Surrendering To Her Sergeant (19 page)

A ragged breath shuddered up her
throat. “Bastard.”

He let his lips quirk up. “No. It’s
‘Sir,’ remember?”

“Sir bastard.”

He chuckled. The laugh came from
relief as much as amusement. She wasn’t going to toss him out. Not
yet. That gave him hope that this might work…that a taste of what
they could physically be as Dom and sub would crack open her
emotional ramparts, too.

“Hmm.” He drew back again, dragging
his hands over her breasts, stomach, and thighs as he went, letting
his fingers play at the ties of her swimsuit. “For that, sassy
baby, you won’t get my help getting out of the rest of
this.”

Her nipples turn to small stones
through the bikini’s top, though stubborn fires still flared in her
eyes. “You mean I may actually get to wear it again?”

His hands were positioned beneath her
thighs. Perfect. Two sharp pinches to the flesh just beneath her
ass elicited a lovely little yelp, as well as her renewed
attention. “Take off your clothes, Ava,” he ordered evenly.
“Now.”

He watched another skirmish cross her
face. Part of her, that scared shitless girl who’d shed those tears
on his fingers ten minutes ago, clearly clamored to give him the
kiss-off to hell and beyond. But the other part, the woman who’d
been longing for submission since well before their forest kiss,
responded to the command like a kitten shown to a cream waterfall.
She didn’t just want this. She needed it. The rapid rise and fall
of her breasts, which she bared so beautifully for him by untying
her bikini top, betrayed that. She was more demure about revealing
the treasure beneath her bikini bottom, but he caught a long enough
glance at the shimmering tissues to know cream wasn’t just flowing
figuratively here.

The conclusion, beautiful as it was,
laid down a conundrum. How did he give her what she needed without
just handing over what she craved? How did he bash through her
window without breaking her completely? And how did he do it all
without giving in to the lust to simply spread her wide and fuck
her so deep, she wouldn’t remember anyone’s name except his? But
that was no different than feeding a buddy the answers to an exam.
No lesson learned. No trust bonded. No connection
forged.

Connection
. He couldn’t believe the
word now echoed in his mind. It had been a long damn time since
he’d even hoped for such a thing. Years since he’d met a woman who
seemed perfect for it on all the levels for which he longed. It
seemed unreal that he took in the naked splendor of such a woman
now.

Yeah. He needed to do this right. For
both of them.

Which added another hurdle in the
challenge course. Her bedroom wasn’t a dungeon with play toys on
the walls.

Or was it?

Available
resources.
It was a key directive of any
soldier’s training, especially once a guy was going for his beret.
It came in handy now. Draped over the footboard of her bed were a
dozen scarves in various colors and weights. He leaned back and
scooped them all off, fast selecting the one he planned on using
first. It was made of soft but strong fabric, meant to stay in
place once tied. And it was all black.

“Perfect,” he murmured.

“For what?” she queried, though one
glance into her eyes, brilliant with attention, proved she’d
formulated some guesses. The look was pretty damn adorable, not
that that he was going to let her know that right now.

“Tell you what,” he offered. “I’ll let
you pick the start square.” He extended the scarf between his
hands. “Wrist tie or blindfold?”

Her breath audibly snagged. “What if I
say no and ask you to leave?”

“You can do that any time you want,
sunshine. Call a red light and we’re done.” He leaned in to capture
her gaze more securely in his. “But I don’t think you want to be
done.”

The amethyst glints in her eyes got
darker. She pulled in a long breath. “And what if, after
everything, I still refuse to talk? What happens if you don’t get
the information you want out of me?”

He unfurled a slow smile. “Oh, I’ll
get it.”

She volleyed with a little smirk.
“We’ll see.”

Fuck, it was good he still had his
shorts on, not that they helped much in hiding how her spunk fired
his spirit—and his cock. “Well, one of us will.” He inserted enough
wry command to assure she got his meaning. Not that he had to worry
about that. Before he’d even kissed her the first time, he’d seen
that the woman’s mind shined bright as her beauty.

Sure enough, Ava’s mouth dropped open
again. “You said I got to pick, Sir.” She stomped on the title hard
enough to suck any trace of respect from it. “Wrists or blindfold,
right?”

“I said you got to pick
where we
started
,
mouthy girl.” His blood surged with exhilaration as he hooked the
scarf behind her neck and pulled, making her eyes spark again. “But
that little line just cost you the privilege.” He tugged her an
inch closer, lowering his face so she didn’t miss an inch of how
deeply he desired her. “Now up on your knees, with wrists presented
up front.”

It was a pleasant surprise to watch
her comply so fast. He left the first scarf draping from her neck,
the sheer black fabric playing at her breasts like the magical mist
from the forest where they’d first touched lips. The image fit.
This was an important first for them, too. Though this afternoon
had been incredible, he hadn’t been dominating her, pushing her.
Not as he would now.

The longest scarf in the pile, a
knitted crimson thing, was his choice for looping around her wrists
in a figure eight pattern. He had to improvise on the technique
since this wasn’t typical bondage rope, though he was able to
finish off the knot with a nice circle wrap between her wrists,
ensuring she wouldn’t squirm her way free anytime soon. With what
he had planned for the things he’d seen on her nightstand, that was
a good thing.

Ava sighed as he tugged at
the improvised cuffs to test his work. He double-checked the space
he’d left to give her proper circulation but didn’t give her any
sound or response in return. Still without speaking and keeping the
scarf’s lead in hand, he swept off the bed in order to make her
lean forward, extending her hands toward the footboard. Her bed was
a sturdy piece of furniture, heavy wood embedded with wrought iron
cutouts that looked inspired by a church in one of the missions
that dotted the bottom half of the state. When he secured the scarf
to one of them, her torso angled down and her flawless bronze ass
shot straight up.
Glory
Hallelujah
.

He lifted her face toward him with a
thumb and forefinger. Her gaze was cloudy with deep indigo smoke.
She’d been biting her lips, because they were plumped and crimson
with the rush of fresh blood. “Beautiful.” he growled.

“Thank you, Sir.”

She whispered it with quivering
reverence. After that, the dark cherry planes of her lips parted,
all but roping him in for a kiss—and calling every swollen inch of
his dick to come out for a long dip between them, too. He locked
his teeth in resistance and instead rubbed a rough thumb across
them, before offering, “One more chance to do this easy, sunshine.
Right now, all I want is his name. We don’t have to dig any deeper
than that tonight. One name, and—”

“What?” she interjected. “You set me
free?” She pushed out a playful pout. “After all your hard
work?”

“Didn’t say
that
was happening.” He
used the same urbane fluidity to pull the black silk from her neck.
After wrapping the material twice around her eyes, he fastened the
knot hard against the bridge of her nose, ensuring she knew that
his glib mien didn’t cancel his serious purpose. “Just thought
you’d appreciate knowing the options again. There’s a fun side of
being bound and fucked and a not-so-fun side. Your choice.” He
smoothed both his hands down the column of her neck then over her
shoulders. “One name gets you the fun, baby.”

She released an unsteady breath.
Dipped her head. For one moment, Ethan thought he’d get to
disregard the stuff on the nightstand and get right to claiming her
body in all the ways his mind could conjure and his cock could
stand.

That was before the next second, when
her muscles stiffened beneath his touch. A tight whimper emanated
from her throat. “You’re like a damn dog with a bone, aren’t
you?”

He sighed and dropped his hands.
“Let’s hope you’re a dog lover, Miss Chestain.”

She snickered. He let her have the
defiant moment. It was the least he could do, considering what the
shit on her nightstand was mandating for the evening. He stopped
there on his way back to mounting the bed again, making no effort
to mask the sounds of his search from her—including a nice long
slide of the drawer. That gained him the sight of a gorgeous shiver
up her spine, no doubt inspired by what she knew he’d find in the
compartment. With a smirk, he pulled out the handheld vibrator and
joined it with the other items in his hand.

After he dumped all the
items onto the bed, she treated him with another long quiver.
“Ethan, why the hell are you raiding my nightst—
oww
!” She writhed as he let the hard
plastic teeth of a hair claw dig into her left buttock. As he
grabbed her hip to hold her in place, he balanced it by securing
one to the other side of her ass.

He hummed in satisfaction. Those
things held firmer than he’d anticipated. They looked pretty cool,
too. One was embossed with zebra stripes, the other with leopard
spots. “Wild thing,” he murmured, “you make my heart
sing.”

“Shut. Up. Oh,
shit
!” Her scream pierced
the air again, as he got a smaller tortoiseshell clamp into the
skin below the zebra clip. Holy hell, could this woman let out an
expressive wail.

“You want to try for number four?” he
taunted. “Forget my proper address again, and I’ll be happy to make
it one of the big ones, too.”

She snorted. “Don’t you
know how to just spank a subbie like everyone—
oww
!”

He made it a big one, anyway. This
clamp was giraffe print. It blended nicely next to the leopard
colors, and slid into her skin with beautiful perfection. “Are you
still obsessed with swats, baby?” His chastising chuckle lasted
until he leaned deep enough to get his lips against her shoulder,
taking care not to hit the clamps on the way. “That’s so cute.
You’re actually trying to change the rules, aren’t you?” He gently
bit into her shoulder. “But the thing is, they’re my rules. My way.
You want to help call the shots again? Just give me his name,
Ava.”

Her head slumped. “Why?”
she moaned. “Why do you even care? It’s over. In the past.
Far
in the past,
okay?”

“Then it shouldn’t be such a big deal
to talk about it, right?”

She didn’t say anything for a long
moment. “Damn it.”

He shifted back to his position behind
her thighs. “I’ll take that as a sign to carry on.”

She fumed again in response. Ethan sat
and gazed at her for another moment. Her upper thighs, as bronze
and breathtaking as the rest of her, spasmed in anticipation of him
pulling off the clamps. When he left the wild-patterned torture
tribe right where they were, she seethed with a little more
gusto—right up to the moment he slipped the vibrator between her
thighs and turned it on.

“Ohhh!” she cried.
“Oh…mmmm…”

While she slipped from pissed to
blissed, he took the four jumbo paper clips he’d also found on the
stand and expanded them to fit the tops of his fingers. A quick tug
on each one transformed the innocent office utensils into small but
purposeful spikes. If his instincts were tracking right, Miss
Spank-Me-Please wasn’t going to like the sensation of the four
sharp tines marking her skin.

His intuition was right. She yelped
with surprise at first, but settled into an exhilarating shriek
when he started the spikes down her right thigh—especially because
he timed the move with shutting off the vibrator.

“Aggghh!” She threw back her head,
unknowingly turning him on in at least ten new ways. Her
blindfolded face thrusting in the air…her lips open and straining
on that scream…the sight was achingly similar to how she looked
this afternoon on the wine room’s couch, in the throes of the
orgasm they’d reached together. Again, thank fuck for the board
shorts. If he was naked right now, this would be torture for them
both.

He pressed the tines against the back
of her knee. And scraped his way up to her ass.

“Shit!” she cried. “I—I don’t like
this.”

“And yet you’re trembling for me,
Ava.”

He let his hand continue, spreading
his fingers over her ass cheek, weaving them around the hair clamps
still fastened there. He let the vibe drop from his other hand long
enough to swipe those fingertips through the slick layers of her
sex.

“And your pussy is dripping for
me.”

He scooped the pleasure stick back up.
Started it back up on the low setting, brushing it over her dark
genital curls.