by Angel Payne
He cinched the sweats in with harsh jerks. Every lurch of the movements told her she’d come close to, if not spot-on, the truth. She hated that surety because it put the emotional stick in her hand for poking the puma in the hardest way.
“That’s why things were good with Cherie, too—for a long while. In many ways, BDSM is a neat box of its own, right? Even during the short time I was at Bastille, I saw that. There’s a code. Manners. Ways of doing things, clear-cut sets of actions and emotions. A plan.”
That yanked up his head. He returned his hands to his hips, too, doubling his daunting factor again despite the bedhead and the sweats. “You think that’s why I’m in the lifestyle? Why I’m committed to making it better? Why I’ve mentored people in it?” His glower narrowed. “Because of boxes and plans?”
“I think it meets many needs in you,” she replied, “the same way Cherie did. You wouldn’t have called her Treasure if she didn’t. But once the relationship expanded outside the dungeon and you couldn’t predict every shot, things got scary. Maybe your heart started to open.” When a pulse lurched in his jaw, she affirmed, “Oh, yeah. It opened a lot.”
The other side of his jaw ticked. He cocked his head. “Should I cue the Coldplay ballad now? You going to wrap this up by saying how I took a chance with Cherie anyhow and opened myself up, but then she shattered me by running just like Mom? You going to sob about how I’ve roamed the world a broken man, vowing never to expose myself like that again?”
She shook her head with sad surety. “No, Z.”
He dropped his hands though continued to flex them as if stretching out tension. “Good.”
“Good? Well, that’s a subjective term, isn’t it?” When he answered her rhetoric with carefully cocked brows, she continued, “Broken isn’t your style, Hayes. Broken means that at some point, you lost control.” She didn’t avert her gaze from him. “Which means that this one ended with you putting Cherie on a plane back to Portland, promising you’d call the next time you were in town—and how you’ve made it a point not to be back in Portland since.”
His fingers froze at his sides…silent confirmation of everything she’d just spoken. Which made her next words complete agony to utter.
“Guess that leads to the logical conclusion here.” She dropped her head, kicking at the carpet. “My own time on the magical Master Z timer is just about expired, isn’t it?”
He punched out a heavy huff. “Don’t you dare trivialize this. I won’t let you, Rayna. Just because—”
“Just because what? I was a ‘friend’ before I was a subbie? Ooohhh, does that earn me an extra play allotment?” She palmed her forehead. “Shit. Maybe it works the other way. Hadn’t thought of that. Do I get time lopped off because I know more than any good little Zeke subbie should? Because I’ve actually seen that some of him is—gasp—human?”
His hands curled into fists. “Goddamnit. That’s enough.”
She took a step back. Her damn chin quivered again. Fortunately, she felt too helpless to cry. “Yeah. I suppose it is.”
Since she’d meant every word as an accusation this time, his seizing her wrist didn’t come as a surprise. The way he wrenched her next to him, pinning her body against his by locking his other hand to her ass, was what sucked the air out of her lungs.
“Look. At. Me.”
The syllables washed over her face with seething heat. She dragged her gaze up, trembling harder from the intensity stamped over every inch of his face. “I am what I am, Rayna.” His lips barely moved. “You knew it when you stepped foot into this cabin with me. Maybe this conversation filled in a few blanks for you, but there wasn’t anything you didn’t know about what I could offer—and what I couldn’t.”
She gulped, trying to fight the fingers of disappointment around her throat. “So your point is what?”
He tightened his hold as well as his stare. “You wanted this, bird. You begged me for my domination, though you knew it wouldn’t come with forever. You dropped willingly to my feet, twice, accepted safe words, and let yourself be bound and commanded and fucked.” His eyelids got heavy as his gaze slid to her mouth. “You’re also the one who woke me up this morning with your lips on my cock.” He scooped a thumb under her chin and yanked. “Eyes still here. I’m not done.”
She complied, but not without narrowing her eyes to slits. “Seriously? Because this felt like done about five minutes ago.”
“Shut up.” He shifted his hold, fastening his hands to both sides of her face. “And listen to me.” Just like that, the puma sheathed his claws. His touch, now two thumbs that stroked her cheeks with gentle intensity, coaxed her obeisance inside three unnerving seconds. “I wouldn’t trade a single fucking moment of it, Rayna. Damn it, I’d give my left nut to do it all over again. You were…so breathtaking. So courageous. So honest in everything you felt and experienced.” He pressed closer, tilting her head back, filling her vision with his breadth and muscle and power. “It was a privilege, in so many ways, to be the first one to set your submissiveness free.” His whole body tensed as he dipped her head back farther. “You’re so goddamn special to me. You know that, right? You’ll always be my beautiful firebird…”
“But now you have to put me on a plane to Portland.”
The words left her on a whisper. She lifted the tips of her fingers to the edge of his jaw, breathing in his forest scent, soaking in the strength that had made her safe for so long and willing him to deny the searing finality of it.
His thick silence stretched longer.
The crack in her heart widened a little more.
He lowered his gaze to her mouth.
She swore if he tried to kiss her she’d bite off his tongue. Better that than the thousand pieces into which she’d shatter.
He still didn’t say a word. Only tugged her chin forward a little more…closer to him.
A loud whirp exploded through the cabin.
The satellite phone.
Zeke let her go and stepped back. They blinked in time with each other, as if waking up from an insane dream.
Because maybe that was all this was.
The phone blared again.
“Garrett,” he muttered before heading toward the stairs.
She winced and slammed her hands over her ears. That phone sounded too damn much like an alarm clock.
Chapter Eighteen
“Psycho Zsycho, at your service.”
He hoped the sarcasm would hide the fury in his gut.
Rayna’s words had caught him well before the bag at first base. He’d been graceful about it—to a point. Yeah, he had abandonment issues. He’d more than earned that goddamn rank. But what about the rest of her rundown? “Boxes” for emotions? “Invisible lines” for his submissives? What the hell was up with all that?
Except maybe…that she was a little right?
Fine. But he was right, too. He couldn’t be her training Dom. He couldn’t be any kind of decent Dom to her. The last three days, having her totally to himself, had shredded any scrap of objectivity he had about the woman. Training her in this condition would be a farce.
What was that lame musical Franz had forced them all to watch one time when they were stuck in Malaysia? The one about the professor who tutored the street urchin how to talk right only to watch the mission go to shit at the racetrack anyway? It’d be like that, only his ponies would run right over Rayna’s golden heart. They’d flatten her incredible spirit.
He wasn’t going to let her flounder. He’d set the bird free, but he wouldn’t let her fall. She’d have her pick from a handful of incredible Doms who’d practically fight each other to the death for the chance to train her. He just had to find a way to get that through to her while resisting the lust to tie her down for himself again.
Tagged out at second base. In a major, shitty way.
They both needed some time. As in freezing-shower, brisk-hike, and then hours-at-opposite-ends-of-the-cabin time.
After that, he’d have his b
rain twisted on straight again. He’d have a good plan formulated for her, some names of the better Bastille Doms to hand over, and his body wrangled in line with the new program. But right now, even after he’d spilled his guts and let her play jump rope with them, all he wanted to do was get her into his bed and treat her pussy to a nice, slow, tantalizing follow-up.
Not going to happen. Thanks to Garrett’s impeccable timing, this phone call was out number three. Inning over. Time to move on and get into the rest of the game as best as he could. Whatever the hell that meant.
Listening to Hawkins chuckle and suck face with his fiancée at the other end of the line was not the best helper for his game face.
“Hey, assface. Can you tell your sub to disconnect her mouth from yours for a few minutes?”
There was a throaty female laugh. “I’m all too pleased to attach my mouth elsewhere on his body,” came Sage’s quip.
He clenched back a string of choice expletives. Thanks for the memories, Sage. His mind filled with an image of Rayna’s lips sealing over his cock, of her tongue playing with his piercing, of her face lost to bliss as he lost himself down her throat.
“Ten minutes, sugar,” Garrett murmured. “Then you’re all mine again.”
“Mmmm,” Sage purred. “Does that mean I should go prep the guest room?”
His friend let out a carnal growl. “I think that’s a damn good idea, subbie.”
“Fuck.” This was getting worse by the second. Two weeks ago, he’d helped Hawk assemble a truss system in that “guest room” specifically designed for suspending a willing submissive and doing wicked things to her. Garrett hadn’t spared any expense. The rigging was lightweight steel with a sturdy titanium shell. The guy could suspend a goddamn giraffe in his “guest room” if he wanted.
So maybe one day, one adorable bird wouldn’t be a problem at all…
Knock. It. Off.
As his balls pounded in an attempt to take that order literally, he snapped, “You ready to give me a rundown or not, Hawk?”
Through another interminable moment, he listened to the distinct smack of a hand on an ass followed by Sage’s delighted squeal. “Sorry, Z. We’re taking advantage of some well-earned free time.”
“Really? And I thought you were just getting in a few pages of your favorite Jane Austen tale.”
“Actually, Sage has gotten me into Lexi Blake lately.” His friend’s voice carried a smirk. “You should try her out. You might learn a few new things. You haven’t been spending all your time catching up on SportsCenter, have you?”
“Is my social calendar that riveting to you? Maybe you need to consider a pet, dude.”
Garrett chuffed. “Have one, thanks. She’s laying out rope in our play room right now.”
“Fuck you, Hawkins.”
“Ooooo, testy. Is someone discovering a new shade of blue between his thighs?”
He sighed. “Did you really call to discuss the status of my balls, asshole?”
“Hoo-wee there, Grumpy McGee. Man, it’s so official. You need a night at Bastille. A normal one with a sweet, soft subbie. Especially before we bug out.”
There it was. The statement that got his brain firing on some regular cylinders again. “Wait. What? Bug out?” He pushed off the counter and stepped out to the deck. The air socked him like a fist of ice, exactly what he needed to focus fully on the implications of Hawk’s statement. “As in, hopping on a transport for a mission? That kind of bug out?”
“Roger,” his friend replied. “We have forty-eight hours and some change. Got the text from Franz about thirty minutes ago.”
He scratched the back of his head. “Okay, nifty piece of news. But why are you looping me in like I’ll be anywhere near the base when the fun gets started? I’m still the official AWOL boy, remember?”
“Not anymore.”
His breath left him on a whoosh. So this was what it felt like when they talked about world-sized weight leaving one’s shoulders. He was a legitimate member of the First Special Forces Group again—a restoration he had no idea he’d missed. The whomp of emotion in his chest told him otherwise.
“You serious?” It was an effort not to choke out the words.
“A hundred and ten percent,” Garrett confirmed.
As fast as it had vanished, the weight returned to his shoulders. He gladly bore the burden this time. Humility and gratitude sank over him like warm blankets after February jump practice over the Sound.
“I owe one of you fuckers about ten cases of beer.” He declared it in as dry a tone as he could to hide the depth of sentiment. Like that was going to make a difference with Hawk.
“Shit.” His friend strung out the word with derision. “I’m gonna chalk up your lack of manners to the fact that your last scene was with the pain queen of Seattle and now you’ve lost all sense of decorum. Do I need to give you a refresher course on how we do things? Have you forgotten so damn easily? Repeat after me, Sparky: there’s no limit to the good we can do—”
“When we don’t care who gets the credit,” Z finished in a bear’s snarl. “Colonel George Marshall. You want the time and date he said it, too?”
“Nah. Gold star in your box, Sergeant Hayes.”
“Shut the hell up and tell me who it was, Hawk.”
There was a long pause. He could feel Garrett’s conflict through every satellite wave that connected them. “It was Rhett,” he muttered. “But you didn’t hear it from me, you stubborn pud. And I’m taking away your gold star.”
An affectionate smile spread over his face. Rhett. Figured. The unit’s tech guy wore his BDUs more like a tuxedo and asked for his beers as if ordering a martini on the rocks—but the arena where his style shined the most was any piece of an op involving a code to crack, a firewall to breach, or an intelligence labyrinth through which to sneak.
“Double-Oh-Seven worked his magic, eh?”
Garrett gave an appreciative groan. “Dude, it was beautiful. He found an exterior security camera feed from a building three blocks from Bastille. By the time he was done enhancing the footage, it looked like the camera was six feet away instead. There was no denying what happened. The attack on Rayna, the way you pounced to her rescue…it was movie magic, man.”
“So the police had no choice about admitting the truth.”
“Bastards’ balls were nailed to the wall.”
“What about implicating Mua in that shit? If he was in a single frame of that stuff—”
“Sure as hell was. More than one frame, too. It only shows the back of his head, but we couldn’t—”
“Care about your goddamn lives?” Z cut in. A movement in his peripheral snagged him. Rayna had come downstairs, dressed now, and studied him with troubled curiosity from the other side of the slider. He turned and walked farther out on the deck. “Hawk, are you out of your collective minds?”
“Chill your grill, Zsych. We’re not a bunch of hobos on this train.” The guy snorted hard. “We didn’t take the footage to the PD.” His pause practically blared his shit-eating grin. “We went straight to the news outlets with it. Not local, either. I’m talking CNN’s crew. And Fox. And MSNBC. Dude, they were more captivated than the day the royal baby was born. You’re the newest vigilante hero of the nation.”
He let himself sink into one of the covered deck chairs. It was soaked with morning mist. He barely noticed. “Huh?”
“You’re practically Batman!”
“Not funny.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. As a matter of fact, we think it was enough to spook Mua, too. After the vid hit, the Seattle PD had no choice but to issue a public apology to you, hot on the heels of an APB for him. Clearly, one of his remaining inside minions got off a call to him, because one of the private air charter companies matched a photo of him to ‘a handsome bloke’ coming in right before the security nets got thrown down. They say he flashed a lot of cash for an expedited hop to Tokyo. Third battalion’s already in Tokyo, so they’re set to intercept once he’
s there. By this time tomorrow, that scumsucker’s going to be carving his legacy into the walls of a max-security bunker.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Does this mean we can come home? That I can come back, report for duty, and do my job—and that I can know Rayna will be safe when I do, too?”
Garrett’s empathetic hum, possible only from another soldier who loved what they did, was a welcome balm on his overwhelmed brain. “Yeah, Z. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Thank fuck.” He stood again, welcoming the familiar surge of adrenaline that helped prep his body and mind for a mission. In this case, it also helped him start a timeline for getting some appointments set up for Rayna at Bastille, to meet with the right Doms and talk to the right submissives. Sage could help her with a proper wardrobe as well as the other basics. Gratitude flooded him again. He wouldn’t be around to see any of it, which was a damn good thing. When he returned—if he returned—she’d be the happy property of a loving Dom who could give her everything she needed and deserved from the lifestyle. And eventually his gut would stop feeling like an overcinched loaf of bread because of it.
“Okay,” he said into the phone, “we’ve got forty-eight before reporting in, right?”
“Uh, yeah.” His friend’s voice got edged with a weird lilt. “Technically correct—though there’s a special project I’ve gotta ask your help with first, Z.”
He cracked his neck. It didn’t help clarify the mystery in Garrett’s voice. He let a long moment go by, allowing time for his friend to continue, but mild static was the only sound filling his ear.
“Okay, you going to elaborate any time in the next century? Because I’ve got every scenario going here from building a gazebo in your yard to disposing of a dead body.”
Hawk snickered. “Points for creativity. But I’d rather tell you in person. How soon can you get to our place?”