Defensive Zone

by Catherine Gayle

  That wouldn’t be a good idea. For either of us.

  I put both hands on her shoulders and pushed her away, breaking off the kiss before it became a hell of a lot more. Her eyes were glassy and confused, and it took a mountain of restraint to keep myself from tossing her over my shoulder like a freaking caveman.

  But I didn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  “Ten minutes,” I said gruffly. Then I guided her to the stairs and gave her a nudge so she wouldn’t follow me into my bedroom while I changed.

  BY THE TIME he came downstairs again, my entire body was thrumming with anticipation for whatever was to come.

  This was it. Any minute now, I’d find out the truth about what he’d been doing when he was arrested last season, and then we could finally bury that in the past so we could move forward.

  I’d been expecting him to show up as Dirty Harry, though, dressed in some sort of black leather bondage gear, not in his Mr. Rogers getup. He was wearing a full suit, complete with the requisite bow tie. Hell, he even had on a buttoned vest underneath the suit jacket. I didn’t have a clue what to make of that. And he had something I couldn’t make out tucked in one hand. Whatever it was, he shoved it in a pocket before I could figure it out.

  He was still hot as hell, of course, and I had to restrain myself to keep from stripping every piece of that suit off him so I could lick him from head to toe, but to say I was disappointed in the lack of kinky gear would be an understatement.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Go? Where?” Despite my confusion, I was on my feet in about half a nanosecond. Maybe he had a basement dungeon after all.

  His big, warm hand landed on my waist, and my pulse went through the roof as he guided me toward a door in the kitchen. But instead of a stairwell, it led to his garage.

  Damn.

  He opened the passenger-side door of his car and angled his head toward the seat. “Get in.”

  Yeah, I was disappointed that we were going somewhere instead of staying put. That made the likelihood of us engaging in sexy times go down dramatically. Still, I climbed in, adjusting my above-the-knee skirt to give him a bit of a view while he closed the door and stalked around to the driver’s side.

  Sure enough, he glanced down at my legs for a long moment before starting the engine.

  I bit my lower lip, trying to keep my smile from getting too out of control. No point looking like a madwoman. That wouldn’t help. “So where exactly are you taking me?”

  “To show you what you want to know,” he replied, gruff and terse. Damn, but he was hot when he got annoyed. He backed out of his garage, pressing a button to close the door as he turned the car onto the street, heading toward downtown.

  After that, he didn’t say a word. I kept quiet, too, watching the scenery through the windows and trying to contain the myriad emotions swirling through my veins. I’d never been good at keeping my feelings private. They tended to bubble out of me, exploding all over whoever happened to be in the general vicinity. If I wasn’t careful, it wouldn’t be long before Harry—no, Cody, since he seemed determined to have me call him by his name, even though Dirty Cody didn’t have anywhere near the same ring to it—was covered in a blanket of my nerves, lust, anticipation, and maybe a hint of anger. The anger part was due to him keeping me in the dark. I wasn’t good at surprises, and that seemed to be what he wanted to spring on me.

  In no time, he found a spot to park along the road next to a place I’d never noticed before. The sign on the side of the building read Leather & Lace, and my already pounding heartbeat jolted into an erratic, staccato drumbeat as I looked at the wall of darkened windows.

  “You don’t have a dungeon at home,” I said with way too much excitement tingeing my tone. “You go to a club.”

  I was already in the process of opening my door to rush out and see what this place was all about when Cody stopped me with a strong hand on my shoulder. His eyes were almost fully black with a need that matched my own. I felt it all the way to my girly parts, which left me squeezing my thighs together. Yep. Already wet. Holy cannoli, this was going to be the best sort of torture.

  “You stay with me when we’re in there. Don’t leave my side. And you’re too recognizable for your own good, so I need you to wear this, and I’m going to call you Sugar while we’re inside the building, not by your name.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a black, lacy, carnival-esque mask.

  “Seriously?” I spluttered.

  “Do you really want word getting back to your father that you were in a BDSM club? With me?”

  I supposed he had a point, but I still scowled at him for good measure.

  “Turn around and let me tie it in place,” he grumbled.

  Yeah, I turned my head and let him put it on me. And I tingled in all the right places when his fingers brushed along the nape of my neck as he swept my hair out of his way. “You’re hot as fuck when you get pissy, you know,” I muttered.

  His response was a muffled grunt.

  “Speechless? Surely you realize by now I’m into you.” I spun around again, this time to find him putting on something that was like a twist on a Batman mask, only without the pointy ear things. It completely obscured his hair, so there was no chance of seeing those gorgeous ginger locks, but it left his eyes, nose, and mouth free.

  Those midnight eyes were boring into mine.

  “That mask is kind of kinky,” I said. Another grin spread over my whole face in a flash, and I bit my lip to keep myself from jumping him right this second.

  I felt rather than heard his sigh, which came close to making me giggle. Pushing his buttons was way too much fun.

  “I meant what I said. Stay with me.”

  “Why? You afraid I’m going to run off and let someone tie me up or something?” I rolled my eyes when his only response was to continue staring at me. “I promise, the only person I want tying me up is you, okay? Let’s go in.”

  His eyes flared.

  Hmm. I might have discovered another of his buttons. Did he want to handcuff me to the bed or something? I’d probably be down with that. Hell, I’d probably be down with anything he wanted to do, as long as it meant the two of us getting naked and sweaty together, preferably sometime in the very near future. Like tonight.

  This time when I grabbed the handle, I didn’t let him stop me from climbing out of the car. A slight breeze fluttered around my bare legs, causing the hem of my skirt to tickle my overly sensitive skin. Good grief, just being so close to him and thinking about what his filthy fantasies might be had my whole body on high alert, primed for anything. A couple of finger swirls around my clit, like he’d done the other night, would probably be all it took to get me off.

  He made his way around the car and fed a credit card into the meter, then placed the receipt in the window. I was so antsy to go inside and find out what all went on in this place that I walked toward the door without waiting for him.

  He caught up to me and snaked an arm around my waist, drawing me up against his side until his heat wrapped around me and his woodsy cologne tickled my nostrils. “You’re supposed to stick to me like glue, remember?” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. I wasn’t about to let him mollycoddle me in there. Or anywhere. Never before had I gone somewhere so far outside of the protective bubble my father had insisted on keeping me in, and I wanted to explore to my heart’s content, not have Cody—or anyone else—decide what I should and shouldn’t do. “Once we’re inside,” I muttered, not that I intended to stick to that.

  “You’re not getting inside without me.” He must have recognized the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me look I was giving him, because he rushed to add, “You aren’t a member, so you need someone to sponsor you. They don’t just let anyone off the street come into the place. The privacy of their members is one of their biggest priorities. Besides, if you’re with me, no one will think you’re there for…well, for whatever. They’ll leave you alone.”

  �
�What if I don’t want to be left alone?” And the idea of being there for whatever, as he had put it, was exactly what I wanted. As long as it involved him.

  He let out an inhuman sort of jealous, growly sound that made my belly flutter. Maybe I was getting to him better than it seemed.

  But he opened the door and led me into the lobby of what appeared to be a perfectly normal, businesslike establishment, with dark, hardwood floors and boring beige walls. Granted, in most businesses, there were open doorways and halls, big windows looking into offices, and whatnot. That wasn’t the case here, where every door leading out of the lobby was firmly closed, and there was no way to see what was going on.

  A daunting specimen of a man stood behind a desk, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt stretched tightly across his chest, revealing all sorts of muscle. His smile lowered his intimidation factor by a couple of points, but not by much. “If it isn’t Professor OTK… Wasn’t expecting you this evening,” he said, nodding his head toward Cody. “And you’ve never brought a guest before.”

  Professor OTK? What the hell was that about? I glanced up at Cody to gauge his reaction to being called something so ridiculous, but what was visible of his face was as much of a mask as the actual mask covering part of it. Still, a twinge of excitement rushed through my veins to learn that he’d never brought anyone with him before.

  My reaction was ridiculous. It shouldn’t matter to me one way or another that I was the first, but there wasn’t any point denying it mattered. A lot, actually.

  He tugged me closer to his side, his big palm curling over my hip in a move that was decidedly possessive and maybe even a little bit protective. “Take out your ID, Sugar,” he murmured next to my ear. Then he lifted his head and met the gaze of the dude behind the counter. “We’re just observing tonight.”

  The hell with that. I’d never been to a BDSM club before, and Lord only knew when I’d get the chance to come to one again. I didn’t want to sit back like a fly on the wall. I wanted to be in the middle of things. I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he pressed his foot over my toes hard enough to have me sucking in a breath in surprise, but not hard enough to actually hurt me. “ID,” he repeated.

  I glared at him, but I fished my driver’s license out of my wallet and passed it over to the muscled gatekeeper.

  The guy snickered, like he knew some sort of inside joke that I was missing out on, but he didn’t say anything. For a long moment, he studied my ID. He probably could have memorized every tiny detail on it by the time he glanced up at me. “I need you to lift the mask for a moment, Sugar.”

  Cody stiffened beside me when the guy called me Sugar. Served him right if he was feeling jealous, even though it left me tingling with awareness…because it meant Cody was starting to soften toward me. Maybe he didn’t want to be, but he was. I counted that as a victory.

  I lifted the mask enough that the guy could see my full face. Once he gave me a nod and passed my license across the desk, I settled the mask back in place. Cody reached up to adjust it, his fingers gently brushing my cheek and leaving goose bumps in their wake.

  “All right. You two have a good time,” the guy said. He took a brochure of some sort out of a stand on the desk and passed it into Cody’s hands. “You’ll make sure she’s aware of all the rules?”

  Cody let out an indecipherable grumbly sound that apparently passed as confirmation and gave me a tug toward one of the heavy closed doors. He held it open so I could pass through, and I ducked under his arm. Not that he let me get too far ahead of him. I’d barely stepped into the dark hallway before he clasped his hand around mine, threading our fingers together.

  I was equally annoyed that he was going to slow me down and turned on by the thought that he was being so touchy-feely without me prompting it. That was what I wanted, right? Well, at least it was a start. I wanted sweaty, naked shenanigans. Handholding was a decent start, but he was going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that before I’d be satisfied.

  My eyes finally adjusted to the dim lighting once we’d moved a few feet away from the door. And then I nearly stopped short. Because holy hell, this was the kind of kinky dungeon-esque stuff I’d imagined.

  We’d stepped into a large room, with seating around the edges, where some people were eating, drinking, and talking—and watching. In the middle of the room, there was a big cross kind of thing with a nearly nude man strapped to it while a pleather-clad woman struck him with some sort of flogger. Not too far from them, a couple of men were busy tying up a woman in a complicated series of rope knots that looked painful, restrictive, and hot as hell. Another couple could be found kitty-corner from them, where a naked woman was handcuffed to a bed while another chick held a lit candle over her, dripping hot wax onto her stomach.

  I was so fascinated by all of this that my feet came to a standstill, even though Cody was still plowing his way through this room, his fingers tugging on mine until I stumbled after him again.

  “I thought you said we were observing,” I muttered, keeping my voice down because I didn’t want to interrupt anyone or draw their attention to us. The truth was that even though I had an unflinching fascination with everything going on around me, now that I could see it, the idea of being in the middle of some of these things gave me pause.

  Like the flogging. That seemed a bit extreme. Didn’t it? I gave an internal nod, agreeing with myself, as my eyes strayed back to the couple with the flogger. She swung again, and the leather stringy things fell against the man’s chest hard enough that I could hear the slap raining down. Yeah, extreme—but it still drew a response from my girly parts. Particularly because these people couldn’t get away from whatever was being done to them. I should be turned off by that, but instead I found myself wanting to be restrained.

  By Cody.

  Granted, I didn’t want him to do most of those things to me. But there were an awful lot of things he could do to me while I was handcuffed to his bed that I would enjoy the hell out of. Maybe too much.

  The only thing I was certain of at the moment was that I was a bundle of confused nerves. Nothing racing through my head made sense.

  “We are just observing,” Cody said, reminding me I was supposed to stick with him by squeezing my hand a bit harder than necessary. “But I thought you wanted to see my kink.”

  I waved a hand, indicating the insanity in front of us. “This isn’t…” My voice trailed off as the guy getting flogged flinched and cried out like a little girl when the flogger came down harder than it had before.

  Yeah, that was enough of that for one lifetime, thank you very much. I caught up to Cody and put my head down, trying to ignore the way my breasts tingled. This was some crazy shit, and I might have gotten in over my head. Sometimes curiosity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  He let out a snort-like laugh, leading me toward another long hall. “I have no qualms about what other people do in here, but most of it doesn’t do much for me.”

  A breath of relief whooshed through my lungs. Who knew I was feeling quite that uptight over it all?

  He opened a door to another room full of chairs, with a few stations—for lack of a better word—set up along the outskirts. One station looked like a classroom, which was situated next to what appeared to be an upscale office. Another was undoubtedly a doctor’s office, and in the opposite corner was a little girl’s bedroom complete with a four-poster bed and pink unicorn decor. Across from that was a locker room setup. Next to that was a ritzy living room…and in that station, a man in a business suit had a woman in a French maid’s outfit bent over his knee so he could spank her.

  No one else was in this space but the two of them and the two of us.

  Keeping his hand firmly on mine, Cody moved farther inside, until we were beneath a patch of light. The man looked up, and some sort of unspoken communication went on between him and Cody. The guy nodded. The next thing I knew, Cody was guiding me to a chair near them.

  “Sit and watch,” h
e whispered, gently nudging my shoulder until I complied, plopping down so fast I nearly bruised my tailbone.

  He took the seat next to me. I kept waiting for him to say something, to explain why we were watching this man spanking the maid, but he remained silent, watching. So I watched, as well.

  They were both fully clothed, although the well-dressed man had raised the maid’s skirt up so that only her panties covered her private areas. He held both of her arms behind her back with one hand, slowly and deliberately smacking her cheeks with the other in an almost hypnotic rhythm.

  Despite my inherent discomfort, my blood roared through my veins, nearly drowning out the slaps and the maid’s whimpers with its intensity. Because her whimpers weren’t filled with pain; they were needy, lusty, full of a turned-on-beyond-belief sort of ache that had me squirming in my seat and my breaths causing my chest to rise and fall heavily.

  His hand connected with her ass so hard that I jumped. He caressed her cheeks, rubbing away the sting as her fidgeting came close to matching my own. Then he delivered a few more quick swats, one cheek followed by the other in rapid succession, never allowing her a chance to guess where the next would land or brace herself against the blow. The maid yelped a few times before letting out a deep, erotic groan that started a veritable flood between my thighs.

  I might have groaned, too, if the way Cody looked at me was any indication. His eyes were filled with a mixture of surprise and no small amount of lust.

  And maybe just a hint of regret, although I didn’t have time to analyze that one.

  Because another woman came into the room, wearing a tiny, plaid skirt that showed off long, shapely legs and a white blouse tied beneath her ample breasts. Her midriff was completely bare, her blonde hair in pigtails, and her makeup schoolgirl-Barbie perfect. She looked like she’d walked straight out of a Britney Spears video. Her face lit up when she saw Cody, and she sauntered over to him.

  “I wasn’t expecting to find you here tonight,” she cooed, and I had a hard time not curling my hand into a fist and punching her too-perfect nose the way Dad and Luke had taught me to punch a guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She briefly glanced over at me, but it didn’t last long. All her attention was on Cody. “Wanna scene with me?” she asked him, making my hand itch. And I wasn’t a violent person, usually. I preferred to leave the punching to the hockey players in my life.