Handcuffed by Her Hero

by Angel Payne

“If you’re referring to Garrett, then I’m afraid none of his threads will fit you much better.” He fingered some stray tendrils off her forehead. “He’s the only ‘houseguest’ I’ve had besides you.”

  She blamed her fatigue for how her whole body reacted to that little brush of his fingertips. Still, she managed to quip, “Your mask is slipping, Darth Vader. Better come clean now.”

  “And your ass is begging for a good blush for that, little bird.”

  The rain suddenly stopped. Maybe it was just as stunned as she was—though Rayna wondered if the astonishment on her face came close to the wonderment on Zeke’s. No, she was pretty certain her bewilderment outweighed his, for in that moment, three insane realizations hit her.

  She’d loved what he growled at her.

  She’d loved how it stopped her breath.

  She was terrified at the image it burst in her mind. Because she loved that the most of all.

  Her ass beneath his hand. Her naked flesh, blooming for his touch. Her screams feeding his soul.

  “Yeah. Maybe I’d better get in the shower.”

  He reacted to her rasp with a clipped nod. His gaze had gone dark as burnt copper. His bottom lip was shoved against its mate, and his jaw was a hard square. “Damn good idea.”

  He left the bedroom before she could say anything else, disappearing down the stairs. He pounded the steps so hard, the decorative reeds in the urn at the top rattled each other. Rayna glared at them.

  “Hey, kids,” she grumbled. “Looks like the word of the day is going to be ‘awkward.’”

  * * * * *

  Things went from bad to worse after she got out of the shower. She headed downstairs to find Zeke throwing a couple of blankets and a pillow across the sleeper bed into which the living room couch converted. When she’d thanked him and gratefully sank onto the mattress, sleep encroaching fast now that she was warm, he’d given her a string of snarled “No”s before snatching her up, blanket and all, and carrying her back upstairs. She’d gotten out no more than three words of protest before he’d cut her off with a sharp, “Good night, Rayna.”

  As he’d shut the door on her, she’d fumed, punched a pillow, and muttered, “Next time, just cut to the chase and tell me to fuck off, Hayes.”

  Before sleep torpedoed the rest of her consciousness, she promised herself a good long meditation session tomorrow—or more correctly, later on today. She needed to lob a shitload of mental detangler on this mess called Zeke Hayes. The fact that he was now her roommate for a few days only hastened the urgency, especially the not-so-little part about thinking of his hand on her backside—or any other part of her body. He’d made all of that clear, hadn’t he? His kinky world wasn’t hers to tread on. She needed to stay in her own box with him. It was probably better that way for them both.

  On that thought, she’d passed out.

  That was when, even from hundreds of miles away, Mua had gotten to her again.

  In the dream, she was walking through thick midnight mist again. But this time, she wasn’t in the city. Her surroundings looked like a canyon, stark and steep, the high walls making each of her steps resonate in frightening emptiness. Mua materialized from the gloom just as he had before, with Round Face and Chain Man by his sides. Rayna backed away but was stopped from behind by arms that curled around her neck and waist with greasy surety. A camera floated in the air in front of them. A tongue slid along the curve of her ear before a seedy voice commanded, “Smile, little bitch.”

  King.

  Her legs buckled. Her lungs seized. Her heart stopped. Her mind turned to paralyzed ice.

  No. No. No!

  One simple syllable. Say it. Scream it. But she couldn’t. She…couldn’t. Her throat was glued shut, strangled by terror. Her mouth struggled to move, to simply process air. What air? She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. He was going to get her. He was going to sell her. He was going to make her disappear forever.

  “Noooo!”

  Her scream burned in her throat and rang in her ears as she shot straight up in bed.

  She reached for the glass of water on her nightstand. It wasn’t there. That wasn’t even her nightstand. She whacked her hand back to her heaving chest and peered around. Where the hell was she? Everything was still dark and murky. Clouds roiled past a glass window, dumping rain in deafening sheets.

  She cried out in confusion and kicked at the covers. There were so many of them, so heavy and thick. Lightning flash bombed the room. Thunder bellowed. She shrieked in full again, her senses caught in the ether between nightmare and sentience.

  A set of arms formed from the shadows. Terrifyingly strong, just like King’s. They grabbed her shoulders. She screamed and twisted free. “No!” The force of her voice gave her strength, yanking her back toward reality. “No, damn you!”

  “Rayna.”

  The voice was gentle and firm—and achingly familiar. She stilled for a second. Major mistake. In that second, her wrists were captured in dual iron grips then pinned to either side of her head. She flailed and kicked but her quads were subjugated by a log-sized thigh.

  “I’m not the docile one anymore, damn it. No! No!”

  “Rayna, honey…listen to me. Look at me.”

  She kept fighting. Bucking her whole body. Squirming and writhing. Sucking down air in giant, desperate gulps. Those inhalations made her smell the monster, which was confusing as hell. He didn’t smell like sweat, mud, and halitosis. He smelled like cedar, smoke, and mountain wind.

  She swallowed and opened her eyes.

  Then let her mind wake up. And her heart fall apart. “Zeke.”

  His face warmed with a gentle smile. “Hey.” He slackened his hold on her wrists.

  “Your cabin.” Relief flooded from her with the words. She grabbed the front of his T-shirt, pulled him close, and nestled her head into his chest. “We’re at your cabin.”

  “And you’re safe, bird.”

  Right after he rumbled it, he shifted to roll off of her. Panic speared her like a rogue icicle. The worsening storm, which had turned the afternoon into an eerie night outside, didn’t help. She dug her fingers deeper into his shirt.

  “Don’t go. I can’t—”

  “All right.” He smiled softly, his teeth white against the stubble that was now becoming a full beard. “I’ll be right here, okay?” He patted a couple of pillows. They were as close to the edge of the mattress as possible. She violently whipped her head.

  “No. Too far. I’m—I’m still scared.” Her voice was small and pathetic but she didn’t care. “And cold.” She ran her fingers along the little gap between his T-shirt neck and his skin. “And you’re so warm.”

  He expelled a long breath. “Rayna, you know what I’ll do if—”

  She wrested the argument from him by showing him what she yearned to do. With one hand yanking on his shirt, she dove another into his hair. She wrenched his face down to hers, fully ready with an open offering of her lips and tongue. Their mouths fused. Their breaths mated. As the storm raged outside, they stirred a wanton, hot hurricane inside. Rayna let the tempest take her, rejoicing as it ripped through her blood, fired through her sex, and decimating her resolve.

  “Zeke,” she finally pleaded. “Help me forget it. I need to make it all go away. Please!”

  She watched his jaw tighten and his eyes flare. A squall of dark humor passed across his face. “Fuck,” he whispered. “You’re not talking about a chick movie and a foot rub, are you, honey?”

  “No.” She moved her hand to his face, digging her fingers into his beard. “I want you to make me forget…just like you made Luna forget.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Zeke stared at her hard for a long minute. Now he had to be the one dreaming. For the last forty-eight hours, she’d been the merciless erotic torment in his mind but now she was his wildest desires come to life, right here in his arms. With her lips parted, her eyes imploring, and her body this close and warm… Fuck. “Dream come true” was the
tip of the goddamn iceberg.

  But weren’t dreams the soul’s way of reminding you what you couldn’t have? Who was the depressing dickhead who’d said that? Oh, yeah. That was him.

  With a resolution he couldn’t be further from feeling, he uncurled her fingers from his shirt then cupped the ones at his face long enough to press a kiss on her knuckles. “Honey, as much as every bone in my body would thank me to do that…I can’t.”

  As he forced himself to sit up, her bewildered stare followed every move he made. “Why?”

  How could she speak one word but scratch at fifty corners of his composure? Even if her trembling tone didn’t tip him off, he saw the self-doubt on her face, the way she glanced down at her body, encased so adorably in his shirt and nothing else, and compared herself to Luna’s “charms.” And clearly noticed every difference that he did. Then instantly came to the ridiculously wrong conclusion.

  “Damn it, Rayna.” He cracked his neck. Wasn’t working. His thoughts still bounced in his head like ping pong balls in a carnival guppy booth. “It’s not you, honey, okay?”

  “So it’s you?” she retorted. “Is that it? And I’m supposed to believe that how, Mr. Prom King of the Seattle kink crowd?” She shot a derisive laugh at his stunned gape. “There isn’t a lot Sage and I don’t share with each other, Z. I’ve known since before you went on the last mission. But even if I hadn’t, the rocket science degree wasn’t necessary to witness it at Bastille last night.” Her glare dissolved and again she tore at his edges with her questioning eyes and wobbling lips. “But there’s no subbie waiting line right now, is there? You can’t have your pick of the bench. But you can have me, and—”

  He surged to his feet. “My pick of the bench?” Straining the outrage from it was impossible. “Is that what you think? That I just stroll into the club and decide what workout I want for the night? Like choosing to go run on the treadmill or play some basketball, huh?”

  She twisted the drooping sleeve of his shirt. Goddamnit, why did she have to look so sweet and small and sexy in that thing? “I don’t ‘think’ anything, Zeke. I just want—I just—”

  “You just want? Okay, you just want what? Are you able to verbalize that much?”

  “Stop talking to me like I’m seven. These aren’t words I’m spewing on a whim. I didn’t decide to pop them out because I liked the sound, okay?”

  “Right. Because you were thinking so lucidly after having a nightmare that had you nearly tearing up this bedroom.”

  He was being a semi-asshole. Maybe more than “semi.” Still, she responded with tight calm, “From time to time, Sage shares a few things with me about what she and Garrett have as Dominant and submissive. I already know there’s a lot more to it than what people assume. Now I’ve had a chance to witness it firsthand, too.”

  He moved to the end of the bed and locked his hands behind his back. “That’s nice. But you didn’t answer my question.” After stepping one leg out and bracing himself in a full drill instructor pose, he leveled his stare back into hers with unflinching intent. “What. Do. You. Want. Rayna?”

  She earned a new chunk of his respect for not surrendering an inch of her own gaze. Despite the Gung Ho Mo Fo act he flung at her, she gave back as good as she got, drawing up her shoulders with admirable precision. But when she spoke…her words were complete woman. One hundred percent a pleading, sexier-than-hell husk.

  “I want you to look at me the way you looked at Luna last night.”

  Gut, meet a boot named Rayna Chestain.

  His breath left him on a heavy rush. So did his anger. But the void left behind didn’t remain empty. He recognized the feeling like rounding a corner and seeing an old schoolmate—the one who liked to get in a couple of punches before letting him move on.

  “That’s not a request I can grant, Ray-bird.”

  She rose up on her knees. “Why the hell not?”

  “Christ.” It roared out of him. He threw up his hands. Another emotion two-by-foured his core without the bully’s help this time. Despair didn’t need a sidekick. “Did your ‘firsthand’ experience include what I did to Luna last night, Rayna? Did you see the marks on her body? All of them? Did you think about how she got them, about what I did before—” The look that crossed her face, as if preparing herself to be slapped, clutched the words short in his throat.

  “Say it,” she rasped. “Before you fucked her. There. I did it for both of us.”

  “I didn’t fuck her.” She blinked, seeming to believe him, though his ominous growl didn’t give her much choice. “I wasn’t her Dominant, Rayna. I was her Top. There’s a massive goddamn difference.”

  She let out breath in frustrating puffs. Her lips twisted. “But when you stood in my living room and told me you were going to Bastille, and what you were going to do, I thought—”

  “I know what you thought. It was exactly what I wanted you to think.”

  He pivoted and crossed the room. Though it was the middle of the afternoon, the world was a swath of pewter mist and black clouds. A perfect backdrop for this conversation.

  Conversation? No. It wasn’t going to be that. She was silent and still now, and he needed to just leave it at that. He had to close her down from ever thinking they could explore a D/s dynamic together. He knew damn well what would happen if he ever crossed that line with her, ever accepted her at his feet and demanded a Yes, Sir spring from her lips. As beautiful as the beginning would be, none of the end results were remotely good.

  Yeah, he should have left it at the silence.

  But her mute hurt tore at his edges. Pulled and jabbed and peeled at his scabs.

  Shit.

  “Letting you think I was going to screw Luna was an easier way to break things with you, okay? I needed you to see what I am, Rayna. How I’m wired.” He swung his gaze toward her again. “And how that equates to a disaster for your wiring.”

  As he expected, she was waiting for him with eyes that looked like crushed emeralds—tossed on top of a bonfire. “So you just decided to sever my wiring,” she charged. “Is that it?”

  Hell. That mind of hers. Nothing was a bigger turn-on and nothing made him want to throttle her ass more. Hard. With a slotted paddle.

  “I’m not going to jump on this carousel with you. It’s going to leave us both dizzy and pissed. You don’t understand half of what you’re asking me for, and—”

  “God!” She climbed off the bed so fast, she thought nothing of the peeks she gave him at her bare sex as she did. He stood locked in a mix of stunned and stimulated as she advanced and smacked the center of his chest. “They give you three golden rules in BDSM, right? Safe, sane, consensual? Congratulations, Jesse James. You’ve already stolen the third from me and you’re well on your way to making off with the second.”

  He openly fumed at her—and seethed with disgust at himself for doing so. Goddamnit, the brat had hit him twice and he just fumbled like the fucking new guy with bad intel, disbelieving what was happening but unable to pick up a damn radio and order a proper extraction. Gawking. Helpless.

  No. Way.

  He hadn’t been helpless for a very long while. He sure as shit didn’t plan on starting a trend of it now.

  Rayna had made the mistake of leaving her hand suspended midair in front of his chest. Now she drew it back a little, as if contemplating whether to pummel him again. The follow-through was a no-brainer. He whipped his own hand up, swallowing her fist inside his own.

  “You want to discuss your sanity, bird?” He shook his head with steady surety. “Trouble is, you haven’t gone insane. You’ve gone bratty.”

  Her eyes widened. She flinched and attempted to pull back. He grinned and clutched her tighter. Yeah, that aroused him. A lot. But this had nothing to do with his pulsing cock and everything to do with teaching this little girl a lesson. Sometimes—many times—that involved mission recon above the waist.

  Not that she made the effort one click easier. Instead of fighting him more, she tossed her
fiery hair and gritted her teeth in sexy challenge. “Bratty, huh?” One side of her sleek mouth quirked up. “Aren’t you big, bad Doms supposed to put brats in their place? Teach them a lesson?”

  Damn it. She was really, really asking for it.

  Openly sparring with you doesn’t mean she wants you to subdue her, Hayes.

  Even if she did, it’d be too damn dangerous. Tait wasn’t here. Nobody was here. That was the fucking point. Zsycho couldn’t come out to play if there wasn’t a babysitter, especially with Rayna. Especially with how incredible she’d feel under him, snarling at him…then finally, breathlessly begging him…

  With a tight growl, he slid his hold from her fist to her wrist. Using the extra stability for strength, he yanked her closer to him, nearly punching her nose with his as he forced her to stare at him. “Is that what you want, Rayna? A lesson? From me?”

  She drew in a rickety breath. But her eyes glittered with pure sass. “Hmm. What do you think, Master Z? Do I need one?”

  He shook his head again. The move wasn’t so patient this time. “Ohhh, honey…”

  “Well?”

  “It doesn’t fucking work that way, Rayna. Five minutes ago, you were about to kick in my family jewels because of fighting off the cockroach twins in your sleep. Now you want me to turn off the lights again and take you to subbie dreamland. But if we hit a landmine on the way, your psyche is the casualty. Do you get that? Has Sage explained that part of this shit to you?”

  In spite of the challenge, he made no move to let her go. She didn’t shift, either. Her chin jutted higher as if daring him to go on. Who was he to disappoint?

  “You’re pulling bratastic on me right now. Doing a damn fine job, too.” He tapped her head with his free hand. “But there are a lot of emotional insurgents in here, waiting for you to pop your parachute, Rayna. If you’re ever on your knees for me, then the brat walks out the door. All the way out. You won’t get to hide. You won’t get to pick the reaction you think I want, or some cute answer from a story Sage has fed to you about what she and Garrett did one night in the dungeon. I don’t teach lessons like that.” He watched her pupils dilate in response, so gorgeous and intoxicating, making it impossible to conclude in anything less than a low but determined thunder. “So be damn careful of the one you’re asking for now.”