Steel Dominance (38 page)

“What are you thinking?” Then more words tumbled out, ones she hadn’t meant to say. “Am I a monster?”

“No. God no. Never.” He reached out to delicately trace the neckline of her bodice. His irises were a strong brown. She’d always loved seeing them up close, like this. Like a traveler arriving home after years away, she felt the surge of their connection again. This was her Dankyo, not the cold fish of the last hour or so. “Sofia, can you forgive me?”

That finger of his, near her breasts… She breathed deep as heat suffused her groin, and almost wriggled but stopped herself. A smile graced his lips, then spread to his eyes, showing in the tiny wrinkles about them.
Smug bastard, he knows he’s arousing me.

“Forgive you? No. Not yet.”
Oh damn, why’d I say that?

“No?” The universe seemed to stop. Despite the lack of expression on his face, she figured she’d hurt him.

“I… The truth. This all bothered me, this last week. I didn’t understand why. I guess I do now, but not how you could be any part of this. I don’t understand how you couldn’t tell me anything. I mean not even a hint, just before you left on this mission, or whatever. But, still…”

Hesitantly, she reached up to run her hand over his hair, enjoying the way the soft bristles flicked under her palm, and then with her fingers she followed the shape of his face to his jaw.

We’re touching again
. That alone made everything settle around her. “Talk to me, please.”

“I did send a message. Theo had it intercepted. But, I thought he might do something like this. I should have come and told you.”

“Oh.” Better. But, for a whole week she’d thought he’d abandoned her.

Dankyo toyed with a ribbon on her bodice.

“I’m not good at this, at saying feelings.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to do as Theodore asked. But it was an order. Choosing between him and you was impossible.”

“Then why did you choose him?” She was asking him the hardest of questions. Her own hurt nudged her into ever deeper waters. She prayed this wouldn’t sink her somewhere she, they, couldn’t recover from. “I mean, I know how close you are to Theo. And expecting you to choose me over him is ridiculous, but…” She shrugged. The bodice moved over her breasts, teasing her nipples, and she saw him notice. “I don’t know what I’m asking.”

“In the end, I didn’t choose him over you.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple working. “I came back here despite orders to the contrary.”

Oh
. Mouth open, the depths of what that meant thumped into her like a boulder dropped from a cliff. Dankyo and Theo were as close as two peas in a pod.
I have come between them. I’m sure that’s
… “That makes me feel awful. I’m sorry.”

“Not pleased?”

She shook her head, stopped. “I’m not happy it’s upset how you and Theo get along, but I am happy you came back for me. Only thing is…” She whispered in a glum tone. “Did you think I was a monster, when you saw those reports?”

The way he paused gave him away.

“Oh.” She stared at the buttons on his shirt. “You did.”

“Yes, for a while. Which is why I asked if you could forgive me. Then I started to feel he was wrong, but I couldn’t prove it.”

Forgive him
. She whirled through all the implications of what he’d said and what Theo had told her.
Truth is, I am someone odd now. I don’t even know what I am.

She peered up at him while she played with the line of his jaw, feeling the stubble rasp her skin. Either say no, and run away, or yes, and accept reality. “I do forgive you. Thank you for explaining.”

He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “You still have to be careful. That book—Zigzag dropped it on my foot.”

She gaped. “No.”

“He had it in his mouth, and he dropped it. That was while you were angry at me, wasn’t it? And I’m sure his teeth were bigger for a while too.”

“I’m…”
Zigzag?

From where he now sat at the foot of the bed, the critter panted at her, silver tongue lolling on the quilt. So innocent. But as she looked, she recognized the whisper of a connection they had to each other. And she recalled how her anger had drained from her into him just before the book had fallen.

“Oh God, I’m sorry, Dankyo. I won’t…”

“If Theo knew, he’d be unhappy. You need to control whatever this power is. For your own health as much as anything. I’d like you to think about this a while, and then tell me what we should do about it.”

She frowned. What was this? “Because?”

“Because this isn’t something trivial. Because you need to face this and work out a solution.”

“Uh.” So much for it being something she could brush aside and forget. But remembering what she’d done to all those people, merely at the wave of a hand. Cooked, electrocuted people. Dead people. What she’d done…

I don’t want to face this. Don’t want to remember
. She trembled the tiniest amount.

If she said yes, he’d leave her be. “Okay, I will. I’ll think on it, like you said.”

“Good.”

The pause that followed said maybe he was wondering at the other thoughts running about in her head. He couldn’t
know
, though.

Dankyo tilted her head with his hand on her chin. “I’m not going to let you ignore something that almost took your life.” Steel determination shone in those words, and for a few seconds his fingers gripped her so hard it hurt.

This made her feel weirdly scared and yet also happy. To be the focus of this man’s concern when moments ago she was so lost and confused, and out in the cold… Her heart sped up, rocketing along.

Say something. “I’m not going to, Sir, really…”
But…monster.

“What is it?” The frown set a little line straight down the middle between his eyes. “You look sad.”

She screwed up her mouth. “I’m still a monster. I have these things, or something, inside me.”

“My lady. Now you are getting me angry. No. Forget this notion,
now
. Yes, you are different, but not a monster. If I hear that again, I will be experimenting on you in ways you will regret. I have some ideas to do with nipples that you won’t like. Am I understood?”

Nipples? Ulp
. For a little time, she didn’t blink. “Okay. Not a monster. Got it.”

“Good. Now, business aside, you do recall I haven’t been able to do anything to you for a whole two weeks.”

“Do?”

She was suddenly aware of where his hand had gone—back to fingering the scooped edge of her bodice. Then he wandered that finger southward, bumping and trailing over the sheer white fabric and ribbons, toward one very erect nipple, where he stopped, a half an inch from the center. Her body responded, heating up, as if he’d pressed some secret button.

“The doctor says you’re well enough today.” He did a circle around her nipple, taunting her for sure. “After two weeks, that makes fourteen times you owe me.”

“Fourteen?” she squeaked.

“Have you turned into a parrot, woman?” He twitched an eyebrow, then pinched her nipple hard enough to make her gasp. “That means I get to make you come fourteen times before we’re even.”

“What?” Did he mean that? Well, she wasn’t giving in that easily. Not when he’d made her feel so dreadful. “In one go? Ha-ha. Besides, I don’t owe—” She went to pull away his hand, but he intercepted her and pinned her hand to the bed. Her other arm was crammed half under his side, squashed under his weight.

“Uh-uh. Naughty. Now, how do I touch that nipple?” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Maybe, you don’t?” She wriggled, trying to free herself enough to scoot up the bed. “And…I never said I forgave you this much. We’re still at a lesser phase. No sex.”

“A what? A lesser phase? No sex?” His gaze darkened. His mouth firmed. “Mischievous wench.”

“Am not!” That word coming from Dankyo was so ridiculous. She mimicked a Brit accent. “And wench? Really? Is that from your little book of jolly good come-hither lines?” She smirked. This was getting to be fun.

“Are you trying to tease me?”

“Trying?” She bent her legs up ready to thrash to the side, but he laid his thigh across hers, squashing her legs to the bed with his weight. Maybe she could worm her other hand free?

“Stop! Sofia…” His warning growl might have come from a Rottweiler, and the look in his eyes too. He shifted the elbow he leaned on a few inches higher and flattened his hand on her stray hair. Moving meant pain.

She froze and shrank down into the bed. The barked command and the way he’d shut down his expression to just a flat, mean stare had impressed on her his seriousness.

“No more fighting. You’re still not at full health.” One corner of his mouth curved up. “I’m going to hold you down, and I’m going to make you come however I want to
because
I want to. If you continue to resist, I will tie you up outside in the hallway like a trussed chicken so everyone passing can hear you squeal. Understood?”

The image of that flashed into her head. Embarrassment vied with arousal. Her pulse thudded in her temples. She licked her lips. Slow as a beast stalking prey it had cornered, he moved his hand and hooked two fingers into the corner of her mouth.

If before she’d thought him attentive, now his eyes locked onto her, as if he wished to see everything—every breath, every shiver, every dark thought. “Do you understand? Nod, Sofia.” His words rumbled through her.

With his fingers there, she could barely move her head, but she nodded as much as she could, rocking his fingers. They slid a little deeper, bumping her tongue, and his thumb curled under her jaw.

A little satisfied sound escaped her throat. Being fastened down so intimately, made the bed seem to enfold her in its embrace, made the world fade out, until there was only him and her and nothing else.

I’m lost
. But being lost was good, when he was there to catch her.

“Good girl. This is how I want you.”

Then he bent and licked her nipple through the cloth. The wet softness of his tongue curled over her and made her top stick to her areola. When he leaned over and licked her other nipple, the first cooled. Heat and the cold alternated. With his teeth, he pulled down the neckline, exposing both breasts and accentuating them.

“Beautiful.” Then he started on her again.

Her need to fight had been taken away; her will removed from her. She centered on what he did, writhing a little and groaning at each nip of teeth or lap of tongue, at the delicious possession of her breasts.

The fingers in her mouth were soaked from her saliva, but they were a part of him, and she welcomed them.

When heat ran and pulsed from her breasts and abused nipples to her groin, when her clit ached so much for something to touch it that she arched herself off the bed as if to grind on something, he tucked her hand under the small of her back so her weight held it in place.

“Keep it there.”

She blinked at him while he caressed her chin with his thumb and said quietly, “I thought you might have forgotten over these past weeks who it was that owned you, but you haven’t.”

Owned?
The word had a wicked ring to it. So simple, yet the echoes reverberated.
His.

Without looking aside, Dankyo slipped his hand beneath her nightgown, over the side of her buttock and hip, and up the curve of her waist to her belly button. He pressed down. The warmth and solid presence of his hand flattened onto her stomach somehow connected to her trapped hand. Eyelids almost shut, she huffed out past the digits stuffed in her mouth—wanting him to move that hand lower, but not wanting to speak.

“Do you like me owning you, Sofia?” As if it were an afterthought, he coasted his palm over her navel, and downward, then halted at the upper limit of her triangle of hair.

Keep going
. She wriggled but didn’t say the words. She wanted him to just
know
. But she also wanted him to do what he wanted to, even if, maybe especially if, it was not what she desired.

I like being used
. And that, she realized was where her rape fantasies centered.
Being used by a big powerful man, who also loves me. I’m mad, but I don’t care. Not anymore.

He stirred her pubic hair, his fingertip barely three or four inches from her clit.

“Answer me. Do you like the idea of being owned?”

Her strangled mew only made him move that hand even slower. Under her back, her own hand splayed out, and then her fingers curled in the sheet. This was agony—wanting, aching.

“Yes.” Her tongue tangled with his fingers, making her gargle the word. She could tell her difficulties pleased him in some way. And that pleased her. Whatever the reason, she loved it, because he was the one doing it, for no other reason than that.

He nodded.

By the time he reached it, her clit was standing up at attention, waiting for him. Light as the caress of a feather was the touch of his fingertip. Barely disturbing the hood, he treated her clitoris as if it were a castle surrounded by a moat that had to be assailed or wooed before he could climb to the peak. With his finger he did laps around and around her clit.

Touch me, harder!
She strained upward but still didn’t say it.

She hadn’t so much as thought about masturbating while they were apart, and the storm arrived quickly—her blood hammered, engorging her clit and her labia. Moisture seeped from her in little gushes, spreading over her lower lips. The tightness coiling up inside was like a stoked furnace ready to explode.

It became too much. “Pleeese,” she squeaked out, squirming, pressing her thighs together, wriggling against his hold.

“You need to come, do you, my lady?” He kissed her belly. “Say it.”

Nasty, evil man
. “Yessss.” Her next thrust went nowhere as his leg tightened over the top of hers.

“Then come.”

The stroke of his finger went over the top of her clit and centered there, wobbling the little ripe nub to and fro, while his mouth sucked the peak of her breast up inside. His hot tongue rasped across the nipple.