Capturing Kate (24 page)

“Sloan. You’re here?” Her voice was full of disbelief.

“Yeah. I’m here.” He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled it to his chest. “Kate. I needed to see you.”

“You did?” Wild hope suffused her body.

“I missed you too much.” He pulled back to look into her eyes.

“Sloan.” Her voice cracked. “If you’re only here to tell me no in person…”

He cut in. “Kate, my name is Michael Masters. I go by Sloan. I have an undergrad in psychology, and a PhD in criminal justice, and I’m an FBI agent. I’m a kinky bastard, and I fell for you while we were together in that cabin.” He took both of her hands. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Those eyes! His eyes. She’d seen them in her dreams, and here he was. She couldn’t stop staring.

He cleared his throat. “I have a dangerous job, and I’m not good at relationships, and I need to find out if you’re still—if you still want—fuck, Kate. I can’t wait the whole six months to see you again. When you sent that note?” He ended on a question.

She nodded. “Yeah. My note.”

“It made me think.”

She caught her breath. “What about?”

“You. And me.”

“And?” she couldn’t breathe.

“My shoulder healed fast, Kate. The pain went away. The thing that never healed? The way I miss you.”

“I missed you, too,” she whispered. “I tried, Sloan. I tried to forget about you. Everyone told me that I was just missing you because I’d bonded during stress, and that it wasn’t real. But it is real.”

He nodded. “I think so, too. Do you still want to try?”

Kate put both of her hands on his face. “I still want to try. To see what we can be.”

He put his hands on top of hers and took them into his. “I do, too.”

A sudden silence in the shop made Kate glance around: everyone was watching. Lila clapped without sound and smiled, her face full of surprise, shock, but also happiness.

Kate flushed. “Can we go somewhere else to talk?”

“Yeah. Come.”

He ran with her to his car and they got inside, laughing, wiping rain from their faces, and when she turned to him, he kissed her. A full-on, sexy kiss, his hands in her hair, pulling her lips to his, his tongue searching her mouth. She pushed into his body, running her hands over his chest, up his shoulders, over his cheekbones, lost in his taste and smell: the same and new. His leather jacket with rain. His cologne. The smell of his skin, all blended together into one concoction that made her dizzy with pleasure. It was the aroma of hope and passion.

When they broke apart, he touched her cheek with his knuckles, stroked. “I wanted to stay. When I left you in that room, with that fucking IV in your arm, it almost killed me. I wanted to stay and be the one to fix you. But I was part of the thing that broke you. It didn’t seem like it could work, ever. I didn’t think it was good for you to have me around.” His voice was pleading. “Do you understand? I wanted you more than anything. But I figured you were better off without me.”

“I didn’t think that,” she said. “And I still don’t. You didn’t break me. And I’m not broken.”

She thought about that, and repeated it, because it felt important that he know it. “I’m not broken, Sloan. That experience changed me, but it didn’t crush me. I made it through and I’m stronger for it. And you helped me make it.”

“I blamed myself for what happened,” he said. “My job was to keep you safe, and I failed.” He shook his head. “I’ll never forgive myself, and I didn’t think you should.”

She shook her head, too. “Sloan, what Allison did, nobody could have guessed. I don’t blame you. You got us out of there! We made it. And the fact that I—I stopped her in the end? That’s the thing that lets me live with this. Because I helped. I helped you and me. We saved each other.” Her voice was earnest. “You saved me, and then I got a chance to save you back. It keeps me sane, that I did something good out of all this nightmare.” She grabbed his hand. “I will never blame you for what happened.”

He took her hand. “Kate, I feel I don’t have a right to come here asking for another chance. I should have been the one there through the worst of it. I wasn’t. I couldn’t. But I want a chance for the future. If you can forgive me.”

She squeezed his fingers. “We’re both going to have to do a lot of forgiving and accepting, I think. But it’s worth it.”

His face fell. “You do blame me.” He pulled back and his face was anguished.

She grabbed his arm. “I have to forgive
myself
for things. Forgive the
universe
. Let go of anger at Mancini, Allison, Ella. Me. I have rage, Sloan. Not for you, but—just lots of rage. So when I say
forgive
, I don’t even know what that means, but I have to let go of emotion. I think you do, too. It might take a while.” She licked her lips, nervous. “Maybe it will be too stressful to be with me while I do that. While we both do it.”

“No.” He pulled her into his arms. “Don’t say that. We’ll do it together, okay? It will be better together.”

“All I know is that I feel better with you than away from you,” she confessed. “I’m not saying this will be easy. But I think it will be worth it.”

“You sure?” He put his hands on either side of her face and looked into her eyes. “Really sure?”

She twined her hand with his. “Sloan, I know we were only together a short time. And I know that maybe part of the emotions were due to the drama. But we’ll never know if we don’t try. And I—I love you. Maybe it’s too soon to know that. Maybe it’s crazy. But I do, okay? I just do, and I don’t think that’s going to go away.”

“Kate, I love you, too.” His voice was full of wonder, then he said it again firmly, “I love you.”

“People are going to think we’re insane,” she said, burrowing into his jacket, opening the unzipped flap to get closer to his heartbeat. His warm, dry shirt. His hard body.

“Do you care what people think?”

“Not really. I’m just saying.” She took a breath and her voice came out firm. “I don’t care what anyone says, not my therapist, not anyone. If we want to get together, we’ll be together.” She let her breath out into his body.

He squeezed her hard. “Damn right we will.”

She smiled into his chest. “We can make flash cards. Signs on sticks. If someone looks at us and points, you can hold up the one that says, ‘Fuck off.’ And I’ll hold up one that says, ‘Go away, bitches.’” Kate giggled into his shoulder, then lifted her head to his face. “What should we do now?”

He bit her neck. “I have a few ideas.”

She screamed out as he bit harder. “After that! After.”

“I don’t know,” he said, putting a hand on her cheek. “But we can figure it out together. My job—I’m willing to make changes, Kate. I’m ready to start doing more project management and fewer operations. We’ll find a mix that works. Chicago’s not so far from Maryville. We can see each other every weekend. Hell, I can drive up here and back during the week.”

“You can sleep over,” she whispered in his ear, shy and excited.

“I don’t think we’ll do much sleeping, but yeah. I like that idea,” he whispered back.

“You came back. For me.” She was entranced with his eyes. She traced a finger up his jaw, then cupped his cheek in her hand. “For me.”

“For us.” He kissed her a
gain, and they melted together.

Epilogue

One year later

“Kate, can you please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop flashing that thing around? You’re sending such powerful rays of shine into my eyes that I’m going blind.” Lila threw her hands up and staggered. “The pain!”

“This?” Kate held up her left hand and extended the fingers, moving the ring back and forth in the beam of sun. “You mean my ring?”

“I mean your death star. Yes.” Lila straightened up and laughed. “I think that weighs more than you do.”

“That must mean my diet is working and I can have another donut.” Kate beamed. “I still can’t get used to it. I’m engaged, Lila.”

“Yes. I know. We all know. I’m going to have to stock a bin of dark sunglasses at the door for customers.”

“You’re so funny. Dr. Fischbein will love me, though. I think he only gets cataracts and stuff these days. He’d love to do some corneal replacements, I bet.”

Lila came over and gave Kate a one-armed hug, a mug in her other hand. “Seriously, though. I’m happy for you today and every day. Really happy. Seeing you shine like this is so good. I thought you were excited about the promotion at work around Christmas. But this is even better.”

“I feel good.” Kate smiled and touched the ridges where the diamond met the platinum, small metal prongs that were powerful enough to hold in a million years of carbon compressed into crystal. “Really good. Speaking of good, I have to get going. Sloan and I have to—well, I need to meet him.”

She flushed. It was probably not okay to say, “
Sloan and I have to have some kinky sex and he promised to fuck me good and hard, so I need to get going. If I’m late, I’ll get a spanking.
” There were some things that were just, you know, private.

“Well, have a good
meeting
.” Lila wiggled her eyebrows. She knew that Kate and Sloan were adventurous; Kate didn’t give explicit details but she talked so excitedly about Sloan so often that some things slipped.

“Oh, I will. We always do!” Kate waved and took off, admiring the ring once again as she did.

* * *

Sloan was waiting in her bedroom. Seated on the chair beside her bed, legs spread, thighs powerful in his jeans, he looked like the dominant fantasy man of her dreams. He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Five minutes late.”

“I’m sorry. I got caught up, you know, bragging about my ring. Important stuff.”

She flashed her hand backwards at him, and caught him suppressing a smile.

“You know what happens when you’re late.” His low, stern voice sent pangs of arousal and anticipation surging through her body.

“Um, you say, ‘Oh, baby, I’m sorry you had such a busy morning showing off your rock, can I make you a Frappuccino from scratch and serve it to you on a silver platter’?” she guessed, unbuttoning her shirt, flicking the fabric aside with each new move.

His eyes traced the path of her hands. “Guess again.” A muscle clenched in his jaw when she dropped the shirt to the floor and cupped her lacy bra in her hands.

“You tell me that I have the prettiest tits in the world, and that you’re so glad to suck them that you don’t mind that I’m late?” She bent over to make the flesh spill up into her hands, and smiled to watch his eyes flare.

“They are, but nope.”

She shucked her pants and flipped the string of her lacy panties against her hip. “Maybe you decide that you need to lick me into a screaming orgasm to teach me a lesson about timeliness?”

He was hard. She could see his length through the jeans. As always, she marveled at the way her words and movements could do this to him, and how all it took was his sexy voice to get her wet, needy, practically begging for his touch. They were sexual dynamite together.

“Oh, I’ll do that and I’ll fucking love it. But first, something else needs to happen. Do you remember what that is?”

“I just can’t say that I do.” She turned around and bent over the bed, spreading her legs and wiggling her ass. She looked over her shoulder provocatively, biting her lip. “You might need to remind me. With your cock.”

“Oh, I’ll remind you all right,” he growled and stood up, hands going to his belt. “You want a reminder with my belt or with the hairbrush, Kate?”

“How about neither?” she squeaked. “I’ve been so good lately! Right?”

“You’re always good,” he whispered into her ear, bending over her body and pressing his chest to her back, his hips to her buttocks. “And when I spank you, you’re even better. Take off those panties and decide right now, or you’ll get both.”

Instead of replying, she pushed her ass back into his hips, grinding against him, hard through his jeans. He reached around to grab her breast and squeezed the nipple hard, just hard enough to arouse delicious spikes of pain and pleasure. “I’m waiting, Kate. You know I’d enjoy doing both. Spanking your ass gets me hot.”

“‘But how can I take off the panties with this huge cock blocking my way?” she said innocently, pushing into him again, making him groan and grab at her with both hands now. “I don’t feel like I’m getting a fair chance here.”

“You’re a creative girl. I bet you’ll think of something,” he replied, twisting both nipples at once. She cried out and jerked in his hands, but she loved it. He knew just how to touch her with the combination of rough and tender, a mix that got her passion soaring. Over the past year, they’d learned each other’s bodies intimately, finding the ways that worked to best tease and satisfy, to torment and bring torrents of bliss.

“Touch me,” she whispered.

He bit her neck and licked down the bite, then growled, “First you’re getting over my lap for a punishment. I made the rule about not being late for our appointments, and you agreed to the consequences.”

She sucked in her breath. They’d been playing at dominance and submission, a game that was both pretend and real at once. She had the right and the ability to say no at any time, but the thing was that she didn’t want to.

She liked being his to command in the bedroom. It got her hot. It made him so attractive to her that she wanted to jump him every time she saw him. She liked being punished, because his dominance made her weak with pleasure. The punishment spankings hurt, and she wanted them to stop in the middle of one, but she also didn’t want them to stop. Not enough to
make
him stop. She loved being spanked without control; the pain fed her pleasure, the dominance fed her sexuality. It was a strange dichotomy, but it was hers, and she accepted it.

He’d promised never to injure her, and he never had. She was sore after a spanking, but it was the good kind of sore—the lasting tingle that made her think of him all day. It wasn’t glaring pain that made work or life impossible; he’d never do that, and she’d never let him. They fell into a routine without needing to discuss it—if she was cranky and pissy, he spanked her harder for it, unless she let him know through her body language and expressions that she just needed to cuddle on the couch. Sometimes they did both. He spanked her for both of their pleasure, and lately, they’d agreed to try using spanking as a way to encourage more submission in the bedroom, as long as it fed both of their pleasure in the long run.