by Joely
His mood couldn’t be lightened. Turmoil whirled in his eyes, clenching his jaws in a hard line, his hands fisted. As she watched, stone walls went up in his eyes. Brick by brick, he shut himself off. To protect her, she knew, but she couldn’t allow him to keep those walls. Not if she ever wanted him to truly submit. Sitting on her bed dressed only in a nightshirt and robe, she drew herself up like a warrior queen. Building her power, honing her will like a weapon, she snapped, “Freeze, soldier.”
The combination of familiar cop words and his past, mixed with the harsh tone of her voice, made him hesitate. Eyes hard and grim, he met her gaze unflinchingly, closed and guarded, but not yet withdrawn completely.
“I’m not done with you yet, Wade. So don’t go shutting down on me. Get that ass over here pronto.” His eyes flickered, hesitating, so she sharpened her voice and used it like a whip. “I gave you a command, soldier. Now!”
It was a gamble, but it worked. Years of following orders from his commanding officers had honed in him an innate instinct to obey an order, especially in moments of crisis. He stood, stiffly, but did as she told him, this time walking around the bed instead of diving across it. Rigid, as if he might bolt toward the door any moment, he stared down at her.
Another calculated risk, but she suspected he felt as though he needed to make amends. Holding his gaze, she kept her voice deceptively soft, even while each word thudded with power. “Go to your knees, soldier.”
He swallowed hard and jerked down to the floor like a rusty robot with stiff joints. But he did it. And he didn’t drop his gaze with shame.
She leaned toward him, putting herself in harm’s way, a deliberately sign of her trust in him. “This was not your fault.”
“I could have hurt you, Mal.” His words were raw, as if his throat had turned to sandpaper and gravel. “Real bad.” He shuddered, as if he could see her broken and bloodied body before him.
“But you didn’t. It was my mistake, not yours.” A muscle ticked in his cheek and his shoulders strained, so she knew he hadn’t accepted her explanation. “I’m from New Orleans.” She deliberately let her accent shape her words, adding to her story. “My uncle ran an alligator farm when I was little, and I was fascinated by his tales. I thought he was exaggerating, but then I finally saw him do a show once at a little county fair, and I never doubted him again. He could handle his gators like they were pets. Put his head in their gaping jaws, just like you hear about at those big gator shows. Never had an ounce of fear. I asked him about it and he said if you knew the gator, you could handle it. But you had to know it like your mama. You had to be able to read its smallest signals and know whether it was sleepy and lazy, the perfect time to handle it for a show, or if it was hungry or interested in a hunt. If you couldn’t tell, then you had no business messing with a gator.”
Some of the tension eased from Colby’s shoulders, but his eyes were still shuttered and hard. The eyes of a soldier. The eyes of a man who’d go off to war without looking back, even knowing he’d die, because he’d given an oath to protect the people back home. But he was listening, and she could work with that.
She lifted her hand and held down her pinkie and ring fingers. “I said, ‘But Uncle Robbie, what happened to your hand? Didn’t a gator take your fingers?’ He nodded and smiled, without an ounce of anger or fear. ‘Yep. He got me good, ‘cause I wasn’t listening. My mistake, not his.’”
“I could have taken your head clean off, not a few fingers,” Colby grumbled, finally dropping his eyes.
She leaned closer and pressed her forehead to his. “And it would have been my mistake, not yours. When I wrangle with a gator, I have to respect his teeth. That’s the risk that I accept.”
“I don’t. I can’t. If I hurt you—”
“Colby,” she interrupted gently. “I was a fool for sneaking up on you like that. I knew you’ve had some issues with PTSD. That alone should have told me to be more careful when waking you up. Plus you’re a detective, who worked most of the night probably on some murder. God only knows what violence and horror you see everyday on the streets. You need your gator teeth just to get through everyday unscathed. It’s my job to respect those teeth, not ignore your signals.”
His tension bled away from his shoulders and he relaxed against her, though he made no move to put his hands on her. “I still hate that I scared you.”
“A little excitement is good, and a healthy dose of respect for your training is definitely a good thing. I’m glad I got to see you in action, even for just a second.” She slid her arms down his back and squeezed his buttocks firmly in both hands. That brought his head up in a hurry, the grim icy quickly melting to a sultry smolder. “You’re quite something to look at, Detective Wade. Maybe I should ask to do a ride-along with you and your partner sometime.”
He choked back a laugh. “Elias would love that.”
She kneaded his buttocks, watching the way his nostrils flared and the lines of strain and worry slowly eased from around his eyes. So she saw the moment he realized that he’d actually gone to his knees for her. A very submissive thing to do. “If this is all I had to do to get you on your knees in front of me, then I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Even if you kicked me in the head first.”
He didn’t answer, and she could read the questions and doubt streaming through his eyes. Was he really going to make it this easy for her? Was he really submissive? Half a man (or less) in his eyes? How far would he go if she asked? All things he was thinking about right now. Guessing he’d need some time to process everything, she released him and stood, easing around him to head back to the kitchen.
“Let’s eat. I’m starving. So how do you take your coffee?”
He rose up to follow her, grabbing the cup she’d set on the nightstand for him. He took a drink and let out a pleased sigh as he followed her. “That depends.”
She tipped her head to the bar, indicating he could sit there and watch. She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could manage eggs and grits just fine. Mama would have a heart attack if she knew her daughter served somebody frozen biscuits, but anything that required special cooking utensils like pastry blenders was beyond her patience. She could do anything if she set her mind to it. She just would rather have someone else do the baking, especially if she was the one going to eat it.
Pouring the beaten eggs into the skillet, she glanced over her shoulder at him. “On what?”
There was that cocky grin she loved so much. “On whether it’s good coffee or bad. Good, I can drink black. Or I can doctor it up and make it as good as dessert. I’m fine with either. Bad coffee, I have to load up with all the cream and sugar I can stir in, and let me tell you, the precinct goes through a ton of sugar and creamer packets. This coffee has a nice bite to it.”
“It’s got chicory in it. I buy it from Cafe Du Monde. There’s creamer in the door of the fridge if you need to cut the bitterness a bit.”
“Nah, this is fine. Great.”
“Do you cook much?”
“Not really. Never had the teaching.”
Stirring the eggs, she waited a moment, hoping the silence would encourage him to keep talking. She wanted to crack open that hard soldier/cop exterior and find something delicate and tasty on the inside.
“I was too busy in sports and helping with chores on the ranch to do much in the kitchen. Alli was always the one to help Mom.”
“How many siblings do you have?”
“Three sisters, all older: Jessica, Allison, and Rachel. Dad always joked they’d had to keep trying until they had a boy, but Jess was better on a horse than I ever was.”
Mal split out the eggs, sprinkled with cheese, and grabbed the plate of biscuits to take over to the breakfast nook. Colby didn’t need her request to grab the two plates and bring them for her. What surprised her was that he then took her cup and his, filling both back up with coffee. She sat down, even more pleased when he glanced at her to see if she had anything else to add. “Just a splash of half and
half.”
He set her cup down but hesitated before sitting. “Should I put some pants on first?”
She chuckled, arching a brow at him. “I like the scenery, unless you’re uncomfortable.”
“Are you kidding?” He sat down and stared at the plate, practically drooling, but he didn’t pick up his fork until she did. “I’ve eaten an MRE at the bottom of a foxhole, sitting in a foot of rain and mud in forty degree temps. This is not uncomfortable.”
She cracked open a biscuit and slathered on some orange marmalade. “I didn’t think Afghanistan got that cold.”
He tucked into the eggs like he hadn’t eaten in days, without any challenges from her like he’d needed that first night. It actually made her throat tighten enough that she had to swallow the bite twice to make sure she didn’t choke. Usually her Mistress games were just that: games. Fun. Entertainment. She didn’t often actually get to help somebody. Let alone someone like Colby. She let her gaze wander across his pecs, reading the stories written into his skin.
“It does at night, but we didn’t have many foxholes there. That was actually boot camp in San Diego.”
She didn’t prompt him, hoping instead that he’d keep talking after a few bites. Her patience was rewarded when he reached for his third biscuit.
“It was mostly dust and heat and miserable sun. During the day, you’d cut off your right arm for a bit of shade. When we had breaks, it was nothing to lie under the vehicles, both for shade and protection. I thought Texas was hot, but it wasn’t anything close. At least here, we have plants that have adapted to long summers and even droughts, but there, it’s just all rock and sand and dust, blowing, so dry and grim. They’ve been bombed for decades, first the Russians and then us, hunting for the elusive terrorist cells. So there’s barely anything left but rubble.”
He’d already given her a lot to think about. The youngest with three sisters. That would explain his politeness and absolute horror at the thought of hurting her. He’d grown up on a ranch too, so he was probably used to doing chores, handling animals. Unless he’d joined the military to escape that life. “I can see you as a cowboy.”
Actually, now that she’d said it, the image of him in cowboy boots and a big hat made her nipples tighten. His slow Texan drawl, all yes, ma’am, no ma’am, with nothing on but a hat and boots…
“I never really took to farm life.” He looked away a moment, his jaw clenching. A bit of old guilt and shame. If his father had been excited to have a boy after three girls, and then his only son hadn’t been much of a rancher, maybe his dad had made him feel like shit for it. “I wasn’t good at it.”
“Sugar, I can’t imagine anything physical and outdoorsy that you wouldn’t be good at.”
He laughed but it was harsh and tight with suppressed rage and angst. “Tell that to Dad. He made it very clear that I was nothing but a disappointment.”
Fighting down those old feelings of childhood failures, Colby pushed his plate away and picked up his coffee cup. He took a few calming sips. He’d left the ranch behind a long time ago, along with a dissatisfied father. Funny how those old arguments and feelings never actually went away. Mal, damn her, didn’t say anything, but watched his every move as diligently as he’d watch a drug dealer on the street approaching a bunch of school kids. Though her eyes gleamed with a soft, golden light that he’d never give to a criminal.
She wanted those old stories of hurt and anger. She was a Mistress. She dealt in pain.
She didn’t ask, so he didn’t feel obliged to share those ugly stories of his past. But she waited, and watched, and he couldn’t seem to wire his jaws shut.
“Maybe it’s not like this anywhere else, but here in Texas, there’s a sort of hierarchy that fathers expect from their sons. First, the land and the work it needs. Second, Friday night football. Third, church and God, although some people claim it should be higher in the list, most people I know always knock it down at least a few notches. Most people have family in there somewhere, and eventually country. I’ve known a few guys who’d put their truck at the top of the list.”
Mal nodded and settled back in her chair with her cup, quietly sipping. “That’s a pretty good list.”
“It wasn’t my list.” Even now, his voice sharpened, defiant and hurt that nobody cared more about him than a bunch of cow shit and dust. Adult Colby knew that wasn’t true, but the kid buried deep inside him still hurt. “Even as a kid, I failed the most basic tasks Dad expected of me.”
He had to pause a moment to keep the old rage contained. He took another sip and almost choked because his throat was too tight and raw to swallow.
“It was the same for me. I think it’s the same for all kids. I think we all have a moment where we fail to meet our parents’ expectations and suddenly realize that we’re different, unique, and can’t ever follow some parental guidebook.”
“What was it for you?” He didn’t expect her to answer, but something deep inside of him craved a bit of her soul. Something she hadn’t told anyone else, before he cut open his old wounds for her.
A sad smile twisted her lips and she turned to look out the window. “Mama gave up on me in the kitchen at an early age. I can only do the most basic recipes. Meanwhile, she’s baking twelve pies for church and opening her own restaurant. She needed my help, but I couldn’t keep up. I made more mistakes, that made more work for her. Eventually she hired someone to help her and replaced me entirely.”
Gave up. Yeah, that’s exactly what Dad did to me too.
“Plus she never liked my taste in men.” Mal glanced over at him, a teasing lilt in her voice that didn’t match the sadness in her eyes. “Though I got that taste from her.”
He could feel her gaze gliding over his chest like hot embers smoking into his skin. “Ex-soldiers with tats?”
“White men,” Mal clarified. “My daddy was white.”
“Oh. I guess I never really thought about it.” Which was true. When he looked at Mal, he saw a beautiful woman with a kind of power that drew him like a moth to a flame. Even if he ended up crispy, he couldn’t stay away. Didn’t want to stay away.
She laughed. “Which is totally a white man thing to say. I’m sure the man who fathered me probably thought the very same thing, right before he went back to his high-class family and blonde girlfriend. I only met him once. He wasn’t ever part of my life and refused to acknowledge me publicly as his daughter. That’s fine. His payoff funded Mama’s first restaurant and that’s all we ever needed after that.”
It was too early for him to start thinking long-term. Two nights, and one of them sleeping only, sure didn’t count for much. But the thought that her mother might frown on him from the get-go put him on high alert. “I wouldn’t ever do that to you. Or anyone, for that matter.”
“I know.” She smiled and reached over to pat his thigh. “I wouldn’t let you.”
The firm stroke of her fingers took away some of the sting to his ego. His brain wanted to object that he’d do what he damn well pleased, but she’d already shown him another way. A way that had his dick tied up in a leash that only she could guide.
“Surely your daddy wasn’t worse than mine. At least yours stayed around.”
He saw what she’d done there, but with her hand on his thigh, he couldn’t find it in himself to complain. Even if he flopped around a bit like a catfish on a line. She’d baited and hooked him good. “I let him down, not the other way around. Over and over.” A dam rose up in his throat, old walls he’d built a long time ago to protect himself. She didn’t push for details, but gently kneaded his quadriceps, a silent encouragement with infinite patience. Old memories swirled in those flood waters, a tidal wave slowly building pressure behind the dam in his mind. He tried to hold on, to push those words back, but knowing that Mal wanted them made it impossible to deny her.
The dam crumbled to dust in his mind and he let out a long, heavy sigh. “The most important thing on a cattle ranch is the herd. You have to protect the herd
at all cost. Especially the calves. If the calves die, that’s future profits dying, especially if it’s a heifer that could have had a dozen babies herself. Losses are part of the game, but we survived by minimizing those losses as much as possible.
“One of my earliest memories is riding a horse. Dad started us early and expected a full day’s work from all of us. We didn’t ride around in a ring for kicks and giggles, or go off to shows. We got up at dawn and rode out to the pastures. Checking fence, counting head, doctoring, in rain, drought, or even snow. Whatever it took. The herd came first.”
“How old were you when you started riding out like that?”
“I’m not really sure. Five or so. I started out riding with Dad, and then by eight or nine I had my own route to take every day.”
“On a full-sized horse?”
“We didn’t keep Shetland ponies, that’s for sure.”
“I’ve been on a horse once as an adult and I was terrified. A lot of it for me was the lack of control. Even with a tight grip on the reins, there really wasn’t anything I could do to stop that beast if it decided to run off or buck or simply stop and graze. And it was big. I didn’t like being that far off the ground with so little…”
“Control,” he finished, repeating the word for her. Yeah, he could see Mal having a problem with situations like that. “Let me guess—you have a manual transmission in your car too.”
She tipped her chin up. “Wouldn’t have it any other way. You don’t get to be the Mistress of Dallas by letting anything—man or machine or animal—fall to chance.”
“I wasn’t scared of falling off, or even riding. In the beginning, I loved being out on the range with Dad. We had some of the best talks on those rides.” If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the creak of the saddles and smell the hot sweat of his horse.
“So what changed?”
He took another drink of coffee, but the liquid didn’t want to slide down his throat, so he didn’t risk another. “Late one day, we came across a cow that’d fallen down in a ditch and couldn’t get up. It wasn’t that deep, but her head was downhill and she just couldn’t get herself up. She died, but managed to give birth to her calf first. The little heifer was still wet, so she hadn’t been born for long. Of course it was getting pretty late and we were still a good hour ride from home. Dad meant for us to take over the ranch for him, so he was real good about talking things through and explaining his reasons for everything. We could have carried that calf home and bottle fed it, but time was of the essence. She needed to be warm and safe and fed, and a hard bumpy ride might be enough to push her into shock and death. Plus we didn’t have a lot of time on the ranch to bottle feed a calf. We already did chores from dark in the morning until after dark at night and never had a shortage of things that needed doing.