Deadly Retaliation: A Dark Bully Harem Romance (A Twisted, Dark and Deadly Romance Book 1)

by C. P. Mandara

  “Good.” Adrien has the cheek to grin. “And I did give you the best sex of your life, and you look cute when you lie.”

  “Put the cell phone down, Adrien. Please.” Unfortunately, he does no such thing.

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart. Ask me what I was doing while you were snoring your head off this morning.” He waggles the phone at me and raises his eyebrows in challenge. Uh oh.

  Where is this going? Only one way to find out, I guess.

  “What were you doing this morning, while I was recovering from being sexually harassed by one of my employees last night?” I ask sweetly. Fine, if he wants to play this game, we’ll play. As long as he’s not pressing any buttons on his phone, I can just about keep my temper under wraps – for the time being.

  Adrien snorts. “Now that is a very good question,” he drawls, which is a bit like giving himself a pat on the back, but whatever. “I was up at the crack of dawn. She’s a lovely girl, Dawn.”

  I do not smile. I am not in the mood.

  “Anyway, I headed out to the office at about six am, safe in the knowledge that you wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near me for a good hour or so. We all know what that means, don’t we?” Adie’s eyes light up like fireworks. I know exactly what that means. It means he’s had some snooping time. I’m not overly worried. Everything in my office is password protected. Unless he’s the best hacker in the UK, he’s unlikely to have found very much. I try to reassure myself that the cocky man in front of me is bluffing his ass off, but my palms are sweating.

  My mind goes into overdrive, even though I am sure I have nothing to worry about. Did I leave anything of note in my office last night? No, I am very careful to make sure everything is locked away and switched off. Mind you, locks are no deterrent for any of my employees. Still, all the important stuff is on the computer, which is password protected and encrypted. Stop panicking. For some reason, though, I feel a sense of impending doom. It has a lot to do with the fact that Adie looks like one of those smug Love Islanders, who knows he’s hot, and better yet, knows he’s going to win the show. I have news for him – he’s not.

  “And what did you find? Anything exciting?” I taunt him. I am royally ticked off this morning and we need to have words about his attitude. I do not find it endearing.

  “I might have found one or two things of interest,” he drawls. He’s not immediately revealing his hand, which tells me he doesn’t have anything. My blood pressure, which has been requiring medication all morning, finally starts to wane. Thank God.

  “Did I leave the remains of yesterday’s lunch on my desk?” I ask sweetly. He’s about to get the remains of today’s breakfast all over him if he isn’t careful. My sarcastic side has now reared its ugly head, and it is ready to do battle.

  “No, darling. Your office is spotlessly clean as well you know. There isn’t one person alive who isn’t aware of your OCD tendencies, especially in the office kitchenette.” He looks at me as if this is a crime. So? I have a thing about clean microwaves. I don’t want someone else’s sludge all over the place when I want to heat my dinner up. Cleanliness is next to godliness. It’s good practice to learn to clean up your own mess. This is equally true when you decide to have sex with an employee. Ahem.

  “Well? I have things to do, people to see. Are you going to keep me waiting all day, Dumortier?” If he has anything interesting to say, he needs to get on with it. I am now more than slightly irked. In fact, if Leader wants to kill him on his next assignment, I’m not sure I’ll be too upset about the fact.

  Adie continues to sit there, grinning at me. I want to slap the smug smile off his face so badly, I almost have to physically hold my hand back.

  “Well,” he says, angling his chair to the side as he hoists his feet up on his desk. “I discovered that I need to be on the lookout for one Ione Warrington, and that she works at The Royal London Hospital as a pediatrician.”

  My face goes slack in horror. It seems I have severely underestimated Adrien’s skills. Now I have virtually no leverage against him, whatsoever. Forget being between a rock and a hard place. I am a tiny speck of dust on earth with a twenty-mile wide meteor heading for the top of my head. This man is going to destroy me.

  “You don’t know which floor she works on, or which boss she reports to,” I add weakly. This is all stuff he can figure out for himself with a few simple phone calls. Shit. What do I do now?

  Adie’s grin simply gets wider. “I’ve already got those details. Took me less than five minutes, sweetheart.”

  That’s what I was afraid of. My brain goes into freefall trying to find a way out of this situation, but I come up blank. Yep, I’m about as full of ideas as a freshly wiped whiteboard. Oh God.

  “So, what now?” I whisper. My eyes stray to the video footage of my naked body that is still playing on his cell phone. The fallout from this is going to be epic. Humiliation, embarrassment, and the inability to work in espionage ever again don’t even begin to describe it.

  “That depends on you,” Adrien says, reaching for his Starbucks. He takes a long swig of steaming hot coffee and licks his lips. He looks supremely confident, and he has every right to be. I have been neatly cornered and there’s not much I won’t agree to if he’ll let me wriggle out of this mess.

  “Go on,” I say, darkly. I already know I am not going to like this. I just want to know how much I’m not going to like it.

  “Well, we’ll obviously need to come to some sort of agreement,” he replies.

  Obviously. Give me the details, asshole, I say quietly in my head, while I scowl at him.

  “What sort of agreement?” I ask. He’s dragging this out to watch me squirm and I am not amused. I still haven’t recovered from the bike ride, for fuck’s sake.

  He pretends to consider what he wants, while I stand there waiting. His finger is tapping against his lower lip as his eyes keep wavering up and down my body. I know where this is going. I also know I won’t be able to handle it.

  “I’ve got it,” he then says, as if a lightbulb moment has struck. He even puts one finger in the air to celebrate his decision. “You do everything I say for a month. That should do it. I’ll even give you my phone at the end of the deal.” He waves the thing in the air, and the video is still playing, so I close my eyes as I contemplate how neatly I have been outplayed. This is what I pay them for, though. More fool me.

  “And if I walk away?” All my instincts are screaming ‘run.’ Perhaps there’s a chance he’ll let me go gracefully, so I can find a job with another agency somewhere.

  “Then I’ll thoroughly enjoy plastering your face all over my social media and anywhere I can put it. Bizarrely enough, I know quite a few celebrities. I’m sure they’d post this for me if I asked them nicely. I don’t think I need to tell you that you’ll never work again.” Adrien gives me a sad little frown and shakes his head. Fuck you, you bastard.

  Can I walk? Yes. Will I ever be able to show my face in public again? Probably not. Sure, I could change my hair color and get a bit of work done, but my colossal earning power is only related to this industry. If I’m compromised, I’ll never work in it again, and I’ll probably end up stacking shelves in Aldi. I can kiss goodbye to my lovely lifestyle in London, with my luxury condo and concierge service. Actually, I’ll have to say goodbye to lots of things. Lots of things that I really like and have grown used to having. Besides, how long is a month, really? When you break it down, it’s only four and a bit week’s. This should be a snap. It’s not like I don’t find Adrien attractive. He is the hottest thing on two legs I have ever come across and he makes my body do internal somersaults from fifty meters away.

  I do have one question, though. “What guarantee do I have that you’ll return the footage to me when my month is up?” It’s best to know these details beforehand.

  “You have no guarantee. You’ll just have to take my word for it,” he replies.

  That’s what I was afraid of.

  “If you m
ess with me, I’ll have you killed,” I threaten. This is not perhaps the wisest thing to say to the person who’s about to control everything I do for the next four weeks. I can’t bring myself to say, ‘month.’ It sounds far too long.

  “I don’t doubt you’ll try.” There’s that grin again. I want to strangle him. “So, do we have a deal?” he asks.

  No. Fuck no. “Yes,” I say through gritted teeth.

  “Good,” he says, standing up. “Now bend over my desk, hitch your skirt up, and place your hands in front of you.”

  I close my eyes. I cannot do this at work. What if someone walks in? Just as I’m about to voice my protest, he puts one finger over his lips.

  “No talking, poppet. Not until we’re finished. Remember, you’re obeying my every order.”

  How could I possibly fucking forget? With wooden movements, I step forward towards his desk and bend over it. My hands are visibly shaking as I wiggle my skirt upwards. When I’ve finished baring my ass, I then place my hands over my head. Oh. My. Fucking. God.

  Adrien then runs one finger from the top of my clavicle all the way down to the bottom of my spine. I shudder. I can’t help it.

  He sighs happily. “If I were you, I’d keep very quiet when I begin fucking you. That’s just me, though. If you want to scream, you go right ahead.” His hand then caresses my left ass cheek before giving it an almighty whack.

  Oh, I want to scream alright. I want to scream so much the sound is already echoing around my head, pleading with me to let it escape.

  Adie

  I can’t believe I have never thought about shagging the boss before. I mean, I have thought about it, but just figured there would be far too many problems involved. When it actually comes down to it, the reverse is true. It actually makes things far simpler. If I can control Elizabeth, I can control certain aspects of my job, and knowledge is power in this industry. Why did I not think of this before? This is too much fun.

  I can’t tell you how easy it was to slip into her office and hack her password. There were few benefits to working for my brother, but one of them was that I was surrounded by criminals. Constantly. So picking locks, hacking computers, jacking cars, grading diamonds, assessing weapons and counterfeiting comes quite naturally to me. It was how I got out of the exceptionally tight and sticky situation of having a suicide bomb strapped around my waist as it happens, but that is another story. Anyway, the main thing is that I managed to get into her servers and I had a good rummage around, and what beautiful servers this woman has. The best. I’ve been thinking about overloading them all morning. All it took was a little maneuvering into the right place, and here she is, neatly packaged and ready to obey my every command. I fucking love being me.

  It’s almost laughable the woman thinks I want to steal her job. That is the absolute last thing on my mind, but if that misbelief encourages her to dance to my tune, so much the better. As long as she does every damn thing I tell her to for the next month (unless I get bored of her earlier) we’ll get along swimmingly and she can have her photos back with interest.

  Would I have posted those photos of her? Do you know, I would have been tempted, because the woman can be an enormous bitch to work for, but probably not. Then again, maybe I would have. I’m undecided. Anyway, now I won’t have to, so it’s all good. That pussy can just worship my cock for the next few weeks and weep whenever I come near it.

  Smacking my lips out loud as I circle around my prey, I admire the ass I spanked last night. It is barely pink this morning, which is disappointing, but it’s something that can be easily rectified. The good news is that I can spank that ass red raw over the upcoming weeks and there isn’t a thing Elizabeth Sharkey can do about it. If I were her, I’d invest in one of those rubber ring things if she ever wants to sit down again. Before the week is out, she’s going to need one.

  Admiring her delectable ass for a second, I then give it a firm spank, and delight as her cheeks quiver. My cock is already pulsing against my trousers, which is pretty much where it has been all morning. I cannot lie, the thought of tucking into that ass has been the focus of my attention for the past couple of hours, even when my thoughts should have been elsewhere. Still, the important bits got done and the rest can wait until later.

  “Spread those legs wider,” I command, slapping her other butt cheek. I need to see whether she’s aroused by this. If she’s shaking with fear, I’ll just hit the whole thing on the head and she can do my housework for a month. I’m not that desperate. Anger, I can handle. Fear, not so much. I’ve seen too much of it. If it’s in the right context, it’s okay, but if she’s trembling like a leaf, then she can toddle back to her own office while I get a list of cleaning supplies ready. I’m an asshole, but I like to think I have my limits these days. I’m not sure I do, but I like to think so.

  Elizabeth spreads her legs as ordered, and I kick them out a bit wider, so I have better access. If I’m going to train her up, I may as well start as I mean to go on.

  “Are you wet?” I ask her. Her reply doesn’t really interest me, as I’m about to check for myself, but I want to know if she’s angry. I’m pretty sure she is. Her hands look rather strained above her, and I can almost see her chest heaving up on down on my desk. I have a feeling she’s not just angry, but downright mad at being outmaneuvered, and if that’s the case, I’m going to enjoy this a whole lot more.

  “Fuck. You.” The words are spat out with venom and I can’t help but wonder how much she wants to kill me right now. If I had to guess, I’d say a lot. Hmm. This is going to be fun.

  Standing between those amazing legs, I place one hand upon her cunt. There’s a good chance she might kick me at any second, so I want to be ready for it.

  She doesn’t lash out, though. Her legs are trembling, but her hot little snatch is soaked. My fingers glide inside her as if she was made out of melted butter. Ahh. I think the lady doth protest too much. Elizabeth might not like the predicament she’s in, but her body isn’t complaining.

  “Wow, darling. If you’re not careful, there’s going to be a puddle on my floor. I have to confess I didn’t expect this much enthusiasm so early in the morning.” Yes, I’m goading her, but she’s given me plenty of grief in the past, so I don’t feel too sorry for her.

  “Just get on with it,” she hisses, and this makes me smile even more.

  “You’re always in a hurry, darling.” I spank her ass again, left then right. “You should never hurry sex. Never. They key to a great orgasm is lots of patience and anticipation building.”

  “I’m in a hurry because someone could walk through that door at any moment. Please, Adie. Do whatever you want, but please hurry.” Elizabeth isn’t opening her mouth as she talks, so everything sounds like a growl. It tickles me.

  “Well, never let it be said that I am unreasonable. Just this once, you can have it your way.” She’s going to regret it, but that’s her problem. Shoving my thumb into my mouth to lubricate it, I then insert it in her ass. I watch her buck up off the table, but I push her back down again. The woman is not coming up for air any time soon.

  “No, sweetheart. Your job is to stay still and take it like a good girl. Remember, you’re doing everything I tell you to for the next month. This is your last reminder. The next time I have to repeat myself, you’ll earn a punishment and you didn’t go much on those yesterday.”

  Hmm. What’s my next course of action? I could just shove it in there and watch her scream, but like I said, that’s not my bag anymore. I don’t want her cowering in the corner. I want her hot and angry. A few tears might occasionally be nice, too. I live for tears. Ideally, I need a woman that I can make cry every day, who won’t run screaming inside of a week. Most do. Scrap that. All of them do. The only one that could stay the distance was Lois. That’s why I’m not going to let James have her. He has no idea how to handle her. I do. Until then, however, I need someone to help me let off some steam. Elizabeth will take my mind off things if I introduce her into my kind of
kink gently. I just need to remember to ease her in slowly. No tears for a day or two. Ger her hooked first. I keep saying that over and over in my head to remind myself. I know what I’m like. I’ll get excited and then wham! Off she goes, never to be heard of again. Not if you do it right, Adrien. Treat this like an assignment. Take it one step at a time. You’ve got her for a month. There’s no rush.

  My thumb rims her asshole for several seconds, warming her up for round two. To be fair, there is no warm-up for round two, but pre-warned is better than wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. While one hand is doing this, the other hand is circling her clit.

  “God no, Adie,” she hisses. “Not there.” It looks like that’s still a sore spot, then. This is good.

  Immediately giving her ass a slap, I say, “You’ve just earned yourself a punishment, Elizabeth. Remember what I said. You do what I say. You take what I dish out. For now, you need to stay quiet. If you can’t do that, I’ll gag you. Just try explaining that one away if someone walks in.”

  Although I can’t see her face after that comment, I know it’s hit home because she goes deathly quiet and stills almost instantly. She obviously takes me at my word because I don’t hear another sound.

  “Relax,” I murmur, as her body tenses. “It will hurt less if you relax, trust me.” While this is great advice, it’s unlikely she’ll be able to follow it. I hate to think what might be going through her mind right now, but I suspect that panic is flowing through every vein as she tries to figure a way out of this mess. While I’m teasing her body, she’ll be plotting how to steal my phone, or get me incarcerated or killed. She can dance with those thoughts all day, but she won’t get far. I’ve had too much experience in this business, and I don’t play by the rules. Never have, never will. She’ll figure that out soon enough.