Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 220(@200wpm)___ 176(@250wpm)___ 146(@300wpm)
“The fuck! What are you doing?”
“Punishing you for your rudeness, your ineptitude in catching my brother, and your attempt to incarcerate him.”
“But… you weren’t there. How am I supposed to catch someone with wings? I can cuff him all I like, he’s always going to be able to fly away. And.. oW! Cut that the fuck out!”
He does not cut it the fuck out. He spanks me until my ass is throbbing and sore as hell, and I am feeling both pissed off and very sorry for myself. I no longer feel like helping him, that’s for sure. I want to see him behind bars for assaulting an officer.
I want him to respect me. I want him to treat me like a person of authority. But he clearly doesn’t see me that way. To Justice, I am nothing but a pawn to be used and punished if I fail to serve to his satisfaction.
This was the last thing I expected to have happen tonight. I thought he might be slightly miffed at what happened, but this is… he’s treating me like a servant who failed to please her master.
“You need to be more careful,” he lectures. “You walked into the web the moment you saw it, and you brought a friend with you in a very delicate condition. She could have been greatly harmed if you had encountered a hostile beast.”
“You are a hostile beast! And she’s been kidnapped.”
“Don’t worry about her. Worry about yourself, brat.”
“Brat!” I repeat his comment, offended. How dare he. “I am an officer of the law. I am a detective of the New York City Police Department. I bring down murderers. I protect people. I am not a fuckin’ brat.”
“Yes,” he says, steadying me briefly, only so he can spank my ass harder. He then continues lecturing me as I bounce back and forth in the net, yowling. “You are. You hide behind the law you claim to serve in order to do as you please.”
“The fuck?” The accusation maybe isn’t that far off, sometimes, but he doesn’t know me well enough to know that. I haven’t done anything wrong. “I went and found your psycho brother like a goddamn criminal courier. It’s not my fault my tools don’t cover winged perps!”
“Yes. I intended to help you with a tool for that.”
“Maybe you should help me instead of lecturing me and punishing me for not catching a monster by myself in less than twenty-four hours. Christ, even my chief is more reasonable than you!”
My ass fucking hurts and my ego is bruised. I am also very, very worried about Tessie and Obigor. I don’t trust Order as far as I can’t throw him.
“The net you stuck yourself in within seconds of seeing it is not for you,” Justice says to me. “It’s for my brother.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“Yes. Now all we need to do is lure him into it and we will be able to take care of him.”
“How? You’ve obviously lost control of him. You’re sending me rushing about the place without the slightest bit of help, just vague clues. Now you’re suddenly interested in helping and keeping him under control? He has killed thirteen people! He needs to pay the price for that. I’m not handing him over to you so you can…FUCK!”
Another harsh slap lands on my ass. This one, coming on top of the previous several dozen, hurts like Hades.
“He will be incarcerated,” Justice says. “He will serve his sentence.”
“What sentence? He’ll get life in prison, and he’s lucky the death penalty was rolled back here.”
“He would be confined somewhere he could no longer do harm. We take killing humans very seriously. We know how precarious our position is in this world, how quickly we could be eradicated if our existence was to be discovered. This is a matter of survival for us all. Now. Are you ready to come out of there and do some work?”
“I’ve been working all day, asshole.”
He sighs softly. “So that’s it.”
“That’s what?”
“You like being punished. Are you jealous of the criminals you catch, because they get to be in trouble, while you have to be a good girl? Is that why you cause trouble for your chief?”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
I love being from New York. It makes cussing someone out feel more like a cultural experience than actual rudeness.
“I’m talking about the way you keep challenging me, and the way you insist on earning punishment even while you are earning punishment. You never do anything simply or easily. And you are careless.”
“I am not! What makes you say that?”
“Aside from the fact you are currently upside down in a web, you left a bank of high lumen lights on the roof of your apartment.
“I did?” I think a second. “Oh, shit. I did.”
“I turned them off,” he says. “Before you set your building on fire.”