Falling Hard (Billionaires in Disguise: Lizzy, #1) (19 page)

Lizzy sucked in air.

Fear trembled in her gut, and she grabbed
that fear and choked it like the weakness it was. “Tonight is a
trial scene, right?”

He pivoted on his heel and looked at her.
“Yes. After this, if we seem compatible, we’ll have a long
conversation about boundaries and the extent and responsibilities
of our relationship, but tonight, we can explore each other.” The
dim overhead lights glinted in the gray-blue sky of Mannix’s eyes.
“Sometimes, the danger of exploring boundaries can be
interesting.”

“Condom,” Lizzy said, making sure it sounded
nothing like a question.

“Absolutely, unless we share our medical
histories and mutually decide otherwise.”

If she wanted a relationship with Mr.
Smolder, this was the way, and she wasn’t a weakling who would run
at the first sting. “A trial scene, then.”

He swept across the room in a heartbeat and
stood in front of her, his hands on her upper arms. “Even tonight,
you will do as I say, everything I say. Unless you use your safe
word, you submit to
my
desires.”

Fear closed her throat so she nodded, but she
was so turned on that she could barely breathe. Her body vibrated
with a high-pitched tone, wanting him.

Mannix dipped his head, and his breath
whispered from her shoulder, up the tendons of her neck, and to her
ear. “Say it.”

Lizzy choked out, “I submit,” and Mannix
grabbed her.

His lips weren’t softly seductive this time,
and he didn’t coax her. He
took
her lips with his. He
dragged her body to himself, pressing the breath out of her.

Lizzy glanced up at the eye in the sky, a
black globe that gathered all the light around it, knowing that
Jeff or some other guy would be in the booth, protecting her, just
in case Mannix’s exploration of her boundaries got too rough.

He broke off the kiss and scraped his teeth
down her neck, obviously holding back from biting her. “I’m going
to remove your clothes now, and then I’m going to tie you up and
explore your pain tolerance. Do you submit?”

Lizzy gathered a deep breath.
Pain is
weakness leaving the body.
“I submit.”

Fourteen years before, Lizzy held onto the
side of the vaulting table, balancing, while her father screamed at
her in front of all the other little girls in the gym, who looked
away, embarrassed for her. Her other leg dangled, just the toe
touching the blue mat. Her ankle swelled around the blue tape
binding it. Pain spiked in the joint between her small bones. “But
it hurts,” she said. “I need to stop.”

She was so tiny back then, back when she
thought that whining about pain would result in sympathy.

“
Nyet,”
her father said. Towering over
two feet taller than she was, Viktor Pajari shouted in Russian at
her. His sweaty hair flopped on his forehead. “Olga didn’t quit
training because of little sprain! Nadia didn’t quit! Neither did
Veronika or Mary Lou or Mallory. If you want them to say that
Elisaveta did not quit, then you
don’t quit!
You give
everything you have to gymnastics!
Everything!”

“But it hurts. I just want to rest.”

“You are eight years old, Elisaveta! Quit
whining!”

“I just want to sit down for a few
minutes.”

“
Nyet!
Back to vault. Five runs and
then you can work on bars to rest weak leg. You are weak, afraid of
such minor injury! Fear is weakness. I don’t want to hear, and I
don’t want to see any evidence, or you work longer on vault!”

He cuffed her on the back of the head,
throwing her off balance. She grabbed the leather-covered vaulting
table and put her foot down to keep from falling flat on her face
on the gym mats. A dagger of pain drove into her leg. She
gasped.

“Go practice now! You give it all. You give
it everything you have, or you regret it tonight. We have only nine
months until nationals. Every moment counts! Pain is weakness
leaving body!”

Across the mats, Lizzy’s mother was watching
another girl flip back handsprings on a low practice balance beam.
She shook her head at Elisaveta, her lips pressed tightly
together.

Elisaveta strode over to the vault, not
limping. Her father was mad, and her mom was mad. Tonight at home
was going to be tough.

Home had been tough ever since the last
Olympics three months ago when none of the girls from the Pajari
Gym had medaled.

Elisaveta had eight years until her own
Olympics in 2008.

Maybe she could hide in the closet for an
hour or so tonight with the Nancy Drew book that she got from the
school library. Elisaveta could curl herself down to a very tiny
ball when she needed to.

She stood at the end of the vault runway and
stretched to her toes, preparing. Her ankle ached. The mats led to
the springboard, the vault, and the air that she would fly
through.

The runway was only twenty-five meters, which
was eighty-two feet. She could survive anything for twenty-five
meters.

Lizzy sprinted, muscular thighs pumping and
calloused feet slapping the tacky mats, running full tilt at the
vault. The crack in her cuboid bone in her ankle shot agony into
her right leg with every step.

Elisaveta’s mind shifted, refusing the pain,
refusing the fear, refusing to feel anything.

With every step, the pain faded.

She ran harder.

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Lizzy held her breath as her gold cocktail
dress crumpled around her feet on the black leather bench. The
cloth glittered from the wan recessed lights.

Mannix slid her panties over her slim hips
and let them fall on top of the dress. His hands circled her waist,
and with the slightest push, he lifted her out of her clothes. The
flashing cloth fell to the floor, and Lizzy stood naked except for
her black pumps.

His hands were still around her waist, thumbs
and fingers almost touching. “You’re so small.”

“Yeah,” Lizzy said. “I didn’t grow much.”

Mannix’s look was sharp. “The Dom said that
you are twenty-two.”

Lizzy nodded. “Yep, for another couple
months. Swear to God. I just didn’t grow.”

Actually, she had grown. When she was
seventeen, she had grown three inches, getting her near enough to
five feet that she could claim it without fibbing too much.

He ran his hands up her thin ribs to the
sides of her small breasts, which she thought of as pecs instead of
boobs. He said, “Don’t misunderstand: I’m not criticizing.” His
light blue eyes glanced up at hers, startling in their intensity
from his black lashes. “I get rough. I don’t hold back.”

She settled her arms around his shoulders.
His gaze was solemn, and she said, “I’m not asking you to.”

His bulky arms, wrapped around her, was like
being trapped by steel bands lined with iron globes. His fingers
ran up her short hair and pressed her body to his. She fit her thin
arms around his neck, feeling small and overpowered.

The fire in her body leapt.

His hands groped her waist and hips, nearly
bruising, but he released her flesh at the instant between pain and
damage. His lips on hers became rougher, sucking and biting.
Lizzy’s lips swelled under his attack.

His hand slid around her hip and over her
ass, and he kept going. His fingers gripped her thigh, lifting her
leg to wrap it around his waist. Her pussy opened, and cool air
brushed her for just a moment before his fingers slid back up her
thigh.

Lizzy held her breath, her lips still against
his warm mouth, and her heart thumped, waiting.

He dipped his head to mouth her neck, heating
the skin there. His hand warmed the back and inside of her leg and
crept higher.

It didn’t matter. He didn’t have a magic
dick, and she was Sisyphus’s motherfucking rock.

Her heart beat like trapped birds.

His hand reached her pussy. His fingertips
stroked her thin skin down there, slipping on her light blond fuzz.
The skin between her legs felt smooth, like the skin on her thigh,
and rubbing there brought her no particular pleasure.

Mannix’s breath on her neck was even and
smooth, not rough with desire, and he opened his mouth to scrape
his teeth over the trapezius muscle that ran from her neck to her
shoulder. Shivers fanned over her skin. His sharp teeth snagged her
fine skin.

Her breath stuttered out of her lips, and she
gasped it back in.

His fingers slipped between her legs and
massaged, searching. Lizzy arched her back and tightened her arms
around his neck, holding on.

God, this was dangerous. BDSM scenes were
supposed to be as choreographed as a gymnastics routine, with
boundaries discussed and consent given and training for months
ahead of time.

The danger sparked fear, and she choked the
fear. She became stronger.

His fingers caressed her folds, gently
sliding over the skin.

She buried her face against his corded neck
and squeezed her hands into fists. Fear was weakness. His scent
wafted out of his shirt, like a green forest and natural male.

As she clenched her fists, the fear
receded.

She lifted her head, feeling for what he was
doing. Mannix’s fingers slid gently over her slit and opening, but
the skin down there felt like the skin on her back. His stroking
felt like a backrub, nice, but a backrub.

Back to normal, then. She sighed.

His fingers moved away from her slit and down
her leg, like he could tell that it wasn’t doing anything for
her.

Mannix’s arm around her waist firmed as his
muscles flexed, and he lifted her whole body with just his one arm.
Her feet dangled, and she stretched her toes but found only cold
air.

He reared his head back and kissed her, still
holding her against himself. She held onto his neck even though his
grip around her waist seemed secure.

Every time he showed off his strength, she
felt smaller, and her body tingled.

Mannix walked a few steps and slid Lizzy down
his body again. He untangled her arms from around his neck, and she
dropped farther down. Her head could have rested in the middle of
his chest. He bent and ran both hands along her waist, up her ribs,
and lifted her arms above her head. She was still looking up,
looking to see what he was doing to her arms, when he whipped a
rope around her wrists, tying her hands together and above her
head. The rope stretched her so far that, if her knees had given
out, she might have sagged only a few inches.

Her knees didn’t give out. She wouldn’t give
in to fear.

With that, and with knowing that he wasn’t
going to try to make her orgasm and embarrass her anymore, steel
poured into Lizzy’s core.

He had said that he was going to explore her
pain tolerance.

She hoped he was ready to be impressed.

He stepped around behind her, and she stared
at the closed dungeon door across the room. Wrought iron hinges
held the right side. A black knob studded wooden planks to the
left.

She watched it, waiting.

The air whistled behind her, and stripes
blazed across her back.

She arched from the shock of it, but the pain
was nothing. A cry died in her throat.

Pain had wracked her body constantly for
years, both during training and at night when she had often had
trouble finding a way to lie in her bed to sleep that didn’t press
a bruise or cracked rib, and that kind of pain meant that she was
training hard enough. Broken bones hurt far worse than a few stings
on her skin. Torn ligaments and ripped muscles could hurt worse
than bone cracks and took longer to heal.

More stripes of pain. Harder. Deeper.

She bowed backward to take the force, her
shoulder blades contracting, and she gasped.

The harsh rope scraped her wrists.

Another lash flayed her back.

She grabbed the rope above her head and held
on, taking the weight off her wrist joints.

Another lash. More pain.

Pain is weakness leaving the body.

Lizzy’s mind shifted, denying the pain,
refusing the fear, not feeling anything.

With every lash, the pain faded.

Lizzy drifted.

At the boxing gym, in one of the back rooms
where men worked on their boxing skills, Theo battered a heavy bag,
punching hard. His boxing gloves smacked the bag hard in jab-hook
combinations. Shock waves ricocheted up the bones of his arms,
jarring his shoulders and thundering down the strong muscles in his
back.

From the other side of the bag, his gym buddy
Jorge grunted, sliding backward from the force of Theo’s blows.
Behind him, speed bags clattered, and men grunted, doing
synchronized sit-ups on the floor mats. Red bricks staggered up the
walls, and the bags were crimson, as if a matador had decorated the
gym to enrage bulls and boxers.

Theo was too honest. Not holding back was a
bad habit. Telling Lizzy about the background check had been
stupid.

Sweat flicked from Theo’s hair, stinging his
eyes. The gym stank of angry men and uncontrolled aggression. He
slammed his fists into the bag again and again.

Such unlimited honesty was a fatal flaw in a
lawyer, and it had cost him what might have been a good
relationship.

God, what an idiot he was.

His New Jersey vocabulary rose in his mind:
mother
fucker
, always pronounced as two words, emphasis on
the second word, and Theo was a mother
fucking
idiot.

He slammed the heavy bag, punishing it.

Theo punched it over and over, for a long
time, but the anger didn’t fade.

“Okay,” he said to Jorge and stood, shaking
out his arms. “Your turn.”

Theo jammed his shoulder against the bag
while Jorge beat on it.