Love, Diamonds, and Spades (13 page)

He groaned out in appreciative bliss a minute later when he discovered that she’d washed and made the sheets extra soft and fluffy with the same softener scent she used for her towels—a few of which, she was now finding, seemed to have sprouted legs and walked from her house to his.

The powder blue towels serving as pseudo pillowcases were hard to miss.

While up until this point, she’d mainly found his never ending frustration with ‘evil’ laundry wash and dry cycles amusing, and his reverence over her soft bath towels endearing, it wasn’t until she actually felt all the scratchy sheets, and brillo pad like towels, and stiff as paper pillow cases in his apartment that she realized just how bad he really was at doing the laundry.

The last corner of the soft new sheets was barely tucked under the mattress before he dragged her down onto the bed and let out a deep, rumbling purr, burrowing in the sheets and pillow case like a big, brawny lion.

A long sigh of pleasure whooshed out of him and he sat up to pull her onto the bed, tucking her against him contentedly.

“Thank you, sweetheart. This is the best present you could’ve given me.”

* * * * *

RYLAN TOOK IN
the soft glow of pleasure lighting her face. Next to her blushes, these were his second favorite. And he loved that this particular glow had been the result of her getting him a gift. The sweetest gift he could’ve imagined.

Twining her long legs with his, he felt her run the tip of her index finger over his bicep and then up to trace his tattoo.

He groaned silently. Everywhere she touched always seemed to become a live current of electricity.

“You know that first day we saw each other?” she asked, rubbing her finger in tiny circles over his now over-sensitized skin.

“Yeah?” All he could focus on was each stroke sending a lightning bolt of arousal down his body, looking for the most explosive means of freedom.

“I couldn’t take my eyes off your arms. Every time you weren’t looking, I’d sneak a peek, trying to see more than just the curling edges of your tattoo every time your sleeve rode up those massive biceps of yours.”

He made a non-descript sound, because, in all honesty, he hadn’t heard a thing she’d just said.

She looked at him expectantly.

Criminy. She’d just asked him a question, hadn’t she?

He shoved down the roar of blood in his ears when her tongue licked over the tattoo on the inside of his forearm.

“Is that a no?” she asked, lips twitching in amusement.

Damn, he caught her.

“I didn’t hear what you said, sweetie, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well it was no big deal.” She shrugged and half-rose from the bed. “I was just asking if you wanted to christen these new sheets, is all.”

He clamped his hands on her hips and flipped her back onto the bed.

Laughing, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “So I guess that’s a yes.”

He skimmed his lips across her shoulder, smiling against her skin. “That’s a hell yes.”

The soft, happy sigh slipping past her lips had his chest tightening with emotion just as he felt her teeth nip along his jawline.

Hell. He needed to calm down and regain some control.

A futile mission, he decided soon after when she then ran her palms across his abs, slowly, as if it were an immense pleasure just to feel him.

Spearing his hands through her hair, he opened his mouth against her skin to taste her.

Always so sweet.

Another sigh, accompanied by a sexy, feminine shiver had him pulling back, even as his hands flexed against her hips.

“You’re a menace to my control,” he rasped.

“Right back at you,” she tossed back as she tugged at his shirt.

Their clothes flew off soon after at an alarming speed, but still it didn’t feel fast enough.

Already hard enough to hammer nails, he quickly reached for a condom, knowing he would never have the presence of mind to do so later.

As he slipped it on, he let out a low groan, raw and tortured, when he felt his knuckles graze her hot, slick core. So wet.

Turning his hand gently, he slipped a finger deep inside her, reveling in the wild cry that left her lips as her hips arched and silently asked for more. Her limbs began trembling as he captured a berry ripe nipple in his mouth, tugged and caressed as he slowly slid between her legs.

Damn. He’d thought he was hungry for her before, but now he was downright starving.

With his hard length nudging against her scorching hot heat, he gripped her hips and plunged deep inside her with one long stroke.

Her hands clutched at his biceps and slid down to manacle his wrists. Planted beside her head, she held on to them for leverage as she bucked up to meet and deepen his thrusts.

Eyes locking on his, she smiled a secret utterly female smile and kissed him from the inside out, gentle rolling pulses that squeezed over his hard length, made him release a harsh sound of pleasure. Her sapphire eyes darkened, grew so turbulent with emotion, he felt the force of his thrusts increase, her eyes dilating even more with every plunge.

Her cries quickly dissolved into spasms of pleasure that tightened over him like a hot, silken vise. He was lost in the moment. Ready to come, but wanting this never to end.

Rylan, please. Harder. More.

Her words echoed in his head, stripping the last of his control.

With gentle rough fingers, he reached between them and stoked the flame hotter, reveled in her inner muscles rippling over him as she let out a soft, lust-glittered moan. She angled her hips then, taking him deeper. Just once.

And he lost it.

His entire body went rigid, his world detonating with the force of her orgasm that sent him spiraling over the edge.

With her name on his lips, he surged into her one last time and plunged into darkness.

* * * * *

WHEN HE RESURFACED
back to the land of the living, he found her awake, again tracing a finger over his tattoo, mind clearly chugging away.

“What are you thinking about, baby?”

She sat up and he immediately felt the loss bang against his chest. “Come back and cuddle with me, woman.”

A smile peeked through at that rough demand but she maintained her interrogation face.

He sighed, wondering what was going on in that busy little head of hers.

“Were you holding back earlier? During all the sex, I mean?” A faint blush pinked her cheeks and he almost lost track of the questioning. It never ceased to amaze him—and turn him on—how she could be his ferocious little hellcat one second, and his shy, sweet kitten the next.

“Was I holding back? Not at all. Why, were you?” He raised a brow. “Are you about to crush my fragile male ego?”

She laughed. “I think you have plenty ego left on reserve. But seriously, you weren’t holding back on anything? As in things you like?”

“I like you.”

“I’m being serious.”

“No, you’re being weird.” He sighed and tucked his arms behind his head. “Just say what you’re trying to say.”

After a pregnant pause, she looked him in the eye and said in one long exhale, “
I know you’re a dom, and that you like to go to BDSM clubs.”

He blinked at her for a second and then cursed.

“So it’s true!”

Thankfully that wasn’t sheer horror on her face. More a cross between curiosity, amusement, and a tiny bit of hurt, along with a whole lot of questions.

“Who’d you hear that from?” he asked shaking his head tiredly. “Dani? Xoey?”

“Yes.”

He paused and then rolled his eyes. “Well that explains some very weird Christmas gifts I got last year.”

“From Dani or Xoey?”

He chuckled. “Dani. Xoey always gives me weird gifts.”

She tilted her head. “Why didn’t you tell me? That you were into all that whole dom and sub thing.”

“I’m not.”

“But…”

“Quinn, I’m not a dom. But…my ex, Lacey, was a sub. That is, she realized she was a sub while we were dating.”

Quinn wrapped her arms around her legs and tucked her chin on her knees. “Really? That must have been hard on you two.”

He loved this about her. That he could just talk to her about anything, even the bizarre and uncomfortable.

“It was hard. She started researching it heavily and throwing herself into the lifestyle. But I wasn’t in to it. She kept saying if I loved her, I should at least try it.”

A look of annoyance flitted across Quinn’s face and he almost reached out and kissed her for that. “It wasn’t all bad. But after about six months, I discovered she was becoming obsessed with the lifestyle—in an outsider-looking-in way. Everything about her changed…or no, that’s not right. I think her true inner self just came rushing out all at once.”

With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes and tried not to let those long few months fill him with the black sticky webs of discontent and at times, pure misery, as it had back then.

“Because she didn’t have a dom to help her, she sort of just…lost it. I’ve been told that if she’d had a dom to guide her, or more folks in the lifestyle to help her, she wouldn’t have unraveled the way she did. But basically, she started needing me to tell her what to wear, who to be friends with, how to act, when to talk. When and if to use the bathroom, when and if she should eat. And she wanted to be punished for things, she wanted to punish herself, rather. Almost cruelly. Not for the sake of pain, but almost like she was going crazy in her own skin.”

Now, Quinn did look horrified.

Yeah. That’s how it’d been for him too.

“Then one day, she tried to commit suicide.”

Quinn gasped.

“I tried to get her to go to a therapist and she did for a while. Some helped a little but it was still like she was wearing someone else’s skin, going crazy scratching at it to try and tear it off.” He exhaled roughly. “Honestly, I knew I couldn’t go through another six months like the six prior so I made myself think outside the box.”

Quinn’s eyes widened. “That’s why you went to the BDSM clubs.”

He nodded. “But not in the way you’re thinking. I really have no interest in the lifestyle. But I found doms who folks recommended I talk to and I had them meet Lacey. By then, she was a shell of a human, nearly broken. I couldn’t send her out into a new world—even if it was clearly the world she’d always been meant to be in—without watching out for her.”

“So I spent a few weeks with her in the clubs, and I interviewed a bunch of doms for her. Eventually, she started to come to life. After a month, I met one dom I just knew was going to be a good fit for her. So I introduced them, threatened his life if he hurt her, of course. And then finally let her go.”

For a while, he just let the silence sink in. Almost like the thud of a book closing with the words, ‘The End.’

When he looked up at Quinn, he found she was just staring at him, shaking her head. “You’re just…you’re an amazing guy. You know that, right? I don’t know a single person who would go through everything you just explained.”

Uncomfortable with the adoration he saw shining in her eyes, he gazed up at the ceiling. “I’m not that amazing.”

Two soft female hands cupped his jaw and turned his face back towards hers. “Yes. You are.”

“I couldn’t love her the way she needed, be what she needed. And because of me, she almost died.”

“Rylan, because of you, she
lived
. Have you heard from her since?”

“Once. She’s pretty far immersed in the world but she did contact me once.”

“And?”

“She’s happy. Finally. She sounded really happy.”

Quinn studied him for a bit. “You’ve never told anyone this have you?”

“No. I didn’t want folks to judge her.”

“So you had no one to ask you how you were doing during it all, after it all.”

He almost choked on the emotions in his throat. “No.”

A silent beat passed before she asked, “
Were
you okay during it all, after it all?”

“Not really. I’d felt like every emotion I possessed had been slaughtered in a war that I didn’t even know I’d been fighting until I was cornered and almost crushed. My heart had felt ripped to shreds. Not because she’d broken it, but because it’d been wrung dry, clawed at, twisted around, and cracked open. Shredded. It’d been shredded. But the sad part was that I didn’t ever love her, not really. I cared for her a great deal, but I stayed by her to help her and take care of her. I got my heart shredded and it wasn’t even filled with love for the woman at the time. Crazy, right?”

She gazed into his eyes—concern, empathy, and pride all swirling around in that blue abyss. “How on earth did you survive that? Move on from that?”

That was easy. His heart stuttered a beat as he said simply, “You. You helped me move on from that. You help me glue back the pieces of my heart without even trying.”