by Susan Stoker
“What if you choose to pass on a question?” Defiance rang out in her voice.
I considered, nudging her legs wider with the cane. “I will subtract two strokes from your total.”
“That’s not fair!” Her outrage made me chuckle.
I bent over her and lifted her head with her hair. “Our relationship isn’t built on fair, princess. What made you think it was?”
She made a huffy sound into the covers when I released her head.
I repositioned myself behind her. “I could simply cane you now because I wanted to.” I brought my hand up between her legs, spanking her pussy. “Because your ass would look gorgeous with my stripes across it.” Another spank. Her wet folds told me her indignation hadn’t diminished desire. “Or because I’m pissed you want to use our time together for your fucking story.”
Her back shuddered when she sucked in a shaky breath.
“I’ll give you a taste of the cane before we begin. So you know what you’re in for if you displease me.”
The muscles of her back and shoulders bunched up in expectation.
I stood to the side of her and let the cane swish through the air, striking her right in the middle of her buttocks.
She screamed, rising up on her tiptoes, making a beautiful sight. “You’re mean!” she shouted when she’d regained her breath.
I traced the red weal I’d left with my fingertip. “That’s what they say,” I said lightly, the shadow of every paparazzi story written about my wicked ways crowding around me. It had been my self-ordained job from the beginning to draw the media attention away from the rest of the royal family. Away from my father’s suicide, which had been labeled as a hunting accident, away from the Queen’s lovers, and now away from Kaspar’s exploits.
I’d created a persona that gave the world something to gossip about. Sordid stories about the cruel and wild young duke. Some of them were even true. I’d let my reputation snowball into something huge and vivid. And they loved to hate me. Hated to love me. Everyone still wanted me. My notoriety made me even more popular. They called me a drunk, a womanizer, a violent, misguided trouble-maker. Women still threw themselves at my feet, wanting to be used and abused by me.
Chelsea was different. She’d known the gossip but still had seen me. At least I thought she had. She was a smart girl; it shouldn’t have shaken me when she recognized the truth about Madison, but it had.
I liked being with her. In my room, it had just been her and me. I didn’t have to put on a show. She’d let me strip her layers.
Funny that it surprised me when she wanted to do the same to me.
“I will begin. Who do you work for?”
Her body tensed, bottom squeezed together as if already deflecting the whipping I’d give her for not answering. “Pass,” she said stiffly.
“Three strokes.” I walked to my toy box and pulled out lube and a butt plug.
“Is it my turn?” she asked, breaking the charged silence between us.
“Yes.”
“Was Madison your BDSM partner?”
Pain stabbed me at the mention of the girl who’d committed the ultimate betrayal. “Yes.” I pulled her cheeks apart and dribbled lube on her anus.
She tightened against me. “What are you doing?” Her voice quavered.
I knew I’d lost some trust at this point, but was willing to be a dick for the time being. “I’m going to plug your ass, princess. It will help remind you that you belong to me, whether you tell me your secrets or not. I own you for the duration of this trip.” I pressed the rounded tip of the plug against her anus and circled it with pressure until her sphincter muscles relaxed and allowed entry.
“Ow… no.” She whined and moaned when I pressed the plug steadily inward, the widest part of it stretching her beyond her comfort level. “Ung.”
“There. It’s in.” Because she looked so beautiful with her arms bound behind her back, her legs spread wide, plug shining between her cheeks, I rewarded her with a light tap over her clit.
A shiver ran through her.
“Have you ever been betrayed by a lover, Chelsea?”
She hesitated. “Not like you. But in a way.”
I didn’t realize how much I desired every piece of knowledge I could get about Chelsea—her life, her past, her wants and desires. “Tell me,” I murmured, stroking her dewy slit again.
“I came to Ibiza… mmm”—she gave a soft moan of pleasure when I twiddled her clit—“to save a relationship. Turned out it wasn’t worth saving.”
My fingers curled into fists, teeth bared at hearing about some other relationship, even though it sounded like it was over. “What happened?” My voice sounded tight to my own ears.
“Turned out I was far less interesting to him than ecstasy and late night parties.”
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t. Did it make me a terrible person? “You know it wasn’t about you, right?”
When she hesitated, I stopped fondling her folds.
“Right?”
“I think it was my fault.”
“How so?”
“I made a choice… not to follow him originally. I think I waited too long. I keep wondering if—”
“No.” I made my voice cold and hard, though the way my stomach roiled made me feel anything but sure. “It wasn’t about you.” I patted her pussy in a series of quick little spanks. “Do you wish you were still with him?” I held my breath, disturbed by the insistent thudding of my heart in my throat.
“No.”
Thank fuck.
“I miss the fantasy of a boyfriend. Never the reality.”
I stroked her ass, twisted the plug. “What’s your fantasy, Chelsea?”
“I thought we were taking turns with questions.”
Clever girl.
“All right. Your turn. Ask a question, baby.”
I thought she’d have a pile of questions ready to tumble out, but she was silent for a long moment. “Why didn’t you come out with the truth? About Madison?”
The million-dollar question. The one that sucker punched me in the throat.
***
Chelsea
Darius removed his touch and paced away, leaving me unmoored on the bed.
I’d tried to pick a question he would answer, but when he went silent, I realized I’d chosen poorly.
But, to my surprise, he spoke. “The queen didn’t want my fetish made public. She knows Kaspar’s followed in my wicked ways, and she thinks he’d be a laughing stock.”
I digested that. The Queen of Halsburg would rather people believed Darius had abused his girlfriend than have it known he had a kink? It seemed misguided, at best.
“I wasn’t willing to take Madison down, either. Samson wanted to play dirty and go after her with every gun blazing, but I… couldn’t.”
“Did you love her?”
“Your question is over,” he said softly, returning to my side.
I didn’t move, waiting for his interrogation.
“I was fond of her, but it wasn’t love.” He stood directly over me, but didn’t touch. “I still have sympathy for her. She was a single mom, and she probably believed herself in love with me—I don’t know. I broke things off, and she took her revenge. What she did was wrong, but we’d shared something. I don’t take a woman’s submission lightly.” Now, finally, his palm returned to my skin, stroking down my back and over the curve of my buttocks. “It may not seem that way to you, but I don’t.”
I lifted my bottom into his hand.
“I don’t take your surrender for granted, American beauty. It’s a gift of trust. You give a piece of yourself to me every time you yield. Just like you give a piece of yourself to me with every truth you tell.”
Guilt over my refusal to share my personal details twisted in my gut.
He let his words hang between us, doing their sickening work.
He was comparing me to her, I knew it. I was another woman who was going to use his fame and fortune for her perso
nal gain. I didn’t plan to destroy his name, but he didn’t know that.
“I’m not like her.” I forced the words out.
When Darius didn’t comment, I knew he didn’t agree.
Anger flared. Not at him, but at her. At Madison James, who had done him a terrible turn. I was going to vindicate him. I would find that woman and reveal the real story, show him for the gentleman he was. He’d been protecting that bitch all this time, not wanting to damage her.
Well, I had no such compunction.
“How many sexual partners have you had?” His next query took me by surprise.
Seriously? He didn’t need to know that. I was glad my face was pressed into the covers, because I felt a blush streaking my neck and heating my cheeks. I wanted to lie. Didn’t want him to know how terribly inexperienced I was.
But he probably already knew. That was why he asked.
“Only one.”
His hand stilled on the undercurve of my buttocks. “Just the asshole you came to Ibiza for?”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Never, baby. It makes sense why you’re grieving that relationship.”
“I am not grieving it.”
He gave my ass a light slap. “Good. Because I was thinking about finding the asshole and giving him a one-way plane ticket to Turkey.”
I giggled, pleasure curling in my chest at his jealousy. “Turkey?”
“Yeah. Plenty of drugs there, too.”
I laughed some more, my entire being warming from the inside out. The words ‘I love you’ floated up in my brain, shocking me.
I loved this man? Impossible. I hardly knew him.
The feeling swimming in my chest, that light, floaty warmth, that appreciative joy, sure felt like love.
Damn. I needed to get a grip. Because somehow I knew that having my heart broken by the duke would be ten times worse than what I’d imagined I’d suffered as a result of my breakup with Derek. That had been nothing. An inevitable separation that had been more about me readjusting my brain around what had always been than anything else.
The emotions swimming around in me now were real. Real trust. Real desires, real longing. Real attachment.
“Your turn,” he said lightly.
“Do you keep BDSM relationships in a separate category from romantic ones?’
He stroked between my legs, and my breath turned ragged. “This is my romance, baby.”
“I mean—” I struggled for words, hoping my question didn’t reveal too much of my heart. “Would you… would you have this in your marriage? Or keep it for the call girls?”
His hand came down in a quick flurry of spanks, although I had no idea what I’d said wrong.
“Why?” I blurted. “Why are you mad?”
He stopped spanking and soothed the sting from my skin. “I’m not mad at you,” he muttered. “You just summed up the queen’s dictate for Kaspar. Use call girls for kink. Marry a virgin princess. I… don’t like you thinking that of me.” He pinched my butt cheek between two fingers. “You’re not a call girl to me.”
I choked on a sour laugh. “I’m not a call girl, period.”
His laugh was just as harsh. “Jesus, I know that. I’m saying… I’d keep a girl like you. Maybe forever.”
My heart thundered in my chest, bouncing around like a ping pong ball. He said a girl like you, not you. He wasn’t saying he wanted to keep me forever. Even so, some part of me had already jumped on a horse and was galloping to a finish line with him as my life mate.
And the rest of me was dead scared. Terrified. Because this was the kind of man I would throw away everything for. The way my mom had given up herself for my dad.
And I didn’t think I’d ever recover from being left by a man like him.
So no. No way. I couldn’t even consider playing house with this man, not even in my deepest fantasies.
“Where do you live in the States?” His tone had gone hard, as if he knew I might not answer.
My brain raced, trying to figure out how dangerous it was to give him that information. But L.A. was a big city. Lots of news organizations there.
“Los Angeles.”
He picked up the cane. “Three strokes.”
“Don’t I get another question?”
“No.” He sounded irritated, like he’d lost patience with the game or me. “Take this like a good girl, and I’ll let you come when we’re through.”
Always the flipping of my belly when he turned stern, the flood of heat between my legs, not that I wasn’t already wet for him. “Yes, sir.”
He brought the cane down across my ass. I gasped, surging forward, crying out into the covers. A second line landed neatly beneath.
I let out a low moan.
A third line of fire erupted below the second. Tears smarted my eyes, and my body shook with adrenaline as it struggled to cope with the pain, but relief had already swept through me. It was over.
I’d survived. And now he would reward me.
Being Darius’ submissive was so easy. I didn’t have to know what to say or do, I only had to follow orders and receive either pain and pleasure—whichever he deemed appropriate.
Now that I’d let go of control—realized I couldn’t say how things went in this bedroom—it was blessedly simple. But it was also easy knowing there was an end point. Tomorrow I’d walk off and never see this man again.
Why in the hell did that hurt so badly?
Darius removed the bondage tape around my wrists. “On your back, baby. Knees wide. I’m going to eat that sweet little pussy until you scream.”
Chapter Six
Day Three
Darius
Chelsea was up early. I opened my eyes when she slipped out of bed and whispered her enthusiastic greetings to Shadow, rubbing his ears and face before feeding him. I wondered if she’d had as much trouble sleeping as I’d had.
I didn’t know what in the fuck to do with her. Let her go, I guess. It was my only option. She refused to tell me her full name or who she wrote for, refused to sign an NDA, which meant she was still hell-bent on writing whatever story she had in her.
So I could either apply more pressure to get her to cave, or let her walk and tell her story. What did it matter, anyway? My name couldn’t be much more sullied than it already was. Except she knew about Kaspar. I couldn’t have that part come out.
I needed to cut some kind of deal with her.
Normally negotiations—especially with beautiful young women at my mercy—turned me on. In this case, the thought made my stomach turn.
I liked Chelsea. Really liked her. She produced a powerful lust in me which hadn’t diminished with having her in the multitude of ways I’d already experienced. But I also liked the smart, sweet girl underneath. I felt comfortable with her. I could be myself.
Hell, she knew how to play whist, and had even seemed to enjoy it.
How in the fuck was I supposed to reconcile that with the ambitious, selfish woman who wanted to use me for her own gain?
Fuck.
Chelsea emerged from the bathroom wearing my t-shirt.
I was tempted to tell her I hadn’t given her permission to cover and rip it off. Have round fifty-four in my bed with her sturdy thighs spread and that sweet little cunt opening for me.
But the heaviness of the negotiation deadline made me swing my legs out of bed and pull on some clothes. I tossed her a pair of boxer briefs. “Want to see the sun rise over the sea?”
Kaspar and his buddies would sleep until noon. It would be safe enough to bring her up on deck. Despite all the hot sex we’d had, I was getting as sick of the confinement of my room as she was.
“I’d love to.” Her face brightened, nearly knocking my breath away at the sheer beauty of it. When her carefully placed mask was gone, she broadcast her emotions with a bullhorn.
“Come on.” I interlaced my fingers through hers.
Shadow crowded us to the door, tail wagging, excited for adventure. He led us both up on
to the deck. The sun glowed orange, just emerging from the turquoise blue horizon of the sea. The spray of sea mist fell on our faces in a soft caress.
Chelsea closed her eyes and made a soft hum. “It’s so beautiful,” she breathed.
She was so beautiful. Her olive-toned skin glowed gold in the morning light, which also picked up the gold flecks in her eyes. Her lips were plump and full from sleep. She lifted her face to mine. “Thank you.”
I brushed my lips across hers, addicted to the taste.
“Look.” I pointed and pulled her, running, to the stern of the yacht, where a pod of dolphins swam along behind us.
Shadow raced with us. He saw them at the same time and gave a joyful bark, bounding to the rail.
“Shadow, no,” I said sharply.
My exuberant dog leaped over without hesitation, plunging into the ocean to play with the dolphins.
“Cut the engine,” I shouted, running for the bridge. I wasn’t afraid for Shadow’s life—he’d been swimming in the ocean many times, but it would be a pain in the ass to get him back onto Sweet Surrender.
In the time it took me to get the captain’s attention, Chelsea disappeared. I peered over the rail. Oh hell, no.
Her golden body glinted in the water beside Shadow’s dark fur and the sleek gray forms of the dolphins, who’d stayed to play.
“Chelsea!” My heart shot into my throat. I grabbed a life preserver from the wall and threw it over before peeling off my shirt and diving in, too.
I surfaced near the boat and swam swiftly to the gathering.
Chelsea was laughing, holding onto Shadow’s collar, eyes wide with wonder at the dolphins leaping in circles around them. “I can’t believe this!”
“I can’t either,” I muttered, trying to modulate the fight instinct seeing her overboard had triggered. The cave man in me needed to drag her out and fuck her hard against the deck floor, claiming every inch of her until I was certain she was solid and real and still with me. But her joy was infectious, and I found myself grinning.