Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
As Ben drove Anne’s vehicle back to Uzuri’s, she regarded him. He seemed unfazed by Jane’s tears and terror, the husband’s anger, or the fight. His attention was on the traffic, his fingers keeping time with the radio’s music.
Country-western, unfortunately. But, for him, she’d put up with the music.
For him, she’d put up with a lot.
She was still trying to get her head around the way he’d watched her take on Jane’s husband. Her brother Travis would have argued and eventually have backed off. Harrison and her father—never.
But Ben hadn’t tried to throw his weight around at all. He’d let her handle it; damn, he pleased her.
“You do that stuff often?” he asked. “Picking up women?”
“Now and then. I spend most of my volunteer time with the girls in the shelter. The teens, especially, are pretty angry and confused.”
“I saw you with Andrea’s crew. You’re good with kids. But the shelter stuff—why that?” He gave her a concerned glance. “Did you have a violent husband or boyfriend in the past?”
After a second of feeling insulted, she realized his question arose out of concern.
“No. But as a military brat, I saw a fair number of abusive husbands.” Like her best friend’s mama, who’d been married to a captain.
The woman had concealed her black eyes and bruises with makeup.
Had made excuses to her daughter and everyone else.
“I fell down.” “I’m so clumsy.” “I bumped my head on the cupboard.”
He winced. “Yeah. Seen that. I get you.”
Anne had hated that captain with all her childish might. Had kicked him one day when he’d hit Tracy…and that had gotten her father involved. The captain had been drummed out of the service, but then Tracy and her mother had moved away.
The ache of losing someone never disappeared entirely.
Anne returned to the conversation. “As a police officer, well, I had to handle domestic violence calls.” Those involving children still haunted her dreams. Babies should be protected.
“I thought you were a fugitive recovery agent. You’re a cop?”
The surprise in his eyes was delightful. “I was. Olivia thinks that because my father tried so adamantly to shelter me, I naturally joined the Marines and then the police force.”
“I can see that.” His laughter filled the car, a heartening rough roar. Still grinning, he said, “In that case, I’m glad I stayed out of the fight.”
She snorted. “Funny man. Really, I think my family has a protect-and-serve gene, even if my male relatives refuse to acknowledge its existence in the women.”
“But you’re not in law enforcement any longer? What happened?” His voice was casual, but his fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
“Nothing particularly ugly, Ben. I simply didn’t appreciate the bigotry against female officers.” Between the climate there and the domestic violence cases, she’d started to hate everyone with a dick.
She added, “Later, I discovered my station had a reputation for misogyny, and I should have transferred. Instead, I bailed into bail bonds.”
He smiled at her feeble pun. “No husbands in the past? Serious men in your life?”
Snoopy submissive. But under his quiet interest, she didn’t mind sharing. “No husbands. Nothing serious.” She’d had a few guys in her younger days who…maybe…she might have loved. And in college, the man she’d loved had been vanilla, so that relationship had crashed and burned. And hurt.
She probably just didn’t have it in her to love anyone deeply enough to sustain a real relationship.
In recent years, although she’d owned longer-term slaves whom she’d loved, she’d never been “in love” with them. “You?”
“One ex-wife.”
He’d been married? Feeling the oddest sense of jealousy, Anne studied him. Yes, she could see him as a married man. He would tend to what was important to him with the same seriousness he gave to his other duties. His wife would have been a lucky woman. “What happened?”
“She divorced me when I was in the service. Couple of girlfriends since, not what I’d call serious-serious. Not sure how to explain that.”
“There should be a scale of relationship gradients.” When Ben paused for a red light, Anne’s gaze landed on a gun shop.
“Something to show how deadly love is.” She considered.
“A BB-gun denotes a casual first date. A .22 revolver for the first night of sex. A .38 semi-automatic for reaching the non-serious, exclusive stage.”
“All right.” He was smiling as he turned the corner. “An M24 SWS ‘sniper weapon’ for locking on to someone—getting engaged. And maybe a Carl Gustav for doing the deed—getting married.”
She grinned, remembering that the Carl Gustav was an anti-tank weapon. “There’s a cynical man. So what rating did your past flames get?”
“One girlfriend would have been a….38. The other a .44 magnum.”
One step above exclusive, meaning he’d been serious about the woman. “I see.”
He hesitated and asked, “What was Joey?”
As her spine stiffened, she bit back her first response—none of your business. But perhaps it was. “I’d say a .38, because I don’t go over a .38.”
The tiny muscles beside his eyes tensed as if absorbing a blow. “Got it.”
“I don’t have typical man/woman relationships, Ben. You could call that a hard limit with me. I have slaves. I care for them—love them even—but never in a man-woman-love kind of way.”
He nodded.
Time to change the subject. Past time. “You were good with Paige today.” She turned to give Bronx a pat. “And so were you, baby.”
Bronx responded with a delighted thumping of the tail and a sneaky finger lick.
“I’ve had practice with Marcus’s crew,” Ben said. “When he takes his martial arts teens out, he asks for volunteers to herd the pack.”
“Ah. Well, you gave Paige something to think about.” Thoughtlessly, she laid her hand on his thigh. The way his muscles went taut under her touch shifted the dynamic between them to something more sexual.
She was afraid that their dating score was rising rapidly from a nice .22 to something with more impact. What was she going to do about this?
“What do you mean?” he asked, derailing her thoughts.
“Her parents taught her that women are passive. That a man would never tolerate an assertive woman.” She grinned. “Definitely not an aggressive one.”
“Fucking stupid.”
“Exactly. But now Paige has seen a woman fight back and heard a confident man say he enjoyed the show—and still likes said woman.”
“I did like the show,” he said.
“I noticed.”
He snorted. “You did, huh?”
Paige hadn’t noticed, but Anne had spotted the very large bulge in Ben’s jeans. He deserved to be rewarded for such a lovely reaction, but it wouldn’t be—
He put his hand over hers and slid it up to his groin. He was still semi-hard. “I get your limit, Ma’am. But lots of people have limits and still manage to have sex. Let’s have sex.”
Her body stilled at the surge of desire. And yet…“I don’t want you to be hurt, Ben.”
He glanced at her, his tawny tiger’s eyes intent. “Anne, do you like it when people restrict your life because they’re afraid you’ll get hurt?”
His words were a light stinging to the face, waking her up.
His smile appeared…until she cupped his cock. “Well, Benjamin, we wouldn’t want to worry about you getting hurt, now would we? Want to meet at my place?”
Ben knew for a fact that he was going to have a fucking heart attack—fucking soon—and Mistress Anne would be stuck explaining why she had a naked dead man sprawled on his back in her bed.
Why there were finger dents in her headboard.
She nipped his cock.
“Jesus!” His head rose off the bed, and he glared at her.
The Mistress raised an eyebrow. “I’d suggest you stop thinking, Benjamin. Or else.” Her fingers cupped one of his balls, then the other in a warm threat. When she squeezed, sweat broke out on his body.
As her fingernail scraped the sensitive spot just in front of his asshole, lights danced in his vision.
And when she released his junk, the blood flowed straight to his dick, which was already straining against the leather strands wrapped around it.
His head fell back on the pillow as every muscle in his body turned rigid.
He needed to come. So. Fucking. Bad.
When she smiled at him—hell, that was almost enough to get him off. She was magnificent, all naked, her skin a golden tan. High, full breasts with tight nipples. Heavy-lidded eyes. Mouth swollen from his kisses. She looked like one of those female sex demons—a succubus—the ones no man could resist.
As she bent closer, her hair spilled over his groin in silky sweetness and her sultry laugh stroked his skin with warmth. And then he felt…
Oh, Jesus, she wouldn’t…
She did.
Her tongue traced over the head of his cock. The wet heat circled the slit and licked over the leather. His erection managed to engorge even further. The laces grew painfully tight as she teased him. Nipped the helmet. Sucked lightly.
His body started to shake. His clenched hands cramped around the oak spindles. The groan that escaped him couldn’t have come from anything living.
“All right, Benjamin. I think you’re ready, and I’ll even give you a choice today. Do you want me to ride you, or do you want the top?”
Could he talk without shouting? He breathed out—and swore he could still feel her fingernails on his nipples. “Top. Please. Mistress.”
Her disconcertingly strong, delicate hands stroked up and down his thighs. “So be it. When I release the last strand and after I put a condom on you, you may let go of the headboard and jump me.”
Her lips curved in an innocent smile, as if she’d just agreed he could have a cookie rather than permitting him to fuck her senseless. She was screwing with his mind as easily as she’d tormented his body. Sadist.
And he’d never been so hard in his damned life. What did that make him?
She, ever so slowly, unwound each leather strip, and he felt the blood rush back into his dick, like the ocean at high tide. His eyes strained as he watched her finally, unhurriedly undo the last strand.