Chance eased her
down, running his hands up and down her thighs, her stomach, her chest, while
she gasped for air and jerked once or twice with aftershocks. He didn’t know
how she did it, but she always looked amazing after coming.
While
coming.
All the time, really.
Too amazing to
resist. He knew how far to push her. And he wanted to indulge himself. Just a
preview of the way he’d take his pleasure, as a Dom, when she was through
training.
“Lena,” he said.
“You back on Earth yet?”
“Yes, sir,” she
murmured.
“Good. Sit up.”
He helped her
scoot up the chair, raising the back of it for her, and got out from under her
legs, standing over her while still straddling the chair. He blocked the sun
now, so she could look at him without squinting.
He saw the idea
occur to her, too. She licked her lips.
“Suck me,” he
ordered.
She looked around
a little nervously, still kind of spooked even though they were alone. She’d do
this, and she’d be ready for tonight. And damn, did he want to see her suck him
off.
Lena
ran her hands up his legs
,
her eyes alight with something
. She looked like she’d
been waiting a while to do this, but there was still the nervousness, like she was
worried she wouldn’t do a good job. Her confidence had gotten better since
she’d been at Volare, but if you looked you could still see the signs of the
bruising she’d taken from Kerns.
By the time she
got to his zipper, though, he could see she was thinking about one thing only.
She was careful with his cock, which made him want to laugh; the damn thing
could punch through two inches of steel at this point. Being around Lena all
the time was giving it plenty of use.
She kissed the
tip.
“Fuck,” he said,
as she licked away a drop of
precum
. Lena licked her
way down the shaft, looking up at him with those eyes.
She was teasing
him the way he teased her.
Oh, hell no.
Chance threaded
his hand in her hair and watched her chest heave the way it did when he smacked
her ass or put a finger inside her. She liked the intimation of force. Then she
looked up with those eyes again, smiling while she held his cock in her hands.
“Open,” he
growled.
She did, and he
pushed in while she took his cock gladly, sucking slightly as he entered her
mouth. He fisted her hair in his other hand and started to move in her mouth
while she moaned.
The site of her trying to take as much of
his dick as she could was unbelievable, the look of lust in her eyes as she
looked up at him maddening.
She was so good, so,
so
good, and the found himself thrusting faster and faster, driven
by the sounds she made and the way she reached for his balls, until he pushed
her back against the back of the chair just as the rush hit the base of his
dick.
“Swallow,” he
said.
She pulled back
briefly, licking her lips, and smiled. Then she did.
All he could do
was watch.
This woman…
He had plans for
her already. But he added a few more orgasms to the list.
chapter
15
Lena tried to
relax the rest of the afternoon, but she faced several obstacles: one, holy
crap, what was Chance going to do to her later; two, she was still worked up
about the questions he’d asked her; and three, she’d gotten another psychotic
text message.
The text messages
were starting to make less sense, honestly. Usually they commented on her and
Chance, taunting her, asking when she was going to come out and get back in the
scene—whatever the hell that meant. Maybe bars? Clubs? Trying to be seen
in L.A.? She wasn’t interested—but this one had just said, “You’re
delaying the inevitable.”
Yeah, threatening.
She was starting
to think she’d have to tell someone. And if she told anyone, she knew it had better
be Chance. And that thought put her right back where she started, worrying
about getting more involved, becoming dependent on the man, and making this
arrangement into something it wasn’t.
And then, inevitably,
getting hurt again.
She didn’t like to
admit how worked up she’d been by Chance’s naked interrogation, but it had been
obvious to both of them—she’d actually snapped at him. Come to think of
it, she was surprised he’d just let that go.
Had she ever
opened up to anyone? What did that even mean? And why had it hurt
when
he
asked her? She knew why it hurt, generally, but she thought
she’d grown a thicker skin under most circumstances. In private, it hurt
because she wanted to be able to do that, and
that
made her feel stupid, because Lena Simone Maddox knew better
than that, and had since she was a child. Even now she’d watch a sappy movie
and part of her would want to rail at the screen:
That’s not real! Real life doesn’t work out like that!
She’d learned that
the hard way the first time her mother had kicked her out for one of her mom’s boyfriends.
Then she’d learned it again the second time. And so on. But the worst part was
that by the time she got to L.A., sixteen but looking twenty and lying about her
age, she
still
hadn’t been smart
enough: she’d gotten taken for rent money by the first guy she’d gotten involved
with. Had she opened up to him? Was that the problem?
Over the years it
had just been a slow process of acclimation. She was proud of the fact that
she’d gotten tougher, tough enough to mostly avoid getting her heart
broken—because, in fact, she’d realized Richie
hadn’t
broken her heart, because she’d never given it to him.
Of course, she
hadn’t gotten smart enough or tough enough to avoid getting exploited. So there
was that.
It was the one
thing that Chance Dalton hadn’t seemed to understand right away, and that made
her feel uneasy. Like he didn’t get it because he’d been lucky in his own life.
The privileged romanticism of people who got lucky.
Wait, wait, wait—that’s not fair
, she thought. She was just being bitter and angry. She didn’t
know jack about Chance’s life, except that something had screwed him up, too.
And that he’d read
her script.
And that he
thought she was brilliant.
Lena smiled. Maybe
it wasn’t smart to open up heedlessly, and maybe she had some things to
resolve, but she could let herself bask in that particular revelation for a
while. She could trust the man with her body and with her work. Maybe that was
enough.
By the time eight
o’clock rolled around, she was in a frenzy of anticipation.
She’d actually
wondered about what to wear.
Then she realized
whatever she wore was probably just going to come right off. That did
not
help.
Eight o’clock
found her in a light wrap dress and sandals, her hair tied back in a loose
knot, climbing the floating stairs to the top floor of the main building,
looking down at the atrium below. She’d walked through it on her way to the
stairs and had felt comforted to see a bunch of familiar faces—Ford was
there, and Adra, giving Ford some perplexing looks, and Declan Donovan, the
rock star who last week had insisted that she try a bite of his first attempt
at baking, part of some sort of stupid competition he’d had with Adra. Once
Lena got over the surrealism of the moment, she’d agreed to taste test his
attempt. Lena
thought
he’d meant to
make cookies, but the results had been…something else. The guy had been a
sweetheart. And apparently he was also a Dom. Some sub was going to be very
lucky.
Look at her, using
words like Dom and sub and feeling like she knew what she was talking about.
This place…this place was already to feel like home.
Sort of.
She could see them
all from the railing on the top floor, right below, still sitting around and
chatting after their meeting. The acoustics in the atrium were pretty good. She
could almost understand what they were saying.
It almost
distracted her from thoughts of Chance and what he had planned for her.
Almost, but not quite.
Probably nothing could have done
that.
“Look at you,” he
said from behind her.
She turned,
leaning back against the railing, and just enjoyed the way he looked at her.
The man knew how to make a woman feel good in more ways than one. He was
dressed like he always was, in that effortless dressed-down cool of a real life
movie star or a country singer or something. It was just that body, and that
impish grin, and the square jaw, and the buzzed head.
All of
it, really.
Irresistible.
“I’m here,” she
said.
“Yes you are,”
Chance said, coming closer. He toyed with the tie that held her dress together,
tugging on it to see what kind of give it had. “This all it takes?”
Lena breathed a
little faster. “Yes.”
He flashed that
smile. “This is a good dress.”
Oh jeez. She felt
her legs quivering already. And the suspense was just killing her. He didn’t
tear off her dress, though now that was practically all she could think about;
he didn’t tell her what he was going to do—he didn’t do
anything
. Just drove her insane.
“Is there
something I’m supposed to do?” she asked. She hated that she sounded so
nervous. That had been happening a lot.
He gave her a
playful frown, then bent down and bit her neck. She made a sound in shock, a
kind of cut-off squeak, but he just held her
there
,
his teeth gripping her neck, his hand at her waist, until she relaxed into him.
Oh God, he
owned
her.
“That’s better,”
he said, lifting his head to look down at her with those bright eyes. “You’re
gonna
need to relax, sweetheart.”
She nodded, not
trusting herself to form words just yet. He’d
bitten
her…
“So tell me
something,” he said, leaning on the railing and looking down as she turned to
face him. “Why is it that you, who is so ordinarily brave, seem so hung up on
what other people think of you?”
“Ordinarily
brave?” she asked.
He smiled. “That
was unclear, huh? I meant that it’s your ordinary state, not that it’s a common
thing. It’s
un
common. See? You’re a
writer, I’m not.”
She felt her
cheeks get hot. Of all the things this man had said to her, of all the things
he’d
done
to
her,
that
was what got her. Yeah, that made sense.
But he was talking
nonsense again. It bugged her the same way it had that afternoon.
“Don’t pretend
like it doesn’t matter what people think of you,” she said quietly, turning to
look down at the people gathered below. “I know people like to say that, but
it’s just…wrong. Your professional prospects damn well change based off of what
people think of you.”
“I’m not saying it
doesn’t matter, or that it should or it shouldn’t,” he said. “I’m saying I
think you assume that people will think bad things about you, and that just
astounds me.”
She frowned.
“That’s not—”
“You don’t trust
the world to treat you right, Lena,” he said. “And maybe it hasn’t in the past.
But that’s not now. Here, it’s different. You have to learn there are places in
the world where you’ll be cherished for what you are.”
She was stunned.
His words, what he’d said—she’d thought he hadn’t understood. But he had.
He’d understood perfectly.
Lena looked at him
with the beginnings of tears in her eyes, which is how she missed it when he
slipped one soft leather cuff over her right wrist and attached it to the
railing.
She looked down as
he reached over and cuffed the left wrist and did the same thing.
“Oh, you’re
kidding,” she said.
“I don’t ever joke
about this,” he laughed. “Except when I do, of course.”
She was starting
to get that tingling feeling all over, that rush that said it was starting.
Lena couldn’t help but look down, where that crowd of familiar faces was still
gathered, all of them lounging comfortably on the plush chairs and sofas. None
of them expecting to see her get fucked several stories above.
Or maybe they
were.
She flushed with
heat and tested the cuffs. No, she wasn’t going anywhere. And those were
Chance’s hands running down the sides of her body.
“Put your hands on
the railing and step back, sweetheart,” he said. “Bend at the waist and lean
into it like you might have to be
there
for a while.”
Well,
that
was suggestive.
So she was afraid.
Yes. She was, in fact, kind of shaking as she gripped the railing and bent over
to lean into it, putting some of her weight on her arms. There was no way to
hide the shaking in her bare, treacherous arms, and Chance took a moment to
stop whatever he was doing behind her to run his big, warm hands down the
length of her arms, up and down, murmuring into her ear the whole time.
She stopped
shaking.
She didn’t know
exactly what he was going to do, but she knew enough to be freaked out. She
knew it would be in full view of those people down there. She knew it would
force her to face that. And while there was that rotten, familiar tightness in
her chest and her adrenaline was pumping and everything was telling her to run,
she knew she could do this. With Chance standing behind her, she could do it.
Giving up control to him was the only thing that had felt consistently right,
that had freed her when she’d felt most trapped, that allowed her to just…
feel
.
She trusted him.
“Good girl,” he
whispered.
Then he spread her
legs. She closed her eyes and felt a cuff go around one ankle, then the other,
and saw him attach the tethers to different parts of the railing.
Her legs were
staying spread.
Chance let his
finger tips dance up the inside of one leg until he reached her sex, bare, the
way she knew he’d want it. He swiped his finger down the length of her slit,
saying, “Good thinking.”
She clenched, and
he laughed.
“You are so much
fun, you know that?” he said, whispering into her ear again.
“Don’t tease me,”
she said, wavering.
“I’m not teasing
you, Lena,” he said. “You’re
gonna
have to get used
to the idea that I like being around you, is all.”
She felt his hand
on the back of her neck, holding her delicately, then rubbing her bare back
down to her waist, her hips.
“You’re
gonna
have to get used to the idea
that I think you’re fucking amazing,” he said. “In bed and out.”
Lena felt a tug at
her waist—the tie that held the wrap dress closed, and
on
. He was slowly—oh God, so
slowly—pulling it loose.
She closed her
eyes.
“Actually,
sweetheart, you should probably get used to the idea that a whole lot of people
think you’re amazing, whether you know it or not,” he said as the tie pulled
free. “And I’m taking about Lena, not Simone Maddox.”
Chance was silent
as he let the dress slip off her in its own time, the material whispering
against her skin as it slid, so slowly it was like another caress.
“But that,” he
said softly, “is neither here nor there, at the moment. God. Damn.”
Lena still hadn’t
opened her eyes, but Chance’s talk about her naked body would get her every
time. She smiled, even as she started to shake again, her arms rattling the
cuff clasps on the railing.
“Shhh,” he said,
and then his warm hands were on her bare skin again, and the sensation of his
touch overwhelmed everything else. Her mind followed him as he trailed down her
back, across her stomach, her chest. While he held her breasts, kissed her
neck, ran his hands over her hips and down her legs.