by Zoe York
Right. She sagged back against the door. “Still. Good present.”
“And there’s still two weeks left until Christmas…”
Oh God. He was going to kill her with dirty kindness.
* * *
“So…last night was fun.”
Hunter glowered at Quinn across the small secondary base gym they were using for PT. He didn’t like his friend’s tone. “What do you mean?”
“Whatever you were doing with Serena at the bar. She was panting for it. What did you have her wear, a remote control vibrator or something?”
“None of your fucking business.” Hunter’s first reaction was to keep going and tell Quinn where he could jam such an inappropriate question, but if it was obvious…shit. He hadn’t considered that. Because while it had been hot as hell to keep Serena amped up like that, it would be less so if other people could notice.
“Fair enough.”
Hunter chewed on his lip. There was something about the way Quinn said it, like it truly was no big deal…and that his inquiry hadn’t been a jackass comment, but something else. Something Hunter didn’t quite get.
“How could you tell?”
Quinn laughed. “Your girlfriend is a classic submissive, man. Probably nobody else would see it, don’t worry.”
A what? No, Hunter knew what that was. But Serena wasn’t… “You got it wrong.”
“Okay.”
“Serena’s not—” he cut himself off.
Because yes, Serena was like that. And she’d danced around talking about it… but a submissive? That was a word straight out of internet porn, not real life.
BDSM? Hell, no.
Hunter was as vanilla as bad-ass SEALs came. He liked to fuck, but he liked to laugh and tease and have his girl ride him just as much.
And the thought of hurting Serena…nope. That would never happen.
He frowned at Quinn, who shifted uncomfortably, like he was pretty sure Hunter might deck him if he said the wrong thing. Hunter wasn’t sure he wouldn’t, but now Quinn’s words were under his skin and he needed to know where they came from. “Tell me more. How could you tell?”
“She’s…shit, man, don’t mind me. I’ve got a big mouth and a dirty imagination.”
“Stop imagining shit about my girlfriend.”
“Never started, I promise.”
Hunter paced away, but he could still feel the other man looking at him. “Stop it.”
“So I take it you’re not someone who knows what a flogger is.”
He snorted. “I know what it is. I have no desire to use it.”
“Not for everyone. Are you…” Quinn laughed. “Look man, I’m just going to say it. Are you kinky at all?”
No fucking way was he answering that question. He gave Quinn an incredulous look and moved toward the free weights. “Are you?” he popped the words back over his shoulder. “Because I can’t imagine you leather and chains.”
Quinn laughed. “Leather isn’t my thing. Chains…maybe.”
Jesus. “Not a visual I needed.”
Another laugh. “I might be able to help you.”
“Changed my mind. This conversation is not happening.”
“I’m just saying I know some stuff…and hey, I’m putting myself out there by admitting this, too, right? You can trust me.”
Hunter knew what Quinn meant. He glared back over his shoulder. “Not now.” Then he huffed a breath. “Not here, anyway. Maybe we can get a drink after work?”
“Sure man. Whatever you want.”
“And not a word of this to Serena in Vegas.”
Quinn shrugged. “Your sub, your rules.”
“She’s not my… Okay, whatever. My rule is that we stop talking about this.”
“Got it. Come spot me?”
“Sure.”
“It’s not a big deal, man.”
Maybe not to Quinn.
Hunter, on the other hand… he needed to do some research.
Chapter Seven
Serena folded a second little black dress into her carry-on suitcase. They weren’t leaving for a few days yet but she liked to pack ahead of time. And re-pack.
She narrowed her eyes at the three pairs of shoes sitting on the floor, waiting for their verdicts. In addition to the dresses, she was also taking leather leggings and a barely there halter top, plus jeans and a few t-shirts for when she wasn’t happily slutting it up for Hunter’s enjoyment. All of those could go with one pair of shoes…but which one?
As she mulled over the shoe question, she zipped up the suitcase and set it against her bedside table. That dragged her attention to the wooden box next to her lamp that now contained her very first sex toys, courtesy of her amazing boyfriend, and blushed. Yes, she’d dress up for him. Strip down for him. Wear ridiculous heels.
Whatever Hunter wanted, he could have from her. She was his in every way.
Right on command, the front door opened. Hunter let himself into the house and called out her name.
“I’m in the bedroom packing!”
She listened as he moved through the living room, her pulse picking up as he got closer. She was almost breathless by the time he loomed large in the doorway. “Hey.”
He turned her into a terrible flirt. She fluttered her eyelashes at him and laughed gently as he gave her an exaggerated once over before chuckling himself. But the low rumble didn’t do anything to douse the flames. If anything, the connection they had was stronger because they could laugh at themselves, laugh at the ridiculous heat between them.
And now their shared secret. She waved her hand at the box. “I assume I should pack those things?”
He prowled closer, crowding against her back. “I should make you wear the plug on the plane.” She meeped at the thought of having to explain that to a TSA agent. His next chuckle was right against the sensitive skin at the base of her neck as he pressed her forward over the bed. “Hands down. Ass out.”
She gasped as he flipped up her skirt.
“Serena, you’ve been holding out on me.” His palm circled one butt cheek, then the other, his fingers teasing the bare skin along the edge of her panties.
“How so?” Her voice caught on the two little syllables.
“There’s dirty and extra dirty. That’s what you said to me.”
Heat bloomed inside her. “Yes.”
“That’s creative word play, isn’t it? Were you trying to avoid telling me about…your preferred kind of…” His hand stopped right on the fleshy curve where her hip met her thigh. “Kink?”
“No…” she lied, breathless with excitement.
“Is this where some other asshole would spank you for lying?”
She closed her eyes and nodded.
“I’m not like that, beautiful.” He traced the line of her underwear again, from one hip, curving across the top of her cheek, and down into her crease. “I don’t get off on punishing you.”
She couldn’t breathe. Oh, God.
“I get off on watching you come, though. And I’ve been doing some research. Do you know what a forced orgasm machine is?”
Holy shit. She dropped her face to the bed and groaned.
Hunter didn’t say anything.
He didn’t do anything, either.
Her breath still ragged in her chest, she slowly twisted her face to the side. Nothing.
She pulled away from him, and he held on tight, but then she felt it…a quiet, shaking laugh.
“Jesus, Hunter!”
He laughed out loud and picked her up, dumping her further into the middle of the bed, then crawled after her. “Scared you?”
“Turned me on a little, too.” She gave him a serious look, feeling quite guilty despite his teasing. “I’m sorry for holding back.”
He shrugged. “We’ll get there.”
She so didn’t deserve him. “How did you…?”
“Quinn.” He made a face. “Bastard called you my submissive. After I threatened to kill him, he talked me down and convinc
ed me that maybe I should know a few things about dominance and submission, and other stuff.”
She covered her face with her hands, peeking out at him through her fingers. “You can’t even say the other things!”
“Bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism.” He winked at her. “Bondage has its appeals, maybe.”
Taking a deep breath, she wiggled closer, needing to feel his arms around her. Heady relief coursed through her as he instantly wrapped her up tight in his body. “I should have told you myself.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She took a deep breath, screwing up courage deep in her belly because she’d need it. Admitting weakness wasn’t something she did willingly. Usually. But for Hunter… “I don’t have that much experience with kink, actually. And my experiences with other guys has been mixed.”
That was an understatement, and even as Hunter tensed around her, she knew she had to stop hedging. Had to tell him everything.
She pressed her hand against his chest. “Wait. Don’t…say anything. Let me get it all out, okay?” She waited a beat, then forged ahead. “I was nineteen when I went to art school. I’d tried two years of college, and it wasn’t for me. I’d always felt like a misfit, and when I got to art school, it was like coming home to my tribe. In more ways than one, it felt like at first, because people weren’t just creative in how they worked. My classmates, teachers, mentors…everyone eschewed the norm in every way. And I loved it. One of my profs had three partners, and I learned about polyamory. A female classmate was a Domme, and invited me to a local get together for people interested in kink. And when I got there, more familiar faces. It felt totally right.”
Right up until it didn’t. Hunter picked up on that right away and ignored her request to wait. “What happened?” he asked, his voice more gentle than ever before.
“Bad relationship.” She shrugged weakly. It really had been that simple. “Happens to the best of us.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not physically.” Not when she didn’t want it, anyway. “I thought we were serious. He thought we were simply playing around. And when I realized he didn’t want to introduce me to his parents—not then, not ever—because I was a dirty slut, and those weren’t just words he threw at me during sex, but what he actually thought of me all the time…it broke something inside me.”
“No.” Hunter’s voice cracked, then he dragged a heavy breath into his chest, his muscles rising and falling hard against her. “Jesus. Who is me? Let me at him.”
“Long in the past.”
“But not forgotten.” He swore again, under his breath. “You’re not dirty. There’s nothing, nothing you could ever do that I would think that about you.”
“I know. This is why I’m telling you.” She hesitated a beat. “I haven’t been able to open up like this before.”
“So since then…you’ve just…”
“Done the vanilla thing. Or the kink thing. Either or, but never both. It’s just easier that way.”
“You deserve more than easy, beautiful.”
And now she had him, so it didn’t matter. She pressed her face into his chest and breathed him in. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Your sexual history only pertains to me in so far as how it affects our sexual future, together, and so far, I think we’ve done just fine. And now we’ll do even better.”
“Mmm.”
“But if there’s something I’m not satisfying for you… If it’s something I can give you, I will.”
She closed her eyes and remembered the feeling of being completely full as Hunter fucked her, butt plug in place. “Nope. You’re everything I’d ever want. More than I’d ever dreamed possible, too.”
“That’s high praise.”
“It’s the truth.” Another deep breath filled her head with the subtle scent of him. Spicy wood and man underneath it. She kissed his neck, his jaw, his lips. “Hunter, you’re everything to me.”
“The next time you have a fantasy, though, you should tell me about it, got it?” He squeezed his large hand over her shoulder and she nodded. No more secrets. “Now tell me more about how submitting to the big, bad Navy SEAL turns you on, because I’ve got some ideas…”
* * *
Hunter felt better after they talked, and Quinn proved helpful as well. The guy quickly set him straight on his wrong-footed assumptions about what a kinky relationship looked like.
“It looks like a relationship,” Quinn drawled two days later when he busted Hunter googling how to introduce BDSM into a new romance. “Something only an insane man would be up for, because why sign up for hell of a lot of hard work like that? But it’s just two people negotiating what they like and what they don’t. Don’t over-think it.”
But it was all he wanted to think about, and not in a bad way. Now that his mind had been opened to kink being more than what a bunch of letters stood for, he was…curious.
Wary, too.
So the night before they flew out to Vegas, he told Serena he’d been doing more research. “But now I just have more questions,” he admitted, leaning back against the kitchen counter as she mixed a salad together.
She blushed as she glanced sideways at him. “Questions?”
The way she flushed heated his own blood right to the boiling point. “Does that embarrass you?” He moved closer, brushing a few strands of her hair off her cheek. Her lips parted as his fingertips skimmed her skin, and deep inside he felt desire start its irresistible pull.
“Maybe a little,” she whispered.
“I’d never want to hurt you,” he said quietly. “But I like pushing you to that limit. Out of your comfort zone.”
She blinked up at him. “Control freak.” She smiled softly. “One of the many things I love about you.”
He’d been thinking a lot about that. How she really resisted just coming out and saying what she wanted. She wasn’t passive about sex, not at all, but she was…coy.
The realization slammed into him like a freight train. Damn. Didn’t she know he was a typical guy who needed shit spelled out for him?
And spelling out exactly what she wanted would spoil her fun.
Shit.
Well, they’d find their way. But if they were going to do it by trial and error, it would take a hell of a lot longer.
Good thing he liked experimenting with her.
“Show me how far down that blush goes,” he said abruptly, pointing at the tempting vee of the soft button-down shirt she wore. She always wore those shirts, or a robe, while she was painting. Easy off.
Convenient for him, and his throbbing dick that wanted her to strip for him and then fall to her knees.
Without hesitating, her fingers flew to the buttons, baring the sweet inner curve of her breasts beneath the fabric.
No bra. He approved, and he opened his mouth to tell her that, but then stopped and corrected himself. Up the ante. “I like the idea of your nipples rubbing against the fabric all day.”
She raised her eyebrows, a pleased sparkle lighting up her eyes.
He gave her a slow grin in response. “Yes. I like that a lot. No more bras for you when you’re at home.”
She laughed out loud, then nodded pertly. “Okay.”
“All the way off,” he added, pointing at where the shirt still hung on her shoulders. “And then come here.”
He’d changed his mind about the blow job. He wanted to feast on her breasts first. Her breasts, her mouth, the sweet warmth between her silky legs…
Experimenting with Serena. What a hardship.
Chapter Eight
It turned out that Emme Ryan, another SEALs’ girlfriend—fiancée, Serena realized, since the woman wore a sparkly engagement ring; leave it to men to get that wrong—not only knew when flights would be pretty light, and could get them on as travellers with her to Vegas, but she got Hunter and Serena upgraded to business class as well.
“This is inc
redible,” she whispered to Hunter after the flight attendant brought them something bubbly.
“You’ve never been upgraded before?” He stretched out his legs in front of him.
“You have?”
He shrugged. “Perk of the uniform, maybe. And let’s be honest. They take one look at me and know that I’m going to be shaking the next seat in front of me every time I move my knees.”
“That’s seriously cocky. Are you saying that it’s my pixie-esque height that keeps me back in economy?”
“I’d never suggest anything negative about your perfect size.” He winked as she winged caramel corn at him. “But you do fit better back there…”
An hour later, barely enough time for a single glass of champagne, they were descending into Vegas. When they walked out into the surprisingly chilly Nevada night, a limo was waiting for them.
There were six of them in total. Nathan and Emme, Quinn and Jason, and Hunter and Serena, who was regretting her thin cardigan. She had a thicker sweater in her suitcase, but everyone else seemed fine in what they were wearing and she didn’t want to be whiny.
Hunter glanced at her and shrugged out of his jacket.
He was a mind reader. She smiled as he wrapped it around her shoulders and once they were bundled into the limo, she buried her face in the leather. When she looked up, Emme and Quinn were both looking at her with very different looks on their faces.
Emme winked, like she could see that Serena was hopelessly underwater in the new-love sea. And she’d happily leave her to drown, because she knew just how awesome it was.
Quinn, on the other hand…his look was more appraising. Knowing.
She sat up a little straighter and glanced at Hunter. He didn’t look at her, but he lifted his voice and brought Quinn into the conversation he was having with Jason about helicopter tours.
“Shit, people pay for those?” Now he looked at her and winked. “We get those for free all the time.”
“Someone would have to invade the Grand Canyon for us to get this one for free, though,” Jason said.
“Shut up, man. You’re being far too reasonable.” Hunter pointed to the champagne in the built-in bar. “Quinn, open that shit up. We’re on vacation for three days, and when we get back, it’s Christmas. We don’t need to think about bad guys or helo rides or anything but good ol’ American fun for the next seventy-two hours.”
