Three Days of Dominance Read Online Free Page A

door for her to come out.
    She called off going to a movie with Jacqui and Sarah and fed Killer some steak she hadn’t the energy to turn into anything worth eating. She peeled off her uniform, tossed it into a pile of dirty clothes next to the washing machine, then padded barefoot to her bedroom to slip on the little white dress she’d bought at the flea market. The cotton slid light as a caress down her skin. In the mirror, her wavy auburn hair lay in loose curls across the white shoulder straps.
    She grinned. For once she looked like a woman and not an underpaid, stressed-out cop.
    Having nuked the remains of some chow mein, she toted a large scotch and ice out to the back porch and flicked on the light. At one end of the cane rocker lounge, two fat, oversize cushions beckoned her. Paradise. She sat and shifted the cushions into the right spot. After a big gulp of scotch that sank the level by an inch, she placed the glass on the floor and leaned back to soak up the nighttime show.
    Beautiful.
    She’d lived elsewhere in Australia—had even gone down to Sydney and tried out city living for a year—but this place drew her back. Like most towns on the East coast of Queensland, Coomooma Sands had beaches to die for, and for her, the small-town atmosphere was an added bonus.
    The ice cubes clicked and danced. Frogs and crickets burr-upped and creaked under the hedges of mock orange and jasmine, stars speckled the sky like diamante, and a cool breeze wafted across the back fence. Only fifty yards farther back, the mangroves started, and past them lurked the river where the odd croc sometimes made a slothful appearance, or so the tabloids liked their readers to believe.
    Danii took another cool swallow from the glass, snuggling farther into the plump cushions as the scotch worked its sultry, sweet magic on her. Midsummer, the mosquitoes would turn the air out here into a battleground for blood, but right now she reckoned it was close to heaven, and she wouldn’t have traded it for a penthouse apartment. Who needed psychologists when you had scotch and this? At her feet, Killer rested his nose on his paws and snored his way into doggie dreamland.
    All in all, she guessed the day hadn’t gone so badly. Jugsy was back next door with his owners, safe and sound. She’d nailed the burglar and his crazy mamma, and well…she squeezed her thighs together, grinning…she’d had the steamiest kiss ever, from a sizzling hot man.
    * * *
    Heketoro waded out of the creek until he was only ankle-deep. Water dripped from his body and landed in little plinks as he stood quietly, letting the fae glamour flow over his naked body and clothe him in his usual black. The last of the fishes that were following zipped away into the deeper waters. After a hundred years, the lake and every creature in it responded to him in one way or another. He’d mastered them just as he felt sure he’d soon master this woman.
    Even in this moonless darkness the undergrowth posed no problem, not simply because of his faerie eyes, but because he’d been here many times before—now tonight, at last, he could act on his desires. He navigated past the twisted mangrove roots, stepping over them and shallow puddles with ease and in silence.
    As he drew closer, the distant lights from Danii’s house seemed to tease him, flickering through the curtains of leaves and trunks.
    He stood in the shadows just beyond her fence. The heavy perfume of jasmine blossoms hung in the air.
    The formalities needed to be observed. First, he needed to get her to allow him into her dwelling. He smiled. Before the kiss at the lake he’d not been as certain of her desires, but having touched her, he knew her more intimately. It was what she wanted, whether she realized this yet, or not. He’d enjoy seducing her and teaching her the darker facets of lovemaking.
    He watched as she sat on the porch of her house, then lay back on the sofa and gulped at a drink. Though he’d seen her