Wickedly Ever After

by Evans, Anna J.

  Maybe there, wrapped in his heat, she might finally feel safe for the first time in years.

  Fuck, Edna. Get rid of this man before you do something really stupid.

  “You win, okay? You’re right, I’m a complete fraud,” Edna said. Tears flowed freely down her face and her nose began to run. “Now will you go?”

  “Don’t cry. We can work through this,” he said in that same commanding tone, but with a softer edge to his words. He reminded her of her high school track coach delivering a pep talk to the relay team.

  Just what she needed, a dominatrix pep talk.

  The entire situation was so absurd that she started laugh-crying again, making unfeminine and un-dominatrix-like snorting noises that should have scared Baldy away if nothing else had already. Not only was she a fraud, she was an un-sexy fraud who snorted when she cried.

  Could she be more undesirable? And why was she concerned with being desirable to a man she wanted out of her presence as soon as possible?

  “You just need to take a few deep breaths,” he continued, crossing toward her with slow, measured steps that banished her laughter.

  She suddenly felt hunted, despite his kind words. The way he stalked toward her, eyes taking in every inch of her bare skin, should have been sufficient reminder that this was no track coach. This was a man who looked like he killed for a living and hunted for sport. The killing part was just plain scary. Unfortunately, her traitorous body liked the idea of being Baldy’s prey, liked it way too much.

  “Think about a nice, safe, quiet place and imagine yourself there. Now start breathing more slowly, breathe in the air of that safe place.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Baldy,” Edna said, trying to laugh but failing miserably. She could hardly breathe with him this close, let alone laugh. His heat warmed the front of her body and her nipples tightened again as she imagined being pressed flat against him, her bare breasts smashed against his strong chest.

  “Baldy?” His mouth quirked at the edges again, but his eyes didn’t hold a hint of humor. Instead, they smoldered, boring into hers, telegraphing an invitation that was clearly sexual.

  “Do you prefer Big Baldy?”

  “I prefer Frank,” he said.

  “Well okay, but…I…uh…” Edna’s breath hitched and her words fled when Frank reached out and let one finger trail down the side of her corset. Idly, casually, he stroked her ribs and moved down toward the curve of her waist. Even with that simple touch, he conveyed a sense of ownership, and Edna had to admit that it felt right for him to touch her.

  “Yes?” he prompted. His fingers curled possessively around her hip and pulled her a little closer. A few more inches and they would touch, and she would know if he was one-tenth as aroused as she was quickly becoming.

  “I have a rule—if I know your name, I can’t play with you.”

  “Okay, but what about me playing with you?” His fingers tightened, pressing into the flesh of her hip with enough force to hurt a little, and to make her pussy gush wet heat onto her already ruined panties.

  “You have to go,” she whispered, the husky tone in her voice sounding like an invitation to stay, even to her own ears. But she couldn’t indulge whatever madness was making her want the man in front of her. She’d never crossed the line with a client and wasn’t about to start now. She didn’t get paid for sex, she wasn’t a prostitute, and that distinction was very important to her.

  “You really want me to leave?” He dipped his head to whisper the words into her ear.

  Edna’s eyes closed and a small moan escape from her parted lips. This wasn’t fair. He shouldn’t be able to seduce her so easily. Where was her pride?

  “I have a hard time believing you when I can see your nipples through that leather thing you’re wearing. Why are your nipples so hard, Edna?”

  “It’s cold in here.”

  “Is it?” He laughed, and she shivered. “I’m not cold. Maybe I can warm you—”

  “Goodbye.” Edna turned to leave, determined to prove, at least to herself, that she wasn’t completely at the mercy of her frustrated libido.

  “Wait.” This time he snagged her elbow in his powerful hand.

  “Let go,” she said, pulling at her arm, not surprised when he didn’t loosen his hold.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “I’m having déjà vu here, Frank.”

  “I hate déjà vu.”

  “Me too, so let me go.”

  “Can’t do that,” he said, his eyes becoming shuttered, unreadable ice-blue pools that chilled her all over.

  “Who are you?” she asked, beginning to feel that tickle of fear once more.

  “I told you, I’m Frank,” he said, his face still expressionless.

  “Oh my god, it’s you,” she whispered, realization dawning a few seconds too late.

  “Now, Edna, Emily, whichever—you just need to calm down.”

  The shock of hearing her middle name made her inhale sharply. The creep who had been writing her those horrible letters always called her Emily.

  Frank could be the creep! And now he’d have the chance to do what he had threatened to do in all those letters—those hateful, psychotic letters that had made the last three months of her life a living hell.

  And to think she had been attracted to him. Attracted to a certifiable psychopath. She was going to have to get some help—if she survived the night.

  “Help!” she screamed, clawing at his arm as she tried to tear herself out of his grip. “Security!”

  “Stop it!” he said, capturing both her hands and spinning her into him.

  Soon, her arms were wrapped across her chest and the bulk of his body was pressed against her back in one long stretch of unyielding flesh. Edna’s body tensed further as the thick shaft of his aroused cock pressed between the cheeks of her ass. Frank was turned on by their struggle, no doubt about it.

  Now, however, her fantasy of being forced to take his thickness into her unprepared body didn’t seem nearly as appealing.

  Edna struggled and stomped her feet, trying to aim a well-placed high heel in the center of his bare foot, but nothing worked. He anticipated every move, breathing heavily in her ear as he continued to hold her, immobilize her, overpower her in every way. In a last-ditch effort, Edna dropped her head to his arm, sinking her teeth in deep enough to draw his blood a second time, but the man was obviously not made of mere flesh and bone. Once again, he didn’t even flinch.

  But he did bend his mouth even closer to her ear and proceed to speak in the most frightening whisper she’d ever heard.

  “If you want to live, I highly suggest you stop fighting me, sweetheart. And shut. The hell. Up.”

  Chapter Two

  The woman the entire kingdom knew as the Wicked Stepmother trembled in his arms like a scared little girl, though she didn’t start to cry again. Thank god.

  When she’d turned from the window with tears in those big brown eyes and black streaks trailing down her cheeks, she had looked so goddamned vulnerable. For a second there, Frank had actually questioned his ability to complete the mission. He was the Captain of the Queen’s Guard, but he wasn’t equipped for an adversary like this one. He dealt with soldiers, with battles, not with women.

  Of the three, the female of the species was by far the most terrifying.

  They were unpredictable, changeable, with the disturbing tendency to say one thing and mean another. Edna was a prime example. She said all the right “dominant” words, but every breath, every movement, every spark of heat in her fuck-me brown eyes begged for him to take her. The last thing he had expected on this job was to run into a willing submissive, let alone be tempted to take her up on her unspoken offer.

  But he didn’t play with women who didn’t understand the lifestyle, and it was more than obvious Edna did not. How she’d managed to fool anyone into thinking she was a Domme was beyond him. She was one of the least dominant females he’d met in years, a fact that gav
e him a raging hard-on that was impossible for him to ignore.

  Or for her to ignore, it seemed. He’d felt her tense and her heart race the second his erection pressed against her ass. He had to let her know that she was safe, that no matter how aroused he might be, he wasn’t the type to use force to get what he wanted.

  At least not that kind of force.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered, using the same tone he would use on a skittish horse before battle.

  “You already are,” she whispered, pain in her voice.

  Frank cursed himself as he realized how tightly he was holding her wrists. She had been struggling so fiercely, he hadn’t realized. Yet another reason to keep himself under control. He only trusted himself with a submissive he could depend on to let him know when rough became too rough. Frank had never considered himself an insensitive lover, but being so goddamned big did have its disadvantages. One major downside being that he often truly didn’t know his own strength.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” he began, loosening his grip on her wrists.

  “Security!” she screamed again, using his second’s distraction to stomp a deadly looking spike heel down in the center of his bare foot. Before he could say “sucker for a lady in distress,” she twisted free and ran across the room to where he knew her panic button was hidden behind a very large, obviously fake potted plant.

  Fuck. He hated fake plants almost as much as he hated this job.

  “Edna, calm down,” he ordered. He followed her, trying not to think about the pain radiating up from his wounded foot. He had to get the situation under control, while there was still a chance he could reason with Edna and enlist her help. At the bare minimum, he had to force her to put a lid on the hysterics before she ruined his chance to catch the sick fuck who would be here within the hour. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

  “Security! I need help!” She paused for a second, listening to static from the tiny speaker. “Hello? Now would be nice, guys. Hello?”

  “Edna. I promise you. I’m not the man you have to worry about.”

  “You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you. Hello? Kendra? Allison? Hello?”

  “I sent your staff home and replaced them with my own men. There’s no one out there to hear you who will move a muscle unless they get a direct order from me.”

  “Who are you?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear.

  “I’m a friend of a friend.”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  “Damn it, I knew this would happen.” Frank sighed, wishing he had worked harder to convince the queen it was a lousy idea to come here undercover. He was no actor and Edna might be wicked, but she wasn’t a fool. She had smelled a rat, and now he would have to work doubly hard to enlist her aid.

  It would have been so much simpler if he had been able to approach her as the Captain of the Queen’s Guard in the first place. Surely she would have gone along with her new monarch’s demands, especially considering Edna still owed Queen Cynthia quite a hefty sum as a result of the lawsuit when Cynthia became an emancipated minor.

  But the queen was eighteen, an age of willfulness, and had a taste for the dramatic. She had insisted that Frank go in as one of the Wicked Stepmother’s clients, not letting Edna know that he was there to catch her stalker until the deed was accomplished. Cynthia had wanted to save her stepmother secretly, only revealing her generosity after the fact.

  From what he understood, she planned to surprise Edna with a call to the castle to pardon her debt. The queen wanted to put the last two years of bitterness behind them and be a family once more. She had a soft heart, foolishly soft, if you asked him. Frank couldn’t imagine making nice with a woman who had put him through the kind of hell Edna had put her stepdaughter through.

  But then, second chances weren’t his strong point. Never had been, never would be. If you fucked up once with Frank, you didn’t get the chance to fuck up again.

  “Hello, earth to psycho! Are you listening to me?” Edna squeaked, still looking unbelievably beautiful, despite the fact that the last of her infamous cool was long gone.

  Cool? The woman was anything but cool. She was smoldering, every inch of her body made for the fucking she supposedly didn’t do here in her parlor. She was a Mistress in name only, and made it clear up front that she didn’t offer any sexual favors beyond the adoration of her perfectly shaped feet.

  A shame, that.

  She was all legs and curves and the face of an angel, with lips that promised the sweetest type of sin. From the second she’d opened her mouth, all Frank could think about was watching those deep ruby lips sliding down over his cock. He wanted to see her lipstick smeared along his rock-hard arousal, testimony to how eagerly she had set about sucking him. He would let her set the pace, but in the end his hand would be fisted in her hair, her neck arched backward, taking the full force of his thrusts and loving every minute of it.

  She would love every minute, he was certain of it. Even the way she called him a psycho sounded like an invitation to bend her over and fuck her against the nearest piece of furniture, to take control of her sexually and give her the freedom of sensual abandon. He wanted to give that to her, god help him, he did, no matter what she’d been accused of in the past.

  She was ripe for the kind of night he hadn’t had in far too long. It would be almost too easy to convince her to step over to the other side of the game. By the time he’d bound her to that four-poster in the corner and used his mouth to show her how generously he rewarded his pussy for her trust, she would never go back.

  How he was supposed to keep his mind on the job at hand with that kind of temptation thickening his cock to the point of pain, Frank honestly had no idea.

  “Fine, if you’re just going to stand there, then—”

  “Will you shut the hell up?” he asked, crossing the room. She met him with a vicious kick with one of the lethal weapons she was passing off as shoes.

  “These are going to throw off your spinal alignment,” Frank said, easily catching one of her slender ankles in his hand, noticing as he did that her feet were indeed lovely. If he’d been the foot fetish type he would have been totally enthralled. Hell, he was already enthralled and she wasn’t even an out-of-the-closet submissive. “Not to mention give you back pain.”

  “I’m going to give you ball pain,” she muttered, kicking with her other foot and managing to hit her target before her entire upper body crashed to the floor.

  “You really are insane.” Frank groaned and clutched at his aching balls, but held tight to her ankle with the other hand.

  Despite the agony that radiated through his crotch, he had to give the woman credit. Not only had she surprised him, she had taken a major fall to deliver that kick. She was still flailing about, kicking like mad, though her left arm looked to be in a spot of pain.

  “Stop it. I’m not your stalker. I work for the queen and I’m here to help you.”

  “The queen?” she asked, paling visibly.

  “Yes. Now could you give my balls a rest?”

  “She’s the one who’s been sending the letters?”

  “Of course not.” Frank released her ankle when she lay still, but not without a hint of reluctance. He liked touching this woman, liked it far too much.

  “Right. Why would she go to the trouble of stalking me when she could just have me killed while I sleep?” she muttered to herself.

  “How’s your arm?” He reached toward her, ignoring her last comment. Whatever quarrel she had with the queen, he was staying out of it. No good ever came from meddling in women’s arguments.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, pulling away from him. “I don’t need your help, if that’s really why you’re here. I don’t need her help either, and you can tell her that yourself.”

  “The queen is concerned for your safety. We have intelligence that says your stalker will be coming after you tonight. You would be wise to be gracious and accept her help.”

&n
bsp; “Why does everything you say make me feel like a kid who doesn’t know what’s best for me?” she asked, her face telegraphing loud and clear that the more burning question was—why did she like it so much?

  “I’m not trying to make you feel like a child, I’m trying to convince you to see sense and let me help you. We both know you’re not a child, Edna.” He met her eyes and a shiver of recognition passed between them, thickening his cock and making her nipples visible through the leather she wore.

  Damn, he wanted to tug on that thing until her full breasts spilled from the top, wanted to cup her in his hands, tease her already tightened tips with his tongue. He wanted to make her beg for him to fuck her, and then he wanted to lick her, suck her, bite her until she begged for more. Every cell in his body was cursing his lack of theatrical skills. If he’d been a better actor, maybe his earlier attempt at seduction would have worked and they would be in bed right now, waiting for the sicko to show up.

  He could stake out the room as well from the bed as anywhere else, and he was the type of man who would do anything to get the job done. He’d crawled through uninhabitable wastelands and fought enemy armies when there seemed to be no chance at victory. If he had to take one for the crown by taking this woman to his bed…well, it was a sacrifice he’d be willing to make. He could use a little pleasure right about now.

  Edna looked like she could use a little pleasure as well. No matter that she’d brought her misfortune on herself, he still hated to see the despair in her eyes. He wanted to wipe it away and replace it with lust, nothing but pure, desperate, healthy lust.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” she said, her breath coming fast between her parted lips.

  “I can’t help it. You’re a beautiful woman.”

  “I’m the woman who tormented your queen, doesn’t that turn you off?”