She knows without asking that it will be stuff concerning his brother.
“I need my clothes from my apartment,” she says.
He nods. “We’ll get them later. I can’t let you go alone. It isn’t . . . safe.”
She agrees.
“Cook us something for dinner,” he says. “I missed your lasagna last night.”
It’s the first time a man has ever claimed to miss anything she cooked, but he doesn’t know better . . . yet. She disguises her smile.
“Wear something sexy when I get home,” he says. “Choose one of the French maid outfits. I didn’t have time to enjoy that yesterday.”
They are both back to their comfort zones. He is once again the supreme alpha, master and commander of his home. She is once again his employee and submissive.
“Yes, sir,” she says wryly.
A ghost of a smile graces his wide, sensuous mouth.
Never, she promises herself. Never will I tell him I’ve fallen in love with him.
4
When he comes home, he is visibly tired. She wants to ask what happened, but an almost imperceptible shake of his head tells her he doesn’t want her to know.
He regards her outfit. She has gone out of her way to please him again. She wears a racy black number with white lace trimmings that is corseted at the waist and cut very low to reveal her cleavage – right down to her navel. Whatever expanse of bare skin she has in front is crisscrossed by black lace, so that the contrast is stark.
The skirt is unusual. The back of it is completely cut away in an inverted ‘V’. She is not wearing any underwear, so the cleft of her buttocks is completely exposed. She dons thigh high stockings and very pointed black heels.
“Very nice,” he says softly,
“Thank you.”
“Come here.”
She goes to him, and he caresses her breasts and buttocks, squeezing the flesh firmly.
“You’re making me hard again, but I need to eat first.”
His hand roams down her pussy under her skirt. She’s already creaming for him. A trill of satisfaction prickles her ego. I can make him hard, she marvels. I can make this extremely handsome, extremely powerful and confident man hard. He desires me. I can see it in the way his eyes light up as he takes me in.
It’s a high she has never experienced before in her working environment.
“Later,” he promises, taking his hands away.
She’s disappointed.
She serves him in the dining room – at a table large enough to seat fifteen people. He must get lonely eating here alone, she thinks, but doesn’t mention it. She has outdone herself in the cooking department. She has made them pasta in béchamel sauce, with roast chicken and onions. She opens a chilled bottle of white wine. Simple food, but he eats it ravenously.
She watches him eat, reveling in his beauty and in the fact that he is actually enjoying something she made with her hands.
“This is really good,” he says between bites.
“Thank you.” A blush tinges her cheeks. No one has ever praised her cooking. Is it really that bad, or has she just been with the wrong men?
She says, “Have you found him?”
“No. He’s disappeared seemingly into thin air.”
That is ominous.
She lets the silence between them elapse as she picks at her own food. Then she says, “I need to go back to get my clothes if I’m to stay here any longer.”
“Of course. Though it’s tempting to let you remain naked.”
She glances at him to see if he’s teasing, but he maintains a seriously intense expression, although the right side of his mouth twitches.
When they have finished eating, she starts to clear the dishes.
“No, leave them,” he says, rising from his chair and coming to her. He clasps her waist. “I need to de-stress.”
Her heart leaps as she sees the purposeful desire in his eyes. She raises her hands to his shoulders.
“Let’s go to the dungeon,” he says huskily.
5
She admits to being scared. She follows him timidly, her heels digging into the carpet, as he unlocks the iron dungeon door with an old-fashioned key. Here they are, master and slave again. She wonders if he purposefully designed the door this way – to intimidate the submissive before she even steps across the threshold.
If that is his objective, he has succeeded well. She’s virtually quaking as the door whines open.
“Don’t worry, Susan. You’ll enjoy this,” he says.
She isn’t so sure. She wants him inside her badly, she can’t deny that. But this is a whole new experience. She remembers the spanking and how she had cried at that, and her legs wobble as they propel her into the viper’s pit.
The dungeon is cavernous. Channing closes the door behind them with a clang, and she jumps. She notes that the door on the inside is decked with en electronic panel – a strange modern application that clashes jarringly with the rustic material it’s embedded in.
It’s a strange chamber, about the size of a large office meeting room. The walls are opaque grey. Various pieces of furniture that resemble medieval torture racks line the perimeter, alongside black cabinets and metal safes.
She quails.
His palm is at her back, stroking her gently. “Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be OK. You’ll like it . . . if you let your inhibitions go and free your mind.”
She remembers the pact she made with him. Her body at his every whim in exchange for her promotion to Vice-President. Much of it has been enjoyable . . . so far . . . but now, at the sight of all this BDSM paraphernalia, she isn’t so sure. Maybe she had made a pact with the devil himself. He’s certainly handsome enough.
He says, “This doubles up as a panic room. The walls, ceiling and floor are concrete. They are padded with asbestos and other insulated structures.”
“A panic room?”
“Yes. To protect its occupants,” he says this in a meaningful tone.
I could have hidden here last night, she thinks faintly. Oh, the irony of it.
He goes to a tripod and caresses the wood. It is a triangular structure, almost like an easel. There are leather bonds at the top and at the sides. She can envision herself being bound upon it – wrists at the top and thighs stretched out and tied to the side beams. She recoils from it.
“Why so frightened?” he asks her, amused.
It’s this room, she wants to say. It’s too much. She thinks of torture and inquisitions, and all her bravery in the face of adversity (and ambition) flees.
He reads her mind. “I’m not going all hardcore on you. I’ve spanked you before, and you liked it.”
She isn’t sure she liked the spanking, only that she liked his cock in her mouth and him fucking her. Yes, that’s what she likes. And being under his total domination. Being desired by him. Being wanted by him. Being loved by him, not that it’s likely to happen.
“That’s as far as I would go where pain is concerned,” he assures her. “Spanking. A little whipping. Nothing major.”
Whipping? The blood drains from her brain. She’s afraid of whips. She’s afraid of pain. Oh, oh, oh. She’s confused as to what she’s afraid of.
He places his hand at her back and shepherds her to a strange contraption on the floor. It has a half-circlet attached to vertical rod, which is in turn attached to an adjustable horizontal bar on the floor. About two feet away from this is a larger half-circlet, designed to accommodate the circumference of a body, also attached to a similar rod and bar. At both ends of either horizontal bar, leather straps trail on the stone floor.
“I want you to get on this, Susan,” he says.
Get on this? How? Her apprehension begins to churn.
“Place your neck here.” He indicates the smaller half-circlet.
Oh, so that’s what it is for. Feeling ill at ease, she obeys him. He helps her place her slender neck upon the broad base of the half-circlet. The metal is cold. He adjusts the rod so that she can spread her arms out in an inverted ‘V’ to be ensnared by the bonds on the horizontal bar.
He does the same to her waist, so that it snuggles comfortably into the larger semi-circlet. She is still in her French maid’s outfit. He spreads her thighs out so that they are in the same position as her arms – bound by the leather straps.
He steps back to admire his handiwork. She can see the very obvious bulge in his pants. He starts to take his clothes off, beginning with his shirt, and then his shoes and socks, and finally his pants. Despite her discomfiture, she can watch him doing this forever – watch his gleaming torso being revealed like a god shedding off his mortal accoutrements.
His eyes narrow as he gazes at her. After all, her cleavage is more pronounced than ever, and her pussy and buttocks are completely revealed at the back. Somehow, she feels more naked this way than if she were to be fully nude. The semi-circlets are cold upon her skin. The one at her neck presses upwards against her jaw, and she shifts her head to ease the pressure on her chin.
Once he is completely nude, he goes to one of the mysterious black cabinets and pulls out the top drawer. She spies an array of metallic instruments inside and shudders. What can she do now? She is effectively trapped like a prisoner. She can struggle all she wants to (and she’s not sure she wants to) and no one will hear her in this dungeon/panic room with its forbiddingly thick walls.