Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (16 page)

It wasn’t a question. He liked that. “No, we’re not. Do as I told you.”

She sat up in his arms and grasped her forearm behind his neck. She folded into his hold, with her face pressed against the top of his pecs. Kisses there made his knees weaken, when he hadn’t been weak since he was a boy cowing beneath his father’s warped expectations and believing every word about what entitled Evan should expect from the world. He had the colonel to thank for setting him on a path where he could look himself in the mirror each morning and be proud.

Would he be proud when he looked at himself come dawn? Only if he gave Katsu what she deserved.

“You want to sleep in my bed,” he said bluntly.

“I do.”

“You want to come while we fuck.”

“Very much.”

“You’ll be a good girl to earn those things.”

“I will.”

She never looked away. Each vow was as meaningful as sacred words spoken in a place of worship. Evan walked toward the bedroom before his knees really did bend at the sheer desire her simple words shot through his body, making him both weak and invincibly strong.

Without as much care as he usually would’ve shown a woman, he deposited Kat on the bed. It was queen size, with a blood-red micro-fleece throw and a camouflage-patterned blanket folded neatly at the foot. “I told you how I’d get undressed tonight. What did I say?”

“That I’d strip you.”

“Get to it.”

Kat pushed off the fleecy blanket. She trailed her hands along the softness, still wearing that contented smile. “I like this.” She reached up and started with the buttons at the top of his shirt. “I like doing this better.”

“This isn’t about what you like.”

“Oh, Evan,” she said softly, angling her sleek eyes to meet his. “Our game only goes so far. Don’t take your commands to the point where I have to smile and pull out of this trance. Because I’m loving this, you know. Being subject to your whims. But I know it’s for both of us.”

He framed her face and couldn’t help a rueful smile. “Shut that smart mouth, shark. I have better uses in mind for it.”

“Shark?”

“Believe me, it suits you.”

She grinned, still unbuttoning his shirt. “I like that too.” When she’d finished, she asked, “May I move freely to finish my task?”

Evan choked down a groan. “Yes.”

“Thank you.”

She stood and pushed his shirt off his shoulders, then tossed it into a nearby laundry hamper. She stood behind him, smoothing almost idle caresses down his back and, when she reached around, all across his pecs and abs. He couldn’t help but notice how she skillfully avoided touching any of his scars, as if they were barbed wire tipped with poison. He didn’t mind the unspoken evasion. They weren’t huge, and escaping a life like his without repercussions was impossible, but he didn’t want those physical reminders to intrude.

“This is probably against the rules,” she whispered.

“I’ll tell you when you’ve gone too far.”

“I believe that without a doubt.”

Evan looked down as she undid his belt, button, zipper. Her hands didn’t shake. Good God. She moved with a calm efficiency that spiked his arousal another few notches. The jeans slipped to the floor under the careful push of her clever fingers. She seemed to touch him everywhere with that simple act.

Nothing about this is simple.

Helping her out with logistics, he lifted one foot at a time once she’d untied his boots. She placed them neatly beside the hamper where his socks and jeans had already been deposited. All that remained were his briefs.

“I want you kneeling for this,” he said. Where was his rough voice? Where was the spoken tone of how turned on he was? Maybe that was it. A tense man would speak with tense words. He was aroused as fuck, and it took the strength of a hundred men to keep from throwing her onto the bed and fucking her deep, but he was relishing the moment of calm before their inevitable storm. “You’re going to get two condoms.” Her gaze turned stormy and hot, even greedy. “Then find the green Pyrex bowl, fill it with warm water and bring a blue cloth for washing my skin. When you have all of that, come back and kneel.”

Satisfaction flared behind her eyes. The lethargy of her orgasm was gone. She appeared energized and eager. Her nipples were tight, and her breath slowed to a long, tranquil rhythm. She nodded in what was nearly a bow.

Evan stood motionless, listening to her carefully go through drawers and cabinets. He knew where the green Pyrex bowl and the blue washcloth were, but she didn’t. He knew for a cock-hardening fact that she wouldn’t return until she’d found her prizes.

Her offerings.

He curled his toes into the carpet when he heard a little squeak of triumph from the bathroom across the hall. Running water was even a turn-on. What the hell was this? Had it been four years ago, they’d have been working on their third fuck of the night. This… This was very different. He was intimidated by the idea of liking it too much.

Katsu walked into the room on soundless steps. He tensed as if an enemy approached, then blew all the tension and questions out of his chest with a single exhalation. He made room enough for her to place the bowl—the exact bowl—between his widened feet. She knelt gracefully, with her face hidden by the angled strands of her bob. A blue washcloth rested in a perfect square in her upturned hands.

“Tuck your hair behind your ears. I want to see your face when you rinse my prick.”

Now her fingers trembled. Her chest was softly heaving. He could watch her tits all day, every day, and he would’ve, had her eyes been any less intoxicating. The mystery was in their nearly unreadable darkness, not their tipped-up shape. With her hair out of the way, she dipped the cloth, wrung out the excess water and began her maddening ministrations. He was hard. Surprisingly hard. Somewhere between baring his chest and kneeling, Katsu’s compliance had made him throb with readiness.

Slim, warm, wet fingers enfolded the base of his cock just before the subtle bite of the cloth’s texture followed. Evan hissed. He instantly assessed her reaction to his slip-up and found the same determined set of her jaw. Only the curled edges of her lips gave away her satisfaction. Over and over, she attended his prick with alternating strokes of skin and cloth. He was going insane.

“Good girl,” he whispered. “Such a good girl.”

She rewarded him with a shiver and another satisfied smile.

“Now suck me.”

The cloth dropped instantly into the bowl. Hot droplets of water slashed the insides of his calves, before even hotter pleasure engulfed his swollen head. She’d blown him years ago, but not like this. This was like…worship. She slipped her hands along the line where his thighs met his ass. She never used her fingers to aid in accomplishing his demand. She simply used that fuck fantasy of a mouth to suck. And lick. And suck again.

Evan reached his physical breaking point a lot sooner than his mental one. He could’ve stayed there all night, filling her mouth with his come, then starting over. But he owed them both what they deserved after so much patient foreplay—because it was foreplay. All of it.

“Condom.”

She reached to the nightstand where she’d placed the condoms. Within seconds he was sheathed, although she never seemed to rush. Her hands moved like waves on the surface of a lake. Not invisible, not absent, but…languid. That’s how they behaved, despite a torment raging just beneath the surface.

Evan left her on her knees as he positioned himself on the bed. He stretched out and folded his hands behind his head on the pillow. “Come ride me, Katsu.”

She joined him on the bed and without hesitation sank onto the full length of his ready prick. Their moans matched, deepened, harmonized. But even then, Evan could see that she wanted more. She could ride him like a cowgirl—and had. But this night was about minutiae, right down to aligning his boots beside the hamper. “You’ll ride me at your pace. You’ll touch yourself however you want. You’ll come as often as you can, but you’ll tell me when you’re on the verge and the exact moment it takes you over—no cussing. I want words. I want, ‘I’m coming now, Evan.’”

She nodded, already beginning the slick rise and fall over his engorged cock. Her hands were braced against the thick muscle of his abs. Christ, he liked being strong for her. “And you?”

So close. He could practically hear the unspoken
Sir
.

“You’ll know when it’s my turn. If you can come when I flip you and fuck you, you get a bonus. But I’ll be done indulging you when that happens. Understand?”

She nodded as her eyes rolled shut. She tipped her head toward the ceiling as her hips worked. He’d never been able to forget how responsive she was and how in tune she was with her body’s needs. It was almost a game in his mind. No, it was that challenge she’d mentioned. How many orgasms could he let her have before he gave in to the driving need for his own?

She rubbed her clit in perfect rhythm with her hips as he thrust up to meet her. So tight. So goddamn wet. Evan gripped the globes of her ass, kneaded the full bounty of her breasts and tweaked hard nipples until she gasped. They moved in their odd combination of calm and raging. Every driving clench of her pussy was a release of tension and a sexual game of one-upmanship unlike any he’d ever played. More edging, even as she came and came again.

Each time, she did exactly as he’d ordered. Leading to the fourth orgasm, she was covered with a sheen of sweat and gasping for breath. Her balance was so unsteady that he kept her righted with his palms spread up either side of her rib cage. She must be wondering too. How long could he hold out? She couldn’t stop—not until he told her to. So she kept riding, kept fucking, kept taking pleasure while waves sapped her strength to the point of full physical exhaustion. What must it be like in her mind? Was she gone? Were all the worries and fears gone?

That’s what he really wanted for her. And Christ, for himself. They could lose the world when they lost themselves in each other.

“May I cuss a little? Please?”

He smiled, because despite the passion and sweat, she was smiling down at him. “Yes.”

“No demerits?”

“No demerits.”

“Then fucking hell, this is amazing.” A laugh bubbled out of her work-of-art torso. “Cock-sucking, motherfucking
amazing
.”

“That’s a little?”

“For me,” she said, her expression cheeky—until her mouth opened on a gasp. “Yes, it’s happening again. I’m coming now, Evan.”

To the letter. Four times now.

He snapped.

He flipped her over, enveloping her in his full embrace, and drove deep, so deep, and deeper still, until he lost himself in the feel of her pussy bearing down on his cock. He thrust past the tight clench of her muscles, like breaking past barriers he didn’t know either of them had. She thrashed beneath him until, just to see if she could manage, he said so quietly beside her ear, “Be still.”

She dropped to motionlessness in the span of his next stroke. Equally as quiet, she told him again, “I’m coming now, Evan.”

Pleasure ripped over him like being cut in half by a blowtorch. There was no stopping his driving hips as he came for what seemed like an eternity. He levered with his arms for more depth, more power, and swore he felt the trembling aftershocks of a second orgasm.

They fell together into a tangled, sweaty heap, so breathless that the room filled with their gasps and lingering moans. A sadness worked up to his chest when he needed to withdraw. After disposing of the condom and flipping off the light, he pulled the old service blanket over them and hugged her spoon-shaped against his front.

“Ooh, do that again.”

“What, fuck you? Jesus, woman.”

“No, not yet.” He heard the smile in her voice and returned it by nuzzling his grin against her neck. “I mean that thing with your arm. You flex when you hold me. I like how you feel. You’re bigger than you used to be, aren’t you?”

He’d never given something so simple any thought, but he did her quiet bidding. That they could give and take was reassuring. She was still Katsu. She was still her own woman, and everything they’d just done had been on her terms too. He flexed hard as he pulled her more closely against his body.

“Mmmm, just like that. You know, Evan…” Her slurred words said she was sliding toward sleep. Evan was happy to know he was exhausted enough to join her. “You’re going to make a lucky girl feel very safe and loved. One day.”

Ice coated him. His thoughts flashed to the empty paddocks on his lonely estate and the “one day” dreams he put off in favor of his obligations to CFA. Caring for a woman like Kat was on that “one day” list. He’d never experienced feelings of unfairness about it before, but he did then, holding Katsu, knowing he’d just experienced a moment in paradise—and knowing that despite his exhaustion, he wouldn’t be sleeping after all.

Chapter Fifteen

Katsu was the sort of person to loll in bed long after the alarm went off. She owned three: an old-school copper bell one that sat across her room on her dresser, a porcelain
maneki-neko
that beckoned her from atop her bookcase to have a lucky morning, and the digital phone dock on her nightstand. That added an extra alarm from her phone, all of which went off in intervals. That’s what she usually required to get out of bed after spending a long night delving deep into the depths of bullshit on the Internet. Even then, she’d hit snooze a couple times, throwing herself facedown across her bed for another nine minutes.