Own (Command Force Alpha #1) (25 page)

“I meant it, Katsu. We’re here tonight. However long this lasts, I want you to call me
Sir
.”

She turned eyes like laser beams to meet his gaze. The silence between them felt like standing too close to a grenade without its pin. “Why?”

“The same reason I told you to fold your clothes the right way. And wash me. And suck me. The same reason why the word ‘demerit’ now gets me hard as a rock. The same reason you own a five-hundred-dollar purse. I like telling you what to do, and you sure as hell seem to like it when I do.”

“
Sir
is part of it?”

“It’s another step, yeah.”

“Toward what?”

She stood slowly and walked on silent feet to meet him. Mere inches separated them—just the hot, sweet mingling of their breaths. She spread her hands wide across his pecs. Nimble fingers worked into his chest hair, then around to his nipples. She teased until they beaded beneath her erotic touch. Evan stood perfectly still, as if undergoing torture rather than seduction.

“You have to tell me, Evan. I have to know exactly what you mean by all this. This can’t go well between people who aren’t upfront with each other.”

He tensed. “Are you talking about that other guy? The one who wanted to give you a collar?”

With a defiant flip of her hair, she lifted her mouth toward his. “Yes. I didn’t know what I wanted or what I was doing. I couldn’t articulate it, you know? So we flamed out.”

“Did you go as far with him as we have?” He might as well have been speaking around a mouth full of glue. Or nails.

“Are you going to tell me how many cheerleaders? A private life’s a private life.” She shook her head and dropped her hands. “But no,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He wasn’t the right fit. The college guys I dated weren’t right either. Straight-up sex and flowers and chocolates aren’t for me. I tried. Believe me, I tried to be normal.”

“Normal?”

“Telling them what I like. Asserting myself, just so they could paw their way to my clit. Practically shoving my ass in the air when I wanted something other than missionary. I blew them all away in class without batting an eye. Why not be their equal in bed? But I couldn’t do it. I felt like a bimbo for wanting to be treated…” she looked away, “…like you’ve been treating me. Or I’d open up about what I wanted and they’d totally lose respect for me. Then I might as well have been a blow-up doll.”

Evan felt the flip side of every word she said. Lightheaded, he sat on the settee. The cherry wood wasn’t the only thing sumptuous about it. The upholstery was the softest velvet he’d ever touched. He wanted to touch Katsu even more.

She’d opened up. She deserved it from him too.

“I’ve wanted to own women,” he said gruffly.

“Own?” She dropped beside him on the settee as if her knees had melted. Her pupils were dilated, and good goddamn, her front teeth were showing. He loved that fucking overbite. Out of all the things to fixate on…

“Yes.
Own.
I’ve wanted it for years. I don’t know why, unless you take the psychoanalysis route. Blame my compulsion to control everything in my life, when that’s particularly impossible in my case. I’ve fought the urge, because that’s sick, right? To pick out a woman’s clothes, choose her meals for her, punish her when she gets something wrong or disobeys…? Who the hell signs up for that?”

“A submissive. A submissive
wants
to be owned by a deserving Master.” Kat didn’t look away. “But how would you know, about the clothes and meals? Would you guess and just expect her to go along?”

“No, that’s not it.” He turned toward her, taking her hands, needing contact. He was prying open the deepest recesses of his lizard brain, risking her potential sneers. “I’d want to know everything about her. What she liked and didn’t like. It’s reverb. You get a kick out of looking sexy at the pool halls, so I chose something sexy—the best we could do. You wore it. I was happy and turned on all night, and you were happy to have pleased me. Weren’t you?”

“Yes.” She added a single nod that made her thick, raven’s-wing hair bob.

“And when you washed me? When you knelt on the bed and waited and waited? You liked that.”

He noticed how those last three words weren’t a question. He was regaining himself, in part because she was easing toward him with every syllable, her whole body asking for more.

Her eyes pleaded. “I liked that. Very much.”

“How long would you have waited for me?”

“As long as it took.”

Evan stroked her cheek. “Why?”

“It’s like you said, you seem to want to…know me. Inside and out. You turned me right to that purse. How did you know that’s the one I’d adore?”

He slid closer and kissed her softly on the forehead. “Your apartment is chaos. When all this blows over and you go home, you’ll clean a special place for it. You might even put it on display. You’ll use water protectant and leather conditioner. When you’re out, you’ll be extra aware of where you walk, where you sit, where you place it—and damn, you’ll feel special on those days. Sometimes you’ll touch it because you want to, because it’s pristine and lovely when things rarely are.”

“You… How…?”

“I’ve seen a lot of things I don’t want to remember, and I’ll see a lot more. Today—God, Kat, the terrifying parts of today rank right up there. But figuring out that you wanted a white purse was a treat. And I’m glad I got it right.” Two tears angled down over her cheekbones. He swiped them away with his thumbs. “Why are you crying?”

She sniffed. “I’ve never doubted that what you demand of me will be
for
me too.”

Evan’s chest felt stuffed with cotton. She was awe-inspiring.

Cupping her hand over his, she pressed it more firmly against her cheek. “Trusting you with all this is harder, even, than putting my life in your hands today. It’s more intimate. It’s scary. Otherwise we wouldn’t have waited this long to talk about it. But I love the challenge, Evan. I love knowing that if I hold on and do what you say, we’ll get through it just fine and you’ll tell me I’ve done well. And I’ll get my reward…whatever that is.”

“Do you always expect a reward?”

“If making you happy counts, then yes.”

Evan dropped his head until she cradled it in her lap. He was floored. Toasted. This
was
torture, because Katsu had told him everything he’d ever hoped to hear from a woman. Yet she was still the colonel’s daughter, he was still a covert operative who could disappear like a ghost come morning, and their time together would end when his team eliminated threats aligned against her. Exposing that tail at Quincy Market said they were making someone very uncomfortable.

The feeling was mutual.

She was perfect. And he couldn’t have her. At least not forever.

“Get up, Katsu. I want you naked on the bed before I get my pants off.”

“You’re already half naked. That’s quite a head start, sir.”

Evan groaned. He flopped on the settee as she scrambled away. She shouldn’t have been able to, but she’d pinpointed the one way to obey his command and beat him to the bed—by making his fantasy come true.

By calling him
Sir
and meaning it.

Clever girl.

But Evan… Evan was in charge.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kat didn’t use the word
Sir
lightly. It was short, but strong and powerful. Something about those three little letters created a larger whole.

Evan had all but explained it to her, the thoughts that had simmered under the surface of her skin. He’d taken them and formed them and handed them back to her in a way that made sense. So she could call him Sir, at least for tonight. Beyond that, she couldn’t and wouldn’t promise.

Especially when it earned such a delicious reaction. He lolled against the velvet settee, looking something like a Greek god who’d strode down from Olympus. He wasn’t fair to the world—too strong for it, and so powerful that no one would ever match up. He’d filled out an extra fifteen pounds of muscle in the last four years, and with it he lived in his big frame more comfortably. She caught glimpses of him in fits and starts as she stripped her clothes. First she peeked at his abs, between yanking off her thin sweater. When she pulled off her tank top, she saw the dip of his shoulder before his pecs swelled out into steady, flat planes. She swallowed the rush of liquid in her mouth.

She wanted to touch her tongue there. She wanted to open her teeth against the narrow strip of skin that delved toward his waistband. So she lost no time in pushing down her skinny jeans, only to realize that she’d forgotten to take off her boots.

Plopping down on the edge of the sumptuous bed, she looked Evan straight in the eyes. “Fuck,” she said, crystal clear. Then she added one more, because what was a single-cheek spanking, after all? “
Fuck.
”

He stood up and shucked his jeans while she was still struggling with the zipper of her boots where it had caught in snug denim. “You’re going to pay for that.”

She didn’t bother to hold back the grin. Why should she? They were both getting exactly what they wanted. “Want me to throw in a few more? I know more than one bad word.”

He prowled toward her with all the grace of a dancer, though she’d never utter that analogy. Jarheads marched. They stalked. They jumped when they were told to jump. Not Evan. He was sensuous and enticing. His hips rolled toward her, and he was already getting hard. His thick shaft made her want to lick him. Suck him.

Wash him again.

She was having fantasies about being some sort of serving wench. It didn’t sound liberated or strong, but she knew she’d feel like a princess if he demanded it of her again.

“Give me three more,” he said. He was a leashed beast and he was on his
own
leash. No one controlled Evan but him. She couldn’t keep inside her own skin—he was that sexy.

And he had issued his command.

“Motherfucker.” She finally kicked free of her boots and shoved her jeans down. “Shit.” She knelt on the bed. “Cunt.”

“Yours is wet.” His words were calm and perfectly assured. He stood close enough that she could reach out and grasp his growing cock. But she didn’t. He hadn’t said to.

“Yes, Sir.” Her stomach flipped at saying that. She was depraved in the best kind of way. There were deeply bent implications in all this, but she didn’t want to look at them—not when he was gloriously naked in front of her.

“Show me.”

He hadn’t said how, so she lay down on the bed. The fluffy white duvet surrounded her in exquisite comfort. It was cool along her back, in perfect counterpoint to his hot gaze along her torso and legs. She licked her bottom lip. This was more difficult with ephemeral orders. She wanted him to say exactly what to do—but she also wanted to be able to please him no matter the order given.

She touched two fingers to her swollen pussy. The wetness slicked her strokes. She lifted her fingers, where they shone in the low light of the room. “That much. You haven’t even touched me yet, and that’s what I’m like.”

His shoulders twisted on something close to a shudder, and she was practically high. Her head spun. Thank God she was lying down. The magic of being able to affect a man like Evan so strongly was heady stuff. She could get strung out on that.

“More,” he said gruffly. His voice was a deep growl that rocketed through her. He locked his knees against the edge of the mattress, between her spread thighs. “Touch yourself more.”

Immediately she obeyed. Her own touch felt more electric under his gaze. Every stroke of flesh over flesh was hypnotic. With the way he watched her, her touch wasn’t her own. It was his.

“You like it when I do that.”

“I like what it shows me about you.”

“What’s that, Sir?” She lost control on
Sir
, just as both fingers found the button of her clit. Her voice cracked on a sighing moan.

“How much you want me.” He spread one hand across her upper chest. His fingertips balanced on the line of her collarbone, his thumb stroking the delicate skin above her breast. “How strongly this affects you.”

She could have laughed at the echo of her own thoughts from moments ago, but laughter was impossible when he added his fingers to hers. She started to pull her hand away.

“No,” he snapped.

Their fingertips dueled. They circled her clit until she thought she might cry with how sweetly the pleasure cut through her. This was something like war, and something like danger, and something like worship. The sharp edge of
ending soon
was enough to make her fight toward orgasm, as if he’d disappear before she could even climax.

He knew. Of course he knew. “Don’t come.”

Fuck, he controlled her body from the inside out. Two little words and her lungs seized and her cunt clenched tight and she just…
stopped
. Her eyes scrunched shut, and she wanted to sob with frustration.

She didn’t. He wouldn’t leave her wanting. Not for long. He never had. She just had to be good and patient and do precisely as he said.

It was heaven.

“Roll over,” he ordered. “Present that pretty ass for me, with your face down in the mattress. I want to see your curves on display. For me.”