The Protective Dominant (12 page)

And her eyes… Her eyes were the same moss green as Jenny’s.

“You painted me in here?”

Taz closed his eyes and sagged against the door. “Yes,” he whispered.

“But…”

His eyes snapped open, gleaming, animalistic. “You think I could tell you how I felt, how I wanted you? I’ve been painting you for months. And before I did that, I had women here who looked like you. I’m surprised you never noticed.”

Jenny’s eyes rounded. Oh, God. She had, just not consciously. But when she thought back to those last days before her attack, she’d seen him only with brunettes.

“I couldn’t get you out of my head. I couldn’t go near you.” He laughed, an edge of frustration. “Even a bastard like me doesn’t want to hurt the innocent.”

Jenny wetted her lips. She knew she had to handle him carefully. Because her protector was wounded too, had been wounded a long time. “I’m not innocent anymore.”

“You are.” Pain twisted like a lightning strike across his face. “It was enough at first just to take care of you. To know you hurt less every day, that you would heal, but I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop thinking of you here with me.”

Jenny reached for another painting. It was her on the bed, scarlet silk wrapped around her wrists and ankles, her legs spread lewdly even as her eyes were shining. He’d captured shyness and eroticism in the same work.

As she went through the paintings she found sketches of herself sleeping naked in her garden, her hair tangled as if from a man’s hands. In all of them she looked whole, healed, utterly female.

Throat aching, she let the paintings fall back into their hiding place.

Taz wasn’t looking at her, his gaze on the floor. “Just go if you’re going to. I won’t try to stop you.”

Jenny frowned. Then made herself go to him. “Why would I go?”

His gaze snapped to hers. “You think I don’t know those are just fantasies?”

Courage.
She was going to have to find her courage if she wanted Taz for her own. She held his gaze. “What if they’re my fantasies too?”

Taz swallowed. Pain, confusion…
Yearning.

“They couldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

His head fell back. “Because I’m close to you now. Close, do you understand me, Jenny? And I’ve never been close to anyone, not in all my life.”

Tears pricked her eyes. “I do understand. I feel the same way about you.” She squeezed his hands. In a hushed voice she asked, “What if my being here with you would only make us closer?”

Heat flared in his eyes like a match igniting. His nostrils flared and on a primitive level she felt as if he were taking in her scent, taking in her readiness, her want of him.

“Yes, Taz.”

“I’d be afraid of…scaring you.”

“You’ve never done that. You’ve always taken care of me.” She looked into his eyes, willing him to believe. “In all these months, I’ve learned to trust you. You’ve picked up the pieces, held me when I vomited, cooked for me when I thought I wasn’t hungry, taken me shoe shopping and helped me take a risk on a puppy.”

Taz swallowed, looking utterly caught by her.

“I trust you. You would have to lead me because I don’t know my way in this world, but I want to try. I want to be the woman I see in your paintings.”

Chapter Twelve

Jenny moved restlessly in his arms.

Taz stiffened, pulling her close. He knew what was happening.

She was having the nightmare again. Soon she’d leave his bed and go out to the garden, trying to bury her pain working there, her subconscious looking for the place she would feel safest.

He sat up, running a hand through his hair. They’d only managed a couple of hours of sleep. He ached from fatigue. Worse, he felt lost. How could he help her? How could he finally kill her ghosts so she’d be free?

When her eyes snapped open he jumped. Her face was impassive, her eyes wide. Seeing and yet not seeing.

She moved to get out of his bed.

He couldn’t have it. He couldn’t watch her go through this anymore. It was tearing away parts of him, exposing a wound he’d thought long closed.

She had to stop hurting so he could stop hurting.

They’d decided they wouldn’t use his playroom or do anything kinky until they’d caught up on their sleep, but what he had in mind couldn’t be put off for a better time. “There is no better time,” he muttered.

Not as long as his Jenny still suffered.

Somehow he had to free her.

His eyes widened as he remembered what she’d told him she remembered of her attack. Shadows… More than one man…

He reached for his phone even as he looped a possessive arm around Jenny, keeping her from leaving his protection.

* * * *

Zane stared at Taz in disbelief. His sea green eyes were bloodshot. He had to be as exhausted as Taz, but he’d come when Taz had called him.

“You want me to
what?
”

“Hold Jenny while I kiss her. It’s not that hard a concept,” Taz growled. He’d explained himself twice. He wasn’t doing it a third time.

“Taz, it’s three in the morning.”

“So you said. Twice. Just do what I told you to do, rook. Come on, I know you like her. This is your chance to be a hero and help her from these nightmares.”

“Whoa. You’re in love with her,” Zane said.

And Taz had…nothing. He couldn’t automatically and sarcastically put the rookie in his place because the truth was that he’d been in love with Jenny Ann Green for a long time.

He hadn’t been man enough to let himself see it.

“She was attacked by three men.” Taz’s voice broke. This was so fucking hard to talk about. But he had to do it. For Jenny. “I want to eclipse that experience, give her subconscious something else to think about.”

They were in Jenny’s garden. She was digging, her blank concentration a little spooky. She might as well have been alone in her own world.

Zane looked at her and anguish twisted his face. “I don’t know if I can do it. She looks…”

“You’ll be helping her,” Taz pushed. “She doesn’t want to be like this anymore.”

Reluctantly Zane knelt behind Jenny. After a moment, he put tentative hands on her shoulders.

Jenny acted like she didn’t even feel the gesture, continuing to dig.

“If she doesn’t like this, I’m stopping,” Zane growled.

Taz knelt in front of Jenny and as he had so many times before, he spoke softly to her. “Jenny. Look at me, baby.”

It took a while but finally a slight frown furrowed her brow. Her hazy eyes focused on Taz’s face. Before she could speak, he pressed his lips hotly to hers, putting everything of himself into the kiss.

At first her lips were cool, her touch as blank as her expression, but his fire ignited hers and her hands were in his hair and she moaned as his tongue penetrated her mouth, claiming her.

She was pressing herself against him when Taz felt her abruptly stiffen.

She’d felt Zane’s light touch on her shoulders.

She broke away, gasping for breath. Taz saw the same confusion and fear…read her dejection at being here again in her garden.

No, she hadn’t healed. Not yet.

But maybe tonight he could finally find a way to help her.

“It’s Zane,” Taz told her.

“Zane?” Jenny looked over her shoulder at Zane, who was busy blushing again as if he’d never seen a couple share a passionate kiss.

“Yeah, um, hi, Jen,” he said.

“Uh, hi.” Jenny stared at him for a moment then turned to Taz. “Why is he out here?”

“Because I asked him.”

She made a growling sound and Taz found himself grinning. She lit him up. She could do that, break him one minute and light him up the next.

“Jen, I figure if he’s there while I touch you, it might bring some things back.”

Jenny paled.

Taz swallowed, rubbing his chest. He hurt there, a hollow, unending ache. God, he couldn’t take this anymore. This had to work. “Your mind won’t let it go. I don’t know what else to do anymore, Jen, but try a similar but very different situation. Yes, we’ll be here, two men, but we’d die before we’d ever hurt you. And you have to give your consent. You have to give yourself.”

He wanted to compel her, wished somehow that along with his experience at persuasion he somehow had magical powers because he would use them without hesitation to heal her.

“When I…ran away from home, I had some hang-ups.” He swallowed, not sure he could go here, face this. “I had a lot of angry user sex. I punished the people who wanted to lie down with me. You think I’m a jerk now? I found people’s weaknesses and I was ruthless, tearing them down, making them feel shitty just because they found me hot.”

Jen looked at him, simply looked, accepted, and another part of Taz’s dark history fell away like a shedding iceberg.

“Yeah, I… I met another dominant and he was ruthless. He challenged me to submit to him and he did everything to me that I’d prided myself on doing to others.” Taz swallowed. “And it
hurt
, Jen. It wasn’t funny, it sure as fuck wasn’t sexy. But he helped me see myself. I know I still have problems with women. But I’m gonna work on that for you so can you try this with us tonight? Because it breaks me to see you like this and I just want to help you heal.” He squeezed his eyes shut, afraid of what she’d see there. “Please, Jen,” he asked very softly.

“Okay.”

His eyes snapped open and he felt the chasm open between them. Did he really know what he was doing? He had only the strength of purpose he’d honed as a dominant. It was scary, where he was taking her, but he’d be with her every step of the way.

He kissed her again, using his mouth to try to give her comfort, to burn away the layers and get to her. She was stiff and cold but when he touched her, over and over, gentle as water lapping the beach, she began to warm for him again. She clutched his shoulders, losing herself.

She loves me. Christ, she loves me.

Knowing that he held a vulnerable woman in his arms made him shake. He was scared. If he hurt her, he’d feel it. He’d lay himself open and bleed.

Her gown-covered breasts brushed against his bare chest and he groaned. For him, just that, her kiss, the brush of her body, and he was ready to have her. He burned to have her and knew that the dark part of himself was also getting off on the way that Zane was breathing harshly as he watched Taz pleasuring Jenny. The younger man’s cheeks were flushed, his eyes wide and dilated. Taz had the funny thought that maybe Jenny wasn’t the only inexperienced one here in her garden tonight. Could Zane actually be…a virgin?

A second later he shoved aside the insane thought. Nah. He was just so celibate it was no wonder that Jenny’s innocent fire aroused him. The way she went from stiff shyness to ardor. The way she grasped Taz’s cheeks in her hands and forced him to give her more of his kisses.

He caressed her mouth with his, taking forever to savor, to lick and curl his tongue with hers, to tease her into melting submission.

When he put his hand on her breast, she jumped as if she remembered they weren’t safely alone, that Zane was there, his hands tense on her shoulders. As if he couldn’t stop himself, Zane buried his face in Jenny’s long, tangled hair, inhaling her lush female scent.

Zane’s arousal only fired Taz. This was his beautiful woman. His to heal, to protect, and in this moment to enjoy her flowering like one of her wild roses.

On a primitive level, he also liked showing her off.

Mine. Look at what’s mine. And you only touch her if I allow it, so eat your fucking heart out.

He’d known his plan was insane, known he was sleep deprived, desperate… But somehow the insanity was working. Jenny breathed out a sigh as his mouth found her breast through her gown, sucking strongly while he kneaded the other one. She trembled, her body held upright only by the two men captivated by her, servicing her.

Taz had always seen sex as a golden ribbon, a flow of energy that could move from one person into another. Sometimes that flow could be interrupted so that it was choppy, unsatisfying, and sometimes it moved like a storm overtaking the land, merciless, taking everything in its path.

This was the stormy kind of flow, catching him and Zane and Jenny so they moved together like survivors of a shipwreck, alive, desperate to touch.

Hands brushed over Taz’s where he was squeezing Jenny’s breasts. Zane. He wanted to touch, couldn’t hold back.

Taz dragged his hands down to Jenny’s hips, testing them under his grip, and suddenly he was impatient that she was clothed at all.

“Jen… Take off your gown.”

Jenny’s eyes widened as she absorbed the situation. Zane’s hands on her, Taz’s eyes heavy with suggestion, Jenny crushed between them, wild. She bit her lip then gave a hesitant nod.

He reached down and lifted the gown, pulling it free, revealing her pale, vulnerable body.

Vulnerable. Why had he never seen a woman that way?

Zane groaned, putting his open mouth against Jenny’s neck.

Jenny gasped, her head falling back, her back arching so that Zane could play with her nipples. He wasn’t being gentle, too far gone. He left pinkish marks on her neck from whisker burn.

Dark arousal curled in the base of Taz’s spine. He loved this, watching Zane and Jenny and being the one in control.

For this moment, they belonged to him.

His hands slid down Jenny’s thighs, spreading them. She leaned against Zane, her dazed eyes and dewy, well-kissed mouth.

She looked like a woman pleasured by two men, not a woman who had ever been hurt by more than one man. Would she remember this the next time those shadows chased her? He could only feel that the physical, the touch of hands and mouths and need would do what all the talk, all the trying had never done.

Heal her.

“Watch me make you come, Jenny,” Taz commanded.

He spread her and began to stroke her, merciless, experienced. He knew she liked to be forced to the edge, liked to be made to submit.

“Oh, God,” Zane muttered and he reached down as if he couldn’t stop himself, brushing his fingers against Jenny’s slick heat. She was succulent, glistening.

Jenny shuddered, pressing back against Zane. Her hand covered his as if she was loving this, two men pleasuring her, unscripted, slightly dangerous.