Rogue Defender (Gone Rogue), page 11
I’ll give her anything she wants if she keeps looking at me like I’m her whole world, because I know for damn sure…she’s fast becoming mine.
Domina
Held in Leo’s arms, I feel protected in a way I never have before. He rubs my back, his fingers trailing up and down along my spine. I could fall asleep like this—except for the empty feeling inside me. I need more.
Stroking my hand over his chest to his abs, I find at least a six-pack, maybe more. “Take off your shirt,” I whisper.
He stiffens, then stretches for the light. I wrap my fingers around his wrist, right over the thick scar.
“Leo? You have seen all of me.” Being naked in front of him was not my plan when I knocked on his door. I wanted to be held. To fix what I had broken between us. To sleep without fear. But as soon as I was in bed next to him, I knew I needed more. “Leave the lights on.”
He shakes his head, twisting his hand free. This time, I pull away, scooting to the far side of the bed and drawing the duvet up to my breasts. “What are you doing?” he asks. He’s still hard, the sheet tented over his erection, and I wish I could let this go. Let him take me in the dark and not care that he feels he must hide from me.
“I trusted you. But if you cannot trust me, then this was a mistake.” With each word, I feel Leo’s pain even more. “I know you have scars.” Trailing my hand down his right forearm, I trace one of the deeper, jagged troughs in the muscle. “Why do you think they matter to me?”
“Because they matter to me.” He jerks back, fighting against the sheets. Stumbling to the far side of the bedroom, he presses his fist to the center of his chest. “Multiple surgeries on my ankle and knee. Skin grafts for the worst of the burns. I lost three of my toes. Spent six weeks in the hospital. Months in rehab before I could walk without a cane. And my eye…do you know what they do when you lose your eye?”
“No.” I draw my knees up to my chest and hug myself tightly.
“You don’t want to,” he snaps.
“Yes, I do.” Abandoning all modesty, I slip out from under the duvet and march over to him. “I want to know everything. Trust me, Leo.” Taking a risk, I lift the hem of his t-shirt a few centimeters. This time, he doesn’t stop me, but he does go completely still. Rigid.
His eyes closed, he tenses when I expose his abs. Burns mar his torso. But they do not look like any burns I have seen before. They are deeper, somehow.
“Take it off,” I say softly. “Please.”
With a wince, he reaches over his head and grasps the collar. The shirt falls to the floor, but he still will not look at me.
His right shoulder bears most of the damage. I rise up on my toes and kiss a dark red surgical scar that stretches from his collarbone almost all the way to his nipple.
Following the trail, I explore his upper body. Up close, the ravages of torture and time are obvious, but they do nothing to make him any less handsome.
“Did you think I would run away?” I ask, palming his cock through his thin pants. He hardens so quickly, it takes my breath away. And makes my core clench. “I need you, Leo. All of you.”
With a low groan, he opens his eyes. Our gazes collide, and he hauls me against him. Hands under my ass, Leo lifts me until I wrap my legs around his waist and carries me back to the bed.
Something’s shifted in him. Gone is the angry, fearful, damaged man who half begged me to turn off the light. This Leo is confident, possessive, and completely in control.
“You’re so damn beautiful,” he says, his voice rough as he takes a step back and reaches for the tie on his pajama pants. They fall to the floor—along with a pair of black boxers, then his socks—and I gape.
His right leg is significantly thinner than the left, with more scars than I could have ever imagined. He’s missing two toes on his right foot, one on his left. But the rest of him…is perfect. A thick, hard cock stands proudly amid wiry, light brown curls with a hint of gray.
My nipples harden, and a fresh wave of arousal washes over me. His gaze is almost predatory as he straddles me. Dipping his head, he scores his teeth over my breast. God, I want him. All of him.
“I need to touch you,” I whisper. I never thought I would want a man to take control in the bedroom, but with Leo, it makes everything so much…more.
He stares into my eyes, a hint of wonder in his own. “I’m yours, Domina. Touch, taste, anything you want. For now.”
The implication—that his dominant side will come out again soon—turns me on even more. I wriggle my hips, the underside of his cock rubbing between my folds.
His ass is like steel, hard under my fingers. With a nod, I arch a brow. “Lie down.”
“What?”
“If I can do anything I want to you…for now, I want you to lie down.” My earlier exhaustion is nothing but a memory, replaced with excitement at being with this amazing man.
I run my fingers through his hair. It’s softer than I expected, long on top, shorter on the sides. The neatly trimmed beard and mustache scratch my lips as I kiss him. Leo reaches for me, and though I am tempted to stop him, I need his arms around me.
My teeth score the shell of his ear, and he groans. “Fuuuuucck, Domina…”
With my free hand, I reach for his cock. The smooth, hot length fills my palm, and he shudders when I close my fingers around him. Skimming my thumb over his crown, I capture a drop of precum, and bring it to my lips.
Leo watches me as I suck it into my mouth.
“I can’t wait any longer.” His voice deepens, and he rolls onto his back to yank at his nightstand drawer. Once he rolls the condom over his length, he turns back to me. “Hands around my neck, baby.”
Gently, he positions himself at my entrance, balancing on his elbows so he can hold my gaze. “Eyes on me the whole time.”
I cannot look anywhere else. Not when I have him this close. So I do what he asks, and the connection it forges between us as he pushes into me is like nothing I have ever felt before.
“Gonna try to make this last, but…” he manages.
I wish I could tell him we have the rest of our lives. Or even tomorrow night. But there are no guarantees in life, and after the rally… I blink once, hard, and all my fears fall away. There’s only me and Leo and his cock filling me so completely, we’re one.
“God, you feel so good.” Thrusting his hips, slowly at first, then faster, he claims me. Every rasp of his length against my clit—how does he manage to angle his body in just the right way?—brings me racing toward the edge.
“Leo…I am close…”
“Me too, baby. Don’t let go.” The raw emotion in his voice is all I need to send me into orbit, and when I cry out, Leo thrusts twice more, so hard we shake the bed, before he lets himself fly with me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Leo
Domina’s soft curves press against me, her dark hair tickling my chin. She saw me—all of me—and didn’t run. I don’t know what I did to deserve her coming into my life, but I’ll do anything to keep her here.
A weak ray of light filters through a part in the drapes, but the sun hasn’t fully risen. In three hours, we’ll be on our way to the rally, and my gut is telling me by the end of the day, everything’s going to change.
I don’t want to wake her, but my back and right leg are locked up tight.
Easing her from my arms, I clench my jaw so hard, my teeth ache. But I manage to sit up without groaning. Not bad for an almost-fifty-year-old with enough titanium in his body to rival the Six Million Dollar Man.
But after three of my six daily exercises, I can’t help myself. A painful trigger point takes me by surprise, and the sound I make is part grunt, part hiss, and part strangled cry.
“Leo?” Her voice is still husky with sleep, and it does things to me that are damn inconvenient wearing only my boxers with a therapy ball under my ass. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I manage and let myself topple onto my side. “This is my normal.” I toss the knobby ball into the corner where I don’t have to look at it again and shift to hide my mangled right foot.
She draws the covers to her chest, facing me as I reach for my least favorite torture device, The Stick.
“What is that?” Domina asks. “It looks like broken pieces of PVC pipe…”
Grimacing, I bend my right knee and start rolling the damn thing up and down my hamstring. “It helps with myofascial release.” At her obvious confusion, I adjust the angle and add, “It loosens up the muscles and helps with blood flow. Or so my PT back in Venezuela claimed. Hurts like hell, but without it, my flexibility is shit.”
“And the rest?” She gestures to the various therapy balls and foam-covered rollers lined up against the wall. “You need all of them?”
Admitting how fucked up I am shouldn’t be so hard. She saw me completely naked last night and didn’t blink twice. But seeing my scars is nothing compared to learning my body is FUBAR without half an hour of painful exercises each morning.
“Every day.” The two words follow a deep groan as I move The Stick to the side of my leg and roll up and down along the ligament connecting my hip to my shin. I have to pause to catch my breath, the pain making my eyes burn. “I’ll make coffee in a few minutes. I’m almost done.”
Domina pats the duvet until she finds her discarded clothes. “I can take care of the coffee. But you need to add your own sugar.” She feigns disgust and pulls on her tank top, giving me a brief glimpse of her breasts.
My body responds immediately, the earlier agony forgotten in a heartbeat. “Or…we could go back to bed. We have a couple of hours.”
She pauses, the sheet still covering her from the waist down. “Are you…flexible enough yet?”
Rising with only a little pain, I grin. “I’ll manage, baby.”
At promptly 9:00 a.m., a black sedan with tinted windows pulls up in front of our apartment building. Domina hasn’t stopped fidgeting since I taped a thin switchblade to her back. I hope to all that’s holy Cortez was right and they won’t frisk her or send her through the metal detector.
My Glock 19 and chest harness are hidden inside the lining of her briefcase. The most dangerous weapon I have on me? My phone.
“That’s your usual guy?” I ask, my hand tight around her wrist while the uniformed driver holds the back door open.
“Yes. Viejo picks me up every morning.” She glances over at the man and smiles. “This is Leo. My boyfriend. He meant no offense.”
With his dark sunglasses, Viejo’s expression is damn near unreadable. “Sorry, man. This is my first political rally. Wasn’t sure what to expect.”
In the back seat next to me, Domina tugs at the labels of her tailored blue jacket. Every few moments, she shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable.
I cover her hand with mine and lean in to whisper in her ear. “No one’s going to know unless you keep fidgeting.”
She huffs, wriggling one last time before she settles. “This is all new to me, Leo. My life—despite my career—is boring. Normal. Two years ago, Manuel treated the entire staff to dinner at a five-star restaurant. Until this week, that was the most exciting thing to happen to me in as long as I can remember.”
I try for a wink. “So the bar for amazing dates isn’t very high? Lucky me.”
With a weak smile, she shifts closer to me. “Maybe after the election, we could try boring for a while?”
We.
My entire world tilts on its axis. It doesn’t matter that I felt something for her the first day we met. That yesterday—when I wasn’t panicked about her safety or convinced I’d ruined everything between us—was one of the best days of my life because I spent it with her. Or that sex with her was so intense, it felt like my first time.
“Leo?” she asks. “Did you hear me?”
I give her hand a squeeze. “If you want boring, you get boring.” With my lips pressed to her ear, I add, “Except in the bedroom.”
A blush darkens her cheeks, and she looks away, focusing on something outside the tinted windows. But a sexy little smile curves her lips.
If we weren’t so new, I’d tell Domina how she’s changed me. Everything with her is more. Every experience. Every sensation. Every emotion. Hell, if we burn so hot, the flame dies in a week, I won’t be shocked. But I don’t know that I’d survive it either.
Traffic grinds to a halt as we approach the soccer stadium. “The rally doesn’t start for another hour,” I say, checking out the cars around us. “How early can the public get in?”
Domina checks her phone. “The gates opened twenty minutes ago. We hired a local band to play until 10:00 a.m., then the speeches will begin.”
“Shit. We should have left an hour ago. Or more.”
Next to me, Domina frowns, her shoulders hiking halfway up to her ears. “Why?”
“So I could have walked the perimeter. Checked for holes in the vice president’s security. Anything to avoid diving into a three-ring circus, blind.” Digging the fingers of my right hand into my palm hard enough my knuckles crack, I check behind us again.
Who am I kidding? Unless someone’s following us in a fucking clown car with a flashing neon sign on top, I won’t see them.
It’s not until the sedan stops by the north-west entrance gate that I return my focus to the woman next to me. And curse myself for being a complete ass. She stares straight ahead, her jaw clenched tight. Even when I taped the blade to her back, her gaze held a faint glimmer of excitement. But now, there’s only fear.
“Domina, look at me,” I say, keeping my voice gentle. When she doesn’t move, I nudge her chin toward me. “Stay by my side, and everything will be okay. In a few hours, we’ll be back at the apartment—yours this time—and tonight, I’m taking you out on a proper date. Anywhere you want to go.”
“I just want to be safe,” she whispers.
Wrapping my arms around her, I press a kiss to her forehead. “You will be, baby. You will be.”
Domina
Leo presses his hand to the small of my back and guides me through the outer gates.
Just inside, six National Police officers stand shoulder to shoulder. I withdraw my ID and pass it to them. “Domina Sanchez. I am a member of the vice president’s staff.”
They scrutinize my badge for a full minute before a tall, bald National Police officer waves me through. “You may pass, but he must be searched.”
Leo pulls his mobile out of his jacket pocket and holds it up. “This is all I’ve got on me.”
Another officer takes a thick, black wand and runs it up and down Leo’s body. It beeps at his ankle, and everyone tenses. The bald officer rests his hand on the butt of his gun.
“Relax,” Leo says, carefully tugging up the leg of his black pants. “Titanium pins in my ankle. I wear a brace. Check it yourself. No weapons.”
He has to pull off his shoe, sock, and brace, then endure a very thorough pat down before the officers are satisfied.
“I’m sorry,” I say when we enter the tunnel to the locker rooms. “They did not need to be so rough with you.”
Leo takes my arm and draws me into an alcove next to a water fountain. “If it keeps you—and everyone else—safe, they can do whatever the hell they want to me.” His hands slide around my waist, tugging the hem of my blouse free from my skirt. Deft, calloused fingers skim my lower back until he finds the knife taped under my bra. “Ready?”
“Do it quickly.” I clench my teeth, and he pulls the tape in one fluid motion. It stings less than I expected, but my eyes still water.
His lips brush mine, firm, insistent, and I forget all about the pain. Leo twists his hand in my hair, tipping my head back so he can deepen the kiss. A flood of arousal makes my knees weak and my panties damp.
“Domina!” Rafael snaps from the end of the tunnel. “What are you doing?”
Leo sidesteps me, sliding the knife into his pocket as he moves. “Sorry, man,” he says with a shrug. “I thought we were alone.”
“You were wrong. And the vice president is waiting.” Rafael crosses his arms and stares at us, the harsh lights turning his expression from angry to livid. “Are you going to stand there all day?”
“We will be right there.” I make a show of tucking in my blouse, and Rafael turns, heading into the locker room and muttering the whole time.
“Is he always such an ass?” Leo asks as he opens my briefcase and withdraws his gun and shoulder holster from inside the lining.
I help him on with the harness—a move we practiced this morning—and he shrugs back into his jacket. “Rafael is…difficult. But he is a master of political strategy. Without him, Manuel and President Garcia would never have been elected.”
“Well, if he keeps talking down to you, he’s going to get a black eye.” I start to protest, but he quickly adds, “After the election.”
“Do I look all right?” I ask, smoothing my hands down my blouse.
He cups the back of my neck, his eyes locked on mine. “You’re perfect.”
The first sliver of excitement stirs deep inside me. Rallies are overwhelming—even frightening. But there is no better feeling than hearing my words inspire people.
“Come. Manuel and the rest of the staff will be waiting.”
“Finally,” Rafael says under his breath as Leo and I enter the locker room. Manuel stands in front of a full-length mirror while his stylist—a point of contention between him and Rafael—brushes lint from his jacket.
“Mr. Vice President, are you certain you do not want the light blue shirt?” the man—I think his name is Michael—asks.
“Yes. Now leave me alone. If I do not have a few moments to myself before the speech, I will be no good to anyone.”
The stylist throws up his hands. “I will be waiting at the end of the tunnel, sir. For any last-minute needs.”
Cortez steps off a wooden box in front of the mirror and turns to the rest of the staff sitting on benches around the room. “We have come far, my friends. You have all worked miracles over the last six months. I would not be here without you, and I am grateful,” he says with his hand over his heart, “so very grateful. On Sunday, we will celebrate our victory. For Panama!”
