by Angel Payne
Her syllables slowed and then stopped as the man pushed up, releasing his hold on her arms so he could yank off his T-shirt with a pair of hard tugs. He stripped off his dog tags too and then wrapped the shirt around them and hurled the whole wad out into the dining room.
Ay dios mio. Every rippled inch of his torso was no less resplendent than this afternoon, when she’d had just the dim light of the wine room to help her gaze. The slice of light from her kitchen helped now, making it more impossible to reclaim her pulse from her bloodstream as he braced his hands to the tops of the dual ridges that dipped beneath his shorts.
“Let me make something clear.” His posture alone told her to interrupt him at her own peril. “Missions are what I do for a living—and that doesn’t define this.” He emphasized that by pinging a finger between his chest and hers. “It isn’t even in here anymore.” He swung the finger toward the door. “It’s out there, okay?”
Exasperation surged. She’d heard enough. She had enough. “Damn it, Ethan.” She tried getting away from him again but only got in a hard jab to his chest. “It’s not ‘out there.’” Was he seriously living that high in the clouds? Or maybe he’d eaten some amoeba in the Mexican seafood that gave him crazy delusions. “It’s never ‘out there’ with you guys. Your survival depends on it being right here and here”—she pointed at his sternum and forehead before sweeping her finger toward the room—“which turns this into a pretty convenient op target, right?” As the words spilled, so did her bitterness, stemming from the truth of every word she blurted. “I mean, why not?” Her breath wobbled. “Easy insertion point, yeah? Simple exfil too. After you’re done, you can just compartmentalize it all to a back drawer in the brain, and soon, it’s easy to forget it ever happ—”
The torrent of his lips, wild and consuming, didn’t just drown her words. He drenched every thought in her head and sensation in her body. Surely the flood had been forged by a volcano, for his mouth was as scalding as a surge of magma from a burning core. He was everywhere, fusing his tongue and lips to hers with rolling waves of sensual invasion.
Ava mewled in protest. It didn’t stop him by a beat. She raised a hand to pummel his shoulder. He seized her fist and slammed it into the mattress. Her mind ignited in fury. Her blood detonated in white-hot arousal. Maybe that was why she tried the same move with the other hand. Maybe it was why her stomach flipped when he handled it in the same way, adding a harsh growl this time.
No more than a minute passed before he lifted his mouth from hers.
Sixty seconds in which everything had changed.
The man who’d joked with her during the drive from Bella’s? Gone. The Dom who’d silently brooded at her during the party? Disappeared. Even the half-panther lover from the wine room, who’d just popped in for a cameo in her own kitchen, had fled the building. This creature was someone new. Something new. Her breath snagged, caught on thorns of confusion and even fear as she struggled for a definition that fit him now. Impossible. Anger didn’t begin to describe the ferocity of his gaze. His focus had reset to the power of a thousand, every degree zeroed in on her.
On a ruthless grunt, he shifted his body so her feet were freed from his—because he pinned her lower body with his crotch instead.
“Ay, Dios!” She gasped in punctuation. Even through his shorts and her jeans, his cock pulsed with enough force to tease the swollen ridge of her clit. It was bliss and torture in a single second.
“My thoughts exactly.” Ferocity clawed every note of his voice. “But I’m not sure God can save either one of us right now.”
“Wh-What the hell are you—”
“I tried to do this the decent way, sunshine.” His jaw tightened in proportion to his grip. “I asked nice. One word, one name, was all I wanted. We were going to sit here and just talk about it. I stripped the tags off, threw them out the door. I wanted you to have nothing but me, committed to knowing more about you. But you wouldn’t let it go. Apparently I wear those sergeant’s stripes on my fucking forehead, because that’s all you see. It’s all you want to see.”
She slammed her head to the side and gritted back more tears, accepting every word of the accusation. And why not? They were true. “Some things can’t be changed.” She prayed he heard the apology in her voice. “Some windows can’t be opened, damn it. They’re sealed shut, and that’s how people are doomed to see things.”
His angry breath seemed to fill the room. “Yeah? Well, that’s what hammers are for.”
Chapter Ten
Ethan watched Ava wrestle with that threat, licking her lips in hesitant curiosity but still not looking back at him. That was for the best right now. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been in a woman’s bedroom, just a sundress and bikini away from having her naked and screaming Yes, Sir nonstop but too enraged to make a single move.
Damn it, he hated mental smoke screens. In prisoners, the maneuver was maddening, but at least those poor shits had an excuse. From Ava, it was an insult. A bomb launched for maximum damage, intended to drive him back, generated from panic that rivaled any he’d felt from the poor morons they captured on missions. Fear that pushed at the realm of dread.
Of what?
Of him?
How? Why? Damn it, she’d been in that wine room this afternoon too. She’d had the same hours as him to remember every one of those incredible minutes and every second of the connection they’d forged. To realize the enormity of the trust she’d given him and the explosion they’d created because of it. And now she was talking about super glue on her windows?
Well, there was more than one way to open a goddamn window.
He didn’t give her any time to deliberate on his meaning. Or, more importantly, to develop a defense against him. While she still blinked in analysis of the hammer reference, he reared up and planted on his haunches—and took the bodice panels of her sundress with him. The little buttons made like buckshot all over the room, backed by her high gasp.
“Caramba! Ethan! What the hell are you—”
She stopped herself with another choke as he continued ripping down the middle of her skirt. He was glad she kept sputtering for a couple of seconds, because the sight of her light-bronze curves, tucked to perfection inside a halter bikini top and a string-tie bottom, had his tongue struggling for coordination too. Thank fuck his brain wasn’t stopped at the same red light. It hit the gas pedal right toward Domination Highway, and he enjoyed every second of the ride.
“Ethan?” He looped a sarcastic edge on it. “Who’s that?” After pushing away the torn sides of the dress, he leaned and caught her dropped chin with a thumb, redirecting her eyes back at him. “You’re going to call me Sir for a while.” He slid his other hand back to stroke the valley between her ear and her nape, a place he’d rapidly learned as one of her sensual hot buttons. “If you have a problem with that, tell me now.”
A ragged breath shuddered up her throat. “Bastard.”
He let his lips quirk up. “No. It’s Sir, remember?”
“Sir Bastard.”
He chuckled. The laugh came from relief as much as amusement. She wasn’t going to toss him out. Not yet. That gave him hope that this might work…that a taste of what they could physically be as Dom and sub would crack open her emotional ramparts too.
“Hmm.” He drew back again, dragging his hands over her breasts, stomach, and thighs as he went, letting his fingers play at the ties of her swimsuit. “For that, sassy baby, you won’t get my help getting out of the rest of this.”
Her nipples turned to small stones through the bikini top, though stubborn fires still flared in her eyes. “You mean I may actually get to wear it again?”
His hands were positioned beneath her thighs. Perfect. Two sharp pinches to the flesh just beneath her ass elicited a lovely little yelp as well as her renewed attention. “Take off your clothes, Ava,” he ordered evenly. “Now.”
He watched another skirmish cross her face. Part of her, that scared shitless girl who�
��d shed those tears on his fingers ten minutes ago, clearly clamored to give him the kiss-off to hell and beyond. But the other part, the woman who’d been longing for submission since well before their forest kiss, responded to the command like a kitten shown to a cream waterfall. She didn’t just want this. She needed it. The rapid rise and fall of her breasts, which she bared so beautifully for him by untying her bikini top, betrayed that. She was more demure about revealing the treasure beneath her bikini bottom, but he caught a long enough glance at the shimmering tissues to know cream wasn’t just flowing figuratively here.
The conclusion, beautiful as it was, laid down a conundrum. How did he give her what she needed without just handing over what she craved? How did he bash through her window without breaking her completely? And how did he do it all without giving in to the lust to simply spread her wide and fuck her so deeply, she wouldn’t remember anyone’s name except his? But that was no different than feeding a buddy the answers to an exam. No lesson learned. No trust bonded. No connection forged.
Connection. He couldn’t believe the word now echoed in his mind. It had been a long damn time since he’d even hoped for such a thing. Years since he’d met a woman who seemed perfect for it on all the levels for which he longed. It seemed unreal that he took in the naked splendor of such a woman now.
Yeah. He needed to do this right. For both of them.
Which added another hurdle in the challenge course. Her bedroom wasn’t a dungeon with play toys on the walls.
Or was it?
Available resources. It was a key directive of any soldier’s training, especially once a guy was going for his beret. It came in handy now. Draped over the footboard of her bed were a dozen scarves in various colors and weights. He leaned back and scooped them all off, fast selecting the one he planned on using first. It was made of soft but strong fabric, meant to stay in place once tied. And it was all black.
“Perfect,” he murmured.
“For what?” she queried, though one glance into her eyes, brilliant with attention, proved she’d formulated some guesses. The look was pretty damn adorable, not that he was going to let her know that right now.
“Tell you what,” he offered. “I’ll let you pick the start square.” He extended the scarf between his hands. “Wrist tie or blindfold?”
Her breath audibly snagged. “What if I say no and ask you to leave?”
“You can do that anytime you want, sunshine. Call a red light and we’re done.” He leaned in to capture her gaze more securely in his. “But I don’t think you want to be done.”
The amethyst glints in her eyes got darker. She pulled in a long breath. “And what if, after everything, I still refuse to talk? What happens if you don’t get the information you want out of me?”
He unfurled a slow smile. “Oh, I’ll get it.”
She volleyed with a little smirk. “We’ll see.”
Fuck, it was good he still had his shorts on, not that they helped much in hiding how her spunk fired his spirit—and his cock. “Well, one of us will.” He inserted enough wry command to assure she got his meaning. Not that he had to worry about that. Before he’d even kissed her the first time, he’d seen that the woman’s mind shined as bright as her beauty.
Sure enough, Ava’s mouth dropped open again. “You said I got to pick, Sir.” She stomped on the title hard enough to suck any trace of respect from it. “Wrists or blindfold, right?”
“I said you got to pick where we started, mouthy girl.” His blood surged with exhilaration as he hooked the scarf behind her neck and pulled, making her eyes spark again. “But that little line just cost you the privilege.” He tugged her an inch closer, lowering his face so she didn’t miss an inch of how deeply he desired her. “Now up on your knees, with wrists presented up front.”
It was a pleasant surprise to watch her comply so fast. He left the first scarf draping from her neck, the sheer black fabric playing at her breasts like the magical mist from the forest where they’d first touched lips. The image fit. This was an important first for them too. Though this afternoon had been incredible, he hadn’t been dominating her, pushing her. Not as he would now.
The longest scarf in the pile, a knitted crimson thing, was his choice for looping around her wrists in a figure-eight pattern. He had to improvise on the technique since this wasn’t typical bondage rope, though he was able to finish off the knot with a nice circle wrap between her wrists, ensuring she wouldn’t squirm her way free anytime soon. With what he had planned for the things he’d seen on her nightstand, that was a good thing.
Ava sighed as he tugged at the improvised cuffs to test his work. He double-checked the space he’d left to give her proper circulation but didn’t give her any sound or response in return. Still without speaking and keeping the scarf’s lead in hand, he swept off the bed in order to make her lean forward, extending her hands toward the footboard. Her bed was a sturdy piece of furniture, heavy wood embedded with wrought-iron cutouts that looked inspired by a church in one of the missions that dotted the bottom half of the state. When he secured the scarf to one of them, her torso angled down and her flawless bronze ass shot straight up. Glory Hallelujah.
He lifted her face toward him with a thumb and forefinger. Her gaze was cloudy with deep indigo smoke. She’d been biting her lips, because they were plumped and crimson with the rush of fresh blood. “Beautiful,” he growled.
“Thank you, Sir.”
She whispered it with quivering reverence. After that, the dark-cherry planes of her lips parted, all but roping him in for a kiss—and calling every swollen inch of his dick to come out for a long dip between them too. He locked his teeth in resistance and instead rubbed a rough thumb across them before offering, “One more chance to do this easy, sunshine. Right now, all I want is his name. We don’t have to dig any deeper than that tonight. One name, and—”
“What?” she interjected. “You set me free?” She pushed out a playful pout. “After all your hard work?”
“Didn’t say that was happening.” He used the same urbane fluidity to pull the black silk from her neck. After wrapping the material twice around her eyes, he fastened the knot hard against the bridge of her nose, ensuring she knew that his glib mien didn’t cancel his serious purpose. “Just thought you’d appreciate knowing the options again. There’s a fun side of being bound and fucked and a not-so-fun side. Your choice.” He smoothed both his hands down the column of her neck and then over her shoulders. “One name gets you the fun, baby.”
She released an unsteady breath. Dipped her head. For one moment, Ethan thought he’d get to disregard the stuff on the nightstand and get right to claiming her body in all the ways his mind could conjure and his cock could stand.
That was before the next second, when her muscles stiffened beneath his touch. A tight whimper emanated from her throat. “You’re like a damn dog with a bone, aren’t you?”
He sighed and dropped his hands. “Let’s hope you’re a dog lover, Miss Chestain.”
She snickered. He let her have the defiant moment. It was the least he could do, considering what the shit on her nightstand was mandating for the evening. He stopped there on his way back to mounting the bed again, making no effort to mask the sounds of his search from her—including a nice long slide of the drawer. That gained him the sight of a gorgeous shiver up her spine, no doubt inspired by what she knew he’d find in the compartment. With a smirk, he pulled out the handheld vibrator and joined it with the other items in his hand.
After he dumped all the items onto the bed, she treated him with another long quiver. “Ethan, why the hell are you raiding my nightst— Oww!” She writhed as he let the hard plastic teeth of a hair claw dig into her left buttock. As he grabbed her hip to hold her in place, he balanced it by securing one to the other side of her ass.
He hummed in satisfaction. Those things held firmer than he’d anticipated. They looked pretty cool too. One was embossed with zebra stripes, the other with leopard spots.
“Wild thing,” he murmured, “you make my heart sing.”
“Shut. Up. Oh, shit!” Her scream pierced the air again as he got a smaller tortoiseshell clamp into the skin below the zebra clip. Holy hell, could this woman let out an expressive wail.
“You want to try for number four?” he taunted. “Forget my proper address again, and I’ll be happy to make it one of the big ones too.”
She snorted. “Don’t you know how to just spank a subbie like everyone— Oww!”
He made it a big one anyway. This clamp was giraffe print. It blended nicely next to the leopard colors and slid into her skin with beautiful perfection. “Are you still obsessed with swats, baby?” His chastising chuckle lasted until he leaned deep enough to get his lips on her shoulder, taking care not to hit the clamps on the way. “That’s so cute. You’re actually trying to change the rules, aren’t you?” He gently bit into her shoulder. “But the thing is, they’re my rules. My way. You want to help call the shots again? Just give me his name, Ava.”
Her head slumped. “Why?” she moaned. “Why do you even care? It’s over. In the past. Far in the past, okay?”
“Then it shouldn’t be such a big deal to talk about it, right?”
She didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Damn it.”
He shifted back to his position behind her thighs. “I’ll take that as a sign to carry on.”
She fumed again in response. Ethan sat and gazed at her for another moment. Her upper thighs, as bronze and breathtaking as the rest of her, spasmed in anticipation of him pulling off the clamps. When he left the wild-patterned torture tribe right where they were, she seethed with a little more gusto—right up to the moment he slipped the vibrator between her thighs and turned it on.
“Ohhh!” she cried. “Oh…mmmm…”
While she slipped from pissed to blissed, he took the four jumbo paper clips he’d also found on the stand and expanded them to fit the tops of his fingers. A quick tug on each one transformed the innocent office utensils into small but purposeful spikes. If his instincts were tracking right, Miss Spank-Me-Please wasn’t going to like the sensation of the four sharp tines marking her skin.