by Vonna Harper
“You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Yeah, I am. That’s separate from what I’m committed to accomplishing, and yet I don’t think I would have ever learned what I have about myself if it wasn’t for that.”
“I’m not sure I follow you. What is this thing you’re going to accomplish? So far you haven’t told me squat.”
Although she gathered her thoughts so she could answer her sister, in truth, the words were for Reeve’s sake. And hers. As briefly and superficially as possible, she told her sister about The Slavers. Although she didn’t spell out the minute details of what had taken place that night, neither did she leave out anything essential.
“Call the police,” Hayley insisted. “Those bastards have to be stopped!”
“I agree. But the police can’t accomplish what we have been able to. They can’t infiltrate the organization. And their approach and technique could jeopardize the lives of the women those bastards have kidnapped. This man—he’s a member of another organization, a private and powerful one. They’re determined. They know what they’re doing.”
“I don’t give a damn about that. What about you?”
“I’m a tough bird, sis. I wouldn’t have survived in this business if I wasn’t.”
“But this is different. Not only are those Slavers monsters, you’re changing. You just admitted that everything you always believed about yourself is being turned on end. That’s what I’m worried about—you.”
Saree closed her eyes against the hot burn of tears. “That’s how I felt when you met Mazati. The way he treated you at first…”
“Bondage. Consuming me.”
“Yes.”
“The same is happening to you now, isn’t it,” Hayley whispered.
18
Reeve hadn’t heard Hayley’s side of the conversation, but he didn’t need to; Saree’s expression and body language had filled in the blanks. Instead of asking if she wanted to talk about it afterward, he reminded her that she’d wanted to take a shower. Much as he longed to join her, he remained where he was.
And much as he wanted his brain to lay fallow, it refused. True, every time it surfaced, he managed to dodge the question of how he felt about her, but that didn’t stop him from worrying about her.
What damnable determined fools he and The Clan had been when they’d sucked her into their vendetta against The Slavers! Reasoning that as a player in the BDSM scene, she’d have the resources to weather whatever was thrown at her had been more than insanity! He’d taken her to some of the worst of the world’s underbelly tonight, and she’d have to live with that memory for the rest of her life—the same as he lived with what his father was.
He’d told her about the monster!
Only one man had known about the nightmare that had compelled him to change his identity, and that man, one of The Clan’s founders, had died three years ago. At Howard Capron’s funeral, he’d stood over the casket and silently thanked Howard for making it possible for him to bury his past.
But tonight he’d dug up that past and dumped it in the lap of a woman who already had too much to handle.
Not asking himself what, if anything, he had in mind, he planted his leaden legs under him and plodded into the bathroom. She hadn’t closed the door, and steam floated out to warm his cheeks. He couldn’t hear the water running. Instead of pushing in as he would have done as recently as this morning, he leaned against the wall and waited.
A few minutes later, she stepped out. This woman he’d recently met knew about his past—her, no one else. Her hair looked towel-dried, shining and clinging to her shoulders. She wore an oversized towel, prompting him to ponder when he’d last seen her wearing anything. Strange. Even with his cock hard and heavy, he didn’t want her naked right now. Everything felt unreal to him, not a dream but not of this world either.
Stopping, she looked at him, just looked.
His mind churned with what he might say, but nothing seemed right so he simply returned her honest gaze until she cocked her head. As she did, she winced. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Stiff neck.”
Because of the positions he’d forced on her. “I’ll give you a massage,” he heard himself say.
Her mouth opened. She licked her upper lip, then closed her mouth. “I’d like that.”
With that, she led the way into the master bedroom where he’d slept while she’d been confined to the room he wished he never had to enter again. The towel still flattening her incredible breasts, she sat on the edge of the king-size bed. “I try to get a couple of massages a week,” she said without looking at him, which should have made things easier but didn’t. “Between that and stretching and weight lifting, I’m able to keep the old body going.”
It occurred to him that she wasn’t fishing for a compliment. Instead, she was nervous and using words to get her through it. In contrast, he still couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. Action. Action had always served him. That in mind, he opened the nightstand dresser where he’d seen several containers of personal lubrication. Only when he’d selected one and was opening it did he face what she must be thinking.
“Not that. I just—I didn’t want my hands to be too rough.”
“I appreciate that.” Her mouth twitched. “I found some body lotion in the bathroom and used it after my shower. Still…do you know what you’re doing?”
He wasn’t sure he’d known anything since the first moment he’d seen her. Not wanting to tell her that, he shrugged. “I figure you’ll tell me what feels good.”
“That would be a change after—we’re really doing this, aren’t we?”
He poured a little lotion in the palm of his hand, then rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, we are.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Me either.” Pulling her hair away from the back of her neck, she leaned forward. “It’s mostly on the left side; the muscle’s tight and sore.”
Sore. Sore called for a light touch, right? Crawling onto the bed behind her, he ran his moistened hands all over her neck. He wasn’t sure but thought he noted a difference between her left and right side, the left putting him in mind of a taut bowstring. Thinking she probably didn’t want too much pressure on that spot, he gave everything from the nape of her neck to her shoulder blades and out to the end of her shoulders equal consideration. His fingers knew her body, boy, did they. But unless he’d forgotten more than he thought he had, he hadn’t touched her here before. Her skin was like silk all right, so soft that he wondered if he might puncture it if he pressed too hard, but beneath that she was all muscle and bone.
Although he occasionally had to switch positions to keep his legs from falling asleep, he more than half believed he could do this as long as his mind remained in neutral. She no longer held onto where one end of the towel was tucked under another. Instead, her hands rested on her legs, making him wonder if she’d bother with retrieving the towel if it came loose.
He wanted the towel gone. At the same time, he was glad it remained in place.
She sighed, a long, slow, deep sound, and her body slumped. His cock, to say nothing of the rest of him, might be on the kind of primitive high alert he’d weathered as an adolescent, but she was falling sleep.
“Lie down,” he suggested. “On your stomach.”
“You don’t have—”
“Yeah, I do.”
After another sigh, she gathered herself enough to comply. Now she was on her belly with her head on a pillow and her hands on either side of the pillow, those going-on-forever legs stretched out on the spread. Still not thinking any more than absolutely necessary, he replenished his supply of personal lubricant and began transferring it from his hands to her calves. Recalling how ticklish the back of the knees could be, he avoided that area. He also kept his hands off her thighs because they were too damn close to another part of her anatomy, but unless something drastic like an earthquake happened, it was only a matter
of time before his fingers asked her flesh if she wanted to take things to the next level.
Her sighs made him think of innocence and trust, of his mother and childhood. Other things had triggered those memories, and he’d always run from them, but he didn’t tonight. Instead, he brought his mother back to life, listened to her voice, told her how much he loved her.
And when she’d said the same in reply, he wished her peace and brought his attention back to Saree.
His slave.
What a joke that had been.
“Hmm. Nice.”
His hands were no longer on her calves. Neither had he given her ankles and feet more than a few seconds of attention. Instead, his fingers had covered her thighs after all, and somehow her towel no longer covered the sweet swell of her buttocks.
Slow and steady, steady and purposeful. No thinking beyond those well-muscled thighs and the ass that could make an adolescent boy come just from spotting it at a distance. More lubricant found its way not onto his hands this time, but directly onto her. Droplets and dribbles stretched from the base of her spine to her knees. She lifted her head, but he didn’t think she could see, not that her flesh wasn’t telling her everything.
“Whose lotion is that?” she asked.
“The owner of this place is a bachelor. Maybe he has sleepovers.”
“Good thing he had a lot.” Her head dropped back onto the pillow. Her movements had disturbed her hair, and he brushed several damp strands off her cheeks. He’d loved her hair from the first time he’d seen it. No expert in such things, he couldn’t tell whether the color was all her own, but the thick length sure as hell was. If he’d had any inkling how to braid, he’d be tempted to gather everything into a loose rope in the middle, but she probably didn’t want lubricant in it.
Bemused and confused by where his thoughts were taking him, he tucked them back into whatever cubbyhole they’d been slumbering in and went to work spreading the drops and dribbles over every inch of her lower body not in contact with the coverlet. Having an all-consuming task was good. It kept him from rooting around in his mind and his libido under control, barely.
Why hadn’t she seen this side of Reeve before, Saree pondered as her legs opened so he could reach her inner thighs. He might not have a master masseuse’s touch, but she’d never felt more alive. She wasn’t on fire. Oh, sensuality and sexuality were there, humming like a distant high tension wire, but as long as she didn’t touch the wire, she could keep it under control. At odd and unpredictable moments she ached to touch, but each time she was able to clamp down on the impulse.
She wanted sex. She also wanted to drift in whatever slow and easy river he’d taken her to. Frightening things had happened tonight. She’d committed to try to accomplish the impossible. But that commitment, like the shore, remained out of her grasp, and she had neither the will nor the energy to swim for them.
Reeve’s hands were on her waist, buttocks, the join between ass and thighs, over her thighs, easy along the back of her knees. Floating was good, as easy as his fingertips. There was just the two of them in a desert home owned by a sexually active bachelor. Night was for hawks and owls and whatever rodents thrived in the arid land—and for a man and a woman.
It kept coming back to that, didn’t it—him and her. And as long as he massaged her, and she hugged the pillow, morning wouldn’t come. No plans. No danger or risk. No questions about the future. Just them.
A sudden shiver pulled her back to the moment. When a second wave followed in the wake of the first, she went in search of the source. There. Again. His mouth lightly touching the small of her back. “My God,” she whispered, and tried to turn over.
“No.” Gently but firmly, he pressed her shoulders against the bed. “You’re mine, remember. I do whatever I want to you.”
“Not ropes. I don’t want that.”
“Neither do I, this time. And neither of us trying to take what happens into the future.”
“All right.” And yet although she didn’t want to think beyond this moment, it would eventually happen. The next stroke of lips down the base of her spine forced a whimper out of her. Clutching the bedspread, she acknowledged the flood of wet heat that seemed to claim her from the waist down. “Oh God.”
“Gets to you, does it?”
“Of course.” She spoke into the pillow, imagined him crouched over her vulnerable and helpless body.
He ran the side of his thumb from where his lips had been to her crack. After a momentary pause, he slid his finger between the soft mounds. Still gripping the spread, she ground her pelvis into the mattress. Sweat slickened the sides of her neck, and not moaning called for all the strength at her command.
“I thought—after all the times—it doesn’t get old?”
All the times. Fighting tears, she planted her elbows under her so she could lift her upper body off the bed. “Don’t bring up the past, please. I don’t want what I’ve done and been to be part of tonight.”
She thought—feared—he’d insist she was asking too much of him, but the longer his silence drew out, the more she dared to hope. Besides, there was this heat, this soft and fluid heat stripping her muscles and lowering her back onto the bed.
“I don’t want that either,” he muttered. Then he placed his hands on either side of her buttocks and slid his damp tongue along her crack, and she whimpered like a puppy. His tongue, his bold and knowledgeable tongue, tested her as she’d never been tested, delving deep, depositing moisture along the base of her buttocks, running lightly over her spinal column.
She stopped trying to silence her sounds, gave up trying to keep from thrashing her head. Instead she listened to her cries of surrender.
Change. From gentle to sharp. With each nip he took of her buttocks, she wondered if she might crack and splinter. Wise in her body’s ways, she knew she was experiencing a series of mini-climaxes. None were earth-shattering, but they kept coming, kept her off balance. Now his hands were over the back of her thighs, holding her in place and giving him something to brace against. What had happened to her relaxed state? True, she kept sinking back into nothing every time he paused, but then he’d rake his teeth over her flesh and everything would kick back into high gear.
More change.
Caught between alarm and anticipation, she didn’t breathe while he slid lower and stretched out next to her. With her head turned from him, he became a fantasy man, her intimate desires come true, nothing connected to reality. Then he began nibbling her thighs, and when he wasn’t doing that, he licked the back of her knees, and she was certain she’d cracked into a million pieces.
“Reeve, Reeve, Reeve,” some breathless stranger chanted.
“Not Reeve. Master.” He raked his fingers from her waist to her calves. “Call me Master.”
“Master. Oh shit, Master!”
“Down. Quiet. You’re my toy tonight, do you understand?” A light slap of her ass cheek punctuated his command. “My possession.”
“Yes. Oh yes.”
No longer shattering. Instead she melted and melted and melted some more as he bent her knee and began sucking on her toes. The bed would have to absorb and hold her because no way was she capable of gathering a single muscle. Shiver after shiver after shiver rolled through her. How could she dissolve and shudder at the same time? Did it matter?
His lips closed around one toe after another. At the same time, he stroked and kneaded her calf and his elbow pressed against her tailbone, and she was more him than a separate human being.
“You’re killing me. You know that, don’t you?”
He lifted his head. “Do I?”
“You have to. My God, I—”
“You’ve been killed before. What makes this time different?”
Damn him for bringing up her history again! Hurt and angry, she tried to straighten her knee only to have him grip her ankle and press her leg against his midsection. “I asked you not to bring up my past. If you can’t handle—”
�
�You’re the only thing I’m interested in handling, slave. I want you tamed. Shivering and hungry and licking my feet while you beg me to fuck you.”
Excited by the image he’d just drawn, she turned toward him. “You think you can make me beg?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure as hell going to try.”
Before she could put the words together to challenge him to live up to his promise, he’d released her foot and placed her leg back on the bed. That done, he spread her legs and ran his nails up one inner thigh, over her sex, down the other thigh.
And she screamed. No ladylike moan or sigh this time but a scream and a squall, primal hunger turning her voice rough. “My turn!” she managed. “Damn it, my turn!”
“No.” Placing his hands on her ass cheeks, he pulled them apart. “You’re my slave and this is how I want it. Do you understand? I’ll play with you for as long as I want.”
Until I’m insane?
“Understand!” He slapped her buttocks.
“Yes, Master, yes.”
“Good. Because I need this to be right for you, different from every—forget I said that. You’re incredible. So beautiful.”
Her rear hole was hardly beautiful, but if that’s what he wanted to say, she’d take the words into her.
With her legs widely spread, he had no trouble running a finger into her offered opening. Caught by him, she squirmed, whimpered, and waited.
“Relax, slave. Loosen your muscles. Remember who this ass belongs to and that your owner has every right to it.”
“I’m trying.”
“I know you are, my pet.” His finger dove deeper, held her. “And I appreciate the effort. Now, listen to me. Listen and obey. You’ll do that, won’t you?”
Subservience swept over her, wrapped itself around her limbs, bound them together. “Yes, Master.”
“There aren’t any bounds this time. Do you know why that is?”
A different pressure tore her mind from the question. Two fingers were now in her. The second, a middle finger she thought, had invaded her pussy. “Relax, relax,” he chanted when her cunt muscles closed down on him. “You can do that because your master tells you to and it’s what you want, isn’t it?”