Bound Temptations: Stories of Temptation and Submission (16 page)

"Rocki. Aw, hell." He slid
his hands up and cradled her face. "Everything logical says
otherwise. You know that, right?"

She smirked. "Screw
logic."

"Hmm. I like that logic."
His mouth brushed against hers. "So I guess we're going to rush
things, huh?"

"Nah. It's not rushing.
We're just moving at our own pace."

"Now that sounds
good."

As his mouth came down more
firmly on hers, Rocki wondered if she'd be able to talk him into
moving at their own pace to the bedroom...in a bit. Right now, she
just wanted to enjoy the moment. Wanted to enjoy him.

Beg Me

An Erotic Romance

Warning:

This book contains fantasies
that aren’t going to appeal to everybody…rape fantasies, to be
completely accurate. The scenes between the hero and heroine are
completely consensual, but the heroine is working out some trauma
and this book isn’t going to be for everybody.

Chapter One

Call
her
.

Drake Bennett stared at the
phone, drumming his fingers on his thigh. Black hair fell into his
eyes as he glared at the phone, uncertain. What did he do? Did he
call her? Did he leave her alone? Would she want to talk to
anybody? Maybe she was trying not to think about it. Him calling
and saying something, anything, would be rubbing salt in raw, open
wounds.

January 4.

The four was a glaring red
on the calendar and as he stared at it, it seemed to pulse,
breathe, bleed.

Call her.
Call her
…

“
Shit,” he muttered, shoving
back from his desk and pacing the narrow confines of his
office.

Hell, he hadn’t even gone
through it. Yeah, he suffered because she did, but would he want to
be alone today?

And that decided
him.

No
.

There were certain times
when he just needed a friend with him. This would be one of them,
he thought.

It was only five. Early. He
could see if she wanted to grab a meal. Nice. Easy.

They were friends, after
all. Right?

The ringing of the phone was
unwelcome until Tania Sinclair saw the caller ID. There had been
seven other calls that day—three from other friends, four from her
mother-in-law. The call from Drake Bennett was the only one she’d
answered.

“
Hello?”

“
Hey.”

The sound of his familiar
voice, low and easy, made her smile, made the knots in her belly
unclench, and somehow the tension in her neck and shoulders
dissolved. “Hey, yourself. How are you?”

“
Hungry. Bored. Why don’t
you save me from myself and get some dinner with me?”

Tania closed her eyes. She
wasn’t fooled by the easy, casual invitation. Drake might have been
her late husband’s best friend, but he was her friend as well. Ever
since Kyle’s death, he’d taken it onto his shoulders to watch over
her, take care of her…and sometimes she glimpsed the guilt and
anger that slipped into his eyes for the one time that he hadn’t
been there.

Not that she blamed
him.

She licked her lips, staring
at the calendar. Not that she needed the damn calendar to know what
day it was. It hung over her like a black shadow, had for
weeks.

Now it was finally
here—

“
Dinner, huh?”

“
Yeah.” Her voice cracked.
“I can do dinner. I’m starving.”

Liar
. She wouldn’t be able to eat a
thing. But it would get her out of the house. She could occupy her
mind for a few more hours, delay that inevitable creep of the
clock.

As she
hung up the phone, the memory of a low, insidious whisper echoed
through her mind,
Beg me…

She hadn’t eaten more than
five bites.

Drake didn’t point that out
to her.

And when she ordered a third
margarita, he didn’t say anything. She kept up a nonstop stream of
chatter, and if it hurt his heart to see that over-bright glitter
in her eyes, nobody but him needed to know.

Two years. It had been two
years. He wished he knew if it was getting easier for her.
Sometimes, he thought it was. There were days when he could look at
her, and she was almost the way she used to be, happy and
laughing…but then as the days got shorter, colder, as December bled
to January, all that laughter died and the shadows haunted her
eyes.

He wished there was
something he could do.

“
So. What have you been up
to the past few weeks?” she asked, winding down. “I haven’t seen
you since before Christmas.”

Drake
shrugged. “Not much. Spent Christmas with my folks. Went skiing
with some friends the day after.”
Spent New
Year’s Eve on the couch and thinking about you…
He forced himself to smile. “Nothing too exciting. What about
you?”

She grimaced. “Oh, the
excitement of my life never stops.” She swiped a finger through the
salt on the rim of her glass, popped it in her mouth. “I’ve picked
up three new clients, had two clients drop me, I signed up for
three conferences this summer and ignored every phone call that
came in today…except yours.”

Then she frowned and glanced
up at him. “I didn’t mean to mention that part.”

Drake lifted a brow. “About
the clients, the conferences or the phone calls?”

“
The phone calls.” She
wrinkled her nose. “Like the clients or the conferences make much
difference to you.”

Well, he couldn’t say they
made much sense—he knew she did graphic-design stuff. She’d handled
the website he set up for his garage, although mostly she handled
business for writers and that sort of thing, so that would likely
be the sort of conferences she had scheduled to attend. “How come
you answered my call if you weren’t in the mood to talk on the
phone?”

“
Because I
felt like talking to you?” She smiled and took a drink of her
margarita. “And I didn’t want to talk to the other people. My
girlfriends are either going to pat me on the back and try to get
me to talk about things I don’t want to talk about, or just sit
there and wait patiently, thinking that will get me to talk.” She
put the glass down with so much force, the drink splashed onto her
hand. “I don’t
want
to talk—I talk about it enough. And the other
calls…”

She fell abruptly silent,
grabbing her drink.

When she set her drink down,
he reached out and caught her hand. “I’m glad you answered the
phone for me.”

“
I’m glad too.” She smiled.
Then she giggled. “I’m a little drunk, Drake. You know
that?”

“
Is that a
problem?”

“
No.” She closed her eyes
and rested her head against the back of her chair. “Drunk is good.
Unconscious and unable to dream, unable to remember, that would be
even better. Drake?”

“
Yeah?”

“
Can you make it so I can’t
remember?”

His throat went tight. He
could barely manage to breathe. Slipping out of his booth, he moved
to sit next to her. She leaned against him with a sigh. “No, baby.
I can’t. I would if I could, though. I’d take it all away if I
could.”

She
sniffled. Then she sighed and reached down, touching his inner
forearm, tracing a fingernail over the skin there, along the lines
of his tattoo. The stylized
S
. “You would, wouldn’t you,
Superman?”

“
Yeah.” He kissed her brow.
“I’d undo the past three years for you if I could figure out a
way.”

“
How about you just keep
holding me for a little while instead?”

“
Yeah.” He breathed in the
scent of her hair, felt the crack in his heart widen. “I can do
that.”

Chapter Two

Hours later, the effects of
tequila long since faded, Tania lay alone in her bed and wished
she’d found the courage to ask Drake to stay with her. He would
have, too. He would have sat by her bed, like he had in the
hospital, holding her hand, his blue eyes gentle while he kept
nightmares at bay.

But she hadn’t asked and she
would greet this day alone.

Damn it, she hated
January.

It had been three years
since she’d buried her husband.

Two years since his brother
had torn her life apart after she’d slowly started to try to live
all over again without the other half of her heart.

January 5.

Three in the morning.
Exactly two years after it had happened. Two years since that
night. Kent—damn him. Damn him straight to hell.

Tania shuddered, a sob
rising in her throat. She swallowed, trying to fight it
back.

Beg me,
bitch
…

There had been a time in her
life when words like that had made her burn with desire.

Not now, though. Now the
memory of those words filled her with dread, despair…and right now,
it was pissing her off.

Her life was in limbo and
she couldn’t move on until she got over this. Couldn’t move on
until she took her life back.

How much longer would it
take, she wondered? After two years, shouldn’t it get
better?

Two
years
.

Two years to the day since
somebody she’d known, had trusted, had cared for had broken into
her house and twisted her fantasies, turned them into
nightmares.

Two years since she’d killed
a man. The days and months and years fell away, and just like it
was that night all over again, she could see it happening
again—feel that first brutal shock, then the pain. The
horror.

She could remember the way
his eyes had widened when she’d pulled the trigger, and she
remembered seeing him fall. She’d squeezed the trigger a second
time, but he’d already been on the floor, bleeding out, and the
bullets had buried themselves in the wall in her
hallway.

Drake and some of his
friends had repaired that damage before she’d even come home from
the hospital—home to sleep in the same house where her husband’s
twin had attacked her.

For
months, she’d slept in the living room. Then the guest bedroom. It
was only in the past year that she’d managed to courage to come
back into this bedroom, and that was after she’d redecorated
everything
, after she’d
bought a new bed, new mattress… There was nothing here that Kent
could have tainted.

Nothing but her
memories.

And still his presence
lingered. Still, his ugliness ruined everything.

Two years…but it wasn’t
getting better. Wasn’t getting easier.

Fisting a
hand in the sheet, she tried to shove the memories away, tried to
reach for happier, better memories. They
existed
—there were even memories
involving words like
beg me, bitch
that were happier.

But even
as she tried to reach for them, she cringed, because just the image
of her husband’s face was enough to make her want to scream.
His
was
Kent’s
face.
His
eyes were
Kent’s
eyes. When she
tried to think of the happy memories, from the sweet and gentle, to
the fun and happy, to the kinky and hot, everything was warped by
that last, awful night when Kent had broken into her
home.

Yes—there
were happier memories, but they were all tainted by Kent’s touch,
and Tania just couldn’t
find
them anymore.
That
pissed her off almost as much as anything, because
he’d ruined memories of her husband. The bastard.

“
You son of a bitch,” she
whispered, her voice harsh, broken.

He’d taken away a part of
her—her fantasies, her sexuality, and he’d also stolen away a part
of the life she’d shared with her husband, taken away those
memories. With Kyle gone, every memory was precious and her
attacker had taken them, twisted them.

Wiping the tears away, she
sat up in the bed, clutching her pillow against her chest. “You
evil bastard.”

He hadn’t just been a
rapist. He’d been a thief, stealing something so precious. Taking
her sexuality was awful enough, but it kept her from thinking about
the memories with her husband—times she’d treasured.

She didn’t
know what she hated him for more—the theft of her memories or the
theft of hers
elf
.
Taking so much of who she was.