Chapter Eleven #2
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ll expect to have sex. That’s what this conversation is really about, isn’t it?”
“That’s part of it, but mainly it’s so you know what to expect. I don’t want you to go in blind. And yeah, we’ll be fucking. Just the thought gets me damned hard.”
“Seriously? I think we’ve established you’re always hard.”
“Lucky you.”
Her smile broke out. “That’s true enough.” The smile faded. “But I honestly don’t know about this party situation, Keys. I’m not comfortable with the idea of having sex with people staring at us.”
“I don’t share, Lyric. I think I made that clear. I also made it clear I’ll take care of you. You’ll have to trust that I will.”
“That’s a lot of trust.” She ate a few more bites. “These women, are they going to throw themselves at you? Are they going to be in my face, making it plain they were with you?”
“For fuck’s sake, Wildfire.” He tried not to explode.
She liked to bring up stupid arguments that drove him insane when the subject was important.
Otherwise, truthfully, he found the habit cute.
“How would I know what a bunch of bitches will do? You’re going to be glued to my side.
I think we can make it abundantly clear I’m with you and no one else. ”
He took a deep breath and let it out. He wasn’t a man who talked things out endlessly.
He told his woman what was going to happen and expected her to comply.
This endless return to his past, something he couldn’t change, was annoying, mostly because he felt guilty and he shouldn’t have to.
He hadn’t been with her, so it shouldn’t matter what he’d done.
“You’re doing it again,” she announced, giving him that superior, snippy, haughty tone he loved. Bog, but he loved her attitude.
Deliberately, he heaved another long-suffering sigh. “I’ll bite, although I know I shouldn’t. What am I doing?”
“You’re making this about you. It isn’t about you and your slutty, man-whore ways.
I was around you for months and watched you practically petting your cock right in front of the world.
Do you think I didn’t know what I was getting into when I agreed to an exclusive relationship with you?
I knew you wouldn’t be the one with the doubts about me. I would have those doubts about you.”
Keys didn’t like it when she was making sense. Especially when it was imperative he get his way.
“As we both know, I have problems. Low self-esteem is one of them. It doesn’t go away because you tell it to. So when I don’t want to face other women who have the body you always preferred in the past, it isn’t about you, it’s about me.”
As always, she told him the strict truth, even when she found it painful. And she did find it painful being so honest with him. That was Lyric. She put herself out there, made herself vulnerable. She gave him herself. But not all. He was greedy. He wanted all of her.
“When I wanted to tie your hands above your head, you said no. Why?” They had done other things, things he thought would be much scarier to her.
Since that moment, he pinned her wrists often, holding her still while he took her.
She didn’t fight or complain—if anything, she got off on it. But tying her hands had been a hard no.
“I said we could revisit it.”
He heard the wariness in her voice. Lyric loved sex almost as much as he did.
She was very adventurous. She focused wholly on Keys and followed his instructions, only hesitating briefly.
He knew she didn’t like cuffs. Her hands had been tied behind her when she’d been put in the coffin.
The experience had been a terrible one. His first thought had been that tying her hands was a trigger because of that.
Now he was certain it was something altogether different.
“Babe, you’re allowed to say no to anything I’m introducing to you.
There are a thousand ways to have fun. I’m just trying to understand why that particular kink might be disturbing to you.
It seems mild compared to other things we’ve done.
” He chose each word carefully, making certain his tone was casual. Conversational.
She pushed her plate away. “Declan and his horrible friend stripped off my clothes and tied my hands above my head. I felt…” She broke off. “I never want to feel like that again.”
Keys shut down all expression. Code was working on finding out where Declan was hiding. Or rather, where he felt safe. Declan had money, and he surrounded himself with security. He lived in a high-rise penthouse, owned the building, and those sharing the building worked for him.
“Did Declan call this Russian by name?”
She sent him a wary look from under her long lashes. “Yes. It was Yaman Kuzmin. Mostly, Declan called him Kuzmin. He had dead eyes. He didn’t mind in the least what Declan wanted him to do to me.”
Now he had a name. The members of the Trinity chapter as well as Rampage had attended the other three schools. Someone was bound to recognize Yaman Kuzmin. If not, Keys had all the faith in the world that Code would be able to track him down.
Keys reached across the table and swept back her hair, the pads of his fingers trailing along her high cheekbone and then over her delicate jaw.
“We talked about this at great length. I don’t want any of them in your head.
You give me this. Let me turn that memory into something altogether different.
Trust me to do that for you. When you see cuffs, I want you to think pleasure, not pain. I want you to think of me, not them.”
Her long lashes fluttered in that way that got him in the gut.
Her nod was nearly imperceptible. “I’ll try, Keys.
It’s just that when we’re together, you’re always the one who has to be in the lead.
I don’t want to make what we do together bad because I freak out.
You’re always the one giving and I want that to be equal.
I want to give you the kind of blinding pleasure you give me, but I don’t know how. ”
That shocked him. He thought he knew her well enough to know when she was having doubts, but for him, the admission was on a completely different level, and he needed to clear that misconception up immediately.
Keys stood and rounded the table to stand in front of her.
He widened her thighs so he could fit between her legs.
Close, the way he liked to be with Lyric.
The way he had never in his life wanted to be with another woman.
He framed her face with his hands, tilting her head so she was forced to look into his eyes.
“Lyric, I don’t think you really understand what you do for me. You need to hear me this time. Don’t form arguments in your head because you were convinced, as a child, you’re less than. I need you to hear me out. Will you do that for me?”
Lyric bit down on her bottom lip, but she gave the barest of nods. He kept her delicate little face trapped between his palms. “I’m going to sound like a fuckin’ pussy, baby, but this needs to be said.”
That got him a ghost of a smile. “You have this misguided idea that because I have far too much experience and you don’t that I’m in a position to decide if you’re good enough as a partner. That’s bullshit. It’s always going to be bullshit.”
He watched her eyes. There was puzzlement there, but not rejection. “Empty fucking is not ever going to be the experience making love is.” Now he did feel like a pussy, using the term making love, but damn it, that was what he was doing when he touched her. Every time he touched her.
“Fucking can be a fun part of making love with the right person. You taught me that. You turned something that was empty, a nothing act that honestly didn’t make me feel in the least bit good about myself, into something so beautiful there are times I want to cry when I’m inside you and looking into your eyes. ”
He really needed her to hear him. He doubted if he’d ever be able to make himself come out with the kind of douchebag poetic but all-too-real crap he had thought himself incapable of thinking, let alone saying aloud again.
But she inspired it and she deserved to hear the truth, whether it made him uncomfortable or not.
“I don’t cry, Wildfire. Not ever. Nothing has ever mattered enough to make me feel that much emotion, but you can get me there. Baby, hear me when I say, without you, I would never have the beautiful, loving experiences we have when we come together.”
Lyric stared up at him, her gaze meeting his. He saw the emotion building in her eyes. “You really mean it.”
“Yeah, babe, I really mean it. My life isn’t one of giving, the way yours is.
You make things better for the people around you.
I do things most would consider wrong. Immoral.
Criminal. I don’t give a damn about anyone’s opinion—but yours.
I need you to see me the way you always look at me.
As if I’m worth something. As if you truly believe it.
I never had that until you. From that first time I ever saw you, when you smiled at me, the real thing that you don’t give everyone, I knew I had to be with you. ”
“You didn’t,” she denied.
His thumbs traced the delicate lines of her cheekbones.
“I did. I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but I knew it had to happen.
Torpedo Ink has a rule that we travel in pairs.
We watch each other’s backs at all times.
That’s how we stay alive. The assignment was over, but I continued to come back alone.
That was for you. I couldn’t stay away from you.
And that should tell you, baby, I don’t look at those women.
I don’t want to see them and I won’t. You’re my world, and when we go to any party or on one of the runs, I want you sticking close to me. ”