Revealed

Revealed

by

Ella Ardent

First of the Erotic Novellas

In The Phoenix Series

Once upon a time, two partners built a wildly successful private BDSM club called The Plume, a place where every erotic fantasy could safely come true. When The Plume was destroyed and its members scattered, the partners decided not just to begin again but to improve on the original.

Welcome to The Phoenix, an international private BDSM club, risen from the ashes of The Plume. Once again, all erotic fantasies are possible and secret desires can be fulfilled.

* * *

Athena and Rex are prepared to launch the first two locations of their new club, The Phoenix, when an audacious computer science student insists their systems have been hacked. That would be shocking enough for Rex, the Master who keeps all secrets, even if the persistent young woman wasn’t the younger sister of Joanna who filled his fantasies for years. When he learns Amy wants to trade her expertise for special training at The Phoenix, Rex recognizes an offer he can’t refuse. Will Amy be the fulfillment of his fantasies? Will her information send Athena in pursuit of a new conquest? And is Amy all that she claims to be?

Revealed

by Ella Ardent

Digital Edition

Published by Ella Ardent

Cover by
Fantasia Frog Designs

Digital Formatting by
Author E.M.S.

Copyright © 2014 Ella Ardent

All Rights Reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright preserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter One

Rex was in there.

It was hard to believe. After all her tracking and research, Amy was this close to the enigmatic and elusive owner of The Plume. There couldn’t be fifty feet between them, and whatever he was doing in that building.

It was enough to give her palpitations.

Rex.

No,
the
Rex.

She walked past the front door of what looked like a London townhouse, and continued to the end of the block. It was raining, a soft gray morning, and there’d been mist and fog on their final approach to Heathrow. She hadn’t slept on the trans-Atlantic flight and she should have been exhausted. Instead, she was wide awake, more awake maybe than she’d ever been in her life.

Rex. She was getting wet just thinking about his proximity.

She’d ridden with commuters on the tube coming into the city, and had been embarrassed about her small suitcase in the crush of traffic. It wasn’t like home, though. No one made a single comment. At most, she caught an exhalation of exasperation.

Of course, it was only March. By July, they’d be fed up with American tourists.

By July, Amy would be home, with nothing but her return ticket to her name, or she’d have the best job in the world.

Never mind his power and reputation. Amy thought about his eyes. That cool green was sexy enough, never mind the intelligence visible in their depths. That he was black made the color of his eyes more striking. Amy had found only two photographs of him. One was on his drivers’ license, back in the United States. Even though it was as flattering as most such photos, he still looked good enough to eat. The second had been a candid shot used to promote his solo photography show. He wore sunglasses in that image and was glancing over his shoulder. His face was partly obscured, but he still looked incredible. Amy could only imagine how he must look in real life, and how he must move like a great cat.

Rex held the key to her future, and he was in that house. So was Athena, his partner, but Amy was less interested in her presence. She’d been through the files: it was clear that Rex made all the decisions.

There was a reason they called him the Master.

Her heart skipped a beat at the thought.

The secret-keeper. The planner and organizer. She’d call him the mastermind. Her older sister had thrown Rex back for Mike, who was a nice guy but not a phenomenon like Rex.

Joanna’s choices had never made any sense to Amy.

On the other hand, Mike had married Joanna and they seemed to be together for the duration. Part of what was so appealing about Rex was that he didn’t commit to one woman. Sure, he had a partner, Michelle, and they had a young son, but Amy saw that more as an experiment than a permanent commitment.

Would Rex make Amy’s dream come true? Amy had plenty to offer and was ready to sweeten the deal even more. She’d toyed with pretty much all the fantasy scenarios over the past couple of months. Another person might have said she’d become obsessed with Rex ever since she’d tired of Eric, even that her obsession was behind this new plan of combining her career with sexual exploration.

Today was the day it could all come to fruition.

Or she could blow it completely.

Amy walked to the end of the next block, trying to get her pulse under control. She wanted to appear calm and collected, professional and responsible—not desperate for whatever crumbs Rex might toss her way. She wasn’t her big sister Joanna, and she wasn’t going to be confused with her. She didn’t want to be a submissive anymore, and she wanted to learn domination from the greatest master of all.

Amy had checked her bag into a locker at the rail station, changed her shirt and redone her eyeliner. She checked her reflection in a window as she passed and wasn’t devastated by the view. She looked tired but purposeful, which she supposed was the best she could hope for under the circumstances.

It was time. She retraced her steps, then waited at the end of the block for a heartbeat, listening to the rain patter on her umbrella.

Then Amy took a deep breath and marched back to the doorway of the supposed townhouse. She knew that, in reality, the whole block was joined on the interior, creating one massive complex for sexual games, albeit one masquerading as a row of respectable homes.

There was no chance of her looking casual. She stunk at hiding her true thoughts, and this was the most important job interview of her entire life. The fact that neither of her intended interviewers had any idea that she was coming—much less how badly they needed to hire anyone, let alone her—just gave the moment a bit of edge.

Amy had learned she liked the edge.

A lot.

And the best place to get more of it was at the newly formed private sex club called The Phoenix.

Rex’s new venture.

Amy squared her shoulders and headed for the door, determined to make the pitch—if not the performance—of her life.

* * *

The unveiling of The Phoenix was coming together beautifully.

Rex went over the launch plans one more time, checking details obsessively. He had an office in Athena’s house in London, one she jokingly called Command Control. The last six months had been a crazy blur of brainstorming and researching and negotiating, with each day more frantic than the one before. The joke was he’d thought most of the work had been done before that. He’d certainly had moments of despair and some doubts as to whether they could make it work.

But now it was all coming together into one beautiful whole.

The Phoenix would leave the Plume in the shade, even with its first two locations up and running.

Rex couldn’t wait.

Athena sauntered into the office with a latte, the smell of the coffee preceding the cloud of her usual perfume. She was wearing little more than the scent and a short sapphire silk kimono. Her auburn hair was twisted up and her matching satin mules clicked on the hardwood floor. She dropped into a chair with sigh of satisfaction and Rex spared her the barest glance of admiration.

They’d explored each other well enough that there was just a tingle of interest left. Rex thought it gave a spark to their partnership, but never intended to revisit that particular buffet. He was pretty sure Athena didn’t share his view. She dangled a mule from one toe provocatively, advertising her availability in a way Rex only halfway thought was a joke.

Or a habit.

After all, Julian was upstairs.

“Tell me that we’ll need a great deal more legal advice,” Athena said, as if reading his thoughts. “Maybe weeks and weeks of it. Long hours.” She sipped her coffee and Rex chuckled.

Julian, the lawyer who had handled the affairs for the now-defunct Plume club had been consulting for this new venture, and Rex knew very well Julian and Athena were enjoying each other’s company in more ways than one. The older man’s company seemed to mellow Athena a bit, taking the edge from her usual audacity.

Rex found himself missing her former ways.

Athena’s British accent had returned since moving back to London, although it was softer than when he’d first met her years before. They’d been at university then, and like the standard cliché, a single glance across a crowded room had been enough to draw them together. They’d embarked on an immediate and thorough journey of sexual experimentation. Their libidos and taste for bondage had been just the first link between them, and their enthusiasm for pushing the boundaries had been their common bond—so to speak. Subsequently, they’d founded a private sex club called The Plume in the United States, which had been a victim of its own wild success. Rex missed The Plume, with its gorgeous appointments and even more beautiful members, but it had been burned to the ground two years before. Arson had been suspected.

Older and wiser, they’d planned for The Phoenix, a new club to rise from the ashes of The Plume—yet funded by The Plume’s success and ongoing merchandising. Instead of a single location, The Phoenix would be spread around the world, each location managed by one trusted individual as a separate business entity. Members would be able to choose their fantasy and vacation at different locales, or continue to visit the same one at regular intervals.

With the launch of the first two sites just weeks away, Rex couldn’t sleep nights.

“Surely you two don’t need an excuse at this point?” he asked.

Athena laughed. “I like it to feel spontaneous. Wasn’t it Oscar Wilde who said that uncertainty is the very essence of romance?”

“I have no idea.” Rex pushed some invoices across the desk for her perusal. “Besides, I thought it was just sex.”

“Just sex,” Athena scoffed. “As if there’s any such thing.” She spared a glance for the bills, and immediately understood the reason for his query. “Gear for the human ponies in the stables on Windswept. It cost a bomb, but it’s fabulous.” She unfolded herself from her chair, left her cup on his desk and retreated to her office. She returned with samples in black leather. “I thought I showed you these.”

“No, you told me about them. I was in the Caribbean.”

“At Fantasy Island,” Athena teased. “I need to find you a dwarf.”

“Not my particular interest. You know it’s called the Escape.”

She nodded agreement, liking her joke too much to abandon it readily. She handed him the harness, pointing out some of the innovations. “And how is Michelle liking the islands?” she asked when Rex was least expecting the question.