“Do you like Scotland? Say the word and we’ll go.”
“I’ve never been,” she said, feeling her buzz in her head intensify ever-so-slightly.
“Would you like to go?” he asked.
His sincerity caught her by surprise. In her (admittedly limited) dating experience, most men, even those who could afford it, would ask her these questions in a rhetorical way. And she’d usually say something like, “I guess, but that’ll have to wait,” but she knew that if she were to ask him that he’d merely ask, “Why?” as if it would never occur to him to wait. And true to form, he continued, “I can call my pilot right now; he can have a flight plan filed by tomorrow morning and we’d be ready to go by that afternoon.”
She blinked, wondering why he was so generous with her, wondering what he was expecting in return. “I’d—I’d have to get my things,” she began.
“How long could that possibly take?”
“Don’t you have to work or something?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That’s my business,” he said.
“Well, I have some more members of Congress to talk to—”
“That’s been taken care of. I’ve been buttering up House and Senate reps all day today. The Matrix will never pass.”
Her excuses were gone, and as she looked into his eyes she realized that she had no more reasons to refuse the doors he could open, the life he could give her, however temporary it might be. And for some reason, he liked her, and she had to admit she did find him rakishly charming and adventurous—but was it enough to surrender to him?
He reached out and tilted her chin up towards him with one finger, and then he leaned into her and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t entirely unexpected—she could see it coming from a mile away—but all the same the intensity behind it surprised her, leaving her breathless when he pulled away.
“Wow,” she breathed. She could feel her cheeks flush, and a warm sensation growing inside her.
“I’m usually not this forward,” he murmured, as he took her in his arms. Around them, artfully hidden speakers came to life with classical music, and they swayed together in time to the music, “but you have a way of awakening my senses in ways that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. I can only hope that you feel the same way about me,” he said, moving her hands to his tie, guiding her finger around to loosen the knot.
“I have to admit, I’ve never met a man who knows more about what he wants,” she said softly, as she finished loosening his tie. He held her gaze as she slipped the end out of the last loop, a quiet desperation in his eyes.
“Does it—does it arouse you?” he asked, as she pulled the tie off around his neck.
“I don’t know about ‘aroused’,” she said, reaching for the first button of his shirt. He lowered his gaze, to watch her fingers at their work. “‘Curious’, certainly.” The first button slipped out of the hole. “‘Interested’, even. But aroused? It takes a lot to excite me in that way,” she continued, softly. “I’ve been told that I’m almost impossible—”
“That sounds like a challenge.”
Out came buttons two and three.
“I—I don’t think you’d really like to find out,” she said, astonished that she was actually doing this to him. How much further would they go?
“You’d be surprised,” he said.
He’d been guiding her towards the bedroom, one step at a time, and as she slid his shirt off of his body he took her hand and kissed them. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “Say you’ll stay and everything of mine will be yours—”
She looked around, her heart pounding in her throat, the warmth that he’d ignited spreading into a liquid heat that coursed through her veins. His body was well-muscled, like a ballet dancer’s, and as he turned towards the dresser and opened one of the drawers she found her mouth watering at the way he moved, smoothly and graceful, reminding her of flowing water, clear and cold and purposeful.
He turned back to her, holding something in his hands. It was a moment before she realized it was a blindfold.
She felt her eyes grow wide. “I—I’ve never—” she began, but he crossed the room and placed it in her hands, kneeling at her feet and shh-ing her as he took her hands.
“If it pleases you,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
Suddenly she understood—he didn’t want her blindfolded. He wanted her to blindfold him. The shock of the realization gave way to a surge of excitement running up her spine: one of the world’s richest men, asking her to blindfold him and have her way with him. “Is there anything I can’t do?” she asked. There had been a kinky ex-boyfriend in her past, so she knew enough about the theory but they’d broken up before they’d ever gotten around to actually doing anything that wild and crazy.
“Just this, for now,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it again.
It felt good—proper, even, to tie the black silk band around his eyes. Blindfolding him meant that she was now in complete control, inasmuch as she could be in control of him—his surrendering to her meant that she now had to responsibility to use him well. Well, let’s see about that, she thought, taking his chin and lifting him to his feet.
“Time to get you properly undressed,” she whispered, undoing his trousers and pulling them down.
“Yes ma’am,” he said, as she worked his boxer briefs down. He stepped out of the puddle of clothes at his feet, as she pushed him backwards, slowly. His hand reached for her body, but she held it away. “Not yet,” she whispered.
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
All the while she was guiding him towards the bed, her hands wandering up and down the rippling walls of muscle. She wondered, briefly, what his gym routine was, whether he wore a shirt—what it would be like to watch him do pull-ups and swing a kettlebell. Tasty.
He fell back on the bed, obedient to her wishes. “What do you think I’m doing?” she asked, stepping away from him, slipping out of her dress, one shoulder at a time. She could see him angling his chin, trying to find a gap in the blindfold, trying to find some way he could see. Part of her wondered what it would be like to just leave him here. She didn’t have to sleep with him, after all.
But the spark had been lit: curiosity and a boldness that she didn’t know was inside her, took her and wouldn’t let go. Ideas began to flit in her head, inflaming the desire that was building up inside her as she stared at his body, naked before her, as she realized that there were things she could make him feel that she’d been dying to share with someone. It wasn’t just an opportunity to do, but a chance to connect, at a level deeper and far more intimate than anything she’d ever done.
Can you trust him?
He trusts me.
“I wouldn’t dare to presume,” he was saying, now, his body tense with anticipation. She’d tied the blindfold on tightly—he could see nothing, she’d made sure of that. All he could do was lie there and wonder at what what she was doing.
“What would you like me to do do?”
“Whatever pleases you.”
“Even if it—” She leaned over and pinched his nipple. He winced and gasped, his back arching as he twisted the sheets in his hands. “—hurts you?” she asked.
“Especially,” he panted.
It was strange, how easily she fell into the role he’d assigned her. She straddled him and put his hands on her hips. He smiled and let out a nervous laugh, and asked, “What would you like me to do?”
“Everything,” she said, not really sure what that meant, but it felt like the right thing to say—he’d given her all of his trust, the least she could do was return the favor.
His hands crept up her body, slowly, his fingers touching her and then moving on, leaving behind a sensation of warmth and, oddly, sunlight. She closed her eyes, feeling the passion in his touch and the quiver of desire through his fingertips. She touched him, stroking his chest, reaching behind her and taking his cock—she couldn’t help but giggle a bit when it sprang to life in her hand, a
nd he groaned as the tip began to weep.
He fumbled with her bra, clumsily, stupidly—being blindfolded he had to undo it by touch anyway, and being aroused she could sense that all of his awareness was concentrating at one point. And what a point.
Away fell the last of her garments, and she pushed him back down on the bed, stroking his shaft with the lightest of touches, taking a delight in his gasping whimpers of unsatiated desire. His teeth were clenched, his breath coming in short, shallow gasps.
She leaned over him, letting her nipple fall into his mouth. The connection was immediate, the sensation electrifying. She managed to rip off the blindfold—his reward—just before he raised his hips and rolled on top of her. “Yes,” she whispered. “Let go—”
And she felt him inside her, hot and hard and big, so very big—there was a delight to the pain, an ecstasy that surged through her when he thrust, as if somehow he managed to crack open the gates and unleash the flood that had been building up inside that warm spot. She felt hot, liquid, gelatinous—as free-flowing as water, as airy as the wind, her mind flitting about, sensing only colors, strangely, and lights. She knew, intellectually, that she had a body, and that he was fucking her with an animal desperation, groaning and almost sobbing as he finished inside her. But she felt, oddly, above everything—an odd sense of freedom, of release, as she gave him pleasure and took from him, everythig.
***
The next morning she woke up, certain that everything was just a dream. That there had to be a more rational, logical explanation for why her body felt drained, and why there was that delicious soreness between her legs—that there had to be a reason why she was looking into Malcolm Raines’s sleeping face and feeling like it was all perfectly normal.
Yes, she was still naked. So it had been real, she thought. She wondered what her short-lived transformation into the dominant meant. It’d felt good—right, somehow. And yet the surrender to his power had taken so little time, and was so absolute, so complete. He trusted her, and she trusted him, absolutely, and completely. It was a thought that should have brought comfort to her, but for some reason it only made her feel confused. There must have been others, she thought, staring at him. His eyes were deep-set, his hair tousled, his face slack—in this light he seemed more cute than handsome, a college student who’d succeeded in banging the hot TA, not the business mogul who could buy escorts by the hour—escorts who could indulge his fantasies.
The thought turned her stomach. Whoever the maid was had been thoughtful, though—she found a bathrobe in the bottom shelf of the nightstand and pulled it on. She went to the chest of drawers where he’d taken the blindfold on.
“Don’t,” his voice said.
She stopped. He was still lying in the same position she’d left him in, turned away from her.
“Don’t,” he said, again. “I know you’re curious, and last night went—good God, but—oh,” he moaned. He rolled over onto his back, his entire body doing its best impression of an eighty-year-old man. “I promise, I will never ask you for more than you’re ready to give, but you must trust me when I say that you’re not ready for what’s in that drawer.”
“How do you know?” she asked, going over to him.
“Do you trust me?”
She nodded. “Then trust me,” he said, sitting up. He twisted his back. Vertebrae cracked like fireworks. His demeanor changed instantly. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t know what you did last night, but damn…”
“Are you all right?”
“My back may beg to differ, but yes,” he said. He glided to his feet, found his own bathrobe, and asked, “So, to Scotland or not?”
She gasped, wondering how he could be so blase about this whole thing. She’d just slept with him—on a first date that she never intended to go on. I am not that woman, she wanted to say, except that she kind of was, now, wasn’t she? “What is it?” he asked. “You’re feeling guilty about something, aren’t you? Let me guess—you’re not the kind of woman who sleeps with men on the first date?”
She could only nod mutely.
“And do you think I care about that?” he asked.
She shook her head, no.
He took her hand and squeezed it, looking into her eyes, holding her gaze. “I don’t care if you want to get back into bed with Reid today. I don’t care if you go out and fuck every member of Congress—which, by the way, is not a bad way to go about ensuring that votes go your way—”
How he knew that was something she decided not to dwell upon.
“I only care that you will be honest with yourself—and honest with me. You did feel it last night, didn’t you?”
Trust. Acceptance. Love? She had never believed that love after one date was possible, and yet she couldn’t deny that the thought of flying back to LA in three days without him already made her more weepy than she even knew was possible. How can it be love? You don’t even know what his favorite color is—where he buys his shoes from, how he takes his coffee—
The color of your eyes, Milan, black.
She blinked, wondering how those answers had popped into her head, how she’d known these things. He smiled and said, “You can take a shower first. I think I have enough eggs to make a couple of omelets.”
He seems to know me better than I know myself, she thought. The bathroom was spare—the most notable feature was that the bathtub and sink were both carved out of one solid block of white marble, streaked with gray. Or at the very least, they were very convincing fakes.
The water pelted her body, hot and cleansing. When she was finished her hair smelled like his orange-mint shampoo and her body smelled like the cucumber-lemon body wash, but somehow the guilt had been washed away. She was a grown woman, there was nothing to be ashamed of—
But you liked it.
And what if I did?
One wall was a full-length mirror, and she stood in front of it for a long time when she got out, wondering how she could have become the person she’d been last night and still look exactly the same as she did this morning. Her body was the same it’d always been, her face was the same it’d always been—
But her eyes—she realized that she’d been staring into her own eyes in the mirror for almost the entire time. There was an intensity about them that Malcolm had somehow managed to unlock, a strength that she found both extraordinary and yet unsettling. She dressed, feeling strangely out of place in her clothes, as if they belonged to someone else, even though they fit perfectly.
How can one night change me so much?
There was a new clarity of purpose, now, and as she walked into the kitchen her feelings about Reid and Rigel and Bill and Eco Energy became clear: she had control. That was what mattered. Malcolm was waiting for her in the kitchen, an omelet, perfectly folded and browned, on a plate. “I hope you like cheese,” he said, as he handed her a plate. His phone, which he’d left on the counter the night before, pinged. On it, she noted, was a news bulletin: the Matrix had failed to get Congressional approval.
“Aren’t you going to have some?” she asked.
“I already ate. You were in there for a really long time,” he added. “Is everything all right?”
She blinked at him. She didn’t think the changes were that obvious. But then again, he wouldn’t have offered himself the way he did if he couldn’t read her like an open book. “Everything’s fine,” she said.
He squinted at her as he poured her a cup of coffee. “Are you sure?” he asked. “You seem, well, different.”
“I feel different,” she said. “I feel like I’m in control of things for the first time in my life. It’s kind of scary, but—I think I like it,” she said.
Malcolm raised his eyebrow and smiled at her over his coffee cup.
“I want you to end your accounts with Rigel, or at the very least, get a new account manager,” she said, suddenly.
“Done,” he said. He tapped his phoneand in thirty seconds he’d sent an email that was probably going to fuck over
Reid’s entire career.
Oh well—maybe if he’d been nicer. Then again, if he had been nicer, she might not have been here. The universe worked in strange ways.
“And I want to go to Scotland.”
“Flight plans take about twenty-four hours to clear,” he said, tapping away at his phone.
“And I want to see what’s in that drawer.”
He looked up, surprised. But then, unexpectedly, he smiled. “You know what, I think I will,” he said. “Come with me. But I have to warn you: you’ll probably like it.”
“I’m counting on it,” she said, taking his arm.
THE END
The Sheikh's Temptation
Chapter One
She’d been fascinating from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. Everything about her, from her pale skin to the dusting of freckles across her nose had intrigued him. There were nights when he stole away to hold in her in his arms, and he’d try to count those freckles. His Sara. The women that surrounded him bowed their heads in respect, but Sara was different. She wasn’t just American different, but she was simply unique. In his years studying abroad, he’d focused solely on his studies. But the moment she’d bumped into him in the coffee shop and spilled the searing hot liquid all over his books, he’d been smitten. It was like the start to a beautiful romantic movie.
ROMANCE: THE SHEIKH'S GAMES: A Sheikh Romance Page 97
