by Ann Jacobs
Yeah. He’d made a real ass out of himself, letting the sight of a badly burned soldier set off a full-scale panic attack. Besides the fact that his action had embarrassed the shit out of him, it resulted in him spending more than a week back in a hospital ward. And meeting a nurse whose face now showed up in damn near all his restless dreams.
Jared glanced around his darkened bedroom, looked out the window at the clear surface of a small lake illuminated by a fat new moon. The throbbing in the stump of his leg made him want to scream, but he refused to give in and take more of the pain medications that dulled his mind.
Sooner or later he’d have to figure something to occupy himself with or he’d go fucking nuts. Not now, though. Now he was struggling, trying to accept that his plan to spend thirty years in the Marines was history. He hadn’t even begun to wrestle with the concept that he was no longer well-equipped physically to enjoy the BDSM lifestyle that had been the cornerstone of his personal life. The lifestyle he’d been exposed to since before his parents’ death when he’d been too young to comprehend it fully. Since he’d grown up in his sister’s household, observing the extreme BDSM lifestyle lived by Diana and her very dominant husband.
Would the take-charge, sometimes bossy Ninia surrender to a Dominant male? Jared couldn’t help imagining her melting in his arms, giving over control to him the way she never had when he was her patient. He’d stroke her soft skin, pillow his head on her full breasts, nibble at her nipples until she squirmed and begged him for more.
Stop it, idiot, or you’ll be taking another cold shower. Sex with your nurse is the last thing you should be thinking about, because it ain’t gonna happen.
Jared didn’t have the foggiest idea of what he might do, professionally or personally. Not that he needed money. His grandfather had left him and his two siblings a prime piece of southern Wyoming ranch land near Tie Siding, along with enough money to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives. As long as the stock market didn’t tank, the principal would keep on growing even if the oil wells should dry up. What he needed was to find something to do with the rest of his life.
And a real live woman to put this recurring dream to rest. Be damned if he wanted to keep fucking a mirage, and only in his dreams. As if there was a chance in hell he’d find a sub to love the scarred-up has-been Dom that he was now.
No chance in hell that he’d sleep any more tonight.
He sat on the edge of the bed and transferred himself into the wheelchair they’d lent him at the hospital when he refused to take a prescription for one of his own. Rolling it to the patio doors that led to a balcony overlooking the courtyard, he let the cool mountain breeze bring a small measure of relief to his heated flesh.
* * * * *
There he was. Jared McTavish. Captain, United States Marines until his medical discharge had come through last week. Her patient. Ninia had no business on earth staring out her bedroom window at the man whose battered body she’d tended…would likely tend again when more shrapnel was ready to be removed. She had no right whatever to fantasize about him pleasuring a woman under his will as a master. No right to imagine him taking her in the BDSM club where she’d submitted to her late husband before his death.
Across the courtyard with its small man-made lake, she watched him stare out at the night. The light of a silvery moon reflected off the water, accentuating the rugged planes of his face and making her want to caress him there with her fingertips, bring him peace from whatever demons kept sleep at bay for him tonight.
Ninia, he’s your patient. You must be insane, fantasizing how he’d master you…how his rough, rugged hands would feel when he touched you. How it would make your body sing when he claimed you the way a Master would.
But she couldn’t help it. Jared McTavish fascinated her as no one had done in the four years since Earl had died. There was something about Jared—the way he looked and talked, the way he mumbled arousing, erotic orders in his dreams…
Once, when she’d leaned over him to soothe him as he cried out in one of those dreams, he’d reached out his hand, closed it over her throat. He’d caressed her there, made her want to drop to her knees when he mumbled the order for her to do so, his voice hoarse, intense. She’d imagined then that if she’d complied he’d have clasped her head between his two big hands, guided her to his impressive erection and ordered her to take him in her mouth and suck. God how she’d wanted to do just that, to encroach on his sleep and taste the rigid male flesh she hadn’t been able to ignore.
Captain McTavish was a wounded male but there was no question in her mind but that he was a sexual Dominant. From the moment he’d surfaced to consciousness in her ward, even before that from the things he’d muttered in his sleep, she could tell he was used to controlling all aspects of his life, commanding those around him. Not only did that part of him make her weak with desire in spite of her fiercest admonitions to herself to remain professional, it made her want to be the one to help him to reclaim that self-confidence…and perhaps to claim her.
God but she’d lost her mind. Maybe it had been pure accident that she’d glanced at his address on the hospital record and noticed that he lived in her apartment complex, in the unit directly across the courtyard from hers. Or had it been fate? Ninia had never been one to discount destiny. She couldn’t lie to herself. She wanted more than to make Jared well. She wanted him. Perhaps it was impulse. The beauty of the night sky. Maybe it was the ache of her lonely body. She didn’t care why she felt this way and wasn’t going to take the time to analyze her actions.
Lifting off her sleep shirt, she stood naked in front of the open patio door, using a vibrating dildo to massage her breasts the way she longed for him to do. She skimmed her hands down her body, spread her legs apart and pretended the gentle breeze was his breath on her pussy, his fingers on her aching clit.
She kept her gaze on him, so she knew the moment when he noticed her. His gaze drifted past the open door then snapped back. Her face was mostly in shadows, but he could clearly see her body as she loosened her hair and let the breeze lift it as she stepped out on her balcony. His eyes were on her, scorching her flesh.
She wished he were sitting here, within reach of her eager arms as she displayed herself for his pleasure, showing him in every way that she was his for the taking. Even with the distance of the courtyard between them, she offered herself as if that were the case. Tendrils of hair curled around her breasts, her waist, caressing her bare skin as she bent and braced one hand on her side balcony rail and the other against the frame of the patio door, giving him a birds-eye view of her damp, swollen pussy.
See what you could do to me? She braced herself with one hand on the rail, used the other to reach between her legs with the dildo. A cool night breeze caressed her swollen flesh when she rubbed the toy along her slit. The heat from his gaze made her hotter, so hot she plunged it into her pussy, balls deep. The vibrations sent shivers through her, but no more so than the knowledge that he was watching. Watching and wanting.
He’d be hard as stone, hot and throbbing as he sat across the balcony watching her do herself. He’d be doing himself too, jerking his long, thick cock in his left hand—she’d noticed when she tended his wounds that he was left-handed—and cupping his balls in his right. His face would be flushed, and his tongue would go out to moisten the thin but sensual lips she longed to kiss. He’d be imagining eating her pussy, ramming his cock hard into her cunt, her ass…
Or maybe he’d order her to suck him off. Her mouth watered at the thought of going on her knees, taking him in her mouth, serving him that way and any other way that would bring him pleasure.
Ninia turned up the vibrator, let sensation wash through her, bringing release of the sexual tension but not the desire. Maybe it was time to go back to the club, to find a Master to fill the empty spot in her heart that losing Earl had carved out.
Maybe…
* * * * *
What the fuck?
Apparent
ly he lived across the courtyard from a female exhibitionist.
Jared should have rolled his chair back inside and crawled back into bed. Instead he stayed out on the balcony and watched. It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn he smelled her coming. No question about it, he’d seen the waves of ecstasy undulating through her naked body. Damn, he’d come all over himself before he realized that he’d unconsciously curled his fingers around his cock and mimicked the rhythm she’d set with her dildo.
He wished to hell he could see her face. Her body was dynamite, all slender curves with just enough meat on them for a man to get a hand-hold. When the new moon darted out from behind the clouds, he saw she was pale, with long light hair that cascaded around her, caught the moonlight. She’d gotten herself off with a dildo at the same time he was jerking off with his hand. Before that, she’d been a surreal shadow, like the oasis in the desert that looked so deceptively real in his dreams.
She looked so much like Ninia, Jared gave his fantasies free rein…
Fuck, he was a fool, imagining anything happening between him and the woman who’d nursed him through panic and pain, seen him at his worst. He had to forget her. Once no more shrapnel could be removed, he’d be gone from Cheyenne and she’d be nothing but a memory. That was all the better, because he was going to end up embarrassing himself, asking her out or deluding himself for a moment that he might pursue a relationship with her, like a hundred other guys who she’d helped through the pain of rehabilitation. She’d probably pat his hand, give him a sympathetic smile if he approached her.
But then he remembered that flush on her cheeks. No. Don’t go there. Don’t be an idiot.
Dawn was breaking in the eastern sky. Soon it would start getting light. He’d be able to see her then, except that now she’d gone back inside her apartment, closing the drapes against his prying eyes. Damn, he’d better get his ass inside as well, or the cops would be paying him a visit. Wouldn’t do if he got caught on the balcony staring at a window across the courtyard and salivating over a neighbor whose pussy he could describe in more detail than her face.
* * * * *
Showered and shaved now, he checked his legs, proud of himself because he hardly winced anymore when he looked closely at the below-knee stump. Good, the latest wounds where they’d taken out more shrapnel seemed finally to be healing. Satisfied that infection wasn’t setting in, Jared pulled on boxers and jeans, pulling the right jeans leg up over the knee of his stump.
He didn’t kid himself that his body had shed the last of the hardware. Seemed he had half a fucking Humvee inside his lower body in minute bits and pieces, mostly concentrated in what was left of his right leg. It had pissed the hell out of him when he was flying commercial for the first time after his injury, realizing that he made airport metal detectors go bonkers when he passed through. It made him want to scream when he recognized the pity in strangers’ eyes when they noticed his wheelchair or the crutches he’d still needed even when he was wearing his prosthesis. He hated it. Hated them for the sympathy that reminded him he was a fucking cripple.
He eyed the stump, wondered why he hadn’t let them re-amputate the leg at mid-thigh, the way the orthopedic guys at Walter Reed had recommended. They’d have gotten most of the metal fragments, and by now he’d have been up and running—or at least walking fairly well if he’d applied himself to his physical therapy as diligently as he had when he’d been trying to pass the fitness tests so they’d let him stay on active duty.
But returning to his unit had been a possibility with the below-knee amputation. He’d known fellow officers who’d done it, had been certain he’d be able to overcome this disability as well. If not for the shrapnel his body kept rejecting piece-by-piece, he’d have succeeded. He’d have been a man, doing a man’s work, not the object of anybody’s pity.
In any case, he wouldn’t put up with stares today. After re-bandaging the two wounds that would come in contact with his prosthesis, he rolled on two stump socks and snapped the stump into its custom-made socket. Getting carefully to his feet, he put weight on the prosthesis, found the pain bearable. More bearable than having people try so transparently not to stare at the empty space where his lower leg should have been.
He winced as he took the last of six steps from the bathroom to his closet where a selection of his shirts hung neatly in a row. The damn wounds weren’t as healed as they looked. Choosing a burgundy print shirt he’d bought two years ago while on R&R in Hawaii, he shrugged it on, then gave in and picked up the forearm crutches he’d sworn he’d never use again. Better to use them than to end up passed out on Cheyenne’s famed Greenway Path, and have to call for the paramedics to pick him up and carry him back here.
Shoving his wallet and keys into his pockets, Jared made his way to the elevator, ticking off his plans as the outside-mounted cab made its way down the twelve floors of apartments to the ground. He’d take it easy, walk a little way along the pathway lined with fragrant evergreens and an occasional massive cottonwood tree and enjoy the wildflowers and the animals that always reminded him he was practically home. Maybe this time he’d make it to that spot where his neighbor kept saying he could enjoy a spectacular view of distant mountains that still had small caps of snow, even now, in midsummer. If not today, he’d make it there someday soon.
Chapter Two
She shouldn’t have done it. But what the hell? It had been almost four years now since she got the call that her husband had been blown to kingdom come by an IED halfway around the world. She’d never stopped mourning for Earl even for a minute. Until last night. Until she’d obsessed about the tall, rugged cowboy-soldier with all the pain in his eyes, to the point she’d consciously exposed herself to him. For him.
Ninia was about to do something equally stupid, if not more so. She stood in the office of Boundless Pleasure, the dungeon where she and Earl had played, waiting for the dungeon master to prepare an invitation.
“You sure he’s a Dom?” Marshall Wallace asked, his gnarled fingers hesitating as he handed her the form. “If he’s not and if he doesn’t care much for our lifestyle, this could get us in a world of trouble.”
She met the dungeon master’s gaze, saw grief there for his friend who’d been almost like a son. Marshall’s compassion for her had kept her stable in the months after they’d learned about Earl’s death in Afghanistan. “A submissive knows,” she said, remembering the snippets of dreams Jared had verbalized in his sleep, his bitterness that seemed to go deeper than the death of his dreams for a career in the Marine Special Forces. “Besides, he mentioned he’d gone to a club in Vegas—a dungeon I visited once with Earl.”
Never mind he’d talked about it in his sleep, and not, as far as she could tell, in the context of a D/s encounter he’d had in the place. Ninia just knew.
“Okay. It’s on you if you’re wrong.” Marshall’s frown morphed into a smile when he handed her the envelope inviting Jared McTavish to visit the exclusive dungeon where Ninia hadn’t played since before Earl had left with his squadron to fight the War on Terror. “It’s about time you stopped mourning and started living again. I assume I’ll be seeing you here again, as well.”
“Maybe so.” While her intention—at least her conscious one—had been to shove Jared kicking and screaming back into the world she sensed he thought he’d forever lost rather than joining him in his rediscovery, that was before something had compelled her to strip naked and masturbate for his viewing pleasure. “I’m still afraid that facing the memories will hurt too much, but I believe it’s finally time for me to move on.”
Marshall took her hand, massaged her palm with his callused thumb. “Good girl. Earl wouldn’t have wanted you to bury yourself along with him, and that’s what you’ve been doing.”
No, Earl had been as generous as any man she’d ever known, never satisfied until he’d brought her pleasure. No way could she imagine him looking down from Heaven and faulting her for celebrating life. “I know, Marsh
all. But it’s taken a long time for me to tell him goodbye.”
“Sure. I understand. Bring yourself on over here tonight. Play with your wounded Marine. Master Chad has booked the room with the observation dome for some suspension bondage play. Should be interesting—nobody else around here is better at rope bondage than Chad.”
Earl had been better, at least at Karada, or net bondage. Many a day she had worn the confining ropes beneath her clothes, felt the arousal he’d intended when he put them there. But Earl was gone. The reminder didn’t hurt Ninia the way it usually did. “That should be interesting, watching Chad do his magic. I don’t imagine that demo would appeal to McTavish, though. Unless I miss my guess, his tastes in rope play will be pretty much limited to tossing lassos and restraining his partner.”
“A basic sort of Dom, then.” Marshall smiled then glanced out at the public room, where a member was working his flogger with less skill than Ninia was accustomed to seeing here in the club.”Go on. That guy just joined last week. Looks like I need to go teach him how to flog his sub without doing her serious bodily harm. Don’t be a stranger any more. We’ve missed you.”
Ninia had missed this too. The arousal that came from being controlled, being forced to shed her inhibitions and experience the ultimate in sexual pleasure. Lured by a black leather corset with pink side lacings on a kneeling dummy in a display window, she stopped in the dungeon’s toy shop. If she was going to get back in the dungeon scene, she’d need some new trappings.