Taken by Chance (15 page)

“Open your eyes,
Lena,” he said finally.

Lena took a deep
breath and obeyed. Her eyes swung around wildly, taking it all in. They were
alone on this floor, at least on the outer hall landing, but Ford and Declan
were still there, two stories below, still oblivious, but for how long? And she
knew there were others around.

“It occurred to
me,” Chance said from behind her, while one hand snaked in under her to play
with her nipple, “that I’m really the only one who knows how incredible you
look when you come. That doesn’t seem fair.”

Lena muffled a
laugh. He was making her feel a little crazy. She was cuffed to a railing, her
legs spread, naked, and he was…what was he even doing? Was she dreaming?

“You’re trying to
drive me crazy, right?” she said.

“Only a little
bit,” he said lightly. “But that’s about to change.”

Smack
.

He’d spanked her.
Hard enough to bring stinging tears to her eyes, hard enough for the pain to
sizzle into pleasure as it traveled through her body, hard enough for the slap
of his hand on her ass to be heard everywhere.

Smack
.

Smack. Smack. Smack.

Her breasts swung
forward with every blow, and the swelling between her legs grew painfully.
There wasn’t any more room for thinking. No more room for why she wanted this,
for why it felt so good, even while it hurt, even while it humiliated her, why
it still felt so
right
.

“Lena, what did
you do wrong?” Chance asked.

That voice.
Still warm and safe, yet
hard
.
Commanding. She opened her mouth, shook her head.

Smack
.

“C’mon,
sweetheart,” he said. “You know.”

“I avoided you,”
she gasped. “I should have told you what…what was going on. Why I was upset.”

“Good,” he said,
sweeping his hand across her stinging ass. “Only four more to go for that.
You’re almost there.”

Smack
. She whimpered,
already feeling sore. Was he really—?

Smack. Smack. Smack.

On the last one
she cried out, sure her ass must be glowing, and unsure what to do with the
feelings that swirled wildly within her. There was nothing
to
do, except ride them and remain receptive. Chance had made sure
of that.

He said, “I can’t
look out for you, Lena, I can’t take care of you, and I can’t give you what you
need, if I don’t know what’s going on. That is
dangerous
. I am going to tie you up and do unspeakable things to
you and I need to know that it’s going to work for you.”

She laughed, half
laugh, half sob,
her
body a confusing jumble of
emotions and sensations, the throbbing in her pussy louder than all the others
combined.

“Unspeakable
things?” she asked.

He thrust a finger
into her, deep. “Starting now,” he said.

chapter
16

She moaned; and
his finger inside her, penetrating her, felt even better when she heard him
laugh and slap her thigh. A rush of affection ran through her when she realized
he had avoided her raw and sensitive butt.

“Bend over with
those beautiful breasts on the railing,” he said. “Give ‘em a good view.”

Lena balked.
Declan and Ford and Adra and whoever else…

What would they
think of her?

“But—”

“Do you trust me?”
Chance asked.

“Yes,” she said.
That—
that
she was sure of. And
she always had her safeword.

“Good, ‘cause I’m
not giving you a choice.”

With one hand
holding her between her legs and his finger still inside her, he started to
push her forward while his other hand pushed down on her back. He really wasn’t
kidding. She was doing this.

“Ok,” she panted.
“Ok!”

“All right, then.”

Awkwardly, with
her legs still cuffed and spread apart, she shuffled toward the railing. She
had a little more slack on her legs the closer she got to the railing, but not
much. She took a deep breath, reminded herself that Chance was always behind
her, and bent over so her breasts were pushed up and visible.

“Good girl,”
Chance said. “Now, how much noise you’re going to make is up to you. But I’m
betting I can get you to go pretty loud.”

“You jerk,” she
muttered.

He smacked her
lightly right on her pussy, and she cried out. Not only was that the shock of a
lifetime, but holy crap, it felt
good
.

“See?” he said.
“And keep talking like that if you want to get spanked so hard you can’t sit
down. I’m not kidding.”

“Fine.”

“What’s that?”

“I meant ‘yes,
sir,’” she said quickly. “Sorry.”

He kept his hand
on her, but bent down to whisper in her ear, his free hand straying to her
breasts again. “You are going to be one fine sub, Lena.”

Going to be?

Going
to be?

She was chained,
naked, to a railing, in front of a bunch of different guys, all because he’d
ordered it!
Going
—

Cold gel fell into
the crack of her ass and immediately silenced her righteous indignation. She
shivered, and she was pretty sure she puckered, too, all of it involuntarily.

First there was a
finger, moving in tiny little circles around her anus, hitting nerves she’d
never knew existed. Anal sex wasn’t something she’d given much of a try. She
hadn’t really trusted anyone with a part of her she knew could be easily
damaged.

In retrospect,
maybe that was a sign that she shouldn’t have trusted those guys with anything
at all.

Chance’s finger,
though, Chance’s finger…so delicate, his touch, and yet firm. Every time he
broached the tight ring it felt like a whole new kind of intrusion, and sent
bolts of sensation shooting directly to her clit.

“Relax,
sweetheart,” he said. “This isn’t too big. You can do this.”

This?

Then she felt it.
More lube, and then hard plastic.
He said it wasn’t too big,
but still it felt impossibly large, going the wrong direction…

“Bear down on it,
Lena,” Chance said, his voice calm and controlled. Soothing. “Go on, you can do
it.”

She closed her
eyes and did what he said, and he pushed it into her with a little
pop
she could feel.

It felt huge.

It flared against
her cheeks, cold and unyielding, and the constant sense of “holy crap, that
shouldn’t be there” just reinforced how much she was simply
his
. To play with, to fuck, to do with
as he wished, even if that seemed to mostly consist of coming up with
unexpected ways to make her feel good.

“How are you
doing?” he asked, stroking her back.

She nodded, trying
to come up with words. “Good,” she said. “It’s…it’s good.”

His laughter was
soft, subtle this time. “Thought it might be. You might even be able to take me
now,” he said, and she moaned at the thought. “But not yet. Your eyes better
still
be
open.
They looking
up yet?”

Lena’s eyes had
been open, but she’d only been obeying the letter of the law, not so much the
spirit. She’d been staring resolutely at a blank spot in the wall across the
atrium, on the other side of the building. Not down.

Not
down.

“Lena,” he said, a
warning in his tone.

“Shit,” she
muttered.

You can do this
.
His hand on her back helped. She looked down.

They weren’t
looking up. They weren’t looking up!

“Well?”

“No,” she said,
and later, when she’d think back on it, she would realize that she’d sounded
too happy about it.

“We’ll have to do
something about that,” he said.

Something moved
the plug. His palm, as his fingers drifted lower, towards her entrance, his
palm leaned on the plug, moving it in circles, raking across those nerves,
making it feel…so much bigger. Huge. Impossible.
Filling
her.

She started to
moan.

“I’m going to take
this ass one day,” he said. “Soon. Spread more for me. And keep those eyes open
and looking down.”

He was going to
make her scream. She could tell already. He was going to make her scream, and
then everybody would know what was going on and where to look and there was
nothing she could do about it. It was inevitable, so why did it still hold
dread for her? Why—?

Something started
to buzz. She knew she wasn’t allowed to move, couldn’t look back, but holy crap,
did it sound big.

And then he
touched it to the base of the plug.

“Oh my
God
,” she moaned, loudly.

It was vibrating
inside her, sparking inside her, and each vibration echoed in her body as her
legs, her arms, her stomach started to shake. She tried to speak, and it came
out as a wail.

Then Chance
plunged ruthlessly into her vagina.

He didn’t prepare
her, didn’t start slow, and the sudden stretch of her flesh pinched painfully
even as she screamed out in pleasure.

Now
she screamed.

She’d never, ever
felt so full. So taken. As sudden as his intrusion had been, now all she wanted
was for him to
move
. She was so
close, perpetually high on the vibrations in her anus, the feeling of fullness,
the knowledge now, the freaking
sight
,
of Ford and Declan and people she didn’t even know looking up at her getting
taken from behind by Chance Dalton.

How did he know?

How did he know
this would be…?

Slowly, achingly
slowly, he started to pull out of her. She whined, he laughed. He pressed the
vibrator down harder as he slid back into her, and her eyes rolled back in her
head. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand it if he just kept
torturing her, stringing her higher and higher while her body tensed and coiled
around him, desperate for release.

She had her answer
as the vibrations ceased, an arm came around her waist, and he pushed deeper
inside her.

“Now you come
screaming,” he said in her ear.

And as he started
to move, thrusting violently inside her, pounding her relentlessly, the round head
of the vibrator touched her clit, and she did exactly as she was told.

~ * ~ * ~

Chance was pretty
sure that Lena had passed out, temporarily, when she came up against the third
floor railing. Her legs had buckled, and she would have collapsed if he hadn’t
caught her. He’d come yelling her name as she contracted around him, but her
orgasm had just gone on, and on, and on. He didn’t know how women did it. He
was pretty sure something like that would have killed him.

But he’d caught
her, and he’d carefully removed the restraints and then the plug, and then he’d
held her in his arms as he carried her back to his room. She wasn’t coherent
until they’d been sitting in his monster green chair for untold minutes, just
breathing together, Chance placing light kisses on her head. He couldn’t resist
touching her. As soft as she was, there was something magnetic about her.

But when she did
finally come to, all she said was one thing.

“Thank you.”

chapter
17

Lena drifted down
to Earth from the heights of subspace, or her orgasm, or both, at a leisurely,
lazy pace. She had that luxury, because Chance was taking care of her.
As always.

He’d held her
until she was somewhat functional, and then carried her back to her own room,
where he held her again until she fell asleep. This was the major barrier she’d
set up, and he hadn’t questioned it yet, though some nights she passed out in
his bed after being fucked senseless; if she made a conscious choice, it was to
sleep in her own space. He respected it, which she was grateful for, but she
also wondered if there was a time limit on his patience with that.
Or, rather, on his patience for her lack of explanation.
But
her ability, her choice, to retreat into her own space was the thing that
comforted her when she really began to fear that she was coming to depend on
Chance.

So it was that he
asked her if she wanted to go to sleep, and where, and then he carried her
there and stayed with her until she was out.

Waking up in the
dark without him there was, for the first time, jarring.

And then she
couldn’t get back to sleep.

There were a
couple of things that kept her awake, but chief among them, besides the ever-present,
gnawing anxiety that she was getting in way over her head with this man, was
the fact that she still hadn’t told him about the harassment from Paul Cigna.

Or whoever was
sending her those texts.

Her ass was still
a little sore from the spanking he’d given her.
From a
spanking
.
She probably wasn’t
going to get over that anytime soon, but the fact remained that his essential
point had been correct: he did need to know about things that affected her,
psychologically and physically. If she was going to ask him to do this for her,
to train her as her Dom, she had to give him the tools he needed to do it
safely.

She’d been an
idiot.

She couldn’t help
but wonder if that idiocy was more about her own issues than anything else.
Well, no, of course it was. It always was. That didn’t make it any less
difficult to overcome.

And that scene!
What he’d done for her with that alone…she didn’t have words. And she knew it
wasn’t over. She knew the next part would come when he forced her to face all
those people and see that they still accepted her.

Damn brilliant
man.

Her gratitude for
that only heightened the guilt she felt for keeping the texts from him. She
didn’t want to go wake him up, but she didn’t think she’d be able to sleep
until she got this off her chest, even if she dreaded that it would become a
big deal.

She decided to
take a shower instead.

He’d given her a
room adjoining his own suite, with a door to his master bathroom. She had her
own, but he made a point of telling her to use the shower whenever she felt
like it. He was a heavy sleeper and generally kind of oblivious unless he was
doing his Dom thing, and he’d insisted it wouldn’t bother him, no matter what
time of night.

Well, he hadn’t
lied to her yet.

Her eyes had long
since adjusted to the dark, and she’d always been a fan of dark, hot showers.
She had just located her towels when she thought she heard something from
Chance’s bedroom.

Or was she
imagining it? Just for an excuse?

She was standing buck-naked
in the man’s bathroom, trying to eavesdrop on him while he was sleeping. That
didn’t speak highly to sanity. There was every possibility that she was
imagining things.

Nope, there it was
again.
A kind of groan, a rustle.
Not the fun kind,
either, though it occurred to her, as she opened the door to his room, that he
had every right to sleep with other women. He had the right; they hadn’t talked
about it, but it would crush her.

There wasn’t any
other woman. Just Chance, writhing in his bed, covered in sweat. His face was
screwed up in pain. Distress.

For a moment she
stood there, shocked.

Then she went to
him.

She knew that on
some level maybe she should be scared. A man of his size and strength, a
military vet, a guy who’d done security work in probably terrible places,
having an obviously violent nightmare—there were a number of things to be
scared of. But she wasn’t. Maybe that was stupid, but this was the man who took
care of her so diligently, who put so much thought into her welfare that he
orchestrated insane scenes, who’d made her feel better about herself than she
ever had before.

“Chance,” she
whispered. She didn’t know what to do. If she touched him while he was asleep,
he might flip out. But he was so obviously in pain, his fists clenched at his
sides, his arms corded with straining muscle, the tattoos on them distorted as
he fought some imaginary enemy.

“Chance,” she said
again, hoping against hope that he would just wake up.

He sat bolt
upright, eyes wide and roving around the room. His chest heaved, dripping with
sweat, while he rapidly checked all entrances and exits. Assessed any threats.

He blinked.

He looked at her.

He was still
breathing hard when he reached out for her hand, enfolding it in his so that it
seemed to disappear. The pad of his thumb rasped over the delicate skin of her
wrist as his body calmed down, retreating slowly from the red alert state of
whatever terrible thing he’d been dreaming about.

With her other
hand she touched his shoulder, lightly.

Chance didn’t say
anything. He only lay back down, slowly, pulling her down with him. Gathering
her to him like something precious. He turned onto his side and held her close
to his chest, big arms wrapped around her, sheltering her from any threat, real
or imagined, and threw one leg over her body.

A bomb could go
off and she’d be fine.

Lena fell asleep
to the thudding of his powerful heart, thinking that maybe she could finally
give him something, too.

The next morning,
Chance was gone.

Lena frowned, her
hands searching the bed covers like she might find him under there. That…was
not like him.
At all.
He’d left a note saying he had
to go deal with some sort of permit or zoning fiasco, which she didn’t doubt,
but she’d become so accustomed to his considerate style that she almost
expected him to, like, wake her up with a kiss, first.

Ok, no, that’s ridiculous
,
she thought.

Still, though. The
point was that it was a change, not that it was unreasonable.

Well, ok. Ok. She
could navigate this. She was so used to guarding herself from becoming
dependent on Chance that she had given little if any thought to the possibility
that he might grow close to her. But wasn’t that exactly what he’d said he
couldn’t do?

And how was she
going to tell him about the texts
now
?

“Crap,” she said
out loud.

There was nothing
to do but make breakfast and mull it over.

Lena couldn’t help
but wonder what Volare L.A. would be like once it expanded. It was still small,
still just a core group of people, while they set up the public club and
carefully searched for new members. For this short period of time, though, it
felt like a small family in a giant, well appointed house.
Kind
of nice, really.

Lena loved the
downstairs kitchen the best. She didn’t know how the New York club was set up,
but she gathered it was more sort of formal? This place had a very California
sense of openness that she loved. Plus giant slate countertops, every appliance
she’d ever seen, and some she hadn’t. She’d identified one:
a
sous
vide
cooker. She’d guessed they were eventually going to hire a
chef. Or at least someone who knew what
sous
vide
was.

But
for now?
It was the most
overly equipped omelet and cookie factory in the hemisphere.
 

She padded down
there in one of Chance’s shirts and her favorite sweats, bleary-eyed and
yawning, and totally unprepared for the redheaded hurricane she found raiding
the fridge.
All the fridges, actually.
And apparently
the tall redhead had gotten to the cabinets, too.

“Um, hello?” Lena
said.

“You must be
Lena,” the redhead said over her shoulder. “Look, I’m not going to get into it,
but this is very important: where the hell is the chocolate?”

Maybe Lena’s brain
wasn’t working properly yet. She blinked and turned the words over in her head.
No, the woman was definitely hunting for emergency chocolate.

“I don’t think
there is any.”

The woman turned
with such slow, exaggerated horror that Lena giggled. She was beautiful, almost
stunning, really, and also about to kill someone for some chocolate. Lena
wanted to be helpful.

“Declan used the
only chocolate I know of to make his, um, cookies, I guess you’d call them?”

“
Where?
”

“If no one threw
them out, they’re probably under that cover, right there. But look, I
really
wouldn’t—”

“Oh, Lena,” the
woman said, tossing the covering aside to get to the plate of
chocolate-containing abominations, “You seem nice, and I want you to like me,
so please, please don’t make me act any crazier than I already am. It’s already
kind of an adjustment.”

“Ok, well, before
you actually take a bite and hate me forever, who are you?”

The woman smiled
at her, a brilliant smile, just
glowing
.
“I’m Lola,” she said.

Lola Theroux!

Chance’s cousin!
The woman who ran Volare New York, who had just gotten married to Roman Casta,
who—

“Holy shit, you’re
pregnant, aren’t you?” Lena blurted out.

Lola spit out her
“cookie,” which was really just as well, considering.

“How…?” she asked,
looking genuinely shocked.

“I don’t know
,
it just…I mean, the chocolate hunt, and you look amazing,
frankly, like your skin. You could be in commercials. And you were feeling
crazy. I just kind of guessed—I wasn’t even serious. And I, um, spoke
without thinking. And…now I know. Sorry about that.”

Lola ran a hand through
her red hair, clearly freaking out.

“You can’t tell
anyone.
Nobody
knows. I barely know.
I did the test when I got off the plane. That is just…”

“I really am sorry.”
Lena cringed.

“Well, we’re
certainly friends now, aren’t we?” Lola said, leaning back on the counter.

Then she took
another bite of cookie.

And swallowed it
.

“Honestly, if you
don’t want anyone else to know yet, you should probably stop eating those
cookies,” Lena said.

Lola snorted.
“They’re so bad, but I just can’t stop. What are they made out of, baking
soda?”

“And salt, I think.”

“Oh God, throw
them out,” Lola laughed, pushing the plate away from her. “I can’t be trusted
with them. That is so gross.”

Lena laughed
again, delighted to have this bond of deadly cookies with Lola Theroux, and
realized she was absurdly happy to have met this woman at all. No, she was
absurdly happy to be friends with this woman. She was happy that Lola wanted
Lena to like
her
.

“So, um, you’ve
heard about me?” Lena asked.

“Ah,” Lola said,
wiping the last remaining horrible crumbs from her mouth. “Oh yes, you are the
woman who’s managed to get Chance to be her Dom for more than a week at a time.
Yeah, I’ve heard about you.”

“It was kind of a
special circumstance. He’s doing it to help me get over something.”

“Your douchebag
ex-boyfriend and his shenanigans?”

“Bingo.”

For the first
time, the fact that someone knew about it all didn’t make Lena cringe. It was a
relief, the way Lola talked about it like something matter-of-fact, like it
wasn’t the end of the world, just something crappy that had to be endured.

“Well, that is
just like Chance,” Lola said, smiling. “He can’t tear himself away from a woman
in trouble. But don’t think that means it wasn’t about you,” she added. “You’re
not the first woman in trouble to come his way, not by a long shot. He usually
doesn’t get so personally involved.”

Lena did not know
how to respond to this. She didn’t even know how to feel about it. She was both
relieved and horrified at the idea that she might be just another damsel in
distress for Chance to help; she was also both relieved and horrified that she
might
not
be just another damsel in
distress, that she might be special in some
way,
something that meant this was getting more complicated than she could handle.