By six twenty that evening, I was sitting in the vast, sleek lobby of the Phyrefly building waiting to meet Zach. My hands were bound so tightly together in my lap that my knuckles had turned white. My face was warm, and my trembling legs were crossed at the thigh, my every muscle clenched.
The slick silver ben-wa balls that Zach had secured inside of me earlier that day sat heavily in my pelvis. I tried to hold entirely still, for even the smallest of movements—any movement—set them rocking against my womb, and overwhelmed me with the sensation.
The vast building seemed to be empty, everyone else having gone for the day. I knew, though, that Zach was still around somewhere. I could feel the tension that being in his vicinity brought to me, vibrating in the air like a tangible substance.
I looked up at the sleek security monitor, wondering if he was watching, if he could see me. At the same time I saw myself, a small, curvy blonde dressed severely in black, picked out in slightly distorted black and white. The woman on that monitor seemed to be waiting for something—searching for something—and I blinked at my own image, startled by the thought.
What was I doing here? Was I really throwing myself at one man so soon after being burned by another? Could I really find myself while in the arms of someone else?
The sound of the chrome elevator sliding into place on the first floor had my heart clenching in the suddenly tight confines of my chest. My palms became slick with sweat, and I unclasped them and nervously wiped the moisture off on my skirt.
“You’re early. I’m pleased.” And then there he was, Zachariah St. Brenton, the charismatic billionaire, striding across the ultramodern lobby toward me. He was dressed in another expensive-looking black suit that made him look all the more mouthwatering. I began to tremble as those crystal blue eyes fastened on me, warm with hunger.
My head told me that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—find myself by pursuing a man. Everything else in my being screamed at me to take what I wanted, for once in my life.
“Come.” Zach held a hand out for me, and I took it without question, just as I was sure he expected me to. I found that I didn’t want to think, didn’t want to analyze my actions, my feelings and my thoughts.
I just wanted to live—and nothing had ever made me feel more vibrant or alive than this man.
“Oh!” The heavy balls rocked as I stood, causing twinges of need all throughout my abdomen, and my knees buckled. Zach’s muscular arm caught me around my waist, holding me steady.
“Maybe I asked too much of you.”
I looked up sharply, certain that he was criticizing me. I was crushed, because for reasons that I didn’t quite understand, I wanted to please him.
Instead, the lines etched deeply into his forehead told me that his mind was filled with nothing but concern for me. I was surprised and touched, and it made me want to please him all the more.
“No.” Zach looked at me sharply as I spoke, the beginnings of a frown crinkling the corners of his lips. He struck me again as the kind of man who was not accustomed to being told no.
“Very well.” Those opalescent eyes studied me for a long moment, trying to unearth my secrets, it seemed, before Zach guided me to the parking garage entrance, where I had parked that very morning. He seemed to be trying to understand me, to figure me out, which puzzled me.
After all, I wasn’t very interesting.
“Where are we going?” The balls continued to rock inside of me, moving with every step that I took. My breath was coming in short pants as pressure built in the muscles between my thighs.
Zach led me past the now-deserted booth where the parking attendant habitually sat, and through a door that I hadn’t noticed before. It led to a smaller, more finely finished garage, detached from the main employee area.
It held half a dozen expensive-looking vehicles. Well, I didn’t know anything about cars—anything at all, other than ideally, when I put the key into the ignition, they would start. Still, I knew without a doubt that all of these vehicles were well out of my price range. The shine of the chrome, their sleek lines—they screamed expensive.
I realized in a rush that they must all belong to him.
“We’ll be going to the Seacliff house tonight, Charles.” I jumped, a jolt of adrenaline shooting through my veins, when a man dressed all in black, whom I hadn’t noticed at all, rose from the folding chair on which he had been sitting to greet Zach.
“Very well, Mr. St. Brenton.” He nodded crisply, but I felt his eyes linger on me—not in a sexual way at all, but with curiosity. I found myself looking back, in short little glances, at the man who looked like he had only recently joined the senior citizens club—not that he would be joining the backgammon league anytime soon. He was tall, muscular, and stood with a rigidity that spoke of military training.
Suspicion was etched into the lines on his face. I swallowed, feeling the need to prove myself, though how, I didn’t have a clue.
“Charles, this is Miss Reid.” Zach splayed his hand on my lower back, and I felt the heat of his body seeping through the thin cotton of my blouse. I shivered, which caused the balls to rock back and forth, and I couldn’t help it any longer.
A small moan escaped my lips, a needy plea. I had never been more aroused in my life.
Zach looked down sharply at my sigh, and I noticed his body tensing in response to my desire. He nodded crisply at Charles, who climbed into the driver’s seat of the car.
I was puzzling over why a man like Zach, who clearly liked to be in control, wouldn’t drive his own fancy car, when he quickly took my hands, spun me so that I faced the rear of the vehicle, and placed my palms flat on its slick surface.
I choked back a cry as the balls swung wildly inside of me, pressing on my entrance, slicking my tight channel with arousal.
“What are you doing?” My whisper nearly caught in my throat when Zach crouched behind me, clasping long fingers around each of my ankles. He ran his hands up the insides of my legs.
“Zach!” The crevice between my legs flooded with wetness as he gently but firmly continued his caress up to the tender skin at the insides of my thighs, reaching beneath my flirty skirt. My face flushed crimson, my breath panted out, and I looked quickly to the front of the car.
Charles was seated in the driver’s seat, facing forward. I could see his stern, focused expression in the rearview mirror. He appeared to be at attention, and at the same time he didn’t appear to be at all interested in what his employer was doing.
Maybe Zach had women in his locked parking garage all the time. I didn’t know, and at that moment, as his thumbs grazed the place where my bikini panties met my skin, I didn’t care.
“Relax.” The word was a murmur against the back of my leg. This late in the day, he had the barest hint of shadow on his jaw, and he rubbed it back and forth over the tender skin behind my knee.
It made me tremble. I knew that it was stupid, since Charles didn’t seem to be looking, but I tried to school my flushed cheeks and parted lips into a mask of indifference.
I struggled to cover my cry with a cough when one of Zach’s hands pulled the elastic of my panties to one side. The other nudged at the swollen lips of my labia, teasing for a moment before entering. My fingers clawed helplessly at the cool surface of the vehicle as Zach extracted first one ball and then the other from my slick channel.
Pressing a kiss to my right buttock, he pulled my panties back into place and lowered my skirt. I gaped at him, aroused beyond anything I’d ever felt and also confused, as he spun me back around and ran a single finger down my cheek.
“It was wrong of me to ask you to wear these all day.” Casually, he withdrew a cloth handkerchief—did people actually carry those anymore?—and wrapped the two ben-wa balls in them. The little metals globes glinted in the light, winking mischievously at me before they were tucked into the pocket of Zach’s pants.
“Come.”
He was going to leave me like this now? No. No way. I had been aroused to the point of pain all day, and my skin felt too tight. It wasn’t fair.
It was cruel.
“What was the point of all of that?” When I was finally able to coax my voice into speaking, I was fully irritated, if breathless. No matter how much Zach turned me on, I didn’t want to be pulled along by anyone else’s will.
A flicker of consternation appeared on Zach’s finely honed features, but it was gone in a breath. It was replaced by that look—the one that said that he wanted me, here and now.
I swallowed thickly as desire pooled within me and scattered my thoughts.
“Delayed gratification can bring you to heights of pleasure that you have never dared imagine, Miss Reid.” Pressing his hand in the indentation between my shoulder blades, he rubbed lightly with his index and middle fingers. “Now. Into the car.”
I planted my feet, trying to glare up at him, even though my body was screaming at me to do as he said. But I felt the need to take some sort of stand, to ascertain that I was not a shrinking violet.
I was just beginning to realize that I had been exactly that for nearly all of my life. It was time to change.
“Tell me where we’re going. Then I’ll think about getting in the car.” I quivered with nerves when Zach’s expression darkened. I saw his fingers curl, his nails biting into his palms.
“We are going to my house.” The pressure of the fingers on my back increased, and I was startled enough by his words that I moved with it, bending to climb into the car. It was the same one that I had been in before, the sleek insides similar to a limousine, and I pressed my hands to my skirt to keep from flashing him a glimpse of my simple panties.
When I had seated myself, I looked back to find Zach grinning at me widely, even though the lust and the danger were still on his face.
“What?” I couldn’t possibly have embarrassed myself in the last sixty seconds, could I? “What’s so funny?”
Zach slid into the car behind me, much more gracefully than I had. I thought that he might sit beside me, might touch me—he had just had his fingers in between my legs, after all. But instead he settled himself on the soft leather bench seat directly across from me . . . the one where we had coupled so feverishly on my first day in his employ.
With him sitting straight across from me, I couldn’t help but look directly at him, right into his gorgeous face. He loosened his tie, one patterned with green and gray today, then ran his fingers through his hair.
I imagined doing both of those things for him myself, and my mouth went dry.
“Why . . . why are we going to your house?” I wasn’t an idiot—I knew very well where this was heading. However, the man and his mercurial mood changes had me feeling just uncertain enough that I wanted it in words.
Leaning forward, Zach pressed one single finger against my lips. I smelled copper and heat, and realized that the scent had come from me. I flushed all over, and that tense coil of need tightened even more.
“We are going to spend the night there.”
• • •
I nervously tried to keep up a conversation as the car twisted its way along winding roads that were a slender black ribbon of asphalt bordering the ocean. Zach appeared to be entertained by my monologue, though he couldn’t possibly have listened to even a fraction of it.
Still, his entire attention was focused on me. Combined with the slightly lessened but still very present ache from the ben-wa balls, I was ready to climb the walls.
Or him.
“This car is beautiful.” I didn’t actually care much about cars, but the combination of the low-slung vehicle, its black leather seats, and the view from the coast road made me itch to go for a fast drive with the sunroof open. “It must be amazing to drive this road in this car.”
Zach didn’t speak, but something in his silence changed. Turning my attention from the window to the big, beautiful man who was seated across from me, I understood immediately that I had said something wrong.
The face that had been so open and engaged only moments earlier was shuttered, and something flickered through the depths of those incredibly blue eyes.
“I don’t drive.” As if a steel rod had snapped into place in his spine, Zach sat upright. After a long pause, he drew his phone from his pocket.
“You’ll have to excuse me for a few minutes. I have some e-mails that I need to send.” The words were innocuous enough, but they provided him with a shield, an excuse to separate himself from me for the remainder of the drive.
Mortified, I clasped my hands around my suddenly trembling knees, staring down at them as the car glided onward, up a hill that was dotted with houses that looked increasingly more expensive the farther up we went. What had I said that caused Zach to shut down so absolutely?
I swallowed, hard, daring a glance up at the man through my eyelashes. He was scrolling through something on his iPhone, ostensibly reading it. His large frame was angled toward me, though, and he was stiff with tension. I knew that he was as overly aware of my presence in the car as I was of his.
Biting my lip, I let my stare travel down his body. I blinked when I saw the outline of his cock, pressing against the thin fabric of his pants.
I thought I had upset him, perhaps even angered him. But he was aroused?
Oh, he was so confusing.
I stayed silent, even as the car began to slow, and as Zach looked up from his phone. Sliding it back into his pocket, he looked at me with an unreadable expression on his face.
The car coasted to a stop. Peering out the window, I saw a massive garage door yawning open, and then we glided inside, pulling into line with another half dozen pricey-looking vehicles. I heard the sounds of the driver’s-side door opening then closing, and then Charles opened the door to the area where we were seated. He helped me out first, and as I righted myself and smoothed down my skirt, again trying ridiculously hard to keep my underwear to myself, I heard Zach thank the man in a low voice.
“That will be all, Charles.” I looked up to find the chauffeur peering at me with his curiosity more apparent than it had been earlier. He nodded at Zach, then at me.
“Good night, Miss Reid. Mr. St. Brenton.”
And then I was alone with Zach. His expression still yielded no explanation for the sudden switch in his mood in the car, and I didn’t like being in the dark.
Where once I would have just kept my mouth shut, I now felt compelled to question him. Perhaps some of Zach’s brusque, confident demeanor was rubbing off on me.
“Why does Charles look at me that way?” Zach didn’t pretend that he didn’t know what I was talking about. Instead he sighed, ruffled a hand through his hair, and shoved his fingers down deep in his pockets.
“I’ve never brought a woman here before.” I wanted to be suspicious—Zachariah St. Brenton had surely dated scores of women—but the simplicity of his words told me that he spoke the truth.
“Why?” I’d come this far, after all. Why not poke the sleeping bear a bit more?
He raised an eyebrow at me, and the hint of a wicked smile played over the corners of his lips.
“I’ve never wanted to.” His eyes roamed over me, daring me to ask him another question. I felt the fire that had been banked by his mood change suddenly roar back to life.
“And you always do just what you want to?” I spoke before thinking, but I was still irritated with him, and at the same time envious. What would it be like to live like that, I wondered, doing only as you wished, all the time?
“Always.” My question had been meant to provoke, but as Zach suddenly stepped toward me, I realized that I had pushed him in an unexpected way.
His eyes had darkened, and he looked like he was capable of devouring me. And even though all I had wanted for days now was to feel his hands on me, when he looked at me the way he was, I felt slightly—very slightly—afraid.
He closed his hand around the back of my neck and dipped his head. I closed my eyes, waiting for the kiss. Instead of the brush of his lips on my own, I felt the warmth of his breath as he whispered.
“Will you still stay the night?” My eyes flew open. His face was a study in seriousness, and I realized that the answer to this—my consent—was incredibly important to him.
Weighing my options, I let both the good angel and the bad berate me. Staying the night at some remote fortress of a mansion with an enigmatic stranger was not the brightest idea I’d ever had, and I was more than willing to admit it.
I also knew that if I said no, if Zach asked Charles to drive me home right then, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
“Yes.”
Zach exhaled loudly at my simple word, and I realized that he had been holding his breath. Before I could contemplate what I had agreed to, he clasped his hands at my waist and lifted me.
“Zach!” I let out a very undignified squeal as my bottom made contact with the hood of his car. The metal beneath me was warm in parts, since we had just driven in it, and bitingly cool in others. The contrast seeped through the thin material of my skirt, teasing my skin with its warring effects.
“Lift your skirt.” My mouth fell open at the order, but I did as I was told, remembering the feeling of his hands on my inner thighs. His stare fell on my parted lips, and with a growl he descended on them, his tongue immediately demanding entrance, then sweeping inside my mouth to claim.
“Oh.” A breathy moan escaped my lips. One of his hands tangled in my hair, and the other slid down to my waist, then up and under the back of my blouse. My hips arched upward instinctively, and he nipped at my lips, sharply.
“I hadn’t intended to do this just yet.” With a final pinch of his teeth on my mouth, he drew back, breathing heavily, his gaze wandering up and down my body. “When I’m around you, I can’t seem to help myself. It’s a serious problem.”
With his stare locked tightly with my own, Zach stood straight and undid his belt. Not bothering to pull the strip of leather from the loops of cloth, he undid the snap and then the zipper of his pants.
Heat flooded through me, a slow, wicked burn, when I saw that he wore nothing beneath them.
“Use your fingers. Hold your panties to one side.” A shudder racked my body.
I had never been spoken to in this manner, never been treated like I was incredibly desirable.
I loved it.
I began to tremble when, opening my legs and drawing my knees up, I did as he asked, hooking a finger in the elastic of my panties and drawing them to one side. There was something thrilling about being fully clothed, yet exposing this most intimate part of my body.
Zach looked his fill at the neatly trimmed blond curls that I knew had been revealed.
“Shit.” He muttered an oath at the sight, and then pulled a small foil packet from his pocket. Grasping the base of his cock with one large hand, he ripped into the foil with his teeth, shaking out the ring of latex before smoothing it down the length of his cock.
The sight of his long fingers on the engorged shaft had saliva pooling in my mouth. I wanted to demand that he come to me, right then—to order him to fill me, to fuck me hard.
I did none of that, instead watching wide-eyed as the magnificent creature approached me with a wild look in his eyes.
“I don’t know what it is about you, Miss Reid.” Releasing his cock, he slid one hand up and under the front of my blouse, finding and squeezing a nipple that was erect to the point of pain. I gasped, and as I did he took two fingers from his other hand and quickly slipped them inside of my slick heat, crooking them back toward himself in a quick succession of motion.
Those fingers brushed against something inside of me, something that was exquisitely sensitive. I cried out, then clapped a hand over my mouth.
“I want you to beg.” Pulling his fingers back out, Zach positioned his cock at the entrance to my pussy. I wanted to slow down, to savor these amazing sensations, and at the same time I wanted him to fill me up so that I stopped feeling so damn empty.
“No.” I shook my head and uttered the word in a whisper. As I did I looked over Zach’s shoulder and caught sight of a bank of security cameras and a monitor not unlike the one in the lobby of Phyrefly.
“Oh.” My body clenched, and I tried to close my legs. Was someone watching this? Charles? A maid? A butler?
Zach seemed like the type who just might have one of each.
He followed my stare, looking over his shoulders. When he turned back, his expression held just the slightest edge of delicious taunting.
“Do you like the idea that someone might watch us?” With a very controlled motion of his hips, he pushed just the very tip of his cock inside of me. I arched my hips and cried out, wanting more, but he grabbed either side of my waist and held me still.
“Don’t move until I tell you to.” At that I uttered a soft whimper, my patience long gone.
He had teased me, tortured me, all day long. I wanted my reward for being good.
He waited for me to still. Impatient, my eyes flicked back to the monitor. I wasn’t sure I would have liked someone right there in the garage watching us, but the idea that someone—anyone—could be watching a monitor like the one I could see made my pussy become even more slick.
“Look at you.” I tried to turn back, to look at Zach, but he caught my chin in his fingers and forced me to look at the monitor. He turned his head, watching it, too, and we both saw our television images do the same.
“Look at that woman up there. She’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen.” I didn’t for a moment believe that, but looking at the image—the length of my blond hair splayed over the sleek black surface of the car’s hood, my legs wrapped around Zach—I felt wanton. I felt desirable.
I felt sexy.
“Please.” I gave in. I just wanted him inside of me. Rocking my hips forward again, I groaned when he pulled back, the tip of his rock-hard cock slipping out from between the moist heat of my lower lips.
“Please what?” Placing one hand on my chest, flat between my breasts, he pushed lightly until I lay back on the car, my legs loosely wrapped around his hips. The metal was hard and unyielding against my skin, and I stared with longing at the thick erection that Zach fisted, rubbing his hand up and down lightly.
“Please, Zach.” Propping myself up on my elbows, I gave in to what he wanted . . . to whatever he wanted. “I . . . I want . . .”
Spit it out, Reid. The words stuck in my throat. I had no experience in talking dirty. But something told me that Zach wouldn’t give even an inch—he wouldn’t reward me until I’d told him what I wanted in plain terms.
“Please . . . please fuck me.” I ducked my head, embarrassed.
All hints of discomfiture were shattered when Zach grabbed one of my hips in his hand and thrust inside of me in a long, hard plunge.
I gasped, crying out. My voice echoed off the plain plaster walls of the garage as he pulled nearly all the way back out and then seated himself inside of me again. There was nothing gentle in his actions, nothing kind. He was a predator who had cornered his prey.
I had never been so aroused.
“Move.” I had started to arch my hips to meet him, then had stilled when I remembered his admonishment to do so. “Move however you want to, Devon.”
His rough stroking had aroused me beyond thought. Throwing caution to the wind, I sat up, wrapped my arms around his chest and my legs around his waist, and met his thrusts with my own.
“Fuck.” He growled when I scraped my nails down his back, through his jacket and shirt, frustrated that I couldn’t find flesh. “Fuck!” His movements came faster and even harder, pounding into me with fury. I fisted my hands in his suit jacket, feeling the pressure within me finally, gloriously rising, bringing me close to the edge.
It wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted him to brand me with his body, to let me know that I was woman enough to make Zachariah St. Brenton lose control.
“Harder.” I barely recognized my own voice, gone guttural with need. “Don’t hold back.”
Something wild flashed in Zach’s eyes, and then, molding his hands to my ass, he lifted me right off of the car as he thrust in, so deeply that it hurt, but the hurt was so good. My ass slammed back down on the car as he pulled back, and then he lifted me up again.
“More!” Arching my body, throwing my head back, I let him pound into me again and again. I bit my lip until I tasted blood, desperate for release.
“Fuck!” My world shattered into a million brilliant pieces when he forced one hand between our straining bodies and rubbed his thumb over my clit. I shuddered against him, clinging to him with arms and legs, and felt him seat himself deeply inside of me and let go himself. He shouted as he came, his heat warming me from inside.
It was several long minutes before either of us so much as moved. When Zach finally stood, my front felt cold, protesting the removal of the heat from the solid body that had pressed me back into the car.
Despite the fact that my limbs were like jelly, I felt wariness steal over me when I noted that Zach wouldn’t meet my eyes as he pulled a still-semi-erect cock from between my legs. Pulling the condom off, he tied a knot in the end and tossed it toward a trashcan that sat beneath the glaringly white security monitor.
As he stepped back, fastening his pants, I started to feel exposed—a ridiculous feeling, really, given what we had just done.
Regardless, I straightened my shirt, ran a hand over my tangled hair. As I smoothed my skirt over my hips, I noted that the elastic of my panties was stretched all to hell, and that they were soaked through.
Swallowing, I slid off the hood of the car. Well, what had I expected, coming here to have sex with my boss? That was exactly what had happened, and now I supposed that he was going to call Charles to drive me home.
Instead he offered me his hand formally, his expression guarded. Hesitantly I took it, flushing when I thought of how that hand had just touched me.
“Let’s go have a drink,” he offered, to my surprise.