by Zara Chase
She let out a long sigh. “Yes, it did.”
“We won’t do anything to you that you won’t thank us for, not if you enjoy being spanked and—”
Porcha shuddered. “I do. Believe me, I love it.”
Beck groaned, touching an erection through his combat pants. “Then why—”
“I think we need to understand what went wrong between Porcha and her husband and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes.” Troy ran a hand lightly down her spine. “You ready to tell us? Does it hurt to talk about it?”
“No, I want you to know.”
“We want to help you get over it,” Adam assured her, his hand now resting tantalizingly short of her pussy. “And, all modesty aside, we know what we’re doing. Tell you what, why don’t we go back downstairs, I’ll cook us all a decent meal, and then we can talk about it?”
Chapter Five
Porcha watched in a trance as the three men acted as a tight team, their joshing a thin disguise for the deep friendship that sealed them as a unit. Beck volunteered to go out for supplies, taking with him a long list written in Adam’s spidery scrawl.
“I need to shower,” Troy said, heading for the stairs. “Won’t be long.”
“Can I help?” Porcha asked Adam, strolling into the kitchen area and looking round his shoulder to see what he was cooking.
“You can keep me company.” He turned behind him, grabbed a bottle from the fridge, and waved it at her. “You look like a white-wine kind of gal.”
“Yes, please, I could use one.”
He opened it, poured her a glass, and opened a beer for himself. “You all right?” he asked. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course you’re not, but we will sort this. If it’s any consolation, we’ve been doing this a while and haven’t lost a client yet.”
“You guys are really close, aren’t you?”
“In spite of Beck being an ass, yeah, we are. We were all in the military together, back in the day. That’s how we met.” He stirred something in a pot. “That’s where we met Georgio as well. He was our CO.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“Well, none of us talk about those days much.” He checked the oven temperature and shook his head. “Then we were all mercenaries for a while, risking our butts in various hellholes at the ass end of the world. We made enough money to quit a few years ago and now do what we do…well, because we don’t know how to anything else, I guess, and because we need something to get up for in the mornings.”
That was quite a speech for Adam. Porcha already had him pegged as a man of few words.
“I’m glad you do,” she said, meaning it. “You make me feel safe.”
“That’s the general idea.” He took silverware from a drawer. “How did you meet Georgio?”
“In London. I was a nurse, if you can believe it.”
Adam waggled his brows. “I’ll bet you cause a general rise in the male patients’ collective temperatures just by walking onto a ward.”
“Hardly. Georgio’s wife had leukaemia.”
Adam shot her a look. “I had no idea he was even married.”
“Oh, he was married all right. They were devoted to one another.” Porcha shook her head, filled with sadness when she thought of Maria’s untimely demise. “If you could have seen them together. It was as though the rest of the world didn’t exist.”
“We were in Africa popping bad guys about then.”
Porcha, watching Adam work with economical efficiency in his kitchen, had trouble imagining him murdering anything more vital than a soufflé and told him so.
“You’re really at home in a kitchen.”
“I should be. My folks have a string of them back in Philly. I could cook before I could walk. I always intended to go into the business myself but—”
“But you got a taste for what you do now and prefer it that way.”
He stopped what he was doing and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Yeah, I guess. We get on so well that it would be like cutting off my own arm if I left the guys.” He grinned. “Besides, someone has to make sure they eat right.”
“What do the others do whilst you’re taking care of their nutritional needs?”
“Beck can make anything with an engine talk to him.” He laughed. “That truck we brought you back in looks like millions of others on the road, because we want it to blend in. But under the hood it’s a whole different story. It can outrun just about anything on the road if need be. Don’t tell him I told you this, but Beck’s a top-notch driver who could give a lot of professionals a run for their money.”
“And Troy?”
“All those gadgets in the study. He’s the cyber prince. Keeps all our communications up to date, amongst other things.”
“Yes.” Porcha smiled. “I can imagine him being at home doing all that stuff. He’s a bit of a control freak, isn’t he?”
“We all are, babe. Goes with the territory.” He turned his attention back to his cooking. “You were telling me about Georgio and his wife.”
“Well, he brought his Maria to London because the best specialist in the world at the time was based there. I looked after her in the private clinic he checked her into, and we hit it off from the word go. So, when Georgio brought her back to the States, knowing she didn’t have much time left, he asked me to come, too, as her private nurse.” Porcha paused to take a sip of her wine. “I was in a bit of a rut at the time. I couldn’t shake off a persistent bloke who wouldn’t accept our relationship was going nowhere, and so I decided a trip to the States was just what I needed.”
“How long did Maria last?”
“Six months.”
“We wondered why he got out of the mercenary business and came on home.” Adam sighed. “He should have told us.”
“He probably didn’t want to distract you.”
“Yeah, that would be it. Anyway, at least he set up his security business and we had something to come home to.”
“My relationship with Georgio was never sexual, in case you’re wondering. More father and daughter, I guess, but I know a lot of people thought there was more to it than that. He wanted me to stay on with him after Maria went, but I couldn’t do that. There was a big wide world out there, I was only twenty-two—”
“How long ago was this?”
“Just over three years. Anyway, I fancied Mexico. Georgio knew someone with a club down there, a respectable nightclub if that’s not a misnomer. He got me a job as a hostess, meeting and greeting the punters.”
“And let me guess,” said a voice from the doorway, “that’s where you met your husband.
They both turned to see Troy standing there, unsure how long he’d been listening. He was wearing long shorts, a clean shirt, and was freshly shaved. Adam tossed him a beer, which he caught one-handed, and he popped the tab.
“Yes, that’s where I met Sal.”
“Save the rest of it until Beck gets back,” Troy advised. “He shouldn’t be long.”
They heard his key in the door at that moment, and he staggered in, loaded down with supermarket bags. The guys decanted his purchases and stacked everything neatly in the cupboards. Shortly after that, they sat to eat the meal Adam had produced remarkably quickly. It was really good, and Porcha told him so.
“Ah, some appreciation for my talents at last!”
“You seem to have regained your appetite,” Beck said, laughing at her empty plate. “What happened to the shit-scared woman we met this time yesterday?”
She grinned at each of them in turn. “She got some sleep, she got laid, and now she’s just mad as hell, thirsting for revenge.”
“Atagirl!” Beck said for them all.
“Where did you learn to handle a gun?” Troy asked.
“Same place I learned self-defence. Sal insisted. I spent hours on the range until I hit the centre of the target every time. I spent even more hours taking private karate lessons.” She shared another grin between them all. “Just so you know, I can han
dle myself, so don’t hack me off.”
“Ah, baby, I’m sure you can,” Beck said, fluttering his brows. “But can you handle us?”
The guys stood up and cleared the plates away, their movements swift and economical, always seeming to know where the others were. Porcha watched them in admiration, feeling safe and cherished. She knew she was about to tell them everything—all the intimate details of her humiliation at Sal’s hands—sensing it was the right thing to do. Sal was dead. He couldn’t come back and chastise her for anything. Even he couldn’t control her thoughts from beyond the grave. She was free of him, and once she got rid of the people trying to chase her down, she’d be able to do whatever she damn well pleased. She was probably a wealthy woman, at least on paper, but she wouldn’t take a penny of Sal’s illicitly obtained funds. If she came out of this thing alive, she’d give it all to charity and start again with a clean sheet.
“Come on.” Beck took her arm. “Let’s go get comfortable, and you can tell us your life story.”
Porcha accepted another glass of wine and curled her feet beneath her in a swivel chair. The three guys sat opposite her, all in a line on a large couch, rather as though they’d agreed without the need for any words not to touch her until they were sure she was comfortable with it. Adam succinctly brought Beck up to speed on what she’d so far told them. He, too, expressed his surprise at the news of Georgio’s wife.
“He didn’t tell me about any of you, either,” she said. “Georgio only doles out information on a need-to-know basis.”
“So, you met Sal at the club you worked at,” Troy prompted.
“Yes, he swept me off my feet, to be honest. He was charming, well connected, and a perfect gentleman. He showered me with gifts, took me on his gin palace of a yacht, flew me to Rio in a private jet.” She lifted her shoulders. “It was a first-class ride every step of the way. What girl wouldn’t be impressed?”
“Did you know what he was?” Adam asked.
“Not at first, but his permanent protection squad told he was no Boy Scout. That and the fact that everyone treated him with grovelling respect. Georgio went crazy when I told him I was seeing Sal. He put me straight on his profession and told me to back off.”
“And did you?” Troy asked.
“I tried to, which was when I discovered that no one walks away from Sal Gonzalez unless he’s ready to let them go. He besieged me, launched an out-and-out charm campaign, introduced me to all sorts of legitimate business contacts and promised me he would get out of the drugs business permanently if that’s what it would take to keep me. In the end, he convinced me he was a reformed character.”
“Leopards don’t change their spots,” Beck said, unusually sombrely for him.
“No, obviously not.” She groaned at her own naïveté. “But perhaps I wanted to believe it was possible because I was a little in love with him.” She shrugged. “Who knows? He told me about his childhood. He came from an impoverished background, and all the kids, according to him, got involved in drugs in some way. He came up through the ranks, had natural leadership qualities, and it went from there.”
“That part’s probably true,” Troy said.
“You’re not Mexican?”
“No, I come from Argentina originally, but I know life can be as tough in Mexico as it was in South America.”
“I’d been having a tough time supporting myself,” Porcha said, feeling the need to continue justifying her decision to marry a man like Sal, “and it was nice to have someone I kind of trusted to make decisions for me. Anyway, I eventually agreed to live with him, which is when the fun and games started.”
Adam frowned. “You didn’t know he was a dom?”
“Call me sheltered, but I didn’t even know what a dom was. What I did know, once he had me behind the walls of his fortress in Mexico, was that there was no going back, so I made the best of it. He trained me for weeks before he laid a finger on me, which drove me insane.” The guys shared a glance. “I like hard physical sex, and I wasn’t getting it, you see.”
“He had you pegged,” Beck said, curling his upper lip. “Knew exactly how to turn you into what he wanted you to be.”
“He taught me to assume a subservient position whenever he walked into a room alone. In the end, it became second nature, even when we had company. He regularly spanked me and taught me to wait for the pain to transmute to pleasure. He introduced me to all his toys but wouldn’t fuck me until I agreed to marry him.” She looked at each of them in turn. “By then I was in a permanent state of arousal and would have married his grandfather if it had got me laid.”
“He was controlling you from the get-go,” Troy told her, anger in his tone.
“Yeah, I know that now. On our wedding night he kept me up, literally all night. He made me sit at the dinner table with nothing on except nipple clamps and a plug up my butt. Then he took me to a room I’d never been in before. Like your one, except it had a real creepy feel to it, like people who’d been in there before me hadn’t enjoyed the experience.”
“I hope you didn’t get those sorts of vibes from our room,” Adam said earnestly.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Good,” Beck said. “Because we’re not into cruelty.”
“Sal chained me to the wall on our wedding night and made me turn to face it with my butt in the air. That was his favourite way to look at me, I later discovered. He finally fucked me from behind, telling me over and over again that I was his and would never do a single thing for the rest of my life without his approval.”
“Was it good? Beck asked. “The sex, I mean.”
“I loved it. He was thirty years older than me but still a passionate man with a big cock. Not as big as Troy’s,” she said, giggling, “but still pretty impressive. He filled me with it and made it last forever. I came twice without his permission and got punished harshly for it.”
“Doesn’t sound so very bad,” Beck remarked. “Not if you liked it.”
“He released the chain from the wall afterward, attached it to the collar he’d put round my neck, and made me crawl across the floor to him and beg for more.”
“Did you?” Adam massaged an impressive-looking erection through his pants.
“Oh yes, and he spanked me for asking. Said girls who asked didn’t get.”
Troy shifted his position, also rigidly erect, Porcha noticed. “Babe, if you enjoyed it so much, and you obviously did, what went wrong?”
She shrugged. “I guess I’m not cut out to be a slave. I’m happy to submit, beg for what I want, and take any punishments my dom thinks appropriate, but outside of that I want to be able to live my own life, make decisions for myself.”
“You’ll give your body and not your mind, which makes you a sub not a slave,” Beck told her. “That’s what we’re in the market for, in case you’re wondering. We’d never do anything to you that you didn’t want. There’s always a safety word in our games.”
“To answer your question, Troy, what went wrong is that Sal is a show-off. He didn’t want anyone else to touch me, but he did want people to see what power he had over me. It got to the stage where he’d have one of his men in the room when he was fucking me, usually that prig Woollard.”
“Woollard?”
“Let her finish,” Troy said, talking over Adam’s interruption.
“He was Sal’s right-hand man, and we hated each other. He disliked me because he thought I lessened his influence with Sal but still lusted after me. I disliked him because he was highly dislikeable.”
“He made his man watch you?” Adam grimaced. “What a sick fuck.”
“Not just Woollard. My two bodyguards were regular spectators, too. Sometimes he’d get one of them to administer his punishments for him whilst he sat and watched. They were never allowed to lay a finger on me with their bare hands. It was always a paddle or a whip. I was totally humiliated because I could see how turned-on they were, but that was rather the point. But, as I said, Woollard was
the worst. He used to spank me really hard with one hand and jerk off with the other. He was the only one allowed to do that. But it was the smug satisfaction in his eye that got to me. Sal knew I hated what they did to me, but I couldn’t do anything about it. He’d worked his way inside my head and had complete control.” She spread her hands, trying to make them understand what it was like. “And in spite of everything, I still enjoyed the sex, even if I didn’t enjoy the humiliation.”
“And yet Sal taught you to protect yourself—”
“Oh yes, he loved me and was kind to me in a perverse sort of way when it wasn’t about sex and domination. It was just…well, this’ll sound like boasting, and trust me, it isn’t. He saw how men looked at me and used me as a weapon to show them how invincible he was.” Porcha sighed. “The trouble was that he trained me too well for me to even think about protesting. I knew I had to do whatever he asked of me, no matter how degrading. He stripped me of the will to do anything of my own volition.”
“Mind games.” Troy spat the words, giving Porcha the impression that if her husband hadn’t already been dead, Troy would have been happy to help him on his way to the next world.
“It got worse. He started inviting his male business colleagues to dinner and made me wear completely see-through clothing. He made me sit at the foot of the table with my tits on open display whilst they chatted like I wasn’t there.”
“The perverted bastard!” Beck growled.
“Inevitably, at some stage he’d say I’d displeased him, which was my sign to get up and crouch in the corner.” Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes. “He didn’t have to say a word. Just one look and I knew what I had to do.”
“He had you the moment he didn’t fuck you at the beginning, and he knew it,” Troy said. “He was thirty years older than you so he needed his rivals and friends to see that you weren’t with him for his money. I’m betting that you smiled all through those humiliations. Am I right?”
She lowered her gaze and nodded. “Yes.”