“I’ve never done kink before,” she finally said.
“I can teach you everything you need to know.”
“You would teach me?”
Kingsley tapped her under her chin and grinned at her. Something in his smile made her stomach clench. “Is that such a terrible prospect?”
Charlotte stared at him. Never before had she seen a more viscerally attractive man in her life. He seemed to read her reaction to him in her eyes.
The sane, rational part of Charlotte’s brain told her to get up and get out. Unfortunately, every other part of her body and mind overruled her.
“Stand up,” Kingsley ordered, and Charlotte came to her feet.
He looked her up and down once before flashing her a dangerous smile. Raising his hand, he caressed her lips with the soft pad of his thumb while he reached out with his free hand and opened a drawer on the bedside table. From it, he pulled a pair of handcuffs.
“Hey, no way in hell.” Charlotte took a quick step back.
Kingsley said nothing as he slapped the cuffs onto his own left wrist.
“S’il vous plaît,” he said and turned around, indicating he wanted her to cuff his hands behind his back.
Charlotte took the cuffs in her hand and nervously clapped them onto Kingsley’s other wrist.
He turned around to face her. “Do you feel safe with me now?” he asked.
She nodded slowly. What could he really do to her with his hands cuffed, after all?
“Now,” he said, “drop the robe.”
Immediately, Charlotte pulled the robe tighter around her body.
“Charlie…take off the robe. Now.”
Something in Kingsley’s voice, some hard edge of authority, spoke to something deep within her. Slowly she untied the cord and let the robe fall to the floor. Kingsley ran his eyes up and down her body with an appraising air as she stood naked and blushing before him.
He stepped forward and she fought the urge to step back. Instead she stood her ground as he made a circuit around her body.
“You have exquisite breasts,” he said. “The perfect size to fit in the palm of a large hand. I’m sure other lovers have told you that.”
One old boyfriend had said she had “great tits,” but that had been the extent of it.
“Not in so many words,” she said.
“Pity. Also, lovely full hips. Well-rounded but with definition. Oh,” he said pausing at her back. “You have a birthmark.”
Every muscle in Charlotte’s body tensed as Kingsley dropped to his knees behind her. “Just a little one.”
“It looks like—” Kingsley’s voice dropped to a low whisper “—the Eiffel Tower.”
Charlotte laughed but the laugh turned to a gasp when Kingsley’s lips touched the birthmark that graced the back of her left hip. The heat from his mouth on her skin spread through her entire pelvic region and sunk deep into her stomach. Just as the gasp started to turn to a low moan, Kingsley stood back up again.
“Long legs but not excessively so. Not too thin. Beautiful Celtic skin. Exquisite Roman nose.”
“Roman? Is that a synonym for hooked?”
“Oui. You, Charlie, will do nicely.”
“Um…merci?” she said, remembering one other French word.
“De rien. Now tell me…would you care to stay with me? One month. Let me train you to be the perfect sexual submissive.”
“I have a job, you know.” She grabbed the robe off the floor and pulled it around her again.
“I’ll pay you twice what you made in your best month last year. Cash. Of course.”
“Of course.” Charlotte swallowed. Good Lord, he really meant it. This drop-dead gorgeous, rich, weird Frenchman wanted her to stay with him for a month. And not just stay with him; he wanted to teach her how to submit sexually to some rich client of his. Insanity. And yet, the thought of walking away from this offer.… No, that wasn’t right. The thought of walking away from him….
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t walk away from Kingsley.
“I’m not agreeing to anything,” she finally said. “I haven’t even met this guy.”
“I won’t ask you to agree to anything until you meet him. Nor will he agree to anything until he’s met you. We’ll spend the next few weeks in training. When you’re ready, I’ll arrange a meeting. If you like each other and decide to give a relationship a try, he’ll pay me my rather exorbitant finder’s fee and you and he can work out whatever financial arrangement best suits you both. Knowing him, he’ll offer you a room in his rather impressive home and the freedom to come and go as you please as long as you are at his disposal three to five evenings a week. He’ll have a partner who is his sexual equal, and you’ll have someone who is quite happy to make most or all of the decisions so you, for once in your life, won’t have to.”
“My feminist friends would kill me.”
“Those of us in the lifestyle are too busy having good sex to worry about the gender wars. True, most submissives are women and most dominants men. But I have several male submissives on my payroll, and I know every dominatrix in this town. I assure you the vast majority of my clients are men who want to be dominated by women. So you needn’t worry that you’re giving up your right to vote or right to equal pay. You’re only giving up boring vanilla sex, and I promise you, you won’t miss it. Say yes, Charlie. We know you want to.”
“Okay…yes. Fine. I want to.”
“Beautiful, brave, and honest—I may have to keep you. You can stay in the room next to mine. I’ll send my secretary to see you have everything you need. In the meantime, I’m afraid I have to behave myself and get some actual work done today.”
Charlotte took a slow, deep breath. “Okay, I’ll stay for a few days. Maybe a month. I’ve been trying to take a vacation for two years.”
Kingsley turned his head and smiled at her with a cocked eyebrow. “Ma chérie…this will be no vacation.”
And then he laughed and something in that laugh caused her toes to curl and dig into the rug under her feet. The laugh rippled up her body and wrapped around her hips and dug like fingers into her stomach.
“Right….” she said, suddenly very aware of her nakedness under the bathrobe. Knowing Kingsley still had the handcuffs on his wrists came as both a relief and a disappointment. “I should go and let you get to work, I guess.”
Charlotte started for the door but stopped before leaving. “I should probably take those off you,” she said, remembering the handcuffs.
Gasping, Charlotte found herself with her back pressed to the door and Kingsley’s arms imprisoning her on either side. The handcuffs dangled impotently off his right wrist.
“Pas de problème, Charlie. Anything that needs taking off…I will do it.”
At first, fear alone kept Charlotte frozen to the door. She sensed the iron strength in Kingsley’s arms, in his body, that had her trapped in place. Kingsley pushed forward until his hips pressed into her hips, his chest into her breasts, and the fear turned to another feeling equally powerful but no less terrifying.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
“Non. Not yet.” Kingsley caressed the right side of her face with his fingertips. “You’re here to learn. This is your first lesson. The man I’ll train you for enjoys games like this…games of passion and fear. He will want you ready for him always. In the middle of the night he might wake you with his hunger. He may find you reading in the evening and without a word take your book from you and your clothes. You will try to pass him in the hallway, and he will stop you with his arms, turn you around, press you to the wall and force himself inside you. Comprende?”
Charlotte swallowed hard. “So this is the lesson? Learning to keep my mouth shut while he does whatever he wants to me?”
Kingsley shook his head. He slid his hand from her face and down the front of her body. She inhaled as Kingsley cupped her left breast and gently kneaded her nipple with his thumb and forefinger.
“The lesson is that you must learn to
speak when he does something you do not want him to do. Do you know what a safe word is, Charlie? We use them in my world.”
“No,” she breathed as liquid need began to gather in her hips.
“It’s a word, any word, that the two parties involved agree upon. It is the word that you must use to stop whatever is happening to you that you don’t want.”
“I can’t say ‘no’?”
“For this man I will train you for,” Kingsley said as he moved his hand lower over her quivering stomach, “the word ‘no’ gasped in fear, in protest, will only stoke his passion further. It is a game, you see. The more you resist, the more he will desire you. Say ‘no’ and he will carry on. Say ‘stop’ and he will not stop. Say ‘don’t’ if you wish, but he will do whatever he will do.”
Kingsley shifted his hand from her stomach to between her legs. “Tell me to stop,” he said. “I dare you.”
“Stop it,” she whispered, although she didn’t mean it.
“Stop what? This?” Kingsley’s middle finger slipped inside her. Closing her eyes tight, Charlotte thrust her hips out and into Kingsley’s hand.
“Yes,” she replied, panting. “Stop…that.”
“Should I stop this, too?” He pushed a second finger into her and began to move his hand, thrusting in and out of her with his fingers.
Charlotte nodded, unable to speak from the sheer pleasure of his touch. She sensed Kingsley’s mouth at her ear.
“Non,” he said again. “I’m enjoying myself too much to stop. You feel exquisite inside. So warm, so wet…did you know if I touch right here—” Kingsley twisted his hand and pressed the tip of his finger hard and deep into a spot one inch inside her “—I can feel your pulse?”
“Kingsley….” His name was the only word Charlotte could push past her lips. He apparently took it as an encouragement, because a third finger joined the second and Charlotte had to open her legs wider to take it.
“Now pretend for a moment that you aren’t actually enjoying this as much as we both know you are,” Kingsley said, making lazy circles with his hand inside her. “Shocking thought, oui?”
“Oui,” Charlotte agreed. She truly couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything so erotic. The expertise of his technique, the pressure, the movements were beyond pleasurable. Far more erotic, however, was the power of the man who held her pressed to the door and refused to let her go even as she mock-protested.
“Let us say you really did want me to stop. Except, as I’ve demonstrated, we both know when you say ‘stop’ in this context, you don’t really mean it. Not with me. So you need a word that truly means stop, and to that alone will I listen. That is your safe word. Do you understand?”
“I think so.” Charlotte grasped his left forearm and held onto him as she felt her climax building. Hungover…scared…in a stranger’s house…and yet she could scarcely breathe for her desire. “So what’s my safe word?”
The muscles deep inside her tightened around Kingsley’s hand. She felt a rush of wetness between her thighs.
“As you are my little red-headed fire-breather, your safe word should be ‘dragon.’ You must say it whenever you truly wish me to stop whatever I’m doing. No other word, no amount of struggling will do it.”
Charlotte’s breathing turned hard and heavy as Kingsley’s hand moved faster and deeper into her. His thumb massaged her clitoris. Never before had she been with a man who knew how to manipulate a woman’s body so well.
With his lips, Kingsley traced a path from Charlotte’s ear to her shoulder. Charlotte dug her fingernails into the fabric of his jacket.
“So if you truly wish me to stop what I’m doing, Charlie, you will say…?”
“Dragon.”
Kingsley pulled his hand abruptly out of her body and took a step back. Charlotte nearly collapsed from the sudden shock of his departure as her vaginal muscles fluttered in protest.
“C’est ça,” Kingsley said. “It’s like magic.”
Kingsley took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Get settled in,” he said. “I’m off to work now. No rest for the wicked.”
Kingsley pulled her away from the door, opened it and strolled into the hall whistling a song she thought might have been the French national anthem.
Charlotte closed her eyes and imagined fire shooting out of her mouth and burning Kingsley to the ground. She must have actually audibly hissed because Kingsley stopped whistling long enough to call back to her.
“Patience, Charlie. We have all month.”
Charlotte spent the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom Kingsley had assigned to her, a bedroom nearly as luxurious as his own. His secretary came in and gathered information from her—emergency contacts, food preferences, even allergies.
“Allergies?” Charlotte had asked, repeating the woman’s question.
“Latex, for example?” Kingsley’s secretary answered with hardly a blink or a blush.
“Oh, God.”
An hour after returning from her apartment with a month’s worth of clothes and supplies, Charlotte tried to get some sleep but her mind wanted to wander down far too many dangerous paths. Kingsley Edge.… The one and only Kingsley Edge. She finally worked up the courage to call her younger brother and let him know a little of what was going on.
Simon sighed heavily, so heavily Charlotte nearly laughed aloud. “You sure about this, Char?” he asked.
“I like him.”
“Do you like him because he rich and infamous or because you actually like him?”
Charlotte thought about the question, a perfectly valid one, for a few seconds before answering.
“Yes.”
After getting Simon’s blessing, or at least his promise to not call the police, Charlotte hung up and stared around the room still not quite believing she’d be spending the next month here. What would Kingsley do with her during her stay? Part of her was terrified at the prospect. Another much bigger part of her couldn’t wait to find out.
Charlotte started as an envelope slipped in under her door. She picked it up and found a hand-written invitation.
Charlie—Present yourself at my bedroom door this evening at nine o’clock. Wear your finest. We shall attend a piano recital in the music room. Do not be late. The consequences will be both severe and enjoyable if you are.
Charlotte corrected herself. Invitation? No, this was a summons. And although she knew she should bristle at the order to present herself on time or be punished, she almost wanted to be late simply to force Kingsley to make good on his threat.
For a solid hour, Charlotte stood before the bathroom mirror primping for the recital. She did her makeup quickly and spent the rest of the time curling her waist-length hair into thick red waves. The fanciest dress she had was a little black number. Hopefully the effect of her hair would distract Kingsley from the simplicity of the dress.
At nine on the dot, Charlotte was outside Kingsley’s bedroom door, waiting on him to answer her knock. She still barely knew the man. The more time that passed from their one long conversation this morning, the more she questioned her decision to stay with him for the month. This was crazy, right? Spending a month with a stranger? No one in her right mind would have agreed to his offer. Why was she doing this?
Kingsley opened the door.
Okay, that was why.
“Wow,” she said when all other words failed her.
He wore a black suit with silver buttons on the black-and-silver embroidered vest. His riding boots had been polished to a near-reflective shine. Had she stared into those boots long enough, she imagined she would have seen her own wide-eyed face staring back at her.
“You approve?” Kingsley asked, a slight smile at the corner of his sensual lips.
Charlotte slowly nodded. “Um…yes. You look…damn.”
“And you, ma chérie, look enchanting.” Kingsley took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Utterly exquisite.” Raising her hand over her head, he spun her in a slow circle.
“Parfait, Charlie.”
“Merci,” she said and curtsied. “The dress isn’t much. But it’s all I have that’s semiformal.”
Kingsley took her by the arm and they started down the hallway. “It will look lovely on the floor by my bed.”
Charlotte blushed and laughed. “Is there any particular reason why you dress like it’s the nineteenth century instead of the twenty-first?”
“There’s only one reason that matters,” he said as he escorted her down to the main level of his home. “Because I can.”
He led her to the music room. Kingsley introduced her, still on his arm, to his guests. Most of the men were seated on the chairs and loveseats. But although there was enough room for all, a few of the women sat on the floor at the feet of the men they’d come with. One woman, almost forty and stunningly beautiful, took an imperious seat on a chair and snapped her fingers. Her date, a young man of about thirty, swiftly sat down at her feet.
Kingsley had a wicked gleam in his eyes as he observed Charlotte take in the scene. When he settled down, she instinctively sank to the floor and leaned back against his knee. He ran a hand possessively through her hair. Now she knew why no one had asked her how she’d met Kingsley. All his guests were part of his kinky little community.
Charlotte adjusted herself and found the floor was actually quite comfortable. The carpeting was thick and lush and Kingsley’s fingers in her hair and on her neck felt extraordinary—sensual and seductive and also relaxing. She could stay here all night.
A tall blond man entered to a smattering of applause and sat at the piano. Charlotte’s eyes widened when she saw he was dressed like a priest. A beautiful young woman with black hair followed him and sat on the floor next to the piano bench. Once the applause ceased, the man began to play. Charlotte sat still, entranced by the breathtakingly handsome pianist and the woman who rested so contentedly at his feet.
Kingsley leaned forward and put his mouth at her ear. “I know he’s handsome as the devil, Charlie. And you’re welcome to look all you want. But don’t touch. That,” he said, inclining his head toward the piano playing priest and the young woman, “is a love match.”
Immersed In Pleasure/Submit To Desire (The Original Sinners Pulp Library) Page 7
