COPYRIGHT
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 9780748131198
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Marina Anderson 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.hachette.co.uk
For Ellenie, with many thanks for all her help!
Contents
Copyright
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER
1
The heavy wooden shutters of the old colonial-style house in the southern part of Rio de Janeiro were closed against the heat of the early-afternoon sun. It looked peaceful, an oasis of calm in the middle of the noisy, bustling, crowded streets.
In the large master bedroom of the house the atmosphere was far from peaceful. As an old-fashioned ceiling fan turned slowly and sluggishly, a tall, bronzed young woman lay spreadeagled in the middle of the vast bed. One of the thin shoulder straps of her red-and-white polka-dot dress had slipped down her arm, the skirt was bunched up round her waist and her right hand was working busily between her slender thighs
A man stood at the foot of the bed; watching and listening intently as she began to approach her climax. As her breathing grew ragged and her fingers moved more quickly he spoke. ‘Slower, it’s too soon. I want to watch you wait a little longer.’
The young woman groaned, moving restlessly against the mound of pillows beneath her head. Her waist-length blond hair was dark with sweat, and her hips twitched with desperate desire.
Although the man’s voice was quiet, she knew him too well to disobey. She could feel the heat spreading upwards through her body, and her belly felt tight with need, but she forced herself to slow her fingers down, and moaned softly as the first deliciously exciting sparks of orgasm faded into the background.
The man nodded approvingly and smiled to himself as his blond mistress tentatively began to caress her breasts and belly in an effort to delay her climax. ‘I didn’t say begin all over again,’ he remarked. ‘Keep your hand between your thighs.’
‘I shall come!’ she protested.
‘I doubt it.’
They both knew that he was right, and for another five minutes the beautiful bronzed body heaved and struggled to subdue the pleasure that was threatening to consume it. Finally, when she began to plead for release from her torment, the man moved.
Sitting on the side of the bed, he pulled the girl on to his lap, and she gasped as she felt herself impaled on his long, rigid erection. Realising that her body was finally going to be allowed release from the incredible sexual tension of the past hour, she wrapped her arms around the man’s neck as he started to move her up and down with his hands.
At last the wonderful, scorching heat began to flood through her again, and she cried out with excitement, but then her rhythm was broken as the man stood up. Quickly she wrapped her legs around his waist, pressing herself against him as she tried to find the stimulation that she needed to climax.
The man was breathing rapidly, his excitement growing as he carried her across the room until her back was against the wall. Now he began thrusting in and out of her with increasing force, and she could see his startlingly blue eyes darken with passion and desire as they both approached their climax.
The blond girl knew the rules, but to her horror she suddenly realised that she wasn’t going to be able to keep to them. He was moving too well, and had kept her on the edge for too long. She was going to come, before he’d been inside her for as long as he liked.
The man also realised it, and all at once the light went out of his eyes. ‘No, Livia,’ he cautioned her, but it was too late. She felt as though an electric current was surging through her body; all her muscles went rigid and then her belly went into violent spasms of almost painful pleasure, and she screamed with a mixture of ecstasy and fear.
As soon as her vagina contracted around him, the man’s pleasure started to swamp him as well. A pulse jumped in the side of his neck as he tried to delay it, but it was no use. With a muffled groan he thrust one final time, grinding his hips against her as hard as he could, extracting every last bit of pleasure from the moment.
For a few seconds they remained locked together, the sweat on their bodies making it difficult for them to part, but then the man withdrew, and with an exclamation of annoyance he let the blonde fall to the ground in a tangled heap of tanned limbs and flowing hair.
She watched him from beneath lowered lids, wondering how he would react to her failure. To her surprise he didn’t speak again, but instead went for a shower, then dressed and started to leave the room.
‘I’m sorry, Carlos,’ she said quickly. ‘It was all too much for me. I …’
He turned to look at her, and there was an expression on his face that she’d never seen there before. He looked bored. ‘I’m beginning to think that I’m wasting my time with you,’ he remarked. ‘You don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word discipline.’
‘How can you say that? When did I last fail you?’ she asked.
‘The point is that after all this time, I don’t expect you to fail me at all. How can I rely on you to help me teach someone else discipline if you haven’t mastered it yourself?’
The blonde’s dark brown eyes widened in surprise. ‘What do you mean, someone else?’
‘I need a new hobby, a diversion. I thought that together we might introduce a newcomer to the kind of pleasures we enjoy.’
‘Who?’
He shrugged. ‘I have no idea yet. Someone will come along. I trust in fate.’ With that he walked out of the door.
Once she was alone, Livia got up off the floor, padded over to the window, opened the shutters a little and looked at the city spread out below them.
Sometimes she wondered how she’d ever got herself involved with Carlos. She was young, rich and beautiful. Almost every man who saw her desired her, and yet here she was caught in the net of a man who’d taught her more than she’d ever wanted to know about herself. A man whose public persona was so at odds with his darkly perverse private life that no one would believe the truth about him, even if she ever dared to tell it.
The worst of it was that she was enthralled by him. She lived for the forbidden things that they did, the strange world of punishments and rewards that accompanied the sexual discipline which he expected his women to follow. He demanded much of her, but the rewards were great, and just the memory of the way he would sometimes touch her, or bind her, was enough to make her nipples harden with excitement.
Lost in her thoughts, it was several moments before she realised what was happening in the garden beneath the bedroom window. Someone was coming slowly up the long drive. It looked like a woman, but her clothes were strange. Not bright and casual, as most Brazilian women’s clothes were, but
dull. The dress looked to have long sleeves.
Opening the shutters wide, Livia leant out to get a better look. As she did so, the figure looked up, and it was then that Livia realised Carlos was being visited by a young nun. Hastily suppressing a giggle, she quickly closed the shutters again, deciding that after she’d showered she’d try and find out exactly what her lover had meant by his last remark.
Livia stepped beneath the powerful spray of water just as Chloe Reynolds, a novice nun in the first year of her novitiate, raised the brass knocker on the front door and banged loudly with it.
When she stepped into the delightfully cool hall, it was probably fortunate that she had no way of knowing that she was also taking her first steps into a very different world from the cloistered safety of the order of St Luke of the Holy Cross.
CHAPTER
2
Never in her entire life had Chloe seen a hallway like the one she was standing in now. The intricate marble tiles beneath her feet must have cost a small fortune, she thought to herself, and every exquisite object on the dark mahogany side tables looked like a collector’s dream.
Although she hadn’t wanted to come here, and if Sister Agatha hadn’t had a migraine she certainly wouldn’t have had to come alone, she was glad now that she’d been sent. She’d felt awkward walking through the front garden, listening to the shrieks of the peacocks, but now she was angry. Angry that in a country where there was so much poverty, people’s consciences let them live like this.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear Carlos Rocca’s footsteps on the stairs. It wasn’t until he gave a slight cough that she lifted her eyes from contemplating the floor tiles. But when she saw him, she found it almost impossible to breathe. It was as though the close, humid air outside had followed her in and was threatening to choke her.
‘I was expecting Sister Agatha,’ he said, his voice deep and surprisingly gentle. ‘Unless she’s suddenly lost forty years, I take it I misunderstood the message.’
Chloe struggled to speak. Not only did her chest feel tight, she was also giddy. It was a most peculiar sensation, and she didn’t like it one bit. ‘Sister Agatha has a migraine,’ she explained, relieved to find that her voice sounded normal, except for a slight tremor. ‘I was to have accompanied her, but because everyone else is so busy, I had to come alone.’
He gave a slight smile. ‘I’m surprised they weren’t concerned for your welfare.’
‘You’re well known to them. They said that you’ve given us assistance before.’
‘Sister Agatha hardly offers a man the kind of temptation that you do, Sister … ?’
Heat suffused Chloe’s cheeks and she felt herself start to tremble. She couldn’t believe that a religious man, and a philanthropist, would speak to a nun in such a way. ‘My name’s Chloe,’ she whispered, wishing he’d stop looking at her so intently with his deep blue eyes.
‘Sister Chloe? That doesn’t sound a very religious name!’
‘We’re allowed to keep our birth names if we want to these days. At the moment I’m only in the first year of my novitiate, which means that I don’t have to choose my name for another twelve months. I don’t suppose I will keep Chloe,’ she added regretfully. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t sound religious enough.’
Carlos gestured towards one of the heavy panelled doors in the hallway. ‘Come through to my study. We’ll talk there.’
Chloe hesitated for a moment, intimidated by the masculinity of his muscular body and his intense, almost pagan, charisma. Then she reminded herself that she was here for the children, and should have put such silliness behind her long ago. The fact that the man was tall, dark and handsome meant nothing to her now, just as she meant nothing to him. Her religion protected her. She wondered why she didn’t feel more grateful.
As Carlos sat down behind his desk and surveyed the young novice sitting opposite him, he wondered how he was managing to keep his intense desire for her hidden. At last, just as he was beginning to question whether any woman would ever fascinate him again, this girl had been sent to him. She was literally a gift from heaven, he thought to himself with an inward laugh. Now he had to work out how to set about seducing her away from the convent and into his world.
‘I take it you’ve come about a donation,’ he remarked.
Chloe nodded. ‘It’s for the Brazilian street children. Over five hundred of them have already been killed by your own policemen this year, and—’
‘They’re not my policemen, Sister.’
‘Of course not, I didn’t mean … It’s only that I’m from England and …’
Carlos leant forward, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘What on earth is an English girl, and a novice nun at that, doing here in Brazil, walking around dangerous streets on her own, asking strange men for money?’
She looked flustered, which was what he’d intended. ‘The streets aren’t dangerous for me. My clothes mean that I’m safe. As for asking strange men for money, you’ve given to us before. You’re one of our benefactors.’
‘Giving money to worthy causes isn’t necessarily the mark of a good man,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Perhaps it’s how I atone for all my sins. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing so far from home.’
‘I’m trying to reach inner freedom through the discipline of religion,’ explained Chloe, hoping that he wouldn’t laugh at her. ‘The trouble is, I need to be doing things. I’m not very good at just praying and meditating. The order that I joined in England felt that if I came here and joined a working order, it would help me decide if this was truly my vocation.’
‘And have you decided?’
‘Not yet,’ she confessed. ‘But at least I’m making a difference. I don’t suppose someone like you has any idea what it’s like in the shanty towns, but the poverty is appalling. People live—’
Carlos held up his right hand. ‘I don’t need a lecture. Here, let me write you a cheque.’ Opening his chequebook, he scribbled swiftly for a few seconds, tore off the cheque and handed it to her. ‘Here, take it. If you think it will be used to help the poor, then I’m happy for you.’
He saw her startled expression as she looked at the figure on the cheque. ‘Of course it will help them!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s far too much. I never expected …’
He looked intently at her. ‘No amount of money can save your street children, or the poor. Before you come back to me for more, I want you to promise to do something for me.’
‘Anything,’ she said quickly. ‘You’ve been so generous.’
‘Do some investigating. Find out for yourself where the money goes. I think you’ll soon realise that more of it is used in bribes than ever reaches the needy. This is a corrupt city, Sister Chloe. Most people here lack the discipline you seem so anxious to acquire.’
He watched her fingers tighten round the cheque, and then she stood up and walked towards the door, clearly anxious to get away from him. ‘I’m sorry that you have such a jaundiced view of the world,’ she retorted. ‘I shall pray for you.’
For a moment he almost felt sorry for her, but then he hardened his heart. It was best that she knew the truth. Best for her, and definitely best for him. Moving quickly across the room, he managed to open the door before she reached it, and then watched her walk towards him.
Her knee-length grey skirt revealed perfect black-stockinged legs, and her short black veil, with the narrow mauve band of the novice, showed a glimpse of dark curly hair beneath it The outfit was far more seductive than any low-cut dress, and he felt himself harden with desire. Somehow he had to have her. Had to teach her his own kind of discipline. He had the feeling she’d be an excellent pupil.
‘Don’t forget to do your research,’ he reminded her as he held the front door open. She didn’t reply, but he saw her almond-shaped grey eyes flick upwards and saw too the expression of pitying contempt in them. It didn’t matter. She’d soon learn the truth, and then she’d be back because she wouldn’t know where else to go.
> Chloe walked as quickly as was considered proper down the long path, and licked at her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. Now that she was out of the house, and away from the disturbing presence of Carlos Rocca, it was easier for her to breathe. She’d never had a man stare so intently at her before, as though he could see right into her soul.
Although his cheque was amazingly generous, he obviously wasn’t a good man. To suggest that the money being raised in the city was used to bribe people was despicable. All the same, she’d check up on it, see for herself exactly where it all went.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just his allegations that had disturbed her. Even after she got back to the ramshackle building that served as the headquarters for the order, she kept remembering the contrast between his blue eyes and his tanned skin, and the way his wavy brown hair had curled up on the edge of his collar at the nape of his neck.
It was unforgivable, but she didn’t confess any of it, because deep down she knew that she wasn’t sorry. It was a frightening thing to discover about herself.
CHAPTER
3
Carlos settled himself comfortably in the depths of the soft-cushioned chair, watching intently as Livia and a Brazilian girlfriend writhed together on a rug on the floor in front of him.
The girl, Juanita, had been to the house before. She was the daughter of one of the city’s most infamous drug barons, but Carlos had nothing to fear. His power was the greater, and the man knew it. He believed that her visits were an honour, a sign that Carlos would support him if any of his rivals tried to remove him. In this he was completely wrong. All that interested Carlos was the pleasure Juanita gave him, and that he and Livia gave the girl.
Tonight was particularly exciting, because Juanita had been told that she must remain silent the entire time. Normally she would murmur incoherently as her pleasure mounted, and then scream in ecstasy when she climaxed. Although used to playing different games on every visit, she was finding tonight a struggle. As a result, it was difficult for Carlos to wait his turn.
Discipline Page 1