Slave to Love by Nikita Black

away and he calmly pressed the release button on the panel. With a jerk, the car ascended to the next floor.
    The door whooshed open and he strode out, pointing to a small camera in the corner of the elevator's ceiling. “Now, smile real sweet for the surveillance tape,” he said with a look of infuriating smugness.
    Ah, hell.

 
    Chapter 6
    Caroline sank her forehead against the wall next to the elevator. Damn, damn, damn. How brilliant had that move been? She'd completely forgotten about the security cameras that had been installed in the elevator due to the increased threat of terrorism. Now she’d have to do whatever he wanted, if he had a mind to make her. He could say she seduced him and they’d believe him— The whole thing had been caught on tape. And he'd known it all along. The bastard.
    How on earth had this happened to her? In less than forty-eight hours she’d gone from being offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fast-track her dream of transferring to Homicide, to possibly killing any chance of staying there by sleeping with her superior officer, to subsequently being royally fucked by him.
    Damn, damn, damn.
    Jeez, what a mess. She'd end up in a straitjacket if she had to face these explosive feelings and situations every day. Should she bail out now while she still had a modicum of dignity left?
    No. She could handle this. She could handle him. She would reason with him. Suggest they both just forget any of it ever happened. Suggest they start over with a clean slate. And keep their hands off each other. Both of them. Maybe then she could work with him. It wouldn’t be easy. But she owed it to herself to try. She would not blow this chance because of a bad case of unruly hormones.
    “Mick!” she called after his retreating form, and hurried to catch up. “I need to talk to you.”
    “You can do that later, too,” he said without breaking stride. “Right after you fuck me.”
    She didn't have time to do more than grind her teeth and think about lifting her foot and kicking him in the shins when Bobby and Tim Woodruff suddenly emerged from the task force center.
    “You found her,” Bobby said cheerfully to Mick.
    Sorely tempted, she nevertheless dropped her foot to the floor and tapped it impatiently instead.
    “In SIS. She must miss it.”
    Mick greeted Woodruff with a quick handshake. Without so much as a glance at her, he took a sheaf of files Bobby handed him and started down the corridor to one of the interview rooms.
    Bobby gazed after him with a slightly raised brow, then leaned in to her. “Naughty, naughty. Detective McGraw doesn't like sharing his slaves with anyone. Better not let him catch you in SIS again.”
    “He won't have to.” She crossed her arms mutinously. “He’s going to fire my ass any second.”
    Bobby slung an arm around her shoulder, compelling her to follow McGraw and Woodruff. “Now, that’s not true and you know it.”
    “I’m not kidding. Honest to God, Bobby. I don’t know if I can work with the man. He's a complete prick.”
    Bobby chuckled. “I agree. But he's an equal opportunity prick. That's what makes him so good. The bad guys don't stand a chance. For some reason this case has him more wound up than I've ever seen him. My advice? Just do what he says and ignore the rest. If he likes you, he'll get you rotated into Homicide permanently. That's what you want, isn't it?”
    It was. More than ever, not that she’d had a taste of it. “That's beside the point,” she said, puffing out a breath. “He doesn't like me. Not one damn bit.”
    “Oh, yes he does. He does, indeed.”
    They'd arrived at the door to Interview 3 where Tim and Mick waited for them, so Caro didn't have time to ponder what Bobby could have meant by that ridiculous remark.
    “We'll be interviewing several close friends of the victims,” Tim explained before they went inside. “The idea is to put together a profile of the victims' patterns of behavior as couples. That way