Without a Net (35 page)

Now Ollie was essentially hobbled and ass-up over his couch. His cock ached deliciously. For too long, nothing happened, and Ollie pressed up onto his toes and then settled back down. When the anxious energy had reached an almost intolerable point, a belt snapped. Ollie gasped and jerked upright. It took him a second to realize Travis hadn’t touched him.

“Nervous?” Travis asked. Ollie looked behind him, and Travis stood there with a hungry expression.

“Dying of anticipation,” Ollie said as he leaned over the couch again. His heart was racing, and Ollie tried to imagine all the things Travis could do. Travis didn’t have a prearranged sub checklist to work from. His only limits were his respect for Ollie and his own imagination. The breadth of that license took Ollie’s breath. He longed to be tied down so he couldn’t ruin this, but he kept his mouth closed. Another day he’d ask for that, but right now Travis distrusted Ollie’s submission. He feared pushing too hard, and Ollie feared scaring him away by asking him to push harder.

“You have a nice ass.”

“Thank you,” Ollie said.

“It will look better with a few stripes across it.”

“I assumed you’d think that,” Ollie said. “Hoped for it, actually.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint.”

A second crack split the air, and for a half second Ollie thought that—like the first one—the lash hadn’t hit him. Then the fire exploded across his ass. He cried out, and then the second stroke cut off his cry. Ollie gasped, the pain engulfing him for that critical moment before it faded into something intense and hard, but no longer painful. It was like a deep itch, and at the same time, it was the pleasure of scratching that deep itch.

Two more strikes, and Ollie started begging. He wasn’t sure he was even using words, but the heat was overwhelming and wonderful. It swallowed him whole, and then Travis ran his bare hands over Ollie’s bruised skin, and it was too much. He struggled to stand, and Travis used his weight to hold Ollie down.

“Fuck, yes. More. Fuck me,” Ollie begged. The heat, the possessiveness, the lust—it was all so much it wasn’t enough. Travis caught Ollie’s wrists and pinned them down. His jeans rubbed against Ollie’s overheated skin, and Ollie squirmed in an attempt to press back into that bright pressure.

“Maybe I don’t want to fuck you. Maybe I’ll keep you hot and hard and begging for hours. After all, that was only four stripes. I can put a lot more marks on you before getting tired of the game,” Travis whispered into Ollie’s ear.

Ollie arched his back and cried out.
God, yes.
He wanted that. Travis pushed Ollie’s shirt up and over his head. A half second later, Ollie realized Travis was wrapping the fabric around Ollie’s wrists. Ollie humped the pillow as his need to come nearly whited out his brain.

“Oh, not yet,” Travis cautioned. He stood and rested his hand on the small of Ollie’s back. It was an anchor in a storm of fire, and Ollie tried to be still under the touch. He wanted more, though. He shifted and strained until Travis took a step back, and then the sound of the belt cracking warned him before the heat intensified so much that Ollie screamed. Embarrassed, he hid his face in the couch cushion before he screamed again. The whipping continued, and Ollie’s cries gradually faded as the need to come became so great he could barely breathe enough to moan. His body throbbed with it.

“You are beautiful,” Travis said as he ran hands over Ollie’s ass. Ollie’s body trembled and tingled. When Travis pressed against him, Travis’s hard cock poked him, leaving behind a streak of wet that felt ice-cold as it dried.

“Fuck me,” Ollie whispered, his pleas desperate and breathy. But they were no less heartfelt for the lack of volume.

“Beg me,” Travis ordered.

“God, please. Please, fuck me. Fuck me hard. Stuff me full. Shit. Just do it.”

“Not the prettiest begging ever, but effective,” Travis said.

“Please,” Ollie repeated.

Travis leaned across his back and licked Ollie’s neck before nipping it. He was like a furnace against Ollie’s flesh. Sweat gathered between them, and then Ollie heard the sound of a condom wrapper ripping.

It was the best sound in the whole fucking world. Ollie moaned and arched his back in invitation. A hand came down on his ass cheek hard, reawakening all the pain and need and heat and hunger in Ollie’s flesh. His cock was so hard he was afraid he might come from the spanking. That wouldn’t be bad, but he certainly preferred to wait for the actual sex. Travis brought his hand down again and again, smoothing out all the sharp lines of fire from the whipping until Ollie’s body felt surrounded by an even heat.

Travis said something in a comforting tone, but Ollie was beyond words. He jerked his hips and struggled to find that push, that bit of more that would allow him to cross over into perfect bliss. A single lubed finger slipped inside him, and Ollie whined. He needed this. Something cool dripped on him, and then Travis’s hard cock pressed against his ass. Ollie grunted as the head breached the muscle. He was so tense that Travis’s cock felt huge.

Then Travis thrust forward, and Ollie gasped and clutched at the edges of the couch cushion. Travis thrust again, and Ollie was shoved against the arm of the couch so hard he knew he’d have bruises. A third thrust, and after that Travis set a brutal pace of pulling out and slamming back in.

Ollie held the couch and rode out the waves of pleasure as Travis used him hard. Muscles stretched, and friction warmed his skin until Ollie squirmed in need. Travis was silent, and the slapping of flesh against flesh filled the room. One more thrust, and Ollie came. His cock was pinned uncomfortably against the pillow, and still, he shot his load so hard he nearly shook to pieces as the orgasm crashed into him.

He was dimly aware of Travis following him, pounding into his hole, which suddenly felt smaller so the reaming was so much more intense. And then Travis was resting on his back, pinning him to the seat.

“I had planned to keep you hard and aching.”

“I like hard and aching,” Ollie admitted.

Travis chuckled, and his breath cooled the back of Ollie’s neck where his hair was plastered to his skin with sweat. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“So, partners?” Ollie asked.

Travis sighed. “Partners. But if I get to be too much…” He let his voice trail off.

“I’m strong enough to put the brakes on something if I’m not comfortable with it. I already got the safe-subbing speech from Buck.”

Travis snorted. “Why am I not surprised? Well, at least this time I’m trying something different. You know all my crazy friends before we go on our first date.” Travis stood and then helped Ollie up. Ollie’s legs felt like rubber. Travis pushed the pillow and towel to the floor before guiding Ollie to the couch, where Ollie barely managed to pull up his pants before he collapsed.

“I think you broke me.”

“Not yet, I haven’t,” Travis said.

Smiling at the thought of all the things Travis could do to break him, Ollie held out his hand. Travis took it, threading their fingers together and then letting their twined hands rest on his knee. It was funny how much the word “partner” sounded exactly like the word “love.”

Chapter Thirty-One

“I miss anything?” Travis asked as he sat at the console next to Ollie.

“They’re moving into position. We still have eight minutes to wait.”

“Good. I want to see this bitch go down.” Travis used a fierce tone, and Ollie grinned. If he’d expected Travis to mellow out over time, reality might have disappointed him. As it was, he liked that Travis got fiercer as the months passed.

Sometimes Ollie had to remind Travis that they were partners and Ollie was a fully trained federal agent capable of kicking ass on his own, but most of the time, he loved the sharp edge. Other agents tiptoed around Travis, but Ollie was the one on the inside of that defensive barrier, not that Travis couldn’t turn that hard edge on Ollie too. But that was part of their game.

It worked for them. In the four months they’d been officially partnered, they’d closed more high-profile cases than any other pair. The director had even stopped giving Travis the stink eye every time he head-slapped Ollie. Of course, she had made it clear to other supervisory agents that if they tried that, she was perfectly willing to support any assault charges filed by the partners or probies on the receiving end of such slaps.

“Israel.” Travis snorted in disgust and shook his head. “What possessed Sauvageot to go to a country with that many surveillance cameras?”

“When you’re a contract killer, I think you have to go where the target leads you,” Ollie said. He had trouble believing the SWAT officer who had such a stellar record had been reduced to bargain assassinations as she fled from one jurisdiction to another.

Travis rested his palms on the desk. “We should be there.”

Director Sewell leaned back in her chair and looked down the line of techs at them. “You’re lucky I let you in to watch the secure feeds at all, Agent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Travis said, but his lips were pressed into a tight, unhappy line.

“She’s not going to get away, and you would be a liability on any strike team, considering you don’t speak Hebrew.”

“Most of them speak English.”

“And some of them don’t,” Sewell said. “I would prefer you avoid getting shot by a Mossad sniper who mistakes you for one of these assassins.”

Travis didn’t answer, but some of the tension did go out of his shoulders. Ollie knew Travis respected Sewell, but it was hard for him to back down when the case involved one of the people who had planned to kill Ollie. Worse, during the investigation, it turned out Greyson had earlier killed two other officers who came too close to finding out the truth. One had a bad reaction to a medicine that had been altered to kill him; another died in a staged car accident. Killing Ollie would have been business as usual for the group.

“Once they have Sauvageot, that will be the end of the case.” Ollie rested his hand on Travis’s shoulder for a moment.

Travis caught Ollie’s hand in his and held on tightly. Ollie was definitely getting nailed to the bed tonight. Any reminders of Ollie’s previous employers seemed to bring out the dominant bastard in Travis, which was why Ollie enjoyed reminiscing as often as possible.

“We could celebrate,” Ollie suggested in a neutral tone.

“Oh?” Travis gave every appearance of focusing on the screen, but Ollie knew Travis was watching him. He arched his back a little and shifted in his chair. Travis tightened his hold on Ollie’s hand. “I suppose we could go out to that new Polish place with the bratwurst and sausages. I could really go for some good sausage,” Travis said.

Ollie grinned.

One of the techs snorted, and Sewell looked down the line of monitors again. “You two are subtle like dysentery. You know this, yes?”

Travis gave her an unrepentant smile. “Yes, ma’am. Subtle was never one of my strengths.”

“As long as you’re aware that not everyone appreciates the trait.”

“I promise to never again profess my undying love for my partner in front of Director Hamilton, that is assuming my idiot partner never again comes so close to dying.” Travis turned and glared.

“I fell in the river. I wasn’t dying.”

“You jumped in the river to avoid people shooting at you. Multiple people.”

“I knew you’d have my back, and you did.”

“And I cleared the report, so you have no cause to comment on your partner’s tactical choices,” Sewell said, and this time she had a little ice in her voice.

“Yes, ma’am,” Travis said more respectfully.

They were all silent as they watched the Israeli team take position around the cheap hotel Sauvageot and her Russian partner had chosen for a base of operations. Teams moved to silently evacuate the other rooms, and Ollie switched from one team member’s camera to another as he watched the action. They already knew Mizrahi and Agbaria would have point, and off to the side, the small icons showing their camera feeds were highlighted in red. But Ollie knew that criminals didn’t always follow the plan, so he shuffled through the other cameras.

Soon the hotel was emptied of all but the rooms directly adjacent to the target. One of the forward team ran a scanner over the wall to find a spot without a stud. When he found what he wanted, he swiped a finger over the spot, leaving a smudge of black. A second team member put a punch grenade on the spot and gave a sharp nod that made his camera dance before he pulled the trigger. The primary explosive blasted through the drywall, and then secondary and tertiary explosions flung concussion grenades and smoke bombs through the ragged hole.

“Why don’t we have one of those?” Travis asked with undisguised admiration for the tech.

“Tactical teams do have them,” Sewell said, “and before you ask, no, you may not requisition one.”

Ollie had a dozen camera views open as he watched the team. One man grabbed the punch-grenade operator by the belt and pulled him back to safety while a dozen men with high-impact shields and powerful weapons moved forward. A recorded message ordering Sauvageot and her partner to surrender—first in English and then in Russian—played on a loop.

Smoke filled the hallway, and several of the cameras flipped over to alternate spectrums. One was clearly tracking heat, and Ollie watched the two figures in the room crouched in a corner. The Israeli sniper in the opposite building had a nice view of their window, but Ollie couldn’t see anything.

When the Israelis made their move, the action was almost too chaotic to follow. Later, techs would sort out best angles and put together a coherent presentation to impress a jury, but Ollie had to watch a dozen bouncing camera angles as people rushed from place to place. The team blasted the door open, and the tactical wedge with their heavy shields pressed forward. Ollie could tell from the jerky motions that they were taking fire, but the images played out in silence.

Mizrahi followed, and Ollie opened the window with his feed a little larger. Smoke obscured most of the view, but Mizrahi fired several rounds before diving to the side. Agbaria followed close behind, taking cover in the opposite direction. A heat-sensing camera showed one of the figures spin around and fall to the floor. Then the two point people were moving, and the remaining suspect was moving, and the wedge of shield officers was moving. Ollie was about to get seasick when a bright ray of sunshine pierced the foggy darkness of the hotel room, and then the last remaining suspect flew backward, picked off by the sniper on the roof of the other building.