by Cooper, Jodi
She was glad it was over and done with for the time being, even if it hadn't been as bad as she had imagined.
Oddly enough she had actually enjoyed certain aspects of him flogging her.
She liked the way the leather smelled and the way it sped through the air before connecting with her body.
She liked the sting of the leather straps against her skin but mostly she enjoyed the heat that pulsed from each of the welts that he was creating on her backside as they rang with sensation and sensitivity.
Hannah couldn't help herself but jump a little when Nathan ran his fingers over the angry red marks where the flogger had hit her and given her goose bumps, where the heat was radiating out of her under his touch, and he lightly touched it with his tender hands.
He was careful not to put too much strength into it.
Breaking the skin would have been too much for her.
Perhaps it would have been too much for him as well.
Striking her did not make him feel good.
He had no sadistic bones in his body.
Punishment was used just for that - punishment.
Sometimes he liked to add a little bit of roughness into the play just because the added danger and power amped up the energy in the room.
Hannah felt his fingers on her back, her ass, her hips and then the sensation changed.
First it was his fingers and then it was his soft, slightly wetted lips that kissed over the red spots with a tenderness that caught her off guard.
From the flogger to his mouth, he gave her everything he had in him.
'Now if only he would do that with his heart,' Hannah thought as his tongue snuck out and ran over one of the red areas on her lower back.
"Now, as promised, I want to reward you for handling that so well and with such grace and submission. Your obedience is truly an amazement and to be commended."
Hannah was nervous about what was next.
Is it going to be more dangerous…
Chapter Fifteen
Nathan stood up from the floor and took her hands leading her to the bed.
He propped her up on the mattress edge and crouched between her legs, spreading her shapely thighs and supporting them with his shoulders as he moved between her legs.
Nathan used his fingers to spread her pussy lips and his mouth caught the little pearl of her clitoris as he licked and sucked it into a tight throbbing bud.
Nathan felt her toes curl on his shoulders as her pussy clenched and tightened in pleasure.
Slipping a finger inside of her and then two he continued to please her with his mouth.
She tasted heavenly.
A darkly sweet mixture of female and a natural light peach aroma that made him want to stay between her legs for hours.
"Oh…"she sighed as he started swirling his fingers lightly to the left and right while his tongue worked magic on her button.
Using his hands and tongue he increased the tempo and had her moaning, begging him for more and aching for his body.
As much as he wanted to give himself to her, he had a feeling that now wasn't the right time to do so.
Her back arched and her pussy fluttered quickly and strongly around his fingers as she came.
Looking up at her as she bit her lip waiting for him to undress and join her in bed was the most temptation Nathan had faced in current memory.
'Why is it so hard to resist this woman?' he asked himself as he stood up and used a towel to clean himself.
His erection was throbbing and begging for release, but he put that on the back burner.
Taking her hands he put her into the built-in cuffs that attached to the headboard and closed the clasps around her wrists, keeping her locked up tight.
As he usually tended to do, he left her legs free from any restraint and allowed her to keep them uncuffed.
"I want you to stay right here and think about all of this while I tend to some business-related calls."
He looked at the clock on the wall and then double-checked his watch to make sure it was right.
"You're leaving me here?" she asked with concern in her voice that was not very well masked.
"For a little while, yes."
Nathan checked that he had his cell phone and kissed her hard on the lips before he went to the door.
"Behave," he told her and left her in the room while he went to his office on the other side of the penthouse.
"I can't believe he left me tied to the bed," she said in complete shock.
She pulled at the cuffs but they were steady.
So she lay there…
Vulnerable.
Exposed.
Chapter Sixteen
Having the clock on the opposite side of the room in view of where she lay immobilized made it harder on Hannah.
She watched the seconds tick away into minutes and after twenty minutes of lying there wondering when he was coming back, she started to worry that he wasn't going to or that he forgot about her here.
“What would happen if he forgot I was in here and went back to the estates for the rest of the week? What if he doesn't come back for me? How do I get out of this?"
Her heart was beating faster as she pulled on the cuffs and tried to squeeze her hand out from the metal enclosure to no avail.
When an hour passed she started to panic.
She was ready to start banging the headboard into the wall in an attempt to catch someone's attention on another floor.
'How mortifying,' she thought of being discovered by a stranger in her naked, cum-covered state while she was cuffed to the bed in her boss's penthouse in the middle of the day.
Thankfully at that moment just before she resigned herself to complete and utter humiliation the door opened, and Nathan came back in, checking his watch.
"Hello, Hannah. I hope I didn't leave you too long. Business calls sometimes take a little longer than expected and they definitely went that direction this time," Nathan explained as he crossed the room to the bed and uncuffed her from the restraints.
Hannah rubbed her wrists and looked up at him scornfully.
That he would leave her for over an hour tied to the bed with no way out and no way to get in contact with him was irresponsible and terrifying.
"I don't like that you left me restrained while you were gone. That worried me, and I feel like it was unsafe and completely irresponsible."
She was honest with him and expressed her concerns without flying off the handle as much as she thought the situation would have justified that kind of reaction.
"I'm sorry that I worried you, and I hear your concern. I was just down the hall in the office and would have come to release you had something occurred."
Nathan tried to calm her, but she didn't seem to take solace in his words.
"I don't want you to do that again," she made her point crystal clear to him.
"Understood." Nathan nodded "I will honor that as a hard limit for you, and I will remember that you are not to be restrained with I am not in the room if that will make you feel better."
She didn't feel like he was taking her seriously.
It was like he didn't think her reasoning behind being upset was valid, and Hannah felt like he was talking to her as though she were a child who needed her hand held.
"I want you to stay here. Remain naked and ready for me when I return, and then I will make it all up to you. I promise you won't regret it. I just have to hurry downtown to sign a few papers, and then I'll be back." Nathan looked around and blew out the candles before he pointed his finger at her and reiterated, "Stay here."
'How dare he speak to her that way. Dominant or not, submissive or not she was not a child, nor was she to be treated like one. How dare he think that being told to stay here was a valid option as though she had nothing better to do than wait at his beck and call for him to return from wherever he was whenever he chose with no communication or courtesy.'
Hannah was near tears as she sat on the edge of t
he bed and looked at her clothes on the floor.
"This is ridiculous," she said and picked up her clothes, throwing them on in a hurry.
She wasn't going to sit there like an idiot and wait on him when he was showing no sign of concern for her.
He was acting aloof, cold and uncaring about her concerns, which were one hundred percent valid, and the thought of letting him get away with treating her that way was not sitting well in her mind.
She needed to go home and think about all of this.
Think about him.
Think about what she needed from him and if he was able to give her what she needed.
The sex was amazing, the way he made her feel the first time was incredible, but it was like he was holding back.
Like he didn't want to get too close to her, and that feeling bothered her deeper than she thought it would.
It made her feel like there was a chance he was just using her for the sex and didn't actually care about her as a person.
Hannah sighed, slipped on her shoes, and made sure all of the candles were out before she slipped out of the bedroom.
"What are you doing?" Nathan's voice caught her off guard and made her jump. "I told you to stay there and remain ready."
"I don't like the idea of waiting around for you while you go off for who knows how long and leave me in that room again."
She looked down at the floor.
"I fear I may have made a mistake when I left you in there without supervision," he said more to himself than he did to her.
"I couldn't agree more," Hannah said, looking up at him and finding his eyes on her.
She couldn't read the emotion on his face… perhaps because she was looking for something that simply wasn't there.
Chapter Seventeen
After Nathan's demeanor and actions, Hannah wasn't sure what to think about him anymore.
She couldn't believe what had gone on in the penthouse.
It most certainly wasn't what she had expected.
With everything that happened the night before she had envisioned everything going much better than it had today.
The heat of their passion, his dominance that he exuded over her and the cloying desire inside of her to submit to that power in him was dimmed.
He had been almost aloof when he was in the penthouse.
It was almost as if what they had done together didn't matter to him.
All of the things he had said to her that first night in the mansion were like forgotten promises carried away by the wind.
Today felt cold, uncaring, and the lack of affection and communication made her feel like he had used her last night, and now that he had taken her and had sex with her he was done with her.
Like an animal in pursuit.
Once he caught her, he lost interest in doing it a second time.
'Had everything he had told her, promised her and made her think just been a ploy to get her into bed with him? And now that he had gotten what he wanted he was going to give her the cold shoulder and leave her tied up in his bed all day?'
Hannah was heartbroken, humiliated and angry with both Nathan and herself for letting this happen.
She had never been the kind of woman to give her body freely to any man who caught her interest.
Allowing him to seduce her may have been a mistake.
He had charm, appeal and the kind of personality and looks that made a girl's panties tie in a wet knot between her legs, but when it came down to how to treat a woman, Nathan Maxwell had obviously missed the day when God passed out that little handy piece of information.
Hannah was starting to think it would just be better to leave.
Of course she was now working in the penthouse, which meant that she would see Nathan a lot less than she would have if she were still working at the main house in The Serene Willow Estates but at least when she ran into him at the house there was a good chance of other people being around, and it would be less awkward and painful.
She could hide her feelings and her pain when others were around and she was working, being unprofessional and starting drama in her place of employment was never going to be something that she took part in.
But Hannah knew that if she was alone with him in the penthouse only two scenarios could come from that and both of them ended with her getting hurt by him again.
Either she would confront him about the way he had treated her and they would argue and he would tell her that she was free to go and she would lose her position or she would end up pushing all of those hurt feelings and negative thoughts back into the closet of her mind where she would deal with them on her own later, and she would end up having sex with him again.
Her intention had been to stay at the penthouse tonight in the one of the guest rooms like Nathan had told her she could when he first gave her the position.
She had a bag packed and it was sitting in the back seat of her car waiting for the end of the day to come so she could go get it and get settled into her new room for the night.
"Very bad idea," she told herself in a whisper as she finished up polishing one of the coffee tables.
The smell of Lemon Pledge filled the room with it's comforting brightness that was totally at odds with how she was feeling, and the juxtaposition of it made her feel worse about her situation rather than better.
She couldn't go on like this.
The stress of it paired with how ugly the situation had the potential to get just felt like too much to handle right now when she thought about how she was going to deal with everything.
Hannah didn't want to resign in a face-to-face conversation with Nathan.
It would just be too painful and would end in hurt feelings… most likely on her end rather than his based on the discoveries she had made lately about what his real personality was like.
“To think I had thought that there could be something real between us,” Hannah scoffed at the idea of it now.
Of course there were moments when she thought that it was a possibility, perhaps even a likelihood, that he had genuine feelings for her and that everything he was offering her and told her had a basis in reality.
Sadly, he turned out to be just another man full of unfulfilled promises and empty words just like most of the men she tended to give a chance to on the rare occasion that she decided to let her heart win over her mind.
She shook her head and stuffed the aerosol can into the cleaning tote and went to put it back in the supply closet before she called it quits for the last time.
Why on earth was she always having such terrible luck with her love life?
Wasn't she ever going to be able to find a man who actually cared about her rather than just being in it for the chase or with the sole intention of getting in between her legs?
Chapter Eighteen
When she came back from the supply closet and putting everything away she decided on going into Nathan's office.
She would just leave him her letter of resignation on his desk for when he came back to the penthouse, whenever that may be, and he could put in for a new housekeeper with the agency the next day.
Granted when he told them that she had walked out with only a handwritten note and no notice she would likely not be welcome back at the agency to be placed with another employer, but that was a risk she was going to have to take.
The office was nice.
It smelled like his cologne inside and everything in the room reminded her of him.
He had chosen things that really fit with his personality when he had designed it.
The room was the definition of a man cave minus the sports memorabilia.
It was well decorated with oil paintings on the walls and the furniture could have been in a catalog for one of the high-end furniture shops that send him magazines and brochures on a seemingly daily basis.
This room alone was probably the reason why.
There was a large desk facing the window overlooking the city.
Ha
nnah went to the window and looked out.
The late evening skyline was stunningly gorgeous from this height.
The view was truly breathtaking, and she completely understood why he chose to face his desk in this direction.
Hannah's heart was heavy as she picked up one of the heavy fountain pens from the metal container on his desk and found a pad of stationary with his monogram and a list of his contact numbers on the bottom.
"Dear Mr. Maxwell,' she thought. 'Hmm, Nathan?'
She didn't want this to be an overly personal letter but at the same time, she didn't want to discount what had been the closest thing to becoming a relationship she had gotten herself into in quite a long time.
"Dear Nathan," sounded appropriate and felt right.
Crafting the letter made her feel like a coward for not facing him in person with everything that she wanted to say.
She wanted to spill her heart and soul to him and tell him everything that was racing through her mind.
She wanted to make him feel as badly as she did, but that was only a retaliation mechanism and that would do neither of them any good, even if it would be cathartic to her.
'So much for it not being an overly personal letter,' Hannah thought and wiped tears from her cheeks while she put the pen back in the cup at the corner of the desk and made sure the note was somewhere on the tidy desk where he would easily find it when he came in and sat down.
She tried to keep it professional, but undertones of their personal issues glowed like nuclear warheads in the subtext of her letter.
He needed to see how he had made her feel.
If he wasn't willing to listen and be an upstanding man that wasn't going to be her problem anymore.
Hannah left the office as she found it with the addition of the note sitting on his ink blotter and locked up the penthouse before she left.
Chapter Nineteen
Nathan came back into the penthouse expecting to find Hannah waiting for him.