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“I have work to do,” she said—her voice sounding prim even to her ears.
“Yes. Your job is to take care of the client and whether he wants to admit it or not, what happened tonight had to have rattled him. He could use not only your strength and bravery, but your softness and compassion.”
“Last time I checked, Fitz didn’t whore out his operatives.”
Brock shook his head. “Girl, it’s a good thing you still have that man on a leash. Someday that won’t be the case and he’ll take you to task for saying things like that, especially about Fitz or to another Dom. I can’t wait to see you two scene together. Everyone who saw you in London said the connection between you was intense.”
“I’m not saying I’m not attracted to him or that he isn’t good. The problem is what he wants, I don’t have to give him.” She walked toward the bedroom, placing her hand on the door. Before closing it, she turned back to Brock. “I’ve got some work I can be doing. I’ll be in the main room with my computer and a gun. I’m going to work for a few hours. Holler if you guys need me.”
“I hope he thumps you good for putting both of you through this bullshit,” said Brock as he went back to patrolling the property.
Thoughtfully, she closed the door. It was just that kind of thing that confirmed for Miley that she and Damon could never be. She’d served with Brock in the military and ever since she’d joined Cerberus. She’d saved his butt more times than she cared to count, and yet he was already treating her like she was just another sub—or was he? Maybe he was just a friend trying to be supportive, but still telling her a truth he knew she didn’t want to hear.
Once she was back inside the main room, Miley grabbed her laptop and settled down at the desk, pulling up the latest intel supplied by Seth coupled with what Damon had shared with her. She began researching the Francis Marion National Forest and the surrounding area. Using satellite imagery, she was able to pinpoint the location of the Acosta cabin.
She texted Seth, asking if he could get them more detailed information not only about the location itself, but its defenses and weaknesses and what they might expect in terms of resistance. The idea of allowing Damon to accompany them did not sit well with Miley, but she knew trying to leave him out of it would take more time and men than she had to expend.
Tapping the pen she’d used to make notes, Miley began to devise a plan to assault the cabin, take down the bad guys and confront Francesca Acosta. She agreed with Damon and found it worrisome that Francesca had apparently left a clue that would lead them directly to her. Miley still believed she had been Francesca’s intended target, but she had to know Damon would know where she was holed up, and that he would want to be in on taking her down. Francesca had to be setting a trap. It was up to Miley to see that Francesca’s plans came undone and she either ended up in federal custody or dead. She knew she should be hoping for the former, but she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t prefer the latter.
Normally, planning an assault on a location was a specialty of hers. Time and again, she had led raids on various compounds or locations. More often than not, she was able to get in and get out with minimal loss of life and usually without any kind of serious injury to her team. She was good with details, and she would tease out a plan, ensuring every contingency was covered.
The problem tonight was she couldn’t focus. Damon did that to her. She didn’t want to be out here sitting at a desk plotting how to bring down his crazy ex-girlfriend. What she wanted was to be lying underneath him, feeling his weight pinning her to the mattress while he parted her thighs and buried his cock up to his balls inside her. She wanted to feel him thrusting in and out, surging forward and back until finally he held himself hard against her and gave up his cum.
She looked at the closed bedroom door. She’d never been so close, and yet so far from something she wanted. And never had the field between where she was and where she wanted to be been so strewn with mines.
Part of her desperately wanted to go to him, to tell him he was right about everything and to give him the future he apparently wanted. But she was afraid, and her fear covered a myriad of issues. One thing she’d learned in her life from being a foster child to serving in the military was that it was dangerous to form strong attachments to anybody. They could be snatched away at any time, leaving you bereft and broken. People and situations were temporary. She knew how sad that was. It didn’t matter that people didn’t intend to break their word, but the old saying had proven true more times than she cared to think: the road to hell was paved with good intentions.
Even the best laid plans could often go awry, especially when you depended on anyone other than yourself to gather intel and make the plans for you. She’d learned that she could trust Seth and the Cerberus intelligence-gathering team, but that had taken time. More than once she’d relied on faulty military intelligence and someone else’s plans and had lost the lives of her men because of it. She’d learned to rely only on herself, and now herself and those at Cerberus. They were the only ones she could trust, but now she wondered if she could trust herself.
She knew what she wanted, didn’t she? Miley closed the laptop and began to pace. She moved swiftly and gracefully from the desk to the door of the bedroom and back again—each time coming closer and closer to reach for the doorknob. Finally, she stopped with her hand resting on the knob. This was madness. She needed to go in there and give Damon the old ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech and make it clear that not only was it not possible, but that she had no interest in anything more than a D/s relationship where they only saw each other once in a while. He could be free to pursue other relationships, but Miley knew she’d never want another.
That was the crux of the whole thing. Miley wanted to believe she could have it all. She knew the reason she craved a D/s relationship was because she’d spent her whole life being responsible for herself, making all the decisions and keeping everyone safe. She needed to be able to sink into a Dom’s care and authority to let go—not only in matters of sex, but in finding peace.
She reminded herself the logistics alone made the whole thing impossible. Her life was in Chicago or London. His was in Charleston. She needed to stand firm. If she loved Damon—whoa, wait.
Where had that thought come from? She couldn’t love Damon. She’d had an encounter with him in London, and then there was the brief time they spent together in Charleston. She couldn’t possibly be in love with the man—or could she? Was that what had kept her from having sex or D/s sessions with any man since their time together in London? Holy shit. Had she actually fallen for a billionaire Dom?
She let her hand fall away. No. They couldn’t be, regardless of how much she wanted it. Nothing was permanent for her—never had been. She’d learned long ago that permanence couldn’t be trusted. Seth often accused her of having one foot out the door. She’d reminded Seth that was a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
Miley spun on her heel and made her way back to the desk. Did she really want to be the coward he had accused her of being? Did she really want to forego the chance to have what she’d always wanted with the one man she’d ever thought was capable of giving it to her because she was afraid something would happen to one of them? And there it was: she wasn’t afraid Damon would leave; she was afraid he wouldn’t. She was afraid that he could give her everything she’d ever wanted or needed, and somehow she’d fail him.
Deciding she’d never backed down from a challenge before and she was not going to do so now, Miley marched back to the door, stopping short as if someone had dropped an invisible forcefield in front of her that actually prevented her from reaching out, grabbing the knob, and turning it.
The decision was taken away from her as the door swung open. “Damn it, Miley,” he growled before realizing she was standing right in front of him. He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “So, what’s it to be, Miley? Are you going to turn tail and run from the best thing that ever happened to either of us like you did in London? Or are you going to be the badass I know you to be?”
Not knowing what else to do and hoping he knew that she’d never knelt for anyone else, Miley sank gracefully to her knees, letting her head fall forward, her hair almost touching the floor as she placed her hands on her thighs, palms up. She didn’t dare look up. She studied his bare feet—even they were sexy.
“Answer me, sub,” he commanded in a voice that had dropped into a dominant depth as his finger came up under her chin, tilting her head back so that she was forced to look into his eyes. She was mesmerized almost immediately.
“I’m going to be the most righteous, holier-than-thou badass that ever walked the Earth. I’m going to take down your psycho bitch ex-fiancée and her gangster father and his goon squad, and then I’m going to play all kinds of D/s scenes with you, and fuck you stupid for the rest of your life, Sir.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” he said, leaning down and somehow managing to lift her off the floor without groaning or grimacing. Sweeping her up into his arms and holding her close, he turned around, heading back into the bedroom and kicking the door closed. “Be advised, sub, forever starts right now.”
CHAPTER13
MILEY
This might be a mistake, but she was going to make it. She didn’t care. She refused to live the rest of her life wondering ‘what if.’ For however long it lasted, she would allow herself to sink into Damon’s dominance. He didn’t seem to have an issue with allowing her to lead in matters of security, or at least he was able to quell his need to protect and allow her to do her job. She intended to fully surrender control in every other area to him.
