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AtHerCommand
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An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
At Her Command
ISBN #1-4199-0704-2
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
At Her Command Copyright© 2006 Marcia James
Edited by Mary Moran.
Cover art by Lissa Waitley.
Electronic book Publication: August 2006
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing Inc., 1056 Home Avenue, Akron, OH 44310-3502.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
At Her Command
Marcia James
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
7-Eleven: 7-Eleven, Inc.
Animal Planet: Discovery Channel, Inc.
Baskin-Robbins: Baskin-Robbins, Incorporated
Ben Gay: Pfizer, Inc.
Betty Ford Center: Eisenhower Medical Clinic
Bic: Bic Corporation
Budweiser: Anheuser-Busch, Incorporated
Burger King: Burger King Brands, Inc.
Cadillac: General Motors Corporation
Casablanca: Turner Entertainment Co.
Catholic University: Catholic University of America, The Not For Profit Corporation D.C.
Chippendales: Chippendales USA, LLC
Coke: The Coca-Cola Company Corporation
Coors: Coors Global Properties, Inc.
Cornell University: Cornell University Educational Corporation New York
Federal Express: Federal Express Corporation
Ford: Ford Motor Company
Formica: The Diller Corporation
Fortune 500: Time, Inc.
Frederick’s Of Hollywood: Frederick’s of Hollywood, Inc.
Glock: Glock, Inc.
Godiva: Godiva Brands, Inc.
Gone With The Wind: Turner Entertainment Co.
GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly): Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc.
Happy Days: Paramount Pictures Corporation
Heinz 57: H.J. Heinz Company
House Beautiful: Hearst Corporation
Honda: Honda Motor Co.
Jaguar: Jaguar Cars Limited Corporation
Jeep Cherokee: DaimlerChrysler Corporation
Krispy Kreme: HDN Development Corporation
Marlboros: Philip Morris Inc.
McDonald’s: McDonald’s Corporation
Mercedes: DaimlerChrysler AG Corporation
Mini: Rover Group Limited
Oscar: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Corporation
Penthouse: General Media Communications, Inc.
Ralph Lauren: Polo Ralph Lauren USA Holding Inc.
Ravens: Baltimore Ravens Limited Partnership
Redskins: Pro Football, Inc.
Shelby Mustang: Ford Motor Company
Star Trek: Paramount Pictures Corporation
Starbucks: Starbucks U.S. Brands
Styrofoam: Dow Chemical Company
Taco Bell: Taco Bell Corp.
The Washington Post: Washington Post Company
Velcro: Velcro Industries B.V. Limited Liability Company
Viagra: Pfizer, Inc.
Victoria’s Secret: V Secret Catalogue, Inc.
Volkswagen: Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft
World Wrestling Entertainment: World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
Chapter One
“Men pay me to dominate them.”
The sentence hung in the air as Agent Dominique “Domino” Petracelli waited for the young woman to elaborate. Tori Preston, the witness offering testimony in the cold, sterile Drug Enforcement Administration interview room, fiddled with the buttons on her Ralph Lauren shirt and ran her hands down the pleats of her khaki walking shorts.
Domino stared at the wholesome-looking girl who was holding a roomful of seasoned agents enthralled with her words. This was her main witness? A sex club worker? With all the drug cases crossing her boss’s desk, how had Domino lucked into being lead operative on this one?
“Some want to be humiliated, others want pain…you know, whippings and stuff,” Tori continued.
As the only other woman in the narrow, gray-walled room, Domino watched the blue-eyed blonde glance around as though daring the male agents to criticize her. Four of the six guys in attendance weren’t even involved in this case. But word of Tori’s profession had spread like a computer virus and the men had dropped by to check out the dominatrix.
“Not your typical part-time job, but it pays my tuition.” Tori folded her arms over her chest. “I’m only a year away from my master’s degree and the job pays great.”
“Getting an MA in S and M?” Agent Gus Meyers added his two cents to the interview and drew a laugh from his male buddies.
Domino frowned. The man was always a smart-ass and one of her least favorite coworkers. Unfortunately, Meyers was her partner on this investigation. With her eye on a soon-to-be-available assistant director job, Dom wasn’t in any position to turn down assignments. She sighed. Maybe this would be an open-and-shut case. Yeah, and maybe she’d win the lottery and marry Mel Gibson.
“My degree is in physical therapy,” Tori stated with cool pride.
“Perfect major.” Meyers smirked. “When I was shot last year, the therapists seemed to love torturing me.”
“Enough.” Sam Lowery, director of the DEA’s Virginia field office and Domino’s supervisor, silenced any follow-up remarks. The male snickering died as well.
Domino glanced at her boss, who occupied the uncomfortable metal chair next to hers. With his receding hairline and tortoise-shell glasses, Sam looked more like an accountant than the multi-decorated ex-Marine who’d stormed up the career ladder since joining the DEA. He might appear mild-mannered, but his staff knew better than to piss him off. Dom both admired and hoped to emulate her boss, especially his rapid professional advancement. As glad as she was for his presence however, Dom had to regain control of the interview.
“Let’s go back to the beginning,” Domino suggested. She scanned the notes she’d made on her yellow legal pad. “You say the Xecutive Branch sex club is distributing large amounts of cocaine and maybe other drugs?”
“Yes.” Tori directed her answer to Dom, ignoring the rest of the agents. “For the past two years, I’ve heard things that made me suspicious, but Saturday night something happened that convinced me. You see, the club has this main supply closet where employees can get anything they might need for a session–-riding crops, nipple clamps, whatever.”
A snort of laughter from one of the men interrupted Tori’s explanation. Sam glared around the room until all of his agents had received the warning loud and clear. Dom motioned for Tori to
continue.
“Well, that night I needed an extra large, um, vibrator, and the supply closet was out. So I went to the storage area at the back of the building and asked Benny, one of the bouncers, which box held the sex toys. He took me over to a stack of boxes, but before he could open one, Clyde—that’s Victor’s head guy—stopped him.”
“Victor would be the club’s owner, Victor Xavier?” Domino verified, glancing at her notes again. “And Clyde is Clyde Salvi, the club’s manager?”
“Yes,” Tori shivered. “Clyde bit Benny’s head off and told me to get back to my room, that he’d make sure I got what I needed. I left but I was worried about Benny, since he’s not too bright you see, and I didn’t want him to get in any trouble because of me.” She licked her lips nervously. “Clyde’s real mean. So I snuck back in and hid behind some sets.”
“Sets?” Domino paused in her note-taking to look at the young woman.
“Movie sets, for the porn flicks they do,” Tori explained. Domino nodded, and the girl continued. “Clyde was really yelling at Benny, calling him awful names and stuff. Then he said, ‘You idiot! Those are the drug-filled dildos for the New York shipment. What if that bitch had opened the damn thing to put in a battery and discovered the cocaine?’”
“They’re smuggling cocaine in dildos?” Jerry Goldsmith, one of the younger agents, seemed stunned by the idea.
“Well, they’re actually vibrators, and there’s a large battery compartment in them,” Tori said.
“I wouldn’t know,” Goldsmith mumbled, blushing to the roots of his dark hair.
Domino stifled a laugh, feeling a camaraderie with her coworker. It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one in the room uncomfortable with the sex talk. At thirty-one, Dom wasn’t inexperienced in the horizontal boogie, just not too adept at it. And if there was one thing she hated, it was doing a lukewarm job, whether it was in the office or between the sheets. Dominatrixes, dildos and drugs. Damn, why couldn’t she have pulled a nice, non-sexual case like taking down a Colombian drug lord?
“Okay, Ms. Preston.” Dom refocused the group. “So you overheard Clyde talking about drug shipments two days ago, and that’s why you came to us?”
“No…that is, something else happened Saturday night.” Tori gripped her hands together on the scarred table, her knuckles turning white from the strain. “You see, I went back to my room, you know, where I meet with my clients, and—” her voice broke “—and Jason could tell something was wrong—”
“Jason?” Domino asked.
“One of my regulars, who…well, we’d become friends.” Tori’s eyes filled with tears. “I ended up telling him about the drugs. And then he told me he was a cop—”
“Metro, Virginia or Maryland?” Dom interrupted.
“Jason said he was a D.C. cop. And he told me it was time for me to quit…that he’d handle everything.”
Tori was crying now, getting the words out between sobs. Domino wished there were tissues to offer the girl but the stark, winter-chilled room—usually a venue for junkies and pushers—was bare of all amenities. Besides the table and chairs, the room held only the stale scent of tobacco and sweat.
One of the agents made a derogatory comment under his breath about meddling cops, but Tori didn’t appear to notice. The territorial attitudes of D.C.’s federal and local law enforcement groups were legendary. The different organizations rarely worked well together despite public lip service to the clear logic of interagency cooperation. The DEA was designed to fight the war on drugs so Domino understood her fellow agent’s irritation. The cop should have turned over the information to the DEA instead of investigating the drugs himself.
“Jason said to tell Victor my mother was sick and I had to go back to Pennsylvania to help out,” Tori explained. “So when I came to work Sunday night…last night, I gave notice.”
Sam handed Tori his handkerchief, which she accepted with a watery smile. After blowing her nose, she spoke again.
“Then I saw in the paper this morning that Jason was…found in the Potomac.” Tori’s red eyes met Dom’s across the table. “The paper said he was high on drugs and must have fallen into the river late Saturday night and drowned.”
“Shit.”
Domino wasn’t sure which of the men in the room had spit out the curse but it fit her sentiments exactly. The cop may have overstepped his jurisdiction but he was still a brother…one of the good guys.
“The paper didn’t mention he was a cop,” Tori said.
“The Metro PD’s probably holding on to that info right now while they investigate his murder,” Sam surmised.
“So I came here to get you to arrest the bastards who killed Jason Walters.” Tori sat straighter in her chair. “I couldn’t go to the cops since all sorts of D.C. government types come to the club. One of my regulars is a D.C. councilman. I didn’t know who to trust.”
“You made the right decision,” Domino told the girl, whose determination had wiped the innocent coed look off her face. What would it be like to be so blonde and petite, Dom wondered. Unlike Tori, she came from Italian stock, a family known for its tall, dark, well-developed women. But despite having a body that drew its share of wolf whistles, Domino had never been as comfortable with her sexuality as this preppy dominatrix.
“It was a smart decision, Ms. Preston,” Sam agreed. “Until we know who’s involved, you could be signing your death warrant if you confide in the local police.” He scrubbed his hands over his face in a world-weary gesture Domino had seen before. “When the police reconstruct Jason’s last twenty-four hours though, they’ll follow the path to your door. For your own safety, don’t tell the police about the drugs yet. We’ll bring them in on our investigation when the time is right. Understand?”
Domino noticed the steely look that hardened Tori’s eyes as she nodded. She has backbone, Dom thought, which probably proved useful in the girl’s part-time dominatrix job.
“Jason was a good man.” Tori tightly grasped her hands together on the table. “I want to see Victor and Clyde pay.”
“You have my word my office will turn the full force of our investigative power on this case, Ms. Preston,” Sam assured her.
Domino experienced a strong sense of foreboding. Her job was everything to her, but just what did her boss have in mind?
“The first step,” Sam explained, “is to place one of our agents on the club’s staff. Do you feel up to training your replacement before you leave for Pennsylvania?”
“My replacement?” Tori looked confused.
“I have the perfect dominatrix to take your place at the club,” Sam said. Smiling, he looked straight at Domino.
* * * * *
Detective Dalton “Bull” Cutter sat slumped on the leather couch, drinking his third beer and staring into the eyes of a large Siamese. Chi, the sleek, blue-eyed tomcat, could have been fashioned from marble for all his stillness and unblinking gaze. Despite the open can of gourmet cat food Dalton had placed on the kitchen floor, the animal sat on the coffee table directly in front of him as though demanding an explanation.
“Jason’s not coming back, big guy.”
Dalton’s voice sounded rusty so he tried to clear his throat. But there was a lump he just couldn’t wash down with the Budweiser. His eyes burned from lack of sleep and he wished he could find a way to turn off his brain. One thought kept repeating in his head—Jason Walters, his partner and best friend, was dead.
Twenty-four hours had passed since he’d received the call Sunday night…heard his captain break the news, but the pain was still fresh and razor-sharp.
Dalton resisted tossing his beer bottle against the wall of Jason’s living room…his living room, he corrected. Jason, orphaned at an early age, had named his partner his beneficiary, a little fact Dalton had learned from a lawyer today. The cozy Cape Cod home complete with cat now belonged to him. He’d give a billion Cape Cods for the chance to go back in time.
“It should have been me.”
* * * * *
“Hey, Dalton, heard about your spanking-new assignment.” Laughing, Jason walked into Dalton’s apartment with a six-pack of cold beer and a couple of pizza boxes. “Maybe we should change your nickname from ‘Bull’ to ‘Mouse’.”
Several inches shorter than Dalton and leaner, Jason looked more like a college fraternity pledge than a cop. While Dalton knew his partner took a lot of ribbing about his boyish good looks, he trusted the steel-nerved Jason with his life.
“Very funny. Besides it’s not definite yet,” Dalton grumbled, unwilling to think about the possible undercover job. Assigned to the Metro Police Department’s Special Investigations team, Jason and he worked whenever and wherever needed. They’d been involved in everything from homicide to vice cases. It certainly kept the job from becoming routine.
Recently the Metro PD had received a tip that underage girls—runaways who’d come to the nation’s capital to escape the real and imagined horrors of their lives—were working at the Xecutive Branch sex club. Dalton had heard through the grapevine his name had been suggested for the undercover role of a sex club client—a damn submissive wimp who got off on pain and humiliation.
Shit. Probably retribution for some of the hot-dogging he’d done recently. Maybe he shouldn’t have been quite so disrespectful to the police chief when he was being chewed out for wrecking his third unmarked in a month.
Grabbing two beers, Jason put the rest in the fridge. While Dalton watched, his friend made himself at home, opening kitchen cabinets, getting out bags of chips and placing them on top of the pizza boxes. Balancing the items, he carried them to Dalton’s secondhand kitchen table. Unlike Jason’s sunny home, there weren’t many cheery spots in Dalton’s apartment. The breakfast nook with its bay window was the best bet.
AtHerCommand