LITMIR.BIZ

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even when he knew she wanted him as much or more than he needed her.

      He loosened his grip on her wrists long enough to turn her. He wanted her facedown tonight, bent over the bed, impotent in her struggles. The spreader bars, cuffs, shackles and ropes hung unwanted, unneeded on the walls all about them. He’d rather hold her down with his own body than employ any tools.

      “Monsieur …” she panted, her eyes wide with fear as he shoved her forward and she fell across the bed. The scent of fear and sweat graced her skin like the most drugging of perfumes. “Non … s’il vous plaît …”

      Her voice broke at the end of her plea and Kingsley almost laughed. Anyone who’d ever chanted “no means no” had never met his Juliette. This wasn’t only his favorite of their games. It was hers.

      Kingsley gripped her by the back of the neck and pressed her face into the sheets to silence her. With his free hand, he wrenched the back of her dress up, tearing it in the process. She did look so lovely in white. How it glowed against her dark skin. He’d found her on a beach in Haiti years ago … when she’d been eighteen, barely more than a child. But she’d suffered the miseries of a thousand lifetimes in those years. He’d brought her back with him, made her his property. And in the unlikely event she ever forgot who owned her now, this was how he refreshed her memory.

      With his knees he pried her thighs apart as he opened his pants. When he shoved himself inside her, she let out a scream that anyone in the hall would have heard. But it didn’t matter. No one would come to her aid.

      He rode her hard with brutal thrusts. Breathing deeply, Kingsley willed his pounding heart to slow. He wished to savor this moment, savor her fear. He never imbibed her fear right away. He’d always let it breathe first, decanted it, before pouring it out and drinking it deep.

      At times Juliette forgot it was him, her Kingsley, and got lost in the memory of the man who’d done this to her out of hatred and not love. Kingsley knew when her body went stiff underneath him, when she stopped struggling, that her fear had reached its peak.

      He lived for those moments.

      Her grunts and cries of pain and fear were the sweetest sounds he could imagine. Only they could silence the music in his ears that he heard from the time he woke until he fell asleep and into blissful oblivion again. One piano concerto thirty years ago … and still he couldn’t unhear it.

      Juliette’s breathing quickened. She made a last valiant attempt at escape, but Kingsley merely dragged her arms behind her back and held her immobile. He thrust again, thrust hard, and with a shudder he came inside her, as her inner muscles clenched around him with the orgasm she’d fought against until finally surrendering to him.

      He lingered inside her and simply enjoyed the bliss of the moment, the emptiness of it. His people were so right to call orgasm le petite morte … the little death. He died while inside her and he cherished that death, that freedom, those few seconds when he was released from the spell of the only man in the Underground who wore a collar but belonged to no one.

      Juliette’s laughter jarred him from his musings. He couldn’t help but join her in her postcoital amusement. Releasing her hands, he pulled out of her, and relaxed onto the bed as she straightened her clothes before draping herself over his chest.

      “You scared me, monsieur. I thought you were still with le père.”

      “I meant to scare you. And no, he’s praying, je pense.”

      “Praying for what?” Juliette turned her eyes up to Kingsley and he stroked her cheek. His beautiful Juliette, his Jules, his jewel. He treasured her above all others. Only one person had he ever loved more. But the one he loved more, he hated with equal passion. He wished that the mathematics of the world were like the mathematics of the heart—then his equal love and hate would mean he felt nothing instead of double.

      “For his lost pet to come back to him someday, I’m sure.”

      Juliette sighed and relaxed against him.

      “But she is not lost.” Juliette kissed his chest. “She’s just off her leash.”

      Kingsley laughed.

      “It’s much worse than that, mon amour. His pet’s run off, and this time, she hasn’t got her collar.”

      

      SOUTH

      As long as Wesley’s parents hadn’t heard of her, everything would be okay. And surely they hadn’t heard of her. Why would they have heard of her, a BDSM erotica writer from New York? Did they even sell her books in Kentucky? Ludicrous thought. Of course they hadn’t heard of her. And everything would be a-fucking-okay.

      Nora sighed as they crossed the Mason-Dixon Line at Hagerstown, Maryland, and entered the South. Her stomach clenched hours later when they crossed the state line into Kentucky.

      What the holy hell was she doing in Kentucky?

      After she’d gotten over the shock of seeing Wesley again, she’d tried talking him into staying with her in her house in Connecticut. But he’d been unusually insistent.

      “Kentucky,” he’d said.

      “Please,” he’d said.

      “I lived in your world. Come live in mine for a while,” he’d said.

      She’d finally acquiesced, unable and unwilling to ever again see sadness in those big brown eyes of Wesley’s. But at her insistence they’d driven in separate cars—he in his Mustang, she in the Aston Martin Griffin had delivered to her. After all, Nora never went into any situation without an escape plan. She’d learned that lesson well back in her days as a professional Dominatrix. She hadn’t commanded her exorbitant fees by simply being more beautiful or more vicious than other pros. She did what few others of her kind did. Instead of working from a guarded, well-staffed dungeon, she went to her clients’ houses, their hotel rooms, wherever they paid her to go. Back then she’d joked her motto was Have Riding Crop, Will Travel. And travel she had. From New York to New Orleans, from Midtown to the Middle East, she went wherever Kingsley sent her. And for her own safety she relied on two things—her notoriety as the most dangerous Domme in the world, and Kingsley’s reputation as the last man in America anyone wanted to cross. She had only to say her name or his and the Underworld toed the line.

      Now Nora prayed that where she went no one would have heard of her. Especially Wesley’s parents. Surely, as conservative as Wesley painted them, they’d never even been in the erotica section of a bookstore, much less heard the name Nora Sutherlin.

      But it didn’t hurt to ask. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and called Wesley.

      “Yes, we’re almost there,” he answered before she even said hello. Every hour on the hour she’d called to him to ask, “Are we there yet?”

      “That’s not why I’m phoning this time.”

      “Sure about that?”

      “Nope. So you never told me what your parents think about me coming to visit.” Nora turned on her blinker as they veered onto exit 81.

      “They’re fine with me having visitors. A lot of my college friends came by over the summer.”

      Nora pursed her lips. She would have stared Wesley down had he not been in the yellow Shelby Mustang two cars ahead of her.

      “Nice nonanswer there, kid.”

      “It’s fine.” He laughed and Nora couldn’t help but smile. God, she’d missed that boy’s laugh in the fifteen months they hadn’t seen each other, hadn’t spoken. Wesley’s absence from her life had been a void no amount of sex or money or kink or fame had been able to fill.

      “Seriously, Nor. My parents are nice people. They like all my friends.”

      “Friends.

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