She scrabbled for her HK, and held it in both hands between us. “I know.”
I touched her chin. “You’re safe.”
She shook her head. “Fucking stop, Lear.”
“No.” I brushed her cheekbone with a thumb. “You’re safe. You’re allowed to cry. You’re allowed to feel weak for a few minutes. You’re allowed to let it all hang out. You’re safe with me.” I met her eyes. “I won’t think less of you—I’ll think more of you.”
A quick series of blinks—wet eyelashes. “Shut the fuck up!”
I kept going. Risky, I knew. “You didn’t deserve to be molested. You didn’t deserve to be raped, or touched by the people who were supposed to protect you and take care of you.” She went utterly still, and I kept going. “It shouldn’t have ever fucking happened, and you didn’t deserve it.”
“SHUT UP!” she shouted, curling in on herself.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I made no sudden moves. Held still and kept my eyes on her. “It wasn’t your fault, and you didn’t deserve it, Dani.”
In a flash, I was flattened against the floor, and the barrel of the HK was pressed to my forehead, held in one hand, her other hand clutching at my throat. A feral, rage-filled Cuddy was on top of me, shaking all over, eyes flaming hatred. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
I didn’t move. Instead I met her primal brown gaze. Risked it all—our relationship, my own life, everything. “Own that truth, Dani. It wasn’t your fault, and you didn’t deserve it.”
She shook her head, and I saw a tear slide down her cheek. “Shut up,” she whispered. “It was, and I did.”
“No. It wasn’t, and you didn’t.”
She stared down at me, a second tear joining the first in a slow slide down her cheek. “Stop. Please stop.”
“You have to know it, Dani.”
“Don’t you call me that,” she whispered, her voice venomous.
“You are Daniela Khoury.” I held her gaze. “You are Danielle Cuddy.” I pushed. “You’re Dani. You’re Danielle, the woman, and you’re Cuddy, the operative. You’re all of that, and more.”
She shook her head, dislodging a third tear. “Goddammit, Lear.”
I reached up slowly and wiped them away. “And of all those identities that make up who you are, none of them deserved what happened to you.”
She rocked to her feet, HK dangling from her fingers. She stalked away from me, facing the window beside the door.
Her shoulders shook.
I got to my feet and stood behind her. Gently I took the weapon from her and set it on the floor, leaning it against the wall. Without it, she seemed to deflate. As if the last barrier between herself and the truth had been taken away, and now she was finally forced to confront the reality within her.
“Dani—”
She held up a hand, and I went silent.
Waited.
Her shoulders shook, and when she spoke, I could hear the tears, but her voice was steady nonetheless. “I did not deserve any of what happened to me.” A long, hard pause. “I did not ask for it.”
My role, now, was to be quiet, to be there and let her work through it the rest of the way on her own.
“It wasn’t my fault.” Her shoulders straightened, her spine stiffened.
Silence.
“It wasn’t my fault.” She turned, and her eyes burned bright, locking on mine. “I thought for years that if I dealt with these demons, I’d lose my edge.”
“You won’t.”
“I know.” She wiped her face with both hands. “I know. I’m not going to fix a lifetime of pain through a little self-awareness, but…”
“It’s a start?”
She nodded. “It’s a start.”
I smiled at her. “Keep reminding yourself.”
“You have some big brass balls, pushing that the way you did.” She held my gaze steadily. “I had my finger on the trigger.”
“I knew that.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know.” I chewed on her question for a moment. “Maybe because I knew you’d never deal with it if someone didn’t make you, and I’m not sure anyone else could survive trying to force you to face it the way I did.”
She snickered. “You’ve got that right. I know it sounds cliché as fuck, but…I really have killed men for less.”
I was still wearing my web vest and armor—she made quick work of removing both from me, and then set them on the floor near her own. It felt to me like we were suddenly just a man and a woman standing a foot apart, waiting for one of us to break the tension crackling in the space between us.
It felt to me like the room was filled with explosives, and we were just waiting for the spark that would ignite us.
A single touch.
A look.
So much had happened in the hours since we’d crashed into each other’s lives in that bar—sex, danger, stillness, sleep, survival, death, sharing deeply personal experiences and truths we’d never told another soul…
I knew this woman, intricately and intimately, in a way that was far too deep for the infinitesimal amount of time I’d actually known her.
If I touched her, right now—a touch so innocent as a hand to her face, even—we’d explode in a conflagration of mutual need.
And everything would change.
The sex before had been so much more than just sex, but we’d been strangers then, and the intensity was only frightening then because of its unexpectedness. Now, however…it would be frightening for a whole different reason.
This time, it would be deeply, terrifyingly, life-alteringly personal.
She knew it, I knew it…
I reached out, cupped her cheek in my palm.
Dani shuddered, shivered. “Lear…” She leaned into my palm. “I’d be less afraid to go into combat than I am to let this happen.”
“Same.”
Her eyes fixed on mine. Wide, deep, brown, liquid, roiling with emotion. “There’s no going back, if we do this. Not after…everything.”
“I know.”
“And you still want this? With me?”
“I’ve done some crazy shit in my life, Dani.” I swallowed hard. “Base-jumped skyscrapers. I did a HALO dive behind enemy lines, through live fire. Free-climbed sheer rock faces most pro climbers wouldn’t go near. Street raced at speeds where a wrong thought meant death. Wingsuited down the face of mountains, between trees and buildings.” I sidled closer to her, so our bodies were a hair’s breadth apart. “This feels like the craziest, riskiest, scariest thing I could ever do.”
She blinked up at me, and then closed the space between us so her breasts smashed against my chest, soft and heavy and firm, her hips nudging mine. Her breath tickled my throat. Her palms skated up my back, fingers curled into my hair.
She hesitated, though. “I’m giving you an out, right now, Lear. Last chance. There’s no going back.”
“I don’t want to go back,” I whispered. “I don’t want an out.”
Her lips slammed against mine, mouth slashing, tongue seeking. Her fingers tightened in my hair, yanking me closer. Her hips pressed against mine, and I tasted her need in the fervor of her kiss.
I let her have the moment of control, because I knew she needed it, needed to recalibrate after the confession. Needed to reassert herself as strong and dominant, to feel sexy and powerful.
I also knew, the way I knew my own name, that she needed to be held, to be comforted—to be taken and loved and dominated, to feel feminine and small and safe and desired.
A difficult balance to strike.
In BASE jumping, there’s a very particular window in which you can release your chute. Too soon, and you won’t slow down enough to land safely. Too late, and you go splat. There are numbers and formulas and gauges and technological innovation but, for me, it always came down to instinct. To just knowing in my gut and balls when the perfect moment to yank the cord had arrived.
Wingsuit flying, riding a crotch ro
cket at death-defying speeds— all relied on instinct. Reflexes. Trusting your gut totally.
I was an expert at those things.
I was better at that than I was at coding, hacking, writing software, crunching data, crunching code, finding people…
This, with Dani? It’s the same thing. Riding a line, finding the balance. Trusting my instincts to know when it’s the perfect moment to take control and show this incredible woman what it can really be like between us.
And, just like my adrenaline-rush hobbies I’m scared shitless in this moment before I jump off the edge, before I gun the throttle.
What if I’d got it wrong?
What if I’d missed the moment?
What if I’d misunderstood her, her needs, her desires?
What if I’d overestimated my own skill, and the accuracy of my own instincts?
I pushed the doubts away, ignored them and focused on my instincts.
I let her kiss me, let her search my mouth with hers, let her tongue slash through my lips and teeth, let her hands wander and demand and strip and take and caress and fondle.
Let, and let, and let.
Until I knew it was no longer time to let, but time to take.
I grasped her wrists in my fists and pinioned them behind her back, curled a hand in her hair at the base of her scalp and yanked her close, tipped her head back. Grinned down at her.
“My turn,” I whispered.
Her grin was slow, and she didn’t fight my hold. “Ooh, goodie.”
Chapter Seven
Damn the Past, and Fuck the Future
For a moment, I wasn’t sure how breathing worked.
It happened in a split second—I was kissing his delicious lips and raking my fingers down his abs and eagerly divesting him of shirt and yanking open his jeans and gathering his lovely erection in my fist and trying to decide whether I’d deep throat him, jerk him off onto my tits, or just go for the gold and hop on his cock and ride him till I screamed.
I’d tentatively decided to go down on him just to see how he tasted and felt…but it seemed he’d had other ideas. He let me stroke him to full arousal, let me cup his heavy, taut balls for a moment, fondling and caressing them and readying myself to drop to my knees and then, the very next moment, before I had a chance to even pull away from his kiss, he moved like lightning. Faster than a snakebite, he had my hands pinned behind my back and had my hair fisted near the scalp—controlling, taking, but not hurting. Or, at least, not hurting me in a bad way.
He somehow seemed to know exactly how much pain I liked with my pleasure—just enough to leaven the bliss with a tinge of ache, offsetting but not overwhelming.
He jerked me up against him, a rough, forceful yank which brought me flush against his hard body—my breasts were squashed flat, my sensitive nipples aching, throbbing, needle-sharp, diamond-hard points digging into his firm muscle. My hips were snug against his, and I felt his arousal like an I-beam between us, sheathed behind his BDUs and mine. Too many layers—I needed to be naked with him. Needed.
“My turn,” I heard him whisper, saw his lips move, but his words only really registered on the physical level.
As in my core pulsed at his words, sending soaking heat gushing through me in a flood. “Oh, goodie,” I murmured back.
He grinned, and bit my lower lip. “I’m going to take you how I want you, and you’re going to love every second of it,” he growled.
“I know I will,” I answered.
“You gotta communicate, though,” he said. “Tell me what you want. Tell what you like, what you don’t like.”
“You seem to know damn well without having to be told.” I wiggled against his hold, but didn’t relinquish it.
“So long as we’re on the same page.”
“The only page I’m on right now is you getting us both naked as fast as you can.”
His smirk, then, was purely wicked. “Get you naked, yes. Fast? Not so much.”
“I need you, Lear,” I said, not ashamed to hear the need and desperation in my voice.
“I know what you need,” he murmured. He kissed the corner of my lips, his chin under my lower lip, my cheek. “It’s just probably not what you think you want.”
“Show me,” I demanded.
“You trust me?” he asked this with his eyes on mine, still gripping me tight, but his eyes were tender and open and searching.
“I told you my birth name,” I whispered. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Need the words, Dani.”
I lifted up, sudden and quick, and seized his lower lips in my teeth. “Yes, Lear. I trust you.”
Stupidly, absurdly, impossibly, that was the raw, terrifying truth, too.
He lifted the bottom of my shirt over my head. I raised my arms and let him bring the garment to my wrists, and then he surprised me again, moving with that same blinding speed to wrap and tie the shirt around my wrists in front of me, so I was effectively bound. I mean, I know about a dozen different ways to escape being handcuffed, zip-tied and hogtied, so I could’ve gotten free in about four seconds flat—and he knew it—but I wanted this, wanted to go along with whatever he was planning. So I stayed bound.
He moved me to the bed, knocked me off-balance so I fell onto the mattress with a noisy bounce on the springs. He untied and removed my boots faster than I’d have thought possible, tossed them aside, and then knelt with an eager grin in front of me.
“What’s next, do you think?” he asked.
I hesitated—I wanted his mouth on me, and I also wanted the bra off, to have his eyes and hands on my breasts. I wanted everything and I wanted it all now, and I didn’t know what I wanted first, and I wasn’t sure if he’d give me what I asked for, or if he’d give me the opposite just to toy with me.
I figured I’d just ask. They said communication was key to a good relationship, right?
“Are you asking so you can do the opposite just to mess with me, or so you can give me what I ask for, or was that a rhetorical question?”
He just grinned. “Find out.”
“You’re gonna tease me?”
“Maybe.” He left my socks on, and began unbuttoning my BDU trousers. “You’ll enjoy what I do, regardless.”
“I know. But I want you inside me.”
“What else do you want?”
“I want you to eat me out until I scream,” I said. “I want your cock in my mouth. I want to make you come and I want to come with you until neither of us can move.”
“How about…” he murmured, tugging the trousers off so I was in nothing but a bra and panties. And those weren’t sensible underwear; they were the same sexy lingerie pieces I’d put on at my condo what felt like a lifetime ago. “We just take those requests in order…”
“Oh fuck…please—yes.” I writhed, aching all over, throbbing between my thighs, reaching for Lear with hands bound by my shirt.
He was having none of that—he snagged my bound wrists and pulled me upright, kneeling on the bed in front of me so my face was level with his belly. He touched my chin with two fingers, tipping my face up. He smiled down at me—a grin somewhere between heated and tender, which made me melt as it set me on fire with lascivious need. Slowly he settled his lips against mine, and his fingers danced downward over my shoulders, kissing me as he ghosted a teasing, tickling touch over my spine when he reached the clasp of my bra—my breath caught and my skin pebbled as I anticipated being bare to him. He didn’t disappoint: he unhooked the undergarment with a deft flick of his fingers and let the cups slip off. My breasts swayed heavily, freed of their prison, and my nipples—already achingly hard—tautened further to painfully erect points of need. He kept kissing me as he lifted the bra up and away, and his lips broke from mine for a split second as he slipped the bra between our bodies. Rather than removing it completely, however, he pressed against me and I fell backward onto the mattress, willingly—the bra was trapped around my wrists by the shirt, and he tugged the straps of the bra aw
ay and hooked them over the upright bedposts, effectively binding me to the bed frame. Simple and effective, yet gentle. No handcuffs, no zip ties, just my own clothing, but I was as helpless as I could want to be. Even with my skill at escaping being tied up, I’d have a hard time getting out of this.
Being tied up like this only turned me on all the harder, so my already-damp sex positively dripped with a renewed surge of need.
“How did you know?” I asked, in a hoarse whisper.
“Know what?” he asked, sitting astride my belly, gazing down at me.
“That being tied up and helpless has been a fantasy of mine since forever.”
He shook his head, shrugged. “I didn’t. It felt pretty risky, but I’m a gambler, as we established.” He moved down my body, sitting now on my thighs. “You’re a strong, independent, powerful, fierce woman who takes no shit. You likely have serious control issues, I’m guessing.”
I bit my lip as he bent over me, and I arched my back to lift my breasts to him as he feathered ghost-soft kisses over my diaphragm. “You guessed right.” I inhaled sharply as he flicked his tongue over a nipple, sending a surge of lightning through me. “I think I said as much last time we fucked. I don’t let men take control during sex.”
“I don’t remember very clearly what you did or didn’t say. I was pretty focused on what you looked like and how you felt.” He watched me as I kept my spine bowed upward, silently begging for more of his mouth. “But you just seem like a take-charge, take what you want sort of woman. But I do remember you saying you’re not the average sort of woman.”
“I think that’s been well established between us at this point,” I said, working to sound casual and in control of my breathing, when I was anything but—gasping, writhing, needing. I was afire, his tongue lapping and circling at my nipple, flicking and licking in unpredictable rhythm. “You just do something to me. I’ve never done anything with a man the way I do things with you. It scares me.”
“But you’ve always had a fantasy of being tied up?”
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