When he released my hair, my scalp tingled from the rush of blood to the tortured roots. He ran his thumb over my lips, parting them, playing with the bottom one. I wanted to lick, bite, nibble, entice. That wouldn’t be met with favor. It was his move. He could take me now on the cold garage floor and I would welcome it.
I’d agreed to his demands again. It wasn’t my choice whether he took me now or not. I might die if he didn’t.
“Now, go do something productive with your time and stop wasting mine. If I catch you out here begging like a brat again, you’ll be punished.”
Punishment had to be better than the waiting game.
“You won’t like it, Angel.”
Damn, he was reading my mind again.
“If you’re good, maybe I’ll let Cade play at punishing you later.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Pleasure and Pain
Find something productive to do, my ass. I’d show him productive. However, first I needed to change my panties.
The night he took me to The Asylum and then took charge of the scene with the guys at home was the first time he’d actively participated in my sexual adventure. He watched, he’d pleasured himself, he even directed what happened to me, but at its heart he did nothing more than protect and brood.
The morning I woke up in his arms still gave me a warm spot behind my heart. Today was nothing like that. His dominance, his control over my whole world, for that one moment in the garage burned white hot and left me beyond wanting.
My complete irritation that he thought I was acting like a brat and his demand that I find something to do with myself only added fuel to the raging forest fire of need I’d been in the center of for the last three days.
Maybe I could get away with getting myself off in the shower when I went to change. Except he’d know. Without ever saying a word, he’d know.
Damn, why did I ever agree to his deal? Sure, I wanted to explore the dark world of the BDSM, and for sure I wanted to explore it with him. Agreeing to allow him to control me was downright stupid. I should have known he wasn’t going to tie me up and do dirty things to me.
But a girl could fantasize.
“Bella, you are looking so feisty and beautiful today. Tell me our oh, so manly Grayson has lifted his ban on your orgasms?”
Ilario snuggled up to me from behind and wrapped his arms around me, caressing my breast and grinding his always-erection into my butt. How I wanted to drop right there onto the floor and let him have his way with me. His way was always fun and very satisfying.
I leaned into him and sighed. “Oh, you know he hasn’t. He’s doing his very best to torture me.”
Ilario released me and ran the back of his finger down my cheek. “How can he stand to see you suffer so?”
“He thinks it’s good for her.” Cade walked in and winked at me. Damn Dom in training.
“Ugh, not you too. It’s not good for me.” I didn’t throw off my mantle of being Stepford wife material so some jerk that I happened to be in love with could tell me what to do. Unless of course it was in the bedroom, or the kitchen, or the garage.
“A woman such as yourself should have at least three orgasms every day to stay healthy and happy. This is why you have the three of us, no?”
“Maybe, but she’ll do what he says because they both want that. Isn’t that right, Angel?” Cade said.
I chose to ignore him all together. “Damn straight, Ilario. “You should let Gray know your theory.”
He stepped away and crossed his arms, shaking his head. “Your Grayson has theories of his own.”
My Grayson wasn’t really mine. Yet. “Don’t I know it.”
Somewhere along the way I’d let Gray slip into the role my ex-fiancé, or really every other man in my life, had until a few months ago. Someone who could tell me what to do and have no other expectation but that I would meekly do it.
Payaso. Why did I do that?
Because Cade was right. Gray and I were meant to play these roles. But were we just playing?
This whole dominance and submission thing was throwing me off kilter. Sexy as hell, but it was messing with my brain.
I was on a mission to take control of my life, and that included a serious sexual revolution. My sexy-nista transformation was well under way, but the rest of me was a long way from true independence.
Viva la Angelina!
“Do you want to help me with something?” Gray wanted me to do something productive and I’m pretty sure he meant find a charity or go to school. For being the one man who was willing to help me break the chains of societal expectation he sure had fallen back onto them with his own expectations of me. Screw. That.
Ilario snuggled back up to me, always needing that reassurance of touch. “If we cannot fuck, what will we do?”
I put my hand over his before it could find its way to the fun places. “Find something... productive to do.”
“What is this productive thing?” He looked down at my pants and back up.
Poor guy was suffering more than me on Gray’s no sex ban. I think he was ready to defy the orders and break all kinds of rules.
Me too, just not those ones. “Have you ever been to a BDSM club? Played with a real Dominatrix?”
“Yes, the sex club is very fun for me. Are we going to one? This will be much fun.”
“You can help me then.” It’s what got me into this no orgasm mess in the first place. Gray and his cohort, Foster Bennett, decided I didn’t know anything about anything. If I wanted to pursue the idea of being a Dominatrix, I needed to be trained up in the lifestyle for real. Not this faux, no orgasms routine. But real experience
“I think Grayson would not like if we went to a club. Maybe we can play the Dominatrix game here in your home?” Ilario glanced around the hallway as if he could find the right place to put a big ole St. Andrews cross.
He smiled. “I think, my bella, that you will need to do much research. I will volunteer to help you.”
“Don’t you have some studying to do?” Gray’s voice sounded from behind us. He leaned against the door jamb wiping his hands on a blackened rag. Calm, cool, and sans the erection he’d been sporting ten minutes ago.
Did he take care of himself or use the power of his will to erase any signs of arousal and attraction for me?
Ilario either didn’t hear the underlying growl in Gray’s question or he chose to ignore it. “Of course, but I can still help our Angelina with her pet project.”
Gray nodded. “That’s very kind of you, but I’m sure she wants to do this on her own.”
I opened my mouth to protest but the look I got from Gray was the same one when he promised me a punishment of the not fun kind. I’d stand up to him... later.
“Thanks, Ilario. I do want your help. I’ll let you know when I’ve got something together. You’re right. I have a lot of research to do.” I winked at him, hoping to break the tension building in the little hallway.
He took the hint and nodded. “As you wish.” He kissed me on the cheek. “I will do my studies now, let me know when you want my help, bella.”
Ilario went upstairs leaving me to the brooding Mr. Gray.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Uh-oh
Gray didn’t move from his spot pretending to be a coat rack. Which was fine by me. I needed a minute to figure out how to tell him off without pissing him off too.
“I thought we agreed that you’d wait on your Dominatrix idea for six months while I initiated you into the lifestyle.”
“I changed my mind. I’m a woman. I get to do that.” Roar.
All my muscles tensed ready and waiting for him to pounce on me again. He didn’t move. Except to rub the rag across his fingers some more. His face flashed a moment of disappointment, and then a weird little smile tugged that away.
I wanted to analyze that like the girl that I was. A thousand questions flew through my mind about why he might be disappointed and about what. And what in the world was that
smile?
“You told me to do something productive with my time and I chose to work on my future.”
The smile transformed into one that said he knew I wouldn’t stick with the training. “It’s your life, Angel.”
Normally, a smile from Gray was a thing to behold. Not today. This one made my insides sink like the Lusitania. “I don’t understand you.”
The smile fell from his lips. “I know.”
“No manches.” I pivoted on one foot and walked the hell away from that conversation.
Gray was no help at all. Who else did I know that had the inside track on the ins and outs, and back ins and outs, of sexual domination?
I couldn’t for the life of me find the card of the actual Dominatrix I’d met at the club and had a sneaking suspicion it had gone the way of wherever Gray had hidden Hawk’s card from me too.
Maybe I should take a class. Or I could hire a consultant. Hmm...both.
Finding a class wasn’t that easy. It’s not like the city colleges had tons of them BDSM 101.
Who needed a big bad Dom anyway? Not me.
Liar, liar, pants up in flames. The little bit of submission and domination I’d experienced had taken sex from boring to fireworks and rockets and atomic explosions.
My panties were still wet from that encounter with Gray in the garage, and our little tiff in the hall certainly didn’t dry them up.
I went to my room to change clothes. As worked up as I was, nothing looked comfortable, so I plopped down on my chaise longue naked, something I never used to do.
Amazing what having some great sex did for a women’s body confidence. I still had a very round bottom, a tummy, a bit of sag under my arms, and more chins than I liked, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t learned to embrace my curves. I still had doubts and days where I didn’t love what I saw in the mirror, but they weren’t every day and definitely not every night.
Not that I’d be comfortable walking around in my birthday suit, a collar and chain like the girls I’d seen at The Asylum.
Eureka. That was it.
I knew who to ask for advice from. I needed somebody inside the biz.
He might scare the hell out of me, but why not go straight to the source?
I grabbed my phone and had Siri do my bidding. “Siri, find me the number for The Asylum.”
“OK, here’s what I found.”
There were three search results, but only one was a sex club in the warehouse district. I clicked on the number and waited while it rang. Would anyone even answer during the day?
“Angelina. What are you doing calling me?” His voice dripped with power and knowledge like a professor who knows you’ve been a bad girl.
I shivered and snuggled into the pillows on my chaise. This was the weirdest start to a conversation I’d ever had, and I was thus far silent. Not the right way to show my new and improved womanly confidence. But, A, why was Foster Bennett answering the phone? Didn’t he have, servants or sex slaves or something for that? And B, caller ID creeped me out when people answered the phone with my name. I needed to remember to block my number.
If he could lay it on this thick, so could I. I imagined we were old friends and I was calling in a favor. “I’m hoping you can help me, Foster.”
“Isn’t that what Gray is for?”
“Uh...” I had so many responses to that I didn’t know where to start.
“Oh, ho ho. You aren’t supposed to be talking to me, are you? I see how it is. You’re a brat. I bet Gray just loves that.”
“I am not a brat. I’m trying to exert a little bit of independence in my life. I don’t need men telling me what to do all the time.”
“Of course, you don’t need it. You like it though.”
Did I? “I do not.”
“We’ll see. When’s the last time you came?”
Oh my cajones. “That is none of your business.”
“It’s exactly my business. How do you think I make my money?”
Obtuse bastard. He was worse than Gray. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’d like to—”
“Not until you tell me how long since you came.”
I crossed my legs and looked around for a bathrobe or a towel or anything that I could cover myself up with. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t. I’m more interested in how insane you’re driving Gray. So, how long?”
Okay, that’s a game I could play. “Three days.”
“That’s all?”
I scoffed. “It’s pretty much forever.”
“So, Gray’s testing your orgasm denial limits, is he? Typical. I’ll bet he’s got you all riled up too. Are you wet right now?”
This conversation was not going how I wanted it to. “Do you think about anything other than sex?”
“No. It’s why I’m so successful. I have a real passion for my business. What are you wearing?”
What was this a 900 sex line? “You really do have a one-track mind.”
“No, it has a couple of tracks, but the one it’s on right now is imagining you on my lap, naked.”
The last time I saw a naked woman on his lap was the one and only time Gray had taken me to The Asylum. Foster had made a woman come choking her...while she sat on his lap.
He was trying to intimidate me with that reminder of his dominance and what he could do to a woman like me. Well, I could play that game. “Funny, because I happen to be naked.”
“No, you aren’t, little brat.”
“I’ll show you if you’ll help me get in contact with the Dominatrix that was at your club last week.”
He laughed. Hard. I wasn’t sure if I should be irritated or flattered I was so entertaining to him.
“I’d take you up on that if I thought for one minute you’d actually go through with it.”
I texted him a picture of my outstretched legs.
“Very nice, but that doesn’t prove a thing. You could be wearing shorts or panties or a bathrobe. Send me a picture of your pussy and we’ll talk names and numbers.”
“Pervert.”
“Indeed I am.”
No way I was taking a dirty picture and sending it to him. I was about to try something I’d only ever heard women used as a bargaining tool. I was holding out.
“Well, that’s all you’re going to get, for now. Tell me what I want to know, and we’ll see if another trip to your club can’t be arranged.” Whoo. I sounded like a badass.
“You’re wet, aren’t you, Angelina? Have you been touching yourself or has Gray?”
“Neither. Now is she the only Dominatrix you know, or are there others?”
I may not have any real experience in negotiations, but years of listening to my father and the boys club conduct business at the country club over a round of golf or dinner had soaked into my brain.
“I said we’d talk names and numbers. I didn’t say whose.”
“What? No. You’re a cheat.” No wonder Gray didn’t like this guy.
“I’m not the one who only sent me a picture of her bare legs.”
“Foster.” Wait. He wasn’t going to respond to whining, which was exactly what I was about to do. He was into power exchange. I needed to offer him something to get anything from him. Whatever I proposed was going to have to be more than a simple picture.
But what did I have to entice the king of the forbidden?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Deal with the Devil
This conversation was not going the way I’d planned. Not that I expected Foster Bennett to roll over for me, but I hadn’t thought I’d be ass deep in negotiations for a fucking phone number.
I had one ace up my sleeve. “What if I give you a video of me in a ménage with two other men?”
“Ah, yes, the infamous socialite sex tape. Has Gray seen this?”
Okay. Not the reaction I was expecting. “He filmed it.”
“Very interesting. But no deal. You’re assuming I haven’t already seen it.”
What. The.
Fuck?
Gray was the only one with a copy, and he’d only shown it once...to every person at my former country club. Foster Bennett certainly wasn’t a member.
Now I wanted two things from him. I had to be very careful and strategic if I was going to get anything. Power exchange and submission. “What can I do for you to get you to give me some contacts,” go for it, “and how you saw the tape of my sexcapades,” go in for the kill, “...Sir?”
I held my breath while Foster’s deepened into heavy breathing.
“Clever minx.” Several clicks sounded through the line. “You come for me, right now, over the phone, while I tell you what to do and how, and I’ll let you come down to the club and I’ll introduce you to anyone you like.”
I dropped the phone. Dropped it like it’s hot.
No way. I couldn’t. Gray would kill me.
But... I would get exactly what I wanted if I did. The knowledge I was after and the god-damned orgasm my body was craving.
I glanced at the door to my room. Shut and locked.
No. It would be an utter betrayal of Grayson. Getting the contact information for a woman who could answer all my questions and help me figure out what the hell was going on in Gray’s head was important. But, there had to be another way.
What if...?
A muffled sound came from the floor. Oops. I grabbed the phone and put it up to my ear.
“Okay.”
“Not, okay, little brat. Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.” As far as he knew.
“Good girl. Put your phone down and turn it on speaker. You’re going to need two hands and I want to be able to hear everything.”
What have I gotten myself into?
A business exchange. One in which, in the time-honored tradition of the ultra-rich, I was going to cheat. No way I was going to do what he said, but he didn’t have to know that. I could fake it like a porn star.
He got what he wanted and so did I. If I kept telling myself that I could forget about the ugly taste bubbling up from my insides.