by Christa Wick
I swapped the razor for the scissors and started to cut. I had the bottom edges cut and was about to drag the chair back over to cut along the top when the phone on the desk rang. I wanted to ignore it and finish unwrapping the portrait, but there was the chance Jo hadn't been able to reach my cell and was dialing my room with news of Mishka.
"Hello?" I answered, cradling the phone against my ear as I tugged the chair in place with both hands.
A woman's crisp British accent informed me that St. Simon was on his way up.
"Stop him!" I blurted.
"Miss?" Her tone sounded like I'd just sworn that the earth was flat. "I'm sorry, but he's already on the way up. The elevator doors closed as you were answering."
With no time for politeness, I hung up and returned to the package. I wasted a few seconds trying to decide if I should immediately begin sealing the paper or seeing as much as I could and doing a quick and dirty re-wrap. The seconds were wasted because I knew my rope master had insisted on his anonymity. Rick wouldn't have included the man's face in the portrait.
I jerked the roll of tape from the desk and dropped to my knees.
"Damn it!" I swore at my stupidity. "Why didn't I back out when that son of a bitch sprung another person on me? Idiot, idiot, idiot!"
I had just finished calling myself an idiot for the third time when a confident rap of knuckles landed against the door to my suite. Apparently the elevators ran faster when the big boss was in them -- or I had spent more time in indecision than I realized.
"Just a minute!" I yelled, hoping my voice was loud enough to cover the distance and penetrate heavy doors that were meant to provide a nearly absolute noise barrier. Messily, I finished taping the bottom and started running the roll up the vertical cut I had made.
I heard a beep, the sound telling me St. Simon had just swiped his all-access card. My lungs seized and my bladder almost emptied until I remembered that I had set the inside latch.
"Pushy bastard," I hissed under my breath. Whether he had heard my order for him to wait or not, it was just like him to disregard both my wishes and my boundaries. The man would call me any time before midnight and after five in the morning no matter how many times I reminded him what the hour was in Dallas.
Simon was such a royal pain, he could be the freaking King of England!
Stretching all the way up on my tiptoes, my arm extended over my head, I finished my rushed job of re-taping the paper so that the portrait beneath was shielded. Mumbling unflattering words about my unwanted visitor who was several hours early, I quick-stepped to the doors, sweating and undoubtedly flushed as I yanked them open.
"I told you..." My reprimand trailed off as I got my first look at the man.
This couldn't be Simon St. Simon. Not that I had been able to find a picture of him, but this man didn't match my image of my very British pain in the ass. I had searched online, found nothing, then casually asked both of my brothers what he looked like. Jake had never met the man and Dylan only glowered at the question because St. Simon had the dubious honor of being the only person to ever best my powerful big brother at business. Dylan might never forgive the win.
So I had nothing more than St. Simon's voice to go by in forming a mental picture of his looks. High, almost lilting and definitely theatrical, his voice had me picturing him as a bit of a dandy, not very masculine, and either very diminutive in size or twice as fluffy as I was.
The phone voice and speech mannerisms did not match the face and body in front of me. Not in a million years!
"I know we agreed to meet later," he smiled, gently pushing his way into the room despite my death grip on the doors. "But something exceedingly important came up for this evening, so I decided to drop by now."
I turned and stared in open surprise. Not only did my visitor not look like the picture I had formed of Simon, but the voice wasn't the least bit familiar despite the far too many hours I'd spent in telephone conversations with him heatedly arguing over design aspects of the London hotel.
I took another quick, discreet glance at the hard, lean body hiding beneath an expensively tailored silk suit. This couldn't be St. Simon. It just couldn't. Maybe the card I had heard swiped was a regular room card and this man was lost while St. Simon had somehow been delayed on the elevator, perhaps running into staff who desperately needed his attention.
"Simon..." I started hesitantly. If he was the wrong man, then use of the name would clear up the issue immediately.
"Riona?" he said with a teasing lilt I half recognized. He turned in the small entry area to look at me, pale green eyes sparkling with mischief. "I am the only one you're expecting, I hope."
Holy crap -- it was him. This was beyond wrong. In a desperate desire for it to not be true, I had almost talked myself out of any meaning in finding the package here or the room decorated with flashes of that perfect shade of cerise. Through all that cutting and re-taping, I was no more than a microsecond from convincing myself that Rick had found out I would be in London and thought it would be hilarious to make me go through customs with the painting.
Now, I was once again facing the very real possibility that St. Simon, who had a body that was definitely similar to all the thick muscles and powerful limbs of my rope master, was the man who had tied me up and made me climax in Rick's studio.
He repeated his query. "No one else on your calendar, correct?"
"Of course I'm only expecting you." I stumbled past my embarrassment and closed the doors. "It's just that you don't sound at all like your phone voice."
I stopped myself before I stupidly confessed to having searched far and wide on the Internet for a picture of him.
He chuckled lightly. "Admittedly, my voice tends to go a touch higher when I'm highly amused. I imagine the phone exacerbates the difference."
I froze. Did the bastard just say he found our calls highly amusing? Or was it that he found me highly amusing, his high voice on the phone evidence that he thought of me as the spoiled little rich girl playing at being a designer of any sort? Maybe it was the little trick he had played with Rick's help that had layered his voice in merriment?
And just how damn long had they been planning it?
Lifting my chin, I strode past him as I responded. "I just arrived and am not ready for the meeting. If you can't discuss the designs tonight, then it will have to wait for tomorrow or later in the week."
Stopping, I looked over my shoulder and gave a dismissive wave of my hand that indicated he needed to leave. I hadn't grown up as my daddy's daughter without learning how to put on a good show of being an imperious, stuck up brat. Simon might be a jerk by natural inclination, but I had more than twenty years of practicing my bitch face. And he if thought he was going to get the best of me with that damn charade in New York, he had more than another think coming. I didn't care how lovely or expensive my boots were, he would find one of them up his ass if I learned he had played me like that!
His oh-so-fine ass...
I suppressed a snarl at my overactive libido and continued walking away, expecting to hear the sound of a few short steps from Simon, the doors closing and then nothing but my own noises. Instead, the door shut, the latch slid back into place and Simon followed after me, his long legs bringing him quickly by my side before he pulled ahead of me and reached the desk before I did.
Giving a casual nod at the covered picture, he sank into the guest chair in front of the desk. "I hope the staff didn't have a hand in that tape job," he laughed lightly, more of his high tone returning. "I'd have to fire the lot of them."
Confused, I circled the desk and sat down wondering whether the sudden, but brief, change in his voice signaled only amusement at the fast and dirty job I'd don'e of taping the edges back together or if he couldn't refrain from enjoying his little joke back in New York.
If, of course, he was my rope master and I wasn't over-analyzing everything and placing too much importance on the appearance of the painting in London and that shade of cerise
in the room.
"Do you know?" he asked, bouncing to his feet and swiping the roll of tape from the top of my desk.
For the second time in less than fifteen minutes, I felt like my bladder was going to empty. Was he asking me if I knew he was Baku?
"Know what?" I managed to croak out.
"If the staff did this or the sender?" he huffed. "It's a damn shoddy piece of taping. Perhaps the shipping company damaged it in transit and had to re-seal it. Who handled it?"
He ripped off a long piece of tape and started to place it along the top edge, his extra foot of height over my shorter stature meaning he barely had to raise his hands over his head to place and smooth the tape. Taking a step back, he looked the package over from top to bottom then shook his head.
"No, that won't do. We'll need to trim those patched areas of the paper." he turned, his hand outstretched and his gaze dead serious. "Hand me the scissors, pudding."
Certain my face was turning beet red, I grabbed the scissors from the desk's surface and shoved them in the drawer. I waited until I could speak without stuttering and then I turned a withering glare on Simon. "I told you not to call me that again."
A simpleton's smile graced his face and then his brows pinched together. "When?"
I thought back, my own brows pinching when I realized the first and only other time he had used the endearment was shortly after my trip to New York. I didn't want the time frame to have any meaning. I couldn't comprehend who this man in front of me was. I just knew who I didn't want him to be -- my rope master.
"Almost three months ago," I growled, my hands wrapped tight around the armrests of my chair.
"And I haven't used it since?" his grin hinted that he knew the answer. He looked exactly like a toddler caught climbing on the countertops of his mother's kitchen so he could reach the cookie jar she'd hidden from his precious, but greedy, little hands.
Damn, he was mouthwateringly gorgeous. He didn't need to be so damn cute at the same time. That was exactly the kind of grin that women gave into. And the bastard knew it!
But that didn't mean he was my rope master. He was having a go at needling me like he always did in our phone conversations. The calls never ended until he had managed to get my temper up, an angry passion coating my words.
I rolled my lips, looking for some measure of self-control. "That shoddy tape job is mine, Simon. And I like it just the way it is and it's not something you have any say in."
At least I hoped he didn't have any say in it -- hoped like hell he hadn't been the one to tape it in the first place.
"I think we can end the purpose of my trip today," I continued, trying to regain control of the conversation. "Seeing the changes to this suite so that it's almost completely restored to my original design, I can return to the States tomorrow after we agree on one last concession."
His mouth twisted until it looked suspiciously like a pout. He recovered quickly, his face returning to an amused mask as he settled gracefully in the guest chair. His hands turned palm up in a gesture of good will.
"So what's left to concede?" he asked. He scooted his chair closer then planted his elbows on the top of the desk, his firm chin resting atop his clasped fingers as those seafoam green eyes of his focused like a laser on my face.
I pulled my hands from the desk and folded them in my lap, suddenly aware of the acute ache that had taken possession of my pussy. Discreetly, I lifted my nose and tried to catch Simon's scent. The cerise fabric sprinkled around the room was one of two vivid sensory details I had from my only meeting with my rope master. The second was the man's fragrance, something I had never encountered before and had not found again despite several hours at high end stores at the men's counter sampling every single bottle of cologne in stock.
All I could smell from Simon was a hint of Calvin Klein's Obsession, pleasant, but not the fresh cut oranges punctuated with walnuts and oakwood that I remembered from Rick's studio.
My eyes drifted shut, my stomach quickly growing as hungry as my cunt as I remembered my rope master's scent.
"Pudding..."
My eyes jumped open to glare at Simon in reprimand. He flashed another one of his grins at me and shrugged in an unconvincing apology.
"What's left to concede?" he repeated.
"I know you can't help but change at least one aspect of everything that comes across your desk," I stated flatly, my pulse rate beginning to recede to a state approaching normal. "But the all black playrooms are overbearing."
"You can have that ghastly mauve back," he started with a wave of his hand at the nearest cushion sporting the cerise stripe.
"No," I shook my head, not wanting to give away just how very much I wanted to keep the new shade of pink. "In fact I'd like the name of the supplier."
"I'll have to dig through my records." Simon looked away, his appearance suddenly remote until his mouth quirked to one side in thought. "I wonder, have you ever been in a playroom? Not as a designer, but on one side or another of the game?"
I frowned at his use of the word "game." I feared that far too much of what Simon did in life was a game to him and I knew that both of my brothers disliked the euphemisms that dressed up the domination and submission lifestyle in terms more acceptable to general society -- playrooms and, as Simon had just indicated, games. Dylan, I knew, referred to his room as "The Keep," which seemed downright medieval to me, but also infinitely more exciting than "playroom."
"I didn't think so," Simon said after I had failed to answer his question. "While the activity within the room focuses primarily on the submissive's pleasure, the room is itself a reflection of the dominant's personality -- which is why the rooms at this hotel will be black."
I could feel my face contorting with confusion. The color without any offset in his design save for a few accents of cold polished pewter for knobs and fixtures turned me claustrophobic. How could a submissive find pleasure in a room like that.
"I don't understand," I managed at last.
"Simple, really," Simon answered, his steepled fingers unclasping as he placed his palms flat on the white polished surface and smoothed them across the desk until he all but embraced my edge of the piece of furniture. "Dominants are dark inside. We absorb your light, Riona, the light you release at the height of your pleasure, its rays refracted a thousand times in each drop of perspiration dotting your skin, making your whole body glow..."
He trailed off, the lightly colored eyes shadowed by something I couldn't name. My pulse followed the descending pace of his words until I could no longer be certain that my heart was still beating.
Damn, he was insanely sexy -- and probably insane. The possibility that he was a fair distance from normal in his head was easy to overlook when he talked like that, using those words with that intense, but remarkably gentle, expression and a pale glitter in eyes thinly glazed with need.
I could feel my cream seeping through my panties and knew I was holding my breath, waiting for whatever he might say next. What came next was my damn cell phone chirping with Marjolein's ringtone. I pushed away from the desk with a startled reflex, snatching the phone as I gained my feet.
"I need to take this," I said, my words rushed. Simon lifted his chin slightly, his gaze that of some liege lord granting a subject's request.
"In private," I clarified with a low growl. Not only was the call's content likely to be sensitive, but I also desperately needed St. Simon out of my suite. He had my head all mixed up, my emotions running high. I still didn't know whether I should abandon the idea that he could possibly be my rope master or embrace it. All I had was that slip of color in the decor and the presence of the painting -- but the color seemed to have no meaning to him and the painting could have been a coincidence.
With a small lift of his finger, he gestured toward the double doors that led into the bedroom. "I'll wait, pudding."
Hitting the answer icon on my phone before Jo-Jo gave up and ended the call, I turned sharply on one heel and power walke
d into the bedroom as I barked a rough "hello" into my phone. Before Jo-Jo could respond, I slammed the heavy doors shut behind me, furious that Simon had ignored my veiled request for him to leave the suite and instead sent me sulking to my room like an ill-tempered child.
A soft, sunshine-filled laugh tickled my ear. "I thought your meeting with St. Simon wasn't until tonight?"
"What?" I said, barely bringing the volume of my question below another bad-mannered shout.
"I don't know anyone else who can get you even a tenth that pissed, Ree. Do you have him holding the other line? Or am I wrong altogether?"
"No on both counts," I answered with a whisper as I settled my broad bottom onto the bed. Instant comfort cushioned my ass, the mattress's down-filled fingers massaging the flesh so that I succumbed and rested my entire upper body against its heavenly surface. "He's in the outer room. Now please tell me we have good news about Mishka."
"Sorry, babe," she answered, her throat tightening on the last word. "We are still at no news. Now tell me about Simon. What's he look like?"
I heard a snort over the phone and realized Dylan must be sitting shoulder to shoulder with Marjolein. Growing up, I had never seen him display so much as an ounce of possessiveness or jealousy until he met Marjolein. He'd kept it well hidden, of course, in the two years they danced around one another. But now that she had his engagement ring on her finger, he didn't want to share her with anyone, not even to work with me. Thankfully, she was fully capable of bulldozing past his resistance.
It was cute, really, and I loved that my oldest brother was finally head-over-heels in love.
"Ignore that snort," Marjolein joked, "and spill the beans."
"He's okay," I lied by a long mile. The man was hot, even when he wasn't being a complete irritant, which seemed to be 95% of the time he was awake and breathing. "But the weird thing is, he doesn't sound anything like he does over the phone."