Handcuffed by Her Hero

by Angel Payne

  Z braced his hands to his hips and sucked in a deep breath.

  “Her name was Marie,” he finally said. “She was a hell of a lot like you, Ray-bird. Beautiful. Kind. She was a vet’s assistant…she always had a dog or two around that she’d saved from euthanasia the night before. We met at a kink party down in Portland. After a year, I figured…maybe things could be good. I gave her a lifestyle name. Treasure. I had a collar made for her, inlaid with rubies. She moved up here for me.” He took a determined step back in front of her. “You getting the picture now? We were unshakable, Rayna.” A sad smile moved across his lips. “We were flameproof.”

  She threaded her fingers into his and gently pulled. Once he sat beside her, she took in every inch of his beautiful, formidable face before forcing out her question. “What happened?”

  He pulled her grip out of his, digit by digit. With unwavering purpose, he flattened them all against his chest. “We didn’t leave all the ugliness behind us in the city, bird. A shit ton of it came up with us. It’s right here, beating in what’s left of this heart. It’s bloody and it’s crappy and it doesn’t get better, because that’s what happens when your soul is sliced open at the age of eight, watching them bring home your dad in pieces from Somalia.”

  Her breath clutched. Somalia, roughly twenty years ago… Shit, no.

  “Mogadishu?” she whispered.

  His lips twisted. “Ding, ding, ding. Give the girl a golden trophy. The glaring military mistake that everyone up top wanted to sweep under the rug, including the families who had no husbands or fathers anymore. They tried some great parting gifts on us all, of course. I got to keep dad’s medals. Mom got a great gift out of the deal, too. A newfound craving for vodka.”

  She moved her fingers to his neck and squeezed, trying to show him how sharply his disclosure moved her. “Oh, Zeke. Oh, yuck.”

  “That’s not where my vocabulary was going, but sure, yuck will do.” He left her and paced to the window. His steps deepened his confession in their tight restraint. “After a year, she decided she was actually quite fond of that little perk. She wasn’t home a lot but it didn’t matter. When she was home, she wasn’t the person I knew as my mom.

  “On my ninth birthday, I had a delicious dinner of Spam on saltine crackers followed by a friendly visit from Child Protective Services. Mom had decided to go to bingo night and took her own ‘beverages’ to the party. They decided that foster care was the better route for me—but the trouble was, I’d had a preview of what that foster shit did to a kid. His name was Kier Montague, and he’d beat the crap out of a couple of first graders the day before. And as we both know, he ended up on the streets, anyway. I decided to cut to the chase. I’d already packed a bag for the contingency. Birth certificate, some cash, a couple of bags of Skittles, an easy shimmy out the bathroom window, and I was gone.”

  “Just like that?” She frowned. “Didn’t you ever try to go back, to see if your mom—”

  “I went back every night for a year.” He slammed a fist to the window frame. His silhouette looked like a furious Michelangelo nude cut and pasted against an Ansel Adams slide. “I scrubbed the house from top to bottom, wanting it to be perfect for her when she decided she wanted to come home and be a family again.”

  Rayna dropped both hands to her stomach and clenched them. She hated what she said next, especially because she sensed it was the truth. “But she didn’t.”

  Zeke shrugged. “I don’t know. The city put the house up for sale, citing abandonment by the owner. After the sign went up, they locked it up like the goddamn White House.” He turned and stared at her with finality. “I was on my own.”

  He turned back. Her stare fell to the ink across his lower abdomen with new understanding. “That’s what your tattoos mean,” she murmured. “Those are tear drops.”

  “One for every year between the day I left and the day I enlisted.”

  Rayna swallowed hard. Her chin started to tremble. The bricks had stopped trying to macerate her heart. They were a pile of useless chunks now, shoved into the corner next to her soul so she could finally see through the dust—at Z’s pile, too.

  “And you’ve been gone ever since.” It was a revelation, not an accusation, though Z’s glower told her otherwise. “You really haven’t stopped running, Zeke, have you? Because the only time you tried, you couldn’t deal with what it made you feel about that woman. You couldn’t deal with feeling for a woman at all because of the last one you ever felt anything for.”

  He didn’t reply until he’d crossed back over to the dresser, not sparing her a single glance in the movement. “I’m fine with feelings, bird. It’s commitment I’ve got issues with, remember?”

  A messy laugh sputtered off her lips. She raised a finger high. “Taxi? You got room for one party of seriously confused?”

  He pulled out a pair of sweats with the letters A-R-M-Y down the leg and jammed his legs into them. “I’m going to let that pass because you’re angry.”

  “How about answering to it because I’m right?”

  He wheeled back toward her. His stance was menacing, his hair wild as he dragged his hand through the unruly waves. “You calling me an unfeeling bastard, Rayna? I have news for you. I feel just fine, goddamnit. I have eleven guys who depend on me to have feelings and act on them when necessary. Their lives and mine depend on it.”

  She didn’t blink as she returned his glare with a slow nod. “I know,” she said. And she did. In the revelations he’d given her, she was able to connect more back to his finality about pushing her away now. More than she wanted to. More than her heart might be able to handle.

  “Thank fuck for the day job, huh Z?” she went on. “No wonder you’re really good at it. Makes a nice little paint-by-numbers for the emotions. Take loyalty and brush it here. Anger is best dabbed there, there, and there. Fear? It belongs right there. Joy waits to get put there. Perfect and neat. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody goes home in pieces in a casket. Nobody goes to bingo night and never comes home again.”

  He cinched the sweats in with harsh jerks. Every lurch of the movements told her she’d come close to, if not spot on, the truth. She hated that surety because it put the emotional stick in her hand for poking the puma in the hardest way.

  “That’s why things were good with Marie, too—for a long while. In many ways, BDSM is a neat box of its own, right? Even during the short time I was at the Bastille, I saw that. There’s a code. Manners. Ways of doing things, clear-cut sets of actions and emotions. A plan.”

  That yanked up his head. He returned his hands to his hips, too, doubling his daunting factor again despite the bed head and the sweats. “You think that’s why I’m in the lifestyle? Why I’m committed to making it better? Why I’ve mentored people in it?” His glower narrowed. “Because of boxes and plans?”

  “I think it meets many needs in you,” she replied, “the same way Marie did. You wouldn’t have called her Treasure if she didn’t. But once the relationship expanded outside the dungeon and you couldn’t predict every shot, things got scary. Maybe your heart started to open.” When a pulse jumped violently in his jaw, she affirmed, “Oh, yeah. It opened a lot.”

  The other side of his jaw ticked. He cocked his head. “Should I cue the Coldplay ballad now? You going to wrap this up by saying how I took a chance with Marie anyhow and opened myself up, but then she shattered me by running just like Mom? You going to sob about how I’ve roamed the world a broken man, vowing never to expose myself like that again?”

  She shook her head with sad surety. “No, Z.”

  He dropped his hands, though continued to flex them as if stretching out tension. “Good.”

  “Good? Well, that’s a subjective term, isn’t it?” When he answered her rhetoric with carefully cocked brows, she continued, “Broken isn’t your style, Hayes. Broken means that at some point, you lost control.” She didn’t avert her gaze from him. “Which means that this one ended with you putting Marie on a plane back to Portland,
promising you’d call the next time you were in town—and how you’ve made it a point not to be back in Portland since.”

  His fingers froze at his sides…silent confirmation of everything she’d just spoken. Which made her next words complete agony to utter.

  “Guess that leads me to the logical conclusion here.” She dropped her head, kicking at the carpet. “My own time on the magical Master Z timer is just about expired, isn’t it?”

  He punched out a heavy huff. “Don’t you dare trivialize this. I won’t let you, Rayna. Just because—”

  “Just because what? I was a ‘friend’ before I was a subbie? Ooohhh, does that earn me an extra play allotment?” She palmed her forehead. “Shit. Maybe it works the other way. Hadn’t thought of that. Do I get time lopped off because I know more than any good little Zeke subbie should? Because I’ve actually seen that some of him is—gasp—human?”

  His hands curled into fists. “Goddamnit, that’s enough.”

  She took a step back. Her damn chin quivered again. Fortunately, she felt too helpless to cry. “Yeah. I suppose it is.”

  Since she’d meant every word as an accusation this time, his seizing her wrist didn’t come as a surprise. The way he wrenched her next to him, pinning her body against his by locking his other hand to her ass, was what sucked the air out of her lungs.

  “Look. At. Me.”

  The syllables washed over her face with seething heat. She dragged her gaze up, trembling harder from the intensity stamped over every inch of his face. “I am what I am, Rayna.” His lips barely moved. “You knew it when you stepped foot into this cabin with me. Maybe this conversation filled in a few blanks for you, but there wasn’t anything you didn’t know about what I could offer—and what I couldn’t.”

  She gulped, trying to fight the fingers of disappointment around her throat. “So your point is what?”

  He tightened his hold as well as his stare. “You wanted this, bird. You begged me for my domination, though you knew it wouldn’t come with forever. You dropped willingly to my feet, twice, accepted safe words, and let yourself be bound and commanded and fucked.” His eyelids got heavy as his gaze slid to her mouth. “You’re also the one who woke me up this morning with your lips on my cock.” He scooped a thumb under her chin and yanked. “Eyes still here. I’m not done.”

  She complied, but not without narrowing her eyes to slits. “Seriously? Because this felt like done about five minutes ago.”

  “Shut up.” He shifted his hold, fastening his hands to both sides of her face. “And listen to me.” Just like that, the puma sheathed his claws. His touch, now two thumbs that stroked her cheeks with gentle intensity, coaxed her obeisance inside three unnerving seconds. “I wouldn’t trade a single fucking moment of it, Rayna. Damn it, I’d give my left nut to do it all over again. You were…so breathtaking. So courageous. So honest in everything you felt and experienced.” He pressed closer, tilting her head back, filling her vision with his breadth and muscle and power. “It was a privilege, in so many ways, to be the first one to set your submissiveness free.” His whole body tensed as he dipped her head back farther. “You’re so goddamn special to me. You know that, right? You’ll always be my beautiful firebird…”

  “But now you have to put me on a plane to Portland.”

  The words left her on a whisper. She lifted the tips of her fingers to the edge of his jaw, breathing in his forest scent, soaking in the strength that had made her safe for so long, and willing him to deny the searing finality of it.

  His thick silence stretched longer.

  The crack in her heart widened a little more.

  He lowered his gaze to her mouth.

  She swore if he tried to kiss her she’d bite off his tongue. Better that than the thousand pieces into which she’d shatter.

  He still didn’t say a word. Only tugged her chin forward a little more…closer to him.

  A loud whirp exploded through the cabin.

  The satellite phone.

  Zeke let her go and stepped back. They blinked in time with each other, as if waking up from an insane dream.

  Because maybe that’s all this was.

  The phone blared again.

  “Garrett,” he muttered before heading toward the stairs.

  She winced and slammed her hands over her ears. That phone sounded too damn much like an alarm clock.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Psycho Zsycho, at your service.”

  He hoped the sarcasm would hide the triple play of infuriation tearing up the turf in his gut.

  Rayna’s words had caught him well before the bag at first base. And he’d been graceful about it—to a point. Yeah, he had abandonment issues. He’d more than earned that goddamn rank. But what about the rest of her rundown? “Boxes” for emotions? “Invisible lines” for his submissives? What the hell was up with all that?

  Except maybe…that she was a little right about it?

  Fine. But he was right, too. He couldn’t be her training Dom. He couldn’t be any kind of decent Dom to her. The last three days alone, having her totally to himself, had shredded any scrap of objectivity he had about the woman. His self-control was clearly next for that grinder. Training her in this condition would be a farce. What was that lame musical Franz had forced them all to watch one time when they were all stuck in Malaysia? The one about the professor who tutored the street urchin how to talk right only to watch the mission go to shit at the racetrack, anyway? It’d be like that, only his ponies would run right over Rayna’s golden heart. They’d flatten her incredible spirit.

  He wasn’t going to let her flounder. He’d set the bird free but he wouldn’t let her fall. She’d have her pick from a handful of incredible Doms who’d be practically fighting each other to the death for the chance to train her. He just had to find a way to get that through to her while fighting the craving to tie her down and get inside her for himself again.

  Tagged out at second base. In a major, shitty way.

  They both needed some time. As in freezing shower, brisk hike, then hours-at-opposite ends-of-the-cabin time.

  After that, he’d have his brain twisted on straight again. He’d have a good plan formulated for her, some names of the better Bastille Doms to hand over, and his body wrangled in line with the new program. But right now, even after he’d spilled his guts and let her play jump rope with them, all he wanted to do was get her into his bed and treat her pussy to a nice, slow, tantalizing follow-up.

  Not going to happen. Thanks to Garrett’s impeccable timing, this phone call was out number three. Inning over. Time to move on and get into the rest of the game as best as he could. Whatever the hell that meant.

  Listening to Hawkins chuckle and suck face with his fiancé at the other end of the line was not the best helper for his game face.

  “Hey, assface. Can you tell your sub to disconnect her mouth from yours for a few minutes?”

  There was a throaty female laugh. “I’m all too pleased to attach my mouth elsewhere on his body,” came Sage’s quip.

  He clenched back a string of choice expletives. Thanks for the memories, Sage. His mind filled with an image of Rayna’s lips sealing over his cock, of her tongue playing with his piercing, of her face lost to bliss as he lost himself down her throat.

  “Ten minutes, sugar,” Garrett murmured. “Then you’re all mine again.”

  “Mmmm,” Sage purred. “Does that mean I should go prep the guest room?”

  His friend let out a carnal growl. “I think that’s a damn good idea, subbie.”

  “Fuck.” This was getting worse by the second. Two weeks ago, he’d helped Hawk assemble a truss system in that “guest room” specifically designed for suspending a willing submissive and doing wicked things to her. Garrett hadn’t spared any expense. The rigging was lightweight steel with a sturdy titanium shell. The guy could suspend a goddamn giraffe in his “guest room” if he wanted.

  So maybe one day, one adorable bird wouldn’t be a proble
m at all…

  Knock. It. Off.

  As his balls pounded in an attempt to take that order literally, he snapped, “You ready to give me a rundown or not, Hawk?”

  Through another interminable moment, he listened to the distinct smack of a hand on an ass followed by Sage’s delighted squeal. “Sorry, Z. We’re taking advantage of some well-earned free time.”

  “Really? And I thought you were just getting in a few pages of your favorite Jane Austen tale.”

  “Actually, Sage has gotten me into Lexi Blake lately.” His friend’s voice carried a smirk. “You should try her out. You might learn a few new things. You haven’t been spending all your time catching up on SportsCenter, have you?”

  “Is my social calendar that riveting to you? Maybe you need to consider a pet, dude.”

  Garrett chuffed. “Have one, thanks. She’s laying out rope in our play room right now.”

  “Fuck you, Hawkins.”

  “Ooooo, testy. Is someone discovering a new shade of blue between his thighs?”

  He sighed. “Did you really call to discuss the status of my balls, asshole?”

  “Hoo-wee there, Grumpy McGee. Man, it’s so official. You need a night at Bastille. A normal one with a sweet, soft subbie. Especially before we bug out.”

  There it was. The statement that got his brain firing on some regular cylinders again. “Wait. What? Bug out?” He pushed off the counter and stepped out to the deck. The air socked him like a fist of ice, exactly what he needed to focus fully on the implications of Hawk’s statement. “As in, hopping on a transport for a mission? That kind of bug out?”

  “Roger,” his friend replied. “We have forty-eight hours and some change. Got the text from Franz about thirty minutes ago.”

  He scratched the back of his head. “Okay, nifty piece of news. But why are you looping me in like I’ll be anywhere near the base when the fun gets started? I’m still the official AWOL boy, remember?”