Danny slings an arm around his tiny best friend. “Don’t worry, Jimi. Next tour, we’ll be so rich we can afford those bumpers on the edge of the bunks to keep you from falling out. Or we’ll just bolt a crib to the wall.”
She smacks him and bounces over to push the elevator call button yet again. “Maybe next tour we’ll be so rich I won’t have to share the same bus with you, smartass.” She glances over at the lobby door, where hotel security is holding back all the fans and Jax is still signing autographs. “Can you believe how big this has gotten, honestly? It’s nuts!”
“I can, actually.” Danny aims the twist of a smile my direction. “Somebody broke it down for me.”
Jera holds up a hand to me for a silent high five, but I just wince. “Yeah, I got a little carried away.”
She drops her hand and grins as the elevator arrives with a ding. “If that’s what you want to call being awesome, sure. But the next time you read the riot act to Danny’s folks about their crap-ass parenting, I better have a front row seat or else.”
“Duly noted.” I lead the way onto the elevator, avoiding her eyes as I push the button for the twenty-second floor. I can’t believe how cocky I was to butt in when at the time, Danny and I weren’t even technically dating. Even now, I’m hardly in a position to comment on his relationship with his parents.
“Or else? You threatening us, midget?” Danny reaches out and tickles Jera. She squeals and they barely make it on before the doors close, grappling and slapping at each other like a couple of giggling siblings.
“Oh for the love of—” My protest is weak, because it’s pretty tough to stay mad at Danny when his eyes are so bright. And then we all fall silent as a hand pokes through the closing doors, triggering them back open again so Jax can join us.
He clears his throat and pushes the button for the eighteenth floor, even though the bar is on the second.
“Staying in tonight?” Even in Jera’s lightest tone, it ends up sounding like an accusation.
Jax shoves his hands into his pockets, stealing a quick glance at Danny. “Yeah.” He gives a weak smile. “No big plans.” He’s pale, but his hands aren’t twitching at his sides for once. He’s stopped disappearing into side rooms since the big fight on the bus and that’s a huge step. Even so, things are...different.
We ride in silence all the way to the eighteenth floor, and sympathy squeezes the base of my throat every time Jax’s gaze flicks across me to Danny.
“Well, see you in the morning, I guess.” Jax ducks his head and moves to step off.
I fling my arm across the doors to keep them open. “Hey, do you two need to talk about that, um, the backup guitar not holding its tune?” My eyes jump between the two men.
“Nah, Clancy helped me fix it earlier. And it’s just the backup.” Danny leans against the wall of the elevator.
Jera shifts her weight, fingers beating out an edgy rhythm against her leg.
“Yeah. Okay.” Jax’s shoulders slump, and as he passes, I catch a whiff of vodka. The doors close behind him.
“He really is trying.” Jera’s thigh-drumming picks up speed. “Maybe the other night was the end of it.”
“It wasn’t.” Danny’s finger is tapping now, his ring clinking against the railing at the back of the elevator.
Jera crosses her arms. “You know, it’s not helping anything for you to be mad at him.”
“I’m not mad.”
She sends him a skeptical glance, but I believe him. Danny doesn’t seem like he’s holding a grudge; he seems like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Maybe he’ll get better once the tour is over,” I say. “Having the pressure off could help...” I pick at my purse strap, scarring the leather with my fingernails. I can’t help this sense of urgency, like if they don’t mend their relationship by the end of the tour, it will be too late. But that’s stupid: they’ll still be playing together back in Portland. It’s me who won’t be there.
Danny’s jaw flexes and Jera looks away. No one answers me. The elevator doors open, and he reaches out and ruffles Jera’s hair. “’Night, Jimi.” Worry still lingers around her eyes, but she finds a smile for him before she blows us a kiss and heads down the hall the other direction. Danny pats his pockets. “Tell me you didn’t lose your key, because I...might have.”
I give him a dirty look I really don’t mean. He starts up the hall toward our room, and I take a deep breath. Since the European leg started, I haven’t bothered with the pretense of separate rooms. Mostly it hasn’t mattered since we’ve been on the bus, but I’ve meant to have this conversation with him every time we’ve had privacy. And every time, I’ve chickened out.
Tonight is my last chance and if I’m honest with myself, my attempt to throw Danny and Jax together had as much to do with stalling as it did mending the uneasy silence between the two men.
Too bad it didn’t work on either count.
Danny waits for me at the door. As soon as I open it he swings me inside, pressing my back to the wall and growling a playful kiss into my neck. “Christ, who knew how long nine days could be when you’re stuck in the bunk next to mine and neither of us are naked?” His smile fades when he sees my expression. “What? Kate?”
No. Chickening. Out.
I touch his temple just beside his eyes and tap twice, like he did to me once when we stood beside a dumpster. “At the start of all this, you asked me to help you. So you could figure out what would satisfy you, why sex was starting to feel more wrong than right.” I drop my purse at our feet. “I’ve got your answer.”
His lashes flicker and I can’t read a single thing in his eyes. He smoothes a lock of my hair between his fingers.
“Your biggest turn on is getting a woman hot for you, any way that has to happen.” I tip my head back, managing a hint of a smile. “Not the worst trait in a man. But you get lost in it.” His muscles tense beneath my palm as I skim a thumb along the sharp line of his jaw. “And it’s impossible to be fulfilled if you’re not willing to be completely honest.”
Danny’s too willing to give others what they need, and shrug it off when they don’t return the favor. He lets his parents ignore him, lets his fans imagine all these false identities for him, lets his band members steer his career toward whatever they want. I think he’s only now starting to understand there are things in his life—in himself—that he needs to fight for if he doesn’t want to be swallowed up by other people.
Sex is just one more place where he needs to take control back. It was the same for me, only in reverse. I needed to be forced to let someone else take care of me and allow my selfish, sensual side free without regret.
It’s a permission Danny needs every bit as much as I did.
I whisper the words over his lips. “Sometimes, it’s okay to use your dominance to take what you really want.”
With a flick of his wrist, Danny wraps my hair around his fist and jerks my head back. My neck is bent beautifully, my pulse hammering in my throat. “You’re not ready for me to do that.”
My throat is so dry that the words come out throaty, but no less certain. “Try me.”
He bites my lower lip and releases it just as fast. It leaves brilliantly sensitive pain in his wake, and when he lowers his mouth to mine, my moan gets caught between us. I shiver when he draws back, but it’s only far enough for him to toy with the place he bit me, sending glittering pulses of sensation out from the bruise.
His thumb comes up to rest just in front of my ear, and I lean into it, throbbing with how held he makes me feel with a single touch.
He’s right.
I’m not ready for everything he can do to me, in bed or anywhere else.
But tonight is our final night alone. Tomorrow looms with the last show, the flight home, and the black hole of our future yawning beyond that. I need to be sure if I never see him again, I at least kept my promise to help him find his way back to himself.
I pull away and for a second, I’m not sure h
e’s going to release his grip on my hair. But instead of fighting it, I soften my neck into his grip and let him decide. His breathing is rougher than usual, but after a thick moment, his fingers loosen.
I duck out from behind him, crossing the room to unzip my suitcase. I sense his gaze stroking down the entire backside of my body and goosebumps ripple beneath my clothes. I dig beneath denim and soft cloth, and then my fingers brush hard leather.
Yes.
I saw it in one of his toy stashes at his apartment, and it’s been flirting with my fantasies ever since. I knew I shouldn’t have brought it along, knew when I packed it in my suitcase I was crossing a line.
For a second I test the riding crop in my grip, trailing a touch over the flexible but stiff shaft and the loop of leather at the end. My panties are suddenly suffocatingly tight. But it’s not my hand I want the leather to touch.
I turn and toss the crop to Danny.
He catches it, not looking away from my face. “Kate?”
“You’ve been holding back.” I tilt my head and smile. It’s wicked and tender, and full of an understanding I know we share. I just hope the ache in my chest doesn’t show on my face. “And so have I.”
“Kate...” This time my name comes out on a sigh, almost tired-sounding. “I’ve known what you were into for weeks. I was just waiting for you to be ready to tell me.”
“Why?” I take a step closer, trying to keep my frustration out of my voice. “Why would you wait on me when this whole thing was supposed to be about finding out what you like?”
“I’m not sure it was about what I was doing—maybe it was more that I was ready for sex to be something other than it was.” He closes the distance between us, but his steps are more tentative than usual. “I don’t think I realized how different that could be until the first time I was with you.”
I remember the tears that spontaneously came to my eyes the first night I was with him, the way his fist clenched over my heart. I know what he’s saying, but when he said it was only me who could help him...I didn’t realize this is what it would end up meaning, and it scares the hell out of me. Everything scares me, except him. If I could stay in this room with him without time ever moving forward, it would be perfection.
I touch his cheek. “So let’s stop hiding,” I whisper. “And just be us.”
He closes his eyes and leans into my touch.
I don’t start breathing again until he takes one step back. Stillness settles over Danny and spreads across the entire room, the whip resting light in his hand as a thick line swells behind his zipper. When his lips part, his voice is different. Darker.
“Leave your clothes on the chair.”
He’s made me undress for him before, a dozen different ways. Tonight I do it softly, the clothes whispering over my skin as they fall away. I fold each piece, spending greedy handfuls of our precious seconds because I love the way his eyes follow the movement of my hands.
When I’m finished, the heat behind his eyes is unmistakable though the rest of his face is impassive. He jerks his chin toward my suitcase in the barest hint of movement. I follow the order, air cool against my breasts as I take out my stilettos and slip them on, one foot at a time.
I prefer lingerie, lace boosting confidence into my body and smoothing the lines of me into something a little more perfect than I am on my own. But more often than not, Danny keeps me naked, every inch natural and exposed with just the sharp edge of sex added by night-colored high heels.
Crossing the room to Danny, I keep my weight poised in the stilettos, but the brush of my heated thighs against each other makes me feel small and the tiniest bit clumsy.
“On your knees.” He doesn’t touch me, but his voice forces me down.
I kneel on the thin, scratchy carpet and images gallop through my mind: that whip stroking over my back, his fingers lowering his zipper, yanking my head forward to his cock. My breath snags in my chest as I struggle not to pant at the fantasy.
He reverses his grip on the riding crop so quickly I flinch, but it’s only the crook of his finger touching me beneath the chin, lifting my gaze to his. When I see the brilliant colors of his eyes, I stop breathing.
They’re hard, the ruthless control of a Dominant tightening the normally relaxed lines of his face. But it’s not a role play this time. It’s him and the difference is so intoxicating it takes me a long moment to process the demand he makes of me.
“Tell me our safeword.”
Not your, the way most Doms would say it. But our, because it protects him as much as it does me.
“Mercy.” I make the two syllables absolutely clear, the black line of his whip simmering at the edge of my vision. It’s not a word I’ll need to say again tonight.
“Hold out your hand.”
I do it without hesitation, anticipation and fear winding tight in my throat. The back of the hand is bony, the skin thin. The pain quick and sharp.
Danny takes my hand and flips it over so the palm is up. Harder muscle there. Sensitive, but more padded against a blow. I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed, but my nipples are so hard they hurt.
“One to ten,” Danny says. It’s a calibration game the smartest Doms play, so they know your personal pain tolerance. It’s hardly even a warm-up, and still, excitement awakens my skin.
I splay my fingers to keep them out of the way, but I shouldn’t have doubted his aim. He strikes the precise center of my palm, the impact loud even though Danny pulls the force at the last second, delivering only a dull tap. “Two.” The next stroke makes my fingers twitch, but it’s barely more than a tease. “Four.”
He’s motionless. I don’t know if he’s reading my face, or the flush of my skin, or simply drinking my reaction out of the air with that supernatural quiet of his that seems to know everything.
Leather cracks. I have no panties to hide my reaction, no clothes to disguise the eager heave of my chest as I absorb the sting. “Seven,” I gasp, because I want more.
“Eight.” It’s a correction of my lie and a warning. He doesn’t move again until I look at him.
“Eight.” I say the number softly, promising he can trust me. He nods and his fingers touch my hair. My scalp tingles as he rubs the strands slowly between his fingers. I want to lean forward and lay my cheek against the outline of his cock in his jeans, to soak the heat of his thundering erection in through my skin.
But I’m not allowed to move.
I wet my lips and Danny’s forearms knot with tension. “Get on the bed and close your eyes.”
Satisfaction surges through me. I know he sensed what I wanted to do to him, but this time he’s not letting me dictate everything. This time, it’s about him. About us.
The sheets are smooth but every thread registers against my excited nipples as I lie down on my stomach, my hands tucked beneath my torso and my bottom clenching with anticipation. In the darkness of my lowered lids, his breathing approaches before something touches my hair, stroking it away from my back.
Danny’s lips brush beneath my ear, lingering while my heart pleads out one thump, and then two. I feel so much for him in this moment that nothing I say or do could ever make sense of it. Instead it all stays inside me, bursting out through my whole body as he breathes in my scent.
He pulls away. I’m left alone long enough I nearly open my eyes for a peek before hands grab my wrists, yanking them out from beneath me. Silky ropes tighten around my wrists and I jerk back without thinking. Danny overpowers me, pinning me down with a knee. I melt into his control, each tug of the ropes pulsing down into the center of me.
I expected him to pull my hands behind my back, but instead he ties my arms to my sides, the rope circling my waist then dipping down between my legs. I squirm breathlessly, trying to steal a brush of his hand where I already need it so much. The rope loops around the top of each leg, settling into the crease on each side between my sex and my thigh before returning to secure my wrists at my hips.
I’ve
never been tied like this before. The cord is a distracting combination of soft and rough, my hands even more helpless than they would have been in cuffs. The loop of rope around my belly is surprisingly sensual and when Danny rolls me over, my breasts feel terribly exposed.
I squirm, gulping air over my dry tongue. The back of the body is tougher, more able to absorb the strikes of the whip. The front has so many more nerve endings and soft, sensitive places.
A blindfold settles over my eyes, and they go wide behind the press of dark fabric.
“Danny...” Fear jolts his name out of me when he ties the blindfold into place. I don’t know why it is so important for me to be able to see his eyes now that I’ve given him a whip. I don’t want to control this. I want him to use me, to play with me like I’m a sexy little toy. To make all the decisions so for once, for once, I don’t have to.
But when I can’t see his eyes, I’m afraid he’ll be just another Dom.
Danny touches my lips. In a world where I’m deprived of sight, he chooses not to give me sound, either. Instead, the subtle ridges of his fingerprint stroke over my mouth and I’m reminded of the way he touched me outside the gym, at the beginning of the tour. I absorb the kiss of his fingertip more deeply than I’ve ever experienced another man’s mouth.
He stays with me until my breathing steadies before he moves away. His body, that whip: they’re lost somewhere in the darkness of the blindfold, their movements a mystery so near to my nude, bound body.
I arch a little, tingling as I wait for what’s coming.
It’s a sobering thing, the first time you offer yourself to someone, knowing they’ll hurt you. Wanting them to hurt you. Just a little, just enough to feel alive. But when you’ve been in the BDSM world as long as I have, you know that’s a lie. You need it to be a little too much before it’s real. Before all the walls you put around yourself start to crumble and fall away until you’re defenseless, throbbing with pleasure and bright with pain. Until you’re more yourself than you’ve ever been.
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