The Protective Dominant (3 page)

He’d reached out and gripped her hand while she’d cried.

Don’t think about it. On, off, on, off.

Sucking in a deep breath, she opened one of the boxes as quietly as she could and found…an old laptop and some printing paper and a half-full bottle of turpentine. So he’d been doing something like painting the trim in his house? Boring. Why did she think Taz had some kind of secret, if only she could find it?

Knotting her long hair behind her head, she glanced in dismay at her ancient nightgown. Why on earth had she put it on the night before? She knew she was sleepwalking. She couldn’t look more…dowdy. And it was also a little thin in some spots.

Crossing her arms over her breasts, she peeked out of the room where he’d put her, looking down a long hallway with three closed doors.

“Hello?”

When no one answered, she decided she was justified in looking for Taz, but really she wanted to open all those doors and discover what was inside. The first was a bathroom, small, but full of all kinds of soaps and creams and ointments. And an aloe plant on the tiny windowsill. Hmmm. For healing scrapes?

The next room was a home office, completely devoid of any soul. No photographs, nothing but neatly stacked bills under a rock used as a paperweight. A rock. As in, picked up in his yard? Who did that? Hadn’t one of his girlfriends given in to the urge to pretty up the space and gift him a proper paperweight? There was no artwork on the walls, not even curtains on the two tall windows. But it looked out on the lush Eden of her garden, which filled the space with a kind of secondary grace.

The last room was the master. She put her head around the door but didn’t spot Taz, didn’t
feel
him in the space. He possessed a kind of angry buzzing force field that was immediately apparent.

She stood just inside, hands on her hips. No artwork where he slept? One bedside table with an alarm clock. She glanced over her shoulder and went for it, opening the single drawer and… Nothing. Not even a comb. And no condoms.

Come on, she’d seen him with dazzlingly beautiful women and men. He didn’t…sleep with them?

It didn’t make sense.

But this was just a room where he slept. He didn’t live here.

She didn’t feel him here.

She noticed that his window was open so that the floral breath of her garden drifted in. One of the vines of morning glory had crept from her property to his and had snaked up his siding as if all the beauty next door wanted to swallow his house and somehow possess it like the castle in
Beauty and the Beast
, held captive in roses.

It was a fanciful idea to think of him as the haunted and grumpy beast, yearning for someone to love him.

Taz was no prince.

From somewhere in the house, she caught a creaking sound.

She hurried out of Taz’s bedroom and into the hallway, standing there, heart thumping. If she were a good person, she’d skedaddle and leave Taz his privacy.

But what did she have to look forward to if she went home now?

The tick of her grandfather clock, the settling sounds of a house built in the forties. And a microwave dinner made for one. Yay!

She crept down the stairs, straining to catch another giveaway to Taz’s whereabouts.

Clink, clank, clink, clank.

Repetitive metallic sounds and a masculine grunt.

Immediately heat warmed her cheeks. There was just something so…animalistic about the sounds.

She headed for the half-open door at the bottom of the stairs. If it was a mirror of her own home, it would take her to the basement.

She debated a moment on going down there. She wasn’t dressed properly. He couldn’t want her here.

She chewed her lip, but temptation lured her to push the door open wider, revealing the single bulb shining over unfinished wooden stairs leading into a concrete space below. The sounds were louder. What was making them?

Hand on the guard rail, she gripped her nightgown in one fist and carefully inched down in her bare feet.

Cool air breathed under her clothes, chilling her instantly. She reached the base of the stairs and saw
him.
Sweaty as a god working at a forge, his hair clinging to his face and neck, his lips peeled back from his teeth in a snarl as he stared fixedly at the ceiling and lifted what looked like a ton of weights over his head. Up, down, up, down.

She watched the flex of his legs, steadying him, the muscles bulging and relaxing as he lifted.

“What are you doing?”

The question was so matter-of-fact that there was no reason why it should have jolted her heart.

“I…wanted to thank you?” She wanted to cringe at the way her words ended with a question mark. Classic female wussiness. She was better than this usually. She cleared her throat. “I’m going to do something about the sleepwalking.”

In an unhurried movement, he put the heavy weights down then sat up. He was bare-chested, and moisture ran freely over the hills and valleys of a supreme body. He was massive, so large he could easily crush someone as small as she was.

She dropped her gaze.

“How do you plan to do that?” He sounded politely curious. Her belly tightened.

“I don’t know.”

“What was that?” His voice was harsher—he was on his feet, hands on his hips. “Say it louder, Mouse.”

Her gaze snapped to his, sizzled. “I said I…don’t know how to stop the sleepwalking.”

He nodded once briskly. “All right then.” He picked up a towel and ran it lovingly over his upper body. Or maybe she just imagined it was lovingly since that was what she’d do if she ever had the courage. He was a work of art. Too bad he was so snarly and scary most of the time. “So what are you going to do about it?”

She blinked. He had thrown her in the deep end and was now watching to see if she could swim. And damn if she didn’t kind of like it, that he assumed that she could deal with this, that she could get better. “Um. I have done some research into the sleepwalking. Apparently until I deal with whatever I’m suppressing, it will continue.”

“Makes sense. You said you talked to someone.” He picked up a bottle of Gatorade and gulped deeply before wiping the bottle against his forehead.

Emotion balled in her throat so it felt too tight. “I only get so far and then I…freeze up. I don’t remember what happened, not exactly. I hit my head. Everyone says it’s a blessing.”

His gaze, green as a cat’s, shot to hers. “My ass it’s a blessing.”

“No,” she agreed softly. “It’s not. I get pieces and I don’t know where they fit and I’m afraid of finding out. But until I do, those pieces… They’re like broken glass, slicing me.”

Suddenly he was closer. He cupped a hand around the back of her neck. She felt possessed by him to her bones. “I can help you bring it back, deal with it.
If
you trust me.”

Chapter Three

Jenny stiffened as soon as he had said the word ‘trust’. That splinter opening his heart cracked open a little wider. She’d been so trusting before, so full of innocent enthusiasm. Now her eyes were permanently shadowed, as if she’d swallowed darkness.

He’d always told himself she was too young and carefree to appeal to a man like him, full of his own shadows. Now he hated that they had this in common.

She licked her lips and immediately his gaze followed the movement. She blushed and looked down at her toes. “Before… I wanted to get close to you. I guess it was so obvious.”

His lips quirked. “As glass.”

“Oh.”

He frowned, trying to follow her female train of thought.
Oh.
She was embarrassed. He sighed, not knowing how to handle that. He was used to bringing women to orgasm, not dealing with their tender feelings.

And Jenny was still tender. Very much so.

“I didn’t like it when you stopped trying to bring me flowers,” he said abruptly.

She lifted her gaze, giving him a quizzical glance despite the faint pink still warming her cheeks.

“You know—all those bulbs and shit.”

Humor warmed her eyes. “I see.”

To prove something to both of them, he deliberately moved closer to her so that he loomed over her. She arched her head back to look up at him, a small woman to his towering size. He waited, breath held, but she didn’t look frightened. After a moment he reached out and grazed a gentle hand down her cheek. Her skin felt like warmed flower petals. No wonder she had such an affinity with her garden.

“You’re not frightened when I touch you. Not anymore.” When had his voice gotten so low and throaty? He sounded like a sexed up ad.

She was chewing her lip again. “No. I think because you’ve been there with me every night. You’ve, ah, put your hands on me a lot.”

His body hardened at the idea of just how much he’d
like
to put his hands on her, but he shoved down those feelings. He could never truly express how she made him feel. It would be too scary for her and too dangerous for him.

“But I’m scared of any other male who comes around my house.” She sounded ashamed. “I almost fell apart when the mailman delivered a parcel yesterday.”

He growled, feeling an absurd wish that he’d been with her in her house so he could have banished the man, kept her safe.

“I can see how that’s tough.”

“Since… Since it happened I’ve had all my groceries delivered by a female clerk. I’ve started running only on my treadmill. I’ve quit my water color classes, my regular yoga and I don’t even go to the mall anymore.”

He grimaced. “I don’t think the local mall is much of a loss.”

“I wouldn’t know. Not lately.” She sounded so discouraged that he rubbed his chest, rubbed at the unfamiliar ache.

“I could always go there with you.” He made the offer impulsively, then winced.

She laughed, the first he’d heard from her in a very long time. It started off as ragged and cut off too soon, as if she was a little freaked at the sound herself. “Come on, you’re a man. You have to hate malls.”

“They offer some of the conveniences of life.”

“Like what?”

“ATMs, ah, a place to buy a new pair of shoes or cargo shorts.”

“Shoes…” Her face softened.

Oh, hell. She was one of
those
kinds of women, the type with too many shoes. “I think shopping in the mall would be an excellent start in your recovery process.”

One dark eyebrow lifted, giving her the look of an arch little kitten. “Oh, you do?”

He nodded firmly. “We’ll go to the mall. Tonight.”

“Are they open late tonight?”

How the hell did he know? Did he look like he lived to keep track of mall hours? “It’s Friday night.”

“Oh, Friday. Yeah, they should be open until nine.” Her breathing had picked up. Fear. She was
afraid
to go to the mall.

His instincts as a dominant kicked in. He might never have figured they’d come into play over something as inconsequential as visiting a mall, but getting a submissive into new territory was the same whatever the field. For her own good, she needed to get back out into the world and he was suddenly determined to get her there, one way or another.

He put out a hand, waited. After a long pause, she placed her delicate fingers in his grasp. He closed his hand, letting her get used to holding onto him. “You’re going to the mall tonight, Jenny, and I’m taking you.”

Her face tightened, but she nodded. Brave kitten. “All right. I’ll…um, drive.”

He knew she hadn’t driven since her attack, and he didn’t think it was a good idea tonight, on her very first outing. “No. I’ll take you. Come back here at, uh…” What time did one make a mall date? “Say, seven o’clock. Plenty of time for looking at shoes.”

“Shoes. Right.” She sounded like she was revving up for combat.

“Jenny.” He squeezed her hand. “I will be there with you the entire time.”

She focused on him, seemed to take strength from their touch.

And he loved it, absorbed it like one of her plants absorbing water.

As a dominant, one of the things he lived for was that moment when a sub turned to him, even if he had been causing the discomfort. Turned to him. Chose him. Became completely naked with him, not only in body, but in soul.

“Are you going to wear that to the mall?” He nodded to her nightie and she instantly dropped her hand and crossed her arms over her lush breasts. He was sorry she had cut off the view of her shadowy nipples through the cloth, though he could have told her the arm crossing deal didn’t hide anything, just plumped the beauties up.

“No, I’m… I have to go home, shower, change… Work.”

He nodded. “Then go do that,” he said softly.

As if she’d been waiting for his permission, she ducked her head and headed up the stairs. He watched her the entire time, watched the gown bunch tight to her round little ass then fall around it like a cloud.

His little mouse was so scared.

He would keep things under control, help her out because she got to him and he was gut sick with finding her out digging in the earth every night.

But he wouldn’t show her who he was.

Because then she’d run from him.

He didn’t think he could bear that.

But he needed something now. He went to his playroom and opened the cabinet, taking out the supplies he needed.

When he had everything, he closed his eyes, pictured Jenny.

Then he lost himself in her.

* * * *

Jenny Ann couldn’t decide what to wear. She stood in her closet, which she’d had renovated to the walk-in variety. One thing Jenny loved almost as much as her garden was clothes. Silk, lace, satin—the real kind that fell heavy and cool over a woman’s body. And vibrant jewel colors, emeralds, midnight blues, rubies and citrines and amethyst.

The only thing was, she never wore them, not outside her house. She was always
going
to wear them, but she inevitably chickened out and wore some baggy Laura Ashley style dress instead. Something sweet, pretty, fresh.

The siren she wished to be she kept locked in her closet.

She reached down now and picked up a satin shoe dyed a periwinkle blue. It had high heels and thin straps, studded with sparkly stones. Sexy.