by Maren Smith
Sinclair looked at the painting again, but nothing that he had just told her made any real difference to her. She was here to cater, not participate. And by doing so, she was going to make enough money to keep her Maybe’s Candy afloat for months! She’d be able to afford real advertising to bring in more customers, maybe even a make-your-own sundae bar to give Casey’s a real run for their money this summer. What did it matter what these consenting adults did with one another if catering here meant she’d find her financial footing once again?
Lifting her chin, Sinclair met his laughing blue eyes boldly before signing the last paper. She was just about to pass it across the table when the door behind Marshall swung open and her assigned companion walked into the room. He stopped abruptly when he saw her. “Sinclair?”
It wasn’t until he said her name that recognition for exactly who he was clicked inside her. The jeans were gone, replaced by shiny black leather pants—the way he wore those should have been a crime too. His shirt was also gone, replaced by nothing but a pair of black leather wrist cuffs and the broad, bare expanse of his hard chest and even harder stomach. He looked lean, he looked strong. He looked nothing like Sinclair imagined he would in his private life beyond his visits to her store, and yet he also looked better than she ever could have dreamed.
“Parker,” she said, stunned.
The guy she’d been mooning over for the last year worked at the most infamous establishment in the state, possibly even the world.
Finally, at least now she knew what was wrong with him.
Chapter THREE
“What the hell is this?” Parker snapped, slamming the door behind him, which effectively sealed the startled Sinclair in the Masters’ dining hall by herself, and he and Master Marshall out in the main dining hall with all the Castle guests who were currently enjoying their suppers. He tried to keep his voice down. There was nothing more unprofessional than two Masters bickering in public, but he just couldn’t rein his temper in. For the first time in his life, he felt like a submissive in one of Marshall’s annual “deer” hunts—he’d just been stalked, targeted, and tackled to the ground. “What is she doing here?”
“I’ve hired her to cater an event for Valentine’s Day,” Marshall calmly replied.
“Since when do we hire out for our private events?”
“Since Sam suggested it.”
Parker’s head reeled. He took a startled step back and only by supreme force of will kept his temper from really erupting at that point. “Did he also suggest I be assigned to her while she was here?”
“Yes,” Marshall freely admitted.
Parker took another step back. He shook his head, a thousand things racing through his mind, but the dining hall was too full of guests and those thoughts too full of expletives for him to dare say any of it. He dropped his voice to little more than a hiss, “Get out of my personal business, both of you! I didn’t want her here. I didn’t want her to know, God damn it!”
“To what end?” Marshall countered.
“None of your business!”
Spreading his hands, Marshall shrugged. “Having made it my business, at least until after Valentine’s Day, what do you now propose? We have a signed contract, so I’m not just going to cut her loose. Nor can I let her wander the Castle by herself. She needs a chaperone. Do you want the job or not?”
Did he want her? Hell yes, he did! That was half the problem. Parker rubbed the back of his neck. “Hell, she probably won’t even stay, at this point. You’ve dumped so much on her right now, it wouldn’t surprise me if she—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Leaf?”
Snapping his mouth shut, both Parker and Marshall turned to look at Sinclair. She stood in the open doorway between the two dining rooms and looked straight at Marshall, as if Parker wasn’t even there at all.
“If I’m going to do this job, I need to see the ballrooms I’ll be decorating and the kitchen where I’ll be working. And then I’d like to go home. I’ve got a lot of planning to do.”
“Of course.” Marshall turned expectantly toward Parker, though it took him a moment to notice. He couldn’t stop looking at Sinclair. He felt completely blindsided, and he knew she had to be feeling something similar. Her cheeks were flushed and the closest she came to meeting his steady gaze was that moment when she dropped her eyes to the ground and stole a quick peek at his pants.
Parker almost swore all over again. He couldn’t believe his friends had done this to him. This was what he’d dreaded; now that Sinclair knew about this side of him, she couldn’t even make herself look at him. Things between them were going to change now. They were going to become strained, awkward; his weekly trips to her candy store may as well just stop. He’d lost her.
He’d never really had her, he tried to tell himself, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. “Do you want another chaperone?” It wasn’t until the words popped out of his mouth that Parker realized he was going to say anything at all right then, but she surprised them both.
“No.” She stole another quick peek at him, this time her eyes making it up as far as his stomach before she had to look away again. “N-no, I’m fine… with the one I have.”
She didn’t look fine. She was blushing, stammering. Hell, she was probably trying not to laugh at him. Parker stifled another curse. For her to find out like this was his worst nightmare; he hadn’t wanted her to find out at all.
And Marshall couldn’t seem to stop grinning. “See, it’s fine,” he said, thumping Parker solidly on the back. “Welcome to the Castle, Ms. Adleton.”
The look he shot Marshall would have killed a lesser man, but the Master of the Castle walked away not only unscathed but grinning like a fool. Parker glared after him.
“Why do I have the feeling I’m missing something?” Sinclair asked, stepping in beside him as she watched Marshall go.
Parker wasn’t about to tell her what that something was.
“Come on,” he said instead, and started across the crowded dining room. He looked back once to make sure she was following, but once they’d left the crowd of guests behind, his urge wasn’t to take her to the ballroom. If he could have, he’d have ducked with her into the first dark, tucked up out of the way corner he found just so he could talk to her, apologize, try to explain. He wanted to assure her that he knew this wasn’t her thing and that he wasn’t expecting anything from her. He wasn’t a monster. He would never force her to do any of the things her wide eyes kept locking onto as they walked—the naked slave crawling along on a leash at her master’s heel, the copper wall sconces artistically engraved with depictions of both men and women being spanked, blindfolded, bound, or any number of the BDSM-oriented portraits and couples that they kept passing in the halls.
This wasn’t what he wanted at all. Parker had never wanted her to see this, any of it. He didn’t want her to be afraid of him. If he could just hold her for a minute, touch her, kiss the hell out of her the way he’d been fighting himself not to do for most of this last year, then maybe he could somehow make things okay again between them.
God, she smelled so good, like chocolate and licorice, vanilla and cinnamon. Just like her candy store.
He couldn’t make himself stop stealing peeks at her; he doubted if she looked at him even once.
“Can… can I ask you a question?” Sinclair hesitantly asked.
“Anything,” he said, but he wasn’t thinking about anything except his warring desires: the one that said, take her to the ballrooms, let her do her job and go home; and the other that begged for him to catch her close, bury his hands and his face in her hair and screw this colossal fuck up into something even greater than it already was.
“Are you married?”
Parker startled. They both stopped where he did, facing one another in that very public hall not far from the entrance hall and the main staircase leading up to the second and third floors or, through the hidden doorway tucked in an alcove to one side, down into the dungeon. There weren�
��t many people around—a Little Maid was dusting knickknacks on a short table, two noblewomen in full-period gowns were heading up to the second floor, there was music coming from the rainbow room and bawdy laughter. It was Monday. Monday was Pictionary night. Things always got bawdy on Pictionary night.
“Why would you ask that?” he responded, honestly surprised.
Sinclair was blushing furiously, staring after the women and then off towards all that laughter and clapping. Growing flustered, she rubbed her forehead before turning a little into him and lowering her voice in an effort to keep their conversation private. The sweet smell of chocolate followed her movements, scenting the air all around him.
“I don’t… date a lot,” she haltingly confessed. “So maybe I… misread things. But I thought maybe, you and I…”
He was going to kiss her. Parker could feel the need in his tingling lips as he stared fixedly down at hers. “Sinclair…”
“Did I imagine it all?” she asked, somewhat desperately. “I mean, I’ve known something was wrong for a long time now. You’ve come close to asking me out, I know you have, but I could never figure out why you didn’t. So just tell me, is the reason you didn’t because of… of…” She gestured helplessly all around them. “…of this? Or is there something worse?”
Worse than this? Parker felt his gut clench in hard, but he wasn’t sure if it was because she was classifying this as bad or because the way she’d worded it suggested she didn’t consider it to be as bad as, say, if he were married and therefore unavailable to date. Oddly, that fed him a small kernel of hope.
“I’m not married.” He wanted to tell her that this was as bad as it got with him, but he wasn’t sure just how “bad” she considered all this and, to be honest, he himself had never really considered it bad to begin with. How could he? This was who he was, who he had always been even back before he knew what to call it.
He was a Dom, a man who derived intense sexual pleasure from the act of dominating women. This was only the second time in his life when who he was at his core had ever proved itself to be a problem. After the first, he’d sworn never again to waste his time with someone who did not share at least some of his kinks. Apparently, his heart had missed that memo, because it had taken shockingly little time to fall in absolute infatuation with Sinclair, a woman as vanilla as the scent that filled her shop.
She gazed up at him with such big eyes, it hurt to look at them. He tried to turn away but she caught his arm. “Is it an act or do you…” Again, she looked helpless around them. “Do you like this sort of thing?”
Parker caught his breath, a sound that was as much frustration as disbelief that she would even bother to ask. She may as well have asked him to explain the creation of all life on Earth. “Sinclair…”
“No, really,” she pressed. “I won’t laugh. I just… I’m confused. I’m trying to understand.”
“Understand what?” he countered, not just facing her now but moving closer. Looming deliberately to make himself an even bigger presence beside her. “What exactly do you want to know? Does it make me feel powerful to have a woman get down on her knees and present herself before me? You bet it does. Is it pleasurable to bind her, pin her down, spread her helplessly open to my touch, my sight, whatever I desire?” He didn’t feel like it right now, but Parker smiled anyway. “Yes. Hell yes, even. Do I enjoy inflicting pain? Do I like to spank?”
She tried to step back then, but he kept pace with her, backing her right up against the stone wall. He leaned into her, resting his hands to either side of her head. Her eyes were so wide, he could see himself in them, and her chest heaved, her breasts lifting. If he leaned just a little bit closer, he could have felt the soft scrape of her tightening nipples brush up against him. “What do you really want to know, sweetness? Do you want to know what it would feel like for me to dominate you? Do you want to feel my hands pinning yours, my mouth and teeth nipping at the tips of your breasts? Do you want to know if you’ll moan for me to continue or cry for me to stop? I dare say, depending on my mood, you might do a fair amount of both, but I promise, if you’ve been a good little girl, I’ll make you come so many times you forget your own name.”
In his experience, strong and confident women usually balked at being called “little” girls, good or otherwise. Sinclair only quavered, “A-and if I haven’t?”
That look, that voice, that shiver—all three speared him right to the very core. Parts of him softened; another significant part of him hardened with instant interest.
“Then you’d give me no choice.” He shifted his hand to brush her hair back from her cheek. “I guess I’d just have to put you across my knee and spank your naughty little bottom until it’s so hot you can’t sit down.”
Her soft mouth parted, her lips rounding into mirrors of surprise that matched her wide green eyes.
“Does that frighten you?” he asked, but it wasn’t fear that he saw inside her. Startlement, yes. Arousal, definitely not, but at least she wasn’t frightened.
She even shook her head. “I’m n-not scared of you, Parker.”
That shivery little voice and her use of his name both went straight to his cock. He couldn’t help himself. He brushed her cheek with his thumb, and then dipped down to caress her bottom lip the same way. “Good. I’m glad.”
It would have been better for them both if she had been afraid. At least then, that would make it easier for him to let her go again when all this was over. Parker stared down at her soft and trembling lips. Even more tremblingly, Sinclair lifted her chin, making herself so kissably available.
Someone cleared his throat. Parker looked back over his shoulder to see Sam standing not ten feet away, arms folded across his chest, that cat-that-licked-the-cream smile all over his face.
Damn it.
Parker got mad all over again. Shoving back off the wall, he caught Sinclair’s arm and started walking again. This time, he didn’t stop until he reached the adjoining ballrooms.
* * * * *
From the moment Parker—her normally non-threatening, smiling, joking, weekly caramel customer—stalked her to the hard, stone wall and pinned her up against it, Sinclair forgot how to breathe. She didn’t remember how again until four hours later, when Jackson dropped her off just outside her store. He stayed in his van, idling near the curb and watching until she was safely in her car. That was both comforting and unnerving, to be honest. When she drove off, she kept one eye on the rearview mirror and drove aimlessly until she was certain he’d actually gone back to the Castle instead of following her further.
Once she was home, however, everything came crashing down around her. She stood in her foyer for almost three minutes, not moving, not doing anything but staring into space and thinking, although for the life of her she couldn’t even remember what random thoughts shot in and rapidly back out of her head again.
Trying to snap herself out of it, she headed for the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. She ate standing up over the sink and then headed for the shower. That helped to clear her head and pull things back into proper perspective. She had a job to do, nothing else that had happened tonight was as important as that.
With her long red hair wrapped up in a towel, she saw cross-legged on her bed with her laptop on a pillow before her. She made a list of what she’d like, what she’d need, looked up examples of what fancy party themes might look like, crossed out about half of what she’d had on her list and revised it. There wasn’t time to order anything online. She was going to have to shop locally—Target, Walmart, Sears. She’d get tablecloths, drapes, streamers and crystal votive cups. She’d focus on romance and arrange everything in overlapping shades of white, pink and complimenting red.
Red… like the color her face had been for much of the night. Or better yet, like the bright red color on the bottoms of all those well-spanked women.
Sinclair stared at her laptop for a long time, hesitating. Her stomach twisted, clenching, the same feeling she’d had wh
en Parker had leaned in over her and threatened in that low, seductive tone to turn her over his knee. Tiny prickling sensations crawled up the backs of both thighs and spread out across her bottom.
Pulling her laptop onto her knees, Sinclair opened up a Google search engine and typed in BDSM. She read up on it, and spanking too. Finally, she looked up the Castle. She read the online brochure, the list of amenities offered and the different programs. She looked through the gallery pictures, and all the while, her stomach got tighter, her belly grew warmer, her heart raced and her nipples grew heavy and tense.
It was almost two am. Switching her laptop off, she placed it on the nightstand and turned out the light. Crawling under the covers, she lay in the darkness, tight and warm and jittery, wondering what it would feel like to bend over Parker’s leather-clad knees. She imagined his hand on her bare bottom, lightly slapping down, or maybe not so lightly. Maybe he’d scold her while he spanked her, call her a bad girl again in that low sexy voice of his.
It wasn’t her stomach that clenched in sharply then. No, that stimulating clench came from lower down. She squeezed her thighs tight together, but that was a poor sensual substitute for what she really wanted—to be touched, by his hand preferably, although her own would just have to suffice. She could feel the liquid tickling down between the warm and pulsing lips of her sex. Who would have thought she’d be this turned on by thoughts of being held, stroked, and thoroughly, deliciously, sensually spanked by Parker?
Chapter FOUR
Bright and early Tuesday morning, Sinclair went shopping. She hit every Walmart, Kmart, Target, Sears, and Bed, Bath and Beyond within a hundred mile radius and ended up opening her store almost twenty minutes late. Surprisingly, there was a car at the curb waiting on her to unlock her door. She was almost excited about that until she recognized the short blonde—perfect makeup, perfect manicured nails, not a golden curl out of place—woman sitting behind the steering wheel.
