How did she get him to realize she didn't want restraint? She wanted him to let go, unleash the monster he believed lived inside of him, and take anything and everything he wanted from her. She wanted to be possessed, claimed, owned. She wanted him to tear her apart and then put her back together again afterward.
Cassandra didn't necessarily want to want all of that. It felt so wrong now that she knew her mom had been held down and gang raped by four men who thought they could do whatever they wanted without consequence.
But wrong or not, she couldn’t deny that her darkest fantasy was to be chased, then caught. Tied up and held down. Clothes ripped from her body as she was spread open to be taken roughly until her body was littered with bruises, and pleasure built so high inside her it could no longer be contained.
If Dragon knew the thoughts running through her mind, he’d be disgusted with her.
Everybody would.
There was something wrong with a woman conceived via rape wanting to, for all intents and purposes, be raped herself.
Something was wrong with her.
Chapter
Thirteen
January 7th
12:18 P.M.
How was he supposed to focus on anything that wasn't Cassandra?
Joining her for yoga had been a bad idea.
But how was he to know that wearing sweatpants was apparently some girl secret language turn-on code?
Looking around at the guys sitting at the large conference desk they had in their office, he wondered if they’d ever heard that girls liked sweatpants. They didn't discuss their sex lives with one another.
Ever since they’d had their DNA altered by Dr. Gardner, Dragon had never looked for a woman to have sex with, he’d always thought it was too dangerous. Mafia family rules meant he’d had his first sexual encounter at thirteen with his father watching on. The woman was a prostitute, at least he hoped she’d been, because as he grew older, he’d suspected that she was in fact a human trafficking victim, although he had no wayto verify that. Once he escaped and joined the military, he’d kept himself on base so there hadn't been options for sex.
Prostitutes had been his only option as a teenager, and he’d never felt entirely comfortable with it because the older he got, the more he understood what his family was and the more he believed those women were not there by choice. So while he’d had enough sex to satisfy his father that he saw women as something to be used for his own pleasure, he actually hadn't had much sex at all, where he was free to explore what it meant to share that intimate act with another person.
He didn't need to be the most experienced guy to know that Cassandra had been burning hot for him this morning. Didn't need to have enhanced scent to smell her arousal, which had flooded the room the second she saw him waiting for her.
There wasn't a doubt in his mind that every single one of his teammates was more experienced sexually than he was. No one brought girls back here, but that didn't mean they didn't travel into the nearest town to find a sexual partner. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, although he doubted Lion did, the man was still hung up on the woman he’d left behind. And Steel had Rose now, so he wouldn't be looking at anyone else.
“Did you know about sweatpants?” he blurted out, causing all five sets of eyes to turn to stare at him quizzically.
“Sweatpants?” Blade asked.
“What about them?” Thunder asked.
“Why are we talking about clothing in the middle of what is supposed to be an important intel gathering session?” Steel demanded.
Shrugging, Dragon felt bad about derailing their work, not that they’d been making much progress anyway, but he didn't back down from his question. If he was going to do his best to fight against his instincts and his fears and embrace this wholepursuing Cassandra thing, then he figured part of that was embracing the brother bonds he had with these men.
“I know what he’s asking, and yeah, D, I know,” Lion told him. There were shadows in the man’s eyes, the pain of leaving behind someone he loved not having dimmed over the last decade, but there were the remnants of fond moments from what he was sure felt like another life to Lion.
“Well, I still don’t know what in the hell we’re talking about,” Voodoo said, looking utterly lost.
Lion rolled his eyes at all of them. “You all really that stupid? You never noticed that girls go crazy about gray sweatpants? Does something to mess with their libido.”
“It does?” Steel looked intrigued by the idea, and he had no doubt the man would be buying gray sweatpants as soon as they finished up here.
“As if Rose needs another reason to have sex with you,” Blade said with a mock shudder. “I swear all I hear these days are the sounds of you two going at it.”
Steel just grinned. “What can I say? My girl is insatiable, and I can't look at her without wanting to be buried inside her. Too bad I can't stay that way.” Steel’s voice conveyed true regret as he said that, and it went without saying that the rest of them were grateful that it wasn't a viable possibility. Being happy for Steel and Rose was one thing, wanting to see the man they considered a brother, and the woman they were beginning to see as a baby sister having sex was quite another.
