“I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I didn’t–”
He silenced me with his mouth. A gentle, tender kiss. A touch that calmed me.
§
Always trust that first reaction, the gut response. That’s what I had believed.
But when a man races down the service stairs of his apartment building, overtaking an elevator that had stalled while Maninder made his threats... when that man leaps onto a moving car to rescue you...
When a man does something like that, it kind of makes up for things.
43.
I needed air, I needed to fill my lungs deep and not feel confined.
I stood on the balcony, the Thames dark, its surface pricked by dancing reflections of the city’s lights, while Will made a call.
Seconds later, he was there, standing behind me, his arms wrapped around my body.
“I was just arranging for some help for Danny – the concierge.” The guy who Will had left to clear up.
Then: “It’s me who should be sorry,” he said. “I had no idea... Maninder’s been with the family for years. He...”
It was my turn to twist – awkwardly, painfully – and silence him with a kiss.
“I’ve told you before,” I said. “Will you just stop apologizing?”
“The family,” he said. “They’re not as peculiar as you seem to think. They’re not a bad lot.”
“That’s what Maninder said, too.”
“I hope you’ll give them a chance. But whatever happens, I know what I want. I know what I need. If anyone doesn’t like it, I don’t care. I’ll protect you. I’ll always protect you.”
I turned.
“Will you just join the twenty-first century?” I said, reveling in the way his arms curled around me. “I don’t need your protection, and I’m not going to come between you and the people you love. I know what it’s like to lose a family. How could I do that to you? And anyway, I hear that you’re a negotiator, the glue that binds together. Maybe you just need to use your skills a little.”
He laughed at that, and pulled me closer, dipping his head to kiss me on the cheek, to drag his lips down across my jaw to the side of my neck, his touch electric, sending all kinds of sensations through my body.
As I tipped my head back and his mouth found the top of my collarbone, I felt tugging at my blouse and then it was free of my little pencil skirt, and his hands slid up, finding bare skin, the narrowing of my waist.
I found his belt loops, hooked my fingers in them and pulled him hard against me. I wanted him so badly then. I slid a hand round, in between us, finding hardness, the length of his shaft straining against his pants.
He undid my top button, then lost all patience, and ripped at the front of my blouse like he had that time in his Alpine hotel.
“So that’s how you want it, is it?” I asked.
I took hold of his neck tie and jerked it sideways, back, pulling him away from me.
“You like it rough, do you?” I said. “You like a bit of fight?”
I let go his tie and pushed him back through the doorway, into the bedroom.
Surprised, he staggered back until his legs hit the bed, and then I was on him, forcing him back, down onto the mattress, pinning him there while I ground hard against him.
My skirt... Too tight for this. I stepped back and he lay there, watching me as I pulled my blouse clear, then unzipped my skirt and let it fall. Stepping out of it, I stood there, and let him look. Dark blue and black lace push-me-up bra to emphasize my cleavage, matching thong, sheer black hold-ups, and those utterly fabulous, sexy Jimmy Choo stilettos.
I returned the look as he lay there, my poor, battered lover, his shirt ripped, a smear of blood on his face.
“The shirt,” I said. “Take it off for me. Let me watch.”
His eyes... those dark, predator eyes, locked on mine as he sat up, reached for his top button, the next, the next, as he paused with his shirt hanging open over that tight torso and then reached for a cuff, pulled, then the other, and the shirt came clear.
That was a hard, fit body. The muscles almost sculpted, the chest rising and falling, a pulse visible in his neck. A fighter’s body. A body ready for action.
“The handcuffs.”
He twisted, leaned over, and slid open the drawer where he kept those heavy metal cuffs with the scuffed leather padding. Two sets, one for each wrist.
I took one hand, turned it gently in mine, and then closed a bracelet around the wrist. The other hand, more roughly this time, more urgently... raising it so I could enclose the wrist in a cuff and snap it shut.
“On your back.”
This wasn’t about him. It wasn’t even about us, right then. It was about me: my wants, my needs, my desires.
I spread his arms and snapped one cuff to the metal bed-frame. Leaning over him, my breasts crushing against his bare chest, I secured his other wrist.
Another kiss, brief and chaste, if there’s such a thing as a chaste kiss when your man is handcuffed to a bed and you’re leaning over him in gorgeous lingerie.
A brief pressing of lips, then pulling away as he craned his head up for more.
My lips, dragging down his body. Across his chest.
The tiny hardness of a nipple. I parted my lips, flicked that little nub with my tongue, making him tense, gasp.
“Is this what you want? A strong woman? One who will stand up to you. One who will dominate you, and be dominated?”
Swirling my tongue around his belly-button, all too aware of the straining hardness in his pants, now so close to my face.
I kissed my way down, teasing that sensitive area between navel and that hardness. Running a finger along his constrained shaft, as my lips and tongue and teeth worked across the line where his belly hair started to thicken, that tender line between abs and hip that made him twist and squirm at my touch.
I freed his top button, found the zipper, started to ease it down.
Kissing him through the fabric of his shorts, finding the base of his hard shaft, pressing my lips against it, around it, then kissing down, kissing him through his trousers, finding the swollen head of his manhood and pressing my mouth down against it.
Just as he pushed up against me, groaning, wanting me... I pulled away, turned, reached down to untie a shoe, pull it clear, and then the other.
Black socks, they came away easily, and now I had turned fully, straddling him, presenting my ass to him as I leaned down and ran my tongue around a little toe, across its neighbor, working the spaces between them, the sensitive skin beneath.
When I reached the big toe, I sucked it in, swirling my tongue around and across it.
Still sucking on his toes, I reached under myself with one hand, found the waistband of his pants and tugged. They wouldn’t come clear, so I turned again, took his pants and shorts in both hands and slid them down his legs.
His manhood jerked clear, long and hard and now flat up against his belly, reaching way beyond his navel, as I pulled his pants and shorts clear.
“Oh my,” I said, leaning back, kneeling between his spread legs, taking in the sight of his naked, eager body.
Slowly, eyes locked on Will’s, I moved forward, lowering myself. Finally, I pulled my look away from Will’s and glanced down. The veins on his long shaft stood out, pumped, pulsed, and his foreskin was pulled back, exposing the wet, purple head of his manhood.
As I approached him, my hair fell forward like a curtain. I swept it back, and dipped my head, my tongue finding the base of his shaft, pressing down, firmly against it.
§
He started to soften, started to shrink.
I closed my lips around him and pulled upwards, passing his length through my parted lips and then sucking that purple head into my mouth, trying to stir that hardness again.
I looked up the length of his body, confused. Had he been more hurt than I thought in the fight? Was he in pain?
He wasn’t watching me. He was looking past me, across the room,
and that’s when I realized that something was seriously amiss.
“Please. Don’t let me interrupt.”
That soft, deep voice, so low I had to strain to make out the words.
I raised my head and Will’s flaccid member plopped out of my mouth and flopped down against his belly. And when I turned my head I saw Maninder standing in the doorway, his face a bloody mess, and his hands poised ready at his sides.
44.
“It was so good of you to secure him,” he said now. “That makes my task so much easier.”
“Don’t do this, Maninder.”
Will, was straining up against his bonds, those eyes locked on Maninder, now.
“Don’t hurt her.”
“I was always there for you,” said Maninder, stepping further into the room, towards us. “I have stood by you, protected you. Protected the family.”
“You can still do that. There’s always a place for you.”
“You see?” Maninder said to me. “He will say whatever it is that he thinks I want to hear. It is meaningless. These are not words that can be trusted.”
“So you protected them when Sally Fielding came back onto the scene?” I said. “Is that what happened?” As I spoke I shuffled backwards to the edge of the bed and then stood and turned to face Maninder. So much more dignified than if I’d remained kneeling over Will’s naked body, presenting my nearly bare ass to our intruder. “Just like you protected them before? Whenever they were threatened?”
He nodded. “That is what I do,” he said. “I have been with the family for more than ten years. I come from a poor immigrant family. My uneducated parents had expected streets paved with gold but only found bricks through windows and dog shit through the letterbox. The family saw something of merit in me and took me in, and so I have repaid them by protecting them, in whatever way has been necessary.”
“You were always a faithful servant,” said Will. “A member of the family.”
“Those words again,” said Maninder. “Those twisting snakes, ever eager to please. Really, they are wasted. Do you not understand? I have not spent ten years of my life, clawing my way out of poverty, just to throw it all away. I have a position of trust and respect. I am sorry. I really am.”
And with that, he took another step forward and reached for the leather belt around his chinos.
§
“Don’t do it!”
Will’s body arched and he heaved at his restraints, but the cuffs were strong and the bed-frame solid.
I backed away as Maninder came around the bed towards me.
“It is a power thing, I know,” he said. “The act will be barely sexual at all.”
The tone of Maninder’s voice was almost conversational, as he unthreaded that belt from his pants.
“It is about possession, ownership. It is about submission. I will have you, and he will watch, and I will own you both.”
He dropped the belt and started to undo his flies.
My back was against the wall now, my only escape the balcony, but that was no escape I could survive.
“You touch her and you will live to regret it,” hissed Will, still twisting and heaving. “You hear me? You hear me?”
I took a deep, steadying breath, and somehow found a moment of inner stillness.
Train hard, fight easy.
§
He was close now.
I’d had to let him come round the bed towards me. He’d dropped his pants, and I could see that he was hard, his dick stretching at his briefs.
That moment of stillness, a breath held deep, a calmness in my head.
And then a blur of motion as I raised my right knee in front of me, my foot and shin hanging loose. Then that explosion, my leg straightening, whipping out like a striking snake, all my strength behind it as the flat of my foot made high contact around the shoulder, the neck.
My shoes. My gorgeous Jimmy Choo stilettos, the spike lodging wetly, so that when I tried to retract my leg quickly, before Maninder had a chance to grapple it and pull me off balance, that stiletto heel stuck, and I staggered, stretching painfully.
I stumbled, and my leg came down, leaving the shoe in place.
Catching myself, bent over, my hands on my knees, I peered up.
Maninder had a startled look on his face, one hand raised to his neck, the stiletto still impaled and then, like a tree toppling, the momentum of my kick took him backwards and he staggered, stepped back, caught his foot on the threshold and then he hit the balcony railing and kept going.
His body pivoted at the waist, his feet flying up, and then he was over, arms flailing as he fell.
45.
“It’s okay,” said Will, his voice confident, strong, even as he lay there naked and shriveled and still locked to his bed. “Sit down. Catch your breath. Okay? Just sit for a minute.”
How was it that he was the one in control when he was locked up like that?
I kicked off my one remaining shoe and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging myself, realizing that I was trembling uncontrollably.
“I... I killed him.”
“You defended yourself,” he said. “You did what you had to do. It’s okay, Trudy. It’s all okay. That call I made earlier: I have people here who will clear up...”
He didn’t need to elaborate. I thought I was going to be sick, and I couldn’t get that damned shaking under control.
I turned to him then, finally able to look.
“It’s okay,” he repeated, and those eyes were no longer those of a predator, but of a protector, a lover, an inspiration. “It really is okay.”
The shaking. I wasn’t scared. Not any more. I was in shock, perhaps. My veins coursing with adrenalin, my head buzzing.
“You think?” I finally said.
He nodded.
“It will, Trudy. It really will.”
§
Those eyes.
A lover’s dark eyes.
He had relaxed, slumping back against his bonds.
I moved around, so that I was looking up the length of his body, finding his eyes, then, slowly, sensuously, working back down again.
Adrenalin rush. The fight or flight response.
He was soft, shriveled, withdrawn, his balls retraced, pulled up tight in nature’s attempt to protect its valuables.
As I watched, he started to fill out once more. His scrotum slowly lost its tightness, his balls dropping forward in their loosening sac. His cock plumped out, started to grow, flopping sideways against one thigh, and then creeping upwards as it grew.
I leaned forward, my hair trailing down, and then, just as his hard shaft reached its full length and came to lie hard against his belly I dropped my head, found the base of that shaft again, sandwiched it between my lips and drew myself up along his length until my tongue found that swollen head.
One hand around his shaft, I raised my head. “You like it like this?” I asked. “You like a bit of excitement?”
And then I plunged my head down, sharp and fast, taking him deep, my mouth tight around him.
§
It was quick and it was intense, that adrenalin thing, that fight or flight sex.
Bobbing my head up and down, fast and hungry for his climax, he was close almost as soon as I took him in my mouth. The explosion of juices in my throat was sudden, hard and I had to swallow repeatedly, as he pressed up against me, starting to go soft in my mouth so that as I sucked I took more and more of him inside and then his entire length was in my mouth, and his body sagged.
I wasn’t done yet. He might be a man who could get whatever he wanted, but now I knew what I wanted, too.
I pulled back and he slipped out between my lips.
I paused until those dark eyes found mine again, and then I moved up against him, lying flat against his body, my breasts crushed against his hard ribs, my thighs between his, that now-soft bulge pressing against my belly.
He craned his head down and I kissed him, his juices on my lips as his tong
ue gently probed between my teeth, found my tongue, pressed and slid and danced in my mouth, and then I drew up one leg, passed it over his, and then the other until I was straddling him, that bulge now against my own wet mound, separated from me only by the thin satin of my thong.
I started to press, started to arch my back, to roll my hips, to press my mound against that bulge.
Impatient, I reached down and pulled his shaft up against his belly again, so I could grind against its length, each slight movement sending stabs of pleasure coursing through my body.
And a pressure built, deep in my abdomen.
A tightness.
A heat.
A heat that blossomed and expanded and washed over my senses as my entire body heaved in climax.
It was quick and it was intense, that adrenalin sex.
It was urgent and animal.
And I’d never known anything like it.
§
Later. Much later. I’d kept him locked to that bed all night.
They call it the Stockholm Syndrome. When a kidnap victim becomes so attached to his captors that he adopts their mindset and becomes one of them.
But Willem Bentinck-Stanley was no kidnap victim.
He was here by choice. He was here of his own free will.
He was a successful globe-trotting man, accustomed to the corridors of power. He was strong. Oh, he was strong! He was not the brainwashed victim of some syndrome or other.
And so, he lay there, his body no doubt sore and aching, but he did not protest, he did not fight, as, outside that penthouse bedroom, morning broke over the city.
He was here by choice.
§
“Do you need to stop? Do you need a break? Just say the word, and I’ll unlock you.”
“Make love to me,” he said, meeting my look with those predator eyes. “Now. I’m not done with you yet.”
The Author
Writing under other names, PJ Adams is a successful novelist, with several novels published by major publishing houses and optioned for movies. As PJ Adams, she writes in the genre closest to her heart, erotic romance – love stories with that added heat, including the international bestsellers Winner Takes All and Black Widow. Working as Polly J Adams, she writes best-selling erotica, relationship stories crammed full of explicit sex. Among Polly's most popular stories are the Girls’ Club series, and Wings of Desire, the story of a young woman's relationship with the wealthy owner of a New England sex club.
Shades of Submission: Fifty by Fifty #1: Billionaire Romance Boxed Set Page 51
