind date. And with a man she'd been drooling over since seeing him for the first time at the club. It all seemed so surreal, so perfect. He'd even been everything she’d hoped, so dark and unbending. Until it was time for him to bend, and he didn't. Accusations and assumptions were thrown, and in the end, she wound up heading home in a sour mood.
A bad mood that the Stanley case expanded to an almost unbearable point.
Until she could get face to face with Detective Trainer and have her questions answered, she was at a standstill.
Zipping up her coat to help ward off the March air, she glanced around her office to see if she'd forgotten something. Phone: in purse. Purse: draped off her elbow. Brief case: in hand. Nope. Got everything.
Flicking off the lights to her office, she let out another ragged sigh. The floor was near empty. Most of the attorneys had already retired to the bar downstairs or gone home.
Sydney hadn't lied to Denise. Not exactly. She needed to sink herself into something all right, but a hot bath wasn't exactly what she had in mind.
Chapter 2
Tate watched a woman being tied to the St. Andrew’s Cross on the circular platform with unusual disinterest. Maybe it was the way her dom mishandled the ropes, making it too easy for the sub to slip out of the binds and simply walk away from him. He usually held more patience for the newer doms. The man obviously had been taught some tricks of the trade, but he simply lacked experience.
Deciding the last thing the couple needed was his judgmental stare on them while they had their fun, he turned and walked through the dungeon looking for something, or someone, to interest him. He’d taken the same walk at least a dozen times over the past weeks, and nothing even tempted him to a second glance.
His body needed a release. The tensions building at work and the irritation of his personal life were beginning to weigh him down. He'd come to Black Light thinking to meet someone to help him work off his angst at least for an evening, but it was a dumbass thought. Everywhere he looked he realized he wasn't looking for someone new, he was checking to see if she was there.
The damn woman who in one single evening managed to get her hooks so deep into him, he'd spent the last few weeks trying to forget her. In the past, a new flavor often washed the taste of the old away, but it wasn't working this time. Now, even looking at another woman in the club only made him wonder how long she would hide from him. She hadn’t given him the impression of being so skittish.
Their evening at Valentine Roulette hadn't given either of them a happily ever after, but it hadn't been as bad as she’d stalked off thinking. She'd taken everything he had said and twisted it around until she'd gotten herself so wound up he couldn't get through to her anymore. Not exactly off to a great start, he had to admit, but he wasn't finished with her. The woman had more spunk and class than he'd seen in any submissive he’d played with lately.
Thinking a drink would help him at least relax, he headed to the bar and ordered up an old fashioned. The hum of the dungeon continued to fill the air around him. The yelps, cries, and guttural sounds of hard fucking going on between the spanks and the slaps all turned into background music as he sipped his drink.
The bartender leaned across the bar with a mischievous smile. The purple hue from the black-lights highlighted her cleavage the more she leaned toward him, but other than noticing, it did nothing for him. "I think the girl you've been waiting on has finally shown her face." She gave a wink, and twirled a pigtail between her fingers.
"Becca, I'm not waiting on anyone." It took physical strength to keep from turning around to see where she was pointing with her gaze. He gripped his glass a little harder, and forced a wider grin onto his lips.
"Uh, huh." She winked and turned her back on him. "Except I saw you with her on Valentine’s Day and haven't seen you with another woman since. That’s not like you," she said over her shoulder and sashayed off toward another customer.
Not like him at all, he'd have to agree. At thirty-two he hadn’t found anyone to settle down with, much to his mother’s dismay. There was plenty of time to find the right woman, and he wasn't settling for anything less than everything he wanted. Problem was, most of the women he found in the scene wanted playtime but didn't want to carry it outside the bedroom. Or if they did, they weren't into his particular brand of dominant/submissive relationship.
"You waited too long," Becca said in her singsong voice as she walked past him toward the other end of the bar and another patron.
He didn't even try to ignore the comment. He turned around on the stool to find Sydney, the woman who had been successfully evading him for weeks, walking towards the spanking benches with a man following close behind her. Dominick. Tate had seen him play a few times with various subs. He wasn't one for serious play. A few slaps on the ass and then he jumped right to the fucking. The man didn't have the self-control to finish a scene before burying his cock into his sub.
Sydney didn't public fuck, though.
Oh, she probably thought Valentine Roulette was the first time he'd noticed her, but she was wrong. So far, she’d proved to have a knack for jumping to the wrong conclusions when it came to him. He'd noticed her plenty of times, and seeing her stag it at the Valentine’s Day event gave him a chance to get to know her. It hadn’t been a hard decision, offering to share a table at the Roulette game to watch the scenes play out around them. It wasn’t completely unplanned either, to snag her before someone else did. And now that he had, he didn't like seeing someone like Dominick pointing her toward a spanking bench.
"Down boy." Chase Cartwright, supermodel turned club owner, laughed and patted Tate on his shoulder. "You look ready to launch yourself into some rescue mission." He leaned back against the bar.
"I'm fine," tension caused his jaw to clench so tight, Tate could barely utter even those two simple words.
Chase laughed. "Uh huh, and I'm too tired to go back upstairs and help Jaxson with our Emma tonight." He grinned and gestured toward the scene Tate glared at. "Isn't that the girl you wanted me to track down for you?"
"Yes." Tate nodded.
"Still mad because I wouldn't give you her last name?"
"No." Tate glanced at him from the corner of his eye. "I get it."
"I’m guessing you never got a hold of her. Is this the first time you’re seeing her since Valentine’s Day?”
“Yes.” Tate nodded again, keeping his eyes fixed on Sydney and the jackass trying to take control of the scene.
“Do you think you can behave? Emma really is waiting for me upstairs. Jaxson wanted me to come down and get the paddle he left down here earlier."
Tate forced his muscles to relax and leaned back against the bar. "You have this whole club, why play upstairs in your condo?" A bit forward, but if Tate owned the club, he wouldn't be playing in a bedroom on the top floor of the club, he'd be playing inside it.
"Not playing tonight." His expression hardened. "I had hoped, but our Emma had other ideas."
"Right." Tate knew exactly what he was talking about, and he wasn't too proud of a man to admit he envied what Chase and Jaxson had with Emma. A real relationship. No game playing, no dancing around their wants. Everyone knew their place, knew their role, and through bad or good moments they could always count on each other.
"Try to have a good one." Chase patted him on the shoulder and headed off into the crowd of people.
Tate's eyes drifted back over to the spanking bench. The little distraction had made him miss the part where Sydney had pulled up her skirt and climbed onto the bench. She faced his direction, her bare ass pointed away from him. The lighting in the room cast a bit of a shadow over her face, but he could still make out her expression pretty clearly.
Complete boredom.
Dominick was already swinging away at her ass with his bare hand and rubbing his erection through his faux leather pants. If Sydney didn't fall asleep first, he might get his cock out of his pants before she hopped off the table. Had she even taken the time to talk to him before she headed over to the bench with him? Or did she just pick the first guy who offered to spank her and go forth without negotiation or even a short conversation? Though he doubted she would even be fully honest if she had taken the time to discuss their scene.
His ire quickly began to get the best of him. She was a big girl, he reminded himself, and if she was there in the club she knew the scene. He'd seen her play with other doms before. She wasn't a novice. Although it had occurred to him on more than one occasion that she had a really hard time expressing what she wanted, because she rarely seemed satisfied.
Dominick moved behind her, his hand disappearing between her legs. Tate's jaw tightened, and he started to push away from his seat when Sydney bucked up and twisted around. Too far away to hear what she was saying, he could only assume it effectively shut down Dominick's plans. While the novice dom looked irritated by what she was saying, he backed away with a nod.
Tate watched from the bar area as Dominick helped her off the spanking bench and finished speaking with her before she turned and walked away. To his credit, Dominick bounced back rather quickly and shuffled off, back on the prowl, only looking back once as Sydney left him behind.
When Tate turned back to find where Sydney had gone to, he couldn’t locate her. Had she given up so easily and left? Those little taps to her ass couldn’t have sated her need for a spanking.
"A sweet red, please." A soft voice called to the bartender from a few stools down.
"Sweet like candy?" he asked before he could get his mind in line.
Sydney jerked to the side, staring at him with a surprised look. "I like sweet wine. Is that a problem?" A perfectly shaped eyebrow raised and her hand rested on her pushed out hip. Someone was looking for another sparring match.
