Cuffed & Collared Read Online Free Page A

gets out. I still hear talk of how frightened women in this city were fifty years ago.”
    Regan bit a spring roll in half, chewed, and swallowed. “Well, this time women appear to be perfectly safe.”
    “Ah, crap, are we talking little boys, then?”
    “No, grown men, and Pops, the killer is a woman.” She grinned at her father’s astonishment and quickly filled him in on her theory.
    “What kind of man wants a woman to hit him?” he mused.
    She had been wondering the same thing since Morales’ death, and she had no real answer yet. It was simply kink as far as she could tell. The images of her two victims popped up in Regan’s head, and because their killer had been careful not to touch their faces, they remained as gorgeous in death as they had been in life. She would have been happy to let either of them into her bed and into her body. Would she have been willing to tie them up and hit them, too? Sure, she felt a little thrill every once in a while when she took down some punk on the street, but this was different. It was cold-blooded—no, make that hot-blooded—and supposedly arousing.
    No, she couldn’t quite imagine herself doing it. That is, until another image came to mind. Kyle Ramsey, a man in need of a good spanking in her estimation. He was too arrogant and handsome for his own good, or hers. And gorgeous was only the half of it.
    There was something intoxicating about that man. She had sat and interviewed him like she would any other witness, and yet all she really wanted to do was toss her notepad and pen away, strip off her clothes, and straddle his body. She had been so wet when she returned to the station that she changed into spare panties and jeans she kept in her locker.
    Thinking about him again was having the same effect, which was really gross considering her father was sitting only a few feet away. She gulped down the rest of her food, telling herself that chopsticks in no way represented a Freudian cock before she answered her father’s question.
    “I have no idea, but JoJo uncovered the best lead we have. Both victims belonged to a club that caters to this type of fetish. I already interviewed the woman who runs it in connection with the first murder and came up with nothing helpful. This time, I’m going in strong and hard. It’s got to be the connection we’re looking for. For all we know, the killer works there.”
    “Sounds about right. You want some ice cream?” he asked as she started clearing the empty boxes and left-over food.
    “No, thanks,” she said with a smile.
    “You’re too skinny, you know.”
    “I have to be to chase punks,” was her teasing reply. “I’m going to dump these in the kitchen before heading up. Do you need anything, Pops?”
    “Nothing, thanks, darlin’.”
    “See you tomorrow, then.” She pressed a quick kiss on her father’s head when she passed him.
    It wasn’t cool, living above her father in Charlestown, her old Boston neighborhood. She had grown up in the duplex, although in a small room in the downstairs apartment where her father stilled resided. Now she occupied the rental part that had helped her parents make the mortgage payments for many years. Not that she was technically a tenant, because her father refused to accept rent. He didn’t need it, he said, and she knew it was true. Her mother’s life insurance policy had paid off the last of the home debt.
    No, there was nothing fun or sexy about where she lived, and bringing guys home was always tricky. What a good thing it was, then, that she had so little time for what amounted to a pathetic love life. Being a cop was her first and only love, anyway, the one thing she had wanted since she was a little girl.
    As an only child, she had been the center of her parents’ world, and she had worshipped her father. She still did. Her mother’s sister had lived a block away with her cop husband and their three boys. Daire, Ronan, and Finn had treated her as not just an honorary