“This is called aftercare, kitten. It’s my responsibility to take care of you after a scene.”
He could all but hear her roll her eyes as she stopped struggling, which was a pity in his opinion.
“And just what does this aftercare consist of?” Samantha purred, arching her body into his.
Elijah cursed inwardly, ignoring the heady desire that she was wringing from him yet again. Grabbing two plush, oversized bath sheets from the towel warmer, he placed one on the bamboo bench that sat beside his bathtub.
“Down you get.” Wrapping his arms around her waist, he placed Samantha on top of the heated towel. He wrapped the second hug of warmth around her shoulders.
“Oh, that’s lovely.” Samantha closed her eyes and savored the warmth. He took the opportunity to start the water in the lake-sized bathtub.
Females liked bubble bath, didn’t they? Frowning, he looked around. He and his partners had originally fashioned the upper floor of Veritas into a series of apartments for their personal use, and for staff members like Julien. After his divorce, when he’d decided to live above the club full-time, he’d renovated the space, turning the six apartments into one massive penthouse.
He had everything he wanted . . . except bubble bath. Inspired, he moved into the shower stall and grabbed a bottle of shampoo, oblivious to the expensive Italian tiles or the multiple rainfall showerheads.
Samantha, however, was not blind to those details. Elijah saw curiosity warring with something else in her eyes as he returned to the bath and squeezed a liberal amount of shampoo into the water.
“I never would have expected all of this from outside.” Her voice was quiet, as it tended to be when she was confronted with his wealth. “Sometimes you’re just so normal that I forget how very rich you are.”
“You’re a puzzle, little cat.” Satisfied with the froth of bubbles, Elijah removed the towels he’d wrapped around her and, lifting her one more time, carried her to the stone steps that led down into the beckoning water.
“How am I a puzzle?” She looked at him with those direct eyes—eyes he would never have guessed held a secret if he wasn’t so adept at reading people. Holding the gaze, looking back over her shoulder, she waded into the bath, steam curling around her and reminding him of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, one of his favorite paintings.
“Most women I meet know what businesses I’m involved in, my estimated net worth, the restaurants I frequent.” Reaching for her shoulders and pulling her back until she was floating against his shoulder, he let his hands skim over her breasts without lingering.
He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her that he wanted a woman who would let him care for her. To his way of thinking, the need came hand in hand with dominance, which was, at its root, about the needs of the sub. Though he felt satisfaction when he saw the cherry color of her nipples, still tender from the clamps, and though his cock had fully hardened when he’d watched her walk into the steam, this moment was about her.
“And though we have a rigorous screening process at Veritas, once in a while one of these gold diggers gets through. They don’t seem to much care whether they get the attention of Alex, Luca, or myself, but they’re usually more interested in securing a wealthy lover than in submission.” Elijah felt Samantha’s shoulders tense, then quickly unclench as he poured cupped handfuls of water over her hair, wetting it.
The silence stretched out for a long moment, but when he positioned himself so that he could reach over to get the shampoo, she turned and pinned him with that inquisitive stare again.
“I know I’m new to this, and I don’t always know what I’m doing,” she started, moving toward him in the waist-high water. “But you have to believe . . . this is what I want.”
Elijah was uncharacteristically taken aback by her directness.
“I don’t know if you and I will work out any more than any relationship ever does,” she continued, and Elijah felt a tight clenching begin in his gut, accompanied by a surge of stubborn male pride.
He found that he didn’t want to think about Samantha moving on, not at all. And though it was contrary to some of his own concerns, the idea that she might leave made him want to chain her up in his bedroom until she came to her senses.
“But our days together have already shown me that this is what I’ve been searching for,” she concluded.
Suddenly uncertain, she widened her eyes and laced her fingers together. Elijah continued to study her. Confusion was rare for him—he liked to live a life that was as straightforward as possible.
But this woman, with her combination of sweet submission and boldness, wasn’t like anyone he’d ever met before.
“I’ve come to feel more for you in these few days than I’ve felt in a long time,” he said carefully, twisting the shampoo bottle in his hands. “But to fully submit to me, you have to share everything with me, Samantha. Everything.”
Her eyes widened slightly, and he knew that she understood what he was referring to. He had to give her credit for not denying it, for not pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about.
But from the stubborn set of her jaw, he saw that if he pushed in that moment, all she would do was dig in her heels.
Damn. Her refusal to bend was the single most frustrating thing he’d ever encountered.
He wouldn’t tell her it was all right to take the easy way out, because she needed to learn to obey his commands. She was new to this, yes, but she had to try.
He also needed honesty from her if this was going to work.
Needing a moment to think about how exactly to handle her, he took her by the shoulders, turning her so that he could work shampoo through her hair.
“Oh!” Samantha started as he turned her to face the window. Elijah smiled as he squirted the liquid into his hand. It smelled spicy, he supposed, and wasn’t at all suited to her. He’d have to get her something more appropriate.
She sighed as he worked his fingers against her scalp, but didn’t relax. She leaned forward to better see out the window, and he let her have her first spectacular view of Vegas.
“It’s not Baja, but it has its own appeal.” Elijah continued to work the shampoo through the heavy ropes of wet hair as Samantha inched them both toward the window. Planting her hands on the sill, she leaned forward until her nose touched the glass.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” She cast a quick look of delight over her shoulder at him, then returned, craning her neck to see more of the neon lights.
“You can see it better from most of the other buildings.” He resolved to take her on a tour of the city, so that she could see it in all its neon glory. “Veritas was meant to be unobtrusive.”
“It’s amazing.” Samantha finally tore her eyes away from the brightly lit night and relaxed against him. “I’ve never been to a big city before.”
Elijah’s fingers paused for the briefest of moments before resuming their methodical work. Though she’d seemed closed off only moments before, the unexpected view seemed to have pulled an almost childlike enthusiasm from her, opening her up to him.
Whatever her issues were, he suspected they lay with her family, her home. He was certain that by moving to Mexico she’d deliberately distanced herself from whatever it was she wanted to forget.
He had decided—he was going to push her. But there was more than one way to do that.
“I hadn’t seen a city like this before I moved here, either.” Elijah urged her to lean back against him as he began to rinse the shampoo from her hair. “I grew up in a small town in Arkansas, got my start there, and was dazzled by Vegas.”
“You are from Arkansas?” Finally tearing herself away from the window, Samantha turned. Elijah’s fingers slipped from her hair, and he took the opportunity to tilt her backward. She released a startled noise as, with one hand steady beneath her back, he held her in the water and gently rinsed the remaining suds from her hair.
This gave him a second to think. Elijah had
made the very deliberate decision to not tell many people about his past, because he didn’t care for the idea of nosy paparazzi converging on Harley, Arkansas. Alex, Luca, Tara—they were the only ones he’d ever told. And he was surprised that Tara hadn’t shared his secret in revenge, acrimonious as their divorce had been.
It felt strange to make the decision to trust her with this. But he was certain that Samantha would rather give up her glass studio than betray a trust. And though with a more experienced sub he would insist on revelations from his sub first, telling his secrets second as a reward, he knew already that that strategy wasn’t going to work with Samantha.
She needed to feel safe. He was secure enough with his dominance to give her this before he challenged and pushed her. But he would push—hard and soon.
Elijah placed her gently back on her feet. Pulling the plug in the tub, he reached for another heated towel, wrapping it around her when the water dipped to their hips.
“My first ever business was a convenience store back in Harley.” Elijah scooped Samantha into his arms and carried her up the steps that led out of the tub, then out of the bathroom and to the bedroom. When he slid her down his body to stand, he felt his erection begin to stir anew, awakened by the feel of her soft, naked skin sliding over his.
But this wasn’t the time for that. This was the time to urge her forward, to try to gently move her past whatever she was holding back.
“You owned a convenience store?” The look on her face was disbelieving, and Elijah hid a chuckle as he dropped his own towel and strode naked to his bureau. After putting on a pair of lounge pants and a T-shirt, he pulled another T-shirt from a drawerful of neatly folded cotton, then returned and helped Samantha put it on.
“A convenience store doesn’t really fit the tycoon stereotype,” Samantha mused as she relaxed and let him work her arms through the sleeves of the shirt. Satisfaction washed over him. She enjoyed being dressed, as if she were his doll, which was fortunate, because he enjoyed doing it.
“What does fit the stereotype, then?” Elijah skimmed his hands over her hips as he pulled the shirt down over her torso. Though he imagined she thought she was being sneaky about it, he saw her nuzzle her nose into the ribbed collar and inhale.
The simple gesture made dominance of the most primitive kind roar through him. And though he fully intended to obtain her full submission, it worried him that he was allowing himself to grow attached to her.
Then the nymph with the sea goddess eyes turned to him and flashed that mile-wide grin, and he knew he would risk it. He had no choice.
“You know. Fancy cars, expensive wine. Bathtubs so big you could swim in them.” Her saucy grin had him aching to lay her over his knee for some “punishment.”
He’d save it for later. He could see by the set of her muscles that she was relaxing a bit, and he didn’t want to disrupt it.
He needed to focus, not something he’d ever had trouble doing until meeting Samantha. His instincts told him that he needed to reveal just a little bit more of himself, and she would give him something back.
“When I was a teenager, I got involved with the wrong group of friends.” Elijah turned Samantha so that her back nestled against his chest. He didn’t want to hide from her, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to speak about this with those probing eyes on him.
“I started experimenting with drugs, with alcohol . . . with girls.” He felt his own body stiffen, remembering how easily he could have done something so simple and so careless as getting a young, small-town girl pregnant.
It had happened to so many of his high school friends. And many of them had made it work.
But it hadn’t been what he’d wanted. Even back then, before he’d known any better, he’d had a hunger for more.
“Doesn’t sound so different from a lot of kids,” she said.
He read the quick tension in her body and wondered whether she had done the same, or whether she’d gone the opposite way and shunned every vice.
“No, but the difference was that I had parents who cared.” Elijah stroked his hands through her tangles of damp hair, finger combing it. “They approached one of their longtime friends, asked if he would give me a job to keep me out of trouble. Chief could barely afford to pay himself a salary, but he did it.”
“Chief?” Samantha tried to turn around, but he held her still. His memories of the old man still hurt, and just as his submissive wasn’t ready to share with her Dom, neither was it always easy for the Dom to spill his guts. “That’s not a name you hear every day.”
“He was part Cheyenne. He moved to Harley from the middle of a cornfield in Kansas on a whim. Ran his little store for almost thirty years. When he died, I managed to scrape together enough to buy it from the bank. That was my first business.” One that had cost him more sleepless nights than he’d been able to count, as he sweated not just to pay back the loan from one of the other men in town, but to make the store prosper.
Adding to the pressure he’d felt to make the store succeed just to pay back his debts, he’d felt that he owed it to Chief. The man had become his surrogate father when his own parents died in a boating accident when he was barely an adult. When Chief died, it had been like losing another parent.
He would keep the convenience store alive as a memorial to all three, even if it never made another cent.
“From Arkansas to Vegas, huh?” Samantha sounded engaged, but didn’t volunteer any other information. She was proving even more resistant to opening up to him than he’d anticipated.
There might be some punishment coming for her after all, then. And damned if the thought didn’t make his cock swell.
“The only other people I’ve told that story to are Luca and Alex.” This time he let her turn in his arms when she wiggled. He sucked in a breath when her curious fingers danced over the tattoo that decorated his biceps, the one he and his friends had chosen together when they’d opened In Vino Veritas.
He waited, reading the internal struggle in the lines of her body. She huffed out a breath, looked evasively from side to side, and then finally laid her cheek against his chest.
The simple gesture quickened his pulse.
“The sister I told you about . . . she has type 1 diabetes,” Samantha said quietly.
Elijah already knew this, from the digging he’d done on her, but she hadn’t told him herself.
“Her medical needs are expensive, and she doesn’t have insurance.”
Elijah didn’t have to be a Dom to hear the shame in her voice. Shame? Frustration he could understand. Even anger, to some extent. But he wondered where the shame was coming from.
He was dying to push her further, to persuade her to tell him everything. But he’d learned from long experience that he needed to be patient.
It was time to encourage that positive behavior with a reward. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning when he thought of what Samantha’s reaction would be if she knew he intended to train her like a puppy.
“Do me a favor,” he started, placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her to face the door. Then he led her down the hall and to the elevator.
She eyed him warily when he pressed the button to open the door.
“Where are we going? I’m not dressed.” A gasp escaped Samantha’s lips when Elijah, having reached his limit with her sassiness, spun her and pressed her against the cool plaster of the wall beside the elevator.
“What—?” Her words caught in her throat as Elijah pulled her wrists behind her back with one hand and hooked the hem of the oversized shirt over their entwined fingers with the other.
Her ass was pale and jiggled just the slightest bit as her breath heaved in and out. Elijah smoothed his hand over the soft curves and savored the sensation when she pushed back into the touch.
Elijah cupped his hand slightly, pulled back, then let it land on her ass. Samantha’s cry mingled with the sharp crack that sounded in the otherwise silent air, and he watch
ed as the flush of pink spread over that perfect skin.
“Wh-why?” She tried to look back over her shoulder at him, but he tangled his fingers in her hair and turned her back to press her cheek against the wall.
“Keep talking,” he taunted as, releasing her hair, he laid his palm on her ass again. She jolted, and he traced gentle fingertips over skin that he was sure was on fire.
He watched as she glared from the corner of her eye, opened her mouth—probably to yell at him—then swallowed whatever it was she’d intended to say.
“Good girl.” Leaning in close, pressing his erection into the small of her back, he pushed his hips forward, letting her feel how aroused he was.
“I’ve gone easy on you, because you’re so new to this.” He flexed his hips again and enjoyed the small whimper that escaped her lips. “But if you keep on questioning me, it makes me think you need a little incentive to learn to behave.”
He pulled away from her abruptly, flexing his fingers, watching as her body drew tight with anticipation. Pain play was never his favorite, and Samantha wasn’t any kind of pain slut, either.
But a little spanking as discipline—and the chance to watch that gorgeous creamy skin ignite by his hand—was undeniably hot.
“I think we’ll do five more.” He grinned at Samantha’s choked cry, then let his palm fly again.
By the time the last blow had landed, she was trembling, her skin the color of rosé wine. She was still glaring over her shoulder at him, but the way she was moving her hips and panting told him that she’d enjoyed it as much as he had.
“Gotta be sure.” Elijah slid his hand between her naked legs, pushed two fingers inside her, felt her buck against the intrusion.
He released her and held his fingers up to eye level. They were coated with her wetness.
“That’s my girl.” Bending to plant a kiss to the nape of her neck, Elijah pulled her away from the wall and wrapped her in his arms for a hug. She hissed when his crotch pressed against the tender skin of her bottom.
“You’re going to be a bit sore for a while. That’s going to help remind you of what will happen if you get too sassy.”
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