This was the new me, wasn’t it? The Sophie who plunged fearlessly into life and grabbed happiness wherever she could?
“I’d like your answer,” he said. “A verbal contract with such lenient terms would never pass muster in my business. You should take it before I change my mind.”
With a short jerk, he ripped my panties from my hips and tossed them aside. I was panting, my heart hammering way too fast.
Delirious as I was, I forced myself to speak. “If I agree, what happens at the end of the week?”
“A week is an eternity away,” he said, unzipping his pants. “We don’t know where we’ll be or how we’ll feel.”
That scares me more than pain, I almost said, but held my tongue. “Do I need to give you an answer now?”
“Of course. I’m much too impatient to wait.” In one swift, sudden motion, he raised my leg and pulled me against him, his huge, insistent shaft pushing half an inch into my flesh. It was incredibly pleasurable, and incredibly unfair.
“You can’t influence me that way,” I said, pushing my palms hard against his chest.
“I can and I will. Answer me, Sophie. I won’t fuck you until you do.”
My mind spun, weighing fear of the unknown against fear of regret. A week under Marc’s command would be risky. It would probably end in heartbreak. But the only thing that frightened me more than saying yes was being the kind of woman who said no.
“I’ll do it,” I blurted.
“You’ll do what?”
I bit my lip. “Whatever you ask.”
With a wicked smile, he thrust himself into me, a ruthlessly deep stroke that erased all lingering doubt. “God, yes,” I moaned, letting the last shred of control go.
He fucked me standing against the wall with my wrists pinned beside my head. Ignoring the bondage arsenal in the closet, he dominated me completely with only barked instructions and the feral look in his eyes. After making me kneel and suck him until my jaw ached, he took me from behind on the bed, spanking me mercilessly and giving me a teeth-chattering orgasm with only a few strokes of his fingers.
“Look at how easily you come now,” he said. “All you needed was a well-hung master to train you.” At the last moment, he pulled away and climaxed across my lower back, an act of pure possession I’d never experienced before. Pelvis still pressed to my ass, he ran two fingers over my defiled skin and held them to my lips. “Taste me,” he said. “Lick it all off.”
My resistance was shattered. I sucked his fingers clean, experiencing for the first time the sweet saltiness of a man’s come. I’d never imagined that I could not just tolerate it, but crave more. Want him to ejaculate down my throat so I could swallow every bit while he watched.
“You like that?” he said. “Here’s more.”
I licked his fingers, again and again until there was nothing left. “Now thank me,” he said. “Thank me for letting you lick my come.”
I closed my eyes, cringing inside. To thank him would be the most servile thing I could imagine. But hadn’t I just agreed to indulge his every urge? I couldn’t refuse so soon after promising to try. I wouldn’t just be failing him, I’d be copping out the way I’d done for much too long.
“Thank you,” I whispered, kissing his fingertips. “I loved it.”
“We both did, my beautiful girl.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Afterward I lay in his arms in the glow of the moon, reality slowly settling around me. Now that the blinding rush of orgasm was over, I couldn’t escape the truth: with barely a whimper of protest, I’d given myself to Marc for the next week. And in the morning, I would call my editor and convince her that I had to stay in France even longer because…I wasn’t sure what I’d say, exactly, but I’d think of something.
I felt Marc stirring beside me, and then he got out of bed. I sensed a surge of energy in him, an electric charge, as if he’d had an idea that couldn’t wait. His shadowy figure went to the closet and pulled something from the top shelf.
“What’s that?” I asked.
When he didn’t answer, I sat up. I could see him spreading a blanket onto the carpet. He went back to the closet and returned with two pillows.
“Come here,” he said.
Smiling, I got up. We were going to sleep on the floor together, like kids, in a lighthearted ending to what had been a very intense few days.
“Lie down,” he said, with an authority that sent my stomach pitching to the ground.
I’d been mistaken. There was nothing lighthearted about this at all.
I lay on one side on the thick, faux fur blanket and he covered me with the other half. Lifting my head gently with his hand, he slid a pillow underneath. “Got everything you need?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He leaned down to kiss me with a sinful flicker of his tongue against mine. “Goodnight,” he said, and got back into bed.
His bed. Without me. While I stayed on the floor.
I lay in stunned silence, my heart pulsing as if to break through my skin. What was this? What was he doing?
“Marc –?” I began.
“Yes, Sophie?”
“Uh – why am I on the floor?”
He sighed. “You thought an agreement with me would be easy? It wouldn’t challenge you in any way?”
“Excuse me?” Fury boiled up in my throat as I scrambled to my feet. “You said nothing about stuff like this.”
His broad-chested silhouette leaned calmly back against the headboard. “I said everything about deference, and the humiliation you might endure. Or have you forgotten what you agreed to an hour ago?”
I crossed my arms over my knotted stomach and glared at him. This was wrong. It was cruel. It was psychological warfare.
The floor was where dogs and slaves slept. And I was not…
A slave. I was not a prisoner.
Was I?
“It isn’t easy to change your perception of yourself, is it?” Marc said. “To go from who you were to my submissive?” His voice was a dark honey spilling over my raw senses.
I couldn’t speak. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief.
“You’re mine now,” he said. “We’ve proved it again and again. Accept it and you’ll be free.”
I longed for him to touch me, but he stayed coolly out of reach. He had so much control. Nothing ruled him. Not his desires, not his emotions, and certainly not me. “Free?” I said, the word coming out as a harsh whisper.
He nodded. “You can always choose to leave. But if you stay, you’ll submit to me. Not because it’s what I want, though I do want it.”
“Then why?” I demanded.
“Because you need to be submissive, Sophie. You need me.”
For an instant, I almost wavered. I wanted experiences. I wanted excitement. Here were both, in spades.
Then every instinct of self-preservation kicked in, and anger fired through me. What was I doing? I didn’t need Marc Brayden. What I needed was to wake up. I hadn’t battled through hell in my life just to sign away my independence and every last shred of pride.
“I don’t need anybody,” I said.
Marc went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And now, because you’ve argued, you’ll wear your collar and sleep chained.”
My breath froze. When I could inhale again, I shook my head. “What?”
“Just one wrist, handcuffed to the leg of the bed. You’ll be perfectly comfortable.”
I gasped. Chained to the bed. He was serious.
So this was what he meant by an agreement. He laid down the law, no matter how outrageous, and I agreed.
I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t.
“No,” I said.
The word felt like poison leaving my lips. Since knowing Marc, its meaning had changed. Now it was an insult, a provocation, the worst form of disrespect.
His eyes didn’t leave mine. He remained still, an utterly calm and immovable dominant force. “Does your word mean that little?” he asked.
I squinted. “I’m sorry?”
“Are you that forgetful?” he continued, slicing me with his nonchalant tone.
I clenched my fist as if it were his throat. “First my word and now my memory? What the hell are you doing, Marc?”
“Teaching you manners, for a start.”
I gaped at him. “Manners.”
“For a start,” he said, shrugging. “A lady should always keep her word.”
My heart pounded wildly. “You’re one to talk about manners. You want me to sleep chained to a fucking bed.”
“No, that’s what you want. Or at least you did an hour ago.” He pursed his lips. “How fickle women can be.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “I’m not fickle.”
His eyebrow lifted. “No? What do you call agreeing to a contract one minute and ignoring it the next?”
“I didn’t agree –”
He stopped me by raising his hand. “I’ll do it, whatever you ask. Sound familiar? It came from your mouth tonight.”
“But…but that was unfair,” I sputtered. “You know it was.” My eyes burned with the shameful vision of giving in to him. I’d let him strip me and break me down until I’d not only agreed to the rules, but anything he wanted. And now he was holding me to it.
His mouth curved into a demon’s smile. “Tell me, Sophie, are you in the habit of lying when your pussy gets wet?”
“If you’re trying to shame me into staying, I won’t.”
“You will.”
I spat out a laugh. “Because you’re going to chain me?”
“I won’t have to,” he said. “You’ll chain yourself.”
My pussy responded to his authority by pulsing involuntarily. My skin flushed and my heart strained at my ribs. But my body was not in charge this time. I was. “Why would I chain myself?”
“Because that’s what you’re here for. Are you that frightened of what you might feel?”
My cheeks went from fire to ice. Frightened. Sick with confusion, I turned the word around and around in my mind. Was he right? Was I just scared of feeling something?
I had no answer. But I knew one thing. The longer I stayed, the weaker I got.
I turned and went to the closet. I pulled the first dress I saw off the hanger, slipped into it, and shoved my feet into mules. Finally I understood what Marc had said last night. You can’t kill a spark like we have. All you can do is walk away from it.
“You’re leaving?” he said, with a faint hint of surprise.
At the sound of his voice, my heart twisted and tore. “Yes,” I said. My handbag was by the door, making it almost too easy to grab on my way out. Let him send the rest of my things to my hotel. Or not. Let him burn them.
“Okay,” he said. “One last thing before you go, my lovely Sophie.”
As if his words were an invisible rope drawing me back to him, I stopped. Desperate to feel something solid and real, I clutched the door frame. “What?” I asked.
There was a long pause, and then the cold sound of metal tinkling.
I closed my eyes. A little chain. Handcuffs. The handcuffs he would use to vanquish me if I lost my mind and stayed.
“Don’t you want to find out?” he asked.
Gripping the wood so hard my fingers went numb, I steeled myself. Nothing had changed. No matter what he said, I would go.
But I had to hear it. For some reason I couldn’t understand, I had to know.
“Find out what?” I asked.
The handcuffs rattled like a snake as he stood up slowly behind me. “Don’t you want to find out who you really are?”
Join me for the finale of Marc and
Sophie’s story in Descended: Book Two.
“When he said he wasn’t like other men, I should have believed him. With one touch, I was defenseless, a slave to desires I couldn’t understand.”
Sophie shut down her heart after too much betrayal and loss. But Marc Brayden wants to break her resistance and claim her as his. When he pulls her into a world of dark desires and sinful family secrets, the seduction might be more than she can resist. Now she’s thousands of miles from home and surrounded by mystery. What is Marc hiding? Why do his desires torment him? Torn between love and the truth, she resolves to learn everything she can about his cryptic past, even if she risks losing him forever.
Purchase Descended: Book Two now
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rose Devereux writes shamelessly erotic romance, some of it light, some of it dark. It all depends on her mood. In her other life, she is a traditionally published author whose books have been translated into five languages. Reviews of her novels have appeared in Cosmopolitan, The Boston Globe, New York Magazine, and the Associated Press. She lives in sin with her boyfriend and two cats in Boston and New Hampshire. Visit her at www.rosedevereux.com, or email her at [email protected].
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Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 1) Page 19
