“I’m free for meetings right now, Vera.”
It was Trevor Long, one of Aaron’s best estate agents who spoke to the receptionist. Aaron had his own glassed-in office, but he kept the door open. His dad hadn’t done that, had always believed in keeping a separation between himself and his employees. But Aaron had never been overly comfortable playing the hardass, unless it was absolutely necessary. The open-door policy meant his staff felt free coming to him with issues or advice. It also meant Aaron could hear everything that was going on around the office.
Right now, Trevor had his ravenous attention fixed on Jasmine. He slicked back his already jelled-into-submission blond hair and fairly licked his lips in anticipation.
A wholly unearned sense of territoriality gripped Aaron. He covered the phone mouthpiece and called out the open office door. “Vera, when Ms. Campbell comes in, can you show her to my office?”
Vera Wilmington—a woman in her late forties with four kids and a twenty-year marriage under her belt—turned and looked at Aaron over the top of her half-frame glasses. Her gaze slid from him to Trevor and back. Her lips twitched. “Sure thing.”
Trevor’s face fell. “Oh come on.”
“The boss’s prerogative, Trevor.” Aaron grinned. “And she’s an old friend of mine who would, I guarantee, eat you alive.”
“Yeah, but what a way to go,” Trevor mumbled, returning to his desk with a serious case of the sulks.
Aaron worked at finishing up with Bill Leadbeater as he watched Jasmine walk into the reception area, perch her sunglasses atop her head and ask for him by name. Aaron’s heart performed a ridiculous little flip. She’d come to see him specifically. That was interesting.
When Jasmine walked in, Aaron nodded in acknowledgment. She took a seat in the chair across from his desk and crossed her legs, causing her black skirt to ride farther up her thighs. Aaron couldn’t help the way his attention snagged on the exposed length of supple flesh. Damn, she had great legs. Too easy and too damn fun to imagine them wrapped around his waist as he pumped into her. The images accosted him, and the stirring in his loins became more of a frenzy. Jesus. At least pretend to be professional, dickhead.
Seeing the direction of his gaze, Jasmine uncrossed her legs and squeezed them together, sitting up straighter in her chair with her hands in her lap. The pose said “good Catholic schoolgirl”, something which Jasmine had never been. At least not in any way that wasn’t thoroughly filthy.
And now he was picturing her in a short checkered skirt and knee-high socks. Man, he really had reverted to schoolboy thoughts.
“Anyway, a client just walked in, Bill. I gotta go.” Aaron waited while Bill wound up the conversation, using the time to cleanse his mind of dirty imaginings involving the woman sitting across from him. It was bad enough last time that she’d seen how strongly she affected him. If he let her see it again, she’d know he could be reduced to putty in her hands, if she was so inclined.
But then, maybe Trevor had a point. What a way to go.
At last he got rid of Bill and hung up the phone. He turned his full attention to Jasmine. “Well, hello again.”
“How are things, AJ?”
AJ. It was what his pop had called him when he was a kid, what some had called him in school, so it always made Aaron feel about twelve years old. Considering he felt a little like a pubescent boy with his first boner, Aaron figured he probably deserved the assignation right now. “All good with me, Jas. You?”
“Good. Great.” She drummed her fingernails on her knee and bit her lip. “Actually no, I’m not that great.”
Aaron’s smile dropped a little as her words sunk in. “Why—what’s wrong?”
“Business is slow.” Jasmine gestured through the glass, where they could both see Summer’s Retreat. “My sister’s business.”
“We’re heading into the cooler months. Everyone’s business slows down a bit.”
“Not yours,” Jasmine noted. “I hear AJ Sanderson’s is booming.”
“I wouldn’t say booming, not in this property market.” Aaron tried not to be thrilled that she’d apparently been asking about him. “But we do okay.”
“I hear you’ve turned into a savvy businessman. Like your father.”
Aaron was sure she’d meant it as a compliment, so he didn’t deny it even though every cell in his body wanted to protest the comparison. He’d taken over AJ Sanderson’s when his father retired last year, he sat in the same office his father had inhabited for much of his career. The comparisons were inevitable.
Usually he let them roll off his back like water. For some reason it bugged him that Jasmine, of all people, thought he was like Andrew Sanderson, even though she could have no concept of the man’s faults.
“I prefer to think I’m my own man.”
Jasmine’s face fell. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Aaron realized he hadn’t masked his irritation well. He held up a hand. “Sorry. The comparisons get a little old sometimes.”
“I can understand that.”
Aaron remembered how people—people like his mother and her friends—used to say what a shame it was that Rex Campbell’s eldest daughter showed no signs of the same ambition or intelligence that her father or her sister possessed. He felt like a spoiled prick. His dad hadn’t been perfect, but despite what went on behind the scenes people generally admired him. By association, Aaron had been afforded the same level of respect. The comparisons to his father might bug him from time to time, but at least they didn’t have the power to demoralize him.
Aaron wondered if Jasmine had ever been demoralized by what people said. If she had, she’d never shown it. But as Aaron well knew, people put on fronts all the time.
“So the thing is, I came to ask for your help.”
From the way she clenched her hands together in her lap, Aaron could tell that had been a very difficult sentence for Jasmine to utter. He sat forward and put his elbows on his desk. “What can I do for you?”
The Billionaire Submissive
Joely Sue Burkhart
Lesson one: She makes the rules. Lesson two: Refer to lesson one.
Billionaires in Bondage, Book 1
The Billionaire.
Donovan Morgan rules his billion-dollar international company with an iron fist. But in the privacy of his bedroom, he hungers for an iron lady to rule his body.
The Mistress.
Lilly Harrison helps her clients tame their personal demons by taming them. Lots of men—blue collar to white collar—enjoy female domination. But the ultra-rich and powerful CEO is alpha to the core. In public, that is. The challenge will be to teach him that bossy isn’t always better.
The Contract.
Donovan selects his potential Mistress as carefully as a prime investment opportunity, and negotiates a contract as tight and binding as any corporate takeover. He must ensure his privacy at all cost—even if he has to resort to a little blackmail to ensure her full cooperation.
His First Lesson.
When the indomitable Miss Harrison laughs in his face, tears his contract up, and walks out without a backward glance, it seals the deal. Donovan will have her. Even if she makes him crawl to her side.
Warning: A billionaire used to buying everything he could possibly want—except in the bedroom; a Mistress determined to bring him to heel with her sexy red stilettos; inappropriate use of cherry pie and silk ties; and a steel-clad contract that will keep him exactly where she wants him.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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The Billionaire Submissive
Copyright © 2014 by Joely Sue Burkhart
ISBN: 978-1-61922-169-7
Edited by Tera Kleinfelter
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: June 2014
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
About the Author
Look for these titles by Joely Sue Burkhart
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