His Indecent Secrets (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire, BDSM Erotic Romance) (5 page)

She hears voices shouting in the same foreign tongue. She twists her head to look back and sees dark figures on the beach. One of them flashes a powerful torch onto the water. More shouts. Some of the figures begin wading in after her.

Oh no.

She increases the speed of her swim strokes. She has never been particularly good at swimming. Her clothes and shoes weigh her down and she looks to wrench them off, but she knows she cannot stop for a second.

She almost doesn’t see the dark figure bobbing in the water until it collides into her.

She screams. Water rushes into her mouth, choking her. Arms grab her.

“Susan? It’s me, Channing!”

Channing?

She tries to say his name but the water gurgles in her throat and goes down the wrong way.

“Don’t try to talk. Don’t do anything, just lean on me,” he says urgently.

She feels so helpless. He hooks one arm around her shoulders and begins to stroke powerfully away. In the wan light of the moon, the dark figures in the water aim stick-like shapes at them. The cracks of gunshots fill the air as bullets splinter the water all around them. Her mind churns like the furious eddies. How did Channing find her?

He cared enough to find her.

But is he really Channing? She can’t well rip his shirt open to find out right now. So she will allow herself the fantasy of him being really Channing, even though this may all be a fevered dream brought on by voluminous stress. In fact, she’s probably chained to the bed in her prison upstairs, connected to an intravenous drip of potent hallucinogens.

Oh Channing, Channing.
There’s so much she wants to say to him but her breath is coming out in short, sharp bursts. She just lets him carry her further and further away into the sea, until she glimpses the dark shoal of a boat. It isn’t lighted. Dark shapes clamber all over the deck. Hands help her onboard as Channing pushes her up by her buttocks. Her wet clothes stick to her body.

Once onboard, she falls down to her knees and splutters, coughing madly. Channing massages her back, thumping her more than once.

“Are you OK?” He turns to one of the men. “Let’s go.”

The engines start up and lights flare. The boat begins to move.

She’s safe now. She’s really safe.

Channing wraps his arms around her and she finds the strength to hug him back. The wind chills her sodden clothes. He is wearing some sort of neoprene suit. He has never looked more beautiful. His face is beaded with saltwater and his eyes – usually so intense – are soft and filled with light.

He is saying, “I needed time to find where you were. I turned in a few favors, tracked you down, and you’re here.” His hands keep touching her face, her arms, as though he can’t believe she’s really there.

“Where is here?”

She can’t keep her hands off him either. But here he is. His body is hard and powerfully sculptured. She finds herself noticing things about him she never noticed before. Like how long and brown his lashes are. Like the curvature of his full, lush lips. Like the bristles of evening shadow around his jawline.

“A private island in the Caribbean.”

Her trembling fingers come up to his lips. He kisses her fingertips, and then he grabs her face and kisses her mouth.

Her heart stops.

She forgets to breathe. His lips are nuanced and pliant and soft. Unlike Hugh’s, there is both passion and desperation in Channing’s kiss instead of premeditation and lust. He parts his lips and his tongue thrusts into her mouth, tasting the saltwater inside. He licks the insides of her cheeks and tongue. His lips grind against hers hungrily.

He kissed me. Channing kissed me.

It must mean something – he who never kisses.

“Shit, they’re coming for us,” she hears a voice say.

Alarmed, they break the kiss. She looks up to see a large boat bearing down on them from aft. All its spotlights are on and several figures on deck are pointing machine guns at them.

“There’s another one behind us,” someone warns.

She swivels her head behind her. Indeed, there’s even a larger boat heading at top speed straight for them. They are sandwiched in between the two boats which appear to be on a collision course.

Channing says beneath his breath, “Fuck, I think they’re going to ram us.”

She can only watch helplessly as the two boats speed closer. Channing grabs her hand.

“Everybody jump!” he yells.

He helps her over the railing.

“Go, Susan, you can do it,” he says tersely.

She doesn’t think – she just leaps as far as she can out into the water. The cold impact is a shock to her senses. She sinks, the darkness rushing around her. She doesn’t know which way is up, and so she begins to swim towards where she thinks is the surface. But she kicks and kicks, and everywhere, there is water.

She hears the awful shrieking of a metal hull into another metal hull – a noise from the bowels of hell itself – coming from everywhere and nowhere. She feels someone’s hand clasping her waist. But before she can tell who it is, water rushes into her mouth and she finds her world winking out . . . slowly . . . until it is nothing but a big black liquid mass.

6

When she comes to, the stone floor is cold and hard beneath her. Her air passages feel chafed and burned, as though they have been thoroughly laundered. She is lying naked on her belly, with her face pressed to the ground. Her entire body is numb.

Am I dead?
she wonders. But a tendril of hair teases into her mouth, and she blows it out slowly. At least she still has her lungs.

She slowly raises her head. Channing is beside her – immobile, his head bowed. He is seated upon an iron chair. Chains snake across his arms and shoulders and his wrists are tethered behind him. His ankles are manacled to the legs of the chair. There is something a little off about his posture. His knees are too bent, and then she realizes that his naked buttocks are sunken into a crude hole made in the seat.

The man before her
is
Channing, she assures herself. He has no rose tattoo on his right pectoral.

They are in a dungeon cell. The walls are of the same material as the floor. Although the room is humid, the temperature here is considerably lower than her former bedroom prison. She is certain they are on the island – somewhere in the bowels of the mansion. She has a bad feeling about that chair. It’s a torture device.

Her body feels as though it has been hammered all over, but she makes herself rise to her feet to crawl to him.

“Channing?” she says softly.

She lays her hand on his shoulder. Why did they shackle him and not her?

His eyelids flutter open. His shoulders heave as he takes a deep breath. His irises are blurry, as though he has just been awoken from a deep stupor.

“Susan?”

“Channing.” She kneels before him and grasps his shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“I should be asking you that.” He manages a wry grin.

“I’m alive. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.” She strengthens her grip on him. She’s so glad he’s here. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if he were killed, although that might be a possibility within the next few hours. “You found me.”

“Yeah, but look where we are right now. Not exactly the Hilton.”

“What do you think he will do to us?”

The rueful smile has not left his lips. “Kill me. He kidnapped you to lure me here, I see that now. He knew I wouldn’t be able to raise the money on time. The lead he left me was too timely . . . too convenient.”

“You still raised two hundred and fifty million dollars for me,” she says in awe.

“It’s only money.” He shrugs as much as the chains will allow him to. “I can always make it back. But this . . . this isn’t about money.”

“I know. It’s about revenge.”

He sighs. “If he only knew the truth about it. What did he tell you?”

She relays what Hugh had recounted about what happened in the citadel. Her words tumble when she mentions Alia and the fact that Channing left her and his brother to their fate. Her heart thuds as she rushes her story.
I don’t believe you’re a cold-blooded murderer,
she beseeches silently between the lines.

Channing listens to all this without interruption. The set of his mouth is grim.

When she has finished, he says, “It didn’t happen that way.”

“Then how did it happen?”

He raises his brilliant blue eyes to hers. An unspeakable sadness fills them. He flits them away.

“What?” she cries. “What is it? Why can’t you tell me?”

He shakes his head. It is as though he is in great torment.

“That’s not how it happened,” he repeats.

She holds him for a long while, luxuriating in his presence and his warmth. He’s really here.
He came for me. He did.

She says, “It doesn’t matter what you did in Iraq. It’s who you are now.” There’s a pain within her chest that is so turbulent and voluminous that she thinks she will explode.

Her voice is tremulous as she continues, “I have something to tell you.”

He gazes questioningly at her.

“I-I have to tell you before . . . ” she can’t get the words out.
Before we are killed,
she wants to say. “I l-love you, Channing. I think I’ve loved you the moment I stepped into your office.”

Was that only a fortnight ago? It seems like a lifetime.

His cheekbones wince, as though he’s flinching from a physical blow. A dagger twists in her heart. She’s bleeding all over, but she scarcely feels it because she is so numb.

He doesn’t love me . . . oh, he doesn’t love me. And yet he came for me. It doesn’t matter. I needed to tell him, and I did.

He says hoarsely, “Kiss me.”

She raises her head to his, and they mold their mouths together. It’s a passionate kiss – full of feeling and yearning and regret. They kiss and kiss with mounting hunger. Her hands roam all over his shoulders and arms and chest. As she brushes over his nipples, they perk up and become erect. Her palm trails on its own volition down to his cock. It is as hard and thick as she remembers. She cups his balls, which are dangling in the hole.

He parts for air.

“God, Susan,” he gasps against her lips, “you drive me crazy.”

It isn’t exactly what she hopes he would say, but it would have to do. The bizarre circumstances they are in only serves to fuel their desire for each other. It’s as if the realization of their mortality makes them understand how fragile and fleeting their happiness is.

They kiss and kiss, and it seems like she’s been kissing him forever. She kisses his chin, and then his throat, and back to his always hungry lips. Their kisses are voracious and sublime, as though they are falling into each other in a mind mesh of souls. Her clit throbs with need and her juices begin to copiously flow. She needs so much for him to fill her.

He whispers, “I have never kissed anyone for the longest time since . . . ”

He falters. He doesn’t have to complete the sentence. She knows what he will say.

Since Desert Rose.

Hope swells within her chest. If he loved Desert Rose and he kissed her, it might mean –

Her resolve to maintain propriety in this place crumbles. To hell with the dozen hidden cameras here, she’s going to seize a final piece of happiness with the man she loves. She may never get the chance again.

His body responds to hers. She straddles him and positions his upright penis against her starving little hole. She pushes herself down on him.

“Aaah,” she gushes as gravity fuels her.

He hisses between his teeth. His eyes are closed once again, savoring her sweet, wet bed.

The thick firm column of flesh invading her wet tunnel cleaves apart her walls like a sluice. The pleasure is almost too intense. His cock is meant to be inside her. It was perfectly made for her. His flesh embeds every crevice and every nook of her velvety passage, every fold and every cleft. His crown pushes against her cervix, buoying her up. Her weight causes his buttocks to sink in further into the hole, but his strong thighs strain to counter gravity.

“You all right?” she asks.

“Never been better.”

She begins to rock against him, sliding herself up and down his cock.

“God, Susan.” He closes his eyes. “There was a time I thought I would never experience this again.”

“Experience what? Me?”

“Yeah.” The look on his face is one of pure unadulterated bliss.

Her breasts rub against his chest. Nipples brushing against nipples. Erotic skin tingling against erotic skin. She moves her hips purposefully, her abdominal muscles tensing and relaxing as she navigates the length of his cock. Her pussy clenches his rigid cock – squeezing, oscillating, grinding herself around and against him.

She’s building and building her volcano of desire. She can feel the tendrils of compressed need gathering in her groin.