At His Mercy (6 page)

Dammit, looks were so fucking deceiving. And here he thought he’d learned. He’d lived by the trust-none-of-them rule for over two years and things had been going so great.

Follow his heart. Hah.

I know what you’re up to, you little schemer.

“Kyler? What’s wrong?”

But dammit, he was so fucking hard right now. He could barely see straight. He’d bet she was wet, her slick passage r
eady for him. Why should he stop
himself? If Elena was willing to give it up, why should he deny himself? He could fuck her, and then he’d leave her sit in this room until Tuesday.
If that was what she wanted to do to herself—let men fuck her to get ahead—then that was what she’d get from him.

Still straddling Elena, on his knees, he yanked his shirt off then rolled off the bed and pulled off his pants and underwear. She was still wearing that clingy knit top and those black pants. He wanted to see her fully unclothed but lacked the patience. Instead, after she unbuttoned and unzipped the fly, he just yanked her slacks down her smooth, slender legs and tossed them on the floor. No underpants. Even better.

“Kyler!”

He didn’t meet her gaze as he wedged his hips between her legs. Rolled on a rubber. He didn’t kiss her agai
n, just fingered her slick heat, prepared to drive
his cock deep inside her.
He replaced his fingers with the tip of his rod.

She shoved at his chest. “Kyler
. Stop!
Wh
y are you acting like this
?
”

Dammit.

Fuck.

What the hell was he doing?

He couldn’t go through with this.
That would make him no better than that piece of shit, Becker. Disgusted with himself, with Becker, and with Elena, h
e
jerked upright and
tugged off the rubber.

“You bastard.”
She had no right to look that way at him now, like he was a heartless beast. She’d begged him, not the other way around.

“What’s wrong?
” he echoed.
“
Wasn’t
this
what you expected?”

She didn’t speak, just dragged her legs back together and pulled the coverlet over herself.

“I guess that’s a no.”
H
e tossed the rubber in the trashcan then grabbed his pants and shirt. He stepped into his sweats, didn’t bother with the underwear or the tank. He sat on the edge of the bed.

Elena’s eyes were frigid, her gaze distant, her expression completely blank. For about three seconds, he was actually sorry for
treating
her like th
e whore she was determined to be
.
Then she swung her little fist at him, her target, his nose.

He
dodged the blow and
pushed to his feet. “A little hint. If you’re going to use sex to get what you want, you’ve got to learn to look at it like a pro. It’s just a fuck. A cock and a pussy.”

He left, shutting the door behind him, closing himself off from Elena
…
and the guilt eating at his gut.

* * * * *

Elena wasn’t sure what was worse
—
the shame she felt after that
…
whatever it was. The knowledge that she was fucked in an altogether different way. Or the fact that she was totally devastated by Kyler’s absolutely frigid treatment.

He’d treated her like she was a worthless piece of crap. Why? He’d said she was using sex to get what she wanted. That was the farthest thing from the truth.

Maybe it was simply impossible for the two of them to communicate. It seemed he was always misreading her, mistrusting her, misunderstanding her. What had set him off this time?

Oh, who cared? She didn’t need this shit
. S
he just needed to go home, do some packing, and try to figure out how she’d start over again.

She was exhausted already. She inched open the door, finding her purse out in the hallway, empty, the contents strewn all over the floor. Eyes blurry with tears, she gathered her cosmetics, wallet, receipts and hair brush, stuffed them back in her purse. Then she hurried down the hall, making a beeline for the staircase. As she skipped down the steps, she kept looking, listening for Kyler, expecting him to pop out from somewhere and make good on his threat. She made it as far as the foot of the staircase before she stopped.

It sure would be nice if she could find her car keys. Was it worth a shot? She heard a sound from the general direction of the greatroom. Oh, hell, she was already eyeball deep in trouble. What worse could happen? She rushed back upstairs. There were seven doors, all closed. One of them, she knew, led to her room.

She started at the one closest to the stairs. Opened it. Peeked inside. Gasped. Shut it.

Not the room she was looking for, nope.

She opened the door again. Wow. She’d never seen a room like this before, well, not in person. A bondage room. Dungeon.

She’d always wondered what it would be like playing in a room like this. Playing. What a word.

The truth was, she’d been curious about BDSM for quite some time. She’d done a lot of reading, soul searching.
She’d even mentioned it to Ashley.

Maybe
Ashley was right, her fascination with domination and submission
was because she’d been forced to grow up
too
early, had the weight of her younger brother’s care
dumped
on her slender shoulders
before she’d been truly ready to handle it
. She didn’t know. All she knew was that this world, of submission and trust and control, was calling to her. She sensed it would fill a deep need.

If only she’d been able to find the right man to explore these things with. Ironic, t
hat Kyler was into this stuff. After today, h
e was the last man she’d trust with her vulnerabilities.

She glanced over her shoulder, checking the hall before moving deeper into the room.
Touching the furniture would make it more real, more possible.
She headed for the s
ex s
wing first. How’d the thing work? It was little more than a collection of metal poles and straps, now that she was closer. The seat was just a narrow band. Same with the back.

She headed for another piece, a pair of benches angling away from each other, a wooden cross was affixed to the wall at the point where they met. She sat on the benches, legs spread so that a thigh rested on each one, supporting her weig
ht.
Nothing sat directly beneath her bottom.
She closed her eyes, indulging in a quick fantasy.
If she was naked
and with a dark and mysterious Dom
…

The door swung open and
,
desperate to not be caught sitting on Kyler’s bondage gear with her legs spread
—
especially after his last comment
—
she flopped forward, landing on her hands and knees.

Of course he’d found her here. It was just her luck.

“Now that’s an interesting position,” he said from the doorway. His voice was sharp, his gaze piercing, smoldering.

Oh God, she was mortified.

Trying to save face, she scooped up her purse and scrambled to her feet. She wanted to give him some excuse for being in this room, but what could she possibly say that wouldn’t make her look even worse? Already, he believed she was a whore, the kind of woman who fucked her way into a promotion. Nothing she’d said had convinced him otherwise. In fact, it seemed the last words she’d spoken had made things a lot worse.

So, rather than offer him up some more ammunition to use against her, she jerked her gaze from his and hurried past him, back to her room. Once inside, she collapsed on the bed.

What now?

She really, really wanted to find her keys before she headed out. Was it practical for her to leave without them?
Never mind her car, her house was locked too. She’d have to break in to get inside.

She dug in her purse f
or her phone, flipped it open. Down to o
ne bar
now
. Shoot! Did it have enough juice to call Ashley? Maybe she shouldn’t use up the last few nanoseconds of her cell’s battery life now, when she might be able to use a landline to call instead.

The cordless phone had been downstairs, in the kitchen. She wondered if Kyler had another phone upstairs. Most people had more than one phone jack, especially in a house this size.

She checked her room, found no phone. She listened at the door. It sounded like Kyler
ha
d gone back downstairs. Good. She’d go hunting again. Most people had a phone in the master bedroom.

She inched open the door, peered up and down the hall. No Kyler. Good. She tiptoed down the hall to the next door, opened it. Another bedroom. But it looked like another guest room.

What did one person need with a bazillion bedrooms, anyway? This house was ridiculously big for a single guy. He practically had enough beds to sleep in a different one each night.

She closed that door and headed to the next one. Another guest bedroom. Then a bathroom. Finally, at the end of the hall, she found the master bedroom. And oh, what a master bedroom it was.

The guestrooms were all very nice. Kyler’s room made them look like rooms at a cheapskate motel. It was decorated nothing like the rest of the house. Instead of the contemporary style of the main living areas and guest bedrooms, it was much more elegant, sophisticated, yet traditional. A bed the size of a football field sat in the center of one wall, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows draped in gorgeous curtains. Three walls were painted a soft silvery-blue. The fourth, the one with the bed and windows, was a deep, cool brown, with the exception of directly behind the headboard. That section of wall boasted three large white panels, framed in ornate trim. The bed itself was a masterpiece. The black headboard had a sexy, slightly French-ish, curved shape and was hand-painted with swirling ivy and flowers. In another room, it might’ve looked feminine, but not in this one.

A noise downstairs reminded her of why she’d better hurry. She ran across the thickly carpeted floor to the first of two nightstands situated on either side of the bed. She checked the surface for a phone then ran around the bed and checked the other one.

No phone?

She did a quick three-sixty then headed for what she hoped might be a walk-in closet on the other side of the room. Nope. Bathroom. And no laundry basket. She tried the door next to it. Score!

She stepped into one of those closet rooms, the kind that had cedar walls and fancy built-in furniture with shoe racks and drawers. On one shelf, she found a basket, and her keys.
No phone.

Well, one out of two wasn’t bad. She could still use her cell, call Ashley, schedule a time for them to meet, and then head back to the restaurant to get her car.

On the way, she’d tell Ashley everything. No sense keeping it from her anymore. Ashley might be tempted to do something foolish to set things right, but now that Elena had pretty much accepted the fact that her job was history, there wasn’t much damage an enraged out-of-control best friend could do.

She jammed her keys in her pocket and hurried down the hall, back to her room. She called Ashley, told her she desperately needed her help, told her the address
—
thank God Kyler had left a pile of mail in his closet. They planned on meeting in exactly one hour.

Elena didn’t want Kyler to know she’d left, at least not right away. She told Ashley she’d meet her down the street, and warned her not to come to the house no matter what. Her phone chirped a warning just as they were wrapping up the brief conversation, and died just before she ended the conversation.

She stuffed her useless phone in her purse and rushed back down the stairs. She made it as far as the front door when Kyler came sauntering from a room just to the left of the door.

He looked her up and down. “Where are you going?”

She thought about lying. Then she thought about telling the truth. It was too late for the lies to do any good anymore. “I’m leaving. But don’t worry, I won’t bother going to work on Monday.” She brushed past him, her gaze locked on the door’s handle.

He caught her shoulders and jerked her around. “No, no. We had a deal.”

He was not going to hold her to that stupid bet, was he? This whole blackmail thing was so over with. It wasn’t a game anymore, and she wasn’t deluding herself either. She wasn’t his guest. They weren’t on a date. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass about her.

Her heart was banging against her breastbone so hard it hurt. And she could literally see her hands shaking. “I think we both now the game’s over.” She spun back around, wrapped her fingers around the handle. “You win.”

Once again, she was hauled back around. She growled as she tried to fight free of Kyler’s iron-handed grip.