Chapter SEVEN
Cruz
I don't do shit like this. Ever. What was I doing sending flowers to a woman? How the fuck did I end up sleeping all night with a woman? I know better than that. I know how they get after sex, feeling close, needing more.
“Where were you last night?” Kennedy demanded as soon as I came home.
She was disheveled, unslept, curled miserably on the sofa. She hurtled at me the instant I walked through the door, attaching her arms around my neck like a drowning woman. Hurt. She wanted to make me aware that I'd hurt her. Her legs wrapped around my hips and for the first time I felt the suction of her octopus need for me. We'd become so close. And now it was too close.
Kennedy had taken care of me when I was dumped back on US soil. A place I could no longer call home. She was the only one who cared and in those two years we'd become melded. Neither of us knew another soul the way we knew each other nor did we have any relationships outside of the one we had with each other.
Kenn had agreed that we could bring Harlow home. She'd indulged me but she'd also been eager to persuade Harlow to let me initiate her into shibari. But since that night, she'd been pouty and sullen. Even though I'd met all of Kenn's demands. I hadn't tried to kiss Harlow or anything more intimate than observe her tumultuous emotions being restrained in my knots. Still her jealous rage flew at me the second Harlow left the suite.
“You like her. You like her body more than mine.”
“I don't. I swear. I only wanted to observe someone exhibit different sensations. Even you have to admit we've grown stale.”
Oh fuck, never let a woman even imagine that she's become a habit to you.
“You're bored of me? After I gave up everything to take care of you. After I nursed you back from whatever they dosed you up with in the gulag. Now you've had what you needed, you call me a habit.”
It didn't stop there but I'll spare the harrowing details of the endless harangue. She was right. I did owe her everything and with my seeming inability to be with another woman, I had allowed her to insert herself totally into my being. Now it looked like she never planned to leave.
“Answer me. Where were you?”
“I had work, Kenn. Things are going to change with us now, you know that. If we want to take this business to the international level we planned. After what we've been through to make this ours... we both need to make sacrifice to bring it to fruition.”
“Didn't I already sacrifice everything fixing up my broken brother when he came back after—Japan? Answer me, didn't I?”
She's not wrong.
Kennedy took me in and cared for me as no other women would have done. No woman could have been expected to give up her life to heal a monster. I couldn't tell her what had happened to me because I didn't know myself. All I knew was that evil had taken me and I was no longer the boy she grew up with. Perhaps I should have never come home or left again as soon as they dropped me. I could have stayed out in the wilderness but I was afraid I had no control over myself. How could I be sure there wouldn't be other atrocities committed?
The man I knew as my own father hadn't been so welcoming and Kenn had to break with him to be with me. He adored her like a princess and it was tough for her to turn away from that. She tried everything to get us back on speaking terms but the old man wanted nothing to do with the foundling he'd taken in, then abandoned when he refused to conform. It was him or me and she picked me. Without Kennedy I'd be dead now. I owe her my entire existence. And she's going to make sure she reaps every last drop of the debt.
“You did and you know I adore you for that. And for everything you allow me to do.”
“I saw that little Madam Harlow at Illicit last week, strutting around like she owns the place.”
“You didn't tell me you went to Illicit.”
The image of the violet-eyed girl swam up before me. Her trust as I encased her in rope, the intensity of her pleasure. What wouldn't I do to get her owning my joint? She could strut around my club all she liked. Then the vision was instantly replaced by one of the other girl. The one whose name I didn't even know. I realized she reminded me so much of Harlow. The same fiery passions. The same sweet innocence. But with something else too.
“I don't have to tell you everything, especially not now you're staying out the night without telling me.” Kennedy was going on and on about our so-called relationship.
Usually I gave her what she needed, caressed and coddled her until she calmed but I was deranged by the girl I couldn't even name. She'd taken up residence in my mind. I pulled out my phone and ordered the most perfect hand-tied bouquet I could find. Nothing too tacky over-the-top but not cheap either. Something that expressed her varied personality and implied she should only ever go after the best for herself.
An hour later I was in a cold sweat.
What the fuck was wrong with me? You do not send flowers to a woman unless you're planning on calling to ask for a date and get down with all that shit that guys go through. And that I don't do. Ever.
“You're going to have to go down to DC,” I told Kennedy once she'd calmed down enough not to take it as a dismissal. “I've got an important job only you can be trusted with.”
Chapter EIGHT
Dani
I didn't know what I expected from Illicit and so had no clue what to wear. What is appropriate attire for the most exclusive sex club on the planet? I could have begged for Bo's expert advice but I didn't dare tell him anything more than I had a dinner with my new boss. If he'd known it was Illicit, he'd have have applied thumbscrews to come along.
He insisted on curling my hair into loose ringlets to cheer me up and pinned it all in a waterfall across one shoulder. I hardly recognized the girl in the looking glass. But what did it matter? I tried extra hard to hide the empty hollow from him. It had been eighteen hours and nine days since I heard from Cruz. He'd become one of the disappeared and it hurt like an iron vice clamped around my heart.
“It isn't done, trust me,” Bo told my reflection.
“It looks perfect,” I said with a forced bright smile.
“The hair is done, the rope guy, not so much.”
“It's my bad. You know if you sleep with a guy before he's had time to wait and want, he's gonna do a runner. I shouldn't have expected hearts and flowers.”
“But you got the flowers. And breakfast. I know men and this one is not your regular douchebag. It doesn't add up. When it doesn't add up, it ain't done. The hearts are coming, believe me.”
I hugged him and wished I could trust in his promises.
The entrance to the club was nondescript aside from the doormen wearing floor length wolf fur coats against the chill. They parted like the Red Sea to let Harlow through, with me behind her.
As we climbed the circular staircase in the opulent tower, I wondered what the fuss was about. It seemed docile enough. Just a phalanx of naked living statues on plinths within the wall. They wore a decoration of bondage gear, strapping and clamping at the erogenous bits, but nothing I hadn't seen in my research into BDSM. Then we stepped between the velvet drapes that must have been at least sixty feet of cascading lush fabric and, oh my.
“Stiff drink?” Harlow whispered, leading me through the swarm of naked flesh to the low lit bar. I gulped down my prudish inhibition along with the chocolate martini. I'd come to this city to get away from the rigid life I was expected to follow like a map. Now I was observing the alternative choices I'd insisted on.
What fascinated me most were the women dressed in solid corsetry. Body armor that brutally squeezed their flesh as they performed acts on naked men bent on their knees before them. Most of the supplicant men wore masks, or bags over their heads and were extremely excited by the agony inflicted on them. I'd only ever known men firmly fixed in their powerful role. This reversal was something new and I struggled to understand.
Then the group conjugations- that was too much to untangle. Even the menages where one woman was being heavi
ly pleasured from both sides by two men. Every scene boggled my eyes and my mind fought to wrap itself around the variations. I knew I was judging, questioning why someone would want agony inflicted on their clit or foreskin. Why one person as a lover wasn't enough and only three or four would do. I had a lot to learn.
There are many different acts of love, I realized. Or was this purely pleasure? And did it even matter? Where did love and lust merge or separate? Was there any significance to how Cruz had needed to bind me in rope that he carried with him? Or how after he held me so protectively in his iron grasp? I still held so many questions about the man who'd invaded my soul.
I'd fallen asleep in complete comfort. I'd never felt so safe in my life and he was a complete stranger. We knew nothing about each other and yet I was certain I could trust him with my life.
I woke in the small hours and we'd moved around in the night time dance. The blonde head was resting on my breast his hand cupped around the underside of the other mound with his thumb covering my erect nipple as though he'd been strumming moments before. Perhaps the rise and throb between my legs was what pulled me from my dreamy slumber. The blonde devil's face was different. Peaceful as it hadn't been before. He'd looked all evening as though he half expected me to turn into a ghoul, or pull a knife and stab him through the heart. I guess he found it hard to trust. That had been confirmed when I woke up again after the most blissful deep sleep of my life to find him gone.
I came back to the orgy of compressed flesh before me. While I'd been dreaming about that night, playing it in my mind to keep him as close as I was ever going to get, Harlow had disappeared. I was left at the bar alone and with my knees weakening. My mystery man had never once been out of my thoughts if I was honest. As dumb as it was to admit it, I was still stupefied by the most gorgeous man in existence. It wasn't only the perfect beauty and the amazing power with which he brought me to shattering orgasms, there was something inside of him that still gripped me. Something about him wasn’t what it seemed.
I looked out across the crowd, still bound in my reverie of that glorious night of complete connection. He must have felt my thoughts - the quivering in my thighs and my dampened underwear - because Cruz turned and looked straight at me. My knees virtually buckled out from under me as my heart hurled itself against my breasts. It was him. Unmistakeable in the crowd. No one came close to being his double. I hadn't conjured an apparition, Cruz was actually here at Illicit. And he'd turned to meet my gaze on cue, as though responding to my chimera. I leaned into the bar for support as hot prickles rippled down my arms and legs.
His eyes scoured into mine and like a pile of iron filings drawn by his magnetism, without any control over my legs I walked across the room. Except in reality I didn't budge. I was bolted into the floor as his eyes blazed into mine and I was transported immediately back to that night. I stared at the man whose face was spotlit in a nondescript crowd of extras. Every last pore started tingling as muscle memory recalled how he'd tied me down and kissed and licked each one individually.
My skin prickled avidly just from being this close to him again. Even from across the room in a gaggle of people, he could stir me to my right down to my toe nails. It was ridiculous how I felt alive looking at him, having him strip me naked with his stare. Shivering need and waves of avarice pulsed through my ravaging body.
Why had he been so focused on my body when he could have easily just fucked me and left? Why had he gone to all the trouble of breakfast and flowers then not called, even to blow me off? It made no sense. It had been going over and over in my mind for almost two weeks. A pang of disappointment clutched at my gut and was instantly staved off with a flare of anger.
That was so unfair. To be so two-faced, so confusing without any direct communication. Either ignore me and let me know for sure I was a booty call, or send me flowers and let me know you. Doing both was just mean.
Once again I had the feeling he could tell exactly what I was thinking. The stone cold rigidity of his far off beautiful face crumbled for the briefest instant when the rage rose inside me. It was as though all my pain was transferred to him and he would willingly bear it if he could relieve me of its weight. His taut chest shifted as though he was about to step in my direction and my heart flared. His eyes flickered. I saw a wildness in the luminous pools of blue, something ravaged and burnt. He was in more pain than I'd ever know.
Then I wanted to run to him and hold him like I found myself doing when I woke from that dreamy sleep. I wanted to see that look of complete calm on his face again. But before I could force my legs forward, he turned the opposite direction and walked out through the door away from me.
It took every ion of willpower not to run after him to demand an explanation, give him a piece of advice about tricking women for no reason. No. I would not let any more men take advantage of my feelings. I was a big girl I had made my choice to sleep with a man whose name I didn't bother to take in advance. I had told myself it was for the best, to get over my ex so in a sense I had used him too. Now I had to get over it.
When Harlow joined me at the bar again ten minutes later, I was still jittery inside. I hadn't recovered my equilibrium at seeing the man who had dominated my thoughts and dreams for weeks.
Cruz
I can't do it.
I should leave it at that because I don't owe anyone any explanations. Except the pain in her face was unbearable. She was so beautiful, as fragile as a tiny flower that I wouldn't have crushed for anything. If I could have lifted a ton of weight to take it from her I would have. But I recognized that agony and I have no relief to offer her. I headed down to the shibari room to take my mind away from our mutual agony in the only way I know how. Tying the knots has been my only salvation since I discovered it in Japan. When the realization that somehow I was no longer a man and had become a monster dawned on me.
The instant I looked down on that dead man at my feet, the two beautiful women dead on the floor behind me bleeding out all over the pristine white rug I knew I was not the man I'd started out as. At some point in that solitary prison cell in Russia, I'd been changed. And nothing would bring me back.
I was close to finishing my struggle permanently, when I discovered the nawashi master. It would have been nothing to me to kill myself especially as it would save other lives if I was gone. The master was a miracle, my lifesaver, able to read into my soul and finally bring me calm. With the intense focus on the artful rope knotting I lose the desire for a killing spree. I see all the hopes and dreams in a body and that elicits a tranquility that sidelines another kind of domination.
I don't know how it happened. I was never the kind of kid that pulled wings off insects or tortured kittens. Right now the idea of hurting anything makes me sick but I can't deny reality. Every time I discover a pile of dead bodies gruesomely hacked at my feet, me holding the machete, I don't remember a thing.
The sight of her hit me like a Mack truck. More beautiful than ever, she was wearing a nude colored net dress with slashes of tasteful sequins that vividly brought to my mind every naked crevice of her flesh. All the hassle of getting into the club that night was worth it to see Harlow again. The snarling little bulldog at the door curtly informing me my membership was under review. Fuck that, who do they think they are? It just made me want to destroy them even harder and I will. Give it time.
Finally that titan dominatrix came out and told the one she called Strike that there'd been a mistake. She apologized for the misunderstanding in the barely believable manner of a dom, looking down her nose at me like I was scum se'd like to thrash.
I willed Harlow to look at me now and she immediately did so. As though we were joined or a rope connected us across the room. Her gaze didn't falter, not like the other one, the girl upstairs that shivers every time she looks at me. Harlow holds my gaze without a flinch.
I want to take her again right here in the shibari room. Although I can tell she's changed since that night she came with me. She's grown int
o a real woman now, it's plain to see. It would be no trouble to lift her although the little growler at the entrance might give a moment of trouble. Any hassle would be worth it to get her alone at my place. All to myself this time, I'd tie her into a pose she'd never forget. Of course Cole would send out the troops but that was only a sweetener.
I want her. I want her helpless before me while I watch the desire tear through her body. And this time I'd give those desires full thrust. No Kennedy to appease. No escape. The hunger to tie her into my web whacked into me like a metal baseball bat in the abs. Did she see how I'm burning up for her beneath the cool facade I have for the world? Then another face imprinted itself over Harlow's. The girl upstairs. That sweet beauty.
No. I will put that smile out of my mind and focus on the job at hand. As I moved across the room heading straight for Harlow, she turned and walked away.
Chapter NINE
Dani
“Whats up? You look like you saw ten ghosts,” Harlow said when she joined me at the bar and I took the opportunity to order two espresso martinis.
“I’m okay I- er.”
Did I know her well enough to tell her everything? She was my boss as much as we seemed to be building a real friendship. What would she make of the fact that I was well acquainted with one of her members'? Wasn't Illicit supposed to be anonymous? I had no right to out Cruz.
“I know. I was the same as you my first time here. It takes a little getting used to but then you understand how liberating this is and you'll get to like it.”
I knew all about that liberation and had already developed quite a taste for it. It was the man attached to the end of the ropes and chains that was inspiring a pain I couldn't quite explain.
“Dani, are you sure you're alright?”
“Yes, I'm quite sure.” I almost whimpered, remembering how I shook as he licked across the length of my slit without mercy. How he held me utterly still, so I was unable to writhe free of the awe-inspiring feelings and made me shudder until I exploded over the edge into showers of white light.
CRUZ: Billionaire Bonded Romance Suspense (Illicit Book 4) Page 4