A WILDer Kind of Love (20 page)

“I’m here.” She tightened her grip on the phone so hard, it tumbled to the desk and slid beneath her file rack. “Crap crap crap crap!” When she resettled it against her ear, his chuckle rumbled the line. “I—sorry. I’m here. Really.”

“And truly?” he teased.

She whooshed out a breath. “It’s—you.”

“Really. And truly.”

“Shut up,” she lobbed. But when he complied with that, she didn’t know what to fill the silence with. “I—I just—”
Had never expected to talk to you again. Had never
hoped
to.
“How’d you get my number?” Because of her national security clearance her name never showed up on her personal line, but the fact that he had it was a little weird. Which should’ve been unnerving—if her nerves would calm down long enough to be undone.

“I asked Max for it.” Even his weighted pause brought a new round of
Where’s Waldo
for her heartbeat. “But that might depend on your definition of ‘ask.’”

“Oh.” While she hoped his innuendo didn’t mean he’d literally forced the answer out of Max, his revelation clutched at her lower belly.

“So…how are you? Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right.” She brushed fingertips along her hair, having gone glam pin curls with her style in honor of actually facing the world again. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because I haven’t been.”

She swallowed and tried to breathe. Then again.
He’s only checking on you. Stop reading a thousand meanings into his words.
Of course, the tight growl he finished with, along with the voice alteration device, didn’t help things by a damn bit.

“I’m sorry,” She finally managed. “Are you not feeling well?” That had to be it. He’d come down with something over the weekend and assumed he might have already been contagious on Friday night, so was calling to warn her about it. “Did you catch something yucky?”

“Yeah. I caught something.” The words fortified the lead lump in her stomach but his tone was all off. A man newly felled by cold or flu rarely sounded so victorious about it.

“Damn,” she murmured to be polite. “What do you have?”

“A craving for you again.”

Forget trying to catch her breath this time. The shit packed up and left for the stratosphere. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“I’m—uh—” She grabbed a curl and twisted it around a finger.
Think you could add
any
more cliché to this
? She ducked her head like a shy teenager—
guess the answer to that is yes
—and murmured, “I’ve missed you, too.”

A rumble emanated from him, confirming his thoughts had ventured at least halfway down the same path as hers. Damn. That voice enhancer, especially over the phone, turned him into something dark, wicked, and barely tamed, making her very skin ache from yearning to be his prey once more.

“Missed me.” His echo was a challenge. “A little or a lot?”

She twisted her hair tighter.
Dammit.
Talk about a case of rock and hard place. If she said a little, he was going to detect the lie. If she said a lot, then she became the picture of desperate and horny. Okay, she
was
desperate and horny, but that was none of his business.

“A…a lot.”

On the other hand, maybe it was fully his business.

Take forehead. Drop to palm.
Could you be any more a dork
? But was she supposed to have played it differently, when just the sound of his voice disconnected her mind from her body, except to acknowledge the fire in her blood, the tingling in her breasts, the exquisite pressure in her sex? It was as if part of her had been sleeping for the last four days and now received its perfect, dominant wake-up call.

“Good.” He said it like he expected it but still rejoiced in it. The sound was verbal sun, warming her enough to lift a cautious smile.

“Well, now that we have
that
established…”

“Meet me again.”

The room spun once more. “You,” she stammered. “I mean
me
. Well, and you.”
Been forming coherent speech for long there, sister
? “You want to…meet me again? Where? You’re not even here anymore. You had to leave—”

“And it tore my fucking gut out to do so.”

“So I heard.” She winced.
Well, there’s the coherency—along with its new best friend, snarky bitch.
She added in a hurry, “But it was all okay. Honestly.”

“The fuck it was.”

His vicious tone was not to be debated—so she didn’t. Probably a blessing in disguise. She might’ve blurted things she shouldn’t, like,
how the hell do you just know what I went through with the sub drop? And why the hell are you so furious about it
?

“Well, it’s not going to happen again.” His voice mellowed a little. A
little
. “I changed my work load around, to get more done from my Vegas office this week. This time, you’re going to be pampered…
after
I tame every part of you again.”

She gulped before managing, “That—that sounds pretty nice.”

A savoring growl answered her. “Oh, it’ll be nice.”

Dilemma. Follow him down the path of yummy, dark, verbal debauchery he offered, or seize the
other
opportunity too good to resist: the chance to possibly learn more about the man behind the mask?

“Your ‘Vegas office’, hmmm? As opposed to the other office…where?”

No more than two seconds passed before his blunt reply. “I want to see you again, Odette. The sooner, the better.”

Well, that was the last time she let curiosity win out over horny.
Plan B—now.
“I—really think I’d like that.”

“Good.”

Her hand flew back to her head. At this rate, she was going to yank her sleek Rita Hayworth ’do into a red-headed version of the Hermione. “Anyplace in mind, then? Are you a let’s-do-coffee guy? Or is happy hour and bar mix more your speed?”

Another significant pause. Then, with low-toned care: “Was our time at Catacomb that awful for you?”

“Our time was heaven for me,” she answered without thinking. She shrugged, despite knowing he couldn’t see her. “I just didn’t want you thinking that was all I wanted.”

His chuckle filled more than just the digital line between them. It plowed through every cell in her body. He wasn’t a man who laughed often. She had no idea how she knew that, but it was a fact as certain as the sky was blue and Nutella was nectar from the gods.

“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”

“Why?”

She could hear the gravity descend over him again. “Oh, little beauty.” He exhaled at length. “You truly don’t realize what kind of a gift you gave me on Friday, do you?”

Heart, meet moon. Fighting the stars cascading over her spirit from the impact, she rasped, “Just as you don’t see what
you
gave to
me
.”

“Hmmm.” There was a creaking, as if he leaned back on expensive leather. Lots of it. Did he work in a corporate environment? If so, did he have his own office with one of those palatial chairs? What would it be like to kneel for him there, be ordered to pleasure him while he took a phone call from another powerful businessman?

So much for fighting off the ache between her thighs—which spread even deeper as he concluded, gravel thick in his voice, “It sounds like we’re at somewhat of an impasse.”

She sniffed delicately. “Respectfully speaking, Sir, it’s only an impasse if both parties aren’t determined to move beyond it.”

“Hmmm.”

That hum again.
Why
did he keep doing that? At this rate, he’d be making her come right here from the force of the syllable alone.

“Is that what we are, little red?” he murmured. “Two determined parties?”

She threw out a flippant laugh—which probably sounded more like a dying seal. “I’m in if you are, honey.”

His sharp hiss would’ve been a complete excuse to giggle again—until he followed it with a growl that grabbed the middle of her clit, even across the miles separating them. “Let me tell you what I’m determined about, sweet one. I’m determined about seeing you again.
All
of you. Bared to me. Naked for me. Once you’ve peel off every thread of clothing, revealing every inch of your incredible skin, I’m determined to take that breathtaking body and turn it into a thing of ecstasy. I’m determined to push its limits, learn its fears, then explode it past them all, until you’re flying so high, you don’t remember—or care—which direction the ether takes you.”

She undoubtedly sounded like a creepy bitch by now, breathing as hard as she did—but was beyond caring. Finally she managed, “Y-yes, please.”

His gruff huff filled the line. “So fast to agree—when you have no idea what I want to do to you.”

She shifted again in her seat. It was the only way to assuage the pressure, continuing to take over new parts of her pussy. “If it’s anything like last Friday, then do away.”

His pause was a torture of silence. His reply was even more ominous.

“I’m not going to play you easy this time, rose. Not by a fucking long shot.”

And delicious.

And breath-stealing.

“Was Friday your idea of
easy
?”

And has Tess ever heard of a filter
?

“Friday was my idea of heaven.” The line sounded so much better with his resonance applied. At this moment, she didn’t care that it was artificial. “But there are so many depths you haven’t explored yet.”

“Depths?” she repeated. “In heaven? You mean heights, don’t you?”

“All depends on what you consider ‘heaven,’ dear one.”

Dear one.
Oh, that was by far her favorite. Her eyes closed from the impact. Her head dipped. She longed to keep going, to crumble to her knees for him even now. “I want to go to heaven, Sir.”

“I can hear that.” His comeback was threaded with the same brutal desire pounding her bloodstream. “But now…plead it to me.”

Deep gulp. Her head dipped lower, along with her voice. “Please, Sir. Take me to heaven.”

“Gorgeous,” he praised. “Now…from your knees.”

Her eyes flew open. “My…what?”

“You heard me, Odette. Do it. Say the words from your knees. I’ll wait.”

Tess snapped up her head. Peered around. Her normal workday view awaited. Filing cabinets. Supply closet. Pen cups. Staplers. Sticky note holders. Everything was the same—but it wasn’t. “I’m at work,” she whispered.

“At your desk?” he persisted.

“Yes. But—”

“Then be creative. Did you drop something, perhaps? Looking for something in your purse?” A knowing pause. “See, little one? Masquerade
can
be fun.”

“Don’t be a smart ass.”

“And don’t talk back to your Dom.”

“You’re not my—”

“Right now, I most certainly am. But you still have a safe out. Just hang up, and we can be done at this point. No harm, no foul. You’ll be on your way, I’ll be on mine, and—”

“
No
.” She hated the desperation in her voice.

“Then you know what’s required, rose. Lower to your knees…and imagine how good it will feel to do that in our own room at Catacomb. Imagine my hand against your cheek as you say the words to me in person.”

Ohhhh, shit
. The man was like a damn drug. His voice rendered her so woozy, the whole knees-on-the-floor thing might happen in spite of her reticence. “You won’t even know if I’m really doing it or not,” she groused. But lying to him was a seriously shitty choice. Trust was a two-way street, especially in the world of D/s.

“I’ll know.” He constructed a wall of command around each word. No option to do anything but believe him.

After one last little grunt as salvage for her dignity, she pushed her ass off the chair and slid her knees to the floor.

The second they hit, something crazy happened.

Crazy and wonderful.

She forgot all about her dignity. And remembered every tingling detail about the little preview Sir Sexy had just provided. His hand against her face. His approving growls in the air. His body in front of her, proud and hard and majestic, making her feel small yet sheltered…and so thoroughly a woman.

“Please, Sir…I want to go to heaven. Led by you.”

The words brimmed from her in whispers, as natural as mist off a lake at dawn, pierced by the sun that was him. His response drove into her with the same power, thorough and primal and unalterable.

“Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. Catacomb. I’ll meet you at the door.”

*     *     *

For the first
time in her life, she hated herself for being obsessively punctual. Fifteen minutes had never felt more like fifteen hours—especially when every passing moment brought the chance to think more deeply about the strangeness of this moment.

The last time she’d sat here in her car, listening to the brush of the wind and staring at Catacomb’s double entrance doors, she was damn certain she wouldn’t ever do it again. Her quest for fulfilling her D/s dream seemed like it would only ever
be
a dream. Now, there was no question mark over the rabbit hole. She was diving straight into the darkness, led by a creature with a filthy rock god’s voice mashed with a kinky king’s arrogance. Both sides were like sexual crack to her—except for the part about having to choose which side of herself to access as a Dom-pleasing complement.