Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Temptation to Submit
Loose Id Titles by Jennifer Leeland
Jennifer Leeland
TEMPTATION TO SUBMIT
Jennifer Leeland
www.loose-id.com
Temptation to Submit
Copyright © September 2014 by Jennifer Leeland
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eISBN 9781623003746
Editor: Jana Armstrong
Cover Artist: Scott Carpenter
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Temptation to Submit
“Where is Nell?” Tori Rodgers put every ounce of force into her voice. She kept her words short since she’d had a few drinks and was proud of the fact that she didn’t sway as she defied the man in front of her.
Atticus Paulus. Accountant. Acquisitions officer of ConFed. Bastard. His smooth dark skin was impervious to blushes, and he never looked disconcerted or uncomfortable. His long, capable fingers placed his drink back on the table. Damn it. She never should have suggested this place.
This mandatory conference had been difficult enough, but then she had to add a leather bar on their list of Las Vegas hot spots. Apparently, every damned executive with the company that demanded her attendance had it on their list too. All week she’d sat in boring policy meetings and ignored the fact that Atticus Paulus made her imagination go into overdrive. It was probably the fantasies she’d had about him that had driven her here. Yep. She was an idiot.
She’d gone to the bathroom, and when she came out, both of her friends, Nell and Gina, were gone. Positive that the ConFed officers knew where her friends had disappeared to, she confronted them but from a weak position. She was drunk and in a crowd. Too many people looked at her as she faced off with two men she was sure were sexual dominants. Two men who were senior officers in the company, who had become her new bosses and now owned her ass.
If Tori hadn’t been drunk, she would have been able to handle this better, but she’d overindulged, the stress of the last six months taking its toll. Being in close proximity of Atticus Paulus would drive her yoga teacher, who was fifty if she was a day and the most Zen person Tori knew, to murder.
“Nell is in good hands, Ms. Rodgers.” Atticus spoke softly, his East Indian accent barely noticeable, which only lent his voice an exotic flavor for Tori’s ears.
His hands would be good. Tori licked her lips and stared at those long fingers tracing the rim of his glass. She had to be drunk if she started obsessing about his hands like she obsessed about every other part of the man. But then, who wouldn’t? He was a lean, powerful male with steel in his personality. Yet he had a talent for using gentle persuasion until he was pushed too far. Then he took the gloves off, and the Dominant she had sensed beneath that gorgeous exterior would come out. Everyone knew it was pointless to argue with him or defy him. He would deftly eviscerate anyone who did.
And the only ConFed officer more annoying than him was Dimitri Caruso, whom Tori privately nicknamed the Italian Stallion. Both men were handsome, smart, and exuded sexual power. Whatever perverse God had created them also made her unable to back down from Atticus.
“And by good hands, you mean yours,” she snapped, her words more slurred than she would have liked.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Atticus shot back. He rubbed a hand over his face. “She’ll be fine, Victoria.”
She stepped closer to him to make sure he saw her glare. “My name is Tori, not Victoria.”
“You are buying more trouble than you can afford, caro,” Dimitri said softly.
“I’m not buying anything you two are selling.” Well, if she was going to burn bridges, she might as well go all the way. “You come into my company with your hardline business savvy and your soft-porn voices, expecting us all to fall in step with the new world order.” She took a deep breath and sneered at both of them. “Never going to happen. Now where are my friends?”
When Atticus’s eyes narrowed, it registered that he was as angry as she was drunk. “You’ll have to trust us.”
“That’s hilarious, Finch.”
Dimitri snorted at Tori’s nickname for Atticus. Early in negotiations with the new company, Tori’s response to Atticus’s stolid professionalism was to name him after the only other Atticus she knew: Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. Who the hell named their kid “Atticus”?
“I wasn’t being humorous, Victoria,” he said sternly. “It’s time for you to go before you make a fool of yourself.”
“If I want to make a fool of myself, Finch, it won’t be with you.”
“How about with me?” Dimitri asked with a grin.
She focused her glare on the Italian Stallion. “No dice. I have a car coming. We have a room—”
“Gina took the car.”
“What?” Tori shook her head, and dizziness swamped her. She and Gina had always depended on Nell to keep a lid on their craziness. Now, Gina and Nell were in deep shit.
The lights from the bar hurt her eyes, and Tori struggled to clear her head.
“How drunk is she?” Dimitri asked, and Tori glared at him.
“Not that drunk, asshole.” She clenched her fists and looked around the bar, thinking she could cry out for help. Both Nell and Gina were missing, so Tori was the last one standing. That might not last long, but she was going to go down swinging.
“Come with us, soniye.” Atticus stood side by side with Dimitri.
Where did he get the idea he could call her…whatever he’d just called her?
“I want Nell back here now,” she demanded. “She’s drunk, and I’m not going to have her wake up with regrets.”
Dimitri narrowed his dark eyes. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I mean that she deserves better than to get fucked when she’s drunk,” she said baldly.
“We wouldn’t let anything happen to her, and you know it,” Atticus said in a low, dangerous tone. “You’d better come with us. We’ll drive you to your hotel.”
Oh, hell no. “I am not going anywhere
until you tell me where Nell and Gina are.” She braced her feet and clenched her fists.
Dimitri sighed. “They are being taken care of, caro. Now come—”
“You bastard,” Tori snapped, but she spoke to Atticus. It was his fault. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone else, but it did to her. He’d arranged this. Him with that fucking section of the employee agreement. “If you try and hold either of them to that ridiculous declaration section, I’ll have every lawyer in Los Angeles on your ass so fast your head will spin right off your shoulders.”
Shit. She shouldn’t have even mentioned that weird section of their new employee agreement. Nell said it didn’t have any legal basis, but Tori couldn’t take that risk. That section read word for word like one of her fantasies.
“Ridiculous?” Dimitri raised one eyebrow and smiled. “Nell didn’t think it was ridiculous. She was curious. Aren’t you curious?”
It was like they’d read her mind. Both men were focused on her, their dark eyes filled with…something. It wasn’t lust or anger. It burned hot, but it was deeper than getting into her panties. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was just wishful thinking, but their attention created a yearning somewhere in her gut that she wanted to ignore.
The way they studied her made her conscious of the length of her skirt, the dip of the neckline of her blouse, and the way the air-conditioning made her nipples hard. She swallowed. “No,” she lied.
Dimitri and Atticus exchanged a glance.
The look clearly said they thought she was lying. It didn’t matter that they were right. It infuriated her. Before she took time to think, she stepped forward and swung hard, connecting with Atticus’s face with a satisfying crack.
The silence that followed was deafening. She wasn’t stupid. Drunk or not, she’d just struck a senior ConFed officer. Even in the dim light of the bar, she could see she’d hit him hard enough to mark him temporarily.
Dimitri whistled long and slow. “Caro, you just made a big mistake.”
Before she could open her mouth to tell the Italian Stallion to fuck off, the room spun and her vision blurred. “Shit.” She managed one last curse before the floor rose up to meet her.
PASSED OUT. THE woman had passed out, and Atticus had to spring forward to catch her. Now, she hung limply in his arms. Atticus sighed deeply. “Get her other arm. We’ll take her to my car,” he told Dimitri.
“She decked you,” the risk manager pointed out. “You know what that means.”
Yeah. Dimitri knew what it meant. However much reluctance Victoria showed, Atticus was the one she focused on. The officers had all noted it before. How she had no trouble working with Dimitri or the other ConFed employees, but she mouthed off when Atticus took charge. How she flirted with every Dominant in the room except for him. What made it worse were the many times Atticus had caught her staring at him, a hungry longing on her face.
He and Dimitri hauled Victoria to Atticus’s car. Once they maneuvered her into the backseat, Dimitri met his gaze. “You’ve really got it bad for her, don’t you?”
Atticus lifted an eyebrow. “Are you worried about me?”
“Yes,” Dimitri answered without hesitation. “You’re not the kind of guy who sleeps around. If you’ve fallen for her, it’s serious. And she doesn’t strike me as the type who goes easy on a guy.”
No. Victoria was a challenge. She portrayed herself as a party girl, ready for anything, a flirt. But Atticus sensed that beneath that easy, fun facade was the desperate submissive dying to be free. Not that she wouldn’t defy him, goad him, even resist him. She definitely would.
And he would enjoy punishing her for it.
But she was passed out in his car after having hit him in the face hard enough to make his ears ring.
“We researched them pretty thoroughly after we discovered they were the ones who kept Sunsoon afloat. Tori ramrodded the accounting department, not her boss. She’s not a sub to the bone like Nell,” Dimitri went on. “And she’s not a hardcore play submissive like Gina.” The man gave Victoria’s prone form a quick, concerned glance. “She’s a brat and will take a lot of training and work. And that’s if she’s even willing to try it.”
“Oh, she’s willing,” Atticus said. “She’s the one who chose this bar.” He stared at her through the car window. “I find it interesting that they all seemed to break tonight after all the months of that cool, calm exterior they all gave us.”
“Do you think it was the booze?” Dimitri asked.
“No, I don’t.” He smiled at his friend. “Want a lift?”
“Hell no. I’m heading back into the bar. I’ll get a taxi.” Dimitri clapped Atticus on the back. “I don’t want to be around when she wakes up.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because she is going to wake up pissed, and she’s got a mean right hook.” Dimitri laughed and headed back to the busy bar.
Atticus drove Victoria back to the hotel, negotiating Las Vegas traffic with half his attention, the rest focused on the woman passed out in the back. He parked the car and then dealt with his precious cargo. “Wake up, Victoria.”
“Where are we?” she murmured.
“Your hotel.” He moved closer to lift her into his arms, but she waved him away and climbed out of the backseat, giving him a mouthwatering view of her legs. When she rose to her feet, she was unsteady and gripped his arm.
It was a good thing that ConFed had reserved the whole floor of the hotel where the senior executives stayed. Atticus slipped through a seldom-used back door and supported Victoria, who could barely walk. Still, it was a pleasure and a torture to manhandle her into the elevator.
He was prepared for her to be deadweight. He wasn’t prepared when she curled around his body and threaded her fingers in his hair. “I wonder if you taste as good as you smell,” she murmured, and before he had a chance to stop her, she pressed her lips to his.
It took every single ounce of control he had to keep his hands still. He wasn’t cold beneath her touch, but he didn’t take over. If she had been sober, he would have devoured her, stripped her, and fucked her right there.
She hummed and licked his upper lip. “You do taste as good as you smell,” she whispered.
He reached up and pulled her arms away. “You don’t have my permission to touch me, Victoria,” he said sternly.
She dropped to her knees and mouthed his cock through his pants. “Then give me permission, Finch. I want to suck you.”
Damn it. Atticus closed his eyes for what seemed like an eternity, the warmth of her mouth making his head spin. She licked his trousers, and he almost came in his briefs. Instead, he gripped her hair and yanked her head back. “No.” Fuck. It was like razor blades saying that one word.
She struggled to get closer, to put her mouth on his cock. He hauled her to her feet by her hair, and she slapped at his hands. “Ow! Let me go, you bastard.”
He let go of her hair to grip her arms and pin them behind her back, forcing her to face him. “You’re drunk. You’ll regret it in the morning. When I give you permission to suck my cock, Victoria, you’re damn well going to remember it.”
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened. He roughly guided her toward the hallway and dragged her to his room. She remained quiet as he opened the door and led her inside his hotel room.
“You’re wrong,” she said when he shut the door.
He turned around, and she fell to her knees, head bent, hands clasped behind her. Jesus, she was beautiful. Her black dress fit her curves perfectly. She was at least five feet seven, taller in those killer heels she was wearing, so when she knelt, she was gorgeous. Her blonde hair was loose and flowing, her green eyes were hidden from him as she focused on his feet, and her tits—what he could say about her breasts would make erotic poetry seem tame.
“What am I wrong about, Victoria?” he asked as he was still frozen at the door.
She raised her head and met his gaze. “I wouldn’t regret it.”
He co
uldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He wanted her so much, had wanted her for so long, and now she was offering it all to him. But no matter what she said, she was impaired.
Finally, he strode toward her and bent down. He pulled her to her feet and whirled her into his arms. Without another word and working on adrenaline alone, he lifted her off her high heels and carried her into the bedroom.
He put her down at the end of the bed and unzipped her dress. While he undressed her, she stroked his hair, his face, his arms until he was ready to go against his better judgment and fuck her brains out.
When he unhooked her bra, she moaned. He had to stop and close his eyes for a moment as he realized she was wearing garters. Fucking garters.
He couldn’t help that his hands trembled a little as he unsnapped one and then the other and pulled the belt off. Then he rolled her stockings down. Her scent slammed into him like a steam roller, and he had to stop again. All the while, her hands were busy touching him, driving him crazy.
She obliged him by lifting her hips with a smile as he removed her lacy panties. Naked and warm, she clung to him as he slid her farther up on the bed. He pulled a blanket over her and took her face in his hands.
When he bent to kiss her, she met him halfway. He invaded her mouth, demanding a response. She tasted of whiskey and chocolate. It reminded him that she was not sober, and he tore his mouth from hers. “Damn it, Victoria, you’re driving me—”
He stopped, interrupted by a very loud snore. “Damn, damn, damn,” he snarled and rose from the bed. Control. The woman shredded it every fucking time. It took several deep breaths and repeating the same mantra he’d been muttering for months to calm his frustration.
It was the most stirred up he’d ever been in his life. He was usually the more restrained of his circle of friends, though Tony had him beat on the most laid-back. Raised on Eastern ideals but filled with Western ambition, Atticus often found himself split between the more serene reaction to life and the Dominant, aggressive side that reared its ugly head every time he was in the same room with Victoria Rodgers.
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