He’d gone and got himself pu**y-whipped.

“I haven’t paid a pet deposit,” she announced.

“That gonna be a problem?” he asked in reply, and she gave him a huge smile.

“No, seein’ as I have no qualms with them evicting me early.”

He liked that answer a f**kuva lot so he ordered, “Come here, Frankie.”

“Though, they do, while I instigate my heretofore unmined sleuth powers to uncover probably highly felonious acts at a major, multinational pharmaceutical company, the commute is gonna be a bitch.”

“Come here, Francesca.”

She again tipped her head to the side. “Has Gus been walked?”

Fuck.

He hadn’t.

Ben folded out of the couch and ordered, “Go get some flip-flops.”

“I can walk him in heels.”

He cut his eyes to her. “You put those heels on to walk Gus, you’ll find yourself ass to the hood of the first car we pass, giving your neighbors a show. You want to give your man a break from all that”—he threw a hand her way—“you put on flip-flops and I might be able to control it until I get you and our dog back through the front door.”

She grinned her I-have-a-secret-and-I-wanna-moan-it-in-your-ear grin and replied, “I’ll get some flip-flops.”

“Good call,” he muttered.

She bent to put Gus to the floor, torturing Benny by giving him a direct view of her ass with her tight skirt stretching tighter, thankfully straightened, turned, and walked back toward the hall.

Gus looked at Benny, then down the hall toward Frankie and immediately started waddle-trotting after her.

She came out in flip-flops, got some plastic bags just in case, and they took Gus for a walk.

After, Ben made it all the way to her bed before he peeled off her dress.

Twenty-five minutes later, when he made her come, she moaned her secret into his ear.

It consisted of three words.

“Love you, Benny.”

* * * * *

“My turn!” Frankie announced when Ben came back from the bathroom at J&J’s Saloon and approached where Cheryl and Frankie were sitting.

She laid a hard but quick one on him that obliterated any possibility of wingman status (not that it wasn’t already gone since he was there), grinned into his face, then part-walked, part-strutted, and part-bounced to the back where the bathrooms were.

She did this with every male eye in the joint following her ass covered in the tight skirt of her dress, or her long legs that were bare and led into a pair of hot-as-hell heels.

So although Benny appreciated the view, it was also irritating as f**k.

“You’re a new breed of badass,” Cheryl noted, taking his attention to her.

“Come again?” he asked, seeing she was studying him closely.

“Not the show-up-and-demand-to-go-out-with-your-woman-to-make-sure-she-doesn’t-get-into-trouble move. That’s not a new breed of badass, that’s the usual one. The after-she-gets-shot-let-her-stick-her-neck-out-and-do-it-with-the-Chicago-mob-at-her-back move.”

Jesus Christ.

Frankie told this woman what was going down? How long was he in the goddamned bathroom?

His stomach tightening, he slid in front of her, did it holding her eyes, necessarily and intentionally getting close because there was no room, but also because he had a point to make.

“She shouldn’t have told you,” he said low.

“No shit?” she asked in return.

He didn’t reply to that.

He ordered, “And you aren’t gonna say dick to anyone.”

Her eyes narrowed.

He’d been around Cheryl once before, at Vi and Cal’s wedding.

Frankie called her edgy.

Benny and any other man who took one look at her would call her hard.

When she met them at J&J’s, reminded of that hardness and seeing it without her in a bridesmaid gown, happy her girl was happy, Ben understood this was why she wasn’t getting laid.

Men didn’t like hard. They liked soft. They didn’t mind attitude and there were those, like Benny, who wanted that. Some men could get off on the challenge of smoothing out sharp edges, or knowing that was what a woman gave out in the world, but when he got her home, she gave him the sweet underneath.

But Cheryl was straight-up hard. Her eyes said “you are not getting in there no matter what you try, so don’t bother trying.” And everything about her said she’d take what she wanted, and if you got anything out of that, she didn’t give a f**k. This would mean you wouldn’t get anything out of that except maybe an orgasm, but not a good one.

This woman wasn’t about exploring the possibility of building a future or just having a good time and some laughs.

This woman was about riding you hard until she found it, climbing off even if you hadn’t, getting dressed, and going home.

The loyalty she gained from Vi and now Frankie made him wonder what made her like that and why she didn’t put out what she gave to her girls in order to at least get laid and at most find herself a man.

“You do not know me, but I am no dumbfuck,” she said in a voice cold as ice, proving his thoughts true.

“I figure you aren’t, I’m just remindin’ you not to be.”

She ignored that and stated, “But you do know your woman so you know she isn’t one either. If she couldn’t trust me, she wouldn’t have said squat.”

She was right.

But the stakes were high.

“She’s playin’ with fire,” he pointed out.

“Then don’t let her get burned,” she shot back.

“And I’m doin’ that by makin’ sure you know to keep your mouth shut and don’t do somethin’ stupid like thinkin’ you can help your girl by makin’ this a Laverne & Shirley scenario.”

Her eyes slid to the side.

Jesus.

“Which one are you?” he asked, and her eyes came back. “Laverne or Shirley?”

“I know a guy who’s ace at surveillance,” she told him, chin lifting slightly.

She was Laverne.

“There it is,” he muttered, looking away and reaching for his beer.

“And you should be involved, a guy who owns a pizzeria?”

He took a pull off his beer in an effort not to allow that remark to irritate him before he reminded her, “She sleeps at my side.”

“And my mom’s got high blood pressure. Takes meds for it.”

Benny shook his head. “Cheryl, I got a man in Chicago who got the story of what I could give him while my woman was gettin’ sexed up to go out for drinks with her girl, and in doin’ that, tease every guy here, none of ’em who are ever gonna get close to tappin’ her ass, all of ’em wantin’ to, and all of that annoying the f**k outta me. And this man has resources. Your surveillance guy might be tight, but I’m thinkin’ my guy has that covered.”