Owned By Fate (8 page)

Part of him wanted to make up some bullshit lie. Perhaps the documents pertained to something with which he’d agreed to help a friend…or a million other excuses he could make on the spot in order to keep his secret hidden. A secret he’d shared with exactly no one apart from his lawyer. But God, a larger part of him was tired of shouldering the burden alone. Caroline had already made up her mind. One night would be the sum total of their relationship, so would it be wrong to unburden himself just this once? To let it off his chest?

Jonah tapped the envelope against his thigh as he considered her. She hadn’t even glanced away from him once to glimpse her surroundings. Odd. Most women, when brought here, ran straight for the glass wall overlooking the Hudson and most of Midtown. Caroline, on the other hand, seemed completely focused on him. It affected him, that intense concentration. Perhaps it was merely her curious nature, rather than any actual interest in him as a person, but at that moment, the possibility of confessing all became irresistible.

“My new apartment in Brooklyn.” He shook the folder. “Deed’s in here.”

She nodded once. “Are you moving?”

“No.” Jonah took a few steps into the living room to his sideboard and poured two tumblers of whiskey to distract himself. “It’s not for me necessarily. More of an attempt at respectability.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jonah handed Caroline a tumbler, watched as she took a sip of the gold liquid. “I found out six months ago that I have a daughter. Her mother won’t agree to visitation for reasons that should be obvious, especially to you. I bought the apartment in an attempt to change her mind.” He saluted her with his drink. “Sort of a neutral meeting place where she won’t be traumatized for life by my debauchery.”

Caroline appeared frozen as she absorbed his speech. “How old is she?”

“Eight. Her name is Gabriela. Gabby for short.” He cleared his throat to extricate the uncomfortable feeling. “Although since we’ve never met, I doubt I’ve reached nickname status.”

She looked for a place to set down her drink but gave up and drank it instead. “How did you not know about her?”

“Her mother and I only spent one night together. I shipped out with the Navy the next morning none the wiser. You know,
that
old story.”

For long moments, she studied him intently. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Jonah said too quickly, feeling blindsided by her empathy. He hadn’t anticipated it. If anything, he’d expected Caroline to agree with Renee’s decision to keep Gabby away. Or for her to become uncomfortable with the personal nature of the conversation and tune out. “Do all eight-year-old girls like pink?” He asked the question without thinking, wishing immediately that he could snatch it back. What was he thinking?

“I did.” She gave a jerky shrug. “I still like it.”

On top of the unburdened feeling he was experiencing, her compassionate expression suddenly felt like too much. He turned on his heel toward the back of the apartment. “I’m going to put this folder in my office. Make yourself comfortable.”

He could feel her startled gaze on his back as he left the room.

Chapter Nine

Caroline stared after Jonah, feeling as though the rug had been torn out from under her. She shouldn’t have asked about the damn manila envelope. The sadness she’d seen upon arriving at Serve earlier that evening had just come back in full force, knocking the breath from her lungs. It hadn’t seemed easy for him, telling her about his daughter, a topic that appeared to trouble him greatly. She wished he hadn’t told her…wished she hadn’t witnessed his pain or his masculine vulnerability, because now he’d made a dangerous shift in her mind. From sexual fascination to complicated, many-layered potential lover. A man she wanted to know more about. Someone who, despite his assertive nature, still needed soothing, understanding…affection.

No
. Not from her. She wasn’t the one to give it to him. Tonight, she’d come here to exorcise the unwelcome feelings he’d stirred inside her. To rid herself of this physical need to experience something her mind found distasteful and wrong. Not to become Jonah’s confidante or to encourage any more communication between them. There were people who were counting on her to be objective and come out the other side of tonight intact. Her family. The magazine’s employees. Her secrecy had kept them all in the dark, but their respectability sat squarely on her shoulders.

With a jolt of urgency, Caroline came back to herself and looked at Jonah’s home for the first time. She could have looked at one hundred apartments and somehow known this was his. In the same sensibility as his club, everything had very clean lines. Stainless steel, white, black, purplish grays made up the color palette. However, there were little quirks scattered throughout the room that one would miss if she wasn’t looking. A giant mural stretched along one wall, a series of boxes inside boxes, painted in such a way that the 3D effect made it look as though one could walk through it into another dimension.

Caroline, interested despite herself, wandered farther into the living room, her feet sinking into plush white carpet. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, although instead of crystals, white hands hung down in tiers as if reaching for her below. Two rosy-cheeked lawn gnomes stood on either side of a massive fireplace, as if on guard duty. A beat-up copy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s
Slaughterhouse-Five
was bookmarked on the mantel.

All these little things spoke volumes about him, having the audacity to make Caroline like him even more. The feeling scared her into action. After casting a quick look over her shoulder to make sure Jonah hadn’t returned, she wound through the living room and pushed open the first door she saw.

His bedroom. It was massive in size, yet nondescript when compared to the living room. As if he’d designed it with the intention of keeping his personality out. Caroline didn’t allow herself time to puzzle over that before she began to strip off her dress. No more conversation or peeks into each other’s lives. Tonight had been arranged for one reason, and she couldn’t lose sight of that. In the process of pulling her dress over her head, Caroline found her attention arrested by something metal hanging from the ceiling. A…bar? She squinted to get a better look, but it was so high up, she couldn’t make it out. Then it hit her. In her online research, she’d seen pictures of suspension bars. As in, a bar used to secure your partner using ropes or cuffs. So he or she couldn’t get free. Jonah had one in his
bedroom
. In
her
bedroom, she had a gumball machine and a
Breakfast Club
movie poster. If that didn’t reiterate their Grand Canyon of differences, she didn’t know what would.

It dawned on her then that she could use this to her advantage. Blast right out of her comfort zone so far she’d have no choice but to go screaming back to it. Away from Jonah in the process.

“What are you doing in here?”

Caroline spun around to find Jonah leaning against the doorjamb. He’d stripped off his shirt to reveal his rugged, muscular chest. He radiated such base sexuality, it caught her momentarily off guard. Unlike most of the citified men she’d seen shirtless, Jonah had hair on his chest, and she could actually feel herself being ruined for smooth, hairless chests forever. Ruined.

Underneath the dark brown hair, a blue anchor tattoo stretched across his pecs, reminding her that he’d been in the Navy. Worked with his hands. Ropes. Shadowed eyes raked her from head to toe, reminding her that, thanks to impulsiveness, she now wore only a red thong. With a tremendous effort, she didn’t squirm under his heated regard but stood her ground and let him look his fill. “I didn’t want to wait.” Ignoring the heat settling between her legs, she encompassed the room with a gesture. “Isn’t this where we were going to end up anyway?”

“No.” He pushed off the jamb and came toward her, all but daring her to back away. “My bedroom is on the other side of the apartment. I don’t sleep here.”

“What
do
you—” Caroline broke off before she could finish her absurd question. Right. A second master suite used only for playtime. She could just envision that real-estate listing.
For the bondage enthusiast in all of us.
“If that’s the case…if you use this room for
other
things, why wouldn’t we have come in here?”

“I want you in
my
bed, Caroline.” Even he seemed surprised by that admission, but his dark stare didn’t waver, dipping to her naked breasts hungrily. She’d obviously upset him by coming in here, but he wanted her enough to overlook it.
This is good
, she reminded herself vehemently. They were back on an even playing field.

She took a fortifying breath and pointed at the ceiling. “I want to use that.”

Jonah’s jaw worked. “Are you out of your mind? You think going from being teased with a feather to hanging from my ceiling is a logical progression?”

“No, I don’t,” she returned, hating the note of desperation in her voice.
No help for it.
“There’s nothing logical about this.”

“I’m starting to think you’re right.” His words ended on a groan as his fingers skated up the sensitive flesh of her belly to skim over her puckered nipples. “I’m not feeling a goddamn drop of logic right now.”

“Good.” She placed her hands on his wide shoulders, pushed up on her toes to nip at the underside of his chin. “Trust me to know what I want. I want this, Jonah.”

He kissed her mouth hungrily once, then pulled back to trap her with a penetrating look. “Trust
me
, Caroline, to know what you
need
.”

She saw it happening right in front of her, that rise of power inside him. If she’d been given to flights of imagination, Caroline would have sworn his frame grew even larger, more intimidating. His voice had dropped to a pitch that made her stomach twist deliciously. Every particle in her body began to dance eagerly.
Something is coming.
Her head nodded once of its own accord, granting him permission to do…what?

Before she could guess his next move, Jonah scooped her into his arms and carried her out of the bedroom, his sure stride echoing through the apartment. His hard chest rose and fell rhythmically, in perfect timing with her harsh breathing. It took only moments to reach his bedroom, but it felt like an eternity. She’d graduated to a level of need that lent her no time to care about the terms. Only the means. Her naked flesh pressed to his chest felt decadent, only heightening her anticipation for more. For
all
of him.

As they entered his dim bedroom and Jonah set her down carefully just inside the door, she felt a fleeting hint of worry. Not over what they would do tonight but over how she would deal with the repercussions tomorrow. When one of Jonah’s hands sunk into her hair, the other gripping her bottom to lift her against him, that worry drifted away on a tide of lust. They kissed each other as though it could keep them alive. He used his grip on her hair to move her where his mouth could take the most advantage, licking, tasting, exploiting. Caroline went under and resurfaced so many times, she stumbled a little in her shakiness as Jonah walked them across the bedroom without breaking their kiss.

Behind her, a drawer opened and shut, the sound registering dimly. Then she felt it. Smooth, cool leather tracing the curve of her buttocks. Their mouths separated by a mere inch, breaths racing across each other’s damp lips. Jonah looked down at her with an expression that arrested her in its intensity. He epitomized the word
dominant
in that moment, gaze confident and steady, yet dosed with enough excitement to keep her from being alarmed. This was what turned him on. In turn, she felt answering flames lick across her skin, between her thighs. Everywhere the paddle touched.

“Tell me your safe word.”

“Um?”

“Dumpling, Caroline. Dumpling.” He edged the paddle between her legs, slipped it through her wetness. “Say it for me.”

“Dumpling,” she gasped. “God, that sounds ridiculous.”

He laughed softly. “You get points for creativity.”

“Well.” Caroline’s eyes squeezed shut against the riotous sensations. “That’s something.”

“I’m going to blindfold you, but not just yet.” The paddle disappeared, sweeping her with unexpected disappointment. “I want you looking into my eyes the first time I spank your pretty ass.” Teeth clenched, he ground his forehead against hers. “Don’t you dare hide anything from me, baby.”

Caroline opened her mouth to reply, but the air froze in her lungs when the paddle connected with the underside curve of her bottom.
Slap
. Leather, supple and giving, sent a shock of winged heat careening through her, spinning and clenching, only interrupted when the paddle came down again, slightly harder.
Slap!
Oh God, she hadn’t expected it to feel good, but it did. Holy hell, it did. All the pressure she’d been facing, the fear of letting everyone down, seemed to lessen with each stroke of the paddle. Absorbing her stress into the leather.
Slap.

This time, Caroline moaned, struggling to keep her eyes open and focused on Jonah but failing. Just before her eyelids fell, she glimpsed blistering arousal and relief in his eyes, but she could only process one desire.
More.

…

This woman is mine.

Jonah watched Caroline surrender before him, soaking in her gratified surprise greedily, needing every drop. At the first stroke of his paddle, he’d watched her mouth tremble, her pupils dilate. It had been insanely beautiful, her reaction nothing short of a masterpiece. This had to be it. The reason she had magnetized him from the beginning. Underneath her proper outward appearance, Caroline Preston had been waiting to be possessed by him.

He used the paddle’s surface to soothe her stinging flesh before raising the instrument higher and connecting once again, hard enough to jolt the front of her body into his. Breasts flattened against his abdomen, thighs rubbed and interlocked. His groan of pleasure was nearly drowned out by the sexiest whimpering noise his ears had ever encountered. It thickened his erection painfully behind his fly, but he refused to touch himself or allow any kind of relief. No, he planned to savor every second of his sexual high. One Caroline had effortlessly woven around him.

“Jonah…”

He brought the paddle down harder. “In my bedroom, you
will
call me Master.”

Caroline’s body shuddered violently. Her arms wound around his neck, and she buried her face in his throat. At first, the move, which begged for comfort, filled him with dread.
Jesus, no
.
I’ve hurt her.
But then he felt her mouth moving hot and wet across his skin, her lithe body dragging up and down against him, enticing, seducing as if it were necessary.

“Master, please…” she whispered in his ear. “I’m dying here.”

Jonah wound her hair in his first and tugged her back. Mouth swollen and slick, eyes glowing with kindled heat, she was a goddess.
His
goddess. “I’m going to love teaching you some patience, sweetheart. You don’t know what
dying
means yet. You’ll know when you’ve come for my mouth so many times, you’d sell your soul to be filled.”

With one hand, Jonah reached down and tore the insubstantial red panties from her body, rendering her completely, blessedly naked. Almost immediately, he had to battle the urge to drop to his knees, wrench her legs apart, and bury his tongue in her heat. Such little restraint was wholly unlike him, but just then he embraced it. Let it scorch through his chest and make him desperate. He was done trying to keep his beast caged in her presence.

Jonah tossed the paddle behind him onto the bed, then gripped her around the waist and boosted her up onto his dresser. “Spread those legs, sweetheart. Show me where the paddle made you wet.”

Her knuckles went white where she grasped the furniture’s edge for balance, making no move to obey him. She wet her lips nervously. Both telling signs that he needed to reassure her, pull back just a little, or he’d lose her.

Jonah leaned forward, pushed her hair back from her face, and kissed her, slowly and deeply. He could barely concentrate enough to draw the blindfold from his drawer. “Caroline, I find everything about you excruciatingly beautiful,” he murmured against her temple as he tied it on over her closed eyes. “Yes, I’m going to demand things from you. I very likely won’t be able to stop myself from taking you harder than I should. But underneath all of that, I’ll be in awe of you. Can you try and remember that?”

Her breath released in a rush. Jonah waited in limbo as a thousand different emotions radiated from her. Then she met his lips hard, legs spreading wide on the dresser between their bodies. A triumphant growl grated his throat, hands going to her knees to push them even wider. Wanting to keep his eyes on her but unable to keep them open because she tasted so sweet, he kissed down her neck, breasts, and belly until his mouth found her center. He savored her in a long lick, glorying in more of that addictive whimpering from above.

“When I left your office yesterday, did you do as I told you?”