Dangerously Bound (28 page)

He reached under her, found her pussy already wet.

“Have to just fuck you, baby.” He guided his cock to her opening, rammed inside her
all at once. “Fuck, yeah . . .”

“Oh!”

He pulled back, thrust hard again, needing it to be hard and fast and merciless for
reasons he didn’t understand. He took one of her arms and twisted it behind her back,
held it there as he plunged into her over and over.

Pleasure was like a hammer, pounding into him. She was moaning, crying out, and he
felt her sex tighten around him.
He reached around her and found the tight nub of her clit. He tugged on it, pinched,
twisted the tender flesh between his fingers as he rammed into her.

“God, Mick!”

She came, her sweet pussy clenching around him, then drenching him with her pleasure.
It was too much for him. He came in a torrent of fiery sensation, fucking her harder
and harder, pleasure and heat blinding him as he shivered inside her.

“Baby, baby, baby . . .”

He could barely breathe. He’d barely stopped coming and he needed her again already.

He slipped out of her, turning her and pulling her into his arms. Hers went around
his neck.

“You okay?” she asked.

“What? I’m so good, baby girl.”

And it was true. Partly. The other part he’d either ignore until it went away, or
he’d just keep fucking Allie until it disappeared. It was either that or go fight.
He had to admit the fucking was better.

She stood on her toes and kissed his neck.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to need you again in about five minutes.”

She stepped back, kicked her way out of her sandals and pulled her dress over her
head. Her eyes were a smoldering gold. “Ready when you are.”

She offered her hand to him and he took it, let her take him to her bedroom, where
he got out of his clothes and pushed her down on the bed.

“Hands and knees,” he told her.

He wasn’t even certain himself why he was being so curt with her. But she wasn’t fighting
it, didn’t seem to mind. But when he came up behind her and started to wrap his T-shirt
around her
eyes, she pushed it away. “Hard limit, Mick,” she reminded him. “I just can’t.”

“No problem, baby.”

He dropped the shirt and reached under her, sliding his hands over her breasts and
playing with her nipples. They went hard immediately.

“Does that feel good, Allie girl?”

“I like it.”

“But . . . ?”

“But I need you to pinch them.”

“Like this?” He twisted the stiffening flesh between thumb and forefinger. She groaned.
“I take that as a yes?”

“Mmm, yes . . .”

Hearing her moans, feeling her heat up beneath him, was making him hard again. He
felt the desire like a pressure inside his body, his balls, his cock.

“Gotta fuck you again,” he said, as much to himself as to her.

He arched his hips until his cock pressed against her sex. She was wet, the lips slick
and swollen.

He let the tip slide there, back and forth in the liquid heat of her body, before
he pushed inside.

Yes, this was what he needed. To lose himself in her. In pure, mindless pleasure.
In the primal nature of fucking.

He plunged into her over and over, his grip on her lush body tightening, his fingers
digging into her hips. But it wasn’t about giving her pain. It wasn’t about kink at
all. Maybe it wasn’t even about sex. It was more about forgetting.

He came, his body shaking, and collapsed on top of her. It was a long while before
he caught his breath and realized he was probably crushing her.

“Fuck. Sorry, babe.”

He rolled off her and she turned onto her side, looking at him. She laid her hand
on his chest.

“You okay?” she asked again.

“Fine. You keep asking me that.”

“I’m just . . .” She paused, bit her lip. “Checking.”

He wasn’t quite fine. Not yet. But he would be. There was just something about seeing
his family—seeing them with Allie at his side—that made things more painfully clear.
But he couldn’t think about it now. He didn’t want to.

Some things were just too dark and ugly to look at in the light of a Sunday afternoon.

H
E WOKE AT
six a.m., the morning gray and overcast. Allie was asleep beside him, unmoving except
for the gentle rise and fall of her breasts. He’d kept her up late, had gone out to
his truck to get his rope bag at one point and tied her up, practicing some complicated
knots on her. This morning he had to admit it had been mostly so they didn’t have
to talk more than it was the pure pleasure of the rope work—either hers or his own.

He hated himself a little for that.

Flash of that cold morning when he’d gotten up and left her sleeping all those years
ago. His heart in his throat as he looked at her one last time, so fucking beautiful,
her head pillowed on one arm, eyes closed, long lashes against her cheeks. That tearing
sensation as he left her behind. The churning in his gut for days after. The bottle
of Scotch he’d finished that night while he’d justified his actions to himself over
and over.

He wasn’t good enough for her.

Never had been. Allie was a good girl. What the hell had he done?

He’d hated himself then, too.

“Fuck,” he muttered, sitting up in the bed and running his hands over his head, rubbing
the grit out of his eyes. “This is different.”

But was it, ultimately?

He felt twitchy, and he hated feeling twitchy. It only meant one thing.

He got up and found his clothes and came back to the bedroom, intending to tell her
he was leaving. But she looked too peaceful to wake—that was what he was telling himself,
anyway—one arm thrown over her eyes, her hair spread out on the pillows. He watched
her sleeping for several minutes before he turned to leave.

New Orleans was quiet this early on a Monday morning. The quiet was giving him far
too much time to think. About everything he could have—should have—been. And he didn’t
want to go there. But it was too late, wasn’t it?

His head was pounding, his heart racing, as he turned on some music, loud, head-banging
metal, and let it drown out his thoughts as he drove the all-too-familiar route to
the club on the Pontchartrain Expressway. He parked and jumped out. The warehouse
doors were closed. He pulled and found them locked.

“What the fuck?”

There was always someone at the club. Unless it had been raided over the weekend and
he hadn’t heard about it.

He kicked the door with his boot. It hurt, the pain reverberating up his leg, but
he did it again, anyway.

“God fucking damn it.”

He needed the club right now. Needed to fight.

He jumped in his truck and gunned the engine, heading for his gym instead.

It didn’t take him long to get there, only minutes to change. The place was mostly
empty this early in the morning. The before-work crowd would arrive any time, though.
He found Antoine on his back, bench pressing as he came out of the locker room.

“Spar?” he asked him without preamble.

Antoine set the bar back on the stand with a puff of breath. “Sure. You want to warm
up first?”

“Not really, but I will,” he muttered, ignoring Antoine’s curious stare.

He did a quick tape job on his hands and worked the speed bag first, really laying
into it, working up a quick sweat. It felt good, that burn in his muscles, the impact
of the bag against his knuckles. But he needed a challenge. He went to find Antoine,
who was still working out with the weights.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Antoine looked up, set the heavy dumbbells down. “Okay. Let’s go.”

They ducked under the ropes and stepped into the ring. Antoine started to move right
away—he was always good with the footwork. But Mick felt his brain settle into laser-focus.
He threw the first punch, but Antoine ducked. And it pissed him off.

He went after him, managed to land a fist on his chest, a kick to the thigh, then
another punch to the body.

“Hey! What the hell is up with you, man?” Antoine yelled.

But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. His bad leg ached. It only made frustration boil
through him. Made him think the words that had haunted him most of his life.

Failure.

He remembered in a flash the doctor coming in after his leg surgery, telling him he’d
never be able to pass the physical required to be a firefighter. He remembered the
look on his
father’s face, the shock and dismay he’d tried to hide. But Mick had seen it. Had
felt it every damn day since.

Fuckup.

He remembered all the times he’d come home after curfew. Cut school. Hurt Allie. Hurt
his family. Hurt his own chance at the life he
should
have fucking had.

Antoine fought back, finally taking Mick down to the mat with a roundhouse. He held
him down.

“What the
fuck
, Mick? You gone crazy?”

He was breathing hard, his airway partially constricted by Antoine’s elbow across
his throat. “Let me up.”

“Not until you explain yourself.”

“I can’t.”

Antoine was silent for several moments before shoving himself off him. He stood up.
“You need to figure your shit out, man. Go take a sauna or something.”

Mick glared at him.

Antoine crossed his arms. “You wanna tell me what you’re trying to prove? Fucking
coming after me in a spar, man. If I didn’t know you, I’d think you had some kind
of death wish.”

Hadn’t he thought the same thing not that long ago? Mick sat up, then got to his feet.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of one arm.
“Sorry I’m being an asshole. Rough morning.”

“Yeah, well go spread that sunshine somewhere else. I don’t need it.” Antoine shook
his head and walked away, leaving Mick in the middle of the ring, anger still bubbling
like some black cauldron in his belly.

He needed to fight. But the fight he needed wasn’t with Antoine.

He left the ring, left the gym, driving home too fast in the morning traffic.

What he needed was dirty and rough and illegal. He’d make some calls until he found
it.

*   *   *

A
LLIE WOKE ALONE.
She knew even before getting out of bed that her house was empty, Mick gone, and
it weighed on her heart. It wasn’t like him to leave without saying good-bye.

She got up and checked her phone. Nothing.

He’d been so weird the night before. Even the sex had been weird. Strained. Desperate.
But she’d had some sense of giving him something he needed. She’d thought it would
be enough.

Her body was sore from the workout he’d given her. It would have felt good if she
didn’t feel this sense of dread. She got in the shower, blasting the hot water to
ease some of the aches, trying to figure out what to do as she washed her hair.

Should she try to call him? Or give him the space that men sometimes needed to clear
their heads?

It was obvious he didn’t want to discuss how the conversation at his parents’ house
had left him feeling. She understood it—as much as she could, anyway. She tried. But
his family obviously adored him—they certainly didn’t find him lacking, didn’t treat
him any differently. He did it all to himself. Didn’t he have to find some way to
deal with it eventually? That’s what she didn’t quite get. Didn’t he want to?

If only he would let her help him.

She shut off the water, stepped out to dry herself and saw her bruises in the mirror—the
marks on her thighs and arms and breasts from the ropes. They hadn’t even done any
heavy impact play, but he’d used a lot of knots—that was what had marked her. That
and his teeth in a few places. Normally she would have gloried in her marks, but this
morning she knew they’d
come from a place of desperation and pain, and it only made her chest go tight with
concern for him. And a little impatience.

Where the hell was he?

She wrapped her hair in a towel and herself in her robe and went into the living room
to boot up her laptop and check her email. Sure enough, there was one from Mick.

Allie,

Sorry about my early departure—I woke up and found a message on my phone from one
of my clients. I didn’t want to wake you. I’ll be tied up with this job all day. Talk
to you later, babe.

Mick

Babe
. That’s what he called her when he needed to distance himself. Not
baby
, like he usually did. Not
princess
. Not that she needed to see that to know. He’d called her
babe
last night. Had had sex with her only from behind. Had hardly looked into her eyes
since they’d left his parents’ place.

She’d felt his emotions, even though he’d tried to hide them from her. She
knew
him, and she’d felt it bone deep. And she understood with just as much clarity now
that the email was a lie. There was no client. No message. No job. Only his anger
and the guilt that had been eating him up for most of his adult life.

And there was nothing she could do.

She’d be thoroughly pissed if she didn’t get how much he was hurting. It made
her
hurt.

Tears welled in her eyes. She wiped them away, frustrated. Mick was just going to
have to work through this himself. There wasn’t
a damn thing she could do for him. Because he wouldn’t let her. She’d have to wait
and see if what they had together was reason enough for him to do what he hadn’t done
in years. Move on.

*   *   *

I
T WAS ALMOST
ten that night when her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID before answering.

“Hi, Jamie.”

She wasn’t in the mood to chat—it had been one of those endless, dragging days while
she pretended her feelings weren’t hurt, pretended she hadn’t been practically sitting
on top of her phone—but maybe he’d talked to Mick.

“Allie, Mick’s hurt.”

“Well just launch right into your agenda without even saying hello, why don’t you?
And he’s the one who left this morning without saying a word to me.”

“No.
Hurt
, Allie. He’s in the emergency room.”

“What?” Shock coursed through her, then panic. “Tell me.”

“He took a pretty hard hit to the head. Lost consciousness for at least a few minutes,
apparently. Someone dropped him off here—I don’t even know who. The hospital called
me—I’m in his cell phone as his emergency contact.”

“Oh my God. How bad is it?”

“He’s having a CT scan now. But he was awake. Alert enough that he made me promise
not to call you.”

“He asked you
not
to call me? Did he think I wouldn’t find out? Jesus.” She pushed her hair out of
her face, blew out a breath. “Okay. Okay. I appreciate you calling. Thank you, Jamie.”

“Of course. I thought you should know.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“I don’t think you need to come down here. Mick said—”

“Are you kidding? I’m coming!”

She hung up before he could argue any further. She didn’t care what Mick had told
him. They didn’t even know how bad it was, and wouldn’t until they got the scan results.
She wasn’t going to just sit at home waiting for the bad news.

She slid into a pair of sandals, remembered to grab a sweater along with her purse
and headed out the door.

*   *   *

W
HY WERE HOSPITALS
always so white?

She hadn’t had the need to walk into a hospital too many times in her life—once as
a kid when she’d sprained her ankle falling off her bike, again in Paris when she’d
burned her hand on an oven, the last time to visit a friend who’d been in a mountain
bike accident. And of course in high school they had all rushed to the hospital the
night Brandon died, everyone huddled together in these same sterile, garishly lit
hallways. She got the chills just thinking about that awful night.

But this was where Mick was, and she
had
to see him. See if he was okay. She didn’t think she could stand it if he wasn’t.

Her jaw clenched as she walked into the emergency room and up to the desk.

“I’m here to see Mick Reid. He was brought in tonight.”

“Are you his wife?” the woman at the desk asked.

“I’m his . . .” But what was she? “Are you going to let me in if I’m not?”

“I’ll have to check.”

She blew out a breath. If he hadn’t wanted Jamie to call, he certainly wasn’t going
to invite her back there to see him.

She leaned over the desk and said quietly, “Look. Mick is my boyfriend, for lack of
a more grown-up term. He’s been injured. I need to see him. Please. Or find our friend—he
called me to come down here.” A small lie, but she didn’t care.

The woman was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Okay. You can go back. He’s in . . .”
She tapped a few keys on her computer. “He’s in number four.”

“Thank you.”

She gripped her sweater in her hands as she moved through the heavy automatic doors.

She passed an open curtain, caught a glimpse of an empty gurney. Her stomach knotted.

Papa being taken away on the big metal bed, his face covered. Why did they have to
cover his face? He couldn’t breathe right if they covered his face.