And it was kind of a nice thing to be. Not the real world. She forced the words to go across her brain. In the real world, Alex had rarely treated her like a partner. She’d been precious to him, something to take care of, but she couldn’t go back now. She’d changed.
She reached out and touched his chest, letting her hand run over all that silky skin and hard muscle. It felt good to be able to reach out and touch him. The minute her fingers brushed his skin, his cock twitched. She still had that power over him. Her anger was dissolving in the heat of longing. She tried to hold on to it. “Your version of clean and mine are quite different, Master.”
A hard look came back into his eyes. She was done with her hissy fit, but it looked like his had just begun. “I meant what the hell were you doing out there, Eve?”
Did he really want to have this conversation here? Maybe he wasn’t done with his torture. She gestured toward the door. “Master, we might not be alone.”
“Don’t shake your head at me. I locked the door, and Sean is keeping everyone else busy. So you can answer the question before I start your punishment.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “I deserve punishment? You haven’t heard the explanation yet.”
He crowded her, forcing her back against the tiled wall of the shower. Her mind got a little mushy when she felt his cock pressing against her belly. He seemed intent on reminding her just how much bigger he was. “I don’t need an explanation. You disobeyed me. We had a plan going in. We talked about it this morning.”
She hated how breathy her voice got. She had to force herself to fight with him because all she was thinking about now was how good his punishment was going to feel. “You had a plan. You didn’t even tell me about Jake until we were here.”
“I didn’t know he was going to make it, and I don’t have to tell you a thing. I’m in charge of this operation. I have to know that you’re going to obey me in the field, and you didn’t today. You shouldn’t have moved from your place. What the hell were you thinking?” He loomed over her, those green eyes of his dark as he stared down.
His adrenaline was still up. He’d been like this whenever he’d come home from a particularly rough case. When his adrenaline was still coursing through his veins, he’d been practically insatiable. In the last few years, he’d exchanged sex for a treadmill from what she’d seen. After nearly losing Sean and Grace to Eli Nelson over a year ago, she’d caught him on mile nine of what turned out to be a twenty-mile run.
He seemed to be falling back into familiar patterns. He’d gotten scared and now he needed to burn off the feeling inside her body.
She should stop him. She should step out of the shower and give them both a chance to calm down. Alex could be crazy possessive, and he’d had to show her off to men he didn’t trust. He’d had to watch her get close to a drug-dealing terrorist. He just needed a few minutes and some calm to put things on the right footing.
And it wouldn’t hurt for her to tell him the truth.
“I was thinking that you didn’t know what you were doing,” Eve admitted.
His hand tangled in her hair, pulling on it. He wasn’t being gentle with her now. He tugged, lighting up her scalp. God, she’d missed this. “What did you say to me?”
She was pushing his buttons, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself. She knew that if she stepped away, he would probably let her. But all she seemed to be able to do was push him further. “I said your theory was flawed and you needed me to fix it for you. I didn’t have time or a place to talk to you about it, so I took one of the GPS units out of your pocket when I stumbled into you and I placed it for you. I couldn’t exactly call a time-out to explain it all. And you’re welcome. In a few hours, when our bad guy leaves, we’ll know where he’s going.”
His mouth dropped open as though that was the last thing he’d expected to hear. “I got the GPS into one of their jackets. I had it handled, Eve. You placed yourself and the mission in danger.”
She shook her head despite the fact that he still had a nice grip on it. He seemed to really enjoy her longer hair. “I did what I needed to do. You’re not thinking about what could happen. He could drop that jacket at any moment. He probably has several of them. If he has a place here in the States, he’ll likely leave it here and then all we’ll know is where he likes to sleep when he’s in town. But he won’t leave those shoes behind. And let’s talk about dry cleaning.”
She gasped because he turned her and before she could protest, he’d laid ten quick smacks to her ass. The sound cracked through the shower stall. He wasn’t playing this time. Her eyes watered, her flesh flaring with pain. It raced on her skin, lighting every bit of her up and making her feel alive. She wasn’t sure why this did it for her, but it did. She was just a woman who liked a bite of pain.