Collared for a Night (Crimson Romance) Read Online Free Page A

over his desk and fuck her at Matrix. He’d put aside what his dick had wanted because her talent wasn’t worth crossing boundaries. Not when Diana had the goods for being an up-and-coming graphic artist.
    Last month she had been nominated for the prestigious American Design Package Award . His complete confidence in her was reflected in his reserving a table for his staff to attend the ceremony in Las Vegas. Diana and he had a standing breakfast meeting this Monday in which he planned on presenting her with a promotion, moving up from an associate into a partnership slot.
    She’d pack up her desk if she found out he owned the Den — a stud club. She and her prim sensibilities. A year she’d gone without sex. How the hell was that even possible?
    Quinn backed away from his desk. “I’m not interested. I can tell this woman is off-limits by the careening macho reaction you’ve got going on.” His partner chuckled in an irritating manner.
    “Don’t be so damn dense. Do you screw your office staff?”
    “Eleanor, my assistant, worked with my grandfather, just to remind you. I think of her like an aunt. Don’t go there. The day she retires, I’m toast. I understand the problem. I just believe you’ve got a screwed-up perspective on this one. Shit, Shawn, ever since you agreed to head the Southwest council, you’ve taken a holier-than-thou attitude. You’ve been asked to mete out justice, not act the part of a saint.”
    “Aren’t you the one who constantly harps on my position in this community? That I’m supposed to be a role model for other shifters? Or was that all talk?”
    Quinn cocked his head. “I see both sides in the justice system for shifters and what we’re trying to do with the Den. So what if you have an employee who wants a night of release? Isn’t that the point of this place? Isn’t that the point of you heading the council? Giving shifters options.”
    “Sometimes I think it would have made more sense for you, as an attorney, to head the justice council,” Shawn muttered.
    “Naw, you’re the one with family ties. This is more than knowing the law, it’s having clan standing. I could never fill your father’s shoes.”
    “The hell if I know how my old man did it all. Managing shifters is far from easy.”
    “It never is.” Quinn rapped his knuckles against the desk before he stepped away. “So what’s your game plan?”
    Shawn frowned, picking up a paperclip and pulling it apart. Most tended to want fast action and quick results. Mercurial was part of the shifter charm. Shawn’s life was embroiled in solving shifter passions. He’d proven that forging a southwest control center over the once-independent packs meant violent crimes — or at least shifter-on-shifter crimes — had lowered remarkably. Forget the court system or police; shifters lived a different life and were largely ignored by humans.
    Shifters melded and fit into society by being invisible. When disputes occurred, they were settled in shifter form. Wolves and panthers, coyotes, and leopards didn’t require attorneys or bail bondsmen. And the justice doled out was harsh, bloody, and wrenching. Whole families and clans were once targeted. That, too, had changed, now that he’d created the means to allow shifters an opportunity to articulate and seek justice on issues only shifters could appreciate and understand; well beyond the human justice system and what was permitted.
    “Obviously, times are changing. And just because they are, I don’t agree that Diana should be here … seeking this type of release from a club banger. Christ, this isn’t the type of conversation I’d want to hear over the water cooler on Monday.”
    “Seriously, you sweat too much over the details.”
    Shawn stared at the photograph taken for the Downtown Den’s file. Diana looked uneasy with her amazing eyes. In the photograph they were a bit too wide-open and her pupils were fully dilated, a sign of an impending shift. His gaze