Leticia’s eyes darken, and she pauses. “Say please,” she whispers.
I smirk. “Please.”
She laughs. “I love your posh accent.”
&nbs
p; “It’s just an accident of birth, sweetheart. Keep your boots on,” I add.
She returns my smirk, reaches behind her, and casually unzips her tight leather dress. Wriggling her hips from side to side, she shimmies out of the dress and lets it slip down the length of her boots. I smile. She looks incredible. Slim, with small, firm breasts, she’s wearing black French knickers and a matching bra and the thigh-high boots. Stepping out of her dress, she sashays toward me with a beckoning, sexy smile and grabs my hand. With surprising force she tugs me to the bed, then places her hands on my chest and pushes me hard so that I sprawl on top of the quilt.
“Take them off,” she commands, and points to my trousers as she stands over me, placing her feet wide apart.
“You do it,” I mouth.
She needs no further prompting and crawls up the bed to sit astride me, grinding down on my crotch. She drags her nails down my abdomen toward my fly.
Ow!
Fuck this! She’s dangerous.
I sit up suddenly, taking her by surprise, and flip her onto her back, straddling her and pinning her arms down on either side of her head. She struggles beneath me, attempting to buck me off.
“Hey!” she protests, glaring up at me.
“I think you need to be restrained. You’re dangerous.” My voice is soft as I gauge her reaction.
This could go either way.
Her eyes widen, and I’m not sure if it’s fear or excitement.
“Are you?” she whispers.
“Dangerous? Me? No. Not nearly as much as you.” Releasing her, I reach over to the bedside cabinet and from a drawer take out a long silk restraint and a pair of leather cuffs. “Do you want to play?” I ask, holding up both implements. “Your choice.”
She gazes up at me, pupils large with lust and anxiety.
“I won’t hurt you,” I reassure her. That’s not my scene. “I’ll just keep you in line.” But the truth is, I’m worried she’s going to hurt me.
A teasing, seductive smile tugs at her mouth. “The silk,” she says.
I smile and toss the cuffs onto the floor: dominance as a form of self-defense. “Pick a safe word.”
“Chelsea.”
“Good choice.”
I tie the silk around her left wrist and thread it through the slats of the bed’s headboard, and then, taking her right hand, I deftly tie her right wrist to the other end of the restraint. With her arms outstretched, her nails are rendered harmless, and she looks fantastic.
“If you really misbehave, I’ll blindfold you, too,” I murmur.
She squirms. “Will you spank me?” Her voice is less than a whisper.
“If you play nice.”
Oh, this is going to be fun.
* * *
She comes quickly and loudly. Screaming and straining against the silken straps.
I sit up between her thighs, my mouth slick and wet, and I flip her over and slap her arse.
“Hang in there,” I mutter, and slip on a condom.
“Hurry up!”
Fuck, is she demanding!
“As you wish,” I growl, and thrust inside her.
* * *
I watch the rise and fall of her breasts as she sleeps. Out of habit I go through my ritual of recalling everything I know about the woman I’ve just fucked. Twice. Leticia. Human-rights lawyer, sexually aggressive. Older than me. Likes to be restrained. Likes it a lot. But forthright, assertive women typically do, in my experience. She’s a biter, screams on orgasm. Vocal. Diverting….Exhausting.
* * *
I wake with a start. In my dream I’d been searching for something elusive, a vision that keeps appearing and disappearing, an ethereal vision in blue. Then, just as I’d glimpsed it, I’d fallen into a wide, deep abyss. I shudder.
What the hell was that about?
The pallid winter sun seeps through the windows as reflections from the Thames play on the ceiling. What has woken me?
Leticia.
Boy, she’s an animal. She isn’t asleep beside me, and I can’t hear anyone in the shower. Perhaps she’s left already. I listen carefully for any noise within the flat.
It’s quiet. I grin. No awkward small talk. The day is looking up until I remember I have a lunch appointment with my mother and my sister. I groan and pull the covers over my head. They’ll want to discuss the will.
Bloody hell.
“The Dowager,” as Kit referred to her, is a formidable woman. Why the fuck she hasn’t gone back to New York, I don’t know. Her life is based there, not here.
Something clatters to the floor somewhere in the apartment. I sit up.
Shit. Leticia is still here.
That means conversation. Reluctantly I haul myself out of bed, drag on my nearest pair of jeans, and go to find out if she’s as wild in broad daylight as she is in the dark.
I pad down the hallway in my bare feet, but there’s no one in the drawing room or the kitchen.
What the fuck?
I turn around at the kitchen entrance and halt. I’m expecting to see Leticia, but a slight young woman stands in the hallway staring at me. Her eyes are large and dark, reminding me of a startled doe, but she’s dressed in a ghastly blue housecoat, cheap overwashed jeans, old trainers, and a blue headscarf that conceals her hair.
She says nothing.
“Hi. Who the hell are you?” I ask.
Chapter Four
Zot! He is here, and he is mad.
Alessia freezes as his blazing green eyes meet hers. Tall, lean, and half naked, he towers over her. His hair is an unruly chestnut mess with gold highlights that glint beneath the chandelier in the hallway. He is as broad-shouldered as she remembers, but the tattoo on his upper arm is far more intricate than she recalls; all she can distinguish is a wing. A smattering of hair on his chest tapers down over a toned stomach. Then resumes beneath his navel and travels farther down into his jeans. The tight black denim is ripped at the knee. But it’s the hard line of his full lips and his eyes, the color of spring, in a handsome, unshaven face that make her look away. Her mouth dries, and she doesn’t know if it’s from nerves or…or…from the look of him.
He is so attractive!
Too attractive.
And he’s half naked! But why is he so mad? Did she wake him?
No! He will send her away from the piano.
Panicked, she drops her gaze to the floor as she flounders for something to say and clutches the handle of the broom to keep her upright.
* * *
Who the hell is this timid creature standing in my hallway? I’m completely bemused. Have I seen her before? An image from a forgotten dream develops like a Polaroid in my memory, an angel in blue hovering at my bedside. But that was days ago. Could it have been her? And now she’s here, rooted to the hallway floor, her impish face pale, her eyes downcast. Her knuckles grow whiter as she clasps the broom handle tighter and tighter, as if it’s anchoring her to the Earth. The headscarf conceals her hair, and an oversize, old-fashioned nylon housecoat swamps her small frame. She looks totally out of place.
“Who are you?” I ask again, but in a softer tone, not wanting to alarm her. Wide eyes, the color of a fine espresso and framed by the longest lashes I’ve ever seen, look up at me, then back at the floor.
Shit!
One peek from her dark, fathomless eyes and I’m…unsettled. She’s at least a head shorter than me, perhaps five feet five to my six feet two. Her features are delicate: high cheekbones, an upturned nose, clear fair skin, and pale lips. She looks like she needs a few days in the sun and a good hearty meal.
It’s obvious that she’s cleaning. But why her? Why here? Has she replaced my old daily? “Where’s Krystyna?” I ask, growing a little frustrated at her silence. Perhaps she’s Krystyna’s daughter—or granddaughter.
She con
tinues to stare at the floor, her brow furrowed. Her even white teeth chew at her upper lip as she refuses to meet my gaze.
Look at me, I will her. I want to reach forward and tilt her chin up, but as if she reads my mind, she raises her head. Her eyes meet mine, and her tongue darts out, and nervously she licks her upper lip. My whole body tightens in a hot, heavy rush as desire hits me like a demolition ball.
Fuck a duck!
I narrow my eyes as annoyance swiftly follows my desire. What the hell is wrong with me? Why does a woman I’ve never met have such an effect on me? It’s irritating. Beneath fine arched brows, her eyes grow wider, and she takes a step back, fumbling with the broom so that it falls from her hands and clatters onto the floor. She bends with easy, economic grace to pick it up, and when she’s standing once more, she fixates on the handle, a slow flush staining her cheeks as she mumbles something unintelligible.
Bloody hell! Am I intimidating the poor girl?
I don’t mean to.
I’m annoyed at myself. Not her.
Or maybe it’s another reason. “Perhaps you don’t understand me,” I say, more to myself, and I run a hand through my hair as I bring my body to heel. Krystyna’s mastery of English extended to the words “yes” and “here,” which often meant lots of gesticulating on my part when I needed her to undertake tasks that went beyond her usual cleaning routine. This girl is probably Polish, too.
“I am cleaner, Mister,” she whispers, her eyes still downcast and her eyelashes fanned out above her luminous cheeks.
“Where’s Krystyna?”
“She has returned to Poland.”
“When?”
“Since last week.”
This is news. Why the hell did I not know this? I liked Krystyna. She’d cleaned for me for three years and knew all my dirty little secrets. And I never got to say good-bye.