Hard Way (8 page)

“Dash, eyes front,” she snapped.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You’re with the pretty boy.” Her gaze touched on Mike only briefly, before returning to brass-balls business. “Square off against those two numbnuts and make sure they don’t take objective number two. You know the drill, folks. It’s all in your flight packets. Fall in behind your team leaders and raise some hell.”

“What’ll you be doing, Princess?” called Tin Tin.

With Haverty absent, the kid was the only man in the room who could poke at her and get away with it. Not even Mike did. When on duty, he and Leah were scarily professional.

“Today, bandits, I am the rogue element in your midst. Anyone I see with their guard down, either team—you’re mine. An object and an enemy force isn’t the only threat we face in the air.” She smiled almost sweetly. “Today, that threat is me.”

“Damn, she’s being a bitch,” Eric whispered to Dash.

“Get used to it. She’s here to stay.”

“Women pilots. They like a big, vibrating throttle.”

“You feeling inferior to your multimillion-dollar aircraft, Kisser?”

“Nah,” Eric said. “Pissed. Pairing me with that sick shit, Carlisle? She’s doing it on purpose.”

“Course she is.” Dash shrugged as the meeting adjourned. Soon it would be flight suits and safety checks and at least three hours where any stray thought of Sunny could do serious harm to his concentration. “You two keep riding some old grudge and we all know it.”

Eric shrugged his wide shoulders, unconsciously revealing the power in his hefty build. “Not my fault. He’d say the same. Wish to hell she’d leave it. Opposing teams would make more sense.”

“You’re talkative today.” Dash offered his first genuine grin. Eric was known for being unnervingly succinct.

“And you’re not. What the fuck’s up with you?”

Dash flipped him the bird. With more malice than he’d intended, he returned Eric’s taunt. “Swivel.”

The rest of the day was exactly as he’d pictured, with all the familiar procedures and routines. Dash’s tension ratcheted higher. It shouldn’t be considered routine. He was one of the luckiest men in the Air Force for having been given such a plum assignment.

Instead, he used the moments before flight to indulge the fantasies he’d need to tuck away once he took to the air.

Sunny.

What he’d do to her.

She’d said anything. Bring it. Anything. She’d practically taunted him, which had made leaving her wanting so satisfying. Maybe he’d done it as a test, to see if she was serious.
Anything
. Forbidden images wrapped around his head, many of them requiring more zip ties. They were wrong thoughts. Fucked-up thoughts. But having Sunny at his mercy would be heaven in his hands. He would have her body—her mind—to do with as he pleased. How far could he push before she pussied out and admitted she only liked the game on her terms?

Maybe it was time to keep pushing. He wanted to. She seemed to. And hell, what did he have to lose?

His marriage. His life.

She needed something else from him, and damn if he knew what that was.

More flight prep. More circling thoughts. More tension.

He gave that warped place in his psyche a few moments to indulge. A plan took shape. If it weren’t for the security cameras, he could snatch her from her office. She always worked late and always walked to the parking lot by herself, even though it bothered him and he’d said as much. Repeatedly. A camera would only catch a genuine attacker after the fact. She was armed to the teeth with martial arts training and could cripple ninety-nine percent of the schmucks who might mess with her, but the idea of it didn’t set Dash any more at ease.

Dash, however… She’d only been able to take him down on a few occasions.

The trick would be to keep her from screaming and cussing, because hell if the woman didn’t have a pair of lungs on her—paired with the language of a salty old bastard trucker. He’d lay bets that none of her lawyer friends, congressional colleagues or what’s-his-fuck Jake knew that about her.

Jake wouldn’t have the chance. Dash knew he was operating on a tight timetable, now less than four weeks. He would keep her attention with the sex, and keep
her
by whatever means he figured out.

By the time Dash climbed into the cockpit of his F-16, his legs were shaking and he felt as if he’d downed three shots of tequila. What he planned to do was that powerful, that full-on arousing. He was through pussyfooting around the idea of consent. They’d talked when fucking and they’d talked during the relatively sane moments in between.

She wanted their little game as much as he did.

Little game? Piss on that. The scenario he had in mind was
dangerous
.

Which meant he’d need a gag too.

Chapter Eight

For the fourth night in a row, Sunny stayed late at work. Intentionally late. Like, ordered-dinner-in-and-ate-it-at-her-desk late. She didn’t want to go home to grating silences, forced politeness and Dash’s keen gaze following her through the bungalow. Her office was a safe zone. Once she stepped over that threshold, she might as well shout olly olly oxen free.

She wasn’t free in her mind.

Dash haunted her. The possibilities versus the opportunities. How audacious would he really be? More than that, how audacious did she
want
him to be?

Jake had treated her with sympathy all week. He’d been kind and gentle, like she was breakable and fragile. She should want that. She should like it—being cosseted in the ways she’d lacked through years of deployments and training and time on her own. Those times when he was safe at home, Dash displayed versions of cheer—few of which she could believe.

She should have been able to tell if her husband was happy or not. Whether he was serious or not—other than the times he pushed her face into the carpet or made her gag on his cock.

She coughed into a loose fist as she stepped out of her office. The parking lot was empty but well lit, even beyond the bright white desert moon that shone down on the black asphalt. Her dark red Acura sedan was the very last vehicle. A feeling of being watched made the hairs across the back of her neck crawl.

She eyed the security cameras underneath the yellow arc lights. There was another above the front entrance. Contractors had needed to install them when the front windows were broken two elections back.

They were a measure of comfort now. Maybe.

Truth be known, part of her wished they weren’t there. Dash wouldn’t come for her anywhere with cameras. They were walking through fire, but they had careers and families to protect. She ought to be relieved.

She wasn’t. Instead she was frustrated and buzzing inside her skin. She
wanted
. Wanted in a desperate, craving, needy sort of way. The new feeling didn’t sit well. Her bones were so tense they should’ve cracked by now.

Climbing into her car, she forcibly shook off the nerves that clamored to own her. Nothing owned Sunny Christiansen, especially not an arrogant pilot and the amorphous, disturbed desires he provoked.

That meant she’d do exactly what she wanted, which was to stop at her favorite little organic grocery store. She needed tea, and last time she was home she’d run out of her favorite summer berry and lemon verbena jelly. No chance Dash had thought to replace it. Then she could lock herself in the bedroom with tea and jelly on toast and watch something brainless.

Yeah. Right. Like Dash would roll over and take that. The forced politeness would only last so long. She’d felt the monster growing between them with every tense shared breath.

The lot behind the market wasn’t empty. Instead, the dusty blacktop was covered with all sorts of vehicles. She managed to squeeze between a primer-colored sedan and a pickup that was so big it barely fit between the fading white lines.

Inside the tiny market, it smelled like home. Maybe that was what she needed. She could head back to Portland for a while and stay with her parents. If she didn’t have so much work to do, she might’ve already made that decision. She could at least visit Kannadiga Center and catch up with the friends she’d made in Vegas. They all lived busy lives, but Bangalore was the home of their shared culture. A taste of that safety would be more than welcome.

After gathering crispy treats to go with her tea and a jar of the dark red jelly, she was in and out in no time. She could’ve taken longer. Maybe she should have chatted with the clerk when the young man had smiled at her. It wasn’t like she was in any rush to get home, but her restlessness killed the impulse to stay.

Back outside, she fished her key fob out of her purse. Head down, she noticed that the skinny straps of the cloth sack dug into the flesh above her wrist. That flesh was still tender.

Dash stepped out from between the pickup and a convertible, all bathed by the sickly cast of artificial light. He was slim. Dressed in dark jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt of some unknowable color. One of his hands was behind his back.

He didn’t say a word.

The look in his eyes sent a shiver down her spine that ended at the small of her back. She clenched her keys. On a deep, nearly unconscious level, she shifted her grip so that the pointed ends splayed forward. A makeshift weapon.

“Dash?”

He still didn’t speak, but he grinned. Evilly. Unkindly. Like a bird of prey.

One that had sighted in on her.

“Liam?” She didn’t sound like herself, slightly tremulous and uncertain. She swallowed the sharp-cornered knot in her throat and stepped back.

Wrong move.

He attacked.

She kicked. The side of her foot connected with his upper leg, but he snagged her. Her sack of food dropped to the asphalt. Suddenly her mouth was filled with the taste of latex before she could gather a thought. He spun her around and yanked the straps of the ball gag back over her head.

She slammed face first into the side of her car. It hurt. The impact jerked the breath from her lungs, or maybe that was the rough push of his body against her back. He snatched one of her wrists and twisted it up her spine. Her shoulder screamed with pain, but the keys in her other hand weren’t useless yet. She whirled around, driving the metal toward his face.

Trying to cuss him out was mumbled and useless around the gag.

He took the keys and used his shoulder to pin her to the vehicle. Hot metal seared the underside of her chin. He strapped her wrists in less time than she would’ve needed to wind a rubber band. Acrid dirt and the sharp tang of creosote filled the air, but over that was Dash. His scent. Male, and the same damn cologne she’d bought him five years ago.

He’d worn it maybe half a dozen times. But he wore it to abduct her. The absurdity made her giggle, but she choked it down as fast as she could.

This was serious stuff.

Her body was convinced of that, even if her mind wasn’t. Adrenaline shot down her limbs and made her tingle. The breathless clench in her chest wasn’t going away, especially when he picked her up and pushed her toward his goddamn Evo. She should have seen it behind the pickup. He hadn’t exactly hidden the thing. He’d left the trunk cracked, needing only to nudge it open with one hip.

He shoved her in.

She screamed. The gag in her mouth muffled every bit of it. Wedging one foot in the far corner, she tried to launch out. If she succeeded, she’d probably land face first on rough asphalt.

He didn’t give her a chance. One mean hand shoved her down. The back of her head bounced against the floor of the trunk. Her brain rang. She kicked at him but missed. Bad angle.

“Nice try. You’ve pissed me off. Congratulations. You’ll pay for that.”

His eyes were bright and his smile a tight rictus. Oh, he was into this. She was glad.
Glad.
Had she looked up and found mockery or hesitation, she would’ve died of embarrassment. Then she would’ve made him pay for the rest of his life.

Dash slammed the trunk.

Nothing. Alone. A pinprick of light poked in from around one of the taillights. Her wrists were bound behind her back. More zip ties. She explored the smooth but astringent-tasting gag. She’d seen one, but it wasn’t as if she had much experience with them. That Dash had, what, bought one? For this? She shivered.

With her knees twisted, she shifted her hips to curl on her right side. That eased the pressure from her tweaked wrists. She was locked in a fucking trunk.

Holy shit, how had this become her life?

The details fell away. There was only her pounding heart and the way she could claw and fight and rip. And the fact that she wanted to fuck. No. That wasn’t right. She wanted to
be
fucked. The hot insistence of her swollen pussy reminded her she was as much a party to this game as Dash.

She’d all but begged for it.

The engine started up in a purring roar that shook down her side and up to her sensitive breasts. What had Dash been doing? Cleaning up the mess she’d dropped? Hiding evidence? Maybe he was sitting in the driver’s seat, wondering how fast she’d phone the cops as soon as she got the chance.

Except she didn’t really want to get him in trouble. Did she?

Her brain was a gibbering mess. She’d dropped it in the parking lot along with her groceries.