Trent was instantly on his feet, moving toward me. Although stalking was a more accurate depiction. The man moved with a grace that was quite common with wealthy, powerful men.
Feeling the weight of his stare bearing down on me, I squared my shoulders and lowered my arms. I tried to tell myself it was what I was supposed to do, but I knew better. It was a natural response to such a dominating man.
When he stopped directly in front of me, I could hardly breathe. Trent smelled so good, but he always did, so that shouldn’t have affected me.
Still, I had the overwhelming urge to please him. And I knew for a fact Trent Ramsey didn’t have a single submissive bone in his entire body, so I took that to mean I was definitely the submissive in this little test.
Hmm. How did I feel about that? Being the one who took orders from a super-sexy Dominant? Or perhaps a Dominatrix, as I’d learned the females were called? Would he or she tie me up?
I inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, while Trent made a circle around me.
“What’s your sexual preference, boy?”
Was I supposed to be turned on by the fact that he called me boy? Because I was. Coming from anyone else, I probably would’ve been offended. I damn sure wasn’t a boy in any sense of the word. Maybe I didn’t radiate power and authority the way Trent did, but I could hold my own. I wasn’t a damn pushover.
“Answer me,” Trent commanded.
Right. Question. Sexual preference.
It was telling that he’d had to ask me that. In all the time I’d worked for Trent, I had only been on a few dates, all of them with women. Not because I preferred women exclusively, but I knew my actions reflected on Trent. The paparazzi were just as curious as to what I was doing as they were about Trent. I’d learned that the things I did were often associated with him, so it was easier to keep some of the aspects of my life on the down low.
Plus, my sexual orientation was one that a lot of people didn’t understand.
“Men? Women? Both?” he questioned, sounding irritated that I hadn’t responded.
Okay, so clearly my preference had made it onto the menu. “Both,” I admitted. “I’m into both men and women.”
“Is this a fact you’re ashamed of?”
Was that surprise I heard in his voice? Definitely wasn’t disappointment.
I frowned. “No, of course not.”
“Then why haven’t you acknowledged it prior to now?”
“I have acknowledged it,” I stated defensively. “I’m just … fairly good at keeping my business out of the public eye.”
“So you think no one realized it?”
“Did you?” I countered, wondering where he was going with this.
“I did,” he said in that matter-of-fact tone of his. “It’s rather obvious. When did you realize you were bisexual?”
Admittedly, this was one of the strangest conversations I’d ever had with my boss, but I felt the need to be honest with him.
“In my mid-twenties, I guess.”
I wasn’t exactly sure when I’d finally realized it. Since I hit puberty, I had known that I was attracted to both men and women, yet I didn’t act on my attraction to men until I was twenty-five. I’d kept that part of myself hidden. Not because I was ashamed that I liked men. It was more the fact that I was attracted to both and I didn’t think people would truly understand. Considering I was frequently photographed with women—mostly at charitable events for my father’s company—it seemed easier.
“How many men have you been with?”
I was intrigued by his curiosity. “A few,” I admitted.
I felt the warmth of Trent behind me, but he wasn’t touching me. As much as I wanted him to, I knew Trent wasn’t gay. Nor was he bisexual. In the years I’d worked for him, the man had only dated women. Not that I knew everything about him. Trent was a very private man. But I figured if he’d had an intimate relationship with a man, someone would’ve picked up on it by now.
“Kneel.” The gruff command sounded right in my ear and it stirred something deep within me.
“Boss?” I asked, glancing at him over my shoulder, not quite sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Don’t look at me. I said kneel. I want you on your knees. Right now.”
His gruff command spurred me into action. Without thinking, I eased down to my knees, right there in Trent Ramsey’s home office. I thought nothing of it, didn’t feel the need to argue or tell him to go to hell. I simply did as he instructed.
The worst part…
I suddenly wanted this Dom to command me to do something more than simply kneel to prove my submission.
“Well, I think we’ve got our answer,” he said, his tone a little rougher than before. “Come on. I need to run to Devotion for a bit. I’ll give you the dime tour.”
Okay.
So much for proving anything.
Unfortunately, it looked as though my test was over.
On the flip side, I was finally getting a glimpse into the other side of the man.
SEVEN
Clarissa
I DROVE HOME FROM THE restaurant fully engulfed in a sensual haze. Good thing I knew the route without even thinking about it. I had endured a sort of tunnel vision, which quite frankly scared the crap out of me. I wondered how many times that had happened to me before. Surely, I would’ve remembered being so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t even know how I got from point A to point B. Not many times, I hoped.
But I made it, so there was that.
I managed to squeeze my car into the garage, despite the rows of neatly stacked cardboard boxes, then strolled into my modest little two-bedroom house, my mind still whirling with images of Trent Ramsey staring deep into my eyes while saying all the words I’d longed to hear and doing deliciously dirty things to me in a very public place.
My brain cells were still mushy after that and I had to wonder how many women had fallen for that deep, rich voice and those sexy, dominating words. Probably a few hundred, at least. Maybe a thousand?
Part of me knew I needed to keep my guard up because the man I was crushing on was one of the most famous men on the planet. I mean, come on, Trent Ramsey had been named sexiest man alive at the ripe young age of twenty-nine. Since he was still young, I was sure he would likely get that award again. Seriously, the guy only got sexier with age. Unless they didn’t give it to the same person twice. Did they?
Oh, hell, I didn’t know, and I didn’t care enough to Google it.
Regardless, I had to remember who I was dealing with. Women and men everywhere tripped over themselves to fall at Trent’s feet and offer to have his babies. And being that he was thirty-five and he’d never settled down, I seriously doubted that was in his life plan.
Not that I was looking for that. Seriously. Ending up in a relationship was the absolute last thing in the world I wanted. I knew better than to think a relationship with any man would last longer than a few years at most. I certainly didn’t intend to get caught up in the romance of it only to be shot back down to earth in a blaze of fire when the honeymoon period was over and he moved on to the next best thing.
Nope. Not me.
However, I seriously longed for a Dominant I could spend some time with. I felt almost lost without it. It had been quite some time since I’d immersed myself completely in that world that I was starting to jones with the need.
On the other hand, what Trent was offering sounded far too good to be true. And in my experience, when it sounded that way, it usually was. My pessimistic side was a real bitch at times, but my mother’s failed relationships—along with my father’s and stepfathers’ infidelity—had offered some valuable life lessons. Add my lifestyle into the mix and it doubled the chance of failure, in my opinion. What I wanted and what I would end up getting were always two very different things.
Dominants and submissives had popped up everywhere in recent years, only to fade out soon after, not truly understanding what the lifestyle really was. For whatever reason, BDSM had become
a novelty that many people wanted to experience, though few actually wanted the real thing. My core nature was submissive. I craved something few people did. And unfortunately, there were even fewer Doms who could give it to me.
One of my worst experiences had been when I was twenty-four. I’d dated a guy in college. Adam White. He was a pre-med student with a lot of ambition. Not only that, he was nice, smart, funny, and easy on the eyes.
We seemed compatible in every way with the exception of sex. He was very vanilla, preferring missionary over anything else. When I tried to hint at adding a little spice in the bedroom, he had balked. The one time I had convinced him to go to a BDSM club had been the clincher, though. He had broken up with me that same night, accusing me of wanting to be beaten and brutalized.
The man obviously didn’t understand. BDSM wasn’t about abuse. Not for those who understood safe, sane, and consensual, anyway. Being abused or beaten was the absolute last thing I wanted, but I hadn’t been able to convince him otherwise. Since then, I’d kept most of my interactions to Doms I met at clubs, though finding one who wasn’t in it for selfish reasons had become difficult as well.
Some people believed there was a menu to select from when it came to BDSM. As though logging on to FetLife and pointing to a sexy man wielding a flogger would easily have all their needs met. That wasn’t the case. Not by a long shot. The relationship between a Dominant and a submissive was the same as it was between two consenting adults in the vanilla world. A relationship was a relationship and it had to be nurtured, chemistry had to be there, and the two people had to be in it for the right reasons in order for it to work.
Although it seemed Trent understood me in ways I hadn’t expected, I knew it was likely a façade. I’d seen him at the club, watched him scene with various submissives. Never did he keep a submissive around for longer than a few nights at most. As for why he’d set his sights on me, I didn’t know. Perhaps I was a challenge, a mountain he had yet to climb. Once I gave in, he would probably speed right on out of my life as fast as he’d entered.
However, I couldn’t seem to find it in myself to ignore him, to tell him to leave me alone. I blamed it on those damn mushy brain cells.
The problem was, I didn’t want him to leave me alone. I wanted what he was offering. Because men like Trent did not come around every day. He was exactly what I needed right now. Someone to take my mind off all the shit going on. And simply thinking about him made me want to strip off my clothes and kneel at his feet. That wasn’t a normal reaction for me, not these days, anyway.
“Desperate much?” I ridiculed as I glanced around my sparse living room.
My heart sank when I thought about his demand that I would take his call later. I hoped he didn’t want to come to my house. As it was, the place looked bare because … well, because it was getting there quickly.
I’d come to the conclusion that I needed to put my house on the market even though I knew I wouldn’t get top dollar in the condition it was in, and I’d jumped right in with both feet, packing up most of the unnecessary clutter in just a few hours this morning.
The fact of the matter was, I couldn’t make the house payment much longer and I didn’t want the bank knocking on my door and demanding I get out. I was clearly having some financial problems, but I’d be damned if I was going to let my pride be squashed into dust along the way.
I sighed. It was high time I had the conversation I’d been putting off. I had intended to have it last week at lunch, but that was before Trent showed up and sent my mind into a whirlwind of chaos.
Grabbing my cell phone, I pulled up Mercedes’s contact information and stabbed the screen to initiate the call.
“Clarissa, is everything all right?” She sounded sincerely worried when she answered on the first ring.
“Of course.” I eased down onto my couch, tucking my legs beneath me. “I needed to ask you something.”
“Is it about Trent?”
“Oh, no. It’s… Why would you ask me that? Did you know I had lunch with him today?”
“You had what? Really? That’s fantastic.”
Hmm. Something was up with her. Mercedes wasn’t the type to jump to conclusions and I hadn’t even told her how it went. Rather than press the issue, I decided to get into the reason I called before I lost my nerve. “Is your condo still vacant?”
“It is,” she replied cautiously. “Why?”
Here goes nothing.
“So, you know how things have been kinda slow for me?”
“With work, I presume?”
“Yes. It’s taking me longer than I thought it would to make some headway and for my business to make any traction.”
“Which will hopefully change when you bring Trent’s friends on as clients.”
“If,” I clarified. “I don’t know how that will turn out yet.”
“Did you discuss it at lunch?”
“Not really, no. We … uh… It was a bit more personal.” My cheeks heated at the memory of the wicked things his fingers had done beneath the table.
“Okay. Fair enough.”
I cleared my throat and brought my mind back to the present. “I was wondering if I could move into your condo for a little while. I’ve decided it’s in my best interests to put my house on the market. It’s the only solution I can come up with to slow some of the financial bleeding, so I thought…”
“Of course you can move in,” she said quickly. “But what’s going on? And don’t give me the same shit you always give me about how business is slow, blah, blah, blah.”
I decided to lay it all on the line for her. “I’m just… Well, as you know, I’m not making much money right now, and I’m at the point when it’s going to be difficult to pay my mortgage. I figured if I could sell the house, I could use that money to pay off some of my credit cards and get caught up on my student loans. I’m hoping it’ll only be for six months or so. I should be in a better position at that point.”
Especially if I could take on a large client.
Then again, aside from Trent’s friends, I didn’t have any prospects and I knew a job was required in order to feed myself. Which likely meant I would have to fall back on my previous skills, working for a Realtor in the meantime. Of course, this was doable. I was more than willing to work two jobs to make ends meet.
Then again, I could always go to my dad. I knew he would help me if I told him what was going on.
I considered it for a moment.
No. That wasn’t an option. If I went to him, my mother would have a conniption. She would want to know why I was asking him for money. Although she never intentionally came between me and my father, I knew my mother still hated him for what he’d done to her. I couldn’t blame her, but I did not like being caught in the middle.
On top of that, I had to consider my stepmother. If she found out my father was giving me money, she would likely go postal. She wasn’t my biggest fan for whatever reason.
So, I would have to leave my dad out of it for the time being. But I could do this. I could easily work and build a little savings. That was all I needed. In the meantime, I would sell my house and use that money to pay off my credit cards while I worked for the future.
“Why don’t I just loan you the money, Rissa?” she offered. “You can take as much time as you need to pay me back.”
“Thanks, but no. I’m not interested in incurring any more debt.” I was not taking any money from anyone. Pride and all that. “If it’s too much trouble for me to stay there, I completely understand.”
“Nonsense,” she said firmly. “You’re welcome to stay in my condo for as long as you’d like. As you know, it’s still mostly furnished.”
Which I was happy about. “I figured I could store most of my things,” I told her. “Just take my clothes and stuff like that.”
“If you want me to move anything out, just let me know.”
“No,” I said abruptly. “Definitely not. I’m just grateful that it’s still vacan
t.”
“Is your house ready to go on the market?”
“Almost.” I glanced around the nearly empty living room. “I’ve packed up a lot of it. I need about a week to finish that up and then I have to stage. Unfortunately, there’s no carpet, which I’m sure will be a problem in getting top dollar.”
“No Realtor yet?”
I chuckled. “Of course not. I wouldn’t ask anyone but you. You know that.”
“I’ll stage it,” she insisted. “You focus on getting moved out and Xander and I will handle the rest. We’ll get top dollar, I promise.”
I should’ve known Mercedes would find a way to come to my rescue. She always did.
“You’re a lifesaver, you know that?” She truly was.
I had to admit, my life certainly hadn’t gone the way I’d planned.
However, I also wasn’t going to sit around and stew in the defeat. I was the type to make adjustments in an effort to get through the rough times.
And I would get through this.
Eventually.
“Now that we’ve settled that,” Mercedes prompted, “I want all the dirty details about your lunch with Trent.”
Yeah. If I’d thought asking for a favor was hard, that was—
“Hold on a minute,” I told Mercedes. “Someone’s knocking on my front door.”
Figuring it was another flower delivery, I set the phone on the table and rushed to the door. I yanked it open with a smile only to frown when I noticed a man with a cell phone camera pointed right at my face.
“Ms. Tinsley?”
“Yes?” My eyes followed the cell phone as he lowered it.
“Is it true you’re dating Trent Ramsey?”
“What?” I glanced behind him. “Who are you?”
“How long have you been dating him? Is it serious? Do you belong to one of his sex clubs?”
Before I could respond, a deep voice sounded from somewhere behind the man. “You have two seconds to get off the property before I throw you off.”
My eyes widened when another man appeared. This one was gigantic with a bald head and tattoos creeping up his neck.
Their Famous Dominant (Office Intrigue, 4) Page 11
