Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (17 page)

This morning, despite being up past who-knows-what o’clock, she needed no alarm. She awoke in a startling moment of clarity that hurt her chest and made her stomach clench.

“Dad is going to fucking kill me.”

“That’s a demerit.” She’d known without looking that Evan was already awake. His arm was draped over her stomach, and one of his ankles wedged between both of hers. Not quite a spoon position, but close enough that she could feel the unrelenting tension of his muscles.

The same tension now echoed back from her own body. She squeezed up to a sitting position. “Don’t you give me demerits at a moment like this.”

“I’ll save them for later.” He was
impossible
.

She looked at him full on. He didn’t wear the sated calm of the few men she’d woken up with. Evan looked as freaked out as she was, except he was hiding it. She knew that as well as she knew her imminent death. “Try and tell me Dad won’t freak out.”

“You’re a grown woman.”

She stared at him with something like stone weighing down her cheeks. Her mouth pinched into a painful frown.

Evan sighed. He flopped onto his back and reached for his head with both hands. The pose made his biceps strain as he raked tracks through his golden-brown hair. He had tiny lines around his eyes, tight with strain that said he was just as worried. “If he finds out, he’ll send me to…well. Somewhere classified.”

“He wouldn’t endanger your life.” She crossed her arms over her bare tits. She should have put some pajamas on the night before, but that had been way, way secondary to four orgasms. Maybe five. She’d lost track.

“Of course not,” Evan agreed. His amiable smile went nowhere near actually lighting up his eyes. “He’d make sure I didn’t come back to the Boston area for a century or two. Or until you were safely married off.”

She didn’t want to question the strange bent of his last sentence, as if he’d given an order to kill. There was nothing she
could
say other than the truth.
No, no, it’ll all be worth it because we’re soul mates
would be totally bullshit. She and Evan weren’t meant to be together—mind-rocking sex aside. That was a matter of bodies and physicality.

Not trust.

She couldn’t trust that Evan would ever put her first. He literally couldn’t.

She slipped out of bed. The dominant man she was leaving behind didn’t say a word. He let her go. Like he always had. Time in the bathroom helped center her mind, especially when she splashed cool water on her face. The safe house was the simplest kind, with a bare bulb over the oval mirror. In the stark light, she looked a million years older than twenty-two.

Why was she dwelling?

Hearts got broken all the time. She’d reached her nineteenth birthday and put Evan long behind her. This was life’s spectacular prodding suggestion that she should take her FetLife profile seriously and find a Dom who could give her this stuff more often. Obviously she wasn’t ready to add emotions to sexual fantasies, not when she responded to Evan as if he hung the stars.

Except as soon as she stepped outside the bathroom, she reconsidered.

Evan was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing her. His elbows were on his knees. Even in that curled-over pose, his muscles were straight, perfectly aligned etchings of strength. Her pussy was still wet, and she stung here and there from the night’s vigorous activities, but that didn’t stop her from clenching deep inside when she saw how he looked at her. His jaw was tight. His neck was tighter. He gazed up from beneath his lowered brow like a Neanderthal, except every bit of his bright intelligence sparkled in his gaze.

“You’re right. The colonel will be upset if he finds out about you and me.” He spoke in a steady, growling tone that made her nipples tighten. “This
will
end, one way or the other—whether he finds out, or I get deployed again. There’s a ticking time bomb in my head. Can’t you hear it?”

She couldn’t speak. Her neck creaked in a slow nod.

“So this is what we’re going to do.” He stood up, naked and proud and so much bigger than her that she wanted to tremble, just to give him a reason to comfort her. Except he didn’t need a reason and she wasn’t in charge. He wrapped his hands loosely around her throat, using his thumbs to lift her gaze to his. “You are going to kneel on the bed facing the pillows. Spread your knees wide enough that you have to work to hold your balance. Fold your hands behind your back. You may close your eyes or look at the ceiling.”

“And then?” She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be asking, which made her voice shake. She swallowed and tried again. “And then?”

“Wait for me.”

She didn’t dare look back as she clambered onto the bed. She wasn’t particularly graceful about it. Her thighs were tired. Her arms were tired because of how she’d needed to fist her hands to hold back a hundred curses. But she’d managed.

Now, from behind, and despite the way she touched her toes together, he could probably see her sex and how wet she was. Her response to that idea throbbed through her body. Every movement of that sensitive flesh was slick. Spreading her knees allowed a cool draft that was as intimate as a lick.

“Good girl,” he said.

She heard the quiet click of a closing door.

She wanted to break. Part of her wanted desperately to turn around and see if he was still there. Maybe he’d ordered her into that muscle-testing position before walking away. That could be a portion of the challenge. He might have left the bedroom altogether. He might have ducked into the bathroom to clean up. She had no idea, and no clue how long he’d be. She was completely at his mercy.

Over several minutes, she felt her breathing unconsciously drag into slow, drugged measures. She was air and light. She was caught in a storm of her own making. The pounding of her pulse in her ears carried away every moment, until she could wait there forever. Her bones locked into a comfortable position, sinking into the cradle of her hips and the balance of her knees. Five minutes or five hours—there’d be no difference.

Evan was coming back. She knew that all the way down to her soul. This wasn’t a forever thing, but he wouldn’t leave her suspended in time. He wouldn’t leave. At least not today.

The door snapped open again. This time she was paying close enough attention that she could identify the direction—from the bathroom. Subtle fragrance filled the small bedroom, those products that accentuate a man’s masculinity. Deodorant, a little cologne and the ginger of his soap all contributed to Evan’s distinctive scent.

She involuntary hummed, her mouth curving around a smile. He’d always smelled good, all the way back to their first, brief affair. That just-turned-eighteen version of herself had been swept away by how put together he was, simply because he didn’t douse himself in Axe or grocery store colognes. But compared to the Evan, she knew now, that younger version had nothing on him. This Evan was confident in a way that spoke to the very depths of her sexuality, where poor decisions were made.

“You look gorgeous, shark.”

He stood behind her at the side of the bed. He was close. She could tell by sound and by the way her cells wanted to align with his. He framed her waist. Blunt fingertips curled around her hips and tucked across the protruding bones of her pelvis. “You look patient.”

“I don’t feel patient…” There were words she could add there. Names.
Sir…
Master…
Things that would make them both happy in the moment, and destroy her once they finally had to part ways.

He stroked the center of her back. His hands were so bold and strong. She wondered if he was testing her with how hard he pushed, seeing if she’d bend and fold.

She lifted her chin as she set herself more firmly into position. Here, she could let everything go. All she had to do was hold still because that’s what he’d ordered.

The distinctive sound of a zipper being lowered echoed in the room. Kat shivered. The crinkle of a condom packet came next. The mattress sank beneath his full weight as he knelt behind her. His hands cupped her shoulders as the blunt head of his cock nudged at her pussy.

Any other man, any other time…she’d have said something about how she was still a little sore, about how maybe they should wait awhile. But this was it. This was what they had.

The stinging, delicious burn was worth it—so worth it that her eyes wrenched open and her neck dropped back. He was right there. The base of her head found his shoulder. He framed her forehead in one big hand, with his body pressed flush.

“You’re dressed,” she gasped.

“And you’re naked.” Tease and test and statement of fact, all in one.

Her body clenched on his thickness. There were cocks, and then there were works of art. She didn’t want to lose him for even a second, but she knew that when he withdrew, he’d return again and again.

He set a slow pace. His hands roamed over her naked torso. Hers stayed stacked at the small of her back—except where she wound her fingers along the placket of his dress shirt. She found his skin, roughened by the hair that trailed down toward his groin.

She could have been smashed forward into the bed. She could have been worked only so long for Evan to come again, leaving her behind. But that wasn’t the game now. He held her hips fiercely, and though he increased the tempo and ferocity, she wasn’t going anywhere.

She could stay safe within her pose and know everything was going to be all right.

Indeed, the pleasure built within her. It rocked her up and up and snatched her breath until she could practically
see
her come, just out of reach. It was there in the bursts of white every time she held her breath. Still, she couldn’t catch hold of it.

“Let me fuck you, Katsu. That’s it. That’s your only job.”

He bound both arms around her body, one at her waist and the other between her breasts. His thrusts quickened, deepened. He was the perfect one. He’d rescued himself from the brink of ruining his life more than once. First Annapolis, and then when he’d joined the Marine Corps’ elite Special Operations. The strength of his will was enormous. And he’d wrapped that will completely around her.

She let go. Of
everything
, even the past, for moments that made her head spin. Her body rewarded her with an orgasm that wrenched screams from her throat. They bounced off the brick walls and came to her as wave upon wave of sound, sensation and satisfaction.

Chapter Sixteen

Evan came, withdrew and collapsed on the bed, completely spent.

Kat looked down at him, her eyes glazed with stunned satisfaction, but she hadn’t moved from the position he’d commanded her to assume.

At first, the sight didn’t register beyond how beautiful she was. Their underground safe house meant no sunshine, but the overhead light bronzed her skin with an ethereal glow. Her hair clung to her cheeks, which accentuated the near-black, hazy quality of her eyes and the dirty perfection of her parted lips. Her throat, upper chest and breasts were flushed. Each panting breath lifted her pebbled nipples. With her hands still clasped at the base of her spine, she looked proud and as tall as she could manage. It was her posture, determined despite her screaming climax. So lithe, her stomach flat and her hips slim, while the quivering muscles of her thighs proved how strong she could be.

Those muscles must be burning from holding the pose, even as he’d fucked her.

That was the moment his body lost the ability to process air, to circulate blood, to think beyond one mind-warping thought: She was still waiting for his word. She knelt above him because he hadn’t told her it was time to lie down beside him.

A jolt of sexual awareness well beyond the mere physical hit him.
Hard.
That level of control was intoxicating and easy to abuse, especially considering the nature of his here-today, gone-tomorrow assignments.

This… Katsu… Nothing compared to the woman kneeling on his bed, awaiting the next words out of his mouth.

What right did he have?

He had the rights she gave him. By waiting, she was giving him quite a few.

Evan was just enough of a greedy bastard to take them all, grasping with both hands.

“Join me, Katsu.”

She sagged like a paper doll in the rain. There was no grace left in those stunning legs and slender arms as she hit the mattress. “Oh God,” she whispered, her respiration returning to normal. “What a fuck.”

“One demerit.”

“Ugh. And I was being so good!”

“You were.” He could keep fear, suspicion and anger from creeping into his words when the job necessitated, but he couldn’t erase the awe and admiration from this moment. “You were very good, especially waiting for permission to lie down.”

She’d pillowed her head in the crook of his arm and chest, but now she looked up at him with a cheeky grin. “I thought you’d like that.”

“You’re trouble. You know that?”

“Says the man who’s dressed except for his Glock 30S.”

Evan sighed with a contentment he couldn’t remember having felt in…years? That didn’t sound like long enough. He was so relaxed that the prickle of sleep tingled behind his eyes. Could he actually fall asleep in the middle of the morning, holding Katsu, petting the sleek length of her arm?

He might.