gestured her into a darkened room. He flipped on a few switches, and the space illuminated in sections. A bar to the right, a few tables beyond, then a front door and foyer about fifty feet in front of her. So far, she didn’t see much out of the ordinary, just an industrial-looking hangout.
He hesitated, then flipped the last switch. Then the view got really interesting. She knew what most of the items were called from pictures and descriptions, but she’d never seen a spanking bench or a St. Andrew’s Cross in person. She could just imagine Axel cuffing her to a piece of equipment and touching her, giving her both pain and pleasure. Of course anytime he touched her she melted, but imagining him sending her into the intriguing void of subspace made her shiver.
“Wow,” she breathed, squirming as her imagination went wild. “I’m a little . . .”
“Speechless,” he teased.
She laughed. “Obviously.”
“Intrigued?” he asked—and seemed to hold his breath.
Because her opinion on the subject mattered?
“Yeah,” she admitted with a flush. “After you said you were into BDSM when we were in the desert, I looked into it. So intrigued is a good way to put it.”
He squeezed her hand. “I like that answer.” He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “I’d love to give you a more personal tour.”
Behind them, Heath cleared his throat. “Escape routes?”
Axel gritted his teeth and turned. “Front and back entrance. There’s a side door from the kitchen you probably noticed.”
“I did,” Heath assured.
“A few interior doors in the building are steel and lock from both inside and out. Thorpe’s office, for one. The bedroom you’re in, Mystery. If something happens or you feel threatened, and no one you trust can get to you, throw the dead bolt from the inside and call the police.”
She nodded. “Got it.”
“But we’ll see someone coming long before then. I’ve got cams all over the parking lot, covering the street out front, and the alley beside us. No one can even reach the door without appearing on film.”
“Thank you for the explanation,” Heath said stiffly.
“You’re welcome. Now if you don’t mind, Mystery and I have some unfinished business.”
Heath squared his shoulders. “Actually, I do mind. I’m her bodyguard, and I stay with her until she’s ready to retire for the night.”
Mystery really didn’t know why Heath was being somewhere between a stick-in-the-mud and an ass. She’d always found him polite and accepting and easy to talk to—until today.
Was he . . . jealous?
When he took her by the arm and led her down the hall, just out of Axel’s earshot, she gaped at him. “What is up with you?”
“Have you gone mad?” Heath hissed, then glanced back over his shoulder at Axel. With legs planted wide and fists on his hips, he looked utterly unyielding. “Do you know the terrible things he wants to do to you? Tie you up.”
Imagining herself strapped to Axel’s bed, helpless as he spread her legs and did anything and everything he wanted to her . . . Her breath caught. Would he make her beg? Spank her until the rest of the world melted away? Force orgasms on her? Demand she kneel before him and suck his cock?
Desire, thick and hot, rolled through her.
Heath looked down at her breasts. Mystery followed suit and found her insistent nipples stabbing the front of her shirt.
Flustered, she crossed her arms over her chest and concealed them. “I’m an adult. I know what I want from a lover. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Your father made it my business. Do you really want a man who will paddle your butt like you’re a child? Who will discipline you? What if he’s the sort who likes needles or knives or to control your breath?”
Mystery recoiled. “Ohmigod, what are you . . . No. That’s not—”
“I’ve seen the seedy side of the underworld. Normally, I’m a gentleman and I don’t speak of such things, but I’m concerned for you. Have you fallen for him so hard that you’d allow him to whip you until you bleed? Give you to a stranger?”
She shook her head. “He would never hurt me or put me at risk. I’d insist on a safe word, but I’m sure he’d ask me for one first. I know you don’t know him. But I do. He rescued me. We survived together. I’ve had a thing for him ever since. Please don’t get in the middle of this.”
Heath sidled closer, his expression a cross between incredulity and anger. “A thing for him? You’ve known him a total of three days, and you trust him enough to give him complete control of your body?”
When he put it like that, the concept sounded ridiculous. But her gut told her Axel wasn’t the sort of Dom Heath described. She couldn’t picture him as a sadist. Besides, she’d heard that people in a D/s relationship should discuss their limits with each other and negotiate what happened in a scene before they got too busy. Axel was responsible. That’s what he would do.
“Actually, I do.”
Heath gripped her arm and loomed over her, shaking his head. “You don’t understand what you’re inviting. I did a turn undercover in a club in London, and the things I saw . . .”
“Problem, Mystery?” Axel sauntered down the hall with a practiced nonchalance. But every muscle in his body looked tense.
Heath turned and stepped forward, putting himself between her and Axel. “I object.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Axel shot back.
“Her father would not approve.” Heath crossed his arms over his chest.
Mortification rolled through Mystery. “My father still wishes I wore ribbons in my pigtails, too. He doesn’t always get his way where I’m concerned. I don’t think we have anything left to say on this subject. Good night.” She stepped around Heath and approached Axel.
He took her hand in his. “Let’s go.”
Axel led her back to her bedroom, and she tried to ignore Heath sputtering behind her. She didn’t like to upset or hurt him. He’d been nothing but protective and supportive for years. But tonight, he’d crossed a line.
Once inside the bedroom, Axel shut the door and dead-bolted it for good measure. “Are you all right?”
“Sure.” But Heath’s words rang in her ears. “He’s just protective. It’s his job.”
“And he thinks I’m going to hurt you.”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t know you.”
Axel sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, you and I have some catching up to do as well. We need to get a few things straight.”
He’d dropped just enough disapproval into his tone to make her tummy tighten. Mystery tried not to notice that her palms suddenly turned damp. “I know. I explained and said I was sorry, but . . .”
“You did.” He nodded. “I understood and appreciated that. But that doesn’t make everything all right.”
Axel looked calm. He almost always wore an impenetrable veneer of calm, like nothing really got to him. Now, she saw a chink in that—and got the feeling he’d been holding this rebuke in for hours, just waiting for the chance to make his point.
She thought about backing up a step. “I didn’t think so, I just . . .”
He motioned her closer.
Mystery shuffled forward. She wasn’t afraid of him physically, but he definitely had the power to hurt her with his words.
“You really think it’s all right to deceive someone in order to have sex with them? If our roles had been reversed, and I’d pretended to be someone I wasn’t so that I could wheedle my way into your bed, how would you feel?”
Confused. Used. Wretched.
Mystery winced. “You’re right I guess . . . I figured if you were saying yes to a stranger, did it really matter if I was a woman you’d never met or one you’d known a long time ago? The point was to exchange pleasure, which we did.”
“But what if that wasn’t the only point for me?”
He’d wanted something besides sex? “What else . . . ?”
“What
if I’d let you pick me up in the bar because I thought you were interesting, witty, and beautiful, and I’d hoped to use the evening to get to know you more, maybe see if we could start a relationship?”
“That never crossed my mind. I’m sorry.” Guilt lashed her. “I thought I’d spend a few hours with you and get you out of my system so I could move on because I’d never forgotten you. I’ve never, ever wanted anyone else so badly.” When he raised a sharp brow, she looked down, feeling chastened. “I didn’t think you wanted me so I tried to be someone else, thinking we’d both get what we wanted and . . . then we’d be done.”
“You made a whole lot of assumptions, little girl. I never wanted you?”
“You turned me down,” she pointed out, her voice rising as her guilt did. “What else was I supposed to think?”
“That I was trying to be responsible and respectful of you after what you’d been through. Did you think I wanted you this afternoon?”
“Yes.” Together, they’d been incendiary, insatiable, unstoppable. She’d never imagined sex being that intense, ever feeling so much pleasure.
“Damn straight,” he reiterated. “I wanted you that much in the desert years ago. It took every ounce of my restraint to walk away from you that night in the ghost town. I’m sorry if my rebuff was harsher than it needed to be. But I knew if I didn’t eliminate the tequila and ensure you didn’t tempt me again, you wouldn’t stop until I was balls deep inside you, right?”
Mystery wished she could refute him, but no. She’d been so happy to be alive another day. She’d been so grateful to him for making that happen. Her hero worship, the booze, his incredible body and spirit . . . She’d been so drawn to him. He’d done about the only thing possible in that scenario to stop the inevitable.
“Maybe if you had kissed me and said that, later—”
“When I kissed you after the chopper crash, I barely managed to stop myself from laying you down in the sand and fucking you. I knew if I kissed you again at that old hotel, I wouldn’t be able to stop. You needed comfort, not sex, and I didn’t have a single condom with me.”
Birth control hadn’t even crossed her mind that night. How stupid and irresponsible did that realization make her feel?
“And I didn’t look you up later because I knew you’d be going through some PTSD,” he continued. “You needed time to recover and readjust, to finish growing up.” He looked between his feet. “Being totally honest, I worried that your attraction to me wouldn’t hold up in the real world. Even if your father had let you date me—which I highly doubt—once you returned home, you had a glitzy world at your fingertips, and I didn’t fit in. What the fuck do I know about designer labels or country clubs?”
“I don’t care about that crap.” Why did he imagine that mattered at all?
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but I didn’t see us working, so I backed away. I never forgot you, but I was doing all right. Until you seduced me and took my sanity from me.”
God, she’d had no idea he’d given them even half that much thought. Mystery slumped her shoulders, looking around for a chair. There really wasn’t one close to Axel. She needed to curl up, think this through, maybe have a righteous little cry about how badly she’d screwed this up.
“Wherever you think you’re going, no. Come closer.” He waved her near.
She owed it to him to comply. After all, she’d royally muffed everything.
As she closed the distance between them, Axel wrapped his fingers around her wrist. “For the record, if you’d approached me as yourself today, I would have jumped all over you. See, what you felt back then—the breathless attraction, the inexplicable pull, the undeniable attachment—I felt them, too. If you’d come to me today and asked me to be your friend, your lover, your whatever, I would have said yes. Even with the disguise, I was already fascinated by you. I was already thinking beyond the sex. The man in me didn’t like that you’d deceived me or run out.”
“I know.” God, she felt stupid and small. “I’m sorry.”
He put a finger under her chin and lifted her gaze back to him. “You understand what I’ve said?”
“Yes. I never meant to hurt you.”
He nodded. “Now that you understand how the man in me reacted, let’s talk about what you don’t understand. Let’s discuss how the Dom in me reacted.” He pointed to his thighs. “Put yourself over my lap. Now.”
Chapter Ten
SOON he’d take this choking chain off its leash. Now he’d find out if all the submissive signals Mystery had been putting out were real. Nearly everything else about her fit him perfectly. Damn it if he didn’t want their kinks to match, too.
“What?” She blinked at him, her stare bouncing from his face to his thighs and back.
“Did you not hear me?”
“I think I did, but—”
“Is there any part of the instruction you don’t understand?”
Her stare fell to his lap again, and she couldn’t possibly miss the eyeful of hard cock there under his jeans. He adjusted himself, trying to find a position that didn’t strangle his erection, then patted his thigh.
She frowned. “Like lie across . . .”
“Face down, ass in the air. Yes.”
“Oh.” Still, she hesitated, as if she tried to make sense of his command in her head.
“Questions? Problems?”
“I don’t know.” She shifted nervously. “I’ve never done this.”
But Axel suspected the idea turned her on. She sounded breathless. She fidgeted. Her nipples looked hard again. She stared, lips parted, sucking in a raspy draught of air.
His cock stiffened even more.
“There’s a first time for everything, Mystery. Somehow, I doubt it will be our last. You’ve got three seconds, or I’m adding a count of ten.”
Which wouldn’t hurt his feelings in the least. He knew exactly how beautiful her ass was. Having the opportunity to touch it again, this time to spank and discipline it? Fuck, yeah.
Mystery scrambled toward him, casting another uncertain gaze his way, before she lowered herself awkwardly over his thighs. She towered over an average girl by six inches or so, but he still dwarfed her. Axel appreciated that folding long legs in an unfamiliar position wasn’t easy, but he was beyond impatient to get this punishment rolling so they could get back to pleasure.
She wriggled and scooted, bracing herself to slide this way or that over his lap. Again and again, she brushed his sensitive cock. His body tightened, and he’d love to just fuck her every which way. But if he wanted any future with her, he had to set the expectation now.
Finally, he palmed her hips and stilled her, dragging in a long breath before he moved her body up a fraction, sending her long braid spilling, ends brushing the floor. “Don’t move.”
“A-all right.”
“Nope. I expect a polite ‘Yes, Axel’ or ‘Yes, Sir.’ Either is acceptable.” Later, he’d be more exacting, because if this relationship went where he wanted it to, she’d be calling him Master. For now, he simply waited, reaching down to give a gentle tug on her braid.
“Yes, Axel,” she gasped.
“Better.” He cast his gaze over her body, still except for her harsh breathing. The yoga pants she’d tossed on just before they’d left the hotel hugged the curves of her ass and lovingly outlined her thighs. Not a line or a bump marred the black cotton surface.
“You’re not wearing underwear,” he observed.
“No, Axel.”
“Perfect.” He dragged his fingers up the crease between her cheeks, and the fabric clung inside the crevice, stretching even tighter across her ass, further defining its shape. “Beautiful.”
As Mystery splayed over his lap, he felt the rise and fall of her body, heard her long shuddering sigh. She lifted her butt to him, seeking more.