by Nan Comargue
Leda sat up. “Are you looking for something in particular? Because I keep my little black book in the bedside table.”
He straightened up with a scowl. “Don’t even joke about that kind of thing. It makes me crazy.”
“Sorry,” she said, instantly penitent. It wasn’t fair to tease him about his jealousy, even to the new Zach. “What were you looking for?”
He stretched one hand out in front of him. “These.” A pair of black tights dangled from his fingers. “Softer than steel and far more suitable than pink fur.”
Leda’s skin prickled. “Are you going to tie me up?”
By the time she’d asked the question, he was already doing it, grasping her hands and pulling them up over her head, where he secured them to the bedhead with her tights. Curious, yet acquiescent, she lay like a sacrifice placed on an altar, there solely to be used for his ends.
She tried lifting her hands. The stretchy material offered give but no release. She was caught—completely at his mercy.
Zach knelt on the bed. He ran his hands down her body, fingers spread and palms maintaining maximum contact with her naked flesh.
“Beautiful.”
The hot stab of his worshiping gaze left her no choice but to believe him.
Being his captive was incredibly exciting. Her nipples were puckered and aching, her pussy flooded with anticipatory juices.
She wanted him to use her and use her hard.
He pinched her stiff nipples, watching from between half-closed eyelids as she writhed with unseen agony.
Still holding her breasts, he positioned himself between her legs, his engorged dick soaring to his belly.
Leda wanted him inside her, except it didn’t matter what she wanted. Zach was in charge.
For a breathless moment he toyed with her, knocking his cock down so that it nudged impatiently at her pussy lips, smearing her wetness on them both.
He entered her in one hard thrust. Even though she was primed and ready for him, the force of the intrusion stopped her breath for several seconds. Then she released it again in a long moan.
He’d taken her before, of course, but this was different. This was hungry, primitive and oh-so-incredible.
When she moved sinuously against him, his responding growl was low and encouraging. She watched his face as he drove into her welcoming cunt. She could see from the dark flush on his lean cheeks how he reacted to her helplessness—how much it excited him.
With her hands tied, she was oddly free. Free to be ridden and to enjoy it without having to justify her pleasure.
With her pleasure so obviously in Zach’s hands, she could relinquish control, goading him almost to violence with the thrusting invitation of her hips. Yes, even without her hands, she could show him how much she wanted him and make him exert himself in increasingly furious ways.
She didn’t say his name. Only one thing burst from her lips, soon becoming a mindless chant.
“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.”
And he did. Oh God, he did, until the world shattered and formed itself back in the image of their locked and joined bodies.
Zach held his hips hard between the juncture of her thighs as he came…and came…and came.
Leda’s climax came seconds after he’d spent his jism. Her third orgasm of the night left her limp and shuddering. Zach was slow to untie her, his fingers fumbling over the knots he’d made.
Even with her body drained, her mind still worked frantically.
Yes, she was free. Free to want him. To enjoy him. To love him. Yet, she shut her lips tightly against the words.
Love was a bondage she didn’t want. A prison that would shut them both inside…if she let it.
Chapter Eleven
Leda usually made friends easily but, for some reason, she didn’t find it easy to make friends with her coworkers.
It was more than them being cliquey and distrustful of strangers. Their group included designers who’d joined the firm just the year before, while others had been there since the firm’s inception at the time of the province-wide oil boom. And they weren’t so much split up into smaller groups as they formed a complete group…except for Leda.
She’d tried asking about their hobbies and families. She’d tried cracking jokes and editorializing about last night’s hit shows. She’d even watched those hit TV shows so she could speak knowledgeably about them the next day when usually all she watched were the home and design shows, rather like a busman on holiday.
Even bringing in fancy cupcakes from a trendy local bakery hadn’t won her any friends. Her coworkers had merely grumbled about their waistlines as they’d gobbled up her offerings. And, she’d sat alone at her desk for lunch that day as well, while all around her, her colleagues made their daily plans.
“Any leads yet, Mills?”
Leda looked up to see Edwin Chang, one of the firm’s principals, standing next to her desk. Edwin was in charge of the money side of the operation and had very little to do with the design side, which was why she was surprised to find him speaking to her.
Like the rest of her coworkers, his tone was clipped and unfriendly.
Leda was forced to shake her head in response to the question. “Not yet, Mr. Chang.”
At the behest of the head of the design team, she’d reached out to former clients from Regina who were also connected with Calgary. No luck. No one was spending the kind of cash they used to on luxuries like home décor. If the Regina clients had been, she’d not had to have moved in the first place.
“I thought you were some kind of hotshot back in Saskatchewan,” he said, scowling. “A rainmaker.”
She was a friendly person and, yes, that did sometimes lead to work, but somehow her people skills seemed not to have made it over the border with the rest of her possessions.
“I’m trying,” she said. “I have other contacts I could tap into.”
But did she want to exhaust her connections for a company who treated her like an unwanted guest they’d had foisted upon them? The firm president, who’d hired her, was rarely ever in the office and that left her at the mercy of everyone else, who seemed to hate her.
“Try harder,” Edwin told her. “You know, Markson’s sister was up for a job here before you came on board. Then, when the head honcho decided to hire you, suddenly there was no room for her. You need to start producing or your numbers at the end of your probation period won’t justify your continued employment.”
“Thanks for telling me,” Leda said, a little startled but mostly relieved that she now knew the reason for her colleagues’ cold shoulders. It wasn’t personal. They were standing by Markson who, ironically, had been one of the less antagonistic people in the office.
“No need to thank me,” Edwin said, sounding a bit gruff. His gaze softened. “I’m just doing my job, Mills. If you don’t land a big client in the next two months, you’ll get a warning letter. At the end of the six months, you’ll be called into the boss’s office and get your hand shaken and your timecard punched out. That’ll be it.”
“Exit Leda Mills, stage right,” Leda murmured, “and enter Miss Markson in the role of understudy.”
“Just land a client,” Edwin urged her. “I hate writing those warning letters.”
* * * *
Leda trailed her hand across Zach’s ridged stomach. “Do you want to be my client?”
He squinted at where she lay with her head on his shoulder.
“You’re going to start charging me for sex? How much?”
This was said in the light teasing tone that belonged to the new Zach, but those deep green eyes were watchful and serious.
Leda pinched him—or she tried to pinch him. His skin was too taut to get a good hold. “No, you jerk. You couldn’t afford me anyway.”
“No, probably not.” His arm tightened around her. “What did you mean, then?”
“My work.” She sighed. “I’m supposed to land a major client in the first six months or else they’ll fir
e me. Usually it’s not a problem, because the veterans will share tips and leads with the newbies, but this place is different. They all hate me because I took the job someone else’s sister wanted.”
“Six months,” Zach repeated. “You’ve been there five months already.”
He should know. After that first visit, he’d flown into Calgary every week without fail, and every week she told herself that it would be the last time.
“Am I your last resort?”
She sat up, abandoning the warm comfort of his arms. No matter how many times she pulled away from him, it still tore at her.
When will that end?
“Yes,” she said. She owed him that truth.
It was his turn to touch her, to run his fingers along the back of her arm when she refused to look down at him, but he didn’t get up.
He was going to take the truth lying down.
Is there no end to this torture? Because that was what his acquiescence was. His calm. His watchfulness. Even his stupid teasing.
He was waiting for the end, their end, and he seemed determined to take it stoically—like a country man, a plainsman. Like a man.
Damn all men.
For nearly five months now she’d waited for him to fight for this, for them. And he hadn’t. He’d refused to.
Was it because he no longer wanted a future together? Or was it that he had finally accepted that she would never want that? The irony was sharp and cruel.
She wanted him forever, yet she had no way to say it or show it. She’d convinced him already—too well.
Leda didn’t want to stay in Calgary and battle for a job she detested. Her colleagues had never softened toward her, even when Markson’s sister was eventually hired to fill another vacant spot at the firm.
She missed Regina. She missed her friends. She missed Heart Lake and her aunt and Mike.
She missed Zach.
One night a week wasn’t enough, no matter how long they stretched out those hours or how sleepless they made them.
“Don’t you want your own firm?” Zach asked.
“Yes, one day,” she replied. “But that takes more money and a better credit rating than I have.”
“It also takes talent and determination and a charming way with people, all of which you do have.”
Leda glanced back at him. “Do you think I’m charming?”
His expression was sober. “Everyone you meet becomes your admirer—or your slave.”
Her heart clenched. He was speaking about himself.
“You should meet the people at my current firm,” she told him. “They were definitely not charmed or enslaved.”
“The talent and charm are the hard parts,” he went on, as if she hadn’t interrupted. “The funding is easy. I can fund you.”
Leda spoke quickly before she let her dreams grow too large. “Relax. I told you I wasn’t going to start charging you for sex.”
“Since we’re dating, I’d consider the seed money a gift.”
It took a moment for her to realize he was in earnest.
“A gift? Of that much money?”
She shied away from the more important statement, that they were ‘dating.’ There was no better description of the relationship they had but neither of them had said it yet. That made what they were doing more real and somehow urgent.
He stroked her bare back in a distractingly thorough way, raising the fine hairs on her skin. “You won’t let me give you real gifts. I don’t know why. I could before we started sleeping together.”
“You were giving them then with something twisted in your heart,” she explained. “I mean, look at that ring. It was symbolic of…that something.”
Oh fuck. Was she really talking about his heart? That was dangerous territory.
“My heart? That barren wasteland?”
Of course, he’d immediately picked up on her slip. “Don’t,” she said.
“Don’t what?” His voice was still soft, yet it was as if he were shouting. “Don’t tell you it’s a wasteland? Or don’t tell you that it isn’t?”
She stared down at him. “Tell me the truth.”
He pulled her hand down to his chest to cover his left side. His eyes, hard, bright and green, gleamed up at her.
“The truth is it’s on fire for you. It was then, when I gave you that ring, and it is now, whether I’m here with you or not. But you’re afraid you’ll get burned by that fire, so you’ve decided you always have to have one hand on the extinguisher.”
He was right. After Andrew, she’d never wanted to get close to another man, so she’d kept every one of them at a distance.
Zach had been the first one to get close. She loved him with such a painful intensity that it eclipsed everything she’d felt for Andrew.
If she and Andrew had been a burning torch, what she had with Zach was an inferno. It might consume and destroy them, but it would last, even after that.
“You know, I’m younger than you are,” he said with an obvious attempt to return to his former lighter tone, “so chances are you would never have to live without me.”
“Women live longer,” Leda pointed out.
“So it’ll all even out,” he said. “We’ll die together, on the same day.”
His eyes were still watchful.
Leda moved the hand lying on his chest, stimulating his blunt male nipples. “You know, I love you.”
Zach’s response was swift and sure. “I know.”
Her gaze skittered to meet his. “You do?”
“Yes. You loved me when you told me the first time, except you were too scared to admit it.”
“You wanted me to say I didn’t,” Leda protested, remembering his accusations afterward.
“I wanted you to say you did.”
That made a twisted kind of sense. He’d started with the negative, hoping she would contradict him, and trying to make it a little easier on himself if she didn’t.
“I’m an idiot,” she said.
“Yes, you are,” he surprised her by agreeing. “You put hundreds of kilometers between us. What would you have done if I hadn’t followed you here?”
“Come back to Heart Lake,” she said promptly. “Eventually.”
“And made me wait another ten years.”
Leda shut her eyes, struggling with the agony of that stark statement. She’d made him wait all those years, first out of blindness then out of cowardice.
When Zach flicked at her cheek with his finger, that was the first indication she had that she was crying.
“I’m so sorry.”
He closed strong arms around her and spoke into her tangled hair. “Sorry for what? For not loving me? For not admitting it when I wanted you to?”
“Both,” she stammered, her voice weak and watery.
“Idiot.”
Leda drew back to stare at him with widened eyes. “What?”
His mouth drew to the side in a tight smile. “You were right to wait,” he told her. “I didn’t expect you to fall in love with an eighteen-year-old, especially not an eighteen-year-old version of me—arrogant little prick.”
She smiled tremulously back at him. For a moment she’d thought she had been too late…that she’d waited too long. But she was starting to suspect that would never be the case. They were meant to be together. The universe wanted it. Who am I to resist?
“I needed to learn patience,” Zach went on, “and I learned it and paid for it with long fucking years of agony. But I needed to learn it that way or else it wouldn’t have been worth it. This wouldn’t have been worth it. And, hell, sweetheart, you were worth it.”
Leda wound her arms around his neck. “Zach…”
She pressed up against him, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead he stared intently into her flushed face. After a minute, she started to get nervous.
“Zach, what is it?”
“After this,” he said, “you start saying ‘no’ to the other people in your life.”
Shifting clo
ser, Leda pretended to ponder the command. Because that was certainly what it was—a command, one that thrilled her. Yes, he was very lucky she liked that dominant male vibe he had going.
“Even to my aunt and your father?”
“Damn right,” Zach said. “They’ve got each other. I’ve only got you.”
Tears threatened once again. There they were—the chains. Love was bondage and Zach’s possessive love wound itself very tightly around her.
This was her last clear chance to escape their captivity before the lock clicked closed.
“I love you, Zach.” She kissed him warmly and tenderly and with all her heart.
“Will you come back to Regina with me?” he asked when the kiss ended.
“Yes.”
“And live with me?”
“Yes.”
He paused for a while.
“Leda, will you—?”
She didn’t give him a chance to finish.
“Yes.”
Also available from Totally Bound Publishing:
Hot for the Professor
Nan Comargue
Excerpt
Chapter One
How did this happen?
That morning Avery’d had a job, a savings account and a live-in boyfriend. Now, at the end of the work day, she had none of those.
Standing on the sidewalk outside her office—her former office—she struggled to fight back angry tears. She had nowhere to go, not even for the night. Her purse contained forty dollars, all that remained from the ATM withdrawal she’d made on Monday. Today was Friday. Where had the rest of the money gone?
Actually, she knew where—on lunches and lattes and all the little treats people with decent jobs indulge in without thinking. She’d had a decent job on Monday and Tuesday and the rest of it, up until today. Up until a half hour ago, when her boyfriend and boss had called her into his office and told her they were done, both personally and professionally—just like that.
Drew, her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend now—had promised her a severance check in lieu of the notice he should have given her. He should know. He was a lawyer. Presumably kicking her out of his life was all fine and good as long as he paid her for her trouble—except the check in her hand was worth nothing right now.