At His Mercy (6 page)
Adrian frowned at this idea, but then reared back an inch and peered down at me. “You’re impressive when you’re angry, Miss Bloom.”
“Thank you, sir. With your permission, while you call security, I’m going to go get an ice pack for my head.”
Despite the fact that I’d never seen Adrian so much as get a glass of water for himself there, the villa did have a gourmet kitchen. I found a cold pack in the stainless steel freezer and wrapped it in a hand towel before pressing it to the side of my head. Adrian was still on the phone speaking in heated Portuguese as I padded back through the living room.
I settled on the bed for a moment, only to pop back up and use one bare foot to push a shoe into place under Adrian’s wardrobe. My moment in the leather chair by the side table lasted a little longer. Then I just paced, fists clenched, the skirts of my ruined dress swirling around my ankles. Too much adrenaline.
“You need me to get you something to help you sleep?”
Limp-shouldered all of a sudden, I dropped the ice pack on the table and turned to face Adrian. “No,” I grumbled, then crossed the room to bury my face against his chest.
His hands slid lightly up and down my bare arms, which trembled with a chill despite the warmth of the evening. I heard him take a breath to speak. “I won’t—”
“Won’t punish me for my stupidity this time?” I interjected. “You told me to stay away from Vaz. I didn’t… I know.” Now I had to wonder if I’d made matters worse for Adrian, for the project.
I felt Adrian’s breath stirring the hair on the top of my head as he sighed, “I was going to say I won’t ever let anything like this happen again. If I have to post security outside the front door, I will. No more surprises. No one violates our privacy again.”
Without meaning to, I had grabbed the lapels of his jacket in an iron grip, just hanging on to him. “Thank you,” I said, my voice muffled in his clothing and by the grinding of my teeth.
“You should sleep, Chloe. Get into bed.”
“No.” I couldn’t possibly. Feeling small, panicked, head throbbing less but still abuzz, I lifted my face and stared up at Adrian. “I don’t want to sleep,” I insisted, waiting for him to hear the inference in my inflection, to read my expression.
“What?” He cocked one brow. “Now, Chloe?”
Nodding, I sighed out, “Yes. Please.” I wanted Adrian to dominate me, take me again, now. It wasn’t just the distraction. It wasn’t just the thought of replacing the memory of Vaz’s hands on me with the sensation of Adrian’s. It was the security.
So slowly, smoothly, Adrian slid down the zipper on the back of my dress. As I peeled it away and stepped out of it, he shirked off his jacket and tossed aside his tie.
He reached for me but pulled up short when I said, in a small voice, “The collar. Can we use that again?”
After a brief hesitation, Knight retrieved the thick leather collar from the travel chest against the wall. He was supremely gentle and careful buckling it onto my neck. One, two, three buckles, tightened just enough to let me feel it.
His lips caressing my cheek, he said, “Don’t be afraid to use your safe word tonight, Chloe. It’s been…”
“I know. Sir.”
The arousal that was simmering inside me now was not the desperate, searing ache I’d grown to associate with my hunger for Adrian Knight. This was a deep-seated ember glowing low but constant, warming instead of burning.
His mouth hovered over mine, promising one of those long, thorough kisses that felt like sex all by itself. Against his lips, I whispered, “Punish me?”
Adrian went still, even his breathing. “Punish you?”
“For disobeying you.For doubting you. For all the trouble I’ve caused with Vaz.”
For sacrificing my integrity in exchange for a smile from Penn Ellison. For spending so much of my life tied up in knots over whether this boyfriend or that one was being faithful. For trying to recast my relationship with my father with one charming lothario after another, trying to get the happy ending I couldn’t have with him. And even for this. For playing a game with such enormous destructive potential, trying to dance on the razor-fine line between wanting the bliss Adrian Knight could inflict upon me and wanting…Adrian Knight.
Adrian brushed his lips against mine before he hooked one finger into the thick metal ring on the front of the collar and pulled me along to the head of the bed. He used a locking ring to tether me there, so I was kneeling before the headboard, unable to pull back more than a couple of inches. With leather cuffs binding my wrists at the small of my back and my head forced down over the headboard at an angle, I could only keep my balance by spreading my knees wide, resting forward, and pushing my ass up and back toward Adrian.
He left me there like that for a moment, as he paused over the chest to strip off his shirt. The lines of his back… The curves and angles of taut muscle… The quiet power of his stance, feet planted, thighs flexed… Adrian Knight was the most beautiful man I’d ever met. The anticipation started to gnaw at me as he concentrated on the selection of toys and tools in that chest. I was more than ready when he bent and withdrew a narrow black paddle.
Kneeling beside me on the bed, Adrian slid the paddle against the bare skin of my butt. Smooth, soft leather. Then he flipped it in his hand and caressed me with the suede side, and I shivered.
Cupping my cheek, Adrian hunched over me and murmured, “Remember what I said about your safe word.” He buffed my tingling backside with the suede of the paddle until I nodded. “This will be intense, Chloe. Focus on my voice. Yes? Good.
“You will
not
defy me over your safety again.”
There was a heartbeat’s worth of pause before the leather side of the paddle came down on my ass with a resounding smack. Adrian hadn’t spared me, and I yelped at the sharp snap of pain. Everything inside me jerked, from shock and momentary discomfort. The walls of my sex contracted as though he were inside me and throbbed in finding he wasn’t.
“You will
not
question my loyalty to you or anyone else.”
The next crack was like a lightning strike, both in sound and heat shooting along my skin, calling up blood that coursed and pounded just below the surface. I clenched my fists and jerked against the metal links holding my neck to the headboard. Off balance, I fell forward again, panting through the smarting sting. Adrian took a second to smooth the hurt with the suede side of the paddle.
“You will
not
resist me when I demand your total surrender.”
This reprimand came with the hardest strike thus far, and I keened as tears rose to the corners of my eyes. My whole lower body was humming with electrical tingles now, the furious little prickles of dancing nerves. I groaned as the pain took longer to dissipate this time, and Adrian cooed into my ear and distracted me my tapping the leather side of the paddle lightly and constantly against the lips of my sex, until I was rocking my hips to meet the gentle slaps. They vibrated their way up inside me, through me, rippling toward my clitoris and teasing my tensed anus.
I felt Adrian flip the paddle between my thighs, and he started to rub the suede side firmly against my slick vulva. Despite aching arms and cramping knees, I couldn’t help straining and tensing at the friction. Then, with the edge of the paddle, Adrian grazed my clitoris. Once, then again.
“Oh, god!” I blinked repeatedly, trying to clear my vision of tears and the haze of drug-like passion. “Am I allowed to come during punishment, sir? Can I come?”
Adrian pressed and held his lips to my temple, then whispered, “Yes, Chloe. Come for me, whenever you’re ready.”
“I want you inside me,” I begged.
“Not this time. This is for you, Chloe. Let yourself enjoy it.” Against my ear, so hot, he breathed, “Surrender.” He drew his hand from my cheek and teased his fingertips along my rigid nipples, then flicked them, then pinched them briefly but forcefully. The way I jerked made me rub myself, my clitoris, against the edge of the paddle.
“Are you coming, Chloe?”
“Yes, sir,” I rasped, still humping uncontrollably against the paddle.
“Now?”
“Yes, sir!” The climax was cresting, curling up over me, the walls of my pussy pulsing wildly.
Adrian pulled the paddle back and laid one more hard smack, the hardest of all, across my ass. “Say you’re mine, Chloe. Now.
Swear
it.”
Everything inside me seized, clenched, knotted, and a second later came apart in a flurry of throbbing nerves and warm shivers. I sagged so weak and lifeless that Adrian had to wrap an arm around me to hold me up and keep me from dangling by my throat.
“Yours. I’m yours,” I sighed against his shoulder, feeling waves of warm bliss washing through me. My face was hot, wet with sweat I hadn’t felt until this moment. My thighs were trembling, knees like liquid. The pleasure receded so slowly, by degrees.
“Yes. Yes, that’s it,” Adrian crooned to me over and over, rocking me so slightly. I didn’t want to move when he unclipped the metal links and released me, but he was doing all the work—freeing my hands and rubbing my arms, laying me back on the bed, unbuckling the collar. At his urging, I curled on my side to avoid putting pressure on my stinging backside. I assumed he was getting a fresh ice pack or maybe lotion when he left the bedside.
He came back with a teacup filled with a hot, lemony liquid with a distinct herbal and alcohol smell I couldn’t quite place. “Take this,” he said, helping me up onto one elbow. “No arguments. It will help you calm down after everything, help you sleep.”
I sipped the strong, bitter mixture, definitely detecting the bite of whiskey. It made me gag and sputter before I finally relented and downed the cup as quickly as I could. “What’s in that?”
Sitting on the side of the bed, Adrian chuckled and set the cup on the nightstand. “Nothing that exotic, don’t worry. It’s Manuela’s recipe. She’s used it on me plenty of times. Better? Do you think you can sleep?”
Nodding, I rested back, allowing my gaze to stray up from Adrian’s gorgeous bare chest to the smile on his face and finally those moonlit brown eyes. It would have been better if he’d said something to break the silence, to break the moment, but he didn’t. Neither of us did. The alcohol warmed my chest. The last shivers from my climax tickled in the bottom of my stomach.
I leaned up then and kissed Adrian Knight. My hand found the back of his neck, my fingers threading into his hair, holding him near. His mouth opened for mine, and I tasted him, licked his lips, sucked his tongue while he groaned low and approvingly.
Not a surrogate for Penn. Not a stand-in for the male gender and its enviable sexual detachment. I spent several long, relaxed minutes kissing the hell out of Adrian Knight. The man, symbolizing nothing.
It was a bad idea, but it felt so good.
To Be Continued In
Under His Sway: His #4
Thank you for reading At His Mercy: His #3. If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review in support of this author and her work. You can also sign up for the Erika Masten e-Newsletter at
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ALSO BY ERIKA MASTEN
AN EROTIC DOMINATION SHORT
As his junior admin analyst, Claudia sees to Troy Gaspar’s every need. If she had her way, those would include his sexual needs. Troy has been burned by office romance before, but Claudia is a natural submissive who makes him want to break his own rules. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there’s nothing she wants more than Troy as her Valentine’s Dom.
AN EXCERPT FROM ERIKA MASTEN’S
VALENTINE’S DOM
“What’s the real problem?” I ask, reaching over to the hand that is resting on the padded leather arm of his chair.
I trace my fingers along Troy’s, and I’m taken aback, pleasantly, when his flex and rub back against mine. His hands are so smooth, but firm, with long, tanned fingers. He’s only been back from his winter vacation for a couple of weeks, and his skin is still sun-kissed from spending all of it on a tropical beach—alone, I hope, but I doubt it.
“Is it because you are my immediate superior? You’re concerned I’ll cry sexual harassment if things go badly between us?”
He lets me take his large hand in mine. Though his office door is open, his desk and my back would block this from the view of a passing observer.
“Or are you worried about the general messiness of dating where you work, fouling the nest, so to speak?”
Trembling only inwardly, thank god, I place his hand on my thigh. He tenses but still lets me slide his fingers and warm palm just under the hem of my black wool skirt. My heart skips erratically when I see the front of his suit pants start to strain over a growing bulge. Neither of us is breathing, just waiting.
My chest shudders as I draw in air to speak. “Or it is that your last lover betrayed your trust and told secrets? You won’t let another serve you?”
Troy stuns me as he runs his hand up my skirt, curling his fingers around the top of one stocking as though he’d like to rip it. A flood of my warm juices seeps into the crotch of my panties, and I have the overpowering urge to shift my hips and squirm against my boss’s strong hand.
“Do you know what you’re talking about, Claudia? Have you been dominated before?” he demands in a heated murmur.
My face flushes, and I stare at my skirt, at the shape of his hand on my thigh, to keep from having to look at his face. “Not really,” I admit. “I’ve…played with an old boyfriend. But I have friends in the lifestyle. I’ve talked to them about it. And I know what I want.”
“No, you don’t. You think you do, but it isn’t what you imagine or what you’ve read or what you’ve heard about.”
I lift my chin in subtle challenge. “I know more than you think I do.”
“Really?” he says and leans forward in his chair. Under my skirt, his hand wraps around my upper thigh, and one of his fingers traces the elastic at the leg of my wet panties. “Like what, Claudia?”
