To Trust Her Heart (7 page)

“But they’ll hear!” she whispered fervently.

Ty levered just the top half of his body away from her just a bit on the bed, while the rest of him was settling down onto all too familiar territory. He knew just how much of a favorite this position was for Maddie. Although she would only admit it in the dark of night, and he was smart enough never to demand otherwise, she loved feeling submissive to him, and there was no other lovemaking position that more completely reinforced a male’s dominance over his female than the good old-fashioned missionary position.

They were certainly adventurous in bed and tried and liked a handful of other positions. Sex between them was always explosive and rocked the both of them to their foundation. It was never routine, never perfunctory in any way.

But one night while they were both awake, still trying to recover, spooning sweatily, breath still heaving, he posed the question, just out of pure curiosity, and she confessed how much she adored it when he was on top of her, deep within her, and he’d never forgotten it. He’d catalogued and categorized every sexual response she’d ever had, making sure not to repeat those touches or licks or plunges that received a less than enthusiastic response and  remembering those that did.

Before he’d even set her on the surprisingly big bed, he’d already maneuvered himself between her legs, so that when he very carefully lowered her to it, all he had to do was lie gently on top of her, his own size consolidating his position and naturally, physically accentuating the air of dominance that had been a part of him since he could remember.

At first, her eyes had closed, and he’d heard that small, almost relieved sigh. But then she’d opened them again, to stare straight up into his eyes. “Ty.”

He wanted her just about as badly as he had last night, even though it had been less than twenty four hours since he’d had her in this exact same position. Maddie’s small hand landed on his shoulder and he growled, low and deep in his throat. It was one of the few times he’d ever really wished he had absolutely no honor, so that he could tell her that he knew that this room was sound proofed and they could go ahead and make each other scream.

But he didn’t know that. In fact, knowing the stodgy man who owned this plane, he highly doubted it.

Ty wasn’t about to let her up that easily, though. He gathered her legs over his arms, forcing her to spread even further for him, watching her eyes grow large as saucers and making her ball her fists in his shirt in protest, even as his mouth descended on a nipple that might as well have been bare, considering how intent he was on his goal of encouraging it to peak and add to the ache that might make her change her mind.

He highly doubted it, despite the fact that she’d thrown back her head as soon as he began to suckle avidly through two layers of fabric. Dear God, he loved to watch her in pleasure! That was one of the best things about Maddie. She’d responded to him with complete and utter abandon from the very beginning, and it made him want to lose himself in her the way she lost herself in him, each and every time.

Eventually, long, hot moments later, he slid off her, finding his footing at the end of the bed and just standing there, not offering her help up as would be the norm for his sometimes hyper gentlemanly tendencies. Instead, he stood there looking down at her, the breadth of his thighs keeping her legs still spread.

When she tried to sit up, he bent down and cupped her breasts almost less than gently, squeezing her nipples tightly, making her catch her breath with sweet pain as he laid her back down. “Stay still for a moment.” His whispered command was no less forceful.

Maddie knew she should get up. She should roll to the side, careful not to kick him in the head, of course, and just get right off the bed. Now. She should be doing it right now.

But she was caught. Ty had always had the ability to get her to do what he wanted through more than just spanking. The sheer force of his will was a palpable thing, and, although she was loathe to admit it, she adored submitting to that will. She did as she was told, lying there with him watching her, fully clothed but feeling incredibly bare under his knowing eyes.

As his hands reinforced his claim of her, moving slowly over her thighs, up over her hips and back to cup her breasts as if he still had a right to, his eyes never left hers, and his voice hypnotized her with that strong, soft rhythm she knew so well. “When we get to my house, I’m not going to take no for an answer, Maddie.”

She wanted to object, if only on general principles, to his high handed manner, but she knew that anything she said would be a lie that he would see right through, especially since his hands had switched to climbing up the insides of her thighs, and no amount of denim was going to save her from the way he cupped the seat of her desires, rubbing the nub of the inseam against her own nub strongly, making her legs come up automatically in an awkwardly pleasurable spasm.

Maddie tried to close her eyes, but he wouldn’t have that, either. “Look at me, Maddie. I want you, and I know you want me. And about three hours from now, I’m going to carry you into my bedroom and we’re going to singe the sheets again, like we did last night. Only this time,” he bent and pressed his mouth to the cloth over her crotch, blowing his hot breath onto her privates, then rising again and offering his hand to help her up. “This time,” he repeated, grabbing her to him, plastering them together from stem to stern, “you’re going to remember every single second of it, every moan, every whimper, every contraction.” His teeth nibbled her ear lobe greedily, then the spot on her neck just beneath it, and then he turned her loose.

She nearly dissolved, noodle kneed, back onto the bed, but then his strong arm looped around her waist to support her, and guide her back out to the couch in the living area of the plane. She refused to look at the other men, knowing what they must’ve been thinking the two of them were doing back there.

Ty stayed close to her, but not so close as to crowd her. He obviously had other things to do than to babysit her during this flight, and he did them, but she knew that he always had a watchful eye out on her. All of the other men were very solicitous. Kaz got her something to eat mid-flight, and Doc produced a hand held video game that kept her occupied for much longer than it should have. Dead a thousand times over because she had less than no natural abilities with that type of thing, but occupied for a while at least.

But eventually she grew sick of endlessly killing poor Crash Bandicoot, and simply sat there, watching but not seeing the activity around her. She was too wrapped up in what he’d said to her in the bedroom, to achy from what he’d done and what he said he was going to do. More importantly, what she was going to let him do to her.

The plane landed without incident, but not without three armed men jumping out just as it coasted to a stop, brandishing automatic weapons and making sure that the area was secure for them. For her, she knew, because the man who was sitting next to her on the couch with his own gun at the ready, was quite fully capable of taking care of himself. Maddie wasn’t at all sure that she would ever get used to the sight of him like this. She was just beginning to realize how little she knew of him, how little of his warrior face she’d seen, during her years with him, although she would have sworn she’d seen the worst of him when he spanked her.

It was getting to be a trend to be packed into a big black SUV, and that’s where she ended up again, she guessed for the trip to his cabin, only this time there were four other people in the vehicle, and she was in the back seat, squashed between himself and Kaz. It was a good thing she was a basically small person or she would never have fit.

The trip took several hours, as they drove deeper and deeper into the woods. When they finally reached a small clearing at the end of an unkempt dirt road, she got a view of his cabin, and realized that his warrior demeanor wasn’t the only thing he’d downplayed.

While the other three exited the vehicle, guns drawn, the two who were squashing her between them remained in place but hyper alert. Ty kept trying to shove her down onto the floor, but there flat out wasn’t room for her there between those two behemoths.

Eventually, one of the advanced men shouted the all clear, and only then did Ty very carefully unbend himself out of the vehicle, still sweeping his gaze around compulsively for a long while before he let Maddie out. She tried to brush past him, figuring all clear meant that everything was fine, but iron strong fingers literally dragged her behind him before she got more than two steps.

“Don’t ever do that again.” His voice was like death, and that was the only thing that made her obey him, for the moment.

The two men sandwiched her between them, guarding her as if she was the President and they were Secret Service agents, until they got to the house, which had already been cleared by the first swarm of men.

Maddie couldn’t take her eyes off the place as she was maneuvered to it. And he called it a cabin? It was gorgeous, and much too big to be referred to by such a diminutive word. It was a good sized house with a surprisingly number of windows. Maddie had always thought that windows were an inherent security risk, but perhaps not any more. She knew that whatever security gadget he could get, Ty would have, and she was right. He had a retinal scan and a finger print pad, albeit well hidden, at the door.

Once in side, the two of them finally left her the hell alone to go do whatever it was that they did while she wandered around trying not to snoop too much.

She was wandering, open mouthed, through the gourmet kitchen when she knew he was behind her. She didn’t know how, but she’d always been able to tell when he was near her. He was much too much of a professional to ever make a sound, but they had some sort of very basic, very physical connection. “Do you like the kitchen?” Ty couldn’t stop himself from asking. He’d had the whole blasted place built for her, but even more so the kitchen, because he knew how much she enjoyed cooking.

“It’s friggin’ gorgeous, but, unless you’ve attended the Cordon Bleu in your spare time, it’s a complete waste!” Ty was the kind of man who nuked coffee only to have his mug explode.

He grinned wryly, not yet willing to admit the truth to her. “Nope.”

“I didn’t think so. None of this equipment looks like it’s even been turned on, much less used.” Immaculate stainless steel appliances gleamed from every nook and cranny.

Ty was directly behind her. She could sense him, even before he reached out and swung her into his arms.

Knowing it was useless to object, she nonetheless couldn’t stop herself. “Ty, put me down!”

“I don’t think so.” He paused a moment, catching her eye, before continuing in complete seriousness, “You’re never going to get away from me again, Maddie Scanlon.”

Chapter Six:

Then he proceeded to carry her up the gleaming staircase to the master bedroom suite, where he bore her down onto the enormous bed, following closely, as if he knew that she was immediately going to try to pop back up again, which she did, quite unsuccessfully. It wasn’t the first time she’d wished that she’d fallen in love with a ninety-eight pound weakling instead of an over six foot four behemoth. “Let me up,” she growled. “And, just for the record, my name is no longer Scanlon.”

His answering growl sounded somehow much more frightful than hers, especially when he caught her eyes and vowed huskily, “We’ll see about that.”

Maddie glared up at him on an exhausted sigh. She’d recognized quickly, from prior experience, that she wasn’t going anywhere until he decided to allow her to, and relaxed back onto the mattress. There was no sense in exhausting herself with him all at once. The man was a stevedore, and unrelenting bulldozer, and she knew she had to save her strength, mental and physical, or he would wear her down without breaking a sweat - and then where would she be?

Maddie frowned. Right where she’d awakened this morning, was the embarrassing answer – in bed with him, exhausted and sated beyond words, damn the man!

He, of course, was making himself comfortable, lying in that position that was so blasted familiar to the both of them, just to her right side, with his platter sized hand claiming her still flat stomach. She reached down to try to lift it off her, using the barest of her fingertips to grasp his wrist as if it was a particularly offensive piece of trash, but failed miserably again, although she hoped her expression said it all and dampened what she knew was his more prurient interests.

But she should have known that Ty wasn’t going to be that easily deterred from his goal, and she couldn’t even budge that small part of him. When she peeked up at him, which she knew was a mistake in the first place, he had that infuriating almost grin of his, along with one raised eyebrow, as if to say that she should have known better that to think that she was his match in any physical way.

Maddie glared up at him, but had absolutely no fear of him whatsoever, despite the fact that he tended to spank first, and ask questions later. It wasn’t fear that she was concerned about. It was the throbbing bolts of pure sensual lightening that he was creating simply by the presence of his hand just inches from the private territory her body desperately wanted him to claim, but that her brain screamed against.

But he blew away any hope of being able to control those sensual impulses that made her want to arch her hips to entice him to explore further south of her navel simply by growlingly whisper, almost off hand under his breath, “I can feel you trembling.”

Her breath left her forcefully, all at once, leaving her lungs aching. For some reason, her eyes filled with tears at his words, and, try as she might, Maddie could not wrestle them back under control. She wasn’t a woman who was given easily to tears, except for a few short days each month, and she had rarely cried in front of Ty.

Ty was acutely aware of everything about Maddie, always had been, always would be even on his deathbed, he was quite sure. There was something magnetic or chemical between them, and he was as alert and aware as any caveman trying to protect his mate from the elements, herself, and any other cavemen in the area. He glanced up, expecting to see her face twisted in anger, and instead he saw the tracks of the tears as they leaked into the baby fine hair at her temples, and it was like being sucker punched.