Yield (4 page)

I steeled myself not to back away and dug my nails into my palms to make myself focus.

Look at him. Do not take your eyes away, do not blink, it shows weakness.

“You made me a promise yesterday.” He stopped a foot away, glowering down at me while I strived to keep my tongue from straying onto my lips.

When nervous, I licked them or even ran my tongue under my top lip. I wasn’t nervous, just...just...fuck. My toes curled as he reached out, slow and deliberate, toward my face.

My response was automatic. “Do not touch me.”

At that, one brow inched up, but he still took my chin in the cup of his hand. I rocked back, gasping at the contact. His subtle smile transfixed me as much as the feel of his calloused thumb running lightly along my jawbone. Such warm skin, as if his body were several degrees hotter than mine.

Heat spread from between my legs and my nipples ached and tightened.

“See.”

God, the way he watched me...

I swallowed surreptitiously, “See what?”

“You can take my hand on you. I don’t bite.”

Something about those words broke the spell. The assurance that I’d stand there for him, perhaps? When he moved his hand to caress my hair at the side of my face, I stepped away.

“Oh but I do. I bite.”

To my consternation, that only made his mouth quirk at one corner.

Fine. Did he want me to think him made of rock? Emotionless?

This seemed a good time to set boundaries. Was it reckless, considering where I was? Perhaps. But I’d been rock climbing, kayaking, done my share of hiking through wilderness and even tried parachuting, once. I had a father who’d scared me so much I nearly puked, once, when I did something he detested. Damn though, my pulse went crazy as I found the bedroom doorway to the right and entered.

“Is this the main bedroom?”

“Yes.” He came up behind me, close.

“Good.” I went and sat on the edge of the king-size bed, sinking into the heavy quilt, then bouncing up and down. “Care to take a seat?”

Though he looked suspicious, he sat beside me, merely inches away.

Goose bumps. All my hairs stood on end. I hadn’t considered he’d sit this near me.

I lined up the right words in my head, enunciated them carefully. “You said you wanted me to join you in bed before you’d help me. Well, now I have. My part of the deal is done, apart from the money. I never said it meant sex. Now, you have to fulfill your side of things.”

I waited, my lips set in a line. My impulsive decision at the café had been thrown down and ground underfoot. If he was angry, I’d offer to pay more.

If...

What if he wanted to rape me?

Those – rape, death, kidnapping – were what Hugh had railed at me about, for hours. I didn’t care. My psychologists would be aghast, but I plain didn’t care. Maybe I would care if it happened. Of course I would. Logically, I knew it. But rape and assault seemed distant, far-away concepts. My father’s death had ushered in a weariness, which came and went like a gray tide.

If bad things happened, at least I’d be done with this man; I’d know what he was capable of. Perhaps it would bring me peace, as if a penance had been paid. God knew, I owed a lot. It often seemed as if I’d been waiting to pay my whole life.

Bravery was easy when you were numb.

I waited still. What was he doing?

With his thigh almost touching mine, and the dip in the mattress, I had to be careful not to topple into him. I listened to his breathing, smelled him. My awareness seemed to sharpen. From the corner of my eye, I saw the muscles of his arm, and I wondered. What if...he did try something?

I must be mad. I think I wanted him to.

The urge to look at him intensified.

Moghul

Op1

to Vetrov (decrypted)

7.43 pm Wren G observed entering black Corvette. Surveillance ceased after driver (blond male 30 to 40yrs approx) began evasion. Male unidentified at present. Do you wish his identity?

A video was downloading.

Did I? I held the phone to my chin, staring unfocused down the flight of stairs. I was annoyed at myself. I didn’t have any rights over this girl or her body. Then why my reaction to the knowledge that a man was taking her on dates?

My meandering thoughts took me down the stairs. I hadn’t been to my island house for years. No reason. My private playing area held no interest for me. Any subs I took up with at play parties were happy being little exhibitionists and flogged, fucked, or whatever, in public.

Was it fortuitous, some subtle nudge of fate’s hand that the text about Wren had come through while I was visiting?

I could sell this place in a month. I was considering it. Sunlight streamed in through the thick plate glass wall. I glanced across, through the tinted glass, at the blue on blue horizon. The views over the ocean were spectacular. It would need some cleaning, some removal of kink equipment, unless I wanted to shock the real estate agent. I leaned on the rounded steel railing encompassing the rectangular hole in the tiled floor and peered over the edge. The pit of despair, as my last submissive had labelled it, was full of dead bugs, dust, and cobwebs. How spiders got into an air-conditioned, sealed home was inconceivable, as Vizzini might have said.

The brushed steel was cool under my palms. My architect had done well. Outside was searingly hot.

I was fantasizing about a pretty woman when there were a million of them out there. A pretty woman hung on hooks, with an audience of one. I could see myself making her come despite her predicament...her writhing and screaming, then I’d tease her endlessly and make her come again and again. Sadism plus orgasms – my favorite recipe.

Whoa
. Lips pursed, I let out a long breath. I was getting a hard-on just thinking about it.

A Vetrov affair should not invade my legal, if very kinky, Moghul world. It was as if Alice in Wonderland had popped out of a rabbit hole in my living room, though Wren did have a tenuous link to me through her father.

The high-res video downloaded onto the screen and I clicked play. As she walked toward his car, her red dress frothed about her legs like waves washing onto a forbidden shore.

What the hell. Just this once. I could follow what she got up to with impunity. In Papua New Guinea, my affairs were all cleaned up.

Of course, if she wandered into my territory here, now, that would be a whole new ball game. It would be irritating. I sorted through my emotions. And interesting and tempting, definitely tempting. But I could see no route she could take that would lead her to me. No one knew my alter egos.

I shook my head. All hypothetical. After twenty years building my little empire I wasn’t about to jeopardize it on a whim.

Vetrov

to Op1

Yes.

*****

Glass

Was this Wren girl suicidal? I hovered between laughing at her antics and just grabbing her.

Her light blue eyes were dilated, though maybe that was the low light. A little muscle on her jaw twitched. She held my gaze despite toying nervously with the cloth of that dead sexy red dress.

Balls, steel lady balls, even if she was crazy.

She had no idea who I was, except that I’d said I could help her track who had killed her father, and she knew I had men capable of neutralizing her security. I wasn’t your average guy on the street with a deep respect for the law.

I could kidnap her and beat the crap out of her for bugging me.

The neighbors wouldn’t hear much, if I gagged her first and tied her up. I had to admit she tempted me. I could do anything. Pieter had showed me the other side. The dark possibilities: ever since I saw Jazmine kneel to him, they’d been like a siren song.

Wren blinked and ducked her head again.

Especially when she acted submissive like that.
Jesus.
I stared down at the top of her head, as if struck by lightning along with an earthquake and a small nuclear device.

“You expect me to roll over and agree to that?”

Her back stiffened and she unleashed a glare on me. “Two hundred thousand is not a pittance.”

“Gone back to two hundred, hey?” Compensation. She knew she’d done wrong, and that glare, it was like a kick to my brain and my balls.

So I grabbed her. I clenched my fist in the back of her hair. Her eyes snapped open.

Revelation rolled in. This was
nice
.

Soft hair. A woman in my hand. While she was still gasping, I relentlessly pulled her backward until she hit the bed, then I anchored my elbow near her and waited to see what she’d do.

Her hands came up to pry mine off. One after the other, I trapped them and clasped them to her, below her breasts.

Another glare.

“Let’s cut all the fucking around.” I didn’t expect her to give in.

When she arched as if to kick me, I laid my thigh over hers. After a few more seconds of curses, and trying to wriggle loose, she lay there panting.

“You fucking bastard!”

“A fucking bastard? Bastard, maybe. The other? I promise you’ll know when that happens.”

The wrestling had done nice things. If breasts ever heaved, it was now.

“That dress would make a blind man want to rape you.”

She fell silent.

Was there fear in her eyes? Or just anger?

“Why? Why’d you change your mind?”

“I don’t. Want. To fuck you.” Those words came out through an angry sneer.

Nasty. I snaked my fingers deeper into her hair and got another gasp for my efforts. I twisted my wrist and turned her to face me more. I could see the appeal this had for Pieter. Controlling her was a damn aphrodisiac.

“You don’t want to fuck me,” I deadpanned.

I wasn’t impervious to this woman squirming under me. I had a hard-on tenting my pants.

Maybe her mind had problems with fucking me, a lowlife mercenary living in New Guinea, but I’d bet my two hundred K that her pussy was wet and wanting me.

“You’re damn lucky,” I said, grating out the words with my mouth two inches from hers. “That I’m not into rape.”

“Oh.” She blinked while her mouth closed from making that
Oh
.

Disappointment, I swear, written in big red letters. What the hell?

Oh baby, I’m going to convert your confusion into a yes tonight.

“This was a business deal. Not a date. You want to renegotiate? It takes two.”

“It wasn’t signed and sealed.”

“In my universe, our agreement was as good as signed in blood. Want to argue?”

Under my hand, her wrists moved as she flexed her fingers and her tendons shifted. I let her go and jumped to my feet. My maneuver seemed to have stunned her and she lay there looking up.

I leaned over her, steadying myself with a hand to the quilt by her hip. Then I smiled.

“You want to get out of this deal, Miss Wren?”

She nodded.

“Then I get part of you to play with tonight.”

“What?”

“Let’s see. Which bits?” I did an insolent appraisal of her body, sliding my hand upward from her hip, over her belly, to the undercurve of her breast. She quivered enough that I registered it. “Your mouth?” I bent and brushed my lips over hers, then pulled away, slow, conscious of how her breathing had ceased.

So soft. Her mouth was lush, fertile, like maybe I could give her babies just by kissing.

“Wait,” she said huskily, her palms pressing on my chest. “Wait now. You’re talking kissing? I guess...I can do that.”

My knee had ended up against the edge of the bed, squashing the dress material between her legs.

I slid my hand to her dress and started gathering fabric in my fist, making it slither up her legs. “Best of all, after I play with you, you show me your panties. If they’re wet, I get to fuck you.”

Her hands whipped down and she tried to hold down the dress. “Hey! No! No agreement. No way can you do that!”

“Why? Afraid you’re already in violation? Show me or I’ll assume you’ve got the hots for me anyway. I’m being lenient.”

I shoved up the dress, baring a smooth expanse of upper thigh and the lowest point of a triangle of red lace. Damn. The swell of her mons showed above that. I could bury my face there and not come up for a month. Move aside that elastic and I could...

I coughed. Back on subject.
Shut up, dick. Later you’ll get your turn.

“This is perverted,” she said, quietly alarmed.

“You’re lucky they’re not black. With black, I couldn’t tell from looking. Red is good.” I nudged with my leg, applying pressure to the inside of her knees, encouraging her to spread them. “Red goes dark when it’s wet. If they weren’t red, I’d have to take these off and feel your pussy with my fingers.”

“This is...” Her throat moved and her tone had lowered to a whisper. “It’s totally crazy.”

There was a fevered look to her face that hadn’t been there before, a blush on her cheeks. She wasn’t resisting enough for a woman who really, truly meant no. Maybe she thrived on reluctance? Maybe she wanted a man who would simply do what he wanted to her. I could run with that. Run a long fucking way.

“Are you wet, Miss?” Miss? Where’d that come from? I’d never called a woman miss before. “Show me. Now.”

She made a weird noise in her throat – half whimper, half question. I fixed her with a determined glower. “Now.”

“Glass...” But her ass did a subtle squirm, and this time she gave in. Her leg muscles stopped pushing against my palms. Slowly, they fell open.

I straightened and took in the scenery, wishing I had a camera.

Her blue eyes were half closed. Her red dress was scrunched onto her stomach. Her thighs had opened, revealing those red panties. One yank and I’d have them gone. The crotch area showed a quarter inch wide line of darkness. If I bared her pussy by rolling aside the cloth, my finger would find more than enough moisture to sink effortlessly into her.

Now I knew.

Did she know how aroused she was?

She lay under me looking distressed, flushed, a little perplexed even. Expectant.

This was too easy. I wanted her on fire,
dying
to have me inside her. I didn’t want some miserable victory that she’d forget tomorrow. I wanted total surrender. If I didn’t get her to scream out a climax
loud enough to give someone a heart attack, I’d missed my mark.