Sadistic Master Bundle (BDSM Billionaire Erotic Romance)

by Dalia Daudelin

  She tucked herself into bed. There was nothing to be hurt by. She had an exciting couple of days, but that was all it was. She was too excited to think clearly about the man. He was doing her a favor by being cold and distant.

  She knew that it was the right thing to do, and she had always done the right thing. Why did it bother her so much, then? Why did she just want him to come into her room, even if it were just to talk?

  She knew without needing to be told that if he came in, they would do very little talking. The mixture of privacy and everything that had happened on that mountain—the way that he looked at her, and the way she felt about him, they would find something very different to pass the time.

  She ignored the itch of pleasure that was bothering her. There was nothing to be done about it, so she wouldn't do anything. It really was that simple.

  She woke when she felt someone touching her arm. No, more than that. They were shaking her. She blinked her eyes open, eyes already adjusted to the dark.

  "Cora, you need to get up. Now."

  She knew that voice immediately. For him, she didn't mind that a man was in her room, and she was in her bedclothes.

  She pushed herself up with one arm, smiling at him. "You decided to come see me, after all?"

  Ashton pursed his lips. "I don't have time for this. Cora, we need to get you out of here."

  He was still every big playing the professional, and she was tired of it. She stopped holding the smile on her face. "What is it now?"

  "We're in trouble. Can you get dressed in less than two minutes?"

  She started moving quickly. She wasn't about to be caught dead out there without something on. The way that he was acting, it wasn't an idle threat. She felt cold, icy down to the bones. She pulled off her nightclothes, regardless of the fact that Ashton could see her.

  Or perhaps because he could see.

  She dressed as quickly as she could. The choice of coats took a moment too long and Ashton grabbed one for her and started pulling her toward the hall.

  "What are you doing? Ashton Lowe, I'm dressed, now explain."

  "There's something bad on the way. Any second—"

  As the words came out of his mouth, an explosion rocked the train car. Even as she pulled her coat on, it wasn't providing any sort of warmth. The cold was too deep in her bones. She needed time to warm up.

  Ashton looked in the direction that the noise had come from, grabbed Cora, and started pulling her by the arm in the opposite direction. Once he found a door, he opened it.

  "You need to jump. I'll be right after you."

  "Are you insane? We'll be killed."

  "We'll be killed if we stay. Make sure to get as far away from the tracks as you can."

  "I'm not going to jump from a train!" He turned her around, grabbed her arms hard, and pulled her into a kiss. His lips were as soft as she remembered them. Too soft for such a strong, hard man.

  She wanted to kiss him again, a hundred more times. Instead, as he pulled back, Cora still catching her breath, he gripped her harder, lifted and pushed. She went falling ass-first into the brush and brambles. A moment later, holding his flat-brimmed hat onto his head, Ashton followed her out, tucking his shoulder and hitting the dirt hard.

  There was a fire near the front of the train. More smoke than usual, and from more than the usual places. The train hit a bridge, right on schedule. Instead of heading across, though, it sailed off the side, slamming down into the valley below.

  Cora watched it all happen, then turned to Ashton.

  "What just happened? How did you know—"

  He had his pistol out, and she knew what that meant. Cora jammed her fingers into her ears and kept quiet. There would be time to talk later, but from the way he was standing and from that gun being out, she knew that whatever was about to happen, she wasn't going to like it.

  Fourteen

  The scent had been there, at the back of his mind, for longer than he had been awake. It wasn't until he opened his eyes that he realized what was happening. The chill, the smell. The time, combined with being on a train, meant that the Devil-sign had manifested a long, long way off.

  That meant something bad. Something big. Something that didn't want them getting back to Detroit. It wasn't a major leap of judgment to guess that he knew what he was dealing with. Or, he knew about what he was dealing with.

  Whatever it was, it was the same thing that had been watching them in Utah. Now it was here. He hadn't paid close attention. There had been other things on his mind. The taste of Cora's sweet lips. The feeling of her soft body, pressed against his.

  Things that were making it very challenging to do his work like a professional, the way he should have been doing it. But they certainly weren't in Utah, not any more. He let out a breath, steadied the tremor in his hands.

  There was going to be trouble. He knew that much. The Devil hadn't given up on them in Salt Lake City. Taking that train off the tracks was not the last thing it would try, and with the two of them out in the open, it would happen again soon.

  Through the haze he saw what he was looking for. Some physical manifestation on the wind. He moved his hand smoothly to put the barrel of the pistol over the figure, then he pulled the trigger.

  If he had been imagining it, he wasn't any more. It didn't slow the whipping wind, and it didn't warm the blood-freezing cold. He grabbed Cora's arm and pulled her bodily up to her feet.

  He tried to think of the railroad map, but there were too many variables. Too many places they could be. He had to guess, then.

  According to his guess, there was a station not far from here. A mile, perhaps two, to the south. Once they were back in the city at all, Ash could find a place where he could set up wards and weather the storm. Caught out in the open like that, there was no hope of survival. They just had to hope they could make it.

  Cora was limping slightly. It looked like a twisted ankle, but Ashton wasn't going to risk it. He picked her up over his shoulder and ignored the pain in his legs and the stitch in his chest. They had to run, now. Hurting was preferable to getting killed.

  What could they have been dealing with, that it could move? Most—Ashton had thought all—Devils were limited by their physical form. Some were human, or looked it. Some were able to latch themselves onto humans. Most were inanimate. They moved slowly, if at all. It might take a hundred years for something like that baby blanket to make it from that cave to crossing the Salt Lake City limits. The city would expand faster than that.

  The ones that looked human, that could move themselves like a human, were the most dangerous. People had been telling stories about them since before recorded history. Vampires, they called them, or Werewolves, or any number of different ideas. The central crux, though, and the part they got the most right, was that those things were just that—things. They certainly weren't human.

  This was something else entirely, or there were too many coincidences to count. Something that could get in through a window in the roof. Something that could watch them without fear of being watched himself. Something that could outrun a train.

  Or, perhaps, it was something that had known that the girl was in town, then left, knowing she would find nothing. By coincidence, it happened to pick one of the towns on the specific route they'd taken home. By coincidence, the train it took to get there happened to pull far enough out of the station to break the Devil-sign the very instant that Cora and Ashton set eyes on the mother's cabin.

  Coincidence was a powerful force, but that was beggaring belief. No way in hell was there that much coincidence going on. This thing was something entirely unheard of. Ashton could feel his blood boiling in his veins.

  This was the sort of thing—well, this was the sort of thing that Samson would want to know about. Ashton had no intention of fighting the thing right now. It was time to run. He'd make his escape, then he would start to think about what to do next. How to track this thing down.

  He broke the city limit and didn't s
low down. The cold still bit into his bones, the wind still whipped so hard it made his eyes water. A hotel called HOTEL down the way would be the best opportunity he would have. At least, the soonest. He busted in, his hand sitting steady on his pistol.

  "I need a room. It's an emergency."

  "That girl all right?"

  Ash set Cora down, and she shot him an upset look before straightening and smiling at the man. "My leg's a little hurt."

  "Should I fetch a doctor?"

  Ashton cut in. "We need a room, first."

  The man's eyebrows screwed up in confusion, and Ash repeated the request. Still visibly confused, the man turned and grabbed a key. "One night will be three dollars," he said as he turned back.

  Ash didn't hear him. He was through the window, seeing dust whip up into a whirlwind that made a startlingly man-shaped outline. He put his hand on his gun again. Time was up.

  Behind him, Cora reached out and took his arm, pulling him back. She had the key.

  "Hey, you haven't—"

  Ashton's hand was shaking on the butt of his pistol. It was only a matter of time. Something with the powers he was suggesting could walk right into Cincinnati. His house and his office, they were safe. But it would kill him where he stood the minute he left.

  Cora dragged him around the corner, through a door. Room number three, he saw. A good sign, at least. Then it was time to work. The owner might not be happy, but Ash would rather the man be unhappy than let himself die.

  The carvings weren't pretty, they weren't intricate like his usual work. Peters would have told him to do it again, if his apprenticeship hadn't ended so abruptly. But it would hold. Then he moved on to the window.

  The man from behind the counter was shouting in a panic for him to stop. Maybe he should have. Maybe he shouldn't. But he wasn't going to let himself get killed over this job. Not when he'd finally found it. Not when he had Cora.

  Finally finished, he let out a breath. Reaching into the briefcase, he pulled out a crisp twenty-dollar bill that Arthur Little had given him. Practically hot off the presses, he thought. Pushing it into the man's hand seemed to quiet him down a little.

  "Leave us be."

  The old man looked at the bill in his hand, narrowed his eyes at the carvings in his door- and window-frames. "Check yerself out tomorrow. I'll fetch a doctor."

  Fifteen

  Her leg was fine. The doctor, though he got there quickly, was completely unnecessary. Cora didn't have the first idea why they'd called him in the first place but once they had, she wasn't going to complain.

  Ashton was taking a long time to calm down. On the other hand, being in the room was warmer than it had been outside. Once she curled up under the heavy hotel blankets, she almost felt human again. The sheets were nothing like what she was used to, but somehow the scares she'd been dealing with helped to make that matter just a little less.

  Ashton was shaking, she saw. From the cold, she guessed.

  "Come here. Lie under the blanket."

  "I have to keep an eye out."

  "Is this room safe?"

  "As safe as it can be," he answered, defensive.

  "Then you can keep a watch from under the blankets. You're shaking, you're so cold. You need to warm up."

  He stood up and paced back and forth. Anything to avoid getting into that bed beside her. There was plenty of space. She pulled the blanket back a little way, to make the bare side all that much more inviting. He could just slip in, warm and cozy.

  He watched her doing it, looked at the bed and at her, then at the closed door and the window. She could see from the way he closed his eyes that he was struggling.

  "Come on. It's nice and warm under here."

  He opened them again and made his way around the foot of the bed to slip in. "Damn it all, girl."

  Cora could tell that he was enjoying the warmth. Whether or not he enjoyed the company was a totally different question, and not one that she wanted to think about. Was she really so repulsive that he couldn't bring himself even to be near her for only a moment?

  Cora laid her head back and looked up at the ceiling. The knowledge of how close he was to her, of how private the room was, brought images flashing through her mind. Memories of the cave, of what they'd done there together.

  She let them come. Let herself enjoy the memory of how it had felt. She looked over at Ashton after a moment. He had his hands laced behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. His eyes darted down to look out through the window for a moment. Other than that, they didn't move from the ceiling.

  She pushed herself upright, and his eye flickered over to her for an instant. So he was paying attention to her. He just wanted to pretend he wasn't. Well, Cora thought, two could play at that game. But she wasn't in the mood for it.

  Instead she traced the line of his muscle, from his elbow back down to his shoulder. She ran her finger around it, feeling the shape and the relaxed hardness of it. His skin was as cold as ice. He let her trace his arm for a moment before suddenly yanking it away, as if he had only just noticed that she was doing it.

  "Don't."

  "Don't you like me?"

  "I'm not your husband."

  "I'm not married."

  "But you will be, some time."

  "What's that got to do with it?"

  He pushed himself up to match her, but he was bigger, so he looked down on her. Cora felt a shiver run through her body.

  "So you shouldn't be dallying with a man like me."

  "What if I said I didn't care?"

  "Then you're an idiot."

  She noticed herself leaning into him, and she noticed that he wasn't pulling away from her, in spite of what he was saying.

  "Then I guess I'm an idiot."

  She pressed her lips into his, softly. Even the light graze of his lips against hers was electric and arousing.

  "Don't do this," he said softly. She brushed another kiss across his lips.

  This time he wasn't arguing with her. They separated for a moment, Ashton giving her a hard look, and then a powerful hand wrapped around the back of her neck, pulling her in for a third kiss. This one was deep and rough, his teeth almost chewing on her lips, leaving little bruises that she didn't know that she wanted to go away.

  Cora pressed herself in against him, wanting anything that he was ready to give. She could feel him pressing back, the feminine softness of her body molding itself to his hard lines.

  "We shouldn't do this," he said in between kisses.

  "You always do what you're supposed to?"

  Ashton pulled his shirt off and tossed it behind him. "No."

  Cora let him work the buttons on her dress. The feeling of his hands trembling with impatience and arousal as he tried to work them was like a drug, going straight to her head.

  Then he had them apart and she slipped the dress down her body, leaving her in her chemise and, she noted, very little else. Ashton didn't wait long to move his weight over, pressing her onto her back.

  The casual dominance of it sent another shiver through her. She wasn't sure what she would be able to do if she wanted to stop him. She wasn't going to try.

  His kisses shifted lower, his teeth grazing the soft skin of her neck before he sucked on it hard, pulling a soft moan from her lips before she could stop herself. His hands were already exploring her body, pressing into her soft breasts, one hand helping her dress to ride up her spread thighs.

  The fly of his jeans was pressed into her thigh, sending signals to her sex-addled mind that told her everything she needed to know about what was going to come next. Everything she knew she wanted, and everything she needed.

  She reached her hand down between them, feeling for that hardness that pressed against her. The fly came apart with some difficulty. Who had ever made buttons so stiff and so difficult to open? The zip came easier, and then she reached inside for her prize.

  It was hard and soft at the same time, and where the rest of his skin was still a little chilled
, giving his kisses a pleasurable, otherworldly quality, this was burning in her hand.

  "We have to stop."

  "Fuck me," Cora purred in response. For all of his protests, Ashton didn't need to be told twice. He let her guide his hardness up to her, and then pressed himself inside. Cora felt the invasion as a fullness that couldn't be described, and one that she couldn't ever get away from again.

  He held himself still, looking into her eyes. Cora lifted her head to claim a kiss from him. He closed his eyes a moment, forcing himself to stay still, pulling her chemise up and over her head. It joined his shirt on the floor, and he dipped his head to pull one plump breast into his mouth.

  Then he started to move, and every memory that Cora had of how much pleasure he had given her in that cave was overwritten by the difference that she was feeling now. She hadn't known a thing about pleasure until now, her entire body going into fits with every delicious scrape of his hard cock against her insides.

  He took long, hard strokes, hitting deeper and deeper, moving faster and faster, harder and harder, until the sound of flesh slapping on flesh filled the room along with the moans that Cora couldn't stop herself from making.

  "Oh God—I'm going to—"

  Cora couldn't finish her thought before her muscles all tightened at once and stayed that way as he moved inside her. Her legs wrapped around him, trying to hold him in as deep as they could. He fucked her harder still, spiraling her somehow into greater and greater heights, until it seemed as if she had always been cumming.

  She felt him twitching inside her as he came and let her eyes drift shut with the new, impossible pleasure that she was feeling. So many of her older, married lady-friends had complained about their husbands, and about what they did in the bedroom. If they'd had this experience, Cora thought, then they would never have complained.

  She laid back on the pillow, gasping for breath, feeling Ashton's body-weight pressed down onto her, pinning her to the bed. A moment later he withdrew from her and moved off to her side, claiming another kiss from her lips.

  Cora let her eyes close, let her tiredness overwhelm her for a moment. They would figure out what to do next later. For now, she just wanted to enjoy the moment, all the feelings running through her. Even the warmth that he had planted inside her.