“I understand that, probably more than you know. I found a strip center for lease I’d like to show you guys. Maybe tomorrow. It’s actually not far from here. Has a couple tenants already in it but four spaces open for us. If the price is right it may work.”
“Is it ridiculous to be extremely excited about it?”
Jenna tugged her hair, bringing Cyn’s face to hers. “Not silly at all.” She said the words against her lips, feeling the hitch in her breathing as she pulled her hair and captured her soft lips with hers. “I’m glad you’re as excited as I am. Nothing can stop us as long as we find a place that works for us and we can get through all the red tape. You’re one of my best friends. I really wanted to do this with you.”
“Me, too, Jenna. I’m so glad you’re my Fairy Godslut.”
Jenna smiled, kissing her one more time. “At your service.”
“Well, if you’re offering, I’d like—”
“I’m switching most of the cameras to the new megapixel variety and a few will have electronic pan, tilt and zoom control as well—for full access, on site and remotely.”
Chris and Jared walked into the room behind her, talking to another man.
Jenna froze.
Cyn looked at her and did a double-take. “Jenna?” she whispered.
That voice.
She didn’t have to turn around to see him. To verify what she’d already started to suspect. Not a single limb on her body would move anyway so it didn’t matter.
Chris called out to her, “Jenna, I’d like to introduce you to our new head of security. He’s the one responsible for all the new access control and cameras. His name is—“
“Ian. His name is Ian.”
Cyn’s sharp inhale cut the silence like a knife and she covered her mouth in shock.
Jenna stood there, petrified, helpless.
Then Jared piped up. “No, honey, it’s Bryan.”
“He’s a junior and he never liked the name, so he goes by Ian. At least he used to.” So calm. Her voice was steady. Even.
But she was dying inside.
She didn’t remember turning around. Her memory failed her as it seemed the room actually spun around her, taking away her choice about whether or not to stay hidden. Or to run, to hide, to disappear so she didn’t have to face him.
His chest was right in front of her and she looked up into his piercing eyes as he towered over her, making her feel tiny even in her five-inch heels.
When he’d been younger, she’d looked to him as if he were a fallen angel, utter perfection radiated from him.
But he’d left her, letting her fall, not being there to catch her. He’d promised to hold her, to tell her everything would be okay.
“Jenna, it’s been a very long time.”
She’d had years to think about what she’d say to him if he ever stood in front of her again. Scenarios sped through her head in fast-forward as she tried to remember anything she’d wanted to say.
“Not nearly long enough,” came out of her mouth a second before her fist cracked him right across the jaw. She kicked him in the shin for good measure before she could stop herself.
“What the fuck?” came from one of the twins standing behind him.
Catching Ian by surprise was well worth any retribution she would have to deal with. Her knuckles screamed in pain but she kept it balled in a fist in case the opportunity arose to punch him again. She glared him down, refusing to be the one to back away first.
“I see you remember me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, asshole.” Yep, definitely not something she thought she’d get to say to him—ever. She expected it to make her feel better but she just wanted to crawl in a hole.
Instead she put her shoulders back a bit farther and shook out her hand. “I’ve got work to do.”
She sidestepped him with her nose in the air, determined to leave before she fell to pieces and cried like a girl.
Chris and Jared stared at her, both of them wearing almost identical expressions of holy shit. Each had an eyebrow raised in her direction as she made it past them.
All she wanted to do was run back to Ian. To yell and scream in his face how badly he’d hurt her. That gave her the impetus to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
It felt as if she were a dinosaur walking in quicksand. As if Ian were the center of her universe and his magnetic pull wouldn’t let her leave.
She almost made it to the door before he was on her like white on rice.
Jared barked out. “What the—”
He grabbed her biceps, shoving her face first into the corner of the room by the door. He wrenched her hands up behind her back into a reverse prayer, making her arms hurt in his oh-so-sexy way.
Rope.
He must have had it in his back pocket.
He tied her wrists together with a double column tie.
Her brain followed his movements, while her body momentarily calmed.
His rope. He was faster than he had been before.
Rope was like a dance, a waltz, when the partners tied together. The actual tying fell into some kind of hypnotic rhythm made to funnel every sensation in the universe down to the people communicating through jute. Quick, quick, slow. Quick, quick, slow. The repetitive movement of the fibers against her skin sang to her.
The rope brushed across the skin of her throat as he wrapped it around her neck, finishing the tie to her wrists. Predicaments could be complicated or oh-so-simple.
A whimper tried to move past her vocal cords, giving him way too much power over her. She swallowed the automatic impulse to submit to him, trying desperately to keep some part of herself safe from what he always made her feel.
After waiting years to have him against her, waiting night after night to feel the hard length of his body next to hers, she had to focus not to fold.
Hugo Boss cologne permeated her brain and she sighed.
Sighed.
Her eyes snapped open as she remembered everything else.
The phrase “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” echoed inside her skull, shoving the rest of what she needed from him aside.
He wedged his hip into the small of her back as she fought to push away from the wall. His muscular frame and some of his weight made her attempts all but useless.
“Get off me.”
“No.”
She struggled, thrashing as much as she could but he knew just how to pin her. How to tease her with his scent, his rope, his voice. His hand rested on her hip and she clenched her jaw to keep from moaning.
“I want to talk to you.”
“Do you get the impression I give a rat’s ass what you want?”
He brushed his erection against her ass, trapping an extra length of rope between their bodies. She panted for all she was worth fighting to get away, fighting to get closer. Several layers of clothing still separated him from her but she could feel the burn of his skin against hers.
A flash of memory of the last time they were together scorched her mind. Him taking her, owning her just as he did every second. He buried his hard length inside her.
It was like that every time.
“Don’t remember asking for your input.”
She stopped struggling for a second, astounded he could be so cavalier with her feelings after the way he left things. She opened her mouth to tell him where he could go fuck himself and he shoved a ball gag in her mouth.
“I hikjn yaoindl…” She thought to snap her fingers. Their non-verbal safe word. The same one they’d used for years. But she just…didn’t.
“Better.”
She stomped her foot while he buckled the gag behind her head. Yeah she probably resembled a two-year-old, but whatever.
She even wanted to say she was aiming for his foot but that would have been a lie.
Dawning possibilities exploded in her mind and she wasn’t going down so easily.
She moved her head forward as far as she could to get it into t
he corner the two walls made. She hoped he thought she just wanted away from the gag.
Fuck that.
Her head snapped back fast, catching him in the jaw, or cheek, or somewhere hard with the metal of the gag.
It dug into her scalp for a second but his “dammit” was worth any kind of pain she suffered at taking him by surprise.
A growl tore through him.
He spun her around and hauled her up and over his shoulder before she could utter a single squeak.
He held her thighs tight against him so she could do little more than wiggle.
The rest of the rope dangled from her wrists and he quickly wrapped it around her ankles, hogtieing her as if she were being hauled to slaughter.
She blissed-out in his rope so fast she didn’t want to fight.
Her shoulders ached with the position of her arms and she wanted to hate how much she loved neck rope. It was dangerous and sexy and so decadently wicked she’d longed to feel like that again.
His cologne, the feel of his hand resting possessively on her ass, the way he tied her… Deft movements—even better and faster than they were years before—called to her, sucking her down the rabbit hole.
When he said he loved her.
She struggled again, unwilling to make it easy for him. He had years of hurt to make up for.
“We’ll be getting better acquainted.”
Jenna mumbled obscenities the whole time as he hauled her from the room. He whacked her ass and she loved it, pissing her off even more.
“I’m awake, right?” Chris asked the question behind Ian and Jenna would have laughed if she could have around the gag.
Ian lugged her up to her prep area, taking the stairs instead of the elevator. She hoped it was because he needed to burn off steam.
“Ahhhat.” He smacked her ass again and she swallowed another moan.
Ian let himself in. To her room.
Of course he knew the code.
Great.
He untied her ankles and set her on her feet, removing the rope from around her neck and wrists and stretching her arms out, restoring blood flow to her upper limbs.
He straightened her arms behind her and tied them together from her wrists all the way up to her elbows.
Then he moved her beneath the suspension ring, hanging from the middle of the room.
He tied her wrists, looping the end of the rope to the ring dangling from the ceiling.
A strappado.
It had been years since she’d let anyone tie her, to bind her, to take her free will.
Goddamn she’d missed it.
He grabbed a spreader bar from where she kept them in one of the side closets. Just walked right over to it and opened the right door.
How many times had he been in her space to know exactly where she kept everything?
“Yu ar hutch a ahhol.”
He wrenched one of her legs up, cuffing her into the side of the bar. “Pretty sure we’ve already established that.”
He cuffed her second ankle in before she could knee him in the nose, finishing his complete and utter destruction of her ability to flee.
She expected him to strip her down.
Fuck her.
Own her.
But he didn’t do any of those things.
Instead…he paced.
Back and forth he moved in front of her with his hands clenched into fists by his thighs.
Agitation bled off him, reaching her in waves of irritation.
Whether his exasperation was aimed toward himself or her she didn’t know.
She almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
Shock reverberated through her when he strode over, unbuckling the leather straps from behind her head.
She groaned when he tugged the ball from between her teeth and she swallowed to keep her drool off the floor.
He tossed the gag toward the door leading into the bathroom and surprised her again when he hit his knees in front of her.
His thick fingers dug through her hair, holding it out of her face.
He massaged her jaw, letting her tuck her forehead into the crook of his neck.
His breath tickled her exposed shoulder and she breathed in his scent just in case it was another dream. Just to make sure she took a piece of him away with her when he left her again.
“I wanted to be…easier when we met again.”
“Easier? What does that mean?”
His forehead moved against hers. “Softer. Easier. Less of an asshole. But I’m still just…me.”
You were always perfect to me. She clenched her teeth to keep from speaking.
“Fuck, I missed you,” rumbled out of him, slapping her out of her moment of revelry.
She wrenched her head away, instantaneously missing the contact. “Don’t lie.”
Some of her hair fell forward, blocking him from her view, but he tucked it behind her ear. “Why would I lie, Jenna?”
She stole a glance at him, looking away because his eyes saw too much. They always saw more than she wanted to reveal.
“Why you do anything is none of my concern. Not anymore.” God if she could actually mean that statement…
“That’s so much bullshit I can’t imagine we’re not knee deep in it.” He got in her face and she kept her eyes firmly on the floor.
He may have tied up her body but she wasn’t consenting to him having a field day with her emotions.
Not again.
Not ever again.
“I didn’t want to leave you before. I was undercover vice. You knew it was a possibility I could get pulled away on a case.”
She glared at him, pulling on her you didn’t just go there panties. “You think I’m naïve enough now or then to pull that crap with me? So you forgot my number, where I lived, how to text and about a thousand other things making that statement utterly stupid. Cat litter is worth more than the line of B.S. you just tried to feed me.”
“It’s the truth.”
She kicked up an eyebrow and simply waited.
“Maybe not all of it.”
“You’ve been tight-lipped about your past, your family, for as long as we were together. Does this have anything to do with that?” “Family. What a crock of shit. Especially when you’re the black sheep of it and everyone looks down their damn noses at you.”
“Maybe if you talked about it then you’d—”
“No.”
“But if you need to get it off your chest—”
“You’re so fucking stubborn,” he accused.
“Ditto, dumbass,” she muttered.
“Do you even want to know why I’m here?”
She barked out a brittle laugh and clenched her fingers together. “As if I care, Ian. You won’t be here long enough for it to matter anyway.” She mumbled the last part under her breath, doing her best to get under his skin.
“You sure as hell cared when I was balls-deep inside you the other night and you were coming around my cock.”
Oh, fuck.
It was him.
She’d thought she was imagining things. The similarities to him and another man.
Part of that made her feel better about being shared.
Shared…
She shook her head back and forth, trying to shake away the fear of what he must think of her.
That he was part of her first and only ménage made her want to cry in happiness. Knowing he would never forgive her made her want to crumble.
“It was my tongue on your clit when you came the first time. My fingers on you, my cock inside you at the end. Mine, Jenna. Mine.”
“I’m not yours,” she snapped. “You have no claim over me after you walked away last time.”
“Really?”
He moved behind her and she prepared for him to spank her, to mark her, to bruise her, to prove he still owned a piece of her no matter how small.
But the strike never came and then the sound of a zipper being lowered made her shiver.
<
br /> She froze, expecting him to take her, to use her. Moisture rushed to her sensitive inner folds and she wanted to curse her reaction to him.
But he didn’t touch her.
She moved as much as she could to see him and he was crouched down, next to her rope bag.
He stood, striding back around her and tossed something at her feet.
“No claim, huh? None at all?”
Her mask.
Pain, panic and regret tore through her system like a flash flood breaking through a levy.
He undid the cuffs at her ankles, tossing the spreader bar a few feet away.
“Don’t lie to me. After everything we went through, you can do anything else. Hate me, forget me. But I know you. Even now you’re not as unaffected as you’d like me to believe.”
He brushed her shoulder with his abdomen as he stood.
She wanted to argue, to curse at him some more, but staring at her mask stole any other words she would have hurled at him.
The tension on her arms lessened as he untied her wrists and the end of the rope fell beside her. He pulled her to stand, slowly lowering her arms at the same time.
She gritted her teeth at the pain, welcoming the distraction from their reunion.
Standing on her own was more than she could handle and he knew it.
Feeling weak in front of him scared her. She had to be strong, to keep some part of her safe as he pulled her into him. She wanted far more than just physical support.
Instead of sitting her down right there on the floor and untying her or letting her lean against the table against the far wall, he pulled out one of the stools around the makeup mirror and sat down.
Did he sit her on his lap and face her away so he could reach the rope?
No.
Did he have her sit in the chair next to it?
Of course not.
He pulled her onto his lap, making her straddle him and then tugged her forward until her cheek rested on his shoulder.
His scent surrounded her again and she shivered.
He grabbed her hips, moving her closer until her pubic bone dug into his pants zipper.
He reached around her, caging her in as he set out to free her.
The term “oxymoron” had nothing on her.
The untying of the jute took a long time, probably because he’d tied it so tightly and it was difficult to work loose.
She wanted to believe it was because of the way her body fit against his, how he could rub his jaw against her head or a palm down her thigh.
JennasConsent Page 18