by Angel Payne
She was suddenly very much alone with Mark Moore. In a very large suite that felt very small.
He pulled off his jacket, his gaze never leaving her.
She followed every inch of the graceful action, feeling fifteen, infatuated, and ridiculous. Again.
All right, dinner would have to be skipped. It was time to just cut to the chase, get this whole skirmish over with, then march her backside out the door. She couldn’t stay, not when he already had her heart forgetting beats just because he’d shucked his jacket.
She needed some air. The slider to the patio and the garden was open. With careful steps, she made her way there. Cicadas sang in the trees, which waved in a breeze smelling of approaching rain. She glanced up to find Mark’s stare still on her, silent and assessing. He barely moved—until she dashed her tongue over her lips. A small hiss erupted from his. She swallowed, tearing through her brain for something to fill the tightrope walk of a moment.
“Why did he call you Marker Man?” She said it with true curiosity, grateful she hadn’t had to fall back on some inane comment about the weather. He shrugged, actually looking a little uncomfortable about the answer. Hmm. She’d knocked him off-kilter for once. The feat wasn’t as satisfying as she thought it would be. His reply, however, earned an uptick of attention.
“Dante and I don’t screw around with each other. Sometimes that makes us a couple of bulls in a china shop, especially when we’re together. But it’s also formed the base for a great friendship. One day we tossed some beers and started indulging ourselves in semidrunk emotional guy shit about it. He told me I was in his book in ‘permanent marker.’ We laughed like a pair of idiots about it, but it’s stuck.”
The story was pretty endearing. She told him so by tilting a smile at him as she stepped outside. Marker Man Moore and Inferno Boy Tieri, a bromance for all time.”
“Repeat that to anyone, and I promise, no matter where you’re at in the world, I’ll come after you—and the floggers will be packed.”
Her mind played out an image from his words. Him, bare-chested and rippling with strength, whipping a pair of floggers through the air in beautiful symmetry. Her, spread and bound to one of those X-shaped crosses from the BDSM clubs, moaning and arching beneath the mixture of pleasure and pain.
She pulled in a sharp breath, hoping he didn’t hear, and sat in one of the padded chairs next to the villa’s private pool. Her panties, now seeping, decided to share their hydration with the entire apex of her thighs. Recrossing only made matters worse.
New topic. Redirect this conversation, now. You’re here to talk logic and reality, not succumb to chemistry. You’re not one for the best odds where chemistry is concerned, Ro.
“So, you two go diving together?” Shockingly, she kept her voice even. “Where, in Lake Michigan? I’ve heard there’s shipwrecks down there. That must be kind of fun. Do you live in Chicago now?”
He didn’t make a move to sit with her. Instead, he slipped off his tie, then strolled to the slider that led to the bedroom and tossed the burgundy garment into the room. He didn’t close the door when he was done. Still leaning against the jamb, he drawled, “You’re quite the inquisitive thing tonight. Trying to skirt a subject, Ms. Fabian?”
“Y-you didn’t answer my question.”
He looked out over the pool. “I live in Chicago now, yes. And yes to your second question as well. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yes, Dante and I dive. Out of the sky.”
“The sky?”
“I was in recon in the Marines. Dante is just a batshit millionaire adrenaline junkie.”
“You really do like to live dangerously.”
“Yes I do.” When he swung his gaze back at her, it was thick, unwavering. So was his gait, as he prowled back to her. At last, he nudged the ankle of her top leg with one foot. He pushed until she lowered it. Now she sat in front of him, one of her calves captured by his legs. “Why do you look so surprised by that?”
She tried to straighten a little. He didn’t yield the hold.
“I’m not surprised. It…it actually helps my case.”
“And what case would that be, specifically?”
He gave up the lock on her leg. That was only so he could shift his position in order to straddle her thighs. He curled forward to brace his hands to the chair’s arms, crashing through every inch of her physical-comfort zone. The awareness of him, in every beat of her blood and inch of her skin, made her breathing spike, her skin burn, her senses swim. By some miracle, she managed to keep her eyes open. It bolstered her enough to attempt speech.
“Look, I’m not going to deny that we have an attraction…”
His lips parted as he fixated on her neck like Barnabas Collins after a dry spell. “And that’s dangerous?”
“Y-yes. Because…because…”
She interrupted herself, gulping hard, as he raised a hand and brushed her hair off her one bared shoulder. “I’m listening.”
“Senator—”
“I prefer it when you call me Sir.” He traced her collarbone with his thumb. His touch was rough, possessive. Her breath came in audible stammers. His eyes dilated. Oh, hell. The expression transformed him from totally mesmerizing to fucking hot.
“I’m not the one you want for this. I wish I could be. I want to be. But I’m just too—” She grabbed his hand, forcing him to stop, letting him behold her anguish. “I’m not the one you want for this gig, okay? Not by half. I’m not sophisticated, or graceful, or polished—”
“You really think that’s what I want?”
“That’s what you need, Senator.”
She forced herself to emphasize the last word. Someone around here had to grow a chunk of logic, damn it. Apparently, it had to be her. Under other circumstances, she might’ve laughed at that. Placing herself in the same sentence as the word logic? The universe had a sense of humor, after all. But the grandest joke would be continuing this—because if he got near her again and turned her into the same unthinking creature she’d become in the fitness center…
No. No.
She was here to move forward, not revisit a past where passion had led to ruin.
She forced herself to look up when his tight silence went into Freeze-button mode. “Look, I don’t like it either. But what you need is—”
He cut her short with a burst of vicious strength, flipping their grip so he controlled the pressure now. His hands squeezed her shoulders with angry intent. “Don’t tell me what I fucking need.”
“I’m just trying—”
“Don’t tell me what I need. I think I know the answer to that by now. Look at me. Now. Into my eyes, not at my chin.” The depths of his gaze stabbed her, packed with a thousand golden spikes. “Who’s crammed your head with the crap that you’re not enough? Owen? Was that the dickwad’s name?”
She tried to laugh. To her horror, tears brimmed instead. “No!”
“Then what was his name?”
Thank God for a chance to shake her head. “No, no. You’ve got the name right, but it wasn’t Owen. He didn’t—” She swiped her free hand across her cheek. “He never said a word. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t anyone, okay?”
“The hell it wasn’t.” He snared that hand too, interlocking his fingers to it, then pushing it against the chair, next to her ear. “Somebody filled your mind with the idiocy that you’re somehow…” He stared deeper, looking like he couldn’t believe the lunacy of his next word. “Broken.”
“Damn it.”
She didn’t mean to sob both syllables. Yet as soon as they were out, the damn of emotion burst open. “Did you ever stop to think it’s because I am broken?”
She should have just torn her clothes off for him then and there. She’d be less exposed, less horrified, and battling a hell of a lot less torture in her soul. Broken. It was at once the perfect word and the perfect torment, and now it surged through her, erupting in a sob. “Leave me alone.” She struggled, pushing against him. “Let me up. You�
��re suffocating me. I’m serious. Please. I’m hot. Hot. Too hot.”
To her shock, he complied. Rose tore up from the chair. She was sweating, trembling. Her nerves were a swarm of fire ants. Even her fingernails throbbed with heat. The nearest relief for the torture beckoned, steps away. In a haze, she kicked off her shoes, then stumbled toward the pool. Her intention was a wade in along the first step, but she shook so badly she missed, tumbling in face-first. She only went under for two seconds, but the damage was done. She popped up, drenched and humiliated.
“Shit!”
She heard the same word bursting from Mark’s lips as he sprang into motion and intensified her horror. He bounded in after her, plowing through the water like it was simply air.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“That’s not what you want to ask right now.” His retort was damn near a snarl. He came closer by the second, shirt clinging to the ridges of his pecs and abs, the water turning his beard dark gold.
“Are you crazy? I tripped, okay? Not intentional. But you— Oh crap, your clothes!”
His stare dipped, going wildcat again as he beheld what the water did to her linen blouse against her bra-free breasts. “Your clothes.”
“I’m not wearing thousand-dollar Cavallis!”
He jerked off the shoes and his socks, hurling them all into the deep end of the pool. “Stay on topic.” He stepped close enough to grab her elbow in a commanding grip. “Why the hell do you talk about yourself like this? Who have you let into your head, to paint these ass-backward ideas? I want my answer, Rose. Now.”
She flung her other arm out, slamming water at him. “Ass-backward? Really? Do you need more evidence than the situation you’re in, Mr. Moore? I’m impetuous. Ill disciplined. I say the wrong things. I do the wrong things.” She managed to take him by surprise and wrench from his hold but realized he gave her no place to go. Two steps back, and her waist hit the side of the pool. “Why do you think I try so hard to seem a Victorian priss? Because I’m not!”
“Thank God.”
He actually sounded like he meant it. She tried to get around him again. He was more than ready, snaking both arms out to lock in her shoulders. He slid up a graceful smile of victory. She shot him an open grimace.
“Fine. You want to know? For starters, I have too much mouth and not enough manners.” It was easy to spit it out. God knew she’d heard it from Shane enough. “Let’s see, what else? Too much sass, not enough poise. I’m too talkative, too opinionated, too outgoing and apparently, much too passionate.” Not that her brother knew anything about passion. Which was perhaps not so wrong. At twenty-eight, Shane was already a partner in a major Chicago law firm. Yet here she was, soaked in a swimming pool, makeup coursing her face, running a laundry list of everything she’d done to royally derail her life to a man who’d all but declared he wanted to make her his slave-girl kink bunny. And battling a large chunk of her brain that so wanted to let him.
“No. Not too passionate.” If it was possible, the rage in his face deepened. But the anger was joined by something else now. It looked a great deal like the expression he’d given her neck a few minutes ago, only hungrier. Much less willing to let her go, no matter how hot she got now.
“Really?” It was a feeble attempt to screech the brakes on her racing senses. “Then tell me what the hell I am.”
By unnerving degrees, he pressed closer until she was pinned between his body and the pool’s edge. With equal determination, he changed his hold on her from a pair of hand holds to a pair of wristlocks, his fingers now elegant vises around her pulse points. He pushed her arms down, locking them at her sides.
“You’re a creature, wild and beautiful, who just needs the right master to guide you. To hone that passion, to let it shine.” He circled her arms behind her now, so her wrists rested on the pool’s edge. He kept them there by securing them into one of his hands, while bringing his other back to urge her face back up with a firm sweep of fingers. “Every fiber of you wants it pet, don’t you? You’ve had desires…fantasies…haven’t you? And Owen was the man you were going to marry, the man you longed to fulfill those dreams. So you went to him and opened up to him a little. Maybe a lot.”
“Oh.”
It was all she could say, as his nearness turned their proximity into incredible humidity. How did he know? How could he have known? But he did. Somehow, he did.
“Yeah.” He nodded, looking satisfied yet still plenty pissed. “That’s exactly what happened, wasn’t it? You went to him, you bared yourself to him, and the goddamn boy got so scared of having the passion of a real woman on his hands, he shit in his diapers and ran.”
Despite the big beautiful nearness of him and the sparks flying between them at nearly visible intensity, she shivered. The disaster with Owen…she’d never heard it explained like that before. Could it be…maybe a little of it…wasn’t her? Could it be that she wasn’t a complete disaster? Could it be that given the right place, the right man, all the secret yearnings of her heart and all the dark needs of her body…were okay?
But this wasn’t the right place. This wasn’t the right man. They were from different worlds, different life paths. At least with Owen, she had hope of being enough, squeezing enough into the mold. But this golden god, who stripped her of all rational thought? No. She’d disappoint. Oh God, she’d never be enough. And she’d come here tonight to tell him that.
So tell him!
Her brain railed it at her drunk senses like a nagging designated driver. It kept trying even as he wrapped a hand to the back of her head, anchoring it in place to excavate her gaze with his. Then her bloodstream took over. It grabbed those keys of self-control, then hurled them into the thickest bushes of her mind.
She was so in trouble now.
“I don’t scare easily, Rose.” His breath filled the air between them, scented with scotch and wind and desire. “I want your passion. I need your fire. This is good. This is right. You’re so right.” He dipped his head, brushing his lips along the seam of hers, sending a thousand more frissons through her body. “Give in to it, for just tonight. Give me the chance to show you how amazing it can be, how amazing you can be. Submit to me, pet. No obligations other than now. No thoughts beyond this.”
He finished that promise by filling her mouth with his, taking her like a man possessed, slanting her back with voracious force. He swept her hard with his tongue, exploring her, claiming her. Rose moaned, fascinated by the contrasts surrounding her body, her senses. This hot, wet kiss. This cool, teasing water. This fluid, powerful man. His solid, searing touch. She yearned to get her hands on him in return, but his grip on her wrists tightened. She had to show him her heat and her need in other ways. She pushed her face higher, trying to suck his tongue in. She writhed and whimpered, now blatantly aware of the soaked fabric against her hard, achy nipples.
When he finally pulled away from her, a single word sighed up her throat.
“Yes.”
A long, low sound of pleasure came from his throat. “Yes what, pet?”
“Yes, I— I’ll submit to you. Sir.”
“Oh, honey.” He kissed her again, brutal and fast. “You have no idea…what even that does to me.”
She grinned. “Oh, I have a little bit of an idea.”
“Ssshh.” Without taking his eyes off her, he lowered his hand, unbuckled his belt, and slid it off. The only sound between them was water dripping off the leather strip as he circled it behind her, then cinched it around her wrists in place of his other hand. She watched his face as he looped the strap back under, slipping the end between her wrists, rendering them immobile between her lower back and the pool’s edge. His lips were parted, his jaw was set, his eyes were fires of fierce concentration. When he was finished, her elbows lay flat against the tile, their curves turned into little coves. As the water lapped at the sensitive skin there, every nerve ending on her arms shimmered in awakening.
He wrapped both hands to her back, running th
em over her bonds, testing to make sure she really couldn’t move. His stare bore into hers again. “Too tight?”
“No, Sir.” She whispered it, now entranced with his concentration on her. He focused with a heady mix of all business and pure lust. Nobody had ever looked at her like this.
He didn’t miss the change in her voice either. He pressed her forearms firmly, declaring how he understood the enormity of her decision. She shook a little, but he kept his grip there, his nostrils flaring as if just that little act aroused him. His next words were heavy and rough with feeling.
“You’re so breathtaking.”
He lowered his head to her shoulder, teething her skin as he brought one hand around and up to her breast. His thumb swiped her nipple through the wet cotton. More electricity sizzled through her. Rose gasped and bent toward him. “Easy, Rose. It’s okay. I’m going to take care of you, don’t worry.”
She tried to get air but every breath pushed her breast into his hand again, inciting the need to be closer, to get more of him. Without thinking, she tugged against her restraint. Without thought, she cried out in frustration. “Easy? This isn’t easy!”
He laughed—laughed!—and locked his other hand to her hip. “I need to know something.”
She glowered into his chest. “The answer is yes, I’m dying to get my hands on every inch of you.”
He chuckled again, the sound a maddening mix of warmth and desire. “That’s not your place right now, pet.” He ignored her little huff, which halted when his next words came out, deep and serious. “I need to know…in those clubs you went to with your friends, did you learn about safe words?”
Her stomach clenched, though this time in a good way. “Yes, Sir.”
“Then do you know what yours is now?” He pulled back a little to watch her, tilting his head in question. So deliciously smooth. So goddamn hot.
“Extemporization?” When his stare turned into a glower, she sighed. “All right, all right; yes. My safe word is worth.” She stuck in a mocking edge to her finish. “Sir.”
He angled his face over hers now. His fingers closed tighter on her breast. “I shouldn’t let you get away with that.” The hand at her back twined into the ends of her hair, and he pulled at the wet strands. With her neck bared to him again, he began to nip at the hollow of her throat, then the valley between her breasts. “I should rip this blouse off your shoulders, then bite your sweet, hard nipples until they’re red and sore. Yet still, my pet, you’ll beg me to nibble them one more time, just so you can climax for me in a million throbbing pieces.”