All's Fair in Love and Mastery

by Sparrow Beckett

  “Anytime, baby Ellis,” she said as though reading his mind. “Anytime.” She chuckled softly to herself and patted his cheek, then stepped back without dropping her gaze. From innocent to full-on brat mode with one not even fully executed kiss.

  Damn, he wanted to chase her down, grab her by the back of the neck and fuck her against a wall. She tended to have that effect on men, but he was particularly susceptible. She seemed like such a self-possessed little tomboy until she channeled her inner brat—then she turned into a sassy little sexpot who needed a Dominant to keep her in line. It was hard to believe he used to find it funny when she did it other men. Not so funny now.

  Platonic. That was the word he needed to cling to. She’d said it a few times, but he was starting to wonder if she understood what it meant.

  He could play with her, but she wouldn’t let anyone keep her.

  Well, that might be enough for everyone else but he didn’t swing that way.

  When she looked at him like that, every dominant cell in his brain screamed at him to take what he could get and use it as leverage to get the rest of what he wanted. He had to be the first man in the history of men to refuse to sleep with a woman who wanted him because she wouldn’t put out emotionally.

  There was something seriously wrong with him.

  There was a word for it, actually.

  Love.

  Chapter Nine

  The exploration of the lodge and all of the outbuildings had taken forever. No matter how many millions he’d spent on the place, Grant had gotten a deal. Lucky bastard.

  She never would have even looked at a place like this online—not that she could necessarily afford it with so much of her money tied up in the brewery. But the place was perfect and lovely and if she died here and never went home she would have been a happy camper.

  They had made up the bed in the master suite with fresh sheets they’d found in a closet down the hall. Now she was lolling back in the bed they planned to share—just as friends—later tonight. She would have to work on not cuddling up to him as she slept. He was big, so she might just roll toward him unintentionally . . .

  “I wonder if I could run the brewery from here and never go home?” she said, thinking aloud. “I’ll pay you fair rent, I swear. You’ll hardly even notice I’m here.”

  “Somehow I doubt that. You’ll get bored after a few days and start making a nuisance of yourself. It’s part of your natural charm.”

  Grant’s gaze was full of affection and mischief, so she was forced to drill him in the arm with a fist. He complained bitterly, rubbing his arm in mock agony.

  “So your way to convince me to let you stay is to abuse my poor body? Rude.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if maybe that’s what you’re secretly into. Considering how stubborn you’ve gotten about putting out. Maybe you should let me top you for a while. I promise to respect your safeword, too, even if you deserve to be punished.”

  “I’ll keep your kind offer in mind.”

  “I know you’ve never let anyone top you. You really should give it a try sometime,” she teased, knowing he’d never go for it. “I’m sure you’d love to take a break and let someone else be in charge for a while.”

  She cleared her throat, trying to dismiss the visual of him sliding between the sheets wearing nothing more than his boxer briefs. If he decided to parade around half naked all evening, it was going to make her drool.

  If one thing led to another she’d be more than happy with that. He was the one trying to avoid it. Maybe she’d agreed to come with him with thoughts of seducing him first and foremost in her mind, although she’d follow the man across the continent while locked in chastity, truth be told. He’d always been such a gorgeous slut. She’d always admired him for taking his pleasure wherever and whenever he felt like. Resisting his temptations this week was going to be brutal. Hell, it already had been brutal and they’d only been there for a few hours.

  She stretched out, arching her back and enjoying the way his hungry gaze slid over her body. Being here with him, alone, was making her as randy as a three-peckered goat. His appreciative glances and that almost kiss had been making her squirrelly, but she seemed to be getting nowhere with him.

  Sure, she’d said they’d keep things platonic, but she didn’t think she could handle a whole week alone with him with no sex. Sharing a bed. How was she supposed to jill off to release tension if he was sleeping inches away?

  She had the urge to rub up against him and lick him.

  Bad, bad Dexter. No Grant for you!

  If only she’d kept it in her pants instead of sleeping with him that night, she’d never know what she was missing. And she’d been missing him in her bed ever since.

  It wasn’t just sex between them though. Now he knew her better than even Mia had. And that was saying something, considering she and Mia had shared almost everything, back in the day . . . eventually too much of everything.

  “Should we check out the beach?” he asked tightly.

  She knew he had to be tired after all the driving and the adventure to get here this morning—he hadn’t slept in well over twenty-four hours—but it was obvious he was avoiding getting in bed with her even though she was still fully clothed and sharing the bed had been his suggestion.

  “The beach? Okay.” The thermometer outside the window at the front desk earlier had read twenty-one Celsius, whatever that meant. It would probably be cool by the water, but she wasn’t about to go down there without having the option to jump in the lake if she felt so inspired. They’d grabbed their stuff from the boat earlier, so she hopped off the bed and fished her boy short bathing suit bottoms out of her duffel bag.

  “It’s going to be too cold to swim,” Grant warned, bossy as ever.

  She shrugged. “Even if I don’t go in, maybe I’ll start a tan.” She kicked off her hiking boots and stripped off her jeans, not missing Grant’s failed attempt to look away. She met his gaze and smiled an invitation as she tugged off her T-shirt.

  “Do you think it’s safe to go topless, or am I going to get arrested?”

  “One, there’s no one around except me. Two, it’s legal for women to go topless in Ontario.” The latter Grant had addressed to her breasts.

  Her ex, Nigel, had occasionally seemed disappointed about how small her tits were, but Grant never failed to feed her ego with his nonverbals. Apparently she was as much his type as he was hers. Not like Grant was really a type.

  She’d never, in all of her life, imagined meeting a man with long, pretty red hair and a red beard to match. Add the tattoos, muscles, and the big, pierced dick, and he was more like something she would have fantasized about as a teenager reading manga, rather than a real man. He was like a superhero from a comic book who turned into a villain behind closed doors.

  Ugh. Memories of that piercing had stolen her sleep several times after they’d been together. She hadn’t gotten to play with his cock nearly enough, but she fantasized about it a lot. Was it is even as perfect as she remembered? It wasn’t like she’d gotten a good look in the alley after the bachelor party, or in the parking lot at the wedding.

  When she was completely naked, she peeked up at him to find he was looking at her like a starving man watching the Cooking Channel.

  Excellent. At least she wasn’t the only one suffering.

  She pulled on the boy shorts and rooted through her bag for a pair of flip-flops and a towel, trying to ignore the way her pierced nipples felt as they tightened in response to his attention. A shiver stole down her spine. She knew she was playing with fire and would eventually get burned, but not knowing when was a lot of fun.

  Tension sang in the air. The awareness that he wasn’t far from snapping and taking what he wanted—what she wanted him to take—was making her arch her back and take her time, daring him to lose control.

  Most men played hard
to get rid of instead of hard to get, and Grant being the exception to the rule was like some sort of cruel joke. She’d always thought he was sexy, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him as more than just a hot friend to admire from afar. This was exactly why she’d avoided doing him for so long. Falling for a friend was messy—falling for your best friend was a disaster.

  All she wanted from this week was fun, the beach, a campfire, hanging out with her bestie, some gritty, unchoreographed torture, and some nasty, sweaty sex. But no—absolutely no—emotional attachment that went past friendship. Hard limit. Was that so much to ask?

  Grant sighed quietly and rubbed his hand over his mouth, looking away from her to study a wall sconce.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked innocently. “Getting cold feet about the whole lodge thing?”

  He chuckled once, humorlessly, as if he was in pain. “No.”

  “Then what’s the matter?” She might have added a slight purr to her question, but fair was fair. He didn’t have to walk around looking so edible. It was his own damned fault.

  God, she wanted him.

  “You’re not going to get what you want by teasing me.”

  “Oh? I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.” She slid a hand up the skintight black Lycra over her hip, skimming her palm upward to her breast and cupping it. Grant’s bright green eyes narrowed, burning with lust, making him look like some sort of deadly predator. She slid her thumb over her nipple, letting her short nail catch her piercing. She gasped at the jolt of pleasure, watching him watch her, hoping he’d fucking lose it.

  “Someone’s looking for trouble.”

  “Bring it,” she dared.

  Oh, the war of emotions she could see behind his hot green eyes. He didn’t want to play with her—she knew that—but he also very much did. So many Dominants had a hard time resisting a brat. It was like a bull being taunted with a red cape.

  A muscle was twitching at the corner of one of Grant’s eyes, and the sight made Dex positively gleeful.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. All talk, no action.”

  Was he mentally fucking her or spanking her right then?

  His jaw flexed. If he wasn’t careful he was going to wear his teeth down prematurely.

  “You need—” His gaze was so fucking stern, and he was breathing fast.

  She turned her back to him and leaned over the bed under the guise of dragging her jeans closer to fold them. The muttered curse that came from behind her was none too subtle.

  “What is it you think I need? Or are you thinking more of what you want to give me?” she asked sweetly, glancing at him over her shoulder. As she’d expected, his attention was glued to her ass.

  “You have no idea what I want to give you,” he growled, making the hair on her neck stand on end.

  “Don’t I? I’m a smart girl. I’m sure I can come up with a few theories.”

  He strode from the room as if it was on fire and she made sure he could hear her laugh as his booted footsteps thumped down the corridor.

  Ding, ding! Round one goes to Arabella Dexter.

  Sometimes winning could be so fucking sweet.

  * * *

  * * *

  Losing round two sucked, but at least it came with lovely scenery.

  Grant was one of those men who looked even more ridiculously good naked than he did fully clothed. And he was gloriously, splendidly naked.

  She wanted to tell him fighting fire with fire wasn’t very gentlemanly, but the view was far too lovely to complain about.

  The man was covered in freckles and tattoos. He made the freckles look so good she had no idea why other men didn’t get fake ones tattooed on. At some point since the last time she’d seen him nude, he’d gotten a few more nasty-looking aliens tattooed up his right leg. Not the cute green kind, but the ones with sharp, dripping fangs. Ones that didn’t look even remotely human. The only reason she’d even noticed them, however, had been because she was desperately trying not to stare longingly at Grant’s dick.

  It had been a long fucking time since she’d slept with anyone other than Grant. She knew what Grant and everyone else at the club thought, but for the past year—ever since they’d slept together the first time—she hadn’t been able to bring herself to do the deed with another man. Or woman. She’d had plenty of offers, and had played with at least a dozen Dominants and switches at the club and in private, but when it came right down to it, he was the only one she wanted.

  Hell, she wouldn’t even have played with anyone else if he hadn’t started mocking her about her dry spell at one point. Now, with Grant in front of her in all of his glory, she sort of wanted to cry. It wasn’t fair for him to be so perfect and so goddamn stubborn about not touching her again unless she agreed to being collared.

  He didn’t have any pity for the fact that she was way too jaded to buy into the illusion of permanence that came with a collar. It was a pretty lie she wouldn’t let herself believe anymore. Only children believed in fairy tales, and although she was only in her midtwenties, she was way past the point of believing in forever.

  It bothered her that he’d gotten new tattoos—and such extensive ones—without telling her. He was supposed to tell her everything, even when they’d been fighting nonstop. The new aliens on his leg were like a slap in the face.

  “Nice ink,” she lied. Well, the ink was nice, just her cheery sentiment was a lie. “When did you get that done?”

  “Not long after we were together,” he said absently, his attention on the sand beneath his feet as he waded into the water.

  The beach was a lot larger than she ever would have guessed, stretching along this entire side of the island. Large sections of the beach had sand that was silky and fine, but in other areas it graduated up to small, smooth pebbles. They’d walked along the shore from the beginning to the end of the beach, inspecting the dock where the smaller fishing boats and canoes launched from, and the boathouse where they were stored. After that Grant announced he was going for a swim.

  She’d watched him strip, just as helpless to look away as he’d seemed to be when she’d done the same in their room. The bastard. Now she was standing on the beach, watching him wade into the water, drooling over his taut, muscular ass. Without meaning to, she felt her teeth click together in a bite that would have ended with him yelping in surprise if she’d been closer. Bad idea though. Experience had proven he didn’t appreciate having his ass bitten.

  Frustrated, she tore her gaze away and looked out over the water. The mosquitoes were starting to get bad, but the sun setting on the horizon across the lake was too beautiful to miss.

  They were dusty from their explorations, but she’d rather take a shower when she got back to the lodge, rather than deal with the hypothermia she’d get from swimming.

  “You might not want to go in too far,” she teased. “The fish here don’t see a lot of humans. They might bite your dick off—especially with the shiny steel you’ve got through the tip of it. You have a built-in fishing lure.”

  “You say that as though you care.”

  “I don’t think I’ve made a secret of the fact that I’m pretty attached to your dick—or would be if you allowed it.”

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, arching a brow at her. “It’s yours if you’re willing to pay the price. The ball’s in your court.”

  “I’d prefer your balls in my mouth, if we’re being completely honest.”

  He grunted at her, glancing at her mouth before turning away and wading farther into the water. As he got to his groin, he went up on his toes and hissed, then dunked himself under and came up with water streaming down the bulges and planes of his muscled torso and arms. He slicked his hair back and swiped the water out of his eyes and Dex groaned loud enough that she startled herself.

  Luckily he didn’t notice. The last thing Grant needed was an ego b
oost.

  The man should be illegal, really.

  Both he and Will were obnoxiously attractive, but she’d always been a Team Grant girl. Will was more serious in day-to-day life and, from what she’d seen in the club over the years, he was less rough with his slaves. Grant loved to laugh, but he could be an absolute bastard in the bedroom. She’d heard it, but hadn’t really believed it, until she’d gotten firsthand experience. She’d been sore for days afterward. Although she hadn’t slept with them, the Norwegians had left her in a similar state, but they didn’t have the same sort of existing bond with her, and didn’t know how her mind worked.

  There was something to be said for the emotional connection between her and her sexy, redheaded BFF.

  Grant could read her like no one else.

  “You coming in?” he asked innocently.

  She couldn’t help but watch the trail of water that dripped from his red chest hair, downward over his flat stomach to the surface of the water where the lake only barely covered his groin.

  “It’s not bad once you get used to it.”

  She chuckled and slapped away a few mosquitoes. Maybe swimming in a frigid lake would be better than getting eaten alive, which seemed to be imminent. She charged in, diving beneath the surface. Icy cold slapped her skin and she burst up from the water sputtering.

  “You fucking cunt!” she gasped, not even bothering to wipe the water from her face while she waded quickly back toward shore. Fuck, it was cold!

  “Give it a chance!” Grant laughed, catching her around the waist and swinging her around before she got even halfway back to the beach.

  This wrestling business would be way more fun if the water wasn’t the temperature of glacier runoff.

  She screeched and fought like a cat trying to get out of a bath, but he only chuckled and pinned her back to his chest where she struggled in futility.