Surrender to Temptation

by Lauren Jameson

  I didn’t know him well, but I knew that he didn’t take kindly to being challenged.

  “Oh, you’re so cute.” The woman smiled again, but there wasn’t any humor in her voice. “But really, you can leave it with me.”

  I clung to the package as if it were a life preserver, feeling as though I was being tested. I opened my mouth, to say what I wasn’t sure, but the words were forever swallowed down when the voice that echoed in my dreams crashed over me like a warm wave.

  “Thank you, Philippa, but I did indeed give Miss Reid orders to deliver that package straight into my hands.” Philippa turned the sweetness in her smile up in wattage, all aimed at the beautiful man who had opened the heavy wooden doors of his office, but she had been swept from my mind with one look at Zachariah.

  “Miss Reid.” He was waiting, his eyes blue as the innermost flickering of a fire. I moved toward him hesitantly, and when he placed his hand at the small of my back to usher me the rest of the way into his office, adrenaline surged through my veins and made my legs tremble.

  I froze just inside the door, which he swung shut behind us. I had a sweeping impression of a room that was huge, with a desk and chair, two sofas, and various small tables scattered around. The walls were sheer, huge panes of glass. That was all the detail that I noted, however.

  All of my senses were trained on the man who was still behind me, not touching me but invading my space nonetheless.

  “You have obeyed this order to the letter, Miss Reid. I am impressed.” I felt warmth suffuse my neck—his breath—and then it was gone, leaving behind a flush that swept over my skin.

  “I’m good at following orders.” This was the truth. All of my life, I had done as I was told.

  “I don’t believe that is entirely truthful, Miss Reid. In fact, you are in big trouble.” I wanted to lean back, to touch him, just to feel the contact, but his voice was ominous, and I knew that he wouldn’t allow it.

  “What . . . what have I done?” I tried to stand still, straight, and fisted my hands so tightly that my nails bit into my skin. Excitement and anticipation made me tremble. I felt him come closer, come up behind me. His breath hit my ear as he spoke, and it sent a delicious shiver down my spine.

  “I told you to stay away from me. You did not. And now look where we are.” With an intimate nudge, he insinuated his knee between my own, urging me forward.

  “Walk to my desk, Miss Reid, and then open the parcel.” The timbre of his voice dropped, and it scraped over the words huskily.

  He sounded aroused. I hesitated, wondering, and his voice nudged at me.

  “Go.”

  Again I did as I was told, walking to the desk in a straight line, wobbling a bit in my heels. My fingers took a quick impression of the smooth, hard surface before they moved to the flaps of folded paper on the box.

  What on earth was in this box?

  Why did I care?

  I tried to remove the paper neatly, but I was shaking with nerves, and it ripped. The box was brown, too, simple and made of thin cardboard.

  I cast a quick, hesitant look back over my shoulder. I was startled to find that Zach had come up behind me, following just close enough to keep my nerves on edge.

  “Open it.” I didn’t hesitate—by now my muscles were tight with curiosity and anticipation. The cardboard crumpled a bit as I pulled back the lid hastily, and I heard a low chuckle.

  “Oh.” Whatever I might have dreamt of finding in this box, I didn’t think it was . . . well, whatever this was. It looked almost like something a person might use to dust, except that it was made of leather and was far too pretty for such a menial chore. Yes, this leather was beautiful, long ribbons of bittersweet chocolate cascading from a palm-sized handle. The strips of leather crisscrossed over and around that same handle, and my fingers itched to touch.

  I traced one of those curious fingers over the handle, still not sure what I was looking at, though I was quite certain that it was of vital importance to the man behind me. I heard his sharp intake of breath as my touch caressed the object, and then his hand was over mine, molding my palm to the handle, my skin pale white, his tawny from the sun.

  He let me hold the object for a long moment, then pried it from my hands. Rounding the desk, he placed the object on the flat surface, then sat in the large chair, his palms flat on the grainy surface.

  “Take off your sweater.” My mouth fell open and he grinned at me, but it wasn’t necessarily a nice smile. His lips curved with desire, with need, and even with a hint of cruelty, but I was too stunned to be afraid.

  “I beg your pardon?” We were in his office, for goodness’ sake. I tried to make my words haughty, to draw some dignity around me like a cloak, but I knew that it was useless, and from the grin that he shot my way, he knew it, too. “That is so inappropriate.”

  He leaned forward, catching me in that gaze of his.

  “I want you to take your blouse off, Miss Reid, because I want to look at you. I think that you want me to look at you.” I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even swallow. I was mad at him for the weeklong silence, but that did nothing to tamp down my desire.

  “I—” What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Tell me the truth.” Could he read my mind? “If you don’t want to let me look at you, then you have my sincere apologies. But if you forget about what you think is appropriate—what you think you want—I suspect that your desires are very much in line with my own. You want to submit to me.”

  He watched intently as my mouth opened, then closed again soundlessly. His eyes tracked the movement of my tongue as it traced my lips.

  I couldn’t deny the wetness, the heat that had surged between my legs.

  I was at war with myself, and he knew it. He murmured, low in his throat, soothing the tangle of my nerves.

  “What do you want, Devon? What do you truly want?” The sound of his voice saying my first name was intimate, and was ultimately my undoing.

  Slowly, so very slowly, I reached up for the top button on my sweater. My fingers felt thick, clumsy, but I managed to work the button through its hole.

  Zach made a small sound of approval, his eyes gleaming with wicked intent.

  One fastening fell free, and then another. Then my sweater was open and, before I could lose my nerve, off. I was standing in my shell pink cotton bra, my skirt and hose and heels, my arms crossed over my midriff self-consciously.

  Before I could blink, Zach had the strange object in his hand and had flicked it toward me. I saw the strips of leather fly, and then felt a sharp sting on the plumpness of one breast, then the other.

  Holy hell. That pretty leather thing was a whip.

  He flicked twice more, and this time the sting landed on each of my nipples. I cried out and jerked back, hugging my arms around me protectively.

  “Stop it!” I stared at him agog, my eyes wide and shocked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He held the object out toward me, his expression serious and honest.

  “Take it away if you want to, Devon.” I eyed the thing warily, but didn’t move from where I stood a few steps back from the desk. “This is a martinet. It is used for pleasure. Pleasure that I would like to give to you.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘pain’?” My words were nasty, as I meant them to be. He had thrown me off my game, thrust me out of my safe little bubble that I’d built over the last week, and I didn’t think I much liked it. “My pain, your pleasure?”

  I did notice that, despite the fact that I had just been marked by a flogger, my habitual panic had yet to make an appearance.

  “Think, Devon.” I glowered at him, not fooled by his soothing tone. “Did that really hurt? I don’t think it did.”

  Damn it, he was right. It stung, a bit like a paper cut, and it had startled the hell out of me. But it didn’t really hurt—not
unless I counted the ache that was now burning between my thighs.

  Cautiously, his eyes never leaving mine, Zachariah again placed a hand on the object—the martinet. Clutching it firmly in hand, he rounded the desk, moving until he was again behind me. He tucked the handle between my breasts and placed his hands on my shoulders, sliding them down my arms to trace the stripes of my ribs and then to smooth over the skin of my back. One smooth movement and my bra was unclasped, falling in front of me. He caught the martinet that he had tucked into my cleavage with one hand and with the other spun me, twisting my bra at the same time so that my wrists were bound together in the pale pink fabric.

  “Lean back.” He whispered the words. I felt as if I had been drugged, because I didn’t entertain any option, besides doing what he said, even though the rational part of my brain screamed that complying was insane. The cool surface of the desk pressed against my back, pulling at my skin as I squirmed with anticipation.

  “Close your eyes.” I shifted restlessly, my hips swaying awkwardly. I had never felt so needy, so on the edge.

  The edge of what, I didn’t know.

  I tensed, waiting for sharp bite of the martinet. Craving it, if I were being honest.

  Instead I felt the soft kiss of the cool leather dancing over my abdomen. I gasped at the sensation, so very different from what I had expected, but nonetheless pleasurable.

  “This is how my mouth will feel when I get you naked and kiss you all over.” The picture sprang into my mind all too clearly, of myself bare and laid out on his desk, waiting for the touch of his mouth. I whimpered, just the slightest bit, and was hushed with the kiss of the leather over my lips.

  “Spread your legs.” I did it before I even thought about it, the fabric of my skirt riding up, exposing the edges of my stockings, the flush of my panties, and the inches of skin in between.

  The leather traced over my bare ribs, the valley between my breasts, my hard, tight nipples. I began to pant, more excited than I’d ever been in my life.

  “Hold on to the desk.” I did, swallowing hard, wondering what would happen next.

  Instead of the flogger, I felt Zach’s fingers toy with the crotch of my panties. I moaned lightly and leaned into the touch, but he didn’t linger.

  Deftly, he pulled the fabric aside, and I felt slick pressure at my entrance. Instinctively opening to it, I was startled to feel something heavy and round being inserted in my most intimate of places, followed quickly by its twin.

  I tried to clench my thighs together at the strange sensation, but Zach was there to block the movement.

  “What . . .” I straightened up a bit to ask Zach what he had just done, and as I moved, the balls shifted. They created pressure in delicious, private places, and an unfamiliar ache bloomed through my belly.

  “If you are to take this journey with me, then you must learn to trust me.” I was too distracted by the heavy sensation of the balls rolling around to ask him what he meant. “These are ben-wa balls. You will keep them inside of you until I say otherwise.” I shifted experimentally, and the balls moved, forcing sensations that were rich and impossible to ignore to flood through me.

  “Bend over the desk again.” Oh, Lord. Bent over, the balls pressed heavily on the flesh above my clit. I wanted to rock back and forth, to build that delicious pressure so that it could be relieved, but a palm pressed to the curve of my back warned me against it.

  Focused on the new sensations inside my cleft, I wasn’t expecting the hiss of the flogger when it came, the bloom of pain between my thighs. One kiss of the leather on each smooth expanse of leg, then several short, quick flicks right in my center. I cried out, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the slick surface of the desk. He hit harder than he had the first time, and the blows hurt, hurt quite a bit, actually, landing as they were on my most sensitive flesh. But combined with that pain was a sense of pleasure, one that was dark and rich and seductive.

  As my body jerked, the balls rocked inside of me. It was almost unbearable, that pleasure which melted so effortlessly into the sting of the whip.

  The pleasure built, wave upon wave that finally reached the shore in a tidal crash of pleasure. I cried out again as the sensations washed over me, riding the darkness until I’d wrung every last bit of it out and I could see again.

  Stunned, I slowly rolled over, propped myself up on my elbows and looked up at the man in front of me. His eyes were glowing like those of a cat, and they were full of an emotion that I couldn’t read.

  I didn’t know him very well, after all, no matter what he’d just done to my body.

  Something in his stare, though, was too personal, too raw, for anyone to see. In fact, I didn’t think that he meant for me to catch him that way, for as soon as he saw that I had come back down to earth, his eyes shuttered and his face tensed up. I watched as he closed his emotions back off from the rest of the world, again becoming the controlled, charismatic young billionaire who held the interest of the world.

  So even all of his money couldn’t protect him from the demons that haunted him, that haunted us all.

  Feeling exposed, though I supposed it was useless to at that point, I tugged my bra from my wrists and stuffed it in my pocket. I didn’t feel as though there was time to fuss with putting it back on. I wrestled my blouse back over my arms, my shoulders, and closed it hastily, not bothering to double-check if it had been buttoned straight.

  I had no idea what had just happened, but I didn’t intend to think about it there. Zach was frozen in place, his eyes unreadable as they assessed me.

  Pushing away from the desk, I hastily made my way toward the door, the balls rocking as I moved, making me moan. It was all just too much—too intense. I didn’t know what to do with it. I would rather have faced Philippa the paper-doll princess while mussed and braless than have continued to try to breathe in a room that suddenly had no air.

  “Miss Reid.” My hand was on the door before he spoke. I turned slowly, not letting go of the knob.

  The sexy man who just seduced me had changed. The tortured one who made me come had disappeared. In their place was the cool, controlled CEO, complete with arrogant posture and the hint of a smirk on his lips.

  “Be in the first-floor lobby at half past six this evening. We need to have a discussion.” His words were serious and very nearly foreboding.

  “Do not remove those ben-wa balls this afternoon.”

  I shifted, aware all over again of the gentle rocking of the balls inside of me. Though I’d just had a huge orgasm, I felt the need beginning again. I tried to imagine going through the afternoon with them inside of me, of working at my desk while they weighed down on my clit. The thought made my cheeks flush and my lips part.

  “I have exposed you to some of the pleasure of my . . . lifestyle, Devon. But I haven’t yet exposed you to the pain.” I couldn’t move, not without those balls sending jolts of need through my veins.

  “I need to know if you are open to both.” My eyes were wide. Pain? More than the martinet? Feeling as though I were in the presence of a predatory animal, I watched, cautious, as Zach strode across the room to me, tilted my chin up for a soft, short kiss.

  “Go back to work now. I will meet you in the lobby at six thirty.” Somewhat dazed, drugged by the sensations in my blood, I nodded and turned to leave the room. Right before I exited the door, he whispered one last thing in my ear.

  “And whatever you do, don’t come.”

  PART II

  TEMPTED TO REBEL

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By six twenty that evening, I was sitting in the vast, sleek lobby of the Phyrefly building waiting to meet Zach. My hands were bound so tightly together in my lap that my knuckles had turned white. My face was warm, and my trembling legs were crossed at the thigh, my every muscle clenched.

  The slick silver ben-wa balls that Zach had secured inside of me earlier that d
ay sat heavily in my pelvis. I tried to hold entirely still, for even the smallest of movements—any movement—set them rocking against my womb, and overwhelmed me with the sensation.

  The vast building seemed to be empty, everyone else having gone for the day. I knew, though, that Zach was still around somewhere. I could feel the tension that being in his vicinity brought to me, vibrating in the air like a tangible substance.

  I looked up at the sleek security monitor, wondering if he was watching, if he could see me. At the same time I saw myself, a small, curvy blonde dressed severely in black, picked out in slightly distorted black and white. The woman on that monitor seemed to be waiting for something—searching for something—and I blinked at my own image, startled by the thought.

  What was I doing here? Was I really throwing myself at one man so soon after being burned by another? Could I really find myself while in the arms of someone else?

  The sound of the chrome elevator sliding into place on the first floor had my heart clenching in the suddenly tight confines of my chest. My palms became slick with sweat, and I unclasped them and nervously wiped the moisture off on my skirt.

  “You’re early. I’m pleased.” And then there he was, Zachariah St. Brenton, the charismatic billionaire, striding across the ultramodern lobby toward me. He was dressed in another expensive-looking black suit that made him look all the more mouthwatering. I began to tremble as those crystal blue eyes fastened on me, warm with hunger.

  My head told me that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—find myself by pursuing a man. Everything else in my being screamed at me to take what I wanted, for once in my life.

  “Come.” Zach held a hand out for me, and I took it without question, just as I was sure he expected me to. I found that I didn’t want to think, didn’t want to analyze my actions, my feelings and my thoughts.