Page 7 of A Dead Man's Pulse
Reese’s jaw had tightened, but when Ian raised an eyebrow at him, he nodded. “Okay. Rule number one I can live with.” With a little snark, he added, “I assume there’s at least a rule number two.”
“Smart man, although you know what they say about assuming anything. Rule number two is you’re one hundred percent open and honest with me. I can work around any missions you’re uncomfortable with, but you’ve got to open your mouth and tell me. I’m not going to show you the door if you do, but you can be damn sure I’ll kick your ass out if you fucking lie to me or withhold the fact you can’t deal with something.”
After a brief pause, that demand garnered a slightly better response. “Understood. Anything else?”
“Those first two are not negotiable, and neither is rule number three.” Ian steeled himself for the hissy fit that might follow his next words. “After you get some training time with your new team, we’ll all sit down, and you’ll tell them what happened in Afghanistan. Everything that’s not classified.”
This time, the man’s jaw dropped. Fury flared in his eyes, and Ian waited for the “fuck you, asshole” followed by the table being flipped over . . . or something to that effect. Reese leaned forward, glaring at him, but kept his voice low. “Are you fucking kidding me? Who the hell is going to want to work with me after hearing what I’ve been through? Fuck! I can’t even tell the damn shrink what happened.”
Ian knew he wasn’t referring to the classified shit, which he couldn’t tell anyone—not even a government-approved psychologist. He meant he hadn’t told the doctor how he’d listened to his teammates being tortured, one by one, and then had to see their decapitated heads. Ian also knew this was Reese’s third or fourth shrink he’d tried to open up to. “What have you told him so far? Have you told him you have survivor’s guilt? How you breathed a sigh of relief when you weren’t the next one dragged out of the cell? And how guilty you felt seconds after that relief disappeared as you listened to your buddies being tortured? Cowboy, man, all that’s normal. Well, as normal as shit can get after what you’ve been through. And if none of your shrinks have gotten that out of you after all this time, then you’re seeing the wrong fucking ones.” He paused as a thought occurred to him. “Hang on a second.”
The waitress returned with their beers and then left again. As Reese continued to stew silently, Ian grabbed his phone, found the number he was looking for in his contacts, pressed Send, and waited for the call to be answered.
“Hello, Ian. You’ve got three minutes before my next client walks in.” Dr. Trudy Dunbar was a psychologist he’d known for the past few years. Although she wasn’t in the lifestyle herself, she’d done her dissertation on BDSM, so they referred members of The Covenant to her when a Dom or sub needed professional treatment. It wasn’t uncommon for an individual’s personal problems to interfere with their playtime or reasons for being in the lifestyle, which could result in someone getting hurt. Trudy had helped several members of the club. She was also on the government’s approved list to work with veterans who were privy to sensitive or classified information and knew how to skirt around the subjects that couldn’t be talked about.
“Hey, Doc. I need a military referral up in D.C. One of my new employees has been seeing someone, but I don’t think it’s working for him. Survivor’s guilt from things associated with SERE, among other stuff.” The acronym stood for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape in the world of spec ops, with “resistance” referring to torture. He didn’t want to say that over the phone in the busy restaurant, but the doc would easily figure it out. “He’ll need three to six months up here before he moves to Tampa, and then I’ll hook him up with you or one of your approved colleagues.”
“D.C., huh? Who’s he seeing now?”
Not needing to ask, he responded, “David Preston.”
Surprised at hearing the name of his shrink, Reese’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline, yet he didn’t say anything. Trudy’s fingernails clacking on a keyboard came over the phone, so Ian held it away from his mouth. “How do you think I found you today? I wouldn’t have a successful business if I couldn’t track your ass down in less than five minutes. Well, technically, my geek extraordinaire, Brody Evans, found you, but I refuse to let him know he deserves the credit. His fucking ego is already too big when it comes to shit like that.”
“Ian?”
“I’m still here, Trudy. Whada ya got for me?”
“Sara Tennyson is in Georgetown. I met her at a conference last year and was very impressed with her lecture on PTSD in POWs. She’s worked with a few that had been captured and rescued in Iraq and Afghanistan. Did he try a session with her yet?”
He eyed Reese. “Have you tried Dr. Sara Tennyson?” The man shook his head. “No, he hasn’t. Can you send me the info?”
Before he could finish the question, his phone chimed with an incoming text. “Done. I have to run. If you need anything else, call me after four p.m.”
“Thanks, Doc. I owe you.” He disconnected the call and retrieved a pen and business card from the side pocket of his cargo pants. After copying the information Trudy had sent him, he slid the card over to Reese. “Give her a call. Like I said to the doc, you’ve got six months—max—to get your head on straight and get down to Tampa. That’s when the last of the new team cycles out of their respective tours and report for duty. In the meantime, hit the gym, firing range, and sparring mat, and get your ass back in fighting condition. When you’re ready to move, we’ve got bunks at the compound—you’re welcome to stay there until you decide to look for your own place. As for telling the rest of the Omega Team what you went through, it’s their right to know who’s covering their six. I don’t want to hit them with it right away, though. I want you working as a team first, so they can see how good you are before they have to make a decision on whether or not they want to work with you.”
Reese appeared to mull everything over. His anger had dialed down and morphed into understanding. “And if they decide I’m not good enough, or they don’t want to work with me because they don’t think they can trust me, then what?”
Leaning forward, Ian pinned him with an unwavering stare. “Then I’ll put you on my team. That is, as long as you don’t give me any reason to regret it and force me to fire your ass. I’m willing to give you a chance if you’re willing to take it, Marine. No promises that everything will be a fucking fairy tale with pink unicorns and Snow-fucking-White—that’s not the world we live in—but if you give me one hundred percent, I’ll give it back to you in return. So . . . is this a done deal, or do we have to sit here and negotiate some more?”
He held out his hand and waited. Seconds ticked by before Reese nodded and extended his own, and they shook on it. “Done.”
“Welcome aboard.”
The Dom sat back in the comfortable, wingback chair and watched the female sub get worked over with a whip during the evening’s demonstration. His cock got harder with each crack of the leather, then a sharp cry of pain, followed by a moan of pleasure. Actually, he could do without that last part. It was the first two things that turned him on. In his mind, he was the one wielding the whip, and instead of the pink welts up and down the woman’s back, they were deep and bleeding. She would be begging—not for more, as she was now, but for him to stop. For him to end her suffering in the only way possible . . . with death.
Why that was his fantasy, he didn’t know, but lately, that was what he needed to conjure up in his mind in order to ejaculate, whether in some sub’s mouth, pussy, or ass, or his own hand. But it was a fantasy he couldn’t indulge in—at least, not here in the club. One of the main requirements for using a whip in the respected BDSM clubs in the area was that the Doms had to prove they were proficient enough that they never broke the skin with the repeated strikes. It took months, even years of training and practicing to become good enough—he knew because he’d gone through it and was approved for the impact play at several clubs. Practice and testing were done with thin pieces of paper taped against the wall. If the Dom could hit the paper, over and over, without ripping it, then they were allowed to whip a sub on the play floor.
Shifting in the chair, he tried to give his hard-on some room in his leathers. He’d found the lifestyle a few years ago, pretty much by accident, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize it was what he’d been missing in his life. The sights, smells, and sounds that filled the air during play called to him. The first night he’d been surrounded by it all, he knew it was where he belonged, and he’d immediately signed up to train as a Dom. Yet, lately, he was getting the feeling that something was missing again. What would it be like if he didn’t have to hold himself back? If he could push a sub past her yellow limits and beyond her red limits? If he didn’t have to honor a safeword? It would be up to him, not the sub, to say when enough was enough. He couldn’t do that here, but maybe he could find a place where he was the ultimate rule maker and only his word mattered. It was something to think about.
He reached out and stroked the blonde hair of the sub who had agreed to play with him later. In a snug, black, strapless bodice and a short, leather skirt that barely covered her ass cheeks, she was kneeling on a pillow on the floor next to him. Her pale, porcelain skin coincided with her Irish heritage, and he wondered what it would look like covered in stripes from his whip—not pink, but red. Deep, dark, crimson red.
With the macabre image in his mind, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Come, my pet, it’s time to go play.”
Chapter Five
Eleven Months Later . . .
Pushing the heavy glass and metal door open, Dakota left the station, still confused about her conversation with her sergeant. For the first time in a very long while, she held onto a glimmer of hope. He’d told her a Captain Al Bowman had requested a meeting with her at the Special Ops Division. Her confusion was because she’d finally given up on applying for an undercover position six months ago. She’d scored high on the supervisor exam and was also on the detective’s list, but in her heart, she’d still been disappointed at being consistently passed over for UC work.
