The Pleasures of Winter (27 page)

A large trucker yelled at Jack. ‘Hey, Mick, are you going to play pool or chat up your girlfriend?’ He made kissy noises towards the phone, and his jowls, almost hidden by a ginger beard, quivered.

Jack pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment. ‘Hold your horses, this is important.’

The trucker made an obscene gesture while Jack put the phone back to his ear. ‘Go on.’

‘She is going to drive me demented. She’s on kissing terms with everyone in New York. It’s not just the men, it’s the women too. Do you think she could be a lesbian? I mean, that would be cool, I’ve always wanted to watch
some lesbian action, but it would be nice to have some warning, you know?’

Jack felt as if he’d fallen down the rabbit hole. ‘What are you talking about? Lesbian? Of course she’s not. What other men?’

‘Four men came up and kissed her in an hour. And three women. Not polite air-kissing either, real kisses. There could have been tongue. And one of them felt her ass.’

What the hell? ‘Are you sure?’ How could he be so mistaken about anyone?

‘Of course I’m sure.’ Kev sounded indignant. ‘I was there. Hell, the only reason I didn’t shoot clips for YouTube was because she’d have called me “Mr O’Malley” in that annoying way of hers, and then set the cops on me.’

‘Mick!’ roared the trucker. ‘Put down that goddamned phone and pick up your pool cue, or forfeit the game.’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Jack told him. ‘I need to hear this.’

He turned his back on the trucker. Abbie was kissing strange men?

The next moment he was whipped round and pinned against the pool table. A pair of bloodshot eyes stared down at him. ‘Did you just tell me to go fuck myself? Do you know who you are talking to?’

‘A drunken asshole with beer breath?’ said Jack, too pissed off to watch his words.

A growl from two guys standing at the bar was his only warning. He blinked, and was doubled over when a meaty fist slammed into his belly, knocking all the breath out of his lungs.

A second blow to the chin cracked his head back, and
the row of rings on the chunky fingers acted like a knuckleduster. When Jack shook his head, drops of blood scattered.

He braced himself against the edge of the table and kicked out. His boot connected with the trucker’s thigh, knocking him backwards and producing a cry of pain.

‘Why you little bastard.’ With a roar, the trucker threw himself at Jack. With the pool table at his back, there was no escape and Jack braced himself for three hundred pounds of drunken fury. He landed a punch, which made the other man wheeze, then got pitched over on to the table beneath his opponent.

The pool table, old and battered, couldn’t take the strain and collapsed under them. Jack hit the floor first, with the trucker on top of him and splinters of table leg scraping his skin. He twisted out from underneath and scrambled to his feet, but the trucker grabbed his ankle and pulled him off balance.

By the time Jack had sorted out the misunderstanding with the trucker, he was a mass of bruises and under arrest. He used his phone call to ring Kev. ‘What the hell do you mean Abbie was kissing other men?’

‘What?’ Kev sounded baffled. ‘Not Abbie. That fruitcake friend of hers. All Abbie does is hang around indoors and play with her computer.’

Jack sat impatiently waiting for Abbie to log on. He needed to see her, to reassure himself that she was safe and happy. Well, as happy as anyone could be when a powerful bad guy was gunning for her. He was still astonished at her sangfroid when it came to threats to her safety.
She took it all in her stride and complained that he was worrying over nothing.

He cursed when he remembered the faint tremor in her voice when she had told him her apartment had been broken into. If he hadn’t been due at a press conference for
Jungle Heat
the next morning, he would have dropped everything to be at her side. He still wanted to blister her backside for not taking better care of herself.

But her disregard for her personal safety was going to end. Abbie had signed and returned the agreement.
She’s mine to care for now. And I will, whether she likes it or not.
He was already plotting how he would make sure that his sweet sub stayed safe.

At precisely ten New York time, Abbie logged on.

Despite his irritation with her disregard for her safety, he couldn’t help smiling.

Wild orchid is typing.

Abbie debated disobeying him. It wasn’t as if he could do anything about it, since she was in New York and he was in LA. But it might be more fun to tease him. Just to annoy him she took her time about switching on the webcam. She grinned at him.

His voice, slightly distorted by the poor speakers on her laptop, was still enough to give her chills. That Irish accent was pure sex. Then she listened to his words.

‘You failed to provide a lingerie report this morning. You know what that means.’

Sh –. She stopped that word from even crossing her mind. She had enough problems as it was. She wondered what he would do tonight. ‘Aw, come on. I had a lot on my mind.’

Yeah, that was going to work. Jack’s face was set in that stern ‘I am the Dom’ expression that always gave her a nervous thrill in the pit of her stomach.

‘So did I. Waiting for your report. Wondering if there wasn’t one because you weren’t wearing any. The thought was giving me a hard-on in the call-back audition. I was doing a scene with Maria Richards and she appreciated it far too much.’

Abbie couldn’t help it. She giggled at the idea of the queen of Hollywood getting excited by Jack, while she, Abbie Marshall was the one who had him on her webcam,
planning to do something depraved. He didn’t disappoint her.

‘Come on, you know what you have to do. Take them off and show them to me.’

‘Take them off ?’ she protested. ‘Last time I just had to show you while I was wearing them.’

‘You didn’t learn your lesson, so the penalty increases. Take them off and put them on the desk.’

She couldn’t deny the thrill that ran through her at the idea. Her thighs flexed against a tickle of arousal, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. ‘You’re a baaaad man.’

What could she do to stop him getting too cocky? She moved away from the computer and considered. He wanted her panties. Fair enough, she hadn’t sent him the report. But she could play him at his own game. She took them off and slipped back in front of the computer. She held them up. Blue lace, he ought to approve of that. ‘Happy?’

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. Jack said, ‘No, I think you should take off the skirt as well.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’ She was going to kill him.

‘You don’t have to show me. The desk will hide everything.’ He almost sounded reasonable. ‘I just want to know that you are sitting there, naked and available. My imagination will do the rest.’

Unfortunately, her imagination was pretty active too. The thought of sitting there, in front of Jack, bare from the waist down, made her pulse pound. She was surprised by how tempting the idea was.

‘If you insist,’ she said, trying to sound reluctant. She got up, unzipped the skirt and wriggled out of it, but managed to angle herself when she came back to the desk so
that he couldn’t see anything. Before he could speak and demand proof, she dropped her black skirt on the desk. ‘Satisfied now?’

His laugh was evil. And tempting. ‘No, but I’m sure I soon will be. How do you feel sitting there like that?’

She wished he hadn’t asked her that. She had been trying to ignore the sensations that were unsettling her, but he had asked a direct question. She had to answer him. ‘A little bit cold. And a little bit scared. What if someone comes in and catches me like this? A lot excited. The air is moving around me; it almost feels like someone is blowing on me.’

‘On what?’

Oh, he was evil. ‘On my pussy.’ It was a struggle to get the words out.

Jack smiled at her, an untrustworthy smile that alerted her. ‘Hook your feet around the legs of your chair.’ She did, and moaned. The position, which sounded so innocent when he said it, spread her legs and left her feeling completely exposed. ‘That’s it. You can’t cross your legs or press your thighs together.’

She tried to close her thighs, and found she couldn’t. The position focused all her awareness on how exposed she was. To her embarrassment, she felt a trickle of moisture. Kit would kill her. This was an antique chair.

‘Good girl. I’m very pleased with you. Did submitting to my order make you all creamy?’

She swore that his words made everything worse. She had never been so conscious of how wet she was. Reluctantly, she nodded.

He went on, relentless as an avalanche. ‘How are your nipples? Are they hard? Open your blouse and see.’

Oh, he was so bad. It didn’t help that her breasts were heavy and aching, just dying for some contact. Abbie put her hand up inside her blouse and caressed them, teasing the sensitive nipples into further hardness. But again she angled herself so that Jack wouldn’t be able to see what she was doing under her silky blouse.

She grinned at him. ‘Nope. This is not doing a thing for me. I’m as calm as a nun. Bored with all this. Getting a bit chilly, even.’ Let’s see how he reacted to that.

‘We’ll have to fix that. Go to the freezer and bring back a cup of ice.’

‘Ice? Why?’

‘Why do you think? Don’t sit there hesitating. It’s not as if I’m telling you to go and pick some nettles.’

Nettles? For a moment her brain fogged up. What could he possibly want with nettles? Then she remembered skimming over something when she was looking up figging, about a Dom who made a sub put nettles down her panties. No, oh no, that was so not happening. Ice she could handle.

Carefully, she got up, manoeuvring herself so that her bare butt would be out of the shot. Never mind that he had already seen it, spanked it, kissed it, drew pictures on it; she wasn’t showing it to him tonight. She used the break away from the computer and Jack’s commanding gaze to calm her breathing and slow her pounding pulse.

She hunted around in Kit’s freezer until she found the icemaker and scooped a cupful of ice from it. She hurried
back to the sitting room and Jack. Why was it that every time she saw him, he took her breath away? Even on the small screen of her laptop, he dominated the room, dominated her. There was no point in trying to hide it.

‘Good girl. Now rub one ice cube over your nipples. Just enough to get them hard and tight.’

As if they weren’t already. Abbie smiled. ‘Yes, Sir.’

She slowly opened the front catch on her bra, cupping her breasts and smoothing her hands over them. She kept up the tease, doing it all out of view. Somehow, she kept her face straight when he leaned forwards, anxious to see more.

She picked up an ice cube and touched herself with it. It was so cold it almost burned the tender skin of her breast. She hissed and took a couple of deep breaths to absorb the sensation. And still she kept the blouse in position so that Jack couldn’t see. She was on a roll tonight. She knew she would pay, but the idea of tantalizing him like this was delicious.

‘They’re very hard now, Sir.’

He would make her pay for this, and she didn’t care. A reckless surge of audacity made her want to bait him even more. Maybe it would be enough to bring him back to New York.

It took Jack a moment before he replied and then his voice was rough. ‘Very good girl. Now put the ice back, and imagine it’s my hands on your breasts.’ She was, she was. ‘I’m cupping them, feeling the weight of them. So pretty. Pull back that blouse so I can admire them.’

She had intended to torment him for longer, but the vivid blue of his eyes and the roughness of his voice were
too much. Her fingers shook when she undid the last buttons.

‘Now put your hands back on the keyboard. Don’t touch yourself any more. That’s my job. Tell me what it feels like to have my hands on your breasts.’

What was he doing? Obediently she put her hands on the keyboard, as if she were about to type. The position immediately made her aware of her exposed breasts. Her arms brushed the side of them, the nipples ached for attention. She shivered, wanting something. Something more.

‘Oh, that feels strange,’ she murmured.

Jack was continuing. ‘Now my hands are sliding down your stomach. So soft. So ticklish. And you can’t stop me because your hands are on the keyboard.’

Abbie shifted in her seat and fought the need to cross her legs. Instead she shifted restlessly, swinging her chair from side to side, too aroused and needy to stay still. ‘Jack, stop doing that.’ She giggled, a nervous sound that had nothing do to with laughter. ‘It feels weird.’

‘Now I’m thinking about your pretty pussy. So soft and bare and defenceless. And so open and wet. No, don’t close your legs. How does it feel?’

She didn’t want to tell him. She was glad she didn’t have to type, or she would be reduced to gibberish. ‘You really are very bad,’ she said, and was astonished at how breathless her voice was.

‘You’re swinging around in your chair a lot, Abbie.’ Did he miss anything? He was relentless. ‘Have you a problem? Still feel like a nun?’

She fought the urge to laugh hysterically. If any nun
were caught like this, she’d be expelled from the convent. Jack was there waiting for her answer.