Her lips parted; her eyes darkened. “Handcuffs,” she whispered.
She wanted things a little rougher. Something must have happened at work today. Not that she ever told him much about her life outside the bounds of their relationship. She was secretive even when he questioned her. Her evasiveness was one of the things he’d had yet to break her of, but he would, eventually. Tonight, she’d been tense when she arrived. In fact, she’d been unusually stressed for weeks, and he’d learned that the worse her day had been, the higher degree of domination she required.
“Wider, slut,” he demanded as he took one delicate ankle in his hand. She stretched for him, her scent rising, swirling around him. He was hard for her, ravenous, but the night would end quickly after he came. He wanted to stretch it out.
She’d never spent the night. They didn’t cuddle afterward. He didn’t know precisely where she lived or the name of the company she worked for, only that she was thirty-five, unmarried, no children, made her living as an accountant, and she was promiscuous. He’d gathered that the fact he’d been her only lover over the past six months was unusual.
He took it as a testament to how good he was at giving her what she needed.
She needed the trappings of submission, but what she loved best was making him climax with her mouth and swallowing his come. She relished every groan, every cry of pleasure he gave. If he didn’t make her come before he did, she wouldn’t come at all. As if she didn’t require the orgasm to be satisfied.
But in this moment, he craved
her
climax,
her
pleasure, to feel her body tremble for him.
Rounding the bed, he restrained her other ankle. Then he went to work on her wrists, anchoring them to the bedposts. He didn’t ask her if it was too tight; she would merely tell him that she would take whatever he chose to dish out.
“What are you going to do to me, Master?” Her voice quavered, but it wasn’t fear; it was need. When she was restrained, he could force her to let go.
“Would you like me to fuck you?” he murmured, climbing onto the bed, leaning close to draw in the scent of her. She made his head spin.
“I’m your whore. You can do whatever you need, Master.”
Need? Christ. He needed so much, all the things she withheld,
herself
. Her thoughts, her feelings, her fears, her joys, her past. Yes, all those things; but for now, he would take this, savor it, until she gave him more.
He grabbed her chin, held her, forced eye contact. “I want to hear you scream my name when you come.”
She blinked rapidly a moment, and he knew that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted
his
orgasm. But she was his slave, and she answered the way she had to. “I will.”
He lowered his lips to hers, though he didn’t kiss her. “I’m going to lick you, my sweet little slut. That’s how I want you to come,” he whispered against her mouth.
She tensed. He’d never gone down on her when she wasn’t restrained. He’d never made her come with his mouth, tongue, or fingers when she wasn’t immobilized and unable to fight him. He loved it that way, too, because in those moments, she was
his
, she let herself go. As if somehow the restraints actually set her free.
“But don’t you need to come?” Her tone rose slightly at the end as if it were a question, yet she cajoled, her voice like a siren in the night.
God yes, he needed to come inside her, or her mouth. Or by her hand. She could work him up in any way she tried. But he wanted her climax, which was tantamount to her capitulation.
“I’m going to lick you, and you’re going to scream.” He covered her, flesh to flesh, held her gaze, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, her nipples pebbled against his chest. “Right?”
She gave in. “Yes, Master,” she whispered on nothing more than a puff of air.
Then he crawled down her body, tasting her skin as he dragged his tongue over her breasts, her belly, down to the finely trimmed mound of her sex.
“You have the sweetest scent.” He breathed her in, then put his tongue to her a moment. “And the sweetest taste.” He loved her pussy; she was gorgeous, full, pink, her clit burgeoning.
He swiped his tongue across her, back and forth, swirling her taste in his mouth. God. How he loved this. She writhed against her bonds, and her soft sounds of delicious distress filled the room. He fit first one, then two fingers inside her, and played her G-spot and her clit in tandem.
She panted. Moaned. Music to his ears. Then her legs started to shake, her cries rose, she called out his name, and her body jerked. He kept at her, rode the tide of her orgasm, until she fell limp against the comforter, her dark hair splayed across his pillows.
Her taste lingered on his lips as he shimmied up her body to lay beside her. “Was it good?”
“Master, it was heaven.” She swallowed, closed her eyes.
He wasn’t looking for affirmation. There was just something too . . . fast. As if she’d wanted to appease him.
“But you didn’t come,” she added.
He gave her a long, measured look, something inside him shifting. “You didn’t come either, did you?”
She swallowed again. Like a nervous habit she’d suddenly acquired. “I did.”
“Don’t lie to your master.” He clenched his teeth against the epithet that rose to his lips. He could call her
whore
,
slut
,
bitch
, almost anything as he was seducing her, but the words lost their sexiness in the aftermath.
She filled herself with a great gulp of air, her chest rising, her skin tinged with pink, though not as if she’d just surrendered to a luscious orgasm. More like . . . nerves.
“I’m very displeased that you didn’t come.” He used language she understood and responded to.
Yet this time she evaded him. “I’ll suck you,” she whispered. Straining against the handcuffs, she tugged her wrists as if she needed to touch him. “I’ll make you come.”
A coldness spread through him. “How often do you fake it?”
“I don’t,” she whispered, looking at his nose, his cheek, his mouth, anything to avoid meeting his eyes.
But he felt her lie in the stiffening of her limbs. He wondered how many times she’d faked an orgasm, how many times he’d been so wrapped up in her, in what she made him feel, that he hadn’t realized how good an actress she was.
Fuck. He was forty-five years old, too old to get rankled, yet the fake cut him. He wanted into her life. He wanted her to know about him, his daughters, his work, even his failed marriage. And he wanted to know everything about her. There were times his gut roiled against her secrets, the way she held him emotionally at bay. But
this
was what they had. She phoned, came to his house, had him call her names, tie her down or cuff her, blindfold her, spank her. When she was at his mercy, he could do anything he wanted. The sex between them was fantastic, but he wanted something more authentic from her, more real, more than just bits and pieces of her life. He wanted a whole night without her rushing away. He’d wanted all that for months, but he hadn’t pushed. He’d bided his time. Only to find out she’d actually faked some of her orgasms. Damn her.
“Fuck me,” she whispered, and he recognized the deliberate seduction in it. She never said what she wanted, never asked for anything, but she could follow orders. Jesus, she could follow orders and blow his mind. This, asking for it, was different, unlike her. “I’ll make you feel good,” she added.
Sinking inside her body, he’d feel better than good. When he was buried deep, she took him to another plane of existence. No other woman had done that, not even his ex-wife when he’d still believed her to be the woman of his dreams.
He was being manipulated. She was avoiding what he really wanted from her. He climbed from the bed, stood beside it, gazing down at the perfection of her body in her supine position, losing himself in the shimmer of her brilliant blue eyes. He knew he’d fuck her. Because he wanted her, badly. He had from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
But the game would have to change, the rules revised. He wanted more than sex; he wanted everything. And he would have it. Even if he had to order her to give it to him.
After all, he was the master.
1
BREE MASON HAD SPENT HER ENTIRE ADULTHOOD—MAYBE EVEN longer—learning to handle men. Last night, she’d handled
him
all wrong. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed to screw things up. She’d quivered and cried out his name, bucked against his mouth, made all the right sounds, all the right moves. It was so much easier to fake it and give herself the orgasm later if she needed the relief. Where
she
was the one doing it. Where there was no guilt about a man touching her or making her feel good. She didn’t really like men making her come unless it was part of her punishment. But this time Luke Raven had known she was faking. How?
He was the only man who’d ever wanted tenderness. He liked to make her come just for the sake of pleasure. Sometimes, she thought he was trying to look inside her soul. She was terrified he’d despise what he saw if she ever let him.
“Hey, Bree, can you come into my office a minute?”
Bree almost flipped out of her skin at the voice. As if she were an apparition that had suddenly materialized, her boss, Erin DeKnight, stood in the office doorway, her finger crooked. Bree’s stomach rolled over on principle. Bree always assumed the worst; it was her nature. If you expected it, sometimes you could circumvent it, do some damage control. The last time Erin had called her into her office with that tone of voice, she’d ripped Bree a new one. Of course, that had been Bree’s fault. When you act all weird and secretive, it eventually bites you in the ass.
So she jumped up to follow and do damage control if it was required.
Erin was forty, five years older than Bree, but still slender with vibrant red hair. She was smart and assertive, and ran DeKnight Gauges like she was captaining a ship. Erin never seemed to doubt herself, and she never deferred to Dominic just because he was her husband and a man. They shared the company, fondly called DKG by its employees, splitting responsibilities. Erin managed day-to-day operations, including the assembly of the ultrasonic testing gauges they produced, while Dominic, the engineer in the family, did all the design work on the products and most of the marketing. In the six years Bree had worked for them, she hadn’t noticed a lot of toe-stepping between them. Of course, after losing their son Jay a little over a year ago, things had been hard for them both; it had been hard on everyone at DKG. But in the last few weeks, something was different about Erin. Where before no one mentioned him, the pain too great for her to bear, pictures of Jay had started showing up in Erin’s office again. When she’d brought her WORLD’S BEST MOM mug into work again, it was a complete shock, yet it was almost like an invitation to start remembering Jay again.
Erin closed her door on the roundhouse, which was the central area housing the conference table, shared office equipment, and coffee nook. If you were pouring yourself a cup, you could hear everything that was said in any office that ringed the roundhouse, and sometimes even pick up stuff out in the factory on one side or from the engineering hallway on the other end. When she closed her door, Erin had something to say that she didn’t want to be overheard.
Sitting down in the chair opposite, Bree clasped her hands tightly.
Erin pulled on her blazer before she sat behind her desk. “Damn, it’s cold today.”
Rain spat against the office window. January was usually a nice month in the San Francisco Bay Area; sometimes you could even wear short sleeves. The rains came back in February. But this year was proving to be wetter than the last few. Bree curled her fingers together to warm them.
Erin slid a piece of paper across the desk. “This came in the morning mail, and I just got off the phone with Marbury.”
Denton Marbury was their CPA and tax accountant. While Bree managed DKG’s in-house accounting, she didn’t do any of the various governmental filings except for sales tax reporting, which was fairly easy. Leaning in, she pulled the letter closer with one finger. Close enough to see
Internal Revenue Service
across the top. Her heart dropped to her stomach where she could feel it beating, making her ill with the incessant throb.
“They’re going to audit us,” Erin said. “I faxed that over to Marbury.”
Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, your pulse automatically races when you see
IRS
.
“You don’t have to worry, Bree. Marbury says he’ll handle it, but he needs you to collect all the data they’ve asked for. He says he’ll email me a complete list of documentation he’ll need once he’s gone over the letter thoroughly.”
Denton Marbury.
Ugh
. Of course, he wouldn’t email the list to Bree. No, he’d go through Erin first. It was then Bree realized she hadn’t said a word. She stuffed down her pissy attitude. “That’s fine. When are the auditors coming?” She tried to sound unconcerned rather than bone-deep terrified.
“The audit isn’t until the middle of February, but Marbury needs the backup in two weeks so he can review it first.”
“Two
weeks
?” Bree almost squeaked. It was Friday, day five of year-end closing. There was all the reporting to do, verifying the new standard costs, including the standards roll reserve to be amortized over the year, analyzing the work order variances since they’d brought the transducer production in-house, a ton of stuff, plus she had to get started on the 1099s for all their noncorpo-rate vendors, which were due at the end of January. The really irritating thing was that she damn well knew Marbury wouldn’t look at anything she gave him until the morning of the audit. He was just that way. He was a big man with a big voice that emanated from deep in his belly until it actually felt like it boomed, and he made her feel . . . less than. She had this terrible urge to cringe whenever she saw him, something she hated herself for. The saving grace was that she never actually let him see her cringe.