Page 11

Chapter Eleven

Sutton

I made it two steps before the thick root of his arm snaked around my middle and hauled me back against him. The ridges of his chest. The warmth of his angry breath. All fierce, fuming male like a living stone statue rising up around me.

Air clawed at the inside of my throat, trying to escape the riot in my chest. For the first time in a long time, I felt fear. Not that he would hurt me—not in the traditional sense—but fear that he would change me irrevocably all the same.

My breath finally made it up the column of my throat and soared through my lips like a phoenix bursting from the ashes with a resurrected cry of war.

I struggled, legs and arms flailing at him, my elbows trying to land pointed blows, but I was too close to him to exact much damage at all.

Tynan made low noises, sounds of a struggle that was a different kind of physical.

“Let me go.” I gave one last heave, an attempt to break

“Too late.”

My mouth parted, and then the world spun. He whipped us around, the floor going out from under my feet, and then I was flying—falling—landing on the cushion on the bed.

No sooner did I recognize the cloud-like catch of the mattress sinking under my body did I try to rise, my hands and knees scrambling for purchase. And then the full weight of his knee stationed itself to the center of my back, pinning me prone to the bed with one limb.

“Enough, Sutton.” His words landed like a key in lock, chaining me to submission.

“Fuck,” I grunted, gasping, and glared up at him from where my head rested in the duvet.

Even more than when he burst through the door, he looked like some kind of leather-clad Olympian. His dark jeans stretched over his powerful legs, one nailed to the center of my back, the other knee wedged against my hip. His white tee was almost invisible underneath the worn leather cut of his motorcycle jacket, the Vigilantes patch still only half-stitched to the left shoulder. The collar of the jacket was straight against his neck, drawing my straining eyes to the thump of his carotid, its pulse sparring with the equally ragged flex of his jaw muscle.

I shouldn’t think of him as beautiful—not when he had me pinned and prone on the bed, in a position to do anything he wanted to me, the worst: demanding the truth. But I did. I stared and thought him more beautiful and powerful than any man I’d ever met before.

“Sutton…” His eyes glinted like the clean still of unfired bullets, chambered and ready to fire.

I watched him let out a long exhale, his gaze affixed to the center of my scorpion like he didn’t dare let it wander in either direction lest the beast lunge out from my skin and sting him dead.

“Enjoying the view?” A shiver ran through me as the taunt pushed through my lips.

Seeing how he stared at me—the intensity and restraint, the promised savagery of its release—it made me hot. It made my nipples pebble against the comforter, and I felt the hot ache between my thighs grow stronger.

His eyes snapped to mine. “Let’s start from the beginning,” he clipped like he was my commanding officer, not my father’s best friend. “What did Kang really tell you about Mara in the alley?”

My teeth locked tight. Maybe I should trust him—implicitly—but I resisted the idea. My history with men had been nothing more than a string of lost battles of protection, decency, and morals. A history I promised myself wouldn’t repeat. Except Tynan was unlike any man I’d met before…

“Last chance,” he warned, and I swore I saw the smoke on his breath from the fire raging inside him.

Mustering my strength and what space I had, I managed to turn my face away from him, thinking to send a silent message.

Instead, I was about to receive a lesson.

Thwack.

“Ahh!” I cried out, pain blooming on my bare ass from the swift strike of his palm. It was so sudden and sharp, I couldn’t stop the prick of tears in my eyes, a reaction from instinct more so than from pain. “Fuck you,” I grunted, heat blossoming on my backside…and lower.

“What did he tell you?”

I flexed my fists at my sides.

Thwack.

My locked jaw caught the sound of pain before it escaped, but it still rolled unmistakably over my tongue.

“Fine,” I hissed, blinking rapidly to clear the watery haze from my eyes. “Jack told me he’d been approached by someone at the White Pearl to have Mara sign up for this cam site online. He made her film a couple posts, and then the same person told him to bring Mara to the club that night.”

As I reeled the truth out of my lips, I realized that by tipping my chin closer to my shoulder, I could see a sliver of our reflection in the mirror on the closet door. My breath caught at the sight.

His body was so massive towering over me. His position one of power. Of dominance. Of fury. Except the look on his face made me believe I was the one with all the power. The flare of his nostrils. The hard strain of his jaw. His knuckles white by his side.

“What then?”

I heard him ask the question, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue, too enrapt by the sight of us to do anything but stare.

The black of his leather cut and dark jeans appeared to bleed onto my pale skin through the fine lines of my tattoos. His fist uncurled and then rolled tight again. My gaze lifted, finding his gaze locked on the mirror—and mine.

“What next, Sutton?” he growled, his jacket shivering over the sound.

I slid my tongue free—the only free part of me—and slid it along my lips, bottom and then top, and watched the wave of tension roll through him.

He let loose another deeper sound of warning, one that I felt directly on the tingling flesh of my ass.

“Do it,” I muttered as I held his hot stare.

My words severed the invisible tie on his hand, and I watched his arm swing up and arc down with the precision of a machine, so beautiful and smooth and swift, the sensation of pain as he smacked my ass was delayed until all it evoked was a low moan.

And then I gave up more of the truth, realizing I only wanted to give it in order to get something in return. To put a few chinks in his shiny, knightly armor.

“He brought her to the club, and the man took Mara to one of the back rooms. He said she never came back—that he didn’t know what happened to her from there.”

“The name of the man?” He stared at the red I could see staining the skin of my ass.

“He didn’t know. Assumed he was Wah Ching.” I licked my lips again.

His jaw twitched. “And the website?”

My body tried to move under him. The heat vibrating in my cells was like a swell of energy, growing and growing with nowhere to expend.

“Again,” I demanded, my voice low and husky.

His lip curled, realizing this bout of punishment was being flipped on its head. Instead of the spanking being a threat to procure the truth, it was the delivery of pain that let the truth free.

This time, as his hand drew back, I used the moment of freedom to tip my hips up. When his hand landed with another loud smack, it was lower on my ass, the sting teasing the edge of my sex. A breath of relief erupted in my lungs, the pain giving a kind of twisted satisfaction to the gnawing ache in my core.

But satisfaction was the last thing it gave Tynan.

He drew his hand back and wiped his palm on his jeans, glaring at me as though to warn me to never do that again. Too bad I also saw the way his fingers rubbed the damp spot on his jeans like he wanted to work it into the denim fibers so he could wear it forever.

“Jack gave me a card,” I continued. “A business card for the site, Wild Side. It had an invitation code on the back.”

His palm flew without warning, a fresh bite on my ass that echoed along with my cry through the room.

I pulled back my lip and bared my teeth. I could play this game, too. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t want me to sign up, which was the fastest way to get answers.”

“And that’s all you care about? The fastest way to get an answer? Not the safest?” he snarled and spanked me again, heat exploding in my lower body, desire clawing at my insides.

My moan evolved into a breathy laugh. “It worked, didn’t it?” Or would have if he hadn’t barged in. That flash of anger sent my knees into the mattress, pushing my ass up at the same moment his hand cracked down.

This time, I definitely felt the whole of his palm over my aching cunt, and the pain was worth the swift, scorching feel of him against my most tender flesh.

“Fuck,” he swore and grabbed my ass, rubbing my desire into my skin this time and pushing me harder into the bed. “What the fuck do you mean it worked?”

“I mean, I was chatting with a user who talked to Mara, and I swear he’s the one she was meeting with?—”

“Are you telling me”—he heaved out a breath like one second longer of it remaining in his chest would’ve made him explode—“you think your plan worked because it put you in the same fucking danger as your friend?”

I shivered at the threat in his tone. It was deadly and protective with the kind of intensity I’d only felt very early on in my life from the first man who’d promised to protect me…and failed.

“It worked because I found out who took her before you’re fucking friend—ahh!” My cry was swallowed up by the sound of flesh on flesh.

He spanked me hard and fast, and as much as it hurt, the pleasure I got from seeing him in the mirror was a thousand times more. The torture wrought over his face turned my cries into moans. Deep, desperate moans. The kind that comes from an addict when they’ve just been given their next fix.

“Fuck, Sutton,” he snarled and spanked me harder. “ Fuck.”

Somewhere between the blows, the sting subsided and left only the growing buzz in my sex. Everyone had their own kink. Their own delicious, devious brand of pleasure that came from something others might try to shame them for. For me, watching this stoic, regimented man shed layers of his control as he spanked me, each strike wounding him far more than it wounded me, I was so turned on, I felt my thighs grow slick with my heat.

When he stopped, my ass was bright cherry red, and we were both panting.

“I know who took her, too,” he rasped between breaths, his fingertips skating over the tenderized flesh.

He knew…my throat tightened. If I had trusted him…had waited just a little longer…

“Who?” I shivered, goose bumps racing up my spine as he slid one finger gently along the seam of my ass.

“What else would you have done?” he rumbled low, ignoring my question as he probed, sliding his finger back down the crease toward my slick thighs. “Photos? Video? What would you have done for him to find her?”

I waited until his eyes found mine in the mirror and then answered far too steadily for it to be anything other than the truth.

“Anything.” I would’ve done anything to find Mara—anything to save my friend. And then I would’ve done a whole host of other things in retribution.

His shoulders slumped a little as though my answer was like a blade into his side, revealing a fault in him rather than one of mine.

“Anything except trust me.”

We played this dangerous game where we sought pleasure under pretend punishment. So, as he pulled his hand back, I arched my back deeper, his palm landing squarely on my pussy with a wet slap.

He knew what I was going to do just as surely as I knew he’d compensate, hitting my tender flesh with less force than if it had been on the meat of my ass.

“What are you doing?” he growled, making no attempt to move his hand.

I let out a quick breath, and the words were out before I could stop them. The truth rushing free before fear could hold it back.

“Trusting you.”

Suddenly, the energy in the room shifted. My punishment had tilled the tension between us, leaving it open and fertile for desire and tenderness to take root.

Tynan’s big body shuddered, and then his fingers threaded through my thighs to cup the whole of my sex. I shuddered, my jaw going slack with a soundless moan. I’d never felt so small, so vulnerable yet so safe before.

My eyelids fluttered shut, all my focus centered on the friction of his hand against me.

“Fuck,” he grunted, and I felt how he wanted to pull himself away but couldn’t. “You’re so fucking wet for me.” His hand grew slick as he ground the meat of his palm against my sex, the pressure on my clit shooting fireworks through my limbs.

“Please, Tynan. Please—” I broke off with a strangled cry when his hand disappeared, a rush of cold air replacing where the warmth of his big fingers had been.

“Fuck,” he swore, and I blinked my eyes open to see him staring down at his soaked palm. Half of him looked like he wanted to lick the whole thing clean, and the other half wanting to wipe all traces of me off so he could forget tempting himself with something so forbidden.

“Tynan.” My tongue shivered his name.

“Enough, Sutton,” he croaked, a thousand cracks appearing in his former stony appearance.

“Please,” I murmured, the word feeling more vulnerable than anything else I’d said—done—in his presence.

I’d never begged a man for anything, not since I’d learned how carelessly they were willing to take. But for Tynan Bates, I’d get on my knees.

“I…we…” He let out a short breath. “ Fuck .” His knee slid from its post, and I didn’t realize how unstable and untethered the world felt without it. Without him.

“Please, Tynan.” I watched the struggle play out over his beautiful face. The blanched knuckles of his fist. The sharp focus of his stare.

And then his hand replaced his knee. His palm flat on the small of my back, hotter than any brand known to man, searing beyond the layer of my skins all the way to my bones. My soul.

His fingers began a reverent path over my back, tracing the artwork that had taken hours upon hours to complete.

I let out a whimper and pressed my hips down into the bed, needing some kind of friction to ease the ache he’d started.

Thwack.

My eyes flung wide, surprised by the swift punishment of his hand the instant I’d started to seek pleasure on my own. I found his glare, my ass still sparkling from the hit, but this was the first time he didn’t pull his hand away. Either of them.

“Are you going to take care of me?”

The words hit an invisible button. Tynan stilled and then muttered, “I shouldn’t.” He palmed my ass, his fingertips squeezing close to my clenching pussy.

“Then leave so I can take care of myself,” I snapped, frustration cracking through me like whips.

Thwack. Thwack.

I cried out on the first hit and then bucked when the second smack brought his hand close to my slick sex again.

“Fuck,” I spat, my nerves twisted and turned along the edge.

“Ask nicely, my little wasp.” The words were so rough and soft, the endearment so…stunning…I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him or if my horny mind imagined them.

“Please, Tynan,” I repeated, panting as his palm swirled the reddened skin of my ass, soothing and stimulating the needy nerves.

“Say it.”

Instantly, I knew what he meant. The thing he’d told me before not to say. Not because he didn’t like it, but because he couldn’t handle how badly he wanted it.

“Please take care of me… Daddy .”

He tipped forward, like whatever chains had held him back had suddenly been released, and the low groan that released from his chest was that of a starved animal finally allowed to feed.

His hand on my back slid all the way to my neck, cupping it, as his other hand went to the seam of my ass, running deep through the crevice, over my tight hole. My breath hitched like I saw the fuse approaching the bomb. And then his fingers reached my wet pussy.

“Fuck.”

I wasn’t sure if it was his curse or mine as two fingers sank inside me.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. All I could do was stare in the mirror at the man who had me pinned prone to the bed, one hand clamped on my neck, the other curled in my pussy, his shoulders hunched like he stopped the weight of the world from crashing down on us with just the strength of his shoulders.

My admiration was cut short. Desire was like a knife to my throat, claiming all my focus. The way he twisted and thrust his big fingers inside me,

I heard his growl. Felt the heat of his breath. Registered how close it seemed…and then his teeth were on me, sinking into the flesh of my ass with a strong bite.

“Again,” he growled, flicking his tongue over his bite marks before finding a fresh patch of skin to mark with his teeth.

“Please, daddy,” I whimpered, wishing I could blame the duvet for how muffled and drunk my voice sounded.

His groan was intoxicating. “Don’t make me punish you again.”

Somehow, he managed to twist his hand so his thumb could worry the swollen bud of my clit. Pleasure tore me apart limb from limb. Blood from vein. Cell from cell.

“Don’t lie to me again.”

I tensed, and he felt it, and with a savage sound, he finger fucked me harder.

“Promise you won’t lie to me again,” he ordered, the sounds of his slick fingers moving inside me filling the room. “Promise me, and I’ll take care of this perfect, tight cunt.”

I wanted to promise him, and that was the exact reason I didn’t want to promise him. The greatest battle fought is the one inside oneself.

I wanted to promise him, and it had nothing to do with the orgasm that threatened to ink pleasure on the inside of my skin. I wanted to promise him because I wanted to believe him—to trust him to take care of me in a way everyone had proven to me wasn’t possible before.

A moan burst from my lips like a Trojan horse, carrying the words of my downfall before I even realized.

“I promise, Daddy.” My muscles coiled tighter, promises spilling faster from my throat like desire forced their evacuation. “I’ll tell you the truth, I swear, please, oh please…” I could feel where the bed was wet underneath me, my sex soaking and dripping from his hand. “Please take care of me, Daddy.”

His grip on my neck tightened, but all I could focus on was the flex of his wrist between my thighs. The powerful snap of the joint as he thrust his fingers deep into my clenching channel, but it was where they curved and stroked that undid me. The pleasure he wrought from my G-spot seemed to pull the very strands of my DNA apart until I was gasping and shuddering—drowning under the onslaught of pleasure.

“That’s it, my little wasp,” he crooned, the tender words mixed with his rough voice was the most erotic thing I’d ever heard. “Come for me, come for Daddy.”

White hot pleasure bolted through me like his fingertips were charged with lightning, setting me on fire and letting my orgasm burn.

I screamed into the duvet, the pleasure magnified because the whole of me couldn’t move. I tried to bend—to bow—to try and release some of the tension coiling through me, but he held me prisoner to the pleasure, forcing all of it to crest and disperse solely from the center of my pussy.

“Fuckkk. That’s it,” he groaned. “So good. So beautiful.”

My eyes squeezed shut, feeling the embarrassing burn of tears well to the surface. The orgasm he’d given me was so intense, it shook the very foundation of my fortitudes. It let the woman who fiercely wanted to protect the few people she loved feel the desire to be protected. Cared for. Wrapped up in him.

And that was the most dangerous place I’d ever been: toying with the idea of trusting someone else to protect me. Everyone I’d trusted in the past had failed me.

Dad. Mom. Even Mara after I came back, not trusting that I was only trying to look out for her.

And Tynan…he would fail me, too. If I was stupid enough to give him the chance.

The vision of him swam in the mirror, finally collecting into focus when he slowly slid his fingers from me, the emptiness magnifying the similar hollowness in my chest.

I shouldn’t be so turned on by this—by him. By being held down into the bed. The veneer of being his helpless prey was like a heavy fog, but it was broken with each of my hot breaths, reminding me that I’d begged him for it. I’d begged to be his prey.

The fully clothed, leather-wrapped man kneeled on the bed over my limp, naked body. He stared at his glistening fingers with nothing short of self-loathing. For an instant, the whole image looked like a crime scene. The big, bad biker had killed me dead with nothing more than his bare hands.

Who was I that I wanted him to kill me again?

My pussy clenched with a fresh kind of need, seeing the thick outline of his cock distending his jeans, a distinct spot of wetness even on the dark wash where he leaked into the fabric.

Tynan let out a long groan—one of self-hatred—and then he was gone. Off the bed and into the bathroom. The rush of the faucet blasting into the sink as my fingers curled into the duvet and I slowly got my bearings.

My limbs felt made of Jell-O, weak and too supple to support my own weight, but I managed to push myself up to sit by the time Tynan returned.

My hair slid unintentionally over my shoulders and breasts, giving them some kind of unnecessary modesty since he hardly glanced at me as he strode through the room. I couldn’t put together what he was doing until he bent and swiped something from the floor.

My phone.

“Wait—”

“We’re done for tonight. We’ll talk in the morning,” he clipped, staring at his hand like either my cell or his fingers were the traitor in our midst.

I had a feeling I knew which was the culprit.

I was in no position to argue. To fight. To make demands. I’d already tried all of it, and this was where I’d ended up: my body turned into a weapon against me.

The door closed with a surprisingly soft click behind him, leaving me alone with the only person I could ever truly trust to protect me.

Myself.