“I’m proud of you. You took your paddling like a good girl tonight,” he murmured. “Would you like to be rewarded for behaving so well?”
His hand moved further, the tip of one finger slipping up inside her. Rylie moved instinctively, shifting her legs, opening herself to his touch. He laughed, low and deep in his throat, and stroked back and forth, spreading the slick wetness up until his fingers reached the hard nub of her clit. He circled it with the pad of his thumb, then took it between two fingers. Rylie could feel it getting harder. Sullivan kept on, stroking her clit, making it pulse and throb with need. Every now and then he shifted, moving his fingers to delicately stimulate the sensitive nerve endings in the tip.
Rylie gasped, trying desperately not to writhe around. She was afraid that if she moved, he’d either begin spanking her again or stop the exquisite torment his fingers were creating. She’d never been touched that way by anyone. To her dismay, the embarrassing, helpless position in which she was posed only seemed to intensify her arousal.
“Shall I go on?”
She moaned softly. When he withdrew his hand, she realized he was going to make her say it, admit what she wanted out loud.
Her voice was soft, almost shy. “Yes.”
His hand slid back down between her legs, fingers dipping into the slick wetness.
“Oh, yeah, you’re enjoying this.” He nudged her feet farther apart. “Keep your hands on the corners of my desk. Don’t you dare move,” Sullivan growled in her ear. A jolt of pure lust shot through her at his words.
She saw him reach into his pocket for a condom. Then his hands were busy again, teasing her, probing at the opening of her hot depths. She pushed back, needing more, and was rewarded with a firm whack on her already stinging ass. She gasped in shock.
“I said don’t move. Do I have to tie you up?”
“Yes… I mean no!” Rylie found herself babbling. Rather than registering pain, this time the sharp smack sent a lightning bolt of heat straight to her pussy. She forced herself to stay in position, feet apart and ass sticking high in the air, as Sullivan began leisurely stroking her throbbing clit again. He stopped and she heard him unzip his pants, then felt his cock rubbing up against her dripping wet slit.
It was all so slow, so tantalizingly slooow. Bent over as she was, with her legs spread wide apart, Rylie had never been so powerless. She shuddered. This man was taking her as he pleased. He was totally in charge. His cock slid in, just the head, then withdrew. She ached to have more. She was desperate to rear back and bury him deep inside. Her hands gripped the corners of the desk so hard she was sure her fingernails were leaving gouges in the wood.
He kept on, sliding in just a little further with each stroke, then backing out again.
“Oh, yes… oh, yes, please, yes,” she heard herself moan.
“Is this what you want?” Sullivan’s voice was raw. With a savage thrust, he buried himself deep inside her. Rylie screamed once, a primeval sound welling up unbidden from her subconscious. Sullivan reared back, grabbed her hips with both hands and began pounding himself into her. He drove hard, taking them both higher with every powerful lunge. Nearly sobbing with the pent-up need that had been building for so long, Rylie ground her hot, stinging ass against him fiercely with each stroke. Pain morphed into exquisite pleasure as she crashed over a line she never knew existed before this night. With a wild cry, Rylie exploded.
Sullivan groaned and rammed deep inside, his whole body quivering. She felt his cock pulsing, his powerful hands gripping her hips tightly as he came.
She lay there across the desk, spent, panting hard as her heart thudded against her chest. Gradually she became aware that he was speaking again. His words seemed to come from far away, growing more distinct as consciousness returned to her body.
“…anything like that,” he was saying. His fingers stroked through her hair, freeing it from the thick braid and spreading soft waves across her back. She heard him zip up his pants, then hands slid down her arms, gently prying her fingers loose from the desk. Brawny arms lifted her body and turned it.
Sullivan sank back into the wooden chair, pulling her down onto his lap. Rylie blushed, feeling even more vulnerable when she realized that she was stark naked while he was fully dressed again. She buried her face against the shirt covering his broad chest, suddenly embarrassed.
“You’ve never been spanked before, have you?”
Rylie shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“Not every spanking you get from me will end the way this one did,” he said softly. “In the future, some spankings will be meant to drive home a point I’ve made about your unacceptable behavior. You won’t get rewarded for being good if I’ve spanked you for an extreme act of disobedience.” His voice became warm, gentle. “But not all of my spankings are for punishment. Someday, R. L. Duncan, you may even beg me to spank you.”
As the moments passed, Rylie’s strong-willed personality began asserting itself once again. Despite the soothing tone of his voice, at his last statement she pulled away from his embrace. She straightened her shoulders and met his eyes with an angry glare that held no hint of the vulnerable woman he’d just comforted.
“Beg you to spank me? I’ll see you rot in hell first, Neill Sullivan.”
Chapter Three
Despite his earlier threat to paddle her for every curse word she uttered, Sullivan made no move to stop Rylie when she angrily shoved herself off his lap. Stomping to the credenza, she turned her back on him and yanked up her skirt. He watched as with trembling fingers she fastened the low-cut bra and fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. She picked up the lace panties, hesitated for a moment as though trying to decide which would be worse—allowing him to catch a glimpse of her ass again as she pulled them up, or suffering the added indignity of heading home naked under her skirt. Finally she simply stuffed them into her purse and grabbed her jacket.
He sat back, taking in the show with nearly as much enjoyment as he had when she was disrobing. “I’ll expect you in the office at 9 A.M. tomorrow,” he said mildly.
Rylie shot him an evil look and slammed the door as she strode out of his office.
* * *
All the endorphins had worn off and Rylie yelped when her aching bottom hit the leather seat of the car. It was fortunate that there were no cops around as she drove home. Rylie broke every traffic law, speeding like a madwoman and cursing Neill Sullivan at the top of her lungs the whole way.
Her mood didn’t improve once she got home. The first thing she saw was the infamous bottle of Jack Daniel’s that had gotten her into all this trouble, still lying in the middle of the living room floor. She threw the empty liquor bottle across the room, where it shattered against the wall with a satisfying crash. Ranting and raving, her tirade continued until, finally spent, she sagged to her knees, sobbing bitterly.
“How could I have been so stupid?” she asked the tear-streaked face looking back at her in the full-length mirror that reflected the city lights on one wall. “I don’t know what was worse—getting drunk and making those calls or allowing myself to get so turned on that I actually asked that chauvinistic asshole to fuck me after he spanked my ass like a naughty schoolgirl.
“Never again,” she vowed aloud, kneeling there on the plush carpet like a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara. “I may have to live with the consequences of my actions for the next six months. I may even have to submit to another spanking at some point, but I’ll never let Neill Sullivan turn me into a wanton slut again. Beg him to spank me? Hah! He can kiss my ass!”
She tossed and turned in bed that night, sleeping first on one side, then on the other. Every time she rolled over and her sore bottom came in contact with the mattress, unbidden images poured into her head—images of being draped helplessly across those strong thighs, powerful hands smacking her hot, stinging ass again and again, then bending her over the desk as he brazenly probed her most private parts. And despite her anger, Rylie felt a shameful th
rill of arousal.
The next morning, she dressed for her first day at Sullivan and Sons with special care. Her long wavy hair was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her neck. She wore a no-nonsense gray wool suit and white blouse buttoned to the neck, but some perverse instinct had her change from sensible gray shoes to a pair of wine-red stiletto heels just before she walked out the door.
When she arrived at the office, a wisp of a girl who looked like she was barely out of her teens was waiting for her at the elevator. She wore a flowing calf-length black dress with platform-heeled shoes that had a dizzying array of buckles and straps all the way up to her ankles. With half a dozen colorful earrings dangling from one ear and lime green nail polish that matched a single streak in her spiky black hair, she looked more like the hot young thing Rylie imagined Neill would have as his private secretary than the pleasant, matronly woman who met her at his door last night. Although Rylie had chosen her outfit to project an air that was strictly business, the girl’s hip style made her feel dowdy.
“You must be Ms. Duncan,” she said brightly. “I’m Ashlaigh—that’s with an ‘aigh,’ not an ‘ey.’ Neill asked me to show you around this morning and make sure that you have everything you need.”
Rylie gave her a tight smile but didn’t bother to shake hands. The young woman ushered her down a long carpeted hall, pointing out various offices and mentioning names, some of which were familiar to Rylie. She’d met several of the architects and engineers from the firm in the course of business over the last year. As they retired, Neill was replacing the older workers his father had hired when the firm was founded with a new generation. Sullivan and Sons currently had the reputation of being on the cutting edge of green technology, incorporating the latest in energy-saving design and sustainable, recycled building materials.
At the end of the hall, Ashlaigh opened the door to an airy, bright office. Windows on two walls gave a birds-eye view of spring flowers blooming on the trees that lined the street below. The furniture was sparse and modern—clean-lined black desk facing one wall of windows with a comfortable-looking charcoal gray leather armchair behind it. A pair of molded Lucite chairs in metallic silver stood side by side at an angle, with a polished chunk of tree trunk stripped of bark serving as a table between them. The desktop was bare except for a white orchid in a square bronze planter.
Rylie stepped closer. The orchid bore a small card. ‘Welcome’ was written with a bold black pen, followed by the single letter N. She snorted. There weren’t enough flowers in all of Atlanta to make up for what he’d done last night.
Ashlaigh was saying something about meetings and schedules. Rylie dragged her attention back and caught the last few words.
“…at eleven, if that’s all right with you. I’ll come and get you and show you to the conference room. If you need anything, just pick up the phone and hit seven.”
Rylie looked around the room, finally noticing a clunky old-fashioned pushbutton black phone sitting on a long cabinet behind the desk. Ashlaigh saw her expression and laughed. “That’s one of my cost-cutting ideas. Those retro phones… they’re practically giving them away on ebay. Neill just loves it when I slash design costs by recycling old things to mix in with the new.”
Rylie raised her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself properly. I’m Ashlaigh Banfield, head of interior design here at Sullivan and Sons. Neill brought me on board about a year ago, right after I worked with him on a project at his personal residence while I was at the Atlanta Design Center. He’s been branching out into the residential field, doing more and more high-end construction and remodeling jobs for super busy young professionals who want to be able to move into their new, completely furnished condo on a Saturday morning and host a casual brunch for their friends by Sunday afternoon.”
Rylie tried to cover her surprise. This skinny waif who looked like she’d be right at home at a Steampunk convention was Sullivan’s choice to head up a new branch of his company? She’d badly misjudged the girl. Maybe she’d better not make snap judgments about anyone else at Sullivan and Sons, beginning with the boss.
Rylie watched Ashlaigh as she headed out the door and found herself wondering if Sullivan had ever turned that tight little bottom over his knees after hours. Angrily, she pushed those thoughts out of her head and began unpacking her briefcase. She sat her laptop in the center of the desk and pulled out a yellow legal pad. Rummaging around for a pen, she reached into her purse—and came up with a wispy handful of lace. She stared at the panties for a moment, remembering the intense arousal she’d felt when she was peeling them off last night while Sullivan watched.
“Going commando again, Ms. Duncan?”
Neill Sullivan was standing in the doorway. Rylie blushed and crammed the panties back into her purse.
“I was—I was just…”
He gave her a wicked little smile, but then began discussing her duties as the new head of the legal department, as though the intimate events of last night had never happened.
“I see you’ve met Ash. I’d like you to sit down with her in the next day or two and sketch out a boilerplate contract we can use for all our residential construction from now on. I have a meeting scheduled in about an hour that I’d like you to sit in on. I’m going to be examining liability issues if environmental hazards are discovered in the future on projects we’ve been involved with. I need to know how we can protect ourselves.”
From that moment on, the day flew by. Rylie could see that in her new position, she’d be called upon to carry out a much wider range of duties than she’d had at Zenith Construction. She sat in on several meetings that day, saying very little but observing everything. Sullivan treated her with the utmost respect and courtesy, never giving another hint that he expected anything from her other than a professional relationship.
Late in the afternoon, as they sat alone in the conference room, he asked her opinion on several of the issues his staff had raised in the last meeting. Unlike her previous boss, he listened carefully to her remarks and Rylie felt that he valued her input. As the day wore on, he made no reference to any after-hours job requirements and she’d begun to wonder if last night’s episode had just been Sullivan seizing a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get into her pants while satisfying some kinky spanking fetish.
He glanced at his watch as he rose. “You’ve done a great job today, Rylie. I think you’ll fit in very well here at Sullivan and Sons. By the way, I’ve sent you a text with the address of my house, so you can plug it into your GPS. I live just north of the Perimeter, about half an hour away. If you have no objection, I’d like you to start promptly at six every day. That way you’ll still have part of every evening to spend as you choose after your duties as my personal assistant are completed.”
She stared at him, horrified. “You can’t seriously expect me to go along with that insane condition of my employment here?”
He looked back at her with no trace of amusement on his face. “What gave you the idea that I wasn’t serious about requiring you to act as my unpaid personal assistant for two hours each day after work? I thought I made it quite clear that your employment here was conditional on accepting all the terms of my offer.”
Ignoring the stunned look on her face, he headed for the door, then turned. “I want you wearing nothing under that skirt when you arrive at my house. It will save you the trouble of removing your panties when you get there. You have a spanking due for losing your temper and slamming the door to my office when you left last night—along with five strokes of the paddle for suggesting I go to hell.”
* * *
Sullivan kept the smile off his face until he was in the hallway. All day, throughout the endless meetings, he’d been reliving last night’s events. He’d planned on the spanking. But her passionate response had come as a welcome surprise. Feeling how wet she’d gotten from the spanking over his lap, then hearing her gasps and moans when he began pleasuring her—his coc
k was ready to explode. He had to have her, right then. It had taken every bit of willpower he had to prolong the act, tormenting himself as much as he was tantalizing her.
Rylie was smart, stubborn, and strong. But underneath the all-business façade she presented to the world, he sensed there was a woman who desperately wanted a man who was even stronger, someone who would make her feel protected and cherished, someone who would take charge in a relationship. In Neill’s experience, women who competed toe-to-toe with men in suits all day often secretly longed for a primal alpha male who would unleash their wild side when they came home at night.
Rylie had a wild side. Of that he was sure. He’d seen it, felt it, in her response to his stern discipline. But he believed she had been taken by surprise at the depth of her arousal from it. Neill had unearthed a hidden hunger in Rylie. He was enough of a student of human nature to understand that this woman was just as angry with herself today as she was with him—perhaps even more so. He could tell that she looked upon her intense physical reaction to him as a sign of weakness. Instead of letting go and reveling in it, she’d buttoned up her sexual self even tighter around him, as evidenced by the severe gray suit and white blouse she chose today. But the shoes were a clue. Those blatantly sexy red stiletto heels were a cry from the sensuous, uninhibited woman he met last night. “Set me free, set me free,” they chanted over and over as they clicked down the halls. “I want you to set me free.”
It had been a very long time since a woman stirred his dominant streak the way R. L. Duncan did. But this one would be no easy conquest. He knew that, although she looked upon it as shameful, deep inside she’d found her brief introduction to submission strangely compelling. Now it would take a tantalizing blend of seduction and domination on his part to make her embrace this newly discovered thrill. Sullivan relished a challenge. As he headed home, he decided he was definitely going to enjoy the next six months.
Bared and Tamed Page 4