He pulled free of her, raised his hand to his nostrils, and drew in a long, deep breath of her. Christ, she smelled sweet. He wanted a taste, but he teased himself with saving that for next time.
“Compose yourself, Miss Beaumonde,” he murmured.
Her red-gold hair drooped out of its bun, tendrils falling across her forehead. With her skirt pulled high above her pink rump, she looked thoroughly debauched and luscious.
He smoothed the material down over her bottom, covering her, then helped her to stand straight, holding her arm until he felt she was steady on her feet. Only then did she open her eyes, the green lavishly dark like an Amazon rainforest. She met his gaze for less than a heartbeat, then let it drop to the level of his tie. He hadn’t even removed his suit jacket.
“I trust your error won’t happen again, Miss Beaumonde.” He’d have to find something else to spank her for. Or perhaps more, a trip to the private downstairs room of his house in the woods. Like taking Little Red Riding Hood into the big bad wolf’s lair.
She shook her head as if incapable of words. Tipping her chin, he ran his thumb along her bottom lip, fixing the lipstick she’d smudged.
“Now go back to your desk, Miss Beaumonde, and reschedule my lunch with Jacobson.” With that, he dismissed her, pointing one finger at the closed door of his office. She exited on unsteady legs.
She was so damn sweet and fuckable.
Lincoln Masters needed more of her.
Chapter Two
‡
Natalie stepped off the BART train and hurried through the mass of commuters to her economy car out in the parking lot. It would have been lovely to work and live in the city, but despite a good salary as an executive assistant, she couldn’t afford even a studio flat in San Francisco. Instead, she’d bought her home in the East Bay when house prices had fallen during the credit crisis. Even then, she barely had any money left for the work that needed to be done to the place.
Van said he would help, but that had lasted as long as painting one wall of the living room.
Van. She didn’t want to think about him.
Instead, the entire BART ride, she’d thought about Mr. Masters’ spanking. Alone in her car for the ten-minute drive home, her cheeks flamed. The ones on her face. Though the bottom set of cheeks were still red-hot, too. Wonderfully so.
She was awful. The rest of the afternoon had gone by in a daze. Though she certainly hadn’t made another mistake. Good Lord, no. Mr. Masters acted as if that interlude in his office had never happened. He’d buzzed her phone, called her into this office, rattled off instructions, handed her filing, signed the letters she’d typed, all without a single altered inflection.
Yet every time she stood before him, her smarting behind reminded her. She’d remained heated and buzzed all afternoon. Her ears had rung for a good half hour after that delicious orgasm.
Stopping at a red light, Natalie put her hands to her face, her skin warm to the touch. How could she have let her boss do that to her? Worse, how could she have loved it?
She wasn’t into bondage games. She didn’t believe in screwing her way to the top. She didn’t indulge in affairs at work. While she should have been making sure she didn’t lose her job, she’d been daydreaming about lifting her skirt again for Mr. Masters to have his wicked way.
She didn’t even feel bad about Van. Almost with a snap of the fingers, she was over it. Which made her fickle and shallow. She hated to think she was that kind of person.
Her street was older, the sidewalks tree-lined, the houses small starter homes. Tricycles sat in driveways, many of the lawns were choked with weeds, and too many cars lined the curbs. But the two-bedroom, one-bath house was hers. At thirty, she didn’t want to keep paying rent. She’d dreamed of Van moving in. He, however, had never offered to give up his apartment.
Now she knew why.
She’d trimmed her front walk with pansies, impatiens, and geraniums. A huge juniper grew dead center in her lawn, obscuring the view of her family-room window from the road.
She slipped her key into the door only to find it already unlocked. Natalie’s heart began to beat hard in her chest.
Van sat in his usual easy chair in front of the TV, feet up, but he dropped the footrest the moment he saw her.
“Honey.” He rose slowly to his full five feet ten inches.
Natalie couldn’t help the comparison to Mr. Masters. Where her boss was tall, broad, and powerful, Van was average, lanky, and lean. His blond hair was straight, brushing the neck of his T-shirt. His jeans were old and faded, molding to his male package. His feet were bare, and she noted his toenails needed clipping.
A couple of years older than she was, she’d always liked his bohemian look. He was so nonestablishment, an artist who’d actually had his work displayed in a prominent Palo Alto gallery where he’d had an exclusive show. Even his name, Van Wright, had seemed so artsy and self-important.
Yet next to Mr. Masters, Van appeared an unkempt…wuss. Especially after the act she’d witnessed him participating in.
God, she was harsh. Or maybe she was just being a vindictive bitch. He’d cheated, so she let her boss make the moves on her as payback. Sort of. Natalie wanted to bury her face in her hands.
Instead, she laid her purse and keys on the kitchen table. The house was an L-shape, kitchen and dining area on the right, the family room on the left, with a sliding glass door out to her patio and postage-stamp backyard. The two bedrooms and bathroom made the long part of the L at the back.
“Don’t call me honey,” she finally said, coming to stand in the front hall, which was really nothing more than faux marble tiles separating the kitchen’s linoleum from the family room’s beige carpet.
“Let me explain.”
Her jaw dropped in total disgust. “I don’t think you can explain away what I saw.”
He had a long face, and it got even longer as he frowned. “You think I was cheating, but I wasn’t—”
Natalie cut him off. “That woman was—” She stopped, unable to utter a single word describing the event that had so angered and humiliated her. “I believe what she was doing is considered sex, and therefore you were cheating.” She held out her hand. “I want my key back, please.” She should have felt an ache, or even tears prodding her eyes. Yet after her punishment in Mr. Masters’ office, Natalie didn’t feel much of anything for Van except anger.
“It was a therapy session.”
Okay. She felt an emotion. Wait, was disbelief an emotion? “Therapy?” Then there was another emotion. Laughter. Oh wait, laughter wasn’t an emotion either. How about hysterical laughter? It simply bubbled up her throat. She tried to cover it with her hand, but she couldn’t stop, until her belly hurt and moisture trickled from her eyes.
Van’s lips thinned and his nostrils flared. Clearly he didn’t share her sense of humor. “Mistress Divine is my sex therapist.”
Natalie swiped at her streaming eyes, slashes of mascara on her fingers. “Please. I deserve better than that. I’m not an idiot.” Except where Mr. Masters’ lunch schedule was concerned.
Van’s face softened, his blue eyes turning soft. “Please. Sit down. Let me tell you.” He tipped his head like a dog begging for a biscuit. “After two years together, you at least have to listen.”
Now that made her mad. “I don’t owe you anything.” Yet, for the sake of the two years they’d had, she entered her family room to sit primly on the edge of the sofa. Once again, she held out her hand. “First, my key, please.” She’d shoved his key through his mail slot after she left his apartment.
Van pulled out his set and, with exacting movements, worked her house key off the ring. He laid it in the middle of the glass coffee table.
“All right, explain about your therapist.”
He sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of her. His feet were bare, the soles dirty. He was so not for her. She didn’t know how she could have thought otherwise, except that she’d loved his carefree spirit. On
ce upon a time, he’d made her want to be carefree, too. Or maybe all her rationalizations were simply because she wanted to deny how much he’d hurt her, how his infidelity had ripped away her self-esteem.
“I have needs, Natalie.”
She snorted. “We all do. I satisfied mine with you.” Then, horribly, her face heated. She thought of Mr. Masters and how she’d satisfied her need right there in his office. She was no better than Van. Except that he’d done it first.
“I have darker needs. I was afraid you wouldn’t understand about them. Mistress Divine has been helping me work through this.”
Of all the gall. “She was using a—” She couldn’t even finish the full sentence.
“I know,” he said simply.
And they’d been having therapy on the bed in which he’d made love to Natalie. She felt violated. All she could say was “Mistress Divine does not sound like a therapist’s name. Does she have a degree?”
“She’s a black belt.”
That wasn’t what she’d meant, and Natalie laughed. After her hysterical bout earlier, it actually hurt her throat. “She’s a dominatrix, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” He put his hands together and bowed his head as if he were praying. “She helps me through my needs so that I don’t have to foist them upon you.”
“How magnanimous of you.” Her blood boiled over, and she was pretty sure her eyes were rage-red. “I’ve never heard a man explain away his cheating by saying he was saving his girlfriend from himself.”
He raised just his eyes. “I never told you because I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.” There was a look of condescension, too, an I-told-you-so.
She leaned down slightly. “So what you’re saying is that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about your darker needs, so you cheated instead.”
“I wasn’t cheating, Natalie.” His voice took on a plaintive quality. “I just never wanted to frighten you. I’ve been fighting my submissive nature all my life. I’ve lost girlfriends over it before. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“Right.” She huffed out a sharp breath. He’d never trusted her. “You could have asked me.”
“I did.”
She snorted. “You did not.”
“Don’t you remember when I showed you those pictures on the Internet?”
She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. As if she were the one who had to do the justifying. “You were always showing me porn on the Internet. How was I supposed to know that was something you actually wanted?”
“Everything I showed you was something I wanted.”
She’d refused to let it hurt her feelings, telling herself some men were just that way, visual, and Internet porn got their motors running. She hadn’t wanted to read between the lines either—that would require too much analyzing about the situation—and, dammit, she wanted a man to tell her flat out what he wanted instead of expecting her simply to get what he meant.
You can bend over my desk, lift your skirt, and take the spanking you so richly deserve.
Her face flushed as she heard Mr. Masters’ voice in her head. She realized that while making love with Van had been fine, she’d never gotten quite as hot or wet as she had when Mr. Masters ordered her to bare her bottom for him.
God, maybe she was a closet submissive. Not to mention fickle and shallow.
“Van, it doesn’t matter why you didn’t tell me. It merely shows that you didn’t trust in me or our relationship.”
He shot her the look of a whipped puppy, which might not be far off considering his submissive predilections. God, did he like to be chained up and beaten? Natalie shuddered.
“Please give me another chance, baby. I promise I’ll tell you everything. I’ll even introduce you to Mistress Divine, and she can explain it all.”
Ewwe. “I do not want to meet your mistress.” She was done feeling betrayed. She’d licked her wounds, now it was time to heal. “I don’t want—”
He held up his hand, blocking his face from her view. “Don’t say it. Please think about it. Over the weekend. I care about you. I don’t want to lose you. I know we can make this right between us.”
“Van, I—”
He shook his head, holding up both hands this time. “I’m sorry I lied. You’re right, I didn’t trust you to accept that side of me. But if you give me a chance, we can work this out. Think about it over the weekend, and on Monday if you still want me out of your life, I’ll go.”
They’d had two years together. She’d walked in on something horrifying. Well, that was an exaggeration. She wasn’t a prude. The horror wasn’t in the act itself. Under other circumstances—especially since letting Mr. Masters spank her—she might have found the whole thing titillating. No, the pain was in the fact that another woman was doing it to him and that he’d loved it more than anything Natalie had ever done with him. Maybe she had too much pride to consider forgiving him. Whatever. The image had been debilitating.
Natalie gave herself one deep breath. “I’ll give you the weekend. But if I still say no on Monday, then I don’t want to hear from you again.”
She thought he might kiss her feet at the declaration, and there was something oddly powerful in having a man at her feet. She’d been dumped enough times in her life to feel the pleasure of having a man beg for her.
It felt almost as good as Mr. Masters swatting her bottom.
It would have been cleansing to slam the door on Van’s butt on the way out, but Natalie didn’t. That was just plain petty and beneath her, but the anger did serve a purpose, ridding her of the self-pity she’d been indulging in the past few days.
She’d had a right to expect more from Van. Sex therapist, my foot. She had a right to demand pleasure. The level of pleasure Mr. Masters had given her in his office.
Her skin heated. As if he were a magician snapping his fingers, even from afar, Mr. Masters made her suddenly wet, breathless, and needy.
Closing her eyes, she could feel the stinging swat of his hand. All alone in her empty house, Natalie shivered. His scent was all over her. How could that be when he hadn’t even removed his clothes?
Natalie stepped out of her high heels, and entering the bedroom, she undid her skirt, let it fall, and walked right out of the pool of fabric.
Padding barefoot across the carpet, the swish of her silk blouse against her skin felt sexy, decadent, sensuous. She deserved to feel this good. It was her right as a woman. In trying to please Van in all aspects of their relationship, she’d ignored her own needs.
On her last birthday, the girls had surprised her with a vibrator. She’d been mortified, which was their intention, of course. Diana, her roommate before she’d saved enough for a down payment on the house, claimed the longer a woman was in a relationship, the more she needed a vibrator. Natalie felt exactly the opposite, that in a committed relationship, you shouldn’t need outside stimulation.
Well, all right, she should have seen the writing on the wall when Van was so fascinated with the Internet. But no, she’d tossed the vibrator in the bottom drawer of the bedside table and forgotten about it.
Hmm, did it have great meaning that she knew exactly where it was? Oh yes, it probably did, something cosmic like Don’t throw this out because someday you’re going to need it badly to take the edge off what Mr. Masters did to you in his office, you dirty, naughty woman.
What would it feel like now, with her butt still tender, her pussy wet and warm? With fantasies of Mr. Masters running around in her head like proverbial sugar plum faeries?
Oh, she deserved to find out. In a way, it could even be considered payback for what Van had done. He’d needed so-called help from his sex therapist. Natalie was going to get help from her battery-operated BFF, as Diana had called the purple silicon device.
Natalie dropped to her knees by the side of the bed and opened the drawer. The toy was buried beneath a few scarves, her 49ers T-shirt, and her Sharks jersey.
Hah. The batteries still worked. Dia
na had put them in so Natalie could feel the thrum against her hand. Oh yeah, mortifying then, perfect now. Eight inches long, with a little swan-shaped node in a most strategic place, it had three vibrating speeds and two rotating speeds. Buried beneath the silicon skin were layers of beads designed to caress deep inside as they rotated around the shaft. Who needed a man with all this technology?
Take that, Van.
She removed her thong, undid the front clasp of her bra, but left her blouse buttoned. She liked the feel of silk and lace caressing her nipples. Pulling her hair loose from its bun, she let it float down over her shoulders.
Okay, how did one do this? Flat on your back and let it take you missionary?
She imagined Mr. Masters telling her what to do and she had the most absolutely thrilling idea. It was probably scandalous, maybe even perverted, but no one need ever know. This was just for her.
She crawled across the carpet to the full-length mirrored closet door.
“On your knees, Miss Beaumonde”—she imitated Mr. Masters’ deep tones—“and spread your legs so I can see everything.”
Oh my, she was bad. But saying the words aloud made her so wet.
“My dear Miss Beaumonde, you have the prettiest pussy.” She giggled. Yes, he’d say things like that. She dropped her voice and whispered in his dark mysterious pitch. “Now I want to watch you fuck yourself, Miss Beaumonde.”
Lord. She wished Mr. Masters was hearing, watching, saying it all, driving her mad the way he had in her office.
“Do it, Miss Beaumonde.”
Natalie eased the vibrator inside as if it were a cock she was about to ride.
She opened her eyes, needing to see what Mr. Masters would see. “Oh, Miss Beaumonde, that is so hot,” she murmured deeply. “Take it all.”
She slid down slowly, gasping as the toy filled her. The sight in the mirror was sexy and sensual, her nipples beaded against the blouse, her trimmed pussy pink, her clitoris budding.
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 102