by Dani Collins
Yeah. He wanted her under him, her legs locked around his waist and his cock buried deep inside her.
She was prompted into movement by Eloisa’s touch and turned toward the curved staircase. Her dress clung across her ass, outlining the firm flesh under the swing of her hair as she climbed the stairs in a pair of fuck-me slave sandals.
He watched her ascend, hands aching from his tight grip on the rail, and tried to recollect where he’d been going when he’d stood up to leave.
His gut muscles tightened. Nowhere. He was staying right here.
Eloisa wore one of her pussy-eating smiles when she arrived, her frame blocking his view of the woman. He waited for her friend to step around Eloisa, but she stayed angled behind her as they approached, as if deliberately hiding herself from him.
“Porter, you waited. Merci.” Eloisa kissed him full on the mouth and he let it happen, even dipped his tongue into the hot warmth that welcomed him. He didn’t taste sex, only lipstick. Good. He kept his gaze on the woman in purple.
She waited patiently behind Eloisa, gaze lowered, not looking at him.
Eloisa gave the ridge of his hard dick a knowing squeeze before she stepped back.
“Introduce me to your friend,” he demanded. He wanted to kiss her.
Eloisa’s knowing smirk returned. “You’ve never seen her before? I thought you might have, in your travels.”
In other clubs, he assumed she meant. He gave the woman a harder look.
The lighting was deliberately gloomy in the loft. The paneled mahogany and oxblood upholstery absorbed most of the flickering glow off the candles. Averted beams from small lamps on the walls guided guests into the deeper world in the back.
Despite the deceptive shadows, he was certain this woman was new to him. That hair alone would have stuck in his memory. The affect she had on him would have, too.
She was exquisitely still, he acknowledged with a fleck of awe. He took his time studying her, and she didn’t move except to breathe in slow, shallow soughs. Her breasts quivered ever so faintly, as though she fought to keep her inhale and exhale steady. Her hands didn’t fidget. They remained at her sides, her fingertips motionless against her thighs below the hem of her dress.
Delicious thighs. Delectable pair of legs. He wanted to drop to his knees and stroke her smooth limbs then beg her to lift her dress and open herself to be licked. The acute desire to do that, practically worshipping at her feet while he cupped her ass in his hands, took him aback.
He glanced up, seeking the source of her power, dismayed by how thoroughly she was impacting him without even trying. Subs were notoriously passive aggressive, but he knew how to work around that and she wasn’t doing anything. She kept her gaze lowered and he could see her pulse beat in her throat like a hummingbird’s wing.
Fear? Excitement?
He picked up on the conflicting scent and all the hairs on his body stood to attention. Want. That was the only word or feeling he could identify in himself as he drank her in.
“Come.” Eloisa moved between them, breaking the spell. “You look hungry. We’ll eat.”
Turning his back on the woman was harder than it should have been. She would follow. His gut knew her training demanded it, but his ears rang with strain, confirming she paced behind him, not that she created any more sound than the faint grit beneath a soul. He ached to watch her walk back and forth in front of him. Was she aware of the tiny chains swinging against her ankles? What did the weight of her hair feel like, brushing against her shoulders? How did her hair feel when she was naked, tickling the upper swells of her firm ass?
Fantasies exploded in him, brimming his system with hot pheromones and primal excitement. His reaction was so unexpected and strong, it crossed his mind that Eloisa might have slipped something into his drink. He took her arm just above the elbow as they walked around the bar to the more private dining area. Digging two fingers into the soft flesh behind the muscle of her bicep, he stopped short of hurting her, but let her know he could.
“Exactly what kind of game are we playing, Eloisa?”
Her smirk grew into genuine amusement. “I promised to relieve your boredom, didn’t I? I’ll admit I’m playing this by ear and didn’t expect to be so entertained myself, but…”
He heard enough guile in her tone to know he was not in on whatever joke she was playing, but she turned to signal a waiter and he couldn’t read her expression.
“Our little violet will sit there,” she said, pointing to the seat against the window. The glass was coated so even if guests were using the small courtyard that it overlooked, they wouldn’t see who observed them.
“Is that her name?” he asked, glossing past his brief surprise that a sub would use furniture and moving to hold the chair on the opposite side of the table for Eloisa. It was a subliminal assertion of his own dominance over both of them, plus allowed him to bring the sub into his periphery. “Violet?”
The corners of Eloisa’s mouth curled, but he wasn’t sure if it was because of his inability to disguise his curiosity or the significance of his wanting to sit next to the stranger. Eloisa didn’t protest, though, something he noted with annoyed interest.
“Is that your name?” Eloisa asked as the woman sidled into the narrow space between the tall chairs and the wall.
He’d never seen such a strikingly beautiful woman give off such a good imitation of a wallflower. She paused in pulling out her own chair, standing next to it, hands falling to lightly link before her. Head down bent, she said very quietly, “If you like.”
No honorific, he noted. A well-trained sub would have said something like, “If Madam prefers.” She was obviously new to this. He liked that exotic accent in her French. It sounded Asian or something.
He would never dream of ordering another Dom’s sub without permission, but he found himself asserting a type of ownership, commanding her to sit.
She pulled out her chair then gracefully lifted her right hand to her neck. As her elbow came up, lifting her breast, she swept her hair to her left shoulder, caught the rope in her left hand and gave it a practiced twist so it fell down the front of her body on her left side, exactly as if she was baring her back for punishment.
It was a gorgeously executed movement that tugged his cock until he noticed the bruises across her bared shoulders.
The marks of possession might as well have been a cane landing across his own back. He instantly longed to see her naked spine and not only because he imagined her skin held a paler glow than her serene face. He wanted to examine the severity.
Subs often accepted, even craved, disciplinary lashings. That’s what drew many of them into the life so it shouldn’t surprise him to see these marks. They were still a shock to him. He was instantly furious and he didn’t understand why.
His anger came out in his voice as he said, “Move your hair to the other side.”
He didn’t want the fall of it to block her profile from him, but she started a little at the sharpness in his tone before she obeyed without protest.
For some reason, that bothered him, too. Inexplicable pressure filled him, straining his control.
He deliberately crowded her by taking his seat while she moved her hair. His skin tightened, awaiting the brush of that stunning mane, but she avoided him by millimeters.
Her hand swept to smooth her skirt under her ass as she climbed onto the chair, never an elegant height for a woman in a short dress, but she managed to make it look graceful.
“One foot on that rung, the other one here,” he ordered, aware his tone bordered on aggressive, but he was overcome with a stallion-like need to cut her from the herd and keep her as his own.
His reaction was bizarre. Completely different from the way he typically asserted himself over everyone around him. He was beyond aggravated by the bruises, which was not like him. Outside a D/s scene, he didn’t tell anyone what to think, feel or need, yet he wanted to pull her aside from whatever she was pursuing and say no.
At the same time, he watched in a kind of hypnotic fascination as she obeyed him. Her right heel hooked onto the front bar of her stool, which was slightly higher than the one on the side. She pushed her feet tight into the corner leg, but the position prevented her from closing her legs completely. The right rung was higher. With her feet in the corner, she was forced to angle herself toward him.
Perfect. Now he could slide her shoe with his own, opening her legs to reach beneath and trace the seam of her closed lips until he could dip a finger into the nectar he coaxed to seep and lubricate.
As if she read his mind, her nipples rose like flowers opening to the sun. Her cheeks flushed and her hips wiggled, as though trying to quell a flood of sensations rushing between her thighs.
His cock pulled to harder attention. The waiter arrived with drinks and he ignored everything except the tail of dark hair pooled over folded hands. Should he make her come here, in public? Would she enjoy that? Or merely play with her and make her hold it back? He imagined biting into her earlobe to distract her while he fingered her. Not yet, baby, not yet. I’ll tell you when.
“How is your fiancée?” Eloisa asked, her tone pointed enough to slice across the list of things he wanted to do to this sub who held him in thrall.
Violet’s posture flinched as though she’d been struck.
His attention was so focused on her, he saw all the tiny signals of withdrawal that pulled her from a state of excited awareness to walled-off rejection. She said nothing, didn’t move except to draw her elbows into her body, but the pretty color in her cheeks drained away and her mouth tightened into a less sensual pout.
“Why the hell would you bring that up?” He swung his focus to the glitter of exhilaration in Eloisa’s eyes.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Eloisa leaned on the table, offering him her plumped breasts like a pair of bread loaves in a basket. “Violet is with me because she behaved badly and wants to demonstrate that she’s willing to accept the consequences of her actions,” Eloisa said in a silky tone that made Violet drop her gaze. “There are consequences to your actions, too, lover. You’re choosing to marry, so other women are beyond your reach right now.”
He snorted. Marriage was rarely an impediment in places like this, but Violet obviously felt it was an obstacle. He thought of the way his father’s infidelity had driven his mother’s malice all these years and shame sliced into him at how easily he could plan to marry one woman while longing to fuck another.
“I’m not married yet.” He spoke to Violet, irritated by the mental wall she seemed to have erected against him.
“She has commitments of her own,” Eloisa said, her tone offhand, but threaded with glee.
It shouldn’t have been such a punch in the gut. Of course Violet had a Dom. From the way Eloisa had let him take control, he’d allowed himself to believe for a moment that she was on offer, which was no doubt what Eloisa wanted him to think. She was bent on punishing him for marrying Ann when he’d refused to marry her. He could see that, but couldn’t seem to sidestep what Eloisa was doing to him in retaliations. Disappointment spread from his abdomen into the back of his throat, intense enough to be nauseating.
“Who?” he demanded through lips that felt drugged. His second thought was, how much? But even though the D/s experience could be bought for an evening or a week, it wasn’t the scene or short-lived experience he was interested in right now. He wanted her. Violet. It wasn’t like him to be so personal, but there it was. Cupid’s arrow, dipped heavily in sexual infatuation, impaled him.
Eloisa pinned a surprisingly sober look on Violet. “Would you like to talk about who you belong to?” she invited.
Violet kept her head bent, but her eyes widened so her lashes trembled. She shook her head in a mute rejection, the movement more of a shudder.
A vague sense of déjà vu struck him, but the memory didn’t fit and evaporated before he caught a firm grasp on it.
Eloisa pulled his attention with a tight smile and a tease. “Let’s say I’m minding her for a friend. It may or may not work out. That’s still in the air.” A gurgle of delighted laughter underscored her tone.
“Do I know him?” he demanded, deeply annoyed at her desire to torment him, but inured to it to some extent. When he’d been ten, his mother had hidden Tomas in her bathroom for a week, allowing Porter and his father to think Tomas had been kidnapped or killed. When he’d called his mother to inform her Tomas had killed himself, she had thought he was retaliating for that old stunt. She knew he’d never forgiven her for it.
And apparently never noticed that he was beyond such puerile stunts.
Eloisa wasn’t. She tilted her head and sent another measuring look toward Violet. “You do know him.”
“Then stop fucking with me and tell me who it is,” he said flatly, trying to ignore the yank of hopeful desire hooked into his balls as he dwelt on those words: may or may not work out.
Blinking limpid eyes that were also disconcertingly earnest, Eloisa said, “You think I’m enjoying telling you that you can’t fuck her?”
He heard a faint, sharp inhale from Violet and it took everything he had not to set a hand on her thigh. In reassurance? To pin her in place? He wasn’t sure what he wanted to convey, only that the need for a physical link gripped him.
“I am enjoying it,” Eloisa admitted, lashes sweeping lazily to her cheekbones. “Who else could appreciate this treasure as well as you?” She nodded at Violet. “It was obvious to me almost from the moment I saw her that she’d appeal to you.”
Violet’s head came up in surprise.
Eloisa’s eyes narrowed into resentful slits before she smoothed her expression.
“But she doesn’t realize what kind of world you, and this man she’s considering attaching herself to, inhabit.” She spoke to Violet, cold and stern.
“I’ll educate her,” he heard himself say. “It would be my pleasure.”
Surprise and automatic rejection slowly reformed into consideration on Eloisa’s face. A rush of exaltation went through him.
“Perhaps,” she allowed slowly. “Within limits. Tight and hard ones.” With a compressed carbon smile she added. “Je m’excuse. My staff is signaling that they have questions.”
Chapter Four
Ann had to work at making her throat swallow. Her heart was pounding so hard the front of her dress should have elevated off her body.
Don’t leave, she silently screamed, but Eloisa walked away and the waiter arrived with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. They were all sexually graphic. She stared at the thick spear of asparagus against the butterflied shrimp, oddly transfixed by the glossy-pink flesh and the drizzle of cream oozing along the thick shaft.
Porter swung and placed his foot onto the rung of her chair behind hers. His knee extended into her space to almost touch her hip. His bent legs formed a bracket that jailed her into the corner she occupied. Heat seemed to radiate off him, along with another type of energy.
Sexual? She felt threatened in a way that stimulated her in a very unfamiliar way. Her skin felt too tight, her nipples hot and swollen, as if they wanted to burst off her body. Between her legs, a steady simmer of heat gathered. She’d never felt so intensely like she wanted, needed, to touch every inch of her body, but this ache felt even too persistent for her own hands to satisfy.
She couldn’t figure out the source of it. He radiated masculine potency, not that she fully understood why that was having such a profound affect on her. There was also that throwaway comment of Eloisa’s: It was obvious she would appeal to you. That shouldn’t instantly make her want him to prove it, but part of her longed for exactly that.
Meanwhile, Eloisa’s you can’t fuck her was right there on the table like those little morsels that would only take the edge off real hunger. Ann’s ears were still waiting for Porter to deny wanting to do that to her, but he only nudged the plate of finger food toward her.
Before she could protest that she wasn’t hungry, he added, “I don’t care for it.”
Did that make complying a favor to him or janitorial duty?
She had only tried the vegetable once and loved it. Plus she actually was hungry, not that she hadn’t ignored a desire for food when necessary in the past, to avoid Cain, but she was so out of her element she didn’t know the safest way to act right now.
Eloisa had given her the perfect opening to reveal herself to Porter and she’d ducked it. She’d watched many a servant, not to mention her mother, try to talk her way out of a sticky situation. Silence had become her preferred strategy, and how could she explain how she had arrived here anyway? He’d go straight back to Cain and say, guess where I found your stepdaughter?
More than a proverbial knife would draw across her throat at that point.
“I—” she began, almost ready to reveal herself anyway, but admitting who she was would shrink her back into something she didn’t want to be. I’m Ann. That wimp you left back at the house.
She found herself longing to be someone who came to shocking clubs where food looked like sex and people said fuck out loud. She wanted to feel confident and free and attractive. If there was a woman inside her as powerful and confident as Eloisa, she wanted to release her. She yearned to be someone—anyone—but plain, helpless, pathetic Ann. She wanted to be Violet.
More than a decade of subjugation flashed amber lights of caution as she let the schism happen inside her, but her brave half mentally said, Fuck it. Ann was a lump of walking blankets. Without that shroud, she was Violet.
Which wasn’t an easy personality to adopt. Her entire body pulsed in a kind of rebirth, leaving her skin raw and prickled with fresh awareness. Her spine stretched, pulling her taller into a frame that seemed too small for the woman she was becoming.
She met Porter’s gaze and another pulse of energy kicked through her, aligning her polarity like a magnet to him, pulling her concentration firmly onto his every move and breath.
