Handcuffed by Her Hero (31 page)

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.

“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 problem 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?”

“Not anymore.”

His breath left him on a whoosh.
So this is what it felt like when they talked about world-sized weight leaving
one’s shoulders. He was a legitimate member of the First Special Forces Group
again—a restoration he had no idea he’d missed. The whomp of emotion in his
chest told him otherwise. 

“You serious?” It was an effort not
to choke out the words.

“A hundred and ten percent,”
Garrett confirmed.

As fast as it had vanished, the
weight returned to his shoulders. He gladly bore the burden this time. Humility
and gratitude sank over him like warm blankets after February jump practice
over the Sound.

“I owe one of you fuckers about
ten cases of beer.” He declared it in as dry a tone as he could to hide the
depth of sentiment. Like that was going to make a difference with Hawk.

“Shit.” His friend stung out the
word with derision. “I’m gonna chalk up your lack of manners to the fact that
your last scene was with the pain queen of Seattle, and now you’ve lost all
sense of decorum. Do I need to give you a refresher course on how we do things?
Have you forgotten so damn easily? Repeat after me, Sparky:
there’s no limit
to the good we can do
—”

“When we don’t care who gets the
credit,” Z finished in a bear’s snarl. “Colonel George Marshall. You want the
time and date he said it, too?”

“Nah. Gold star in your box,
Sergeant Hayes.”

“Shut the hell up and tell me who
it was, Hawk.”

There was a long pause. He could
feel Garrett’s conflict through every satellite wave that connected them. “It
was Rhett,” he muttered. “But you didn’t hear it from me, you stubborn pud. And
I’m taking away your gold star.”

An affectionate smile spread over
his face. Rhett. Figured. The unit’s tech and communications guy wore his BDU’s
more like a tuxedo and asked for his beers as if ordering a martini on the
rocks—but the arena where his style shined the most was any piece of an op
involving a code to crack, a firewall to breach, or an intelligence labyrinth through
which to sneak.

“Double-Oh-Seven worked his
magic, eh?”

Garrett gave an appreciative
groan. “Dude, it was beautiful. He found an exterior security camera feed from
a building
three blocks
from the Bastille. By the time he was done
enhancing the footage, it looked like the camera was six feet away, instead. There
was no denying what happened. The attack on Rayna, the way you pounced to her
rescue…it was movie magic, man.”

“So the police had no choice
about admitting the truth.”

“Bastards’ balls were nailed to
the wall.”

“What about implicating Mua in
that shit? If he was in a single frame of that stuff—”

“Sure as hell was. More than one
frame, too. It only shows the back of his head, but we couldn’t—”

“Care about your goddamn lives?”
Z cut in. A movement in his peripheral snagged him. Rayna had come downstairs,
dressed now, and studied him with troubled curiosity from the other side of the
slider. He turned and walked further out on the deck. “Hawk, are you out of
your collective minds?”

“Chill your grill, Zsych. We’re
not a bunch of hobos on this train.” The guy snorted hard. “We didn’t take the
footage to the PD.” His pause practically blared his shit-eating grin. “We went
straight to the news outlets with it. Not local, either. I’m talking CNN’s
crew. And Fox. And MSNBC. Dude, they were more captivated than the day the
royal baby was born. You’re the newest vigilante hero of the nation.”

He let himself sink into one of
the covered deck chairs. It was soaked with morning mist. He barely noticed.
“Huh?”

“You’re practically Batman!”

“Not funny.”

“Wasn’t meant to be. As a matter
of fact, we think it was enough to spook Mua, too. After the vid hit, the
Seattle PD had no choice but to issue a public apology to you, hot on the heels
of an APB for him. Clearly, one of his remaining inside minions got off a call
to him, because one of the private air charter companies matched a photo of him
to ‘a handsome bloke’ coming in right before the security nets got thrown down.
They say he flashed a lot of cash for an expedited hop to Tokyo. Third
battalion’s already in Tokyo, so they’re set to intercept once he’s there. By
this time tomorrow, that scum sucker’s going to be carving his legacy into the
walls of a max security bunker.”

He scrubbed a hand down his face.
“Does this mean we can come home? That I go come back, report for duty and do
my job—and that I can know Rayna will be safe when I do, too?”

Garrett’s empathetic hum,
possible only from another soldier who loved what they did, was a welcome balm
on his overwhelmed brain. “Yeah, Z. That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“Thank fuck.” He stood again,
welcoming the familiar surge of adrenaline that helped prep his body and mind
for a mission. In this case, it also helped him start a timeline for getting
some appointments set up for Rayna at Bastille, to meet with the right Doms and
talk to the right submissives. Sage could help her with a proper wardrobe as
well as the other basics. Gratitude flooded him again. He wouldn’t be around to
see any of it, which was a damn good thing. When he returned—
if
he
returned—she’d be the happy property of a loving Dom who could give her
everything she needed and deserved from the lifestyle. And eventually his gut
would stop feeling like an over-cinched loaf of bread because of it.

“Okay,” he said into the phone,
“we’ve got forty-eight before reporting in, right?”

“Uh, yeah.” His friend’s voice
got edged with a weird lilt. “Technically correct—though there’s a special
project I’ve gotta ask your help with first, Z.”

He cracked his neck. It didn’t
help clarify the mystery in Garrett’s voice. He let a long moment go by,
allowing time for his friend to continue, but mild static was the only sound filling
his ear.

“Okay, you going to elaborate any
time in the next century? Because I’ve got every scenario going here from
building a gazebo in your yard to disposing of a dead body.”

Hawk snickered. “Points for
creativity. But I’d rather tell you in person. How soon can you get to our
place?”

“Does three hours give you enough
time to dirty up your play room then get presentable?”

“Hmm. It’ll be tight, but I can
make that work.”

“Fucking sadist.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered good-naturedly…but
the thought hit, as he looked back inside and beheld the tousled, gorgeous
redhead within, that right now he was the greatest masochist that ever lived.