by Angel Payne
“Your fingers. Your cock. Anything. I need it. Please!”
In the long moment that followed, David swung a few hundred rungs higher on Kress’s ladder of respect. The guy gave her enough of a smile to let her know he’d heard, loud and clear, but lifted his fingers only to rub them against his chin as he looked her up and down once again.
“So you need me to fuck you,” the guy repeated. “With anything?”
“Yes!”
“All right,” he finally murmured. “On the bed with you, beautiful.” He emphasized that by grabbing her wrist and guiding her toward the mattress. “Arms spread, legs spread. Sweet and wide. Very nice. Keep your top on. Let’s keep those tits clean tonight.”
Kress wanted to be pissed at the decision to keep her half-clothed. But it was hard to be anything but rock fucking hard as he watched that breathtaking woman go spread-eagle for her Dom. He was dying to know what “pleasure” of hers had gotten cut short this morning, what Pennington could’ve possibly been doing to her… Oh man, to have been a fly on that wall too.
Her face popped into apprehension as Pennington disappeared for a second, then came back to tug at one of her wrists.
“I managed to secure some special deliveries this afternoon,” he said with a slow smile, lifting one of her wrists. He wrapped a padded cuff around it, then locked it closed, securing her to the headboard.
“Wh-why cuffs again?” Dasha stammered.
“Shhh.” He gentled his tone to balance the shock of his actions. “Take a breath for me, pet. And another.” After he clicked the second cuff shut, he smiled down at her. “They’re lined with velvet. Do they hurt at all?”
Dasha averted her eyes. “No. But—”
“And your Sir won’t do anything to harm you, right?”
“R-right. But…why…”
“Because number one, it pleases me to see you tied up and at my mercy.” He grinned before bending over to give her a long kiss. “And second…let’s call it a precautionary measure.”
“Precautionary?” This time, her voice shook. “Why?”
“No more questions.” Pennington pivoted and made his way to the foot of the bed, his pace smooth and controlled. “Time to meet your needs.” He pushed her legs wider, showing off the real evidence of what the bondage did to her. The lips on Dasha’s mouth might have protested the treatment, but the lips of her pussy dripped with glistening new juices.
“Oh yeah,” David praised. “You’re ready to be fucked, little sub.”
What he said. Goddamnit, please—
“Yes.”
With her breathy surrender, Kress couldn’t take the pressure anymore. He unzipped his pants with painstaking silence. His dick burst free, boulder hard, covered in precum. He frantically fisted himself, grinding off three layers of tooth enamel to keep his groan in check, battling shame and ecstasy at once. Christ, he had no idea how long he’d last this way.
Pennington stepped out of his view for a second. He heard the guy unzip a suitcase and rummage through it. When David reappeared in Kress’s sightline, he carried a long, silver tube. The handle of it was attached to a lengthy black cord, which he plugged into a nearby socket.
Crap, yelled the part of his brain that could still think. Holy crap, is that a—
“Wh-what’s that?” Dasha’s gaze went wider as she too focused on the thing.
“Wizards have their magic wands,” he replied, “and I’ve brought mine.” He paused as if expecting her to fire a smart-ass-ism then. When she didn’t, he nodded his approval. “You need to be fucked,” he went on. “We’ve established that. And this is what you’ll be fucked with. I’d planned to introduce you to this in Miami. Good news is, it packs light.” He flipped the switch on the handle, and the rod emitted a sumptuous, erotic hum. “You’ll enjoy electro-stim, D; I promise.”
“Electro—what?”
For the first time, she battled visibly at her wrist bonds. But she kept her legs open, belying two things. One, she really did trust Pennington. Two, a secret part of her was fascinated by the sensual promise his statement had carried…by the dark magic of the instrument he now hovered above her core.
Pennington stopped for one second. He batted her inner thighs with his free hand. “I expect these legs to stay nice and wide, or there’ll be some more restraints invited to come play. I brought those too. Got that?”
It took Dasha a long moment and a deep breath to answer. “Yes, Sir.”
“Very good. You are my good girl, aren’t you?”
“Y-yes, Sir.” It squeaked out as David started to slide the stim wand into her body. Heat roared through Kress as he watched her pussy grip the silver stick, her thighs quivering from the foreign shock of it. He flicked a glance at her face. She’d closed her eyes and now worked at turning her bottom lip into hamburger with her teeth. So scared. So nervous. But so trusting, so wanting to please.
So fucking—
“Perfect.” The Dom in the next room finished his thought. The Dom he’d give his left nut to trade places with right now. But, pitiful as it was, both his nuts were fine remaining where they were, torturing the hell out of him, aching for release.
“Oh yeah, perfect,” David repeated. “You’re so gorgeous like this, sweetheart. Just an inch more…” He gave the wand a little twist, ignoring her cry of protest. “And now, the fun begins.”
He clicked another switch on the stim wand.
Dasha’s shriek was one of the sweetest sounds Kress had ever heard.
She clearly cycled fast through shock, pain, rebellion…but then ascended to arousal, deep and sexual, raw and guttural. Pennington zapped her again, and the sound tore the air once more. Kress couldn’t look away from the sight of her, so purely abandoned to the moment, muscles defined in her strained arms, head jacked back on the mattress, lungs heaving for air, and her beautiful legs shaking to remain spread for her Dom.
Pennington, Kress decided, must be half robot. He was a dozen pumps away from shooting a Nile-sized climax, and he wasn’t standing inches away from that whimpering submissive…that lush body…that shivering pussy…
Which seized again as David pressed the wand—and left the charge going this time.
“Ohhhh!” she whimpered, collapsing her legs inward. Her fingertips gripped the cuffs. Her body contorted, shivering in time to the current that fucked her from the inside out. “Please, Sir! I can’t take it!”
David ran a thumb the length of her clit. Then back down again. “Are you safe wording, sweetheart?”
“Ohhh…I don’t know…”
“Then you’ll keep taking the wand.” His voice was an iron drill. With dexterity that stunned even Kress, the guy sprang onto the bed and locked Dasha’s torso back into place. He straddled one of her legs, securing it into position. His dragged his free hand off her clit and up her leg, pressing it firmly too. He went to work on securing the wand inside her again, tormenting her by making the thing into a makeshift cock for a few deep thrusts. “It’s going to make you come, D. Is that understood?” When she gave him nothing but a groan, he pumped the wand again. “Can’t hear you, sweetheart.”
“Yes,” she cried. “Yes, Sir!”
Kress prayed that moment was destined for sooner than later. Indeed, less than two tormented minutes later, Dasha Moore orgasmed for her master in a rush of screams and gasps that not only clawed at Kress’s dick but sucked at the fibers deep inside his chest, his heart, his being. And as he wrested the climax from his own body, one thought took over, filled with more sick certainty than a Marilyn Manson lyric.
“You’re in trouble, Moridian. The big, dangerous, objectivity-fucking kind. Which doesn’t leave your job, your credibility, and other important shit very far behind.”
Damn it. His jeans weren’t the only thing in a mess now.
Chapter Ten
Three days later, David prayed they weren’t tempting fate for a clusterfuck.
After that first incredible night in the mansion, he’d purposely laid low on the
D/s dynamic with Dasha, letting her get settled while he and Moridian transformed the library into a Let’s-Find-the-Lunatic command center. He made it a point to carve out normal-style couple time too. They’d cuddled on the couch and caught up on movies, slept in every day, and taken walks, shadowed by someone from Kress’s team, of course, along the little creek behind the house.
He only had to pull out the Dom mode for a few select occasions. Nearly all of them had involved requests from D for off-property excursions—and his subsequent vetoes. A farmer’s market visit with the mansion chef? No. Shoe shopping with Mary and the girls? No. A haircut at Atlanta’s newest hot salon? In the heart of Little Five Points? Surrounded by a few thousand strangers? Definitely no.
He put up with the pouty lips and bratty silences from D because he understood them. Cabin fever was a suck-ass affliction. But at least she was alive to feel every moment of it. For that payoff, he’d gladly be her nemesis a few times a day.
He’d given in to only one of her requests and now regretted the decision for the hundredth time as he looked across the crowd waiting behind the barricades in the central plaza of the Lenox Square shopping mall. This scene wasn’t supposed to be happening. This was supposed to be an intimate gathering to benefit Dasha’s favorite cancer charity, going down inside the mall’s Neiman Marcus. “A friendly meet-and-greet,” the planners had said, with a handful of fans who’d paid for the right by forking over the VIP price for her new perfume. But given the event’s beneficiary, D told the planners not to cap the number of eligible participants.
They should’ve capped it.
Apparently, a lot of folks had big piggybanks and weren’t afraid to break them. And now, the VIP group of a couple hundred was backed by the thousands more who’d come just to be in the same building as D. For her safety, mall engineers had started unfolding stage risers too.
Tempting fate.
He tried to ban the words from his mind, but every passing minute brought more mental vultures. They helped drive his stare into the crowd again. Any one of these faces could belong to their dove-killing pal. Any one of these people could be their lunatic, who could’ve easily learned about the event and how Dasha had insisted on going forward with it.
He turned and paced back into the Gap Kids store. The store had offered to be their green room for an hour. Like that had been a sacrifice. The managers eagerly snapped photos of Dasha with their kids—who were dressed in GK’s latest styles, of course. Hurray, fun times for everyone.
Except the woman who’d take a giant chunk of his heart if she died today.
Even the mental vultures froze. Whoa. When the hell did his heart play into any of this? Yes, he was all the way committed to Dasha—professionally. Yes, he was overjoyed to see her fulfilled—sexually. But that was where the love stopped. That was where it had to stop. Getting anything other than his head and his cock tangled with her would be disaster.
Hadn’t he proved that already with another disaster named Sophie?
He grunted and shook his head. This wasn’t the time to be dwelling on exes, especially those who took steak knives to their wrists when he suggested they have a night out with the girls, then dragged in his own brother for support on the matter. Yeah, he’d learned fast about losing objectivity for a submissive, because he’d fallen in love with his. He’d fast learned about the guilt and pain that came with that package. So he just didn’t take the package anymore. Period.
He bit out an oath, dumped the memories behind a display rack of chinos, and told himself to focus on getting Dasha through the next hour intact—though as he approached Kress Moridian, he discerned the agent waging an internal fight of his own. The guy stood against a store wall, clearly yearning to yank the plug on this chaos in his own right. Thank fucking God.
That observation brought another hit of confusion. Moridian’s chivalrous act about Dasha had gotten worse over the last seventy-two hours, which, given all the baggage from Sophie, should’ve turned him into a raving commercial for back-the-hell-off, Agent M. But something had shifted between G-Man and him. Something significant. He’d spent a lot of time with Kress over the days, had seen the guy in a bunch of different circumstances, most in the stressed to very stressed range. In every instance, Moridian never became the FBI asshole David would’ve laid money on. Instead, with every new roadblock they encountered in the investigation, the agent indulged some choice cuss words, slugged another energy drink, then went at their challenge with fresh eyes. Looking for a new angle. Peering for the chink he hadn’t yet seen. Not giving up.
It got damn hard, David admitted, to hate someone who did things exactly like him.
Moridian reinforced that thought the next second. “I don’t like this,” the guy muttered. “I really don’t like this. Did you see them putting up a goddamn stage out there now?”
“I’m aware of the operational developments, yes.”
“Then do something!” the guy snapped. “Control your s—”
David wheeled a hard stare. “Control my…what?”
“Nothing. Fuck.” Moridian looked away, eyes glittering. “Nothing.”
David gave back a noncommittal grunt. He could afford the benevolence. He’d picked up enough veiled innuendoes this week to know he shared more than a hardcore work ethic with Kress. And though the guy had cut himself short, they both knew what statement he’d almost spilled.
Control your sub.
“Look,” Moridian said, “she listens to you, right? Then make her listen now. I have ten men and half of the Atlanta PD out there, but we’re still piss-poor outnumbered against that mob, and—”
“They’re not a mob.” It was a verbal whip, lashed by a glaring Dasha who now stood two feet away, hands on hips. For a wonderful second, she made David forget what planet he was on. She was all soft curves and flowing femininity today, dressed in a cream-colored, lacy dress that fell to the tops of brown hip boots that hugged her legs in the way only good leather could manage. Matching fabric strips wrapped most of her torso, acting like a corset to her breasts, cinching them up and filling the dress’s bodice in a cock-tugging combo of creamy-tease and Southern-belle-innocent.
“They’re not a mob,” she snapped. “They’re my fans, and a lot of them have driven far to be here. A lot more have postponed concert tickets. Do either of you want to tell them we’re canceling this now too?”
Moridian huffed and hunched his shoulders. He slanted a furious glance at David. But of course, when he swung that look over to Dasha, he went all unblinking and intense with it.
“Fine,” the guy finally muttered. “Let’s just get this damn thing done.”
* * * *
A little under an hour later, David took a relieved breath. It was only a short one, snuck between all the clenched others, but he was confident a few more would follow.
He stood discreetly next to the stage, watching his girl plant the crowd firmly in the palm of her pretty hand. They enchanted her in return. Dasha Moore, the senator’s daughter from Indiana, had worked hard to earn her fans’ devotion, proving she was really an ordinary person with stories in her heart that needed to be sung. Because of that, over the last five years, she’d learned other people’s stories too, and never took a single one of them for granted. Even today, she’d listened in empathy to a couple of teenage breakup tales, and right now hugged the brother of a woman who’d succumbed to the same strain of cancer that’d killed her mom three years ago.
As the young man pulled away from her, David caught him stealing a view of the valley down D’s bodice. He allowed himself a small, gloating smile.
Go ahead, pal. Fantasize about what they look like. Now add my initials pierced into both of her round, perfect nipples. Nice picture, eh?
The guy who did look like he’d tear off the fan’s head was Kress. The agent edged over with a dark glare but extricated D’s admirer with surprising diplomacy. Then he pulled back to let her throw out some waves to the crowd before taking her elbow and
guiding her toward the stairs at the back of the stage. David now moved in the same direction, toward the canopy-covered area where the VIP group awaited, a concession Moridian ordered when it was clear this event had become a full circus. “The less time she walks openly public ground, the better,” the agent had said. “You got a stage in here; now add a tent to it, and make those people go to her.”
With the memory, David allowed himself another relaxed breath. Kress really did honor that FBI badge in his wallet. He felt a little safer, knowing the guy’s focus never left her.
He indulged that thought, and one more normal breath, in the instant before a dozen rifle shots ripped the air.
Then he figured he’d never breathe again.
As he lunged for the stage, smothered in the eruption of screams and wails and chaos, David’s stare went tunnel vision, locked on one horror alone.
Dasha was down. And covered in blood.
Chapter Eleven
Dasha struggled to think. To process the logic of the chaos that had seemingly just invaded the world. One second, she’d been jubilant, high on the energy the crowd had given her; the next, the celebration was a war zone. Bodies falling. People shrieking. Uniformed figures sprinting everywhere.
The pops. They still echoed through her mind, her body, her skin. Harsh cracks, like fireworks. But no, a horrible replacement. Somebody had shot at them. At her.
She’d fallen down. Something had made her go down. No, she realized now. Someone. Kress Moridian was still in that position, splayed atop her, his body a shell over her. She swore she felt every tense, poised, solid muscle in his big body.
“Don’t move!” His command was harsh in her ear. “Don’t move until I tell you, Dasha!”
“Ohh…kay.”
Like he could hear her. Her rasp was foreign even to her ears, a pair of dry, terrified syllables. She didn’t bother repeating them due to two things. One, he’d started barking orders into his headset radio. Two, the blood. She stared at it, splashed across her forearm and hand, bright red and fresh. Was it hers or his? She trembled, too terrified to tell. Too numb to feel.