Anthology - Behind the Mask

by Joey W Hill, Lacey Alexander

  She ate the entirety of it from his hand, even obeying the sensual urge to clean the soft cheese off his fingertips, taking the taste of his skin with it, those strong fingers resting in her mouth.

  The tension and lust poured off him as she did it, and she knew her experiment was successful. It wouldn’t be easy, but with the power of that knowledge, she knew she could turn this to her advantage, make him her slave if she wanted to.

  But something else came with the thought. Anguish. She didn’t want to make Matt a slave. She wanted his harshness, his power, his command. She wanted the tender protectiveness and chivalry as well, and wondered if there were even more gentle sides to him than he’d yet revealed to her, aspects of his personality that might exist in a softer world, one outside these corporate walls.

  “God, you make me insane, Savannah,” he muttered.

  Join the club, she thought. “How did you know these were my favorites?”

  It was Lucas who spoke. “You don’t eat much that we have brought in. Or at least you didn’t at first. But then we started noticing the things you would eat, more than once.”

  “We wouldn’t touch any of those,” Peter put in. “And made sure that portion of the tray was closest to you. Then we figured out if we ordered more of that type of snack, you’d eat more.”

  Southern etiquette. Never eat the last one. She remembered a gradual increase in the food she’d eaten at their sessions, an ample variety of her preferences present.

  “We made it a competition, coming up with foods we thought would become your new favorite.” Peter laughed, caressed her bare calf from somewhere out of the range of her vision, reminding her forcibly of the view he had of her spread legs. “I knew you’d love those chocolate cream finger cakes.”

  “I lost a five hundred dollar bet on it,” Lucas grumbled good-naturedly. “I was sure you’d pick the caramel creams.”

  “When Ben baked the cakes himself and slid them on the tray like they came from Dean and Deluca’s? Not a chance.”

  Savannah choked. “Ben baked…”

  “It isn’t the sleazy lawyer routine that gets him women. It’s his culinary skills,” Jon added.

  “Yeah, like you don’t use the lost angel thing to seduce women.” Ben snorted outside of her vision.

  “Five hundred dollars on whether or not I’d eat a sweet?”

  Matt dabbed at the corner of her mouth with one finger, put a missed bit of goat cheese on her tongue. “We always have a betting pool running on something. At the end of the month, the winnings go to the preferred charity of the final winner.”

  “What’s your chosen charity?” she asked.

  “A man’s charities are a private thing. Not manly to discuss,” Lucas interjected.

  “And I think our guest has recovered enough,” Matt said, his eyes studying her face.

  Anticipation sprang up in her, thick as heated blood.

  She wasn’t sure she could take anything else. Emotionally, she felt as delicate as an eggshell, just Matt’s words creating a shiver through her body. But wetness touched her thighs, her pussy leaking a tiny drop, her body’s betrayal of her interest. It was as if Matt’s multiple-layered strategy had already trained her body to such a level of sensual awareness that the mere suggestion of sexual activity could get her revved up again.

  He rose, his fingers whispering across her cheekbone, and leaned over where she could see him touch the table controls. The motor engaged and she was moving along the track, down the table, and as she turned in that direction she saw she was going to the very end, where Peter had moved and now waited, just to the right of the rounded table end.

  Peter would have looked more at home at a monster truck rally. With a corner lift to his mouth at almost all times, as if he were sharing a private joke, he had a soft Southern drawl and a way of wearing his clothes that suggested he’d be most at home in jeans and a T-shirt from a seventies’ rock band. His fingers would tap restlessly as they conducted their meetings and at times she’d hear him humming a heavy metal tune under his breath. He wore his hair cropped in a short military cut that emphasized the strong lines and corded neck of a bodybuilder. He wasn’t a bodybuilder, but an Army reservist. He spent a great deal of time staying in shape to serve his country if called. He’d taken a leave from Kensington to volunteer for a year tour in Afghanistan. During that time Matt had casually mentioned many were sending shoebox care packages to the soldiers. He’d left her a copy of the instructions that were circling the corporate offices, encouraging participation. In the margin, he’d noted how to get one specifically to Peter, if she wanted to have her staff make up one for him.

  Before she knew it, she was collecting items, especially as she had watched the news reports and thought of Peter’s face, the laughter so often in his gray eyes, the strength in those broad shoulders, a strength that the media footage made clear could be erased in an instant by the fragile reality of mortality.

  Moist towelettes, sample-size toiletries, a pack of playing cards she’d found that had images of New Orleans integrated into the depictions of numbers and royal personages. She remembered he had a weakness for ice cream and put in a bag of hard candy that boasted fifty-one flavors similar to ice cream. The latest Dean Koontz novel and a Nightcrawler X-Men comic book. The others called him Nightcrawler, because they claimed he preferred trawling the New Orleans nightlife over sleeping.

  And then she put in something she hadn’t expected to buy. On one of her layovers, when she was browsing in an expensive airport jewelry shop, she’d seen a gold St. Christopher medal. She’d purchased it with not a thought for the three-figure price, because it didn’t matter. Getting him back safely did.

  She’d never done something so…nurturing before. Filling the list in the privacy of her home, she didn’t involve her staff. She even mailed it herself.

  She’d never prayed. She suspected there was a God out there, but had always imagined Him like her father. Not Someone from whom she could seek support or comfort, just Someone who expected the best, or dire consequences would result. But in that moment, when she took the medal home and tucked it in the box, finishing the care package, she offered something that she supposed was like a prayer to that saintly figure. Please keep him safe. Bring him home.

  When Peter did get home, at the first meeting where she’d seen him again, he’d been wearing it. He’d ruffled her by putting his arms around her and hugging her, a close hold that he prolonged five still seconds before he let her go, looked in her eyes and nodded. Then he asked her one question.

  “Have you tried the God-awful chai tea Jon’s trying to make us drink today?”

  He always wore the necklace.

  “I love your breasts,” Peter said simply, bringing her back to the present. He had sat down, and had his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his fists, as if they were two children, facing each other on their stomachs on the limb of a tree. The whole world fallen away below, so that the only things around them were things that could fly or flutter, crawl to great heights to see the world from a higher perspective. “I try not to stare, because I know women think men are creeps when they stare at their breasts during conversation, but since you and I don’t have to talk directly that often in meetings, it’s seemed okay to stare at them.”

  It startled a smile out of her, and he returned the favor, showing her white teeth so symmetrical she knew an orthodontist had been part of his youth.

  “Of course, sometimes it ticked Matt off.” He grinned more broadly. “You like lace, just a bit on the edges. You’ve never worn a bra for us that didn’t have it.” His finger reached out, traced one bare curve, the line such lace would follow if it had been there. In her raised position, her breasts were right before his face, at the level of his mouth, and she could not block the images that thought evoked. This position also put her where she could still see the wall screen. New images had been picked up. Her writhing, screaming response to Jon’s stimulus, all muted, but no less
potent, particularly when Peter’s large callused hands reached forward now and began to fondle her. She was getting very, very attached to the magic of men’s hands. At least the different textures and types of touch these men had.

  He traced the crease under the left breast, started up the opposite curve, making her feel his appreciation of her shape, her fullness. Her nipples ached, but he did not touch them, just the soft flesh around them.

  “You’re too thin,” he observed in a warm voice that implied no judgment, no criticism. “You don’t eat enough, though you’re in good shape. You use your corporate gym daily, I know. When I’ve crossed the city overwalk between our two buildings, I’ve seen you running the track on the tenth floor. Covered in a light sheen of sweat, wearing a black sports bra that holds you so tight and immobile, no give. Much like your life, don’t you think?”

  “And all of your lives are so perfect,” she said, but with much less acidity than she would have had a few hours ago.

  “Well, I can’t think of a moment much better than this one.” He gave her a charming look and then continued on, unperturbed.

  “I can’t stand it when women diet themselves down to zero cellulite thighs and a tiny ass. They lose their breasts, the curves of hip and bosom that make them a woman. I wish we could go back to the fifties, and see women who were firm and healthy, with generous breasts, soft asses, whose thighs were like soft pillows for a man’s hands. I’d be in heaven.”

  “Sounds like I’m a disappointment to you, then.”

  He chuckled and weighed one breast in each hand, pressing her nipples to the heated cup of his palm, eliciting a soft whisper of pleasure from her. “Not in the least. You’re a beautiful woman.” The Southern accent got deeper, richer. “While you and Matt spar, or Jon drones off one of his never-ending financial reports—” there was a snort from the end of the table, “—I’ve imagined them a lot of different ways.

  “Bare, like this, nothing clothing them but the touch of my hands. Anticipating the feel of your nipples in my mouth when I close my lips around them and suckle them.” He gave them a gentle pinch, a mere pressure, and she arched, moaning. “Or in a beautiful satin bra, with sheer cups so I can see the suggestion of your nipples and the color of your skin behind the cloth. The kind with underwiring that pushes you together, makes that deep cleft that I want to run my tongue down, like the cleft of a woman’s cunt lips.

  “Or a shelf bra that your breasts are just barely tucked into, the plump tops rising high like the smooth tops of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. You’ve worn that style before, and the images it conjured have made me nearly insane. I want to sprinkle powdered sugar over the top of them, lick it all off.”

  She was shuddering, and his touch had turned into a gentle kneading, slow, torturous, a manipulation of the sensitive globes even as his thumbs idly, all too infrequently, passed over the distended nipples.

  “And then there’s the bra with cutouts for the nipple, so you can have all the support and shapeliness a bra provides, but your nipples are as prominent under a shirt as if you’re not wearing one at all. No man can resist looking, hoping for a rain shower to soak the cotton, make them even more noticeable.

  “Nipple jewelry is also something I’d love to see on you. D-rings and barbells for piercing, dangles, chains to attach them to one another and adorn the neck. Weights with uncut gemstones. All of which stimulate the nipples and keep them distended, aching for touch.” His hands kept up their complex composition on her, and she thought he would make her come, just from the combination of words and skillful fondling.

  “There are hundreds of ways to appreciate a woman’s breasts, and every day I think of a new way. If I had you to myself for an entire afternoon, I’d lay you out on my bed, apply a henna paste to your tits, decorating them with a Celtic design. And then when I was done, and it was dry so I could touch you, when your body was screaming for fulfillment, I’d place your breasts in a parallel bar restraint like this and tease you with my teeth and tongue until you screamed for release. But not release from that bar. Release from the passion you would be feeling.”

  His voice dropped to a rough whisper, a sensual friction against her senses. Her entire breast tingled as if she could feel the weights he spoke of, the touch of the henna paste, the squeeze of those bars distending her, making her more aware of touch, of the need to be tasted.

  “Would you like me to suckle your breasts, Savannah?” Peter asked. “I want to, very much. Tell me you want that.”

  “Yes,” she managed. “I want that.”

  “Good.” His mouth curled up at the corners. “Because I was going to do it whether you agreed or not.” He leaned forward, his face even with her breasts, and looked up at her. “While I’m doing this, Ben is going to be preparing you for a very different sensation. Together we’re going to rouse you to the pinnacle of climax, but hold you there longer than you think is possible, until we reduce you to mindless sense again, the pure being that you are, nothing else.”

  “I’m not sure I can take much more…” The weak words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, appalling her, but the totally male smile from Peter ran fire through her, obliterating the cold frisson of fear.

  “You can take it. You’ll have to, because it’s not a choice.”

  He lowered his head, covered her with the heat of his mouth, and swamped her with the sweet satisfaction that her nipple had been craving, so sharp that she cried out as he drew it in, teased it in the wetness, pressing on it with his lips. He brought his hands up, framed the rack of her breasts and squeezed just in front of the grip of the bar restraints, causing a moan, an outright whimper.

  She’d never had each part of her so focused upon, so worshipped and cozened as it had been in the past several hours. Her entire body, every expanse of skin and the restless nerves beneath, desired something, a level of fulfillment Peter had just indicated they would not deliver. But it didn’t matter, because the spiraling need felt so good that she shamelessly angled her hips in wanton display. Peter deepened his suckling, making appreciative wet noises as he drew succor from her. Her fingers ached from clenching into one overlapped fist, the desire to touch, to hold his head closer, denied to her.

  She shifted her gaze and saw Matt standing in front of the screens, a silhouette against the many images of her time in this room. Someone had dimmed the lights so she was in spotlight again. Feeling his claim on her as if he had uttered it like a war cry, she understood then the appealing fantasy of a slave girl being prepared for the warlord’s pleasure. For she knew in looking at him, she was not being shared equally among friends, but pampered, her body made malleable for claiming by the man who had fully intended to have her from the first. And that time was drawing very close.

  Peter’s teeth scraped her left nipple and the shudder of reaction went all the way to her womb.

  Then Ben touched her. The man who turned the legal screws when Kensington’s rights were challenged in any situation. It made sense Matt would pull him into this last phase, to ensure there was no challenge left in her. Though Matt underestimated her if he thought that was possible. She would go down fighting. She had to. Didn’t she?

  Ben’s hands were slick as they touched her backside. She smelled an oil, heated musk like opium, and he was sliding it down her buttocks, oiling them, somewhat as Jon did, but then suddenly, he was working his fingers and the oil into her anus, and slid past the resistance before she could react.

  “My apologies, Savannah.” His voice was a sexy baritone with the faintest hint of Cajun accent because of his parentage. He’d spent most of his formative years in New England, including the acquisition of his law degree at Yale, where he and Matt had met. “I didn’t want to warn you because you would tense up, and I don’t want to cause you pain.”

  She highly respected Ben, because while he was in fact as aggressive as the proverbial pit bull, like all of Matt’s team, he played as fair as he played hard. When she’d been privy to m
eetings where they’d been on the same side of the fence, she’d noted that Ben did not hesitate to tell Matt whether or not Kensington could do something. Matt followed his direction most of the time, never undermining Ben’s expertise with CEO ego.

  It was more difficult to relax with Ben touching her, however. She’d had to acknowledge she had a more affectionate and intimate bond with each of the other four than she would have admitted prior to tonight. But Ben had been more distant throughout her relationship with Matt. The man she knew least was obviously preparing to invade the area she’d explored or fantasized about the least, mentally or physically. Jon had barely entered her there, and with Ben’s firm though gentle hands, she understood implicitly that he was planning a full invasion, as the last step in Matt’s plan to completely break her down.

  Her resulting anxiety created a strange dichotomy of sensation, trepidation shooting like a distracting arrow through her reaction to Peter’s mouth, teeth, tongue and hands.

  “Stop,” she rasped. “Don’t.”

  Peter’s mouth slowed, but did not still. Instead of nips and eager sucking, now he laved her softly, tugging her in slow, lazy sucklings in his mouth so her pussy, already wet, flooded with new heat, moisture Ben picked up on his fingers to rub over the outside of her pussy, stimulating her there, and then raised his touch to use the rest to lubricate her back opening.

  “Matt.” She reacted, didn’t think of appearances. “This is scaring me.”

  Her voice quavered slightly, but for once in her life, it did not embarrass or appall her. There was no room anymore for the cold pit viper she was described as being. She was just Savannah, a woman aroused and captivated by the five men in the room, captured by the demands and desires which had roused her own. It was the first time she’d been afraid of the physical portion of the evening. She had been afraid of what they would do to her, afraid of where they would and wouldn’t stop, where that would leave her when it was over. Afraid of Matt. Of his relentless determination, so much greater than she had ever suspected, to have what he wanted. Afraid that she, in the end, did not have the strength to resist him or hold him at arm’s length, stay safely behind a shield so he couldn’t get to who she was. She also was afraid the night’s events revealed all too clearly that he had figured that out a long time ago.