He kept his hand on her cheek and settled his other on the side of her thigh. He didn’t squeeze, he didn’t grab on, he just held it there. “If I had to describe it? Then I’d say that my thing is to have the person I’m in a relationship with trust me to give them what they need. For them to willingly give up their control while I hold the power of their pleasure in my hands. And for both of us to work on building that, together.”
“And the pain part?”
“If that’s what she needs, then I’m in. If it’s not, then, of course, no. I would never push my submissive over the edge or take her to a place where I knew she couldn’t handle it. If I did, then the trust we’ve spent all that time building between us would be destroyed.”
“Are you in one now? A relationship, I mean.”
When he shook his head, her shoulders straightened a little.
“No. I haven’t been with anyone, involved in the lifestyle or not, for a while now.”
“This is too unreal,” she whispered.
“What is?”
Her answer came on another wispy breath. “You are.”
He couldn’t help but smile at that, too. “Actually, I’m about as real as it gets.”
“All this time. You were so close all this time.”
He loved the wonderment lacing her voice. “I’m even closer now.”
“You are. You’re right here in front of me.”
“And I’m not going anywhere.”
He leaned in, tentatively at first. Just inches, really. And she stayed still, right where she was. He looked to her lips, then back into her eyes. He barely heard her next words, she spoke so quietly. But he felt what she wanted, picked up on her need, maybe because it was exactly what he needed too.
“Kiss me.”
Which, holy hell, he did. Softly, God so torturously softly and easily. Her lips met his, teasing him with gentle nips and licks. He forced himself to slow down enough to tease her right back. Neither of them moved any other part of their bodies. Just their lips, their tongues.
But, fuck, his heart was going haywire. His cock thickened with every beat, until the beast it had become strained against the zipper of his jeans, begging to be let loose. Beads of sweat formed between his shoulder blades and his pecs. He could feel them, just as easily as he could feel Laine’s pulse race beneath his fingertips along the side of her neck.
He was nowhere near ready for her to pull away but, damn it, she did. Her breaths were uneven, ragged, just as his were. Trying to calm them just a little, he rested his forehead against hers, still burning inside for her kiss, still needing to touch her. But the way she cringed and the hiss she let out when he did instantly cured any hunger that might’ve been left to ricochet through his body.
He leaned back. Way, way back. “Oh hell. Laine. God, I’m sorry.”
He’d hit the edge of her swollen eye or come too close to the gash on the side of her head, he wasn’t sure which.
She was shaking her head, albeit gently, before he could say any more. “It’s okay, really.”
“No. No, it damn well is not.”
“Stop it. We both got a little caught up in…” She closed her eyes, and he felt like such an ass. A huge, raging, sex-starved ass. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
“No, I didn’t. But that doesn’t make it all right.”
She tried to smile but he knew her pain had to be about a twenty on a scale of one to ten. Another blast of dickheadedness struck him head-on.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Easier said than done, especially when it came to her.
She opened her eyes then and pinned him with a smoldering stare. “I mean it, Tye. Don’t.”
Never, not once in his life, could he remember acquiescing so easily. It wasn’t in his nature to give in to anyone. But there was something about Laine, about the way she talked to him, about the way she kissed him, that made him almost helpless against doing so.
Talk about a dichotomy. He ached to dominate her, to have her bend to his desires. To ultimately give her pleasures like she’d never experienced before. But in the same breath, he wanted nothing more than to do whatever the hell it was that she asked of him.
Which was, oh, just a little hard for him to get a grip on.
“Maybe we should just eat,” she said. “The eggs… They’re getting cold.”
He wanted to say, Fuck the eggs and let me take care of you. Yet at the same time, he knew that feeding her and building up her strength was, in a not-so-roundabout way, taking care of her.
So he nodded and turned first her barstool, then his, so they both faced the breakfast bar. He waited until she’d speared a hunk of the eggs and taken a bite before he did the same.
“They’re good,” she said.
He shrugged, concentrating more on corralling his wayward libido than on the meal in front of him. “They’re not bad.”
“I like that you can cook.”
Well, hell.
“I like that you like it.” He took a huge gulp of the orange juice. “I’ll have to do it right sometime and make you dinner. My specialty.”
She shot him a sideways glance. “Which is?”
“What’s your favorite food?”
“Why? Because that’s what your specialty is?”
He laughed. “I’d make it my specialty, yeah.”
She chuckled too, then took a bite of the toast. “You know, you’re different than everyone says you are.”
That took him aback. “I am?”
She shrugged a little. “Yeah. You have to know that you have a reputation for being this unsocial, workaholic hard-ass.”
The hard-ass part he knew about. That was something he was actually proud of. He ran his office with a firm hand and refused to take crap from anyone. He supposed the antisocial part came about because when he did go out for fun, he made sure he went someplace out of town. Hell, someplace out of the county. So she was pretty much dead-on on that part, too.
“I have a job to do, one that’s sometimes not very easy. To most of the people I deal with, I come off as either a jerk or the bad guy. But whatever. Let them think what they will. Doesn’t change who or what I am or the fact I’m damn good at what I do.”
“I don’t see you like that. Like a jerk, I mean.”
“That’s because you’re not running around out there on the wrong side of the law. You’re on my side.” He grinned as he said that. After their mutual confessions, saying she was on his side suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
“Even though my job is to defend the guys you’re trying to get put away?”
“Your job is to defend the law. So is mine. Both jobs are important. I just have to make sure that what I do out on the streets results in having the strongest case possible. You do that, too.”
It was no secret that those in her office worked by the letter of the law, which didn’t always make them popular in the eyes of those they were sworn to defend. Sure, there were crooked public defenders, just as there were corrupt trial lawyers. Lies and twisted truths were the norm for some, but in the end he liked to believe that nine times out of ten it was the hard evidence and sound witnesses that determined to which side a case would turn.
Try convincing the inmates waiting it out in his jail of that, though.
“Speaking of the wrong side,” she said, setting down her fork and backtracking a bit. “What did you find when you went inside my house?”
He’d been waiting for her to ask that question, even if at the same time he’d been hoping she’d wait a little longer to bring it up. Although he supposed he shouldn’t have expected anything less from Laine. She was a strong woman. The events since last night made that more than apparent. She deserved for him to be up front with her. After everything she’d been through, he owed her at least that much.
“It wasn’t pretty,” he started, setting his fork down, too. “The guy’s obviously twisted. And definitely out to get you for what you did.”
“He told me he would be. He shouted that as I ran away, in between calling me every name under the sun, some I hadn’t ever heard before. I certainly pissed him off, no doubt about that.”
He pushed his half-eaten plate of eggs to the other side of the counter, downed the last of his juice, then turned back to her. “With guys like this, it’s more than them just being pissed. You’ve embarrassed this guy. Gotten the better of him. I, for one, am damn glad you did. But he’s not going to let that slide, Laine.”
“I know he won’t,” she said. “Everything he screamed at me, along with whatever he did inside my house proves that. Which was?”
Tye sighed and rubbed a hand over his mouth and chin as she sat there and patiently waited for him to answer. “He didn’t touch the kitchen, not that I could see. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the living room, either. Going down the hallway, though…” Ah hell. His throat threatened to close up as his chest tightened. “He…” Tye swallowed. Tried again. “He cut several long gashes into the walls. Almost like he was making a trail. By the time I got to your bedroom…”
Tye had to stop. The muscles along his spine stiffened until they almost cramped, just as they’d done as he made his way through each of those rooms in her house. His blood pressure started to rise—he could feel the building strain behind his eyes as his anger ratcheted right up along with it.
Laine pressed her fingertips to her lips. “Oh God. What did he do?”
Tye lowered his voice in an attempt to rein in his concern. But it didn’t work. Each word came out thick and heavy, just as he’d intended, but there was no mistaking the disquiet lacing every one.
“There was a doll, one of those dressy, fashion types,” he went on reluctantly. “There were some ropes tied to it, along with a lot of red paint splattered everywhere. And there was a screwdriver placed, well, rather strategically.”
He didn’t mention that the screwdriver was shoved handle-deep into the belly of the doll. He really didn’t need to, not with the Oh shit expression taking shape on her face. He figured she pretty much got his meaning without him having to spell it out, word for word.
“Are they done, your deputies and Steve? Are they done there?”
He immediately knew where her question was going. “Laine…”
“I want to see it.”
“Why?” he asked, the level of his voice lowering a bit more than he intended.
“I have to.”
“No you don’t. I could have someone go in there tomorrow to clean up the mess and fix all the damage. There are companies that specialize in doing just that. You’d never have a clue that anything happened in there.”
“Yes I would. I’d feel it, Tye. When all this is over, I still have to sleep in that room, you know. I still have to live in that house. By myself. I can’t do that until I see what he did.”
Fuck, he hated the thought of her going in there. He wanted to tell her that, no, she’d never have to step foot back in that house, or her bedroom, ever again. That she didn’t have to see for herself what had gone on in there. She could stay here, at the ranch. With him. For however long…
But if the tables were turned and it was his house that had been given the once-over, he’d damn well want to see for himself everything that had been done. Regardless of the meaning behind the trash-fest, of what the sick fuck had come up with to get even with him, Tye would want to see it firsthand, too. As much as he ached to shield and protect Laine, he knew, when it came to this, when it came to every aspect of the attack, that realistically there was no way he could. She was smack-dab in the middle of this fuck-uppery, whether he liked it or not.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t negotiate a few of his own house-visit terms.
“Finish eating and I’ll call in to check on the status.”
The look she tossed him carried a whole lot of what-the-hell along with it. “Are you trying to make a deal with me?”
“No, I’m working with you,” he stated. “You eat and start getting your strength back up to speed, and I make a phone call. A little give, a little take, and we both end up winning.”
She picked up her fork and tossed him another sideways glance. “You’re good, you know.”
His comeback to her statement danced on the tip of his tongue. Instead of teasing her with the cocky Baby, you have no idea how good I really am, like he typically might’ve at any other time, he leaned back against the barstool, crossed his arms over his chest and tried like hell not to look overly smug as she took another bite of her eggs.
* * * * *
It hadn’t taken Laine long to finish eating, even though she hadn’t exactly cleaned her plate. Tye knew the instant she’d had too much—of not just the food, but of everything else that went along with it. Her eyelids drooped and her entire body went lax. Stick a fork in her, the woman was pretty much done.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you over to the couch. You can rest while I make that call.”
“But I didn’t finish,” she said, after a yawn.
“You ate more than I thought you would,” he replied, trying not to catch the contagiousness and yawn just as widely as she had. “We can always try something different later.”
“A cheeseburger. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a really good cheeseburger?”
“Hmm, what if I told you that was my new specialty?”
She smiled as she snuggled into the corner of the couch, but she didn’t answer him. Not that it mattered, though. He covered her with the afghan he kept along the back of the couch, and two seconds later, before he could blink a quarter of a dozen times, she was out like a fricking light.
Probably for the best, he decided. He made his way into his office for his phone, dialed Tom’s number by heart and walked back to where the hallway met the living room. He leaned against the wall, watching Laine sleep as he waited for his deputy to answer.
“Wyland.”
“It’s Carter. What’d you guys find?”
“Not a thing. Not a tire track, not a fingerprint, not even a random footprint. It’s like the guy ghosted in, did his business and then ghosted back out.”
“Fucking figures,” Tye murmured.
“That’s not all,” Tom went on. “Steve said there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary at the location where Ms. Morgan was found, either. We’ve come up with nothing at both locations.”
That last tidbit didn’t surprise Tye, not since he’d found out that Laine hadn’t been dumped behind Pete’s Tavern, but that she’d run there after escaping the van and then proceeded to pass out behind the dumpster.
“Are you guys finished at her house?”
“Just packing up now, sir.”
“Checked with the rest of the neighbors?”
“Sully just left to start knocking on doors. Chuck and I are following right behind him.”
“Good. Let me know what you find out. Oh, and have Steve send his report over as soon as possible. I’ll be working from the ranch for at least the next few days, but I’ll have my phone with me at all times. Call if anything comes up.”
“You got it,” Tom said.
Tye ended the call and slipped the phone into his jeans pocket. Nothing Tom told him came as a big shock. Scoring trace evidence wasn’t as easy as some people thought. He blamed TV for that. All those CSI shows, with the investigators going to crime scenes wearing their Armani suits, designer sunglasses and five-hundred-dollar loafers, then spotting that one lone hair that just didn’t belong.
What a crock of shit. Tye had never heard of a criminal case being solved by matching DNA from a single strand of hair or half of a smudged fingerprint. In real life, it just didn’t happen that way.
He needed to put his famous patience to work and wait for the break that would eventually come in this case. And it would come, of that Tye had no doubt. The guy would fuck up somewhere along the way, as most do in quests for retribution or infamy. That’s when Tye w
ould let his wrath loose. There’d be no stopping him, not until his own private brand of justice had been served and the asshole had been taken care of—either judiciously or, well, otherwise.
He came around the opposite end of the couch and sat beside Laine’s feet. She never moved, not even when he placed his hand on her calf. He was careful to avoid the ring of raw flesh around her ankle, concentrating instead on the softness of her skin higher up. The bottom of his b-ball shorts came to just under her knee, and he stroked his fingers gently over the space in between. He thought back on their conversation, and the way she’d asked him to kiss her.
Now that she knew the truth about him, he couldn’t help but hope she’d open up to him a bit more. And she didn’t necessarily have to do that with words. Her movements, the honest way she took in her surroundings, all of that could be so telling. And that was something he really loved—the experimenting, the observing. He loved watching her, picking up on what she liked, and what she didn’t like.
Pain. She didn’t like pain. She’d made that abundantly clear.
But she’d never experienced it the hot and sexy way he could deliver it, he was sure of that. He had to admit that needles and blood play were on the extreme side, even for him. But pain could be subjective, and everyone was different. She was different, and he wanted more than anything to run that fine line with her, to take her to the edge where she thought she didn’t want to go and then blow her mind by giving her a taste of the other side.
He closed his eyes and let his head flop onto the back of the couch. When the time was right, he’d take her there. He’d give her more than she ever wanted—but only when the time was right. And as his breathing evened out and his head got heavy in those final moments before he drifted off, he honestly didn’t know how long he’d be able to wait for that time to come.
Chapter Ten
Tye Carter was a Dom.
Laine had woken sometime around dusk to find him sleeping on the couch at her feet. She grabbed the opportunity to study him in the dim light. The natural lines of his rugged yet handsome face. The muscular angles of his body. He was athletic and built and, God…just mouthwatering.
My Tye Page 11