Take Me Deeper

by Jackie Ashenden

  Zane firmed his hand on her stomach, kissed her shoulder, then bit her lightly. “Who’s Dylan?”

  She made a murmuring noise, as if she was half-asleep, but he wasn’t fooled. The moment he’d asked the question, he’d felt her entire body stiffen against him. She was awake all right and must have realized she’d spoken aloud.

  “I know you’re awake.” He trailed another kiss along her shoulder. “And you better tell me if you’re seeing someone else.”

  There was a silence.

  Then she said, “I’m not.”

  He wanted to growl like an animal in satisfaction at that, but he didn’t, contenting himself with another nip on her shoulder instead. She shivered in response, making him hungry to do other things. Christ, so many other things…

  No. First things first. He needed to know who this Dylan asshole was and what the guy had once been to her, if he was going to protect her. Certainly he did if he wanted to keep sleeping with her.

  Stroking her stomach gently and avoiding her scrape, Zane waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. So, she thought she was going to go back to her being her prickly, cagey little self, did she? Sadly, that wasn’t going to work for him. He was on a mission, and when he was on a mission, absolutely nothing got in his way.

  “So who is he then?” Zane kept the question casual, allowing her some time to get herself together enough to answer.

  “No one.” Her voice was expressionless, her body tense and stiff.

  Yeah, he wasn’t having that, and the sooner she understood that the better.

  With gentle, but insistent pressure, he pushed her over onto her back, easing himself over her and placing his hands palms down on either side of her head.

  She blinked up at him, eyes wide with surprise. “What are you doing?”

  “I want you to answer my question.”

  Instantly the expression on her face became guarded. “It’s none of your business.”

  “What? You saying another guy’s name when you’re in bed with me is none of my business?”

  Her jaw took on a mutinous cast. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Look, all you need to know is that he’s not in the picture anymore and hasn’t been for a while.” She lifted her hands and placed them on his chest, not quite pushing him away but exerting some pressure nonetheless. “Anyway, where do you get off being such a damn caveman? This is only for a night, Zane.”

  He ignored that. They could discuss it later, once they’d sorted out this prick Dylan. “You don’t want to talk about him.” He stared down at her, studying her face, watching the walls come down behind her eyes. “And you don’t want me to know about him either. Which means something happened with him. What is it? What did he do? Did he hurt you?”

  Her body shifted beneath his, and now she was definitely pushing him away, her palms hard against his chest. “Like I said, none of your business. Now get off me, I need the bathroom.”

  Like hell she did. Resisting her push, he slid one thigh between hers, using it to both pin her down and to press gently against the soft, wet heat of her pussy. He’d get it out of her one way or another. They didn’t call him relentless for nothing. “I’m not going anywhere.” He increased the pressure between her thighs. “Not until you tell me who this guy is.”

  A helpless spark of heat flared in her eyes and he watched it light up the darkness, watched it color the delicate skin of her cheekbones in one of her quite frankly adorable blushes. “Why do you want to know? He’s got nothing to do with you.”

  “I want to know because if I’m going to protect you, I need all the information I can get.”

  She scowled, blushing red. “You don’t need to know this.”

  “Sure, I do.” He lowered his head, nuzzling at her neck, indulging himself totally with that delicious scent of hers. “And you’re making a big deal out of it, which means there’s something I definitely need to know.”

  “Zane, stop.” She shoved at him.

  He remained unmoved, lowering himself instead and placing his elbows on the pillows on either side of her, their faces only inches apart. And he stared right into her eyes, allowing her no escape, pinning her with the length of his body and the thigh he had pressed hard between hers. “No,” he said gently. “I will not stop. You trusted me last night and that’s a gift you can’t take back. Not now that I’ve accepted it. I’m here to protect you, Iris, and that’s what I’m going to do. And to do that, I need to know everything.”

  Anger glowed hot in her gaze. “I said one night, that’s as far as my trust goes, asshole. And since it’s morning, it now doesn’t apply.”

  She was protecting herself, he understood that, but surely she could tell him. Especially after last night. Jesus, this Dylan guy had to have hurt her if she was fighting this hard.

  He looked down at her, debating a couple of options. Sure, he could stop pushing her, let her keep her secrets, but in his experience secrets led to shocks and often unpleasant ones. He couldn’t allow there to be any nasty surprises when it came to making sure she was safe, mainly because those nasty surprises involved armed drug dealers. No, in order to make sure he could protect her the way he needed to, he had to have all the information, whether she thought it was relevant or not.

  However, she’d been protecting herself too long, the habit too deeply ingrained to let her just hand out painful secrets to anyone who asked for them. Naturally she would resist him. Which meant he was going to have to show her gently, but thoroughly, that resistance was not only futile, but pointless.

  Shifting his hands, Zane cupped her face between them. “Tell me,” he ordered, using the same gentle, but firm tone he had the night before. “I’ll get it out of you one way or another, so it may as well be now.”

  Anger glimmered in her eyes, but as he stroked along her cheekbones with his thumbs, he could feel the tension in her easing. Her throat moved, her gaze flickering away from his. “No,” she murmured, the word sounding less firm and more uncertain.

  “Yes.” He let his thumbs move down to her mouth, tracing the outline of her lower lip in a light caress. “And you’d better do it fast. You don’t want to make me have to punish you, do you?”

  She took a breath. The pressure of her hands against his chest had vanished utterly, and now they were just resting there rather than pushing away, the heat of her palms like a brand against his skin. “Punish me?”

  He gave her a narrow, stern look. “You think you can get away with disobeying a direct order? I don’t think so, baby girl.”

  Her lashes drifted down, her gaze centering on his mouth, and he could feel the tremor that went through her. She liked the idea of punishment, oh, yes, she did. And since Zane wasn’t a man who let an opportunity go by, he added, “You understand that a confession taken under duress can’t be held against you, don’t you?”

  Sable lashes rose, her gaze meeting his, black as the thickest, darkest, strongest espresso. “You’ll have to torture it out of me in that case,” she said, her voice all hoarse. “Because I’ll never tell.”

  Excitement pulsed through him, hot and raw. Did she know how much he’d been wanting to do exactly that? Torture her deliciously until she spilled all her secrets, until she’d laid herself bare and just for him, only for him.

  You can’t make her do that. Not when you’ll fail her just like you failed Charlie. Like you failed Dad.

  No, God. He’d cop to failing Charlie, but that old bastard? Definitely not. The old man had chosen his path and walked down it without a backward glance.

  Anyway, this was a different situation entirely. He’d loved Charlie, and once, he’d loved his father. But he didn’t love Iris. Which meant he wouldn’t fail.

  Zane smiled. “Very well. Your choice.” Pushing himself away from her, he reached over the side of the bed for his pants and extracted something from the back pocket.

  “What are you doing?” She eyed him warily.

  He didn’t bother explaining, she’
d figure it out soon enough. Grabbing her hand, he clicked the handcuffs he’d extracted from his back pocket around one wrist. She tensed, her sharp intake of breath audible in the silence, but didn’t say anything or try to pull away.

  “Good girl,” he murmured, pushing her back onto the pillows. Then he lifted her arm and cuffed it to the headboard of the bed.

  She lay still, staring at him, and there was no mistaking the challenge in her eyes. “Well, this is kind of familiar,” she said, with a ghost of her usual snarky tone. “I thought you might have something more original up your sleeve.”

  His smile widened, not bothering to hide the hunger slowly building up inside him. “Ah, but I haven’t started yet.” He urged her other arm up onto the pillow. “Keep that hand right there. If you move it, I’ll be angry.”

  Flashes of fear and uncertainty darted across her face, quickly masked by what appeared to be boredom, as if men routinely handcuffed her to beds before demanding answers from her. “Sure. No problem.”

  Oh, it was going to be a problem. He’d make it one.

  Zane shifted, straddling her hips, bracing himself above her. “If you don’t tell me who Dylan is,” he said quietly, firmly, “I won’t let you come.”

  She snorted. “That’s not much of a threat.”

  He nearly laughed, because she clearly had no idea, no idea at all. “You’ll see, baby.” Dipping his head, he brushed the base of her throat with his mouth, feeling her body quiver. “Give me enough time and I can make you tell me everything.”

  “No, you can’t—”

  He nipped the side of her neck before she could finish, and sure enough, she broke off with a sharp gasp. As he’d discovered the night before, her neck was very sensitive, and soon he had her breathing fast and hard as he licked and nipped and kissed his way down to her throat again. Then he pressed his tongue to the pulse that leapt and kicked beneath his mouth, testing the salty sweetness of her skin.

  The night before he hadn’t managed to taste much of her because she’d gone to sleep so quickly and he hadn’t had the heart to wake her, not after she’d been so exhausted. It had meant a difficult night, trying to get to sleep while still being hard enough to hammer nails, but Christ, she was going to be worth the wait, he just knew it.

  She sighed as he sucked gently, her pulse getting faster, yet he didn’t linger, moving down across the delicate architecture of her collarbones, trailing kisses over her chest until he got to the soft swell of her breasts. Then he lifted his head and met her gaze. It was dark, smoky, and stubborn as hell, and obviously she still thought she was going to win this one.

  He pinned her with a narrow, intense stare. “Ready to tell me yet?”

  She stared back. “Seriously? Is that all you’ve got?”

  Zane gave her a feral grin.

  Then he really went to work.

  —

  Iris had no idea what she was doing. She knew pushing this was a bad idea and yet some part of her couldn’t stop herself. Murmuring Dylan’s name while half-asleep had been dumb, and she couldn’t believe she’d revealed it like that. She didn’t want to talk about Dylan, and most especially she didn’t want Zane to know what an idiot she’d been in the whole fiasco. It was her shame to bear, a deeply private shame that she didn’t plan on telling anyone about, ever.

  But then she’d gone and murmured his name in that confused half state between sleeping and waking, and of course Zane had heard. And of course he wanted to know what the hell was going on. She should have just told him and not made a big deal out of it, but she had. Then she’d gone and made matters worse by refusing Zane’s direct command, pushing and pushing until he’d handcuffed her to the bed.

  She still didn’t know why she’d done that. She didn’t know why her heart was racing and her body was trembling, and her skin was prickling all over with heat. Why the thought of him torturing a confession out of her made her scared and yet desperately excited at the same time.

  She shouldn’t want that. She shouldn’t actually want to be handcuffed to the bed while he crouched over her like a starving tiger, his mouth trailing in a tantalizing line toward her breasts. Yet that was exactly what was happening.

  Unable to take her eyes off him, Iris found herself watching as his dark head moved lower. Then her breath caught as his lips brushed over one achingly hard nipple. Sensation rippled through her, intensifying as the tip of his tongue touched the sensitive peak in a light tease. His gaze met hers as he did so, hot and blue and sharp, staring at her as he did it again, circling her nipple with his tongue, around and around.

  She swallowed, trying to get a breath that sounded at least a little bit like normal yet utterly failing. There was no way she could hide what he was doing to her. He knew. And somehow that knowing look only made her hotter.

  “Who is he?” Zane breathed gently over the peak of one breast and the wetness left by his tongue, causing her nipple to tighten even more. “What did he do to hurt you?”

  Iris wanted to close her eyes, escape into the darkness, but scared of what even that would reveal, she steeled herself to hold the fierce brilliance of Zane’s gaze, to not look away. She couldn’t let him read her like this, she just couldn’t. “He didn’t hurt me.”

  “Really? So why don’t you want to talk about him then?”

  “He’s just an idiot I went out with a couple of times. No biggie.”

  “Uh-huh.” Zane lowered his head again, that wicked, teasing tongue making another circle around her nipple. Then, his gaze still on hers, he drew it slowly into his mouth and she couldn’t stop the sound that escaped her, a raw gasp of agonized pleasure at the heat and pressure against her sensitive flesh. He sucked hard, watching her, as if he were reading the ebb and flow of the pleasure on her face, and adjusting what he did to meet it.

  Her mouth was dry, a heavy, pulsing ache between her legs, and she couldn’t work out why she was doing this. He’d been so gentle with her the night before, coaxing her, making her feel so safe, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to talk about Dylan. It was still so painful. She hadn’t realized how much until now.

  Because, of course, it wasn’t just about Dylan, was it? It was about her mother too.

  Zane released her throbbing nipple, but he didn’t let up, his fingers replacing his mouth, circling and slicking over it, pinching it with the same aching relentlessness he’d given her the night before, the one that had her arching beneath his hand. “You’re lying to me,” he murmured, never taking his eyes off her. “Don’t think I don’t know it.”

  “I-I’m not,” she gasped as his fingers played gently with her, the heavy weight of his body over hers making her want to move, to press against him and find some friction, some relief.

  “Yes, you are. You want to be punished? Is that it? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  She couldn’t think, seemingly every nerve ending in her entire body concentrated on the movement of his clever fingers on her breast. Behind her came the sound of metal chiming against metal and the bite of something sharp against her wrist. The handcuffs. She must have tried to bring her hand down, though to push him away or to pull him closer, she had no idea.

  “No,” she said, panting. “I don’t.”

  “Another lie.” He shifted and she found her gaze helplessly drawn to his naked body, all smooth, tanned skin and hard, cut muscle, lean and graceful as a professional athlete.

  Her breath came faster and faster. She wanted to touch him in a way she’d never wanted to touch a man before. Feel the texture of his skin, the flex and release of those powerful muscles. Taste him the way he’d been tasting her. It made her hungry, made her want, and she wasn’t sure she liked it. Wanting was always dangerous, wasn’t it?

  Casually, Zane trailed a hand down her stomach, caressing as he went, watching her face as he did so. “I think you’d love to be punished, baby. I think you want it more than your next breath. But it’s not going to happen, understand? Not until you give me wha
t I want.”

  Bastard. He was such a bastard.

  As if he’d read her mind, his hand moved lower, stroking the soft curls between her thighs, and she went still and quiet, waiting for the knife edge of pleasure to hit, certain he was going to stroke her clit the way he had the night before.

  But he didn’t. Instead he toyed with her curls, pulling lightly on them in a way that only sharpened the desperate ache, while he bent his head and gave her other nipple a long, lazy lick. “I’m waiting,” he said, his voice full of command and rough heat. “Don’t make me wait too long.”

  She was shaking, her hips trembling, wanting to move. Telling him would be so easy. All she had to do was open her mouth and the words would come out, and then she could get to what she really wanted, his hands on her and the beautiful burn of pleasure.

  You really think you deserve that? After everything that’s happened?

  The thought came out of nowhere, like a bright light shining directly in her eyes, and she had to blink and turn her head to get rid of it. Because she didn’t want it there. What she had with Zane was only a night, only a moment in the greater scheme of things, and why shouldn’t she have it?

  Really? After the way you lost Jamie? After you swore to yourself you’d do a better job than Mom? Come on, Callahan. You know what you deserve, and it’s not hot sex with a beautiful man.

  “Iris.” Zane’s voice again, commanding her complete attention, drowning out the voice inside her head. “Enough. I’m a patient man, but not this morning. Not after having you sleeping naked beside me all night.” His fingers slid through her curls, stopping bare inches from her exquisitely sensitive clit. So close and yet way too far. She tried to lift her hips to encourage the touch, but he didn’t move his hand any further.