Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
“Hey!” she protests, glaring up at me.
“I think you need to be restrained. You’re dangerous.” My voice is soft as I gauge her reaction.
This could go either way.
Her eyes widen, and I’m not sure if it’s fear or excitement.
“Are you?” she whispers.
“Dangerous? Me? No. Not nearly as much as you.” Releasing her, I reach over to the bedside cabinet and from a drawer take out a long silk restraint and a pair of leather cuffs. “Do you want to play?” I ask, holding up both implements. “Your choice.”
She gazes up at me, pupils large with lust and anxiety.
“I won’t hurt you,” I reassure her. That’s not my scene. “I’ll just keep you in line.” But the truth is, I’m worried she’s going to hurt me.
A teasing, seductive smile tugs at her mouth. “The silk,” she says.
I smile and toss the cuffs onto the floor: dominance as a form of self-defense. “Pick a safe word.”
“Chelsea.”
“Good choice.”
I tie the silk around her left wrist and thread it through the slats of the bed’s headboard, and then, taking her right hand, I deftly tie her right wrist to the other end of the restraint. With her arms outstretched, her nails are rendered harmless, and she looks fantastic.
“If you really misbehave, I’ll blindfold you, too,” I murmur.
She squirms. “Will you spank me?” Her voice is less than a whisper.
“If you play nice.”
Oh, this is going to be fun.
* * *
She comes quickly and loudly. Screaming and straining against the silken straps.
I sit up between her thighs, my mouth slick and wet, and I flip her over and slap her arse.
“Hang in there,” I mutter, and slip on a condom.
“Hurry up!”
Fuck, is she demanding!
“As you wish,” I growl, and thrust inside her.
* * *
I watch the rise and fall of her breasts as she sleeps. Out of habit I go through my ritual of recalling everything I know about the woman I’ve just fucked. Twice. Leticia. Human-rights lawyer, sexually aggressive. Older than me. Likes to be restrained. Likes it a lot. But forthright, assertive women typically do, in my experience. She’s a biter, screams on orgasm. Vocal. Diverting….Exhausting.
* * *
I wake with a start. In my dream I’d been searching for something elusive, a vision that keeps appearing and disappearing, an ethereal vision in blue. Then, just as I’d glimpsed it, I’d fallen into a wide, deep abyss. I shudder.
What the hell was that about?
The pallid winter sun seeps through the windows as reflections from the Thames play on the ceiling. What has woken me?
Leticia.
Boy, she’s an animal. She isn’t asleep beside me, and I can’t hear anyone in the shower. Perhaps she’s left already. I listen carefully for any noise within the flat.
It’s quiet. I grin. No awkward small talk. The day is looking up until I remember I have a lunch appointment with my mother and my sister. I groan and pull the covers over my head. They’ll want to discuss the will.
Bloody hell.
“The Dowager,” as Kit referred to her, is a formidable woman. Why the fuck she hasn’t gone back to New York, I don’t know. Her life is based there, not here.
Something clatters to the floor somewhere in the apartment. I sit up.
Shit. Leticia is still here.
That means conversation. Reluctantly I haul myself out of bed, drag on my nearest pair of jeans, and go to find out if she’s as wild in broad daylight as she is in the dark.
I pad down the hallway in my bare feet, but there’s no one in the drawing room or the kitchen.
What the fuck?
I turn around at the kitchen entrance and halt. I’m expecting to see Leticia, but a slight young woman stands in the hallway staring at me. Her eyes are large and dark, reminding me of a startled doe, but she’s dressed in a ghastly blue housecoat, cheap overwashed jeans, old trainers, and a blue headscarf that conceals her hair.
She says nothing.
“Hi. Who the hell are you?” I ask.
Chapter Four
Zot! He is here, and he is mad.
Alessia freezes as his blazing green eyes meet hers. Tall, lean, and half naked, he towers over her. His hair is an unruly chestnut mess with gold highlights that glint beneath the chandelier in the hallway. He is as broad-shouldered as she remembers, but the tattoo on his upper arm is far more intricate than she recalls; all she can distinguish is a wing. A smattering of hair on his chest tapers down over a toned stomach. Then resumes beneath his navel and travels farther down into his jeans. The tight black denim is ripped at the knee. But it’s the hard line of his full lips and his eyes, the color of spring, in a handsome, unshaven face that make her look away. Her mouth dries, and she doesn’t know if it’s from nerves or…or…from the look of him.