Page 40 of To Catch a Sub

Landon’s stomach muscles clenched.

“Which means it’s something more interesting than that. I’ll figure it out.” She half turned to him, her smile soft, but one brow quirked in teasing inquiry.

He forced himself not to return the smile. Instead he grabbed the straight-backed chair. Opening the door between their rooms, he brought the chair from her room through, then grabbed the desk chair from his own room and positioned both near the window, facing each other.

Colette hovered in the doorway, visibly hesitant.

“Sit,” he commanded.

Colette stiffened, then leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe. “I am not a dog.”

“No, you aren’t, but if you’re going to stay here, you will obey.”

You will obey me.

Her posture didn’t change, but he knew she was tensing for a fight.

“I will not be spoken to with disrespect.” Her accent was thicker now.

“That wasn’t disrespect, that was a command. There may be times when I tell you to do something, and you simply need to do it. Your safety may depend upon it.”

“And right now my safety depends upon my obeying the same command you’d give a dog?” She shook her head. “No.”

Landon dropped into one of the chairs. She wasn’t…wrong. Outside the power exchange and an active scene, one-word commands like what he’d just used were an unacceptable way to speak to someone. He’d been deliberately harsh, to the point of rudeness, and that wasn’t fair to her.

“Colette, please come sit. We need to talk through a few things.”

Colette prowled over, her gaze locked on him. She took a seat, her hands in the pockets of her jacket, her legs crossed.

“I’m going to ask you some very personal questions. I need you to answer truthfully, because your answers will affect how I protect you.”

“I’ll do my best to be honest.”

“Either you’ll tell me the truth or you won’t.”

She tsked. “You know better than that. The truth is not always black and white, yes and no.”

“In this case, it needs to be. These are yes or no questions.” He held up a hand, anticipating a protest. “I get that there might be some caveats, but your answer to each of these questions needs to start with either the word yes, or the word no.”

She shifted, jamming her hands a little deeper into her jacket pockets.

It wasn’t the first, or even the second, time she’d done that. In fact, she’d had one hand in her pocket when she first showed up at his desk yesterday.

Was that a sign of nerves, or that her hands were cold?

“If you remember, there’s a stipulation to our being here. We’re both meant to be working. Spending time here is already part of my job, but you are expected to work as a member of club staff.”

“I remember.”

He didn’t tell her that fact was a sign that his boss didn’t fully believe she was in danger.

There were levels to how a witness was protected, from tight, temporary security, to relocation and new identities. His orders regarding her were a mix—one-on-one protection, but also she was expected to work, which was something they’d expect of a witness who was given a new identity.

If Landon’s boss thought she was in real danger, Landon and Colette would be locked up twenty-four hours of the day in a nondescript hotel somewhere.

Once the rest of his NCB investigated and verified the information she had given them—though there sure as fuck hadn’t been much—his orders would probably change. But that was a problem for later. Right now he had a cat burglar in a BDSM club, and needed a plan.

“You’ll be working up here, in the private club. Have you ever been a server?”