by Madeleine Oh
“Thank you so much, Branko.”
“My pleasure, Adele. My pleasure.”
It had been her pleasure too.
“I’m going to hold you to those promises,” he said. “We will do this again and next time, my dear, I will bugger you.”
“I hope so.”
He kissed her and then moved to release her legs. “Tired?” he asked.
“I need a new word to describe how worn out I am.” Worn out, but so satisfied and contented.
“Best you sleep,” he said, and from somewhere brought out a duvet and laid it over her. “We have this room as long as we want.”
Her last thought, as her eyes closed, was she never wanted to leave.
Chapter Ten
He woke her with a tray of breakfast and a smile. Had he slept beside her? She thought not. “What time is it?”
“Nine.”
“Branko,” she said, taking the cup of coffee he offered, “thank you for last night.”
“My pleasure, and I hope we have many more sessions. I like you and your body, Adele, they inspire me.”
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she replied. “You are a very nice Dominant but you’re a distraction.”
“I’m flattered to hear it. Now, I have one request.” She waited, cup halfway to her lips. “Will you let me join you in your search, perhaps tell Luc and see what he knows?”
Part of her wanted to refuse, this was her quest, her mission, but common sense prevailed. “You really mean that?”
“Why not? It will be a way to earn your gratitude. I’d like to deserve that.”
“You’ve already got that, you know. You are the lover of my dreams.”
“And you dream of being dominated.”
“I have since I was little, before I had any inkling of what I was.”
“What you are is wonderful, Adele.” He kissed her, a soft, gentle kiss, just a brush of lips on lips but her nipples tingled in response. “Now, my dear, get showered and dressed. I asked Arzhel if he knew your father. He didn’t but suggested we look at the club records. It’s a long shot but might be worth a try.”
“Let’s please check, but don’t you have something else to do?”
“I’d planned on spending the weekend with you in Monaco. Remember? You turned me down. Let’s see what we can find today and then tonight, I’ll give you the chance to show your gratitude.”
“Here again?”
“No, back at Les Santons and you will allow me to use that flogger. Pink, did you say it was?”
“Yes, bright pink, magenta.” As if the color really mattered.
“So, finish your breakfast, get washed and dressed and I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
A couple of hours would also give her time to explore this room a little more too.
Wild and wonderful sex with Branko and maybe finding clues, this was going to be one fantastic weekend.
* * * * *
Branko sat at a computer in the back office of the club and shook his head. Much as he’d be delighted to help Adele find her long-lost father, and he was more than willing to support her in the endeavor, he privately thought she was chasing after a blue moon.
Adele was twenty-eight, he’d learned that from her job application, and her father had abandoned her when she was four. Hell, the man could be in Timbuktu or Outer Mongolia, although staying in France made more sense. But how useful were years-old addresses? One had been a dead end and this one turned out to be one of Luc’s business ventures. Now how odd was that?
Or was it? Adele was kinky, her mother had made premium sex toys. Good chance her father was kinky. Had he been here, all those years ago? Come to that, how long had this club been here?
Good question. He went in search of Arzhel again and found him dozing in one of the downstairs rooms. He wasn’t delighted to be roused a second time.
“Damn it all, Branko, a man has to sleep.”
“Sorry, but I need to know something.”
“It had better be good.”
“How long has this club been here and did it always have this name?”
“Christ almighty, you want a history lesson! I’ve worked here ten years, that’s all I know. It was established then but who the hell knows for how long? I don’t.”
“Someone must.”
“Ask Luc Prioux, or Stephane. And you won’t be able to disturb him. He locks his door when he’s sleeping. I’ll have to start doing the same.”
Call Luc? Why not? He punched in the number and listened impatiently, hoping he wasn’t going straight into voice mail.
“Branko?” Luc said on replying. “Enjoying yourself? I’m surprised you have time to call. Something wrong?”
“No, everything’s fine but a question came up and I think you’d know the answer.”
“What?”
“The Nice place, Velours Noir,” he tried to sound as causal as possible, “was it always a kinky club?”
“Has been since my grandfather bought it and set it up after the war. Before then it was some sort of hangout for collaborators, or so he claimed.”
“Thanks. Sorry to bother you.”
“Not a problem. Thinking of taking Adele there? Might be a bit much for her until you know her better.”
Little did Luc know! “Thanks, see you Monday.”
So, if it had been a kinky club all that time, and assuming Adele’s father was inclined the same way as his daughter, it was not impossible that her father might have been a member or an employee. There had to be some reason her mother had the address.
He was whistling as he made his way back upstairs.
Something inside his chest caught as he opened the door and saw Adele sitting by the dressing table, combing her hair. She was so beautiful, his chest ached.
Had to be hunger pangs. They both needed to eat a proper meal after all the exertion last night.
She turned and smiled. “Hello, Branko.”
Mon Dieu. This was more than feeling a trifle peckish. He ached, but not for food, but he had to wait. She needed to rest and recover. So, come to that, did he, even if certain body parts disagreed.
He walked over and kissed her. “You are beautiful, dressed or naked.” He perched beside her. “You were incredible last night. Truly stupendous.”
“You were pretty impressive yourself. I think I’m lucky I can sit comfortably.”
“I’ll see about that later but meanwhile…”
“I need to get going, Branko.”
“Listen to me. Please.” She listened. “I want us to go back to Eze. I thought of something when I was in the office downstairs.” She held on. Not exactly patiently but she let him continue. “This club has been here, under one name or another, since the war and Luc’s family has owned it all that time.”
“And?” Not sounding the least bit patient, she let him go on.
“The business records, Adele. They will list anyone who was a member or employee. If your father was here in either capacity, his name will be there.”
She was out of her seat and her hand on his arm was like a spring clamp. “Where are they?”
“Back at the house. I’ve been spending a lot of time the past few years transferring old paper records to the computer. We can check.”
She gave no argument after that and even beat him back to Eze, practically dragging him out of his car before he’d killed the engine. A suggestion she make them both coffee was dismissed with a frown and an impatient tsk. So he pulled up an extra chair and had the distraction of her sitting so close that he’d swear he could hear her heartbeat. Or maybe that was his. What was happening to him?
“All right.” His computer took forever to start up but once going he got busy. “I’m doing a search for anyone with the name Royer for the past twenty-five years. Would that be about right?”
“Why not start right after he left us and do five or ten years at a time. It might be faster and since he isn’t known there now, if he ever was there, it
’s more likely it was earlier.”
A good point. He set the search for twenty-five to fifteen years previously. She was right, ten years would surely do it.
“Look!” Excitement wasn’t the word for her reaction. “There’s a list of them but it’s not exactly an unusual name after all. How many?”
“Twelve.” He brought up the full list. “Okay, we can eliminate Annette and Marguerite.”
“Might as well.”
“How old was he?”
“I have no idea. In the one picture I have he looks sort of the age you expect your father to be.”
“Let’s say that then he’d be between twenty and thirty. That knocks out Etienne Royer. He was fifty-six.” They also eliminated Georges, Saint Jean, Maurice and Paul. But… “Hey, is this him?”
Jules Royer, age twenty-nine, employed as a bookkeeper and it gave an address.
“Oh!” she said, and then, “Damn! I tried there already. It’s all been refurbished and there’s not even a concierge nowadays. I asked around but no one knew anything other than it had been run-down and uninhabited for several years before it was restored ten years or so ago. It’s a dead end, Branko.”
“Maybe not. At least you know for certain he did come down here, and where he worked and lived. There has to be a reason your mother had those two addresses. Maybe she did have contact with him but never told you.”
“No.” She sounded very certain. “I saw his brother, my uncle, when I was in Paris and none of the family has seen or heard from him. Unless Uncle Alain was lying and I don’t think he was. Although he did urge me to forget about him so maybe…” She ended up shaking her head.
“Could he be dead?” He hated to throw that out there but it wasn’t impossible. Her mother was dead after all.
“It’s not impossible but I don’t think so. He used to send Mother money, every month until I was eighteen. It came via a notaire in Cannes.I wrote to him about six months ago asking if he knew the whereabouts of Jules Royer and got a rather curt reply telling me to cease making inquiries and threatening me with an ordonnance restrictive if I persisted. So that pretty much confirmed he must be alive.”
And not wanting to see his daughter. Bastard. “So you ignored him and came down to look for yourself.”
“Not right away. I had to find a job first.”
“I’m glad you did.” Very glad. “So what now? That notaire wasn’t joking. Seems your father is determined to stay out of reach.”
“But why? At this point I don’t want anything from him. But I would like to know why he walked out on us, without as much as a word. And cut himself off from his family too. Branko, his mother is old and frail and you’d think he’d at least have kept contact with her.”
“Are you sure persisting is a good idea?” Seemed pretty dicey to him. The man threatened legal action to preserve his privacy, so it was pretty clear he valued anonymity.
“It’s probably a rotten idea but I’m doing it. Will you help?”
If he had the brains of a fruit fly he’d talk her out of this ridiculous, self-appointed mission. One look at her face and he’d conceded the superior mental power to drosophila. “We need to be organized. No point in barging in and having that notaire waving legal papers at us. How about we have lunch, then you show me everything you have, addresses, the photo and anything else? Heck, even the notaire’s address as that’s all proof of one sort or another.”
“We’d better not try to contact the notaire again, he was pretty emphatic.”
“You have the letter?”
“Yes, I brought that too.”
“Good. Luc might know of him.”
* * * * *
So, after a lunch of omelets and salad, Adele spread out her collection of scraps. It wasn’t much to go by, just an old address book, the letter from Maitre Dupont in Cannes and three very old photos. One, a crumpled wedding picture, another of a very young man posed by a motorcycle and the third the same man, a few years older, holding a dark-haired little girl on his shoulders.
“That’s you?” Branko asked.
“Yes, and I don’t even remember it being taken. I found them all among Mother’s things. And the two addresses are in the address book.”
He flicked it open. It was old, held together with a rubber band as the spine was split and some pages were loose but there, under “R”, were the two street addresses. “Maybe we should go through this,” he suggested. “There might be other addresses that could help.”
“I already have, nothing else caught my eye, just Mother’s old friends, her parents—who are both dead—and tradespeople, but go ahead and look. I even tried the studios on the back of the wedding photo but they’d been out of business for years. No luck there.”
Did seem she’d hit nothing but dead ends but dammit, he wanted to help her. “How about this.” She was clearly too disposed to listen so he went on. “We talk to Luc when he gets back. He knows people and has contacts and might possibly have heard something. Failing that, we talk to his notaire, Maitre Poulain, and see if he can’t do something from our end. What do you think?”
She didn’t seem as enthused as he’d hoped. “Sounds marvelous but, Branko, I can’t afford to spend money on his fees.”
“Don’t worry about that. Luc keeps him on retainer. If Luc okays it, he’ll do the work.”
“But seriously, why would Monsieur Prioux do that?”
“Because he’s one of the good guys and besides, it would put you under a bit of an obligation to him and you’d be less likely to leave.”
“And losing a cook would be so devastating to him? Honestly, Branko!”
“It would devastate me.” Where had that come from?
“Please, Branko. Two weeks ago you didn’t know I existed.”
He hadn’t. That rather gave one pause. “I didn’t know what I was missing. I need you, Adele. I never knew I did until I met you.” He sounded as if he were suffering from brain fever. “You think I have a screw loose, don’t you?”
“I’m not sure what I think about you. No, that’s not true. I think you’re a rather wonderful lover.”
That was a good start, until he got better control of his brain and tongue. He’d never get control of his cock. Not while she was around. “It’s mutual, my dear. Good and sincere submissives aren’t easy to find but a superlative one like you, a Dominant finds once in a lifetime.”
“Branko, you’re getting too serious and too earnest.” He disagreed but kept that to himself. “Are you trying to distract me?”
“Would you blame me if I were? I’ll do anything I can to help you find your father but I strongly urge you to wait a couple of days until we contact Maitre Poulain.”
She looked ready to argue but nodded. “Fair enough, but what do I do until then?”
“You’ll do what I planned for this weekend before you ran off to Nice.”
“And what was that?”
“We go into Monaco, to spend the rest of the weekend at Cent-Vingt-Six. It’s a club Luc owns.”
“Another club? Now many does he own?”
“Lots but this one’s not like Velours Noir. It’s a rather staid dinner club, with special rooms upstairs for Luc and his special associates. If we leave soon, we’d have time for an aperitif on the terrace, maybe two, and a very nice dinner and then afterward, I’ll take you upstairs and have my wicked way with you as you learn what obedience really means.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Most definitely.”
Her smile was the finest reward a man could have. No, wrong, her naked body, spread and restrained was what he wanted. “We can stay until Sunday evening. I’ll show you around Monte Carlo. Bring your identity card and we can stop by the casino if you like.”
“Anything else I should bring?”
He had her, at least for now, and God he needed her. “How about that flogger you mentioned?” He stepped close and rested the back of his hand on the side of her face. “I’d rather like
to try its touch on your lovely body. I want to see your skin with marks on it.”
“I thought you already had. You spank darn hard.”
“Sweetheart, the kiss of a flogger leaves very different marks. I hanker to see them on you.”
She swallowed, eyes wide and her breath caught. “I’d better go and fetch it, then.”
“Do, let’s close up the house.”
Everything set, Adele ran across the drive to her flat. Branko didn’t follow her. If he did, they might never leave. She was like a fever in his soul and he needed her in every way imaginable.
“Adele,” he called, as she reached the stairs. “Don’t you dare come down wearing panties.”
She turned and grinned. “Or you’ll do what to me?”
“Rip them off you and hang them from the top of the gate. So every passerby will know you disobeyed.”
She laughed. “Really?” And she went on up to her door.
He half-hoped she would defy him and come down wearing them. He rather liked the prospect of bending her over the hood of the car and ripping them off her.
He’d better stop thinking such thoughts or he wouldn’t last the drive to Monaco.
Chapter Eleven
Adele sat down on the end of her bed and looked at herself in the mirror across the room. She was confused, excited and horny. Not a good combination when trying to make a considered and reasoned decision. She’d agreed to go with Branko to Monaco, but was it a good choice? If she told him to forget it, she could follow her own plan to keep looking but if she did that, she’d miss out on some rather splendid sex.
Was she letting her hormones rule? And if so, was that a bad idea? Branko was incredible as a lover, almost too good to be true. But he was real, as well as hot, passionate and gloriously dominant. She was wet already thinking about last night and what he promised was waiting for her tonight.
She could go with him, have a superbly wonderful time and rely on his word to talk to Luc.
Why not? She was in need and her need was Branko. She smiled. She wanted him and darn, he wanted her and had promised to use her new flogger.
What more could she ask for? At least for now.