Harden offered no response.
Kerri said louder, “Don’t you die, Harden, you hear me? Don’t you do it, don’t you dare do it! You’re not gonna do it ’til I say so, you got that? You hear me? You do it when I tell you! You hear me? You hear me?”
Harden’s fingers began to curl, little twitches followed by rolls of those numbed digits, slowly reaching down to clasp around Kerri’s own.
“Yes,” Kerri said, her voice breaking with relief and exhausted gratitude. “That’s right, Harden, that’s right. You’re gonna be all right, Harden, you hear me?” His fingers gripped tighter. But she commanded him even louder, stronger than she’d ever been before. “Say it! Say it, damn you!”
Harden’s voice creaked and croaked, his eyes glancing around and finally finding Kerri, looking down on her. His lips quivered and his jaw struggled to open. In a tearful whisper, Kerri repeated, “Say it…say it…”
Harden pushed out, “I-I’ll be…all…all right.”
Kerri broke out in a gush of tears, falling down over his chest, wrapping her arms around him, and squeezing him tighter than she’d ever done before. They’d come so close to losing each other, losing everything they’d won and everything they’d ever enjoy together. But love and faith and perseverance had triumphed, and Kerri believed for the first time in a long time that she would be okay, that they would be okay, that everything would finally be as it was meant to be; nothing would ever challenge their love or their lives again.
She believed it.
But outside on West Oak Street, a silver Audi cruised slowly past the house owned by Britany Stevens. When the police and ambulance sirens got louder in the distance, the Audi jumped into a higher gear and sped forward, turning onto Pass Avenue to disappear into the traffic.
* * *
THE END
PROTECTED
Steele Series Book 3
Chapter 1
The thick nylon ropes were tight around Kerri Steele’s wrists and ankles, spreading her out on the bed. Each limb had length enough for some movement, and her knees were bent slightly upward as she tried to pull herself to one side and then the other.
The drop of hot wax hit her sweat-damp skin with a tiny thud, the heat sinking into her then fading fast. But it wasn’t alone. Another drop found her right breast, just under the nipple, hot heat quickly passing. She bit into the cleave gag, groaning into the dampened cloth that pinned down her tongue and pushed her cheeks back.
“So good to watch you struggle, baby.” Harden’s voice rumbled low in the room. “Look at that gorgeous body, twisting around; God, it makes me hot.”
Harden stood above her, unseen on the other side of her blindfold. She knew it was him and she didn’t want to imagine anything else. But the blindfold meant she couldn’t see those hot drips coming, and those sizzling little surprises were all the better for coming at her unannounced.
“But I’m not fucking you yet, my sweet little wife, oh no, no no no no no…“
“Please,” Kerri said, muffled in her gag.
And as the candle burned down, the wax came faster, hotter, in bigger droplets, splashing in different parts of her exposed belly, breasts, hips, thighs—a chaotic journey around the landscape of her physique.
Harden knew every beautiful curve. And as usual he was in complete control of every inch of her, inside and out. He knew how she felt, how she’d react; he’d always known and would always know. Kerri and Harden Steele were a perfect physical and spiritual match, and both of them indulged in that perfection.
Harden chuckled, low and mischievous. “Oh, I’m going to fuck you, of course. You know I am. But not yet, gorgeous Kerri, not for a good, long while yet.”
The wax came faster—a hot splash of sensuous pain across her inner thigh. Kerri shifted to the side out of sheer, lusty instinct, pulling herself against her bonds, nylon digging into her wrists. Harden had tied her expertly, several loops around each wrist and ankle, her skin unbruised. It was as if her own hands were clamped around her limbs—one hand over her eyes and mouth, another pouring hot wax over every part of her body.
Kerri’s juices were hot and ready to flow, but she used the techniques of self-control she’d learned from Harden to hold it back, to push her orgasm down deep, only to let it grow bigger and stronger. Since he had taught her about the continuous orgasm, she’d become a master of it on her own. ’There’d be the perfect time to unleash her unending tide: rising and pausing and rising again.
No, Kerri told herself, not yet, not yet. He’s got something special, I know it! I can’t wait!
Kerri’s heart beat faster as her muscles pulled tighter, Harden chuckling above her.
The drops stopped coming, Kerri panting into her gag, head lolling on the pillow. Behind the relative dark of the blindfold, even more effective in the dim loom of the moonlight, Kerri could only imagine what Harden had lined up for her. She could hear his naked footsteps moving around the bed, from the sideboard to the dresser, and a drawer sliding open and then closed. Goosebumps rose up on her breasts, her nipples already hard and glistening with her sweat.
Kerri waited, knowing that Harden was there, knowing he was about to do something. But the anticipation was cranking up the tension in her muscles, her head lifting up off the pillow as if to beg Harden to speak, to act—to do something, anything.
Then Harden said, “I can’t get to you, Kerri! You have to get loose, but I can’t…I can’t get to you…“ Harden put a little strain into his voice, as if he too were bound and not actually looming over the bed.
Role play, Kerri told herself. God, I love this man.
So she let Harden carry her away, as she always did and always wanted to. He would control the fantasy; he would control her reactions, her mind and body and soul.
When Harden said, with slightly more dramatic urgency, “Baby, you’ve got to get away!” Kerri responded, pulling at her ropes with delightful futility.
The first little poke pushed into the sole of her left foot. It hurt a bit, more from surprise than anything else. She could feel that he didn’t break the hard skin, even with several more pokes on the soles of both feet. Kerri knew right away that he was using a pair of two-pronged kitchen pokers—the type used for barbecuing steaks.
But he was going to use them for something else entirely. She was blind to everything but what her imagination would show her. Even that was in Harden’s masterful hands.
Those little metallic jabs poked her twitching feet, glided past the toes to the tops, and tapped lightly but chaotically around her feet, sometimes harder, sometimes softer. But the sum total was a vibrating sensation that raced up her legs and quickly collected in her writhing hips.
“Don’t look at it, Kerri, don’t look! It’s hideous, I… Can’t you get away, baby? Please, try!” She did pull away, but she knew she wasn’t going anywhere, and that she’d need her strength soon enough.
More taps danced around her feet and ankles, those twin prongs poking and bouncing off her skin like a pair of creeping metal fingers, or the spikes of some hideous alien creature. Those curious little spikes investigated the ropes around her ankles, creeping farther upward, past the ropes and into the tight curves of her gymnast’s calves. Her leg muscles flexed as the imagined monster investigated every inch of her soft skin before slowly advancing. Little pings of excitement danced around the skin of her quivering legs, squirming in anticipation.
“It wants you, Kerri,” Harden said with an even more raspy urgency in his voice. “It knows it can have you, and it knows it’s going to have you, Kerri! Jesus, you gotta get away from it, Kerri! Struggle, sweetheart, struggle!”
She did, hips rising and cocking to the side, arms pulling hard at the ropes securing them to the headboard. But it was no use, and both of them knew it. That’s the way they wanted it. Her heart pounded behind her jiggling breasts. Her orgasm was ready, fighting her, hating her for her tyranny, resenting its own sense of being bound and helpless. But like Kerri,
it would simply have to accept being helpless and struggle fruitlessly against it.
“You know what it’s going to do, Kerri! My God, it’s huge!”
Kerri could imagine herself: a bound sacrifice to some hideout sexual spider alien about to ravish her, impregnate her with its terrible seed. It had to be ten or twelve feet long, a steely body with silver spikes, its front claws bristling with the very hard little prongs that advanced up her legs.
“It’s getting closer, Kerri…closer!”
That slow procession of pokes and jabs ascended, sharp and quick, two at a time, advancing to the top of her calves, just under the knees. Harden’s imagined creature poked behind Kerri’s knees—soft and supple—pulses of energy running up the backs of her thighs. They circled around her lower thighs, muscles pulling as she wriggled a bit more.
Kerri’s nerves were lit up, crackling under her skin, humming throughout her outstretched body, keeping her brewing orgasm growing, no longer content to remain suppressed. Kerri was panting, imagining that terrible thing as those metallic pokes rolled up her thighs, inside and out, moving a bit faster than before. The monster was getting excited, tapping at every hard curve of those outstretched thighs—the inner thighs especially as they crept closer and closer to her bucking hips.
“Kerri, my God, get away from it…now, while you can!”
Kerri cried out and pulled at the ropes, her arms and legs bending, her pelvis shifting one way then the other, even reaching up to that pair of metal prongs as they whirred faster, tickling her inner thighs and tapping onto her abdomen, circling her pussy and closing in on it from all sides.
One poker crept down from above, gently poking her vulva just where her G-spot awaited it, her orgasm bubbling and rising with every crazed little tap. The other poker spun in a wide circle, striking her upper thighs and labia in a clockwise whirl.
Kerri screamed, her hips thrusting upward, her body quivering as her orgasm finally broke free. It rampaged through her body: legs and arms and hips and breasts and throat. Her entire body was a vessel for that steaming, riling orgasm, already too big to sustain and only getting bigger.
Kerri’s body was tense, nerves on fire, orgasm heaving below, Harden hypnotizing her from above, the fantasy world of their creation swirling around them.
And the night had only just begun.
Chapter 2
Kerri took a long, hot shower, water pouring down over her smooth, supple skin. She was exhausted for what had been another marathon session with Harden, and her knees were almost too weak to hold her up. But that hot water pounded on her muscles, relaxing and revitalizing them, encouraging her blood to run more eagerly in her veins.
The soapy suds were luxurious—a slick surface over the curves of her hips, her body tight and compact from her endless adventures with Harden. Keeping up with him kept her in great shape.
* * *
Kerri couldn’t help but crack a wry smile at her misadventures, steam rising around her like the mists of time. What a silly way to make a living back then—being a scream queen, Kerri reminisced, though at the time I wasn’t married to a handsome billionaire. Even so, running around screaming, boobs bouncing, some maniac chasing me through the woods—ridiculous.
* * *
Kerri rinsed herself off, skin clean and pure, unblemished despite the dangers she’d faced in the previous year. Her memory was still haunted by flashes of the perils they’d faced and only miraculously survived: charging down that snowy slope in Switzerland, armed gunmen speeding down from behind, gunshots barely missing her, her own movie set burning to the ground, and actors and crew nearly trampling each other in a desperate bid for escape. The fact that she was alive was incredible, but the fact that she came out of it without injury, with barely a scrape, struck her as being simply amazing.
Kerri knew she’d been lucky, even blessed, to have ever met Harden in the first place. She would never have gone to that billionaire auction without Yvonne Suggs’s urging, but she couldn’t deny that her oldest and dearest friend had been absolutely right. Nothing in her life had been the same after that night, and it would never be the same again.
Kerri dried her blond hair, her ice-blue eyes staring back at her from the foggy mirror. She wiped the mirror with her towel so she could get a better look at her reflection… Not bad, she acknowledged. Hope I can keep it up. After a pause to look herself over, Kerri had to wonder, Will our kids be blonde, like me, or a dark complexion like their father? Will we even have kids?
When?
But there were other questions lingering in Kerri’s mind, even if there were no doubts in her heart.
I love Harden, I always have and I always will. But I still know so little about him—used to be Harding Stone before he changed it after meeting me, got rich in tech stocks, parents are dead. It’s not much to know.
Kerri slipped on a light summer dress which clung to her tight and sun-kissed skin.
Well, how much more is there to know? What difference does it make? Like he said, who he was before he met me doesn’t matter; it’s who he is now, who we are now.
But Kerri’s skeptical self had to whisper into the corner of her ear, Unless he’s hiding something…something terrible.
Kerri shook her head, her ongoing internal debate not interrupting her careful application of some cover-up and a just a touch of lip gloss.
What could he be hiding?
But the answers came quickly. That wasn’t his first auction. Lord knows what a man of his sense of power and control, of dominance, could have been capable of, or what he might be covering up.
No, Kerri corrected herself, Harden’s the one person in the world I can trust. He could have killed me a dozen times if he’d wanted to. I can trust Harden.
But the reply was even more ominous: He hasn’t wanted to, or needed to…yet.
But Kerri had to shake it off. No more of this ridiculous conspiracy theory crap! How stupid did I look blaming Big Pharma and some billionaire cabal for what those miserable mafia bastards were doing? It only made sense, but I just couldn’t keep my head on straight. Between Britany Stevens and George Hume, they had me running around in circles.
Not anymore! Nobody’s gonna spin me around or manipulate me anymore, least of all myself!
Kerri came downstairs, the smell of coffee rich in the air, the Malibu waves a constant hush in the distance. Kerri found a plate of freshly cut cantaloupe, honeydew melon, and some big purple grapes, crisp and bursting with juicy tang and a sweet aftertaste.
Smartphone to his ear, Harden glanced at Kerri with a wink. Tall, black hair, naturally dark over his sparkling green eyes, he was casually dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve silk shirt, a dark gray pattern she’d found in a place on Rodeo Drive shopping with Yvonne.
“Yeah, I’m interested. I don’t usually fly out to meetings; can’t you come here…? Yeah, I would like to see the factory; that’s true.” Harden looked at Kerri with a long, silent study and a slow, clever grin. “I’ll tell you what: my wife and I will take a trip out there this week. Let’s say…next Monday at ten a.m.?” Kerri looked over, curious about what plans Harden was making for the two of them. “All right, text me the address; we’ll see you then. Good day to you, Mr. Sonjaya.”
Harden swiped the screen and set down the phone.
“What was that all about?”
“Some guy from India has a supplement business—looking for investors; he’s got a factory out in Jersey.”
“Supplements?”
“Nutritional supplements, actually: glutathione, CoQ10, resveratrol, things like that.”
“Holistic, I know all about it. I thought we could look into some of that after taking down those billboards.”
Harden’s lip turned up in a little half-smile. “I put out some feelers. Anyway, they wanna have us come out and take a look. Interested?”
“In going to New Jersey? Can’t we just invest in the company and go to Paris instead?”
Harden huf
fed, his eyes combing Kerri’s body, one brow raised. “I don’t invest in anything I’m not…intimately familiar with.”
“Is that so?”
“It most certainly is.” They kissed—a playful meeting of lips and tongue, joy crackling between them. Harden went on, “Anyway, you keep saying you want to know more about my childhood?”
“Well, sure, you’re my husband, you’re the love of my life. I want to know everything about you.”
“All right then, let’s go see it in person.”
Chapter 3
Flying on their private jet was always a thrill for Kerri. So much of her life had changed, but it was still impossible for her simply to get used to. Kerri had done fairly well as an actress, and her first husband, Mark McCall, had done even better before his tragic, early death. But the gross sum of all their movies combined didn’t compare to the Steele couple’s personal wealth.
Mark, she couldn’t help but think, poor Mark, dead three years ago almost to the day. If he hadn’t taken all those pills, gone driving on Mulholland that night…if there’d been something I could have done. Still, guess I’m lucky I wasn’t in the car myself.
But that was all in the past, and Kerri was staring right down the barrel of a bright and brilliant future. Little by little, she was feeling more and more at home with her wealth, and comfortable with the luxuries of her life, if still quite impressed with all of them. The yachts, the jets, the amazing vacations to the most exotic places; she still couldn’t believe that it was real—it all felt like just a dream.
But one glance at Harden reminded Kerri that she was the one who made him happy, that she was the missing ingredient to his life. That life was theirs, not simply his; he wouldn’t have wanted any of it without having her, and that made her feel more special and more valuable than all the riches that Harden or anyone else could deliver.
Billionaire Bash: The Complete Steele Series Page 19
