My Tye (14 page)

She nodded, not really thrilled with how any food sounded right about now, but she also knew Tye was right. She needed something more than an ice ball rattling around inside her stomach, so scrambled eggs it was.

“Good, since that’s the easiest way to make ‘em. Never quite got the hang of flipping the whole ones without breaking the yolk.”

She smiled when he did, despite her insides pitching and diving like she was stuck on some roadside carnival ride.

He quietly placed a small skillet on the stove, then cracked five brown eggs into a bowl he’d gotten from the cabinet above the sink. He added a touch of milk and a few turns of the pepper mill, then whisked the mixture with a quick, steady rhythm. The motion mesmerized her, but it wasn’t the whisk or the eggs that captivated her attention. It was Tye’s forearm—the way it flexed, the muscles tightening along the top and the veins protruding from underneath, all from doing something so everyday and mundane—that held her transfixed.

He stopped too soon for her liking, and plopped a couple pats of butter into the skillet, followed by the eggs. He looked up to her as he stirred them, and before she could stop herself, she glanced away.

“How long have you known Jack?” she asked, concentrating on the eggs instead of him.

He stopped stirring and thought on that. “Hell, close to ten years now, I guess. We served as deputies together over in Louis County before going our separate ways. We keep in touch, though. I still talk to him every now and then.”

“So, you’ve known him a long time.” She didn’t know if that made her feel better or not.

He nodded. “There’s not too many men that I trust more than I do him.”

Well, that was good to know.

“Was last night your first time at Euphoria?” he asked.

Whammo.

She pulled the ice pack away from her eye and set it on the counter in front of her, kneading the frozen goo inside with her fingertips. A fresh round of nerves struck her, but she went with them this time. She really didn’t have any other choice.

“It was,” she said. “It was my first time any place like that.”

He let the eggs sit a minute and dropped a few slices of bread into the toaster, then went to the fridge for some orange juice. “What’d you think?”

That question was easy enough to answer. “That I’d made a huge mistake by going there.”

He drew his eyebrows together. “Because of the attack.”

If she were being honest? “Afterward, absolutely. But before? The place just wasn’t what I, um, expected.”

The look he gave her then took on about a million different meanings all at once. Still, he didn’t say anything. He simply stirred the pan one final time, turned the flame off underneath it and split the eggs evenly between two plates. The toast was next, which he lightly buttered, then he poured two glasses of juice. He set the plates and glasses on the breakfast bar, then came around to her side and slid onto the stool next to her.

But he didn’t just dig in like she thought he would. Instead, he turned her barstool so she sat facing him.

“What was it that you expected?”

Her hands fell to her lap where she fiddled with a string on the hem of his shirt. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

“You had to have had some idea.”

Okay, this pussyfooting around was stupid. This, right here, right now, was her chance to lay it all out on the line. On a deep breath, she looked up and met his eyes. “You’re right. I knew what I wanted to find. Only what I saw didn’t come close to that. It wasn’t even in the same hemisphere.”

He slouched forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees and tracing an imaginary circle around her kneecap with one finger. “I can only imagine.”

She blew out an acerbic huff. “Can you?” Then again, if he knew Jack…

“Places like that aren’t for everyone, you know.”

That stopped her, simply because it was almost word for word what Jack had said to her during the tour of the club. “Yeah, I figured that out.”

“So why go in the first place?”

Oh, man…

She shrugged and concentrated on her hands in her lap again. “I couldn’t
not
go anymore. I just wanted to see for myself if what… If these feelings I have are…”

He slid his hand up her thigh and held on to her hand. “Are what?”

She licked her lips. Swallowed. Hesitated, but only for a moment. “I have these fantasies.”
Which you star in.
“This… I don’t know. Need?” The edge of her lip lifted and she nervously let out a tiny chuckle. She glanced out the front door, then over to the fireplace, then down the hallway. She looked everywhere, it seemed, except Tye’s face. “I’ve never told anyone this. Well, I tried to tell Jack last night, but that didn’t go so well either.”

“It’s okay. Go on.”

After another minute, she said, “I thought I’d find what I was looking for there. But, God, Tye. What I saw…”

He gripped her hand a little firmer. “Intense?”

She snuck a peek at him. “Not for some, maybe. But for me? Yeah.” This time she held her ground and didn’t look away. “I think it was the blood.”

Tye narrowed his eyes. “The blood?”

She nodded. “And the needles. That was…well, not for me. I’m not in the market for blood and pain.” She sighed. “Hell, maybe I’m just fooling myself altogether. Maybe I’m not cut out for
any
part of that lifestyle.”

Tye shifted in his seat, sat up straighter. “Not necessarily. Maybe it’s just that you haven’t found the right person to share with yet. The one person who knows what you need. Who can give you exactly what you want.”

The fact that he sounded like he knew a little bit about understanding what a person interested in BDSM might want or need, along with him
not
completely freaking the hell out on her, had her mind whirling.

She didn’t have a chance to tamp down on the spinning top her head had become, not when he moved in closer and cupped her cheek. And not when what he said on his next breath took hers away.

“Maybe I could be that person for you.”

It was Tye’s turn for a little confession. Now that he’d heard from Laine’s own lips that she’d been to Club Euphoria and that she had some interest in maybe not the S&M side of BDSM, but in other aspects of the lifestyle, it was time for her to know the truth about him as well.

“What do you mean, maybe you could be that person?” Her question came out breathy. Quiet. Like he’d just shocked the hell out of her.

He stroked his thumb along her cheek. “Just what it sounds like. Being a county sheriff isn’t the only thing I have in common with Jack McKay.”

“I…” As her eyes widened a little, she opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. She bit at her bottom lip, and all he could think about while she did all that was how badly he wanted to kiss her. “You’re…”

He figured he’d answer her before she even finished asking the question. “If anyone’s labeling, then Dom would fit.”

Her chest caved in a little when she let out her held breath, and her shoulders slumped, but only slightly. “Oh God.”

He didn’t know if that was a good
Oh God
or a bad
Oh God
. “Not what you expected?”

“It’s not that.” Again with her hesitation. “No, wait. It pretty much is that.”

He smiled a little.

“I didn’t know,” she said, quieter.

“No reason you would have. Not very many people do. Like Mac, it’s not anything I go around advertising.” He scooted forward on his barstool, spreading his legs wider so her knees fit between them. “Unlike Mac, though, I don’t do the whole club scene. It’s just not my thing.”

She swallowed while searching his eyes. “What is your thing?”

He kept his hand on her cheek and settled his other on the side of her thigh. He didn’t squeeze, he didn’t grab on, he just held it there. “If I had to describe it? Then I’d say that my
thing
is to have the person I’m in a relationship with trust me to give them what they need. For them to willingly give up their control while I hold the power of their pleasure in my hands. And for both of us to work on building that, together.”

“And the pain part?”

“If that’s what she needs, then I’m in. If it’s not, then, of course, no. I would never push my submissive over the edge or take her to a place where I knew she couldn’t handle it. If I did, then the trust we’ve spent all that time building between us would be destroyed.”

“Are you in one now? A relationship, I mean.”

When he shook his head, her shoulders straightened a little.

“No. I haven’t been with anyone, involved in the lifestyle or not, for a while now.”

“This is too unreal,” she whispered.

“What is?”

Her answer came on another wispy breath. “You are.”

He couldn’t help but smile at that, too. “Actually, I’m about as real as it gets.”

“All this time. You were so close all this time.”

He loved the wonderment lacing her voice. “I’m even closer now.”

“You are. You’re right here in front of me.”

“And I’m not going anywhere.”

He leaned in, tentatively at first. Just inches, really. And she stayed still, right where she was. He looked to her lips, then back into her eyes. He barely heard her next words, she spoke so quietly. But he felt what she wanted, picked up on her need, maybe because it was exactly what he needed too.

“Kiss me.”

Which, holy hell, he did. Softly, God so torturously softly and easily. Her lips met his, teasing him with gentle nips and licks. He forced himself to slow down enough to tease her right back. Neither of them moved any other part of their bodies. Just their lips, their tongues.

But, fuck, his heart was going haywire. His cock thickened with every beat, until the beast it had become strained against the zipper of his jeans, begging to be let loose. Beads of sweat formed between his shoulder blades and his pecs. He could feel them, just as easily as he could feel Laine’s pulse race beneath his fingertips along the side of her neck.

He was nowhere near ready for her to pull away but, damn it, she did. Her breaths were uneven, ragged, just as his were. Trying to calm them just a little, he rested his forehead against hers, still burning inside for her kiss, still needing to touch her. But the way she cringed and the hiss she let out when he did instantly cured any hunger that might’ve been left to ricochet through his body.

He leaned back. Way, way back. “Oh hell. Laine. God, I’m sorry.”

He’d hit the edge of her swollen eye or come too close to the gash on the side of her head, he wasn’t sure which.

She was shaking her head, albeit gently, before he could say any more. “It’s okay, really.”

“No. No, it damn well is not.”

“Stop it. We both got a little caught up in…” She closed her eyes, and he felt like such an ass. A huge, raging, sex-starved ass. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

“No, I didn’t. But that doesn’t make it all right.”

She tried to smile but he knew her pain had to be about a twenty on a scale of one to ten. Another blast of dickheadedness struck him head-on.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Easier said than done, especially when it came to her.

She opened her eyes then and pinned him with a smoldering stare. “I mean it, Tye. Don’t.”

Never, not once in his life, could he remember acquiescing so easily. It wasn’t in his nature to give in to
any
one. But there was something about Laine, about the way she talked to him, about the way she kissed him, that made him almost helpless against doing so.

Talk about a dichotomy. He ached to dominate her, to have her bend to his desires. To ultimately give her pleasures like she’d never experienced before. But in the same breath, he wanted nothing more than to do whatever the hell it was that she asked of him.

Which was, oh, just a little hard for him to get a grip on.

“Maybe we should just eat,” she said. “The eggs… They’re getting cold.”

He wanted to say,
Fuck the eggs and let me take care of you
. Yet at the same time, he knew that feeding her and building up her strength
was
, in a not-so-roundabout way, taking care of her.

So he nodded and turned first her barstool, then his, so they both faced the breakfast bar. He waited until she’d speared a hunk of the eggs and taken a bite before he did the same.

“They’re good,” she said.

He shrugged, concentrating more on corralling his wayward libido than on the meal in front of him. “They’re not bad.”

“I like that you can cook.”

Well, hell.

“I like that you like it.” He took a huge gulp of the orange juice. “I’ll have to do it right sometime and make you dinner. My specialty.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “Which is?”

“What’s your favorite food?”

“Why? Because that’s what your specialty is?”