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  Whipped

  Sabrina York

  Text Copyright Sabrina York 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  IBSN: 978-1-941497-01-2

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  Dedication

  For Tina Reiter. She knows why.

  Whipped

  By Sabrina York

  Dane Coulter is mourning the loss of his best friend, fellow Special Ops buddy, Cody. Oh, Cody didn’t die. It’s worse. He’s getting married. Cody is, in Dane’s opinion, whipped.

  Dane swears he will never suffer the same fate. But when he meets a woman who can take all his dominant loving and beg for more, he realizes he may have met his match. It’s a damn shame she’s the one woman in the world his man-code deems untouchable…his best friend’s sister.

  Chapter One

  It was a sad day. One of the great ones had fallen.

  Dane Coulter bowed his head and lifted his glass. “To Cody. My best friend and the world’s best wingman. He was a good man. I’ll miss you, buddy.”

  Billy nodded and swiped at his cheek. “Damn straight.”

  “To Cody,” the others around the table chorused as they lifted their glasses as well.

  All but Cody. Cody shot them an annoyed look and snorted. “I’m getting married, not dyin’.”

  “Close enough.” Dane clapped him on the shoulder, a somber expression on his face. “It was damn good knowing you.”

  Hard to believe all their adventures, all their wild sexcapades were over. Hard to believe such a dyed in the wool ladies’ man could succumb.

  But succumb he had. Cody had met Angie and she’d swept all his cynicism—his stalwart resistance to that romantic notion women called love—aside.

  In just a couple days he’d be a married man. Ball and chain and everything.

  Which was ironic, when you thought about it. Given his…proclivities in the bedroom. A submissive man, Cody was not.

  Dane knew him well, had known him his whole life. As Army brats, traveling the world in a rootless existence, it was rare to run into the same friends again and again but, as a result of their fathers being repeatedly assigned to the same bases, they’d grown up together.

  They’d been best friends since grade school, except for that month or so in high school when they’d both been besotted with Lila Pennington. But then she’d slept with Thomas Winkler and that had been the end of that.

  Their families were still friendly too. Their dads went fishing together, their moms had cocktails and their brothers and sisters were all best friends. There had been dinner parties and sleepovers and camping trips.

  As young men, Dane and Cody had enlisted side-by-side and helped each other survive Basic, and then Cody had followed Dane into the Special Forces. For the past five years they’d been inseparable, had each other’s backs on mission after mission, adventure after adventure.

  Until Angela.

  Dane had been joking when he’d said Cody’s impending marriage was like a death sentence but, on some level, it didn’t feel like a joke at all. He tried not to think she was taking Cody away forever but, deep inside, that was how it felt.

  Like he was losing a friend.

  He glanced over at Cody, who had wandered to the window and was staring out at the Vegas skyline. Angie had picked Vegas for their whirlwind wedding and, of course, Cody had agreed. He agreed to everything nowadays.

  Dane hadn’t complained because, hell, it was Vegas. And Angie’s dad was paying for everything. A week in Vegas. Everything top of the line.

  And Cody was in love. Head over heels, helplessly, hopelessly in love.

  Whipped.

  Dane stifled a snort and took a draw on his beer. This was supposed to be a celebration, a badass bachelor party. Cody’s last gasp of freedom with his wild and raucous buddies before the boom fell. He glanced around the lush suite with derision. Wild and raucous? Not.

  Billy and Kaye sat at the table flicking paper footballs at each other and Ennis was playing with himself…a desultory game of beer pong with olives. Dudley was perched on a chair angling cards into a wastebasket. Badass bachelor party? Shit. It felt more like a high school slumber party. All that was missing was footie pajamas.

  It was a crying shame.

  If their C.O. saw his Special Forces team brought this low, they’d all be drummed out of the corps.

  “When are the strippers getting here?” Kaye asked the question humming in Dane’s mind.

  Cody spun around and paled. He clutched his chest like a swooning virgin. “Gawd. Strippers? There can’t be any strippers. Ang would have my balls on a plate if I so much as looked at another woman.”

  Dane tried not to roll his eyes in disgust.

  “Does that mean you won’t be needing the hooker we hired?”

  Cody gaped at Billy. “You hired a hooker?” His voice broke.

  “Um, yeah?”

  “Shit.” Cody raked his fingers through his hair, though there wasn’t much to rake. Like all of them, his hair was closely cropped.

  “She’s paid for and everything,” Billy said, as though this would help.

  “No fucking hooker. Come on guys.”

  Ennis frowned and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. His biceps rippled. Of all of them Ennis was the most ripped, which was saying something, because they were all pretty ripped. “Shee-it, Cody. This is supposed to be a bachelor party. We’re in Vegas. It’s supposed to be wild and crazy. There are supposed to be strippers. There’s supposed to be a fucking tiger in the room.”

  Why he pouted at that, Dane didn’t have a clue. If there was a tiger in the room, it would probably eat the strippers.

  “Yeah.” Billy echoed Ennis’ pout. “Tonight’s the night, bro. Your last chance.” It was true. The families were all arriving tomorrow. Tomorrow the hotel would be filled with mothers and sisters and flower girls, for Christ’s sake. In all likelihood, they would not appreciate strippers. Or hookers.

  Kaye joined the refrain. “If we’re gonna have a bacchanal, it’s gotta be tonight. From here on out it’ll be rubber chicken with Aunt Gladys.”

  “I don’t have an Aunt Gladys.”

  “Aunt whoever then.”

  “And there’s not going to be a bacchanal.” This growled by their host, with a slash of his hand.

  The guys eyed Cody gloomily. “You changed, man,” Billy muttered.

  “Yeah.” Kaye tipped up his beer and reached for another. “What’d she do to you?”

  Cody set his hands on his hips. “I love her.”

  None of them, of course, could respond to that. Although Billy did mutter again, under his breath, “You changed.”

  He had. Dane tried to ignore the ripple of desolation at the thought. He tried to ignore the sneaking suspicion that as of tonight, as of right now, nothing would ever be the same again.

  Ennis wandered across the room, plopped down on the sofa and turned on the TV, scrolling for porn but stalling on some financial news update. “I can’t believe we’re in Vegas and sitting in a hotel room. With no hookers,” he grumbled. “What kind of bachelor party is this?”

  “A boring one.” Kaye sat next to Ennis and grabbed the remote, surfing through until he found a game on. All the guys drifted over to watch. Everyone but Dane. Yeah. He couldn’t take this. It was all too…painful.

  “I’m gonna head out,” he said to Cody.

  “You’re not leaving, are you?”

  Dane faked a grimace. “Little bit of a headache.” It was a believable lie. After the concussion he’d received during their last mission, he’d been having them. He was probably going to hell for lying about it now to escape what felt like
a wake for his best friend, but he had to escape. Misery was closing in on him like a steel trap.

  He’d probably go back to his room and drink himself into a stupor.

  No. He wouldn’t. He was in fucking Vegas. He’d find a party somewhere—with hot and horny chicks—and drink himself into a stupor there.

  “Okay.” Cody’s brow wrinkled in concern. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess.”

  “Yeah. Have fun tonight. And…congratulations.”

  God, that word was hard to choke out. Still, Cody took his hand and shook it. Believing, trusting that Dane was sincere.

  He wasn’t. He set his teeth as he left Cody’s room. Damn. Whatever had a hold on his friend, he sure hoped he never got a dose of it. Sit in his room with his buddies and chat? While in Vegas? Turning down a hooker? One that had been paid for?

  So unlike Cody it made Dane’s brain hurt.

  Of course, hiring hookers wasn’t their general M.O. Neither of them ever needed to hire a pro, but that was hardly the point.

  The point was—

  What was the point?

  Ah, yes. Cody turning down pussy.

  An occurrence so rare it probably caused a rip in the space-time continuum.

  Even as a kid he’d been a horn dog. They both had been. Women, women, women. Nothing was as exciting as a new conquest. And with their profession, the covert missions, constant travel—relationships just weren’t in the cards.

  Besides, the world was filled with gorgeous, willing hotties who loved a man in a uniform. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. Full-figured, slender. Legs, boobs, thighs… Too many choices to settle for just one.

  And fuck. He was in Vegas. Hot and willing women were everywhere. Some of them didn’t even charge. Determination, to find one of them and have her tonight, raged in him.

  The elevator door dinged open and he glanced up as he made his way down the hall. The breath caught in his throat.

  Yeah.

  Exactly.

  She was perfect. Long legs. Tantalizing curves, tightly wrapped. Boobs out to here and a slinky skirt. She wore a leather jacket over a clingy black shirt. Leather on a woman always made his mouth water a little. Her face was perfection to begin with—a delicate, alabaster sculpture—but her makeup, something exotic and alluring, caught him like a fist to the gut. Red lips. Eyes darkly shadowed with long, lush, patently false lashes and a Cleopatra slant. She carried her impossibly high heels in her hand, swinging them carelessly. Her bare pedicured feet slapped the floor in a saucy cadence.

  She saw him coming and her lips quirked up. As though she had mysterious secrets, and they amused her. Her eyes raked him, assessing his muscles. She popped her gum. “Well hey there,” she cooed, swinging her shoes in a wider arc.

  Dane felt her coo straight down to his balls.

  Fuck.

  Visions filled his mind. Visions of him pushing her up against the wall and fucking her here, now, scorched him.

  Her face wrinkled up into an adorable puddle. “Say, do you know where Cody’s room is?”

  Yeah. She had to be the hooker.

  Something hot, hard and needy curled through his gut. “Cody doesn’t need your services tonight.”

  She blinked. “He…doesn’t?”

  “No. But I do. If you’re interested…”

  Her eyes widened. She looked him up and down. Her tongue peeped out.

  He shivered.

  “Interested?” He loved the way her lips parted on the word. The way it floated between them on skeins of the air.

  “Are you?” He shot her a speaking grin. It seemed to bedazzle her. His dimples did that to chicks sometimes. Apparently even pros weren’t immune.

  A sigh passed her lips. She seemed to melt right there in the hallway. “I…am.”

  Two words. Two little words.

  They skewered him.

  “Come on. My room’s this way.” He held out his arm, suppressing a quiver of excitement as she hooked hers into it and gazed up at him. Damn she was gorgeous.

  Too bad she was a hooker.

  He didn’t know where that thought, that trickle of regret, came from. Tonight was about reclaiming manhood—for all men. For Cody.

  He would sink himself into sensuous pursuits without compunction. Fuck her and send her on her way.

  If she was any good, maybe he’d give her a tip.

  Chapter Two

  Tina waffled. Oh, not about her decision to go with him. She was definitely doing that.

  She was torn between desolation that Dane Coulter—the guy she’d been in love with her entire life but who had barely noticed her—didn’t recognize her, and exultation that he was noticing her now. She could only chalk it up to the makeover Angie had insisted they all have for their sexy photo shoot, which had been part of the bachelorette party package.

  She looked damn good and she knew it.

  Good enough to—finally—capture his attention.

  Her makeup was some perfect confection created by an artist who dubbed himself The Master. Her outfit was to-die for, despite the fact it had been culled from a bargain basement. Even her hair was cooperating tonight, her long locks falling in perfect waves down her back.

  She’d been on her way to show her brother her new “look,” to laugh about it perhaps, when she’d seen Dane, the man of her long-held fantasies, strolling toward her.

  And damn. He was hot.

  Hotter than she remembered.

  Then again, it had been years. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been robed in a cap and gown at graduation. She’d seen pictures of him through the years though. Pictures of him and Cody kneeling before a deuce and a half in Afghanistan, at some bar in Stuttgart, holding a puppy he’d rescued from a gutter…

  The photos didn’t do him justice. In person, he was devastatingly handsome. Maybe just plain devastating.

  He was bigger than he’d been in high school. Bigger, taller and just…more. His muscles, lacquered by a tight black tee shirt, bulged. Tattoos danced over his biceps. The planes of his face were angled. His high cheekbones, dark brows, long blade of a nose, all the same, but sharper. His eyes hadn’t had those shadows back then either, that predatory glint. His hair—his thick mop of curls—was gone, shaved off, revealing the perfect shape of his head. His chin, however, wasn’t shaved. It was covered by a smattering of dark fuzz. A scar on his cheek, rather than detracting from his looks, made him even more fascinating, dangerous.

  And he smelled… scrumptious. As he moved, his cologne, a clean enticing scent, enveloped her in a cloud.

  Oh, he was dangerous all right.

  She didn’t care.

  The slight buzz from the margaritas at the bachelorette party, the sexual sizzle ignited by the strippers who’d burst in on their party wearing camo fatigues with rip-away crotches, all contributed to her bravado.

  In real life she would never hook arms with some random guy and sashay by his side to his room. But hell. This was Dane. The man of her fantasies. Judging from the hunger in his expression as he looked down at her, the heat that passed between them where they touched, he wanted her.

  Thank God she wasn’t still the dorky teen with braces she’d been when they’d last met.

  She looked amazing tonight. He happened to wander by and notice her. No one else was around. And he wanted her.

  It was as though, somehow, magically, all the stars had aligned.

  There was no way—no way—she would miss this opportunity.

  Excitement danced low in her gut as he swiped his room key and led her into his suite. It was a nice suite—not as sumptuous as Angie’s, but nice all the same—with a small sitting area and an enormous king bed. The windows looked out on the sparkling lights of the City that Never Slept. Or one of them.

  “Can I get you a drink?” he asked, taking off his watch and dropping it on the table by the door. It drew her attention to his forearms, thick and muscled and sprinkled with dark hairs. They were roped with thick veins. She’d alwa
ys had a thing for bulky forearms. And she’d always had a thing for Dane. The combination was irresistible.

  Tina tipped her head to the side and blew a bubble with her gum. “Margarita?”

  He waved at the glossy wood armoire against the wall. “I have a mini bar. It’ll have to be shots. What’s your poison?”

  “Tequila then.” Might as well keep a good thing going.

  He hunkered down and searched through the fridge, pulling out a tiny bottle of tequila for her and whiskey for him. He cracked them open and dumped them unceremoniously into two glasses and handed her hers. No ice or anything.

  Good thing it didn’t matter to her, or she’d be pissed at his cavalier attitude. The drink was lubricant, a time filler. They were dancing around a seduction, and they both knew it.

  Or…not.

  Apparently seduction was not necessary. Because Dane took a swig of his drink and said, with no preface whatsoever, “So do you have any no-nos?”

  She gaped at him. “No-nos?”

  “Anything you won’t do? Because I’ll be frank. I like a little kink.”

  Holy God.

  First of all, the heat scorching her was mind-numbing. Literally.

  Mind. Numbing.

  Those brash words from Dane’s gorgeous lips and she nearly lost her balance.

  Second of all—he liked kink.

  So, in fact, did she. Nothing super dark, but a little slap and tickle for sure.

  “Um…” She took a sip of her drink and shuddered as the harsh bite of liquor burned through her. It clashed with the flavor of her gum. “What kind of kink are we talking about?”

  He strode to his suitcase and fished around, pulling out a long leather strap with two loops on the ends. Her eyes fixated on it. She gulped.

  “I want to tie you up,” he said, his voice low, taunting, as though he expected her to squeak like a mouse and scuttle from the room.

  The. Fuck.

  “Hmm. I think I can handle that.”

  “I’ll probably smack your bottom.”

  Also good. She tried not to flinch in anticipation. His hand on her ass? Gawd.