"No-"

"I want you to. Spank me. Do it!"

Jonas had been through enough with this woman already. Almost being hit over the head with his own poker. The ridiculous pleasure of building a snowman with her. The most amazing s.e.x he'd ever had in his life. Followed by Lily's total withdrawal and insults when he'd told her Evan Butler was dead. Her threats and ultimatums when he'd refused to accompany her to her apartment. The fact that she totally disobeyed me after I told her to stay put in the hallway.

These past few days with Lily had been full of emotion, the whole gamut, from anger to pa.s.sion. Jonas's normally ordered life felt like it had been dragged through a wringer and then pulled back the other way again. Enough was enough. And he'd had more than enough.

"Fine." He unfastened her jeans and pulled them and her panties down before sitting on the sofa to lay her across his muscular thighs, then removed them completely.

Jonas put one hand on her back to hold her firmly in place and landed the first slap on her perfectly rounded, bare backside with the other. He felt the impact of that slap all the way up his arm. Lily's yelp of pain told him he hadn't held back in the slightest.

"Again," she breathed.

Jonas had no intention of stopping now that he'd started. There was too much adrenaline rushing through him, too much frustration, his control in danger of snapping completely as he landed slap after measured slap against her bared flesh.

He could feel the increasing heat of that flesh against his palm as Lily's yelps turned to groans. Of pleasure, not pain. That pleasure, along with the delicious scent of her arousal, caused his c.o.c.k to harden and throb, ache to be inside her.

"Lily-"

"Don't stop, Jonas," she groaned. "I'm so close. So close..."

His hand on her back kept her in place while his other hand moved between her thighs, feeling how wet she was. His fingers stroked along her swollen nether lips. One stroke of her pulsing c.l.i.t, and she shuddered and quaked in her release, spasm after spasm that caused the juices to gush from her p.u.s.s.y and soak his fingers while he drew every last ounce of her pleasure from her trembling body.

"Again," she breathed longingly.

Jonas had never pleasured a woman this way before, but maybe it was what they both needed? The restrained violence a release of his own tensions, the pleasure a release for Lily's?

Didn't really matter why or how. He slapped her quivering flesh again and again, Jonas breathing hard from his own arousal and the exertion by the time she cried out her release for a second time.

Those cries quickly turned to choked sobs when Lily began to cry. Deep, racking sobs that shook her whole body.

"d.a.m.n it, you should have told me I was hurting you-"

"You weren't."

"But-"

"You didn't hurt me, Jonas." Lily stood before straddling his thighs, wincing slightly as her sore bottom made contact with his jeans. "I- It was so intense," she acknowledged, brushing the tears from her cheeks. "I'd thought after our lovemaking this morning that nothing else could be that intense- I was wrong. But you were right about my not being able to sit down comfortably," she acknowledged ruefully as she leaned forward slightly so that she could rest her head against his shoulder and ease the pressure from her burning flesh.

Jonas wrapped his arms around her. "I didn't hurt you?"

She shook her head, hair a glossy black in the moonlight. "I deserved it."

He nodded. "Because you're willful. Stubborn. Pigheaded. Untamed and untamable. Shall I go on?"

"Better not." She chuckled wearily. "But, in my defense, this time I disobeyed you because I was worried about you-"

"I can take care of myself."

"And everyone else." She nodded. "But I was still worried about you."

"Why?"

He sounded so genuinely surprised by her concern that Lily's heart ached. For him. Because Jonas really didn't see it. Didn't understand that someone could care enough about him to be worried when he put himself in danger. It made her feel ashamed of her reaction to her brothers' overprotectiveness. They might be a pain in the a.s.s, but at least she had a family that cared about her, whereas Jonas- "What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?"

Lily looked up at Jonas in surprise, only to realize, as she saw he was looking toward the doorway rather than at her, that he wasn't talking to her.

A giant of a man, almost as tall and muscular as Jonas himself, stood silhouetted in that doorway, dark hair long to his shoulders, even darker eyes narrowed as he looked at the two of them.

A man Lily had never seen before.

Chapter 11.

"I asked what you're doing here, Seth?"

Seth? Who the h.e.l.l was Seth? And what was he doing at her apartment?

"Why are you sitting here in darkness-"

"Don't put on the light," Jonas rasped at the same time as he attempted to pull Lily's sweater down over her naked thighs.

Just in time too, because the other man took absolutely no notice of the instruction as he switched on the overhead light. "Oh." He turned the light off again.

Lily's cheeks blushed a fiery red as she realized what he must have seen in that brief moment of light: her jeans and panties thrown on the floor, while she sat half-naked on the thighs of a fully dressed Jonas. No doubt her hair was all over the place too, lips puffy from where she had been chewing on them as Jonas spanked and pleasured her.

As Jonas spanked and pleasured me.

Because she had asked him to. To punish her. To arouse her. To pleasure her.

Dear G.o.d, even the air was thick with the perfume of her arousal and release.

"If this is a nightmare, please wake me up," she groaned as she buried the heat of her face against Jonas's shoulder.

"I've been called some things in my time, but never a nightmare before," the man named Seth drawled-instantly confirming he was all too real.

Jonas sighed. "Wait outside in the hallway until I call you."

"That isn't very polite, Jonas," the other man taunted.

"Polite went out the window the moment you walked in here without knocking."

"The door was open."

"Because the f.u.c.king lock is broken."

"I noticed that."

"I realize you're enjoying yourself, Seth, but if you don't leave in the next ten seconds, I'm going to stand up and throw you out."

"Tetchy, tetchy."

"Go!"

"No doubt Jonas will introduce us when I come back in, Miss Knight."

Oh G.o.d, she might not know this man Seth, but he certainly knew who she was.

"He's gone."

Lily slowly lifted her head and turned to look at the empty doorway. She moved quickly, standing to hastily pull up her panties and jeans before refastening them. Only to release a hissing breath as the constricting material chaffed painfully against her heated and sore flesh.

She winced at that burning sensation as she moved across the room to turn on the light. "Who is that?"

Jonas grinned at her obvious discomfort. "My partner, Seth Armstrong."

"Partner?"

He nodded. "At Grayson Security."

"You have a partner?"

"For the jobs that need two of us, yes."

"I'm also the best friend he has," Seth Armstrong called from the hallway.

Letting Lily know that he could overhear their conversation. "You may as well come back in, Mr. Armstrong," she answered dryly.

"I found this out in the hallway." He held up the bag of takeout as he sauntered back into the room, a huge grin on his face. "I'm presuming it's dinner?"

Seth Armstrong was a couple of inches over six feet tall, had overlong dark hair, with piercing dark eyes set in a hard, uncompromising face. He was leaner than Jonas but just as muscular. It was easy to imagine that these two men together would be a formidable force.

"Lily Knight. And yes, that's our dinner." She took the bag from him.

"Seth," he invited, before the humor left his face and he turned to Jonas. "You are in so much trouble."

"Wouldn't be the first time." Jonas rose slowly to his feet.

"What the h.e.l.l did you think you were doing, not telling me the reason you were taking two weeks' leave was so that you could guard Miss Knight?"

"Lily." She eyed the two men curiously, seeing genuine affection in Seth's dark eyes, along with an edge of anger, perhaps even disapproval. "This is all my fault, Mr. Armstrong-"

"I said call me Seth," he dismissed. "Jonas is a big boy, he can defend himself, if necessary. Right now, it's necessary. Well?" he snapped at the other man.

"I'm not answerable to you, Seth-"

"Like h.e.l.l you're not." The other man tensed. "We're partners, friends, and the closest thing to family the two of us have. And friends and family don't just swan off and put themselves in danger without so much as a f.u.c.king word. Excuse the language, Miss-Lily." He grimaced.

"I've heard worse." She deliberately quoted Jonas.

A Jonas who seemed to be genuinely bewildered by the other man's vehemence. "What the h.e.l.l is your problem, Seth?"

"You're my problem." Seth stalked across the room until he was standing in Jonas's personal s.p.a.ce. "Why didn't you tell me what Gabriel was doing at Grayson Security? What's with the I-don't-need-anyone's-help att.i.tude?"

"I don't need anyone's help-"

"Like h.e.l.l you don't." Seth glowered. "Two men have already died, d.a.m.n it. And you aren't invincible. No matter what you may think to the contrary," he added scathingly.

Jonas's expression darkened. "Get the f.u.c.k out of my face, Seth-"

"No."

"If you're upset about my using a couple of Grayson Security men, and other resources-"

"I'm upset because my best friend didn't come to me when this situation turned nasty."

"Gabriel didn't want Lily's involvement to become public."

"f.u.c.k what Gabriel Knight wanted. Sorry." He turned to give Lily another apologetic grimace. "But your big brother is an a.s.s."

"True," she agreed softly. She was enjoying herself far too much to be in the least offended by Seth's opinion of one of her brothers.

Whether Jonas realized it or not, Seth's anger was mainly caused out of concern and affection for him. Because he was his friend. Because he cared about him. Because he was family.

"Diana is so going to kick your a.s.s the next time she sees you," Seth warned.

Jonas looked distinctly uncomfortable now. "You told her?"

"Of course I told her."

"Why?"

"Because she's my wife? And your friend."

"This really is my fault, Seth," Lily said again.

"No, this is Jonas doing his one-man-army routine," he a.s.sured her. "The big, tough Apache who doesn't need or want anyone. Well, guess what, Jonas?" He was once again in the other man's face. "We need you. Diana and me. Dair and Kat. Lijah and Callie. Daisy and Nikolai. Everyone who works for or is a.s.sociated with Grayson Security. We all need you, alive and well. So cut the c.r.a.p and fill me in on what's going on here, and we'll put all of Grayson Security's resources behind it. Behind you. And that's a direct order from Dair," he added in warning.

"Why the h.e.l.l can't you all leave me the f.u.c.k alone?" Jonas scowled as he stepped around Seth, hands thrust into the front pockets of his jeans.

He really didn't understand, Lily acknowledged sadly. Didn't realize he had a lot of people in his life who cared about him and for him.

Including her.