The Protective Dominant (11 page)

Jenny was sleeping with her head on his table. Jet was sprawled at her feet, one front paw raised in a strange ‘high five’ puppy gesture.

“Jen.” His voice sounded like a raspy fog horn. He cleared his throat. “Hey, Jenny, you okay?”

She sat up, blinking at the light. Taz was relieved to see coherence in her eyes. She wasn’t drifting somewhere he was afraid to touch her.

“Um, sorry. Last thing I remember, I made some coffee.”

He saw it and went and poured himself a mug so he could keep his hands off her. Luke poking him earlier had stirred the darker parts of himself. So had coming home and finding Jenny and the new pup in his house.

It felt right, damn it. Her house was nicer than his, he supposed, more finished. Prettier. But he wanted her here, under his roof and in his bed waiting for him when he got home.

And shit, even he, caveman that he was, knew now was not the time to bring this up, not when he was dragging his sorry ass.

“Let me get you something to eat with that.” Jenny went to his fridge and while he watched, bemused, she pulled out an omelet on a plate. Only hers had salsa and chips on it. Oh, man. He was such a goner.

He fell on it like a starving man, feeling her watch him as she sipped her own coffee.

“What happened to your eye?”

He grimaced. “Spark from the wildfire we killed. It’s all right, just sore.”

“Don’t rub it.”

He cocked a rueful eyebrow. How had she known he was going to do that?

He got up and offered his hand. “When was Jet last out?”

She took it, getting to her feet. “I…don’t remember. I came over here and…” She looked uncomfortable.

“Jen, I liked finding you here,” he said, deciding to make his feelings plain. He didn’t have time to pussyfoot around whatever female thing was going on in that brain of hers.

“Taz.” She swallowed. “I came here to spy on you.”

It was the last thing he’d expected her to say. And he had to stop himself from grinning. “Please, you sound like a trailer for a thriller. If you wanted to paw through my underwear or put a camera in my shower? I’m on board.
Totally
.”

“A camera in your shower?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “I’d love to give you a show, honey.”

He guided her out of the side door and they let Jet run around Taz’s less than stellar-looking flower beds. Hell, maybe he should just let her do his yard too. It was a good excuse to get her on his property and she looked hot in her little shorts, ass tilted at an enticing angle.

She took his arm, squeezed it so he’d take her seriously. “No, I mean… Dharma and Sian made me wonder if you might be hiding a part of yourself from me, maybe because you thought I couldn’t accept it, so I came over here to root around.”

He shook off her hand. “What exactly did they say?” God damn them. Women were always interfering—

He gusted out a sigh. No.
No.
He wasn’t going to think that way anymore. Jenny was a woman and she was honest with him, even when she knew it would cost her.

And he knew Sian and Dharma were only trying to help her. They could see how innocent she was. God knew Taz should keep his dirty hands off her.

“Well?” He couldn’t help that his voice was testy.

Jenny had her hands on her hips now, looking him in the eye. “They’re right, aren’t they? I’ve always felt like you were protecting me from something about yourself. It would explain why you were such an asshole to me for so long.”

His throat closed up. “Did you go into my playroom, Jenny?” he asked, very softly. If she’d gone in there without him, unprepared… What would she think of him?

She pushed her hair back, tension sagging from her shoulders. “No. I… When I found the locked door I knew I could probably find my way inside, but that’s not what I wanted.”

He crossed his arms, knowing he looked intimidating, but that was okay. She’d pushed this. She wanted to know his secret? Well, they’d both see. “What did you want?”

“To ask you about it. To not just invade your privacy because you’ve been so good and kind to me and you don’t deserve that, me just going behind your back.”

“Oh, Jen.” And just like that she melted him. “Come here.” He cupped the side of her face, brought her close enough so he could rest his forehead against hers. It had to be so scary for her, getting close to a man like him.

Of course she’d want to know what he was hiding.

“Everything Dharma told you about me, everything you’re afraid of is true,” he said. “I’m not the man for you.”

Instead of getting tearful the way he’d half expected, Jenny crossed her arms. “I am tired of people assuming that a—poor little Jenny is a basket case and will never be strong again, because I’m healing, damn it, and I plan to be stronger than ever, and b—that you’re a total asshole. Are we clear?”

Taz blinked. “Uh. Sure.”

“All right then.” She raised a brow. “Planning on sharing your dark secret before we both collapse from lack of sleep?”

He surprised himself by giving a crack of laughter. He tugged her close again. “Come here, you.” His heart was thudding and he felt a little sick. Because he was beginning to think that maybe she might not be the only one who could fall in love here.

“Is he done?” He nodded to Jet, who’d collapsed on his back, snoring in the grass.

Jenny’s eyes softened. “Aw.”

Taz rolled his. “I knew this would happen. You’ll be that puppy’s slave.”

“I look forward to my servitude.”

Taz hefted the pup in his arms. He was a solid, warm weight as he carried his dog and led his woman back into his house. When he put Jet in his dog bed, he again offered his hand to Jenny. Fuck, his palm was sweaty. He tried to comfort himself with the memory of their lovemaking. She’d enjoyed being submissive to him. She’d liked the way he’d taken control in the shower too.

“You liked the stuff we did. Sexually, I mean.” Gently he led her to the basement door, dread gathered like a ball in his gut. He couldn’t lose her. If she couldn’t accept him for who he was… What would he do?

Her eyes warmed. “Yes, although the girls said the spreader bar was a new one on them.”

“You
told
them about that?”

Jenny snickered and jabbed a finger in his chest. “No. Gotcha.”

“Wench.”

“Hey, wench sounds powerful and sexy. Better than some of your ideas about women.”

“Um.” He decided not to touch on those. He knew he still had a lot of edges she’d want smoothed.

He took a key out and opened the door to his playroom, switching on the light before he lost his nerve.

Then he stepped back and let Jenny make up her mind about whether she wanted to enter his world or not.

Chapter Eleven

Jenny wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Some kind of dark red leather hangout? Silver spikes and face masks and whips?

“It’s…beautiful.”

The room wasn’t large but it was cozy. A tall wooden four-poster bed was in one corner with an empty fireplace in front of it. With the climate so often hot, it would not often be chilly enough to light, even in a basement.

“It’s electric,” Taz said. “It doesn’t give off heat.”

Jenny looked over her shoulder at him. He was still hovering in the doorway, tension riding his shoulders. His face had dirt streaks and his eye was the color of the planet Mars, reddish and sore. “So you like the ambience of firelight?” She deliberately chose the word ‘ambience’ rather than the one that came to mind—romance. Taz already looked spooked, though she didn’t know why.

He couldn’t be worried what she thought of this place, could he? Her confident, fuck-the-world Taz? He was so rude and crude, but also so sure of himself, like the bedrock that built their coastline.

An Elizabethan style sideboard had handsome brass candlesticks with pink candles in them. Pink seemed incongruous. Again, shouldn’t they be black or red? Something macho? As if reading her thoughts, Taz’s lips quirked. “Women like the pink. They are also unexpected, which is disarming.”

“Ah. Crafty devil.”

He watched her, his eyes sharpening to something that looked almost…predatory. A shiver ran down her back. She had the strangest impression that now she was here in this mysterious room that he didn’t want to let her out.

That he wanted to keep her here, trap her here and do with her things that would suit heavy silk brocade wallpaper and the pendulous Fortuny chandelier sitting over a marble dining table.

She swallowed audibly.

Taz stepped into the room and shut the door quietly behind him.

“You’re not afraid,” he said. “You should be.”

She stood her ground, sensing that he was testing her for some reason. If she backed away, if she showed her nerves, he’d be back to coddling her again, the way he had right after she’d gotten out of the hospital.

And she didn’t want that. Not anymore. At first he’d been her protector, her guardian, and she hadn’t let herself see him as sexual for a long time. He’d held her when she would wake up disorientated and break into hot, silent tears.

He’d been with her through her worst.

But she wasn’t so broken anymore. Every day she got stronger. She’d made a date with Dharma to visit the local spa for a mani and pedi—just as if she hadn’t stopped visiting for months. Somehow she was going to get in her car and go and if she was keyed up, she’d still make herself stay and enjoy it, damn it.

“I went to the corner store,” she said, holding Taz’s challenging gaze. She could feel that under his show of intimidation some part of him ached for her, woman for his man. Was she ready for that?

His eyes widened. “You drove out there by yourself? Jenny, you should have waited until I was home! I would have got anything you needed.”

“Yes, you would. Everything except a backbone, Taz,” she said, lifting her chin. “It was time. I
was
scared. I did forget half the things I meant to pick up. But I will go again, and I’ll do it alone.”

His eyes softened, then heated. With pride, in her.

Jenny gestured around the room. “It’s like a Victorian brothel.”

Taz nodded, face contemplative now as he looked around. She preferred it to the tension.

“I feel like I’m in a fairy tale, like I only found this room now because I was
ready
to find it.”

His gaze sharpened on hers. “Jenny, I have tied up both men and women here. I like to do dark, dirty things to them. But what I want most of all is to do them to
you
.”

Jenny blinked.

And, okay, Taz inwardly winced. Did he have to be so goddamned blatant about what he wanted from her?

As soon as he’d seen her in this room, he’d stopped denying that all along he’d hungered for her here…in chains…and under his command.

Jenny touched the beaded trim on a lamp, making it tinkle, the soft sound somehow suggestive, almost flirtatious. But it couldn’t be. She’d run from him any moment. “You do realize that this is your secret garden?”

“Garden?” He frowned. “I don’t have any flowers in here.”

“Um, yes, that
is
an oversight. But you’re missing the point. My garden isn’t just a physical place, it’s where my heart is. I pour my bad days into the soil. I’ve bled there, and I’ve…let myself be broken there.” Her voice hitched then she swallowed and lifted her chin again. “You have to let go of the past to heal and part of that is grief.”

He went to her, but she held up a hand. “No. No more coddling, Taz. What I meant is, this is your place to go after a bad day, isn’t it? It’s your place to feel safe and passionate. Your place to celebrate your sexuality instead of being made to feel shame for it.”

Oh, Christ.

Why had he ever thought her a simple, defenseless woman? She saw
too much.

To the heart of him.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t feel ashamed. Not anymore.”

She smiled, radiant as one of her sunflowers in August. “No, and that’s the point. I use my garden to heal. And that’s what you’ve done here. This isn’t a dirty place, it’s beautiful, full of life. Now I see why the rest of your house is so empty. It’s not where you live.” She ran a finger over the side table. It came up grimy. “But you haven’t been here for months, have you?”

He shook his head. “There’s been no one else since the night in the hospital. Do you think I could think about sex when you wake up screaming?”

She held his gaze. “You needed to heal me like you healed yourself, but you didn’t know how. Obviously the same method you used wouldn’t work for me.”

“Uh, no.” Was he blushing?

Dangerous, she was dangerous because he’d never be the same, not since he’d held her in the mud of her garden, listening to her heart break one shovel of dirt at a time, not since he’d led her into this place, his secret heart.

“Will you be with me here?” He felt like he’d waited forever to ask her, forever to have her here.

She nodded. Jenny Ann Green wanted him, for who he was. “Yes…but Taz? What’s that weird smell?”

“It’s, um, the other half of my secret.”

And he opened the large wardrobe cabinet, watching her face as he revealed what was inside.

Jenny stared, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. “You paint? Wow, you paint a lot.” The smell was turpentine and oil. She saw scattered color-smeared tubes, a palette tray with dried paint, a knife and brushes and paper towels.

Then she saw the canvases hidden in the bottom portion of the wardrobe.

What he painted! She couldn’t stop herself from blushing as she caught a hint of what he liked to paint, but she was going to see Taz for who he was, damn it. She was through adoring him from a distance. She wanted to know him. “May I?”

“Ah…sure.”

Now he looked uncertain of himself. A little like how he’d been in the shoe store as she had looked at shoe after shoe. Adorable.

It helped to think about that and not about the painting of a beautiful brunette woman looking over her shoulder enticingly at Taz. Her hands and feet were tied to the scarlet tufted bench Jenny had glimpsed at the end of the bed in this room, leaving her sex open to the viewer of the painting. One heavy breast was revealed and her rear end was a suggestive pink, as if she’d just been spanked.