Page 3 of Daddy's Justice

I turned and took off.

Because I ran every morning, I was fast and had incredible endurance. Sure, they were bigger than me, but I didn’t have armor weighing me down. The odds were in my favor.

Sprinting through the park, I realized that the lone bench away from everyone hadn’t been the best decision.

Oomph.

The wind was knocked right out of me. Strong arms wrapped around my waist and without any effort at all, tossed me over a very broad shoulder. I stared at the ground from seven feet above it as we strolled toward the waiting women.

What the actual…

The audacity of this man!

I paused momentarily to note how easy it had been for him to swing me up and over like a sack of potatoes. At just under six foot tall and athletic, I was far from a lightweight. I looked down at his back and my gaze wandered even lower.

Oh my God. His ass was perfect. My panties dampened.

Morrigan, you are being kidnapped. Maybe you should stop drooling over your assailant and, I don’t know, fight for your life?

My inner voice finally snapped through the haze of lust that had overcome my other senses. No matter how good looking this man was, he wasn’t taking me anywhere.

“Put me down, right now!” I yelled, summoning my most authoritative voice. “I am a law enforcement officer. This is assault! Put me down!”

“No.”

Well, he wasn’t a man of many words. I started slamming my fists into his back. It felt like I was punching a brick wall. “That’s cute,” he growled. “I’m still not putting you down.” The words spurred me on, and I renewed my struggles. I pounded his chest with my feet, while reaching behind to strike his neck with my closed fist. I caught the outside of his jaw hard. He stopped walking.

“I haven’t assaulted you, not yet anyway. If you keep hitting me, my hand is going to descend on your upturned behind.”

What? What did he just say? I stilled, needing clarification. “Did you just threaten to hit me?”

“No. I threatened to spank you, Morrigan.”

“You can’t spank me!” I protested, even though the threat did funny things to my insides. My body was a traitor. “I’m an adult.”

“While that is true, you are not acting like one. You are kicking and hitting me, throwing a fit like a child. If you want to act like a child, I’ll show you how much of a deterrence a well-placed swat on an upturned bottom can be.”

I considered what he was saying for a second too long. With only a couple of quick strides from his long legs and ginormous feet we were back by the bench, where the giant women waited.

“I will put you down now, but you can’t run,” he said. “We need to talk.”

The anxiety that phrase always brought sent frost through my veins. Every man I had ever dated had started a conversation with those four words before breaking up with me.

At least I knew this man wasn’t going to break up with me.

He slid me over the front of his body and the hair on my arms stood up. God damn this man was sexy. I felt my nipples tighten under my bra, and I hoped they weren’t visible.

“Not here,” the tallest woman, the one who looked like me, said. “It is too dangerous.” She looked around, assessing the park. I wondered what she thought she would find.

“This park is perfectly safe. I come here all the time. It is only a block from my lab.”

“That is the problem,” she said, cryptically. “You come here all the time. It is part of your normal routine. Anyone watching you would know that. We need to move and quick.”

“Ummm, yeah, no. I’m not going anywhere with you. You are strangers, not to mention, you’re just strange. Especially this one.” I jerked my thumb in Viking dude’s direction and rolled my eyes. “For all I know, you’re trying to lure me away under false pretenses and plan to kill me.”

Those words triggered a memory of the last murder. That girl had looked the most like me. What if it wasn’t one person committing them? What if it was a team of people? What if these people were serial killers? I reached slowly into my pocket and pulled my phone out. I swiped up and was about to hit the emergency call button when it was snatched from my hand by the purple-haired woman.

“Give that back!” I put my hand out, waiting for her to listen. “You can’t take my phone. That is theft of my personal property.”

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