by Cox, Chloe
Good God.
“That was pretty hot,” she said.
He said, “That’s not what you’re gonna do.”
And then he raised his leg again, his hands pressing down on her hips, driving her into him, and Cate moaned. She couldn’t help it, it just happened, the feeling…how was he doing this? The angle just right to apply a kind of pressure she hadn’t felt before.
“Jesus, Soren…”
His hand moved around her hip, found its way under her skirt, which was hiked all the way up her leg. His thumb pressed down just above her clit and she fell forward, her hair falling over his face, her fingers grabbing his shirt and twisting.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
“You’re gonna ride me,” he said. “And you’re not gonna come ’til I say you can.”
Cate’s mouth fell open, her eyes wide and unseeing, her fingers knotted up in his shirt. He couldn’t be serious. He was serious. All sensation in her body was centered now in her core, just above where her body made contact with his leg, just where she felt tight and tense and needy every time she thought about Soren, and all of it screamed for release. Like this tight, coiled, ball of need, of want, of frustration, of being so close, so close to finally feeling free, to finally having…
“Move,” he ordered.
size="+1">“Oh my fucking God,” Cate whispered.
Because her hips were moving. Without thinking, without knowing, without…they were moving. Because when she moved she felt his leg against her entrance, his thumb pressing down just above her clit, and it felt like nothing she’d ever had before. The pressure, the right kind of pressure, sending her up, higher and higher, and Jesus H. Christ, but she was riding his leg while he sat there and watched.
She met his eyes and knew. Knew she couldn’t stop moving even if she wanted to. Knew how much he wanted her, and how much she wanted to do exactly what he said.
Holy fuck.
“Cate,” he said, his voice gruff. “Look at me. Don’t stop moving, and don’t you come until I say. You hear me?”
“Oh, please…”
“You don’t stop,” he said again. “And you don’t come.”
His gripped her hard around the hip with his other hand, helping her to drive the rhythm, his thumb still pressing that same rhythm under her skirt, and looked at her hard. His own breathing was ragged, rough, and she could see the lust in his eyes. She didn’t think she could stop moving if she tried, if she wanted to, if the people behind her stopped and saw her. She was so close, and when she came it would be over, she could go back to hiding. For the first time in her life, Cate had to seriously think about whether she’d be able to resist an orgasm.
“Soren, I don’t…please…please let me…”
“I know why you’re scared,” he said, his leg moving up to meet her now, driving her wild. “There’s something inside of you that needs to come out, and I need to bring it out of you, I don’t know why, but I do. I fucking need it.”
Cate let her head fall again, her body moving on its own now, moving beyond her, beyond words. Everything he was saying, everything that was coming, it all seemed so inevitable.
“Cate,” he growled in her ear. “You’re going to come when I tell you, and then you’re going to walk into that meeting with Ford and you’re going to handle it, and then you’re going to know you can do this, you can do both, you can…”
Cate buried her face in his neck and the scent of him almost pushed her over. She couldn’t breathe right anymore, couldn’t do much of anything but put her hands around his neck while she rode him desperately, like an animal, the humiliation of that, of her naked, bare need, adding to the pressure, to the hope that he’d let her come.
“Tell me you can do this, Cate,” he said into her ear. “Tell me you’re mine, tell me you’ll submit, Jesus fucking Christ, tell me…say it…”
Could she even speak still? Could she process what he was saying? It didn’t matter; she knew the answer. There wasn’t room for second-guessing, for rationa no for ralization, not when she needed like this.
“Yes,” she said, tearing it out of her while her body begged him for release. “Yes, I can do this.”
Then she put her lips on his ear and whispered, “Yes, sir.”
She felt him stiffen.
Then with a growl he rose up, catching her in his arms, spinning her, pushing her against the wall, and she was pinned. His mouth hovered over hers while he shoved her panties aside and she felt him inhale, felt the air drag across her lips to his, when he felt how wet she was.
And then he was inside her.
Cate groaned, buried her face in his neck, lifted her leg around his waist. Soren pushed two fingers in slowly, slowly, until she felt like she as about to burst, his huge palm resting over her clit, her whole body on actual fire.
“Now,” Soren said. “Come for me.”
He thrust into her once and she felt herself beginning to fall, beginning to drown, and she let go. Cate Kennedy let go. She’d never come like this before, never felt totally beholden to it, never felt like she lost her mind to something more basic, more animal. It tore through her, obliterating all thought, all worry, leaving just…
Just…
He fucked her like that with his fingers until the orgasm tore through her like something unleashed, like something she hadn’t known she had inside her. She whimpered into his mouth as she came, slumping against him as he took everything she had, as she realized she was done, done, she would give this man anything. Anything.
“Oh, what the hell was that,” she mumbled. “What…what…”
Soren laughed, his breath hot on her cheek, his own chest heaving. She’d left scratch marks on his shoulders. She didn’t remember that at all.
“That was a preview,” he said.
Oh God.
“I’m late for my meeting,” Cate said absently. Her voice sounded hollow, about as hollow as her brain felt. She was still holding onto Soren. In fact, she was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to stand without him.
“You’re going to be a little bit later,” he said. “There’s something else I need.”
“How?” she said. It sounded so plaintive that she had to laugh.
Then she felt him moving. His hand, that hand, again, pulling at her ruined underwear, tugging them down over her hips. Letting them fall to the floor.
“Step out of them,” he said roughly.
“Soren,” she said.
“Now.”
That voice again.
That voice.
Incredibly, unbelievably, Cate put her hands back on his shoulders and carefully stepped out of her panties. She watched while Soren grinned, dipped briefly, picked them up, and put them in his pocket.
“Now you’re ready for the meeting,” he said.
Cate’s brain function was starting to return. She must have looked as horrified as she felt.
“Trust me,” he said. He gripped the side of her face and held her still against the wall, his eyes boring into hers. “Trust me.”
“Oh, fuck me,” Cate muttered. “I do.”
“Soon.”
The ghost of that orgasm fluttered somewhere deep in Cate’s belly. Soren meant it. Soren would do it. This had really just happened. He had her underwear in his pocket and her juices on his fingers.
Or did, until he licked them off.
Cate watched, incomprehensibly turned on and possibly embarrassed and definitely flustered.
“You taste incredible,” he said gruffly. “I’m not going to be able to wait that long. Get in that meeting.”
Cate tried to smooth her skirt down as best she could, tried to fix her top, her jacket, her hair, tried to do everything possible to hide the fact that Soren had just made her come against a wall and all over his hand.
Soren just smiled.
“Now,” he said.
Cate bit her lip. The voice could definitely work for her.
In fact, the voice worked so well
that she rode that high all the way across the first floor of the club, past the clueless people congregating at the bar, all the way to the stairs that lead up to Ford’s office.
It wasn’t until she was actually climbing those stairs, only dimly aware of Soren’s eyes on her ass, that she started to freak out. It wasn’t anything new, so to speak; it was just the reality of the situation starting to seep in past the blissful haze of an intense orgasm and the awareness that her underwear was in Soren’s pocket.
She was going to do her job in front of a man who now knew her as someone else. As a woman who, yes, had been abused, even if he didn’t know the details of how, who, or when. As a woman who wanted to submit, sexually. As a woman who, if the right man told her to do it, would ride his leg in a semheileg in i-public place until he finally told her she could come.
It was shattering, in a way.
Her brain wouldn’t work. The different parts of her refused to work together; she couldn’t make sense, couldn’t hear herself think over all that dissonant noise. Normally she’d put on the professional mask and be done with it, but with Soren here, she couldn’t. It felt like lying, like it would be embarrassingly transparent. It was such a stupid thing, so silly, only she’d never had to do this before, and when she reached out to knock on Ford’s door, she saw that her hand was shaking.
So did Soren. He gently put his hand on the small of her back, and she knocked.
“Cate,” Ford said, opening the door wide. “You’re late.”
“I got held up.”
Ford looked past her shoulder at Soren and cocked his head. “Everything all right?”
“Everything’s great,” she said, propelling herself past Ford and into full-on lawyer mode. If she had to do it by brute force, she would.
Dammit.
“Well, obviously everything’s not great,” she added, remembering the reason she was ostensibly here so late at night. “Can you show me the complaint?”
Ford handed her the papers. Cate managed to avoid his eyes, but that didn’t stop her from thinking about how she must look. And about where her underwear currently resided.
She felt exposed, and scared, and yet very aware of Soren’s presence, and that was safe. Which was all confusing. And then beyond it all was this complaint.
She scanned it. No surprises. Some woman named Daniella Collins accusing Soren of using his position to engage in sexually abusive practices, etcetera, etcetera. And she thought of Mark Cheedham’s opening gambit, and her lawyer brain clicked on.
“Soren, I have to ask you this again, so please don’t take offense,” she said. “You’re sure there is no basis for this suit? Nothing? Nothing that could even be construed as a basis for this suit?”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Soren said from behind her. “But I never hurt her. I get affirmative consent. Always. And not that it matters, but she came after me. I don’t make just anyone my sub. Everyone on that tour watched her work on me for months.”
Cate felt a twinge of wholly inappropriate pride. She hadn’t had to beg, though she probably would have if he’d told her to. Who was she kidding; she definitely would have. But Soren had come after her.
That might not have been admirable, but a weird thing was happening. Her anxiety and fear and all that dissonance—it was all starting to fade away.
Very weird.
Roll with it, Kennedy.
“So what does this mean?” Soren asked, walking over to the side of the room. Cate felt very conscious of his gaze now that he could see her face. “What happens next?”
Cate took a deep breath. Screw being afraid. Screw the mask.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” she said. “You’re going to tell me everything, Soren. I mean everything. We’ll respond to the complaint, and I’ll try to get a gag order, which won’t work in any practical sense. Then they’ll start doing press. Because if they really have nothing except the power to embarrass you and the band and your potential business partners with lots of salacious sexual details, they need to do it soon if they want you to settle before we go into discovery and discover that they are, in fact, completely full of shit.”
Cate thought about Jason and his talent for finding ways to cause her pain. What Cheedham was planning to do wasn’t all that different from what Jason sometimes did to her. Only Cheedham did it for the money—Jason did it because he liked it.
Wow, was she tired of being pushed around.
“It’s all about applying pressure,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “They’ll keep finding women to talk to the press about what a sadistic, abusive monster you are until we pay them.”
“That’s not my thing,” Soren said. “And sadism isn’t abuse. We have sadists here; they’re nice people.”
Cate shook her head. “Nobody cares about what actually happened. Sorry, boys, it’s true. Cheedham’s just going to try to make it cheaper and less painful for you to pay him than it is to fight him. The way I fight that is by going after the plaintiffs and Cheedham himself, no holds barred. That means you have to let me off the leash.”
Soren’s eyebrows went up, and he was grinning. Did she just give him ideas? Jesus.
“This is you on a leash?” Ford said.
“Soren,” Cate said, and she was surprised to hear her voice. It was her lawyer voice. It was her leader-of-armies voice. And she was using it with the man who held her underwear in his pocket after he’d just pinned her to a wall.
“Cate,” he said. He was smiling.
“This is a woman you once cared about,” she said. “Think about that. Because I might have to destroy her. You have to decide if you’re ok with that.”
The smile on his face faded, and Cate felt something inside herself grow warm. Soren took this seriously; he didn’t like the idea of going after this woman, even though she was trying to hurt him. He really was that guy.
“It’s likely that I won’t be ok with that,” Soren said.
“Yeah, well, we’ll have to talk about that,” Cate said. “I don’t take it lightly. Because if I have to destroy someone and I find out later that they were innocent? That they had reasons to come after you? Then I will come after you. Both of you. Screw the Bar and rules of ethics, I will come after you.”
Silence.
Where had that come from? Cate was breathing hard, her whole body wired. It tasted like fear, but it felt…different. It felt like fighting. And she couldn’t get thoughts of Jason and Cheedham out of her mind. One and the same, those two, and probably working together, and she was damn sure going to go after them.
Ford and Soren were still staring at her.
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Soren,” she said softly. “It’s just a warning I feel obligated to give. Please know that I do believe you.”
“Understood,” Soren said.
“Cate,” Ford said. “What the hell?”
She sighed. “Yes, Ford, this is personal. Don’t look at me like that, you should know better. You think I got to where I am without having to deal with real harassment from powerful dirty old men? Ford, you remember Professor Willis?”
Was it lying if she failed to mention her own ex-husband? Did it matter? She was already breaking enough rules, what was one more.
Ford’s face fell. “He seemed nice.”
“He wasn’t. And every time there’s a bogus lawsuit like this, women like me have to think twice about filing a complaint. Proving that it’s bogus won’t help, but it will make me feel better. And call me idealistic, but it irks me when people use harassment and abuse as a pretext for extortion. So basically everything about this annoys me, and I’d really, really like to take my annoyance out on Mark Cheedham, if that’s all right with you.”
Cate finally stopped talking and realized she was a little bit flushed, a little bit out of breath. She was, in fact, worked up. She was angry, she was determined, she was passionate. She was going to crush these jerks.
All of this was weird. She
was normally controlled. Normally, she wore the mask.
She didn’t know what else to do, so she looked at Soren. Who was smiling. Seriously, seriously smiling, leaning up against the wall, his huge arms crossed in front of him, looking like he just won something.
“What?” she demanded.
“Where’s the retainer agreement?” Soren said.
Cate pulled it pete pull out of her jacket pocket, tried to pretend she hadn’t quivered at the sound of his voice, and smoothed it down on Ford’s desk.
Soren walked around until he face her across from the desk, reached for a pen, and said, “Look at me.”
The voice again.
He held her eyes. She saw a lot of things in those eyes. She saw triumph, she saw lust, she saw a promise.
He signed the agreement without ever looking away, and she knew exactly what that meant. She was doing both. She was his lawyer, and his sub.
What the hell had she just gotten into?
“See?” Soren said, walking toward her. He didn’t give her a chance to respond before he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him, his big hand covering the span of her lower back, his hard body pressing against hers. He held them there like that for a beat.
Then he bent down and nipped at her neck.
“I told you that you could do it,” he whispered.
Cate shuddered.
More than that, she had completely forgotten that Ford was still in the room.
“Excuse me,” Ford said. “Soren, can I borrow your lawyer for a minute?”
Soren grumbled, but he let her go, leaving aching trails where his hands had been. “For a minute,” he said. “Cate and I have to set up a few meetings.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Tonight I’ll let you sleep, though,” he said softly.
Cate blinked. He’d let her…?
By the time she recovered, Soren was already gone. Just her and Ford. In a room. With Ford looking at her funny.
“Don’t tell me you’re shocked,” she said, trying to pretend she wasn’t shaken by being outed to Ford. It obviously had to happen at some point, she just hadn’t thought much about it. Apparently Soren had. “You see weirder stuff than that all the time, right?”
