Dream Chaser - SETTING

by Ashley, Kristen

  My body automatically got tight.

  One of his hands slid from my ass, up my back, and he caught the end of my silk leash.

  I felt him wrapping it around his fist.

  Okay, after he’d fucked me out, how was I getting a tingle?

  “You get what that means, Kathryn?”

  Oh yes.

  I got what it meant.

  “Yes, Boone,” I answered.

  “All right, baby,” he whispered, rested his silk-wrapped hand on my back in a way I felt a hint of tension on my neck, just as he intended.

  Yeah, oh yeah…

  Oh yeah.

  He was good.

  “Now sleep,” he ordered.

  “’Night, Boone,” I murmured.

  “Goodnight, Rynnie,” he replied.

  I closed my eyes.

  And lying on top of Boone…

  Fucked out…

  I fell right to sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  And Now…This

  Ryn

  My body slid up and down on the bed as Boone pulsed me into his mouth.

  “Baby,” I moaned.

  “Come,” he growled between my legs.

  I came.

  He rolled me to my belly, yanked me up at the hips, slammed inside and fucked me on my knees.

  It didn’t take long before I came again.

  And this time, so did Boone.

  He ended this gliding, his hands clamped tight on the cheeks of my ass, his mouth muttering, “Vanilla totally doesn’t suck with you either.”

  What he could do with his mouth and his dick was so far from vanilla, it wasn’t funny.

  I did not point out I was still collared.

  And I’d woken up with my man’s mouth between my legs so he pretty much assumed control before I was even conscious.

  But, whatever.

  He thought that was vanilla?

  Who was I to argue?

  He pulled out, put a hint of pressure on one hip, and I collapsed to the side, which was not a surprise, since his dick was essentially holding me up anyway.

  Boone twisted my upper body so he could rest his to mine.

  “You’re a great lay,” I muttered, already half asleep, seeing as I hadn’t even recovered from last night’s festivities, so although I was up for a couple of orgasms when he did all the work, it was now still-early-morning naptime (at least I thought it was early morning, seeing as I was getting eaten out upon waking, I hadn’t had the opportunity to check a clock).

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he replied, humor in his tone.

  I wanted to share his humor, and I smiled, but I felt it came vaguely since that was the best I could do, seeing as I was barely conscious.

  He got a grip on my leash at my back and gave it a gentle tug.

  My eyes popped open.

  “Sex on the brain with you,” he said softly, his gaze not just on my eyes, but roaming my face.

  And throat.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Worse now, knowing what a sweet fuck you really are.”

  “What?” I repeated.

  “Since we became something that was gonna be, I’ve been like a goddamned teenager. Practically all I could think was how I was gonna do you. Never had that for a woman. Always could compartmentalize. That was a different part of life and I kept it there.”

  I was not your everyday girl, case in point, being collared with a scarf in bed with a hot Dom who was now, I was thinking, also officially my boyfriend.

  But still, I figured most girls would take that as the compliment I took it as.

  This being huge.

  “Well, I have a feeling you ticked a few things off that list last night.” I paused. “And this morning.”

  He smiled at me, brushed his lips against mine, pulled a hint away, and reminded me, “Worse now, Ryn.”

  Ah.

  I got it.

  I lifted a hand to his jaw and said, “Honey, your stamina is awe-inspiring, but you wore your fucktoy out. This girl needs a rest period.”

  His lips were quirking (in a cocky way, which obviously was a hot way) when he said, “I don’t mean I’m gonna take you again now. But you told me the other night what you’d been thinking the days we were apart, and I didn’t tell you that I was alternating liberally between wondering why I was being such a huge fucking dick, and jacking myself to sleep thinking what I wanted to do to you when we worked it out.”

  Suddenly, I was not tired at all.

  “You jacked yourself to sleep thinking about me?”

  “Yeah, and babe,” he went in for another lip brush, and clearly had read my mind because he went on to say, “you’ll watch me jack off. And you’ll jack me off. But fucking you out fucked me out, so your man needs a rest period.”

  I smiled huge at him because he was being cute, but also because I would someday get to watch him jack off.

  I bet it was like everything Boone did.

  Incredibly freaking awesome.

  He proved he didn’t need that much of a rest period because his eyes took in my smile, then his arms went around me, and he started making out with me.

  Boone finished this off by running his lips along my cheekbone, down to my chin, along my jaw, and in my ear, he said, “Doze, Rynnie. I gotta make some calls, and after you get some rest in, I’ll make us breakfast.”

  That sounded like a plan.

  “Okay, Boone.”

  He kissed my neck above the scarf that was still there.

  Then he got out of the bed, pulled the covers over me, bent in and kissed my shoulder, and I watched as he walked naked to his bathroom.

  But once that fabulous view was out of sight, it didn’t take me long to be out.

  Because seriously, my man was a fuck machine, and this girl needed a rest period.

  * * *

  I was sitting on the kitchen counter, nightie on, legs open.

  Boone was standing between them, wearing nothing but jeans.

  We weren’t in the throes of doing it again.

  We were eating oatmeal.

  I was a big fan of oatmeal, especially since it meant Boone didn’t one-up my breakfast because everyone knew even burnt hash browns and not-so-great eggs were better than oatmeal.

  “Big meal last night, light but solid breakfast,” he said, and my eyes went from my bowl to him. “I’ll knock your socks off tomorrow with my version of Sunday brunch.”

  Right.

  Straight up, this was freaky.

  “How do you always know what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  “Just then I knew because you were looking at your oatmeal and smirking.”

  Well then.

  Huh.

  I spooned up more oatmeal, mumbling, “I need to work on my poker face.”

  “There is absolutely no reason you need to hide your thoughts from me, Ryn.”

  At the steely tone of his voice, my eyes flew to his.

  “Or anything,” he went on. “Any emotion. Any reaction.”

  And there it was.

  We were diving straight into some heavy.

  I liked the jokey, bantering, fucking-a-lot zone we’d been in a whole lot better, so I teased, “There might be some thoughts best left hidden. Christmas presents? Birthdays?”

  His gaze stayed direct, but grew soft when he said, “I’m not feelin’ playful about this subject, Rynnie. We’re doin’ this and we’re important, so I hate to say it, but your reprieve is over.”

  Great.

  Though I liked the “we’re important” part a whole lot.

  Boone kept talking.

  “You fought hard not to give me your emotion the other night and then you were fucked up about giving in. You gotta know, we both need to understand why you did that.”

  I sucked in breath.

  Shit.

  He wasn’t starting out small.

  His head ticked and he said, “Release.”

  I let that breath go.

&nb
sp; He watched me super closely after this and I knew he was recalling the incidents I’d done this before, and maybe putting shit together, and since I didn’t want to get into that right now, I got into something not important.

  My father.

  “My dad was an awesome guy. He was really good-looking. Funny. Charismatic. Everyone liked to be around him. Especially women,” I shared.

  Boone put his oatmeal aside, turned fully to me and put his hands on my knees.

  Crap.

  On the one hand, it was incredibly cool he was indicating unequivocally that I had every bit of his attention.

  On the other hand, it was rare I talked about this (like, never) mostly because I didn’t think Dad deserved my time, even to bitch about him.

  “So,” I went on, “it’s not a reach to think, with a guy like that, the everyone who liked to be around him included his children.”

  “Rynnie,” he whispered, knowing now where this was going.

  But this was my heavy.

  Or part of it.

  And we were doing this, and Boone would eventually need this, and he was right, we both needed to understand it.

  “I’m guessing you know I was not a pretty, pretty princess. Not daddy’s little girl. I wasn’t daddy’s tomboy either. I was me. But he was like, the greatest dad a kid could have, on the surface. Handsome. Successful. He walked into a room, and by the sheer force of his personality, everyone looked right to him. That was the dad to have. That was the dad to be proud of. That was the dad you wanted to shine his light on you. And he did, Boone. He shined his light on us. And when he did, the heavens opened, and the angels sang. When Dad made us laugh, because he could be really funny. Or when Dad took us to a movie and then to get ice cream sundaes and we’d talk about the movie and he’d treat us like adults. Like what we had to say was akin to a review from Siskel and Ebert.”

  I stopped suddenly, turned my head to the side, and put my bowl by Boone’s.

  “Ryn,” Boone said gently, wrapping a hand around the side of my neck.

  I looked again at him.

  “But he’s like a whirlwind. He’d sweep into a room and sweep you off your feet and then he’d cast you aside, leaving you dirty and broken and used in his wake.”

  Boone flinched.

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s like those people who see what they see, only what their eyes can see, which is mostly what that might mean to them, and that’s all. There is nothing greater. There isn’t a whole wide world out there. There is only them and what they’re experiencing. And I’ll tell you something, it didn’t feel great, those vast amounts of time I was outside my father’s blinders and melted completely from existence.”

  Boone’s fingers tensed.

  “And it didn’t feel great, watching him do that to my mother and brother either,” I went on. “Do you know, I have not spoken to him in years, and do you know what that means to him?”

  “What does it mean, sweetheart?” Boone asked hesitantly.

  “It doesn’t mean anything, Boone. I’m not in his sights, so I don’t exist. But say, he needs something, and he can get that from me, he will suddenly remember I’m around and expect me to twist myself in knots to give it to him. He does not miss me. He does not wonder why I’m not in his life. But if he needed a kidney, he’d be on my doorstep, and if I told him to fuck off because he didn’t show up for visitations. He didn’t pay child support. He made my mother need to hire attorneys so she could sue him to get the money we deserved or defend herself because he was suing her, when we had nothing. We had dick. But the attorneys had to get paid.”

  Boone’s other hand came up to the other side of my neck, he latched on, and he muttered, weirdly urgently, “Baby.”

  But I ignored that and carried on.

  “Even with all of that, and there’s more, Boone, a load more, he’d be pissed. Insanely pissed. At me. Because what kind of daughter am I, I don’t give her loving father a kidney? What kind of daughter am I, that when the rare happens and he remembers it’s my birthday, and he deigns to phone me, and I don’t take his call, and he calls back and leaves a ranting voicemail message about respect and family? What kind of daughter am I when he never loved me a day in my life and I was born loving him and I’ll die never having that back?”

  Boone slid his hands to my jaw, dropped his forehead to mine, and looked into my eyes, saying firmly, “Stop now, baby. Stop.”

  I breathed heavily in his face.

  “That’s enough for now,” he said.

  “I build walls,” I replied.

  “Enough for now, Ryn,” he repeated.

  “You’re right. I build walls because I’m utterly terrified someone I love is going to cast me aside.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “Shit,” I muttered.

  “You get it now and I get where you’re coming from now so we can work on that,” he said.

  “I didn’t know I felt this much about him,” I admitted.

  He lifted his forehead away, but he did it in an “Ah-ha!” motion.

  So I asked, “What?”

  “Nothing, Ryn. Let’s finish our oatmeal.”

  “Oh wise Master, share your wisdom,” I joked.

  “Stop being a brat,” he replied, his lips twitching.

  But I got serious because I wanted to know.

  “What, Boone?”

  He studied me.

  Then he sighed.

  After that, he spoke.

  “You gotta be strong. You gotta be tough. You gotta take the hard knocks and keep on ticking. In other words, you gotta be perfect, because if you’re not, if you give anyone reason to go, you think they’ll go. You can’t let yourself be human because your dad taught you to work for love, when love isn’t work. It isn’t, Ryn. Love is a gift that’s the only gift there is that isn’t about earning it. People say that. Shit like, ‘You gotta earn her love,’ and it ticks me off. Because that’s not the way it works. Love just happens. It just blooms. Then it’s yours to give. And you give it. The end.”

  I stared up into his gorgeous face.

  “But we get where you’re at with that now, you feeling the need to be all to everyone, stand strong, never fall down, and we’ll work on that too. Though I’ll say, that’s you. It’s obvious that’s how you’ve gotta be and it’s a part of you that’s beautiful. It’s just that I gotta get you to the place where you know you’re safe not having to be like that with me,” he finished.

  I heard him.

  But mostly I was hearing a repeated refrain of, Love just happens. It just blooms. Then it’s yours to give. And you give it. The end.

  “Ryn,” he called.

  It just blooms. Then it’s yours to give. And you give it.

  He had an awesome pad.

  He cooked great.

  He fucked amazing.

  He was beautiful.

  He complimented my outfits.

  He liked lots of ketchup on his onion rings.

  He did the work (albeit belatedly, he still did it) to get shit straight between us.

  He got uber pissed at the thought of his friends being mean to me.

  And he lost it when he thought he was falling down on the job of protecting me.

  And now…

  This.

  “Ryn!” he said sharply when I kept drifting on the gentle waves of how great my hopefully-now-official boyfriend was.

  My hands shot up, I caught his cheeks, I yanked him down to me, and I declared, “I like you a whole lot, Boone Freaking Sadler.”

  “And I like you a whole lot too, Kathryn Sweet Fuck Jansen.”

  I felt my eyes widen.

  Then I collapsed against him and burst out laughing.

  He put his arms around me.

  I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.

  When I quit laughing, I said into his ear, “Totally beat you on the breakfast thing.”

  “Tonight, you get to make dinner.”


  “Shutting up now.”

  He lifted his head and looked at me, doing this chuckling.

  He started to stroke my back, and he kept his tone light, but I knew it wasn’t when he asked, “Okay now?”

  I nodded.

  “Good, baby.”

  I grinned at him.

  His tone stayed light, but still serious, when he said, “You need to talk about this shit more, you know?”

  I sighed.

  Then I nodded again.

  “And don’t think you got out of the holding-your-breath discussion.”

  Well.

  Shit.

  I rolled my eyes.

  I rolled them back when I felt his mouth on mine.

  He kissed me quickly, pulled away and nabbed our bowls, handing me mine.

  “Finish your oatmeal.”

  I did a salute before I took the bowl.

  “You were a good girl last night, but warning, I got a great memory, so you can be good at the time, but I’ll remember if you earned a spanking.”

  I rolled my eyes again.

  He chuckled again.

  I let us finish our oatmeal and I let him bring me more coffee without instigating any further heavy.

  Boone seemed content to stand between my legs, one hand on my thigh, staring out the window and sipping from his mug. And I was content to watch his handsome profile doing this, liking it a good deal that he could get in that zone of just being with me like that, but I shook myself out of it because I had to.

  And then I prompted, “Boone. Brett.”

  He turned to me.

  “We got dick,” he announced.

  Was he serious?

  “What?” I asked. “It’s been four days.”

  “Cops on our crew have exhausted all avenues to try to find someone who might know if Tony Crowley was investigating a couple, or a syndicate, of dirty cops. And after two of our boys went and struck out, Ally visited the widow, hoping she’d open up to a woman. But she’s locked down tight. Scared as shit. They got to her, but she knows something. So we did some checking, and in a thorough search of her house, no files, no hidden panels with folders filled with damning evidence—”

  Hang on.

  “You searched her house?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who searched her house?” I pressed.

  “Me and Mag.”