Текст книги "Kill Shot"

Автор книги: Lani Lynn Vale

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Chapter 4

Do you want to know what I got for Christmas? Fat. I got fat.

-T-shirt

Bennett

It was Friday, a week and a half after I’d gotten the stitches in my hand, and I was about to knock on Lennox’s front door.

I contemplated having my sister do it, knowing she had every capability to do so, but I sort of liked having the excuse to go see her.

Plus, my sister had just taken the ones out of my face. It was someone else’s turn.

She’d been on my mind a lot in the last week and a half, and I found that I sort of liked the idea of her being there.

She was cute, funny, and I liked that she didn’t lay down and roll over when it came to me.

I wanted…and needed, someone who could go toe to toe with me. I didn’t want some simpering woman that was intimidated by my size and personality.

Plus, they’d never make it past round two with my family.

We were all loud, obnoxious and found it more fun to laugh rather than cry.

Which made me think Lennox would fit in perfectly.

Knocking on her front door, I turned until I could see the street behind me.

The neighborhood was nice. Something I could never afford to live in on my salary.

I made plenty of money when I wasn’t having to shell out a whack to pay for a home loan, but I was afraid with one, I wouldn’t be able to buy that new truck I needed, or the fifty dollar pair of jeans Reagan was already insistent upon having.

My truck was the same one I had in high school, and since it was still running good, I had no reason to get a new one. Yet, it would be better to have a little nicer of a vehicle that I could rely on in the middle of winter.

“Oh, hey!” Lennox said, opening the door. “I thought you’d call!”

I raised my brow at her. “And how would I have called you?”

“Well…you called me the other day just fine…you know, to get your phone back?” She asked, opening the door wide to allow me in.

Her eyes were happy to see me, and I liked that.

Although I was afraid she was a little too blonde.

“You do realize, right, that I called my phone?” I asked.

Her mouth dropped open, and then she blushed from the roots of her hair all the way down her chest.

“Oh,” she breathed.

I snorted, then ruffled her hair. “You’ll do, Lennox. You’ll do.”

She gave me a sour face, and then motioned me into her kitchen.

It wasn’t opulent, but it was pretty freakin’ awesome.

The countertops were stainless steel, as were all her appliances.

It was a man’s kitchen, with a woman’s flare.

She had Coca-Cola decorations all over the walls, and the windowsill was decorated in rich red fabric. She had a red bowl of fruit set up in the middle of the island that separated her kitchen from her dining room, and I wondered why she even bothered to put it there when the fruit itself was fake.

“I have a suture kit around here somewhere. Let me wash my hands real quick. Go ahead and sit at my table,” she said, gesturing to the table with her free hand.

It was piled high with…shit.

That’s all it was. Letters. Newspapers. Magazines. Change. You name it, it was on the table.

“Sorry for the mess, but I’m allergic to cleaning,” she laughed.

My eyes followed her movements as she walked to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. She had a massive glass with a stopper on it that held the soap, and she upended it, pouring a gargantuan amount of soap onto her hands before she washed all the way up to her elbows.

“This isn’t surgery,” I said once she turned the water off.

She smiled. “I know. I just had my hands in the soil outside, though. Soil’s a breeding ground for bacteria. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

I silently agreed, eyes moving down to her paper, and immediately alighting on a stack that was directly on top.

My eyes scanned it, and then widened at what I read.

“Why do you have a restraining order?” I asked in alarm.

She gave me an admonishing glance as she said, “You really shouldn’t be reading other people’s mail. Isn’t that illegal?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s illegal to open other people’s mail. It says nothing against reading it once it’s already opened.”

Walking back to me, she grabbed a package off the counter between the kitchen and dining room table, and tossed it to the top before getting a pair of gloves out of a box on top of her table. Something I hadn’t seen because it’d been buried under a hefty pile of newspaper.

“To answer your question, I have a restraining order against one of my ex friends,” she explained. “We had a big falling out, and she started to get really ugly. I asked her to back off, and she started to send her friends around to terrorize me, as well as coming herself. Toilet papering my house, egging my car, forking my yard.”

My mouth opened and closed. “Forking your yard…”

She smiled. “Yeah, they stab the plastic forks into the yard, and then break them off at the base so you can’t get them out.”

Ahh that made sense.

“And what did you do to deserve that behavior?” I asked her.

She grimaced. “When I was in college, we shared a room together. She said that I stole her boyfriend and her ‘stash.’ I didn’t know what stash she was accusing me of stealing, but I most definitely didn’t steal her boyfriend, nor her stash.”

I snorted. “Stash of drugs, probably. And has she come around lately?”

She shook her head as she started opening her box, revealing sterilized scissors and other stuff that I had no clue what it was.

“I haven’t seen her in a while. I moved about a year ago, and either she doesn’t know the new address, or she’s obeying the law,” she informed me.

“Mmmm,” I said. “It’s more likely that she doesn’t know where you live. Try to keep it that way.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I try to do that. Yet some police detective I know looked me up in the system when I didn’t want him to.”

I smiled at her. “I’m not a detective. Only a lowly patrol and SWAT officer.”

She snorted and then snapped her gloves on before she started to cut the pieces of thread from my hand.

It pinched slightly, but didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad as they had going in.

Once done with that, she started to pick them out with a small set of tweezers.

While she did this, I studied her hair. Her face. Her clothes.

Her hair was up today in a messy bun on top of her head, and her face was free of any makeup.

I found that I liked both sides of her, but this one had to be my favorite.

If she looked this beautiful in the first place, why in the hell did she wear makeup?

She was wearing a pair of black knit shorts that were extremely short, and the tank she was wearing barely covered her belly. However, I found that I liked the two in combination with the other. She looked freakin’ hot.

Her tan proved that she was outside a lot, and most likely in just about the same amount of clothes if the tan lines were anything to go by.

Ruff! Ruff!

My eyes went to the French doors on the other side of the table, and then down to see her dog, the massive white beast that looked like it’d grown in the week and a half that I’d seen it.

“Aren’t you worried that he’ll break that door?” I asked when he stood onto his hind legs and put both paws up on the glass.

She looked over and smiled. “No. It’s safety glass.”

“Why? Have you experienced him breaking the glass before?” I asked.

“Mmm-mmm,” she said, shaking her head. “Corrinne again.”

“Corrinne?” I asked in alarm, the name pulling me rudely out of my perusal of how great her hair smelled.

She nodded. “Yeah, Corrinne. Threw rocks through my last house’s windows. That’s why every one of my doors, as well as windows, have safety glass.”

“Where’d you go to college?” I asked warily.

“UT,” she answered quickly.

What were the odds of two Corrinne’s, in Kilgore or around the vicinity, both being crazy as fuck?

“What was her last name?” I asked, really not wanting to hear the answer, but knowing it would need to be done. Just in case.

Don’t say Calloway. Don’t say Calloway.

“Beamer….” she answered.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God!

“Bennett?” She called from behind me. “What’s the deal? Do you know her?”

I turned to find her standing, tweezers in her hand, and looking at me like I’d grown at second head.

“No. My Corrinne isn’t your Corrinne, thankfully. That’s my girl’s mother,” I explained. “It’s just the sound of that name really freaks me the fuck out. Not that I’ve seen her in five fucking years, but to hear her name still gives me chills.”

The last time had been by accident, too.

I’d been out to eat with my family, and Corrinne had been out to eat with hers.

I’d never know why she’d bothered to come over when she did, looking at Reagan like she was her long lost daughter that she cared for.

She never wanted her and only acted like she did when she was wanting money from me.

That day, though, was the day she’d thrown out a little hint that maybe she really did want Reagan.

It’d freaked me out so much that I’d had my mother speak with a lawyer about any and all possible options Corrinne might have, in case she ever got the whim to try to get Reagan back.

Luckily, there weren’t any, but I still broke out into a cold sweat whenever her name was mentioned.

She really could make my child’s life a living hell, even if she couldn’t get her under the letter of the law.

“Seems to me if she was so bad you wouldn’t have made a kid with her,” she surmised.

I shook my head. “I was a teenager at the time. Young and dumb. I have some stories that will turn your skin inside out to hear.”

She shivered. “How does she get along with your daughter?”

My face hardened. “She hasn’t seen my daughter since she was born…at least not purposefully. I’ve had full custody of her for the majority of her life. She only knows that her mother was a very bad person, and that she’ll never be seeing her, at least if it’s within my power.”

“So does your girlfriend, Meg, like her?” Lennox asked, taking my hand once again and finishing the job.

I scrunched my face up in confusion. “Meg?”

She looked up at me with her brows high.

“Don’t you have a Meg?” She asked casually.

I shook my head. “No.”

“You were talking to her the last time we were together,” she said suspiciously. “You asked her if she wanted you to bring dinner.”

I didn’t let on that I knew who she was talking about. It really cracked me up that she was trying to be so aloof about Meg, and still get information at the same time.

I smiled.

“Meg is my babysitter when I’m working. She has a seven year old of her own, and she’s married to a Marine,” I said with a laugh at the look on her face.

“Oh,” she laughed a little under her breath before taking out the final stitch.

After inspecting the skin, she curled my palm into a fist with both of her hands and said, “Try to open your hand.”

I did, easily.

“Well, you could at least make it look like I have some strength,” she grumbled.

After throwing all her trash into the trashcan, she smiled at me.

“What are you doing now?” She asked.

I looked at my watch. “In about an hour, I’m supposed to be having dinner with a few of the guys off the SWAT team and their wives…do you want to go?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I don’t want to impose.”

Then the moaning started, followed shortly by barking.

I looked towards the backdoor to see the dog barking at the back window of the house beside Lennox’s. It looked like the two houses shared a yard.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked sharply.

Lennox smiled. “That would be my next door neighbor and best friend. He’s a little…loud when he’s…ummm….you know.”

I raised a brow at her. “When he’s fucking?”

Her mouth dropped open.

“Yes!” She hissed in affront at my language. “But you don’t have to be so vulgar about it!”

I grinned. “We’re all adults here. Fucking is fucking. No other way around it.”

She shook her head and went to the backdoor and opened it before calling the dog.

“Cola, come!”

Cola didn’t stop barking. Plus she didn’t move, either.

“Your dog looks like she listens real well,” I observed dryly.

“Yeah, she’s pretty stubborn. Cola! Come!” She yelled louder.

With the door open, I could hear the yells and shouts even clearer, and wasn’t really sure how Lennox could stand to hear that. Add in the dog’s barking, and it was really quite loud!

“Jesus, they’re really getting after it, aren’t they?” I asked her.

“You have no idea. This is pretty mild for Paxton,” she said just before she walked outside and captured the collar around the dog’s neck.

Cola continued to bark even after she got the dog inside.

“Does she ever stop?” I asked, wincing a little as the large mutt’s bark reverberated off Lennox’s walls.

She shook her head. “Only if I put her into her cage in my room. That’s her quiet place.”

I grabbed a hold of the dog’s collar and started pulling her in the direction of what I assumed were the bedrooms.

It turned out to be the third on the left.

It was painted in shades of pink. The bedding was a soft pink, and the walls a bright neon pink. More like the color of a highlighter, if I was being honest.

Her floor was the only thing not pink, and that was a dark grey that looked to be softer than my bed.

I sank at least half an inch into the carpet, thinking that it’d be perfect to fuck Lennox on.

Her bed, however, was even nicer.

It was a king size in a huge rustic wood frame with four posters.

At the footboard there was a stand for her TV, so close that she could see it perfectly if she were to be in bed.

The dog’s cage was even pink, if you could believe it.

“Do you have a thing for pink?” I tossed over my shoulder as I moved the still barking dog to her cage, and shut her in.

“Yeah, pink’s my favorite color,” she said with a laugh in her voice. “That’s also my favorite song!”

I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t dare because I feared she was being serious.

“Well, now that we have that taken care of, why don’t you slip into a pair of pants and some shoes so we can go?” I offered.

She shook her head in amusement. “First of all, I’m wearing shorts. Second of all, I don’t have any jeans that are clean for me to wear. Where are we going, anyway?”

I liked that she didn’t tell me no, instead just asked where we were supposed to be going.

I smiled a cryptic smile and said, “You’ll see.”

Chapter 5

Sex jokes aren’t funny. I mean cum on, people.

-Coffee cup

Lennox

“You do realize that this is a strip club…right?” I asked the man at my side.

“Yep,” he agreed quickly.

“A female strip club…” I continued. “One where males go without their females.”

He nodded again. “Yes, and no. This isn’t a strip club anymore. The KPD bought it so we could hold SWAT training, and other department trainings that are required by law. It says it’s a strip club on the outside, but it isn’t. At least not anymore.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful that I didn’t completely underestimate the guy.

“So is it renovated inside?” I asked as he got to the door.

He shook his head. “Yes, well sort of. The front part is still pretty much the same as it had been, but the back part is completely renovated. That’s where we’ll be having dinner. The stripper poles are still up, though. The guys found those pretty fun, so we left them.”

I snorted.

Guys would.

He led me into the back of the building, using a huge set of keys that he’d revealed from his pocket to get us in.

“Oh, wow,” I said, looking around the large arena. “Do y’all use all of this stuff?”

The ‘back’, as he’d called it, was more like a warehouse.

Everything in it was painted black, and there were huge obstacles, ropes hanging from the roof, and even padded walls.

“Train. Run through the course. See if we can beat our times. A little bit of everything,” he said as he passed the ropes.

My hand curled around one of the ropes, and I dropped my bag off my shoulder, settling it on the floor by my feet.

“Can you climb this?” I asked, taking a running jump and pulling myself up.

I curled my feet around the long rope and started to climb hand over hand.

I got about ten feet off the ground before I decided that I really couldn’t go any further.

My hands were already killing me.

And I was fairly sure if I got all the way to the top, which I wouldn’t, that I’d fall to my death.

Looking down, I saw Bennett smiling up at me.

“That all you got?” He asked, curling his massive hand around the other rope and raising his eyebrow at me.

I nodded. “I don’t have much upper body strength.”

He held the rope underneath my butt steady as I started to come down, but didn’t move his hand when my ass started to get close to it.

“Uhh,” I said, nodding my head towards his hand. “You think you can move that?”

He grinned. “Sure I could.”

I slipped until his hand rested against my ass, and I visibly jolted at the contact.

If Bennett hadn’t had his hand there, I would’ve been swinging.

I glared. “Move it.”

He grinned, baring his teeth, and laughed before moving it.

I slid the rest of the way down, and rubbed my hands on the back of my shorts to try to work out the sting.

“Can you climb that?” I asked in challenge.

He raised his brow at me, then nodded.

“Yeah. It’s a requirement to be on the SWAT team,” he said simply.

“Prove it,” I declared.

“And if I do? What do I get?” He rumbled softly, moving in close.

I licked my lips, suddenly very aware at what his words were doing to me.

My heart was beating fast and my palms were sweaty. And we wouldn’t even mention the other places.

“What do you want?” I breathed.

He moved his head forwards until he was less than a hairsbreadth away from my lips, and said, “You.”

I gasped, getting a huge lung full of the air he’d just breathed out, and said the only thing I could.

“We’ll see. You’ll have to do more than climb a rope to get me. But I’ll at least consider it…that is, if you can even do it.”

He chuckled before backing away.

Placing both of his hands onto the rope as high above his head that he could, he started to climb.

And he didn’t even use his legs.

It was all in his upper body.

Every single bit of it.

Holy. Shit.

“Holy shit!” I breathed.

“Such a fuckin’ show off,” a male said.

I turned to see a man directly behind me.

He was gorgeous.

Tall with brown hair, and the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen, he could easily be a cover model for a magazine.

He was wearing faded light blue jeans, black boots, and a black long sleeved shirt that covered him from hands to neck.

I smiled at him. “I bet him he couldn’t do it.”

He raised a brow at me, surprised, I’m sure, that I’d done so.

“It takes a lot to get Bennett to do much of anything. It must’ve been some payout,” he laughed, starting forward.

“It’s totally worth it,” Bennett yelled from above us. “Introduce yourself, shit head.”

I covered my mouth with my hand to keep the laughter from bubbling forth.

Jesus, these men acted like they were twelve year olds!

“I’m Michael,” the man at my side said, extending his hand.

Before I could extend my own hand, though, Bennett was there.

He dropped down in between us, officially cutting off our contact before it even got started.

“I said introduce yourself, not touch her,” Bennett said.

There was no venom in his tone, yet I could tell something was taking place in front of me.

A silent admission between the two.

“Jesus,” I said. “He didn’t offer to fuck me as an introduction. It was only his hand.”

He turned his honey eyes to me and smiled. “I know.”

Simple as that.

I know.

What the fuck, Batman?

“So are we just early, or so late that they’ve already left?” Michael asked, taking a look around.

“I don’t know. I guess they’re just not here yet…” he trailed off as his eyes fastened on a sound, and then dropped me down, covering me with his body.

The movement was so fast that I hadn’t even had the time to scream, let alone draw a breath before it was all knocked out of me.

Bennett’s body lay heavy on mine as he covered me, and my heart was pounding.

“What…what…what’s going on?” I whispered loudly.

Bennett grunted and levered himself up off me, then offered me his hand.

“Sorry about that,” he said, offering me his hand.

I extended my own and looked around warily.

“What the hell was that?” I gasped.

Michael was grinning, wiping at his shirt with a rag he’d magically produced.

“I told you I’d get him!” A woman yelled loudly.

“No, I told you that you couldn’t get both of them, and you didn’t,” a man’s triumphant voice shot back.

The two of them appeared at a balcony above our heads, and I tilted them up to see a man with red hair, and a woman with what looked to have black hair, standing beside him.

The woman had a wicked looking paintball gun in her hand, and she was waving at Michael and Bennett frantically.

“Sorry,” she said. “He told me I couldn’t do it.”

The men beside me snorted, deciding to be amused rather than ticked.

“I wouldn’t have let you do it had Bennett’s woman not been here,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder to indicate me.

I waved at them, and the woman’s face went startled as her mouth turned into a big O of surprise.

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized, tossing the gun at her husband. “I didn’t know anyone was coming with them.”

She hurried down the ladder, much to the red haired man’s consternation, and hurried over to me.

She was pregnant, and I could now see why the man had been upset about her going down the ladder.

I would’ve been advising her, if she were my patient, to not do dangerous things like descend a ladder from twenty feet above while she was pregnant.

Pregnancy did weird things to your balance, and most women didn’t think their balance was altered until they fell or did something bad to themselves.

“It’s okay,” I said, waving my hand in the air as if to clear it. “Benny here protected me.”

“Benny? You call him Benny? He lets you call him Benny?” The woman asked with a smile in her voice.

I raised my eyebrows. “Let? The man has no control over me.”

The woman laughed.

“Oh, I think I’m gonna like you,” she breathed, latching onto my hand and pulling me along in her wake.

She was surprisingly strong for her small stature, although she was still taller than my five foot two.

“Where are you taking me?” I whispered, looking over my shoulder to see Bennett, Michael, and the red headed man talking.

Bennett’s eyes were on me, watching as the oriental woman stole me away, and not caring in the least.

“I’m taking you to meet the rest of the crew. We’re all up front. The rest of the guys are in the back room moving some big…thing that I don’t know what it’s called, around. We’re playing on the stripper pole. Or I was when my husband came in there to check on me and started throwing a little hissy fit,” she explained before pushing through a swinging door into the front of the strip club.

I’d never been in there before, so I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to find.

What I wasn’t expecting was the elegant red hues, and the rich hardwood floors. The stage was even beautiful.

“Wow,” I said, surprised. “I never thought it’d look like this from the outside. I always pictured trashy.”

She shot me a smile over her shoulder. “That’s what we all thought, too. We thought the guys were freakin’ nuts when they told us they were getting this place. We went along for the ride, though, and helped them clean up. It looks pretty good, too.”

My eyes moved from hers to the huddle of women that were sitting in chairs around the front of the stage.

Apparently they’d abandoned the stripper pole for drinks.

My kind of girls.

“Hey!” The woman still holding my hand yelled, bringing the attention of all the women. “Look what I found!”

“She didn’t use to work here, did she?” One of them asked.

She was a blonde with hair down to her mid back. It was styled in waves around her beautiful face, and I knew instantly that I would kill for her hair.

It was probably a hundred percent real, too.

“Umm,” I said. “I came with Bennett. I’m not a stripper.”

They all stared at me, blinking in surprise.

“You came with Bennett?” Another one asked.

This one was a brunette.

“That’s true,” I confirmed, continuing around the table. “My name’s Lennox.”

“I love that name!” The first blonde said. “My name’s Blake, I’m married to Foster. The woman who still has yet to let you go is Memphis, and she’s married to Downy, since I’m fairly sure she’s not stopped talking long enough to introduce herself.”

I smiled at them both.

Memphis looked sheepish that she’d forgotten to introduce herself, and I patted her on the hand.

“It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “My best friend’s the same way.”

She grinned. “Right, then let me introduce you to the rest of the SWAT women.”

Ten minutes later I knew everyone’s names, and who they were married to. Nico to Georgia. Luke to Reese. Downy to Memphis. Foster to Blake. And last, but not least, Mercy to Miller.

“Alright,” I nodded, once Reese introduced herself. “I will try to remember, but please forgive me if I slip up. I’m horrible with names.”

They all smiled in understanding.

Reese got up and asked, “Is there anything you’d like to drink? We have a full bar… I don’t know how to make actual drinks, so if you want something specific, be prepared for it not to be what you wanted.”

I laughed. “How about anything non-alcoholic?”

“Coke?” She asked.

I nodded. “Dr. Pepper is fine.”

She grinned and walked behind the bar, leaving me alone with four very interested women.

“So you’re seeing Bennett?” Mercy asked.

I nodded, then frowned as I thought about it.

“Yeah…no…I don’t really know. I’m not really sure if you could count this as a date,” I admitted.

Mercy raised her brows at me. “What aren’t you sure about?”

I ran my finger along the collar of my shirt, stretching it out slightly.

“I asked him what he was doing after I took his stitches out of his hand, and I think he felt obligated to ask me to come out with him,” I explained.

They all started laughing. Every single one of them.

“What?” I asked, starting to feel uncomfortable not being in on whatever joke I’d just told.

It was Reese who explained as she walked up with my Dr. Pepper.

“Bennett doesn’t do anything that he doesn’t want to do. Trust me. He’s got the hardest head of the entire bunch of men, and he has no problem letting you know that he has a problem doing what you’re asking of him,” Reese informed me.

I blinked. “Really? He seems pretty standard in the man department.”

“She bet him he couldn’t climb the rope out in the warehouse. He proved her wrong and I expect she now has to do something naughty to him later,” Memphis teased, throwing me a smile.

I blushed. “He didn’t say that…exactly.”

“Oh, I can’t freakin’ wait to hear how this pans out!” Reese gushed, smiling widely. “Bennett’s such a sweetheart. And that girl of his…don’t let her get to you. She likes to test out Bennett’s women. Most of them don’t stick around because his daughter’s a vicious little she-devil. Once you get past her act, though, she’s very sweet.”

I raised a brow at that.

“I just saw her, actually. She wasn’t bad at all. In fact, she was very sweet,” I admitted.

They looked at each other. “Were you going out on a date with him?”

I shook my head. “No, I wasn’t. She threw a French fry covered in ketchup over to the booth I was sitting at. It landed right in my lap. Which was pretty good aim since I was wearing white pants. I’m sure you can guess what it looked like once my best friend, Melissa, tried to clean it off.”

They were all giggling.

Everyone, or at least every girl I knew, had a similar phobia of wearing white pants and her period coming.

I had to admit it was fairly embarrassing to walk out with that on my crotch, even if I did have a large jacket covering the stain. The entire restaurant had seen me with it, so I knew they were staring as I left.

I saw the waitresses giggling about it, too.

I might have been twenty six years old, but I wasn’t immune to gossip. I still got embarrassed.

“What do you do, Lennox?” Georgia asked.

I turned my eyes to the brown haired woman with the hot pink undertones in her hair, and smiled. “I’m a PA.”

“Like a publicist, or a physician’s assistant?” Reese asked, taking a drink of her coke.

“Physician’s assistant,” I answered, reaching into the middle of the table for some peanuts.

The women looked at me in surprise.

“What?” I asked, cracking open a peanut.

“How old are you?” Blake asked in disbelief.

“Twenty six,” I answered honestly. “And yes, it is young. I graduated college really early. I practically had all of my credits to graduate with my associates in biology before I got out of high school at seventeen.”

“Ahhh,” Reese said. “That makes sense now. How’d you meet Bennett?”

I would’ve answered, but a particularly upbeat song came on the radio, and my eyes widened in disgust. “Do y’all know what this song means?”

They blinked. “No. What?”

“Google ‘Truffle Butter’ on urban dictionary,” I said.

I’d thought the song was pretty awesome myself until I looked up the meaning one day after Melissa did much the same as I’d just done to the ladies in front of me.

“Oh, my God! That’s disgusting!” Mercy groaned.

“That’s just unsanitary. Everybody knows that if you go from the ass to the vagina during intercourse that it’ll cause an infection. Why would you write a song about something so yucky like that?” Memphis asked in horror.

I’d been, and still was, of much the same opinion.

According to the urban dictionary, truffle butter was the substance that built up when a man stopped using the asshole and went directly to the vagina without cleaning anything in between holes.

Personally, I felt that it was a UTI and a yeast infection waiting to happen, so I couldn’t even find the song remotely entertaining anymore. Not with all my medical background, anyway.

The music suddenly cut off, and I was thankful. I changed the station every time I heard it, too.

“Well, that just ruined this station for me. I’ll have to wait until it’s not popular anymore,” Reese said, making a gagging gesture with her hand.

“What’s wrong with the station you were listening to, baby?” A blonde man wearing a skin tight black t-shirt and dark washed jeans, asked.

He was tall. And big. Really big.

He had a beard, much the same as all the men I’d realized.

Was that a requirement to be on the SWAT team?

“Nothing,” Reese said. “I’ll tell you later. Luke, I’d like you to meet Bennett’s guest, Lennox.”