Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (23 page)

She heard Stefan order a whiskey and exchange a few words with the bartender. Someone moved from a bar chair next to him and he gestured toward it, smiling briefly, absently at Luna. Well played, sir, she thought. But the chill lingered in the air, along with the memory of Isabelle’s malignant stare. Suddenly the idea of flirting with Stefan lost its appeal. So Luna sat down and waited, drinking her drink.

She looked at her watch. Then, on an impulse, looked at her phone. And sighed, so softly that you could easily miss it, if you weren’t listening carefully.

‘Late,’ came a voice next to her. She turned to look at Stefan, whose eyes were resting on his drink.

‘Excuse me?’ she said.

He looked at his watch. ‘Ten past ten. He’s late.’ Eyes returning to his drink, he lifted his shoulders slightly. ‘Am I mistaken? Is it a friend you’re waiting for? A business acquaintance, perhaps?’

‘None of your business, perhaps?’ Luna replied.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Quite right, it’s not.’ He smiled down at his drink, lifted it to his mouth and drained it. For an awful second, Luna thought he was going to call her bluff, get up and walk away. But then he looked at her and said, ‘May I buy you a drink while you don’t wait for someone who isn’t your useless boyfriend?’

Luna pursed her lips, then lifted an eyebrow and tilted her wrist slightly atop the bar. Acquiescing.

As the bartender got to work on their drinks, Stefan walked to the other side of the bar and retrieved a chair, placing it next to hers. ‘So,’ he said, taking a seat. ‘As you say, it’s none of my business. But if I were lucky enough to be with a woman like you, I wouldn’t keep you waiting.’

Luna frowned and lifted her fingers on the bar. ‘He’s a busy man.’

To this, Stefan said nothing. Again, playing it very well, inviting her to keep talking.

‘He… owns his own company, and has other demands on his time,’ she continued. ‘He’s under a great deal of pressure right now.’

‘So much pressure that he’s asked you to meet him here and can’t even be bothered to show up on time,’ Stefan said, accepting another gimlet for Luna and passing it to her, his hand briefly touching hers, warm against it.

‘I take it you have always been a paragon of virtue, when it comes to the women in your life,’ Luna said lightly, lifting her martini glass to her blood red lips.

‘Touché,’ he replied, and sipped his own drink. ‘I have not.’

‘And yet you presume to lecture me.’

‘No, but I would lecture your boyfriend, I think. On how easy it can be to… misplace precious things. How, if I were him, I would be doing whatever it took to keep you; whatever you asked…’

‘Easily said,’ Luna remarked, as dark waters shifted and eddied between them. ‘You don’t know me, or what I might ask.’

She could sense the bartender, pretending disinterest as he methodically ran a cloth over the highball glasses on the shelf behind him, all the while scrutinising the rather extraordinary exchange taking place before him.

‘True,’ Stefan said, playing for time.

‘A
lot
of men talk that talk,’ Luna continued, injecting a slight note of world-weariness into her tone. ‘That they want a woman to take charge, to set the rules. And yet, here I sit, waiting for a man who may or may not be coming. And there you sit, talking the talk. And nothing changes.’

Beat. ‘Then let’s change it.’

Luna turned and looked at him, lifting an eyebrow.

‘What if I told you that tonight I would willingly do anything you asked of me,’ Stefan said. ‘
Anything.
’

Oh, the bartender was floored by this, dishcloth hovering over a glass. Waiting with baited breath for Luna’s response.

‘Would your…
boyfriend
…’ Stefan enunciated the word disparagingly, ‘make you a similar offer? I doubt it.’ To emphasise his point, he looked at his watch, and looked toward the empty doorway.

Luna contemplated. Then got down off her bar chair, taking her martini glass and emptying it, setting it back on the bar. She picked up her phone and clutch bag, opened the clasp on the bag and pulled out her hotel card key, placing it, too, on the bar.

‘Room 202,’ she said, nodding toward his glass, ‘Take your time, finish your drink. We have all night.’ And walked out of the bar.

Once back down on the pavement outside, Luna legged it as fast as her five-inch heels and three gimlets’ worth of alcohol allowed. Arriving at the hotel, she quickly explained to the nice-smelling man on the front desk that she’d given her only key to her boyfriend, and waited for him to code another one for her, looking around with approval at the candlelit reception area.

Duplicate key obtained, she climbed the stairs to the second floor two at a time, running down the hall and into her room. She quickly removed her dress and sandals, approaching the standing mirror in the corner, reapplying her lipstick and studying her figure in the blood red velvet and lace underwear she’d bought earlier that week from the lingerie shop in Lerwick, where they must now be assuming she belonged to a sex club.

She ran to the tub, placing the candles strategically around it, experiencing a moment’s panic when she remembered she didn’t have any matches. But the man on reception had anticipated her every need, leaving a pack on the table beside the jasmine plant.

Candles lit, bath running, accessories laid out on the bed, perfume reapplied… only then did Luna consider where she should position herself for Stefan’s arrival. On the bed? No, too obvious. Kneeling beside the tub? No, too submissive. In a chair, reading the complimentary in-house magazine? She snorted with laughter; really, she was useless at this whole seduction malarkey.

There was a quiet knock and Luna jumped – it hadn’t occurred to her that Stefan would do the polite thing. She steeled herself, picking up one of her accessories from atop the bed and going to the door. As Stefan entered, she stepped back and stood stock still, hands behind her back, allowing him to take in the image of the room and of her.

‘Did you mean what you said back there?’ she said eventually, walking toward him, watching his eyes drink her in. ‘About being willing to do
anything
?’ She came within millimetres of his chest, then glided left, circling around him. ‘Or were you just talking the talk. Entertaining our bartender.’

‘I meant it,’ he said. ‘Did you?’

In response, Luna swiftly stood on her toes and lifted her hands over his head, pulling a long, soft band of leather across his eyes and tying it off against the back of his scalp. Coming to stand in front of him, she ran her fingers over the strip of leather, assuring herself that it made an effective blindfold. Then raised her mouth to his ear.

‘No talking,’ she whispered. ‘That’s my only rule.’ And circled back behind him, raising her hands to his jacket lapels, removing it, throwing it on one of the armchairs. And slowly unbuttoning his shirt, reaching inside to run her palms along his beautiful pectoral muscles and perfect biceps. Pressing her lace-and-velvet-clad breasts into his back, she snaked her hands around his waist, undoing his belt.

When he stood naked before her, she placed his hand on her shoulder and led him to the bath, helping him in, blood red lips hovering over his as he sank into the water. She washed him… thoroughly, starting with his feet, moving up his legs, getting very thorough indeed after that and rewarded with visible evidence of how much he appreciated her attention to detail. By the time she finished washing him, kneeling behind him with one hand holding his chin and the other rubbing a sponge along his chest, Stefan was sighing and stretching in the tub, hips flexing under the water.

Leaving him to soak for a moment, Luna laid out a towel on the bed and studied the rest of her accessories, five thin lengths of soft, pliable leather. Asking herself if she really had this in her. She was… well, she was not Stefan, she knew that.

His voice replayed in her head.
I meant it. Did you?

After drying him off, she led him to the bed and laid him on his stomach. One by one, she tied his wrists and ankles to the bed, testing the loops around his wrists to ensure they weren’t cutting off his circulation. Gratified and increasingly aroused that he accepted all this unquestioningly, clearly intrigued as to what she would do next.

One of the complimentary products in the room was a small bottle of oil that smelled like geraniums and bergamot. Luna poured a small amount onto his shoulders and silently began working on them. She took her time, moving to his neck before honing in on a small knot of tension between his shoulder blades. At first she knelt beside him, but as she got to the base of his spine she straddled his waist, digging her fingers into him, watching the play of light along his glistening back muscles.

When eventually he made a low noise of gratification and his hips began to rise and fall under her, she knelt between his knees, massaging his perfectly formed buttocks, delving between them and massaging there too till he was arching under her hands and the leather at his wrists and ankles stretched taut against the spindles of the bed. She reached back and untied his ankles then, urging him onto his knees while his head remained on the pillow, hands tied to the bed rails.

Pouring the last of the oil into her hand, she let it warm in her palm, then reached underneath him, finding the head of his cock and slowly, slowly lubricating his entire length. She brought her other hand down to assist, alternately squeezing and stroking and teasing him, listening to his breathing becoming laboured, watching the sinews in his thighs flex, feeling his balls begin to tighten under her ministrations.

Luna was kneeling behind him now, the soles of his feet bookending her. She bent her head down to his ass, kissing first one cheek, then the other, then slowly sliding her mouth to the top of his cleft, hands still working along his shaft.

He tensed then, and she heard the sound of the leather straps at his wrists stretching.

‘Luna—’ he warned.

Her hands immediately stilled and she rocked back on her heels. ‘One rule, I gave you,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘One rule.’ With that, she reached for the fifth and final leather strap.

‘Yes, but Lu—’ Stefan began, only for her to quickly drag the strap across his mouth, between his teeth, pulling it tight, tying it off behind his head. Cut off mid-protest, he made of noise of frank surprise, tilting his head to one side, revealing his gagged profile. And Luna waited, waited for a cue from him as to what would happen next, whether he would allow her to continue. After some seconds, he lowered his forehead back onto the pillow, and she had her answer.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘where was I?’

She returned her hands to his cock, and lowered her mouth to his ass again. Kissing the top of his cleft, moving lower, and inserting her tongue. Commencing to lick him, adulating him with her mouth even as her hands worshipped his hard, straining cock. Tasting geraniums and bergamot and… him.

He began to whimper, a sound she had never heard from him before, and Luna’s sex ached and throbbed in sympathy. His stomach muscles tightened, his balls drew up till they practically disappeared. Seconds later his body began to jerk, and she felt his come coursing up through his shaft as he cried out helplessly against his gag.

Showing him the same courtesy he’d shown her the first time he tied her to a bed, Luna immediately set about untying the bindings at Stefan’s wrists, then removed his gag, and finally the strip of leather over his eyes. As he rolled onto his side, gasping for breath, she went to the bathroom and washed her hands, then returned to the bedroom, putting on her dress and sitting down on one of the armchairs to pull on her sandals.

Last, she gathered all her leather straps, as well as all the complimentary products she hadn’t gotten around to using, and loaded them into her backpack.

‘The room is paid for,’ she said as she opened the door. ‘Stay as long as you like.’

He arrived home two hours later to find Luna sitting, legs crossed, on the bright red sofa in the living room wearing a pair of his sweatpants and one of his t-shirts, her hair in a braid over one shoulder, face devoid of make-up and body still warm from the shower.

Stefan came in and sat down in one of the armchairs opposite the sofa, throwing his keys on the maple table. He said nothing, staring at her with something between astonishment and consternation.

‘Problem?’ Luna said at length.

Stefan opened his mouth, but couldn’t seem to find any words.

‘Only,’ she continued, ‘it seemed like you enjoyed it.’ Her lips curved and she lifted her eyebrows. ‘Admittedly, it’s hard to tell when a man has a gag in his mouth.’

‘I enjoyed it,’ he confirmed after some seconds. ‘Very much.’

‘That’s good to hear,’ Luna said, uncrossing her legs and stretching them on the couch. ‘Because, I have to tell you, I found it extremely arousing, doing that to you. So much so that I remain extremely aroused, two hours later.’ Stefan’s eyes widened at this news and he sat up in his chair. ‘So if you’ve gotten over your scruples at being bound and gagged and… abused by your girlfriend,’ Luna went on as he got to his feet and headed toward her, ‘I’d appreciate it if you got down to doing your duty.’

Needing no further instruction, Stefan knelt on the floor in front of her, abruptly pulling down the sweatpants and opened her legs, pushing them wide and butting his nose and mouth into her apex, sucking her in, devouring her. Within seconds she was gasping, moaning, her swollen clitoris yearning into the punishment he was meting out. She placed her hand on his nape, curled her fingers in his hair, and arched her back atop the sofa, crying out for him just as he had for her.

And then he was on his back on the sky blue rug, and she was on top of him, loosening his belt, releasing his ready cock from his trousers. Mounting him and riding him hard until he came, his body jutting and writhing beneath her.

They lay together for some minutes, panting next to each other. ‘Never again,’ Stefan said eventually, ‘do I want to hear the “oh, Stefan, you are so much more sexually experienced than me” speech.’