Legally Binding (7 page)

M
aisie kept looking
at her cell phone, waiting for Trent or Raphael to call. In the hours since she’d arrived at the office, she had cleared a third of the folders off her desk, and so far, no new ones had been added.

No new paper cuts, either.

She opened the next folder, yawned, and ran her fingers through her hair.

The woman with the beehive hairdo walked by. She ignored Maisie as she headed for Mrs. Donahue’s desk.

Maisie was just about to get up to stretch her legs when Ethan glided out of the hallway. “I need you,” he said impatiently.

There wasn’t any secret meaning to his words, and not an ounce of tenderness in the way he’d said them. She’d lain awake in the strange hotel, thinking about all her bosses and Ethan in particular, wondering where he was and what he was doing. What his bedroom looked like. If he was thinking of her, too.

Obviously he hadn’t been… but that made her want him even more.

She forced herself to stand like a sane person and not jump to her feet like a lovelorn schoolgirl.

He’d walked off in the direction of the elevators, not his office. Confused, she glanced around and found that the beehive woman and Mrs. Donahue were both watching. Maisie closed the open folder on her desk, then hurried after him.

“You were with Davina all night, correct?” he asked as they stepped onto the elevator.

“Y-yes,” she said. She could smell his aftershave, and heat pulsed in her core.

“Did she go out?” He pushed the emergency stop button, and the elevator slid to a smooth halt.

Frowning, Maisie shook her head. “Definitely not. Why?”

“Mr. Ballystock was supposed to meet his brother for a racquetball game last night. His brother, the assistant chief of police.” His voice became tense. “I just got a call—it seems he’s already investigating. You’re her alibi.”

Coldness washed over Maisie, and her mouth went dry.

Ethan was staring into her eyes. He knew that she’d put it together. “You set me up,” she whispered.

He shook his head to dismiss that. “It was an accident.”

A little cry burst from her throat, and she took a step back. The hardness in Ethan’s eyes turned to surprise.

“Maisie, you don’t think…” He laughed uncomfortably. “He’s not dead. We were able to… persuade… him to leave town. We didn’t realize he’d try to disappear completely. But it looks bad. If something happens to him before the divorce is final, his wife inherits everything.”

“He’s alive?”

“We didn’t hurt him. I swear it.” He held her gaze. It seemed, she thought, that he felt it important for her to believe him.

And… she did. “Ok,” she said, and let out a trembling breath.

“Good.” He pushed the emergency button again, and the elevator resumed moving. When the doors slid open so more people could get on, he said coldly, “Get out.”

“What?”

His expression was like marble, and for once, both sides of his face matched. “Get out,” he said.

The two people who’d just gotten on the elevator looked nervously away, pretending not to hear. “I’m going to buy myself a cheese danish, and I don’t need you for that. Wait in my office.”

He flung out an arm to stop the door from closing. Head bowed, Maisie stepped out.

She turned to ask what she’d done wrong, to ask why he suddenly hated her so much, and discovered his gaze was locked on her. Was that a flicker of arousal in his gray eyes?

Wait in my office.

She smiled.

T
wenty minutes later
, she was still waiting. She timed it in her mind… taking the elevator to the lobby, going to the deli, waiting in line… He should have been back five minutes ago.

The door opened, and Maisie practically jumped to her feet. Her jacket, which she’d been holding on her lap, slipped to the floor.

Flustered, she dipped down to grab it.

When she looked up, she found herself staring at Ethan’s shocked assistant. “No one is allowed in here alone.”

Maisie felt her mouth open, but no words came out. “I…” she whispered.

“Stella, in fifteen minutes or so, could you give Mrs. Donahue a hand with collecting yesterday’s summaries from the other office?” Ethan handed her a small paper bag. “Blueberry,” he said, and his assistant beamed.

He closed the door after her.

Maisie twisted the jacket in her hands. Her heart was racing. Now that they were alone, Ethan seemed too large, too intimidating.

“Strip,” he said. “Everything except your shoes.”

He went to his desk and picked up the phone. “Stella,” he said. “Hold my calls. When Raphael and Trent get here, send them right in.”

He hung up. “You’re still dressed.” He leaned against the front of his desk and crossed his arms. “Strip, Maisie. Slowly.”

Giddy with relief, Maisie turned and dropped the jacket onto the sofa. She unzipped the dress and let it skim down her body, slowly uncovering her curves. When she glanced over at Ethan, she saw that his attention was fixed on the skin she’d just revealed.

Her ankle wobbled as she stepped out of the dress, and for a moment the heel of her shoe caught in the hem. Her pulse doubled while she gracelessly got everything under control, but she didn’t fall, and she didn’t punch a hole through the beautiful garment.

She couldn’t help looking at Ethan again once she was standing straight. He raised an eyebrow.

With a teasing smile, she ran her fingers over the exposed mounds of her breasts, then into the silky material of her bra. Her shoulders curled forward, and she slid a finger under one of the satiny bra straps.

“Stop there.” He whipped off his tie, the movement fluid.

She trembled as he approached her. Now that he was closer, the imperfections in his face were more difficult to ignore. The first chance she got, she planned to pump Jayne for information.

“Go ahead and stare,” he said.

“I wasn’t…” The heat of a blush scalded her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to…”

His arm snaked out and he caught her wrist. Slowly, eyes fastened on hers, he raised her hand and pressed her fingers against the right side of his face.

The skin was thicker there, denser. Her breath caught.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing the words through the lump in her throat. “I never meant to offend you.”

Something flared in his eyes, and if he hadn’t been holding her, she might have pulled away. “I wasn’t offended, but you have a lot to learn about tact.”

He released her.

She didn’t immediately lower her arm, but then he did it for her, catching her wrists together and forcing them to the small of her back.

The position lifted her breasts proudly into the air, and Ethan had stepped closer to her. Even though they weren’t touching except in a few places, she could feel the heat of his body on the naked skin of her thighs and stomach.

Staring into his eyes felt dangerous. From what she’d observed, he was a man of logic, a linear thinker.

But what she felt? There was a volatility in him. Like now, a few seconds after letting her touch him, the coldness in his eyes was absolute. She didn’t like the way he could turn it on and off.

It made her afraid.

Tightening his grip on her wrists, he brought her toward him, pulling her into the solidity of his body and that addictive hardness. She ached to feel him inside her again. Because as much as he scared her, she didn’t want to stay away.

She didn’t think she could.

He turned them both, a quick dance step, then quickly released her hands and pinned her body to the wall with his. She trembled against him, her hips straining forward, wanting his cock.

“Your training begins now,” he said.

Then he wrapped his tie around her head, covering her eyes.

Her little whimper of surprise sounded especially loud now that she couldn’t see anything. But she could feel: Ethan’s rock-hard body, his warmth, the rush of her own breathing, the whisper of the ends of the silk tie as he secured the blindfold.

She heard the door open, and were those footsteps entering?

The door closed.

Then there was silence.

T
ime crawled
.

Two minutes? Fifteen? She couldn’t tell, but she was getting dizzy. The blindfold wasn’t too tight, nothing like that, but all she could feel was the hard wall behind her, and Ethan in front.

If he moved away, she might fall over. It was like yesterday morning, with him holding her up.

She’d heard about sensory deprivation chambers, huge vats of dark water, and how people lost their minds in relatively short periods of time.

She heard herself gulp in air.

Rough hands grabbed her.

How many men? Just the partners?

“Who is it?” she asked, and she could hear the terror in her own voice.

A hard, masculine chest leaned against her shoulder. He was tall. Solid. “It’s just us,” Trent said.

Then he dipped her to the side, pulling her against him, his arm sweeping under her knees.

She choked in a fast breath as she went horizontal. Trent was carrying her, and a moment later he carefully placed her on a soft office chair.

The blindfold had shifted a few centimeters. She could see very little—just a sliver of her knees.

Someone tied her wrists to the chair’s armrests, the soft fabric cushioning her forearms.

One of the men was kneeling. All she could see was his shoulder. Dark jacket. It could have been any of them.

He pushed her knees apart and tied each to the support of the chair’s armrest. She was able to see the scrap of fabric he’d used. Royal blue, silky. She didn’t know where it had come from, but it wasn’t a necktie.

She heard the men walking away, then their lowered voices discussing something. Slowly, she tilted her head back until she could see the three of them in conversation. Ethan was taking off his jacket.

He unfastened his cufflinks and slipped them into the jacket’s inside pocket before tossing it out of view.

His strong fingers deftly flipped over the bottom of a shirt cuff. He rolled it to just below his elbow, exposing a muscular forearm. He started to repeat it with the other arm, then paused.

The men were having a disagreement about something, she realized. Trent and Raphael were arguing with Ethan.

After a moment, Ethan said, “Fine,” loud enough for her to hear, then jerkily rolled up his other sleeve. She sensed them turning toward her, and she lowered her head lest they realize she wasn’t completely blind.

Footsteps approached.

A nervous smile rose to Maisie’s lips. It froze there—oh, she hoped she wasn’t about to start laughing inappropriately. She felt like she’d been kidnapped.

“Stick out your tongue,” Ethan said.

She poked out her tongue and waited for an erect cock to join the party.

But instead of hard flesh, she got nothing. Just the office air, slowly drying her tongue out.

How ridiculous did she look?

A hand plunged into her bra, the touch so unexpected that she gasped.

Fingers tweaked her nipple. “You were given orders.” Raphael’s voice was low and dangerous.

“What—” she started to say, but rough fingers forced her jaw open, caught her tongue, tugged it forward.

“Don’t fuck up again,” Raphael growled, and her pussy gushed with excitement. These powerful men had turned their focus on her, and while she didn’t know the rules of this game, she loved it already.

Nodding enthusiastically, she strained her tongue forward, lengthening it until the corners of her jaw ached, and the tug on her tongue’s frenulum brought tears to her eyes. She could even hear the hum of her trembling muscles.

“Much better,” Raphael said, his voice thick and deep with tightly controlled desire.

The chair was being rocked, then lifted into the air.

Squeezing her eyes tight—not that it made any difference because she couldn’t see much—she clamped her teeth on her tongue to keep from disobeying her bosses again.

The chair landed with a mild jolt, and she slowly peeled her eyes open. Through the sliver by which she saw the world, she learned that she’d been put on top of Ethan’s desk.

The men released the chair, and the wheels slid slightly.

She gasped, thinking she was about to roll over the side and crash to the floor. If her hands had been free, she would have clawed off the blindfold.

Suddenly the chair was still; one of her bosses must have grabbed it. Maisie’s tongue had taken refuge in her mouth. She desperately pushed it forward again.

“Bad, bad girl,” Ethan purred in a deep voice. His hands stroked from her knees to the tops of her thighs, and then his touch became cruel and punishing, his fingertips digging into the vulnerable flesh just below her sex.

He pushed her thighs away from each other, but she was already spread as wide as possible given the chair’s confines. His fingers burrowed into her softness, hitting the muscle underneath. “Bad girl.”

Someone moved behind Ethan. Impossible to be sure who; they all had similar builds, at least when they were dressed.

The man shifted to the side, and she almost gasped when she saw the protuberance of his erect cock thrusting through the fly of his pants. She only caught a glimpse, but it was enough to set her blood pounding in her veins.

He wouldn’t have taken it out if he didn’t plan to use it on her, after all. Now she had to clamp down on her tongue to keep from grinning.

“When you’re bad,” Ethan said, increasing the intensity of his grip and chasing away all thoughts of grinning, “we will punish you.”

Something flicked against her clit. Hard enough to make her gasp, but because her jaw was clamped down, she didn’t disobey her bosses’ orders.

The second flick delivered a stab of pain that quickly heated to a sizzling burn.

She inhaled sharply through her nose.

Then Ethan moved his left hand and began flicking his way up her inner thigh. The skin he’d been squeezing was tender. “One from each of us,” he said, and flicked her sex so hard that her pussy quivered with pleasure.

She was practically panting, and it was a strange sensation, her tongue painfully dry while the rest of her mouth had turned into a floodplain.

“You’re incredible,” Raphael said. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

“Believe it,” Ethan said. “You should have seen the way she came in here, practically begging for me to put her across my knee and paddle her ass raw.”

Someone reached out and yanked down the cups of her bra. The straps dug into her shoulders. He leaned forward (it was Raphael, she saw now) to force his hand behind her back and unhook the closure with surprising precision.

She could smell his aftershave, which she hadn’t noticed yesterday. It was heavier than Ethan’s, the musk stronger and the individual scents less distinct from each other. He tugged her bra again. The straps came to rest in the crooks of her elbows, the cups suspended over her lap.

His hands cradled her breasts and lifted them. By tilting her chin just right, she could see his thumb stroking across one nipple.

The dusky pink tip tightened, and his attentions became almost too intense. Each brush of his thumb sent painfully intense sensations streaking toward her clit. Her body felt like it was vibrating.

“You may relax,” Ethan said. He released her other thigh to tap her tongue. “That’s enough.”

Slowly, she pulled it in. She could still feel the ache in her jaw.

“Should we fuck her?” Raphael asked. He resumed teasing her nipples, and she knew her arousal was seeping through her panties and onto her boss’s chair.

“Please,” she said, and one of the men barked out a laugh.

She both heard and felt a drawer in the desk being pulled open. Then the rasp of a condom packet being torn free. “Catch,” Trent said.

So he knew Ethan kept condoms on hand. It was more proof that they’d done this at work before. She remembered Jayne’s reaction to seeing Ethan, the way she’d gone stiff. Then, later, she’d said he was sexy.

Had Jayne once been tied to the chair and fucked by the bosses? Maisie felt herself frowning. It wasn’t the sort of thing one would mention casually to the new girl.

“Oh, it won’t be that bad,” Raphael said. He brought her breasts together. When he spoke again, his breath was hot on her nipples. “We’ll even allow you to come as much as you want. Enjoy it while you can.”

Then he licked a lazy circle around one of her peaks.

She gasped and threw her head back.

The chair was moving, but she didn’t care so long as Raphael kept on with what he was doing.

The tip of his tongue danced over her nipple. She longed to bury her hands in his hair and hold him to her.

A second tongue joined in, worshipping the other nipple. The sensations were almost overwhelming.

She moaned, and someone flicked her pussy, making her squeal from the sharp, delightful agony. “Be quiet,” Ethan growled.

But she couldn’t keep quiet, because slowly but surely, an intense orgasm was building. They were doing it to her with their tongues and their domination.

Ethan flicked her pussy again, and it almost sent her spiraling over the edge. Then his mouth was on her panties and her most sensitive flesh.

She cried out, and Ethan jerked away. “This isn’t going to work.”

Her breasts were abandoned, and someone violently ripped away the blindfold, leaving her blinking in the sudden light.