Fit to Be Tied

  Praise for

  All Kinds of Tied Down

  “Oh, how I loved these boys! … I adored the two of them together so much, I didn’t want the book to end!”

  —The Blogger Girls

  “Overall, this book is delightful and I already want to reread it. I can say with certainty that this book will be one of my top reads of 2015. I just loved everything about it.”

  —Series-ously Addicted

  “All Kinds of Tied Down is angsty, exciting, sweet, romantic, funny… heck, it’s all the feels rolled into one gigantic ball of freaking awesome.”

  —Joyfully Jay

  “I seriously love, love, LOVED this book.”

  —Smitten With Reading

  “For a little over half of All Kinds of Tied Down you the reader will be all kinds of tied up over the sexual tension. … Once Ian and Miro get on the same page… holy hell! This book gets hot quick.”

  —The Jeep Diva

  “You can’t go wrong with this book!”

  —Top 2 Bottom Reviews

  By MARY CALMES

  Acrobat

  Again

  Any Closer

  With Cardeno C.: Control

  With Poppy Dennison: Creature Feature

  Fit to Be Tied

  Floodgates

  Frog

  The Guardian

  Heart of the Race

  Ice Around the Edges

  Judgment

  Just Desserts

  Mine

  Romanus

  The Servant

  Steamroller

  Still

  Timing • After the Sunset

  What Can Be

  Where You Lead

  CHANGE OF HEART

  Change of Heart • Trusted Bond

  Honored Vow • Crucible of Fate

  Forging the Future

  L’ANGE

  Old Loyalty, New Love

  Fighting Instinct

  MANGROVE STORIES

  Blue Days • Quiet Nights

  Sultry Sunset

  MARSHALS

  All Kinds of Tied Down • Fit to Be Tied

  A MATTER OF TIME

  A Matter of Time: Vol. 1

  A Matter of Time: Vol. 2

  Bulletproof • But For You • Parting Shot

  Piece of Cake

  THE WARDER SERIES

  His Hearth • Tooth & Nail

  Heart in Hand • Sinnerman

  Nexus • Cherish Your Name

  Warders Vol. 1 & 2

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Grand Adventures

  Tales of the Curious Cookbook

  Three Fates

  Wishing on a Blue Star

  Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Copyright

  Published by

  DREAMSPINNER PRESS

  5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Fit to Be Tied

  © 2015 Mary Calmes.

  Cover Art

  © 2015 Reese Dante.

  http://www.reesedante.com

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

  ISBN: 978-1-63476-487-2

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-63476-488-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945759

  First Edition September 2015

  Printed in the United States of America

  This paper meets the requirements of

  ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

  Once more for Lynn.

  Thank you.

  I COULDN’T control the whimper of delight. Since we were out in Elmwood, where we never were, I’d begged and pleaded with Ian to stop at Johnnie’s Beef and buy me a sandwich before we got to the house we were sitting on. I hated stakeouts; they were so boring, and I tended to use them as an excuse to eat good instead of the alternative. It could be argued that an Italian beef sandwich with sweet peppers was not, in fact, a gourmet meal, but anyone who said that had obviously never had one. Just opening it up, with the smell that came wafting out… I was salivating.

  “This better be worth the long drive outta the way,” Ian groused.

  No amount of grumbling was going to get in the way of my happiness. And besides, he owed me. The day before, on our way to the same stakeout, I’d stopped and gotten him hot dogs at Budacki’s—Polish with the works, just how he liked it. I’d even broken up a fight over ketchup between a native and an out-of-towner while I was there and still managed to deliver the goods. So swinging by the beef place was the least he could do.

  “You wanna screw the sandwich?” he asked snidely as he started on his pepper and egg one.

  I lifted my gaze to his, slowly and purposely seductive, and I got the catch of breath I was hoping for. “No. Not the sandwich.”

  He had opened his mouth to say something when we heard the shots.

  “Maybe it was a car backfiring,” I offered hopefully, having peeled back the wrapper, ready to take a bite. On this quiet tree-lined suburban street, the kind with white picket fences and people walking their dogs and little A-frame houses with picture windows, it could definitely be something other than a gunshot.

  His grimace said no.

  Seconds later, a man came flying across the street and down the sidewalk past our car that was sitting quietly on the storybook street at a little after one on a Tuesday afternoon.

  “Motherfucker,” I groaned, placing the sandwich gingerly on the dash of the Ford Taurus, out the passenger-side door seconds later.

  The guy was fast—I was faster, and I was gaining on him until he pointed a gun over his shoulder and fired.

  It would have been a miracle if he’d hit me—he was moving, I was moving—but still, I had to make him stop. Stray bullets were bad, as we’d learned in our last tactical seminar, and more importantly, we were in a small, quaint residential neighborhood where at this time of day, women could be jogging with strollers, followed by beagles or labradoodles. I would make sure reckless discharge of a firearm was tacked on to the charges as soon as I had the guy in custody.

  He shot at me a second time, missed me by a mile again, but it was enough of a threat to make me alter my course, cross into a heavily foliaged yard, and cut through two others—one with a swing set, the other with wildflowers—to catch him at the corner. Arm out, using the classic clotheslining move I knew from my days of fighting in foster homes, I had him off his feet and on the pavement in seconds.

  “Oh shit, what happened?” Ian asked as he came bounding up beside me. He put his boot down on the guy’s wrist, pinning it painfully to the sidewalk as he bent to retrieve the .38 Special. I’d been the one stepped on before, so I
knew the pressure hurt like a sonofabitch. “Look at this. I haven’t seen one of these in years.”

  I nodded, admiring my FIORENTINI + BAKER suede boots on him, not even caring if he messed them up, loving more that what was mine, he considered his.

  “This is a nice gun that you tried to shoot my partner with,” he said menacingly, his voice icy.

  “I’m fine,” I reminded him. “Look at me.”

  But he didn’t; instead he lifted the gun and bumped it against the stranger’s cheek.

  “Fuck,” the man swore, his eyes wild as they rabbited over to me, pleading.

  “How ’bout I make you eat this,” Ian snarled, much more pissed than I’d realized as he hauled the runner up off the sidewalk and yanked him close. “What if you’d hit him?”

  The man was either smarter than he appeared or his survival instinct was exceptionally well honed. He correctly surmised that talking back to Ian at that moment, getting lippy, was a bad choice. He kept his mouth shut.

  “Everything’s fine,” I soothed Ian as police cars surrounded us.

  “Freeze!” the first officer out of the car yelled.

  Instead of complying, I unzipped Ian’s olive green field jacket, which I was wearing, and showed them my badge on the chain. “US Marshals, Jones and Doyle.”

  Instantly they lowered their weapons before surging around us. Ian handed off both the prisoner and the gun, and told the officers to add reckless discharge of a firearm to whatever else they were charging the guy with.

  I was surprised when he grabbed hold of my arm and yanked me after him a few feet down the street before jerking me around to face him.

  “I’m fine,” I assured him, chuckling. “You don’t have to manhandle me.”

  But he was checking, looking me over, still scared.

  “He missed me clean.”

  He nodded, hearing but not listening, not taking my words in. I was about to tease him, wanting to nudge him out of his worry, when I realized he was shaking.

  “Come here,” I prodded, tugging on his sweater, getting him closer, unable to hug him—not with so many people around—but able to whisper in his ear. “I’m okay, baby. I swear.”

  He muttered something under his breath, his shoulders dropped, and his fists unclenched. After a second, he seemed better. “I bet your sandwich is cold,” he whispered.

  “Fuckballs,” I muttered, turning to trudge back to our car.

  “So what’d you learn?” he teased, normalcy having been restored with my swearing.

  “Not to run after other people’s suspects when we’re supposed to be eating.”

  Ian’s snicker made me smile in spite of myself.

  A LITTLE more than eight months ago we were Deputy US Marshal Miro Jones and his partner, Ian Doyle, but it hadn’t meant what it did now. Then, it was us living apart, him dating women, me wishing he was gay so there would be hope that I could have him instead of comparing every man I met to my very straight, very unavailable partner. Everything changed when I finally saw what having his full and undivided attention actually meant, and when he got up the guts to tell me what he wanted and needed from me, I dove in quickly, drowning in him as fast as I could so he wouldn’t have time to think that maybe, since he’d only recently discovered he was bi, he might want to try the dating scene before settling down. The thing was, though, Ian was one of those rare guys who wanted the one person in the world who fit him like a glove, and that person, it turned out, was me.

  So, yes, Ian was still technically bi, but was exclusively now Miro-sexual and wasn’t interested in trying the buffet. All Ian wanted was to stay home with me. I couldn’t have been any happier. Everything was mostly working in my life. Professionally I was in a great place, and personally I was ready to put a ring on Ian’s finger. Like really ready. Like maybe even too ready for Ian, but all in all, my life was perfect except for the grunt work we were currently doing.

  After our interrupted lunch, we had to drive all the way back downtown to file a police report to be in compliance with Chicago PD—since we’d been the ones to make the collar—and then turn around to head back out to Elmwood.

  “This will teach you to help,” Ian grumbled, and even though I knew he was kidding, it was still a huge pain in the ass.

  We were supposed to sit on the house of one William McClain, who was wanted for drug trafficking, but I got a call from Wes Ching, another marshal on our team, asking us to help serve a warrant out in Bloomingdale instead. He and his partner, Chris Becker, were already in Elmwood on another errand, so they would take my and Ian’s crappy stakeout chore and we would take their more—in theory—interesting warrant duty.

  I was not a fan of the suburbs, any of them, with or without artery-clogging food, or the hours it took to get to them from each other or the city itself. Traffic in Chicago, all day every day, was a beast, and added to that was the fact the radio in the new car didn’t get Ian’s favorite channel—97.9 The Loop—and the crappy shocks that let us feel every bump and dip in the road. Because we drove whatever had been seized in a criminal investigation, sometimes the cars were amazing—like the 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle SS we had for two weeks—and other times, I worried if maybe I’d died and gone to hell without anyone letting me know. The Ford Taurus we were in currently was seriously not working for me.

  “It’s fuel-efficient,” Ian prompted me, reaching over to put a hand on my thigh.

  Instantly I shifted in my seat, sliding down so I could get his touch on my cock instead.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked slyly even as he pressed his palm against my already thickening shaft.

  “I need to get laid,” I said for the third time that day.

  It was all his fault.

  Instead of getting right out of bed that morning like he normally did, he’d rolled over on top of me, pinned me to the mattress under him, and kissed me until I forgot what day it was. He never did that; he was so by the book in the morning, so on task and barky with the orders. But for whatever reason, I got Ian in languorous vacation mode, all hard and hungry, hands all over me, putting hickeys on my neck, instead of the drill sergeant I normally had to deal with until he got the first cup of coffee in him. He was ravenous and insistent, but then our boss called and Ian was up, out of bed, doing the “yessir, right away, sir” thing and telling me to hurry up and get in the shower fast.

  “What?” I roared, sitting up in bed, incredulous when I heard the water running. “Get your ass in here and finish what you started!”

  He actually cackled as he got into the shower and was still chuckling as I sat there in bed, fuming, before I fell back to take care of myself.

  “Don’t you dare touch that!” he yelled from under the water.

  I groaned and climbed out of bed and plodded downstairs to get coffee. Chickie Baby was happy to see me, mostly because I fed him. Stupid dog.

  “There was no happy ending for me this morning,” I complained to Ian, back in the present. “You didn’t take care of me.”

  “What?” He chuckled, moving his hand back to the wheel. “I woke you… up nice… and… crap.”

  I wanted Ian, needed Ian, but he was distracted as he slowed the car, and when I dragged my gaze from his profile to the sight in front of me, I made the same noise of disgust he had. Immediately I called Ching.

  “You fuck,” I said instead of hello when he answered.

  Snort of laughter. “What?” he said, but it was muffled like he was chewing. “Me and Becker are doing stakeout for you in Elmwood and then following up on a lead from the Eastern District warrant squad.”

  “Where the fuck are you?” I snarled as I put him on speaker.

  He said something in reply, but it couldn’t really be categorized as a word.

  I was instantly suspicious. “Are you at Johnnie’s Beef?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Asshole!” I yelled.

  “Oh, come on, Jones, have a heart. We’re doing you a favor,
right?”

  “I’m sorry, what’d you just say to me?”

  All I heard was laughing.

  “You know we’d rather follow up a bullshit lead than serve a warrant with a task force, you dick,” Ian growled from beside me. “This is fucked up, Wes, and you know it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ching finished with a cackle. “You two get to work with the DEA and the Chicago PD for the second time today. That’s awesome.”

  I should have known when he offered; it was my own fault.

  Ian reiterated my thoughts almost perfectly, which made things that much worse. “You have no one to blame but yourself.”

  After Ian parked the car, we walked around to the trunk and got out our TAC vests, put the badges on our belts, and Ian put on his thigh holster that carried a second gun. Walking over to the group, Ian asked who was in charge. It turned out to be exactly what Ian and I expected; it was a clusterfuck better known as a task force. We saw both district and regional groups, this being the latter because I could see local law enforcement as well as guys from the DEA who all looked like either grunged-out meth addicts or GQ models. There was no in-between with them. I had, as of yet, never met a DEA agent I liked. They all thought they had not only the toughest job, but also the most dangerous. They were a bunch of prima donnas I had no use for.

  It was amazing how many people thought that marshals did the same things other law enforcement agencies did. They assumed we investigated crime, collected evidence, and sat in front of whiteboards to try to figure out who the bad guy was from a list of viable suspects. But that was simply not the case. Much like it was in the Old West; we tracked people down and brought them in for trial. As a result, a tremendous amount of time—when we weren’t out on loan to a joint task force, for instance—was spent running down leads, watching houses, and basically doing surveillance. It could be a little mind-numbing, and so, occasionally, when the usual was broken up by things like traveling to pick up a witness or taking part in an undercover operation, it was viewed as a welcome diversion. But neither Ian nor I ever thought working with the DEA was a good thing.