by Flora Dain
He pauses mid-stride to scowl at me, looking so like his brother I smile.
‘What?’ he snaps. ‘This is funny now? The same day I happen to tell you – what I told you – your best friend turns up with a file on the same guy and I’m supposed to believe that’s coincidence?’
I sigh. ‘Believe what you like. I didn’t ask to come here. Is it my fault Eldon tried to kill me? Ask your parents.’
He strides into his own room and slams the door. Soon I hear him on the phone. He sounds angry.
I pity the Boston office.
I’d like to see Billy but there’s no sign of her or Eldon. I guess they’re – busy. And I’m seriously worried for Darnley. Tonight of all nights the last thing he needs is a fight. He needs someone with him.
After an hour he’s still in his room making call after call. I can’t stand any more of this. I make a decision, take a quick shower and review my lingerie collection.
* * *
Ten minutes later I brush out my hair so it loops to my shoulders in a glossy curve, add a dash of extra scent and take one last glance in the mirror to check that my suspenders, fishnet stockings and wisps of scarlet lace make me look slutty enough. Satisfied, I step into my highest heels and knock lightly on his door.
He’s leaning back in an armchair, still in shirtsleeves, phone in one hand and a stiff drink in the other. His feet are propped up on a side table and the only light in the room is by his elbow. It pools on his jutting cheekbones and angular jaw, highlighting the hollow at the base of his throat.
As I pose in the doorway his eyes lock on mine. He ends the call, drops the phone and gulps the last of his drink. ‘You should be in bed.’
Deep in the shadows I see his eyes glitter.
‘So should you.’ With me. I stand very still, letting him take me in.
‘Come here.’
I move slowly. My heart leaps as he pats his knee and I lower myself onto his lap, splaying my thighs provocatively wide. Instantly I sense he’s very aroused. I start to throb in response. His fingers fold around my wrists where the marks are still vivid and I try not to flinch.
He watches me steadily, his face expressionless. ‘Where were we before we were interrupted?’
‘Talking about Freda,’ I say calmly. ‘Lydia mentioned her. You were close?’
His eyes narrow. ‘What else did she say?’ His grip on my wrists tightens painfully and I wince.
‘Just that. I know it’s none of my business …’ I tail off as his jaw stiffens.
He releases my hands and I rub the angry red marks left by the cuffs. His eyes gleam but he keeps his voice low. ‘You’re right. It’s none of your business. My private life is just that, private. Please remember that. Now tell me what you came in here for.’
My mouth feels dry. All at once my wild scheme to dress like a tramp and lure him to bed seems foolish. He’s got companies to run, business to see to and appointments to keep. He’s been trying to protect me. He’s even confided in me. And now the whole carefully constructed shield of secrecy he’s placed around his past to save his brother’s sanity is about to collapse and all I want is sex …
And even my friends are snapping at his heels. First Ryan steals his company’s invention and his girlfriend, and now my best friend of all people turns up with this …
I can see how it looks.
‘I thought you’d want some company. I guess I was wrong.’ I move to get off and he clamps his hands on my thighs, pinning me down.
His eyelids lower as a muscle moves in his cheek. ‘I said, “Tell me what you came for.”’
I’m mortified now, my voice rising. ‘Isn’t it obvious? There’s no need to –’
‘Tell me, dammit. What do you want? Say it.’
All at once he spreads his thighs, pushing mine wide apart where I straddle his lap. I gasp and clutch at him instinctively, scared of collapsing onto the floor. He grins and reaches down to cup my sex protectively in one hand, his fingers splaying wide and slipping deep into my passage.
I whimper as my arousal flares. He keeps his hand in place, his thumb moving gently over my hard, swelling bud, grazing it with a light touch that sends electricity shimmering all over my skin and raises the down all along my arms.
‘Is this what you want? Tell me. Be honest with me. You want me to feel you like this? You want me to fuck you? You want to feel my cock in your mouth, up inside you? Say it.’
Take me somewhere … Now he’s taking me. It’s a miracle – my plan’s working. With a surge of joy I lean forward and start to whisper obscenities into his ear, thrilling to the feel of his chest rising and falling against mine as his breathing grows more rapid and his heartbeat quickens.
I say things I would never in a million years have thought of saying until this minute and when I pause for breath he grins against my cheek and rises to his feet. I cling like a limpet and lock my arms around his chest and my legs round his waist. He grabs my thighs to support my weight as he carries me across the room and deposits me on the bed. Then he tears off his clothes once more and joins me – just as his phone signals again. Without looking at it he switches it off and throws it across the room.
Now I have his full attention. I push him back, hold him down when he tries to rise, and start to lick one of his tense little nipples. He laughs softly, giving in with good grace, and leans back on the pillows as I lick slowly across his chest to the other nipple, kissing as I go, letting my hair trail along his rippling muscles. I reach for his hard, jutting erection and caress it gently, pressing with my fingertips to explore the regions beyond, making him gasp.
At last he leans up over me and takes command, his expression intent. ‘I want to play.’ His eyes glimmer as he pronounces the last word. Instantly I sense we’re not talking Chinese checkers here but something dark and dirty.
Me too.
He hauls me back to the bedrail and now he simply binds my wrists with a scarf and loops me to the rail sunny side up, pushing my legs wide, forcing one foot onto the floor, pulling the other wide and cuffing my ankle to the far post. Now I’m splayed out on my back, trapped by one foot and both hands. The cold, unforgiving metal hurts when I move. I dread having to pull against it.
‘Are you OK like that or shall I gag you?’
What a strange question. I gaze at him mesmerised as he towers over me, a textbook example of hot, virile perfection.
‘Well?’ The edge in his tone warns me he’s impatient for an answer. I stare up at him in surprise.
‘It depends what you want to do. Did someone mention permissions?’
He lowers his body over mine and now I feel his erection, hot and hard, prodding at my belly, my thighs, my splayed dip, the deliberate, burning touches of his shaft on my skin a vivid reminder that it’s as eager and as desperate as I am.
‘I want to worship you with my tongue and then I want to torment you with my teeth and then I want to fuck.’ He sounds hoarse. His eyes gleam as he lists his needs. Instantly my sex throbs and my nipples stiffen as his words fall into the silence around us, building pictures of the fate that awaits me.
‘There you go,’ I murmur, ‘one more coincidence. Those are the very things I want too.’
His eyes gleam. ‘But if you cry out or make a noise I’m going to make you pay with a punishment. So here’s where you have to grant permission. You permit?’
Pay? Now we’re in uncharted territory but right now I’m too hot to check the map. ‘Punishment? What kind of punishment?’
He smiles slowly. ‘Oh, I’ll think of something. A few strokes of the lash on your tits, or I might make you finger yourself for a while. Or I might see how long you can hold out before you come if I squeeze you like this …’
I gasp as he pushes the fingers of one hand hard into me, his thumb grasping my stiff, swollen bud and pressing, his fingers jammed hard up against my G-spot. As a swelling climax jolts into view he eases the pressure and simply splays his fingers, sending fullness rippling th
rough me in little waves of pleasure while my swelling climax hovers, infuriating and unfulfilled.
‘You permit?’
I swallow. How can I deny this man anything? For days I’ve given him my body. After what he told me today I’d offer my soul if it helped him to heal.
And I want him so much …
‘I permit.’
It’s like I’ve lit a fuse. He descends on me, eager, hungry, his mouth all he promised, his tongue and his teeth all I’d hoped. As I writhe he growls low in his throat and jerks me back in place, wedging my free leg with his knee and twisting the scarf binding my arms, ensuring my rigid submission.
And now he leans over me and feasts, taking great mouthfuls of breast, pulling and sucking on them, teasing and probing my nipples and my aureoles with his teeth, tiny, tormenting nips that make me whimper for more.
Each time I move he frowns and jerks me back into position, clearly irritated, and when my moans get louder he leans up over me and glares down into my eyes. ‘Too loud. You just earned your first punishment. Now keep quiet, or you’ll earn another.’
I grin, beside myself with arousal now. This is fun. It’s turning into something much darker than I expected and surprisingly hard work, but I’m burning up for him, fascinated by what turns him on, curious to know if it turns me on too. ‘Can I join in?’
He pauses on his journey down my breastbone to my navel, where he’s probing with small darts of his tongue, teasing the edge of my small, round gap with tiny nips of his teeth, making my belly ripple in reflex. I long to cry out but I know he means what he says and I’m so fired up now any shriek or yell would probably wake the whole house.
He smiles at me, as cruel and hungry as his animal namesake.
‘You will, never fear. You think I take all this trouble for no reward? That’s not how I do business. Or pleasure.’
He moves lower, his hot mouth landing hard on the wide flatland of my lower belly where a stray hair on my curly, semi-trimmed snatch snags on his teeth and I shriek.
He leans up with a grin. ‘Aha. Another punishment. More severe this time – that was pretty loud. Too many of those and we’ll have some explaining to do in the morning.’
Now he curves over me and I feel his tongue surge deep between my legs, stronger than ever, questing, licking, his teeth following through as he gnaws at my sex-lips and nuzzles into my most private places, making me groan. I feel my juices pool. He pauses to trace the moisture with a fingertip while I writhe in protest.
‘Keep still. You’re making a small wet patch down here. This sheet will have to go to the laundry.’ He leans up over me with a grin. ‘Yet another punishment. You’re turning into a surprisingly bad girl. Now, did somebody say something about a reward? I think it’s time you earned your keep.’
He turns around and straddles my face as he leans over to kiss my splayed sex, his mouth and tongue as warm and loving on my unfurling petals as if he was kissing my mouth. The feeling is extraordinary. My orgasm, waiting all this time for a touch, any touch to set it aflame, starts to swell, building into a wall of heat that threatens any second to consume me.
I reach up to salute him with my mouth as his growing excitement makes his bulging, muscular root swell and gleam over my face. I drink in his heavy scent, all earth and spice and heat, letting it stoke my fires even higher, and lick gently. In response he torments me further by holding himself just out of reach and dipping down just long enough for me to touch him with my hot, eager tongue.
Now the torment really starts, as he begins a series of tiny, rhythmic assaults on my burning bud with his teeth, the darting needles of pain as shocking as they are arousing, and in seconds I know I’m about to come. But just as I’m about to tip over the edge he pulls away with a laugh. ‘You like? You’re so hard I think you’re close. But you’re not coming just yet. Now me.’
He shifts position and tilts his erection so the wide, glossy expanse looms over my face. From here it looks huge and with my arms bound, one leg captured in the unyielding handcuff and the other thigh pinned under his hand where he’s leaning with his full weight, I’m exquisitely helpless, my arousal all the hotter for my desperate entrapment.
‘Take it in your mouth and suck.’ His voice has dropped several notches and he’s not laughing. Reverently I reach up, tease him with my lips, lick gently. I hear him let out a long, deep sigh and he lowers himself into me. I open my mouth and my throat wide to take him in and hear his breath quicken as my eager mouth starts to work.
‘You look so beautiful with my cock in your mouth.’ His words are crude but his tone full of awe. ‘Suck harder, just at the tip.’
I do it and he eases away and holds his shaft over my face.
‘Now lick, all the way along. Both sides.’ His expression grows intense, his face contracted as if in pain.
‘I want to hold you,’ I pant. ‘I want to touch you, to feel you.’
He smiles down at me. ‘Too bad. Mouth only. And if you’re very good and make me come in the next few minutes I might let you off some of those things you just whispered in my ear.’
I laugh, kissing his hot ridged shaft with a playful brush of my lips. ‘I should be so lucky. They’re anatomically impossible, most of them.’
He grins again. ‘No harm in trying.’
Finally I finish him, swallowing lustily as he pumps into my mouth, and at last he releases me and collapses over me like a spent giant. And now I win my own small victory as he sinks swiftly and peacefully into deep sleep.
My plan has worked.
As I drift off too I seem to be floating in a sea of people. Freda, Billy, Eldon and Ryan are all dancing around me to some wild tune being played on a fiddle like some manic square dance. But when the fiddler looks up and laughs I see it’s everybody’s childhood hero, the Popkorn King himself, Fletcher Kraik.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In the morning there’s no sign of Darnley. This is normal. He rises and works early, issuing instructions to his staff, his PA and his business associates. But instantly I sense something’s wrong.
I hear loud, angry voices followed by silence. Then voices again. There’s a fight going on …
And now I remember. Billy of all people has rushed in where no one wants to tread. What has Lydia found in those papers?
I leap out of bed and shower in minutes, pull on pastel linen pants, a matching top and soft sandals, scoop up my hair into a simple band and make it to the breakfast room.
It seems full of people but nobody’s saying anything. Lydia motions me to the seat next to hers with a warm smile that holds a hint of relief. As I sit next to her Aaron looks away and Darnley fixes his steady gaze on me. Across from us Billy looks tousled and happy. She beams a genuine welcome. Next to her Eldon toys with his coffee, his face gloomy.
No one seems to be eating anything either. I’ve walked into the middle of an argument.
‘So when are you going to look at them?’ Darnley is talking directly to Lydia, his tone brittle.
She smiles vaguely over her silver-mounted glass beaker of steaming lemon tea. ‘Oh, some time. Does it matter? We’re on vacation. Paperwork can wait.’
Billy looks up from a whispered conversation with Eldon and swats away his hand as it steals around her shoulder. ‘Might I make a suggestion, Mrs Wolfe? Please look over them and sign for them. I can’t leave here until you do.’
Eldon grins. ‘Good. Mom? Ignore her.’
Billy gives him a withering glance and smiles at me. ‘Morning, Ella. And before you ask I’m wearing a T-shirt and boxers filched from the idiot sitting next to me because I packed no leisure clothes, I came straight from the office. Plus he wants to go on a hike. Me, I’d sooner fly back to Boston.’
‘No way. You’re staying right here.’ Eldon puts his arm round her and gives her a hug.
Billy rolls her eyes but to my amazement she stays put.
She’s got it bad.
‘Lydia?’ Darnley ignores them. His harsh
tone makes me tremble. His past is about to unravel right here in the heart of his family and no one’s even guessed.
Lydia looks vague. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ll sign your receipt anyway, Willamina. OK, Aaron?’
Aaron covers her hand with his. ‘Sure, if that’s the way you want it. But why not just give those papers to me? We should burn them. All that was over and done with long ago.’
For a split second Lydia’s eyes flash. ‘They’re addressed to me. I’ll look at them later. And now please drop the subject.’
Darnley and his father exchange a look and rise from the table. Aaron goes off to answer a call while Darnley strides to the door and glances back at me and raises an eyebrow.
Heart thumping, I abandon my untouched cereal and join him. He draws me into a quiet part of the lobby, his look sending shivers up my spine. ‘Freda’s called to say she’s bringing Mitchell.’ His eyes narrow.
I stare at him in dismay. ‘What about Lydia? Is there any way of finding out what’s in those papers?’
He shrugs, looking suddenly weary. ‘Not till she opens them. It’s a sealed package. But you’re the only person who knows about – me. So it can’t be that.’
He tilts my chin, his look troubled. ‘Are you OK? You’re pale.’
I grin briefly. ‘Lack of sleep. Remember?’
* * *
Before lunch I snatch a few words with Billy. ‘You and Eldon?’
She blushes. ‘I know. Silly, twisted boy. But – you and Darnley?’ She pauses for effect with her head on one side and eyes me from under her thick mop of hair. ‘That is seriously weird. And what is it with these people? Anybody would think that package had a bomb in it.’
I grin. ‘All that money must go to their heads.’
Her pert little nose crinkles as she grins back. ‘Tell me about it. We must scare the pants off them. These people pay people to talk to people like us. Not that I’m complaining. It’s a big career boost to get an invite here, apparently. For Lautner Wolfe employees, at least.’