The Shy Dominant (13 page)

It was worth all the aches and pains and knowing he was going to hurt like hell in the morning. And for several mornings after this one.

He saw Dharma and Luke talking down the hallway before disappearing into one of the rooms. Going to Sian? He’d heard she’d had contractions…

His eyes closed. Burning and sore and so tired…

He roused a while later. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Taz was gone and Dharma was holding his hand. Her brown eyes, her long hair and shapely figure made her a knockout, even as washed out as she was.

“Come home with me?”

She nodded.

“I have to change clothes, go back out into the field. We’re putting out spot fires…”

“Okay.” Brave and tough. And she loved him. Christ, he couldn’t believe it.

He had wanted nothing but her for months but told himself it couldn’t happen. He hadn’t let himself hope until she hadn’t been shocked and repelled by his darker side but aroused by it.

Mmmm. He pleased her.

And maybe if he kept working at things with her, trying to figure out this relationship with a younger woman thing, ideas would come to him like offered bouquets. His ex-wife, Marilyn, was going for it.

She was trying to find new love.

She was…brave?

It was a new way of seeing her, aside from the haze of bitterness like smoke in his eyes. So they hadn’t made a go of it, he and Marilyn. But he hadn’t loved her the way he did Dharma. And maybe the wanting to make a baby with Dharma right now wasn’t so crazy. He’d been a single dad long enough to know he loved it, and he didn’t have time to mess around if he was going to play a big part in his new kid’s life.

With Dharma’s hand in his, he led them both out into daylight and his truck.

* * * *

Fred was quiet on the drive to his house. Dharma had slid close to him as soon as he’d started up the truck, her arms around him, her face pressed against his shoulder. Now and then he stroked the back of her head protectively with one hand.

He liked her where she was, liked her blatant show of affection.

When he pulled into his garage, she blinked in surprise. Usually he parked outside.

The doors slid shut behind them and Fred freed her from her seat belt, then himself.

She was on him in a second, straddling him, kissing him, tears running down her cheeks.

“Oh, baby, it’s okay,” he soothed.

“Need you.”

He kicked back the seat and yanked her skirt up, tearing off her panties. He thrust his fingers into her and she gave a sharp cry.

Lying back, he let her free him, take him in her hand. A second later she was riding him, moving hot and hard in the too tiny space.

She was as beautiful as a dancer, her face glowing, her hair all around them. He shoved up her shirt and bra so he could palm her bouncing tits, remembering how he’d wanted to do this that night in the bar.

“Ummm.” She leant back, enjoying the hell out of riding him.

He wet a finger in her slick heat then traced it to her other opening. Her eyes shot open as he deliberately penetrated her there. “I’m going to take this pretty little ass sometime soon.”

“I’ve never…”

“You will. And you’ll like it.”

Her eyes were dark and serious as she nodded. “Yes, I will.”

He pushed his finger deeper, rubbing her harshly. She screamed and came, and he was right behind her, on fire with the idea of screwing her ass at that club. He’d take her against that coffee table. Maybe by then he would have her collared. It wasn’t something he wanted twenty-four seven, but he had decided he liked the idea of embracing certain traditions when they visited the place.

Besides, he wanted his ownership of her completely obvious, as if her coming on his cock or begging for his hand between her legs or slapping her ass wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever share her with another man again, not now he was feeling more confident of her feelings for him as a man, but he still liked the idea of showing her off.

And she was so okay with that.

She was, in fact, perfect for him. And he’d felt it down deep inside, all the time they’d talked and flirted in that coffee house.

“I’ll help you get out of those clothes,” Dharma said. “And you’ll need food and a hot shower.”

“If you share the shower with me, honey, I won’t have time to eat.”

She nibbled her lip. “Okay, I’ll overlook the lack of shower sex this once in the interest of feeding you.”

He brushed her lips with his. “I love you,” he said and had the pleasure of seeing her eyes pop a second time. “I’m putting an engagement ring on your finger before the end of the week. Got that?”

“Ah…yeah. Okay.” She looked completely dazed.

He planned to keep surprising her like that for a very, very long time.

Coming Soon from Totally Bound Publishing:

Men of Station 57: The Protective Dominant

Jan Irving

Released 11
th
April 2014

Excerpt

Chapter One

Jenny Ann Green was digging in her garden again.

Taz watched her from the open door of his kitchen, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.

Dirt shot like it was geysered out of the ground, hitting her face, hitting the ratty-looking things in her gardening basket. She dropped her trowel and began tunnelling into the earth with her bare hands, more dirt whipping out, shooting onto the neatly kept grass.

“Fuck this,” Taz growled.

He reached her in seconds. Stood there, trembling. Closed his eyes.
Don’t touch her, asshole. You can’t touch her.

But it was hard, so freaking hard not to yank her off the ground and into his arms.

“Jenny?” His voice was rough. He cleared his throat, balling his fists.
Don’t scare her.

She kept on digging. She probably hadn’t heard him.

“Jenny, look at me, sweetheart.” A memory of a female voice mocking him for using the word ‘sweetheart’ came to him. Dharma, his friend Fred’s smoking new girlfriend. Yeah, she’d pointed out that using that word hadn’t suited him at all since he was such a bastard with women.

She’d been right.

He was.

He didn’t like women. He didn’t trust them.

They had their use and he kept what he wanted from them tightly compartmentalised.

With his head thrown back, he dragged in deep breaths, trying to centre himself. As an experienced dominant, he knew the first rule was to master yourself before you tried it with anyone else.

But it was so hard because Jenny got past all that. She was the crack in his armour that kept getting wider and wider, and it scared him because what the fuck would spill out if he kept letting her in? Nothing good. Absolutely nothing good, he knew.

When he had control, he knelt beside her, ignoring the dirt that she shovelled in his direction. Hell, the girl couldn’t even see him out of those spacey eyes so the dirt coming towards him was nothing personal.

Jenny was too polite, too sweet to ever throw dirt his way, much as he deserved it for the way he’d treated her.

He remembered the evening he’d come home and found that she’d planted flowers along his drive. “
If I want fuckin’ flowers, I’ll plant them myself. Now get your ass off my property.”

Yeah, he’d been a real prince.

“Jenny Ann.” His voice was calm. “Jenny, wake up, sweetheart.”

No response. She was putting the weedy-looking things into the hole she’d dug. Damn, it was as deep as one Bo, his friend Mike’s golden retriever, routinely dug in Mike’s backyard.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m…” She frowned and looked down at the bulb in her fist. “Saffron bulbs. Come up in the fall,” she said in her honeyed Southern lady drawl.

“That’s good, Jenny,” Taz said. “But do you have to do this now?”

“Now…” She blinked. He could see her mind slowly coming back online. Suddenly she shuddered violently, looking around her.

It was killing him. He had to put his arms around her. “Jenny.”

She was ice cold.
Ice cold.
Shivering in her little threadbare nightie. No slinky red gown and red shoes for Jenny Ann. No, she went to bed alone in soft cotton, worn from too many washings.

He tried not to look at her nipples through the gown. She had larger breasts than he’d thought. She had a way of hunching her back or wearing too-large clothing so he hadn’t been able to see them clearly. He wanted to take them in his hands. Bastard, to be thinking that now.

“Let me go,
let me go!
” She was tearing at him, clawing, smacking—all of it so ineffectual because he was a big muscular guy and she was a tiny little thing.

Aching, he let her go. Watched her fall on her butt in the earth, watched her glance around frantically, getting her bearings. Her chest rose and fell. Finally she curled up in a little ball, a thready sound coming from her.

Panting, he stared.

“Oh, Jenny.”

When she didn’t move, he couldn’t take it anymore. He reached down and picked her up, tucking her ball shape under one arm.

And she growled at him.

Taz blinked. Frowned.
That was new.

Women as nice as Jenny Ann didn’t growl.

“Stop that.” He tapped her butt then froze. What the hell was he doing? She wasn’t one of the women he used. But his palm wanted to stay on the warm, lush fullness, wanted to squeeze. She was not a stick woman. If a man made love to her, he’d sink in, be surrounded by feminine warmth.

Probably why she was so self-conscious about her looks, he thought with annoyance. Women shaped like women weren’t found on magazine stands or in movie theatres. They were made to feel ashamed of their curves.

He paused, realising belatedly that he’d automatically carried sweet little Jenny Ann to the door of his kitchen. What was he doing?

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Just hadn’t been getting enough sleep…

“Put me down.” Her voice was timid, uncertain. It would have broken his heart—if he had one.

Screw it.
He shoved open the door and plunked Jenny on one of his kitchen chairs. She immediately pulled her legs up to her chest, shielding her body from him.

“Aw, hell.” He backed away from her, rubbing the back of his neck. “I just thought”—he blew out a breath and she jumped—“I’d make you an omelette.”

“Omelette?” She looked up at him, her dark eyes serious.

“Yeah. You know, it’s not just for breakfast anymore?” he cracked. She didn’t smile, but she also didn’t run, so he took it as a good sign.

She rubbed her forehead. Her long brunette hair was free of its habitual no-nonsense bun and he saw that it must be long enough to reach her plump ass. Jesus, what would it be like to lie down with her and have all that dark, silken stuff on his body?

He looked away.

“Anything you don’t like in your omelette?”

“Ah…” She blinked. “No. I’m not picky.”

“Good thing if you’re going to eat my cooking, sweet cheeks.”

He had a pan out before she said, again so softly he could barely hear her, “I don’t like being called ‘sweet cheeks’, thank you very much.”

He grinned, unaccountably happy to get a rise out of her. It sure beat coming home to her sitting on her porch swing, staring out at the horizon with haunted eyes. Or, worse, hiding in her house like she had for weeks after she’d been attacked.

Taz squeezed his eyes shut and blocked that thought. He couldn’t… He couldn’t think about that. Whenever he did, it made him crazy.

She was so delicate. A man his size could knock her over without a second thought and she’d been attacked by three men…

Don’t think about it.
The pan rattled against the burner in his shaky grasp. He released it, then ignited the flame. A flashback of what she’d looked like in her hospital bed hit him. Her face covered in bruises, as if a man had beaten it with his fists, one eye swollen shut, the stitches on the side of her neck—

“I have some Jack cheese.”

“Okay.”

He glanced at her and saw she was sitting up at his table now, her head in her hands. “What time is it?” she asked, her voice sounding too tired for someone in their early twenties.

“Just after three a.m.”

Her lips stretched into a smile with no warmth. “Oh, that late, huh?”

“Because last night it was one thirty when you did your midnight gardening routine? Yeah, things are looking up, sweetheart. You’re getting closer to daylight hours.”

She swept him a look out of eyes the colour of moss agate. “You don’t have to get up every night and rescue me when I go bonkers.”

“Yeah, I do.” His voice was flat, uncompromising.

“Because you’re a professional fireman. I get it.”

He shrugged because no, she didn’t. Rescuing someone had always been secondary to him. It was the thrill of the dare, the risks he took that had made him who he was. He knew he lacked Battalion Chief Fred James’ commitment to serve and his best friend Luke Cade’s passion for helping people. He knew it but could experience only emptiness.

For him, it was the rush of doing something that might, just might, get him killed.

When he pictured what it meant to care about someone, he heard the snap of a lighter, the sound of his mother’s voice.