desire for Bliss: a novel of Sex, Mystery and Romance (RiverHart Book 2)

by Adira August

  "Girls, this time," Talli grinned. "I haven't told him, yet."

  They started eating at three and finished at six. Ben made sure there were plenty of rooms with big TVs so everyone could lie around in a stupor in front of something they liked. But there were tables set up in the Library with games and almost everyone gravitated inside.

  At nine, Ben and his brother Nick, who looked so much like Liam Hemsworth Avia had stared like a addled fangirl the first time she saw him, rounded up children and set to work cleaning. Roland joined them.

  The only thing missing was Hugo, who had gone to spend the holiday with Hank's family. But that was better for him. And for them.

  Avia went around making sure every dish was washed and leftover containered and refrigerated. She wanted the kitchen to sparkle when staff came back. She'd made Ben give them Friday off, as well, so it was every person for themselves with the leftovers. And that was just fine, too.

  In the two weeks since, she'd developed online relationships with most of his family, and she and Talli had become especially close with Felicity and Ellender, Ben's "not too bratty" sisters. They were nine months apart, "diaper twins" the saying was, and looked remarkably alike.

  Watching the snow, done with her breakfast, Avia felt like it was time to move forward. But Ben had to come with her. She patted the lump in her pocket for good luck.

  "I need to talk to you," Ben said.

  "Coincidentally, I need to talk to you, too," she told him.

  "Bring that," he said, referring to her mug. He led her across the room and into the library. They settled on a long sofa that faced the windows, with the fire to their side. He looked at her expectantly, wanting her to begin, to get whatever things of hers out of the way before he told her.

  "I quit my job," she said.

  "Oh? When did this happen?" He asked. He'd been expecting it.

  "Just before Thanksgiving," she said. "I've been doing a lot of writing."

  He nodded. "I noticed."

  "I think - no, I know what I want to do next," she told him. "But it has to do with you."

  He switched tactics. This was something he might have to head off. "I see. Maybe I should tell you before you go on that I'm thinking of quitting my job, too. Really, getting out of the business altogether."

  "You mean sell it?" She asked.

  "I mean shut it all down." He said.

  Avia was very still. He hadn't seen her go into journalist mode in a long time.

  "What does 'all' mean?'" She asked him.

  Here we go. "The sex parts. The website, the books, the … toys," he looked away and down.

  "Nick and Hugo will take over everything else, the military contracts. I'll look into some commercial markets for the other alloys." He shrugged and looked back at her. "Probably make a lot more money."

  She was quiet for a very long time. She put her mug on the sofa table and straightened up, to face him squarely. He almost expected her to fish out a notebook and a pen.

  "Tell me what happened in Macau."

  He felt the blood drain from his face. "This has nothing to do with that."

  "You're going to start lying to me now?" She asked. "Special rules for you?"

  "The Rules are few but categorical. No lies, ever. One lie and we’re done."

  They were his words, spoken to her the first day they'd met, when she'd agreed to become his Companion.

  "You resigned from Companionship, remember?" His eyes went cold and dark. "You took off your collar. You quit your job. Planning on quitting me next?"

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. "This one of those C.E.O. business tactics? Something from The Art of War?"

  He must be in terrible pain, she thought, to have attacked her. He had never spoken rudely to her in all the time she'd known him. Never used a cheap shot in an argument. Never been anything but honest.

  He looked down and away. Guilt. He'd done that before. When he mentioned his sex toys business. Why guilt?

  She waited. He lifted his head, but looked out at the snow, not at her. When he spoke, his voice was hollow, dead.

  "People are dead because of these … things …. I make. I design. I manufacture and promote and - Don't you see? All I do is sell sick shit to sick people. I made myself rich from feeding on people's perversions."

  He glanced at her and then down at the floor as if he couldn't bear to look at her.

  "I corrupted something beautiful," he whispered. "What about all the people I don't even know, how many lives did I fuck up? How a many women lost their self-respect, how many chil-"

  His hand covered his mouth. He wiped at his face with the other. Children? Dear God, what happened? Her heart went out to him. But she put aside her compassion, because she could not help him with that.

  "What happened in Macau?"

  He leapt off the couch and paced in front of the window, running both hands through his hair.

  "Jesus Christ, would you get off it? Hank is dead because of me! What difference does Macau make? What will it change if I tell you?" He was shouting.

  "Macau changed you," she said, keeping her voice even and calm. "Hank is dead because a man who decided to be be a criminal shot him. And all that went before happened for the same reason. Because people made terrible choices to do terrible harm."

  She stayed still and in place on the couch to not agitate him further. "But you stopped touching me before all of that. What happened in Macau?"

  He turned away from her. She took a deep breath. All in.

  "Tell me about the children, Ben."

  He went to his knees. He let out a huge guttural wail of grief and pain, his head thrown back, the cords of his neck standing out so tight she thought they might snap.

  She went to the library door and locked it. Then she knelt on the floor next to him, where he rocked on his knees, his hands over his face, and cried like a wounded animal. He took great gulps of air and screamed his rage and agony and seeing her there at last, he threw his arms around her waist and lay on the floor, weeping as she held him and stroked his hair.

  She didn't tell him it would be alright. Whatever this was, she was sure it would not be.

  Avia sat in the semi-darkness, watching Ben sleep on the library sofa.

  After a long time, he had quieted and she'd gotten him to the long couch. He told her the story. The story of the man who wanted to win his favor by offering him all the free sex slaves he could desire in a video catalogue, each with a convenient order number. He wanted Ben to see how creatively his toys and devices would be used by the wealthy guests who would come to his hotel because he carried the Hart products.

  Ben told her about the "items," how the cost increased as the age went down. He thought the last, the twin girls, might have been five.

  And at that, he withdrew into himself, and lay on his side, tears running in a steady stream. He did not sob or cry out. The tears just flowed from him. He closed his eyes and after a long while, they stopped, and he slept.

  She covered him with an afghan, and eased his phone from his pocket, setting it to "do not disturb." Only Nick and Hugo could get through. And Avia, of course.

  No wonder he couldn't abide the thought of sex. She'd allowed her own tears to fall, then. But she didn't let herself dwell on the horrific things that befell children. She'd always been aware of that. She thought of the attack on the soul of her beloved. He'd come home assaulted and broken.

  He'd had no time to process when his personal life was exposed, the love of his life threatened, his safe place, his home, invaded. The one person he should be able to trust, Avia, had insisted on the one thing he could not abide from her, to put herself at risk of death.

  In all these things he'd been helpless to protect what and whom he loved.

  And he'd been betrayed.

  They hadn't come over the wall. Cleo Delia had sold him out to men who claimed they only wanted to examine the prototypes. Industrial espionage. She'd told them how to find the hidden access for cons
truction vehicles that got them through the wall and about the concealed elevator you entered from the outside that opened on the helicopter bastion.

  But she hadn't told them Talli wasn't Avia. Why would she? What did it have to do with industrial espionage? So when she texted and said she had to drop off at the condo and then she'd be free to meet with them, they'd assumed. And she'd died, betraying herself more than anyone.

  Talia's suitcases were found still inside the security vehicle, discovered parked in the secure lot, right on the Hart property. Video surveillance showed they had driven right past the Barbican in the vehicle assigned to Cleo Delia. Why would they stop it?

  Ben had done everything he could to keep them all safe, but nothing worked. Nothing helped. And the worst crimes of all were ongoing. He knew where, he knew who, he knew what. And he had no power at all.

  But he could do one thing. He could destroy that which everyone seemed to want. His products, his name as a manufacturer.

  What have I done to him?

  Ben awoke to the scent of warm bread. Avia was pouring wine into a glass on a tray that also held covered bowls and a basket of rolls under a red-checkered towel. A blue ceramic ramekin full of butter sat next to it. But what he wanted was the tall glass of ice water that accompanied the meal.

  He sat up and drank it off and reached for the pitcher. He felt … surprisingly okay. Empty, but not in the way of despair. More like the glass in his hand, emptied and waiting to be filled. He felt relieved. Except …

  He'd attacked Avia, then shattered in front of her. Worthless.

  She sat beside him, facing him. Serious. She took a breath. Here it comes. He looked down, ready for the speech. The one where his weakness disgusted her and she had to take some space …

  "I'm going make a speech here and I'd appreciate it if you'd listen to me," she told him.

  He nodded. He felt numb and lost and already alone. But she deserved to be listened to.

  "My sister was really fucked-up by what happened to her," Avia began. "She and Roland always had a great sexual relationship as well as a great marriage just generally. You know what helped her? Them? That basket of toys for 'perverts' you gave them."

  What? What's she talking about?

  She leaned forward. "You really want to call my sister a pervert? After all she went through? The men who violated her, they perverted sex for her.

  "It was all the stuff from you, that you designed, conceived, created, it was that stuff that when she looked at it reminded her of how much fun sex was with her husband. How close it made her to Rolly. How completely she trusted him, how safe she felt with him, during sex play."

  Her voice thickened. He looked up. Her eyes were shining with unshed tears.

  "It was your toys that helped her heal. Trying them out, exploring together. It was you, caring about women and how they feel," she was weeping now and didn't seem to care, "You who made it so my sister isn't miserable and frightened and broken. And now she's pregnant with twin girls."

  Ben felt something light expand in his chest.

  "You want to think about all the unknown people? Think about all the women ashamed to have the dreams and fantasies they have. Because someone or something else, like this weird, repressed culture we live in, made them feel like they were sick, twisted perverts.

  "But you didn't, Benedict Valor Hart. You made them feel heard and validated their desires. 'Sexual support products,' you call them. I thought it was pretentious. I didn't get it until you freed me. Until you cared for me and opened me up to myself.

  "If you think I'm a pervert, I guess you're right. Because I want to spend my life helping you, in my way, with my talents, support people, women and their partners, in the things they want. I want to change things, too. You aren't the problem, you're my fucking hero-"

  His arms were around her and his mouth found hers. He kissed her with the need to assure himself she was there. She kissed him with the desire to let him know she was.

  He tilted her head and opened her mouth with the pressure of his own and their tongues met. He held her, adored her, explored her and his hands stroked her back and pressed her to him. Her breasts, firm and round flattened against his chest, hips tilted, reaching up for his cock that flared with heat and need. His balls tightened and the weeks of denying himself were swept away by his consuming need to be inside her.

  He turned them to lie her back on the couch and she let go of him to pull her skirt up as she let herself fall back. His fingers found her panties and he yanked and they tore apart in his hands. His steel-hard erection jerked and poured precum - she was still wearing the tear away panties. She was still obeying him.

  He felt her fingers at his zipper and opened his trousers, their tongues still entwined, twisting and stroking. He did not think, could not think, of anything but being buried in her. He kneed her legs apart and guided his cockhead to her entrance, hot and wet and ready.

  She pulled back. Startled, he stopped and looked down at her. She was fumbling with her skirt. Then pulled out a crumpled napkin. She opened it and lifted a shiny silver chain she slipped over his head. The tiny key hung down. She picked up the choker and put it around her neck, bringing the chains to the front, fitting it by feel. She slid the links onto the open shackle of the padlock and held it up to him with delicate fingers to be locked.

  He flexed his pelvis until the head of his cock pressed against her cunt. He felt himself slide into her heat just enough to spread her opening. With one thrust he would plunge into her core.

  He took the padlock in his fingers and positioned the shackle to close. And hesitated.

  "Who decides, Sub?"

  "You do."

  He felt her clench and spasm. Her nipples hardened under her sweater. Every muscle in his body tightened. In a second he was going to come, without ever being inside her.

  "When?"

  "Always," she gasped, clutching at his shirt.

  "Say it."

  "I'll submit to you always, Benedict."

  His cock slammed into her up to his balls as a deluge of cum gushed up through his dick and filled her. She cried out with her own orgasm and spasmed hard around him again and again, wanting more, deeper, harder. And he gave it to her. Emptying himself.

  The collar slipped off her neck and down between the cushion and the sofa arm. As they rode out their orgasms, he clutched the lock he'd unhooked from the chain tightly in his fist.

  She was going to have to prove herself to him, this time.

  FINAL MATTERS

  Thanks so much for reading Avia and Ben's continuing journey. If you would like to leave a review, click here. If you'd like to read Desire for Touch, which is the beginning of Ben and Avia's story, it's here. Here's a blurb bit:

  The story of a woman discovering that the freedom to choose, includes the freedom to submit.

  ...Billionaire Benedict Hart loves designing - and testing - the world's most elite sex toys. But no batteries are required to spark a sexual power struggle with investigative reporter Avienne Rivers, interviewing him at his remote, fortress-like home. Avia struggles to hide her strong sexual response to the compelling CEO. But Ben's desire for her is just as strong, and he challenges her to 'go undercover' with him to answer to her question:

  "Why would a psychologically healthy, self-confident woman want to be controlled, or even spanked, as part of a sexual encounter? And why, if that’s her choice, would she have to be restrained?"

  ***

  Part 3, Desire for Ecstasy is coming, but you can't click it, it's still stuck in my head.

  I do have some shorts in the works I'm publishing under The RiverHart Chronicles series name. Profiles and sexual antics of many peripheral characters from both RiverHart books. Guess who has the foot fetish? And which woman is the Domme?

  For the latest info, and pre-release sneak peeks go here: http://www.adiraaugust.com Find the little chat balloon at the side of the page to sign up and I'll keep you informed.

  A
LSO - I just got this FB account, so let’s be friends. I’ll post updates and stuff and we can say hello to each other. Aaaaannnnndddd!!!! TWITTER! The only time a stranger following you is a good thing! (All my social media places are hate-free zones.)

  I'm excited to start posting in these places now that I have Desire for Bliss in everyone's hands and can start on Desire for Ecstasy: RiverHart Part 3.

  addi-