Collateral Read online

  Zeth scratches at his jaw. “No, that won’t be necessary, thank you.”

  Celebrations? Reserving a booth? Tally those things up with Michael’s less-than-subtle reaction to the receptionist’s question, and I suddenly have a very vivid picture of what happens at The Regency Rooms. This is the kind of place that hides deviant, provocative secrets in its dark corners. Zeth accepts the key card off the counter and collects our bags—more clothes and toiletries procured by Michael—and then he leads us over to a sleek, minimal elevator. There is no call button, just a black panel mounted into the wall that Zeth touches the key card to. A white star icon appears on the black panel, pulsing ever so slightly.

  This place is super fucking surreal. I cast one last look over my shoulder as the single, seamless steel door slides back to give us entry to the elevator, and I catch the receptionist watching us. He gives me a very slow, very deliberate wink. My cheeks burst into flames. I step onto the elevator, unsure whether to mention the man’s salacious suggestion to the guys. Because it definitely was a suggestion. A single girl headed up to a room in a place like this? With two men? I turn around as we wait for the elevator to begin its ascent, Zeth on one side of me and Michael on the other, and a wicked part of me grabs the reins. I make eye contact with the receptionist. And I wink back.

  His professional façade crumbles as he sends me an appreciative grin. The doors close, and then it’s just the three of us. Michael nudges me in the back and leans forward so his mouth is close to my ear. “Are you misbehaving, Dr. Sloane?”

  I can’t help it. I laugh. Zeth gives Michael a warning glance. “Better not be fucking hitting on my girl.” He cocks an eyebrow at his friend, and his demeanor is all fight, though I can tell he’s only joking.

  Joking and Zeth Mayfair. I’d never have thought the two would go together, but I’ve learned of late that the man I call mine is actually a very funny soul. He just hides it really, really well. Michael straightens his tie, glancing up at the display—twelve, thirteen, fourteen—and says, “Me? I wouldn’t even dream of it.”

  The elevator car glides to a halt at the sixteenth floor—the top floor, of course—and we find ourselves in an empty corridor. There are only two doors up here. The door on the left is marked A; the door on the right, marked B. Michael bites back a grin again, and Zeth throws a bag at him. I don’t know how I missed it before, but it’s a black duffel. My heart starts thumping in my chest at the sight of it. I never thought I’d admit to anything of the sort, but I’ve missed that bag. I have no idea why Zeth is throwing it at Michael. Or at least I don’t until Zeth growls, “Don’t say a fucking word. I mean it.”

  I have a medical degree. I have a science degree, too. I’m a pretty smart person. It’s obvious there’s something entertaining about being here, in this hallway, standing between these two doors. Michael picks up Zeth’s duffel and shoves it into his chest. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, I assume.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. He pulls a key card out of his own pocket and turns to the door labeled with a B. He opens it up and vanishes inside, leaving Zeth and me with door A.

  “Let me guess,” I say. “This is normally a choose-your-own-adventure moment, huh? Pick the door on the left and get one thing, pick the door on the right for another?”

  Zeth shoots me a surprised look. I am loving the slow, glacial melt that’s taking place within him. He’s a fool if he thinks he’s hidden it from me. And the fact he’s letting himself go around me more and more these days means I get to witness an entirely new range of emotions on his face. Surprise is a cute one. He looks kind of innocent with those big brown eyes of his growing wider, though the words that come out of his mouth next are far from it.

  “You’re too smart for your own good, angry girl. Now you know our little secret, you’re going to have to be punished.”

  My toes curl inside my shoes. He’s joking again. I think he’s joking. He opens the door, slings his duffel inside, along with our two other bags, and then turns to face me in the corridor. He pulls his hood up and begins to pace toward me. “When people come up here, Sloane, one of them always gives the other an option.”

  Oh, shit.

  With his face drawn into shadow in that hood…

  With that dark, predatory look in his eyes…

  With the way he prowls toward me like he’s hungry. So hungry…

  My body comes alive.

  “They might take the person by the hand,” Zeth rumbles, deep in his chest. He takes hold of my hand. “And they might press that person up against the wall.” I’m already walking backward, my breath fighting in and out of my lungs in short, heady bursts. My back hits the wall, and Zeth’s powerful body leans up against mine, trapping me. “And they might get up nice and close…”

  He’s about as close as he can get. His mouth is less than an inch from mine. I want…no I need him to kiss me. I need it so bad. Zeth licks his lips, and it’s not a teasing motion. I can see it in his eyes—he wants to kiss me, too.

  “Fuck, Zeth.” I mouth the words. I have no breath to spare for sound. Zeth smiles a little. The intense way he’s studying me—his eyes traveling from my own to my mouth, to my neck and back again—gives me the impression he’s fascinated by what he’s seeing. If that’s the case, then it makes two of us.

  “And that person might say to the other person,” he whispers, “pick your poison, angry girl.” His tongue flicks out and licks at my top lip, sending a chorus of vibrations humming through my body. My nipples are so hard, they’ve started to ache. God, this is so messed up. I have to have him.

  “What—what might a person’s options be?” I’m barely in control anymore. My hands are sweating, desperate to take hold of him. Zeth stares me down for one long second, and then he carefully lowers his mouth, barely touching his full lips to mine.

  “Pleasure,” he whispers. There’s a ball of heat twisting into a burning knot in my stomach. That heats explodes into an inferno, burning up inside me when he takes my lip in between his teeth and tugs, hard. The surprise of the sensation makes me gasp. “Or…pain,” Zeth tells me.

  My head is spinning. From the need in Zeth’s eyes, I know this isn’t a game. This isn’t a theoretic conversation. I am meant to choose now, and I know which option Zeth wants me to pick. For once, there’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind. I want what he wants.

  “Pain, Zeth. I want the pain.”

  Zeth growls low in the back of his throat. There’s no way he’s holding himself back. Adrenalin zips through me as he crashes his body into mine, hands reaching under my thighs and hoisting me off the ground. I wrap myself around him—arms, legs. My heart. I wrap my heart around him as I cling on for dear life. He kisses me, his lips finding mine, and I don’t need to breathe anymore. His mouth on mine is all I need. His hands holding me tight is all I need. Just him. He is everything.

  “Fuck, Sloane, you turn me inside out,” he murmurs, his tongue licking at me again, tasting me. I don’t know whether his statement is a good or a bad thing, but from the size of his hard-on, I’m guessing good. Hoping. He carries me into the apartment, slamming the door behind him. I don’t register a single element of my surroundings. Those brown eyes, searching mine, peering deep into me, are the only thing I see. We move from the main room to another, smaller room—a bedroom—and Zeth throws me down on the bed. Our hands frantically scrabble at each other’s clothing. This—our joint desperation, to see, feel, taste, touch each other—makes this different to any other time we’ve been together. We’re coming to this as equals, and for once I feel like Zeth is as out of control as I am.

  That doesn’t last long of course. He tears himself away from me and rips down his jeans, kicking them off with a dark, seductive look on his face. The excruciatingly beautiful man in front of me, naked as the day he was born, then takes hold of my ankle, lifts my leg, and kisses me on the arch of my foot. “Wait here,” he tells me. And then he disappears out the door.

  I know where he’s go
ing. I know what he’s going to come back with. My blood is charging in my veins, lighting me up. He left me in my bra and panties, but I don’t want to remove them myself. I want him to take them from me, the same way he takes everything else: roughly. He’s not gone long enough for me to regulate my breathing. My chest is still heaving when Zeth reappears in the doorway with his black duffel bag held tightly in one hand.

  “Get off the bed. Get on your hands and knees,” he commands.

  I oblige him, my body prickling with anticipation. I want to suck him. To lick him and bite him and make every inch of him mine. Zeth places the bag on the edge of the bed and rifles inside, completely oblivious to how perfect he is. His body is flawless symmetry, muscles taut and knitted together, shoulders, legs, buttocks, back—every single part of him is expertly put together. As someone who’s studied human anatomy for many years, I can safely say that Zeth is the owner of the most perfect body I have ever seen.

  When he turns to face me, his cock still rigid and erect, he’s holding a length of material in his hand. “Close your eyes,” he says.

  It’s almost unbearable that I have to block out the sight of him, but I still behave. Once my eyes are closed, Zeth brushes the material against my cheek, down the slope of my neck. Across the swell of my cleavage. The fabric is sensuously rough, the threads catching at my skin. I start to shake when Zeth rubs it ever so gently across my lips. I open my mouth, almost begging him to do what I think he’s going to do. To feed the length of raw silk between my lips and gag me. He doesn’t, though. Instead, he ties it around my eyes, tight enough that I can’t see a thing. I sense him moving away from me.

  When he comes back, he does exactly as I hoped he would. He removes my underwear, and he is none-too-gentle. He takes hold of my bra straps first, and he slides something cold and hard against my skin. Something sharp. The straps ping loose as he cuts them one at a time. My panties are next. He grabs the material at my left hip and slices it, and then my right, ripping the material from my body.

  “Pain is a strange thing, Sloane,” he says softly. “People have entirely the wrong idea about it. From birth, children are coddled and panicked over when they hurt themselves, so they grow up believing it’s a bad thing. As soon as their nerve endings start sending feedback to the brain, their fear receptors kick in. They freak the fuck out. What do they teach you in medical school about pain?”

  “It’s a survival technique,” I whisper.

  Zeth moves closer—I can sense him standing before me. All I need to do is reach up and touch him, but I know I shouldn’t. It’s not my role. “Right,” Zeth says. “But that doesn’t mean we should be afraid of it. We should embrace it. Relish it. Know the limits of our pain, and understand what we can tolerate.” Something hard presses against my cheek, and my hands, pressing into the carpet, automatically curl into fists. “I know what you can tolerate, Sloane. I’ve told you that before, and you’ve trusted me. Do you trust me now?”

  “Yes. I trust you.”

  My lips tingle as he kisses me, then. A soft, light, barely there kiss that causes heat to pool in the bottom of my stomach. “Thank you, Sloane,” he whispers. “I’m going to hurt you now, but I promise you’re going to like it.”

  A promise from Zeth means something. If he promises I’m going to enjoy this, I have absolutely nothing to worry about, but that doesn’t stop the swell of nerves that rise through me. I can hear him moving around me, pacing, as though he’s observing me from all angles, trying to decide where to begin. He doesn’t keep me waiting long.

  Something pointed traces the curve of my spine, starting at the base of my neck and traveling slowly down until it reaches the curve of my butt. I have no idea what it is. Not cold, so probably not metal. Not sharp, so not the knife.

  “You grade pain in hospital, don’t you?” Zeth whispers, his voice thick with lust.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me how it works.”

  “We…we ask the patient to tell us how much pain they’re in on…a scale of one to ten.”

  “And does that help you?” Zeth trails whatever he’s got in his hand across the tops of my shoulders, and I feel more of it against me. Something long and thin, solid and almost warm.

  “Yes, it…helps us to grade how much pain relief they need. Tells us the severity of the problem.”

  The pressure from Zeth’s toy vanishes. “We’ll use your system today, Sloane. When I ask you, you give me a number.”

  “Okay.” For some reason, I feel a little reassured by this. I probably shouldn’t, but I do.

  I’m relaxing into the situation a little when a bright sting of pain bites into the flesh of my buttocks. It’s the surprise that gets me, more than the pain. I yelp, almost hopping up from my position.

  “Stay still, angry girl,” Zeth tells me. “Now. One to ten. What was that? Really think about it.”

  I take a second to do just that. “Three,” I say. “It was a three.” I can’t feel the burn of it anymore, so I can’t legitimately grade it higher. Zeth will know I’m lying in order make him go easier on me, and I get the feeling that will have entirely the reverse effect.

  “Good girl, Sloane. That was a three.” I barely dare breathe as he paces around me. I jump when the cane—it can only be a cane—makes contact with my chest. Zeth strokes the length of wood underneath me, across my breasts, making my nipples throb. “You’re so fucking perfect. So fucking beautiful,” he tells me. “Breathe, Sloane. You have to remember to breathe.”

  I inhale, drawing a steady pull of oxygen into my lungs, and that’s when the second strike lands. Across my butt again; this time the force is harder. More intense. “Fuck!”

  Zeth laughs quietly. I can imagine the look in his eyes—the amusement dancing there as he watches me squirm. “Such a foul mouth on you, angry girl. How would you grade that?”

  “Six,” I say, panting, doing my best to keep still. I want to touch my fingers to the tender area where he caned me—it feels as though there’ll be a raised welt there, angry and red to look at if I could see it in a mirror.

  “Now, now, that was only a five. Take a deep breath. Fill your lungs, relax your body, and then tell me again. How would you grade that?”

  I do take a deep breath. I do relax my body. And he’s right. “All right. Five.”

  Zeth kisses me, pressing his lips against my shoulder. He’s standing behind me, but not for long. He moves so he’s in front of me. I’m almost ready for it this time when he touches the end of the cane to my skin. Instead of using it to dole out pain, he traces the tip over my stomach and then down, until it rests between my legs. The hard inflexibility of the length of wood slides over my pussy, between the folds of flesh, probing me, searching out the sweet spot. It doesn’t take long to find it. Just like with the knife, there’s something thrilling about an object that can cause me great pain being used to bring pleasure instead. My whole body hums as Zeth slides the end of the cane repeatedly up and over my pussy, occasionally applying pressure, but mostly just teasing me with it so I can barely keep my arms and legs from shaking. I groan, trying not to let myself rock my hips against it.

  I can sense when Zeth figures I’ve had enough pleasure. Seconds after I realize it’s probably coming soon, the cane makes a zipping sound as it rips through the air. A burst of pain explodes in my head as the wood connects with the back of my thighs, just below the curve of my ass cheek.

  “Ahhh! Shhhh…” I bite back the curse word begging to be screamed out loud, digging my fingers into the pile of the carpet.

  “How about that?” Zeth whispers into my ear. His breath on the skin of my neck sends a wave of heat rippling over my skin.

  I want to say seven. I want to say seven so bad, but I don’t. “Six,” I pant.

  Zeth makes a grunting sound—the sound of his approval. He runs his fingertips down my cheek, down my neck, over my shoulder and down my back as he walks around me. “Open your legs wider for me, Sloane.”

  I
wince as I place my knees farther apart, doing as he asks. I can’t fight the powerful urge to push back against him as Zeth sinks to his knees and presses himself between my legs. He’s so hard. So hard, pushing his cock forward so it’s rubbing against my clit. He curves himself over me and begins to kiss my back, one vertebra at a time.

  “Oh, god. Fuck.” I want him to slide himself into me. I want to feel him inside me as deep as he can go, filling me, stretching me, owning me, but instead Zeth pulls back and uses the cane again. A seven. This time it’s a seven.

  “Ahhh! Zeth! Motherffff—” It’s getting harder to choke back the cursing. It feels like I’m winded. Like I’ve fallen on my ass and it’s knocked every last bit of oxygen out of me.

  “Eight? Or seven?” Zeth asks. I can hear the labored twist in his own voice, like he’s short of breath himself.

  “Seven. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I half laugh, my body still quivering.

  “Oh, good god, girl. You have no idea how much.” He leans forward so his cock is pressing urgently against my pussy again, but now he wraps his arm around my body, reaching for my clit. “Are you not enjoying it, Sloane? Because it feels to me as though you might be.”

  He’s right. This may be totally outside my comfort zone, but the anticipation of the pain, followed by the reality of it, is driving me crazy. And the burn…the burn is so fucking beautiful. Each time the cane lashes into my skin, I’m practically torn in two trying to escape it, and trying to lean into it at the same time.

  “I—I—”

  “Say it, Sloane.” He leans back and the cane comes again—fireworks detonating through my body. Wave after wave of pain, surging and pulsing through me, riding high on my heartbeat. My throat tightens.

  “Sloane. Say it.”

  “Yes. I do. I…I like it.”