Her Hero

by Jane Henry

  “Gonna take this pussy,” he rumbled.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, loving the way it felt to call her hero sir, something special and wicked, and arousing. His hands planted on either side of her hips, and she could feel the head of his cock at her entrance.

  “Tell me, angel,” he said, softer now. “Tell me if I hurt you.”

  “I will,” she whispered, and then he was in her, and she was filled with him, his cock throbbing as waves of pleasure rocked her body.

  “Grace,” he said, his fingers raking over her clit as he pumped into her, and God, was she gonna come already? He worked her over as he thrust into her, her need getting near frantic with every push. It felt different accepting him from behind like this. She felt somehow fuller, more aroused, even, and though the feel of him still stretched her with touches of pain, it was bearable, as bearable as the delicious licks of his belt had been. She wanted to own his pain, absorb it into her very soul.

  “I love you,” he said, grunting his release as she fell over the edge into ecstasy, climaxing as he rode her hard. “God, I love you.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said when she could speak again, not knowing how to respond or if sir was still expected. “Donnie, I love you so much.” A final thrust for him, and he collapsed, holding himself up but barely, as he withdrew and pulled her over on top of him as he removed the t-shirt from her eyes.

  “Stay there, honey,” he said, getting out of bed and grabbing a washcloth. He came back quickly, cleaning her up as she lay in the ecstatic afterglow. She could get used to lying here with him like this, just after being spanked and fucked senseless. Hell, she couldn’t even feel her legs. As she rolled over, and he pulled her into his arms for a cuddle, she froze.

  An obnoxious blare of an alarm rang in the distance.

  “Fucking hell,” Donnie growled. “I’ll beat the shit out of those dumbasses if they don’t get these alarms fixed.”

  She groaned. The last thing she needed was him leaving her right now, but it seemed he had no choice. “I’ll be right back, Gracie,” he promised, as he stood, pulling on a pair of jeans, grumbling to himself.

  “Please,” she said. “Be quick?” She needed him now. Her body still ached from the way he’d worked her over, and she needed the reassurance of his touch.

  He leaned in and ran his hands through the hair at the back of her neck, his fingers claiming but gentle. “I promise, honey. I promise I’ll be right back for you.”

  “Oh yeah?” she teased, though there was a thread of irritability in her voice. She really didn’t want him to go. “How do you know I’ll still be here when you get back?”

  She’d underestimated his ability to read her, she realized, as he gave her a sidelong glance. Though his lips twitched, his eyes were serious, focused. “Oh, honey, I have ways to ensure you stay exactly where I put you.”

  She’d thought it wasn’t possible for him to arouse her yet again, but she was wrong. Her body ached for him, and already, her clit pulsed and arousal shot through her chest. “Oh yeah?” she whispered.

  In one swift move, he lifted his t-shirt from the bed. He was a big enough guy that the shirt was long enough for him to twist it into a rope, before he fastened it around her wrists. “I’ll tie you to my bed if I have to,” he said, securing her as he knelt next to her. He kissed her forehead, making her chest rise, before he released her. “I’ll be back,” he said. “It’ll only take a minute. And when I come back, we’ll have a talk about making sure you behave yourself.” Her heart stuttered in anticipation.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The door shut with finality.

  Chapter 9

  Donnie let the apartment door slam shut behind him, not even attempting to dull the crashing sound it made, and jogged down the hall.

  “God Almighty,” he grumbled to himself as he smacked his broad palm against the heavy fire door that led to the back stairwell, pushing it open so hard that it cracked against the wall. “Villi said he’d taken care of this. If the neighbors complain again, I am giving them his fucking cell phone number! Let them wake his ass up.”

  The fire alarm panel had been located on the ground floor on the west side of the building, near one of the service entrances. The idea was that it would be convenient for fire crews in the event of an actual emergency, and out of the way of guests while The Club was in operation. But if this false-alarm bullshit kept happening, he needed to get a remote control switch or have the damn thing relocated to his apartment.

  He didn’t care how much he owed Blake and The Club; he was not paid enough to leave his Grace tied up in his bed, her ass buck-naked and striped red from his belt, while her eyes begged him to come back and make love to her again.

  Christ, fucking his woman was a revelation, every single time. Sex and dominance were nothing new to him, but sex with Grace was something special. There was a connection between them that went beyond the simple give and take of pleasure and desire. Dominating Grace didn’t simply satisfy his need for control; instead, he recognized that he was meeting her need to have a strong person to lead her. And he could see, from looking in her eyes, that her choice to submit to him wasn’t simply because she wanted to give over control, but because she wanted to meet his need for dominance. It was selflessness, purer and deeper than he’d ever seen or experienced, and he felt it working a change in him.

  He was beginning to look at himself in different ways, to simultaneously expect more from himself and to feel like he no longer needed to hide his desires, because Grace was more than up to the challenge of handling him, no matter what fantasies his brain conjured up.

  Her words from earlier replayed in his mind. “I’ll do anything you tell me, sir. I’m yours to do with what you will.”

  Fuck.

  He needed to get back to her. He took the stairs two at a time.

  The panel, when he reached it, was lit up like a Christmas tree, and Donnie frowned in concentration, trying to remember everything that Villi had told him. Nothing looked like the error displays they’d discussed, goddamn it!

  He reached into his back pocket for his cell phone, ready to wake Villi and get to the bottom of this, only to realize he’d left his cell phone on his nightstand.

  “Shit! Okay, all right… Error code, error code…” he muttered under his breath. He ran his finger across the display, which Villi had told him would flash with the location of the malfunctioning sensor, but the small window which should have shown a location now read, “Dispatch notified.”

  A tremor of unease snaked up his spine, and he felt goose bumps form on his naked chest.

  The dispatch had not been contacted, because Villi had disconnected that part of the malfunctioning system to prevent yet another false-alarm callout to their friends at the local fire station. But the computer system was trying to alert the fire department, because…

  Because both the smoke and heat detectors near the second floor staircase had tripped.

  Not just one sensor, but two? Not an error code, but heat and smoke detected? He shook his head once, in instinctive denial, but the display didn’t change. Understanding settled like lead in his belly, followed by a thrill of fear unlike anything he’d ever encountered. Was it his imagination, or could he smell… smoke?

  Holy shit. Grace was up there.

  Tied to the bed!

  His legs were pounding back up the stairs, bare feet slapping the treads, before his brain had finished articulating the thought. He panted as he reached the third floor, already shouting Grace’s name as he tugged the door handle… But it wouldn’t budge.

  What the hell?

  “Grace!” He pulled with both hands, even bracing his foot against the wall beside the door for added leverage, but the magnetic locks that were supposed to fasten the door shut to prevent the spread of fire had somehow engaged.

  He beat at the door uselessly with his palm, the metallic clang ringing above the shrill sound of the alarm. She was so close, but he couldn’t get to h
er. Fuck!

  He flew back down the stairs to the second floor, and that door mercifully clicked open as soon as he tugged on it. He threw it open and pelted down the hall towards the main staircase at the center of the building.

  Smoke, heavy and thick, stung his eyes and filled his throat. He took a deep breath of the relatively clean air in the hallway before battling forward again. The noxious fumes were unreal, far worse than he’d ever imagined, and he felt his lungs seize and burn from the chemicals. He moved forward at a crouch, trying to peer through the roiling black haze, only to come up against a wall of flames when he reached the center landing. The stairway to the second floor was impassable and… holy shit. The entire office was in flames.

  No way to call for help.

  The smoke forced him to his knees and he retched. As he crouched there, a decorative brocade panel that draped from the ceiling caught fire and sailed to the ground in a shower of sparks. Several burning embers carried on the drift of smoke to land on his naked chest, and he slapped at himself, barely feeling the burns.

  Above the roar of the flames and the alarm, he imagined he could hear Grace calling his name. He forced himself to crawl back in the direction he’d come.

  The smoke filled nearly the entire hallway now, and this time when he opened the fire door he did so carefully, closing it behind him as fast as he could to keep the air in the stairway as clear as possible. Then he dropped to his knees once more, coughing black soot from his lungs while tears streamed from his burning eyes and rolled down his face.

  Shit. How had the fire gotten so bad so fast? How the hell could he get to Grace?

  With a start, he remembered the fire escape on the rear of the building.

  He reached out a hand and pulled himself up using the railing, then stumbled down the stairs, past the blinking panel, and out the service entrance into the freezing cold night.

  He sucked in the bracing, clear air, even though it made him cough even harder, and considered his next step.

  The fire escape ran in a zigzag pattern from the center of the second floor of the building up to his bedroom window on the third floor, with a small landing halfway along. He just needed to get to the second floor.

  Donnie ran to the corner of the parking lot where the construction guys kept their equipment and nearly sighed in relief as he spied what he’d been looking for. He grabbed an aluminum ladder maybe twelve feet tall from the back corner, where it had apparently been abandoned by one of the masonry companies that had come earlier in the spring. He hauled it out without a thought to the loud crash of the discarded wood and other supplies in the pile as they resettled.

  An annoyed voice from the spa building across the alley called, “Is that the damn alarm again?”

  “Call 911!” Donnie screamed, his voice hoarse and thready. “It’s a fire!”

  “No way! A real fire?” the voice demanded. “Are you kidding?”

  But Donnie wasn’t sticking around to chat. “Fucking now. My girl is in there!”

  His girl. His future. His Grace. His whole damn world.

  He hauled the ladder across the parking lot and propped it against the building where it looked like it would be just long enough to get him to the fire escape. Thank Christ. The fucking thing shook like a leaf in a breeze as soon as he was halfway up, and he took a precious second to steady himself, reaching through the rungs to touch the rough brick of the building. Up and up he climbed, trying not to focus on the shaking, or the fall that he was likely to take, or whether the stonemasons had left the ladder behind on purpose because the fucking thing was missing one of its stabilizing feet. Grace, he thought. Gotta get to Grace.

  Finally, finally, he got to the top and reached up, ready to grab the fire escape ladder, only to find that it was still two feet above him.

  No!

  The alarm was still blaring shrilly, and although no flames or smoke were yet visible from outside the building, he imagined he could hear the roar of them as they climbed inexorably closer to the third floor, creeping down the hall to his apartment. Without planning, without even considering the consequences, he jumped…

  And caught the ladder extension on the bottom rung.

  He held on as tight as he could as the extension descended, then climbed back up until he was firmly on the black metal staircase. He flew up the stairs, mentally assessing the strength of the glass on the window in his bedroom, and whether he had time to shuck his jeans and wrap them around his foot to provide a small measure of protection before he broke it, when the sight inside his bedroom had him stopping and flattening himself against the side of the building.

  Grace wasn’t alone in the room.

  A figure dressed in black stood with their back to the window, pointing a gun at Grace with one shaking hand.

  Panic seized him, bringing the choking red haze to cloud his vision. How had Mikey found her? Had Joe given them away? Donnie vowed then and there to end his brother if he’d had one fucking thing to do with harming Grace. Fuck brotherhood. Fuck family.

  Grace was all that mattered.

  But then a single beam of logic cut through the haze.

  Mikey wanted her, needed her, for Salazar. Why would he set fire to the building while she was still inside it? Or, fuck, why wouldn’t he be freeing her right now, and forcing her down the stairs?

  Donnie peered around the window for one more glimpse, just as the figure in black slipped off their hood… and shook out her long brown hair.

  Holy fucking hell.

  Julie?

  He’d suspected that something was off with her, but never this.

  He sank back against the wall, and willed back the blind panic that had driven him up to this point. He sucked in a deep breath and forced himself not to think of the terrified expression on Grace’s face, nor the fire that was no doubt racing across the floor towards his apartment. He instinctively knew that if he broke the window and charged to the rescue, Julie would lash out. He needed to handle this with finesse… with control. He needed to formulate a plan.

  Please, God.

  He glanced up and saw exactly the sign from Heaven he’d needed.

  Further back along the fire escape, the window to the bathroom was open, just a crack. No doubt Gracie had opened it earlier yesterday, when the weather had been mild, and forgotten to close and lock it. On any other day, he would have very firmly pointed out the inherent safety risk, and reddened her ass enough to ensure that she never made that error again.

  Tonight, he felt like singing Alleluia.

  He climbed onto the railing of the staircase, and was just able to get his hands on the window casing enough to pry it up, inch by careful inch. When the opening was as wide as he could make it reaching from this awkward angle, he held his breath and reached up with both hands, grasping the windowsill and pulling himself up and over until his forearms were inside, and the rest of his body dangled against the side of the building.

  And then a loud voice from the other room rose above the whine of the fire alarm, and what he heard chilled him to the bone.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

  It was Julie, but not. Gone was the strange, breathy, high-pitched voice she’d always used with Donnie. Her voice now was hard and filled with pain as she threatened Grace.

  Donnie’s bare feet scrabbled against the rough exterior of the building, needing just the tiniest bit more traction so that he could lever himself up. His toes dug in and he pushed, wriggling through the narrow opening as silently as he could, first his head… then his shoulders.

  “I tried to be nice to you, Grace. I tried to tell you the other day in the parking lot that guys like Donnie have the girls they fuck and the girls they fall in love with. Remember?” A pause, and then more harshly, “I said ‘Remember?’ ”

  Grace’s tear-filled voice stuttered out a reply. “Y-yes. I remember!”

  “But you didn’t stay away!” Julie accused. “You let him fuck you anyway, didn’t you?” />
  “I-I thought you meant that I…” Grace’s voice trailed off.

  “You thought I meant… what? That you were the girl Donnie would fall in love with?” Julie cackled, her laughter glee-filled and absolutely insane. A wave of terror threatened to swamp him and he wriggled faster, nearly dislocating his shoulder in his haste. The bathroom window opened into the tub, and the tiled walls provided nothing for him to grip onto.

  “Oh, you’re so sweet, Grace. So silly. How could you ever think a man like Donnie could love a girl like you? Oh, he’ll fuck you,” the bitch allowed in a sing-song voice. “He might even play cute little tie-down games like this with you. But you will never understand what makes him tick. You will never get off on the pain like I do!”

  “I get off on making him get off,” Grace retorted quietly. And though a corner of his brain roared in pride at her bravery, the remainder of him vowed to tan her ass again the second she was free. Why the hell was she arguing?

  Julie didn’t seem to understand either. The sound of flesh slapping against flesh rang out like a gunshot, even over the wail of the alarm. Grace cried out, and Donnie froze as fresh fury flooded him. Heedless of the pain, he forced his hips to shimmy through the window, catching himself with his hands against the bottom of the tub.

  “You don’t know the first fucking thing about getting him off!” Julie cried. “How long have you known him, little girl? Ten minutes?”

  Grace wisely kept her mouth shut, and didn’t correct Julie’s assumption. Despite his precarious position, Donnie heaved a sigh of relief.

  “I’ve been there for him for months!” Julie continued. “I’ve made myself indispensable around this place. I know how to work the alarms and all the electrical systems, I know how to trigger the magnets on the fire doors, and I know where the painters keep all of their supplies. The members love me, the staff loves me, and Donnie loves me too! Oh, he tried to deny it. Told me he wanted to stay professional, because that’s just the kind of honorable guy he is… or was until you came along.” Julie’s voice descended into bitterness. “But I could see through it. He chose me for all his demonstrations because he knew I craved the same things he does.”