Taming the Fire (22 page)

“Just breathe,” he said softly, locking gazes with her. “I want you to breathe, to regulate your heart rate. Listen to my voice. Let it move through you like a caress.”

“Yes,” she murmured, that strange calm falling over her.

“Yes… ?” he prompted.

“Yes, Sir.” She swallowed hard. She'd done it. And the wolf wasn't freaking out. Better, Trance was smiling at her, his hand rubbing slow circles on her belly until he plucked one of the buttons open and slipped his fingers inside to touch her bare skin. An electric buzz shot through her, and wow, this… this was amazing.

“Nice.” He leaned over and dragged his lips over her ear, his hot breath fanning across her cheek. “I'm going to take care of you. Do you believe me?”

She wanted to say yes, but he was so close, his lips like velvet on her ear, and all she could do was turn her head so her mouth met his. He flinched in surprise, but he kissed her. Hard. Hungrily. With a moan, she opened for him. Funny how, before Trance, she'd only kissed Masanao—the Seducer who kissed her only to teach her how—but now she couldn't get enough.

This was intimacy, what two normal people did when they cared about each other. After a moment, Trance pulled away, his eyes flashing with anger.

“That,” he rasped, “was not acceptable. You get what you want when it's something I want.”

“Oh, you wanted it.” She smiled. “That's why you're angry.”

She knew she'd hit on the truth when his mouth tightened into a hard line. Interesting. She had the sudden feeling that kissing wasn't something he normally enjoyed or wanted from the women he was with, and the fact that he'd been as lost in the moment as she had bothered him.

It might bother him, but it made her wiggle like a happy pup. She was bound, but she wasn't without a measure of control.

“I'm not angry.” He unbuttoned her shirt. “This isn't the time for it. Anger never belongs in bondage play.”

Funny, because it always belonged in hers. Her time at the club was all about the beast taking out its anger on humans.

He peeled her shirt away from her chest and unfastened her bra with a flick of his fingers. When his hand came down on her breastbone, her breath caught.

“There will come a point where you're going to think I've betrayed you,” he said quietly, “but you have to know it's for your own good.”

“I tell my subs the same thing.” Well, maybe not quite like that, but when she stretched the torment out, not giving them the release they wanted, they might see that as a betrayal. The end result was always worth the delicious denial, though, and once she gave her subs the ultimate release, they glowed with worship.

He dragged his hand low, to the waistband of her jeans. He took a long time to unbutton them. “Lift your hips.”

She did, and he slid her jeans and underwear down, unlocking one ankle at a time to remove them. When he'd refastened the second cuff, he gripped her calves and slid his hands up her legs. Slowly. Sensually.

Pleasure skittered across her skin, and as his hands smoothed up her inner thighs she had to fight the instinct to lift her hips so his thumbs would brush her core on their journey up her body. Still, he knew, and he smiled.

“What do you want, Rik?”

To change places with him, but she didn't say that. “I want to come.”

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“I'm not going to fuck you.” His voice was rough. “Not until you beg for it. And you will beg for it.”

So cocky, so arrogant… and so wrong. But she said nothing, was too choked up with need and with the enormous amount of restraint she had in place to keep from writhing into his touch.

To her surprise, he slipped his fingers between her folds to a rush of wetness.

“Oh, yeah,” he growled. “You were so ready for this.”

She was beyond ready, she realized. To have someone concentrating fully on her was an amazing experience, and when he began an easy back-and-forth slide through her sex, even the beast began to purr.

It liked this. It liked
him
.

The knowledge freed her in ways she couldn't have believed, and she felt a tear squeeze from her closed eyes. His thumb pressed against her swollen, aching clit, nearly taking her over the edge, but he stopped the delicious motion suddenly.

“Rik? What's wrong? Are you okay?” Tenderly, he wiped the tear from her cheek, and she opened her eyes. God, his expression was so full of concern, and maybe a touch of worry.

“Oh, yes,” she whispered. “I'm more than okay. Just… please… keep touching me.”

“I love touching you.”

He moved his fingers lightly over the pad of her sex, stroking the cleft several times before dipping them between her folds again. He brought her to the edge over and over, until she couldn't control her body anymore, was arching her back and rocking her hips, and when he penetrated her with two fingers, her sex clenched around them and she screamed in release.

She pumped against his hand, knowing she could get a multiple orgasm out of this, but before she hit that peak again, he withdrew to caress her inner thighs, her belly, her breasts. She watched him dip his head and tongue her nipple, and the erotic sight nearly had her coming again.

But again, he knew, and he stopped. “What do you want now?” His hand dropped to his hips, where he stroked the massive erection popping against the fly. “I'll give you anything you want. You have my promise.”

“Another orgasm,” she blurted.

“How?”

“Your tongue, your fingers, your cock, I don't care.” She was starting to pant, her hips still rocking as if that could relieve the terrible ache.

She licked her lips as he unbuttoned his jeans. “You want me to mount you? To take you over and over until you lose your voice from all the screaming?”

“Yes. Yes, please.”

It was only later that she realized that not only had she begged, just like he said she would, but that, when he asked what she wanted and promised he'd give anything to her, she hadn't asked to be released from the chains.

A
FTER STOPPING
at a small corner store, Ryan parked the rental car a block away from what he believed was an ACRO safe house, and he and Coco hoofed it the rest of the way. As they neared the gated residence, he grabbed her hand and told her to walk leisurely, as if they were a couple on a stroll.

“There are probably cameras on the surrounding area,” he explained. “Smile and pretend you're happy.”

“Oh, I don't have to pretend,” she said, and yeah, her sarcasm was duly noted.

“You didn't have to come.”

“You need me.”

That was probably true, but he didn't want to admit it. “Okay, so how do you plan to get us in?”

She tapped her laptop bag slung over her shoulder. “I need to find the nearest utility trunk.”

He scanned the area, saw a grate in the grass a few yards beyond the far corner of the property. They'd be vulnerable while Coco worked, but there was no help for that. They'd need to hurry.

Ryan placed himself between the ACRO house and Coco as she kneeled next to the grate and opened it. He dug out the pack of cigarettes he'd bought at the store and lit one, doing his best not to cough. He wasn't a smoker, but he'd anticipated needing to play casual, so he stood there like he'd taken a much needed smoke break. Hopefully Coco was hidden well enough behind him, because if not, she was going to look really fucking suspicious.

After a few minutes, her curse startled him. He didn't think he'd ever heard her utter a harsh word.

“What is it?” He risked a glance back at her, saw her sitting on her heels, laptop balanced on her legs, a wire running from it into the grate, where it was no doubt plugged into an electric wire.

“These people have a top-notch security system. I've never seen anything like it.”

“ACRO would have the very best,” he muttered.

She cursed again. “I can get in, but they've installed a couple of backup measures.”

“Like what?” he asked, though he was still amazed by the fact that she could get in at all. He'd had his doubts, had been running through alternate break-in-to-the-house scenarios in his head, but damn, she knew her shit.

“There's a broken relay between the cameras and the main control panel. It requires manual manipulation at the source to alter any settings. I might be able to get around it, but that would take hours.”

Ryan threw down his cigarette butt and ground it into the dirt with the heel of his boot and then squatted next to her. She was so hot sitting there, her fingers flying over the keyboard, her intense expression what he'd expect from her during sex.

He mentally kicked his mind out of the gutter and put his hand on the computer.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm mildly electrokinetic. I can manipulate some electronic devices. I might be able to…” He trailed off as he let his mind travel through the circuits and electronic pathways until he found the gap Coco had been talking about. “Okay, I can bridge it, but only while I'm in contact with the computer. The moment I stop, it's gone.”

“Wow,” she breathed. “I think I love you.” She tapped furiously, a smile curving her full lips. Man, she was beautiful when she got all excited. “Got it. Cameras are off.” She grinned.

“Can I stop?”

The grin fell from her face, replaced by a scowl. “Crap. No. There's another safeguard in there.” She glanced at him. “I can't do anything about this one. Not without a lot of time and a lot more sophisticated equipment than what I've got.”

“What is it?”

“I can turn off the alarms, no problem, but the system is set to reboot after ninety seconds of being down.”

“ACRO designed it to thwart exactly what we're doing.”

“Yes.”

“So we've got one and a half minutes to get in and find my guy.”

“Yes.”

“Shit.”

“Yes.”

Ryan glanced at the house and felt his stomach hatch some butterflies. This was either going to get him some answers… or get him killed.

H
E WOULDN'T
be able to hold out. The only thing keeping Trance together at the moment was how beautiful Rik looked—half contented from her orgasms, the other half wanton and wanting more. From him.

He could only give her more for a little while longer. There was an expiration date stamped clearly on this mission—on this developing relationship—and he'd definitely stepped over the line.

Him, who'd never ever allowed himself to get personally involved with a sub when he was still Domming. Hell, he'd never allowed himself to get personally involved with any woman.

But here, with Rik, she'd already taken him in ways he'd never let anyone take him. And she was wet and willing and spread for him—the chains pulled taut with the force of her begging.

He pulled his shirt off, his pants remaining undone, but he didn't pull them down. Still, he enjoyed her gaze washing over him, taking him in the way she had those times before and wanting to see more.

It was different now—her eyes held the look of trust this time. In his heart, the severity of the betrayal he would soon commit threatened to burst open and for a second he pondered what would happen if he set her free, loosened the binds, sat her down and explained everything.

We can help you…

He hadn't believed those words the first time he'd heard them. No, he'd punched the agent and run off and he'd hidden deep inside the BDSM community until someone else had come for him. He'd listened then, mainly because the female agent had the ability to seduce the shit out of him, allowing two other excedos to tie him down and drug him.

He'd woken up at ACRO, scared out of his mind and angry—it had taken him days to calm down. But he'd finally listened to Devlin and the others, who'd explained, much in the way Rik had the other night, what he was. What he was capable of doing, and how he could help others with his powers.

Helping others—that's what he'd always done best. Helping himself, not so much, something Devlin gently reminded him the last time they'd spoken.

“Trance, please.” Rik was breathing heavily from her last orgasm—it wasn't helping that his fingers still played with her nipples, that he'd mounted her and her sex rubbed his. It would be so easy to sheath himself inside of her and ride this whole thing out.

“Why do you want me so badly now, Rik?” he asked. “Before, you couldn't wait to get rid of me. Didn't need my cock to orgasm. Still don't. So why do you need me?”

“I don't need you,” she panted. “I want you.”

He pushed himself back, though he remained above her. “I can't do this.”

She lifted her head from the mattress to stare at him, the soft clink of the chains sounding like guillotine blades to him.

“Trance, what are you talking about? What can't you do? I'm right here—I'm okay… please. Please don't stop now—this is good for me. You're not hurting me.”

“Not yet,” he muttered.

Trance allowed himself the luxury of taking one of Rik's nipples in his mouth, rolling first one hard nub and then the other as he ground against her.