Under His Watch (9 page)

“You play along for now, and you let me figure out what I can about what’s going on.”

“Are you sure you don’t just want to put this to bed, so you can…” Charity giggled, realizing she had just launched another double entendre, which was not something she generally tried to do, or enjoyed. But being a good girl for Ryan—yes, submitting to former Navy SEAL Ryan Bedford—seemed to have unlocked a bawdy side she hadn’t known she had.

“Put you to bed?” Ryan asked. He raised his left eyebrow. “Tie you to bed?”

Charity felt her eyes widen. So many things she had simply refused to let herself think about—so many little fantasies—seemed likely to become an actual part of her life now, with her protector to take her in hand. Surely that meant more than whether she did a video series on this ancient temple or that one?

Chapter Ten

While Charity called Becca, Ryan called Joe.

“Big favor,” he said when Joe picked up.

“Bigger, you mean? Do you have any idea what my time is worth, bro? I’m supposed to be building secure websites for multinational corporations and shit.”

“I know,” Ryan said, laughing at the over-the-top dude bro-ness in Joe’s voice. Joe was so far from a dude bro that Ryan wondered how he could even imitate one.

“Lucky for you your shit is a lot more fun, Mr. Bodyguard. What’s up?”

“I need to know what’s going on in Handristan.”

Joe gave a low whistle on the other end of the phone.

“I mean, don’t do anything that would put you at risk, but if you can, I don’t know, scrape some metadata and give me your best sitrep, I’d owe you big time.”

“I assume you’re not talking about the new golden statue of Herzyov.”

“Nope.”

“I assume you’re talking about a resistance movement our government may or may not be involved in.”

“Yup.”

“And… judging from our prior conversation, bro, I’m guessing you’re wondering which side Mithras Mining is on.”

“See, Joe, that’s why I pay you the big bucks.”

Joe snorted. “Give me twenty-four hours. And tell your girl to keep her hands off for now. I may want her to go in again once I’ve got some things in place, just to see if any hornets come out, but keep her occupied elsewhere for at least a day, okay?”

Ryan snorted, unable to keep himself from imagining exactly how he wanted to keep Charity occupied elsewhere.

“Dude,” Joe said. “I know that snort. Guessing I should be happy for you?”

“I think so,” Ryan said, shaking his head at how readable he apparently was. “I really think so. Thanks for the help, Joe.”

“You got it, man,” Joe said in his normal voice. “Anybody who kills two bad guys intent on making my hacking career a lot shorter gets all the Joe-hours he needs at whatever discount he wants.”

Charity was finishing up with Becca—the talk seemed to have turned to gossip about college friends, so the call must have gone reasonably well. When Charity saw that Ryan had ended his call with Joe, a look came into her eyes that made Ryan feel ten feet tall: the look of a submissive girl who, at that moment, is feeling the attention of the man who’s taken her in hand, and knows she needs to act as he wishes.

“Gotta go,” she said into the phone. “See you Monday? And we’ll talk about Turkey? Okay, love you too. Sorry about the confusion.”

Ryan felt absurdly compelled by the way his new socialite submissive girlfriend smiled at him as she slowly lowered her phone from her cheek. He took the two strides necessary to reach her on the other side of the living room, and took her in his arms.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I can…”

He bent down and, at the same time, took her hair in his hand and pulled her head back, so he could kiss her like a barbarian warrior who has just won the civilized princess as his tent-girl. He brought his right hand down and took hold of her bottom, still left naked by the apron’s scanty cover. He thrust his fingers between her thighs from behind and commanded her wetness, as Charity moaned up into his mouth.

“I don’t care what you’re sure about, slut,” Ryan said. “Joe tells me I need to keep your hands off your PC for the next twenty-four hours. The only question is whether I’m going to tie those hands down or not.” The light came into her eyes again at the sound of the word ‘slut,’ the way it always seemed to do. “If I tie them down, that will make it harder for you to learn to touch my cock reverently. But of course I have many other paths to pleasure, where your lovely body is concerned.”

Charity gasped, and a look of incipient panic came into her eyes.

Ryan took the dominant talk down a notch. “What were you going to say you weren’t sure you could do, honey?”

“Oh… I-I mean…” The panic had reached her voice.

“Shh,” Ryan said, pulling her into a more conventional hug and letting her rest her cheek on his chest. “Color?”

“Yellow?” Charity replied instantly.

“Why, honey?”

“Because I’m just getting used to it, maybe?” She pulled her head back and looked up at him. “Are you just never going to be a conventional boyfriend at all?”

Ryan laughed, suddenly feeling carefree as he realized just how easy it would be to allay her fears. “I made you dinner, didn’t I?” he asked teasingly.

“But you put me in an apron and nothing else, and you spanked me, too.”

“Fair enough,” Ryan said. “Do you want me to be a conventional boyfriend for a little while, so you can see that I know how?”

Charity nodded solemnly, her eyes wide. Then she giggled. “Maybe only for fifteen minutes.”

Ryan kissed her very conventionally. “And then?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Sex-toy,” she whispered.

“Fuck-toy,” he corrected.

“Oh, God,” Charity said, moving, apparently by instinct alone, against him like an animal seeking release.

“If you want me to be conventional, though,” Ryan said, “you’ll have to behave yourself. I guess a conventional boyfriend doesn’t spank his girl for humping his leg, but you’ll have to follow my bodyguard rules anyway and clean up after yourself. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, disentangling herself from his arms and stepping back. She folded her arms across her chest and looked him up and down. Ryan couldn’t imagine anything more adorable than Charity standing there with her arms folded over the blue-striped apron he had put her in, and only that. He could actually see just a little of her right nipple, and it made him instantly hard yet again. Charity declared, “You are one fine specimen of a boyfriend, Ryan Bedford.” She giggled again. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“And you are one fine specimen of a beautiful socialite girlfriend, Miss Phillips.”

“Do you want to hear what Becca said?”

“Yup.”

“Come sit on the couch then, and cuddle me like a regular boy.” She took his left hand and led him over to the same sofa where he had spanked her, just about twenty-four hours before.

He laughed. “Are regular boys that good at cuddling?”

Charity made a face. “It’s
all
they’re good at, as far as I can tell.”

She sat and pulled him down to her. He kissed her, sat beside her, and put his arm around her, just like a regular boyfriend. He had no idea whether that was the way hipsters put their arms around their girlfriends, but perhaps he could use some cuddling practice. He leaned over and kissed her again, and their tongues met deliciously. “What was that about what Becca said?” he murmured.

“What, sir?” she whispered back.

Ryan put his left hand down and flipped up her apron, to reveal just a bit of her sweet golden pussy-curls. He was glad he had decided she would keep a few of them. Charity struggled a little bit, and started to try to lower the apron, murmuring into his mouth in protest. Aroused by the struggle, Ryan took her hand away and raised the apron even higher, so that he could put his hand between her thighs and feel his newly claimed property once more.

Charity was panting, and Ryan turned his eyes up from her pussy to her face, which was bright red. The moment of overcome resistance had clearly had the strongest effect on her of anything he had done so far, in teaching her about her submissive needs. Suddenly he realized that he was probably violating the agreement about being a conventional boyfriend, and he guiltily withdrew his soaking fingers and smoothed the apron down over her pussy.

“Sorry,” he said, unable to keep from grinning.

“You, um… ought to be,” Charity said. “Definitely.” She remained silent for a moment, her breathing still harsh, looking at him. “What’s wrong with me?” she whispered. “What does it mean? I went to
Columbia
.”

Ryan smiled back at her, feeling a little sad to see her distress, but no less sure how he should answer. “Nothing is wrong with you. You just discovered something new, and pretty important, about what you want.”

“Does it mean we’re right for each other, though?” She began to chew, adorably, on the inside of her lower lip.

“Maybe. That’s the best I think we can do right now. I wouldn’t have let things get this far if I didn’t think we have a shot at something, well, lengthy—if not permanent. I know I’m just a bodyguard, but
you
already know that there’s a lot more to me than that. And I’m not just talking about the bedroom.”

Charity nodded. “Okay,” she said. “But can you try not to… just do that, that way? Just for fifteen minutes? I can’t seem to
think
when you’ve got your hands on me like that.”

Ryan nodded. This thing certainly presented huge differences from his relationship with Laura. Laura had wanted his hands on her all the time; she hadn’t been happy if she thought she was doing anything that wasn’t exactly what he wanted her to be doing. It wasn’t that Laura couldn’t make her own decisions, but most of the time she didn’t want to make them. If Ryan hadn’t gone overseas, he had long since realized, he and Laura would probably have broken up before too long anyway.

But Charity… Charity’s need to sort herself out from him, and her submission from her intelligence and her professional life—it fascinated Ryan, frankly. It turned him on, too, in a way that was new to him: he wanted to conquer her, somehow—to make her admit that what she wanted most in the universe was Ryan’s hard cock, wherever Ryan wanted to put it in her beautiful, yielding body.

“Keep your arm around me, though,” she said. Now her voice actually had an air of command in it. Ryan fought a tiny bit of annoyance at that, and realized that maybe he shouldn’t have been so sure he could play the conventional boyfriend—at least as far as Charity’s idea of how a conventional boyfriend should act was concerned.

She looked into his eyes, as if searching for confirmation that he would be a good boy, and that, too, annoyed him a little. The urge to spank her started to rise, and he pushed it back. Time for that later, whether she broke a rule or, when this conventional time was over, just because he wanted to.

“Okay, Becca forwarded the original email to me—the one that they spoofed.” Ryan nodded. “It just says ‘Sorry for the suddenness, but we’re cancelling Alexandropolis. Call Standish if you’ve got questions. See you Monday,’ or words to that effect. So she called Standish, and Standish is all hot to get us to do Kandahar.”

“But you told her Turkey?”

“Well, is Turkey okay? We could do a new take on Alexander’s visit to Troy, and what the Turkish government is up to. We could even mention Handristan. Not as hard-hitting, maybe, but a good showcase for FPCH, and it’ll probably get picked up by Discovery or somebody.”

Ryan looked at her quizzically, and she seemed to hear what she was saying.

“Is what I said to Becca,” she said sheepishly, pretending that she hadn’t become wrapped into the idea herself as she talked to her friend about it. “I still want to get to the bottom of the Handristan thing, but I guess I want to be realistic, too.” She reached out and took his free left hand—the hand he had used to flip her apron up and claim her pussy a moment before—in both of hers. “And it’s like I have something here now that makes me want to take fewer risks.”

“It’s like that?” Ryan asked softly.

Charity’s cheeks went a little pink. “Okay, it
is
that. But you have to understand that it’s not easy. I just… learned this about myself.”

“What?”

“You know!”

Ryan thought for a moment about what a conventional boyfriend would say, and finally said, “As your conventional boyfriend, I’d like politely to request more information, because I think it will help you to tell me.”

Charity giggled. “Okay. I just learned that I’m into incredibly hot spec-ops warriors. Who knew?”

“And?”

The pinkness on her cheeks spread. “And I like these dirty things a certain spec-ops warrior makes me do, I guess.”

“You guess?” Ryan tried to make his tone light and teasing, but he felt that the point was an important one.

“Dammit!” Charity said, clearly actually angry. “Ryan, you have to give me a little time to get used to it. Please.”

She was right. Her self-knowledge wasn’t even a day old. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “Guessing is fine for now.” He smiled. “So you want me to sleep in the guest room tonight, I guess.”

“You guess no such thing, mister! I need to spend my time productively, getting used to it, don’t I?” She looked steadily into his eyes. “Sir?”

Chapter Eleven

They packed the next sixteen hours with as much dirtiness as Charity thought any twenty-four hours in history could ever have contained. Roman emperors and their courtesans, sultans in their harems, and the whole Olympian pantheon, she thought, couldn’t have come close. Of course, she knew, really, on the grand scale, what Ryan did with her and taught her couldn’t compare—but Charity lived for cultural heritage, and what mattered was how it
felt,
after all.

Above all, Ryan made those hours a kind of story about what he had called ‘the privilege of anal.’ Charity had to learn her lessons to be worthy of Ryan deflowering her backside. The very idea had made her go all hot, with chills down her spine, when he’d had her spread her bottom-cheeks for him.