by Maisey Yates
But there was one thing he’d never used it for before.
“I could always tie you to the bed,” he said, gripping the knot on his tie and loosening it until it came free. “Then I could do whatever I wanted with you.”
He slid his tie through his hands, the silk heavy and cool against his skin. It would be soft on her wrists. And it would hold her tight.
There was something intoxicating about the thought of total control, and dammit, he’d never considered himself that kind of guy before.
But life was a big mess. A giant, uncontrollable beast that moved forward with the force of a freight train, whether you wanted it to or not. Which was why all you could really do was your best to have as much fun as possible until it ate you.
Except right in this moment, time seemed to be slower. And here in his room, he felt like he might be able to master it.
Or at least master something.
“I think that’s what I want,” he said. “You. Tied up for me. Naked. Take off your dress.”
“All the way?”
“Yes. All the way. Your bra. I’m on the fence about the heels. We’ll decide about those after the rest is gone.”
Her fingers shook as she reached around and undid the zipper on her dress, letting it fall down past her hips. She had one of those strapless bras on. Not much support or padding to speak of if the jut of her nipples through the fabric was anything to go by.
And that meant she had every asset she’d promised to have.
At this point, though, he didn’t care. Regardless of how she looked naked, she’d proven she was hot.
And he was hard for her again already.
She unhooked her bra and he almost lost it right then. She was totally naked for him, and she was perfect. Full, pale breasts, pink nipples. The sweet spot at the apex of her thighs. He’d already tasted her there, and now he craved more. She was better than ice cream. And he wanted to lick her all over.
“Now, get on the bed. Put your hands up over your head.” She obeyed, sitting on the edge of the bed, raising her arms up over her head, her wrists crossed. “Yeah, like that,” he said. “Hold still.”
He approached the bed and wound the tie around one wrist, then the other, then around both before knotting it. She could escape if she wanted to. But she wouldn’t. He was certain of that. Of her commitment to him. Her commitment to giving him the control.
And he had no idea what she was getting out of it, but he knew what it did for him. That was all he needed to know. This was just one night, not a relationship. And it was a bed, not a freaking psychiatrist’s couch.
“Put your arms down. Hands in your lap,” he said.
She obeyed, and she was watching him far too closely for his liking. Her eyes were arousal-glazed enough. They were too clear. Too smart. Too watchful. Like she was seeing through his suit. His chest. Down to the things beneath that. His heart. His soul, if you believed in shit like that.
He needed her a lot more mindless.
He started to unbutton his shirt and he kept his focus on her. Now she was starting to look glazed, her breasts rising and falling sharply with each quick little breath she took.
He pushed his shirt off his shoulders and shoved his pants and underwear down, gratified by the hitch in her breath when he was naked in front of her.
“Do you know what I want you to do?” he asked.
She looked up at him and shook her head.
“I want you to suck my cock.”
The color in her cheeks deepened, the speed of her breathing increasing. He could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her neck. Oh, Evie. That was what he liked about her. Every emotion, every want, every thought, spoken out loud by her body.
He moved closer to the bed and reached behind her head, sinking his fingers deep into her hair and tugging back, tilting her face up. “You have such pretty lips,” he said. “I want them wrapped around me.”
She fidgeted, her cheeks brilliant pink, her eyes bright. “Whatever you say.” He guided her to him and she pressed her mouth against his length, testing him delicately with the tip of her tongue. Her hesitance only got him harder, hotter. And the guilt stabbed at him again. The combination of her tongue, her innocence and his own physical response to it was enough to send him over the edge.
He wrapped one hand around the base of his erection and squeezed tight, trying to keep control. She looked up at him, her tongue sliding along his length, from the head down to where he held himself tight, before following the same path back up.
Then she adjusted her position, her hands tied, his grip still solid on her hair, and took him in deep. His knees almost gave out. He tugged hard on her hair, to brace himself, to prove he was still rooted to the earth.
She moaned, the sound vibrating through him. He pulled up hard as she maneuvered her lips down over his length and he was rewarded with another deep sound of pleasure that shot straight through his body.
He tugged her head upward, pulling away from her at the same time. “Enough. I can’t…I can’t possibly take any more of that.”
“You liked it?” she asked, a small smile curving her glistening lips.
“Hell. Yes.” She laughed, and it hit him like a lightning bolt. Shocking considering the situation. Arousing, which he found strange.
“What?” he asked.
“No one has ever said things like that to me before. But then, no one’s ever given me an orgasm against a wall, tied my hands and given me orders, either.”
“You have to start sleeping with better men.”
“Consider this the beginning of that.”
He chuckled. “Okay. Now we have to get serious again.”
“Okay.”
“Lie down.” She scooted back on the bed and lay across it, her hands still resting just over pertinent body parts. Like a renaissance painting in bondage, with her flowing red hair, milk-pale skin and the slate-gray tie on her wrists.
“Hands over your head,” he said. “And spread your legs for me.” She hesitated. It was a small moment. A pause in her breathing, a tensing in her muscles. And then she obeyed. He put his hand between her thighs, stroking her slick head, pushing one finger deep inside as he moved his thumb over her clit.
“Ohhh…cheese and rice,” she said throwing her hand over her forehead.
“Did you just call out food names in bed?”
“I…no…it’s a…” she panted. “Kind of a swear word replacement. A little curtailed blasphemy. Just…habit. Didn’t you ever say anything like that in front of your parents?”
“No. And if I did, it wouldn’t be what I was thinking about now.”
“I wasn’t thinking at all,” she said. “Clearly that’s not a great thing for me since…since I just said that.”
He moved up her body and planted his hands on either side of her head, then bent and kissed her lips. “I like it when you don’t think. You don’t have to think. And you don’t have to be embarrassed. Not with me.”
“That’s good. Because you’ve done things to me no man ever has. So I’d hate to have to make our interactions more formal now.”
“Sort of hard to have formal interactions when I’m doing this.” He put his hand back down between her thighs and pushed his middle finger between her slick folds, deep down inside her and back across her clit. “Though, we could try,” he said, teasing her as he leaned in, his lips a whisper from hers. “The weather was very nice today, wouldn’t you say?”
“Perfect,” she gasped, “like always.”
“Good. Now stop talking,” he said, kissing her cheek, then moving away from her. He went over to his nightstand and opened the drawer, taking out a condom and sheathing himself quickly.
“I’m not in the mood to wait.”
She started to lower her hands and he pushed them up, settling between her thighs. “I didn’t tell you that you could lower your hands.”
She blinked. “I’m sorry.”
“You have to obey if you wan
t to come. And you do want to come, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I do.”
“You what?” he asked, pressing his length against her clit, moving slightly. She arched against him, her nipples brushing his chest. “Tell me, or I won’t let you.”
“I want to come,” she said.
“Do you? What’s going to make you come?”
“You,” she said, “inside me.”
“Do you want me to screw you?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.” She met his eyes, her lips set in a determined pout. “I want you to screw me.”
“And now I’m the one who’s going to take orders,” he said, pressing himself against the tight entrance to her body and testing her, watching her face as he pushed deep inside.
“I want to touch you,” she said, her eyes locked with his, desperation visible there.
“No, baby, that’s not the game,” he said. “You’re mine. And that’s better than touching me, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes fluttering closed as he withdrew from her and thrust back inside. “Yes,” she said again.
And then he was lost, completely. There was nothing but the feel of her, the smell of her. Of being surrounded by her. She threw her head back, arched against him, her arms stretched up behind her head, her internal muscles tightening around his cock as she came.
And then he let go. And for the second time that night, Evie James had blown his mind.
Chapter Five
Evie hadn’t meant to fall asleep. When she woke up, she was in a gigantic, unfamiliar bed alone, the sun just staring to rise up over the ocean.
“Crap,” she muttered, looking around the room and spotting her discarded dress, shoes, bra and…her panties where elsewhere. “Crap, crap, crap…”
She stumbled out of bed, the sheets balled up against her chest in a protective, silken wad. She tiptoed through the room and collected her things, then scurried into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
She put her clothes on quickly, then made the mistake of looking in the mirror. “Oh…oh dear.” She was the epitome of the walk of shame. Bedraggled was the word. Her hair was sticking out at weird angles and her makeup had slid down her face, leaving tracks of black beneath her eyes.
She turned on the sink and put her hands beneath the cold water, before splashing herself in the face. “Ah, darnit!”
This was not a moisturizer commercial, and she was not a model. She did not feel refreshed. She felt soggy and half-drowned.
She looked at herself again. Well, at least the makeup was gone. But she looked like she’d had a fight with a hose.
She smoothed her now-damp hair and walked out of the bathroom, back into the empty bedroom. She wondered where Caleb was. And why he hadn’t fallen asleep.
She tiptoed down the hall and to the kitchen, and that was where she saw him, sitting in a chair at the table, upright, asleep.
He obviously hadn’t wanted to sleep with her. Shame prickled her scalp. Obviously she’d violated the rules of the one-night stand. But she didn’t know the rules of the one-night stand because she’d never had one before. Because she was woeful and pathetic and not at all sophisticated.
And she felt even less sophisticated, and a bit more woeful, now that she’d had one. Because she just felt…strange. A little bit hollow, a little hungover and a lot embarrassed.
She walked through the room, past Caleb, and out into the living area, where she retrieved her panties and stuffed them in her purse before slipping out the front door and into the cool morning air.
She pulled her phone out of her bag and started searching for a car service. She was not calling anyone she knew. No one ever had to know about this, ever.
It was clear to her that Caleb already wished he could forget it, and she was starting to feel the same way.
But even while she felt slightly hot and shamefaced, calling a car out to an address she had to do some investigation to find, standing there in last night’s dress, just advertising what she’d been doing, she knew she wouldn’t forget all of it.
She would never forget the way he’d made her feel. Would never forget that for one night, she’d had the kind of sex she’d never even imagined was real. That she’d had the kind of sex she didn’t think a woman like her could have.
Her ex could suck it. Or rather not, because she didn’t want him anywhere near her. Not after a transcendent experience like Caleb.
She would focus on that. Not the morning after. Morning afters were supposed to suck, but if the night before was awesome enough, who cared?
Yes, Monday she had to go back to business as usual. No one would ever know about this. But she would know. She would know, and she was determined to hold onto only the good stuff.
And the good stuff was legendary. His hands between her thighs, his fist wrapped around her hair…oh yes, there was a lot of good to take away.
So she would leave the bad stuff, the regret, the embarrassment, here. She’d had enough of that to last a lifetime. She was moving on, a new, properly ravished person.
The car she’d ordered finally wound up the drive and to the front of the house. She looked back and saw that the windows were still dark, no sign of Caleb rousing evident.
“Goodbye, Caleb Anderson,” she whispered before she got into the car, “thanks for the good times. And thanks for proving my app a success.”
* * *
“Evie, you better get out here.”
“What?” Evie looked up from the instant noodles she was eating at her desk, and at Raj, one of her interns.
“There’s someone here who says that he’s from Flirt. Or higher up, actually. And that he’s here to start…overseeing the app development.”
“What?” she slammed the foam cup down on her desk and stood up quickly, feeling a slight head rush. She blinked rapidly and tried to make the room stop swimming. “Why would they send someone? Everything is going fine.”
“Something to do with coordinating content, and…making sure appropriate testing is done?”
“What does that even mean?”
“Just come out here,” he said. “But…wipe the broth off your chin.”
She wiped her arm over her face and ran her fingers through her hair. She wasn’t exactly dressed for a meeting. She was just supposed to be working in her little office, with her little interns and employees. She was not supposed to be dealing with corporate suits.
She straightened her T-shirt and stared down at the words “Trust me, I’m the Doctor” with no small amount of regret. Not the best outfit to go to a meeting with bigwigs, but whatever. She’d been ambushed. It wasn’t her fault.
Then she took a fortifying breath and walked out the office door behind Raj.
And stopped cold in the wide-open expanse of the office. Standing right in front of reception was not the corporate bigwig she’d envisioned. It was Caleb Anderson. And he was in a suit, his hair perfectly coiffed, his tie straight, his appearance immaculate.
But that didn’t matter because she’d seen him naked, and frankly, that was all she could imagine now. That and those big, masculine hands wrapping his black tie around her wrists and…
“Mr. Anderson,” she said. “What a surprise.”
“Is it?” he asked.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
He put his hands in his pockets. “I’m not.”
“My office,” she said.
He lifted a shoulder. “Sure.”
She turned, her face burning, unbearably aware that every eye in the open-plan office space was on her, and Caleb in the suit.
Of course, they would all assume she knew him from previous interactions with the Flirt corporate office. She was sure of that. They wouldn’t know she knew him from letting him tie her up and have his wicked way with her.
Unless it was stamped on her forehead. She felt a little like it might suddenly be stamped o
n her forehead.
“Now,” she said, turning and walking quickly back into her office, holding the door for him until he sauntered inside.
She slammed it shut behind him.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nice shirt? Are you supposed to be Doctor Who?”
“It’s just The Doctor,” she said, annoyance coursing through her. “And that’s beside the point.”
“Is it?”
“Well, no. I mean…it’s a point that needs to be made.” She closed her eyes. Oh, Evie, focus. “Yes. Why are you here? How are you here?”
“Did I not mention?”
“You said you didn’t have a job!”
“I didn’t. But I called my dad over the weekend and mentioned that I might like to try and get back into the family business.”
“Your dad owns Flirt magazine?”
He laughed. “Don’t be silly. My dad owns Holden-Anderson Media. Flirt magazine is just one piece of the empire.”
“What?”
“Where do you think my money comes from? Did you think I followed the rainbow to its end and stole a pot of gold from a leprechaun?”
“Obviously I assumed you had family money. But I did not assume that you were somehow connected to the project I was working on.”
“You know what they say about assuming.”
“Seriously, what are you doing here?”
“I’m overseeing your project.”
“Thanks in no small part to nepotism and manipulation. I got it. But why?” she asked.
“You’re different in the office,” he said. “It’s interesting.”
“This is my natural habitat, and you just walked into it. You might be king of the bars and…and bedrooms, but I am a business badass. So don’t try to BS me or I will hand you your balls. Metaphorically. Not literally. Because literally your balls have nothing to do with this and I will not be touching them. Again.”
He nodded slowly, walking over to her desk and rapping his knuckles lightly on the surface. “Sure. Point taken. But that’s sort of counter to my plan.”
“Which was what?”
“To help you work through your list.”