by Angel Payne
“Yes…Sir.”
Miracle of miracles, she prevented the punctuation on it from being a shaky question mark. His instructions took on another tone she’d never heard from him before, frost and fire mixed so seamlessly she couldn’t determine what to prepare for. His lips curled higher, telling her it was where he wanted her, too. Wavering on his strings. Teetering on his ledge. Slowly, achingly, fulfilling her dream—on his terms.
As she worked to accept that thought, he unwound her hair and brought her braid forward, draping it between her breasts. His knuckles brushed her skin, making her quiver. She released a rasp of shock. Simple caresses weren’t supposed to do this to her. She wasn’t a silk and ribbons girl. She was barbed wire and steel chains, a creature built for Doms who bit as hard as they barked. Z knew that, too. Knew it and craved it as much as she did. So why was he pulling the lame seduction moves? Why did he follow that stroke on her breast with a duplicate caress? Why did he slip his other hand down in order to fondle the other peak in the same manner? Why did he keep up the mushy-gush treatment, even when she let out a protesting snarl?
Probably had something to do with how he planned to rip that sound in two. Or a thousand. That’s what her voice felt like once a pair of nipple clamps seemed to appear in his hands from nowhere, then got guided to the tips he’d coaxed to full attention.
Without a second of warning, her crests went from aching need into mind-halting pressure. She screamed, wondering if she resembled one of the immortals from Highlander, with lightning bolts ripping her apart. She had the head flinging, body thrashing part down, that was for sure—especially when the pain went from mere torture to what-the-fuck-is-that within a second.
“Holy shhiitt!”
Z was still as a damn monk. She got her head under control long enough for a chance to look down and gauge if his cock was behaving like Friar Tuck, too. If she was going through this and not getting a damn inch out of him, her snarl was coming back I she had to hogtie it in her chest.
Her gaze never got as far as his crotch. As soon as she saw his fingers on the strings of the adjustable clover clamps attached to her breasts, tightening their sadistic little clutches on her nipples, the beginnings of that snarl came with no problem.
“I’d think twice about saying it if I were you, girl.”
She bared her teeth as she lifted her glare. He released the strings but continued batting at them, taunting her, his eyes aglow. He knew exactly what he did to her with his gorgeous arrogance, didn’t he? He was confident of every drop her pussy released for him now, with his massive body in front of her and the clamps pumping an agonizing elixir through her whole torso.
Through those clenched teeth, she issued, “Wasn’t thinking of saying anything, Sir.”
His lips quirked. “No?”
Unbelievably, she summoned a smile. The endorphins from that, blended with the adrenalin from the pain, curled a tendril of delirium through her brain. “Words aren’t the only way to talk, Master.”
Z chuckled. “Very nice point. They certainly aren’t.” Through foggy vision, she watched his hand dip into his pocket again. “Which is why you won’t mind this at all, hmmm?”
Before she could follow his movement, he showed her the “this” to which he referred. Luna grunted in surprise as he fitted a hard silicone bit gag between her lips with expert speed. He had the nerve to laugh softly again, the mirth lingering on his lips as he cinched the buckles to hold the bit in place. When he finished, he slid his fingers back to the sides of her face, tilting her up for his scrutiny.
He began stroking her bottom lip with his thumbs. The motion clicked as her cue to do something, right? But what was it? It was time for her to glower at him again, right? Or stamp her cute sandaled feet at him? To pick something out from the “bratty” column to drive a new thorn into his fur, so a bigger chunk of his civility finally fell off and he—
Stared at her exactly as he did now.
Ohhhh, hell.
As he swiped her lip the second time, Z traced the seam between her teeth and the bit. That made his snicker stop. When that happened, Luna pulled in a shaky breath. Zeke’s smile faded. She was glad she’d filled her lungs, because when his lids lowered and his irises went molten, air was officially added to her body’s No Admittance list.
Stare at me like that forever.
“Very nice, Luna.”
Forever and a day.
His husky words wove such magic into her body, she excused him using the nickname she loathed so much. She needed to acknowledge him, but nothing stirred from her except a soft moan from deep in her throat. For some reason, that made his lips rise again. But this time, his smile didn’t tease. It was more like…
What? What was he thinking? Hell, she barely connected to what she was thinking. All right, that was funny. What thoughts would those be, exactly? The ones consisting of nunh, he’s so beautiful, or gah touch me again, gah, oh please, Master?
He’d told her they’d do this in his time. By his rules. It had been so easy to Yes, Sir him, without absorbing the truth into her soul. She believed him now. She adored him for it now. She needed more of his Domination now. And could do nothing to demand it.
Even when he dropped his hands from her and disappeared.
She whimpered in frustration. The ropes around her arms, once friends, were the sentinels that prevented her from knowing where he’d gone or what he was doing. She dropped her head, glaring at the dark, throbbing red nubs of her nipples, still bound in his clamps. Her mind swam, still hostage to the spell of his control. Though she could hear his steps and feel his presence, she craved his touch again. Longed for his words. Needed the next sweep of power and blessing of pain he had to wield.
She hated every second of it.
She loved every second of it.
As her mind plunged deeper into her surrender, a deeper moan erupted from her throat. She drooled a little past the gag. She tugged at the ropes, savoring every burn they gave her skin.
Until Zeke slammed against her spine again.
Her breath rushed out as he splayed a hand to her stomach. His other hand trailed lower. Two of his long fingers dipped into the valley of her buttocks. They stopped at the rim of her tight back hole. Luna pulled in air through her nose as he slowly pressed at the sensitive nerves.
At the same time, he trailed his other hand into the layers of wet arousal between her legs. A thousand sparks shot through her pussy, her thighs, to the ends of her toes. “Ahhhh!” The cry came from her but sounded like the scream of another, a being spun of pure sensation, created solely to be his special welcome-home toy. Oh damn, yes. More of the world spun away. She forgot the dungeon, left the world behind, even the awful memories of Saint Cecelia’s that had threatened before. Right now belonged to Zeke: his touch, his hands, his control…especially as he captured her most sensitive button beneath his fingers.
She released a high, long keen.
“Good girl.” His voice was dark as coal as he squeezed something cold into the opening of her ass. Hell. The only smell she loved more than leather was leather mixed with lube. As he worked the tapered tip of an anal plug against her entrance, he ordered, “Be still now, subbie.”
Despite the morass in which everything from her clit to her cranium now swam, she tried to swing a glare backwards. Be still. Really? Sure, boss. She’d get on that as soon as she got over the fact that first, his fingers were turning her pussy into a not-so-small electrical storm, and second, he was preparing to invade the tiniest cavity in her body with something—
That stretched it far beyond comfort.
“Unnnnck!” The syllable was a miserable fail at the f word. It did the trick all the same, easing off the tempo on her body’s wild mega-mix of pain, frustration, and nympho-level arousal. Her vagina, teased by two forces outside her control, throbbed like a savannah without a tiger to rip through it. Yet Z twisted the plug in deeper, stuffing her more full than she’d ever been back there, hurting he
r so exquisitely, so erotically. “Uhhhhnnnn!” She bucked against his grip, feeling that he hadn’t gotten it in all the way, unsure if she could take the rest.
“Girl, what part of ‘be still’ did you not understand?”
Hell.
With heaving lungs and trembling legs, she gave in to his command. And learned that her ass could indeed take the rest.
“Aggghhh!”
Stars shimmered behind her squeezed eyelids as he seated the plug completely. He pressed the base to her ass cheeks with an approving grunt, letting his fingers linger along her skin. “Perfect.”
His voice was lower. Grittier. Mesmerizing as the lightning he continued to spread through her sex, helping to gather the downpour over her savannah. Terrible torment. Throbbing rapture. She wanted to burst so bad…
“Mmmmph.” The pressure from the plug turned into a steady, beautiful burn. Everything was a mad mix of pain and pleasure. In the black behind her closed eyes, she spiraled higher into the storm. She was pulled by relentless winds, flying across the veldt. She was lashed and helpless, at the mercy of the beast now driving her on with a bamboo cane at her ass. His feral breaths ripped through her blood. His guttural commands filled her head.
“Feel it all, Luna.”
Another stinging blow. Another scream from the depths of her soul. Yes. Oh, yes!
“Take it all, Luna.”
Another. Harder. Sharper. Her penitence. Her deliverance. Yes, Master. Anything you want to give me.
“Shatter for me, Luna.”
The bamboo came down. His fingers pushed inside. The storm crashed. The climax claimed. She was devoured.
Yet before the pulses in her sex died away, his mouth was back at her ear. His breathing was heavy, harsh, pure animal. It matched the next whack he rained on her, going for the virgin flesh of her upper thighs this time. Relentless. Driving her to another limit. Ramming her past it.
“Now you’ve had your warm-up.”
Chapter Five
Rayna didn’t want to be here.
Sally couldn’t have been thrilled about it, either. But the therapist looked serene as the Dalai Lama in one of her office’s big leather chairs, blond curly hair pulled up loose, Foo Fighters sweatshirt pulled over faded jeans. From behind her trendy oversized glasses, her eyes smiled.
That didn’t stop Rayna from continuing to feel like a giant shit.
“It’s ten o’clock,” she muttered.
“We’ve established that,” Sally answered gently.
“On a Saturday night.”
“That, too.”
She grimaced. “I can’t believe you insisted on meeting like this.”
“I can’t believe you thought a phone call would handle it.”
She tugged at a thread in the tan T-shirt in her lap. Zeke’s T-shirt. He’d left it in her room this morning. Not surprising, considering his commitment to his bat-out-of-hell flight from the house. She hadn’t found it until she’d finished scrubbing the kitchen, scouring the bathroom, and cleaning out the den closet, only to find she still wasn’t tired enough for the TV lullaby that had saved her from returning to the bedroom last night.
As if fate still had it in for her, she’d walked into the bedroom—and found the damn shirt like it was a homing beacon. To compound the mistake of picking it up, she’d smelled it. In an instant, he’d filled her senses again. She was meeting his brilliant hazel gaze. Exploring his burnished skin. Letting him fill her body. Letting him see more of her soul.
Burning their friendship because of her damn hormones.
Twenty minutes after that, she’d dialed Sally. Gotten desperate enough to call her therapist’s cell at eight p.m. on a Saturday.
“I would’ve been fine,” she murmured, “after a little bit. I just needed to talk and—”
“Rayna.”
“What? I wasn’t in total crisis, okay?”
“Rayna.”
“I was in a little rough spot.”
“You were in tears.”
“It was a bump.”
“A lot of tears.”
“Okay, okay.” She started making accordion folds in one of the T-shirt’s sleeves. Sally didn’t say anything for a very long pause. Crap. The woman was watching her. Being watched was intimidating. It meant she was a target. That any minute, three of King’s men would swoop in, hold her down, spread her legs and—
This jewel isn’t your shame. This diamond is a symbol of your miracle. It’s your true medal of honor…
She forced down a shaking gulp. Clung to the words, begging them to echo some more in her head, hating them when they did. Her fingers hurt from gripping the beige cotton. Shit. She was stronger than this. He’d been the one to show her that. And he’d be the first to tell her she had to do it without him, too…
“Ugh. I’m a mess.” She fidgeted, considering a get-me-out-of-here moment of her own. “Look, I’m sorry I bothered you, Sal. I’ll call one of my brothers. This isn’t fair to you. You’re gorgeous. You must’ve had a date lined up or something—”
“Yep. A really good one.” Sally chuckled. “He’s very adept at putting a movie on pause, keeping dinner warm and understanding that when his woman is a shrink for MRW services, her hours aren’t nine to five.”
“Sounds like a keeper.”
The woman’s face softened. Her lips crinkled in that “I’ve got a delicious secret” way that only other women understood. “We’ll see.”
Rayna nodded at Sally’s shirt. “Does he like the Foo Fighters, too?”
The woman squared her shoulders. “Are you going to play deflection until I call you on your shit?”
She shrugged. “You have to admit, I’m good at it.”
Sally didn’t return the mirth. She let a sizable pause go by before asking, “Who belongs to the shirt, Ray?”
She let her gaze fall again to the beige lump in her lap. Tried to tuck in the spots where she’d dampened it with her tears. This heartache was so ugly. And stupid. And useless. “You mean who belonged to it.” She ran a finger along the worn collar. “Me,” she finally said. “It belongs to me. He left it behind. Which means it’s officially mine now, right?”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“It’s a no thing.”
As Sally’s brows ticked up, she back-pedaled over her thou-protesteth-too-much answer. “It’s nothing, okay? It has to be. It’s what I agreed to, all right? And the last time I checked, I was a grown-up who knew the difference between strings-free sex and stalker-time expectations.”
One side of Sally’s mouth kicked up to join her brows. “So you slept with someone.”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Nothing. I think it’s wonderful. You’re moving forward with life, getting on with what a normal twenty-seven year-old woman should be—”
“It was Zeke.”
After ten seconds, she got ready to repeat it. Maybe the bomb was so huge all Sally had gotten were the shock waves and not the real words. The woman looked more Zen-perfect than ever, not even lifting her pen to jot this in her ever-present session journal.
Finally, Sally stated, “So he got back early from the deployment.”
Had the woman spoken like they were just trading costume ideas for the Halloween bash next week? “Uh…yeah.”
“Bet you were glad to see him.”
“Uh-huh. I was. And then I slept with him, Sal. Did you get that part?”
“Yep. Sure did.”
“And you’re not shocked?”
“I’m stunned that you thought I’d be.”
She went silent while scrunching one of the T-shirt’s sleeves into an accordion fold. Yay. The self-appointed stupidity medal just got bumped from silver to gold.
“Now, let me guess,” Sally went on. “You two agreed it would be a friendly little tension reliever, right? Just a way to burn off some stress? But hindsight isn’t bearing that out?”
She let the fold fall apart along with the
edges of her composure. “Hindsight.” It fell out on a whisper. An image engraved itself on her mind with not-so-nice severity. Z’s broad, bare, shoulders as he’d made a beeline for her front door. “Sure. That’s a good way of saying fucked up to shit, isn’t it?”
“That’s pretty harsh language.”
She looked up. Hell, here came the tears, anyway. “It’s a harsh world.”
Getting her bitter side on didn’t help things one bit. The ache in her throat got heavier. The loss in her heart flooded deeper. Neither got better when she remembered the look Z stamped into her before turning from her. His stare, full of so much regret and discomfort, that she’d been certain of one thing. He’d likely been prepping it long before their night of reckless sex.
Great. Out of all the Special Forces studs in the world, she’d slept with the only one who dealt the goodbye fuck after the deployment.
She erased the wetness from her face in two furious sweeps. “Look,” she muttered, “I understand what happened. I even understand why.” After her easy catch of Sally’s tissue box lob, she went on, “I just don’t understand…all this.” She waved one of the white swipes. “I have a lot of friends on the base. And some of them come with ‘equipment’ that’s handy at times…”
Sally smirked. “Helps to know a soldier with a good-sized…gun.”
She returned a watery laugh. “Yeah. It does.” As if she were getting naked physically as well as emotionally, she curled her knees to her chest. “But I’ve never had any problems putting them all back into their compartments. What’s my problem now?”
Sally released a meaningful breath. “Zeke’s a little too big for a compartment.”
Rayna snorted. “No shit.”
“I didn’t mean that literally.”
“Neither did I.”
After another silence passed, filled mostly with her efforts to force the memories of Thursday night away, she hurled the tissues to the floor but kept the T-shirt.
“I hate this,” she spat. “I hate feeling like this. All right, I admit it. I was just part of his job for a while. Maybe a part that lingered longer than most, but—” She rested her cheek on her knee. “I told myself it wouldn’t be forever. I knew it wouldn’t be, since the second we got out of that damn jungle. And nothing got any easier when I found out he’s a Dom—”
