Penance (Long Slow Tease, #2) (7 page)

The urge to choke some sense into
that evil bitch made his hands itch, but he had to remind himself where they were, and who she was. The thought of Michelle growing up with such a crazy, manipulative cunt for a mother made his heart hurt for his beloved Domina. No wonder she found it so hard to let herself love him.

He took a deep breath, then another, trying to get
ahold of his anger before he triggered. Not that he was worried about having a flashback. No, he was worried about losing his temper and cussing out Mrs. Sapphire in front of over two hundred people, those near them now watching their whispered conversation with interest. Though most of their audience watched them with carefully blank expressions, there were a few women here and there who had almost gleefully malicious smirks curving their perfectly lipsticked mouths.

So instead of telling
Mrs. Sapphire what a total fucking cunt she was, he said in a low voice, “I pity you.”

Anger
mixed with surprise lined the features of her still beautiful face, deepening the lines around her mouth and eyes, making her look closer to her true age. “You what?”

“I pity you. I pity you for pushing your daughter away, for denying yourself her love. I pity you that you
feel you have to hurt everyone around you because you’re hurting inside. I pity you that you’ve managed to make such a gentle, loving, amazing woman as your daughter remove herself from your life as much as possible to avoid your venom. You have no idea what Michelle is really like. You have no idea what an amazing woman she is, what she’s survived, and for that, I pity you.”

He turned, needing to walk away from
Mrs. Sapphire and cool down, but as soon as he did he saw Michelle practically running through the crowd with an older man at her heels. As soon as Wyatt saw him, he knew this was Michelle’s father. They had a similar bone structure, and the slightly horrified look on Senator Sapphire’s face let Wyatt know that he wasn’t hiding his disgust as well as he thought. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward to meet them and held his arms open, pulling Michelle into his embrace and giving her a sound kiss on the lips, not giving a fuck who was watching. This was his woman, he loved her, and he didn’t give a damn who knew it.

Michelle searched his face with a worried look
, then gently rubbed her lipstick from his mouth with her thumb. “Are you okay? What did my mom say to you?”

He debated telling her the truth, that her mother was a complete cunt, but decided against it. His Domina had enough to deal with at the moment so
instead he smiled and gently stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re good. We just had a difference of opinion over something.”

Michelle opened her mouth, no doubt to argue with him, so he cut her off by moving her to his side, keeping an arm around her waist while he extended his hand to her father. “Senator Sapphire, nice to meet you
, sir.”

Senator Sapphire took
Wyatt’s hand and gave him a firm, practiced shake, his jovial smile sliding back into place. It was faintly disturbing to see how easily Michelle’s father hid his emotions and Wyatt wondered if Michelle had learned how to mask her feelings from him. “Wyatt, so good to meet you. I hope you’re enjoying the party so far.”

Looking down at Michelle
as she gazed up at him with a worried frown turning down her lips he kissed her forehead. “As long as your daughter’s with me, I’m having a good time.”

   
Her brilliant smile lightened his heart. “Flatterer.”

Putting just a bit of heat into his
grin, he winked at her. “It’s not flattery if it’s true.”

Michelle swayed
in Wyatt’s arms as the band played into the night, the music floating across the soft waves of the lake. Wyatt had been charming all night, but she still studied him for signs of strain. Meeting your beloved’s parents was a tense situation in the first place, but having to deal with her mother was a whole different story. When she’d seen them talking earlier, rage screamed from every inch of Wyatt’s body, and she wanted to kill her mother for upsetting him. Wyatt wouldn’t say what her mother had said to him, but Michelle knew her mom well enough to know it had probably been something cruel and hurtful. It would certainly fit her record with Michelle’s boyfriends. Anyone she didn’t approve of she ran off. The only man she hadn’t been able to get rid of was Owen, and now, Wyatt. While it made her proud that Wyatt hadn’t been scared off, she still hated that he had to deal with the sharp side of her mother’s tongue.

As if
meeting her parents wasn’t stressful enough, chatting up all the high ranking military personnel who attended had made even Michelle nervous. Hell, she wasn’t immune to gazing in awe at a General and thinking about all the things he had to accomplish to earn his stars. There were lots of high powered people at this party, yet Wyatt outshone them all.

Handsome didn’t even begin to describe her man. He was utterly breathtaking. More than once she had to hide a small smile as some random woman swooned
when Wyatt shook her hand and called her ma’am. Who’d have ever thought that such a simple word could make so many grown women giggle and flirt?

While her mother seemed immune to Wyatt’s considerable charms, her father had been genuinely happy to meet Wyatt and tried to talk politics
until Michelle subtly elbowed her dad in the ribs. At least, she was going to pretend it was subtle. Wyatt had to cover his mouth as he coughed in a way that sounded strangely like a laugh. When she gave him a narrow-eyed look, he grinned at her, as unrepentant as could be.

James was a bad influence on him. After
hanging out for hours together modeling for Yuki’s next big sculpture they’d become really close. It made her tear up to see how happy James was now that Wyatt was around. She realized that in her own selfish grief she’d failed to notice how lonely James was. But Wyatt knew; he had some kind of sixth sense when it came to people who needed him. It was annoying when he used it on her, but Yuki said James had talked with Wyatt about his sister who passed away, something he never did, and Michelle had to admit she was really happy Yuki and James approved of Wyatt. In many ways they were more like her true family than her blood relatives.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

She turned fully and laced her arms around his neck. “You’re amazing.”

He flushed and gave her a bemused grin. “Not that I’m going to argue with you on that point, but why am I particularly awesome at the moment
?”

Twirling her fingers in his hair, thinking it was already time for another trim, she shrugged. “
When I first brought you home with me I pictured a different relationship between us. More of a traditional twenty-four/seven-type thing.”

“Like me being in submissive mode
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week?”

“Mmhhmmm
, yes. Something more – formal – a Mistress/slave relationship rather than a romantic one. I’m glad we didn’t.”

“Have you done that before? Had a full
-time slave?”

“Yes.” A shadow of pain moved through her heart and she forced her mind to not think about all the times she’d danced with Owen out here.

His gaze softened even as something resembling jealousy flashed through it. “And how am I amazing for not living up to your expectations?”

“Because you didn’t allow me to box you into a role that doesn’t fit you. Eventually you would have chaffed beneath the constant collar of my dominance and I would have lost you.”

“Michelle, I’ll never leave you.”

Her heart melted for him and she nodded. “I know. You’re mine, Wyatt. Heart and soul. Just like I’m yours.”

“I lo…”

A loud, jarring series of small explosions
suddenly went off – and Wyatt lost it.

“Everybody down!” he yelled and took Michelle to the ground with him, hovering over her body.

Terror raced through her as, for one brief moment, she was transported back to Afghanistan, holding his intestines in place and praying like she’d never prayed before that he would live. He had to live. She’d die without him.

“Stay still, Doc. They’ll call in an air
strike.”

His voice penetrated her own panic
. She took a deep breath, grabbed him by the back of his head and forced his wild gaze to meet hers. “Wyatt, baby, we’re in the United States, in my parents’ backyard. That was probably my rotten nephews setting off fireworks over the lake.”

“What?”

She tightened her grip on his hair, hoping the pain helped reach him. “We are at a party, in my parents’ backyard, in the States, in the middle of the dance floor.”

H
is gaze cleared, then he pushed off of her as if she’d caught fire, but she grabbed his shirt and pulled him back to her, giving him a fierce kiss. “Always my hero.”

His lips were unresponsive beneath hers
, and when he helped her stand, she could feel the humiliation rolling off of him. People stood around them and whispered. Michelle knew how to harden her heart to their snide glances, but Wyatt was being cut to ribbons by them. The urge to protect him overwhelmed her. She opened her mouth to tell him that she loved him, but caught sight of her father walking towards them with a very embarrassed young man covered in what looked like chocolate cake. Her dad also had some chocolate cake on his jacket, and she wondered what the hell was going on.

“Wyatt,” he
r dad called out, “nothing a father likes more than to see a man who would die to protect his daughter.”

Wyatt s
lowly thawed next to her, just enough that she could feel his hurt and it arced through her body as though it was her own. She did the only thing she could to help Wyatt right now, which was to take the attention off of him. “Dad, what happened to you?”

“Come on inside and I’ll tell you. You too, Wyatt. I want to show you some embarrassing pictures of when Michelle was in junior high and decided to shave one side of her head. Her mother just about had a heart attack over it.”

“Dad!” Michelle gasped, horrified by the thought of Wyatt seeing her during that incredibly awkward phase when parts of her body seemed to be growing at different times and in separate growth spurts, even as she silently thanked her dad for being so smooth.

They followed her father into the house and down a series of hall
ways until they reached his private study. Michelle had spent many hours here as a child, reading on one of the huge, ancient leather couches flanking the door that invited sleep. The room even smelled the same – books, the faint hint of furniture polish and a ghost of pipe smoke still flavoring the air. She relaxed and followed the men inside. Now that she was looking at the young man with her father, she could see that he was even more embarrassed than Wyatt. He looked positively mortified and there had been a samurai sword on the wall, she was sure the guy would have tried to commit
hara-kiri
.

Her dad opened one of the drawers in his desk and pulled out a set of hand towels. He was notorious for knocking over his coffee cup
, and the housekeepers had given up and made sure he had his own cleaning supplies. After handing the young man one, he stripped off his jacket and sighed. “Wyatt, Marshall, I sincerely apologize for the fireworks. I made it very clear that I did not want them at this party, but I’m afraid my sons don’t beat their children enough and the kids brought some with them to shoot off over the lake. I’ll make sure they get taken behind the woodshed and whipped for this.”

Wyatt stiffened for a moment before Michelle squeezed his hand and laughed. “Easy there, Dad. Wyatt doesn’
t know your twisted sense of humor yet.”

Her dad gave his trademark charming smile and she knew he was putting on a show for the other men. While he could fool most people, he couldn’t fool her.
He was worried and Michelle prayed he wouldn’t say anything to hurt Wyatt. Her father could be a bit overprotective of her; she’d heard from more than one boyfriend about his you-better-not-hurt-my-little-girl lectures.

“Wyatt’s fine.” He turned to look directly at Wyatt. “He has nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yeah,” the young man spoke up as he tried to dab the chocolate frosting off of his dark navy coat. “He didn’t just tackle a Senator and almost get his ass shot by the same Secret Service that he’s trying to get a job with.”

T
he young man flushed, but her father laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll talk to your director and let him know how impressed I was that you would lay down your life for me after shadowing my detail for only two days. By the way, Michelle and Wyatt, this is Marshall. He recently retired from the Army after a deployment in Afghanistan and is thinking about working for the Secret Service. His father is Major General Schwartz, a good friend of mine.”

Out of the corner of her eye she watched Wyatt take in the situation and a small change came over him. He stood taller and some of his embarrassment drained away
as he faced Marshall. “Welcome home, and thank you for your service.”

“Thank you. I read your
military file. Errr…damn, I probably shouldn’t have said that.” Marshall flushed and Michelle marveled at how young the man was; it shocked her to realize that she was getting older, as stupid as that sounded. “Anyways, you went through some crazy shit and managed to make it out alive.”