Knights and Kink Romance Boxed Set

by Jill Elaine Hughes

  As I leaned against the wall, struggling to catch my breath, Mistress Violet turned her attention to Senator Grayle. “You may relieve yourself now, Slave,” she said.

  “Thank you, Mistress.” I watched in the wall mirror as Senator Grayle instantly brought himself to a massive orgasm. His seed spilled all over the floor in front of him. When he was finished, though, instead of collapsing in exhaustion, he stood at attention and awaited Mistress Violet’s next command.

  Mistress Violet helped me to recline on a nearby velvet settee and handed me a warm washcloth to clean myself up. “Take a moment to rest, dear,” she said. “Would you like a glass of ice water?”

  “Yes, please,” I replied as I stretched out on the divan. But before she could bring it to me, I’d already fallen asleep.

  ****

  I woke up in a small bedroom of sorts. I was tucked inside a twin bed lined with silk sheets and a satin comforter. I was wearing my black silk robe again, but someone had removed my face mask. I checked the robe’s inside pocket for my cell phone and found it there. But to my dismay, I saw that something—or someone—had deleted all the pictures I’d taken of Senator Grayle from the phone’s memory.

  I got a sinking feeling in my stomach as I realized that I had failed my first assignment as an undercover sex spy. I’d put my own pleasure ahead of completing my mission. What would Rodney Doyle think of me now?

  Even so, I had mixed feelings as I tucked my camera phone back into my purse. Although now nobody would know it but me, I’d just shared a very intimate experience with my boss of the past two years. And even if he was a corrupt, self-serving politician who was in trouble with the law, he was still my boss, and to a certain degree I still respected him greatly. Hadn’t my attempted betrayal of Senator Grayle turned me into a terrible hypocrite—as big a hypocrite as he was, in fact?

  After much thought, I had to just shrug it all off. After all, everyone who worked in Washington was a hypocrite to some degree. It sort of went with the territory. I was just doing what everyone else in Washington did every day. The only difference was, I was being an anonymous hypocrite in a sex club instead of a public-official hypocrite saying one thing on C-SPAN and doing another in a smoke-filled back room chock full of money-grubbing lobbyists.

  I found my clothes and purse stashed in a cubby just below the bed. The small bedroom had an adjacent bathroom and stand-up shower, which I used to clean up. The shower was equipped with luxury-grade toiletries, a hair dryer, hairbrush, even a makeup kit. After a long, hot shower and a few minutes of fussing in front of the mirror, I was back to my nondescript, PR-staffer self. I gathered up my purse and overcoat and made my way out into the hallway.

  Daisy was there to meet me. “Did you enjoy your stay with us today, Hyacinth?”

  Hyacinth? I thought, still groggy from my nap. Who is Hyacinth? Then I remembered it was me. “Oh, yes, it was just—lovely,” I stammered. Which was true. But I was still having a hard time getting my mind around everything that had happened there that morning.

  Daisy smiled. “Good. Please do come back and see us again soon, Hyacinth. You’re welcome here anytime. And your account has already been paid in full, so you’re free to go whenever you like.”

  My account had been paid in full? By Rodney Doyle, I supposed. I wondered what the price tag for a private session with a dominatrix would be. If the House of Flowers counted senators and media moguls among its clients, it had to be steep. “Thank you for all your help, Daisy,” I said. “I appreciate it very much.”

  My well-satisfied female parts appreciated it even more.

  “I’m so glad,” Daisy said, patting me on the shoulder. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  I fished the business card the cabbie had given me that morning and handed it to Daisy. “Could you call a cab for me? I need a ride back to my office on the Hill.”

  “I can do better than that,” Daisy said. “The House of Flowers has a private limousine at its disposal. I’ll have it pull around out front for you right away.” She handed me back the cabbie’s business card. “Keep this for another time,” she said with a knowing smile. “You never know when you might need it.”

  Daisy guided me through the sex club’s twisting hallways and staircases until I was back out on the street. The limousine’s passenger door opened itself on hydraulic hinges. I stepped inside, and before I could even settle back into the luxurious leather seats, I was already being whisked back to the Hill.

  Before we were even halfway there, however, I had the distinct feeling that we were being followed. I turned around and glanced out the limo’s tinted rear window, and saw another limo just behind us. A white stretch Cadillac. The Cadillac’s windshield was tinted too, so I couldn’t make out what the driver looked like, and of course there was no way of knowing who the limo’s passenger was, if there was one at all. But the fact we were being followed was obvious. The white stretch matched every turn and lane change my driver made, and tailed us all the way back to the Hill, only breaking off its pursuit moments before my driver dropped me in front of Senator Grayle’s office building. The driver of the other limo seemed to know exactly what my destination was. And the only other person besides Daisy who knew where I’d been and where I was going was Rodney Doyle.

  Rodney Doyle was having me followed.

  The bastard. I’d have to give him a piece of my mind.

  But first things first. I had work to do.

  Chapter 10

  I made it back to the office just in time for lunch. Rebecca was seated at her secretarial desk, rummaging through a stack of pink “While You Were Out” phone message slips when I came in.

  “Oh, Jasmine!” she exclaimed, startled, when I walked in. “I’m so glad you’re back. We’ve had some interesting calls come in this morning.”

  I slumped down in one of the overstuffed leather reception chairs. “I’m sure,” I said. I could only imagine what the calls might have been about. Maybe in addition to being tailed by Rodney Doyle’s people, I’d somehow been followed by someone in the press on my trip to the House of Flowers and the calls were from people who wanted to blackmail me. That would be pretty typical Washington election-season stuff.

  Rebecca took the top message slip off the stack and handed it to me. “I think you should respond to this one first,” she said. “It sounds urgent.”

  I looked at the slip. There was a phone number I didn’t recognize for a return call but no name and no message. “What exactly is urgent? There’s no name.”

  Rebecca’s lips pursed. “I tried to get whoever it was to leave a name and message, but he—I think it was a he, anyway—refused. The voice on the line sounded odd, sort of distorted.”

  “Distorted eh? Hmm,” I said. “Could be a tapped line. I’ll return this one on Senator Grayle’s line, then. “What about the other calls?”

  Rebecca handed me the rest of the slips in a wrinkled wad. “The usual press calls, a couple constituents calling to say how upset they are about Senator Grayle’s sex behavior and how they hope he loses the election.” Rebecca’s expression saddened a bit as she handed those messages over. “And one last call from Rodney Doyle at the Beltway Times. He wanted you to call him back as soon as you got back to the office.” Rebecca paused. “He seemed to know where you were, too. Which I thought was odd, since I tried to tell him you were tied up on another line, not out on an errand. Do you know how he could have known where you were?”

  I bit my lip. “I dunno—lucky guess, maybe?” I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep things with Doyle and the Beltway Times under wraps. It looked like Rebecca was getting caught up in my clandestine affairs whether I liked it or not.

  I tucked the phone messages in my pocket and decided to change the subject. “What’s for lunch? I’m starving.”

  Rebecca stood up and stretched. “I don’t know. I’ve been too busy this morning to even think about food. In addition to all the calls coming in, I’ve been having to p
ut all of Senator Grayle’s financial records in order for the divorce lawyers. Things are getting pretty nasty with Mrs. Grayle. It looks like she wants to take her husband for everything he’s worth and then some.”

  “Well, you can hardly blame her,” I said. “Honestly, I always found it hard to understand why she stuck by him as long as she did.”

  Rebecca lifted a stack of sorted files from the floor and placed them in a banker’s box. “I think she enjoyed being a political wife so much she looked the other way for a long time,” she said. “But what happened at Rock Creek Park was way too public of a scandal for her. Mrs. Grayle is always worried about how things look to others. After what happened the other day she probably won’t be able to show her face in public for a long time.” Rebecca sighed and shook her head. “I feel so sorry for Mrs. Grayle. She really is a nice lady, even if she is a bit of a snob sometimes. She didn’t deserve this.”

  Thinking back on what I’d experienced at the House of Flowers today, I had to wonder what Senator and Mrs. Grayle’s sex life had been like. If they’d had a sex life at all, that is. Between all his expensive mistresses and his membership in a top-secret S&M sex club, it certainly seemed that Senator Grayle hadn’t been getting his sexual satisfaction from Mrs. Grayle for a very long time. I also knew that the Grayles had no children. Had their marriage ever been a real marriage at all, or had it always been just a sham front to help Senator Grayle’s political career? Whatever the case, I had to agree with Rebecca. Unless there was something sinister about her that had been kept secret for more than thirty years, Mrs. Grayle had gotten a raw deal.

  I cleared my head of all these thoughts. I couldn’t get personally involved in that mess. Especially not now. “Rebecca, what do you say I order us in some Chinese takeaway for lunch and I’ll try to make sense of all these calls.”

  Rebecca smiled. “Sounds good. But I always thought you hated Chinese food.”

  I smiled back. “You know, I used to. But today I just have a taste for Chinese for some reason,” I said. I headed for my cube to make the takeout call, clenching my vaginal muscles as tightly as possible to keep the Chinese balls from chiming in Rebecca’s earshot again. “How about sweet-and-sour pork, chicken with cashews, and an eggroll appetizer? My treat.”

  “Sounds great.”

  I ordered the takeaway and left some cash with Rebecca so she could pay for it when it arrived. “I’ll be in Senator Grayle’s office, returning calls on his private line,” I said. “Just come get me when the food arrives.” I walked into Senator Grayle’s office and locked the door behind me.

  I decided to try returning the mysterious distorted-voice message first. I dialed the number given, but all I got was a recording from the telephone company saying the number had been disconnected. Thinking I might have misdialed, I tried again and still got the same recording. I wondered if perhaps Rebecca had taken down the number incorrectly, but knowing how efficient she was, figured that was unlikely. Whoever had called probably gave a fake number. I made a mental note to ask Rebecca to be vigilant if a caller with a mysterious distorted voice rang again.

  I tossed all the messages from angry constituents in the garbage. With Senator Grayle’s political career over, there was no point in trying to keep in good graces with the voters back home. That left the message from Rodney Doyle. I had mixed feelings about Rodney now. On the one hand, my experience at the House of Flowers had been incredible. A whole new world of sensual delights had been opened up for me there, something I knew that Rodney had wanted to happen. And the very thought of how my new experience could spice up our future encounters made my heart race.

  On the other hand, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to get caught up in the kind of scandal and intrigue Rodney and his newspaper were famous for stirring up. It was already pretty clear he was probably having me followed; he could have been responsible for the mysterious distorted call, too. Maybe not directly responsible, but I knew he employed scores of undercover freelancers all over Washington who might have been angling in on me for a scoop they could turn around and sell to him.

  At first I’d considered Rodney Doyle and his newspaper as my only possible savior out of an impossible situation. Now, I wondered if getting involved with him was only going to make things worse.

  But even if my head told me that the man wasn’t good for me, my heart (and my crotch) were saying something else entirely. My hand hovered over the receiver, hesitating to make the call to Rodney’s office. Calling him back would just get me in over my head even deeper. But what other choice did I have? My PR career was on the skids, and Rodney Doyle’s proposal was the only viable career option left to me, at least for the moment. And he’d certainly done a terrific job of blackmailing me sexually. After the past two days of wild sex under his direction, my body wouldn’t tolerate anything but being at his beck and call.

  I dialed his office and was surprised when he picked up his own line, bypassing his luscious little secretary. “Rodney Doyle speaking.”

  “Well, I’m back from running that little errand,” I said, my voice husky and deeper than usual. I decided not to let on I’d figured out he’d had me followed.

  “So I heard,” he replied. “Daisy called to let me know how things went.”

  I blinked. “Did she now? Boy, the girl is efficient.”

  Rodney laughed. “Yes, she is. Which is exactly why I keep her on my payroll. It’s my understanding from Daisy that you had quite a good time.”

  I kicked off my heels and threw my bare feet up on Senator Grayle’s desk, suddenly feeling powerful. “Yes, I did have a good time,” I said. “The whole experience was—ahem—very interesting.”

  Rodney cleared his throat. “I understand from Daisy that you gave Mistress Violet a run for her money. Is that true?”

  Was that a glint of arousal in Rodney’s deepening voice, or was I imagining things? “I’m not sure,” I replied. “What exactly would constitute a run for a dominatrix’s money?”

  “Oh, this and that,” Rodney said, teasing. “Trust me, you did very well. I have it on good authority.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Rodney paused. I could hear him drumming his fingers onto his mahogany desk. Was he really as nervous as I was? It didn’t seem possible. “Now down to business,” he said. “How many pictures did you get of Senator Grayle while you were there?”

  I chewed my lip. “Well, there’s kind of a—thing about that.”

  “Such as?”

  I took a deep breath and swallowed hard. “I did take several photos with my camera phone,” I gushed. “But all the photos got deleted somehow. ”

  Rodney coughed. “And how, pray tell, did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. I sort of fell asleep after things wrapped up with Mistress Violet, and when I woke up, my phone’s memory had been cleared out.”

  Rodney took a moment to ponder this. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard him grinding his teeth. “Well, it’s not unexpected you’d have problems on your first assignment,” he finally said. “And I also suppose it’s my fault. I should have better prepared you for what you’d run into at the House of Flowers. Mistress Violet does have a reputation for wearing out her clients. ”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I was certain that given his reputation as a cutthroat barracuda in the media world, Rodney would have been furious with me for failing. But here he was, shrugging it off as no big deal. I wondered why.

  A second later, I had my answer. “And even if you hadn’t fallen asleep, Jasmine, I probably shouldn’t have sent you on assignment after Senator Grayle as your first visit to the House of Flowers. I think it was probably a bit too personal for your liking. Am I right?”

  “Yes, you’re right,” I sighed. “But don’t misunderstand me—I did enjoy myself. Really.”

  “I don’t doubt that at all,” he said. “You are a very sensual woman, Jasmine, and I’m sure you were in your element.You see, I wanted you
to go to the House of Flowers as a sort of test. A test not only of your potential skill as an undercover tabloid reporter, but also a test of your sexual prowess. And when I say ‘sexual prowess’, I mean your willingness to try new things, no matter how exotic or taboo they might be. And I’m pleased to report that you passed that test with flying colors.”

  I passed! I couldn’t help but feeling a little smug. If someone had suggested to me a week ago that I’d soon be living the life of a sexpot political spy, I would have laughed them out of town. I figured my new life had to be a matter of pure dumb luck. I had to stifle a giggle at the notion that someone like me could possibly be destined for a life of secret sexual intrigue among the most powerful movers and shakers in Washington. Stuff like that just didn’t happen to small-town, virginal girls from North Dakota. Did it?

  “Jasmine? Are you still there?” Rodney sounded concerned.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” I stammered. “I just—umm, sort of lost my train of thought for a minute.”

  “More like three minutes,” Rodney said. “I was beginning to wonder if maybe you’d passed out from exhaustion. And no wonder. I’m told Mistress Violet can be quite demanding, even of first-timers.”

  I felt my cheeks burn. “She did show me some. . .interesting new things about my body,” I said. I hated to admit it, but I was embarrassed to go into more detail.

  Rodney laughed again. “I’m sure she did. And I’m looking forward to hearing more about it, believe me.”

  I took my feet off the desk and sat up straight. “So, what happens now?”

  “Take the rest of the day to catch up on whatever you need to in the office,” Rodney said. “We’ll meet for dinner tonight to discuss our next steps. My condo. 34 Riverside Drive. I employ a private chef who’ll make us a nice meal. I hope you like French cuisine.”