An awkward silence fell between them.
“I miss him, you know,” the older woman blurted. She covered her mouth with her fingers as if shocked she’d said something so personal.
This time, Skye tensed, a muscle jumping near her eye. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.” It was more complaint than statement.
Savannah blushed, and tears swam in her eyes. “I know, honey. I should’ve called you. He asked for you at the end—” Once more, she stopped, eyes round.
Skye’s lips trembled. “Did he?” she whispered.
Savannah nodded rapidly, as if relieved that the secret was out. “All the time. He always talked about you...he loved you more than anyone in the world. Even me.”
Joe looped an arm around Skye’s waist and pulled her against his body for support.
“I still have lots of your things at the house. Did you want to come and look through them? Or, I mean, I can keep them there for you, too. For whenever you need them. If you need them.”
Skye molded her hand over his at her waist, squeezing it tightly. “I don’t care about those things. I can’t get that time back with my father.” Her voice wobbled.
Savannah’s shoulders slumped, and she looked around as if to make an escape.
“Well, we need to make the rounds. Enjoy your evening, Ms. Duke.” He steered his date away from Savannah. As they walked toward Alex, who strode purposefully in their direction, he dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Still okay?”
“Yes. I’d like to stay bitter, but she’s not going to change. All I can do is let it go.” She smiled up at him. “Thanks for helping me see that.”
He smiled back.
Alex met them in the middle of the dance floor. “I looks like Kacey, the manager, was part of the scheme. They found the poison she gave to our servers in her purse.” He glanced over at Savannah and lifted his chin. “How was she?” Alex looked ready to slay dragons for Skye.
“I do believe our little ninja just took the power back in the relationship.”
Alex cupped her upper arm. “Yeah?”
“Savannah was falling all over herself to please our girl. I think she’s been feeling guilty over her misdeeds.”
“And how’d it go for you, baby?”
Skye laughed again. “It was okay...fine. Good, actually. I feel better.” She beamed up at Joe. “Thanks for the cane therapy earlier.”
He grinned and winked. “My pleasure, if it wasn’t obvious.”
“So, ninja...” Alex looked serious. They’d talked about discussing a future with Skye later, but it looked like he couldn’t hold it in. “We were wondering...” He switched off his microphone and hers. They obviously didn’t need the rest of the security staff listening in on their kinky relationship discussions. “I don’t know what your plans are after we set you free, but ah...I have a head of security position that needs filling. We were going to offer it even before you proved your value with that dramatic disarming just now.”
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “What? I mean, wait—” She shook her head. “Wow.”
He probably looked as anxious as his brother did. Alex held up a hand. “No sexual obligations, of course. I mean, strictly business if that’s the way you want it.”
She frowned. “Oh...”
“Or as our permanent slave.” Joe jumped in to help. “What we’re saying, Skye, is that we’d like to keep you. Indefinitely. And we’re willing to negotiate on the terms of the contract.”
Her smile lit up her beautiful face. They’d seen so few smiles from her. He didn’t know about Alex, but seeing it made him vow to do everything in his power to keep her happy. When he wasn’t torturing her to tears, that is.
“So both positions are open?”
“Excuse me?” Alex rubbed his palm over her arm.
“Slave and head of security?”
Both men grinned like idiots. “Precisely,” he said. “Do either of them entice you?”
“Only if they’re a package deal. Both jobs. And both men.” She bit her lip, her cheeks tinging a lovely shade of pink.
He couldn’t help it, he pulled her up against his body and claimed her mouth, his tongue sweeping between her lips, tasting her sweetness. When they broke apart, she looked at Alex, guiltily. For appearances sake, they had agreed Skye would be Joe’s date in this highly public setting. Showing up as a threesome might shock some of the attendees, no matter how liberal they might be politically.
Alex smirked. “Don’t worry, I’ll be taking my turn later. I hope you weren’t planning on getting any sleep tonight...”
Skye flushed again.
A server passed them, and he stopped her and took three glasses of champagne, passing them out. “To our little slave.”
Alex clinked his glass. “The thief who stole our hearts.”
She lifted her glass. “To new possibilities.”
They brought their crystal to meet hers. “To new possibilities.”
About Renee Rose
Named Eroticon USA's Next Top Erotic Author in 2013, Renee Rose is a naughty author who writes romance books centered around her favorite kink: spanking. She has won The Romance Reviews and Spanking Romance Reviews' Best Historical Erotic Romance, has often made the list of Amazon's Top 100 Erotic Authors and is a regular columnist for Write Sex Right. She also pens BDSM stories under the name Darling Adams.
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Lust Angel by Cari Silverwood
Chapter One
She looked down through the wisps of clouds, past a mile or two of atmosphere, to where a man emerged from the depths of the bay, climbed onto the dock, and hauled off the top half of a wet suit, a mask, and his breathing gear, to reveal his nakedness. His dripping, well-muscled, and broad-shouldered nakedness. Nothing she’d not seen a hundred thousand times before, yet she was riveted. If eyes could eat someone, hers consumed. Something was different about this man.
“We go!” hailed Benenyon, raising his spear of light, his wings flailing the chilled air with their supreme whiteness. So white were they that a haloed afterimage would remain on any human’s vision, if a human could see this host of angels.
Her mission had been declared. They must go. Souls to save. Evil to do bad things to. Yet her gaze strayed earthward and she maneuvered past thicker cloud to improve the clarity. At the second sight of his flesh, a novel warmth blossomed at the juncture of her legs. A...pleasure evoked where none could exist.
“Benenyon!” hissed a nearby member of the host. “Benenyon! She trespasses upon forbidden emotions at a time of monumental significance.”
It was? And here she’d thought it was yet another battle against evil, same as those of the past few thousand years.
“Who spoke?” Stricken, she searched for them.
“Is this true?” Benenyon’s voice boomed, cloaking her in an awareness of him alone.
She shuddered and bowed her head. “Yes.”
A shouted vaunt overcame her. “We cast you down. Seek penance. Your wings, gone. Let us leave her to her contemplation. We go.”
Their absence was instantaneous yet marked by whispered words that evaporated anon: her sword of light?
What of her sword?
Through a mind blanked of all save a whirling maelstrom of thunderous black, she felt the tear of her inviolable skin at her shoulders and was left bereft and screaming, and plummeting to somewhere that had no discernible direction. Earthward, no doubt. There were few other options.
And then, there was naught.
*****
At the whistle from his upstairs owner, Gandalf, a scruffy, white terrier, galloped off toward the stairs. Adam smiled, watching him tear around the corner and disappear into the stairwell. The dog was a happy thing,
considering some of the stupidity that occurred in the McDonald family apartment. Being rich seemed to have fed the ego of the bastard up there.
At least the dog did okay, if not the wife and kids, but you didn’t interfere in other people’s shit, no matter how good you were at killing. Well, apart from trying to get Mrs. McDonald to do something about it. They’d spoken, a little. Ridiculous that in a civilized nation like Australia, getting justice could be as difficult as in war-torn Iraq. Their boy, Jacob, reminded him of the little one in Pakistan, Abu, and that made it doubly bad. The memory of Abu running after their truck, then watching him disappear into the dust cloud churned up by the wheels, it never left him.
Life sucked in general, some days.
He straightened the cricks from his back and neck, feeling the burn of strained muscle. Above the scatter of silhouetted palm fronds, the full moon stared down at him.
This circular complex called Gabriel Towers had been built twenty years ago at the whim of a millionaire seeking a penthouse overlooking Brisbane River. Though once upon a time it had been terribly exclusive, now it was run down enough to allow in the likes of him – a mostly employed ex-SAS soldier doing clearance diving for private companies in between overseas contracts. A mercenary some might call him, except he wasn’t one, or anywhere near that glamorous or illegal. The latest government laws had come close to making what he did a criminal act, though. It had given him pause. Why was he still doing what he did?
Orneriness or habit? No, it wasn’t simply that. Drive and ambition plus a need to improve on what he’d done before. To never be beaten. He hated feeling he’d not done the best he could.
Which was why the McDonald situation bugged him. Beating up the neighbor because he gave his wife a bruised face wasn’t exactly legal either. Fuck though, it should be.
With his palm, Adam swept dog hair from the legs of his jeans then straightened. He stuck his hand in his pocket to grab his keys. A sound and flash of white light from off to the side alerted him.
A whimper? That had sounded female.
Wary, he ventured toward where the light had flashed. The central lawn, garden beds, and meandering paved pathway through this central miniature park was pretty enough in daylight, but sometimes lights failed unexpectedly. Like now. All three of the post-hung electric lanterns were out.
He checked the apartments above. Many of the windows and balconies glowed with light. Not a power problem then.
His vision adjusted quickly and he moved over lawn then silently hopped over a row of some sort of flower. Pink buds in daylight, he recalled. The chances were low that someone was out here in the dimness checking out the small moon above, or necking with their girl or boyfriend.
To get in here people had to enter via the gated car park or two side entrances that were also secure.
The fronds of a weeping willow brushed his shoulder, whispering against his black T shirt. A good color for this situation. If this was some kid staking out the apartments, he was getting a nasty, wake-up, clip on the ear.
He was sure this area had been illuminated when he’d come up in the lift from the carpark.
Perhaps the disturbance had indeed been the lights failing?
He halted, struck dumb.
Perhaps the disturbance had been caused by this naked woman, who kneeled, head down, in the center of this haven of flowers. He could see her well, as if she possessed some inner light.
Alabaster. The word sprang from nowhere. Her skin seemed perfection incarnate with moonlight whispering over her curves and the ripple of her pale-as-bone, blond hair.
Blood. Another stark word. There was red, below her shoulders, in two precise stripes or gouges. Thick trails wept sluggishly down her skin.
He paused to check their surrounds. Nothing. No one. And she was in the middle of a bank of tall flowers with no signs of footsteps leading in. Flew in? Hah. However she’d arrived there, she was hurt.
“Miss? You’re bleeding. You need to see a doctor.”
She turned her head until one eye showed, dark, inquiring, and as mysterious as a trail leading into a dark forest. “I do?”
Thank god. She could talk. Her head was ticking over on at least three cylinders. Compos mentis. Maybe not on drugs? “You do. I should stop that bleeding on your back. Is that okay?”
If she had other injuries, the slight blood loss could be a problem.
“Sure. You can stop it.”
Then she rose to her feet, slowly, revealing her breasts as full and tipped with that wonder of womanhood – plump, full nipples that shone, just a little. If aroused, they would scrunch up and stick out like buttons. The triangle of hair over her mons was light, delicate as the spark of sunlight through mist. He jerked up his head. And why was he even looking?
Bandaging, remember? An ambulance would take a while to get here.
“How do you do this?” Though her question must be about the bleeding, she studied him as carefully as he had studied her.
“How do I what? Stop bleeding? Pressure. Bandages.”
He found he’d paused again, just to stare.
Was she a siren, a lost and hurt woman, or just a junkie on a bad bender?
Nothing in his life, not the intensity of army training, not blowing holes in doors with shaped charges, not passing the many and constant tests to be on the TAG anti-terrorist team, had prepared him for this. Distilled magic. She. Him.
His awareness seemed concentrated to an infinite degree.
How quaint that he’d thought himself connected to other women in his life, before this.
He shook his head. Maybe the lack of sleep was getting to him? Old age, man.
Bandages. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Here. Dial triple zero while I get you to my apartment. I have a first aid kit. And clothes. You need those.”
Swallowing was on his list of things to do, straight after breathing.
She swayed, stumbled. The flowers suffered as she trampled a few.
“Can you walk?”
“Walk?” She took another step and almost fell sideways.
Maybe not. “I have to pick you up. Okay?”
“Yes.” She blinked at him and he marveled at the silver reflected in her pupils, then she nodded. “Okay.”
Yeah, take her to his apartment and...clothes.
She had to be on drugs. He stayed away from that like the fucking plague. With the world the way it was, it was hard enough to navigate sober. Handicapping yourself with drugs was like saying to the sharks, come and get me. Hell no.
But he approached her and carefully lifted her, adjusted her weight for balance, and set out for his apartment, trying like mad to ignore the enticement of her female scent and her softness under his hands.
She was a siren. His mind whirled with possibilities he had to stomp on second by second. What was this? It wasn’t him.
His dick had problems too.
“You got a name, girl?”
“Girl? I am girl?” He refused to answer that. “Call me Ahn-gyel”
Ahn-yil? What nationality was that? “Are you Russian? How do you spell that?”
“No, not Russian.”
And yet that had sounded, almost, Russian. He’d met a few on his travels.
He reached his door and set her on her feet, steadied her with one hand on her shoulder, with her hair tickling his fingers while he unlocked the door. She hadn’t used his phone. Maybe for the best. He had things happening that the authorities might frown on, places to go in Africa. The police might find him suspicious if he turned up with a girl who looked assaulted.
“I won’t hurt you.” He ushered her in. She went, like some innocent doe. His cock was as hard as timber and that shamed him. He knew his fetishes.
Innocent girl rescued, taken home, tied up, and fucked? One of his main corruptions. If he got to do that, he was hooked, if they wanted him. It was how he met Katya, outside that nightclub with that sicko boyfriend that had needed shooing off. She�
�d never known how kinky she liked it until him. After a while, it had worn thin. Innocence was finite. His line of work turned off girls. He was too dedicated and away from home too often.
This time, he was the sicko one. He found his kit and wrapped a bandage over her wounds in a crisscross around her shoulders, trying to forget how it reminded him of shibari. Then he stripped off his shirt in one fast motion and gave it to her. When she did that doe-eyed blink at him, he shuffled it over her head and pulled it low, then lower, so it shifted over her breasts and butt and covered her pussy. Almost. The hint of what was there was killing him.
Fuck. Need pants. He found a drawstring pair of old gym shorts he’d chucked in a corner. He prayed he’d washed them.
The whole while, she clutched the phone and let him do whatever he wished to.
He needed her gone. “Will hospital emergency admittance do you?”
She blinked. Her blond hair shifted across one eye and she peeked out at him. Her eyes were blue with big gold flecks that seemed to drift. Such large pupils. The way she stared... He cursed.
“Yes? It will do me.”
Such confidence, not. She had to be foreign. Maybe an illegal immigrant.
He turned her and checked her back for bleeding. None was evident. Good. Her flesh gave under his hands but there was solid muscle there too. She seemed, at once, both small and formidable: a challenge.
He inhaled sharply at the sight of her butt. His gaze was drawn down that voluptuous slope from ass, to knees, and beyond. What was above and between those thighs tantalized his imagination too. Clothing her didn’t conceal enough. A tent might work, but he figured she’d protest him throwing one of those over her head.
“Did someone beat you? Hurt you? You have back wounds.”
“No. I. I did that.”
Self-inflicted? Was she lying?
Phoning the cops was bad for him. She was coherent, not pale, a little blood loss, a bit...dense, but otherwise perfectly fine, and innocent and, yes, another word arrived to go with alabaster and blood.
Fuckworthy. Oh she was that, by a zillion.
His drive to the hospital was fast and precise. No speeding, just get there and lose her. Trouble was probably following her. He let her out near the entrance and remembered to breathe. He was definitely saving on oxygen when around her.
Bound, Spanked and Loved: Fourteen Kinky Valentine's Day Stories Page 20