by Chloe Cox
After a moment, she said, “You were really hooked?”
He looked up in surprise, not because of what she’d said, but because it was the first time he’d heard her sound shy.
“How can that surprise you?” he asked. “It’s brilliant. I’m not a bookworm or anything, but I know a good story. Your agent should be all over that.”
“Yeah, I tried that. Don’t think he read it.”
“His loss.”
Her turn to shrug. Chance didn’t like the expression that was gathering on her face, like a storm front moving in, threatening to ruin her mood.
“What about Adra?” he asked. “She’s an agent now, right?”
He watched Lena very carefully. That suggestion hadn’t dispersed the storm clouds—it had strengthened them. She looked somehow frightened, threatened. He wouldn’t have that.
“Lena,” he said sternly. “Tell me.”
Lena pursed her lips, sighed, and opened her eyes. Every fleck of gold and green embedded in the rich brown of her irises lit up in the sun, dazzling him, locking him in place for the moment. They would have made it impossible to focus on anything else, if there’d been anything else he cared to focus on.
She said, “Look, Adra—and everyone else here—they all seem to like me. They respect me. I just really want to keep it that way.”
“You assume that if they read your work they’d no longer respect you?”
No answer to that. Chance saw an opportunity. He moved his hands lower on her belly and slid his thumbs under the edge of her bikini bottoms. She jumped a little. He wondered if she had noticed how much easier she found it to talk about things when she was physically exposed. He sure as hell had.
“Have you ever opened up?” he asked her.
She frowned, her brow furrowing and her eyes squinting open. She put her hand on top of his as if to stop him.
“What kind of question is that?” she said.
Chance just looked at the offending hand. Then at her. Awareness dawned on her, and she removed her hand.
“Not good enough,” he said as he untied the double ties on the sides of her bikini bottoms. Lena’s abs tightened, but she leaned back and said nothing. He picked up her wrists and placed them on the armrests of her deck chair, then tied them down with the ties from her now useless bottoms.
Not a strong restraint, but effective. Restrained, naked, and spread.
“You were saying something?” he said.
“You are a piece of work.”
He spread her legs farther apart and watched her shudder.
“True. Answer the question.”
“It’s a bullshit question! Like, ‘Have you ever given your heart to someone?’ No, because that’s some romantic nonsense. It doesn’t work like that in the real world.”
Chance let his hands roam aimlessly, rubbing her inner thighs, then her belly, then her breasts. Just teasing her.
“How does it work, then?” he asked lightly.
She opened her eyes and glared, even as he could smell her growing arousal. “Don’t patronize me,” she said. “It doesn’t ‘work’ at all. People like each other for a time, or use each other, or get what they need, and move on.”
“And what,” he said, grazing his thumb over her clit, “do you think I’m getting from you?”
Lena flinched.
Chance studied her silently while he rubbed her stomach. She wasn’t ready to tackle whatever lay behind this little display, either. He’d ease the tension out of her now, but it was pretty clear to him that, while what Richie Kerns had done to her was bad enough on its own, it had been made far worse because it tapped into an issue she already had. And he was already planning to deal with that himself.
But for now? He’d just tell her the truth.
“Everyone does like you and respect you,” he said. “Hell, they’re crazy about you. I doubt there’s anything you could do that would change that at this point, kiddo. But you don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”
She gave an audible sigh of relief and wiggled her hips at him. He had her body ready to burst.
“Oh, don’t get too comfortable,” he laughed. “There’s some other stuff I’ve decided that you are ready for.”
She opened one eye. “Like what?”
“You’ll see. Tonight. Eight o’clock. Be waiting for me on the north side of the hall around the atrium, top floor.”
“That sounds…nefarious.”
“It is.”
“Why is it when you say something like that, I get turned on?”
“Didn’t I tell you I’d train you good?” he said, slipping his thumbs between her inner and outer folds, searching for the bundle of nerves hidden there. Her tummy tightened again as he put pressure on her, the sensation almost visibly coiling up and down the length of her body, and her eyes flew open in surprise.
“What…what are you…?”
And then he just decided, Aw, hell, I want to.
He held her hips like a cup and bent down to drink.
He lapped at her slowly, in big teasing strokes, just glancing the sides of her clit, circling around it, driving her nuts until her thighs squeezed at the sides of his head and her hands reached for his head. He knew her body even better now, knew he could give her one quick orgasm to warm her up, even if he could have eaten her all day. He loved the taste of her.
They were so connected that he could feel her start to come in a way that drove him wild, like he could actually feel it with her, so that by the time he had her thighs shaking and her hips bucking, he was hard as steel and half there himself. She came silently, her body keening and her hands white-knuckled on the armrests, still afraid of being seen.
Chance eased her down, running his hands up and down her thighs, her stomach, her chest, while she gasped for air and jerked once or twice with aftershocks. He didn’t know how she did it, but she always looked amazing after coming. While coming. All the time, really.
Too amazing to resist. He knew how far to push her. And he wanted to indulge himself. Just a preview of the way he’d take his pleasure, as a Dom, when she was through training.
“Lena,” he said. “You back on Earth yet?”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured.
“Good. Sit up.”
He helped her scoot up the chair, raising the back of it for her, and got out from under her legs, standing over her while still straddling the chair. He blocked the sun now, so she could look at him without squinting.
He saw the idea occur to her, too. She licked her lips.
“Suck me,” he ordered.
She looked around a little nervously, still kind of spooked even though they were alone. She’d do this, and she’d be ready for tonight. And damn, did he want to see her suck him off.
Lena ran her hands up his legs, her eyes alight with something. She looked like she’d been waiting a while to do this, but there was still the nervousness, like she was worried she wouldn’t do a good job. Her confidence had gotten better since she’d been at Volare, but if you looked you could still see the signs of the bruising she’d taken from Kerns.
By the time she got to his zipper, though, he could see she was thinking about one thing only. She was careful with his cock, which made him want to laugh; the damn thing could punch through two inches of steel at this point. Being around Lena all the time was giving it plenty of use.
She kissed the tip.
“Fuck,” he said, as she licked away a drop of precum. Lena licked her way down the shaft, looking up at him with those eyes.
She was teasing him the way he teased her.
Oh, hell no.
Chance threaded his hand in her hair and watched her chest heave the way it did when he smacked her ass or put a finger inside her. She liked the intimation of force. Then she looked up with those eyes again, smiling while she held his cock in her hands.
“Open,” he growled.
She did, and he pushed in while she took his cock gladly, suckin
g slightly as he entered her mouth. He fisted her hair in his other hand and started to move in her mouth while she moaned. The site of her trying to take as much of his dick as she could was unbelievable, the look of lust in her eyes as she looked up at him maddening. She was so good, so, so good, and the found himself thrusting faster and faster, driven by the sounds she made and the way she reached for his balls, until he pushed her back against the back of the chair just as the rush hit the base of his dick.
“Swallow,” he said.
She pulled back briefly, licking her lips, and smiled. Then she did.
All he could do was watch.
This woman…
He had plans for her already. But he added a few more orgasms to the list.
chapter 15
Lena tried to relax the rest of the afternoon, but she faced several obstacles: one, holy crap, what was Chance going to do to her later; two, she was still worked up about the questions he’d asked her; and three, she’d gotten another psychotic text message.
The text messages were starting to make less sense, honestly. Usually they commented on her and Chance, taunting her, asking when she was going to come out and get back in the scene—whatever the hell that meant. Maybe bars? Clubs? Trying to be seen in L.A.? She wasn’t interested—but this one had just said, “You’re delaying the inevitable.”
Yeah, threatening.
She was starting to think she’d have to tell someone. And if she told anyone, she knew it had better be Chance. And that thought put her right back where she started, worrying about getting more involved, becoming dependent on the man, and making this arrangement into something it wasn’t. And then, inevitably, getting hurt again.
She didn’t like to admit how worked up she’d been by Chance’s naked interrogation, but it had been obvious to both of them—she’d actually snapped at him. Come to think of it, she was surprised he’d just let that go.
Had she ever opened up to anyone? What did that even mean? And why had it hurt when he asked her? She knew why it hurt, generally, but she thought she’d grown a thicker skin under most circumstances. In private, it hurt because she wanted to be able to do that, and that made her feel stupid, because Lena Simone Maddox knew better than that, and had since she was a child. Even now she’d watch a sappy movie and part of her would want to rail at the screen: That’s not real! Real life doesn’t work out like that!
She’d learned that the hard way the first time her mother had kicked her out for one of her mom’s boyfriends. Then she’d learned it again the second time. And so on. But the worst part was that by the time she got to L.A., sixteen but looking twenty and lying about her age, she still hadn’t been smart enough: she’d gotten taken for rent money by the first guy she’d gotten involved with. Had she opened up to him? Was that the problem?
Over the years it had just been a slow process of acclimation. She was proud of the fact that she’d gotten tougher, tough enough to mostly avoid getting her heart broken—because, in fact, she’d realized Richie hadn’t broken her heart, because she’d never given it to him.
Of course, she hadn’t gotten smart enough or tough enough to avoid getting exploited. So there was that.
It was the one thing that Chance Dalton hadn’t seemed to understand right away, and that made her feel uneasy. Like he didn’t get it because he’d been lucky in his own life. The privileged romanticism of people who got lucky.
Wait, wait, wait—that’s not fair, she thought. She was just being bitter and angry. She didn’t know jack about Chance’s life, except that something had screwed him up, too.
And that he’d read her script.
And that he thought she was brilliant.
Lena smiled. Maybe it wasn’t smart to open up heedlessly, and maybe she had some things to resolve, but she could let herself bask in that particular revelation for a while. She could trust the man with her body and with her work. Maybe that was enough.
By the time eight o’clock rolled around, she was in a frenzy of anticipation.
She’d actually wondered about what to wear.
Then she realized whatever she wore was probably just going to come right off. That did not help.
Eight o’clock found her in a light wrap dress and sandals, her hair tied back in a loose knot, climbing the floating stairs to the top floor of the main building, looking down at the atrium below. She’d walked through it on her way to the stairs and had felt comforted to see a bunch of familiar faces—Ford was there, and Adra, giving Ford some perplexing looks, and Declan Donovan, the rock star who last week had insisted that she try a bite of his first attempt at baking, part of some sort of stupid competition he’d had with Adra. Once Lena got over the surrealism of the moment, she’d agreed to taste test his attempt. Lena thought he’d meant to make cookies, but the results had been…something else. The guy had been a sweetheart. And apparently he was also a Dom. Some sub was going to be very lucky.
Look at her, using words like Dom and sub and feeling like she knew what she was talking about. This place…this place was already to feel like home. Sort of.
She could see them all from the railing on the top floor, right below, still sitting around and chatting after their meeting. The acoustics in the atrium were pretty good. She could almost understand what they were saying.
It almost distracted her from thoughts of Chance and what he had planned for her. Almost, but not quite. Probably nothing could have done that.
“Look at you,” he said from behind her.
She turned, leaning back against the railing, and just enjoyed the way he looked at her. The man knew how to make a woman feel good in more ways than one. He was dressed like he always was, in that effortless dressed-down cool of a real life movie star or a country singer or something. It was just that body, and that impish grin, and the square jaw, and the buzzed head. All of it, really. Irresistible.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Yes you are,” Chance said, coming closer. He toyed with the tie that held her dress together, tugging on it to see what kind of give it had. “This all it takes?”
Lena breathed a little faster. “Yes.”
He flashed that smile. “This is a good dress.”
Oh jeez. She felt her legs quivering already. And the suspense was just killing her. He didn’t tear off her dress, though now that was practically all she could think about; he didn’t tell her what he was going to do—he didn’t do anything. Just drove her insane.
“Is there something I’m supposed to do?” she asked. She hated that she sounded so nervous. That had been happening a lot.
He gave her a playful frown, then bent down and bit her neck. She made a sound in shock, a kind of cut-off squeak, but he just held her there, his teeth gripping her neck, his hand at her waist, until she relaxed into him.
Oh God, he owned her.
“That’s better,” he said, lifting his head to look down at her with those bright eyes. “You’re gonna need to relax, sweetheart.”
She nodded, not trusting herself to form words just yet. He’d bitten her…
“So tell me something,” he said, leaning on the railing and looking down as she turned to face him. “Why is it that you, who is so ordinarily brave, seem so hung up on what other people think of you?”
“Ordinarily brave?” she asked.
He smiled. “That was unclear, huh? I meant that it’s your ordinary state, not that it’s a common thing. It’s uncommon. See? You’re a writer, I’m not.”
She felt her cheeks get hot. Of all the things this man had said to her, of all the things he’d done to her, that was what got her. Yeah, that made sense.
But he was talking nonsense again. It bugged her the same way it had that afternoon.
“Don’t pretend like it doesn’t matter what people think of you,” she said quietly, turning to look down at the people gathered below. “I know people like to say that, but it’s just…wrong. Your professional prospects damn well change based off of what people thi
nk of you.”
“I’m not saying it doesn’t matter, or that it should or it shouldn’t,” he said. “I’m saying I think you assume that people will think bad things about you, and that just astounds me.”
She frowned. “That’s not—”
“You don’t trust the world to treat you right, Lena,” he said. “And maybe it hasn’t in the past. But that’s not now. Here, it’s different. You have to learn there are places in the world where you’ll be cherished for what you are.”
She was stunned. His words, what he’d said—she’d thought he hadn’t understood. But he had. He’d understood perfectly.
Lena looked at him with the beginnings of tears in her eyes, which is how she missed it when he slipped one soft leather cuff over her right wrist and attached it to the railing.
She looked down as he reached over and cuffed the left wrist and did the same thing.
“Oh, you’re kidding,” she said.
“I don’t ever joke about this,” he laughed. “Except when I do, of course.”
She was starting to get that tingling feeling all over, that rush that said it was starting. Lena couldn’t help but look down, where that crowd of familiar faces was still gathered, all of them lounging comfortably on the plush chairs and sofas. None of them expecting to see her get fucked several stories above.
Or maybe they were.
She flushed with heat and tested the cuffs. No, she wasn’t going anywhere. And those were Chance’s hands running down the sides of her body.
“Put your hands on the railing and step back, sweetheart,” he said. “Bend at the waist and lean into it like you might have to be there for a while.”
Well, that was suggestive.
So she was afraid. Yes. She was, in fact, kind of shaking as she gripped the railing and bent over to lean into it, putting some of her weight on her arms. There was no way to hide the shaking in her bare, treacherous arms, and Chance took a moment to stop whatever he was doing behind her to run his big, warm hands down the length of her arms, up and down, murmuring into her ear the whole time.