Hard Way (11 page)

The house wasn’t exactly quiet. It ticked and sighed with all the usual noises of a house she knew intimately. The refrigerator hummed and wind whistled around the eastern cornice.

No sign of Dash.

He wasn’t asleep in the living room, so maybe he’d left early. He’d taken to folding the blanket and topping it with a pillow after crawling off the couch for each of the five mornings.

Maybe he’d… What, took a taxi himself to go get her Acura? Headed to base in some turnaround means of spiting her, leaving her to her own devices. One was generous, if a little over the top. One was too easy for her mind to latch on to. Dash, letting her down.

She curled her hand around the handle of her attaché case. The leather smashed into her flesh—not cutting, because the case was too well made for that. She could use a bite of pain to keep her jaw from locking.

Trailing her hand down the cool wall, she waited for something. The cab’s honk? A sign? So damn stupid. A few feet more and she’d be free for the day. She could bury herself in work and let everything else go away.

Just over three weeks now.

A pair of steps from the door, she heard him behind her. Not heard.
Felt.
The skin between her shoulder blades prickled. The air shifted and weighed heavily against her skin.

“Where are you going, Sunny?” His voice was low. Gravelly.

That
was what she’d been waiting for.

She didn’t look back. Her tongue slicked over her bottom lip, and there was no denying the way her body clenched and readied. A flood of moisture dampened her panties. Her expensive, pretty pink panties, which matched her lace balconette bra. She was such an idiot, holding on to secret hopes and wants that she hadn’t stopped to examine. She’d wanted to be pretty. For him. Just in case.

But she still played along.

“I’m going to work.” She lifted her chin and put as much attitude as she could into her words. She reached for the brass door handle. Let him come for her. Let him try. “You can’t stop me.”

That quick.

Between one breath and the next.

She’d turned the knob when the slam of their combined weight made the door shake in the frame. Her already-raw knees burned where they ground against the wood. The oval leaded glass shuddered.

He was bare from the waist up. Jeans were hitched around his hips, but what pressed against her torso and bent over her shoulders was pure skin. Smooth, healthy, tanned skin. He was warm with sleep.

She managed not to shiver.

His head bowed low, and he nudged her neck with his chin. Tousled hair tickled her ear. “You’re not going anywhere. Thought you would’ve learned that last night. You go where I let you.”

His bare foot shoved between hers, his thigh pressing hers apart. She tried to surprise him with her heel—lifting and slamming down. His reflexes were too fast. He jerked back at the same time as he pushed his upper chest more firmly against her back. She was pinned.

“You’re a mean little whore, aren’t you?”

She ground her teeth and tried to headbutt him. She caught him across the temple, but he didn’t even sway. Her insides clamped in a happy little lost-girl response. This was what she wanted. Being completely dominated meant she could give up her choices, let the world fall away and scream her goddamn head off.

She wasn’t going down easily.

After throwing her case to the side, she dropped to her bruised knees. Pain spiked up to her hips, but she didn’t let it slow her down. She kicked.

He caught her ankle. That grin. Oh fuck, that grin. It did wicked things to her pussy, making her heated and soaked and ready.

“Uh-uh, Sunny,” he said. “Don’t be a bad girl.”

She couldn’t help but grin as well, which quickly turned into a laugh. Maybe a giggle. It probably sounded hysterical. “Fuck off, Liam. Don’t do this. I’m going to be late.
Again
.”

He put one bare foot on her other ankle. She thought about trying to jerk him off balance, but he caught the direction she was looking. “Nope. Won’t work. You’re too small. I’m too well centered on my other foot.”

“You beast.”

His smile was positively lethal. She couldn’t look straight at him, but looking anywhere else meant swaths of bare skin and strong torso. He held her ankle at his hip in a seemingly casual grip. Lean muscles twitched and pulled.

“Okay, fine. You wanna play a different game, Sunny?” He spoke with latent threat. “I’ll let you go. If you manage to get all the way down the hallway without me pinning you…well. You’ll win. And you know what
won’t
happen.”

Her first response was
no
. She didn’t want to play. Because shit, he was right. What if she won? This felt like a choice, and she didn’t want choices.

But she nodded.

The moment dripped like cold honey—him watching her and her watching him, and her breath catching in her throat as she waited for him to blink and let go.

He stepped away from her ankle and released her leg. She flipped. Scrambled to her sore knees. Her elbows protested. Even a well-aimed donkey kick didn’t save her.

First she felt his fingers inside the back of her slacks’ waistband. The tight pinch across her waist snatched her breath. She tried to evade, slip sideways. He knew her too well. She slapped backward, connecting with his cheekbone.

He shoved her down. Her breathing jerked into overdrive. White stars bloomed across her eyes.

With his hand like a vise between her legs, he pressed his mouth against her ear. She’d expected his growl of victory, but she hadn’t anticipated the shivers it pushed across her skin.

“I win.”

Chapter Eleven

For the second time that morning, Dash listened while Sunny took a shower. Only now he wore a robe tied loosely at his waist and stood outside their en suite bathroom door.

He’d wanted her and he’d forced her again. Holy Christ, it was amazing layered on unbelievable layered on intensely intimate. Fists clenched, he pushed his forehead against the doorjamb, steadying his breathing.

Desire hadn’t been his only motive for dismantling her morning. No, in part it was because he’d spent another knocked-in-the-head, pride-shredding night on the couch. The hours in the desert, the trust they’d shared, the fantasy they’d made real—none of it had mattered. Upon returning home she’d mumbled a good night and shut the bedroom door behind her.

Then she’d been ready to tiptoe off to work, as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t been tossed in the trunk of a car and fucked until she screamed. Dash had
never
heard her scream like that. Full-on ecstasy. Hell, he’d never gotten close to anything like that himself. Fantasies, yes. But to share it with Sunny? While she enjoyed it as much?

He’d felt used. And that morning, he’d taken the feeling out on her.

To anyone watching, without knowing their agreement in advance, it would’ve looked as if Dash had kidnapped Sunny and raped her in an abandoned desert housing tract. The worst sort of violation. In fact, had the police happened by, he would’ve been hard-pressed to keep from getting arrested. Would Sunny have let him get hauled away? Would she have spoken up? She’d barely been able to meet his eyes when he’d tended her inevitable injuries. Was she ashamed too? He sure as shit had been, there in the aftermath, when they couldn’t even talk to each other.

Maybe her shame would’ve kept her silent.

Great. He was playing rape games with his wife, when he couldn’t trust that she’d keep him safe. He sure as hell tried to keep
her
safe. In the meantime, he was getting her off hardcore, with an intensity neither of them had ever shared…but he slept on the couch. He stood there like a fumbling jackass, wondering whether he should knock on the bathroom door before entering.

He believed Sunny wanted to leave him. Sex now was, what, some last fling? A little rough-and-tumble before they signed off?

Yup. He felt used.

He would’ve laughed at the heaps of irony if the whole situation hadn’t left him so heartsick.

The water shut off. Dash inhaled, then knocked softly.

Being angry hadn’t worked.

“Sunny? Can I come in?”

For an agonizing heartbeat, he didn’t think she’d do it. Stillness and indecision waited between them as opaque as the gleaming pine door. Then, the doorknob turned. Steamy air scented with jasmine, her favorite, wafted out on a humid cloud. She’d wrapped her hair in a towel, and another hugged her body. The white terrycloth made for a bright, eye-catching contrast to her golden skin.

She was so beautiful.

He should say that to her. He didn’t know how anymore, and worse, he didn’t think she’d believe him.

“Surprised you asked permission,” she said, chin tilted. “Hasn’t been your style lately.”

Dark, dark eyes studied him. God, he hoped she was as confused about all this as he was. His only clue was how she touched her right collarbone. Once. Then hands at her side. Followed by another touch, like the flutter of a butterfly. A droplet of water gathered in that delicate hollow.

Dash couldn’t be trusted to speak yet. Sure, anger hadn’t worked. It was still there, so potent that he could barely see past the gleaming red haze of pain and loss.

He wasn’t enough for her. He didn’t make her happy.

So, pain and loss and another type of shame—the kind that had nothing to do with his sexual desires. He’d wanted to give her an incredible life. This was where they’d ended up.

He met her inquisitive eyes and held her stare. She ducked her gaze first, which wasn’t like her at all. Only when trembling fingertips reached for her collarbone once more did he move.

This wasn’t another wrestling match.

He caught her wrist between both of his palms. The bones in her wrist were so delicate. He should’ve been mortified by the angry red abrasions that circled her skin, that he’d maimed something so perfect. Instead he tramped down a flushed, needy wash of lust at seeing physical proof of all they’d done.

Her bow-shaped lips parted and her eyes softened. She’d put the hostility away, but there was no telling how long the cease-fire would last. Didn’t matter. Dash had survived four tours by taking advantage of such lifesaving moments in the midst of chaos.

Bringing her wrist to his mouth was easy. Right. Something beautiful and slow and sexy—something he’d forgotten having once done. They’d been kids, and even back then he’d known what to do, because he’d been so goddamn head over heels.

The flowing seduction of two people in love.

When had that gone away? Not the love, but the…
ease
?

He kissed the inside of her wrist, where her skin was still damp and warm. Three kisses in total. Each one touched where a zip tie had held her immobilized.

A part of him flipped over, unable to stop. This time it wasn’t the ferocious way they lit each other on fire, but the simple gift of touching his skin to hers. He wanted more. Traveling with infinite slowness, he treated her like a doe that might bolt at any moment. Who’s to say she wouldn’t? They had too much mistrust and too much unpredictability between them to make assumptions.

So he kept kissing. The back of her hand. The soft slope of her shoulder. And finally, he reached the droplet of water in the hollow of her collarbone and sipped it away. Her warm scent filled his senses. He couldn’t help nestling his nose against her neck and breathing in. Breathing
her
in.

Sunny’s so-quiet gasp barely reached his ear. He hadn’t let go of her wrist. Instead he pulled back. Without looking up to ask permission—taking again, but in the gentlest way possible—he started the same path of kisses up her other arm. He touched his tongue to every droplet he found. He was surprised by the tender gratification of feeling goose bumps lift across the skin he caressed.

He returned to her neck, and with gentle palms, he found the dip of her lower spine. Holding. Not confining. Had she squeaked the wrong way, he’d have jumped a yard backward. He opened his mouth and kissed her throat, and she answered with another sigh nearly too quiet to hear.

There, tucked close, where it seemed safest to speak his mind, he closed his eyes. “I have an apology and a question. No, two questions.”

Perhaps the sound of his voice made her flinch, but at least it wasn’t some huge repulsed flight from his arms. She made a noise of encouragement.

“I’m sorry for making you late for work.”

“Not sorry for what you did?”

“No.” He moved his hands forward to span her waist. The rhythm of her breathing was jerky and shallow, like his. “Not sorry. You wouldn’t believe me if I said I was. And I wouldn’t believe it of you either.”

A shiver chased across her shoulders. Dash leaned down to kiss her there. More jasmine and damp skin and goose bumps. He wasn’t aroused—not yet. Too much could go wrong to let his body off the chain even a little. But he was aroused by possibilities. Quiet affections. The tempt and tease of something they hadn’t shared in too, too long.

“You’re right,” she said, her voice strained. “I’m glad you didn’t condescend.”

“Hm?”

“Dumb-as-shit Dash.” Eyes darkly luminous, she met his gaze. “You didn’t try to play me like you do everyone else.”