Defensive Zone

by Catherine Gayle

  “And just what do you know about it?” he bit off.

  “I know everything your sisters told me. I snuck your phone into the bathroom the other night and saw all the text messages, so I knew a lot before I contacted them. And I put their numbers in my phone so I could do it behind your back.” He started to interrupt me, so I spoke faster and louder, cutting him off. “Because you won’t tell me anything! Nothing. You want this to just be about spanking and sex and nothing more, so you try to keep me in the dark, but I’m not okay with that.”

  “I thought that was all you wanted,” he groused when I finally stopped for air.

  “So did I! But I was wrong, okay? I’m freaking twenty years old, and I’m a woman to boot. I’m allowed to change my mind about what I want. I’m supposed to be young and dumb and make all sorts of stupid, idiotic mistakes right now, all right?”

  “And getting involved with me was a huge mistake. I could’ve told you that much. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did tell you that back when you first started chasing after me.”

  “No, actually, it wasn’t,” I bit off.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Oh, get over yourself. You think you’re all big and kinky and scary and aloof, but you’re full of shit. You’re not scary, and—concept—you don’t have to do everything on your own. Sometimes, it’s better to get some help, you know.”

  “There’s nothing and no one who can help me. Not with this.”

  “Well, that’s another thing you’re wrong about, now that you mention it.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I am right. I can help you. Unless you’re too dumb and proud to accept help, which, frankly, I’m starting to believe. Maybe your sisters were right about you.”

  “You’re talking in fucking riddles.”

  “Well, dummy, why don’t I spell it out for you? There’s an assisted living facility that’s perfect for your father right here in Portland. And they have an opening. They’re ready to take him in as soon as you can get him here.”

  “But he’s a Canadian citizen,” Cody said, shaking his head. At least a bit of the fury seemed to be melting away from his eyes, though. “I don’t see how that can work. Canadians can’t come to live in the States unless it’s for work or something like that. You have to get a Visa. And he’ll never have a job again, so… I just don’t see how it can work.”

  “He can come to the U.S. for medical care, for as long as is necessary, if he has a U.S. citizen as a relative who can sponsor him.”

  “Which he doesn’t.”

  “But he would if you’d marry me. I was born here. I’m an American citizen. I can be what you need, if you’d get over yourself and let someone else help you for once.”

  For a long moment, Cody fell silent, staring at me and blinking in disbelief.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest, glaring. “Well, that’s not exactly the reaction I expected for my proposal. You’re going to give me a freaking complex.”

  “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

  He had that one right.

  NEVER BEFORE, NOT once in my entire life, had I felt the word flabbergasted would be appropriate for the situation at hand. Not until now. But at present, it summed up my state of mind perfectly.

  “I misheard you, right?” I said, blinking in case that would help to clear the mud clogging up my ears. “You didn’t just ask me to marry you.”

  She couldn’t have. Marriage wasn’t on the table for us. From the beginning, this had only been about sex and a bit of kink, nothing more. Definitely not marriage. Dani had been emphatic about what we were—and what we weren’t—right from the start.

  Never mind the fact that I’d been falling for her. Probably since well before she’d forced her way into my life, if I were being honest with myself. There was just something about the way she grabbed life by the horns that drew me in and refused to let me go.

  The cold, hard truth was that my feelings didn’t matter when it came to something like this. In fact, it was at least partially because of those very feelings that I had been so adamant about sticking to her rules. If I wanted to have her in my life in any way, I needed to keep my heart out of it. That had been far easier said than done, but if anyone was going to suffer due to my inability to follow her rules, it would damned well be me.

  Marry her? I couldn’t. Not now, and not ever.

  It wouldn’t be fair to drag her into the upheaval of my life. She was barely an adult. She had her whole life ahead of her. She didn’t need to be saddled with all the problems that would come from being with me.

  Yet there she stood, looking up at me with the same sort of determined expression she always gave me when she intended to get her way. And truth be told, she always could and always would get her way when it was something involving me.

  I’d never be able to deny Dani Weber anything. “You’ve lost your mind,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Maybe so, but the fact remains that this would solve your problem. You need to get your father in an appropriate facility that can handle caring for him. There isn’t anything back home that’ll meet your needs, at least not soon enough to help. There is an excellent facility here. And the only way you can bring him here for the care he needs is if he has a family member who’s an American citizen. That means you or one of your sisters needs to marry an American. And frankly, you’re the only one who can do that right now. You’ve been dating one for a while, so no one with any sense would question it. They’re both still in Canada, and if they’re dating anyone, he’s not American.”

  She was making too damned much sense. But…

  “Your father won’t allow it.”

  “My father doesn’t have any say in what I do. I’m a grown-ass adult. He doesn’t get to control my life.”

  “But he knows—”

  “What?” Dani demanded, throwing up her hands. “What does he know? Would someone please tell me, finally? Because I’m sick to death of being the only one in the dark. Not that it matters, in the long run, because as I’ve already explained, I’m a freaking adult and can make my own decisions.”

  I scowled. Then I glanced around, checking to be sure no one was too close. “He knows about my kink,” I bit off, keeping my voice low.

  “Wha— But how?” She looked so full of dismay.

  “The night he came to get me out of jail,” I said quietly but insistently. “I’d been at a private party. Usually, I never participated in any of that unless I was at the club, with the safety and privacy they provide, but one of my regular partners was at the party. We went into a back room to scene together—”

  “Scene together?” Dani interrupted.

  “I spanked her. I was Professor OTK and she was a naughty schoolgirl. In the BDSM community, that’s what you call it when you play out a scene.”

  “Ah.” She nodded, even though she still looked confused as all get-out.

  But I didn’t give her a chance to ask any more questions. Not right now. I had to make her understand. “There was a noise complaint, and the police raided the party. I was in the back room, completely oblivious to everything going on in the front of the house, when they busted in and arrested both of us, along with everyone else at the party.”

  “On what grounds? There’s nothing illegal about spanking someone who’s willing. Is there? There can’t be, or half the parents in the country would be in jail right now, because I sincerely doubt kids can consent to being spanked.” She sounded outraged on my behalf, which made me grin despite the absurdity of the situation.

  “The guy who answered the door could have defused the situation, but he was drunk and he gave the cops a hard time. After that, they arrested everyone in the house for disturbing the peace. I didn’t even know any of it was happening, because we were in the back, minding our own business, until they busted in on us.”

  Dani pinched her eyes closed. “And that’s what Dad knows, then…he bailed you out of jail, so he knows you’re into spanking.”r />
  Finally, she was catching on. I nodded. “He knows everything. Which is why I don’t want him to know about anything to do with the two of us. So clearly, we can’t get married.”

  “And why the hell not?” Dani demanded. “Like I’ve told you before, he has no business sticking his nose into my sex life.”

  “He’ll murder me if he even thinks I’ve laid a finger on you.”

  “He’ll have to get past me first.”

  “I don’t think he’ll have any trouble with that. Not with that sort of rage fueling him.”

  Dani rolled her eyes. “Let me deal with my father. Don’t worry about him. I can handle him.”

  “He’ll go to Jim Sutter and have me shipped out of town. And that’s the last thing I need to have happen, especially if the plan is to bring my father to a facility here.”

  “I can handle my dad,” she insisted. “Seriously, he’s not that scary.”

  That was where Dani was wrong. David Weber was that scary since he held so many cards pertaining to my future.

  I dragged a hand through my hair, saying a silent prayer for patience. “Dani…”

  “Cody…” she repeated in a tone of combined frustration and mockery. “Besides, he already knows we’ve been seeing each other.”

  “He doesn’t.” I shook my head. Yeah, I’d had a sinking feeling that he was onto us for a while, but he couldn’t really know. Maybe he had his suspicions, but he couldn’t know for a fact or else he would have already murdered me. Or insisted on having me traded. One was as bad as the other.

  “He does,” she insisted. “Mom knows and Dad knows and Katie and Jamie know. Your teammates know. Everybody knows. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Luke knows, even though he’s all the way off in Germany. Everyone knows. We’re not keeping any secrets here. So please, for the love of cheese, get over it and marry me so we can get on with moving your father here so he can get the help he needs.”

  I STILL COULDN’T believe I had gone through with proposing to him, but it was even harder to fathom that he was standing there and acting like I’d grown an extra head for doing so.

  It wasn’t every day a woman had the cojones required to ask a man to marry her. The least the man in question could do would be to hurry up and accept.

  I stood there, glaring at Cody and waiting for him to grow some sense. At the current pace, we might be waiting an eternity for that to happen.

  Instead, he said, “You’re insane.”

  “Not as crazy as you if you refuse to listen to reason. Your sisters can’t keep doing this much longer, you know.”

  “Trust me, I know. And I’ll be giving them a piece of my mind for talking to you—”

  “They told me you’d overreact,” I said, cutting him off.

  “So they know about this?” Cody demanded. “They know you’ve got this hair-brained idea about us getting married?”

  “I didn’t tell them that part. Not yet. I figured I should talk to you about it first, funnily enough. But they know I’m trying to help you all figure out a solution.”

  “You need to mind your own business.”

  “Well, pardon me for thinking that your business is my business. I seemed to be under the impression that we were kind of a thing.”

  “You were the one who said this was just supposed to be about sex.”

  “So I changed my mind! Sue me. As you’re so fond of reminding me, I’m young.”

  “And what’ll happen when you decide to change your mind about being married to me?” he demanded.

  “You must think really highly of me to believe I could do something like that. Newsflash, Cody: once I make up my mind about something, I make it happen. I don’t change my mind on a whim. You’ve never met anyone as determined as me—”

  “That’s the fucking truth,” he cut in.

  “Exactly. Well, here’s some more truth for you. I love you. Maybe at first, all I wanted was a bit of kinky fun, but that’s not good enough for me now. I want it all. I want everything you have to give me and more, okay?” And now that the words had come out of my mouth, I knew they were true. So true that it caused tears to spring to my eyes. Damn it. I wasn’t a freaking crier. I hated crying. It made me feel weak, and I was not weak. I was a freaking badass, and badasses weren’t supposed to cry.

  The same couple was heading toward us again, making their way back to the restaurant, and the man slowed down when he saw my tears. He met my eyes, coming to a stop. “Do you need any help, ma’am? He’s not hurting you, is he?” He had a strong Southern accent that reminded me of Rachel Campbell.

  Damn chivalry, popping up at exactly the wrong time.

  “I’m fine. We’re just having a disagreement.”

  “If the gentleman would care to step outside with me, I’m sure I could help you two sort things out.” His tone made it clear how he thought they’d sort things out, and I doubted there would be any talking involved unless it was fists doing the talking.

  Cody tensed up. Every muscle in his body was on high alert. He didn’t fight very often on the ice, but I was fully aware that he knew how.

  Nope. No, no, no, no, no. Not gonna happen. The last thing we needed right now was for Cody to get arrested again, this time for getting into a fight. Besides, I didn’t know what kind of fighting skills this Southern gent might have, but I’d seen what Cody could do. The other man wouldn’t fare well. Hockey fights were one thing; real fights were something else, entirely.

  I met the woman’s eyes and held her gaze. “We’re fine. Thank you for looking out for me, but we’re just having a disagreement. Nothing more.”

  “As long as that’s all there is to it,” the guy said finally as his lady friend tugged on his arm, hauling him away.

  Once they were gone, I met Cody’s eyes again, raising my brows in challenge. “So, will you marry me or what?”

  At precisely the wrong moment, Koz and Bea came down the hall, holding hands and looking way too cozy for my comfort. I heard Bea take in a sharp breath a fraction of a second before Koz said, “Holy shit. Webs is going to fucking murder you.”

  That might very well be, but I was going to murder Koz first.

  THE STUBBORN MAN wanted to go talk to my father on his own. Right now, no less. Yeah, that wasn’t about to happen if I had anything to say about it…which I did. If I wasn’t there to act as a buffer between them, Dad might very well try to murder Cody, just like Koz had said.

  There wasn’t a chance I’d allow that to happen.

  Still, after a few more minutes of arguing, we headed back out into the restaurant to rejoin Koz and Bea, who were both laughing their asses off. Our food had arrived while we were arguing in the hallway, so we took our seats and tried to eat.

  Cody was too busy sulking and glowering to do much eating, though, which was enough to nearly give me a heart attack. Because he still hadn’t responded to my proposal. He said he had to talk to Dad first before he could give me an answer, and no amount of me calling bullshit would convince him otherwise.

  So we sat with Bea and Koz.

  And we pretended to eat while they enjoyed the meal. I couldn’t stomach the thought of putting anything of substance in my body. I picked at the food on my plate, and while it all tasted great, my stomach kept churning something fierce.

  With anger.

  It wasn’t every day that a woman got up the nerve to propose marriage, so the least her guy could do was give her a freaking answer, damn it. Wasn’t it his duty to say yes, simply due to the fact that women weren’t supposed to be the ones to ask? I was almost positive it was one of those unwritten rules that everyone knew, so he just needed to get on with it.

  The longer we sat there, the more I seethed; the angrier I got, the less I could eat.

  At least Bea was having such a good time flirting with Koz that she didn’t notice how moody Cody and I had become. I couldn’t even work up the fury necessary to glare at Koz. It would take too much of my focus away from my sulking, and I was
having a damn good sulk.

  I barely even touched the dessert our waiter placed before me, which was pretty much unheard of. I never turned down sweets, a fact that the size of my ass proved.

  Finally, the guys paid the bill, and we all piled back into Koz’s car to leave.

  Bea and Koz kept up a steady stream of chatter punctuated by copious amounts of laughter the whole way back to Cody’s house, which meant Cody and I needn’t say a word to each other. They were none the wiser, too caught up in enjoying one another to notice the tension emanating from the back seat.

  It turned out to be a good thing they didn’t expect us to participate in the conversation. Neither of us was capable of saying a single word. I couldn’t even work up a good sulk over the fact that they were getting on like magpies; I was too busy trying to plan out my next move and anticipate Cody’s.

  When Koz pulled into Cody’s driveway, Cody and I climbed out, both of us still fuming. I was sure my hair had turned to flames and smoke was issuing from my ears.

  “Don’t wait for me,” I muttered to Bea before slamming my door closed and stomping after the infuriating man. I wasn’t positive she’d heard me, because she was so engrossed in whatever conversation she was carrying on with Koz at the moment, but I figured she’d get the picture.

  Cody unlocked his door and stalked inside, leaving it open for me without saying so much as a single word.

  I slammed it behind me, hard enough to make the windows rattle, glad to have an outlet for my frustration.

  He spun around on me, eyes blazing. “Are you planning to break my door?”

  “You still haven’t answered me,” I bit off, not deeming his question worthy of an answer if he couldn’t bother to say yes.

  “I already told you, I have to talk to your father.”

  “You can damned well talk to me first.”

  “It’s not as easy as that.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. “Nothing in life is easy. Not if it’s important.”

  “Which this is!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good. So you understand.”