“No, Sir.”
If it didn’t smell so godawful in here, he might even draw this out. Let her sweat a little longer. But his irritation is dissipating just looking at her backside. He knows she’s not fragile or she couldn’t have made it this far in the Corps, but she looks delicate dangling from that hook.
He swipes his fingerchip over the scanner on the latch. The lock clanks and the door opens, and he enters the cell. He circles around her. The light spilling into the brig from the corridor skims her cheekbone. She looks up at him, her gaze direct.
Catch just hopes it’s dark enough that she can’t read his response.
First’s description of his little sister had been brief but clear. Or so Catch thought. “She’s a dork,” he said, when word got around to the other trainers that his sister was arriving today. When one of the assistant trainers asked what she looks like, First leveled him with a steel gaze and said, “She looks like me, shitrag.” First is huge. Just over six feet and broad-shouldered, lanky but muscular, with big hands, a square jaw, and thighs that could probably split a skull. So the image this conjured in Catch’s mind, and probably in the minds of the other trainers, wasn’t pretty.
Which might have been the point, in retrospect.
True, she does look like her brother; First just wasn’t clear what he meant. Yes, First is a hulking beast. He’s also graceful, somehow, lithe and athletic. And extremely good-looking. His sister’s been cut from a similar cloth.
Her eyes are dark in the shadows of the brig as she watches Catch, pupils overtaking that familiar blue. Her chest rises and falls in quick, shallow breaths, her full pink lips pressed together. She’s working very hard to look like she’s not losing her mind. Over the cuffs? The cell? Him? Catch can’t tell. He can’t seem to form a coherent string of thought at all.
And she just stares at him, uncertain. Waiting.
She doesn’t look angry or defeated, like he might expect. She looks alert, vividly humiliated, as she squirms on the hook. There’s fear, too, just beneath the surface, threatening to shake her apart, though she seems to have a handle on it—for now.
She also looks like she might just drop to her knees and suck his cock if he frees her—but that part is probably wishful thinking. Clearly she’s dying to be let free, but she doesn’t ask for it. Much as he might like her to ask. To beg, even. It’s the cuffs and the humiliation that get him. The tenderly bruised pride. But she’s not going to break. She’ll stay just as she is, her mouth shut, as long as he commands her to. This much he can tell by the deference in her gaze. His cock stirs at that look. An uncomfortably familiar pang of arousal roils low in his gut, even as he swallows it down.
First’s sister.
The thought snaps him out of it like an ice-cold slap in the face.
He leans in, so close he can feel her hot little breaths on his neck. Christ. He reaches up and grasps her slender wrist, feels her pulse beating against his thumb. He turns the cuff, exposing the clasp, and presses his fingerchip to it, disengaging the lock mechanism. When he lets her arm go, it drops like dead weight. He frees her other wrist and she stumbles back, heels dropping to the floor, and he catches her, his hand clamped on her upper arm. To her credit, she doesn’t protest. Doesn’t try to sell him a story about how that stuff in her ruck isn’t hers. She doesn’t say a thing.
“You’re going to keep yourself out of trouble, and I won’t tell your brother about this.” Strange, how he doesn’t sound like himself. Like this is just some scene he’s watching on the viz, some stranger playing Catch and doing a lousy job of it.
For a moment she looks stunned. Then she blinks and finds her voice. “Yes, Sir.”
He hooks a finger under her chin and holds her gaze, trying to ignore the electric charge crackling between them—does she feel it too?
“This incident will be stricken from your file. But if you act up again, make no mistake, I will bounce you right back down here to cuddle up with your new friend.” He nods at the shuttlehiker, who’s still passed out, snoring sloppily. “You don’t want to get on my bad side, Marsden. I don’t care whose sister you are. You follow my orders or I drop you from DEEP so fast you’ll be back on solid ground before you know what happened.”
The words come out smoothly, a recitation he’s uttered numerous times, to numerous trainees, over numerous infractions. Catch knows how to step into a room and take control. To use his bearing, his tone, his mere presence, to command respect, compliance, obedience. If he’s honest, the training core suits him better than the cockpit ever did. He was made for this, being a trainer. Though the words, this time, are a lie. It would take a hell of a lot for him to drop First’s sister before the end of the quarter, to eject her from the station, even if she was failing miserably.
There are certain things Catch would put up with only for his best friend, and his sister’s inadequate performance will be one of them, if it has to be.
Even so, he’d just as soon intimidate an adequate performance out of her.
“Yes, Sir.” Catch detects the hint of a tremble in her chin, but her voice remains firm. He releases her and she takes a discreet step back. “I won’t be any trouble, Sir.”
Get DEEP
Sneak Peek: DEEPER
DEEPER (DEEP #2)
This time… Catch wants it all.
For months, Sergeant “Catch” Durant has scraped out an existence without her. Cadet Lana Marsden. The girl of his kink-fueled dreams. Sweet. Submissive. And utterly in control.
The girl who used the safeword and walked away.
For months, Lana’s tried to carry on with her duty—her mission into the deep. She’s tried to let Catch go… and failed.
When a state of emergency forces their paths to collide, there’s only so long Lana can resist the man who brought her to her knees. Only so long Catch can hold himself back from all he really wants.
Harder.
Darker.
Deeper…
Catch is back.
DEEPER
CHAPTER ONE
The girl has short, dark hair, medium-dark skin, and a cunning, cutting look in her eyes that can only be described as catlike. She’s short, maybe five-three, and looks even shorter with her curvy, compact frame. Other than her general age, the fact that she’s a female member of the International Space Corps, and the fact that she’s strikingly, almost disturbingly pretty, she has nothing at all in common with Lana Marsden.
Lana…
Fair, slender Lana, with the long, soft brown hair and the deep blue eyes. Lana… who had whole galaxies in her eyes.
Lana.
Catch takes a deep, deep breath as he blinks at the girl in his wavering vision. Those calculating eyes cutting through him, finding him lacking. Pathetic. He’s damaged goods, and she knows it.
No. Nothing in common with Lana.
Maybe that’s why he’s here.
But then, of course, there’s the leather. The straps that hold the girl, bent over, bound to the desk. Those remind him of Lana… fragments still in his head, still burning him up, smoldering like live embers under his skin, no matter how he tries to snuff them out.
Drugs. Abstinence. Denial.
Memories…
Her faint vanilla scent. The sound of her desperate cries, her panting breaths, her soft sighs. The feel of her skin, soft and hot, against him.
Lana… bound to the hook in his ceiling, to the hook in his wall. In a collar and cuffs. On a leash.
Lana…
“Harder,” the girl says, her eyes on Catch.
Blaze steps forth and smacks her with the black leather crop. Right across the ass, both cheeks; leaving another pink mark alongside the others and making the girl buck and gasp in pleasure-pain. Her eyes gleam with satisfaction. She smiles.
She smiles at Catch, and the room does an ugly spin-out.
He shuts his eyes, hard, black holes imploding behind his eyelids. Needing to escape this place. The cube, so dank yet vibrant; close and hot; stifling
and cool. Large, then small. There’s not enough room. He’s so high, his eyes roll in his head when he scrapes them open. It’s the Pull or the Zag or the Exotica, he doesn’t know which. Which pill was the one that put it over the top.
“Do you like her?”
He realizes Blaze has asked him a question, that it’s dangling in the air between them, but it could’ve been ten minutes ago. His tone is absent, his focus on the girl—the girl whose sharp, dark eyes are still focused on Catch.
And Catch can’t even compute the question.
Like.
Her.
What’s to like?
What’s to like about any girl, no matter how pretty she looks in bondage, if she isn’t Lana Marsden?
Blaze looks over at him, cocking a coppery eyebrow when Catch doesn’t answer. He stands at the edge of the light, his pale, sculpted face pitted with shadow, twitching and vibrating like he’s not even real, just some viz model beaming out over a bad datastream.
It’s the Pull. It’s stretching everything out; the high, the need, the hours. Making everything else unreal. How long has it been since he entered this room? Half an hour? Half the night?
He can’t unscramble the time inside his skull.
“I think he’s tripping out,” the girl says, laughter behind her words, but she doesn’t laugh. It’s hollow-echo-quiet in his head as Blaze frowns and strikes her again, the snap of the crop-whip against naked flesh too crisp, too loud.
The girl winces and Blaze says, “Shh.” He runs his hand, gently, over the marks on her backside, and when she looks up at him, finally… the naked devotion, raw and tender, still fresh, so like the way Lana used to look at Catch… he feels bile rise up from deep in his stomach.
He swallows it down.
But he can’t seem to move as he sits here on the edge of the couch, his entire body tense but immobile, disconnected from his thoughts.
Because she does remind him of Lana.
Everything does.
Natalie. That’s her name. Or something with an N…?
He doesn’t remember her rank any more than he remembers her name. He doesn’t care. Doesn’t care if this is a violation of the Code of Conduct, if it’s a giant Fuck you to the Fraternization Policy, if the girl shouldn’t be here at all, in an officer’s cube late at night, in bondage, about to get fucked six ways from Sunday.
He doesn’t care about any of it anymore.
The girl meets his eyes again, her pupils dilated with arousal, her mouth open. Getting off on the crop, on Blaze’s familiar attention, so focused on her, mellow and hot. But getting off on Catch, too; on his rising discomfort as he watches her there… helpless but not helpless.
What the fuck is he doing here?
Blaze invited him. Brought him here, let him in, bound the girl while he watched. Because he wants Catch to watch, to see.
To participate?
But this is not Catch’s scene.
Take him, or I’ll whip you myself and let him watch.
That was Catch’s scene. The one he directed, for Lana, for himself. Some stranger, a nameless officer brought into his cube to fuck her.
The scene that fucked everything up.
The scene he shouldn’t be thinking of right now.
You made me feel worthless. Do you know that?
That was what she said.
Worthless…
And still, he thinks about it. Still, he watches the scene before him. His cock hard in his cargos, throbbing with the force of the Exotica vibrating through his veins.
He watches Blaze strip off his shirt, his pale, muscular chest already gleaming with sweat, with the exertion of what he’s been doing to the girl to cause all those pink lashes on her pretty skin; with the exertion of holding himself back from all he really wants to do. He doesn’t look at Catch as he moves closer, behind her. As he runs a hand over the swell of her ass, squeezes one of her cheeks and digs his fingers in. As she winces, as she gasps.
More…
And Catch keeps watching.
He watches Blaze take out his cock, hard and ready, and tease her with it until she squirms and starts to beg. He watches Blaze start to fuck her. Slow, torturously slow, as the girl begs for more.
Harder…
Please… harder…
Until Blaze gives it to her harder, so hard the desk, bolted to the floor, groans and creaks with the strain, and the girl struggles to breathe in her restraints.
And Catch is right back where he once was… that final day… fucking Lana, as she gasped and moaned for more.
“Shut your mouth…” Blaze stuffs his fingers in the girl’s mouth and she bites down, sucking on him. With his other hand he squeezes her ass so hard his fingers dig into her flesh up to the first knuckle. Hard enough to leave a hand-shaped bruise he can jerk off on later; Blaze likes to leave his mark.
Not Catch.
Catch never left a mark on Lana. Never hurt her like that. Never left more than a blush of pink and red, that one time he paddled her. Never wanted to hurt her, really hurt her.
Only wanted to please her.
Harder…
He fucks her harder. Gives it to her in a relentless rhythm, driving her open, forcing her to take him deeper…
But then he stops.
He releases Lana from her binding, buckle by buckle, kissing her everywhere he struck her. She slithers off the desk and onto the floor as he falls back on the couch. She’s crawling to him, crawling up into his lap, rubbing his cock through his pants… and when he smells her, when he tastes her as she snakes her tongue into his mouth, he realizes it’s not Lana. It’s not real.
No. This is real.
The other thing… The other thing isn’t real.
Lana isn’t real.
Lana’s gone.
And the girl in his mouth, her hand starting to rub him off through his cargos, starting to unzip him, isn’t her.
He pushes and she falls, sprawling, naked, on the floor. Nina? Naomi? He reaches for her but Blaze is in his face too fast, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, hauling him up and slamming him against the wall.
He doesn’t fight.
“Sorry,” he chokes out. “Fuck… I’m rolling…” His tongue is heavy. His pupils are blasted open, the ceiling light so bright in his face he winces.
“No shit,” Blaze mutters. “Let’s take a fucking walk.”
The corridors are a blur. He can’t walk right.
The next thing he can comprehend, he’s lying face-down on a bed. He’s alone. It’s his own bed, in his own cube. He can tell by the mess.
He falls asleep. He wakes.
He sleeps again.
Over and over…
Somewhere in the endless night, he imagines messaging her. Her. Typing a com to her on his tablet. Can practically feel the smooth glass of the screen beneath his fingertips.
Icanstillfeelyourheartbeatagainstmyskin
He stares at the words on the screen, blinking. The neat line of tidy, glowing letters jitters and throbs, blurring together.
Real?
He blinks again. The tablet weighs heavily in his hand. He can’t remember falling asleep or waking again. Can’t tell if this is a dream. I always will, he types, then blinks, trying to clear his vision.
IalwayswillIalwayswillIalwayswill
His thumb hovers over the glowing dot—SEND—that will send the message with a single swipe.
Then he types: You’re all I ever dream about
He stares at the words, but they vibrate and blur until he can no longer understand them.
He drops the tablet and puts his head in his hands. Takes a shaky breath, so deep his ribs hurt; the lingering damage from his last fight. He lies back on the bed and stares at the amber light recessed into the low ceiling above his head, just letting it burn… until a blurred fringe of light at his peripheral vision makes him shut his eyes, dizzy.
In the darkness, angry stars explode. A kaleidoscope of colors spins in on i
tself, a giant light-dragon eating its own tail, around and around…
There are so many things I should say
that I should have said
but it all comes down to one
Tablet in hand again, his fingers shake as he taps out the words.
Next time I see you, you’re mine.
You’remineyou’remineyou’remine
He closes his eyes against the blur. Doesn’t even know if it’s all gibberish.
He sends it anyway.
Then he collapses on the bed, thinking of her.
Lana.
He’s still tripping, hard, the Zag coming on in a black wave, leveling everything in its path. He’s got his cock in his hand, hard… then soft. He jerks himself off, tries, but he’s still too high to get there. He can never get to her anyway. She’s too far away.
It’s always like this.
Until he gets the knife…
He digs under his mattress for it, and when he finds it, when he drags the blade across the flesh of his upper, inner arm, that soft, tender flesh where it hurts the most, he can feel her again. He can smell her vanilla scent. He can practically taste her skin. She’s here with him, so vivid… and he comes harder than he has in weeks, his skull splitting down the middle.
Then he’s sucked back down, into the undertow of black.
When he wakes again, the tablet is vibrating next to him. A message has come in.
He sits up and grabs for the tablet, fumbling, swiping the screen to wake it from standby. But it’s the same message he always gets when he coms Lana.
Pain, jagged and fresh, claws its way up inside his chest as he reads the familiar words, as he struggles to find his breath.
Message undeliverable.
He collapses on the bed, clenching his teeth in a silent scream.
Every day.
Every day, he’s sent her a com. Every single fucking day since she left. One hundred and twenty-six days. Sometimes twice a day, sometimes ten fucking times. And every day, the same result.
Message undeliverable.
He hurls the tablet across the room. It hits the wall. He doesn’t look to see if it’s broken. He doesn’t give one fuck.
Dirty Like Seth: A Dirty Rockstar Romance (Dirty, Book 3) Page 43
