A WILDer Kind of Love (19 page)

He fell into one of her big leather easy chairs. “Jesus, Tess. I never meant—”

“I know, I know. It’s why you’re even sitting here.” She refolded her arms and toed the throw rug. “Let’s move on.”

“Right,” he rejoined. “As in, me screwing myself.”

She sank to the floor next to the chair. Dan almost groaned from the irony of it. Since stepping through the door, he’d done nothing but fight images of her submissive perfection. Fate wasn’t going to let him have the win. His fingers ached in their fight not to reach out, press her head against his thigh, and whisper how much he loved seeing her like this, perfectly lowered on her knees. Yeah, even with the sassy smirk that wiggled at her lips.

“As interesting as that would be to watch,” she said with equal sarcasm, “you know that I respect and value you, wherever you’re at in your life. That includes the boundaries—or whatever the hell they are—of your journey as a Dom. But as the guy who keeps saying how much he respects me in return, you have to support where I’m at with my submissiveness, too.”

She might as well have lobbed an anchor down his gullet. “You’re right. And I’m sorry.”

He flattened his hand atop hers. She bent her head, briefly pressing her cheek to his knuckles. Her fiery hair brushed his skin as she raised back up, searing him for another breathtaking second, before she pulled back completely.

“It’s not a matter of right or wrong,” she murmured. “It’s about being real. It’s hard for me to do that sometimes.” A breath wobbled in and out of her. “It’s hard for me to do that
most
of the time.” She looked to the darkness beyond the window. “Perfection isn’t perfection if you’ve had to lie to everyone, even yourself, to get it. But I want this—
need
this—part of my life to be the real deal.”

Though her gaze was still averted, Dan lifted one side of his mouth, hoping she felt the energy behind it. “‘This part of my life’,” he reiterated. “Because the other parts aren’t real?”

She shrugged. “It’s not important right now.”

He almost growled. Just like he almost took advantage of her submissive position to push her for a truth she’d never trusted him with. He knew parts of it, simply from relentless observations over the last year. Her parents were tangled in it, as well as a pair of sisters. She spoke kindly of them from time to time, but never
to
them. No phone calls on her birthday. No fond “when I was little” family memories. How did it all figure into her bigger picture? She knew affection, of course, but craved intimacy and honesty. That explained why she’d never defined him by his wealth, and why his scars didn’t matter to her, either. It was also a clear explanation of why the BDSM dynamic drew her in so deeply.

And why she could never learn that the friend who’d refused to be her Dom had turned into the Dom who’d rocked her world.

And in doing so, had gotten his world rocked just as hard.

Shit.

There it was.

His
reality.

As explainable as it all was—he hadn’t been with a subbie in a year; her first-time eagerness was a blowtorch of a turn-on—it was, in every incredible
and
disgusting sense, a gigantic truth. For now, and probably forever, a small part of him would always think of himself as her Dom.

Which transformed into another intractable truth.

Her happiness was now his ultimate goal—at whatever price he had to pay.

He glanced upward.
Hey, Big Guy. Bet you didn’t expect to hear from me so soon. But here I am, ugly as ever, putting you on notice. You ready to forgive this black soul for a few more sins?

He sure as fuck hoped so.

‡

O
n Tuesday morning,
Tess sucked it up enough to stuff her sore breasts into a bra and report to work. By then, the lingering discomfort in her nipples was eclipsed by the enduring ache in her spirit, and chasing down terrorist assholes was the best therapy she could think of.

Returning to the routine of life—the banter of the morning show DJs, the latte in her cup holder, the morning sun glinting off the hotels along the Strip—helped toward setting Friday night in perspective. It had been a dream come true, but it was still only a dream.

And the griffin?

He still occupied every other thought she had, a force powerful enough to sway her at times. His sensual fingers, his growl of a voice, his branding iron of domination…she’d been changed in so many ways by that hour beneath his control, as if he’d been sent by fate to be her perfect fantasy lover. She even saw the purpose behind the mask that had irritated her so much in the beginning. Without his anonymity, she wasn’t sure she’d have flown so high into their intimacy.

So
high…

It was crazy, wasn’t it, that a stranger could actually set her truth free the most? Yet it made the most sense of all. Since he was still a stranger, the pangs of remembering him didn’t cut so deep.

So she tried to tell herself.

Constantly.

The battle wasn’t eased by the thoughts that took up space between the hot memories. Every one of them had only one face in them.

Dan.

Sleek as his leather jacket. Rugged as his faded jeans. Dark as the night that had brought him…when he’d filled her world with sun again.

Like she’d ever needed an excuse to let him in her brain.

Still, these thoughts felt…different.
He’d
been different that night, all intense and touchy and practically pensive, after inviting himself in with the subtlety of an ogre. She’d been mortified, of course, that he had—not that he’d never seen her Pony PJs, bedhead hair, and ugly-cry eyes before. And not that any of it mattered anyway, now that they were going to stick to the friend zone.

It was the other shit she couldn’t bear for him to see.

The tears. The aching. The
weakness
—over a man she couldn’t name, much less identify even if he’d shown up at the door right alongside Dan.

But Commander Colton, for all his pushy protectiveness, had understood. Held her, consoled her, even washed away her fears that three days of sub drop wasn’t more freak-worthy than zombie Ebola. He’d told her she’d get through. He’d talked her back into stumbling one step in front of the other until she could run again.

Now, as she left the conference room after the morning staff briefing, she was pretty sure she’d have to
Freaky Friday
that shit back at him. In a number of huge ways.

He’d done the stumbling thing before. He could do it again now. He’d get back up again too, stronger than before, because that was what Dan Colton did better than anyone else she knew. She’d be here to help him do it, too—exactly as he’d been there for her.

The confidence bolstered her a little—a
little
—as she marched to the break room, hoping somebody had set the coffee maker to “Molasses” this morning. Nothing like a little over-caffeination to help a girl call her best friend and tell him one of his arch-enemies was on the short list for a huge presidential favors.

Right, right; technically, they were still labeling Newport’s compromise as “house arrest”, but she wondered how many noses across DC were growing longer at this very second. Nobody halfway close to the situation was in the dark about the backdoor bullshit Newport would start once he’d showered off the prison stink. Perhaps before that.

She fell into one of the break room’s steel chairs, along with the new java she’d poured into her travel mug. The liquid was hot and strong and
bad
. Juuuust perfect. The bitterness on her tongue was a perfect match for the seething emotions in her heart.

“Bloody good thing you really don’t have laser capabilities.” The jest came from the guy who’d just appeared in the doorway, finger-combing his rambunctious curls as he closed the space to the tea station. “I wager that report would be ashes by now.”

She glanced over as Alex Kenyon filled a cup with hot water then dunked in a bag of Earl Grey. The analyst was a fresh transport to the CIA by way of five years at M16, and had already broken a swath of hearts across the city with his dry British charm and body worthy of a pro soccer player. He was too smooth for Tess’s tastes, but objectively she understood the appeal. And right now, smooth was what her roiling stomach needed.

“This isn’t pretty,” she muttered.

Alex settled into the next chair over. “Neither is the escalating tension with the Russians.” He blew on his tea and met her gaze with the blue clarity of his own. His eyes were several shades lighter than Dan’s but she couldn’t help using them as a jumping point for wondering how Dan’s gaze would change once he knew Kirk Newport’s demands were a signature away from being approved. Depending on how busy the president’s day was, the former four-star general could be kicking up his heels—still dripping with the blood and guts of the innocents he’d walked over to commit his crimes—in front of his fireplace by dinner hour.

“How the hell am I going to break this to him?”

Alex rubbed her forearm in reassurance. He knew the “him” to whom she referred. Ever since those weeks she’d spent nearly every day by Dan’s side in the burn unit, everyone had known.

“You’ll find the words,” Alex assured. “You always do.” He sipped his tea and arched both brows, teasing a little. “We’re all just glad it’ll be you and not any of us.”

Tess glared at the report again—and now, really wished she could laser the damn thing, too. “This is so fucking unfair,” she bit out.

“War is hell, buttercup.”

“This isn’t war, dammit!” She bolted up, hurling the rest of the swill in her cup down the drain. “This is a stupid pissing match that could be handled with a closed-door meeting over a large bottle of vodka. Newport knows the exact same thing but he’s leveraging his ‘sacred advice’ about these bastards for everything he’s worth—which isn’t much, now that he’s been disgraced like the cockroach that he is.”

Alex thrust out his lower lip. “Mr. Wonderful, indeed.”

She put her cup into the drain rack with a violent
thunk
. It was a tap compared to the fury pounding her blood.

“I can’t consider what Newport will be capable of. That report only scrapes the surface.”

She dropped her head into her hands as her mind jumped back a year, remembering the frenzy around here once everyone realized that one of the country’s biggest, most horrific biomedical experiments had been conducted for years right beneath everyone’s noses, in a secure building at Area 51—because of Kirk Newport’s collusion.

“I’ve seen enough of the paperwork to have a good idea,” Alex declared. “The Big Idea project, turned into a cover-up under the Verge Pharmaceutical umbrella. Splicing human and animal DNA.
Bollocks
.” He peered back up at her. “Wasn’t one of Dan’s friends one of those poor souls?”

Tess nodded. “Shay Bommer. He gave himself up to Stock, Newport, and the brains guy, a whack-job named Homer Adler, to save a bunch more of the test subjects. His friends tried to intervene but the mission went really sideways. One of the guys took a bullet in his leg, and a couple of nurses died in a massive structure fire. It would’ve been
three
nurses if not for Dan.”

“And that was how he got burned.” Alex grimaced. After Tess nodded again, he asserted, “Bastard’s a bloody hero.”

She swallowed against the sharp sting behind her eyes. “Yeah. He is.”

“Well, then.” The guy rose, clearing his throat. “Good move, dumping the coffee. Just move onto the vodka, duck.”

“Not a bad idea.”

She scooped up her copy of the brief and made her way back down the utilitarian halls to her desk, with all its familiar piles of prioritized cases. Normally she’d be eager to turn on the laser and get to work, but today she plopped into her chair and gloomily eyed the stacks.

Maybe she could turn them into a little forest, and hide out from making the inevitable phone call to Dan. Just thinking about Newport again, with a dozen canaries in his fat cat belly, made her crave a punch—or ten—at the wall.

Her cell phone rang to life. Incoming call. Generic ringtone. The source number wasn’t one she recognized, making the hairs on her neck prickle.

“Get a grip,” she rebuked. “Telemarketers find their ways.”

Two more rings. She lifted her thumb, eager to shoo the call straight into voice mail, but a rebellious grin caught her lips. Telling off a pushy asshat might be just what the doctor ordered for her craptastic morning.

“Your data minutes. Start talking. And make it good.”

“Little rose.”

Shit.

Shit.

Time stood still. Then jolted ahead. Then froze again. Then broke free, racing to catch up with the electrons she’d once called a body, now splintered into a thousand tiny sparks that both fought and resisted the confines of her body again. As if she had a choice in what they did now. She was a prisoner of the voice that still reverberated in her ear, its technically altered tone as low and sensual and beautiful as she remembered. The sound curled through her, taking over cell by cell, awakening her on every visceral level once more.

“Are you there?”