Chapter Seven #2
Kala was fairly certain her heart was going to explode. She was too young for a heart attack, although she sometimes thought what Huisman had done to her was very similar to The Princess Bride. There had been a torture machine in that movie, and it took years off the victim’s life. Maybe she was actually eighty now.
He said yes. And he didn’t want to wait.
And she was supposed to be this cool, sexually experienced chick. She was not supposed to be a twenty-seven-year-old maybe virgin who lied about sleeping with men because she didn’t want any of them besides Cooper McKay.
He had. She knew he’d slept with women. He’d had a couple of serious girlfriends in college.
Not even Lou knew she’d never slept with anyone. She’d lied to her best friend so she didn’t look like the sexless, scared-to-find-out-if-she-was-a-virgin freak she was.
Only Kenzie knew. Even her parents thought she had boyfriends in college. Her father had even praised her for not bringing the dumbasses home to meet them. Though that might have been a complaint now that she thought about it.
Cooper held a hand out. “Let’s go to a privacy room. I’m not fucking you for the first time on a spanking bench.”
For the first time. Oh, this was so many first times. He didn’t even know how many first times were going to be had tonight.
And he wasn’t going to because this wasn’t about happily ever after. This was about getting him out of her system so she could properly focus on her job. She’d gone to that freaking bar the night Huisman kidnapped her because she’d been thinking about Cooper. She’d watched Tris and Carys and Aidan fighting and wished Coop cared about her enough to fight with her.
She had to get him out of her head, and not sleeping with him hadn’t done the trick. So here she was. But no one else had to know about it. “The bench is fine.”
He stared down at her. Without her boots, he had a good five inches on her. And a hundred pounds of muscle. Pretty muscle. She’d never seen him naked before. Tops didn’t tend to get naked during scenes.
Shit, was she a top so she didn’t have to be vulnerable?
She wanted to punch her therapist.
“The bench is uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be. It’s a punishment bench. And it’s too low for what I want to do. I know they clean in here, but I’m not laying on the floor.”
“Why would you do that?”
“So I can eat your pussy,”
he said like that was a normal thing to say. He tugged on her hand. “I’ll tell one of the subs to deliver your bag and boots to the locker room. They’ll be thrilled.”
She tugged back. “But if we march through the dungeon, everyone will know.”
He stopped, those gorgeous eyes of his narrowing. “And that’s a problem why?”
He wasn’t thinking. “Cooper, I told you I wasn’t angling to be your girlfriend. We don’t need all these people in our business.”
“Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
It was time for her eyes to narrow. With irritation. “No. I don’t want people talking about me.”
“You don’t care if people talk about you. You roll your eyes and walk away. So this is about me. I don’t care if they know. I’m going to ask how this is supposed to work because the team is usually in pretty close confines. Hence your father’s regular bouts with hysterical blindness. Are we going to go to seedy motels? I’m not against that. It can be sexy, but again, I thought we were all about expediency. We’re not going to be doing it in whatever safe house we find ourselves in? What’s the point then?”
She hated that he sounded so practical and that he was using her own argument against her. Did she care? Did she care if everyone knew she finally got into Cooper’s silky boxers? Didn’t they all already think she pined for him? When they broke up, it could really be over. Or she could tell whoever asked they could bite her ass and it wasn’t any of their business. Because it wasn’t.
She looked down at the hand on hers. Would she be able to come back here after it was over? Able to watch him with some sweet sub who would give him everything he needed?
Was she doing this to break with him or to break with everything in her life and start over? Was the idea of splitting off and working for someone who hadn’t been there when she was born playing around in her head?
If she left, she could be free. Free to be whoever she truly was. Lou didn’t need her anymore. Her sister was going to end up with that Canadian operative. She would have to watch them all settle in and become something she could never be.
“Okay.”
The hand around hers softened, and she realized he’d been holding on pretty tight. Had he thought she would run? He seriously underestimated how shitty her knee was.
“Okay? Okay, we can go to a privacy room or okay, we’re not doing this?”
Cooper asked, his gaze intense on her.
“Privacy room,”
she whispered. “And anyone who has a problem with it can kick dirt.”
She thought of another positive. “Hey, they’ll probably start betting on us, and since we’re not really together except for the sex stuff, we can control it. We can make some money off this.”
Rent wasn’t cheap, and it was good to multitask.
He huffed and then did something completely unexpected. Kala thought she was pretty good at tactical maneuvers, including figuring out what her opponent’s next move was in any fight. She knew Cooper’s style, and he was laid back and patient.
This man was anything but patient. He leaned over and shoved his big, stupid strong arms under her knees and lifted her against his chest.
She hadn’t been picked up since she was a kid and her dad carried her around. Well, not when she was conscious anyway. “What are you doing?”
“Saving myself time. You’re right. I’m incredibly horny, and now I have a fuck buddy. Also, there are a bunch of stairs between us and the privacy rooms. I’m thinking of your knee.”
Good. She could go with his reasoning. It also felt nice.
He managed to get the door open, and immediately the industrial thump of music was all around her. And sex. She could hear the sounds of sex and pleasure, and was she about to find out what that really meant?
She needed this. She would be a better operative for doing this, and no one ever had to know how afraid she’d been all these years.
She heard someone gasp as Cooper strode by the main stage and then felt every damn eye on her. He stopped when he found Mattie at the edge of the crowd, looking up at a big guy with wide eyes. Flirting. He was a lot more flirty after a good thwacking. If he got some tonight, she’d done her job.
Mattie turned and stopped, staring at them.
“When you get a chance, deliver the Mistress’s kit and boots to the locker room. Her sister is in there, and she’ll store them for her,”
Cooper commanded. “They’re in the red room.”
Mattie nodded. “Yes, I know which room and yes, I will.”
He put a hand over his heart. “Are Mommy and Daddy actually going to do it this time?”
“Hey,”
Kala began. She’d known this would happen. The subs liked to gossip. Despite the fact that it was discouraged. Sort of. In theory. In practice, the club ran on it. “I can still spank you.”
She shouldn’t have let Cooper pick her up. It made her look weak. It made her feel so good.
It was expedient since she had an injury and there were many stairs that could exacerbate the injury.
Cooper started walking toward those dangerous stairs. She glanced up at him, allowing her arm to float around his broad shoulders. He wore his leathers, no shirt beneath the black vest on his chest so she could feel warm skin. His jaw was tight and with the barest hint of stubble.
“Kala.”
Lou ran across the dungeon floor, TJ following after her. “What happened? Should I get one of the doctors?”
Oh, bestie. She’d kind of hoped they would get by her. Lou might be a sub, but she could be super stubborn if she thought someone could hurt a friend. “I’m fine.”
Cooper kept walking.
Lou followed. “What is going on? Did your knee give out? Was it the spanking bench in the red room, because I told Gabe I thought we should get another.”
“Lou, baby, I don’t think this is about a bad knee.”
TJ put a hand on his girlfriend’s elbow. “We should give them some space.”
“Space for what?”
Lou asked as though she couldn’t wrap her head around why Coop would be carrying her upstairs and toward the privacy rooms.
Cooper didn’t say a word.
TJ whispered something to Lou and then her eyes went wide and she watched them. Her best friend sent her a look of pure surprise. And maybe a little hurt.
She told Lou everything. Almost everything. Since the incident in Canada, she’d held a lot back. Or maybe it started when Lou and TJ got together and Kala realized how she could fuck things up for her friend and her cousin.
Cooper blew right past the bar where everyone was not paying any attention at all. Nope. They were all staring. Every single one of them. Daisy’s jaw had dropped, and she pulled her cell out of her boobs and started texting. So her sister would know in seconds.
It didn’t matter. This was what she wanted. What she needed. When they broke off whatever they were starting, everyone would think she was the heartless bitch who walked away from perfect Cooper.
“Three is open,”
a deep voice called out. She glanced behind Cooper and his brother, Hunter, was standing at the entry desk to the privacy rooms, dressed in his leathers and a big old grin. He gave her a thumbs-up as Cooper simply walked on.
He got them inside the privacy room labeled three and closed the door behind them and stopped. For the first time since he picked her up, he looked at her, staring right into her eyes. A long moment passed.
“You can put me down,”
she said quietly, the intimacy hitting her like a kick in the gut. She was in a room with Cooper and they were supposed to have sex. He was probably thinking she was incredibly experienced. Since that was kind of the vibe she put out.
“I’m worried if I put you down, you’re going to run away,”
he admitted. “And I don’t want you to run away. I think we need this. Both of us.”
Yes, they needed to indulge so they could both move on. “I don’t care what they say, Coop. This is a private thing between the two of us. Which is why we should have stayed downstairs. No one would think anything of us holing up in a room together on the dungeon floor.”
“We should negotiate.”
He set her on her feet, not taking those big hands off her until he seemed certain she was stable.
She was anything but. Her heart rate had tripled, and she could feel her stupid nipples hardening because there was every possibility that he was about to see them, and they wanted to put on a freaking show. “There’s nothing to negotiate. We have sex when we’re horny and that’s that.”
“We have sex when it’s convenient and we’re around each other, and we’re free to have sex with anyone else who catches our eye?”
Cooper managed to make the question sound like an accusation.
Did he think she was trying to trap him? “I thought you said you weren’t sleeping with anyone else. If you want someone else, you should go for it.”
“I wasn’t talking about me.”
His jaw was a stubborn line as he got into her space. “I won’t take another woman while I’m in your bed. I’ll be utterly devoted to you and your pleasure. I’m talking about you, Mistress Kala.”
She barely bit back a laugh. She’d obviously done an excellent job at building her reputation as a sexual powerhouse. It was good to know Cooper had an ego. Sometimes she thought he was far too perfect. He didn’t want anyone to think she was cheating on him. Which she wouldn’t be because they weren’t together, and he should have thought about that before he paraded them through the dungeon. “I’m not your girlfriend and I’m not your submissive. However, I can agree to not sleep with anyone while we’re sleeping together.”
It made sense. There would be way less drama and no need to worry about things like sexually transmitted infections. From him, obviously, not her since she hadn’t and never had wanted to sleep with anyone except him.
Would sleeping with Cooper awaken a sexual animal inside her? It was an outcome she hadn’t considered but could actually work in her favor. She’d always worried about her lack of sexual response to anyone but him. What if getting a taste of him opened her up to sex in all its various flavors? She might be normal. This might help her be normal in one thing.
Cooper stood there, staring at her, and she couldn’t quite name the emotion in his eyes. Or she was afraid to because she sometimes didn’t get the same cues her sister and friends picked up on. Was he changing his mind?
“I’m here, and now I don’t know quite what to do,”
he said, his words cutting through the silence. “I feel like I’ve…like we’ve danced around this forever, and now I’m a little scared I won’t live up to what you expect.”
Good news for him. She expected nothing except awkwardness and probably disappointment. And yet she was still going to have this time. “Why don’t you kiss me? Forget I’m Mistress K. Treat me like you would any woman you want to sleep with.”
“Never.”
His hands were on her cheeks, brushing back and sinking into her hair. “You are not any woman. You are the woman. You’re Kala, and I can’t ever forget that.”
She would have said something back, something like… She didn’t know what she would have said. Hopefully something sarcastic to break the emotional cocoon she found herself in, but it could have been something stupid and sappy because she felt it. He saved her by lowering his lips to hers and kissing her for the first time in over a freaking decade.
They’d only had three months of this. Three months where he’d put his hands on her and she felt like the woman she wanted to become. When Cooper kissed her she felt safe and normal. She felt like the Kala she was, and that it was okay to be her.
She knew now that was an illusion, but she sank into that kiss. For a moment, she allowed herself to be fifteen again, the world laid out in front of her, with all the roads still open and waiting for her to choose. She let her hands find his lean waist, brushing past the leather of his vest to soft, warm skin.
She followed his lead, the same way she had when they were kids. He was dominant but it didn’t bother her. This man would never harm her physically. She trusted him with her life, so when his tongue dragged across her bottom lip, she opened her mouth. His tongue found hers, and her whole body came alive. So often her body was nothing more than a tool, a weapon she used against the enemies. She trained it, fed it properly, maintained it, but now she realized she’d been missing something essential. Every inch of her skin hummed with need and he’d barely touched her.
He kissed her for what felt like forever, and the world fell away. The thoughts that were always in her brain, picking at her and nagging like incessant insects, were silent now, and she was nothing more than a body meant to touch and caress and kiss.
“I’m never going to be able to last, baby,”
he whispered against her lips. “It’s been too long and I want you too much. So I need to get you across the finish line first. Turn around.”
Normally the bossiness would bug her, but she wasn’t the expert here and he was. So she turned and let him loosen her corset and drag it off her. When his hands slid up to cup her breasts, she practically melted against him. She let her head fall back on his shoulder as he played with her nipples.
“Have I told you how fucking hot you are?”
He growled the words against her ear. “I can’t watch you work without wanting you. Hell, I can’t be in the same room without wanting to fuck you, baby.”
He hadn’t talked like this when they were kids, and the words felt jarring, a reminder that he thought she was used to this, that he believed she was the sexual being she presented herself as. It was easy to turn and kiss him again. When he kissed her she could pretend the years that had passed between them weren’t an ocean she had to find a way to navigate.
His fingers slipped under the waist of her shorts, easing them down.
She was comfortable with her body. It was certainly not the first time she’d been naked in front of a guy. She’d brought plenty of dumbass counteragents or dudes she needed something from up to her room and gotten them comfy and distracted. Boobs were great distractions. But this was usually the moment she knocked the guy out. Or killed him when he decided it was a great time to attack.
She was naked in front of Cooper. He’d touched her before, put his hand between her legs and rubbed, but this was different. This felt more serious. Or less serious because it meant less, because they both knew this wasn’t forever.
She had to shut the voices out or she would lose it. She moved into his arms and went on her toes, pressing her lips to his again.
She let him take the lead and found herself on her back in moments, Cooper’s big body covering hers as he pressed her into the mattress. She’d worried his weight might bug her, but she liked it. He felt warm and reassuring. He kissed her, his tongue delving deep, and then pressed kisses down her neck and chest until he caught a nipple in his mouth, the sharp tug sparking something deep inside her pussy.
Desire. She’d thought she understood the word, thought she remembered how it felt to be young and to think she was in love, but this…this was a drug she could get addicted to. This was a wave she could ride and for a while be outside herself, be someone else. There was no future for them, but for a brief moment, he could be hers.
He sucked her nipple until her hands fisted in the comforter and she groaned, her toes curling. Then he worked his way down her body, kissing along her belly until he was right above her pussy.
She wouldn’t be able to take it. What if she didn’t like it? What if he didn’t like how she tasted? She was so weird, and what if this part of her was weird, too? Regular sex seemed safer. He would like regular sex and then she would know. “Cooper, just do it. I don’t need the rest.”
His head came up, eyes flashing like he was going to argue with her. There was the top who would need a sub. This was why it couldn’t work but they’d agreed to this, and she was seeing it through. She was going to know. Going to know once and for all of time that she wasn’t a virgin.
“The rest is the fun part,”
he grumbled. “I told you, I won’t be able to last. I’m lucky I haven’t gone off yet.”
She didn’t want to fight and she didn’t want to lay there worried he wasn’t enjoying it. The actual sex part was something every guy liked.
She should have talked about sex with her sisters more. She tended to leave the room when Tasha and Kenz started up, and Lou blissfully didn’t seem to need to tell her everything about her sex life with TJ. She’d learned at a young age to tune her parents out. She’d gotten the meaningful stuff. Wear a condom. Sex is important. Yadda, yadda.
He was so gorgeous, and the idea of disappointing him damn near killed her. What was she doing? She was thinking again, her brain caught in a never-ending wheel moving her toward panic.
“It’ll be fine,”
she insisted, tugging on his arm. What should she say? “I need you. Please, Coop.”
She needed to know. It was perverse. She’d waited all this time, and suddenly she had to know. She couldn’t wait another second, and she was well aware if Cooper drew out the foreplay she would freeze up. A vision flashed through her brain. A vision of herself laid out for a monster. Had he laid her out on a bed? Or just did whatever he’d done in the car they’d transported her in? Had he waited until they were on the plane?
“Please.”
She hated to beg but she couldn’t stop the words. She was at an inflection point. She did this with Cooper and gave herself a chance at finding something normal or she might be done trying at all.
“Damn it,”
Cooper cursed and lifted his hips. “I’m not even going to get my damn pants off. We can forgo the condom?”
“You know I’m on birth control,”
she replied, her nerves flaring. They were doing this. It was happening. She was ready. Was she ready? “We’re both regularly tested. It’s fine.”
Cooper managed to shove his leathers down and then he was spreading her legs, lowering himself on top of her.
Suddenly his weight did bother her, but he was kissing her again and she let it go. It would be fine. This was Cooper, and she did want him. He made her feel more than anyone ever had. He could show her this world. It would be okay.
He thrust inside her, and she winced at the fullness. It wasn’t pain. Not exactly. She was all kinds of wet down there, but it also wasn’t pleasure. It wasn’t comfortable.
Cooper went still. “You feel so fucking good, baby. Better than I could have imagined.”
He stared down at her, and the lust in his eyes seemed to clear. Concern replaced the desire she saw there. “Are you okay? Fuck. Baby, did I hurt you?”
She felt her jaw clench. “I’m fine.”
He reached up and brushed something off her cheek. “You’re not.”
Crying? She was fucking crying? She didn’t cry. The last time she’d cried it was because she was pinned down by a paralytic. Huisman didn’t need to tie her down to make her feel like a bug pinned to a board, studied for the amusement of others.
In a moment she was back and she felt the fire in her veins, knew she was going to die, and for the barest moment she’d been okay with it because it would free everyone she cared about. It would free him.
“Baby, stop,”
he said, and then he gritted his teeth and gasped.
She went still, felt him move inside her, his warmth filling her.
Cooper pushed himself off, rolling away. “I’m sorry. Kala, what the hell happened? You were somewhere else for a minute.”
He scrambled to his knees, looking down on her like she might be dying.
She was. On the inside. Of embarrassment. What had she done? She needed to play this cool. Long breath. Nothing was wrong. She forced herself to roll over, getting off the bed and going for one of the robes the dungeon monitors stocked the privacy rooms with. “It’s all good. Can’t be sexually compatible with everyone, I guess.”
She belted the robe and turned, and Cooper was still on his knees though he’d tucked his cock away. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at it. His mouth was open as he stared at her like she’d said something unbelievable.
She simply shrugged and tried not to think about how sore she was. He was big. She should have known he would be big. But it didn’t look like she’d bled or anything. She hadn’t felt some tearing sensation.
So she would make of that what she would.
She was not going to cry. He didn’t seem to want to say anything. This was going to be one of The Hideout’s shortest hook-ups, it appeared. “Now we know. It’s good to know.”
“We know nothing,”
he replied, his eyes narrowing. “And I’m worried I know less than nothing. Kala, get back on this bed. We’re going to talk.”
There was a knock on the door, something that was never supposed to happen. Privacy rooms were private, and unless there was an emergency, no one was supposed to interrupt.
Thank god something had blown up or someone had died and she would feel bad about it later because right now, that knock was her salvation.
“Go away,”
Cooper said in his absolute dommiest voice.
She had to admit. It was still hot, but now she knew she was only sexual in an intellectual fashion.
Hadn’t she known that all along? Hadn’t she known the loving relationship her parents shared wasn’t something she would ever have?
It was good to know.
She moved to the door.
“Kala, do not answer,”
he ordered, getting off the bed.
Did he even know her? Well, she’d proven he didn’t, but he should know she didn’t follow orders. She opened the door, and her sister stood there. Kenzie was in street clothes, and that told Kala everything she needed to know.
It was time to leave this dream behind and move back to reality.
“Huisman?”
she asked.
Her sister nodded, her expression tight.
“Get dressed, Coop. Time to get to work.”
She walked out and didn’t look back.