Prologue
She’s already glistening wet for me. My Kitten.
I grip the leather paddle in my hand, dragging the edge down her spine slowly so I can watch goosebumps form in its wake, rippling across her milky soft skin.
“You’re mine,” I say. “But you know that already, don’t you?”
She moans softly, arching her back and pushing herself toward me imploringly.
I smirk, wanting nothing more than to plunge my rock hard cock into her warmth, but that would be too easy. She has been hiding something from me. I’ve been seeing the signs for weeks now, and I’ve given her long enough to tell me on her own.
“You don’t get to keep secrets from me,” I say, lowering my voice. I pull the paddle back and she tenses. I bring it down. Whack! She jolts, sucking in a breath and letting it out slowly with another soft moan. A bright red circle forms on her ass. Beautiful. I caress the heated mark, basking in her response to my touch. My voice is a whisper in her ear. “It’s your choice. Tell me now and I’ll give you what you came here for. Or you can keep hiding the truth from me and we’ll start every session this way.”
She turns her head slightly. I can see just the tip of her pert nose and her long eyelashes. “I’m not hiding anything, Sir,” she says. There’s a tone of defiance in her voice that makes me clench my teeth and grip the paddle tighter. She turns her head to look toward the wall again, clutching the sheets tighter in her fists to brace for the paddle.
I smirk. Fine by me. She can drag this out as long as she likes, but I’ll get what I want in the end. I always do.
1
Logan
Two weeks earlier
“Mr. Steel?” asks a hesitant voice.
I look up to see my new secretary poking her head into my office. I gesture roughly for her to hurry up and come in. She straightens her skirt and noisily crosses the distance to my desk. Click. Click. Click. Her cream colored heels look uncomfortable, and there’s no way the tight pencil skirt she wears isn’t cutting off her circulation. She sets the file on my desk, making sure to lean forward enough that I could have an eyeful of her cleavage if I wanted.
But I’m not in the mood. She’s not my type, for starters, and the last thing I need right now is to get entangled in another relationship that could hurt the image of my company. I’ve spent too long trying to fix the public’s opinion of me to throw it away now. A few years ago I might have taken her up on her obvious offer, adding fuel to the public’s opinion of me as a playboy billionaire. I was young, successful, filthy rich… and filthy between the sheets.
Eventually, my business partners started to wonder if I was taking the company seriously. The fuckers tried to maneuver behind my back to take my own company out from under me. Their mistake. I left every last one of them in financial ruin. No mercy. No regrets.
Now, I trust very few people. There’s my little sister, and my business partner, Dean. That’s it. Everyone else can go fuck themselves as far as I’m concerned.
“Sir?”
The secretary has worked her way around the side of my desk and I can smell her perfume. It’s nice, but she’s wearing too much. She’s trying too hard, and I can practically hear her heart thundering in her chest.
I snatch the thick envelope from her hands and let it flop loudly in front of me. I temple my fingers in front of my forehead, breathing out my frustration. It’s not her. It’s this week. Hell, it’s this year. My patience has been pushed too far. I can feel myself on the verge of snapping. “That’s all,” I say, forcing a calmness into my voice that I don’t feel.
I turn in my chair, looking out the floor to ceiling windows lining the back wall of my office. The view should be beautiful. I can see the entire city laid out before me. From up here on the 92nd floor, I can imagine it’s all mine. In fact, a lot of it is mine, but the realization brings none of the pride I thought it would while I was fighting and clawing my way to the top. For as long as I can remember, striving for more was enough. It was what got me out of bed in the morning and what helped me fall asleep at night. I knew I attacked every day with an intensity most men can only dream of, and I knew no one was better at this than me.
I hear the click of my secretary’s heels and the door closing gently behind her.