Free Locked Out (Locked In Love, an Alpha Billionaire Serial)(Volume 2) by Myra Song Page B

quiet enough for me to hear my ragged breaths. It seems like I can hear the rapid fire pulsing of my heart as it races in terror.
     
    It’s awful.
     
    The pain is up there, too. My feet are going numb. They aren’t there yet. It’s the tingling warning that comes just before the numbness. The man in black bound my legs so tightly I can’t shift at all to get circulation going.
     
    My shoulders are on fire. It’s worse than the numbness in my feet. Having my elbows forced behind me is putting an enormous strain on my shoulders, and they are angry about it.
     
    It’s hard not to get lost in the pain and the fear and the quiet.
     
    Thankfully, I’m trained for this kind of thing. Okay, maybe not this exact kind of thing, but I’m able to keep focus. I’m able to not hyperventilate. And, as I slow my pulse, I’m able to think.
     
    There was a thief in Jameson Locke’s house. The cold, calculating nature of the thief put him far above the typical robber. The man had no problem diverting from his plan. He never lost his temper. And he seemed keen on letting me know that he knew about Jameson, and Jameson’s less than wholesome preferences.
    Okay. This means he knows Locke. Knows him well.
     
    He also seemed to know, and be counting on, the security Locke was using. The security Locke obviously knew wasn’t prepared for an event like this.
     
    A knot ties in my stomach. I can’t tell if it is anger or sadness, but it’s there. It’s looking a lot like Locke set this up. I don’t think he meant for me to be groped by his thief friend. I can’t believe that of him.
     
    I was probably supposed to be somewhere else. I’d been heading to my room to pack and leave, cutting my losses and Locke out of my life.
     
    What do I know of Locke? Not that much. I know he’s one of the richest men on the planet. I know he owns a lot of property, some of it questionable. I know he’s arrogant. He wants people to see him as a playboy. It’s all laughs and smarmy charm in public. But he made his father’s company what it is, and that requires ruthlessness and calculation. It requires control.
     
    I bite my lip when I think of Locke and control. Because that is something I know he needs. It was never an option or a conversation when he touched me. He just commanded and--
     
    and I submitted.
     
    Submission . It’s not a word I’m used to. Not one I like, really. I never submitted to the chauvinistic comments at the station. I never submitted to my father’s desires to take up painting, or my mother’s hopes that I become a proper lady. My debutante ball had been the last time she’d had that hope.
     
    With Locke, though, it just clicked. I fell into place. And he made it so, so worth it. My body is responding to these thoughts, arousal tinging the corners of the pain. It threaded through and made everything, well, bearable.
     
    I’m torn between wanting Locke to find me. Him, because I can’t stand the thought of one of the guys from the station seeing me like this. I know it’s okay. I’m a victim-- there was a gun in my face. Being a victim doesn’t make me less of a woman. How many times had I said that shit to a woman on a case? Back when I was a cop and still trying to make the world a better place?
     
    But it’s Locke I want. And, according to the man in black, it’s Locke he wants to find me as well.
     
    On the other hand, the pieces fit in such a way that I’m sure that Locke set this up. The police department instead of his own men. The thief was walking around, bold as brass, in a home with more security than a prison. And the other safe? The competitor? What was that?
     
    If I had to guess, I’d say a distraction.
     
    Locke said he wanted to play. He’d said the stakes were high. But were they stealing a ruby from his own estate high?
     
     

 
     
    Locke
     
    That , I decided, was entirely too easy.
     
    I place my sunglasses in my inner coat pocket and step back into the party,