In His World: His #8 (A Billionaire Domination Serial) (5 page)

There might have been photos—that was how this had all gotten started—embarrassingly intimate shots of the things Penn used to like me to do for him. I could expect a fair measure of public humiliation if he chose to leak any of those to the gossip blogs that had revealed that last indiscretion of his, and that did sound like something that would appeal to the Ellison love of irony.

I said goodnight to Edward and Ian at the door as Adrian was sending them off to the best available suites for the night, stood arm to arm with him in the doorway of the villa,…and felt like this was worth any damage I took.

As soon as Adrian closed the door, I was hounding him.  “Call Obray.”

“Why?”

I sighed and let my explanation rush hurriedly out of me. “Karl said Penn’s plans in Miami are going sour. Lots of people suddenly being placed on administrative leave. Bids being disqualified. All of this happened hours ago. Call Obray and see what’s happening with the prosecutors already!” God, was it too much to hope they’d outright drop the charges against Adrian? He had, of course, bribed a government official to pass the demonstration project permits through faster than they warranted, but that was a fining offence at this level. But prison, no. Too much to hope for dismissal, I repeated to myself. Wasn’t it? Maybe…

Looking doubtful, Adrian rang through to Obray, muttered back and forth briefly with him, saying nothing that I could interpret one way or the other. He was shaking his head as he ended the call. “No word from Holanda’s office. Nothing since our counteroffer right after the last call.”

“Nothing?” That didn’t seem right. The situation was developing so quickly in Florida. How could it have been lagging here? I was so certain…so convinced…so… So anxious and keyed-up and ready for this to be over, more like it.

I tried not to let my worry show with Adrian. He’d just reunited with his mother’s family. There had to have been a flurry of thoughts and emotions swirling around inside him just then, besides the worries that had been at him since the indictment. Cuddled in bed with Adrian in the dark, I had to tell myself to quit glancing over toward the nightstand, looking for the telltale light on his mobile. He stiffened, almost imperceptibly, every time I did it. And he wasn’t sleeping any more than I was.

Saturday morning, we should have slept in, but I awoke shortly after dawn with Adrian already sitting up in bed tabbing through messages on his phone.

“Any word?”

He shook his head but tried to smile. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Good morning.” But it wasn’t. Even taking hot chocolate on the chaises by the pool. Even listening to my favorite classical music while entwined with Adrian on the leather sofa. Even sitting between his legs with my back against his firm, warm chest on the beach, it wasn’t a good morning.

Periodically, I would squirm around to look for Adrian’s phone. “Any messages?”

And he’d clear his throat to break up a building sigh. “No.”

It was noon before that goddamn phone finally rang, and I spun up onto my knees in the sand to face Adrian. I didn’t see the name on the screen, though not for lack of trying as I craned for a glimpse. He answered the call hurriedly with a terse, “Yeah.” A male voice grumbled down the line. “Okay, keep me updated.”

“What?” I demanded.

Adrian tossed the mobile down beside us in the sand. “Five years, twenty million in fines, and they still want Ilha de Flor.”

“Still?” I blurted before I could stop myself. “Well, it just hasn’t filtered down yet, everything happening in Miami.”

“It might not,” Adrian said softly to me, like he was trying to let me down easy, preparing me. “Once they got the Ministerio Publico involved, this became big political news. Holanda probably couldn’t back out now if he wanted to.”

“That’s bullshit,” I fumed. “Brazil is every bit as bad as the U.S. about letting off white collar criminals when the money is right.”

I couldn’t believe it when Adrian started laughing. “Are you suggesting a few payoffs will get me out of this mess?”

“What? No! Adrian, stop it; that’s not even funny.”

“Oh, it is. I’ve never heard myself called a white collar criminal before, even if the term fits. I have the urge to change my looks and evade police by settling myself up in some little coastal tourist town where I can open a bar and talk with an overly thick Australian accent.”

“How can you joke at a time like this?”

Adrian pulled me back against his chest. “How can you not, love? Settle down.  We’ve done everything we can. Now we have to wait it out.”

We did, for the rest of the day and the whole night. Sunday morning hit without anything new from Quinton. Neither Adrian nor I seemed the least bit interested in the lavish breakfast Manuela sent over before she dragged Luiz with her on the ferry to Natal for morning mass. So I padded down the hallway to the bedroom, committed the submissive’s sin of rifling through her Dom’s toy chest, and forged back into the living room with a certain three-buckle leather collar in hand, which I presented to Adrian.

He didn’t ask, just told me to kneel down on the floor between his legs and fastened the collar around my throat, over my fluttering pulse. Taking his time. Buckle by buckle. Then he traced the line of my neck, hugged tightly by the leather sheath, with his thumbs. Tentatively, asking permission with the caution and languor of my movements, I pulled on the drawstring tie for his tan beach pants and loosened them until I could tug them down below his hardening member and the round bulge of his smooth, full balls. He let out a hissing breath as I slid my tongue along the underside of the ruddy, engorged member jutting out for my attention. Then I was sucking him into my mouth, in long, slow, deep strokes, and Adrian was guiding my head with one hand tangled in my hair and the other holding firmly to a metal ring on the collar that said I was his to command.

When I had Adrian as hard as his cock could get, when a shudder through his hips and abs flexed all those beautiful muscles and told me his release was near, he pushed my mouth away. His hands were quick, deft, demanding as Adrian drew me to my feet, spun me about to direct me to the thick cowhide rug in front of the sofas, and put me on my knees with my cheek to the floor. One thrust and he was bottomed out inside me, my sex flaring with a stinging, burning ache at the sudden intrusion. Every thrust thereafter was harder and faster until he was bucking and panting savagely, and I was trying to get a grip on the rug to steady myself and push back against him.

He came buried to the root inside me, his fingers searching for my clitoris to bring me to my climax, but I pushed at his hand and tried to squirm away. “No, sir, please. Don’t. I don’t want to, Adrian. Just let…let me stay like this.”

On the precipice. My pussy pulsing and quavering inside me from his hard use. My blood still coursing. My unrealized release a slow burn in my sex and the pit of my stomach, a bristling itch of energy prickling along my nerves.

And he relented. I ended up on my side with Adrian spooned against me. “It’s okay, Chloe. Just be still with me. Just be still,” he trilled low to me and kissed by shoulder and added in a nearly inaudible whisper, again, “Eu te amo.”

Brazilian Portuguese for “I love you.” I’d looked it up, finally, when I wasn’t as sure it would break my heart to have my suspicion confirmed. But it still hurt, the bittersweet bliss of hearing those words from a man I might lose. Prison for five years… He wouldn’t be the same man after that. And I didn’t want to make that ridiculous emotional vow to wait for him, even though I would. Even if he wasn’t coming back to me and I was somewhere else in the world, even if we never saw one another again, I knew I’d never stop waiting for Adrian Knight.

Nothing about my life even slightly resembled what it was before I met him, including me. I saw the places around me only in comparison to Ilha de Flor. I measured people according to whether they were as graceful as Manuela, as mischievous as Luiz, as focused as Gabriel. And I felt everything—the caress of a breeze, the heat of the sun, the sweetness of a bite of honey cake—as a reminder of Adrian’s caress, his warmth, the taste of his kiss. My world was nested inside his now, enfolded, safeguarded… But if something now shattered his world…it shattered me with it.

On the round dining table, Adrian’s mobile sounded with a text. I didn’t move, didn’t get my hopes up. Reluctantly, he slid away from me to check the message.

“Better get dressed. Manuela and Luiz are getting back from town and want to stop in to see us. I’m surprised she let us have this long alone.”

Despite not feeling at all like entertaining anyone, like putting on a happy face and pretending I wasn’t terrified we’d all lose Adrian any day now, I obediently trudged back to the bedroom for the suitcases that had been delivered from my hotel in Natal. As I removed the leather collar and slipped into a plain white sheath dress, Adrian sat down at the piano. Then I heard the first strains of that infernal adagio, and I ran down the hallway and threw myself into Adrian’s lap to stop him.

Straddling his hips on the piano bench, I held Adrian’s rough face and kissed him furiously. “Not that song,” I begged between desperate nips. “Please, never that one.”

Adrian, not asking why, nodded as much as I would allow it. “Okay, okay,” he assured me whenever I let him have a breath.

The kisses were growing deep and passionate when Adrian’s mobile rang again. Not a text message this time, an actual call. One last kiss, and we spent a fateful heartbeat staring into one another’s eyes. I would never know another man with eyes so beautiful.

His hand hesitated before he reached into his pant pocket to withdraw the chiming device. “Quinton,” he answered. Then it was just a lot of “yeah” and “m-hm” and an occasional “noted” while I sat there restraining myself from beating him about the head and face for denying me the least hint of what the attorney was saying. Then he muttered, “Yes, final offer, I understand.” I was ready to pry the mobile from his grip to speak to Obray myself when Adrian finally disconnected and set the phone down on the Steinway.

I didn’t breathe as Adrian stroked my hair, his eyes damp and gleaming.

“Dammit, tell me, Adrian!” I ignored the tears streaking down my cheeks. “Just tell me.”

“Ten million pound fine and three years.”

“Three years?” It hurt my chest to say it. Three years.

He nodded. “Probation, with community service.”

“Pro—” I choked on the word. “Probation?” And he grinned at me. “You fucking bastard!” I pounded both my fists against his shoulders with every ounce of my strength and well-deserved wrath.

“Probation,” he repeated, catching me by the wrists to protect himself from the beating, holding me near. “You’re not getting rid of me after all, Miss Bloom.”

“No…but, wait, what about Ilha de Flor?”

“A little complicated, that. I get to keep the resort freehold, but the rest of the island reverts to a leasehold preserve. More than one government agency is going to have to approve every aspect of any demonstration project I propose.  It’s manageable, with the right people at the helm. This is easily the most expensive mistake I’ve ever made in business. And the most worthwhile.”

Wrapping my arms around his neck like I’d never let go, I swore a blue streak for several seconds. “Filho da puta. I see getting off easy hasn’t helped dull that ambition any.”

“My, Miss Bloom, I think I’ve been letting you spend too much time with Manuela. She’s even taught you to swear in Portuguese now?”

“Manuela! We have to tell her.” I grabbed up Adrian’s mobile and rang through to her. “Where are you?” I asked before she could even say hello. “We have news!”

The front door opened. “Right here. What’s going on?”

I bounced up from Adrian’s lap to rush toward the Brazilian matron. The silver stood out in her otherwise glossy black curls under the pale blue scarf she’d worn to church to match her blue dress. She met me with a frown on her tanned face, her hands closing hard around mine. There was a strength beyond age in those hands, in this woman.  “Probation, Manuela!” I gushed, and she gasped and embraced me. “Community service and probation.”

And from behind us, I heard Luiz burst into a loud chorus of laughter like the cackle of a drunken hyena. He heaved in a huge breath…and burst out again. After several long moments of this, the lanky teen was leaning back on the entryway wall holding his ribcage as he shook and teared up and turned bright red for lack of air.

“Yes,” Adrian replied blandly as he joined us, “I thought you’d enjoy that.”

It took everything in Luiz to gasp for breath and calm himself enough to say, “Don’t worry, Mr. Knight, I’ll show you where we keep the shovels.”

Adrian grimaced. “Thank you, Luiz. Thank you very much.”

With a flurry of strong language, Manuela herded her grandson back through the villa door, where she paused. “We have to celebrate. A special dinner tonight. A very special dinner. I have to get started. Chloe, you…you keep him out of trouble until then.”

Standing straight and still and peering hard at Manuela, he nodded once and said, “She will.” And she nodded back, as something passed between them in the look they gave one another.

“What’s that about?” I tried to ask after Manuela had closed the door behind her and Adrian turned to walk back to the piano. “I can’t believe you.” For a second time, I inserted myself onto his lap between the Steinway and him.

“I play piano when I’m sad, and I play piano when I’m happy. I just wanted to take a few minutes before we get too busy. A lot of paperwork ahead of us, Miss Bloom.”

“Won’t Obray and Ullman be taking care of all that for you? You’ll just have to sign the agreement.”

Adrian teasingly tried to reach around me for the piano keys, but I slapped at his hands. “Youch, Chloe, be gentle. We have other visa and residency paperwork to fill out, for you.”

Which finally got me to stop wrestling with him. “What does that mean?”

“I believe you have recently found yourself without employment, Miss Bloom, and I am in need of someone familiar with both commercial development and environmental law to administer the projects and federal reporting for the Ilha de Flor eco park.” He studied my face as I gaped, uncertain he was being serious. Uncertain I could let myself believe I had spent so long afraid of a phone call that had now so abruptly banished the worst of those fears. “Unless you’re considering that offhand comment Obray made about hiring you. I do think I offer better benefits, though.”