She’d tried that line on a few clients here and there. Most of them laughed, because they didn’t believe her. They didn’t realize that she’d been cracking people like safes since long before the psych degree. When one of her older brothers had held her Malibu Barbie for ransom, she’d gotten the doll’s location out of him in four minutes. She’d been eight.
People told her things. Whether they wanted to or not. People connected to her. Whether she wanted them to or not. It was a blessing and a curse. Maybe it was her supernatural gift.
“You’ll give me everything,” she assured.
Joe Peluso didn’t laugh off the challenge. Instead, he seemed to mull it over. His brows winged together. His eyes went distant. He interlaced his fingers, cuffs clinking against the tabletop. He watched her watch him. Nate shifted beside her, obviously unsettled by the standoff, but he wouldn’t have asked her along if he hadn’t thought she could handle it.
She could handle this. She could handle him.
She knew Joe was guilty…and she knew she was just that good.
* * *
His new lawyers were slick talkers in expensive suits. Fine by him, since the public defender who fucked up his last trial was a dumb shitbag who couldn’t string a sentence together, much less a defense. And he knew these guys were in it for the headlines. It sure as shit wasn’t about the money, because he didn’t have any to pay them with. The woman, though, he couldn’t figure out. Secretary? Paralegal? They’d introduced her at the beginning. First name Neha, last name something with a lot of syllables. She’d spent most of the hour scribbling on a yellow pad, occasionally looking up at him and tapping her lips with her pen.
They were good lips. Full. She wasn’t wearing lipstick. Someone probably told her to wipe it off before coming out to the jailhouse in case the sight of Posy Pink incited a prisoner riot. The problem was, she couldn’t wipe off that she was hot. Black hair pulled back into a prim ponytail. Huge doe eyes. Smooth brown skin. What he could see of her above the table was bangin’. Her tits looked like they’d be a perfect handful. Makeup or no, the woman was a total fox. Enough to start a riot all on her own. Which was why he figured it was a play. Nobody brought a beautiful woman into a prison unless they wanted something.
“You’ll give me everything.”
Problem was, Joe didn’t know what he had to give. Blood? Sweat? Been there and fucking done that. He had nothing left. She wasn’t going to break him. She wouldn’t even come close. But he liked hearing her say it. So serious. Intense. Like she wasn’t a Disney princess who’d stumbled into the wrong movie. Like he couldn’t snap her in half with one hand. She probably teased tigers for fun. Poked bears on Sundays after church or temple or whatever. Maybe that was why they thought she could tangle with him. Just another animal for the circus tamer.
“You’re a shrink,” he concluded out loud. “I get free therapy with this gig now?”
Her big, dark eyes narrowed. The fancy suits—Feinberg and Taylor—looked uncomfortable but curious. They were waiting to see how it all unraveled. He’d played worse games. Hell, he’d won a round of hoops with some punk asses in the showers last week—and his head was the ball.
“I’m a lawyer,” she said, all snotty and self-assured. She thought she had him pegged already. “I also have a PhD in psychology and am here to utilize my skills as a profiler. But any official psychological evaluation you require will be handled by someone not affiliated with our firm. We don’t cross the streams. We won’t risk contaminating your defense.”
Fuck. If she looked like a princess, she sounded like a phone-sex operator—all husky-voiced and pitched low for the bedroom. And Joe could imagine just how she would “contaminate” him. How she’d “utilize her skills.” That mouth on him. Sucking him down. It wouldn’t be because he was in control. No. It’d be because she set the rules. Because having him in her mouth meant she literally had him by the balls. He sprang wood pretty much instantly at the thought, and he was glad for ugly orange coveralls and chains. A con’s equivalent of a coat to button up over your junk.
The irrational lust raged through him like someone lit him on fire, burning him down to the bone. And there was a whisper at the back of his brain, a low growl he couldn’t make heads or tails of. It didn’t make sense…but then again, not a lot had made sense since the military docs shot him up full of shifter juice. “There may be side effects,” they’d said during one of those early debriefs. “Some species have reported instances of imprinting.” The fuck was imprinting? Like he was a damn duckling except with the urge to bone a complete stranger?
One thing was for sure: he couldn’t remember the last time he actually had sex. He’d killed people more recently than he’d fucked anyone…and he could just imagine what his not-so-sainted nonna, who’d spent every day in church, would say about his life choices. Fortunately, she was dead—and hopefully rotting in hell. He wondered if he needed to say all of this to this lawyer-psychologist. She’d probably find it significant that he associated his sex life, or lack thereof, with a formative female relative. The shrink he’d seen before the Corps approved his fancy upgrade and handed him over to his new unit sure had.
He stared at his panel of would-be saviors until they started to fidget. It was a game of chicken he never lost. He could stay quiet for hours. Days. Years. When they started shuffling papers and making to wrap things up, he cleared his throat, tapped the table with his knuckles. The white-haired guy, Feinberg, looked up first. His sharp-dressed wingman next. The woman didn’t have to…because she hadn’t taken her eyes off him this entire time. She caught him staring and gave it right back. Fuck you, too, buddy.
“Did you need something, Joe?” she wondered.
He needed a lot of things. A Heineken. A decent burger. A room with an actual door. A flight outta this joint. He rattled off the list just for kicks. “And a 1963 Corvette Stingray. Can you get me that, too?”
“Right after your trip to Disney World and a massage from a supermodel,” she said, like he’d asked for the most reasonable things in the world. Smart as a whip and cool as a cucumber, this one. But there was fire there, too. Burning close enough to the surface that it wouldn’t take much for it to rage. That interested him. More than anything had interested him in a long-ass time.
“Okay, I’ll talk to you,” he told her. “Whatever you want. You and me, we’ll chat.”
And maybe they’d do more than just chat. Maybe they’d get to be alone. Sitting real close as he spilled his guts to her. Braiding each other’s hair and shit…or unbuttoning each other’s buttons. He knew which option she’d prefer, and which one sounded better to him. She didn’t pick up on what he was already imagining…which was a good thing, because he’d be slapped with extra charges so fast. Whatever the opposite of “contempt of court” was.