Also by Abigail Barnette
ALSO BY ABIGAIL BARNETTE
Bad Boy, Good Man
Surrender
Where We Land
THE SOPHIE SCAIFE SERIES
The Stranger
The Boss
The Girlfriend
The Bride
The Ex
The Baby
The Sister
The Boyfriend
THE BY-THE-NUMBERS SERIES
First Time (Penny’s Story)
First Time (Ian's Story)
Second Chance (Penny's Story)
Second Chance (Ian’s Story)
Baby Makes Three (Penny's Story)
Baby Makes Three (Ian's Story)
THE CANIS CLAN SERIES:
Bride Of The Wolf
Wolf’s Honor
THE NORTHERN CIRCLE SERIES
Awakening Delilah
Writing as Jenny Trout
Choosing You
Say Goodbye To Hollywood
THE NIGHTMARE BORN SERIES
Nightmare Born
Sophie
The Boss
Abigail Barnette
Content Warning: depictions of alcoholism, discussion of suicide and domestic violence.
Contents
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
About the Author
Copyright © 2021 by Abigail Barnette
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For everyone who’s loved Sophie like I do.
Chapter One
“Look who made Page Six!”
An iPad landed on the kitchen table in front of me far harder than any iPad should ever land. A paparazzi shot of a brunette vixen in a way-too-short asymmetrical Versace dress and sky-high stilettos, on the arm of a tall, devastatingly handsome man with an unfortunate pit stain visible on his sleek gray shirt.
“Page six? Of what?” My husband, Neil Elwood—“billionaire philanthropist” according to the caption beneath the photo on the screen—asked. He neatly flipped an omelet like he was a professional chef and not a retired publishing magnate.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t the figure beside me in the photo. That man sat across from me at the breakfast table. He leaned over the iPad his eldest daughter, Amal, had nearly shattered on the table. “‘Sophie Scaife, wife of billionaire philanthropist Neil Elwood, seen leaving 1 Oak with Bahraini shipping heir El-Mudad Ati.’ Well, that’s not fair. I’m not just a shipping heir.”
“Would you have preferred ‘former race car driver?’” Amal asked, her French accent giving the sardonic comment an even deeper cut to my American ears.
Even as a hip thirty-something—ugh—I was nowhere near as cosmopolitan and smooth as my sort-of-stepdaughter. I had a degree in fashion journalism, and I still didn’t dress half as well as she did. Though she wore her school’s required uniform, she’d accessorized hers with a Hermes scarf and giant nineties hoop earrings she described as “vintage” just to make everyone in the room feel old as hell. Her golden, sand-brown skin matched her father’s; her glossy black hair was set in a Janelle Monáe-inspired pompadour. Everything about her screamed style.
Teen girls made me feel old and a little threatened these days. Especially since two of them had moved into our house. Sometimes, our preposterously large mansion didn’t seem large enough.
El-Mudad ignored Amal’s comment. He and Neil had experience with teenagers and their sarcasm. “You’re an heir, as well. If you’d like to stay one.”
“I think you’re missing the point of this photo, Baba,” Amal said patiently. “They’re making it look like you and Sophie are having an affair.”
“Because we’re leaving a club together?” he scoffed.
“As someone who once owned one of the sleaziest tabloids in the United Kingdom, I assure you, that’s all it takes.” Neil didn’t sound concerned about either of those statements. He plated the omelet and motioned to Amal. “Are you eating before school today?”
“No, I want to get a smoothie on the way.” She dropped a kiss on her father’s head and scooped up her keys from the counter.
“Drive carefully,” Neil called after her as she headed out the kitchen door.
Despite Neil’s protestations, El-Mudad had bought Amal a car as a reward for the good grades she’d gotten during her first semester in school here. After losing his daughter and son-in-law in a car accident only a few years before, Neil had strong opinions about the girls he now considered his stepdaughters engaging in “risky” behavior.
Neil checked his watch. “As usual, Rashida is running late.”
“She adheres to her father’s schedule,” El-Mudad quipped.
Neil didn’t miss a beat. “None, then.”
I leaned over the iPad and zoomed in on the photo. A part of me had always wanted to see myself doing something scandalous in a tabloid, though I had never actively pursued fame. I’d been in the social pages of magazines like Vanity Fair and similar publications now and then, seen leaving this function or that. The attention I received had ramped up considerably after I’d been photographed sitting beside Kate Middleton at a charity polo match in Windsor. Though we didn’t even speak beyond me saying, “Sorry, I have to steal this chair, or my feet are going to explode out of my shoes,” the internet went wild over the photo of the two of us laughing. And thanks to social media, my sudden fame as the princess’s potential lesbian lover had cemented me as interesting enough for the tabloids—if no actual celebrities were doing anything better.
“At least they didn’t refer to me as the royal ‘gal pal’ this time,” I said with a sigh, sitting back and crossing my arms.
“This still isn’t fantastic,” Neil pointed out. “All it takes is one slow celebrity news week, and suddenly you’re ‘carousing’ with Sarah Brightman on a yacht when you were, in fact, at the party solo and getting violently ill down the front of her dress.”
“I don’t remember that scene in Phantom,” I said dryly.
Neil made a grim face. “I wish Andy had found it as funny as you just did. It was his yacht.”
“At least you’re housebroken on boats now.” El-Mudad stood and took his empty breakfast plate to the island, pausing to grab an apple from the fruit bowl there.
“You ran in more public circles in the eighties than I do now,” I reminded Neil. “But I promise, I’ve learned my lesson. I won’t accidentally sit in Donatella’s lap at Fashion Week or anything.”
I pushed my chair back and stretched, gazing out the window at the lightening sky. Beyond the vast manicured lawn, an embankment of beach grass waved in front of the rolling white crests that dotted the tossing Atlantic.
And I got the spectacular view right from my own kitchen.
My life so far had been absolutely nothing like the way I’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t that I’d never envisioned myself hanging out in Hamptons mansions and attending parties with royalty. I’d just always thought it would be because of my hugely successful career in fashion journalism. While I hadn’t failed at my goal of one day being editor-in-chief of a magazine, when I’d hit that milestone, it had tur
ned out to be something I hadn’t wanted, after all. I’d written two bestselling memoirs, something I’d never foreseen. Marriage? No way. Two romantic partners? The thought would have never crossed my mind. And a family with children? I had wanted that least of all.
Well, that wasn’t true. I hadn’t wanted to be a mother. And I still wasn’t; I loved Olivia, Amal, and Rashida, but I wasn’t the mothering type. The way I saw it, I was more like a loving female influence who had zero interest in doing the hard part of parenting, and I rarely had to since there were two accomplished parents already in our household. Plus, Olivia had her grandmother, Valerie, and Rashida and Amal split their time between our house and their mother’s home in France.
However, they’d opted to stay with us for the school year rather than travel with their mother and their tutors.
Rashida careened into the kitchen with untied shoes.
“Slow down, slow down!” Neil urged.
“I can’t get another tardy!” she gasped, struggling under the weight of her backpack. While Amal strongly resembled her father, with the same golden skin and sharp features, Rashida looked more like her mother, with dark brown skin and a round, elfin face. She hurried over to throw one arm around my shoulders briefly before repeating the gesture with her father.
Neil retrieved a bento box from the refrigerator and held it out for her as she hurried to the door. “Breakfast.”
She veered off course and wound both arms tight around his middle before taking the box and running out to meet our chauffeur.
Neil turned to us with a smug smile. “I got a better hug.”
“It’s the angle. It’s not because you’re special. It’s because you’re standing up,” I argued.
“Okay. That was two.” El-Mudad held up two fingers. “Where is three?”
The kitchen door swung open again. In marched Olivia ahead of her nanny, Mariposa. “I’m going to school now!”
“Yes, you are, big girl.” I stuck my hand out for a knuckle bump, which Olivia returned with enthusiasm but not aim; she ended up punching me in the wrist instead. I shook my hand out. “You’ll get it next time.”
“I’ve got her at preschool until twelve-thirty, then ballet and tumbling from two to three-thirty,” Mariposa read off her phone, pausing to blow one fluffy brown ringlet from her face.
“And her piano teacher at four-thirty,” El-Mudad added with a wink. He’d been teaching Olivia simple pieces on the grand piano that graced our formal living room.
Neil scooped up Olivia. She’d gone through a growth spurt over the summer and carrying her around was becoming a thing of the past; he used every excuse possible to do it while he still could. “Be a good girl. Don’t get any steps today.”
“I stayed on yellow all day yesterday,” Olivia announced proudly.
Of course, “yellow” was the second most serious disciplinary step. It came right before a call home. Of which we had received many.
Olivia was indeed her mother’s daughter.
“Why don’t you try to stay on green today?” I suggested.
“From your lips to his ears.” Mariposa pointed upward with one finger.
“Don’t...don’t expect too much,” Olivia warned solemnly.
Neil set Olivia back on her feet with a kiss. “Thank you, Mariposa.”
“I definitely couldn’t do this without you,” I added.
They went out the door, Olivia’s steps as determined as a CEO striding into a company-wide scolding.
That she got from her grandfather.
“That’s three. And we are all alone.” El-Mudad leaned back in his chair with a relieved sigh.
I shook my head with a rueful smile to myself. Neither of my guys would survive parenting without a full-time support staff of tutors and nannies.
The silence that followed the girls’ departures always seemed to make Neil a little bit wistful. Of course, he missed his own daughter, but long ago, he’d mentioned that he would have liked to have had more children in his younger years. By the time he married his ex-wife, he’d already set the idea aside; chemotherapy and my staunch no baby policy had sealed the deal. Having custody of Olivia had changed our plans somewhat, and now, with El-Mudad’s girls, Neil had embraced the fatherhood role again.
For me, it took a lot more adjustment. Finding a happy medium between being a female parental-ish figure and not being a mom was a near-constant balancing act. I couldn’t be their cool grown-up friend because Emma had entrusted me with raising her child.
Also, Rashida and Amal definitely didn’t think I was cool.
“Finish up breakfast, the two of you. I’ll leave the dishes to Julia this morning,” Neil said, washing his hands and methodically drying them before looking to both of us. “Because I have plans for you.”
El-Mudad and I waited impatiently on the recamier in the bedroom of the private sex retreat we kept tucked away in a secluded area on the grounds. Face-to-face, straddling the seat, our legs spread wide and bound expertly together with soft, natural fiber rope, we couldn’t move away from each other. With our wrists tethered behind us by the cuffs attached to the rolled arms of the bench, we couldn’t get any closer, either.
“One for you,” Neil—now in the role of my Sir—said before placing a ball gag into my obediently open mouth. He pulled the strap over my head and pushed me slightly forward, extending my arms behind me. A matching strap hung from the other side of the gag. He fitted it over El-Mudad’s head, bringing our mouths together on the dual rubber ball. “And for you.”
Stepping back to survey his work, Sir put his hands in the pockets of his bespoke Ermenegildo Zegna trousers. The motion pushed the matching navy-blue jacket back and gave him a deceptively relaxed look. He was anything but. In this space, he was always in control, always planning his next move.
I was always at his mercy. El-Mudad sometimes took on a dominant role, but I’ve grown less protective of my submission to my Sir. Today, El-Mudad was as under Neil’s power as I was.
The cold air teased my clit as I waited, already wet with anticipation from his methodical application of our restraints. I wanted to wriggle, to feel any stimulation at all. A heavy glass plug filled my ass, and it would have been so easy to rock my hips and feel the pull of it deep inside me, but Sir would punish me for that. One of Sir’s favorite punishments was ruined orgasms. I certainly didn’t want to endure that today.
“Don’t look at me,” he warned, running the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “Look at him.”
My eyes met El-Mudad’s; this close, I could only focus on one at a time. His pupils flared with each rapid heartbeat. Though I couldn’t feel it, I knew his cock was painfully hard, bobbing in the air between us, constricted by the ring Neil had cinched around him. The plug El-Mudad wore was velvety silicone and equipped with vibration; I loved to watch Neil use it on him because the stimulation caused copious amounts of pre-cum to slide down his shaft. Just like now.
“We’re going to have a competition,” Sir announced, pacing a circle around us. “A contest, to see who can endure the most pleasure.”
The doors on the toy cabinet opened.
“You’ll both come. And you’ll come again. On and on, until one of you signals for me to stop.” He paused. “Not your safe signal. But let’s review that.”
El-Mudad and I both obediently snapped our fingers; Neil always made sure we were on the same page, though our safe words and signals never changed. His history made him overcautious. I would take too-careful any day, especially since our scenes had become so intense.
The cabinet closed, and Sir returned to us. Not knowing what he held made his slow pace and edict not break eye contact even more unnerving. Did I see trepidation in El-Mudad’s eyes? Or was that my own anticipation showing me what I wanted to see?
Sir went on. “To admit your defeat in the game, you will open and close the hand nearest me three times. Show me that, now.”
We did.
Sir parted my labia wi
th his fingers. I held back a moan as he pressed the familiar, smooth dome of a wand vibrator against my clit. He pushed his fingers into me and pumped them slowly. When I shifted my hips, he pulled his hand away. A moment later, I heard the slick sounds of that hand gliding up and down El-Mudad’s cock, lubricated by my juices.
"El-Mudad, you have an unfair advantage,” Sir mused, and I felt the addition of another wand vibrator to the mix, the head pressed tight against the underside of El-Mudad’s cock. “Let’s even the playing field a bit.”
El-Mudad took a sharp breath that passed over my lips; Sir must have turned on the vibrating plug.
“Are we ready?” Sir asked. “One...two…”
He announced, “three,” at the same time he clicked the on-switches on both of our wands; the toys bumped together when El-Mudad’s hips jerked forward.
“Let’s discuss what happens when you give up. When you simply can’t take a moment more.” Sir rolled the head of my vibe back and forth as he spoke, and my hips tried to follow. “Whoever loses the game will get fucked.”
That didn’t sound like much of a punishment.
“Hence, the plugs.”
Oh.
El-Mudad’s eyes grew even wider; he’d never taken Neil’s cock before. They’d discussed trying a few times, but Neil was so well-endowed that I didn’t blame El-Mudad for his hesitation. I loved rough anal, but it certainly wasn’t for everyone.
“Sophie, if you give in first, I’ll be fucking you. And El-Mudad, if you lose, Sophie will fuck you,” Sir clarified.
Sophie (The Boss Book 8) Page 1