by Poppy Flynn
Charlotte whimpered and tried desperately to push his shirt off his shoulders, the fabric becoming caught on his biceps because of the angle of his arms. Jake cursed, pulling away for a moment to free himself of the fabric. Then he took it in his hands and twisted it into a makeshift bond which he wound around her wrists and pulled taut as his innate dominance surged to the fore. It wasn't tight; she could free herself if she truly wanted, but even in a primarily vanilla encounter, Jake would never manage to completely throw off his need for control. He didn't want to. This was who he was, take it or leave it. He could keep his baser urges at bay, and he ruthlessly tucked away his desire to inflict any delicious kind of painful pleasure. He knew that would be far too much for sweet little Charlotte. But he wasn't ever going to put aside his need to push her boundaries. He would respect them, of course. If she told him to stop, he would. He wasn't the monster the news rags had made him out to be a decade ago; he never had been. He respected women and their right to choose. It was the cornerstone of everything he believed in the BDSM lifestyle. 'Safe, Sane and Consensual', it was more than just the catchphrase of the club he co-owned back home, it was Club Risqué's mission statement and it was a morality code that he lived by.
Jake pushed Charlotte's arms above her head. "Keep them there!" he demanded, carefully watching her reaction with an intense stare.
Charlotte's breath hitched, and her pupils dilated. The corner of Jake's mouth lifted in a devilish hint of a smile. Yeah, she wasn't averse to a little bit of dominance and his pulse leaped at the knowledge.
Jake peppered kisses across her face and down her neck and stroked his long fingers up and down her arms to soften the effect, but he couldn't resist the urge to sink his teeth into that succulent area where her neck met her shoulder. Hard.
Charlotte bucked underneath him, and a low rumble gritted from the back of her throat as she pushed her torso closer to his in a reflexive response which had Jake releasing a groan of relief that it hadn't been too much but enticed him to encircle that same milky throat with one long fingered hand. Not tight, just enough to stake his possession and pick up the vibrations of the soft, sexy noises she tried not to make. Charlotte was self-consciously quiet, but Jake planned to have her letting loose entirely and screaming for him by the end of the night.
Jake's lips feathered down the deep V created by the bodice of her wrap around dress and he rubbed his thumb against the pulse point in that shallow hollow where his hand rested. Levering himself up far enough on his elbow, he pulled on the tie that held it secured at her waist. It was like unwrapping a beautiful gift. Jake undid the bow, then smoothed his hand across her breast to sweep the fabric aside.
She stiffened and sighed quietly as he grazed her breast through the barrier of her lacy bra. A second later, she cried out breathlessly as, in one lightening swift move, Jake released the front fastening and, without warning, pulled one waiting, pebble hard nipple into his mouth, sucking hard and making Charlotte arch up off the bed to instinctively offer more of herself. Jake responded by capturing the other tight little bud between his thumb and forefinger, plucking and pinching until she writhed and twisted beneath him, her breathing contracting into short, gasping pants.
Charlotte felt as if she'd been blindsided. Sensations bombarded her faster than her mind was able to process them, leaving her totally off balance and drunk on pleasure.
Intimacy with Jake Blackwood surpassed even her wildest of fantasies, and she'd sure had plenty of those. And they hadn't even had actual sex yet!
Charlotte felt close to being overwhelmed, but this was one roller coaster she sure as hell wasn't getting off of any time soon. No, siree! She was just going to lie here, revelling in this encompassing, gratifying pleasure, and let Jake take control.
It was just so liberating to be lightly bound and following commands. She didn't have to worry about what to do and what to say, whether she should be reciprocating in some sensual, provocative way that seemed to come naturally to some women, but which she had never understood.
Prior to this experience, sex had always been something awkward and slightly stilted. Like some kind of complicated dance that no one had shown her the steps to and which she had no chance of following after the music started. So instead of relaxing, she fretted and second guessed herself, wondering if she was doing the right thing but feeling like a failure regardless, until she was so stressed that the whole thing became an ordeal to endure until the man she was with got off and she lay there feeling disappointed and vaguely unfulfilled and wondering if that's all there really was.
But not tonight. Tonight, something magical was happening. Tonight, she felt free, as if someone had waved away the burden of unrealistic expectation and replaced it with the permission to just feel. And boy was she feeling! Every touch, every kiss, every…thing seemed startlingly magnified. This was the closest thing to bliss that Charlotte had ever experienced and intuition was telling her that this time there was certainly more to come. Hopefully, her! Yes, definitely her. It would be the first time. Well, not the first time. But the first time with a man. Oh, goddesses! What if it didn't happen? Would Jake be able to tell? What if she disappointed him anyway?
Suddenly, Jake bit down on her nipple and the light bolt of pain wrenched her away from her thoughts before he laved at the small hurt and it bloomed into a tingling pleasure.
"You're thinking so loudly I can hear you," Jake growled. "Keep it up and I'll be forced to spank you to take your mind off whatever is winding you up."
Spank her? Charlotte's pussy clenched at the thought and she felt her panties dampen some more.
Jake chuckled darkly against her breast. "I don't think you find that idea too dreadful, do you, sweet Charlotte? Would you like to feel my hand warming that pretty ass until it's all hot and pink and branded with my palm?"
"No," Charlotte panted. "I mean, yes!" Her back arched as Jake bit down tenderly on her other nipple, taking away her ability of coherent thought. "Oh, goddesses! I mean, were there two questions there? I can't think…"
Charlotte could feel the laughter rumbling in Jake's chest. "That was the idea. Don't think! Just feel. You were doing such an excellent job of it until your brain kicked in."
Charlotte preened under his praise. "Go back there, that's all I'm asking from you. Go back to just feeling. That's your role here; I'll do all the rest," he whispered as his hands brushed the fabric of her skirt away from her hips, exposing the rest of her to his sight and then trailing his fingers across the taut skin of her belly and down the swell of her hip.
When Charlotte might have been self-conscious, Jake spread nipping kisses across her abdomen and murmured, "You're so beautiful." In that second, as he worshipped her body with his fingers and his mouth, even Charlotte believed it. Jake made her feel beautiful and not at all like the tall, gangly girl with the beanpole figure that she had always perceived herself to be, with hair so straight it didn't hold so much as a hint of a wave. It was just long and skinny like the rest of her, in a boring brown colour that contrasted painfully with her pasty white skin.
But at this moment, under Jake's expert ministrations, Charlotte bloomed.
Nibbling at her belly, Jake hooked his fingers under the waistband of Charlotte's panties and whisked them down her legs and away before nudging lower.
Charlotte was wet and so turned on, she could detect the smell of her own desire, so when Jake divested her of her underwear and continued down there, she tried to shrink away from him, embarrassed by the state of her arousal.
Jake took a firm grip of her hips, his fingers sinking into her flesh. "Be still!" he commanded bluntly, and his dominant tone make her tummy flutter.
Slowly, inexorably, he pushed her thighs wide and wedged his broad shoulders between them then, piercing her with his penetrating cobalt eyes, he swept his tongue along the entire length of her opening.
Charlotte had lifted her head to watch him, but with the first electric touch of his clever mouth, she suc
ked in a shocked breath then just as quickly expelled it and collapsed back on the pillow, her inhibitions forgotten in the face of the tumbling wave of pleasure that washed over her.
Jake groaned. "I always knew you'd taste this sweet," he breathed reverently before renewing his task with gusto.
Charlotte thought she was going to implode. It surely wasn't possible to endure this much pleasure for quite so long and still survive. Every time she slipped closer to that ephemeral peak, Jake seemed to pull back. Did he do that on purpose? How could he possibly know?
Charlotte writhed and burned, a sheen of perspiration blooming on her overheated flesh, but Jake held fast and continued his erotic torment. Just when she thought she couldn't possibly take a second more, he plunged two fingers into her sopping wet heat.
Charlotte bucked off the bed with a strangled cry which turned into a plaintive mewl as he crooked his fingers inside her at a deliberate angle and stroked some special spot within her tight walls which had her ready to detonate.
Before she could reach that pinnacle, Jake tore himself away with a curse, shed his remaining clothes and sheathed himself with a condom before she had time to even protest his absence.
Charlotte scarcely glimpsed his long, thick cock and had barely managed to form the thought of how on earth they could possibly fit together before he'd covered her, aligned himself and thrust inside in a single, powerful sweep.
Charlotte heard the impassioned cry but her befuddled brain couldn't compute that it had been torn from her own throat before Jake launched into a heavy, driving rhythm that forced her higher and higher, winding her tighter and encouraging her to wind her legs around his waist and cling on for dear life. Her grasping fingers found purchase on the shirt tails that bound her wrists and as Charlotte raced toward what had been, until now, an elusive crest, she couldn't contain the gasps of pleasure that erupted with each wild plunge.
Finally hurling herself off the peak, Charlotte screamed her release and her eyes flew open as the most powerful orgasm she had ever experienced shattered her completely.
Her hazel eyes, glinting green with her pleasure, collided with his powerful blue gaze and the moment seemed to hang, suspended. An instant that stretched into a lifetime which seemed to bind them together in a far more intimate way. One that transcended the physical act in which they were engaged.
Jake stared into Charlotte's face at the moment she came. Pure shock painted her features, as if she'd never known that this pleasure might exist, and as the scream died in her throat, her eyes captured his, opening wide just as her mouth moved to form a little 'o'.
The look of awe and rapture on her face sent him hurtling over the edge himself. He thrust once, twice, and emptied himself inside her tight sheath.
The silence around them seemed deafening, the sounds of their panting loud against the sudden hush as they both tried to catch their breath.
Jake rolled to her side, his arm flung across her stomach and his head tucked into the crook of her neck.
Charlotte released her death grip on Jake's shirt and slipped her hands out of the loop, so she could wind her arm around his back, desperate to touch him and convince herself that he was really here, and she wasn't just dreaming, because surely something quite so mind bogglingly amazing couldn't be real.
"That was…awesome!" Charlotte whispered, her voice strangely scratchy, though she couldn't quite work out why.
Jake kissed her collar bone. Yes, it had been awesome. Who knew that vanilla could be such a decadent flavour, after all?
"Maybe there's something to be said for this dominance thing," Charlotte sighed dreamily.
Jake frowned, and a sliver of unease skittered up his spine that Charlotte should think such a thing about an encounter that had barely skirted the tamest edges of BDSM.
Jake scrunched his eyes up and exhaled. Damn it! What was he doing and what the hell had he been thinking?
Regret stabbed at his conscience. Charlotte was not one-night stand material and she certainly wasn't kink material. If she was bowled over by the merest hint of dominance, there was no way her tender disposition would ever cope with Jake in full out Dom mode while he brandished his beloved signal whip!
Silently, Jake cursed himself while Charlotte floated in sated ignorance. Jeez, he should have sent her away when she first entered the bar, instead of allowing himself to wallow in self-pity and indulge his momentary melancholy with a woman who would never understand his lifestyle and who deserved better than to be bedded and discarded.
As Jake desperately tried to think of a way to extract himself from this clusterfuck of his own making without making Charlotte feel like she'd been nothing more than a convenient piece of ass that he was throwing over now that he'd had his fill, because that surely hadn't been his intention, Jake's phone rang and he'd never been more grateful for its intervention.
Rolling over to grab it from the pile of discarded clothes that littered the floor, Jake answered with one hand as he disposed of the condom with the other. Casting a guilty look at Charlotte who lay boneless and replete on the edge of sleep, with a slight smile playing at the corner of her mouth, he couldn't help feeling that he'd been thrown a lifeline as he agreed with the disembodied voice on the other end of the line.
Tapping the button to hang up, Jake grabbed his ruined shirt, shrugged, then threw it into the laundry service hamper and grabbed a fresh one from the wardrobe. He wasted little time dressing, then took a deep, fortifying breath and sat on the edge of the bed next to the supine Charlotte and tenderly brushed the hair away from her face.
Charlotte opened heavy lidded eyes and vaguely noted that Jake was dressed but she was far too comfortable and relaxed to move.
"Who was calling you at this time of night?" she mumbled, acknowledging the interruption.
"I've been recalled to head office for an emergency, sweetheart," Jake replied as he continued to stroke her hair. Charlotte frowned, still drifting at the edges of sleep.
"I'm sorry, this isn't how I would have chosen to do things," Jake sighed. "But I have to leave now so I can be in the office first thing."
Charlotte's frown deepened. "But when will you sleep?" she mumbled.
Jake closed his eyes against the weight of his remorse. Here he was, effectively seducing her and then walking away and Charlotte was worrying about his wellbeing. She was an angel whom a man of his dark desires didn't deserve.
He dragged a hand across his face. "I'll sleep on the plane, angel, don't worry about me." The endearment slipped out probably because of the direction of his thoughts. "You just snuggle down here and get some sleep, yourself."
"When will you be back?" Charlotte murmured, watching him quietly.
The silence stretched before Jake answered and he saw some of the light dim from her expressive eyes.
"I don't know," Jake sighed. "Everything's changed now that Joel has come to his senses and asked Desi to marry him. Obviously, he'll now stay here to oversee the merger between the Blackwood Corporation and Universal Holdings and that means I'm the one who has to go back to head office and deal with things from the other end."
Charlotte was well aware of the newly proposed merger between Jake and Desi's companies which had replaced the takeover bid that Jake's uncle had declared several months ago. It was what had brought the Blackwood cousins back into her best friend's life…and Jake back into hers. And now, it seemed, it would take him a thousand miles away again.
"I don't want to make promises I can't keep, Charlotte," Jake said softly, but there was a certain finality in his words.
Charlotte nodded her head and closed her eyes to hide her conflicting emotions. She didn't need Jake to see just how much more this night had meant to her than it did to him; she had some pride. And what sort of shmuck fell in love with an impossible dream and kept that candle burning for twelve years, anyway?
Instead, Charlotte pulled together every molecule of self-preservation that she could muster and evened her breathin
g to stop her voice from wobbling and simply said, "You'd better get a move on then, so you don't exhaust yourself."
She felt Jake press a sweet kiss to her forehead, but she didn't dare open her eyes again until she heard the door close behind him and the first tear tracked down her cheek.
Chapter 1
Charlotte fretfully smoothed her hands down the pale gold coloured bridesmaid's dress she wore and tried to calm her nerves as she looked around the large ante-room that she stood in with the other bridesmaids, Laurel Stanton, Desi's PA at Universal Holdings—or rather what had now become the recently amalgamated Blackwood Universal Corporation—and Luanna Morgan, Desi's relatively new finance manager.
Charlotte knew Laurel fairly well; they had met often enough during the five years that the girl had worked for Desi. Luanna was new on the scene, though. Charlotte had only met her a couple of times and then only in regard to the plans for Joel and Desi's marriage in which they were both part of the wedding party.
Luanna had only worked for Desi a matter of months, but Charlotte knew that the two of them had hit it off straight away. Right now, Charlotte was wishing she could channel a little bit of Luanna's relaxed disposition. The other woman appeared calm and unruffled, totally unlike herself. She felt as skittish as a newborn foal and could feel the tendrils of a vague kind of panic curling at the edges of her consciousness that had nothing to do with the pomp and ceremony of the upcoming nuptials. Well, not directly, anyway.
Charlotte's anxiety had everything to do with another member of the wedding party, the best man, to be exact. The same man she had rolled in and out of bed with in the space of a few stolen hours…after less than thirty minutes at a bar where they'd exchanged even fewer words.
It had been one of the most wonderful experiences of her life. And also, one of the most humiliating. She hadn't seen or heard a word from Jake since he'd rushed off, leaving her lying there in his own hotel room where she'd eventually cried herself to sleep at his sudden departure—only to be rudely awakened the following morning by the hotel staff who had stiffly informed her that Mr. Jake Blackwood had checked out and they needed to clear his suite. Denied even the courtesy to shower, Charlotte had barely had time to pull on her wrinkled clothing before she had fled the room in abject mortification as they treated her to looks of disdain and contempt that she didn't understand. She may well have just picked Jake up in the hotel bar and indulged in what had amounted to a one-night stand with him, but that wasn't really any of their business. She wondered if she had overstepped some kind of protocol by not being signed in at reception as a guest, or maybe she'd slept past check out time. They had sure been hell bent on getting rid of her fast. Her hair a mess and her makeup smudged, Charlotte had kept her head down in the light of day and prayed that no one recognised her as she fled through the hotel and made for her car while the staff sneered and looked down their noses at her. They were a bit goddamned harsh for the relatively minor misdemeanour of a late check out. She supposed they must have new guests due to take residence. Undoubtedly, people who were far more important than she was.