Nor did she stop my finger from traveling down her body before naturally falling away.
She reminded me of a songbird that would stop in the tree outside my childhood home in Italy. The white bird, with its icy blue eyes, would sing a beautiful song, so clear and innocent. That bird always found a way of lifting my spirits during the worst times of my childhood. The song it sang would sink its talons into my heart, like this woman had somehow sunken hers into me as well.
“In the swamp in secluded recesses, a shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.”
I muttered the line as my eyes slowly grazed back up her body. Her picturesque beauty was something I could never have conjured in my wildest dreams. She was too pure for the sordid surroundings that encompassed her. Too innocent for the devious thoughts that existed in my head.
Her eyes widened as the line fell from my lips and I couldn’t help but be shocked when she responded.
“You read Yeats,” she said.
Even her voice reminded me of the songbird. Light and lilting, with low notes that rounded out such a full and heart-wrenching sound.
My little songbird, displayed to me for the taking.
I nodded. I read Yeats and other famous poets and philosophers as a little boy. Books of poetry were the only ones I had access to, with my father being the control freak that he was. When he enlisted me to hunt down my mother’s killers, the beautiful words would jump off the page, blocking out the horrid shrieks of the men I’d delivered to their maker.
This young woman wasn’t just a pretty face. She was intelligent as well. Her following me would be the best decision she’d made all evening. No man in that room could handle the beauty, grace, and intelligence that encompassed the woman standing before me. No man understood how to strum the strings of a woman who expected so much good from the world around her.
“My friends are out there,” she said.
“They will wait,” I said.
I reached over to the switch on the wall and slowly brightened the dim lighting of the room. She looked around and gasped, taking in the walls and the space that surrounded the bed she’d anchored herself to. I could tell she was staring at the expanse of it all. I’d taken up almost half of the hidden upstairs of this warehouse for my own personal pleasures.
It was like a sound stage with small vignettes. One corner was outfitted as my own personal stone dungeon; another was a sumptuous sitting area with ropes that were hidden beneath the opulent fabrics. There was another area that had a sunken in tub large enough for ten people and beside it was a massive, glass-encased shower. She had already become familiar with the expansive four-poster bed, but the light revealed beside it a sitting area that was designed with a modern black and white motif, complete with leather furnishings.
I watched her while she slowly walked around, taking it all in as the flawlessness of her skin finally broke. Goosebumps were raging across her arms and her stomach, carrying with it a healthy flush I would pull from her time and time again before the night was over.
I could tell she was taking things in for the first time. That everything she was seeing was new for her. She was a true innocent, something that twitched my cock and made it grow beneath my tailored trousers. I’d amused myself with women for years. Women who just wanted a little taste, and women who were so submissive, they wanted to be humiliated. I’d satiate my appetite with them for an evening before casting them out, never fully whetting my palate the way I wanted.
I’d n
ever considered anything serious until this very moment and I knew, then and there, I would seduce her. I wanted her, more than I could stand. Her long legs and her flat, toned stomach. Her supple breasts aching for my lips and her long black hair begging to be wrapped up in my fist.
She turned and looked back at me with curious wonder in her eyes and the undercurrent wafting between us was unmistakable. Her eyes ran down my body, drinking me in, the way I had just done with her, and I couldn’t help the smirk that rose upon my cheeks.
She was wanton and I was ready to make her mine. This woman was special and I intended to treat her as such.
I just had to find out why first.
I walked over to her and held out my hand, silently asking for her consent once again. She took my hand without a second thought, and I slowly led her over to the sitting area by the bed. I held my arm out for her, allowing her to steady herself in her heels as she sat onto the full-leather chair, then I pulled up the ottoman and sat with my back straight.
I rolled my shoulders back and drew in a deep breath, expanding my chest as her eyes took in my every movement.
Then, I asked the one question that would start off a night I would never forget.
“Why are you here?”
Chapter Five – Rose
I felt like I had been hypnotized. As I sat there, staring into the eyes of the man every woman downstairs wanted, all I could hear was the blood rushing through my ears. My body was being tugged toward him, wanting him in a way I’d never experienced before. My nipples were painful peaks underneath my lacy bra and I could feel my underwear growing wet as I sat down into the leather chair. His movements were fluid. Languid. Simple. Caring in a way I didn’t expect with how Eli seemed to describe a dominant. His icy gaze held onto mine as my surroundings hit me with an unrecognizable force and, suddenly, I started to digest what was happening.
I was in a dominant’s lair as an inexperienced virgin.
Surprisingly, I didn’t give a damn.
I was surrounded by some sort of fantasy. A room designed to fulfill things people could only conjure up in their imagination. The shower looked absolutely decadent and the tub was something I could swim laps in. The dungeon was an avenue that shivered me with fear and yet the man before me wasn’t someone to be feared.