Owned By Fate (10 page)

Her green eyes flew to his, full of uncertainty and unwanted excitement. His view from above allowed him to see down the front of her blouse to her breasts, where they swelled over the top of her bra, barely containing them. She loved this. She wanted it, whether or not she would confess it. “I can’t do that,” she breathed.

In slow degrees, he let his fist tighten in her hair until she whimpered. “You will do as you’re told.”

As if she’d only been waiting for the choice to be taken away, to absolve herself of any responsibility, she fell onto the floor in front of him. She cast him a sultry look over her shoulder before bending forward, placing her cheek on the floor and raising her ass in the air. The sight of those hands curling around the hem of her skirt and dragging the material up to her hips had him gripping the seat until his knuckles turned white. For the love of God, she was glorious all on her own, but with his marks on her, she was transcendent. Her delicate skin was pink, just enough to assure him he hadn’t been too rough.

His body moved of its own accord. He fell to his knees behind her, smoothing a hand over what he’d done. The evidence of what she’d allowed. Remembering part of his purpose, he slipped the lotion from his pocket, squeezed some into his palm, and warmed it by rubbing his hands together. As he did so, his eyes were drawn to the black garter around her thigh. It was starting to feel like his own version of a collar, but he had a feeling he’d better keep that thought to himself. The strip of matching black silk shielding her flesh consumed his attention then. He watched the material drag over her pussy as he massaged the lotion into her sore bottom, her thighs trembling at his touch.

“I don’t need you to tell me you liked it, Caroline. I can tell by how proudly you’re showing off your hot, tight, obviously unfucked ass to me.” He kissed her right cheek, dragged his tongue up to the small of her back. “But I want to hear you say it anyway. Tell me how you got wet every time you sat down this morning. Were you scared to move in case these damp thighs slid together and everyone heard?”

“Yes.” She heaved a jagged breath and pushed her ass into his hands. “Feels so good… Don’t stop.”

Her words, her reaction, confirmed that she
needed
this. Maybe even as much as he did. But Jesus, he shouldn’t have allowed himself to taste her skin, because his mouth wanted all of her now.
No
. Sore. She’d told him she was
sore
. The soothing circular motion he made with his hands was causing her thong to shift to the side, giving him a glimpse of the delicious, slick spot beneath.
Christ.

“You’re not too sore to have your pussy eaten. Are you, Caroline?”

“N-no. No.” She tilted her hips higher with a moan. “I need you to. Please.”

The words were still leaving her mouth as he jerked her panties to the side and ran his tongue from her entrance down to her clit. Her muffled scream and writhing hips told him she was still overly sensitive from last night. If he kept up this concentrated attack, it would be over too quickly, and he wanted to savor her for a while. He used the pad of his thumb to tease her with slow circles while he continued soothing the pink skin of her ass with hot, open-mouthed kisses.

“God, I love it when you beg.” He went back down and gave her clit a hard lick. “When your bottom stops stinging, you’re going to beg me to rough it up again. Hearing those words will be almost as sweet as your pussy.”

He couldn’t hold back any longer, had grown desperate to see her reach fulfillment. Never ceasing in his gentle stroking of her bottom, he flicked his tongue against her clit, burying his face between her legs so he could suck her into his mouth and draw deeply.

“Master
. Yes, yes… Oh,
God
.” He wrapped an arm around her hips at the last minute to keep her from collapsing as she shuddered violently. Her close-mouthed scream was the hottest fucking thing he’d ever heard, hot enough to make him want to give her another release, but she surprised him by abruptly sitting back on her heels. Before he could order her back into position, she turned around and…kissed him. It wasn’t tentative or reluctant, either. It wasn’t a kiss that said she knew this thing between them was wrong but couldn’t help her need for it. No, this was surrender. She clutched the sides of his face and opened her mouth for his tongue, daring him not to enter. As if he had a choice when she tasted so fucking sweet and was finally,
finally
letting herself go, right there in his arms.

Jonah knew what would happen next, though. He’d throw her down onto her back and fuck her until she screamed loudly enough for the limousine driver to be seriously worried. And when it was all over, she’d tell him he was bad for her. She’d walk away. So he wouldn’t give her what she so clearly wanted, as painful and difficult as it would be. He knew all about pain, though, and he could play the long game if it meant seeing her again. In fact, he was starting to think he’d do just about anything for that. Furthermore, he’d come to see her only after vowing to himself that it would be for her only. He’d initiated her into his world last night, and it had been his responsibility to comfort her. Not leave her worse off than before.

Her hands fumbled with the fly of his pants, stopping to squeeze his pulsing erection. Jonah groaned at the pressure he’d been craving, but going completely against his instincts, he stayed her wrists by grabbing them. “No, sweetheart.”

“No?” She heaved the single word. “Please, I need to…I want to use my mouth—”

“No.”
Damn, he was a bastard. To punish her like this. The way her mind worked, she would go crazy knowing this encounter had been one-sided and left unfinished. Hell, it might kill him, too. But he couldn’t let her get away with the damage she’d done. Not without being disciplined. “Not this time.”

“Jonah.”
She said his name like a curse, shrewd eyes clearing of just enough lust to analyze him. “This is my punishment, isn’t it? You’re punishing me.”

He stared at the ceiling, hating himself as she shoved her skirt back down and crammed her hand against her mouth. Outside, he saw Serve come into view and rolled down the partition separating them from the driver.

“Please make sure to take Ms. Preston back to the same spot where we picked her up.”

“Yes, sir.”

Don’t leave her. Hold on to her.

The only thing that kept him from scooping her up in his arms was the sliver of a chance his actions might bring her back for one more night. Instead, he reached over and took her chin in his hand. “Whatever happens, however you push me away or slander me, I’ll be waiting for you to come to me. If that makes me sick, so be it.” He let go of her chin and gripped his hardness through his pants. “For now, though, look at your punishment, Caroline. You’ve displeased your master.”

A quiet sob fell from her mouth, rending him in two. She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them tightly. God, it almost killed him seeing her hurt, but there was another, darker part of him that needed her to be affected by him this way.

“Good-bye, Caroline.”

Shutting the door behind him and walking toward Serve, away from the glimpse of heaven she would give him if he let her, felt like a prison march.

Chapter Eleven

Caroline groaned at the ceiling of Oliver’s car as yet another slow, bass-heavy song began pumping through the expensive stereo of his Jaguar. Normally, her brother’s musical choices didn’t bother her, but today, everything he played reminded her of Serve. Of the brooding music played within its walls. Of Jonah.

She glanced at Oliver, wondering if the dark tone of the music reflected her brother’s mood. It was Saturday, hence their prescheduled road trip to their father’s house on Long Island for brunch. Her brother hadn’t yet brought up the article, and she was dreading the moment he would. On top of everything that had transpired with Jonah, she didn’t think she could handle Oliver’s disappointment.

Jonah
. Just thinking his name made her want to squirm. They hadn’t parted ways on the best of terms, to put it mildly, but dammit if her desire to see him again didn’t increase with each passing hour. Until he had soothed her with the lotion, her bottom had felt distinctly tender. She should’ve been pleased that the reminder of her transformation into a submissive had faded, but instead, she’d felt an odd sense of loss. As if something were missing. Frankly, it disconcerted the hell out of her. The only thing that had calmed her was the garter she slid up her thigh each morning.

Look at your punishment, Caroline. You’ve displeased your master
.

Oliver briefly tore his gaze from the road. “You going to tell me what’s up?”

“It’s nothing.” She played with the window controls. Was it possible to feel bereft of someone you’d known such a short amount of time? Or did this restless gloom come part and parcel with the knowledge that her world would never be rocked quite so handily ever again?

“I’m just wondering how many of my brain cells this music will kill before we reach Long Island.”

“Ah, come on. You’ve got a few to spare.”

“Are you asking for a donation?” 

He sent her an affronted look, but his eyes were full of humor as he tossed the iPhone onto her lap. “All right, put on your bubble-gum pop music. I won’t tell anyone.”

She scrolled through the selections on Oliver’s iPhone, fingers freezing when she landed on Radiohead
.
Memories bombarded her. Jonah kissing her furiously; his mouth, hot and possessive; his sure touch delving between her legs while bass pumped from some invisible source. That first night, he’d put one of their songs on repeat, but she had no idea which one. Why was she tempted to put the band on shuffle, hoping it came on? It would accomplish nothing, except possibly make her hot and bothered two feet from her brother.

Yuck.

“The iPhone doesn’t operate under mind control, Ro,” Oliver said. “You operate it manually. Archaic, I know.”

“Sorry,” Caroline said, quickly selecting Lady Gaga and placing the iPhone back in the cupholder. “So…are you still seeing Holly?”

“Holly?” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Oh,
Holly
. No, no. We only went on a couple of dates, but then she bought the cat.”

“Getting a cat was a reason to stop seeing her?”

“She attached an engagement ring to his collar and had him delivered to my office. Along with a written marriage proposal.”

“O-
kay
. Sayonara, Holly.”

Oliver grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “That’s what I get for breaking my one-date rule. Anyway, I have a date with Nina the ballerina tonight.
Just
the one date.”

Caroline smiled out the passenger window. “You’ve always been a sucker for rhymes. Didn’t you date Sally O’Malley in high school?”

“Sure I did.” She caught his wink reflected in the glass. “Often, too.”

This was why she loved her brother. No matter what was happening in their personal and professional lives, they were still friends. She should just bring up the article. If he was laughing with her, how bad could the conversation be? She started to talk, but Oliver cut her off.

“So, if you had to guess, how big is the brick our father is shitting right now?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

“Sorry, but this is just too poetic.” Oliver’s white teeth flashed as he smiled. “Since your article went live, the IT crew has been working around the clock because our website keeps crashing. Our subscriptions have doubled.” He cast her a sidelong glance. “You might have been pretty noncommittal, but this proves people are curious. And buying.”

Caroline massaged her forehead, but it did nothing to clear her jumbled thoughts. The article had been a success? That was…unexpected. “It’s just morbid curiosity. I doubt anyone is taking it seriously. How many readers have canceled their subscriptions?”

“Significantly less than have subscribed.” His expression held none of the
I told you so
that it should have. Her brother didn’t have that mentality, but it was there between them nonetheless. Was it possible that he’d been right all along? That their readership could be open to more risqué subject matter?

Look at your punishment, Caroline. You’ve displeased your master
.

She wanted to tear her hair out. Why wouldn’t those words leave her alone? After their encounter in the limousine, she’d returned to her office only to be plagued by his scent, killing her concentration. When she’d shuffled aside some papers, she’d found the package of licorice he’d left behind. Instead of throwing it away as she should have, she’d brought it home and placed it on her dining room table, leaning down to sniff the package when she couldn’t resist anymore.

Really, she should be worried about herself. Possibly seeking professional help. If it were simply a physical craving, Caroline could have abandoned her moral high ground and gone back for more by now. But the more Jonah revealed to her, the more she cast aside her own beliefs, and that scared her. The big bad Dom she’d created in her mind was also an unwitting father fighting for the chance to know his child. His plight pulled at her, forced her to see Jonah bathed in a different light. Had his visitation case been affected by her article? Her instincts begged her to find out, to comfort him and make it right.

No. She needed to stay the course. Focus on her investigation into Joseph Kimble’s Ponzi scheme and work on catapulting
Preston’s
back into relevance—
without
compromising her father’s vision. Saving her family’s publication needed to be foremost in her mind. Not the man who was somehow ruling her body and mind from a distance.

“This doesn’t guarantee the merger,” she finally managed. “It’s too soon to make a decision.”

Her brother nodded, as if he’d expected that. A heavy pause ensued before he spoke again. “I’m not going to ask how you knew about what happens upstairs,” he said quietly. “Just tell me you’re being careful.”

“I am,” she forced past lips that felt numb.

She breathed a sigh of relief when they finally pulled up in front of their father’s house. Oliver drove through the wrought-iron gate and turned into the long, paved driveway. Their father had bought the enormous house in Garden City, Long Island, the very same day Adele, their mother, told him she was pregnant with Oliver. Both she and Oliver were raised inside its walls and, as always, the sight of her childhood home brought on a wave of nostalgia. Posing for pictures outside the front door every single first day of school. Oliver, attempting to sneak out through his window in the middle of the night and getting his pants stuck in the trellis. Seeing her first car parked in the driveway, the one she’d worked two summers to afford. Despite the family’s financial health, there had been no freebies in the Preston household. Laziness or entitled attitudes had not been tolerated.

She stepped out of the car and took a deep breath. Since her mother’s death five years earlier, the house had fallen into a mild state of disrepair. Much like the magazine. Of course, her father had felt the pinch in his wallet—they all had—but Caroline suspected he just didn’t have the same willpower to deal with upkeep. Without his wife to keep happy, he seemed to view the house as shelter and little more, even rejecting her offers to arrange repairs. Her father’s lack of drive saddened her, but she understood. Losing her mother to cancer had affected them all. Regardless of how often they saw their father in the office every day, she and Oliver always made a point to visit him on the weekends. It went along with their efforts to keep family separated from business.

Philip opened the door and stepped aside to let them in. “You two again?”

Oliver grabbed the paper bag full of assorted bagels and cream cheese from the backseat and shut the door. “Someone has to feed you, old man.”

Her father held up a hardcover book. “I feast on words, son. They alone sustain me.”

Caroline hid her smile, knowing her father, a self-proclaimed literary snob, hadn’t meant his comment as a joke and would be offended if she laughed. Oliver, on the other hand, never missed a chance to needle him.

“I read
Playboy
for the articles all the time.”

Their father snorted. “So that’s where our readership has gone.”

“Any time you want to borrow an issue—”

“Let me stop you both right there,” Caroline broke in. “The enjoyment of my sesame seed bagel hinges on me retaining an appetite.”

All three of them entered the house, walking toward the kitchen where they spent the bulk of their visits, leaning on the marble island sipping coffee. Just as she crossed the threshold into the disorganized kitchen, her father pulled her to a halt. She turned with a questioning look.

“Oliver, I need a moment with your sister.” Her father nodded in the direction of his home office, just across the foyer. “Go ahead and set up all that nonsense. We’ll be right back.”

She and her brother went still, staring at each other. Oliver’s usual self-assuredness wavered for a split second before he got it back in place, slaying Caroline where she stood. They both knew that tone from their father, and it meant he wanted to discuss business. And Oliver wasn’t invited. It was on the tip of Caroline’s tongue to question her father, something she
never
did, but Oliver gave her a firm nod, a silent communication that he was fine with their private meeting. Her brother was lying, but she would never call him on it in front of their father, and he knew that.

“No promises there will be any bagels left when you get back,” Oliver said over his shoulder, digging through the paper bag where it sat on the counter.

Once they were enclosed in the office, Caroline turned to her father. “Is everything…okay?”

He tossed the hardcover onto his desk and released a heavy sigh. “Yes and no.”

Caroline sat slowly, very aware at that moment that this was the same room where she’d been told her mother had cancer. “All right.”

Her father propped a hip on his desk, a move that reminded her so much of Oliver. “As you know, we have the final vote in a couple weeks on your brother’s proposal. While your article might have boosted our numbers and earned us some new subscribers, I believe we can chalk it up to rubbernecking. Not the promise of a new business model. I have no doubt the vote will still go as expected.”

He gave her a knowing look, so confident in her rejection of Oliver’s hard work that it made her feel slightly ill. Was she so predictable?
Not lately
, she decided, thinking of Jonah and immediately regretting it when her pulse kicked up.
Focus.

“Right.” She nodded once, already having suspected her father wouldn’t change his position even after the splash her article had made. “So you want to talk about the merger vote now? We should bring in Oliver—”

He cleared his throat. “Caroline, I plan to announce my retirement the same day.”

“Retirement?” She shot to her feet. “B-but…we’re in the middle of…Dad, there might be nothing left to retire from.”

“I realize the timing could be better.” He encompassed the room with a weary look. “I have a lot of time to think. Out here by myself. It’s become obvious to me that
Preston’s
is sinking because I’m still running it like I did forty years ago.”

Caroline sat back down slowly, positive her shock was showing on her face. Her father rarely, if ever, admitted to mistakes. And
never
in regards to his management of
Preston’s
. “So we make some changes. This is good. There’s no need to abandon ship, Dad.”

He shook his head. “I’ve eaten the same thing for lunch every day since we printed our first issue. I can’t even get on board with Casual Friday. There’s no hope of me changing now. I don’t have it in me.”

She swallowed heavily, trying to keep her emotions in check. “So you’re just giving up?”

“Of course not.” Her father pushed off the desk to stand in front of her. “I’m putting
Preston’s
in your hands, Caroline. I know I’m leaving you with a mess, but you’re the only one I trust to maintain the vision I created, even as you modernize.” He glanced at the door. “I love you and Oliver equally. You know that. But he’s irresponsible. His party days don’t appear to be ending any time soon, and that image will hurt the magazine. He’ll turn
Preston’s
into something I’d be…ashamed to have my name on. I know you would never do that.”

Caroline waited for the euphoria to spread through her chest, her limbs…but it never came. Here she sat, trust and honor being bestowed on her from her father. This chance was everything she’d worked for and never expected. But she could only think of Jonah and what they’d done. How she would now be even more responsible for condemning his world by voting against her brother.
Hypocrite
. When she spoke, her voice sounded far away. “For the record, I think you’re wrong about Oliver. His idea might be wrong for the magazine, but he would never do anything to make you ashamed.”

He acknowledged that with a nod. “That might have been too strong a word.” When he placed a steady hand on her shoulder, Caroline forced herself back to reality. “I have every confidence in you. You’re going to make me proud.”