by Chloe Cox
“I need time,” she said. “Go deal with the security issue. Go make it safe here.”
Ford frowned, his eyes sad, but he didn’t move. “Adra,” he said.
“Please,” she said. “Please, Ford? This isn’t my first time.”
Ford smiled a kind of haunted smile.
“No, it isn’t.”
“I know what I need,” Adra said. “I need you to go make the club safe. I need…”
“You’ll need to talk to me,” Ford said. “Eventually. But I’ll deal with this now. I’ll do you anything you want.”
He had walked half way to the door before he turned around.
“You know that, right?” he said.
“You’ll do anything I want,” Adra said.
Ford grinned. “Within the rules.”
And then he was gone.
chapter 7
Adra spent the rest of the morning into the afternoon by herself. She didn’t know if she truly wasn’t needed on set or if Ford had told everybody to leave her alone, but she was grateful for the respite either way. She needed it.
After Ford and that scene, she really needed it. A lifetime might not be long enough to calm down from that. Adra was grateful for whatever she could get.
Besides, the Volare gardens were somehow peaceful, even if all hell was breaking loose outside. The police still hadn’t managed to get the crowds totally under control, the photographers kept trying to climb trees or whatever else they could find, and that stupid stoplight still wasn’t working, adding traffic to all the confusion.
Too bad Adra felt anything but peaceful.
He had absolutely wrecked her. She spent the first hour at least just dipping her toes in the koi pond, playing chicken with those huge, hungry fish, waiting for her heart rate to go down. Part of her was angry with him, though she knew he wasn’t at fault—he’d checked the safeword; she’d consented. She wasn’t angry with him for what he’d done; she was angry with him for what he’d revealed.
What he’d revealed about her.
About them.
She wasn’t going to be able to run from this. From what she felt. The physical need she felt for Ford Colson was so strong it had become a deafening chorus, drowning out all other rational thoughts, making it impossible to tell what she actual wanted, thought, felt. It all got subsumed to this want. It reduced her to nothing more than a physical need she knew she couldn’t meet.
Oh God, if she let it go… if she let herself want him… need him…
That would be the end. She was so, so scared that that would be the end of her. It felt like letting herself fall into the gravitational pull into the sun: inevitable, and ending in fiery death. Everyone would get burned.
Hours of lying out in the sun, breathing, meditating, stretching—nothing worked. She was a goddamn mess no matter what she did. So she was more than just relieved when her brother Charlie finally called her back. She was grateful.
“You’re a jerk, Charlie, but I am so glad to hear from you,” she said.
“Well, I love you, too,” he said.
Adra sighed, and dipped her toe back in the koi pond. There was one fish that seemed really, really hungry for some toe, and she just could not leave well enough alone.
“Charlie, what are you doing?” she asked.
He was silent until he sighed.
“I don’t know, exactly.”
“I don’t need to tell you what it does to Nicole.”
“No.”
“So what… Charlie, just why?”
“I wasn’t actually gone that long, you know. I was just out late. I came back right after she talked to you.”
“Yeah, I know, she texted me,” Adra said, getting annoyed. “And you know that’s not the goddamn point.”
“I just needed some time to think, Adra,” Charlie said. “I know how shitty that sounds, but you don’t know what it’s like. I get so overwhelmed, with the kids and everything, and I just need like…I need to get it out of my system. Like a safety valve, you know?”
Adra could feel herself starting to freak out, could feel the tears welling up inside her, and willed it away. That was her own reaction, not Charlie’s, and she wasn’t going to put it on him.
She would, however, tell him the truth.
“You sound like Dad, Charlie.”
“I’m not like Dad,” he said vehemently. “I’m sober, Adra. And I come home. I’ve always come home. You know, you have no idea what it’s like, having a family that depends on you for everything. You have no idea.”
“No, I don’t,” she admitted.
“Everyone needs a safety valve,” Charlie went on. “It’s not just me. I’m just… I just suck at it, that’s all.”
Adra thought about her own situation, and how wonderful it would be to have a freaking safety valve. And then she laughed. “You really, really do suck at it, big brother.”
“I know.”
“I mean, disappearing like that?”
“I know.”
“Is this sustainable, Charlie?” Adra asked softly. She didn’t really want to hear the answer. She already knew the answer. Of course it wasn’t sustainable; the only question was how it would end, and whether Charlie could find a way to make it work before he flamed out.
They both knew how it had ended for their father.
“I don’t just mean for Nicole, Charlie. I mean for the boys, you know? They know something’s up. You know what it does to them.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he said finally.
“You know I’ll help however I can,” Adra said. “I can pay for a nanny, or—”
“I’m not taking any more money from my little sister,” Charlie said.
Adra cursed.
“Of all the stupid, macho—”
“That’s not it, Adra. It’s just…” Charlie sounded tired, all of a sudden. Very tired. “That’s not sustainable, either. You can’t fix my problems.”
Adra felt little tears pricking at her eyes. She hated it whenever anyone said that, because there was nothing she could say back. No matter how hard she worked, no matter how much of herself she gave, it remained true: she couldn’t fix their problems. It always put another crack in her heart.
“So what are you going to do?” she said softly.
She knew she didn’t quite hide the sound of those tears fighting to come to the surface, and she cursed again, this time silently, knowing it would kill Charlie.
“I don’t know, Adra,” Charlie said. “But I promise you I’m going to figure it out. Ok? I promise you.”
“Just find a safety valve, will you?” Adra said.
“I will,” Charlie said. “I have to. Don’t stress, ok? Please?”
“Ok,” Adra lied.
“Maybe find your own safety valve in the meantime,” Charlie said, only half-joking. “Love you.”
Adra laughed it off.
But when she got off the phone, she was somehow even more of a mess than she had been before. Charlie turning into their father, or some milder incarnation of him, running away from his family over and over again, was one of Adra’s worst nightmares. She knew that wasn’t fair, and she knew it was kind of screwed up, how invested she was in Charlie’s family, but, well, it was all she had. Charlie had managed to make a go of it, even after their disastrous childhood, watching both parents blow in and out of their lives. Adra hadn’t even made it that far. And she couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t. She’d learned that the hard way.
But she so badly wanted Charlie to make it.
And yet it was something else he said that kept rattling around inside her brain while she sat back down by the koi pond. Something else that wouldn’t let her go.
Find your own safety valve.
Yeah, that would be freaking fantastic. A safety valve. That was exactly what she needed, before she did something irreversibly stupid.
Well, it was possible she already had done something stupid.
Adra leaned back in the sun and took her j
acket off. Thinking about Ford made her feel too feverish, too restless.
And powerless. Absolutely powerless to prevent the worst from happening.
And maybe that was because she was fighting it.
Adra sat bolt upright. She almost laughed out loud. She’d run from Ford after the one night they had because she didn’t think she could handle a physical relationship with him without falling hopelessly in love, and then it had turned out he’d wanted more anyway, and so she’d had to stay away. But things were different now, now that they’d talked about it. Now that they both knew the score.
Weren’t they?
At least for Ford?
And for Adra…who the hell knew. But maybe if they gave in, if they had rules, maybe it would all be manageable. Maybe it would make sense. Maybe she wouldn’t feel constantly on the edge of delirium, one touch, one thought away from losing herself in this need for someone else.
That gnawing terror crept in to her thoughts then, that sense that needing someone would be the worst possible thing she could do, and that she might not be able to prevent it from happening. Which turned out to be a good thing, because Adra did what she always did when she felt frightened: she held her head high.
And saw a goddamned photographer.
The man was in the bushes. The actual, real life, bushes. Pointing a camera at her while she lay out half clothed in the sun.
For a second, they stared at each other.
And then Adra shouted, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
She surprised herself with her reflexes. She’d always been kind of quick when she was pissed off, and the idea that this scumbag had just been taking photos of her while she contemplated the most intimate, important facts of her life enraged the hell out of her. Which must have surprised the photographer, because she actually blocked his exit out.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Adra demanded. “Give me that camera!”
“What? No!” he shouted back as Adra grabbed at it. It was huge, an easy target.
“Give me the freaking camera!”
Adra might have had the element of surprise and general shock, considering the photographer probably never expected to be tackled by a female featherweight, but that didn’t last. There was a definite moment, when they were both struggling for the camera, when it became obvious that no, this was a fully grown man, and this was not a fair fight.
“This is private property, you bitch!” the photographer screamed and yanked at the equipment with his full strength, sending Adra sprawling backwards.
And right into Ford.
She didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. She recognized the feel of him. The size of him. The planes and angles of his muscled torso, the strength of his arms, the roughness of his callused fingers.
He’d caught her, the way he had before, and this time she couldn’t fight it.
She forgot about the photographer.
She forgot about her brother.
And she forgot about the looming dread she felt whenever she thought about letting herself give in to it.
She looked up at him, dazed and dizzy, as he spun her around. She felt her fingers on his chest, and couldn’t help but press into his hard flesh, couldn’t help but feel the warmth start to spread, the beat start to throb between her legs, and she thought, Oh God, this is happening.
“Are you ok?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yes. I just…”
She shook her head.
“He was taking pictures. From the bushes. We got into an argument about it.”
Adra looked over at the photographer who was busily checking his camera for damage, muttering to himself.
When she looked back, Ford was still looking at her with an intensity that left her breathless.
“But you’re ok?” he asked again.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said.
“Excuse me,” Ford said.
He stepped around Adra and walked toward the photographer.
Adra couldn’t see Ford’s face, but she recognized that body language. He’d looked like that when he’d confronted Derrick for being rude on the very first day, only this time he looked much, much more dangerous. He looked like the Terminator, walking toward his target with that inexorable sense of destruction.
Whatever the photographer saw on Ford’s face, it scared the crap out of him.
“You called her a bitch,” Ford said. “And you took pictures of her without her consent. Is that correct?”
“I’m just doing my job, man,” the photographer said. He raised the camera again, like it was a means of self-defense. “Maybe she shouldn’t be out where anybody can—”
Ford knocked the camera out the man’s hands, sending it flying into the koi pond.
“This is private property,” Ford said. “You are trespassing. And the only reason I’m not grinding you into the dirt is because she wouldn’t like it. Adra, do you want me to hold him for the police?”
Adra knew she shouldn’t be smiling. She really shouldn’t. But that scumbag had made her feel somewhat violated, and now it felt like she had the world’s biggest, baddest pit bull on a leash.
Sometimes you just had to take a win where you found it.
“No, thank you,” she said. “The camera was enough. Now I just want him gone.”
“Are you going to let me throw you over the wall,” Ford asked the photographer. “Or are you going to climb?”
He climbed.
And then, suddenly, they were alone.
And as soon as that photographer had cleared the wall, Ford was back at Adra’s side, in front of her, running his hands down her arms, her cheek, her neck, as though he were checking for cracks in fine china, his eyes burning and his body seemingly oblivious to the effect he was having on her. She was dizzy, drunk with it all over again, her mouth refusing to form words lest they get him to stop what he was doing.
“You’re ok?”
She nodded.
“I am so sorry, Adra,” he said, his voice rough. “That was completely unacceptable. That will never, never happen again, I promise you. Look at me,” he said.
He tilted her chin up toward his, and his blue eyes locked on hers.
“I promise you,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, legitimately confused.
“I said I’d keep these people out,” Ford said. “And I said I’d make sure you had time after this morning.”
This morning.
Adra shuddered. Just the mention of it, and the sensations poured over her again. The memory of the complete control he had over her mind…she’d had no idea he was such a good Dom.
No, she had. She just hadn’t let herself think about too much. No point in driving yourself crazy with what you can’t have.
Except now it was all she could think about.
“You gave me time,” she said quietly. “Plenty of time.”
“Do you need more?”
Adra swallowed. His hands were still on her shoulders, his thumbs resting on her collarbone.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m ok. It was…it was ok, Ford.”
Adra studied his face, looking for a sign, any sign at all, about what he was thinking. He hadn’t needed time to collect himself, to recover, to process. Had it really not affected him the way it had affected her? Oh God, what if it hadn’t? What if it was just routine for him, just a scene, not something that grabbed him from the inside and wouldn’t let go?
“Adra, are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she said, and forced herself to look away. “I’m totally fine.”
She stepped away, and Ford released her. The sudden absence of his hands felt cold.
“Santos wanted to know if you were available to coach the second scene this afternoon,” Ford said. “I offered to do it alone, but he thinks he needs a sub’s perspective.”
Adra licked her lips. Her mouth was dry. Could she do it again? With Ford? It was
like entering the Thunderdome or something. She was still wrecked from this morning.
“I can tell them no,” Ford said. “I can tell them to fuck off, right now, if you want me to. I’ll get them all out of here.”
Adra smiled. That was insane.
“No,” she said. “I said I was fine. Let’s go do our jobs.”
“Our stupid, stupid jobs,” Ford said. “Remember when you were only an agent?”
“And you were only a lawyer?”
“We had no idea how good we had it.”
No, Adra thought. No, we didn’t.
“Any idea what Santos wants from me?” Adra asked.
Ford held open the door to Volare, his face darkening slightly.
“I can’t wait to find out,” he said.
chapter 8
As he walked Adra back inside, Ford kept thinking about this old television show he used to watch as a kid. It was the first version of the Hulk that he’d ever seen, the mild mannered doctor who, when provoked, would turn into this crazy green giant and violently save the day. Only Ford’s inner hulk was his dominant nature. And he felt like he was on the verge of Dom-ing out every time he touched Adra’s skin. Every time he saw her brush the hair out of her face. Every time he saw an emotion, any emotion, pass across her beautiful face, and that was all the damn time, because he didn’t know anyone who felt as much as Adra.
He was doing everything he could to rein in his inner Dom until he was sure. And she was making it damn hard.
And more than that—definitely more than that—he wanted to protect her. Needed to protect her. He couldn’t believe he’d allowed a goddamn photographer to get that close to her, but he knew his anger over that had as much to do with what had happened between them this morning as it did anything else.
After all, the damn photographer hadn’t messed with her head by spontaneously dominating her. Ford had.
That morning, with the scene, there had just been…something. Some moment. One of those crystalline moments when it was suddenly clear what was what, what needed to be done, and who needed to do it. One of those few moments that happened in a lifetime, and Ford had seized it. And it led him to the inescapable conclusion that Adra was the perfect sub for him.
No. Not just perfect for him. Adra was his sub. He was her Dom. They both knew it. And there was no escaping it.