by Angel Payne
But she couldn’t give him more.
Because every time he claimed her body, a little more of her heart went with it.
And whose fault is that, Rayna? He’s been damn clear about what he can do for you—and what he can’t. If you get caught in the tractor beam of Zeke Hayes, don’t cry when you’re caught, trapped, and executed by your own foolish feelings.
She needed air.
In a rush, she jerked the handle, shoved the door open and got out of the car. As she expected and dreaded, Z scrambled out, too.
“Ray-bird?”
“I’m okay.” She forced a light tone. “Sorry. It was just getting warm in there.”
“Yeah,” he agreed after a moment. The wet ground squished beneath his boots as he approached. “You sure you’re all right?”
He let her have a long moment to respond. When she didn’t, he shifted closer. Her breath hitched from his warmth, so familiar and strong…such a perfect fit with the deepest fibers of her body. It was likely why she let him latch one of his hands into hers and pull her around to face him. He circled his other hand to the small of her back. With semi-automatic instinct, she lifted her hand to his shoulder.
One side of his mouth tilted, along with the corresponding eyebrow—just before he swept her into a perfect waltz.
“What the—”
“Did I mention that Mel also used me as her ballroom dance lessons partner?”
Rayna laughed then squealed as he spun her even faster. After they circled once through the clearing, scattering wet leaves as they went, Z slowed their pace into a more sedate step, similar to a back-and-forth prom night sway. But as his dancing calmed, his stare didn’t. Once more he drilled a searching scrutiny down at her, his dark lashes dropping, his irises filled with glittering bronze intent.
“What?” Rayna finally stammered.
“What what?” He curled her hand in against his chest. Even through his thick jacket, he warmed her skin. His fingers enveloped hers in unflinching strength.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
“In what way? Enlighten me.” His voice dipped lower, as focused as his gaze now. She turned her gaze down. If she looked at him now, she’d blurt something ridiculous. Something that stemmed from what she hoped his intent was, and nothing of the truth.
“What is it, Rayna?” He squeezed her fingers tighter. “You can tell me. But I’ll be clear about something. I’m not buying the ‘it’s too hot in the car’ excuse anymore.”
She forgot his fingers as the timbre of his voice seeped into her. The authority of it, mixed with such deep protectiveness, sounded exactly like the order he’d given her last night. Kneel for me, honey.
Just like then, her heart raced. Just like then, she was a little afraid and a lot aroused. She closed her eyes, savoring the strands of heat and ice in her blood.
She took his hand and pressed it to the side of her face. When she opened her eyes, letting her gaze lock so deeply into his once more, she almost formed her mouth around the words again.
Please. I know it can’t be forever, but I need…all of it. Your bondage. Your body. Your control. Your strength.
I need you.
Instead, she clenched her teeth around a smile before gently kissing his knuckles. “I’m fine. Thanks for your concern. Let’s just get going, okay?”
Chapter Fifteen
An icy wind cut across the high cliff. It was bitterly cold; the clouds would likely open up again soon.
Luna put an odds-on bet that she’d get sick first.
She pushed the binoculars away with a wince. “Enough,” she rasped. “I’ve seen enough.”
It had qualified as “enough” once she watched Rayna and Z got out of the car. Could they have simply taken a walk or gotten a friendly breath of fresh air? No way. He’d gotten her to dance with him. Rayna had looked stunned, as if she couldn’t believe Z could move, let alone dance. What, like it wasn’t common knowledge? Had the woman not done her damn homework on the man?
But the dancing was easier to take than the touching. Having to watch him stop and stroke her face so gently…then give her that hot, heavy stare as she’d kissed the backs of all his fingers…
Shit, shit, shit.
How was this possible? How had this cup of vanilla frosting slathered herself in front of the Dom who was supposed to be hers? Where had things gone so horridly wrong, especially after their time in the dungeon had been so right?
It was supposed to be different now. He was supposed to have seen, to have understood. Once he’d had her in his hands, felt the potency of her submission and the strength of her devotion, he was destined to forget all the rest and surrender to their connection…just as she had.
Rayna Chestain had changed all that.
A tortured cry sprang from her throat.
Mua’s snicker felt like alcohol on her open wound. He dumped salt on top of it with his musically-inflected, “Are you all right, darling?”
She inched away from the edge of the cliff. Though she mentally knew how essential she was to the man and his “plan,” instinct screamed she shouldn’t trust him for a second.
“I think I’m going to throw up,” she whispered.
“That’s unfortunate.” He stepped away. “Please do it over there. I despise the stench.”
She stumbled back but her empty stomach only cooperated with a painful retch. It was for the better. There wasn’t time to waste. The next minute, she watched the distant silver speck of Max’s Jag leave the parking lot of Annie’s Pizza and turn east on Cascades Highway. Mua appeared next to her again, holding a smart pad that showed a GPS-style map with a red dot traveling the same route.
The man emitted a low laugh and called to the three men next to the SUV behind them, “Excellent work, Vadim.” The middle thug, who had a face as round as a pie tin, accepted the praise with a short nod. “It seems our target has acclimated well to the beacon.”
Luna scraped back her wind-whipped hair to get a better look at the screen in Mua’s grip. A shiver gripped her that had nothing to do with the day’s dropping temperature. “Th-that dot is really being transmitted from inside Zeke?”
“Indeed.”
She shook her head, wondering if her mind was going to implode. “I’m still having trouble comprehending how this happened. And why.”
One side of Mua’s mouth tilted as he brushed a stray pine needle off his wool blend overcoat. The move was as refined as the Italian name which undoubtedly lined the garment—and gave her a supersized version of the creeps. The man spoke and dressed better than his brother but the wolf beneath the fleece was spawned from the same disgusting gene pool. She almost hated herself for opening the door to him this morning.
Almost.
Sometimes getting someone to see the light meant you had to go to dark places for them. Really dark places.
Zeke was worth the dark places.
He was worth anything.
“It was quite a simple choice,” Mua finally answered. “As you know, darling, time is a precious commodity to me right now. Leaving the country is a paramount priority for me—though doing so with Sergeant Chestain is equally significant. I’m sure that scenario fits into your plans as well, hmmm?”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “She’s not going to get killed or anything, right? I’m not a murderer. I’m not going to be your little helping bitch for that.”
The man chuckled. It actually made him look like a handsome magazine ad. She wanted to wretch again for even considering the idea.
“I assure you, lovely Luna, her well-being is of prime importance to me.” He handed the smart pad to one of his men then turned fully back to her. “As a matter of fact, our original plan was to simply slip her away in the middle of the night. We were but hours away from mobilizing on that when Sergeant Hayes arrived at her home. After he departed the next morning—”
“Wait.” She gulped against the lump that dumped in the pit of her stomach. “He l
eft…the next morning?”
Mua looked away, blatantly false in his “sympathy” for her. “I could show you our surveillance shots of his departure, though they are a little odd. He forgot his shirt. Seemed to barely have his boots on—”
“I don’t want to see the damn pictures.” She ignored Mua’s knowing leer. “Why didn’t you just take her then?”
“Her brother was still in the house.” He sighed. “Seems she has one for every day of the week.”
She wheeled on him as irritation joined her pain. “Right, right,” she snapped. “Got that picture, okay? Snow White and her seven adoring mutants.” She glared in response to his amused smirk. “So you followed her on Saturday night. She ended up at the Bastille,” –and I don’t want to know the reason why— “and that’s when you moved in?”
Mua’s only confirmation of that was a little arch of his brows. “It became apparent, rather quickly, that Rayna wasn’t willing to depart peacefully with us. When Hayes appeared and interceded, Vadim displayed brilliant thinking to move us forward with this test of the tracking chips upon which we’d been working.”
She looked from him to pie tin guy. “And you just had one conveniently laying around?”
His expression didn’t change. “I brought one, yes. The intention was to use it on Rayna.” He flicked a glance at the smart pad, seemingly satisfied with wherever Z was headed. “She would have been our inaugural recipient. When Vadim inserted it into Hayes instead, he saved us from risking a valuable commodity in the name of research.”
Luna shifted her gaze to the ground. Rayna Chestain was really only a name to her but it was a better designation than commodity. But caring for the woman, even by this sliver, wasn’t part of the plan. Chestain was ruining everything again. The only person that mattered here was Zeke. She had to make him see the depth of her devotion. When he realized she’d forged a deal with a demon for him, had agreed to get this dirty for him… This would be the magic formula at last. It had to be. He had to see everything she’d done for him. After this, he just had to know how much she loved him, right?
She looked back up but directed her gaze at the smart pad. “I still don’t understand where I come in,” she said. “You said you needed me to help activate the chip.” She waved at the screen. “But it’s clearly working. What is there left for me to do? Aren’t you just going to follow them, go get Rayna and—”
When Mua clasped her arm to break her off, she wondered if his perfect handsomeness was due to him being a robot. His grip was crushing.
“Darling, if all I want now is to ‘get her,’ why would I have authorized Vadim to put the chip into Hayes?” His eyes narrowed by dangerous fractions. “Procuring Rayna again is only going to be half my pleasure. Watching her bow to my will and obey every word I say, down to the moment I watch her crawl on her knees in the chains of another, shall be the other. She’ll do all of it without ever spitting at me again, too.” He gazed out over the Cascades peaks, many shrouded now in thick mist. “Hayes is the key to her perfect compliance. Her weakness is now our strength.” A slow smile spread across his smooth lips. “In the end, Rayna will be mine and Zeke shall be yours.”
Hearing him say it aloud made her heart squeeze with elation. She turned, unable to hold back her eager smile. “So how do I help?”
Mua chuckled and returned her look, flashing movie star perfect teeth. “Patience, lovely girl. For seventy-two hours, we run on silent stealth. After that, Hayes’ system will have assimilated the chip in its first phase of effectiveness.”
“You mean it does more than that?” She nodded at the smart pad.
Mua cocked his head with unwavering confidence. “We’ve only just began, darling.
Vadim pushed off the car and set his stare on her, too. He waggled his brows. “A kiss for luck and we’re on our way?”
Inwardly, she apologized to Karen Carpenter. On the outside, she gave the asswad a look that told him his balls were on the line if he took a step closer.
“Oooo,” Mua interceded. “Touchy, touchy, lovely Luna. Vadim only wants to help.”
The henchman lowered his eyelids and leered. “I’m good at helping.”
“Tell him to help from over there,” she retorted.
“That won’t make it terribly easy for you to practice for your part,” Mua answered. “Since it’s going to involve embracing Zeke, I assume you wish to get everything just right.”
Her guts did knot-tying practice again. Her chest heaved with disgust. But she forced her feet to step closer to Vadim. “If your hands go below my waist, your balls will be singing Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“Mama mia,” the guy drawled.
“Shut up.”
I’m only doing this for you, Zeke. You understand, don’t you? Of course you do. Sometimes we do shitty things for the ones we love. Because in the end, it’s worth it. In just a few days, we’ll have our happy end—and all this will be worth it.
Chapter Sixteen
Zeke was used to writing off a lot of stupid hunches to the paranoia that was sewn into his DNA the second he signed on for Special Forces. Not this time. No stupidity here. No paranoia, either.
The air in the cabin had gone from weird to outright uncomfortable. He was pretty certain it had started before they even got back here—during their little dance in the pizza parlor lot to be exact. The way Rayna had stared up at him, as if seeking something but sensing she wouldn’t find it, had ripped through his gut like a shithook’s rotor. Every muscle had jerked with the longing to flatten her to the car’s hood and demand she give up every thought that darkened her eyes so much. Then he would have kissed her in gratitude for the disclosure, promising her more rewards once they got back here. Though there would be that matter of her flippant language in the gift shop to address, preferably in the form of a few good swats to her inner thighs…
One night of indulging the dynamic doesn’t make her yours to do that with. To think of doing that with.
So here they were at the crossroads of Uneasy Avenue and Tension Boulevard. Rayna’s car was clearly stalled at the light, stuffed with so many thoughts that the windows were clogged with the mounting pile. In his car? An arsenal of rifles, primed and waiting to blast those damn panes out.
Dinner was simple, boxed macaroni and cheese that she managed to inspire with spices and some packaged sundried tomatoes, though they ate it in stilted silence. Z got himself a reprieve from her taciturnity by asking about the kids with whom she volunteered once a week at the base’s Child Development Center. With Halloween days away, the excitement was high. They’d already made candy collection bags, as well as little ghosts for the classroom. Audrey was going to be Strawberry Shortcake. Rajan was pumped to dress up like Spiderman. Then there were her “creative” kids: Logan wanted to be a walking cocoa machine complete with working spigot, and Veronica had her heart set on being some creature called Derpy Hooves.
He thought he had her loosened a little again, enough to try and get inside her head once more, when the conversation fell upon the subject of the kids’ annual trip to the pumpkin patch—which was happening tomorrow.
With a tight wince, Rayna had excused herself.
With a tighter wince, Z relocated himself to the couch.
Passing the next four hours with a marathon of Ice Road Truckers didn’t ease the weight on his mind by one ounce. Or the pressure in his body. Though the mental shit was a confusion he didn’t want to untangle right now, he sure as hell knew what was going on in his nerves and muscles—especially the one between his legs.
He was getting hooked on a drug called Rayna Chestain. And damn it, he had no idea how to rehab himself out of it.
He finally dragged his ass into the downstairs bathroom for a shower. Making the temperature ice-cold helped him as much as a cheap condom during wild animal sex.
“Nice, asshole,” he muttered while tucking the towel around his waist, as well as the boner that shoved against it. “Could you do any worse for mental
metaphors?”
He opened the cabinet to grab a fresh towel to hang on the rack. And groaned.
Laying on top of that towel was the heart-shaped paddle Garrett had left up here. There was a smaller wood spanker, a strict leather flogger, adjustable nipple clamps on a gold chain, and a pair of soft leather handcuffs.
“Garrett Hawkins, you’re a dead man.”
He grumbled it as he held the clamps up. The chain that connected them glimmered in the light. His mind instantly filled with the fantasy of putting them on Rayna. Oh, yeah. The matching gilt tints in her skin would glow as she endured the pain for him, as her nipples went from copper to crimson for him…
He let the clamps drop into the sink as he dipped his hand to his cock. If he didn’t get release from this pressure now—
He’d gotten only halfway through his first stroke when a crash from the kitchen filled the cabin.
“Fuck.”
A thousand images filled his mind, none of them good. There was no damn way Mua could know they were here unless the cockroach had gotten to Garrett or Franz, or had his minions hack into the team’s personal records. Neither scenario had a bright side of any kind. And if the din wasn’t Mua breaking in, then it had to be something like a pissed-off raccoon, mountain lion, or bear.
“Fuck.” He repeated it as he skidded around the corner to the kitchen.
There were no marauding forest creatures. No armed and clumsy Mua henchmen, either. The wound in his upper back, now throbbing due to Rayna’s debridement and butterfly bandage treatment of this morning, thanked him for that.
But suddenly, ripping open those dressings seemed a really good plan. He wondered if he could go back and pick that box as the alternative to what he did encounter.
Rayna stood next to the sink where the running water was fast filling one side with wash bubbles. She’d changed back into his Henley, though he’d gotten her a set of pajamas in town. Next to her bare feet were both their dinner plates, in pieces now, surrounded by squished macaroni and spattered cheese. Her head was dipped but not so low that he didn’t see the harsh wobble of her chin and the heaving breaths in her chest.