Jaid Black (20 page)

Chapter 19

Tuesday, July 22 6:22 P·M·

“Well, here we go.” Nikki blew out a breath as she typed
in Dom4me.com and waited for the site to load on the screen of the laptop. Seated on the floor, she and Thomas had set up shop on the living room table, the portable computer, various printouts, and their dinner scattered all over it.

When the site finally loaded, she felt embarrassed inside, realizing as she did that Thomas knew from her email exchange with Richard that she fantasized about the sorts of activities and situations
Dom4me.com
purported. On the main menu there was a photographic image of a naked woman, her head bowed, kneeling before a man—her Master. The next page contained a photographic image of a naked woman tied up and blindfolded while her Master administered to her sexually.

Oh yes, Nikki was embarrassed. Mortified, more like. But she pretended as though they were looking at nothing more provocative or unusual than a weather-reporting news site.

One of Thomas’s eyebrows rose as he watched her navigate
Dom4me.com
. “I see we know our way around in here,” he grumbled.

She blushed and ignored him. “Okay. This is where we set up our ad. I think a good title for it would be, hmm let me think . . . I know!” Nikki began typing, repeating the words back to him as she did. “Lonely CEO Searching for Master.”

He frowned. “Shouldn’t it be, Lonely
Female
CEO Searching for Master?”

She shook her head. “It’s redundant. You can tell by the gender we put in that she, or
we,
rather, are a woman.”

“I concede to your finer knowledge of this site,” he growled.

Nikki ignored the way her heart was thumping at his obvious jealousy, telling herself she could savor that memory later in private. “Okay, first things first, we need to decide what we look like.” Her eyes squinted as she read the selections. “We’ll be thirty-four, have dark blonde hair, and green—no, too obvious—blue eyes. What should our, uh . . .” She cleared her throat. “What should our bra size be?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Big. I want to have big tits.”

She frowned at him. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” He sighed. “Okay, I was kind of teasing, but actually Lucifer does have a thing for big breasts.”

Nikki flushed, quickly looking back down to the screen. “How about 34D, then?”

Thomas’s gaze slowly raked over her chest. “That your size?” he softly drawled.

Her heart was beating so dramatically she could hear it better than she could hear him. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

Thomas snorted at that. “I see we’ve now passed the fifth grade.”

She grinned, but didn’t look up.

Fifteen minutes later, Nikki leaned against the couch, chomping on her pastrami and rye sandwich as Thomas checked his email. The ad was done. Together they had created a fictional woman that fit the killer’s predilection. Unfortunately, it could take up to forty-eight hours for the ad to post, depending upon how backlogged the site administrators were. All they could do now was sit back and wait—and hope the lure would be too sweet for Lucifer to pass up.

“Why the Master stuff?” Thomas murmured, surprising her.

Nikki’s head shot up. She set down the sandwich and swallowed. “What do you mean?”

His dark gaze slowly swept over her, making her belly knot. “Why do you want to call a man
Master
in bed?”

Silence.

She looked away. “I don’t know,” she quietly admitted. “I guess it’s more the symbolism than the word itself.”

“Explain what you mean.”

She shrugged, her gaze still averted. “Well, sort of like the woman you saw on the
Dom4me.com
site kneeling before that man. It’s not the act of kneeling in and of itself that arouses her enough to do it, it’s the symbolism behind the action.”

Thomas’s heavy-lidded gaze studied her face as he listened.

“She wants to be completely possessed by that man,” Nikki said, finding it easier to talk in the third person as if about someone else. “She wants to be owned by him, have him decide her boundaries.” She glanced up and grinned. “Probably only in the bedroom. I know there is such a thing as lifestylers who live in those roles twenty-four /seven, but I doubt ninety percent of women who like to be submissive in the bedroom would allow for such goings-on anywhere
but
in bed.”

His gaze bore into hers. “You want that, Nikki?” he murmured. “You want a man to own you?”

“Not just any man,” she whispered. Nikki drew in a deep tug of air and exhaled slowly. This conversation was arousing her like she didn’t know what. “And not just in general. In the bedroom only.”

Thomas’s intense gaze trailed over her face, down to her lips, up to her eyes. “What if the guy needed to own you outright?” he asked in that low, gravelly voice of his.

She swallowed against the invisible lump in her throat.

“What if he was a jealous bastard who needed to know his woman would never fuck around? Or what if he was worried all the time that something bad might happen to her, so he liked for her to tell him where she was at all times?”

Nikki couldn’t help but to wonder if he was speaking of himself—and her. A fact that made her breathing grow a bit heavier. “Well . . .” She blew out a breath. Good lord, she was aroused. Even her nipples were hard as rocks, she thought grimly. “I guess it would depend on what he meant by owning me outright. Would I leave him a note if I needed to dash out unexpectedly or whatever? I think that’s mutual respect both parties should demonstrate, not ownership per se.”

“What if,” he asked softly, “he wanted you to ask his permission before you went anywhere?”

Nikki’s smile came slowly. “I’d tell him to go to hell,” she whispered.

Thomas grunted. “It was worth a shot,” he muttered.

The next several minutes passed in tense silence. She could feel the detective’s stare boring into her profile, but nerves kept her from looking back at him. She sat on the floor before the living room table, her back propped against the sofa, feigning an inordinate fascination with the soda she slowly sipped from.

She wanted Thomas Cavanah. More than she’d ever wanted any man. There was no point in denying that reality any longer.

“Richard” had been a fantasy lover, and the affection she’d felt for him based on calculated untruths and castles in the sky—none of it had ever been real. But Thomas, and their burgeoning relationship, was different—both were very real. Her brain knew it. Her aroused body knew it. And now her heart knew it, too. It did not follow, however, that he wanted her back.

Nikki realized he was attracted to her on some level. She bet he’d even have sex with her if she showed the slightest inclination toward sleeping with him. But, she dismally thought, things had gone a bit too far for her to be able to view carnal relations with him as merely casual. She’d never been good at that anyway. With Thomas the effect would be a thousand times worse.

The grouchy, growling man had gotten under her skin in a way no male had ever before accomplished. She liked him as a person, trusted him as a friend, respected him as a detective, and wanted him in the way a woman wants a man. The ice-queen’s heart was this close to cracking, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. What was worse was the fact that there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, for she was as good as glued to Thomas’s side until Lucifer was caught.

“I want to be that man,” Thomas said, making her blink. She’d been so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard him get up, let alone walk around the table to stand next to her.

Her head shot up. He looked so strong and powerful standing there before her, his heavily muscled body tensed.

“What man?” Nikki whispered. She nervously met his gaze, her heart pounding in her chest.

His eyes were narrowed, heavy-lidded. “The man who owns you,” he said thickly.

Her heart was hammering so hard she could scarcely breathe. She said nothing, couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it, as she sat there and watched him watch her, her breasts rising and falling with her labored breathing.

Thomas reached for her topknot and unwound it, letting curls spill down to the middle of her back. “Can I own you, Nikki?” he softly asked, his callused fingers tucking a curl behind her ear. The feel of his hardened skin raking her softer flesh made her nipples pucker. She glanced down, seeing his erection pressed tight against his jeans, before looking up to meet his gaze again. “Can I?”

Nikki had never felt more nervous, excited, or closer to fainting in her entire life. Everything she’d ever fantasized about, every last wicked fantasy, was suddenly within her grasp. She wanted to live out her desires more than anything, but also conceded that if she said yes to Thomas, the ice-queen might very well be turning over her cracked-open heart to the detective to do with as he would.

Could she chance that? Did she have the guts?

Her chest was heaving so dramatically it was a wonder she could breathe. “Yes,” Nikki whispered, her eyes now as intense as Thomas’s. “Yes, you can.”

His heavy-lidded gaze raked over her breasts, over her face. “Prove it,” he commanded. “Get on your knees and tell me that.”

Nikki slowly blew out a breath, her hands a bit shaky. She glanced away, suddenly embarrassed about her submissive fantasies. Kneeling before a man had been one thing in thought, while masturbating; it was entirely another thing—a very, very unnerving thing—in reality.

The mortifying thought that Thomas found the situation humorous crossed her mind, made her cheeks redden. But when she looked at his expression, really studied it for the first time, she could tell without reservation that the detective was as aroused by her fantasies as she was. “Okay,” she breathed out, more nervous and vulnerable than she’d ever been in her life. She made to get up, climb up to her knees.

“Take your clothes off first,” he said hoarsely, backing up a few steps. “Stand up, take off your clothes, and then kneel before me.”

His words, coupled with the command itself, were so arousing she could feel her entire body flushing. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Nikki came up on shaky feet and slowly began to peel off her clothing.

“Your shirt first,” he instructed.

She glanced down, no longer able to meet his gaze, as she gradually inched the Cleveland General T-shirt above her navel, above her rib cage, above her naked breasts . . .

The sound of his breath sucking in made her nipples harden. “Very nice,” he rasped out as the T-shirt went over her neck and then fell to the floor. “There isn’t much sexier than a topless, busty woman wearing nothing but jeans.”

Nikki blushed, still too nervous to meet his gaze.

“But I want the jeans gone,” he said in that gravelly drawl of his. “Take them off.”

She blew out another breath, so aroused she felt like squeezing her thighs together. She did as she’d been instructed, her hands shaking just a bit as she raised them to her jeans and unsnapped.

“Faster,” Thomas ordered. “I want to see
my
pussy.”

Nikki unzipped the jeans and stepped out of them quickly, tossing them aside as she nervously stood before him. She’d never been so turned on in her entire life. Until this moment, she had believed a woman couldn’t experience an orgasm with a man with the same intensity as she could through masturbation. She realized she was about to be proved wrong and then some.

“You’re not wearing underwear.”

She could feel his eyes staring at her. “You didn’t pack me any,” she whispered, her head still nervously bowed.

“Look at me,” Thomas murmured. She sucked in her breath when his callused fingers reached toward her, sifting through her soft pubic hair. “Look at me,” he again ordered her.

Nikki’s head came up. Her eyes, narrowed with desire, found his. She moaned softly, almost imperceptibly, as the tips of his fingers grazed through the triangle of light brown hair at the apex of her thighs. His eyes, always intense, were blazing. His jaw, always rigid, was tighter than ever.

“Who does this pussy belong to now?” Thomas asked possessively.

Her heart was ready to beat out of her chest. Some women might find words like that offensive. She now realized she wasn’t one of them. At least not when Thomas Cavanah was the man using them. “You,” she breathed out.

Two of his callused fingers found her clit and started rubbing it. She moaned a bit louder.

“Will you ever let another man touch you here?” he drawled.

She wet her lips, could barely keep her eyes open. “No.”

“No, what?” he growled.

It was unnerving how quickly the words came to her lips. “No . . . Master.”

Silence. He said nothing as he stroked her clit, his dark gaze boring into hers.

“Good girl,” Thomas finally purred.

He rubbed her clit harder, the vein in his bicep bulging. Nikki gasped, one of her hands blindly reaching out to dig into his shoulder so she didn’t collapse.

“Oh, god,” she groaned, her eyes instinctively closing as he rubbed her clit faster.

“Let it go,” he murmured, his voice hoarse. “Come for me, baby.”

She couldn’t have stopped her inevitable orgasm if she had wanted to. “Thomas,” she gasped, the intimate massage growing more and more intense. She moaned long and loud as her fingers dug into his shoulder, her legs ready to collapse. On one last groan she burst, her entire body shuddering, her nipples stiffening to the point of near pain, as she climaxed.
“Oh, god.”

Thomas quickly wrapped an arm around her, catching her before she fell. He allowed her trembling legs to slowly give out, buckling so that she sat on her knees before him panting for breath.

“Tell me,” he murmured, his voice thick with arousal. “Say that you want me to own you.”

Nikki was so weak from the orgasm it was all she could do to lift her gaze up to his. Her breathing was labored, her breasts methodically rising and falling with the movement.