Chapter Eight
Kira
Ty jogged down the stairs just as Kira looked over at Rory and said, “I saved a bone for you.”
“I saved a bone for you, too,” Ty said, rounding into the room with a grin on his face.
Kira sent him a lascivious smile that brought him over to her in two strides, wrapping her in his arms as she set her mug down before he pulled her to his heart. They stood there quietly content until Rory tried to squeeze between them.
“Did you find the rolls?” Ty asked, letting Kira go to reach for the bag on the counter, sliding it forward so she’d see.
“Yes, thank you. But I was waiting for you.” Kira slid behind him, moving into the kitchen where she pulled two plates from the cupboard and two napkins from her linen drawer.
“What have you got planned for today?” Ty asked, pouring a mug of coffee.
She opened the bag and drew out the rolls, placing one on each plate. She looked up at Ty through the veil of her eyelashes. “Playing in bed with you.”
“Which sounds like the best plan ever,” he grinned, capturing her hips in his hands.
She set the plates down. “Then, I have a book I’m enjoying. I thought I might read a bit. What time do you need to be on the road?” she asked.
“By two if I’m going to get back to base in time to prep for my training mission. Before then, I wanted to ask you a favor.” He moved his hands to her elbows.
“Oh? About today? Well, you brought me my favorite breakfast treat. I can’t really say no to you, can I?”
“See, Rory?” Ty looked down where Rory splayed at their feet. “I told you the cinnamon rolls. And you said pain au chocolate. I win.”
Kira looked down at Rory, “I would have said yes to a favor in exchange for pain au chocolate, too.” She tipped her head back to shift her gaze to Ty’s. “How can I help?”
“My mom’s birthday’s in two weeks. I was hoping we could pick out a gift for her that we could give together,” he said.
“I’d be happy to help. That sounds like a lot of fun, actually. Did you have something in mind?”
“I was thinking about a piece of jewelry. Maybe a necklace,” Ty said.
“A necklace is nice, but she can’t see it unless she’s looking in the mirror. Would you consider a bracelet or a ring? That way, when she’s going about her day, she can see it and think of you,” Kira suggested.
“Do I want her thinking of me that often?” Ty leaned down to kiss her.
“The gift isn’t for you. It’s for your mother. And my friends who are mothers—” She paused to take a deep breath. “London, for example. London loves to wear her charm bracelet with the little photo frames of her baby. It was a very sweet gift.”
“William gave that to her?” Ty asked, looking like he didn’t believe it.
“No, Lula brought it to her when London was still in the hospital to remind her that she had a reason to fight for her life.” Kira picked up the bun and took a bite.
She held her hand in front of her mouth so she could add, “I’m going to see Lula this afternoon.
” She chewed and swallowed. “She’s in Durham and is stopping by. ”
Yes, she did notice when Ty’s brows pulled together, and his eyes grew stormy.
“It’s a quick visit. But you know,” Kira changed the subject, “now that I’m thinking about it, a bracelet wouldn’t be a good idea for your mom.
She told me she doesn’t like things on her wrists.
She once told me that when she started carrying a phone with a clock on it, she was relieved because she wasn’t irritated by her watch band anymore. ”
“Noted. No bracelet,” Ty said.
“But she does always have the prettiest decorative fingernails, and she does like to wear rings. We could look and see. I have friends who own a jewelry shop that I like very much. They don’t carry items that you can find just anywhere. He buys estate pieces and pieces made by local artists.”
“Kira,” Ty said softly. “I have a soldier’s salary.”
“I understand that. You set the budget before we go, and if we find something that works, we buy it there, and if not, we look elsewhere.” She lifted the bun and savored the rich yeasty bite.
Ty moved into the kitchen and made himself a breakfast of cheesy eggs with some of her leftover vegetables while Kira moved to the kitchen table with the newspaper.
It was a normal breakfast.
Kira handed Ty the sports and international sections. She was looking through the arts page. They read as they ate and sipped out of their humongous coffee mugs that Ty insisted were supposed to be soup bowls.
Rory lay under the table where Kira placed a folded blanket, so the hard kitchen floor didn’t aggravate his arthritis.
Ty would read something to her, and then she would read something to him.
He folded the paper and laid it on the table, then got up to clear the dishes and wash up.
By most measures, this breakfast was their norm.
But Kira felt like she was hovering in the corner, looking down at the scene of a loving couple being domestic.
And though they were a loving couple, and they were being domestic, it felt like a farce, a dream. Soon it would be morning when the alarm would jangle her awake, and she’d be facing a new reality.
“Kira,” Ty said, walking back into the room. “You okay?”
Kira realized that she’d been staring at her blank wall. She twitched her head to face him, cleared her throat, plastered on a smile, and said, “Daydreaming.” She stood up and took a step toward him.
“Did you have something you wanted to do after breakfast before we go out?”
The tinnitus in her ear was a soft whistle. Her nose began to buzz, and she reached up to rub the sensation away.
She came up on her toes, wrapping her arms around Ty’s neck.
When she kissed him, he smelled of men’s soap, warm and spicy.
It worked with the taste of his kiss, bitter from the coffee and sweet with cinnamon.
She loved the softness of his lips, their warmth.
She liked how he kissed her, as if he had all the time in the world, and that was the only thing he wanted to do.
When the kiss did end, Kira sent Ty a flick of her brow and a saucy smile.
His voice dropped low as he rumbled, “Yes, ma’am.” And he scooped her into his arms. “At your service.”
Rory wasn’t convinced that good things were happening.
He scrambled out from under the table to come sniff over Kira.
“She’s fine, Rory,” Ty said. “I’m taking good care of her. Go find your place and lie down.”
Rory stomped his foot.
“I can’t take good care of Kira if you’re distracting me. Go lie down.”
Rory trotted into the living room and folded himself onto his cot with his head resting on his stuffed octopus.
“Good job, stay there,” Ty commanded.
Ty held Kira effortlessly in his arms as he waited a moment to make sure that Rory was going to behave, then he turned toward the stairs.
As he put his first foot on the tread, Kira tightened her arms around his neck, tucked her head in, and clung to him.
Ty stalled, letting the arm beneath Kira’s knees slowly drop away so she was standing on a tread, and he was holding her to him. They stood there, eye to eye. “Kira, are you okay?” He searched her face, with concern darkening his eyes.
“I don’t know. I have a funny feeling,” she whispered.
“Do you want to come back to the living room and talk about it?”
“No.” She gripped him tighter so he wouldn’t turn away. “I want you to drive it from my mind. I want you to move the sensation out of my body.” That was terrible, she thought as she heard herself. She must have borrowed that line from one of her novels.
Ty took that incredibly seriously. “How long have you felt this way?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. A while.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“There’s nothing to tell. What would you have changed about anything?”
Ty looked around as if the answer could be found in the wind rustling through the limbs outside the window or maybe caught on the frame of one of the paintings in her front hall. And when he didn’t find what he was looking for, he focused back on Kira. “I want to—I need to—"
“Protect me and make my monsters go away. I know you do. But I pay professionals for that. I don’t want that from you.
What I want from you is your company and your skills between the sheets.
” She changed her voice to an English heroine, “Which you deny me, sir, by standing on the stairs having a conversation that’s going nowhere and will solve nothing. ”
“Tell me what you want me to do, Kira,” Ty whispered.
Kira paused before she said, “Slow.”
That wasn’t what he expected to hear. He had to change gears. He nodded. “That suits.”
“I want you to be masterful.” She let her lips wrap around the words, letting them feel round and rich on her tongue.
“Oh, that’s how you want this to go?” Ty chuckled.
Kira loved how his eyes grew dark and lascivious.
If she didn’t already know that lustful energy that radiated from his body, it could have been intimidating.
But with Ty, her body responded, vibrating need into a hot ache.
Kira knew Ty had the strength to do anything to her that he wanted and loved that he tamed any instinct that would put his needs before her pleasure and safety.
In her life, men with that kind of power wielded it to feed their egos, but not Ty.
She lifted her hand to lay it on his chest; his heart raced under her palm.
With a quick flick, she slicked her tongue over her bottom lip. Her mouth dropped open as she panted, trying to catch her breath. Her stomach clenched and released, and she felt her breasts swell under Ty’s T-shirt that she’d been wearing as a nightdress.
Kira forced her weight into her heels so she wouldn’t turn, run up the stairs, and throw herself onto the bed and yell, “Ride me into oblivion.”
It would be satisfying and fun.
But today, she needed more.
With her words, she’d handed control over to Ty, and in that decision, she would face frustration on her road to ecstasy. Ty at the helm meant she couldn’t rush toward her orgasm. He would build the experience with trust and sublime skill.
There was a luxuriousness that came when nothing was expected of her but to lie back and be the focus of Ty’s attention.
Ty was far more worldly than she. And though he was very good about teaching her new things, and she loved all of it, there was a decadence in simply receiving that was a lesson in and of itself.
The first time they were together, she’d told Ty she wanted to be manhandled.
Up until then, Kira’s lovers had been very vanilla, very missionary, sometimes a doggy, all forgettable moments of feeding a need rather than filling her hunger with something both satiating and delicious.
She’d never experienced mastery, but, from what titillated her in books—smutty novels that she’d read in the tub as she masturbated to the mental images she’d painted of her newest book boyfriend grinding it out page after page—Kira imagined she would love it.
And since she thought she was probably about to make love for the last time in her life with a man of her choice before she was married to someone chosen by her Uncle Nadir, Kira let herself ask for what she’d always wanted as a gift to herself.
“What do you want, Kira?” he’d asked.
“I want to be manhandled,” she’d told him their first time together.
The look on his face when she said that told her how easily Ty could step into that role.
She had no idea what it would feel like to feel so wanton and be so well fucked.
But only when asked.
That control never showed up anywhere in their life together unless she broached the idea and asked him to take the reins.
“Masterful it is. Set the scene, Kira,” he brushed the hair from Kira’s cheeks and framed her face with his hands. “What will make you feel good? Do you want to be blindfolded?”
“No,” she paused, letting her gaze paint over his face and down his chest before returning to find him observing her with curiosity. “I don’t want to take my eyes off you. But I would like you to use the silk ribbons to tie me, and then maybe you could make use of my toy box?”
“Pink ribbons are beautiful on you.”
“I want the bite of pain, Ty. I want you deep, deep inside me. I want you to ride me hard.” She looked him straight in the eye, holding his gaze without blinking. “Hard.” She repeated with conviction.
And something in the back of her mind whispered, “so I can remember.”
Ty grasped her chin and kissed her softly, then lifted her gently back in his arms. “Silk and a hard ride it is.”