by Angel Payne
She said her next words to the floor. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Saturday night.”
He swallowed hard. His body’s first reaction, besides the rush of blood between his thighs, was to drive a fist into the air. But the quaver in her voice and her fascination with his wool carpet kept the emotional confetti cannons in check.
“I haven’t either.” He kept his voice modulated. “You were amazing. So brave for me. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It was…eye-opening for me too.”
“In good ways?”
“In many ways.”
She squirmed, almost like her own skin was too tight. Dante took a step toward her, but she stood and walked closer to the windows. Looking out into the mist and the lights, she continued, “I’ve landed at a crossroads because of it, on a couple of different levels. I don’t know how you’re going to feel about any of this, but I can’t ignore that your feelings matter to me now.”
He felt like throwing back the sliding door and taking a walk out on the balcony railing. It would’ve been less risky than the direction of her words. “Thanks,” he muttered. “I think.”
“Stop it,” she snapped. “This is hard for me!”
He clenched his teeth. “I know.”
“No,” she countered. “I don’t think you do.”
She wheeled around, taking in the spacious room again, then shaking her head. To his eyes, it was simply a place to live, a living space he threw together for the sake of appearance for the corporation’s stockholders. But he saw what it looked like to her. A damn palace. An extravagance for a prince with his head in the clouds. Literally.
“Do you know how hard it was for me to come here? To know it was shit like all of this that lured my mom away from my dad, from my family, then ripped us all up again when Natalie left my brother? But I came, Dante, because of you. Because despite how I try, I can’t forget you or how incredible it is to be with you. And I came because I know that will never change, even if GRI goes bankrupt tomorrow.”
“Nor will how I feel about you.” He didn’t say it with any joy, because he didn’t feel any yet. The tormented lines of her face told him she still had plenty to confess, and most of it wouldn’t be making its way onto a screen saver with hearts and butterflies.
“But even being with you is complicated now. I know you meant well on Saturday night, but all of that only crystallized things for me.”
He forced himself to sit. An instinct told him it might put her a little more at ease, if that was a possibility right now. “I’m listening,” he ensured her.
She twisted her fingers together. “And I’m here and confused.” After a hard breath and a nervous glance, she started to pace. “You started it by saving my shit in that brawl at the Blue Sax. Then you didn’t just put me in the cab, but you saw me home, personally—”
“Stellina,” he interjected. “That was the fun part.”
“Yes, smart-ass, I get that. But then I woke up the next morning, thinking you’d probably left, to find you on the phone with your mom, to whom you just sent six dozen flowers.”
“Not exactly following you. Wasn’t that the point where we fought?”
“But you didn’t let that stop you.”
He smirked. “I guess you could say that.”
To his shock, she gave a tiny smile in return. “All right, so the calls and the texts were a little weird. But sweet.”
He let both eyebrows leap. “Sweet?”
“Own it, Tieri. It fits.” Her smile dipped into serious territory again as her eyes gained an intense backlight. “It’s part of why, hard as I fought to keep it slapped on, you tore off that ‘Hi, I’m Asshole Billionaire’ name tag and burned it right out of my fingers.”
He let his brows drop in perplexity. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“Not when you’re the woman who dreams of the lights going out and that sweet guy turning into a Dark Escape Dom.”
The words clung to the air between them, thicker than the clouds outside the window. Elation cut through it, beaming into Dante’s senses. “Celina—”
“That’s insane, right?” She spread her hands, shaking her head. “How can I ask for a man to be two things? How can I want the man with flowers in one hand and a flogger in the other? This is the twenty-first century. I’ll be thirty in six months. I’m supposed to be evolved! I’m supposed to know what I want! How can I be so confused about this?”
Dante lurched back to his feet. He grabbed her hands in his own and jammed them against her sides while he pressed close. She had to lean back to keep looking at him, a position that did some crazy, amazing things to his arousal level.
“Why can’t you be confused? I know that I was.” He tilted his head over her. “But now I also know that I want it all too, cara. I want to be both those things, all those things, for you.” He released one of her wrists in order to lift his hand to her head and dig it against her scalp. He kept up the pressure, steadily pulling, letting her know the words weren’t play for him. “Why can’t we find both sides of ourselves, on this amazing journey, together?”
He yearned to bend down, closing the inches between them to kiss her. But her eyes swam in unsteady emerald pools, depths that looked so much like the emotional version of kerosene. Imagine that.
He forced himself to stop as she took in a shaky breath, preparing her next words.
“Because there can’t be a journey.”
Though she was still captive to his hold, she closed him out for a moment as if summoning supernatural help for her next words. When she reopened her eyes, the shadows in them had turned into chasms. She raised her hand to cover his. “I’ve accepted a transfer to the JAG Region Legal Service Office in Atsugi, Japan.”
For a long second, it seemed she’d issued the words in another language. They were like gibberish, syllables he didn’t expect.
“What?”
He loosened his hold and finally stepped back from her altogether. “Japan?”
“Yeah. I—I leave on January second.”
“What. The—”
He grunted, unable to finish. All her cat-in-the-rain behavior now made a shitload more sense and twisted his gut in a thousand more ways.
She hadn’t come here tonight for their new start. She’d come to say good-bye.
“I’ve been prepping a case in conjunction with their office,” she explained. “The CO is short on advocates for his team, so—”
“So you just volunteered to move yourself six thousand miles. Is that it?”
A breath rushed out of her. It was edged with more tears. “Dante—”
“Wait. Let me correct that,” he spat. “Six thousand miles away from me. That hits the mark a bit better, doesn’t it, cara?”
She had the nerve to close the three steps between them again and grab his hand. “Listen to me. We’re only flying this op at low altitudes right now, okay? We haven’t gotten to the tough stuff yet.”
“Because you’re moving to Japan.”
He wrenched free from her, stomped back to the bar and dumped more scotch into a glass. The liquid never hit his lips. He glared down into the gold fluid, too shocked and enraged to even drink his way into a decent stupor.
A silent minute stretched into another. Another. Celina broke into the fourth one with a trembling voice.
“My brother Dylan flies F-18s for a living. They’re fifty-million-dollar jets. But if the plane is headed for disaster, the navy doesn’t expect the pilot to hang on and try to save the plane. They’re ordered to eject their ass and get out safely.” A sad huff escaped her. “We can’t hang on to this op, Dante. The view looks great right now, but—”
“View?” He slung a bitter laugh. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s no ‘view,’ Celina. This flight has barely cleared the tower, and you’re already grounding us.”
“That’s not true, damn it.”
“No?” He wheeled, snapping his head toward her a
second after his body led the way. She wet her lips and grabbed the couch for balance, confirming he’d accomplished the daunting purpose of the move. But he had no intent of stopping there.
“Are you telling me you didn’t yearn for me to help you back out of that sweater Saturday night, instead of into it? Are you standing there expecting me to believe you didn’t want more, stellina, much more? You want me to believe that you didn’t want me to come back in as soon as I left? That you didn’t long to go back into that playroom with me and have me strip you, bind you, mark you, fuck you?”
With each question, he took another pair of steps in a circuitous path around her, deliberately circling and, watching, introducing new visuals into her head with his growling cadence and his blatant words. And it was working. He watched her chest pump faster beneath her sinful dress. He noticed her hands at her sides, curling with the effort to keep her composure in check.
When he stopped, he was just a foot away from her. He braced his feet, then folded his arms. “Yeah, I call bullshit on your defense, counselor. With every word of it. But I’m done trying to talk about it.”
That caused a fast raise of her gaze. She couldn’t hide the lingering sorrow in her face or the resigned jerks of her nod. “I understand.”
Dante chuffed. “No. You don’t.” He moved his hands to his sides now. “I said I’m done talking about it. I said nothing about not proving it in other ways.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
Before he spoke again, he reached and unclasped the brooch at her waist. He tossed the jewelry to the coffee table. The action didn’t make her dress fall open, but it sure as hell loosened everything up. He now peeked at a red demibra and matching red spaghetti panties. Fucking hell. If this didn’t work, he’d be in a cold shower until midnight.
“You’re going to Japan,” he stated. “Fine. I can’t stop that. But that means that this is what we have left. Now. Tonight. So, game on, stellina. You say you’re fine with ejecting from the flight? Then let’s make you’re really goddamn sure about yourself.”
Her breath hitched as he stepped closer, cranking the burners in his blood higher. He clutched a handful of her hair, this time with hot and determined intent, pulling her head back for his lunge of a kiss. He ended the assault by sliding his mouth down to the defiant crest of her chin and biting her there.
“You’re going to go mach five with me tonight, Celina, or you’re going home. It’s your choice. If you stay, we’re going to the bedroom, and you will submit to me. Let me be clear about how this will go. You’ll sob, you’ll scream, you’ll moan, and you will come, more than once. But first, you’ll give me your body in any way I want, as many times as I want. If you want to go home now, then that’s all right too. I wish you a wonderful adventure, Pippi Longstocking; send me a fucking postcard.”
He released her as gently as he could, but he wasn’t feeling magnanimous right now. His senses flailed in a tangle of frustration, fury, and the raw claw of lust. He wanted to punish her. He needed to fuck her. He longed to brand her, body and soul, in any way he could before she left his life. He wasn’t about to tell her that GRI had expansive offices in Tokyo too, or that he enjoyed the use of a penthouse on top of them nearly as opulent as this. She’d made the decision to go because she needed space—six thousand miles of it—from him. It was done. He had no control over that part. But if she stayed now, it was time for him to take back a few bunkers in the camp known as Celina Kouris’s mind. He was going to make damn sure that even six months and a fourteen-hour time difference didn’t make him easy to forget.
“I’m going to the kitchen,” he told her. “I need a drink of water, and you probably do too. When I get back, I want you either naked or gone.”
His stride across the living room was wide because of the pounding crest in his jeans. He could’ve gotten the waters at the bar, but he had to get out of lunging distance from her. If he stayed near, she wouldn’t have a choice about things. She’d be under him on the floor in two seconds, then spread for him another two. He wanted to be many things for her, but an assaulting monster wasn’t one of them.
That didn’t mean he was going to be leisurely about this, damn it. He picked up his pace, punching on the kitchen lights, then ripping two glasses out of the cabinet. With a suppressed growl, he jammed them into the water dispenser. He’d never been more in a hurry in his life. He needed to know if hell was coming in twelve minutes or twelve hours.
Chapter Fourteen
Celina watched his shadow through the frosted glass that separated the living room from the kitchen. He moved like a man possessed, which meant she needed to stop standing here like an nimrod and move just as quickly. She needed to choose. Pick a path and commit.
Path? Oh, right. One of those things. The two directions Dante had issued to her as an ultimatum, both not on her list for how this “chat” was supposed to shake out. Correction. She had planned for both options, just not getting them handed to her on a platter of seething fury, served with an entrée of scorching sexuality, a side of kiss-me-until-my-pussy-trembles, and a sauce on top of it all called mind-blowing Domination.
“What the hell are you doing, Cel?” Though she issued it under her breath, its wild desperation surrounded her. This was what she’d wanted, right? She’d picked this trip over an e-mail on the desperate hope he would take this to the bedroom, though as the conversation worsened, she bet closer to him dealing a cold Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. She never expected his command for her to make the decision—especially with his personal “touches” on things.
If you stay, you will submit to me. You’ll sob, you’ll scream, and you’ll give me your body in any way I want, as many times as I want.
“Shit,” she whispered. “Shit, shit, shit!”
Could she do this? Just serve herself up on his sexual platter like this? What she’d seen on Saturday, between Rose and Mark Moore—surely they’d worked their way up to being with each other like that, right? What Dante proposed for her tonight, the absolute authority that defined every step he now took back toward her, the hard purpose that redefined the jaw beneath his beard, was not “working up to things.”
She was paralyzed as he approached. One half of her feared the hell out of him. The other half wanted him in more ways than she’d ever dreamed. He was truly a demon incarnate now, defined by utter darkness across his features and in his stride.
He slammed the drinks to the coffee table. “You’re not gone.”
She summoned her best obstinate courtroom face. Well, tried to. “N-no.”
“And you’re not naked.”
“You didn’t give me even a minute, Flash Gordon. This is a lot to process!”
“I know the fucking feeling.”
He deliberately dug that one in with gritted teeth. Celina coiled her arms across her chest. “Are we going to fight again? I’m trying here, Dante. I came here to—”
“To what?” He yanked her arms apart. “To do what, Lieutenant Kouris?” He flung the formality at her with even harsher emphasis. “What the hell do you want, Celina? I even gave you a choice. What do you want?”
Wind whipped at the glass windows behind him. Emotions blasted her with equal force. Fury. Desire. Sadness. Madness. A million more, whipping like papers in a hurricane. Those papers were hers, damn it, the tidy piles she’d filed perfectly in the drawers of her mind. Not anymore. Even after she landed in Tokyo, they wouldn’t be righted for a very long time to come. That meant she had no directions. No idea what to think, what to say, what was wrong or right anymore. She squeezed her eyes shut, just wanting to slam the drawers closed and burn the papers. Just needing to succumb to one action, the only action that made sense right now.
She slowly opened her eyes. With equal deliberation, she looked past his rage-tight temples and ink-thick lashes, straight into the deep midnight of his glare. She stepped closer, moving to stand nearly hip to hip with him before pressing one hand over his chest.
Ten seconds of silence went by. Twenty. Celina didn’t move her hand, which became the only way she knew he still breathed. His lips finally parted a little. His jaw rotated, a slow version of that hungry contemplation that never ceased to make her feel like the last bite of food left on earth.
“Ask me again,” he directed quietly. “But address me as your Sir this time.”
She took her own turn at the no-breathing thing. Her gaze dropped in time to watch her fingers tremble against his sternum. “What do you want…Sir?”
They sucked in air together. As Dante exhaled, he cupped the back of her head. “Damn it, stellina. That’s more beautiful than I imagined it would be.”
The praise filled her with joy. She burrowed against him, roping a hand around his neck, treasuring this moment of feeling their hearts throbbing together. Because her ear was pressed to his chest, she felt his resulting growl before it hit the air. When it did, he purposely scooted her away. It was like her action had rammed a button of deeper fury inside him.
With sharp tugs, he yanked free the tie on her wraparound. He opened his lips more, revealing his locked teeth as he pulled the dress apart and shoved it off her shoulders. A new wind gust hit the windows as the red fabric pooled at her feet.
Dante’s breath rushed out of him with sensual force. “Fuck. Me.”
Celina shifted from foot to foot. She’d blushed her way through purchasing the red lingerie set, having no idea there could be so many choices for shit that covered so little. Crazily, the least expensive part of the set was the most concealing. The red fishnets hit at the middle of her thighs and were attached to a matching garter belt that felt awkward as doing the backstroke in a pair of kid’s water wings.
“It’s lame,” she stammered. “Right? I had to put it all on by myself. I probably messed something—”
“Ssshhh.” Dante waved a sharp hand. “It’s not lame. Just let me look.”