Ashes to Ashes Read online

  She groaned. “I hate that.”

  “Me too,” I sighed. I was so confused about the way Ash behaved toward me now. It was like we were practically strangers. If I was being honest with myself, after our interlude in the SUV and then our conversation on the plane, I thought we’d grown close. Or rather, closer. I hadn’t expected him to treat me like a pariah.

  “What are you going to do?” Charlotte asked, snapping another carrot stick between her teeth.

  “I guess I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I need to finish choosing songs for the record, and then I’ll ask him for help. I’m still skeptical he can run the boards, but it is what it is.” I sighed. I hadn’t been looking forward to recording this album in the first place, and having an amateur in charge of the equipment was one additional reason to shelve it until I could do it properly. But no. I’d made a commitment to the label, and after everything else I’d put them through, keeping my word now was paramount. They hadn’t needed to stand by me when my name was dirt, but they had. This was the least I could do.

  “Worst case scenario is I end up with some demos I can make sense of once I’m back home. The label is giving me a long leash with this one, so that’s a huge relief. I mean, this isn’t exactly what you’d consider ideal working conditions.”

  “No, I can’t imagine it is,” Charlotte agreed. “But I have complete faith in you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, closing my notebook. “You’re probably the only one who does, but it still means a lot to me.”

  I heard a loud noise in the background and then Charlotte said, “Hey, I gotta go. I’ve got purple dye on my head I need to wash out.”

  “Wait, what? How come you waited until now to mention this? Way to bury the lead, Char.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. I told you I was bored though, and you know how I get when I’m restless.”

  I did know. The last time she’d had nothing to do—when I was deep in rehab and her job was effectively put on hold—she’d joined a gym and lost fifteen pounds. Then she’d cut off all her hair, canceled her gym membership, and started taking cooking classes, effectively negating all the time she’d spent trying to lose weight.

  “I’ll send you a picture when I’m done,” she continued, “and you can tell me how beautiful I look.”

  “Or ridiculous,” I teased.

  “You’re just jealous you can’t live out your lifelong dream of becoming Rainbow Brite because your hair’s too dark.”

  “Okay, go wash that stuff out. It’s rotting your brain. Talk later?”

  “Same bat time, same bat channel,” Charlotte answered, blowing a kiss through the receiver and then hanging up.

  I looked at the clock hanging over the mantel. Three o’clock in the afternoon. Shit. These days were dragging. How was I going to keep myself occupied for the next nine hours? I blew out a breath and stared out the window again. The police needed to catch my stalker, and soon. Because if Charlotte was getting restless, I was getting positively itchy. And when I got itchy, things turned bad.

  Chapter Ten

  Rae

  We’d been holed up here more than a week, and I was beginning to feel like a prisoner. The house was hours from the airport in Portland, and the last sign of civilization on the way in, had been a small town, if that’s what you could call a gas station with a broken-down pump and one car out front.

  If my stalker managed to track me down out here, and then make it past all the high-tech security we’d passed on that initial slow roll down the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it driveway, I wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Between our out-of-the-way location, the alarm system that looked like something out of a James Bond movie, and two giant German Shepherds named Blanche and Dorothy, I didn’t think even the U.S. Treasury had better protection than I did.

  So far, to pass the time, I’d refined three of my haphazard poems into some semblance of a song, and had come up with the melody and harmony for two others. I’d also explored every nook and cranny of this fortress, which included looking in every unlocked drawer and closet. And all that time, I continued to barely see Ash.

  Currently, I was sitting on the sofa while Dorothy, the more subdued of my two new canine friends, snoozed at my feet and Blanche, still in her puppy phase, was curled up next to me. She seemed unaware that she weighed over 60 pounds, and on her hind legs was taller than me. I was pretty sure she thought she was a Jack Russell terrier.

  “She’s not supposed to be on the couch.”

  Hearing Ash’s gruff voice after so many hours of silence startled me, but then I grew warm and happy at seeing him again.

  “I tried telling her that but she seems unwilling to listen,” I answered, setting my pen and pad down next to me. I pushed against the dog to demonstrate my point. Blanche gave a low snort and burrowed in even closer to my side.

  “Blanche, down!” Ash barked.

  The pup raised her head, cocked her ears, and lumbered off the sofa. Dorothy stood as well, and then both dogs trotted to Ash’s side. Sitting on their hind quarters in unison, they looked up at him, waiting for direction from their alpha.

  “Good girls.” He gingerly patted each of their heads before coming toward me. “What’s on your agenda today?” he asked, dropping into a chair on the other side of the coffee table, his muscled arms on display in a black t-shirt tight enough to make out the defined cut of his abs.

  Wearing jeans so old they were threadbare in the knees, Ash once again looked more like the man I’d met back in Boise than the stone cold ex-Special Forces soldier who’d walked into the conference room at McClintock Security. Except for the day I’d spied him coming from the gym, his naked torso flexing, Ash had been dressed in some version of his black-suited uniform. Even yesterday when he’d walked the perimeter of the property, he’d worn black slacks and a black button-down shirt that stretched taut over his muscles.

  “Rae?”

  I blinked, chasing away the mental picture I’d been forming of what it would feel like to run my hands over those muscles. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “I asked what was on your agenda for the day.”

  I laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” I gestured at the notebooks and crumpled paper spread out in front of me. “You’re looking at it.”

  “Feel like getting in the studio for a bit?”

  I chewed my lip. While I’d love nothing more than to get behind the mic for a bit, the reality was none of my songs were ready. “I don’t think I’m quite there yet.”

  Ash leaned forward, picked up a scrunched up piece of paper, and flattened it out across his thigh. Normally I didn’t show my work to anyone until I was ready to go into the studio, but since he’d hear it all soon enough anyway, I kept myself from jumping up out of my seat and snatching the paper away. Still, this was new territory for me, and I watched in nervous anticipation as his eyes skated over my handwriting. When he finished reading, but didn’t say anything, I couldn’t stand the suspense.

  “What do you think?”

  “When did you write this?” he asked, his eyes meeting mine.

  “Which one is it?”

  Ash cleared his throat and started reading the lyrics aloud. My words—ones I’d written two nights after we’d slept together—hit me like a two-ton truck going full speed down the highway.

  I don’t know your story

  but I’ll never forget the look on your face

  when I told you I didn’t need to know your name.

  I told you I’d forget all about you

  but the truth is you’re unforgettable.

  Hundreds of people

  in and out of my life

  but you’ve remained a constant …

  and you don’t even know it.

  You’ve moved on and so have I

  but the truth is I can’t forget you …

  and you don’t even know it.

  You told me you hoped I found

  what I was looking for

&nb
sp; but my biggest fear is that I had …

  but I didn’t even know it.

  When he finished speaking, his eyes found mine and I saw something I’d never seen in another man’s eyes before. Ash looked at me with a raw, naked vulnerability that I knew mirrored my own.

  Our eyes locked and held for what felt like a lifetime, and then my breathing faltered when he set the paper aside, surged from his chair, and pitched toward me. His right knee hit the sofa at the same time that his left hand speared through my hair, and then his lips crashed onto mine, demanding and urgent. And maybe just a little bit angry too.

  “You stupid fucking girl,” he snarled against my lips. “All this time wasted—” he nipped at my bottom lip and then sucked it into his mouth “—that we could have been doing this.” He brought his left knee onto the couch and boxed me in with his large, powerful body. “I never stopped thinking about you,” he said, tilting my head and taking our kiss deeper. “Wondering where you were and whether you thought about me too.”

  I broke away to catch my breath. Placing my palms on either side of his face, I held his gaze. “I always thought about you. Always.”

  And then I kissed him with the same urgency I’d felt when I’d first written those lyrics, and then again a few hours ago when I’d revisited them. The only reason I’d tossed them aside was because I felt like they didn’t come close to conveying the remorse I suffered each time I thought back on that morning and the way I’d so callously dismissed him, nor the guilt and shame I’d endured once I’d realized Ash was the type of man who could have made me a better woman. Ash would have made me want to be better—for me. I would have wanted to be the Rae Griffin I knew I could be because it would have felt good to be that person around him. He would have liked her. He might even have loved her. But I’d fucked it all up, the way I always did back then and—like he’d just said—it had cost us so much wasted time.

  “I fucked things up,” I admitted, the first time I’d said the words aloud when they should have been my first words to him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he growled, biting into my neck and then my shoulder. “We’re here now.” He palmed my breast through the cotton of my shirt as I arched into his touch. “And now I’m finally going to fuck you again.”

  Ash tugged my shirt over my head, and when he saw I wasn’t wearing a bra, he groaned. “Your tits are so fucking beautiful.” He hefted each globe into his rough, calloused palms and stared at them in wonder before sucking a nipple into his mouth.

  I let out a needy sigh when he abraded the sensitive tip with the thick, broad side of his tongue.

  “Yeah, just like that. Give me your pleasure … let me hear it.”

  “Ash,” I whispered when he sucked tightly, the pull from his mouth wrenching at my core.

  He moved to the other one and gave it the same attention. But this time when he drew back, he captured the engorged bud with his teeth and plucked, my glistening skin going taut as it stretched between us. The sting of his teeth clamped around my tender flesh brought a quick flash of pain before he soothed it with soft, worshipful kisses.

  “Please,” I begged, even though I wasn’t sure what I was begging for.

  “Tell me,” Ash commanded. “Tell me what you need and I’ll give it to you.”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered as he dropped to the floor and kissed his way over my sternum, his tongue tracing the lines of the winged tattoo that hugged my ribcage.

  “You do know,” he cajoled. “And all you have to do is say it.”

  “I want you inside of me,” I groaned when his mouth reached the small curve of my abdomen and his tongue dipped into my belly button.

  One long finger traced the seam of the denim covering my pussy. Back and forth, torturously slow. “You want my cock in here?” he asked, cupping my mound with his broad palm and rubbing as my hips rocked forward.

  “Yes!”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes … please?” I asked uncertainly.

  “Is it wrong that I want you to beg for it?” he asked, dragging his lips and hands from my body.

  I shuddered at the loss of contact. “I don’t even care anymore. I’ll beg. Whatever you want, just please … give it to me.”

  After he’d made me beg in the Navigator, I vowed that would be the last time, but it seemed where this man was concerned I was willing to debase and humiliate myself if it meant he’d touch me the way I needed him to.

  “Stand up,” he commanded and I rushed to do his bidding.

  “Now take off your jeans.”

  My fingers worked the button loose and then I dragged my zipper half way down as Ash watched me with hungry eyes.

  When I hesitated, he growled, “Keep going.”

  I shimmied the tight fabric past my hips and down my thighs until the denim pooled around my ankles.

  “So fucking beautiful. Even better than I remembered,” he groaned as I stepped out of them.

  When he continued to devour me with his eyes but didn’t lift a finger toward me, I begged him to touch me. “Please,” I begged, knowing how much he enjoyed it when I did.

  “Sit back down,” he instructed, and even though I was dying to have his hands on me, I obeyed.

  “Good girl,” he praised, and I warmed at the approval in his voice. “Now spread your legs … mmm, very nice,” he commented appreciatively when I did. “A bit wider … yeah, just like that. Such a pretty little cunt.”

  But still he didn’t reach for me.

  “Ash?” I asked in confusion.

  He blinked and dragged his eyes from my pussy. “I want you to touch yourself.”

  “But—”

  “Touch yourself.” His tone brooked no argument.

  Tentatively, my fingers skated over my flushed skin.

  “Keep going,” he ordered when I hesitated near my belly.

  “But I want you to touch me.”

  “I will, I promise. But right now, you’re going to show me how you like to be touched. I’m going to watch while you fuck yourself.”

  “You already know how I like to be touched.”

  “Are you arguing with me?”

  I shrieked when Ash twisted my nipple and, moving with the speed of a striking cobra, took the stinging tip into his mouth to ease the pain. Pulling his lips from the smarting bud, he raised his eyes to mine. “Don’t tell me you didn’t like that.”

  “I didn’t!” I argued which bought my other nipple the same harsh treatment. Except this time instead of being shocked at the pain, I surprised myself by melting into it, letting it wash over me until his lips turned the discomfort into a delicious, wicked sort of pleasure.

  “How do you do that to me?” I whispered in amazement as I threaded my fingers through his hair and held him against me. He licked and laved at my tender flesh, heightening my arousal even more.

  “I told you before, Rae, I know what you want. We want the same things. You just have to let me give it to you, let me take it from you.”

  “I can’t,” I argued even as I wondered if he was right. If he knew things about me I didn’t even know myself.

  “You can,” he encouraged, as his hand skimmed down my flesh to find my pussy, wet and ready for him. Aching for him. “I know how important control is for you, but I’m asking you to trust me. Where this is concerned—” one long finger slipped between my slick folds and stroked “—let me have it. Let me control your pleasure and I promise you’ll never regret it.”

  “What does that even mean?” I choked out as I lifted my hips so he could pet me in long, even strokes.

  “It means that when we’re together like this, I’m in charge,” he answered, his voice steady, his strokes sure. “That you do what I say, when I say.” His finger slipped inside, and then out again, as he laid out exactly what he meant. “I want to own your pleasure. I want to own your body. When you’re naked, I want you to give everything over to me. Your pain, your pleasure, your responsibility, your fear. I want it
all.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” I replied in halting breaths, my resolve weakening.

  The truth was, in the heat of the moment, what he described sounded appealing. I’d never say it aloud, but I was growing weary of having to be in control all the damn time, of having to think about every damn thing every single second of the day. If I did what he asked, I could let go of all that. When we were together, I could focus on my own pleasure.

  In order to take, all I had to do was give.

  A second finger joined the first and he pumped in and out of me in slow, restrained caresses. “Stop fighting it, Rae. Give your pleasure over to me.” His other hand skated over the black lines of my tattoo. “Let me make you soar, baby,” he whispered, his words melodic. “I promise, I’ll be good to you. When it’s you and me, here like this, I’ll give you everything you’ve ever wanted but didn’t know to ask for.” His thumb found my clit and he rubbed circles around it while his other fingers continued their questing advance and retreat. “All you have to do is let go.”

  Echoing my lyrics, he continued, “You’ve found it Rae … what you didn’t even know you were looking for.” His fingers picked up their pace, and the wet sounds of my pleasure echoed in the charged silence. “All you have to do is give yourself to me.”

  My mind recoiled from his words even as my body embraced them. Shaking my head, I tried to fight off the prickling awareness that always preceded my orgasms.

  “That’s it, Rae,” Ash encouraged. “Just like that,” he said, his fingers plundering me in earnest. He’d ceased being slow and gentle; now he worked me over with hard, forceful thrusts. “Give it to me. Now. Fucking come on my fingers, right now.”

  And with that harshly ordered demand, everything inside of me contracted and then expanded beyond the confines of my self-control. I broke apart—exploded—into a cataclysmic orgasm that destroyed me and then just as quickly put me back together again. When I reformed, I was a new me—a me who’d decided to quit fighting what Ash already knew. I needed this. I needed him to dominate and control me. At least where sex was concerned, I needed to submit to his will.