Page 8 of A Dead Man’s Pulse (Trident Security Omega Team #1)

Surprised at hearing the name of his shrink, Reese’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline, yet he didn’t say anything.

Trudy’s fingernails clacking on a keyboard came over the phone, so Ian held it away from his mouth.

“How do you think I found you today? I wouldn’t have a successful business if I couldn’t track your ass down in less than five minutes.

Well, technically, my geek extraordinaire, Brody Evans, found you, but I refuse to let him know he deserves the credit.

His fucking ego is already too big when it comes to shit like that. ”

“Ian?”

“I’m still here, Trudy. Whada ya got for me?”

“Sara Tennyson is in Georgetown. I met her at a conference last year and was very impressed with her lecture on PTSD in POWs. She’s worked with a few that had been captured and rescued in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did he try a session with her yet?”

He eyed Reese. “Have you tried Dr. Sara Tennyson?” The man shook his head. “No, he hasn’t. Can you send me the info?”

Before he could finish the question, his phone chimed with an incoming text. “Done. I have to run. If you need anything else, call me after four p.m.”

“Thanks, Doc. I owe you.” He disconnected the call and retrieved a pen and business card from the side pocket of his cargo pants.

After copying the information Trudy had sent him, he slid the card over to Reese.

“Give her a call. Like I said to the doc, you’ve got six months—max—to get your head on straight and get down to Tampa.

That’s when the last of the new team cycles out of their respective tours and report for duty.

In the meantime, hit the gym, firing range, and sparring mat, and get your ass back in fighting condition.

When you’re ready to move, we’ve got bunks at the compound—you’re welcome to stay there until you decide to look for your own place.

As for telling the rest of the Omega Team what you went through, it’s their right to know who’s covering their six.

I don’t want to hit them with it right away, though.

I want you working as a team first, so they can see how good you are before they have to make a decision on whether or not they want to work with you. ”

Reese appeared to mull everything over. His anger had dialed down and morphed into understanding. “And if they decide I’m not good enough, or they don’t want to work with me because they don’t think they can trust me, then what?”

Leaning forward, Ian pinned him with an unwavering stare.

“Then I’ll put you on my team. That is, as long as you don’t give me any reason to regret it and force me to fire your ass.

I’m willing to give you a chance if you’re willing to take it, Marine.

No promises that everything will be a fucking fairy tale with pink unicorns and Snow-fucking-White—that’s not the world we live in—but if you give me one hundred percent, I’ll give it back to you in return.

So . . . is this a done deal, or do we have to sit here and negotiate some more? ”

He held out his hand and waited. Seconds ticked by before Reese nodded and extended his own, and they shook on it. “Done.”

“Welcome aboard.”

The Dom sat back in the comfortable, wingback chair and watched the female sub get worked over with a whip during the evening’s demonstration.

His cock got harder with each crack of the leather, then a sharp cry of pain, followed by a moan of pleasure.

Actually, he could do without that last part.

It was the first two things that turned him on.

In his mind, he was the one wielding the whip, and instead of the pink welts up and down the woman’s back, they were deep and bleeding.

She would be begging—not for more, as she was now, but for him to stop.

For him to end her suffering in the only way possible . . . with death.

Why that was his fantasy, he didn’t know, but lately, that was what he needed to conjure up in his mind in order to ejaculate, whether in some sub’s mouth, pussy, or ass, or his own hand.

But it was a fantasy he couldn’t indulge in—at least, not here in the club.

One of the main requirements for using a whip in the respected BDSM clubs in the area was that the Doms had to prove they were proficient enough that they never broke the skin with the repeated strikes.

It took months, even years of training and practicing to become good enough—he knew because he’d gone through it and was approved for the impact play at several clubs.

Practice and testing were done with thin pieces of paper taped against the wall.

If the Dom could hit the paper, over and over, without ripping it, then they were allowed to whip a sub on the play floor.

Shifting in the chair, he tried to give his hard-on some room in his leathers.

He’d found the lifestyle a few years ago, pretty much by accident, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize it was what he’d been missing in his life.

The sights, smells, and sounds that filled the air during play called to him.

The first night he’d been surrounded by it all, he knew it was where he belonged, and he’d immediately signed up to train as a Dom.

Yet, lately, he was getting the feeling that something was missing again.

What would it be like if he didn’t have to hold himself back?

If he could push a sub past her yellow limits and beyond her red limits?

If he didn’t have to honor a safeword? It would be up to him, not the sub, to say when enough was enough.

He couldn’t do that here, but maybe he could find a place where he was the ultimate rule maker and only his word mattered. It was something to think about.

He reached out and stroked the blonde hair of the sub who had agreed to play with him later.

In a snug, black, strapless bodice and a short, leather skirt that barely covered her ass cheeks, she was kneeling on a pillow on the floor next to him.

Her pale, porcelain skin coincided with her Irish heritage, and he wondered what it would look like covered in stripes from his whip—not pink, but red. Deep, dark, crimson red.

With the macabre image in his mind, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Come, my pet, it’s time to go play.”