Winter's Fire

by Christie Adams

  However, on the plus side, she hadn’t run screaming out of the office. Logan ignored the devilish little voice that added the word yet.

  “Please, sit down.” He pulled a chair out for her. After a moment’s hesitation, she perched on the edge of the seat, as if ready to take flight if he put so much as a toenail wrong.

  Her reaction to him when she’d entered Sir Guy’s office had intrigued him. Not once in the short time he’d known her had Lucy Winter backed down, yet she hadn’t been able to hold his gaze then. She seemed to have the same problem now. Anyone who didn’t know better might take her for a submissive.

  Logan took the seat beside her. This time, she met him head-on, still nervous but in control once more.

  “So what happens now?”

  “First things first. Does your boyfriend know about this? Is he okay with it?”

  He could be way off the mark with his assumption about the absence of a significant other in her life. They were on a ridiculously tight schedule, and the last thing Logan needed was interference from a jealous meathead too stupid to grasp that D/s didn’t mandate fucking like kinky rabbits 24/7.

  The daggers she shot in his direction went straight in under his ribs. Sore subject, then.

  “You needn’t worry on that score, Mr. Simmonds.”

  He kept his voice soft and low. “Logan, for now. You can work up to calling me ‘Master’.” In spite of his good intentions, his inner devil couldn’t resist provoking her.

  He’d never seen anyone’s eyes widen and then narrow the way Lucy’s did then. Her nostrils flared—he almost expected her to breathe fire.

  “In your dreams, Mr. Simmonds.”

  The emphasis on his name amused him for a moment, then he heard something in her voice beyond the words. He heard the spirit, and something long dead inside him flickered into life at the impossible thought of one day hearing her use the honorific of her own free will.

  Her knuckles had turned white under the pressure of her clasped fingers. That meant one thing to Logan—she was nervous, and the mulish attitude was a cover. It was also dishonest, and that was unacceptable. The enormity of the task ahead of them made the next week look shorter than ever.

  “Maybe so, but you will have to get used to addressing me with respect, and that starts with ‘Sir’. Sir Guy and I discussed a few things before you arrived, Lucy. I want you to think very carefully about what I’m about to say.

  “The chances are, we’re going to investigate a complete non-incident. The chances are—as Sir Guy pointed out—Diana and her boyfriend have gone off island-hopping. The chances are, we’ll arrive at the resort, ask a few questions, and confirm there’s nothing worry about. And if that’s the case, fine, act like a brat, and there are zero consequences.

  “But remember what you said a few minutes ago? What if Diana and her boyfriend really are in trouble and depending on us for their lives? If it’s the kind of trouble that results from human intervention, then we’ll need to convince those people we are who we say we are. You go in with the wrong attitude, and you could get all four of us killed.”

  Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. Instead of appearing chastened, she was looking at him almost as if she were… assessing him. “At least you don’t look as if you’re going to throw up today.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yesterday, in the briefing, you went grey when Sir Guy mentioned her name. I thought I’d have to get you a sick bag. Do you know her?”

  He thought he’d covered his reaction well, but it appeared Lucy was more observant than most people of his acquaintance. “It was nothing. A little more focus, please?”

  “I am focused. You were talking about a bratty attitude getting people killed and my calling you ‘Sir’.”

  Her expression went through a series of subtle changes as she connected all the dots. The moment she reached the inevitable conclusion was crystal-clear. Her spine straightened, her shoulders went back, and her gaze connected with his. “You said research won’t work.” For a moment, apprehension ghosted over her face. “What’s the alternative?”

  He couldn’t help himself. When Logan had offered her his hand in Sir Guy’s office, he hadn’t expected her to take it. When she had, it had been with a gentleness that had left him disorientated for a moment. Though he’d been reluctant to let her go, he’d had no excuse not to. Now he had one. He took her hand again.

  “You’re a smart woman, Lucy. I think you know.”

  Her gaze lowered to their joined hands. She had to be way out of her comfort zone, but to her credit, she wasn’t backing away. “Hands-on. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “How else would you put it?”

  “Total immersion, which isn’t as scary as it sounds. You already know it’s the Dom’s job to take care of his sub. I won’t let anything hurt you. Your safety will be my priority, no matter what. I’ll protect you.”

  “I think you have more than just a passing interest in this subject. Why is that?”

  Something about the way she asked the question told Logan she believed she already knew the answer. Something else told him she didn’t want to be right. Even if he had a problem facing his own demons, he owed it to Lucy not to allow hers to win as well. “Figure it out. Don’t be afraid.”

  They couldn’t afford her fear—they needed her confidence. Without it, the mission could fail at any point, including before it even started.

  “This… You really do this, don’t you?” Dismay creased her brow. “You’re a Dom.”

  Logan gave a shrug. “It’s only a label. In practical terms, all it means is I like to be in control.”

  “How much control?”

  “In the bedroom—”

  “Hold it right there!” Lucy shot out of her seat and put the chair between them, as if it were a shield. “I didn’t say anything about—”

  “Stand easy, princess. Domination and submission doesn’t have to include sex. In this situation, it’d make sense to exclude it. Just bear in mind, though, we’ll have to act as if we have a sexual relationship and can’t keep our hands off each other.”

  She released her death grip on the chair, but the stiff, defensive way she folded her arms wasn’t reassuring. Full of nervous energy, the palm of one hand rubbed up and down the opposite upper arm. When a person was wound that tight, it seldom boded well.

  “How do we go about achieving that?”

  Logan chose to ignore the question in favour of posing one of his own. “Why don’t you tell me what has you so on edge?”

  Her chin lifted. “There’s a lot riding on this. If we don’t get it right—”

  “We will. Is that all that’s bothering you?”

  “It’s enough, don’t you think? I’m just worried I’ll make a monumental gaffe.”

  “Then trust me. I can teach you what you need to know if you trust me. Think you can do that?”

  The rhythmic rubbing stopped. Logan had the distinct feeling that her assessing gaze was weighing him up and might yet find him wanting. Oddly, the thought was unsettling.

  “What choice do I have?”

  The same choice every sub had, to safeword out of any scene or situation that tested their limits beyond endurance. “You have a choice, Lucy. If this is more than you can handle—”

  Her gaze flashed fire at him. “I can handle this, Mr. Simmonds. And even if I don’t trust you, I trust you’ll follow your orders for the good of the mission, no matter what you think of me.”

  It was good that she didn’t trust him. Trust could lead to emotional involvement, and he didn’t do that. “Okay. Then you need to remember that a lot of the guests will be lifestylers. In the time we have, the best we can hope to achieve is likely to be a reasonably good impression of that. The best way to do that is for you to move in with me.”

  “Mr. Simmonds!”

  “What did I tell you? We don’t have time to ease you into this. You call me Lo
gan, unless we’re in a scene, and then you call me ‘Sir’. Like it or not, that’s the way it has to be. And we need to spend time together, so you aren’t so jumpy around me.”

  He needed to prove his point. His strategy might be risky, but it was the only way. He rose and circled the chair she’d previously occupied, taking up a position where she was trapped between the chair, the conference table and himself, with only one avenue of escape. With the lightest of touches, he tilted her chin up so he could look in her eyes. As anticipated, she tensed beneath his touch, but the light in her eyes told him she wasn’t backing down.

  Good start.

  “When we’re at the resort, there’ll be times when we need to have physical contact in public.” He kept his tone calm and level. “If something criminal is going on there, and you jump like that every time we touch, it could blow everything. It could even kill us. You need to react as if you don’t just want my touch, you crave it.”

  Logan would never know what compelled him to act as he did then. The softness of her lips, maybe? Their inviting fullness? The warmth of the subtle pink lipstick he’d never noticed before? The notion of harnessing her defiance to the yoke of his will? It could have been any one of a million reasons, but the urge to taste those lips was overwhelming—he caved without putting up even a token resistance and kissed her.

  The nature of her response startled him. Far from reacting in keeping with the contempt he knew she had for him, she explored him with as much urgency as he suddenly found himself wanting to study her.

  Tentatively gaining in boldness, her mouth lingered beneath his. Logan longed to take the kiss deeper but held back. He couldn’t risk undoing the progress her baby steps had made towards their goal by demanding too much too soon.

  Reluctance dogged him as he disengaged himself from the kiss. Lucy’s face was flushed, her breathing rapid and stressed. He couldn’t miss the way her nipples beaded beneath the soft fabric that clung to her breasts.

  “Why did you do that?” She almost sounded afraid of asking the question.

  “Why didn’t you stop me?”

  “Because you… I’m trapped.”

  He raised his hand to the side. “One step that way, Lucy. That’s all it would have taken.”

  The way her teeth snagged at her lower lip was charming—not a word that figured much in his regular vocabulary, but somehow it seemed to fit. Lucy glanced in the direction he’d indicated. Her blush deepened.

  Logan loved involuntary responses in subs—they revealed so much. “A submissive always has a way out.”

  “A safeword.”

  “That’s right. It’s also something we haven’t discussed yet, which is why you were always free to take that step to the side.”

  And free to deny she was a submissive, but she hadn’t done that, either.

  ~~*~~

  If she’d really wanted to, she’d have taken that step.

  Lucy hadn’t expected still to feel the echo of that kiss on her way home hours later. Logan had offered her a ride, but one look at his monster of a motorcycle was all she’d needed to decline. Even though he had a spare helmet, there was no way she was riding pillion on that thing. If something as relatively fleeting as a kiss could affect her so profoundly, what would plastering herself to his back do to her peace of mind?

  Who was she kidding? Whatever peace of mind she might have had, that kiss had effectively annihilated it.

  Nursing a mug of tea, Lucy curled up on the sofa. Certain thoughts, fuzzy and indistinct, had been lurking at the back of her mind all afternoon, but with distance had come some clarity.

  Including the fact that it was time to face some home truths about her attitude to Logan and what it concealed. She used the authoritarian manner she reserved for him and him alone to camouflage an attraction she fought every day to deny. Some days she won the battle—other days she lost it, and made the most of any and every pretext to get him into the office, just to see him and spend time in his presence, even if they were at loggerheads over some minor administrative matter or other.

  And if she’d thought Logan attractive before he kissed her… Lucy touched her fingertip to her lower lip. She wanted more of those searing kisses. What would have happened if the darkness swirling around him hadn’t scared her away from him soon after they first met? Would anything about her have attracted him enough for him to—

  Probably not. A man like Logan had particular tastes, and a woman like her wasn’t an item on his kind of menu.

  The implications of what she was taking on ploughed into her with the force of a runaway train. It wasn’t only the lifestyle stuff, all the protocols, rituals and conventions—her head was already spinning from that. No, what made things a thousand times worse was the prospect of working alongside Logan and making him believe she was faking the attraction she truly felt.

  She’d have to be so careful, but what if she let something slip and gave away her true feelings? At best, that could create a difficult atmosphere between them. At worst, he could use her feelings as if they were a weapon in their arsenal for the mission, with no thought for the impact of such ruthlessness on her.

  A grunt of humourless laughter broke from her. Maybe that would be the best—then she could grow the thick skin she’d need to succeed in this line of work.

  And yet… when their lips had parted, she could have sworn there was a tremble of hesitation about Logan, as if he’d felt something more. Might he want more of those kisses, too? Could a man kiss like that and not feel anything at all? Not love, she wasn’t that foolish, but enough attraction to take it further? Just a few hours from now he’d be taking her into his home, and…

  She wanted him. That was the truth in its baldest form. He was a Dom, she was pretty darn sure she wasn’t submissive, but her neglected lady parts had won and she wanted Logan Simmonds. It didn’t make any kind of sense, but there it was, the elephant in the room she’d been avoiding for weeks. Going undercover could be just what she needed, a heaven-sent opportunity to get him out of her system, or…

  Or what? Lucy didn’t know—all she did know was that she needed to tell Logan about her change of heart, that instead of faking a relationship, maybe they could do it for real.

  Going ahead, though, depended on one thing—whether her nerve held when she called him later on tonight or not, and right now the smart money wasn’t betting on her…

  ~~*~~

  When Logan had fitted out the spare bedroom with the bare essentials, he’d never expected to get much use out of it. Any male visitors were likely to be too rat-arsed to stumble far from the sofa, and his days of providing overnight accommodation for subs had ended long before he moved to this place.

  These days, he confined his pleasure to Aegis, and to submissives who wanted nothing more from him than a good time and a few earth-shattering orgasms in a club setting. He’d distanced himself mentally and emotionally from anything more fulfilling because God knew, anyone with a soul as tainted as his didn’t deserve it.

  Logan kicked the bleak thoughts to the furthest reaches of his consciousness, where they belonged. There was no point in dwelling on what something that could never be a part of his life again. Besides, he had to finish the preparations for Lucy’s arrival.

  He’d already confirmed the arrangements with her, so didn’t expect to hear from her until the next morning. When her name popped up on his smartphone, his sixth sense for trouble kicked in with a vengeance.

  “Lucy. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, fine, thanks. You’re not busy, are you? Do you have a few minutes? I need to talk to you.”

  He braced himself—was this where she softened him up before backing out of the op? “Sure. What’s the problem?”

  “I’ve been thinking… About the discussion we had earlier.”

  Oh yeah, this was it, all right. Logan shifted his phone to his other ear and dropped onto the couch, swinging his feet up to sprawl in comfort. If she was about to blow his mission to hel
l, he might as well relax while she did it. “Go on.”

  “You said the people there… the other guests, the staff… We need to do this right—we can’t be half-hearted about it. We have to be convincing.”

  Okay, not quite what he expected, but he’d have to work on her communication skills. “Lucy, I’m not psychic—just come out with it.”

  “I mean we can’t fake it—I can’t fake it.”

  Which told him precisely nothing. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  What followed was one of the loudest silences he’d ever heard. He wondered briefly if he’d be collecting his pension before it ended.

  “I have to know what the real thing feels like. You… Someone can tell me what it feels like to… Oh, I don’t know, be flogged, but unless I experience it for real—”

  “You want me to flog you? Why do you think I would flog you?”

  More silence. Logan waited.

  “It’s what a Dom does… isn’t it?”

  “It’s what a Dom does if that’s what his sub needs and they both consent.” He took a deep breath. “How much research have you done?”

  “I’m beginning to think not enough.”

  “Then maybe I’d flog you for that, as a punishment—unless being flogged gives you an orgasm. Are you all right?” He hadn’t meant to make her choke.

  “I thought you said sex didn’t have to come into it.”

  “Depends on two things. One—if it’s a hard limit, it’s not happening. Two—how you define sex. My definition is putting my dick in a willing pussy—and that doesn’t have to happen for the owner of the pussy to have an orgasm.”

  He could almost hear the cogs grinding as she processed the implications of his statement.

  “Oh.”

  And now he swore he could feel the solar-flare heat of her blush threatening to melt the toughened glass screen of his phone. “You worked it out now?”

  “Wait a minute. If there’s no… orgasm for the Dom, what does he get out of it?”