Brutal Game (Flynn and Laurel #2)(7)

“If it seems like I’m just getting lazy,” she said, “tell me. I’ll step it up.”

He let her thumb go. “By the time the role-playing falls apart, I’m already as hot as I’m gonna get. The first half, that’s what matters. The stuff before the actual sex, and the start of the sex. By the time it’s all underway, I’m happy just bein’ bossy.”

“You sure?”

“How many times you gonna ask me that?”

She shrugged, studying his mouth. “I just want to make sure I’m not dropping the ball. Your kink’s important to me.”

“I know it is. And you don’t have anything to worry about. Plus you know me—if there’s something I need, I’ll ask for it.”

“True.” She paused, then smiled.

“What?”

“You know how I can tell you’re not pretending anymore?” she asked. “During the sex?”

“How?”

“You call me ‘honey’, instead of ‘sweetheart’.”

His brows rose. “Do I?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.” He supposed that was true.

“You used to call me ‘sub shop girl’,” she added.

“I did.”

“And ‘kiddo’. Actually, you still call me that.”

“I call every woman who’s younger than me ‘kiddo’. But ‘honey’—that’s all you.”

She didn’t have a pet name for him, he realized. If she called him anything, it was Flynn, or occasionally Michael, but only when she was panting and overwrought, on the cusp of a violent orgasm. She liked his given name, but he preferred his last name. He’d been called that for so many years, it felt right in a way that Michael didn’t. Call him “Michael” and he couldn’t help it—all he heard was his shithead father’s voice, drenched in Four Roses.

His sister called him Mike, which he put up with, having no choice. Looking back, it was her boyfriend, Robbie, who’d taken to calling him Flynn. He’d hero-worshipped the guy, and it was Robbie who’d gotten him into boxing, so no surprise that was the name that made him feel the most empowered, the most worthy of respect. He could’ve so easily been Mike or Mikey, some anonymous hoodlum selling stolen stereos out of the back of a van. Crazy what magic a strong male role model could work for a lost and angry kid.

No matter that you could probably shout the name Flynn into a megaphone from a St. Paddy’s float in South Boston and have twenty people turn their heads. Far as he was concerned, that name was his. Robbie had given it to him. Given him so much and never took…not until he’d taken his own life, and far too young.

He rolled over to face Laurel, admiring the creamy glow of her bare skin, that pretty, flushed face with its sweet and wasted expression. “Christ, I f*ckin’ love you.”

She laughed and gave his sweaty hair a limp, lazy pat. “You always say that right after we have the most depraved sex.”

“That’s when I’m the most grateful.”

He liked things rougher than most women were down with, no matter if half the world had read that Fifty Shades book and decided BDSM was the new black. He was no damaged billionaire and this apartment was no tricked-out playroom. Their props were duct tape and rope and the cold, hard floor under Laurel’s knees, his own two hands. Gags and blindfolds were whatever shirt he might grab, and he’d bound her with an extension cord once. This was BDSM as furnished by Home Depot, and without most of the tiresome honorifics and other formalities he found so cheesy. He didn’t mind “Sir,” but if any woman ever called him “Master” he’d be improvising himself a gag real quick.

He didn’t want to be a woman’s master; he wanted to be her assailant.

During sex, he felt all the things the sick shit he played did, hearing a lover’s fear in her voice, seeing it strain her face. He’d never in a million years do this to a woman who didn’t want it, but it had taken ages to get good with that distinction. To believe that it was okay to want these things, when they were consensual.

Laurel was growing drowsy and he scrunched her messy hair.

“Say it back,” he said.

“I love you.” The final word was swallowed by a broad yawn.

He smiled. He’d waited for her to say it first, and that must’ve happened back around Thanksgiving. She was cautious, reserved in some ways, not the kind of girl you rushed. He was normally the same, though he’d never been with someone who felt this right, this easy. They knocked heads now and again, but by and large all was peaceful…outside of the sex, that was.

He’d been ready to tell Laurel he loved her after maybe six weeks, but he’d known better than to have risked scaring her off. Her parents had been a real shit show, same as his, and he’d come to understand that the tighter you tried to hang on to Laurel, the more she’d edge away from you. Plus her occasional depressive bouts did a number on her confidence.

She didn’t love herself the way Flynn loved her, or how her friends did. Something inside her didn’t trust people who cared for her deeply. It made her feel like a fraud, or undeserving. Pretty standard, as baggage went. Plus all the practice Flynn’s f*cked-up family had given him at standing by difficult people made loving her feel like the easiest thing in the world.