Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

My steps, when I took them, were halting and stuttering, my eyes still trained on Zack. His smile told me exactly how he felt about that. But strong hands grabbed me and turned me around, forcing my attention on Declan.

There was none of my laughing, teenage boyfriend right now. A man stood over me, one whose fingers dug into my arms slightly, his eyes studying me, taking me in. He forced himself to calm down, and I saw it in the swallow of his throat, the brief flicking away of his eyes before they were drawn back to me, in the gentle sweep of his hand down my face.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he started to say. “I had no idea…”

He was holding it back again, that more dominant side that had come roaring up at the theme park. Instead, it was getting buried under Declan the Nice Guy again. Of course he was sorry. There was no way to anticipate what the Father Wolf would have done. He just wanted to get me alone somewhere cheesy and have a bit of fun.

My hand shot up, wrapping itself partly around his throat, his eyes widening then going heavily hooded when he felt the press of my thumb against his Adam’s apple. The excuses and explanations stopped, and I liked that. He reached up and tightened my grip just a little, then nodded. I drove him back until his legs hit the bed, then he sat down, my knees going on either side of his thighs when he did.

“Is this what you want?” I asked, squeezing just slightly. The neck had too many fragile little bones to get too enthusiastic, but he didn’t get a chance to answer. Lorcan slid onto the bed, taking in me, Declan, and my grip with glittering eyes.

“You gonna dominate him?” he asked, a slow smile spreading across his face. But there was nothing mocking in it. Rather, it was as if he had stumbled onto something delicious.

“Maybe. If that’s what he wants,” I replied, but that was a partial lie. I was presenting this as something I was doing for Declan, but a part of me that didn’t get to see the light of day often rose at the thought of this. Part of me that was cold, hard, completely unmoved by them or their desires. Part of me that could see me ordering them around, using my dominance to force them into increasingly complex scenes. I smiled back, and Lorcan nodded slowly.

“Then pull your hand free. You can’t negotiate like that.” I dropped it reluctantly, liking the possessive look of it around my lover’s neck, while Declan’s hands moved restively like he wanted it back. “You need to find out what he wants. Dominance and submission is what it sounds like. You call the shots, he does what you tell him, or he gets punished.” Lorcan’s eyes twinkled at that. “Sadism and masochism is another element. When he gets pleasure from being hurt, when you get off on hurting him.” I frowned slightly at that, my eyes switching to Declan, searching his as if I’d find the answers there, but I just saw those alien, moonlit eyes staring back at mine.

“You want me to hurt you?” I asked, unable to keep the shock out of my voice.

“You do anyway.” Those words came out quick and unfiltered, and I watched Declan regret that. “Not on purpose, not in any way you need to change, but…the uncertainty, the waiting, the longing… It all fucking hurts.”

Lorcan nodded slowly. “And this way, you can externalise that pain, process it.”

“Yeah, I think? Mostly, it just gets me hard, the drama, the theatre of it. It’s kinky as fuck, and that’s a turn-on in itself. But also?” His eyes held mine for just a moment. “The girl that’s giving me a hiding? I know I’m her entire focus. Right then, it’s just me she’s seeing. My arse, my skin as it goes red, my cock as it hardens. She sees me, and she pushes me to my limits.” He shook his head as if to break the mood, and it worked, somewhat. But the others drew closer, hungry looks in their eyes as they created a little cocoon around us. “It’s not something I want all the time, but sometimes…sometimes, I want that intensity.”

“Well?” Mason asked me with a cocked eyebrow. I just looked at him for a second, taking in his stern expression, his crossed arms. He was always the hardest to read, but if I had to guess, I’d think there was a protectiveness there.

“You want me to spank Declan?”

“We’ve all walked away from what happened pretty fucking shell-shocked. As beta, I can feel some of what goes on inside my men and they’re…unsettled. They need grounding. If we were back at the house, I’d get them to go for a run or work off some of it on a bag…” he replied.

My fingers flexed, feeling the need to do the same, then considering using them to hit something else altogether. Dec’s eyes met mine, flaring brighter as he obviously thought the same.

“There’s risks to this,” Mason said, his eyes flicking to the shadows on the walls. “He seems to like to come when we get together like this, when we mesh as a group, but Greta seemed confident that whatever we might bring through, she could keep contained, so…help him settle, Paige.”

“Want me to talk you through this?” Lorcan asked. “I’ve done a few scenes up here in the city, when I’d come up for sex parties and the like.”

“Which is something we need to talk further about,” I said through narrowed eyes. I knew Lorcan got up to a lot before he met me, but right now… I eyed that well muscled form, those beautiful tattoos, and resented every single person who had touched what was mine. Lorcan grinned in response, looking very pleased.

“Ask him what