Untied

by Katherine Rhodes

  Because of this incident, Club Imperial was changing its anonymity policy. Even though both Emmy and Franz assured everyone that the card they had run for John Smith had the name John Smith on it—and was a black Amex—they weren’t going to allow faceless financial interactions. If people wanted to stay anonymous in the club, that was fine, but there would be no over the phone or hoodie-up payments.

  A good measure, a good measure too late to save Cece.

  The Watcher sat on the couch and turned to his Hunk. “You saw?”

  “I am glad it wasn’t carried live,” the Hunk answered. “Those were both clusterfucks of epic proportions. The reporter...”

  “That planted the ‘Cece took Hannah’ seed.” The Watcher finished the thought and rolled his head back. “That man has always been a pain in the ass.”

  “Doesn’t he realize they have eyes on Cece all the time? Not for that reason, but they would know pretty quick if she was holding Hannah.”

  The Watcher nodded. “I am worried about that girl, even if they are feeding her and giving her medication. The stress will override that. Easily. She’s tiny and frail, and it’s easy to do. Cece and even Marjorie have made sure that girl is cared for.”

  “Marjorie Robbe might be an asshole, but she did her job as a mother, however unhappy and miserable she might’ve been.” The Hunk took a swig of his beer. “And I despise that woman.”

  The Watcher looked at his man. “I forget sometimes.”

  “I do too. And I’m glad. Life is better without thinking about Marjorie Robbe.”

  * * *

  Dropping the car into park, Cece took a deep breath. She’d driven two hours out to Morgantown, like a mad woman, on the suggestion of a piece of paper dropped into her purse who knew when. It had a hotel, a room number, and a time and date on it.

  All in Killian’s handwriting.

  She was crazy. Absolutely insane. But then again, nothing in her life made sense. Everything felt disconnected and if there was just this one chance to make a connection with something that had been stable before the murder, she wanted just that little bit of normality.

  The car was behind the building, near the keyed entrance for guests. Cece pulled her hood a little lower and made her way to the door in the dark, quickly dipping the keycard in and letting herself in. The elevator doors pinged open a moment after she pressed the button, and with a deep breath to quell the butterflies in her stomach, Cece stepped into the car.

  The ride up five floors didn’t give her enough time to lose her nerve, but the twisting in her stomach was nearly overwhelming. Why am I doing this? Am I so desperate for something normal that I’m risking everything just to see Killian? Or was she walking into a trap, so that the murderer could finish her? Cece was sure that the murderer had meant to kill Everett and her and just ran out of patience waiting for her to show up.

  Coming there was insane. No matter what way she looked at it.

  The hall seemed too long and ominous once she figured out which way she was going. It stretched out, and the perspective of it made her slightly nauseated. One foot in front of the other, she moved down the hall in an automatic response to having to cover the distance. At the end of the hall was room five forty-three, the number on the letter.

  Swiping the card through the lock, she said a silent prayer that this wasn’t the murderer.

  The room inside was a typical hotel room. Creams and yellows and grays were everywhere, and in the center of the bed, a splash of red—

  “EVERETT!!” She tore into the room covered in splashes of red. He was tied to the bed, great gashes open on each of his arms and by his ankles. The cover was soaked with blood, and for just an instant in her hesitation to untie him, she saw his chest rise and fall.

  She pulled out her pocket knife and sawed the ropes in record time. “Everett! Everett, answer me! Oh, God, don’t be dead. Don’t be dead!” She yanked him off the bed, out of the puddles of blood that were on the bed, and into her lap. Desperately, Cece pushed the skin together on his arms and realized—

  He was cold.

  He’d been dead before she got there.

  Someone had bled him to death.

  “EVERETT!”

  Cece struck out at the arms that had wrapped around her, but they didn’t yield against her assault. Panic set in, and she struggled even more; they weren’t going to take her to jail. She wasn’t going back there. She’d rather die herself. “I didn’t kill him! I didn’t! He was already dead! I wanted to save him! He was already dead!”

  “Cece, stop.”

  Her surroundings crashed back down around her, squashing the nightmare and ripping through the trauma her brain fed her again. The sound of that command, from that voice, caught her and helped her fight her way back to the now. She stopped struggling and collapsed back into the strong arms that held her firmly. Slowly, carefully, she turned and looked at the man who held her.

  “Killian.”

  He smiled. “Just me, baby. It’s just me. Can you stand up?”

  She didn’t remember falling. “Yes.”

  She grabbed on to his arm as he pulled both of them to standing. Glancing around the room, he asked, “What set you off? Was it the hotel room itself? The smell? The lighting?”

  “The pillow. The red pillow.”

  “Stay here.” He took two strides out of her sight, and a moment later she heard a drawer slam. He was back to her in a heartbeat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about how the room would affect you.”

  “I didn’t either.” She looked up at him, and her whole body started to shake. There was no way to stop it, and she felt so completely out of control.

  Pulling her to the bed and wrapping his arms around her, he kissed the top of her head. “Don’t try to stop it, Cece. Just let it come. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The tears sprang to her eyes, and there was no stopping them. “I feel like I have done nothing but cry since I found Everett. Nothing makes sense, and I don’t understand why the prosecutor won’t drop the charges. I wasn’t there. I would never kill a fly, never mind someone like Everett.”

  “We all know that, Cece.” Killian smoothed her hair. “But you also know the kind of people who inhabit our circles. They won’t believe that you didn’t. They are disgusted that you’re a Domme, and they’ll choose to punish you for that by prosecuting you for Everett’s death. Because they justify their own superior existence.”

  “Kay, I want to run away. I don’t care if I’m a fugitive.”

  Laughing lightly, he shook his head. “Now you know I’m not going to let you do that. I’m here with you, and we’re going to get you cleared.”

  The shaking had toned down to mere shivering and Cece turned in his arms to look at him. “You’re not disgusted by my lifestyle choice?”

  “Not in the least.”

  She turned in his arms. “Kay, did you just get hard?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well. It happens when I think about you naked, or in those stockings you were wearing.”

  “I sexually pleasure other men in extreme ways, and you’re not turned off by that? I fucked Everett just hours before he died.”

  Killian opened his mouth to say something, but Cece laid a finger over his lips.

  “It wasn’t the first time. I might have been coming close to the last, but the fact was, I enjoyed it. He’s not the only one.”

  He moved her finger from his lips. “Are you careful? With protection?”

  “Always.”

  “And you were thinking about ending it?”

  “For you.”

  “Then what do I have to fear or be jealous of? You were giving up something that defines you for a chance—more than a chance—with me.”

  “Killian, there are parts of this I don’t want to give up. They are so much a part of me. I can’t imagine not going to Club Imperial and having clients visit me. I can’t imagine giving up my shibari. Maybe Emmy was stronger than me by giving it up for Nath
aniel; maybe she wasn’t. But that’s not for me. It has been killing me that I haven’t been able to go to the Club for just a night. It’s a form of meditation for me, all the little rituals and formalities and the Domme-space I can find there.” She slumped. “Why am I confessing this to you?”

  He tipped her chin up and stared into her eyes. It was a piercing gaze, a knowing one, touched with a smile. Cece felt like he was staring hard into her very soul, memorizing every last broken piece of her there. She was shattered. There were a million shards of everything she had been just a few weeks before. As strong as she had been, the murder, the jail, the court, the horrible looks from people had worn her down.

  “How can you stand me?” Cece breathed the words on a whisper.

  “Because I love you. I stood in front of all those people and told them all, including your fiancé, that I love you. And it’s true.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry about the pillow. I didn’t even think about that.”

  “I would have never thought that a stupid pillow would set me off.” The little laugh Cece let out was mirthless.

  “You’re stronger than you realize, mo chroí.”

  “Not even. Look, Kay, I don’t think you want to—”

  His lips found hers, and she was immediately consumed by him. His taste, his touch, his simplest movement against her. Her whole body ignited with the remembered pleasures from their one and only night together, and she pulled him close, answering his kiss with her own.

  “We shouldn’t.”

  Killian smiled against her lips. “No. We shouldn’t. But I didn’t ask you to come here for tea and crumpets. Sex is part of who you are. It’s been that way for years. Without it, without that sexual high, you collapse, shrivel. You aren’t you anymore. And I’ve been watching you, seeing how you’re shrinking and fighting a losing battle against your raw need.” He stared into her eyes, unblinking, unfazed by anything he saw there. “You are the only woman I will ever love. That love demands I help you, even if everyone yells at us to stay away. Paul won’t satisfy this. I am here, no matter how long it takes. I intend the world to know you’re are mine. And I will care for you in whatever ways I deem necessary.”

  “I’m a Domme, Killian…”

  “Not tonight. You will let me make love to you. Slow, careful. The kind of sex that takes your breath away for days, weeks after I’ve made you come over and over. The kind of sex that makes you wet when you think about me. The kind of slow tender fuck that sears the knowledge into your soul that you are mine, and I am yours, and there is nothing in this world or the next that will ever tear us apart.”

  With each word, Killian had shifted them, so Cece lay back on the bed beneath his massive but gentle body. With each promise, he had plucked open the buttons on her shirt. With each declaration, he had unfastened her pants, and finally, on his breath, his hand slipped up her heated skin to skim the lace bra over her breast and expose her pearled nipples to him. His fingers plucked at them more deftly than they had her buttons, her whole body singing in relief at his touch, and joy at the touch being his.

  “For just tonight, Kay, make me forget.”

  “No.” He shook his slightly shaggy mane of hair as he dipped down, kissing a blazing trail from her throat to the hard peak he had exposed. “No. I will make you remember. Every last kiss, lick, and thrust, I want burned into your memory.”

  Cece shuttered, the pure lust a shot of heat, pooling in her sex. While he visited his murmured prayers at her breast, nipping and teasing, she yanked the shirt he was wearing up his sculpted, alabaster skin, over his head—interrupting his feast for just a moment—and out into the room somewhere.

  “Naked,” she whispered to him. “Naked now. Please. I need to feel you against me.” It was a primal need that had suddenly overwhelmed her, the touch of his body against hers.

  He moved to comply, quickly discarding her shirt and bra with his into the middle of the room while she unbuckled his pants and pushed them below his hips. Her pants and panties were gone in the next moment. Killian shed his pants, and Cece wrapped her hand around his hard erection.

  He felt so good in her hand. More than feeling good, he accepted her. He accepted her insanely kinky sexual side. He wasn’t going to let it stop him from loving her, from taking care of her. Killian pulled back from her hand, smiling. “Not yet, mo chroí. Not yet.” He blazed kisses down her stomach to the juncture of her thighs and swept an eager tongue over her throbbing clit. “I have business to attend to. I have missed your taste.”

  “Shit.” Cece dropped her head back to the pillow. “My pussy missed you.”

  “Good, I’m glad it remembers me.” Killian nibbled softly on the skin around her waiting opening, stroking a thumb over her bundle of nerves. Slipping a finger inside her, he swirled it around in her channel, and her whole body clenched and bucked against the delightful intrusion. Stopping for just a moment, he looked up at her. “Pinch your nipples, Cece. I know you like how that feels.”

  She rushed to comply, against her basic Domme instincts. But there was something so incredible about his words, his commands to her that her need to be in control melted away. She wanted him, wanted to listen to him. And her breasts tingled with each pinch, trying to follow his rhythm on her clit. She was only partially successful, and the counterpoint was as delightful as the point.

  The second finger joined the first, sliding in and out of her pussy, and with the nips at her intensifying and brushing against her clit, Cece’s breath started to saw in and out, gasping and twitching in anticipation of the orgasm he was working up in her. With a lick and nibble, he pulled back, and Cece let out a little cry of disappointment. Looking up, she saw him shift on the bed and seat himself between her legs. He moved his hand so that while his two fingers never left her, his palm massaged and tickled her clit. “I want to see you come, Cece. Come for me.”

  His hand made good on his demands, pressing and pulling against her, winding her to the top. A third finger slipped inside, and she was done. She came, screaming his name, arching against him, pulling her nipples hard. She felt the lightning stream through her, blanking her mind, taking her breath, and while she was still consumed by the orgasm, Killian slid into her tight, welcoming pussy.

  “Killian, shit, oh God, yes!”

  His cock filled her and wouldn’t let her climax end. It took her up another notch and wouldn’t let go. Cece had never experienced this before; she’d heard stories of the secondary climax, but this was amazing. Her breath came in staccato gasps, and she felt like she was going to black out.

  His finger still played at her clit. It was almost torture, a pain that radiated out from that bundle of nerves into her body. Pain that reminded her she enjoyed being the submissive, enjoyed impact play, enjoy the tweaks and pulls and memories of punishment the next day.

  “Oh, God, Killian. Yes, yes. Please don’t stop.”

  He leaned down and caught her mouth in a punishing kiss. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Cece looked at him directly. “I want you to.”

  “Fuck.” The word was a hard whisper, and a moment later, he thrust harder into her, driving his cock hard to come. “I’m coming inside you, Cece. I’m going to spill my cum in your pussy.”

  “Yes, yes.” The word became a mantra for each hard pump of his dick. The pain transcended itself, and Cece found herself floating, flying beyond it. The sensation of Killian above her became merely a notion, her whole being focused on the climax that had never really stopped and the subspace she was now floating in.

  It had been years since Cece had been in subspace. That Killian could get her there with only his cock and fingers was amazing. She was safe there; she was secure. She didn’t want to come down or go back. She wanted him to leave her there, keep her floating safely in the cage of his arms, flying through subspace. She wanted this man to keep her safe forever.

  “Cece, where are you?” Killian’s voice was soft, careful.

  “Here.”


  “I have to bring you back, Cece. Come back. What do I have to do? What do you need?”

  “Come.”

  There was a soft laugh. “I know. What else?”

  “Bite.”

  “Mm. Absolutely. Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  There was a soft wet lick on her nipple and in the next instant a sharp bite. She gasped, and subspace slipped away, dropping her back into the cage of Killian’s arms. She felt her eyes widen as he bit again, and half a second later, Killian’s thrust into her at the same time as a pinch on her clit and a third bite on her taught peak brought her to a second screaming orgasm. He followed her a moment later with a splash of his hot cum inside her.

  “Shit, Cece,” he managed to breathe. “Shit.”

  A sheen of sweat covered him, and he speared her with another kiss. She answered with her own possessive kiss, demanding and consuming. Giving himself a moment to catch his breath, he slipped out of her and down onto the bed, pulling her spent, rubbery body into his and holding her tight.

  A long, quiet moment passed, and Cece finally raised her head to look at him. “Subspace.”

  “I know.” He brushed the hair from her eyes. “It was so amazing to see it.”

  Shaking her head, Cece could feel tears in her eyes. “I didn’t expect it.”

  “You were only there for a few moments. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help but let you stay there. If only for a few moments.” He brushed a tear from her cheek. “Please don’t cry.”

  “It was perfect. It was thanks to you.” She let out a breath, trying to stop the tears. “I wish I could hide there.”

  “No, you don’t. But I’m glad I could give that to you.”

  Cece pulled herself tighter to him. “Can we stay the night?”

  Killian kissed her forehead. “That’s the plan. And I’m not done with you yet.”

  She teased him. “Promises.”

  There was no jest in his answer. “All of the ones I can manage, for you. Just for you.”

  Chapter Six