What About Love (Club Decadence Book 6)
Read What About Love (Club Decadence Book 6) Online
Authors: Maddie Taylor
What About Love
Club Decadence, Book Six
By
Maddie Taylor
©2015 by Blushing Books® and Maddie Taylor
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.
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Taylor, Maddie
What About Love
eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-134-5
Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design
This book is intended for
adults only
. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the Author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.
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Table of Contents:
Prologue
A mewling cry like that of a wounded animal startled him out of a light sleep. Instantly alert, his weary eyes shifted to the pretty brunette in the bed. Usually radiant, her skin glowing a healthy golden brown from the kiss of the Texas sun, she was ashen, nearing the stark whiteness of the pillow beneath her head. Her perfectly arched brows were gathered in a frown as her dry, colorless lips parted on another soft whimper. Clearly, she was in pain. He pressed the call light for the nurse and waited, wishing fervently he could do more.
In frustration, T’s hands rose, fingers splayed as he readied to spear them through his hair as was his habit, but the bloodstains on his cuffs—her blood—made him pause. Once saturated, the material had dried hard and rough, stained to a rust color. As he stared at it, he remembered the hopelessness he felt as he pressed his hands over the seeping wound left by the knife in her chest. Unable to staunch the flow, he’d been powerless to do more than pray for her survival as Angie Hixson’s life essence leached out, oozing up through his fingers.
His hands curled into fists, wanting to hurt the man who’d done this to her. As Richard Stapleton’s image appeared in his mind’s eye, the stains on his hands changed from Angie’s to her attacker’s as he beat him to a bloody pulp. Antonio Minelli, more often known as Lil T to his teammates, simply T to friends, was more than capable of snapping the worm’s neck. A decade in the Special Forces had trained him to kill, hardened him and taught him to be ruthless, yet the sight of the helpless woman in the bed made all of that unnecessary. Combined with a need for retribution on her behalf, he had sufficient rage and an instinctive carnality, to make it happen effortlessly. Stapleton was going to pay for this.
An alarm went off, jerking him out of his bloodthirsty plotting of revenge and putting him on instant alert. It was the heart monitor above Angie’s bed, screeching in warning that her pulse rate had spiked to one-eighty. A nurse ran in, her attention immediately zeroed in on the flashing display. Without hesitation, she rushed to the bedside, checked the pulse at Angie’s throat for several seconds, and then proceeded to punch her in the middle of her chest with the side of her fist.
“What the fuck?” T roared, surging to his feet.
“Procedure, sir. She was in V-tach.”
“The hell with procedure. You hit her!”
“And it worked,” she replied, calmly nodding to the monitor, her other hand taking Angie’s pulse again. “Normal sinus rhythm, she converted.” The nurse checked her pupils with a penlight and listened to her lungs. She took a few moments to scrutinize the screen and print out an EKG strip while jotting notes on her paper. In a hurry, she murmured, “I need to page her doctor. I’ll be back.”
“Not if you’re going to beat the shit out of her, woman,” he called after her as she rushed passed Sean and Mara who were standing just inside the doorway watching.
“Did you see that shit?” T demanded of Sean.
“She saved her from going into cardiac arrest, bud. She’s right. It’s standard procedure.”
He regarded Sean, his unit’s medic for over ten years, he would know. T flopped back into the chair that he’d been camped out in for forty-eight hours, his worried gaze locked on Angie’s pale face. Despite the hearty blow the nurse had given her, she hadn’t flinched.
“Why isn’t she waking up? That punch to her chest should have done the trick if she were able.”
“She lost a lot of blood, T.” Sean jerked his chin to indicate the IV where the fifth or sixth unit of blood, at least, was slowly infusing. “They’re still transfusing so she’s not where she should be quite yet. This coma isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either. It allows her traumatized body to regenerate and heal.”
Mara walked to his side and placed her hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “We’ll stay with her for a while, T. Why don’t you go home, shower and try to get a little rest.”
“I couldn’t sleep. What if she wakes up or—”
“There isn’t going to be an “or,” Mara assured him, glancing toward Sean with concern. “How about some coffee or something to eat?”
“Coffee would be good, darlin’,” he said raggedly, dead tired. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” As she prepared to go, he heard her whisper to her husband. “I’ll go, Lucky, you stay with him.” She then stood on her toes and gave him a soft kiss on the lips.
His friend’s sweet subbie wife was back, and T was glad for it. They’d both been through hell, her especially, and they deserved some happiness. As did the rest of his team who had one after another found their ‘one’ since coming home from war. Regrettably, he also had to watch as each man and his woman had suffered some unspeakable tragedy before finding their happiness. For Cap, it had come when Megan had been kidnapped and held for almost a day, tied to a chair so tightly that she had lingering nerve damage affecting her hands. The sensation had come back, though not all the way, but there continued to be slow improvement.
Rick’s situation had been similar, when Regan had taken up residence over a drug dealer’s operation. She’d also been held at gunpoint, her street smarts saving her and another innocent target. Elena’s case had been worse, with two cartel dealers coming after her in revenge. Dex and the team had taken them out, but not before the leader had gotten one lash in, leaving Elena cut and bleeding.
Jonas’ fiancée Lexie had almost bought it when in the wrong place at the wrong time, she’d been shot and left to bleed to death. He’d been on his way back from Laredo with Jonas when they’d gotten word of the shooting at her clinic. Jonas had nearly lost it, trapped in a car two hours away while the woman he loved battled for her life. It had been a very near thing. Mara had also been there that day, taking two bullets, one shattering a bone in her leg, the other in her gut with her losing a lot of blood. That made five out of five owners whose women had been taken or harmed by the cartel. Thank God they had been shut down. Victor Mendoza was no longer a threat, thanks to Sean’s well-placed bullet between his eyes. That was two days ago and they thought it was over. Now Angie hung onto life by her fingernails.
The difference in this case, Angie wasn’t T’s woman.
He shifted, his attention returning to the feisty police detective who had, in a very short time, gotten under his skin. He wasn’t sure why. She swore she wasn’t submissive, but as vanilla as they come, yet he saw shades of something else buried deep. Tall and curvy, which he liked, beyond that she wasn’t his usual type at all. He liked sexually adventurous yet submissive women, willing to try whatever he wanted: toys, bondage, erotic pain, ménage, or group play. The running joke at the club among the submissives—although none would dare say it to his face—was that he was a try-sexual, willing to try anything. He saw nothing wrong with that, always pleasing his partner, or partners, and making it clear from the beginning that he was in it for the play, nothing more. Though he’d turned thirty-one last month, he was still young and busily sowing his wild oats.