His Indecent Demands (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire) (4 page)

He manages a laugh. Once again, it’s a rare moment that she is seeing – one in which he is not dominant and overpowering. It hints at multiple layers within the man – a nice surprise.

“Of course,” he says, going to the back of the tree.

He loosens her bonds and gathers the rope while she rubs her mildly chafed wrists, indented with rope striations. They put their clothes silently back on again and get into the car.

5

They drive through the country tracks once again, the wheels of the car trundling over uneven hillocks.

“Where are we going?” she asks him.

“I thought we’d explore the non-sexual side of our bargain.”

She wonders what that means.

After a while, she remarks, “There’s no one around for miles.”

It’s true. They haven’t seen a single soul or structure or car in these golden meadowlands, now sunken in purple twilight. There are only trees and grassland and flowers rippling in the wind. Birds wheel in the sky.

“That’s because it’s private property. I own it.”

She’s astonished. But of course, she tells herself, there should be nothing surprising about it. He can own anything he wants – he’s a billionaire after all. But to own acres and acres of wide open space like this –

She gazes out of the car window, savoring the possibilities.

“You’re not afraid of trespassers?” she says.

“There’s only so much you can do. I don’t fence it up, but there’s a natural border of trees and hills further south. There are signs here and there, but like I said, there’s only so much I can do.”

It strikes her that this is as close to having a normal conversation with him than she has had. She doesn’t want to spoil the moment. She glances at his profile. In the setting sun, he is a glorious silhouette in repose. Truly, he is a sculptor’s dream.

They finally approach a pair of wrought-iron gates. These crank open to the touch of his remote button. A wall of iron spikes stretch out from either side of the gates for as long as she can see.

“You live here?” she intuits.

“Yes.”

“So it’s an enclave within your own property?”

“Sort of.”

She has never heard of such a thing, but she supposes they exist for the very rich.

They drive in. There are gardens beyond gardens – a profusion of bushes and hedges and trees and crazily paved mosaic paths. The shrubbery has a tinge of wildness to them, much like their owner.

The house looms up. It’s an imposing manor – two stories with gabled windows and a sloping roof. Ivy creeps all over its walls. It looks old, as in centuries old.

“Do you live here alone?” she asks.

There’s so much she wants to ask him. She is naturally curious about him – this strange, mercurial and phenomenally rich man.

“Yes. I have a housekeeping team which comes in during the day, and a gardening team which comes in three times a week.”

“No security?”

He flashes her a glance. “You do ask a lot of questions.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not. I have no security as in manpower, if that’s what you are inferring to, because I value my privacy. But the house is well guarded with state-of-the-art technology.”

He parks the car in front of the entrance. In an open garage built like a pavilion with Doric columns and with a white Grecian roof laden with ivy, she sees a bevy of other luxury cars – a Merc, an Audi 500, a red Ferrari, a Maserati, among many more. He obviously likes his cars.

They get out. She stands in front of the twin oak doors. The house is like something from another era. It emits an air of mystery, of secrets lurking within its shadows. This is not to say she thinks it’s haunted – by it is certainly haunted by a patina of a forbidding past.

Much like the owner himself.

“Is this your family house?” she asks. She can’t help himself. She wants to know everything.

“No. It came to me six years ago when its previous owner lost a bet.” He raises an eyebrow. “Never place a bet unless you know you’ll win it.”

“What was the bet?”

He grins. “You’re reaching, Susan Chalmers. No more questions, OK?”

“OK,” she says contritely.

When the week is up and she’s VP, she’s going to ask him all the questions she wants. It’s up to him to decide if he should answer them, of course.

There’s a boxlike grey panel beside the door – a piece of ultra-modern equipment in stark contrast with the rest of the house. Channing depresses a button and it slides open. Red and green flashing lights wink within. With a whirring sound, a lever protrudes outward, displaying a fingerprint pad. He places his index finger upon it and something clicks within the doors.

He opens one door. “Step right in.”

She’s impressed. “What if someone breaks the windows?”

“They are made of unbreakable glass.”

“You’re not secretly Batman, are you?”

He laughs.

She grins back. She’s enjoying these non-sexual moments with him. It’s as though they are having a real relationship. Well, as real as he would allow it, anyway.

With just a moment’s hesitation, she steps into the manor.

The doors open into a wide hall. The floor is black and white checkered marble. A parade of bronze busts greets her. They are green with age and mounted on white columns in seemingly random locations. The busts are unlike any she has ever seen before. They look as though they should belong in a museum.

“Wow, are these ancient?”

“Mesopotamia,” he says. “Ancient Babylon.”

Where did you get them?
she wants to ask, but senses he won’t tell her anyway. She wonders if the rumors are really true then, and in addition to his purported gold bullion, he has amassed someone else’s collection of private treasures as well.

The hall leads to several rooms and a grand sweeping staircase. Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and the wall art is a mixture of framed papyri and ancient porcelain plates. One of the rooms is a comfortable family lounge with armchairs and sofas. Another is a den.

A little circular robot whirs into the hall. She steps back, amazed. It completely ignores her as it circumnavigates the hall in a zigzag manner.

“My robotic house cleaner,” Channing explains. “There’s one upstairs too. Too bad they are not sophisticated enough to do dusting as yet, or I’d get rid of the human housekeeping team.”

“Interesting,” she says truthfully, eyeing the robot in suspicion.

“And now for what I want you to do,” he says. “Follow me.”

Wow, she thinks, he gets right to the point. She’s still a little sore from the lovemaking. Oh sorry, she should call it ‘fucking’, as he does. In a good way, of course.

She follows him meekly down a passageway, and down a flight of dimly lit stairs. She doesn’t know what to expect. A wine cellar, perhaps. Maybe he wants her to polish the bottles, or something worse. Her mind dances with possibilities.

At the bottom of the stairs is a chamber, beyond which sits an iron door. Dread stops her momentarily in her tracks.

“What is that?” she asks.

He flickers a glance at her. “It’s a dungeon.”

Oh.

He watches her face – the fear that must be showing on it.

“Don’t worry, Susan. We’re not going in there . . . today.”

Today? She feels faint. So there will be the possibility of tomorrow.

“What’s in it?” she asks.

“You’ll find out soon enough. But not today.”

The walls of the chamber are lined with closets. He opens one. Inside are layers and layers of clothes hanging from a rack. He selects one and hands it to her.

“I’d like to see you in that.” His startling blue eyes are steadfast as they hold hers. “After you’ve changed, meet me upstairs. Can you cook?”

This takes her by surprise.

“Uh, yes.”

“Are you a good cook?”

“Fairly.”

“Then make us both dinner. There’s plenty of foodstuff in the kitchen. Just don’t ask me what or where, but there’s plenty.”

He wants me to cook for him?
She is both astonished and puzzled. Does he secretly want a domestic goddess then? One whom he can dominate and fuck at will, and who will play the part of the little woman as well?

He turns tail and goes up the stairs.

She stares at the outfit he gave her.

6

She walks nervously up the stairs. He’s waiting for her in the passageway, just as he said he would.

He grins as soon as he sees her.

“Nice, very nice,” he says.

She blushes. She has never worn such an outfit before, but then, she has never done a lot of things before she met him. Her waist is cinched in a tight black bodice and her breasts are lifted by two whalebone push-ups whose cups are are red rose petals. Her nipples are completely revealed. Her skirt is a flouncy black number shaped like a puff pastry.

She wears no panties underneath, but her skirt is so high at the back that it reveals the lower half of her naked buttocks. If someone were to peer beneath at her front, they would see her pubic triangle as well – a silky black patch against all that black taffeta.

She’s wearing her black garters and stockings as well as her heels. To complete the sexy maid ensemble, her hair is decked with a lacy white maid’s headpiece. The tiniest lacy white apron adorns her front.

“You look very fetching,” he says, going to her.

She stands there awkwardly as he gropes her large breasts. His hands go round her corseted waist, nipped more tightly than she would have thought possible, and then to her buttocks. He pinches the sweet, firm flesh.

He takes one of her hands and places it on the crotch of his pants.

“You’re making me hard again.”

And indeed, he is tented at his crotch – a wondrously hard bulge that she can clearly feel. Her fingers boldly grope him there, sizing him, and his eyes light up.

“You’re enjoying this a little too much, aren’t you?” he says.

She has not stopped blushing. Truth be told, she enjoys his obvious desire for her – the fact he wants to touch her intimately all the time.

“But I’m not going to fuck you again right now, much as I want to.” He takes his hands away from her body. “I need to go out to do one little errand. Have dinner ready by the time I come back in about two hours.”

“Yes, sir.” She dips her eyes to his crotch, and back again to his beautiful face.

She watches him leave. The front door shuts and she hears the distant musical arming of the manor’s security system.

She’s trapped inside this alien house – an indentured servant in a sexy maid’s outfit that leaves too little to the imagination. Alone with a robot and the silent voices of a dozen Mesopotamian half statues.

It’s almost entirely too weird.

*

She finds the kitchen easily enough. It’s very spacious and rustic in décor – with terracotta tiles, a cozy worktable in the middle and gleaming copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. It also has a large brick fireplace, now dormant of course. She can definitely see herself at home here. It’s the most normal room in the entire house so far. She hasn’t been upstairs yet, but she reckons it may be filled with more Babylonian curios.

She finds some lasagna sheets, ricotta cheese, tomatoes and béchamel sauce in the refrigerator, and sets to making some lasagna. That should be easy enough. Channing was right. It’s a very well-stocked kitchen. No doubt his housekeeping team has been thoroughly using the spice rack, because pepper stains smear the shelf everywhere.

As she busies herself in her task, she almost forgets she is half-naked.

She puts the lasagna into the oven to bake. The cleaning robot scurries into the kitchen, and she narrowly avoids tripping over it.

“Thanks a lot,” she says.

It emits one beep – possibly a bad word in robot language. Then she hears a mirror beep somewhere outside the door, a distance away. Another robot?

She sets about clearing the saucepans, bowls and ladles she has used and putting them into the dishwasher.

“You know, if you were that smart,” she says to the robot, “you’d help me with these.”

It ignores her as usual by circling and sucking up the unseen debris on the kitchen floor.

“You have really good manners. Just in case you can’t tell the difference, I was being sarcastic.”

Footsteps sound outside the kitchen door. She freezes. She hasn’t pegged on Channing being back so soon.

“Sir?” she calls.

She wonders if he would let her call him by his first name. Another alarming thought seizes her – what if this is his housekeeping team coming in to clean . . . and with her dressed like this?

Yikes!

In panic, she looks around for something to shield herself with, but can find nothing. Not even a tablecloth.