His Absolute Domination: The Billionaire's Paradigm (#5) (A BDSM Erotic Romance) (The Billionaire's Ultimatum, Book Two) (3 page)

"Ah," she said.

I nodded. That's all I was going to
tell her. No more.

"So," she said. "Did you have sex or
anything?"

"What exactly does anything entail?" I
asked.

"You're avoiding the question, Elise!"
She pointed her muffin at me like some objecting prosecution
lawyer.

"I'm not," I said. "You're asking a
very vague question, though."

"Hm." She removed her muffin from
accusing me and pulled a hunk off it, plopping the piece into her
mouth. "I suppose I meant more like... did you do anything sexual?
Was there flirting? Did he go down on you?"

Oh boy. I couldn't tell her any of
this, but I blushed because of what I couldn't tell her.

"You
did
do something with him, didn't
you!" she shrieked.

"Be more quiet!"

"Or what? The neighbors are going to
hear me? Who cares?"

"I do," I said. "We didn't do anything
like that."

"Did you kiss?" she asked.

"I'm not talking about
this."

"Alright, so you kissed." She nodded,
happy with her illogical deduction. "Hm. What else?"

"I'm tired again," I said. "I'm going
to go take a nap."

"Oh, sure. Su~re," she said. She
sounded anything but agreeable right now. "I see how it is. You
spend the weekend trapped with a rich, gorgeous man and partaking
in some hedonistic orgy or something, and then you won't tell me
anything about it."

"I'm fairly positive you can't have
any sort of orgy between just two people," I said, retreating to my
room.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that,"
Vanessa said, screaming at me as I closed the door to my bedroom.
"You can do a lot of things if you put your mind to it."

I shut my door hard, trying to ignore
her, but thoughts of multiple Lucents caressing and teasing and
torturing me into a multi-tiered fit of ecstatic orgiastic pleasure
refused to leave my mind. Not that I ever needed more than one
Lucent, but if some crazed science experiment ever presented me
with two or more of them, I didn't think I'd pass up the
opportunity.

I should write a story about that, I
thought. That could be my first official project outside of college
work. Probably just for me, for practice, as I doubted anyone else
would want to read it, but... the concept had merit. I liked
it.

...

I...

What did I do? I didn't even know. I
lay on my bed staring at the ceiling with my cell phone held
against my ear. This was...

"To hear more options..." The robot
woman's voice droned in my ear.

I felt so heavy and weird. What was I
doing? This wasn't possible, was it? The robot woman's voice
repeated my voice menu options. "To listen to this message again,
please press..."

I knew what number to press. Yes. I
needed to listen to Lucent's first message again. This had to be
some kind of joke. I pressed the number to replay the
message.

"Miss Tanner," Lucent said, his voice
sounding odd and different through my phone. "I apologize for
telling you everything this way, but I can't do it otherwise. I
know I should be able to, and I feel wrong doing it like this, but
whenever I see you smiling at me, or happy, or whenever you say
anything, I can't. It's not you, nor anything that's your fault,
but this came about because of my own faults."

This part made no sense to me at
first. Listening to it again, I understood it
completely.

"The problem is," he continued, "I
should never have come to the library. I've lied to you and I
regret it, but I came because I worried. I know more about you than
you think, Miss Tanner. I knew you were working when I arrived at
the library, and I knew your name already. I know where you attend
college and your general schedule throughout the day. This sounds
scary, I'm sure, and I hope it won't upset you too much, though I
believe you have every right to be upset."

Well, yes. And hearing him say those
things did upset me somewhat, but mostly because I didn't
understand. How did he know this?

"I've watched you. This is pathetic,
and I realize it, but I first noticed you leaving the library one
day. I stayed late to work on a private project for Mr. Landseer
and during a momentary break, I glanced out of my office window. I
have a direct view to the front of the library and I saw you
leaving. I watched you enter your car and drive off and that was
it. Nothing more nor less."

"I saw you again another time. This
happened later, and I'd mostly put you out of my mind, but I
recognized you immediately. I was walking past the library after
retrieving lunch from a delicatessen down the street--perhaps you
know of it, Sam's--and I noticed you entering the library.
Presumably you were just arriving for your scheduled work shift
after finishing your lectures for the day, though I have no real
way of knowing that."

He paused and breathed in deeply. This
was a long message.

"It's likely you won't believe me when
I say this, but I found you enchanting, Miss Tanner. I rarely
stayed late at work before unless necessary, and usually took my
work home with me if I required more time, but upon seeing you that
day, and realizing I'd seen you before, I started staying to see if
I might see you again. And I did. Daily. For weeks. It's been far
more than weeks now, and I'm ashamed of it."

I frowned slightly hearing the
heartbreak in Lucent's voice. The message had scared me at first,
but listening to it a second time made me feel... something. I
didn't quite know how to classify what I felt, but it wasn't
altogether terrible. Which seemed odd considering he was
essentially telling me he'd stalked me. And he said as much right
then.

"I'm nothing more than a lowly
stalker, Miss Tanner. I was content, though. I enjoyed seeing you
leave and I liked knowing that you arrived at your car safely and
left the library in a timely manner every day. I have an obsession
with safety. After spending the weekend with me, you might
understand this more now. The problem with that is that, while I
know it's wrong, I did nothing to stop it. Truth be told, I could
have removed us safely from the library. Mrs. Landseer, Asher
Landseer's wife, offered to send a helicopter for us on the second
day once she found out what happened."

Yes, I thought, but on the second day
I didn't want to leave. I didn't even want to leave earlier today.
I didn't...

"I went to the library because I knew
you were there and I worried. I should never have gone, nor should
I have worried. I watched you from Landseer Tower and I grew an
unhealthy attachment towards you. I even went so far as to find a
street photographer willing to take a zoomed picture of you as you
entered the library one day. I keep it on my office desk and I like
to look at it. This is horrible, and no doubt I've scared you
beyond repair right now. I realize this. That is why I'm leaving
you this message."

Out of everything he told me, this
next part hurt the most.

"I shall not bother you again, Miss
Tanner. Please accept my sincerest and deepest apologies. I have
used unscrupulous methods to learn more about you, I have done
background checks on you to make certain you were as innocent and
pure as I imagined, and in those regards you were wonderful. I am
corrupt, though. I am not a good person. I do enjoy domination, as
you already know, but it is an abuse of power to do such things to
you, despite my wants, because of the manner in which I've come to
know you."

"You were uninformed," he said. "You
knew nothing of what I was doing or who I was, while I knew
everything about you already. I apologize for my deceit, but that's
no excuse. Honestly, I've enjoyed every moment with you in your
library, and the reason I'm acting cowardly and leaving this
message for you instead of telling you forthright is because I'd
like to enjoy more moments with you while I can. There will be no
more moments after this. I am despicable. I..."

He sounded choked, hurt, pained. My
heart leaped out of my chest, longing to hold him and tell him it
was alright. He didn't need to be upset or bothered or hurt. He
didn't need to be...

"Goodbye, Miss Tanner. Please believe
me when I say I never meant any harm in what I did."

I did. I believe him. I wanted to tell
him. The robot woman droned on again and... "Just shut up!" I
screamed at her. Save the message! I want to save it! I pounded the
number to save it as hard as I could while tears and pain welled up
in my eyes.

I had another message from Lucent,
too. I'd almost forgotten about that.

"I've told you everything important
already," Lucent said. No preamble here; straight to the point. "I
need to inform you of my further transgressions." Apparently I was
his pastor and my phone was his confessional booth.

"I fully intended on leaving you this
morning. All logic dictates I should have. I wrote you a message
and left it with your breakfast, which I assume we shall eat
together soon. This will be upsetting to me, though I hope it won't
ruin your mood. My messages will do a good enough job of that
already. Despite what I have just told you, I've decided not to
leave. I am doing this for a few reasons."

Well, good, you asshole, I thought.
I'm glad you didn't leave.

"Mr. Landseer and his personal driver
assisted in shoveling out the front of the library for our imminent
departure. Along with that, they aided me in shoveling out your
car. Now, I am told this is scary, so I apologize in advance, but I
thought it prudent to pick the lock on your car. I have already
told you that I know a lot about you, and one piece of information
that I learned--that I would never abuse, please believe me--is
that you keep a spare key hidden in your car. For discretionary
purposes, I shall not mention where, though I should add that I
believe this is unsafe and you should refrain from doing this in
the future."

Alright, so he broken into my car, and
then he wanted to tell me to take precautions? This seemed wrong on
multiple levels and it made me laugh.

"On a somewhat related tangent, Miss
Tanner, I truly believe you should look into purchasing a newer
car. Cars with manual locks are easy to break into for anyone with
the knowledge of how to do it, and are also unsafe. Leaving that
point behind us for the time being, I used your spare key to start
your car and defrost your windows. I worried that you might rush
upon leaving in order to listen to my previous message and
potentially bring harm to yourself."

Lucent was dumb. Lucent was an idiot.
I liked him so much it was ridiculous.

"I needed to inform you of this,
because while I know breaking into people's cars is wrong, I did so
with the best intentions. As I plan never to speak with you again
after--"

Why? No. I needed to speak with
him.

"--this, I needed to tell you in the
only possible way I had. Also, while I'm burrowing holes into Hell,
I want you to know you're very attractive when you sleep, and I
apologize for waking you with sexual advances. I believe what I
have done is technically considered sexual assault by deceptive
means and if you wish to press charges against me, I shall fully
accept whatever punishment is deemed fit by the legal avenue
through which you pursue your accusations. Goodbye again, Elise,
and I apologize."

Elise
. I frowned and stared at the ceiling and pressed the number
to save that message, too. Why did he have to do this to me? I
didn't understand.

Yes, it was odd what he'd done. What
he'd done for awhile. I didn't quite know how I felt about being
watched, but in all honesty, Lucent wasn't a bad person. If he came
out and told me that he'd stalked me for months(or however long)
before any of this had ever happened, I'd freak out. I knew this,
and I knew this was the logical thing to do. If someone stalks you,
you dislike it.

Except I had a difficult time telling
myself that I disliked Lucent. It was strange, of that I had no
doubts, but I liked how he worried. Was that odd? Maybe. I
just...

It was sweet in a way. Maybe sweet in
a misguided way, but that's what Lucent was. Misguided. Odd. He was
strange and irregular and handsome and sexy and hot. Demanding! It
kind of fit his personality, now that I thought about
it.

Would I mind if he stalked me now? No,
probably not. Actually, I sort of liked the idea. Like some rich
superhero protector almost. Yes, he broke into my car, but he used
his heightened intellect to do so, and he did it for good reasons.
He used his powers for good, not evil.

Except for when he tied me up or
spanked me. He was allowed to be a little evil then. Just a little
bit, just enough. That was fun.

Not even just fun. It was exciting!
And...

I shall not bother you
again. Goodbye, Miss Tanner.

I needed to call him and talk to him.
Yes, he was... odd. I refused to call him a stalker or obsessed,
because those were very negative words. Lucent had a singular
focus, and that focus was me. That sounded sort of nice, right? I
imagined if a journalist queried married women about their
husbands, one of the prime responses would be that they wanted the
men to pay attention to them and cherish them, and,
well...