by Qwillia Rain
Here she stood, her belongings stuffed into closets and drawers, barely filling a third of the space allotted her. The rest of her things, furniture, books, everything either settled in some other room in the house or placed in storage here on the property. Running her gaze over the furniture surrounding her, Mattie shook her head. This was so much more than what she was used to.
The silk veil had been removed hours earlier. Her sister had helped loosen the complex knot of interlaced braids created by the hairdresser Jacob had hired. Untangling each of the braids and brushing her hair had taken only a few minutes, but it didn’t settle the nerves that jangled and jumped.
Still, even as comfortable as she was with Pirate’s Folly and the nearly two-dozen rooms that made up the mansion, she couldn’t bear to remain in their room a moment longer. Slipping out the dressing room door of her suite, she hesitated, wondering if Bryce would be near enough to catch her, or if her sister might find her wandering the halls in her wedding gown. Each thud of her heels as she crossed the carpet runner had her wincing. Kicking them off at the base of the spiral staircase leading up to one of the turrets, she gathered her skirts and hurried up the steps.
Having never been to this floor in the house, Mattie paused in the arched doorway of the staircase. Another archway stood across the wide hallway diagonal from her position, but only two doors opened into the area. Both were closed. Moving to the one closest, she tested the knob and found it locked.
The other door opened easily.
Fading sunlight filtered through the twin sets of French doors and the skylight above, casting a crimson glow over the canvases stacked against the wall, the few chairs tucked into corners, and the paint-spattered table covered in a jumble of brushes, tins, bottles, and palettes. Set between the French doors, not against the wall or near the center of the circular room, but halfway between, was a wide bed with four thick posts supporting the iron canopy; white silk sheets covered the high mattress and a mound of pillows lay scattered at one end of the bed.
She knew about Bryce’s interest in painting. The nautical scenes decorating his office and hers were his work, but she’d never been into his studio. In the center of the room, directly beneath the skylight, a painting rested on an easel. It was larger than any she’d ever seen in the offices and the braided black leather framing the canvas piqued her curiosity.
With the light fading through the windows, she reached for the switch beside the door. Lamps, scattered around the room, offered only a dim glow, but it was enough as she stepped around the easel and froze. Her heart stopped, then resumed thumping in a ragged, excited beat. The heat between her thighs and the gathering moisture had her cursing the overactive imagination that allowed the image before her to come to life in her mind.
* * *
The brief summary spelled out his suspicions in black-and-white.
“Sorry it took so long to get the information, Bryce.” David Henderson turned from his examination of the books on the shelves to meet Bryce’s gaze.
“I understand,” he assured the investigator before his gaze dropped to read the last line of the report for the third time.
As confirmed through interviews and information filed with subject’s personal physician, subject has never participated in sexual intercourse with any partners, male or female.
“You’ll send the bill to the Folly.” He closed the file and slid it into the desk drawer before rising from his chair.
“Of course.”
The hesitation in the younger man’s voice had Bryce pausing to sit on the corner of his desk. “You have something to say?”
David scratched at the neatly trimmed goatee framing his mouth, seeming to debate whether he would voice his comment. Apparently his need to say it overrode his caution. “I figure if you act fast, you can have an annulment wrapped up before the end of the month.”
Bryce fought the urge to laugh. He’d trained this man, so he understood David’s misconceptions. Without realizing it, his right hand moved to worry the ring on his left. Its unfamiliar weight was strangely comfortable. “There won’t be an annulment, David.”
The younger man stared at him. “But your rule…”
Bryce shook his head. “No annulment.”
David seemed to think about it for a moment before he shrugged, his hands tucked into his dress slacks. “At least she was conscientious about birth control.”
“Explain.” Even Bryce was surprised at the irritation filling his voice at this information.
“According to her doctor’s records, Miss Lawrence can’t use birth control pills. Something about side effects. So about two weeks ago, she was fitted for a diaphragm. It came in day before yesterday and she picked it up.”
He didn’t ask how David had gained access to the confidential information about his wife. The man’s covert skills were something he’d admired and relied on since David had taken over Henderson Investigative Services when David’s father retired three years earlier. Instead Bryce nodded and thanked him before following the younger man out of the study.
The stairs leading up to the family bedrooms stood to his right as he watched David let himself out the front door. They’d seen most of the guests off before Lawrence and he had drifted toward the stairs. David’s request to talk to him had caught him halfway up, so he’d left his bride to go to their adjoining rooms alone.
Bryce controlled his need to curse. Her damned stubborn refusal to wait before having any children would drive him insane. More than likely she would relent on the time frame she’d given, but he didn’t want to wait. A child would connect them. It would forge a link she couldn’t walk away from, no matter how hard she might try. He could read the mistrust she carried about his commitment to their relationship, but he wouldn’t allow her to hide from it.
Since their confrontation over the prenuptial contract, he’d been contemplating actions that would test their relationship but at the same time solidify Mattie’s connection to him. With this last bit of information, he was pretty damned sure, distasteful as it may be, it could be the only move left for him. Turning away from the temptation to join his wife, Bryce entered the formal sitting room.
“You don’t look like a man anticipating his wedding night,” Richard teased from his seat on the sofa.
Anticipating, hell, Bryce thought. His cock was hard and more than willing to spend the next week sating every need he’d held in check for most of the last decade. In answer to Richard, he smiled. “Just making sure the guests have been seen to.”
“With the way you’ve been plotting this, I’d’ve thought guests would be the last thing on your mind.”
An unusual anger slid through him. “Worried you’ll have to wait longer than usual to fuck my woman?”
The very stillness that surrounded Richard had Bryce cursing silently. Setting his glass on the table, Richard rose and crossed to face him. “Do you want to say that again, old friend?”
Thrusting his fingers through his hair, Bryce shook his head. “No. My apologies, Rich.”
“I’m not the one you should be worried about, Bryce.” Shaking his head, Richard stood beside him, arms crossed, eyes carefully scrutinizing him. “You don’t actually think you’ll be able to share her, do you?”
A part of him wanted to growl at the very thought of letting another man touch what was his. With the report confirming his suspicions about his wife’s virginity, a primal part of him reveled in knowing that he was the first to bring her to orgasm, and he would be the first to slide deep into her tight, wet sheath. Another part whispered just how much more intense her climax would be when he introduced her to the pleasure to be had from a ménage.
Shoving that possessive beast down deep, he faced his friend and business associate. “Of course. How is this any different than any of the other women we’ve shared?” Even with the words spoken, he could see Richard doubted his assurances.
“This is Mattie we’re talking about, Bryce,” Richard reminded him,
returning to his seat to retrieve his drink. “She’s not like any of the subs we’ve trained or the women we’ve been involved with before.”
“She’s more, Rich.” Bryce smiled as he recalled the various punishments his woman had endured during the trial period she’d insisted on. “I’ve never seen a woman who was more perfectly suited as a submissive than Lawrence.”
“And a ménage?”
“That as well.” Bryce forced the words out despite the twisting in his belly. “She’ll take to it as naturally as she took to spanking.”
“But what about you?” Richard asked. “Will you be able to handle the repercussions?”
For that question, Bryce had no answer.
“Answer something for me, Bryce?” Richard asked, leaning back in his seat.
“If I can.”
“Why do you always call her ‘Lawrence’?” Richard chuckled. “Since the first day she started working for us, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call her by her first name.”
Bryce actually had to laugh as he contemplated how to answer. Tucking his hands into his trouser pockets, he shrugged. “It was safer to call her by a man’s name.”
“Why?”
“Keeps me from having to hide a permanent erection.” His grin had Richard laughing. “I figured if I called her by a man’s name, it would give me just enough time to keep from imagining her naked and spread out for my attentions; then I could control my cock enough to avoid getting into too much trouble.”
* * *
The sight of her shoes halted his hand as it reached for the bedroom doorknob. Discarded at the base of the stairs leading up to his studio, Bryce couldn’t stifle the grin at what she would have discovered if she’d entered the room. Bending to collect her heels, he moved up the steps, careful to make as little noise as possible. The glow of the lamps and sunset spilled across the honey-colored wood floor as he crossed to the studio door and looked inside.
Mine. The word echoed in his head as he watched her standing before his painting, her gaze focused on the canvas. The light of the dying sun cast a crimson glow around her body, glinting like flames on the unbound curls hanging to her waist.
In his mind, the years rolled back and the image of another woman in a white gown on her wedding day superimposed itself over the features of his wife. Instead of long, curly brown hair, she wore her soft blonde hair in shoulder-length waves that framed her peaches-and-cream face. At eight, he’d known Miss Helen was beautiful. She was also well loved, not only by his father but also himself. She’d been the perfect mother to him for the eight years before he turned sixteen. It hadn’t been until years after her death, when he’d moved to California and inherited Pirate’s Folly and the Diablo Blanco Club from his great-uncle, that he’d realized how much his father had loved her as well as his mother.
Neither of his mothers had been submissives or even interested in the lifestyle his father had participated in before his marriages or after their deaths. Jacob’s love for both women was deep enough that he’d suppressed the very nature he’d been raised and trained to use. The intensity of his feeling was reflected in the pain his father suffered with each of their losses. A hurt Bryce had felt with Miss Helen’s death and which he never wanted to endure again. Bryce slammed the door on his memories and the emotions associated with them.
A master controls no one if he cannot control himself. The phrase ran through his mind, recalling him to his determination for absolute control. He needed to maintain the necessary barrier between his emotions and the women in his life. Mattie would be no different. He would make sure she wasn’t.
Blinking, he refocused on the woman he’d exchanged vows with. She belonged to him. Despite her not having said the words, he knew her feelings for him, and he’d be damned if he let her five-year plan take her away from him. No, she’d trusted him to lead her body into pleasures she’d only read about. He wasn’t about to let her get away after having waited eight years to have her. As underhanded and devious as it might seem, his action would force one of the boundaries she’d tried to establish, and he decided as he silently set her shoes on a chair beside the door and entered the room, no matter what it took, he’d make sure she never left him.
“Well?” Mattie heard the deep Southern drawl of her husband as she stood before the life-size canvas.
Refusing to turn, she shrugged. “What do you want me to say?” She swallowed to clear the obstruction that made her voice sound like the croak of a sick frog.
The sound of the door closing and his steps as he crossed the room to her side had her heart hammering so hard, she wondered if it would break through her chest.
“The truth.” Bryce’s voice whispered past her ear as he moved behind her, eyeing the painting over her head.
She could hear the grin in his voice. You don’t want the truth, Mattie thought to herself as she fought the fire in her belly while examining the artwork. Each powerful brushstroke was evident in the rich earth tones, gold and brown, that accented the subject. The broad canvas, framed with tightly braided strips of supple black leather, stirred her in ways she didn’t want to examine. More than any of the things she’d done with Bryce during the week of her testing, this painting frightened her.
It was the focus that caused her heart to stop, then lurch into rapid palpitations at the same time she felt her breasts swell, her nipples peak, and her pussy grow damp as she gazed upon the image of two men entwined around a single woman. The graphic depiction of a ménage wasn’t what created the sudden fear and anticipation that flooded Mattie’s system. It was the uncanny resemblance the three people in the painting bore to her, Bryce, and Richard.
The woman’s hands were bound over her head with a loop painted and attached to the leather framing the canvas and her face turned away from the viewer. The cascade of thick brown curls caught in the tight fist of the man sinking his cock into the woman’s ass were similar to the curls she’d just tugged a brush through a few minutes earlier.
The faces of both men were also turned away, with the one in front suckling a breast as he fucked her, while the one behind buried his face in the curls at the woman’s nape. The color of their hair was similar to the white blond shoulder-length waves Bryce sported and the mink brown curls Richard kept tamed by cropping them close to his head.
“Lawrence?”
Bryce’s voice drew Mattie from the fantasy induced by the image before her. “Yes…well,” she stammered, then cleared her throat. She pretended disinterest as she turned away from the painting. “It’s…nice.” Her nerves had her twisting the wedding and engagement rings on her finger, still not used the weight of the thick platinum bands. She moved toward one of the French doors, wondering if there was a staircase leading down from the widow’s walk that she might use to escape.
Bryce’s chuckle whispered through the quiet room. He seemed to read her discomfort and moved closer as Mattie watched him over her shoulder. The distance to the door was short, but she knew there was no way she’d make it past him.
Why she would be so frightened she didn’t know. In the eight years they’d worked together he’d never once hurt her physically. And the week he’d spent reassuring her that any punishments he meted out she could handle had only proven that the pain he inflicted was more as a stimulant to pleasure than as a means to do harm.
Resolved to overcome this irrational fear, Mattie settled her hands at her waist and turned fully to face him, her mien of bravado firmly in place. If she was going to survive in this marriage, she would have to make it clear that submitting to him sexually was one thing, but knuckling under to his Dominant nature was quite another.
“What else do you want me to tell you, Bryce? That the painting is erotic and a little startling?” She watched him move closer and she took an involuntary step to the side, coming up against one of the posts of the bed. Reaching out, she held the smooth column and waited.
“It is…nice.” His voice dropped to a sexy purr. “But, Lawren
ce, does it make you wet?”
Chocolate brown clashed with ice green for several breathless seconds before Mattie turned away without replying. Her hands gripped the post, and her damp forehead pressed into the cool wood as she fought the arousal his words and the painting stirred. Yes, she was wet, and she knew he wanted her that way, but was it because he felt something for her or because he found it arousing to control her passion? The questions were getting harder to answer, not easier.
The stroke of his hand along the side of her throat didn’t help her concentration either. The brush of his lips against her neck as he eased her hair over her shoulder, exposing the back of her gown, had her knuckles going white.
“Did I tell you how beautiful you look today?” he asked, his hands sliding over the ivory silk brocade to the twin pearls holding the Mandarin collar closed.
“Yes.” Her breath hitched, then shuddered out of her lungs as the pearls were slipped free. The collar eased open as the callused tips of his fingers traced the narrow triangles of silk securing her long, tight sleeves to the bodice of her gown, while leaving her back bare from shoulder blades to the dimples above her bottom. Only the eight strands of pearls offered any covering as they draped the back of her dress from one side to the other.
“Your sister created the illusion of innocence while acknowledging the siren’s power of seduction.” His body pressed close. His fingertips drifted across the ropes of pearls, finding the hidden hooks and slipping them free.
Watching him from over her shoulder, Mattie marveled at the heat darkening his eyes as they rose to meet hers. The last and longest strand of pearls pooled in the draped cloth at the base of her spine. The clear plastic bands that had helped to secure the dress snug against her torso had been attached to the same hooks as the pearls. With the loosening of each, only the pressure of the post kept the gown from slipping.
“Now this”—Bryce’s fingers pulled aside the last rope and skimmed the silk just beneath the dimples above her bottom—“has tempted me all afternoon.”