by Zara Cox
Her lids pop open and her mouth gapes on a stunned, breathless O. She starts to unravel, and I glimpse a flash of fear and vulnerability as she cedes complete control to me.
“Mason,” she whispers, right before huge convulsions seize her.
Her pleasure detonates mine, and I grunt as my semen floods her. We stare deep into each other’s eyes, our gazes mirroring our lust-soiled turmoil.
I kiss her bruised mouth without disconnecting our gazes.
So I see when her wide-eyed stare whisper-screams: what did you do?
And I see my reply in her eyes: I just fucked your shredded soul.
Chapter 22
Keely
Our arrival in Palma de Mallorca saves me from further examining the depths to which I’ve sunk, and the happy little freak I’ve become. For the last two days, I’ve barely left Mason’s suite. I’ve been fucked in so many ways and so many times, that I struggle to think of a time when an orgasm wasn’t lurking at the back of my consciousness, ready to plough through me at the touch of Mason’s hand. My cunt is Pavlov’s Dog, and Mason my tuning fork. He sets me off with a look across a room, a quirk of his eyebrow, his clever fingers dancing over a keyboard while he writes some insane code I have no hope of following.
I call him sir freely, with no inhibition or hesitation. The power I derive from seeing the effect, which the address has on him, is mind-boggling. The power he derives from having me claim him as my master staggers me.
I’d scoffed when he promised me I’d fall at his feet and stay there willingly. He’d proved me wrong in less than a day and for the first time in my life, I’m happy to concede total defeat and hoist my white flag of surrender proudly.
After what I’d been through, I’d promised myself never to lower my guard or myself to a level of debasement. Little did I know that I’d find the most intense release and the most fulfilling sexual power on my knees.
There’s also a feeling of vulnerability about possible addiction to a way of life I hadn’t contemplated this time last month. Mason Sinclair overwhelms me. He dominates me, takes me out of my mind like the best drug, and I crave him more with each order I follow, each bite of his nails in my hips, each plunge of his perfect cock that makes me forget my real life.
The moment distance is thrust upon me, however, the floodgates of fear and dread part, and I’m back in the bar, staring at my phone, reading that third email, instead of Mason’s dirtier texts.
This one had also come with a picture. In the middle of the underground from somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, a black chair stood under a spotlight. White ropes dangled from it with careless artistry and sinister implications.
Someone has a record of what happened to me in that underground room in the east wing of the Los Angeles mansion six years ago. Someone who’s bided their time until now.
For what purpose? Blackmail?
Since we set sail from Monaco, my phone has blooped with two further anonymous emails. The fourth and fifth pictures only show different angles of the same chair.
By now I’m in no doubt further emails will arrive. In my feeble attempt not to remain a victim, I’d responded with a ‘Who are you, and what the fuck do you want?” after the third email.
My answer had been a System Delivery Error fuck you in return. If their aim is to torment me, they’re succeeding. I’m torn between being supremely pissed-off, and cowering in a corner in ball of shit and piss. Somewhere in the middle ground is Mason, and the pit of cheerful depravity I’ve hurled myself into.
In eight days, when I’m back in New York, I’ll deal with this thing.
I dress in a black and white block dress and platform heels in preparation for taking the guests to their first venue of the evening.
Salamanca is Mallorca’s most exclusive private club and six of the guests are booked into the VIP rooms from eight till two in the morning. So far Mason has declined interacting with any Indigo Lounge sessions and a part of me is relieved. Enduring him twenty-four, seven, especially when I’m overcome with the need to blurt out my rigid fear, is wearing me down a little. Immersing myself in work, I hope, will bring the clarity I need.
If that fails, there’s always Bethany. I smile a little at the thought of my best friend.
My feverishly-preparing-for-her-wedding best friend.
That slight feeling of resentment I’d first experienced in Montauk returns, and I feel like a little shit.
Blanking my mind, I’m tugging a brush through my newly washed and curled hair when knuckles rap on my suite door. I check my watch.
There’s still half an hour before the three launches arrive to ferry the guests to the marina and pre-departure cocktails don’t start for another fifteen minutes.
I pick up my chandelier necklace and secure it as I walk to the door. My hand stills at my throat when I see Mason framed in the doorway.
“Mason? What are you doing here?”
We’d agreed to see each other when I returned from escorting the guests. As far I’m aware, he’d planned to work on another top secret invention in the room he’d secured within the bowels of the ship.
“Now, what way is that to greet me, kitten?” he asks softly.
The sound of his voice sends needy distress signals to my pussy, and I’m already getting wet by the time he steps forward and enters the room.
My pulse is jumping all over the place as I shut the door behind him. “I wasn’t expecting you, that’s all,” I reply. I bristle silently at my defensive tone and look at him.
He’s staring at me with an intensity that scares me a little, so I walk into my bedroom and pick up the matching earrings. Through the mirror on my dressing table, I see him fill my bedroom doorway. He’s wearing an expensive black dress shirt, tailored trousers and a matching dinner jacket, and his hair is tamed a little from its usual touch of wildness. So far, I’ve seen many facets of Mason Sinclair, which keeps me enthralled—the mad genius, the sometimes cruel lover, the alpha dominant, the spiritually decayed man who’d keened his loss and rage in that room in Monte Carlo— but I’ve never seen him as this suave sophisticate. I don’t know what to do with that, so I just let our gazes connect. Until even that becomes too much, and I lower my head.
“You were going to invent some bright and brilliant thing. And I was going to work. Wasn’t that the plan?”
“Plans have changed. I’m coming with you tonight.”
I shouldn’t feel this delighted at the thought of his company. It speaks to an addiction I haven’t entertained since my doomed crush on Leo Brummer. I’m getting attached and I don’t know how to stop myself. So I try and play it cool by heading for where I placed my clutch and my tiny leather jacket on the bed earlier. He takes the jacket from me and helps me shrug it on, before he extracts a box from his back pocket.
My eyes widen when he holds it out to me. “What’s that?”
“The bright and brilliant thing I was working on earlier.”
“Another prototype? For me?” My addiction ratchets up another notch and my hands shake as I take the box from him.
To date, Mason has introduced me to six gadgets that haven’t seen the light of a commercial market. To say I’m a convert from a staid no-sex-toys girl to a happy-nympho-guinea-pig is stating it mildly. Yet another thing that scares the shit out of me. While I finger the box, I tell myself perhaps I should be a little selfish and call Bethany. I really need clarity here.
“Can I open it later? We need to get going.”
Mason’s eyes narrow, but he nods.
I hurry out of the room and I’m halfway to the elevator by the time he reaches me. His fierce stare as we head to the top deck burns me alive. Mason has no compunction when it comes to watching me. In fact, when it comes to me, he has no compunctions, full stop. He stares for as long and as hard as he wants to. And sometimes he takes pleasure in watching me squirm. I’m at squirming point when the elevator slides open.
I stumble onto the wide, stunning topmost deck of
the IL Indulgence and immediately busy myself with the unnecessary task of ensuring each guest is happy. My job is that of grand overseer. I have hostesses assigned to each guest and don’t need to personally check on each one unless there’s a problem. But I do anyway.
When it’s time to board the launch, I feel a hand in the small of my back. I look up into Mason’s set face. He’s not happy. A different sort of panic bolts through me.
I sway against him, and he clamps his arm around me.
We stay pretty much glued together all the way to the private club. He comes with me when I go check with the manager that the burlesque performance is on schedule. He stays by my side through dinner and the strip show that follows.
“How long is this thing going to last?” His voice is a displeased rumble in my ear as we settle in our seats after watching a nude fire-eater strut her stuff on stage.
“Technically, two in the morning, but I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”
He grunts and his jaw clenches.
“Is there a problem, Mason?”
“There will be if that asshole keeps staring at you like that.”
My head swings around and Titus Morton, heir to an energy drinks empire and a known playboy, is staring at me while sliding his hand up and down his girlfriend’s bare arm.
I turn back to Mason. “Is that why you decided to come tonight? Because of Titus?” A delicious tingle starts deep in my belly. I’m momentarily struck dumb when I recognize it as pleasure. I’m ecstatic that Mason is jealous. And possessive.
I’m not sure whether I want to punch some rationality back into my senses or dance in the rain of my new discovery.
“He was a prick when we were in Yale. From the looks of him, he’s only grown into a mega-sized prick,” Mason snarls.
A quick glance at Titus shows the two men eyeing one another with barely repressed animosity.
“I can handle myself, Mason. If that’s the only reason you came, you don’t need to worry.”
The moment the words leave my lips, I flinch.
“You want me to return the yacht, knowing some asshole is going to be hitting on you?”
“That asshole is one of the guests I’m charged with looking after. It’s my job to make sure he has a good time.”
“And your job description includes being okay with guests making passes at you?” His voice has grown lower, deeper. My eyes connect with his and the look he sends me tells me he’s deeply offended by my blasé attitude.
“I’m from Brooklyn, Mason. I’ve experienced worse.”
His brows clamp. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
I flounder, unmoored in a sea of what-the-fuck-ness. “I don’t know,” I finally respond. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to behave with you outside of the bedroom. I mean, what’s your role here? You’re not my boyfriend. You’re not even my lover.”
“What the fuck did you just say?”
His use of the swear word outside of the bedroom terrifies me even more than the rage clouding his face.
It takes a lot of effort to not cower. “Well, you’re not really, are you? You’re in charge of my orgasms, and that’s pretty much it. So what do you care who hits on me?”
Dark hazel eyes flare with disbelief. “Repeat that,” he challenges, his voice a living sword, poised above my head. “I want to hear those insane words fall from your lips again.”
I bring my mouth to his ear and place my hand on his chest. “You. Are. Not. My. Lover. We’re feral fuck parasites, taking what we need from each other for the next eight days. That’s it. I refuse to be intimidated into hanging a label on it that doesn’t exist.”
I pull back, and he stares at me like I’m a rabid animal. I’m ashamed, because every word that has fallen from my lips is a lie. Or at least not the reality I desire. I want him to be my lover. I still want to be a feral fuck parasite, but a nicer one. I don’t want our eight days to end. And most of all, I want a fat fuck of a label to hang onto, whatever dimension we’re existing in.
When the look gets too intense, I jump up and run to the door.
He lunges after me, but a couple entering the room stop his progress long enough to give me the head start I need to make a dash for the ladies.
I slam the door behind me and dump my clutch on the vanity before my shaking takes care of it for me.
Shudders race through me as I stare at my ashen reflection in the mirror. What the fuck is wrong with me?
My brain is eating itself with questions and cravings too terrifying to contemplate. Frantic, I dig through my purse and grab my phone. Bethany is about to get an earful.
She answers, and I suck in a breath, just as the washroom door crashes open. The other female occupant in the room gasps in outrage. “¿Qué diablos es eso?”
“Salir. Ahora!” Mason snarls.
“Hello?”
Bethany’s voice flares from my phone, but I can’t lift my hand to answer. My stomach twists as Mason locks the washroom door and strides to where I’m frozen. He plucks the phone from my hand.
“Bethany, how are you?” he asks in a perfectly reasonable voice that isn’t in any way marred by the sadistic madness I see in his eyes.
I hear Bethany’s spluttered response, followed by a garbled question.
“No, Keely is going to be indisposed for a while. I can guarantee that she will be alive by the time I’m finished with her, but everything else is distinctly debatable.”
He hangs up, places my phone on the vanity next to my purse, then leans against the sink, arms crossed.
“Now, where were we, kitten?”
The latent danger in his voice shudders through me. “Nowhere. We were nowhere.”
He snaps his fingers as if I didn’t just speak. “That’s right. You were saying I had no right to question if someone hits on you.” His head tilts to the side. “Have I got that right?”
“Don’t blow it out proportion.” I flap my hand in a don’t be ridiculous way, then screech when he lunges for me and slams me back against the wall.
“Flippancy is your answer?” His eyes are narrowed, incisive.
The scent of sandalwood, muscle and man engulfs me. Wholly inappropriately, my knees start to weaken. “Mason—”
“Feral fuck parasites. I guess that explains your distance earlier,” he broods.
I open my mouth, but no words emerge. He captures my chin in his hand, and I try not to let my panic show. “You have something to say?”
I shrug. “To determine distance don’t we have to know closeness?” I ask.
“And you don’t think we’re close, given that we’re fucking parasites?”
My heart lurches at the dirty word again. He’s beyond livid, and all I’ve done is hold a mirror up to our torrid little arrangement.
“I don’t recall agreeing to a closeness that involves me spending every spare minute with you, or you getting bent out of shape over who does or doesn’t make a pass at me,” I reply, then exhale on a groan when my mistake stares me in the face.
“You don’t recall?” he growls with veiled softness.
Danger tingles dance along my spine. The little happy freak inside me races to embrace it. “Mason...”
“You’re deliberately goading me. Is that what’s happening here? You want a reaction from me?”
I shake my head. “No.” I want to say more to alleviate the situation, but a part of me realizes I do want a reaction.
When his hand goes to his belt, I exhale in a rush.
“You need a reminder, kitten?”
“Maybe,” I respond shakily.
“The three reasons I gave you this morning and afternoon weren’t enough?”
I shudder in recollection of the rough fucking I’d received at his hands a mere three hours ago. The two, which had preceded it, had been relatively tame, in consideration of the raw pounding from the middle of the night.
“I’m a little confused. Sir.”
A muscle ticks in h
is jaw at the last word, but his expression doesn’t alter. “You’re confused. Well, allow me to provide some clarity.” He steps back and reaches for his buckle. My heart jumps into my throat. I watch with sick fascination as his belt whistles from its loop as he yanks hard at it.
One hand spreads across my lower back, and he pushes me to the vanity.
Our gazes clash in the mirror and the charge that explodes between us steals my breath away. “Bend over and hold the edge. You let go, I start again. Understood?”
Dirty anticipation dissolves in liquid heat between my thighs. My happy freak squeals in delight, even as a part of me recoils at what I’m doing. What I’m letting happen.
“What’s the matter, Keely? I thought silence didn’t work for you?” he sneers.
I clear my throat and force my voice to work. “I...Mason, please.”
“Please, what?”
I shake my head as thoughts of denial and acquiescence clash in a battle to end all battles.
“We never got round to picking a safe word, did we, kitten?” he asks as he pushes me forward and snaps up the hem of my dress. “Now’s your chance, baby. Go for it.”
The cool air hitting my ass makes my brain freeze for a moment. The heat from his proximity helps me along, and I blurt the word that jumps into my head. “Fortis.”
His brow slowly lifts, and one hand trails between my ass cheeks and up my spine to tangle in my hair. “You are that, my brave little kitten,” he breathes in my ear.
The belt lands next my right hand. From its coiled position, I can feel its warmth and I experience an insane desire to caress it.
That thought flees my head as merciless fingers hook into my panties and rip them off. “Oh!”
Mason’s fingers tighten in my hair. “No, kitten. You don’t get to gasp your delight, or arch your back and moan. You answer yes, sir, or no, sir, or use your safe word. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
He stares at me for an eternity, before he pockets my shredded pink lace panties. They look delicate and decadent, dangling from his precisely tailored pants. For some reason, I can’t look away from them.
I jump when someone attempts to open the door, but Mason barely blinks. Coolly, he reaches for the belt, and steps back.
