The Madame (The Chloe Chronicals) Read online

  The words take a few seconds for me to totally understand what she just said. Once they did, I about swallowed my tongue. “What are you talking about?” I tried to make sure that I wasn’t screaming at her but I felt as if everything was about to change.

  Well, change even more than it was about to. Fuck. I’m about to be a father to a baby.

  “You know,” she gestures to the building around us as we walk out to the garage. “I was thinking that we could raise this baby like a real family. Maybe we could do that.”

  My heart about fell out of my stomach. I’m a complete asshole who is selfish as fuck. “You know, that sounds good. You should move out here.” As the words come out of my mouth, I know that I am pushing Chloe farther and farther away.

  But, it’s time that I own up to my responsibilities.

  Chloe- then

  Vlad is a priest. He’s a priest but he’s a sex trafficker all in the same sentence. In what type of crazy world do those two titles go fucking together? Only here.

  I stumble back to my new apartment by myself and the minute I enter my building, I shrug out of my coat. It’s too hot to be wearing it and I feel the sweat pooling down my body. It’s disgusting as hell.

  By the time I walk into my apartment, I have cooled down enough where I don’t feel as if I am on fire. My new phone is buzzing in my pocket but I choose to ignore it as I walk to get Steve out of his pin.

  “Hey, baby,” I croon as I bend down to get him out. He jumps up and starts kissing my face and then knocks me over. “I know, I missed you, too!”

  After I let him outside and he does his business, we go back to my new apartment. There’s a lot of my stuff that is still in boxes and I know that I have to start unpacking. But, I don’t want to. I have zero motivation to do anything but review case files.

  Steve and I are sat on the couch with the air conditioning running. He’s happily chewing on a bone that is as big as him and I am reviewing files on Vlad and Dom. Between the two of them, they have a lot of felonies that are adding up. I don’t know which one is worse.

  They have been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for years and we haven’t been able to get our hands on them. They are like the Al Capone of the twenty-first century and are impossible to pin something on.

  I have downed a glass of wine by the time there’s a knock on my door. I reach under my coffee table and grab my gun that I know is there and walk over to the door. After looking through the peephole, I unlock the door and push it open.

  chloe- Now

  The gun that is pressed against my back has me straightening up real quick. I think back to whether or not I locked the door and then I remembered that I did. I reach my hand out as if I were surrendering, but then fake it by reaching further to my mantel.

  “Don’t try that, Chloe,” the accent is thick and sounds very Eastern European.

  Holy shit! They know my real name. “Who are you?” I ask and look over my shoulder only to be hit in the head with a different gun. How many hands does this man have? Two guns in two different hands?

  The guy chuckles as I wince and then hits me again. “I don’ think you should ask questions, do you?”

  “Why are you here?” I ask bravely and cover my stomach out of impulse.

  There’s a few footsteps that enter my living room and then I hear my dog barking. Steve’s barking so loud that I want to yell at him to stop but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe then he will wake up a neighbor or get the cops called.

  Yeah, I know. I am a cop.

  “Whvat? You think you get away with this?”

  I know who’s voice that belongs to and now I know how fucked I am.

  Howard- then

  It’s no secret that I have been in love with Chloe Delacruz since college and I won’t lie about it either. She’s beautiful inside and out and has a heart of gold. The one problem I have is, I don’t do casual. I’m a balls-to-the-wall type of guy and I want all of her.

  I’m standing in front of her holding a bag of cheap and greasy Chinese food and a case of beer. I nod towards her wineglass and she smiles. “I see you started without me,” I murmur and push my way through her door.

  Without waiting for permission, I walk through her apartment until I’m at the kitchen. Once I’m standing in the kitchen, I put the beer away and start digging through her cabinets to find the plates. She giggles and picks her body up to sit on the counter. “Help yourself.”

  I find the plates in the cabinet next to the fridge and I look over at her over my shoulder. “Don’t mind if I do. What are you up to?” Quickly, I plate the food and then search the drawers for silverware.

  Her little but gorgeous legs are bouncing in front of her as she points to the drawer to the left to her. I fight the urge to trace my fingers up her leg and pull open the drawer. After I grab two forks, I place them on the two plates and start walking to the living room.

  Steve is following behind me and he’s barking very loudly. I’m assuming he’s hungry for Chinese. I sit both plates down and then sit on the couch. I heard Chloe laughing in the living room and I turn to look at her.

  Granted, I like her blonde better than brunette, but she’s still gorgeous. Since she’s not working out as much for the bureau, she’s started to gain some new curves. I love a real woman and that is what she is.

  “What?” I ask incredulously.

  She shrugs and then walks over to the couch but before she sits down: “You have a habit of making yourself at home. You know that, right?” She’s grinning hard enough that I can see the dimples on the sides of her mouth. This is only seen when she finds something very funny.

  Needless to say, I love those fucking dimples!

  I shrug and then turn to her files that she has spread on the coffee table. Before fully reading them, I pick up my plate and then hers. I hand hers to her and she giggles. “You know, a girl could get used to this,” Chloe murmurs as she starts to eat her food.

  That’s my point.

  “So, what do you think so far? Do you think you need to learn more Russian? I know you need to work on your accent. You were kind of Borat.”

  She huffs and then chuckles. “Yeah, I did jack up my accent.”

  Chloe bends over the table slightly so I can see the small of her back. My breath catches and I feel as if I’m being a creeper by checking her out. I can’t help it though. I think she’s fucking beautiful.

  Knowing that I have to calm down so my boner doesn’t poke all the through the fabric of my jeans, I change the subject. “Is it weird working around Barry?”

  I ask because Chloe’s brother, Barry, is a repeat offender and he’s going to constantly be fucking up his life. Chloe was the one that arrested him when he was high on cocaine and now they are saying that he’s involved in this sex trafficking case. Needless to say, Chloe is stressing out about this and she is working harder than ever to clear his name.

  Things are not looking good for him. I think he’s a loser and I feel for Chloe that she has to deal with this. As a child of a mother who was addicted to heroin, I know how it feels to have to worry about someone and making sure that they don’t mess up their lives.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she murmurs before grabbing a piece of paper off the table. “It’s like he’s there, but I’m not sure how much he is actually there.”

  I shrug and she settles in next to me again. We rest on the couch together like this for a while and she reads over a few documents. “So, I hate to bring it up. But you never told me what happened to you and Grant.” I’m fishing and I don’t even fucking care. I am dying to know what happened to her and Grant and I have a feeling that is why she took this case so easily.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Grant must have fucked up pretty badly. I know that Chloe really liked him and I could see it all over her face. But I could also see there was something between him and Christine. Christine was always jealous of Chloe from the beginning and it was ridiculous how
she pretended to be friends with her. Sorority girls are ruthless. They are mean and nasty people that will rip each other apart to prove that the other one is better.

  Which is funny because Chloe’s the exact opposite. She should have been apart of the frat I was in because she’s basically like a dude. Hell, she probably is more of a guy than half of them there.

  I slip my hand under her chin and lift her face up so she’s looking at me while she’s still laying on me. “You have to tell me so I know how to kill him for messing up with you again.”

  Chloe smiles and winks at me through her long eyelashes. “You can’t go to jail. Do you know what they do to cops in jail? They would kill you before you get through classification.”

  It’s my turn to laugh and I do. A full belly one with my head thrown back. She laughs along with me and it’s her cute music box sounding one. “I love your laugh,” I whisper and she looks up at me through her long eyelashes.

  I adjust her off of me before I do something fucking stupid. Like kiss her or lock her in the bedroom for the rest of our lives.

  She looks winded and looks at me like I’m crazy as she rights herself up. “What did I do?” Chloe asks me and looks around the room and then back at me. Her newly brunette hair is rumpled and I can see the crease from the ponytail she was wearing.

  Steve has found himself a bed underneath our feet and he’s sprawled out across a tee shirt that is there. Wait, what the hell is a tee shirt doing out here?

  “Nothing, Chlo. You didn’t do anything wrong. I just don’t want to cross any lines or anything. You know what I mean?” I ask and then lean over and grab up a file. “Let’s go over the case more in depth and then I’m going to leave so I can go to bed.”

  Chloe- Then

  Howard is acting weird. Did I do something wrong? I have never seen him act like this before and I don’t like it. He’s acting as if I was too close to him or something. And what was that about asking what happened with Grant? Like hell I want to go over that with him. I didn’t doubt that he would physically hurt Grant but I didn’t need to start anything between them.

  “So, let’s get another beer and go over some of this shit before you have to go to bed.” Even though you should stay here with me. Wait, what?

  I jump off the couch and shake my ass a little more than I probably should and walk to my kitchen. Steve jumps up off of his bed and follows me into the kitchen with a slanted trot. The dog can’t walk straight but it’s so cute. I’m going to need to take him for a walk later or something.

  With two beers in my hands, I walk back to Howard who is casually sprawled out on my couch. His massive body makes my couch look small and it’s nuts. I have thought of him this way once before and then after we had sex, it was like I lost all interest in him. I know that going down this road again is a bad idea- but I can look, right?

  His legs are in a perfect v shape with his arms splayed out on the back of the couch. He watches me walk in with the beers and I can’t help but feel beautiful. For the first time since I left Grant (or whatever that makeshift feeling was with Vlad), I feel alive again. It’s not good.

  “What?” His velvety voice asks almost as if it’s dipped in honey.

  I shrug and do my best to pretend that he’s not affecting me. “Just thinking about how you make my couch seem small.” I sit next to him and hand him over the bottle.

  “Are you callin’ me fat?” He asks with faux anger.

  “No! Never!” I say with fake dignition.

  I pull out the new file and show Howard the information that I have found on Dom and Vlad. It’s obvious that these two did not just pick up sex trafficking and I’m dying to know how they were able to get these girls.

  “I think that we need to figure out when their next shipment is. I don’t want to tip them off, but we need to find out when and how they are getting them here.”

  He nods his head and then rubs his bottom lip with his index finger. I have come to know that is his thinking stance, and he does that when he’s trying to crack the case or something. “That is something we can ask. The problem is that we can’t say we don’t like the girls or they are going to kill them or hand them off to someone else. We need to find a way to get them to trust us and we can get them out.”

  “How do we do that?” I ask and take another pull off my beer. The liquid is going too easily down my throat and it’s starting to worry me. Since I’m no longer in school, alcohol affects me more and I don’t have as much of a tolerance.

  “We are just going to have to figure it out. Those girls need out of there before it’s too late. I read that it takes seventy-two hours for them to officially disappear and the chances of us finding them are non-existent.”

  Howard- Now

  I shift through all of the stuff that is around her apartment and notice that it’s trashed. Chloe isn’t a super clean- freak but she is in the sense she doesn’t like papers spread out. And everything in her apartment is spread out.

  The couch cushions are split open and there’s fluff all over the place from it. I can see where the kitchen table has been flipped over and there’s a broken chair that is on the floor.

  “Steve!” I call and hear him come running from her room. “Where’s your mom?” I ask the dog stupidly. Like he could answer me but maybe he can show me something that will lead me to find out where she went off to.

  He comes running at me and tries to climb up my leg. I reach down and pick him up. Before I could walk through her room, my phone rings.

  It’s fucking Grant. I already know he hates me and this is not making anything better. The last thing I need is to be accused of not taking care of her. “Yeah?” I greet him.

  “I’m on my way, asshole. Be there in a few hours.”

  Having him come help me find Chloe is the last thing that I want or need. However, if she got kidnapped or something? The chances of finding her with two people are quicker and I would do anything to find her.

  Without her here, her apartment seems empty and large. I can’t put my finger on it, but the one thing that does come to mind is that her personality is so large she takes up everything in here.

  I don’t mean to sound like a pussy, but it’s true. I’m so in love with that woman that I can’t even breathe. It’s disgusting and scary all at the same time.

  God damn it, Chloe. Where the fuck are you?

  Howard- Then

  My eyes bulge out of my eye sockets as Chloe leaned against the wall dressed in nothing but a thong and a sexy bra. She smiled knowingly as my eyes traveled the length of her body. I couldn’t stop my eyes from focusing on the smooth skin right below her belly button that is barely hidden by the gusset of her lacey thong.

  “See something you like?” She whispers to me tauntingly as she spreads her pretty legs far enough for me to see the half moons of her ass poking out from her thong.

  I nod my head like a bobble head and walk over to her. Before I can reach her, I stop and then consider the situation. She’s obviously in a playful mood and I’m going to get something out of this. It’s been a long few years since I last had her to myself and I’m going to make the most of it. “Gimme a show, sweetness.”

  I don’t wait for her reply as I walk past her and towards the living room. Once I’m seated on the couch, she walks towards me with her hips swaying. I take in her stacked body that is raised by a pair of sexy heels and my dick is so hard that my jeans are probably stretched all to shit.

  Slowly and tantalizing, she begins to rock her body back and forth. Her tits shake from side to side and her thighs rub against each other. “Fuck,” I whisper and unzip my jeans. My hand grabs my dick that’s hard in my boxer briefs and I squeeze it to get some relief.

  Greedy, we watch each other as I stroke myself and she dances to some beat in her head. It’s slow and mesmerizing how she moves and I’m hypnotized by it. Her hard nipples press against the lace of her bra and when Chloe sees my eyes on them, she picks up both hands and cups them.<
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  “Bring them over here,” I order and drop my hand off of my cock.

  Chloe follows directions, and walks over to me and then settles herself so she’s straddling my thighs. I can feel the heat from her pussy on my dick and it’s making me lose my shit. “You want them in your face?”

  “Fuck yeah.”’

  Her full breasts are pushed into my face and my mouth waters as I take both nipples in my mouth at the same time. This is a feat, so I used both hands to squish both tits together for me to get them in my mouth. I suck and nip at the rose colored flesh and she moans loudly.