by Tawny Taylor
He’d tied my hands again.
A little pulse of unease zigged up my spine. As it reached the base of my neck, a wave of heat followed. Once again, my body was reacting to my apprehension in a way I hadn’t expected. A second, stronger wave of heat burned through my center, pooling between my legs.
Crazy.
I had to be crazy to get turned on by this, by being scolded and tied.
Feeling guilty and conflicted, I let my head drop forward and closed my eyes. After everything my mother had gone through, how could I let this man treat me this way? Even worse, how could I enjoy it? Had my childhood scarred me somehow?
Had to be.
I felt tears burning my eyes as the shame of my response gripped me.
“Much better. Now, look up.”
I lifted my head but kept my eyes closed. I wouldn’t let him see my shame. That would only give him more power over me. I needed to hold on to something.
He cupped my chin in his hand and grazed my lips with his thumb. “Does it hurt? Did I tie your wrists too tightly?” His voice was softer now.
“No, sir.”
He released my chin. The tears were drying up, enough that I risked slitting my eyes open a little to see what he was doing.
He was standing before me, arms crossed over his chest. Staring. Assessing.
I opened my eyes a little more and focused on his face. His jaw was tight. His eyes were dark. His expression was serious. I wondered what he was thinking. Was he trying to decide what kind of cruel torture he’d do next?
Or was he trying to decide whether he’d fire me?
“Sir?” I whispered, opening my eyes fully and meeting his gaze. “This is all new for me—”
“No need to explain,” he interrupted as he pulled up a chair. He set it directly in front of me, then eased into it. He sat, legs apart, leaning back, still studying me with an expression I didn’t know how to read. “I can see you’re willing to learn.”
“Yes, sir.” Willing for now. Willing until I found a new job and could walk away from all of this. It scared me as much as it intrigued me. And the fact that I was so intrigued frightened me more.
“And you’re only doing this to keep your job?”
“And to keep you from going to the police,” I added, making sure he didn’t forget that part.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why are you willing to go to such measures to protect your brother?”
The answer seemed obvious to me. “Wouldn’t anyone do the same?”
He shook his head. “No. If I had a brother, which I don’t, I wouldn’t protect him.”
“Really?”
“Really. I wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t protect your younger sibling?” I echoed, shocked and disappointed. Did this man care about anyone but himself?
“Not if he’d broken the law. Not if he’d risked my job. No. I’d let the law take care of him.”
I didn’t respond right away, fearful my initial reaction would make him angry.
“What do you think about that, Abigail?” His tone was cool.
I doubted he wanted to hear the truth. “I guess we see the situation very differently.” My tone wasn’t much warmer than his.
“That’s all you’re going to say?”
“It is.”
“Hmmm.” He stood, circled me, doing a full 360 before making a second lap. This time he stopped behind my back again. A fingertip traced my arm, from shoulder to the silk binding my wrist. Little tingles pricked my skin where he’d touched me. “You confuse me, Abigail.”
I confused him? “I’m sorry,” I apologized again. This time I wasn’t sure exactly what I was apologizing for. At his soft touch, the muscles of my arm tensed slightly. My fingers curled into fists. And a tiny shiver wriggled up my spine.
“Are you different from the others?” he murmured. I didn’t think he was speaking to me, so I didn’t respond. I just held very still and let him do whatever it was he wanted, hoping it would be over soon and trusting what he’d said, that he wouldn’t force me to have sex with him.
He continued around to my front again, pulled the chair closer, and sat, leaning forward. Our gazes met, and his lips parted slightly. His tongue slid out, swiping across his lower lip. I felt myself mirroring him.
Something passed across his face, and his jaw tightened once again. He reached between my legs, fingering my folds. His intimate touch, after having taken a break, startled me. I felt a little invaded. But within seconds, the tissues his fingers were exploring warmed. My insides clenched as a gently pulsing heat beat deep within me.
I closed my eyes, both in shame and in pleasure. The darkness swallowed me up, allowing me to just feel. His fingers grazed my skin, teasing me, tormenting me, never quite pushing hard enough or dipping deep enough. The longer the torture continued, the tighter my thighs became. I scooted my knees apart, surrendering to the demand of my burning tissues. They craved more. A lot more. I shoved the doubts and guilty thoughts out of my head and focused on the glorious sensations his touch was stirring.
I was his. To touch. Anywhere. Any time he wanted. That was our agreement. In essence, I was his toy. His plaything. It was all him.
His choice.
His demands.
Him.
For some reason, those thoughts eased my guilt. As if not having control made me less culpable, less slutty.
When he curled his hand and shoved two fingers inside me, I tumbled into a swirling world of heat and need. His strokes were slow, exactly what I needed. I felt my hips rocking back and forth, my greedy body working with his hand, my need building. My teeth sank into my lip. Within seconds, the burning between my legs was almost unbearable. Pulses of heat racing up and down my body. I was about to come. I was about to . . .
“Ahhh . . .” I groaned as the first spasm shook my body. My inner muscles rhythmically clenched around his invading digits as I shook and shivered through pure ecstasy. He stroked me deep and hard, the friction prolonging the pleasure, drawing it out until I was exhausted.
I felt my body slumping forward, strong hands catching me, scooping me up.
Then I was lying on my stomach, floating on a cloud of clean, white cotton. Tingling from head to toe, I turned my head to the side and watched Kameron kneel on the mattress beside me. The silk loosened, gliding off my wrists, across my back. Little aftershocks of pleasure shook me.
Warm, moist lips pressed against the inside of my right wrist.
“We need to get going,” he murmured against my skin. “I’ll leave you to get dressed.”
And he was gone.
If I’d had any misconception about the purpose of our trip to New York, it was completely obliterated by that evening. This was, without any doubt, a working trip.
Riding in a slick, black BMW, we spent hours winding through congested New York City streets in between meetings. Kameron passed the time either working on his laptop or talking on the phone. When I wasn’t taking orders to make phone calls on my new company-owned cell phone or typing his dictation into his computer, I was staring out the window, watching the scenery pass by.
By ten p.m., I was exhausted, my eyes blurry. I had a slight headache, and I was ready to eat and crash onto any horizontal surface that was stationary.
In contrast, Kameron seemed to have an endless supply of energy as he continued pecking at his laptop while jabbering into the wireless headset connecting him to his business associates via his cell phone. I rummaged in my handbag and found a couple of aspirins and a bottle of water in the car’s minifridge. The water’s cap was screwed on very tight, but Kameron was kind enough to open it for me. I popped the bitter pills into my mouth, added a big swig of water, and swallowed. Relief was on its way.
A little while later, I was struggling to keep my eyes open. With every moment that passed, it became harder and harder. My eyelids were drooping.
Wouldn’t lift.
So heavy.
; All of me felt heavy. Arms. Legs. Chest.
I felt myself falling, heard Kameron’s voice. It sounded so far away. Low and husky and sexy. I felt the vibration of the vehicle as it crawled through the streets. I heard the hum of the motor and the sounds of traffic and people, a world that didn’t stop.
Something was wrong.
No, maybe not.
Or possibly, yes.
I was hot. No, cold. Too hot and too cold. I turned my head, and the world swooped and spun. I laughed and let myself be carried away into a mist of swirling, warm bliss.
5
I was warm, lying on something that was soft and cozy. A leg brushed against mine, an arm flopped over my side.
A leg?
An arm?
What the hell?
I blinked open my eyes.
I was in the condo. In my room.
Okay. But . . . ?
I glared at the hand dangling from the arm that had decided it belonged draped over my body. It was a male hand. I had a pretty good notion who it belong to.
A leg swung across both of mine, pinning them to the mattress. I felt coarse hair scratching as it slowly dragged back again.
If I was feeling hair . . .
Moving carefully to avoid waking the man who had evidently invited himself into my bed, I wriggled to the opposite side of the bed. Then I lifted the sheets.
“Oh my God!” I blurted.
“What?” He was upright, hair mussed, eyes wild. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m naked.” Semi reclined, I gathered as much of the covers as I could and heaped them on top of myself.
“Of course you’re naked. Did you want me to put you to bed in your work clothes?”
He put me to bed? When?
What else did he do?
Why couldn’t I remember?
“Well, yes,” I said as I tried to slog through my hazy memories, to recall what happened last night. Had I really been that tired that I had fallen so deeply asleep I hadn’t woken when we’d come upstairs?
“Why would you want to sleep in your clothes?” Kameron asked. “That couldn’t be comfortable.”
“Because . . .” My face was so hot I was afraid it might blister.
“Do you always sleep in your clothes?” Kameron’s shoulders were bare. So was his chest. Clearly he didn’t sleep in his work clothes either.
“No, but . . .”
His lips curled up a tiny bit. “Are you ashamed that I undressed you?”
“Yes!”
He grinned. “Now, we’ve gotten to the bottom of things. No pun intended.” His gaze flicked to roughly my groin region.
I lifted the sheets just enough to peer beneath them again and glowered. “You couldn’t have left my underwear on?”
He shrugged, stretched. “I was thinking of your comfort.”
“R-r-r-right.” I tried to keep the glower going while secretly marveling at how glorious his unclothed chest and stomach looked when he moved that way.
Wow.
Another question popped into my head, and a chill buzzed through me in its wake. “Did we. . . . ?”
“Have sex? No. But not for lack of trying.” His grin amped up a notch. “On your part, not mine.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you practically begged me.”
“So, why didn’t you?”
His shrug was very nonchalant. “Because you didn’t say please.”
Was he kidding? Really? Because I didn’t say please?
What was I thinking? I wouldn’t ask him to have sex with me! He was lying.
He let his head fall forward, rolling it from side to side. “I’m stiff. This bed isn’t the best. I think I’ll replace it.”
Shaking my head, I tried to sort through what had really happened last night. Things just weren’t adding up. “Speaking of that, don’t you have a bed of your own?”
“Sure.” He tipped his head to the right. Cracked his neck.
“Why didn’t you sleep in it?” I challenged.
“Because you begged me to stay with you. And you did say please.”
What a lie! “I did not.”
“You most certainly did.” He crossed his arms over his chest. The sheet was draped across his body, covering only part of him, from just below his belly button to his knees.
“How could I beg you to do anything? I was . . . wait a minute. Was I talking in my sleep?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t ask. When we arrived here at the condo, I couldn’t rouse you. So I carried you in and set you in the bed. While I was undressing you, you begged, pleaded, for me to stay with you.” He paused for a moment. “Now that I think about it, you were mumbling. And maybe your eyes were closed. But I thought that was because the light was bothering you.”
“I can’t believe I slept through all of that,” I mused, still unsure whether I believed that was what had really happened. “I’ve never slept that soundly before. Normally a tiny sound will wake me.”
Once again, he shrugged. “You didn’t have any alcohol to drink. Perhaps you were exhausted?”
“Yes, I was, but I’ve been that tired before and still remembered what I did the next day.”
“How can you be sure you remembered, if you were sleeping?”
“Because I didn’t wake up in bed with a man.”
That argument didn’t seem to convince him. “Did you take any medications?” he asked. “Maybe something to help you travel? I have a friend who takes medication for airsickness. That stuff knocks him on his ass for days.”
“No, I don’t get airsick.” I tried to search the hazy memories of the previous night. The last thing I remembered was sitting in the car, feeling very sleepy. Unusually sleepy. Unnaturally sleepy.
Then, I remembered the aspirins. “I took aspirin. For a headache. But aspirin shouldn’t knock me out.”
“Are you sure it was aspirin?”
“Yes. I don’t keep them in a bottle. I always carry a few in a baggy. Takes up less space in my purse.” My head spun when I sat upright. I blinked, breathed slowly, fighting against the whirling motion. “Whoa.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m a little dizzy.”
“I’m going to check your purse. Those couldn’t have been aspirin.” He climbed out of bed, giving me a full view of his nude backside.
“Whoa,” I repeated. He had a perfect butt. Perfect back. Perfect shoulders.
He turned around, giving me a full frontal view of everything, and I wished I wasn’t so freaking dizzy. Whoa didn’t cut it. “You’d better lie down.”
That wasn’t why I’d said whoa, but I decided he was right, I did need to lie down. I went horizontal and the spinning stopped. Holding my head still, I listened to him pad around my room, to the soft ziiiip of my purse being opened, and the crackle of paper as he fished around in it for the plastic baggy with the medication.
“Found it.” He circled around the bed, sitting next to me. The mattress sank under his weight, causing me to roll slightly toward him. “Are these the pills you took?” He dangled the baggy in front of my eyes.
It took me a moment to focus. “Yes.”
He inspected them closer. “Hmmm.” He stood, left the room. A few minutes later he was back with the bag of pills. And he was wearing a pair of black boxer briefs. Nothing else. It was a good look on him. Very good. “Okay, are you absolutely sure those were the pills you took?” he asked, shaking the baggy.
“Positive.”
“They’re aspirin. I looked them up.” He dropped the bag in my purse.
“Okay. I guess I was just exhausted. And maybe getting sick. I’m not feeling so great this morning.”
Sitting next to me again, he rested a hand on my leg. The slight mattress bounce made the spinning come back. I gripped the sheet under me in my fists. “You’ll stay in bed today. I can handle things on my own.”
This sucked! Here I was, in New York. And I was too sick to go outside. “I’
m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Do you want something to eat before I go?”
“No. I don’t think I could eat yet. I’m feeling a little woozy.” My bladder contracted, reminding me that it had been a while since I’d emptied it. “But I need to go to the bathroom,” I said as I cautiously angled myself up again. I clutched the flat sheet to my chest as I sat upright.
“Easy,” he said, placing his hands on my shoulders as I moved.
The spinning worsened as I stood, but then eased. The floor felt as if it were slanted rather than horizontal, which made it really hard for me to walk. Kameron followed me to the bathroom, his hands on my waist.
“Gosh, this is terrible,” I said as I wobbled across the room.
“I’m going to call a doctor as soon as I get you back in bed.” His voice was laced with concern.
I stopped at the bathroom door, hand gripping the frame. “I’ll take it from here, thanks.” I lurched in, my toe catching on the threshold. I felt myself falling, then felt myself being yanked upright again, a thick arm wrapped around my midsection.
“You’re going to have to let me help you,” my rescuer said.
“This is humiliating.” My hold on the scrunched-up sheet tightened.
“Think I haven’t seen a woman urinate before?” he asked as he walked me across the bathroom’s slick stone floor.
“You have?”
“Sure.”
I’d never seen a grown man urinate. At least, not since I was a child. I vaguely remembered seeing my father pee once.
Using his hands, he turned me around, holding me at the waist. Then he gently pulled the sheet away so it wouldn’t end up in the toilet. “Okay, the toilet’s directly behind you. Sit.”
I slowly lowered myself down until the cool, hard seat was under me.
Kameron stepped back, presumably to give me some privacy.
My bladder said it wasn’t far enough.
I gave him a little shooing motion. “Out.”
He hesitated, then left, stepping outside the bathroom but leaving the door open.
My very full but somewhat finicky bladder decided that was good enough. He was back in the room, ready to lift me up within seconds.