Mastered By The Mavericks (29 page)

“You don’t know that.”

Rhett tacked on a significant glower—which weirdly warmed Reb’s chest. The sex hadn’t
affected the guy’s views on the mission, thank fuck—including his support about the
mouse cam’s failure. Nonetheless, Reb muttered, “Well, you don’t
not
know it.”

Rhett glowered. “Really, shithead? Weren’t we right here an hour ago?”

Nothing
was the same as it was an hour ago.

Rhett illustrated the point by caressing a hand along Brynn’s calf. The move, given
in lazy reassurance, pulled Reb right back into the unnatural thrall the man had over
him. Damn it. He could stare at those powerful, graceful hands for an hour…or ten.
In this instance, he wasn’t alone. Nobody in the battalion had escaped being captivated
at some point by Double-Oh’s magic with a recon intel screen, a GPS box, or even fixing
kids’ toys in third world villages across the globe.

But witnessing the reverence Double-Oh emanated over the skin of a woman…

Fuck.

Yeah. An hour. Or ten.

Brynna herself cut that dream short. She jerked up her head like the world’s sexiest
CEO about to conduct a board meeting. “I just want to focus on what we do
now
. Sitting here in a stupid funk isn’t…going to…” Her voice cracked on fresh tears.
“Damn it! This is the most ridiculous…why am I still doing this?”

As if moving with one mind—and maybe they were—Rebel swept up with Rhett, surrounding
her once more. Crisscrossing their arms over her chest and tucking their heads against
her shoulders, they each captured the wet streams of her desperation with their lips.
Rebel prepared for her resistance, perhaps even for her total flight, but the woman
only tensed for half a heartbeat before urging them closer, then weeping even harder.

They stayed like that, in a three-way cocoon, as Brynn’s sobs mingled with the morning
songs of the birds outside. Minutes went by, as if he even cared. Vaguely—maybe not
so vaguely—Rebel considered the concept of heaven on Earth. If there was one for everybody,
his may just have just been revealed.

Like every law-abiding heaven, it was over all too fast.

Brynn brought her hands in, swiping again at her puffy eye sockets. “Thank you.” She
gazed from one to the other of them, though clearly struggled for focus. “Thank you
both…for…well…”

Rhett pressed a thumb across her lips. “We know. And you’re welcome.”

“This still isn’t me,” she rasped. “I don’t know
who
this is, but it’s sure as hell not—”

“The woman who told us she ‘doesn’t do submissive’?” Rebel filled in.

Her gaze had been melting to a gorgeous milk chocolate shade. It re-hardened inside
of two seconds. “What does that have to do with any—”

“It has to do with everything.” He didn’t let her go, securing her wrist as she dug
in her heels, trying to push away. “Especially because it was part of what just happened.”

“I’m not going to discuss this.” Her tone was rebellious but her stare pleading, especially
as she lifted it to Rhett. The move earned her only a pair of raised brows and a nod
toward Reb.

“Sorry, peach. I don’t have a golden Dom patch, but even I can see he’s right—with
a pretty huge
R
.”

She squirmed. Rebel held tight. He felt like a complete shit for it, but her waterworks
flooded back on, confirming just how big his
R
really was. “Easy,
mon chou.
Easy. It’s only us. And just to refresh your memory, we both really enjoyed it.”
He dropped his gaze along with his voice, making sure she felt just how much he meant
the words.
Enjoyed
was the hugest understatement for what she’d given him with her submission, but this
was going to require baby steps. Lots of them.

Rhett leaned in with the same message taking over his face. Though his lips were firm,
the oceans in his eyes swelled with sensual waves. “You enjoyed it too…right?”

She flung a glare. “I appreciate your respect for my interpretive acting work—but
I’m not
that
good.”

Rebel pulled her wrist against his lips. “Actually, you’re still enjoying it.” He
nuzzled her skin with his nose. “Your heartbeat. Racing and ready. You like the fact
that we’re even talking about it—”

“The hell I do.”

“As well as every moment you gave in to it.”

Rhett performed the same treatment on her other wrist. “Gave in to
us
.”

“The
hell
I did.” She wrested both arms free. Jabbed them close to her torso then under the
sheet, like a kid hiding a stolen candy bar. “I’m
not
going to talk about this.”

Rebel rested back on his haunches. “Well. That’s completely your prerogative, Miss
Monet.”

She huffed. “Oh, it’s ‘Miss Monet’ now? Turning on the ice water, so I’ll coerce you
to heat it back up by baring my soul?” Her eyes rolled. “You want to try something
that I didn’t ace a psych exam on two years ago?”

He teeter-tottered his head before quickly nodding it. “Fair enough. But at least
I cared enough to try, considering you’ve tied my hands against using the method that’ll
really work here.” He settled back a little more, folding his arms. “But that’s exactly
how you want it, isn’t it?”

She wasn’t so snappy with her next retort. With hands still rustling beneath the sheet,
she pressed, “Fine. I’ll bite. What method would that be, Sergeant Stafford?” Slinging
the payback on the formality had her preening a little, proud of herself—

Until Reb issued his rebuttal.

“Brynna Cosette Monet…you need to be spanked.”

“Pardon the hell out of me?”

“Nothing to pardon.” He shrugged, ignoring her stiff spine and plummeting brows. “The
lines have clearly been redrawn, so there’s no need.”

“Lines?” she demanded. “Redrawn? For what?”

“For whatever you now want them to be. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“I—” If she were on a stage in rehearsal, she’d be the one begging for script help.
“I don’t know what—”

“But if, hypothetically, I was still acting as your Dom, you’d probably be flat on
this mattress now, taking my hand on your ass.
A lot
of times.”

The sheet noticeably rustled. Her lips visibly twisted. Oh, he’d gotten her attention,
all right—and likely a little more. And the woman
still
wanted to deny her attraction to sexual surrender? It made no sense. He checked in
with a glance toward Rhett, whose face reflected the same incredulity.

Brynn scowled deeply, though her voice was an unsure rasp. “Wh-why?”

It wasn’t hard to preface the answer with a soft smile. “Number one, because you’d
like it. Number two, to establish a connection between us of energy and trust, so
you’d feel better about opening up to me. And number three, because you’d really,
really
like it.”

Her face tightened again. But more importantly, her legs squirmed beneath the sheet.
Little minx. She was clearly hot, bothered, and on her way to being wet again—but
there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except watch. Because, for whatever
insane reason, Brynna Monet
still
“didn’t do submission”.

“So I like a little bite to my passion every now and then. It doesn’t mean I’m a damn
submissive.”

Rhett reentered the fray with a wry smirk. “With all due respect to every gorgeous
inch of you, peach, I’ve been naked and horizontal with you twice in the last week.
Between those two occasions, I’ve had the fun of pulling your hair, biting your nipples,
sucking your clit, zip-tying your wrists, and fucking you senseless, among other pretty
good highlights. You know when I’ve seen that lovely pussy the wettest?” As he asked
it, he leaned in, making sure their gazes were level for his whispered answer. “When
you begged me for more, sweetheart. When I
made
you beg me for more.”

“When you had to let it all go,” Rebel confirmed.

“When you submitted to us.”

Her eyes slammed shut. Her body balled up. Rebel had expected the withdrawal, but
this was extreme. Her face contorted as if they’d both punched her in the gut.

“I don’t care.” She huddled tighter. “I
can’t
care.”

Rebel bit back a number of Creole words that perfectly fit his fury. God
damn
. If they could only lay her out and redden her ass…

Good thing Rhett was up in her grill right now, and not him. The guy’s composure was
nothing short of astounding as he gently prodded, “Why?” He ran a soothing hand over
her head, not caring about her little flinch. “Why can’t you care, Brynna?”

She lifted her head. Leaned a little toward his touch, giving in to a moment of its
strength and safety. Rebel was envious.
That man and his hands…

Without opening her eyes, she rasped, “Because Enya cared.”

Rhett didn’t falter his caresses by a beat. “Who’s Enya?”

She ducked her head from him. “Enya cared. Now she doesn’t.”

“But why?” He reached again, but she jerked away. “Sweet peach…you can tell us. You
can
trust
us. It’s just Rebel and me.”

She snapped her head up. Glared at both of them, the scared kitten instantly grown
into a terrified cat. They both watched, bemused, as she whipped the sheet fully around
herself. Through every second, Rebel never remotely anticipated her next move.

“I won’t do this. I can’t do this.”

With an acrobatic move only possible for an accomplished dancer, she flipped backward
then twisted, escaping over the back of the futon—leaving Rhett and him to gawk at
each other in shock more naked than their dicks.

‡

T
wo hours later,
Rhett paced into the office with refilled water bottles in his hands and a tight
scowl on his face. He was showered and changed, his faded BDU bottoms topped by a
black T-shirt emblazoned with yellow lettering:
Actually, it
is
rocket science.
Rebel looked up from one of the two chairs now parked in front of the computer desk,
arching a wary brow—which he decided to ignore.

“She’s still sleeping.”

Reb chucked a pencil at the desk. Rocked back in the chair. “Because, of course, you
decided to check again.”

He banged one of the water bottles down. Dropped into the empty chair just as bearishly.
“Beats sitting here looking at you.”

The shithead leaned back a little more. “Hmm. You sure about that?” He laced fingers
in classic criminal mastermind style, a shout-out to every super hero movie they’d
seen together—which meant nearly all of them. Trouble was, no Joker or Loki or Luthor
looked good enough to jump just sitting in a work-out tank and shorts.

Damn it
.

Rebel. Him.
Them.
He couldn’t treat it like a bothersome summer cold anymore, could he? It wasn’t going
to “just go away” on its own. Every moment of this morning’s adventure had sure as
hell changed that.

Adventure.
Okay, that was a good way of looking at it. Like all great adventures, it had been
exhilarating and new, an adrenalin rush not soon to be forgotten. At least not by
him. But was that where everything stopped?

The waters in which he still swam—at a desperate pace—said no.

Treacherous waters.

Where his fucking feelings had turned into boulders.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he finally grunted, peering through the water at the monitors. A
little plastic, a little H2O, and the world was suddenly a different place. Only…it
wasn’t. Only his view had changed. “Damn sure.”

It was time to see things clearly again. To push the boulders back into the stream.

He took another long pull of the water. This time, pushed it away after setting it
down. “So…you think she’s all right?”

“As opposed to the ninety-eight other times you asked me, Mother Hubbard?” Reb came
out of the Magneto pose to balance the opposite way, elbows propped on the desk, tiptoeing
the base of the chair. But by the time he looked up at the monitors, his snark dissipated.
“You know what? I think she’s exhausted. First, we weren’t exactly about hearts, candles,
and Air Supply with her this morning. On top of that, after the details we’ve uncovered
here…”

Rhett grimaced. “No shit.”

Two lamer words had never been spoken—in light of the information relayed by the two
screens. Rebel pointed at a picture from the Facebook page of a woman named Enya Sabine
Monet, dated a little over two years ago. “This has to be the ‘Enya’ she was referring
to.”

“Who clearly has to be her younger sister.” The photo served as the
no, duh
for that. The shot, which looked like it was taken at a club or party, displayed
Brynna and Enya along with another woman, only referred to as Nadine. They all wore
black cocktail dresses, though Enya and Nadine had finished theirs off with fishnets
and pleaser boots that wouldn’t have left any dude at that party guessing about their
end game. Brynn, with those incredible gazelle legs, didn’t need any enhancements
but the sleek black heels on her feet. As it was, Rhett shifted to readjust his fresh
boner. Just imagining her in that dress, with those legs circling his waist and those
heels digging into his back…