Bound to Her: Three Dates With a Billionaire (2 page)

She gazed around at the big sofas in primary colors, the shelves of books and the soft Oriental rugs. “It’s better than the hotel.”

We sat on one of the plush sofas to drink the coffee. I chose the red one. An emerald green one stood on the other side of the rug. I could put her on that rug and have my way with her, but I would behave. I laid my arm on the back of the sofa, as I’d done before. I wanted her so much I had to cross my legs to hide my erection. It hurt, but fuck, I wanted her. I’d never wanted anyone as much before.

She was still talking about the Romans, because I’d encouraged her, but I wasn’t listening anymore. “I want you,” I said abruptly. Not the smoothest proposition I’d ever made.

She stopped abruptly and the silence became a living thing. She gasped. “You do?”

I nodded.

“Will you tell Madame—” She broke off.

“No. And I won’t tip you for it. Never again, Cassie.” I checked my watch. “Your agency time is done. I’ll give you the usual tip, but only because Madame likes her cut. You’re free to go home, if you wish. The cab’s on me.” It was perhaps the cruelest thing I’d ever done. I was forcing her to make up her mind with nothing to lose. If she agreed, it would be because she wanted me and no other reason. She had to know that.

“Yes.” I could barely hear the word, even though I was sitting barely a two feet away from her. But I heard it, all the same.

I got to my feet and held out my hand. Silently, she took it and let me draw her up.

Hand in hand we went to the bedroom. In silence she let me undress her. That black dress was more like the kind of bandage athletes use to bind wounds. I had to peel her out of it, like an orange out of its skin. More than once I was tempted to slice the thing away, but I didn’t want her to take fright and leave. My want had turned to need. I needed her with a desperation I couldn’t deny, but I had experience at hiding my true feelings.

She made me feel raw, wide open, so perversely I made her feel the same. I stripped her slowly and carefully, laying her clothes aside as I’d seen her do at the hotel. I’d do anything to stop her walking out. I’d even bought a few things for her, and now I was glad, because I wouldn’t have to squeeze her back into that dress that I was coming to hate. It revealed too much of her, the beautifully rounded butt and the luscious curves of her breast. They were
mine
.

The dress left marks on her delicate skin, marks I wanted to kiss, but I was still unsure how she’d react. Tonight had started a way to apologize to her, but I hadn’t done that yet, and I didn’t know where to start.

Now she was naked all sane thoughts fled. I just needed her.

She stood before me, hands by her sides, hiding nothing but not showing anything either. She just
was
.

I stripped too. I started with my cuff links, and watched her track every movement with her eyes. I could lead her, just the way I could lead an audience when I was doing well. I began to enjoy myself. This was the best performance I’d given in years.

I undressed without emphasis, but I didn’t need it. The hunger in her eyes grew with every garment, until I was as naked as her.

I paused. I wanted to hold her, but if I did, she would want to hold me. The thought made a lump swell in my throat, rising to choke me, and my breath shortened. No, I couldn’t do it.

“You brought the handcuffs?” she said, the first words anyone had spoken for a while.

“Yes.” But I couldn’t do that to her. Turn her into a thing. She was more than that now. She’d always been more than that, but I hadn’t allowed it before. But I couldn’t let her touch me. Not when—

I shuddered. She smiled sweetly. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.” I got an idea. “Get on the bed and turn around. Get on all fours.”

Oh, that butt again. Round and sweetly pert, smooth and utterly beautiful. “Is this okay?”

She sounded uncertain. After grabbing protection, I climbed on the bed behind her and smoothed my hand over her silky curves. “More than okay.” My voice had dropped a tone or two. I touched her and her sweet heat bathed my fingers. “You’re so wet.”

“Yes.” She sounded breathless. I’d make her even more breathless. I’d make her fucking scream for mercy.

Hastily I sheathed my cock and notched it in her. Just inside. My body eased a trifle. I rolled my shoulders, enjoying the sensation. Then I put my hands on her breasts, filled them with her glorious, soft silkiness, with the little button of her erect nipples nuzzling my palms. I used them to steady myself as I pushed inside her.

Cassie surrounded me, embraced me and took me in. When my balls nuzzled the unbelievably soft skin at the top of her thighs, that was when I relaxed for the first time in days. I needed this. For the first time in my life I got it, why one woman would be so special and how she could mean so much. Only Cassie felt like this, and only she would satisfy what I needed. Greed took over. Why should anybody else have this? Nobody else deserved it. God knew I didn’t, but she accepted me, and that would work for me right now.

She sighed. I didn’t hear the sound so much as feel it when the breath left her chest. “You too?” I murmured, and I kissed her nape, moving her hair aside with my nose because I didn’t want to stop touching her breasts.

She made a sound which could have been agreement.

I started to thrust. Once I’d pulled out and pushed in once, I couldn’t have stopped doing it again if I’d tried. My hips pistoned as I slammed into her the second time. She groaned. I squeezed her breasts, almost dragging her up as I drove into her again. As she rose, she spread her hands, as if searching for something to hold. “Don’t touch me,” I warned her.

She gave a strangled cry and dropped her hands to her sides as I drew her up against me. We knelt upright, and I fucked her. I slid one hand down to her stomach, gently rounded, instead of concave like so many women I’d been with. Her pubic hair tickled the edge of my hand, another sensation I was unused to. I nuzzled her ear. “Never shave or wax,” I  said.

She flinched, as if unused to the intimacy, but she grew wetter, juices flowing over my cock and balls.

I jerked her hard against me. “Promise me.”

“Yes.”

I murmured to her while I fucked her. “You’re beautiful, Cassie. Never let anybody say you aren’t. I want you like this, just like this.”

“In a bodycon dress?”

“Is that what that bandage is called? Not that, definitely not that. You’re mine, you hear?”

“Anything you say.”

If she called me Master, I’d spank her cute butt. In fact, that wasn’t a bad idea at all, but I didn’t want to push her too far, not tonight. “No, baby, anything we say.”

“I thought you were into—” I stopped her talking the best way I knew how. I hammered her. Shoving her forward, I grabbed her hips and went for it. Oh fuck, she felt so good. Every time I powered into her she made a sound, a whimper, or a groan, and eventually I had her crying out.

I shouted too, a grunt of effort as I sweated out, my groin connecting with her backside, making it quiver. Her breasts bounced now I’d set them free, and she didn’t care. I’d made her not care, forced her to want nothing except me. As I wanted her. Every stroke sensitized my cock a bit more, thrumming through my body, spreading and increasing until I could barely hold on. But she hadn’t come. I needed her to come, longed to feel her body take mine as deep as it could. I reached around her, leaning forward to kiss the knobs of her spine and I touched her clit.

It was like lighting a fuse. She came, her inner channel contracting around my cock, milking me. Every pulse point in my body stopped, then started again with a throb that I felt to the depths of my soul.

I came, unable to stop my body taking the satisfaction it needed more than my next breath. I held myself deep, my finger pressed hard against her clit, gasping for breath. My heart pounded so hard I was sure she could feel it pressed against her back. But she was panting too, pulling in breath desperately.

I climbed off her and went into the bathroom, disposing of the condom and taking the fastest shower I’d ever had in my life. I wanted her there when I got back.

She was lying on her side, the sheet pulled up to cover her breasts. I smiled down at her. “Grab a shower if you need one. Then we’ll talk.”

Swallowing, she clutched the sheet for a moment before she pushed it away and slid off the bed. Going into the bathroom, she closed the door. I listened carefully but I didn’t hear any crying. If I had I’d have braved everything and gone to her. The shower came on, but I heard no sobs.

I had an idea. Going to the tallboy, I grabbed a pair of black silk pyjama bottoms and a muscle shirt. They might work, because my body still tightened and not in a good way when I thought of sharing the bed with her. She’d touch me in the night and that could be fatal. I might hurt her—or myself.

In the night? Yeah. I didn’t want her to go home. I wanted her close.

What could I say? How did I start this?

When she came out of the bathroom, a towel tucked under her arms, she stopped and stared at me. “If it makes you more comfortable, there are T-shirts in the top drawer.” I nodded toward the tallboy. Nodding, she went and helped herself. The neckline was scooped low on her, the short sleeves nearly at her elbows. It fell to the middle of her thighs. She looked adorable.

“That’s much better than that dress.”

A smile quavered over her lips.

I flicked back the sheet. “Come to bed.”

She swallowed, but she did as I told her, climbing in next to me and stretching her legs out flat. She lay on her back.

I sat up, still unsure what to say. “Cassie, I’m sorry.” Wow, that came out before I was ready.

“What?” The word was harsh. “I didn’t think people
like me
deserved treating properly.” She spoke bitterly.

My heart went out to her. “I deserved that. I’m sorry, I mean it, baby. I know I apologized earlier, but I couldn’t say everything there.”

She blinked. I hadn’t used the endearment accidentally, but I hadn’t meant to say it yet. “I never know what to think with you.” Her voice softened, became more vulnerable. Anybody who hurt her when she was in this mood was a complete bastard. That would be me, then.

I smiled, loving her feisty attitude. So I had to do the full grovel, did I? Just as well I was feeling it. I leaned up on one elbow, gazing into her face. “When I left you that note the other day, I was hurt. Upset. I thought I’d found you all by myself, you see, until I found that card.”

She lifted her hand, then dropped it.

I carried on, bound and determined to finish this. “Then things fell into place. That attitude equated me with Witney, brought me down to his level. I was looking at women as things, objects to use and then discard. And I deserve for you to think that of me. Yes I do,” I said when she opened her mouth to protest. “I’ve used Madame in the past, you see.”

She nodded. “I guessed. Otherwise how could you have known about the business card?”

“I badly wanted to believe that what happened between us was real, and then—I saw the card. You could have been faking it all along.” She deserved the truth. “But what do I do for a living? I fake, and I work hard at learning to fake. Baby, you don’t. What we shared was real. Wasn’t it?”

With what sounded suspiciously like a sob, she said, “Yes,” and turned her head away.

I wanted to hold her so badly I would nearly have risked letting her touch my naked body. Nearly.

I touched her chin, urging her to look at me again. “Whatever you do, whatever you are, you are a person and you deserve more than I gave you. I’ve been screwed up recently. I guess you know that.”

She shook her head, then nodded. “I sensed something. And then I read the blogs.”

“Sure you did.” I gave her a smile to show her I wasn’t offended. But I was. Generally I didn’t give a fuck what those things said, only that they left me alone. But I was good copy. “They follow me around. Ever since I fucked up the first time, they decided I was prime meat, and they’ve been tracking everything I do until I got paranoid. That’s the nearest I can get to an explanation.”

Unable to resist a moment longer, terrified she’d get out of bed and walk away, I kissed her. I needed that kiss.

Her hands stayed by her side, but she responded, lifted her face to kiss me back, let me slide my hand under her head, thread my fingers into her hair and kiss her senseless. I tilted my head and enjoyed the hell out of it. Even when she tentatively touched my side, I didn’t stop kissing her. The touch was barely there, a gentle nudge, then gone, but I felt it like an angel’s breath.

She’d guessed.

I finished the kiss and smiled down at her, feeling easier than I had in a long, long time. “Stay,” I said. “Stay the night.”

“What about—” The touch came again, fleeting and then gone.

“I have clothes on. And I can trust you, can’t I?”

She nodded. “You don’t like to be touched.”

“Only during sex.” I frowned. No, that was wrong. “You were right the first time. I don’t like being touched. I have to do the touching.”

“You have a phobia?”

“Yes, and if you tell anyone, that will screw me over completely.” I paused. “Just in case you were looking for revenge.”

“I wasn’t,” she assured me, and leaned up, snatching a kiss.

That small gesture made me choke up. That was the first time she’d initiated something, taken something she wanted, instead of responding to what I did. “I’ve been fucked up recently, and I took it out on you. Let me make it up to you.”

“How?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps you could stay a while? We’re a couple of blocks away from the museum. You could walk to work in ten minutes.”

She gazed at me. I loved when her eyes widened. “You mean you want me to stay tonight?”

“Yes.” I was going too fast for her. What I wanted I took, but I had to take care with this one. “How did you ever work for Madame? You flinch when anybody gets too close.”

She glanced away, but returned to me, honesty in her eyes. “Witley was my first date. I was desperate. My student loan came in, and I—” I waited until she was ready to carry on. “I was doing everything I could, but I got a demand from the bank. My room mate works for Madame, and she put me in touch.”