the passion. She roused it. She bit his bottom lip and drew
blood. He tasted the copper and swallowed it.
“I never kiss my clients,” she whispered against his lips. “I
never fuck them. But you’re not a client.”
“What am I?” he asked.
“Tonight,” she said, “you’re mine.”
And tonight he was.
23
MISTRESS FELICIA UNHOOKED HIS CUFFS AND TURNED him so that he faced away from her now. She bent him over and cuffed his wrists to the footboard of the bed. Once again she gagged him with the crop. More pain came then. A cane that battered his thighs. A f logger that cut into his back. A whip that bit from his shoulders to his knees.
He glanced at the clock before she began her beating. He glanced at it again when she finished. She’d beaten him for a solid hour—an hour that had passed in seconds. His lungs burned from how hard he’d breathed during the beating. When Mistress Felicia touched his lower back, he f linched. His skin was so raw even the softest touch burned.
She laughed at his f linching, no doubt enjoying his pain. Any true sadist would. She kissed his neck above the tendon of his shoulder as she unlocked his wrists from the footboard.
Mistress Felicia took the crop out of his mouth again. “Do you need water?”
“Please.”
She brought him water in a wineglass, but when he reached for it, she shook her head.
“On your knees.”
He dropped to his knees, and Mistress Felicia cupped the back of his head. She brought the glass to his lips and bade him to drink. His male pride loathed this childish dependence even as his hunger for surrender and submission gloried in being treated like a dog at the mercy of his master.
The water cooled his burning tongue, though it did nothing to alleviate the pain that suffused his entire body. Mistress Felicia took the glass from his lips, set it aside and returned to him. She wove her fingers through the long hair at the base of his neck and let him rest his head against her stomach.
“I’ve never known anyone who took pain as well as you do,” she said, now massaging his neck. “You’ve pleased me more than I can say.”
“Thank you, Maîtresse.” Finally he could trust his voice to speak.
“And I’ve never had a more beautiful man at my feet before. You are a prize.”
He closed his eyes. These were the words his soul needed. Once Søren had whispered similar words to him. It was like drinking a single sip of the finest red wine and forever chasing that taste in every glass he raised to his lips.
“Merci,” he whispered. She caressed the side of his face. With the same hand that had hurt him, she comforted him. She reached up to her hair, and from the knot by her ear she pulled out the rose.
“This is a Felicia rose,” she said, tickling his lips and cheek with the petals. “Lovely, isn’t it?”
“It is, but not as lovely as you.”
“Well, what could be?” she asked, arrogant as any dominant he’d ever known—himself included. “All roses are traps, you know. The blooms are so beautiful everyone is drawn to them. And yet if you try to take one, and you aren’t careful…”
She turned the rose and let the short stem brush his cheek. One single thorn scratched, but did not break, his skin.
“If you want the petals,” she said, putting the bloom to his lips, “you’ll have to bear the thorns.”
She stepped away from him, reached into her bag, and from it pulled a square of folded wine-colored velvet. She carried the velvet to the side of his bed, unfolded the cloth and gathered its contents in her hand. With a toss of her hand she sprinkled something on top of his bedcovers.
“Come to me,” she said, and beckoned him with her hand. He stood and walked to her and saw what she had done to his bed.
A thousand rose thorns, sharp and shining, lay scattered across the sheets.
“Lie on your back,” she said. “If you want me, that is.”
He wanted her. He crawled over the bed and felt the bite of the thorns into his knees and palms. He lay diagonally across the bed wincing as they pricked at his bruised and battered skin. Once he settled into the sheets, Mistress Felicia raised a hand to her neck and took off the black lace choker. She reached down and removed her boots. She stripped herself of her skirt, then her corset. Off came her stockings and garters. And when she finally stood naked, she took the knot of her hair down.
Now she crawled to him.
“The thorns,” he warned as her hand touched the sheets.
“Have you ever met the rose who was afraid of her own thorns?”
She knelt at his side and took his wrists in her hands, pressing them into the bed by his head. The compassion was gone now, replaced by passion.
“Kiss me inside,” she said against his lips before moving to straddle his head. He grasped her waist. Her skin was so warm and soft. She pushed her hips forward so that her clitoris was at his lips. He licked it and kissed it, sucking it between his lips and teasing it with the tip of his tongue. Mistress Felicia let out the softest sigh of pleasure. He pulled her harder on to his mouth. He tasted her heat and wanted more of it, so he grasped her hips and moved her on him, opening her up with his mouth, lapping at every part of her lips, outer and inner, seeking the core of her while she gasped and moaned on top of him. She covered his hands with hers and squeezed his fingers as she orgasmed. Fluid rushed out of her and coated his lips and chin, and he drank her wetness. He couldn’t get enough of her.
When her shuddering ceased, she sat back on his chest and reached to the table at the side of the bed. He knew she reached for a condom, but he took his chance to capture her nipple in his mouth and suck on it. He circled her aureole with his tongue and sucked her breast deeper into his mouth. Two weeks… It seemed like a year since he’d had a woman’s body in his bed. He had to taste all of her.
She let him kiss her breasts, offering up to his mouth first her right nipple and then her left. As he sucked her, he ran his hands up and down her smooth back. She was thin but shapely, tall and lissome as a f lower but with strength rippling under her skin.
At last she pulled away, moved down his body, removed the cock ring and slipped the condom over his straining erection. She straddled him again. He watched as she gripped him and put him inside her. She took him in slowly, working him into her wet body inch by inch. Her orgasm was recent and her vagina tight from it. He felt that tightness straining to take him all, the size of him pushing against her narrow inner walls. It pleased him to fill her, to see her wince as her body struggled to accept all of him. She tilted her hips forward and took him all the way in. Ecstasy—white-hot and blinding—permeated him as she moved on him, riding him, each thrust of her hips taking him deeper inside her. She placed her hands on the sides of his chest, covering the scar with her palm. Her eyes closed, and he watched her move on him. Her hair swayed about her shoulders, her breasts rose and fell with every breath. She came again, and he could feel her tight inner body convulsing around him.
He wanted to come, too, but not yet. Not quite yet.
Mistress Felicia lifted off him and crawled to the head of the bed. She put her hands on the headboard and spread her legs in an invitation. He needed no other instruction. He mounted her from behind in one swift stroke and wrapped an arm around her waist. His other hand gripped the headboard to hold them both steady. Then he let loose with his need, pounding into her with all his pent-up need and desire. His hips beat against her soft rounded bottom, his cock pummeled and hammered deep inside her. He watched himself disappearing into her hole, reemerging from each foray wetter and wetter. She made no protest, gave no order to slow or stop. Whether she enjoyed it or not didn’t seem to matter to her. He’d earned this privilege of fucking her as hard as he needed.
Blood throbbed in his thighs. Without mercy he pushed into her. Without complaint she received him. His climax built painfully in his back and hips. He’d been hard for so long,
too long. His thrusts grew wilder, more desperate, more bruising. And when he knew neither of them could take anymore, he came and he came and he came, a hand clamped on her shoulder so hard she would share in his bruises tomorrow.
He pulled out of Mistress Felicia and lay on his back again. He knew the thorns were there, but he could no longer feel them.
She crawled on top of him and took a lock of his hair between her fingers. She lifted it and kissed the tip.
“You were sixteen,” she said. “You let a boy inside you.” Kingsley whispered his yes.
“You’ll let me inside you.” It wasn’t a question. Still, he whispered his assent.
She left the bed to retrieve her harness, and he rolled on to his stomach. Since coming out of the hospital he hadn’t let anyone inside him. The knowledge that he’d been violated like that while unconscious had made him afraid to let anyone in him lest he remembered something he far preferred to forget. But Mistress Felicia had hurt him in the way he needed to be hurt, and tonight he could deny her nothing.
She prepped him well, and he felt nothing but pleasure as she pushed inside him. He closed his eyes and received, not merely the phallus she used to penetrate him, but received the comfort of her touch, as well, and the words she whispered into his heart.
Beautiful…she whispered into his ear. Brave…virile…strong… powerful…and a hundred other words that bound his wounds.
The litany kept him with her. He didn’t go into his past, didn’t leave her or the bed. And when he came soon after, they were both pleasantly surprised. She even laughed and kissed his cheek, called him her new favorite slut.
He asked her to stay the night, and she agreed. He worshipped her body all night long, fucking her on her back, on her side, in the shower. He gave her orgasm after orgasm with his hands and his mouth, his cock and the toys he kept under the bed. He obeyed her every order, indulged her every whim and took pride in how readily her body responded to him.
After they’d worn each other out with kink and sex, Felicia massaged warm oil into every inch of his body. He hadn’t felt this sated in years. Not since Søren.
“You’re a masterful sadist.” Kingsley sighed contentedly.
“Merci beaucoup,” she said, putting on a feigned French accent. Kingsley laughed.
“Did you come out of retirement just to fuck me?” “To fuck you…and fuck with him by coming out of retirement to work at your club.”
“Him? Oh, him.” Kingsley knew immediately who “him” was—the billionaire whose divorce had landed Mistress Felicia in jail for two months. “Is he the jealous type?”
“Very much so. And he hates the idea of me with anyone else, even if I won’t see him anymore. But you know what they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” She lightly traced the welts she’d left on his chest. “As you can see.”
“The female of the species is always deadlier than the male.”
“Always?” Felicia asked.
Kingsley sat up in bed, a realization hitting him like Felicia’s crop on his back.
“Always,” he repeated. He turned around and kissed her. “I have to go. With your permission, Maîtresse.”
“Tell me where you’re going, and I’ll consider it.”
“Someone’s been threatening me and I know who it is.”
“Are you going to destroy him?”
“Her,” Kingsley said.
Mistress Felicia grinned.
“You’ll come to my house tonight?”
“I’ll come to your house, in your house and on your house if you order me to.”
“Permission granted.”
Kingsley scrambled out of bed and threw his clothes on.
Five minutes later he was walking out his front door.
And twenty minutes after that, he stood at another front door.
He knocked and waited.
Phoebe Dixon opened the door. When she saw him, she tried to slam it in his face. Kingsley stopped the door with his hand.
Kingsley smiled at her, and she took a fearful step back.
“We need to talk.”
24
“I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU.” PHOEBE GLARED at him as he pushed into the house and shut the door behind her. “I’ll call the police if I have to.”
“And tell them what exactly?”
“That you broke into my house.”
“Call them. I’ll tell where you hide all your drugs from
your husband.”
“You bastard, what do you want?”
“I want to know why you’re threatening me with that tape.” “What tape? What are you talking about?” she asked, a
crack in her voice betraying her guilt.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I know it’s you.
I don’t need a confession. I only want to know why.” “I have to tell you why? You don’t know?”
“I wish I could say I did. The last time I saw you I gave you
exactly what you wanted.”
“And then you dumped me without a word,” she said. “Not
one fucking word.”
“So this is how you punish me? By threatening me and
my friends?”
“I didn’t send the tapes. I just… I gave one to someone.” “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Kingsley sighed heavily.
“Phoebe, I’m a very busy man. We can play the back-andforth game all day, or we can skip the part where you play dumb and get back to the part where you tell me the truth,
so we can both move on with our lives.”
Phoebe crossed her arms over her chest.
“Two can play this game,” he reminded her. “Do I have to
send that tape to the reporter I know? The tape of your husband accepting a bribe?”
She lifted her chin but remained silent.
“I can also tell my friend on the police force who you buy
your drugs from, and then you’ll have to find a new supplier.” “I don’t know his name,” she finally said. “He came to see
Robert and asked about you. I overheard them talking. Robert kicked him out, but he left his phone number.” “And you called him?”
“You had your fucking secretary call me to blow me off.
Your secretary. You couldn’t pick up the fucking phone and
call me yourself?”
“This is your payback because I didn’t call you? I’d hate to
see what you’d do if someone really tried to hurt your poor
little feelings.”
“I don’t talk to secretaries.”
“You should. They’re some of the best people I know. Now
tell me everything about this man who wanted information
on me.”
“I told you, I don’t know his name.”
“Who does he work for?”
“I don’t know that, either. All he said was you were annoying his employer.”
“Who does he work for?”
“I don’t know.”
THE KING 259 “You have to know something.”
She shook her head and raised her hands to her temples. “He