So why couldn’t she stop thinking about it?
Chapter 4
Aimee’s soft moans drifted through the house, making Trace’s cock already harder than it had been after their kiss.
Jesus.
To focus on something other than what she was doing behind the closed door, he recited the alphabet backward.
Fuck.
The fact that she was masturbating drove him mad. Protecting the professor’s seriously hot body had just become one of his most difficult assignments ever. He’d never been this attracted to a client.
If they’d met under different circumstances, he might want to introduce her to BDSM. Then again, maybe not.
He tossed back the sheet and dropped to the floor to do push-ups.
The women he scened with knew the score. They were experienced players and had similar no-strings-attached expectations. They liked the thrill as much as he did.
But Aimee, despite her blasé attitude, was an innocent.
Since he made it a point not to play with anyone new, that shouldn’t appeal to him. But fuck if he didn’t want to be the man to introduce her to her more primal desires.
Trace continued to push himself until his arms shook from the exertion. He had no idea how many push-ups he’d done. Counting wasn’t the point. Forgetting how sweet Aimee’s mouth had tasted was.
Finally, she cried out with a slight whimper. She’d climaxed, which should allow him to shove thoughts of her aside so he could go to sleep.
Should.
He continued to drive himself to fatigue. His form sucked, which meant he needed to stop.
Trace returned to the couch and couldn’t settle. Too damn hot, and the couch wasn’t long enough. Until tonight, that hadn’t been a complaint. Through his career, he’d slept in a whole lot worse places—dirt floors, craggy mountains, blanket rolls, camping cots.
After checking the house again, he opted for a quick shower.
The cool Colorado water gushing over him did nothing to diminish his raging erection. And thoughts of what Aimee must have looked like as she slid her fingers—or was it a toy?—across her clit tormented him. He ached to be inside her.
Recalling her sensual moans, he took his cock in hand and stroked up and down, pulling hard, picturing her beneath him. He wanted her whimpers filling his ears. Wanted to devour her cries with his hungry mouth.
In spite of the millions of reasons he needed to think about anything other than Aimee, he closed his eyes and stroked harder.
Then, consumed by her, he ejaculated in long ribbons, her name on his tongue, her image seared into his brain.
With a shake of his head, as if that would clear his mind, Trace rinsed off. Then he toweled dry with more force than necessary.
He pulled on his sleep pants and tugged a T-shirt on. Jacking off hadn’t helped. In fact, it had the opposite effect. Knowing she was next door, all snug in bed, made his dick swell again.
Before leaving the bathroom, Trace raked a hand through his short, damp hair.
Aimee’s door stood ajar. With a frown, he returned to the living room.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she confessed, standing in the living room. A sleep shirt covered her to midthigh, but his imagination filled in the rest.
“You need to go back to bed.” His voice was rough, cut with warning.
“I know.” Yet she stayed where she was, smelling of seduction. “I…uhm…”
He waited.
“About my reading material.” Her expressive blue eyes drew him in. She was all feminine sensuality and softness, awakening the predator inside him.
“Aimee, I’m here for your safety.” This moment, she needed to protect herself from him.
She nodded. “I’m curious. About BDSM.”
Sweet Jesus.
“I mean, from a scholarly perspective. I may want to write an academic paper.”
“An academic paper?”
“Okay. No. That was a lie. A white one, but still. I’m interested because… Well, I’ve wondered. And I have a few questions.”
“And you think I’m the right person to ask?”
“Uh… Did I misunderstand? Do you…?” She flushed.
“Look.” What the hell should he say next? Hoping he wasn’t walking into quicksand, he answered her. “Yeah. I have a fair amount of experience.” He searched her face. “The only thing you want to do is talk?”
“That’s a good place to start.” She tipped her head back to meet his gaze. “Right?”
Her hair was tousled, maybe from the way her head had moved against the pillow as she’d pleasured herself. “Could you put a robe on?”
“I thought…” She blinked and looked down at herself. “This is long. Longish, anyway.”
“You’re not nearly covered enough.” A low, menacing growl undercut his voice.
Still, she hesitated.
Trace spoke again, and this time, there was warning mixed with a command. “Go and change, Aimee. Right now.”
Like the smart woman she was, she went back to her room. Foolishly, perhaps, she returned.
Thank God, she was encased in a floor-length robe. Not that it made any difference. “We’ll sit in the dining room.”
Her eyebrows furrowed in that quizzical way he’d come to expect from her. It wasn’t necessarily an argument, but something didn’t make sense to her logical, professorial mind. “The couch is more comfortable.”
Making it far too easy for her to scoot close to him. “I prefer the table.” Instead of arguing, he crossed to the dining room and pulled out a chair for her.
Eureka blinked at them, then closed his eyes again.
“I’ll make tea.”
“You sure caffeine is a good choice?”
“Chamomile. It’s herbal. Soothing.”
He took a seat and watched her fill the electric kettle.
“Can I brew you a cup?”
If it would take away his tension, maybe he should ask for a gallon. Instead, he shook his head.
While the water heated, she took down a tiny cup and matching saucer. No way would his finger fit through the little curlicue handle.
She sat across from him. “Are you a Dom?”
“What’s your understanding of what that means?”
Smoothing back her enticing, mussed hair, Aimee sighed. “You’re supposed to be answering the questions.”
“Sorry.” He gave a halfhearted grin. Her frustration wasn’t funny. “This isn’t a college lecture. There will be nothing academic about this discussion.”
“Well, most of my reading has been fiction, but…” She cleared her throat. “Well, you looked at my bookcase. You know I’ve got a couple of manuals that a friend of mine recommended.”
“Go on.”
“I’ve read about safe, sane, consensual play. And safe words.”
“You have done your research.” Of course she had. “Good.”
She squirmed. “This is making me uncomfortable.”
“It’s your choice of whether to go on or not.” He preferred she didn’t.
“No. I mean, I want to know, and it’s the only way I’ll find out. Right?”
He shrugged.
The kettle shrilled. As if being given a reprieve, she jumped up.
He tracked her as she turned off the heat. Her hand shook as she dumped a tea bag in the cup, then added the hot water.
She carried it back, then took her seat again. Staring into the depths of the cup, she continued. “I know that some people are masochists and others are sadists. Which can be impact play or more than that, right?”
“Please look at me.”
Twin scarlet streaks were painted on her cheekbones. Sweet and tempting.
She cleared her throat and sat up, perhaps like she might in the classroom. “There’s a lot to it. A lot of different kinks, and I guess no two people do it the same.”
“Agreed.”
“For example, some people like light bondage, maybe handcuffs and no
thing else. Or blindfolds.” She cleared her throat. “Subs. Slaves. Bottoms. Tops. Masters.” She paused. “Owners. It can be a little confusing.” Her tone was a little distant, as if she wasn’t talking about herself. “My friend and her husband limit scenes to the weekend, and she knows other couples who keep it in the bedroom only. She tells me a number of people just like to go to clubs—or dungeons. I’ve also heard about submissives who are into it because they enjoy the service parts of it.”
“Which applies to you?”
“To…” She pulled the lapels of her robe closer. “Me?”
“Not some hypothetical couple. You, Aimee. When you read, I’m sure you’re drawn to certain things. In your fantasies, what do you like?”
“A lot of different things. I do know that a full-time thing wouldn’t work for me, although…” She picked up the string of her tea bag and dragged it from side to side in a figure-eight motion. When she met his gaze again, her eyes were wide. “I have to confess that I read a fair amount of those kinds of stories.”
“What did you choose earlier this evening?”
“How did you know—”
“I heard you.”
“Oh.” She dropped the string. “I’m going to die. I think I’m going to die.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about, especially in light of what we’re talking about. BDSM is about honesty. It’s about trust. You have to be able to tell me anything. And more, you have to face who you are and what you want. Not that you can’t—or won’t—change and evolve, but you’ll never get your needs met unless you’re able to look them in the face and share them, if not with me, then someone else.” On the final word, he clenched his back teeth. Suddenly, he had no intention of letting any other man near her. “You’re safe with me, Aimee. Your body, your mind, your limits. I know it’s hard to admit certain things, but getting what you want comes with risk.”
She pulled out the tea bag and placed it on the saucer. “I was reading a short story. About a duke and a princess.”
“He was the Dom?”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.”
“Just checking that she—and by extension, you—were not the Domme.”
“No.” She shook her head in denial. “Absolutely not.”
“Tell me more about it.”
“Well, it was kind of a Taming of the Shrew kind of story. He married her, but she didn’t behave like a proper princess.”
He nodded. “So he used corporal punishment?”
She took a sip of her drink, then took her time swallowing it. “A crop.”
“What kind of experience do you have?”
“None.”
“By none, you mean…what, exactly?”
“I have never had a scene.”
His cock rose demandingly. He did his damn best to ignore it. “No boyfriend, date, has ever tied you up?”
She shook her head.
“Spanking? Even playful?”
Her eyes took on a faraway look. “No.” Pain wove through her admission, and he ached to soothe it away.
He’d been with plenty of masochists and subs, and he’d never probed this deep before. They met, discussed their various kinks and safe words, then made an agreement or wished each other a polite good evening. Aimee was different, and it wasn’t just because he was assigned to her. He wanted to get to know her. “But you’ve wanted to?”
“I had a serious relationship, and I hoped that maybe one day…” She moved the bottom of the cup in little circles in the saucer’s indentation. “I didn’t trust him.”
“He was a boyfriend?” She didn’t need to answer, but he wondered if she would.
“It was more serious than that. Thankfully I managed to get out before the wedding. I’m not sure what would have happened if I had ever given him that kind of power.”
Yet she was talking to him. Fuck if that didn’t make him happy. Stupidly so.
“But I asked about you. If you were a Dom.”
“As you said yourself, it’s complicated. A Top, for sure. That can be used interchangeably with Dom in some people’s eyes.”
“You told me—when we had our first run—that you had a girlfriend. Was BDSM part of that?” She abandoned the cup in favor of looking at him.
“Yeah. For a time. She and I had different views on what that meant, and neither of our jobs were conducive for sorting that out. We didn’t have long stretches of time to talk about it. I was on the SWAT team and would get called away. And she was a cop too. Then she joined the military. She shipped out to basic training less than twenty-four hours after telling me. She kept it secret for who knows how long. Days? Weeks?” He shrugged, even though there was nothing casual about it to him. It had fucking hurt. He’d failed, and it still bothered him.
“Was it part of any other relationship?”
“No. And I’ll be honest with you, Aimee—I’ve never considered it again. If the experience taught me anything, it’s that my job is better suited to less formal arrangements, so I keep it that way.”
“That makes sense, I suppose. But I don’t really understand what that means.”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I enjoy my kink at clubs or parties, where the players understand and agree to the rules and everyone has been vetted. No strings. I don’t know what drove Monica to leave in that way. But the ending is a regret I carry.”
“A good relationship takes two people being fully committed and working hard, Trace.” Her tone was soft, rounded by sympathy. “It can’t be all your fault.”
He appreciated Aimee’s fierce loyalty, and she cracked open a part of his heart he’d long since walled over. “Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
“Any more questions? Or should I send you back to bed?”
He watched her draw her eyebrows together as she contemplated his question, no doubt weighing what was best against her natural curiosity.
“I’m curious about the psychological parts of it.” She looked at him. “From what I’ve heard, and read, it’s a bit of a mind fuck.”
“Subspace, potentially. An endorphin rush.” He shrugged. “Experiencing new things. Pushing boundaries. Surrendering to someone else.”
“It’s a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“I should go to bed.”
“Yeah. You should.” Before I can’t let you go.
She stood, slowly. Reluctantly, he wanted to believe. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and clutched her robe’s lapels. “Good night.”
He tracked her movements down the hall, noted her hesitation before she gently closed her bedroom door.
Trace stayed where he was for a while. He should be relieved. Instead, regret pounded through him, hard and relentless.
“I’d like to go for a run.” Aimee breezed into the kitchen to grab a protein bar from the cupboard. As she tore open the wrapper, she tried not to breathe in Trace’s power or scent.
It was still early, right before dawn, and she hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours.
Trace didn’t seem to be faring much better. He stood in front of the coffee maker, waiting for the miserly thing to give up its first cup. “Now?” Judging by the fact that he was still in his sleep pants and that he hadn’t shaven, he hadn’t gotten any more rest than she had. A tiny part of her was glad that last night had bothered him.
She’d spent the night alternating between tormented dreams and lucid fantasies. It was nearly dawn when she fell into a fitful sleep. Aimee wished she’d been strong enough not to run. But his comment about surrender had ricocheted in her head, and for a moment, old fears—of Jack—had returned. Since him, she’d kept her guard up, trusting no man.
Aimee had enough self-awareness to recognize that the two men couldn’t be compared. Trace had ten times more restraint than her ex. But still, he was a dominant, bossy alpha male. And turning over her body and mind to him, with only a safe word as a lifeline, was an enormous risk.
Though nervous energy streaked t
hrough her, urging her out the door immediately, it was still dark out, and he deserved at least one cup of coffee. “Will twenty minutes be okay?”
“Yeah. Should be fine.” He poured a cup of coffee, took a gulp that must have burned his mouth, then went to the living room, grabbed his duffel bag from beneath the end table, unzipped it to pull out running clothes. He paused to look at her. “Don’t think about going alone.”
Because of the energy gnawing at her, it had been a consideration. “I know better.” But that would make the whole team scramble, and that wasn’t fair.
With a tight nod, he headed for the bathroom.
“Aimee! Out! Out, out, out!”
She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
After putting her uneaten breakfast back on the counter, she opened Eureka’s cage and placed her hand inside. “Step up.”
“Whee!” He soared into flight and stole her protein bar.
Since it was too heavy, he ended up dropping it. “Now neither of us get to eat it,” she said.
He cruised back to his cage and perched on the top. “Pretty bird.”
“Uh-huh.” She got him a walnut, since it had been effective for Trace, and placed it inside the cage.
When he went to grab it, she closed the cage again.
“I need to go for a run. I’ll let you out again when I get back.”
Trace turned on the shower, and her thoughts once again returned to the previous evening. What would have happened if she hadn’t run? Sex? A spanking? Nothing?
That wasn’t an option. After his kiss, and then refusing to be alone with her until she’d dressed in a full-length robe, she’d known he was as interested in her as she was him.
Trace joined her, his hair damp, smelling of spicy soap. “Let me check in with the team first.” He touched a button on his high-tech watch. “Falcon wants to go for a run.”
“She going to leave you in the dust again, Romero?”
She grinned. Sounded like Riley.
Trust in Me (Hawkeye Book 2) Page 5