by BETH KERY
“Tomales Bay oysters and mignonette sauce—my mother’s own recipe. I serve it only to family and close friends,” the world-renowned chef said briskly. “And I heard what you said about the wine, and you know you owe us nothing, Lucien. Richard and I would come and cook and serve for you ten times over for all you did in getting us that property in Paris years back. And who is this blooming rose?” Emile said, ignoring Lucien’s outstretched hand and turning to Elise.
“Elise,” she said simply, and Lucien was sure she didn’t want to be recognized as the wild-child, spoiled heiress of Louis Martin. And why should she, he wondered, studying her as Emile took her hand, when she had grown into so much more than that . . . when she was so much more than that stereotype? He’d once been foolish enough to try to squeeze her into that narrow role, but of course Elise could never be pigeonholed.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for years now,” Elise said, staring up at Emile with an amazed, starry-eyed expression. “I went to your restaurant in Paris several times. Your cuisine took me to a higher state of consciousness.”
Emile beamed at her stark, completely sincere-sounding compliment. “You’re referring to the very restaurant where Lucien found us ideal premises. It was no small favor on his part. That is why Richard and I are here tonight.”
“How is your mother?” Lucien asked Emile quietly as he released Elise’s hand.
“As opinionated as ever. You should hear the way she harangues the cook at her assisted-living facility.”
“And you wonder where you get it,” Richard said smugly.
Emile gave his lover a sly smile. “At your every command, Lucien. Come, Richard, I need some help with the quail.”
A few seconds later, Elise turned and stared at him. She still looked slightly startled.
“You got Emile Savaur to come and cook for us?” she asked hollowly.
“Yes. You know he’s opened a restaurant in town, don’t you?”
Her stunned expression told him that was hardly an explanation.
“I didn’t want a Fusion employee to come and do it, and you said you wanted to eat at Fusion,” he said, shrugging and unbuttoning his jacket. He handed her a glass of wine.
“He’s my absolute idol.”
“Then you prove what I already knew: you have excellent taste. I tried incessantly to get Emile to cook for me at one of my restaurants, but he prefers a self-owned establishment. He and Richard work exceptionally well together. I understand why he doesn’t want to change a perfect recipe. Emile’s mother lives here in the area, and has been unwell. That’s why they moved here and started a new restaurant.”
Elise still looked dazed following his explanation. He nudged the bottom of her glass. When she sipped some of the light gold fluid between her lips, he took her glass and set it down.
He placed his hands lightly on her rib cage and kissed her, catching her tiny gasp on his tongue. Her scent filled his nose—her familiar perfume mingling with the intoxicating smell of her arousal spicing her skin. He could never get enough of the fragrance of her.
“I love that wine, but it takes on a whole new dimension of deliciousness on your tongue,” he said a moment later next to her lips. He slipped the button of her jacket from its hole and lightly trailed his fingertips over the buttons of her sheer blouse, feeling the heat emanating off her skin, relishing the small shudder that went through her. He unfastened the top button of her blouse and reached into the opening. His cock lurched in excitement when he flicked his finger over a nipple. It was hard and swollen from the metal loops. They must be exquisitely sensitive.
“How are you feeling?” he asked in a hushed tone as he lightly tugged the nipple chain and a burst of air flew past her puffy, pink lips.
“Breathless?” she asked, panting slightly as she sat there motionless and he returned to tweaking her nipple.
He studied her somberly. “You are being a very good little slave for letting me play with you without protest. Don’t you want to tell me to stop?” he purred as he lightly pinched just the very end of the center nubbin of a crest, making it even more defined than it already had been. She dragged her front teeth across her lower lip when he turned his attentions to her other breast, and he knew she was trying to prevent herself from groaning.
“No. I know I agreed to this. But I am uncomfortable,” she gasped. “Because I’m afraid Richard or Emile will return while you’re . . .”
“Don’t worry,” he said when she faded off. “Richard and Emile believe in the intimacy of the dining experience. They won’t return until it’s time for the salad. They would want us to enjoy the wine and the oysters. And each other,” he added in a low voice as he leaned back and unbuttoned her blouse farther.
“Lucien,” she began, but she paused when he spread back first her jacket and then her thin blouse so that he could see her delectable breasts. Her nipples were a dark pink contrast to her pale skin, fat and erect and mouthwatering. The nipple chain trembled slightly between them. Perhaps she noticed the awe in his gaze combined with the sheer hunger, because she didn’t further her protest. Leaving her breasts exposed, he reached for the iced platter of oysters. He spooned on just a dash of the mignonette sauce and lifted one to her mouth. She kept her eyes on him as he placed the shell next to her mouth.
The oyster slipped between her lips.
She closed her mouth and her eyelids fell shut. His cock throbbed at the rapt expression of sensual pleasure on her face. He ran two fingers over the sweet swells of her upper breasts. Her mouth moved as she enjoyed the flavor of the fresh oyster to its fullest, squeezing the fragrant juices onto her tongue. He wanted to do that to her: savor her until he was drunk on her, ravish her until her taste filled his mouth and ran down his throat . . . absorb her into him.
“You’re exquisite. I have never wanted another woman more,” he murmured, running his lips over her flagrantly pink cheeks even as his fingertips did the same to the skin of her breasts, feeling her heat. You won’t ever want another woman as you do her.
The sound of a pan hitting a metallic surface jarred him from the unexpected, powerful thought. Elise jumped, her moment of rapt pleasure fracturing.
“Shhh,” Lucien soothed, kissing her temple. “Have you never dropped a pan before?” he asked, running his hand along the bare skin of her ribs and feeling her tremble. He loved how delicate she felt in his hands, how responsive.
“Lucien, we shouldn’t. Not when they might see us.”
“They won’t,” he assured, glancing into her face and seeing her anxiety. “But if the choice is worrying you, I will take it away from you. It is my desire to play with you while I feed you this delicious food and wine. And as my slave, you will fulfill my every desire without protest.” His tone was gentle, but he made sure she heard the edge to it as well. He would not be denied the smallest thing when it came to Elise tonight—not her sweet sighs of pleasure, her body trembling next to his hand, her wide-eyed look of surprise when she shocked herself by surrendering completely to him.
He removed the key from his neck. Her eyes grew large now with that mixture of amazement and arousal that he prized. He drew her wrists together. After he’d locked her bracelets together, he reached beneath the table and began to inch her skirt up her thighs. He felt her gasp against his neck.
“Lucien, must you?” she asked in a strangled voice when he lifted the hem of her skirt just above her mons, giving him access to her pussy.
“I must, and so you must allow it,” he said simply before he flipped the edge of the tablecloth over her restrained hands and her lap. “Now,” he said, reaching again to touch a plump nipple, “it’s time to enjoy this delicious fare set before me.”
* * *
Her body trembled and vibrated like a plucked harp string as Lucien played with her breasts and tugged gently on the nipple chain, pausing
every once in a while to feed her the creamy oysters spiced with a dash of the piquant mignonette sauce or to lift her wineglass to her lips. The combination of flavors on her tongue was sublime, what he was doing to her body the sweetest agony. She swam in a bright sea of vibrant sensation. She grew so wet, she knew there would be a damp spot on the fabric of her skirt just beneath her pussy. Had Lucien chosen the color black for her skirt because he’d known how aroused she’d become?
Another oyster slipped between her lips and Lucien bent to kiss her as the flavor filled her mouth. Once she’d swallowed, he plucked at her lips with his own, and then caught the lower one between his white teeth, abrading the flesh gently.
“Your lips are turning as red as your nipples,” he murmured.
She groaned softly. “If you keep biting them, they will turn redder.”
“Then I will keep biting them,” he murmured before he nibbled at her more, his pinching fingertips on her nipple and his sensual kisses making her desperate.
“Lucien, please touch me,” she begged softly.
“Where?”
“On my pussy. It aches so much,” she whispered as she slid her lips feverishly against his. She followed when he leaned back slightly, her mouth seeking out his.
He examined her face. “I will not touch you there yet,” he said, avoiding her lips until she made a sound of frustration at being deprived from the heaven of his mouth. He pinched at her swollen nipple and she moaned in rising agony, her hips shifting on the leather seat. “But you may come, if you can, while I play with your breasts.”
“Oh,” she gasped in a mixture of frustration and intense arousal when he tugged on the chain, and pleasure spiced with pain tore through her. “Do you require a little help in that mission?” she heard him say as if from a great distance.
“Yes,” she hissed.
She felt his hands on the chain, and saw he was loosening the bead below her right nipple. She gasped. Pain tore through, thousands of nerves firing at once at the sudden release of the taut clamp.
“Shhh,” he soothed roughly before he bent his head and took the nipple into his mouth. At the same moment, he lifted her bound hands an inch off her lap, making it impossible for her to press on her pussy from above.
A sharp cry fell past her lips as he drew on the throbbing nipple, and she began to shudder in climax. It hurt. It felt so good she could barely stop herself from screaming. Her hips bucked on the leather seat, but she couldn’t get the full friction she needed on her sex, giving her orgasm a tight, cramped quality.
She was disoriented when he lifted his head a moment later and hastily reattached the loop to her nipple, Elise wincing at the familiar pinch. He just as quickly fastened her blouse. Richard appeared a scant second after Lucien buttoned her jacket. Elise watched as if through a heat haze as Richard served them a lovely white-asparagus and mushroom salad. Richard opened his mouth to speak when he was finished, then glanced at Elise and closed it again. He quickly refilled their wineglasses.
“Enjoy your salads,” he said with a small smile before he walked away.
“Lucien?” she asked breathlessly when Richard was out of earshot.
“Yes, ma chère?” he said as he picked up his knife and fork and began to cut her asparagus.
“I will not survive until the main course if you keep this up.”
She saw his small smile. “You will survive, because I demand it of you,” he said simply before he lifted his fork and slipped it between her swollen lips.
* * *
Elise was beyond eating by the time the main course arrived. It wasn’t possible to exist in the sustained, white-hot fires of arousal and think of anything but release from the glorious torture. When Lucien noticed her turn away from the forkful of quail with chorizo, spring onions, and clover that he offered her, he kissed her lips softly. His gaze flickered over her face. She could feel a slight sheen of perspiration on her upper lip and gathering between her breasts. She panted, but gently, so as not to agitate her overly sensitive nipples against the buttoned jacket.
“Poor girl,” he murmured compassionately. He set down the fork and reached for a glass of ice water. He pressed it to her lips and she drank thirstily, knowing all along the cool liquid would never quench her inner fires. Lucien set down the glass when she’d finished and began to eat. His free hand slipped beneath the tablecloth.
“Oh” popped out of her throat a second later as his finger found her clit and rubbed firmly. Her eyes sprang wide. She stared sightlessly at the beautiful presentation on her dinner plate and shook in climax. Perhaps it was the inserted plug that made her climax so sharp, or maybe it was just the long period of sustained sensual stimulation, but her orgasm was explosive. She moaned in a mixture of misery and bliss as she tried to contain the detonation occurring in her flesh, thrashing her hips against Lucien’s finger.
“Better?” he asked her quietly a moment later as he ate, his hand still moving in her lap, working the last shudders of pleasure out of her.
Elise gasped, trying to catch her breath. She slumped in the seat. The blast of sheer pleasure had left her dizzy.
“Why do you like torturing me?”
He gave her a sharp look before he took a bite of quail, then chewed and swallowed. “Do you think this isn’t torture for me as well, sitting next to you while you tremble helplessly beneath my hand, inhaling the scent of your pussy, knowing your entire body is alight with arousal and that soon . . . very soon, I’m going to incinerate high and hard inside you? You’re the most desirable woman in existence, and yet here I sit,” he said in a stark tone. His hand moved again demandingly in her lap and she bit her lip at the fresh friction. “I am not as cruel to you as I am to myself,” he added before he took another bite of quail, his face rigid with arousal and determination.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know this isn’t easy for you, either.”
“Would you rather I stopped?”
“No. God, no. Your brand of discipline is teaching me things about my body I didn’t know existed. I want to learn control.”
“Take your pleasure now and savor it,” he said quietly, setting down his fork and taking a sip of wine, his hand still moving in her lap, coaxing another orgasm out of her. “Because when we return to the penthouse, it will be my pleasure that must be your priority.”
She moaned softly and shifted her hips against his hand. What he’d said had aroused her. “Even if I don’t take pleasure in what you demand?”
“Yes, even then.” He leaned down and pressed his lips to hers, his kiss somehow both tender and demanding. She felt herself melting beneath his mouth and hand, and she was soon quaking in climax once again.
Elise had no choice but to sit there while Lucien ate his meal and come repeatedly beneath his hand. After her third climax, her clitoris became almost painfully sensitive. Further stimulation left her limp and gasping as she experienced what was almost like a constant low-level climax. It was delicious, but it was like dripping water drop by drop onto the tongue of a person dying of thirst.
Lucien finally set down his fork and removed his hand from her lap. He placed his napkin on the table.
“Come with me for a moment,” he said, taking one of her bound hands.
She followed him out of the booth. He pulled down her skirt for her. Elise was so drunk with lust, she hardly had a passing thought about how embarrassing it would be if they ran into Richard when it was clear that her hands were bound in front of her. Richard and Emile were at the front of the restaurant, however, in the kitchen, while Lucien led her down the back hallway to his office.
He closed the door behind them and hit a switch, lighting the room.
“Go bend over the desk.”
His sharp command penetrated her dazed state. She blinked. “But what—”
“Just do
as I say,” he said, and Elise caught the edge to his tone that betrayed his arousal.
She went to the desk and placed her bound hands on the smooth wood. She bent over, just as she had that first day in this very office weeks ago when Lucien had shocked her by telling her he would punish her . . . show her the limits of her self-indulgent world. Tonight, she felt no less excited as she had on that first time, but she’d grown more confident in Lucien. In herself. Her certainty allowed her to experience less anxiety and more arousal in challenging sexual scenarios than she ever could have in the past.
“Are you going to punish me again?” she asked shakily when he began to work her skirt over her thighs and then her ass.
“No. This won’t take long. I don’t want to be rude and miss Emile’s dessert course. Spread your thighs.”
She repressed a gasp when he matter-of-factly spread her lower ass cheeks, exposing her pussy.
“I’ve never seen you so wet,” he said, his voice rough with arousal. “Your clit is swelling past your lips.” Air whooshed out of her throat when he flicked at the swollen flesh. She moaned loudly when he removed the butt plug, firing the nerves in her anus and sex. She twisted her chin around, curious and wary, and saw him applying lubricant to the larger plug he’d brought in his pocket. It looked intimidatingly large.
He caught her staring at him a moment later as he pushed back a buttock. He held her stare as he inserted the lubricated tip into her ass.
“Push back on it,” he ordered when she winced.
She did what he said and the larger plug slid into her with relative ease. She exhaled at the sharp flash of pain that went through her, but it passed almost as quickly as it came, leaving an arousing, forbidden sensation of fullness and pressure.
She couldn’t escape the exciting knowledge that she was being sexually penetrated, even when Lucien pulled down her skirt and helped her to stand. She stood there waiting, her nipples, clit, and anus throbbing, while Lucien went to the bathroom to wash up. When he returned a moment later, he looked possibly even tenser than he had before. He took her hand and led her back to their table. They were seated just in time for Richard to come and serve them coffee, brandy, and a splendid Venezuelan chocolate custard.