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it. He wasn’t, or rather I couldn’t imagine my future with him. Gray was loving and sexy but he just… he didn’t do it for me. His condescending and proud personality didn’t help either.
    He was always the one to pull me up with any cases I worked on and at first I had admired his eagerness at making me better myself, but now I found it irritating and disrespectful; his haughty manner was beginning to grind at me and drag me deeper into the pit that didn’t have a ladder for a way out.
    In the beginning, over two years ago when we met, I had fallen for him and his natural ability to calm me. He would hold me for hours as I spoke of the hell I had lived in since my mother’s death. He would love me better, holding me close and making love with a rare gentleness but sometimes, his kindness seemed to be the complete opposite of what I needed from him.
    Sometimes, I wished for him to just grab me and tell me to snap out of it, to force me to face up to my life and to appreciate what it offered, even if it was shit. I needed discipline. It was naturally engrained in me but my inner despair had been there for so long I couldn’t find a break in its steel walls for me to climb out of and I needed that someone to smash at those walls for me; to bring each brick down and set me free.
    Granted, Gray had changed over the previous few months, his anger seemed more potent and he appeared more edgy and tetchy but I just put it down to the case he was currently working on. But now, now I wasn’t so sure. Something else was going off with him and he had begun to bring his wrath forth on me, his temper quick and his condescending remarks easier and recurrent.
     
    I screwed my eyes shut as the mocking part of my mind persecuted me when I climbed into my car and slammed the door behind me.
    You don’t love him. You don’t love him, Fran.
    I knew I had to let him go. We were heading in different directions, our lives taking separate paths at the crossroad.
     
    He didn’t follow me out, but then I didn’t expect him to. He would already be on the whisky, another of his recent downfalls.
    I knew what I had to do. I had to finish it. It wasn’t fair on me and it most definitely was not fair on Gray. He didn’t need my inner shit, along with marrying someone who didn’t love him like he deserved.
    My heart ached but something inside me finally felt free and relieved. It was time to concentrate on what I had waited sixteen years for. What I had worked towards for the last six years.
    Bringing down the notorious Don Knight. The man who killed my mother.
     
     

Tate
     
    My hands fisted in her short brown hair as she knelt before me, her wide brown eyes looking up at me with both heat and uncertainty. I tipped my head, narrowing my eyes on her but she remained in position, silently waiting for my order.
    I held her there, relishing in the dominance of her control. She wouldn’t touch until I allowed it, and only if I allowed it. Her tongue peeked out and slightly moistened the centre of her lips, teasing and tormenting me. She should know by now that nothing teased me. I was restrained if not restricted with my own constraint, never allowing any other than myself to drive my need or hunger.
    “Please, Tate.” She almost whispered her plea and my lips curved into a cruel smile.
    “Don’t beg, Kat. It really lowers your appeal.”
    She swallowed at my cruelty but I also saw the heat in her eyes intensify. Women were so easy to manipulate. They say ‘girl power’ and all that shit but they like nothing more than being controlled and ruled by a man. Fucking contradictory species!
     
    My eyes moved to the screens on the wall in my office as I continued to hold Kat to ransom. The front of the club was heaving tonight, a long line of eager revellers packed like little soldiers all the way along the street and around the corner. The dance floor was already heaving and I moved to study the cameras at the entrance. Tony and Tank,