by JoAnn Ross
It was not a question, but Roxi struggled to answer it anyway, which wasn’t easy with the top of her head blown off. “Y-yes.” She’d never believed the G-spot really existed. Sloan had just proved her wrong.
Her inner muscles were clenching at him like a hard, wet fist. “Oh, God, yes.” Like didn’t even begin to describe the sensation.
“Good. Let’s try it this way.” When his wickedly clever thumb found her clit again, she climaxed with a smothered scream, stiffened, then collapsed like a rag doll, sprawled bonelessly on his lap.
The top of her dress was down around her waist, and somehow her skirt had ended up there, as well, as he’d hand-fucked her. Her panties were drenched and his powerful erection pressing against her bottom was driving her mad.
“Sloan.” Her body moved restlessly, needing more. His fingers slid slickly out of her, leaving her cunt feeling abandoned. And empty. “Please.” She would have, if physically possible, split herself open for him. The climaxes he’d given her had only whet her appetite for more. “I need you.”
“I know.” He stroked a hand down her hair. “And you’ll have me. We’ll both have each other. Later.”
He tipped up her face with a fingertip beneath her chin. Touched his lips to hers, at first lightly, then deepened the kiss degree by devastating degree until she trembled and moaned against his mouth.
“Amazing,” he murmured again.
She could feel his satisfied smile and felt a spark of irritation at herself for making this so easy for him. “You really are a wicked, wicked man.”
“Absolutely.” He slid her off his lap onto her feet. “And you’re about to find out exactly how wicked I can be.”
Wanting to take his time, he debated tugging the dress back over her breasts, which were so enticingly displayed by the spiderweb thin lace of that corset she was wearing, then decided to stay with the theme of the evening.
“As much as I really, really like that dress, right now I want you to take it off.”
It was a test, and they both knew it. They also both knew that she wanted what was about to follow every bit as much as he did.
Which was why he wasn’t all that surprised when she reached behind her back. The whispered sound of the zipper lowering sounded unreasonably loud in the hushed room.
The dress slid down her body, pooling in a black, silken puddle at her feet. She stood before him wearing that lacy corset that lifted her breasts, erotically offering them up for a man to look at. To touch. Taste.
She was—thank you, God!—also wearing a matching black garter belt, lace-topped stockings, and that drenched pair of panties that were so miniscule, he wondered why she bothered with them.
“You look,” he said, drinking in the exquisite sight, “like you should be on some Victoria’s Secret runway.”
She folded her arms. Shook her head. “Why does it not surprise me you’d watch that show?”
“What can I say. Men are pigs.” The show was admittedly one of his guilty pleasures. He figured most men in America would watch if their wives or girlfriends let them.
He started to instruct her to hold her hands away from her body, then decided to wait until they got upstairs before laying on the orders. Instead, he took hold of her hands and held them out for her.
Apparently she got the idea because when he let go, she continued to hold them out, inviting him to look.
He made a little twirling motion with his finger.
She turned around slowly, like a girl showing off a new party dress, though there was nothing girlish about either the outfit or the woman. He was also impressed as hell that she was able to move so smoothly on four-inch, fuck-me-big-boy stilettos.
“You look,” he murmured, “good enough to eat.”
She looked up at him through her lashes. It was, Sloan thought, the same look Scarlet had flashed at Rhett when she’d shown up wearing curtains and trying to coax him into giving her the money to pay the taxes on Tara.
“That’s something to look forward to,” she said.
A laugh burst out of him. He might have cast her in the role of his pet submissive tonight, but Roxi Dupree was definitely his equal. Intellectually, emotionally, and, he suspected, sexually.
“Absolutely.” He scooped up the dress from the floor. “Let’s go.”
“Go?” He thought she paled a little at that idea.
“Upstairs. Where I intend to have my wicked way with you.”
Ten
He wouldn’t.
Wouldn’t make her walk through an entire dining room of Savannahians in the barely-there underwear and high heels.
He wouldn’t treat her like a sexual slave in front of people she’d run into on the street, in the grocery store, people who might even be Hex Appeal customers.
Would he?
No. Roxi blew out a short, head-clearing breath. Even if Emma hadn’t vouched for him, she knew he wasn’t into humiliation.
“There are a set of back stairs to your room, aren’t there?”
For a long, suspended moment Sloan was very still. He rubbed his chin. Frowned down at her. “What if I said there wasn’t?”
She smiled. Serenely. Confidently. “You’d be lying.”
His lips twitched. Just a bit. “You think you know me that well?”
“Yes.” Although it didn’t make any sense, she did.
He gave her another of those long deep looks that made her think he could see all the way inside her heart. Her soul.
Then he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, pointing her toward the door.
“You’d be right,” he allowed.
She let out a surprised squeal when he slapped her butt.
“Now, let’s get going,” he growled. “I’ve plans for you.”
That thought, combined with the rough and hungry tone of voice, made her shiver.
At any other time she might have felt self-conscious as she walked up the secret stairway in front of him. The lingerie that had seemed so alluring in the dressing room of Sensual Essentials this morning could seem a bit sluttish while parading around in it in front of a fully dressed man, but the entire evening had taken on a somewhat dreamlike quality, just like those hot and sexy dreams she’d been having night after night, so it seemed perfectly normal.
The stone steps ended at a thick wooden door with heavy iron hinges. She glanced back over her shoulder to see what he intended to do to her now, and saw him take an old-fashioned key from the inside pocket of his jacket.
He reached past her, slipped the key into the brass lock, and turned the handle.
“Come in.”
“Said the spider to the fly?” she asked.
His grin was quick and wicked. “Of course.”
The walls of the room were draped in a deep burgundy silk, which wasn’t unusual for older homes in Savannah. But it was the art hanging on the walls that captured the eye and stirred the senses.
While unabashedly erotic, the paintings did not feature the familiar airbrushed, vacuous girls from the pages of men’s glossy magazines or porn flicks.
These women were strong, confident, powerful in their skin, whether dressed in dominatrix black leather and wielding a whip, or kneeling blindfolded on a stone floor—much like the one in the wine cellar, Roxi noticed—hands clasped behind her back, about to take an engorged penis, which was only a breath away, between her parted, glossy red lips.
Another painting featured a woman seated on a table, a dark and swarthy man pressed against her, fastening a pair of handcuffs around the wrists he was holding behind her back.
“Well.” Having to remind herself to breathe, Roxi exhaled. “We’re definitely not at the Hyatt, Toto.”
He chuckled as he tossed her dress over the back of a chair covered in a dark brocade. It was only when Roxi looked closer that she noticed the pattern was taken from Japanese Netsuke woodcuts depicting a dizzying variety of sexual positions. “Good guess.”
“Am I allowed to look at them?” Or were th
ey, she wondered, going to get straight down to business?
“That’s what they’re here for.”
He took off his jacket, yanked the tie off, slipped the onyx links out of his cuffs and put them in a ceramic box shaped like one of Georgia O’Keefe’s flower pictures, which, of course, everyone, even people who knew nothing about art, understood immediately were meant to depict vulvas.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” Her earlier orgasms, along with anticipation and the blatant eroticism of her surroundings, already had Roxi drunk with feeling. She didn’t want to risk adding alcohol to the mix.
He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt, poured a glass of brandy for himself, then leaned against the desk, legs crossed at the ankles. She could feel him watching her.
“It’s quite a remarkable collection.” And extensive. She glanced down at the ivory chess set on the table and realized that the depictions of the ancient gods were anatomically correct.
“Thank you.”
Surprised, she glanced back at him. “You own them?”
“I’ve collected them over the years. And yes, to answer your next question, this is my suite.”
“Did you bring your little friends up here back when you were celebrating your birthday?”
“No, because at the time it was merely an inn and restaurant with a rather interesting past.”
“As a whorehouse.”
“You make it sound so shoddy,” he chided. “But yes, sex was for sale here. As it was in other places. Swansea was just”—he trailed a hand over the back of the chair—“a sumptuous cut above the rest.
“When my first film hit it big a few years ago, I had some funds to invest. Since I’m a Savannahian at heart, when the building came on the market I bought it, dumped a bundle into restoring it to its former glory, with some admittedly modern touches like soundproofing the rooms and some state-of-the-art video equipment, and turned it into a private club.
“And yes, I also returned the focus to eroticism. But if money is being exchanged between consenting adults, business is taken care of before anyone arrives at the door.”
“I didn’t read anything about you owning a place like this.”
“That’s because the deed’s in the name of a real estate development company I founded with friends. And my managing partners, who take care of the day-to-day running of the premises, are very discreet, which is a must given our clientele.”
“I suppose it would rock the social order if people found out about all the rich, lecherous old movers and shakers swinging with their young mistresses on the chandeliers,” she said dryly.
“Would it surprise you to know that approximately one third of our memberships are owned by women? And that I’m told that many of our guests are married couples who enjoy having a place away from home where they can indulge their fantasies without worrying about mothers-in-law calling or children walking into the bedroom at inopportune times?”
“Sort of like a sexual Disneyland for consenting adults.”
“Everyone needs a hobby.” Amusement touched his eyes. “I prefer to think of Swansea as a five-star date destination.”
“Well, it’s definitely a level above pizza and a chick flick,” Roxi said. “You must come to town often.”
The door to the bedroom was open, revealing a lake-sized, hand-carved bed that claimed the center of the room. She was surprised as something twisted inside her. Something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy.
“Apparently not as often as I should.” He sipped the brandy. “An oversight I’ll have to correct.”
“You’re forgetting my three date rule.”
“Sweetheart, I doubt there’s anything I could forget about you.”
“Then you’re ignoring it?”
“Let’s just table the topic for now.” He put his glass down on a mahogany desk next to a brocade chair and wagged a finger. “Enough chitchat. Come stand in front of me and let me look at you.”
This time she didn’t argue. Just crossed the room and stood, the toes of her spindly black heels touching the front of his shoes as she waited for what would happen next.
“Good girl.”
It was more than a little chauvinistic. Strangely, at this moment, she didn’t care.
He skimmed his fingertips down her throat with tantalizing slowness, his touch leaving a trail of sparks.
His stroking fingers moved over the bodice of the corset. “Take this off.”
Gladly, given that it had been hours since she’d been able to take a full breath.
Roxi reached behind her back and worked the hook and eye fasteners open, one by one. Which wasn’t easy. She would have appreciated some help, had actually anticipated him taking it off her when she’d handed over her Mastercard this morning, but apparently for now, anyway, she was on her own.
She might be playing submissive, but that didn’t mean she had to play dead. When the last hook was unfastened, she held the corset against her chest with one hand. Her eyes lifted to his. And held.
She waited.
He waited.
When she took her hand way, it fell to the floor.
“Nice.” He took her breasts in his hands, as he had downstairs in the cellar. “A perfect handful.”
Ha! So much for worrying about not owning a pair of silicone D-cup boobs.
He frowned when he took in the red indentations left by the corset boning. “As sexy as that little bit of frou-frou is, you won’t wear it again when you’re with me,” he said.
“Not tonight,” she agreed. “But we’re on Cinderella time, cher. After midnight, you don’t get to call the shots.”
“Emma hinted you might not be the type of woman I’m accustomed to.” He traced his fingers over the faint red lines. “She’s right.” Roxi sucked in her stomach as he pressed an open kiss against the skin his fingers, and his eyes, had already warmed. “I don’t want anything marring this tender flesh.”
He picked up the glass again. Took another sip of the brandy. “Now take off those panties.”
She slipped her fingers beneath the elastic riding low on her hips, did a little shimmy, and sent them sliding down her legs.
Then stepped out of them and stood there, hands behind her back, breasts thrust out, inviting his study.
“Incredible,” he murmured, seemingly more to himself than to her.
He framed her waist with his broad, long-fingered hands. Expecting him to kiss her, she tilted her head and allowed her eyelids to drift closed.
When he lifted her off her feet, her eyes flew open.
He sat her on the desk. Then used his knee to coax her stocking-clad legs apart.
“I want to see you.”
She knew exactly what he meant. But because she didn’t want to hand him everything he wanted on a silver platter, she pretended otherwise. “I’m right here, cher. Nearly naked.”
“Good try.” He lifted the heavy glass in a salute. “I want to see those lower lips that proved so sensitive earlier this evening. And then I want you to make yourself come.”
She felt the blood rush into her cheeks. Her breasts. Across her stomach, spreading like a fever.
“I don’t think I can.”
“Of course you can,” he said reasonably. “Unless you expect me to believe a woman who’s reached the ripe age of twenty-five, a woman of your intense passions, has never masturbated?”
“Of course I have.”
In fact, she’d brought herself off just the other night, while reading much this same scene in The Story of O, when Sir Stephen had brutally punished his new slave for not doing what Sloan was instructing her to do.
Which was scary, thinking of how she was alone here in this sex suite with a man she didn’t know. While she might be intrigued by the occasional kink, she definitely wasn’t into pain or humiliation.
He cupped the snifter between his palms and took another drink, eyeing her over the rim of the glass. “If i
t eases your mind, I’m not into hurting women.”
“I know that.” His aura might be blazing red, but she didn’t detect a bit of danger. While she wasn’t in the habit of masturbating in front of a partner, this wouldn’t be the first time. But she was suddenly feeing uncharacteristically self-conscious. “I just need a minute.”
“Take your time.” He smiled, showing her that while the circumstances might seem similar, he was nothing like the brutal Sir Stephen. “I’m enjoying the view.”
She touched her hand between her legs, in that same place it had been again this morning when she’d awakened. Then she flinched. It was still slick from her orgasms, swollen and painfully hypersensitive from the earlier deep thrusts of his fingers.
“That’s it.”
She lifted her head and met his eyes, which had darkened to a deep emerald flame and were watching her every movement.
“Now open yourself wider.” His dark voice wrapped around her like velvet bonds. “Let me see the lovely rose bloom.”
She did as instructed, parting her swollen lower lips, like separating the petals of the rose he’d suggested.
“Does that feel good?”
“A bit.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not too badly.” It was getting better. Closing her eyes, she slipped into a warm, sensual fog of need.
“Tell me exactly how it feels.”
“Lonely.”
He chuckled. “We’ll take care of that soon enough.” She heard something rustle, but unwilling to risk losing the fantasy, didn’t open her eyes. “Now lift that tender little bud.”
It pulsed like a hot little heart against her fingertips as she obeyed.
“That’s excellent.”
His voice sounded as if it was coming from far away. Like right after Katrina, when a post-traumatic stress therapist hypnotized her to help her overcome the nightmares that had plagued her. The difference was, the therapist’s goal had been to soothe her. Sloan’s voice was doing exactly the opposite.
“Now let me see you make yourself come.”
By this point, she was so turned on he couldn’t have stopped her. Leaning back on her elbows, she lasciviously rubbed her fingers over her soaking clit, driving herself closer and closer to the brink.
