And my heart sank. Why did relationships have to get so complicated? Why did people say their heart wouldn’t get involved when it inevitably did? I couldn’t judge Ethan, however, for I was no better. I had briefly reconsidered my plan for revenge on Blaine Devereux last night, because, for just a moment, I fooled myself into believing I cared about him. But that couldn’t be possible, and I wouldn’t even entertain the thought.
Finally I answered Ethan as best, and as honestly, as I could. Just as I had not long ago in our phone argument. “There is no us, sweetie, and we both know that. You remember what it was like when we tried to live together? We nearly killed each other.” I forced a chuckle to try and lighten the weight of our collective moods.
He looked sad, and the sadness seemed to beat the anger out of him. I felt an intense pang of guilt and compassion.
When he still didn’t speak, I added, “We have an arrangement. We’re fuck buddies, darling. We both agreed to that.”
Now the scowl was back, and I knew I’d been too blunt for my own good.
“Of course.” He nodded then threw his napkin down. “An arrangement. That’s all we are.”
He got up and stalked away from the table and I followed him out of the restaurant, leaving enough money on the table to cover the bill before I left. I caught up with him at the corner of the street, grabbed his arm, and stopped.
“Ethan, please, you are one of my best friends in the world.” I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him before he could cross the pavement. “Please, let’s not fight like this.”
He kissed the top of my head, whispered into my hair, “Do you love him?”
I pulled back and gave him a shocked look. “Where did a crazy question like that come from?”
He still looked sad when he spoke, but there was a resignation in the sadness now. As if he’d accepted something he already suspected. “It’s in your eyes. You used to look at me like that, back in college. But now that look belongs to him.”
***
The night had arrived, and Blaine Devereux looked very handsome in his new, custom made bondage suit. The black material looked like dragon scales, and it shimmered as he walked closer under the bedroom lights.
“You’ve done an amazing job, Kitty,” he told me, running his hand over his sculpted pecs and flat stomach before turning a radiant smile on me. “This suit is perfect. The Sanctuary is going to love it.”
I swallowed hard when he mentioned Surrender Sanctuary. We were due there tonight, and we were scheduled to play in one of the performance rooms. That was why it was so important the suit was completed tonight. Blaine wanted to show it off, and show it off he would.
As we walked down a wide, white staircase that led to a rounded area with four white doors leading off of it, I thought about telling him. But this was his great unveiling of my masterpiece. Then I thought about pulling the chicken route.
“You know, Blaine, my throat is just killing me,” I said weakly, pawing at my neck and feigning sickness. “Could we bow out tonight, unveil your suit another time maybe?”
His eyebrows shot up and drew together. “Are you kidding?” He didn’t look too impressed. “I spent a fortune, and you spent a great deal of time, on this masterpiece.” He smiled wide and motioned up and down the faux black snakeskin-like material.
“We could unveil it next week?” I faked a cough. “I’m feeling really dizzy.”
He glowered at me, grabbed my wrist. “We’re going in, we’re performing, and that’s final.”
I glowered back, and almost said, ‘You can kiss my ass,’ but then, suddenly, I didn’t feel so guilty about the revenge I had planned for tonight. I decided to walk right in there and go through with it, and bring Blaine Devereux to his knees.
The room we entered was massive and rectangular. A wide stage with many different devices, including a rack and a spanking chair, waited before us. Massive flat screen TVs hung from the ceiling and seemed to fill the room.
“Camera and audio everywhere,” Blaine whispered as we drew closer to the stage. “So the viewers can see and hear everything.”
How wonderful, I thought.
I chose a padded, vinyl rack shaped like a ‘X’ and standing up so it would face the rows of guests. Big silver buttons ran along its outline, and there were steely cuffs at the wrists and ankles, plus a Velcro belt in the middle to help reduce strain on the limbs once buckled in.
I climbed up and let Blaine strap me on to the rack while the crowd began to drift in. Men in immaculate tuxedos or bondage gear took their seats, along with women in stunning gowns of various lengths and fabrics or tight bondage suits that accentuated curvy forms.
It was warm in the room, and sweat already beaded my brow. I asked Blaine about this, and he said the air conditioning system was being worked on, but the room would maintain a cool enough temperature for us to play in.
That wasn’t my concern, however. My concern was for the suit he wore. My plan of revenge. The suit was designed to break apart when the wearer’s skin temperature increased and they began to sweat. The more their skin heated up, and the more they sweated, the quicker the suit would break apart.
I glanced at the sweat already beading Blaine’s forehead, and we’d barely begun. Gulping down guilt, I watched him go to the table and select a cat o’ nine tails. He returned, smiling and gleaming as he held the instrument of pleasurable torment up before me.
“Blaine,” I whispered, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Later, sweetheart,” he said before he jammed his tongue down my throat.
I was clad in a bondage getup myself, and all it entailed were thin strips of latex that barely covered my breasts and sex as the strips crisscrossed over my skin. He teased my exposed flesh with the tethers on the whip, tickled them over my smooth belly, then he ripped the strips away from my breasts and attached silver nipple clamps to each nipple.
I moaned and squirmed from the stimulation, from the stinging zipping through my nipples.
He once more teased these taut tips with the whip, then he tickled the lengths over my throbbing pussy.
As he dipped to his knees to tease my swelling clit with his tongue and teeth, the suit began to rip. I noticed the fabric molting away from his sweat dampened back, but he didn’t notice at first. Instead his tongue swirled beneath the hood of my clit, making me forget I should warn him about his clothes falling off.
When the arms began to slough off, both Blaine and the audience became aware. “What the hell?” He’d been walking back to the table laid out with sex toys, and that’s when the sleeves fell from his impressive biceps to pool on the stage floor.
“I’m shedding like a fucking snake!” he yelled, and turned his angry gaze on me.
The crowd reacted, and a murmur of surprise and disapproval rose up from their masses.
“Yes.” I gave a sheepish, small smile. “Yes, you are.”
“What have you done to me?” He stalked back to where I was bound to the rack, and as he did more sections of his suit peeled away. By the time he returned to the rack, he stood naked in front of a room packed with people and cameras.
The people gasped, and so did I, at his reaction. His nakedness was near perfect, so far as I could see. Definitely nothing to be ashamed of, so why was he so afraid to lose his clothes in front of anyone?
After he stopped screaming the blood curdling scream he gave once totally bare, I saw the reason when he turned his back to me. Scars, obviously made by a careless blade, crisscrossed his shoulders and farther down, ending just above his waist. They were old, white and puckered, but when he faced me once more I saw the pain they caused him was just as fresh as the day they’d been made.
He stalked up to me, took my chin roughly in his hands, and stared at me with eyes made shiny by unshed tears. “How could you do this to me? I thought we trusted each other.”
Then he tore at one of the stage curtains, nearly bringing down all the drapery lining the pl
atform in his rage. Soon he ripped free one of the velvety, crimson drapes and wrapped the length around himself before he thundered out of the room, leaving me bound and the crowd speechless.
***
Two weeks went by, and the wait was killing me. The wait for his revenge, that is. No, of course I didn’t love him. Ethan was silly for saying such a thing. But I did feel like a supersized shit for embarrassing him the way I had.
Those scars went deep, and whatever reason he had for constantly covering them, it had to be a good one. Exposing something like that in front of his entire rich, elite crowd was sure to get me some retribution from Mr. Devereux.
I’d scanned the papers, feared watching the news, answering my phone. I wondered if the police would show up at one point, and then decided I was being entirely too paranoid.
“He’s not going to get revenge on you,” Lynette said when I confessed my fear to her one afternoon at the office.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked, and when I looked at her she dropped her gaze to the papers before her.
She’s a great businesswoman, Lynette, but a terrible liar. I walked over to her desk and stood as close to it as I could, leaning over it until our forehead almost touched. This forced her to meet my eyes.
“What has he told you?”
She tried a moment longer to feign innocence, then she gave an exasperated sigh and put her hands on her hips. “I’ve talked to him. He’s not planning revenge. He paid his bill and he walked away. That’s all, Katey.”
But something wasn’t right. Not to me, it wasn’t. No way would a rich man like Blaine Devereux let such a public humiliation go. He’d want revenge. He had to, and I was through waiting, through agonizing over it. So I marched right over to his office to find out what his game was.
***
“How did you get in here?” Blaine shouted, his eyes going wide with surprise when I walked in his office.
“I have my ways,” I said simply. “Money talks.”
This elicited a small smile from him. But it soon became a glower in my presence. “What do you want?”
“To apologize,” I said, stepping nearer to his desk. “It was meant to be a prank, a harmless bit of revenge—”
“Revenge is never harmless,” he said, bracing his hands on the desk and leaning closer. His nostrils flared in anger.
I looked down at my purse, fiddled with the thin white strap. “No, it isn’t.” I met his eyes once more, trying to find a trace of hope amidst the anger shining there. “I’m truly sorry. I know I caused you pain. If I could undo it, I would.”
“I wouldn’t,” he said, remaining blank-faced.”
“You wouldn’t?” I blinked at him in surprise.
Another small smile formed on his sensuous lips. “Not a moment. You taught me something. That I can’t hide anymore. That I like having someone like you—someone who challenges me the way you do—in my life.”
I was rendered speechless briefly, then I blurted, “You taught me something, too. Not to judge people based on rumors and appearances.”
He seemed genuinely touched by that, then he continued, “The scars … want to know how I got them?”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. The raw, emotional moment robbed me of my usual bravado and made me tongue tied.
“I wasn’t born rich, Katey. My dad died when I was sixteen, leaving me with a little brother to raise. He was only twelve. We had no one else to go to, so I got a job in the mail room at WDN Studios. We were barely scraping by, and we lived in a pretty rough area.” He dropped his gaze and paused a moment. “One day, when I was coming home from the studio, some other kids grabbed me, took me down, took my money and all my clothes. Slashed my back all up. They tried to stick me in the chest, but I was too fast. I curled up into a ball and went down. Didn’t even try to fight back. Guess they got bored of trying to peel me out of my fetal position, so they left me bleeding out and naked in an alley.”
He let tears fall then, and I offered my compassion. “I’m so sorry…” Words didn’t seem enough, so I walked around the desk and took him in my arms, letting him bury his head in the crook of my neck.
“I managed to get out of the alley. All the time, I just kept thinking about my little brother, how I had to get back to him. How he needed me. That’s when Mr. Warder, of WDN Studios found me.” He gave a sad laugh then. “By some weird twist of fate, he was driving by in his limo. What he was doing in such a shitty area, I have no idea to this day, but he got his driver to stop. When he got out, I was shocked as hell. See, back then, I had no idea what Mr. Warder looked like, but he and I had been having lunch together, out on this patch of grass behind the lot, for weeks, and I never even knew it was him.”
“My god,” I breathed, shaking my head in amazement at the weird luck life could throw a person.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding in time to my amazement. “He took me under his wing that day, and I’m the success I am now because of him.”
“And you don’t like to be naked because the scars remind you of that day?”
He nodded, and his face briefly shadowed with misery, then calmed once again. “It’s tough, yeah. But, well, crazy as it sounds, what you did to me in Sanctuary has me rethinking that. I want to be naked … if it’s with you.”
He looked so vulnerable in that moment, I had to hug him again. And I kissed him deeply too. “What about inside Surrender Sanctuary?” I smiled.
He returned my mirth with a sexy grin of his own. “Are you asking for a return trip?”
I nodded then nibbled on his lower lip before saying, “I’d love to be naked with you anytime, anywhere.”
He swooped up my legs and sat me on the desk. “Why don’t we start right here, right now, then?”
***
Surrender To His Proposition
Surrender Series Volume 5
A Surrender Novella
By Roxxy Meyer
New adult BDSM romance with billionaire doms.
Includes:
Surrender To His Proposition
Bonus Story: Island Anal Adventure by C.J. Sneere
Surrender To His Proposition
“Maya, could you come here?”
My brother’s voice sends a shiver of anxiety through my stomach. I know he’s trying to sound calm, but something is wrong. I dash off the couch and head into his kitchen. There I find him gripping the counter, blinking hard. His face is tense and he’s disoriented.
“What’s wrong?” I go to Xander and put an arm around his shoulder.
He gives me a quick smile that fails at covering his fear. “I … umm … I can’t see.”
My heart knocks harder in my chest. “Let’s get you to the couch.”
I help him walk the short distance from the counter into the living room, then help him ease down on the sofa. Sweat beads his brow and worry ages him.
One month ago, my brother was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis. It’s the most common form of the disease, and it involves relapses, or attacks, where his neurological function worsens. These are followed by stages of remission, where the disease seems to almost melt away. But then a new attack occurs. They figure Xander’s had it for about ten years now, but because he’s one tough bastard, plowing through most of his pain and hiding it, the doctor’s only recently discovered he had MS. That and the disease is difficult to diagnose. The diagnosis came after my brother went temporarily blind while driving. A scary episode for him, his wife, and their two year old.
“That’s it, Xander,” I say, peeking at Josh’s playpen to make sure he’s still asleep. “I’m getting a second job and moving in here with you and Patty.”
“No!” His eyes flutter open and he sits up straight on the couch. I can tell he’s in pain. “You’re finishing college, getting your masters, and I won’t hear another word, sis.”
I touch his hand and worry over its shaking. “You and Patty have a new baby coming. You’re going to need a lot of help. I c
an take night classes or online courses while I work.”
“You’re already working part time at that day care center,” he protests, his low brow knitting in a concerned frown. “You can’t do everything, or you’ll burn out and your grades will slip. I won’t let that happen.”
I lean forward and kiss my big brother’s cheek. “Don’t worry. Let me do this. You helped Dad raise me when we were little. Now it’s time for me to help you.”
Our dad raised the two of us alone after my mom left him for another man when my brother was 10 and I was 2. She went to work one morning and never came home. Dad found letters from her boyfriend stashed in Mom’s office. My brother skipped college so he could help Dad pay the bills. Instead he got a trade as a welder, and thanks to a family friend he secured some lucrative contract jobs before he even finished high school. But with MS, it’s going to be harder for him to work the way he once did. His wife Patty is a legal secretary, but she’s pregnant with their second child and will have to go on maternity leave soon.
“I don’t like it,” my brother grumbles in response to my insistence. “You’re only 22. You’re too young to have this much responsibility heaped on your head.”
“And I don’t like that our genetics screwed you over.” I hug him, but not too tightly. I don’t want to hurt my bro. “But life isn’t fair, Xander. Let me help you the way you’ve helped me.”
He gets teary then, and the emotion spills over, down his cheeks. I have to swallow a lump in my throat. But Xander swipes brusquely at his tears and then takes me into a big hug.
“This is only temporary. As soon as Patty’s ready to return to work, you get your butt back in that dorm and in full time classes. Deal?”
“Deal.”
***
“So it’s definitely MS?” Ethan, my co-worker at the daycare, fellow student, and best friend, gives me a sympathetic look.
“Yeah, right now he’s definitely got relapsing remitting, and his prognosis looks good, but the doctor did let us know he could develop secondary progressive MS over the next 10 to 25 years. So it’s a day by day thing.” I shrug, though the heaviness of worry weights in my stomach and heart.
Surrender Boxed Set (Surrender Series Volume 1 - 7. BDSM romance with man love, bad boys, and billionaires.) Page 38