Into Her Fire (Fantasy Heights) (8 page)

All they could do now was wait.

A lot more than Nicole kept Amanda awake long into the night. Everyone kept making it sound as if ‘once they raise your security clearance’ the clouds would part and the information angels would sing, but she was getting the distinct feeling that the higher she climbed at Fantasy Heights, the less she belonged. She already knew Thomas and Marla were agents, of a sort, here to police and protect, which made them investigators and enforcers. Aside from some fraud investigations at the bank, Amanda had no experience with anything like that, and wasn’t sure she wanted any. What if this higher security clearance meant she would be expected to learn?

Twin bursts of conflicting emotions sparked in her belly. Fear, for one. She hadn’t signed on to be drafted into anything like that. But there was also a strong vein of excitement running through the notion that she could become something more potent than a headliner at Fantasy Heights.

Her last thoughts were a jumbled combination of Josh and Thomas, their split with Steph, and what would happen on set tomorrow. A couple days had passed without a word from Thomas. Had she convinced him that his suspicions were unfounded? Should she try to find out for Josh what Thomas had been hunting these last three months? Josh hadn’t asked her outright, but the request had been made nonetheless. Her thoughts drew a tenuous line to that moment in Haynes House when Thomas kept saying, “It doesn’t track. It just doesn’t track.”

She awoke with the same things on her mind. Struggling to maintain a calm, wait-and-see attitude, she made it through the day and reported for duty that evening.

In wardrobe, Kara’s mood hadn’t improved. Except now, instead of tirades, she’d lapsed into strained silence. Amanda didn’t linger. She plucked her blue and white servant garb from the closet, twisted her own hair into a loose chignon, and retreated to a dressing room.

She found Thomas in the greenroom. He was leaning against a counter, thumbing something into his smartphone. Despite the upset caused by his haircut, nothing could change what was essentially Thomas. He was the pirate king, dangerous, secretive and morally flexible. Also unspeakably handsome in black breeches and black boots beneath a Prussian king’s royal purple velvet waistcoat embellished with gold thread. His face, too, had been embellished with a thin, vicious scar around his eye, one she’d seen Kara apply before, many, many times.

He was either ignoring her, or hadn’t yet noticed her approach. On her part, her mind took an unexpected jog toward the things Josh had told her: Steph telling Warnous about Thomas. The military. How Thomas had idolized Bill Dunkirk, and the way he blamed himself for what happened.

Against her wishes, Amanda’s imagination produced a full-blown nightmare. A bomb going off. The force of it hitting Thomas, driving debris into his back and left side, and the chaotic, horrifying aftermath.

Her heart was pounding when he looked up at last. His face was as bland and expressionless as the wall behind him. He didn’t even bother to say hello. “Blue-chip client. Usually this guy doesn’t go for much theater, but he wanted to try out our set. I figured he could play a visiting ambassador, and you could be the spy sneaking him into the throne room to poison my cup.”

Damn him. Here she was, sick to her stomach at the thought of him being hurt, and he blindsides her with another unfairly suspicious shot. The man didn’t even have the shame to blush.

She said, “Please tell me we’re using real poison.”

He set his phone down and crossed his arms across his chest. “You’ll get your shot at me once we’re done. Until then, keep your mind on the job.”

“Whatever.”

“Take him into the throne room, let him do his bit with the vial and the cup, then take him to one of the chambers and get him going. I’ll walk in and catch you, and deal with you both accordingly. This guy struggles with immersion, so don’t mess around. He’s only really here for the sex, which isn’t much. He’d save himself about thirty grand a year if he could work up the guts to ask his wife to wear a strap-on.”

Amanda crunched up one cheek in a sympathetic grimace and mulled the loose stage directions a couple times, then left the greenroom to collect the client. He was plain, with graying hair at his temples and a rather detached, dreamy demeanor. He stood waiting in black finery that reminded her of Neil’s sea captain uniform, which contributed largely to the manner of her approach.

Right out in the open, with other staff and clients still standing around in the commons area, Amanda placed one hand behind the client’s head. She pulled his mouth down to hers, and sent her other hand directly down the front of his breeches.

The man did balk. His hands reflexively raised to his shoulders, and he let out a yelp before he realized his fantasy was underway. Once he did, he relaxed and opened his mouth against hers, and she felt his cock begin to stiffen in her hand.

Letting it go, she pushed a bit harder until she was cupping his balls, kneading them, gentle and slow. The guy’s breath came quick and erratic.

She realized Thomas had never given them names, but it hardly mattered. “Did you bring it, my lord?”

The client, who she decided to dub Earl, parried her nicely. “Yes. Show me the way.”

Amanda removed her hand to take one of his, leading him quickly around a corner and toward the throne room door. Remembering her orders about wasting no time, she stayed quiet. She simply led him onward, onto the dazzling set. Even after all this time, it still amazed her the level of detail they’d poured into this place. Someone had even added a gorgeously carved chair to the table, one fit for a king.

The pair of them approached the scarred bronze goblet placed at the king’s setting. Hands shaking, Earl brought out a small blue vial and pulled out a glass stopper to dump the contents into the goblet.

Amanda waited until he’d set the vial down before carrying on. She drew him back a few steps toward the padded platform in the center of the
U
-shaped dining tables. “And now for my payment.”

The
client lowered his head. Mouth against her throat, he did his best to give her whisker burn and send her nipples taut and erect. He backed her onto the platform. She draped her arms around his neck and held on, letting him have his way for a time. He yanked at laces and pulled at her costume. Once she lay bare on the platform, he pushed her breasts together and rested his face between them.

She couldn’t help a smile. He might pay a lot of money for Thomas’s attention, but he was a boob man, and had no trouble stirring her even further. He twisted and pinched her nipples, still tender from the earrings, making her twenty times more sensitive than usual. The potent, sharp sensations kick-started the chemical rollercoaster ride. She was near gasping before she remembered what she was supposed to be doing at the moment.

It took some time to wrest control back from Earl. Longer still to haul him away from the main set and into one of three darker, candlelit chambers. In it was a smaller version of the throne along with a wide massage table and all the usual trappings. She stripped their client and began the wet, slippery process of washing and oiling him for Thomas. She started him on the throne. Making him spread his legs wide apart, she worked down from the top of his head to spend a considerably longer time on his penis and thighs. Afterward, she coaxed him over to the massage table to bind his wrist and ankles. She placed a wedge pillow beneath his hips. He knew the routine, and got comfortable with his bottom in the air. She liked his body and used the sponge and a lot of warm running water to get him deeply, deeply relaxed.

She hated to unbind him and make him move so she could oil his front. She opted instead to climb onto the table with him, straddling his head while he remained face down. Using her breasts and hands, she rubbed the length of his back, slathered in oil.

At some point during the long, elaborate massage, Thomas had come along with Max, his usual observer. She didn’t see the two of them standing in the doorway until she climbed down to begin focusing on Earl’s bottom, preparing him for Thomas.

She sneaked Max a clandestine wave. To Thomas, she mouthed, “Five minutes.”

He disappeared again and Amanda went back to work, pouring warm oil between Earl’s buttocks. She liked it when he parted his knees, freeing up passage to his balls. She rubbed him there for a while at the same time she wriggled a finger into his anus. His groan of pleasure made her move on to lubing up her fingers and getting serious about stretching him. Two fingers, then three, twisting and pumping. He kept tilting his pelvis down, so relaxed and so obviously enjoying the gentle yet determined play that she almost envied his ability to ride it without losing himself the way she often did.

Figuring her five minutes must be almost up, she began to insert the butt plug. Bit by bit, in slow stages, he took it in. Then seeing him stretched around the blue plug, she felt that now-familiar pang inside followed by an even stronger rush of envy.

Don’t, she warned herself. She shouldn’t think about Thomas doing these things to her. It only made everything worse.

She returned to her former position, using her breasts and an extra coating of oil to coax her client back down into that sleepy, buzzy lull.

Even though she and Earl both knew Thomas would show up sooner or later, he still managed to scare the crap out of them. In the close confines of the chamber his angry shout was loud as a thunderclap. The client couldn’t escape. Earl was tied down, so Thomas came after her first.

That part, she was used to. What happened next changed their usual savage seduction dynamic. Thomas caught one of her wrists and trapped her against his side. He held her there while yanking Earl’s ankle restraints free, and then his handcuffs.

So curious about what new twist Thomas had in mind, she forgot to struggle. She renewed the effort once more when he forced Earl off the table. After he yanked the wedge pillow away too, she was forcibly put in its place, face up.

Thomas made Earl bind her wrists, and then the real fun began. She never tired of watching Thomas perform with another man. Even men taller or heavier or stronger were somehow diminished by the force of his will. When he gave an order, there was an edge about him, a dangerous promise of dire—probably violent and painful—consequences to disobedience. No one ever disobeyed, least of all Earl, who kept his eyes down while drawing Thomas’s waistcoat off his shoulders and then letting it fall to the floor.

Thomas kicked off his own boots then cowed Earl into unbuckling his belt and stripping off the breeches. The older man didn’t embellish the act. She’d seen other men go down on their knees immediately and take Thomas’s cock into their mouths, making him close his eyes and gather his control, gripping it with a stranglehold.

Thomas didn’t seem to have that kind of tension with this client. He was a lot gentler than usual when he reached down to take hold of Earl’s oiled penis with one hand and cup his balls with the other. He began to knead the tip and balls at the same time, and then came her favorite part. He kept forcing eye contact with Earl. To an outsider, it might look like a straightforward act of domination, but this was so much more than that. Amanda understood exactly what it was about, and wished she had the presence of mind on set to do the same. Thomas was connecting to his client, not letting Earl off the hook by allowing him to close his eyes and withdraw behind some impersonal, hazy veil of arousal. The eye contact demanded awareness, bringing a client out into the moment, feeling another man touch him in a deliberate attempt to cause him pleasure.

That, right there, was the reason Thomas had such a following. It might make clients uncomfortable sometimes, but the connection made them face up to their desires. Own them, experience them, and enjoy them, unashamed.

Even though she wasn’t part of the equation just then, Amanda heaved out a hot breath of sensual envy. So hot. Her insides churned and tingled and simmered, longing to be similarly incited.

Earl succumbed nicely, holding the eye contact long enough to satisfy even Thomas before he rose up to reach Thomas’s mouth with his own. Both pairs of eyes slid closed during the open-mouthed, smoldering kiss, Earl’s gesture of trust and submission.

Lord have mercy, she thought, watching Thomas kiss him back with that ethereal connection she wished she could reach with him, but never had. Maybe there was something to Earl’s approach. Maybe Thomas couldn’t trust anyone who wouldn’t submit.

The idea left her thoughtful but suffered a very short shelf life while chemical need coursed through her veins.

When Thomas finally decided to move things along, she did have to fight rather hard not to smile as the reason he’d positioned her face up in the middle of the table came clear. When he budged Earl against the table’s edge and bent him over, the client’s face ended up directly between her breasts, albeit sideways.

She let her eyes seek Thomas and promptly wished she hadn’t. He reached over to touch before Earl could, taking a nipple between his fingers. Seeing the flame in his dark eyes, she knew exactly what he was thinking about: the earrings.

While she was busy wanting him so badly she couldn’t breathe, Earl took advantage. He drew her other nipple into his mouth and suctioned on. Thomas let her go to remove Earl’s plug and toss it onto a receiving table. After a momentary pause to slide on a condom, Thomas soon had Earl’s mouth opening reflexively at the strong sensations of anal penetration.

Thomas took his time, careful as he always had to be, and once he had his tip worked inside Earl, he did the usual thing and flipped that switch. Then his hands became gentler, no longer forcing his will on the client. Now the fantasy became all about getting Earl off to a gratuitous degree. Amanda was so captivated watching the muscles in Thomas’s torso and thighs writhe and contract that she hardly noticed Earl’s grasping hands kneading her breasts.

Thomas called her attention away by leaning down, taking a slow, deep thrust into the client while lowering his head to kiss her this time. She had to rise up a bit to meet him. It was so easy to forget what a jerk he could be when he kissed that way, gentle and teasing. Coaxing. It didn’t fit into the fantasy at all, but he didn’t appear to care.