Their Discovery (Legally Bound Book 3)

by Rebecca Grace Allen

  He’d brought them to the page for anal play.

  “Butt plugs and strap-ons and dildos, oh my,” she teased. “I think you’ve been to this site before.”

  “I have.”

  He wanted to be chained up and pegged? Jesus, call her an idiot for thinking Brady wouldn’t be into shit. He was even kinkier than she was.

  “You like…all of this?” she asked, shocked.

  She’d only tiptoed toward his back door once, and that was in college. He’d bucked away like she’d struck a match back there, which, given this new information, it seems she had.

  “Yeah.” His blush deepened. But he didn’t look aroused anymore.

  He looked ashamed of himself.

  “Don’t be embarrassed.” Sam tapped on one of the items and pictured Brady on all fours. Imagined stimulating his prostate, the noises he would make. “Do you have any idea how hot that is?”

  A little laugh. A little moment of incredulity. “You think?”

  “Me fucking you? Yeah. God yeah.”

  His shoulders sank with relief. “Okay. Good.”

  It was more than good. “We’re buying it,” she said, nudging the iPad out of his hands and putting it to the side. “All of it.”

  She wanted to reward him for his honesty, to show him she appreciated it. Sam slipped her hand beneath the front of his shirt. Brady’s eyes sank closed.

  There were so many things she wanted to do to him, so many ways she could bring him pleasure. She licked her lips, remembering his taste, the heavy weight of him in her mouth. She stroked his belly, built but not perfect, soft padding over muscles that were already leaping and straining for her. Her panties went damp, a desire so sharp she wanted to snarl and attack, but she wasn’t making the same mistakes as last night.

  This time she would do it right.

  “Is there anything else you want?” she asked. “Anything you’re not telling me?”

  His breathing went shaky. If there was anything she’d learned in the last few days, it was that he was the most honest when he was turned on.

  She leaned over, lifted his shirt and kissed his belly. Spread her fingers wide and gave a little lick. He jumped.

  “I loved what you did in the kitchen the other night,” he said.

  Still kissing his soft skin, she reached over to the iPad, and, one by one, dragged things into the shopping cart. “What did you love?”

  A heartbeat passed before he answered. “Your hands. I like your hands on me.”

  “Uh-huh,” she prompted. She added a bottle of lube to their growing number of toys. “Anything else?”

  Tap. Touch. Tease. Lick.

  “I’d kill to see you all dressed up. A corset or leather or something.”

  Sam smiled against his belly. “We might be able to work something out.” And refinance the house in the process. This shit didn’t come cheap.

  “Anything you don’t want?” she asked.

  Brady went quiet, so she answered his silence with a pause in her shopping and a pass of her palm over his jeans. He was like steel under there, and she squeezed at the same time as she glanced up at him. “If you want me to touch, you have to talk.”

  That got them somewhere. He looked straight at her.

  “No gross stuff,” he said. “Like, bathroom things.”

  Sam laughed. “That’s a hard limit for me, too.”

  It was lingo she’d picked up in her reading—the absolute hard line of what two people were willing to do together when they engaged in a power exchange.

  Sam stroked him through his jeans. His mouth dropped open, eyelids going drowsy with lust. She did it again, just to watch his reaction. “Anything else?”

  Brady swallowed. His cheeks went the color of flame.

  “No, but there’s something else I do want. Something…different.”

  “Tell me.”

  He placed a palm over hers to stop her ministrations. “I miss the way things used to be. With us. In college.”

  “You mean when we’d eat Lucky Charms until our stomachs hurt?”

  He laughed, slightly. “Isn’t it my job to make the jokes?”

  “It is.” But despite the calories, she missed those days, pressing their bodies together on that tiny dorm-room bed, fingers covered in powdered sugar from hearts, stars and moons. “Sorry for interrupting.”

  Brady blew out a breath. “I miss when it wasn’t a sure thing I could have you, and what you gave was like a privilege.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His sheepish smile appeared, sweet and boyish, eyes glittering.

  “You remember that morning I had an exam but stopped by your room first?”

  The memory came back like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “You were really fired up.” He had been. Heavy breaths and shoulders filling her doorway and all but pleading with her.

  “It seemed like a good idea—blow off some steam before the test, help me think straight. But you wouldn’t say yes.” He laughed again, but then his face changed. “You got on the bed, lifted your legs, shimmied your panties up and let me lick. That was it, just the one taste.”

  “I remember.” The lust-drunk look in Brady’s eyes had made it nearly impossible for her to say no, but she was his tutor. He couldn’t miss a test because of her.

  That look was back now, and there was nowhere he needed to be.

  “Your flavor was on my face all day, a trace left behind in my beard. It drove me crazy, wanting you.”

  “And you liked that.” She was half asking, half stating.

  “I did.”

  It was a shock, to discover they’d been longing for the same thing all along—a past she thought they couldn’t recapture. Sharing these desires built a tenuous bridge between who they were in the bedroom and outside of it.

  “I did, too,” she said. “Know what else I liked?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Calling you pet.”

  His eyes changed. Darkened with desire.

  “Did you like that name?”

  His voice dropped to a low rumble. “Yes.”

  “It’s how I think of you, when we’re like this. My eager—” She fingered the collar of his shirt. “—hungry—”

  Stroked her fingertips down it.

  “—little—”

  Ran her palm beneath the hem.

  “—pet.”

  His breathing was quick and shallow. Sam grinned.

  “Is there something you’d like to call me?”

  Brady’s throat worked. He licked his lips. “May I call you…Mistress?”

  She hummed happily. “You liked that last night.”

  Brady nodded slowly, as if in a trance. She’d thrown that word out on purpose, needing to sate this curiosity, to see once and for all if this fantasy was real.

  “I like that title. Much better than ma’am. So yes, you may call me that. But there’s one more word we need to discuss.” She put the iPad on her nightstand. “Your safeword.”

  “It would be bad if I used Beetlejuice, right?”

  She wanted to flick him for breaking the mood, but she’d done that herself moments ago. And it was funny. “Only if you say it three times.”

  Brady chuckled out a nervous breath. Sam crawled over him, hovered her body a few inches away, and waited.

  “Metamorphosis,” he said.

  Sam paused, everything in her going soft and sweet. “Kafka?”

  “It was the first thing—”

  “I tutored you on, I know.”

  That book had been a challenge to help him with, especially with his constant jokes about giant cockroaches, but he’d done well on his paper and she’d been proud of him. Damn, she hadn’t thought he’d remembered.

  Sam bent over him, kissed his lips, licked into his mouth until his tongue danced along hers. “Now, pet, time to get that pretty body of yours all messy.”

  Brady made a noise she couldn’t define after that. The choked sound of an animal being
caught by its prey, giving in to its lovely death.

  He gave his consent in the fluttering of his eyelids, his head tilting back as she unzipped his pants and slid them down. Sam pushed his pants over his feet, then his boxers, then tossed it all to the side.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  “You mean I should come first?”

  He nodded, then shuddered helplessly as she circled her palm over his slick tip. She’d been cruel last night, making him hold back when he couldn’t.

  “I’ll want that, most of the time. And I won’t want you to come without my permission, either. But not right now.” She stroked his straining erection, and he stuttered out a moan. “Right now is for you.”

  Pleasure, that’s what she wanted—to give it and let him take it freely.

  Sam stretched out beside him. Brady turned his face toward hers, mouth open, beard brushing against her cheek as his eyes closed. She watched him give in, watched the kick of his hips and the tightening of his belly as he took what she offered and shattered beside her.

  When the girls returned home the next morning, Brady had trouble shifting gears.

  He and Sam had spent the rest of Saturday in bed, her fiery red hair tumbling over her shoulders as she took what she wanted from him. And this morning was like waking up in some foreign world. Ironic, considering what he’d chosen for a safeword.

  The Metamorphosis was a book he’d fallen behind on after that day in the locker room. A weird-ass story about a guy waking up as a bug. But he had an idea of how the main character must’ve felt. When he’d woken up in the hospital knowing his knee was shot, it was the same. Brady couldn’t move his body the way he used to, didn’t feel about himself the way he had before.

  Today was similar. His knee worked, and he certainly wasn’t a bug, but it was like he wasn’t sure he fit into this new skin he was wearing. It was more like a layer peeled back, exposed and uneasy. He only felt comfortable in it when he and Sam were alone. Transitioning out of whatever place she’d gotten him to in his head when the girls were dropped off wasn’t easy, and a part of him resented having to do it. They’d only just discovered this thing between them—or rediscovered it—and he didn’t want to let it go. He’d gone outside to work out his frustrations by taking down the Christmas lights, but he was still short-tempered, especially when he’d tripped over a pile of Allegra’s things when he walked back in the door.

  “Goddamn it,” he shouted, immediately regretting it when Sam came around the corner. Her fury over his language wasn’t something he could handle after this weekend. But she wasn’t mad. If anything, she seemed…scheming?

  She came up close. Pulled him aside.

  “I have an idea,” she said with that smile, that damn smile that melted his reasoning, short-circuited his thinking and made him unable to focus on anything but her. “Know all those lovely things we bought last night?”

  His gaze darted to the living room where Hope sat, then back to Sam. “Yes?”

  She kept her voice low. “As punishment for that mouth of yours, you don’t get to come at all until the delivery arrives. And every curse in front of our children will earn you one day more of denial after it does.”

  Oh, Jesus. He needed to lean into her. To hide his heated flush. But he wasn’t her pet now. He was Brady. Husband. Daddy.

  Wasn’t he?

  “If you behave, however,” she continued, “I’ll reward you with the toy of your choice when it gets here. Understood?”

  His chin lowered. He shouldn’t have been this turned on with the kids in the house, but Sam was leading the charge, taking him down this path, and he was helpless to do anything but follow.

  “Yes, Mistress,” he whispered.

  Sam’s grin was wild. “Good boy.”

  12

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  Sam waved off Lilly’s concern. “I’m fine, I promise.”

  Lilly wrinkled her nose. Fresh from her honeymoon, all blond and tan, she hovered over Sam, unconvinced.

  “It seems unfair to throw you into the fire on your first day.”

  Sam put both hands on her desk. She’d been trained on the phone lines and the copier, learned who all the attorneys were and memorized the staff roster before Lilly and Gabe took her out to a quick lunch, on the firm’s dime, no less. It was a lot to absorb, but she’d always been quick on her feet and able to multitask, and she needed to calm Lilly’s fears.

  “I’ve got a handle on the mail. I understand the switchboard.” Despite the years that had passed, it wasn’t that different from the one she’d worked in DC. Sam held up the firm’s handbook. “And if I get bored, I can read this.”

  Lilly laughed. “If you’re okay, I have a client meeting to prepare for.”

  Not long ago, Lilly had been a timid paralegal, too broken from a past Samantha knew little about and lacking enough confidence to take the bar exam. It was nice to see her sister-in-law standing there, a woman in her own power, feeling her own success.

  “Get after it then, girl,” Sam said.

  Lilly hurried off and Sam surveyed the reception area. Her desk was a C-shape behind a hutch. Ahead of her were the double glass doors of the firm, the lobby and elevators beyond it. Sam didn’t feel as solid as Lilly seemed to, but this was a space for her, without games or toys or dirty dishes for her to clean up. Even her bag finally felt like her own. Instead of being filled with candy wrappers, snotty tissues and mini plushies, her purse had been cleaned out and now carried her cell, a folio notebook, several pens and a protein bar.

  Which honestly was a goddamn miracle. It hadn’t been an easy morning.

  Allegra had enough trouble switching from the weekend to her weekday routine as it was, so not having Sam to help her didn’t go over well. Hope was surprisingly clingy, refusing to speak and hanging on to Sam’s coat when she’d tried to leave. And of course, Sam’s parents had chosen this morning to let her know they were finally putting their apartment on the market. It was enough to make her nearly lose her shit while pulling on her pantyhose, but Brady had handled the girls, coaxing them away from her so she could get to work on time.

  A warm feeling of appreciation skated over her. Things had shifted with them since Friday, and being dominant with Brady had her seeing power dynamics everywhere. When Johnson Phillips walked her around the building this morning, she’d observed people’s behaviors—who’d shaken her hand with confidence and who hadn’t. Who walked with a sense of authority and who looked at the floor.

  Who was dominant, and who was submissive.

  It was unreal, that she was getting to live this life. A week ago, she had no career, and a DOA sex life. Now she had a spot at the helm of a huge company, leading and in charge. And maybe she’d get to be in charge more tonight.

  “Looks like you’re settling in nicely.”

  Sam glanced up. Reginald Pierce was at the doorway, watching her. “I am. Thank you, Mr. Pierce.”

  His gaze flicked about two inches south of her collar. “Please, Samantha. Call me Reg.”

  “Oh, I think titles are more professional, don’t you?”

  She held his eye and stood her ground.

  “They are.” He gave her a slow grin and took a step toward her. “So, Mrs. Archer. Everyone been treating you right so far? We haven’t overwhelmed you?”

  “Not yet. Like I told Mr. Phillips in the interview, I’m not a skittish person.”

  “I doubt Arnie would’ve thought so highly of you if you were.”

  Sam took the compliment with an appreciative nod. But he remained there, a target she kept missing. “Is there something you need, Mr. Pierce?”

  Pierce balanced his arms on the hutch. The little gap between his two front teeth was humanizing, as was his slightly unkempt beard, but she couldn’t help thinking he looked like a serial killer lying to the cops.

  “I hoped I could assign you a project to do in your spare time.”

  “A project?” She couldn’t get a read on
this man. Was he being slimy, or straightforward? “What kind?”

  “You know I work on estate planning.”

  “Yes.” She’d learned that this morning. “Mr. Forrester runs the litigation and intellectual property practice groups while Mr. Schaeffer handles bankruptcy and labor.”

  “I’m impressed.” He glanced lower again. “You’ve clearly read your handbook.”

  Slimy. Definitely slimy.

  “Anyway, I’m the trustee of the estate of a longstanding client. Mildred Quincy Choate.”

  “Quincy, as in the Quincys?”

  “Correct.”

  Sam knew her New England history. Quincy, Massachusetts. John Quincy Adams. This woman was from Boston’s founding family.

  “And the Choate family,” she said. “I know that name, too. One was a senator in the eighteen-hundreds, and another was a federal judge.”

  “Also, correct. I’m seeing more and more why Arnie liked you.”

  Slimy or not, Sam couldn’t help it—she liked the praise.

  “Sadly,” he continued, “Mildred is in hospice care now. I’ve been responsible for managing her investments, paying her bills, and for the eventual distribution of her assets. I’d like you to do a final organization before we close out the file.”

  “Won’t I have to ask Mr. Phillips for permission? As you said, I did read the handbook. HR manages my role.”

  Pierce’s smile turned into something Sam could’ve called benevolent if she wasn’t fairly certain there was menace behind it.

  “Who do you think the boss is here?”

  The shift from genuine to a power play was dizzying. Must’ve been what made him such a great lawyer.

  “Understood. I look forward to helping out.”

  Two light raps of his fist on the hutch followed. “I’ll get you access to the file.”

  He headed in the other direction, and Sam tried to refocus. A phone started ringing though, and it took a moment of staring at the switchboard before she realized it was her cell.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she whispered, reaching into her bag to silence it.

  Snatching it from the compartment she’d tucked it into, she immediately hit the button on the side to turn the ringer off. How had she forgotten to do that? But her stomach clenched and her heart raced at the number on the screen. It was Hope and Allegra’s school. The most likely thing was that Allegra was having another behavior issue, best case could be the nurse calling to say one of them was sick. The district had a text notification system for things like bomb threats and lock down drills, so she could squelch that particular moment of panic. But as the call went to voicemail Sam stared at her phone, certain listening to the message at her desk on her first day would be a bad idea.