by Chloe Cox
Two things went through Bette’s crazed, clouded mind: he wanted her. He wanted her as much as she wanted him.
And: he was waiting. Waiting for something.
She remembered his promise: he’d get the truth out of her. Remembered that she couldn’t give in. Remembered that she couldn’t even come. And she remembered the club safe words: red, yellow, green.
“Green,” she whispered hoarsely.
His nostrils flared slightly, then the tendons in his neck stood out as he gave one powerful jerk and his belt snaked free. The leather tongue skimmed her ribs like a caress, beading her nipples and sending another of those deep squeezes to her core.
Oh God, what was he going to do with it?
“This is a piece of leather,” Cole said, as if he could hear her thoughts. “An inanimate object. The only way it can hurt you is if the person holding it decides to use it as a weapon. It’s not the belt you’re mad at, sub.”
Oh God, why did he have to know everything?
Bette was still struggling to contain the pressure he’d built inside her when she felt it.
Leather first and then the rough pads of his fingertips as he dragged his hand down the middle of her back. He kept going, grounding her in the sensations of leather and skin, his belt and his touch. Over her hip and down her leg, up the inside of one and down the inside of the other.
With each new stroke, she sank deeper into the mattress. There was just enough bite from the smooth edge of the buckle to keep her from lulling off to…not sleep; her body was too alive for sleep. But he was petting her into a hot, melty daze, stretching her out like a cat in the sun, and she had no doubt that if she had the equipment to purr, she’d be doing it.
He pushed her up onto some kind of satin bliss cloud, where she was aware of things like the sensation of leather and metal on her skin, but not aware of much else. Not even aware that her body was moving, insomuch as it could, the way he had her anchored. Until he pushed his other hand between her legs and under her pelvis, and she rocked down onto the heel of his hand and holy shit.
Pleasure arced through her. She let out a moan and clenched her butt, flexed her hips to try and hit that spot again. And there it was, pressure just right for another spark. Just right and not enough, not nearly enough.
“This is what you interrupted,” he said, his voice gravel and honey. “This is what you took away from Robbie.”
And then he was gone.
Bette wanted to sob. She wanted to scream that she was sorry. Most of all, she wanted him back. But she didn’t move. Most of all, she didn’t disobey.
And then she felt cold liquid on her exposed asshole, and she bucked so hard she nearly shot straight to the ceiling.
“Settle,” Cole said, his voice hard. “Unless you have something to say, sub?”
Bette wanted to scream. Instead she moaned, the word “Green” barely intelligible.
He spread the lube around her asshole in slow circles, the pressure increasing with every stroke. Bette closed her eyes, and moaned. She’d tried something like this before, but it was never…never like this.
The way he touched her.
She was shaking. Her thighs trembled, her hands gripped the sheets, her nipples bounced against the bed. The sheets were wet where she drooled on them, her lips parted in a silent moan as Cole’s finger worked its way into her tight asshole.
Fuck, it hurt, and it was so good.
She didn’t think she could take it, when she felt it—whatever it was—pressed against her. But Cole didn’t give her a choice. With one big, strong hand on her hip, the other slowly pressed the plug against her ass, and when he gave her the order, she was helpless to do anything but obey.
“Bear down,” he said.
Her body did it without her brain intervening at all, and with a soft pop, it was in her.
Holy hell, it was in her.
That sensation of fullness, of being overwhelmed, overpowered—it was inside her in a way she’d never felt before, and it kept her balanced on the brink of something big.
Don’t come, she told herself. Don’t come, don’t come, don’t come.
“Good girl,” he said again, and wiped the lube from his hand on the globes of her ass. Bette could only whimper in response. Whatever he was doing, whatever he was going to do, she didn’t know if she could take it. She didn’t know if that meant she would come or faint or scream her safe word, but she knew it would be something.
“Please,” she begged.
“I will tell you when you are done, sub,” he said. “You will count the strokes, out loud, so I can hear you. Understood?”
“Understood,” she rasped. “Understood, Sir.”
“Good.”
And with that, he spanked her.
Bette jerked forward, the force of the blow from his open palm reverberating through her flesh, the vibrations bouncing off the plug in her ass, the fullness in her body, multiplying as they shot straight to her core. She cried out, this shy of coming all over his hand, before she remembered.
“One!” she screamed.
His free hand smoothed up her back, giving her a break, until he came to her neck. He held her there, in the way she was getting used to recognizing. Held her in place, held her in submission.
And then he spanked her again.
“Two!” she moaned. “Three! Four!”
She took a big sobbing breath, and groaned into the bed, her body vibrating with tension, with the need to come.
“One more, sub,” he said.
With the last blow, he spanked her exposed pussy, and Bette saw an explosion of white. She buried her face in the mattress, her whole body aching with an orgasm she couldn’t have, and yelled.
“Five!”
From behind her, Cole smoothed his rough hands on the skin of her back, bringing her back down off the imminent peak, somewhere to safety. Her body pulsed around the fullness in her ass and the aching absence in her pussy, the contrast between the two enough to drive a sane woman crazy. And Bette wasn’t anywhere close to sane.
“Anything you want to say, sub?” he said, his voice sounding thick. It was the only thing she could hear over the pounding of her heart.
“Please,” she said. It was all she could get out.
“Please, what?” he said, his hand still teasing her skin. Like he knew what she was going to beg for. Like he knew she needed to come more than she’d need anything in her whole life. Like he wanted her to think about whether she’d earned it.
It was all she wanted. But when she spoke, Bette found she couldn’t lie. Not like this. Not with him.
“Please,” she whispered. “I want you to fuck me.”
Some part of her still had enough sense to be horrified at that admission, at how goddamn true it was. She didn’t just want to come. She wanted Cole to fuck her to that orgasm. She wanted him inside her, taking her, driving into her over and over again until she lost herself to him. She wanted to be good enough for him to take. To want.
There was a pause. Cole’s hands stopped moving on her back. She was almost on the verge of panicking when suddenly his big hands were on her hips, and he flipped her over on her back as if she weighed nothing at all, and then there was just Bette and Cole, looking at each other.
Her naked. Him clothed. The air between them crackling as she realized he completely, utterly owned her.
The look on Cole’s face was one of feral, primitive lust. And something else. Something more.
The complete, iron control of a Dom.
Wordlessly, he positioned himself between her legs. She was afraid to look away, afraid to lose eye contact. She held her breath while her Dom freed his rock-hard cock, wanting so badly to look while he held it, for a moment, in his big hand.
The look on his face was the most powerful thing she’d ever seen. Like a giant at war with himself. And she couldn’t look away.
“Touch yourself,” he rasped. “With your right hand. Make yourself come. Now.”
Bette’s hand moved all on its own, hurrying to obey, to please him. She wanted so much more, but she didn’t dare disappoint him. And he wouldn’t let her look away. The look in his eyes as she touched herself, the ferocity, the hunger, it undid her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his hand start to move on his cock.
That was all it took. All. It. Took. Her finger on her clit, his eyes pinning her in place, his domination complete without even having to touch her, and she came apart. In a sharp, bright release that left her dizzy, dazed, and still so hungry for him that she cried out.
Cole’s arm shot out. He grabbed her by the hair, his eyes never leaving hers, and came all over her stomach, her breasts. He pumped himself dry, his eyes boring into her as he marked her. Marked her.
Bette nearly came all over again.
She stared at it, the sticky whiteness thick and hot on her belly, until Cole forced her head back and kissed her, long, hard, deep. She kissed him back, her legs moving around him, her whole body responding, melting, moving with and for him. He hadn’t fucked her, even though she’d begged, and it only made her want him more. Crave him more. But she hadn’t earned it, and the shame of that lit a fire inside her.
It wasn’t until he pulled away that she felt how limp she was, how exhausted. Her brain was still broken, the many little pieces that had been blown apart only slowly coming back together as Cole took care of her.
He wiped her down, rubbed her legs, took her in his arms. Slowly, the warmth started to retreat, while consciousness came back. But the whole time he held her, there was something building. Something bubbling up as she slowly regained the ability to freaking talk, as she came up to full consciousness with the awareness that there was something that still needed to get out. Some pressure that hadn’t been released.
Which was why, when she finally opened her mouth to speak, what she actually said was, “My last name is Liffey.”
Bette knew she was an idiot. But for the time being, nestled against Cole’s chest and listening to his heart beat in time with hers, she didn’t care. She just drifted off into a blissful, dreamless sleep, fully aware that she’d kick her own ass tomorrow.
16
Cole needed to get his head in the game. He wasn’t technically on the job, but he was on a job. The most important job. Hunting Mark Duvall.
And he couldn’t stop thinking about Bette Liffey.
Of course he couldn’t. She’d been naked, spread, begging for him, and he’d done the only thing that felt right: he’d marked her.
But he’d wanted her. Wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone or anything. He’d wanted her with mindless determination, like something beyond words or conscious thought. But he was a Dom, so he’d controlled himself. Because no matter how much he wanted her, the facts didn’t change: she was a liar. Whatever else Bette Liffey was, she was exactly the kind of woman he couldn’t get involved with, for both their sakes. That’s what the facts said.
So why did the facts feel so damn wrong?
Just thinking about her made him hard. Made the world look fringed with light.
And he thought that while sitting in the parking lot of a strip club far enough away from New Orleans that Mascolo and Turnbull couldn’t be bothered to follow him out here, so it wasn’t one of the nicer ones.
To be fair, X-Pectations wasn’t particularly seedy, either. Nine out of ten parking-lot lights worked and nobody was skulking around in what shadows did exist.
Nobody except Cole, anyway. And he was on the side of the angels. He looked away from the employee exit long enough to glance at his watch, and that was when the door opened. A pair of women walked out, heads together as they talked. They wore street clothes and carried big bags over their shoulders. One had a duffel but the other one had some slouchy purse that immediately reminded him of Bette and her oversized bag that was big enough to hold a change of clothes and then some.
And all at once, he was thinking about her again.
The strippers reminded him of Bette in a lot of ways. In the course of his career, he’d met countless women just like these. Not all strippers, but enough. Women backed into a corner, trying to fight their way out while everybody kicked them back in the minute they saw an opening.
Whoever had pushed Bette back and kept knocking her down hadn’t damaged her so much that she couldn’t come back from it, but the bastard had her fighting—angry and afraid, but still fighting. For a sub to be willing to go toe to toe with a strange Dom to protect someone she didn’t even know, had taken a bottomless amount of guts.
But she was still afraid. Afraid enough that just giving him her name had been a goddamn triumph.
He wasn’t sure what got to him, about her.
Maybe it was the way she stood up for someone else. Maybe it was the way she was willing to face the consequences for her choices, no complaints. No hiding from that, anyway. Maybe it was the way she saw him, when she looked at him. Almost the same way he saw through her.
He’d never met a woman he resonated with like that. Certainly not a sub. It was a mindfuck of the highest order.
That’s what had made it damn hard not to take her, in the room, when she’d asked. When she’d begged. He was still thinking about it, about what it would be like if he just stopped caring about being a responsible Dom and did what he wanted. If he gave in to what had been happening in that room, whatever the hell it was that connected them. To the animal instinct that told him she was his, in a way no one else would ever understand, and to make sure she knew it. He’d marked her, but it wasn’t enough.
But it was also his job, as the Dom, to know what was too much, too soon, and he wanted too much from a sub who was still hiding. He didn’t know a damn thing about her, except her name. He damn sure didn’t know enough to make the kind of promises he’d be making if he took her.
Even if it felt like he did.
But he knew her name, now. That was a sacred trust. So as much as Cole wanted to use that information to look up who had hurt her, who had made her want to hide behind lies, he wouldn’t violate that trust. Even if he did want to find the bastard and make him regret every choice he ever made.
Christ, enough.
He was a damn Dom and he took care of his subs. He’d take what he wanted when it was right. He’d leave her breathless, bound, and too high off his cock to do much of anything but take more of it.
And in the meantime, he’d do his damn job.
While he was thinking about his sub, the two dancers had finished their post-shift cigarette. He watched them get into a car together—roommates, maybe, or more. Just as their taillights faded, the employee door opened again. This time, only one woman walked out. The one he was waiting for. Cole straightened and peeled himself away from his car.
“Hey, Kris,” he said, an easy greeting from where he stood. Close enough that she could hear him, not so far away that she couldn’t make a run for her car before he got to her. He didn’t want to scare her, and women tended to be jumpy in parking lots.
She jerked at the first sound of his voice, then blew out a self-deprecating laugh.
“Jesus, Cole,” she said. “When was the last time I saw you?”
Cole shrugged. It had been a while. When he first came to town and got wind that something was going down in vice, state-wide, he’d been more aggressive about talking to women who worked in Duvall’s clubs. It had gotten some of them in trouble, so he’d backed off, and then he’d ended up working Simone’s case involving a sketchy BDSM club backed by Duvall. After that resolved, he’d had time to go after Duvall again, but since then things seemed to have changed some.
He didn’t like it. It meant there were things he was missing. Pieces of the puzzle he’d never have, people who had come in and out of Duvall’s orbit without leaving a trace, people he’d never know about unless he got lucky. But it was what he had to work with.
“I’m back now,” he said.
“Well, what are you doi
ng out here? You’re not the backdoor type.”
“You don’t know what type I am, Kris.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
Cole grinned. If Kris wasn’t so vanilla, they might have had a thing when he first came to New Orleans. She’d been one of the first women who would talk to him about Mark Duvall, and she’d only done it at first because she liked him. If Cole had been the unethical type he might have been tempted.
Now? He’d just be thinking about Bette.
“I need info,” he said.
“Nope,” Kris said bluntly. “Sorry, Cole. I shouldn’t have talked to you the first time. You might be a good guy, but I don’t trust the rest of you, like, even a little bit. And there’s no way I want to get involved in whatever you’re here about.”
“Yeah, we’re in agreement on that.”
She paused mid-step and cocked her head at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just means you aren’t wrong. And that I’m not taking no for an answer on this one.”
Kris stood still, her body trapped mid-stride. Her eyes said she knew he was serious.
“You know I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he said. “No one knows I’m here. It’s all off the record.”
Suddenly Kris sighed, her shoulders going slack. She held out her bag to him with that same shy smile that let him know she wanted him. Cole took the bag, but not the offer. He gestured towards her car—he wasn’t kidding about making sure she got home safe.
“Well, your clock’s running,” Kris said. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to someone who dances at one of Mark Duvall’s clubs. Someone who’s willing to talk. Maybe someone who needs to talk.”
She stiffened immediately, was already starting to shake her head when Cole held up his hand. “Just a name and a number, Kris. That’s all I’m asking for. If I start hanging around Duvall’s clubs, you know what happens. I need you for this.”
The dancer put her hand on her hip and looked up at the sky, muttered something under her breath, then leveled him a hard stare. “I don’t owe you anything. None of us do.”