His Indecent Revelations (Bound and Shackled to the Billionaire BDSM Erotic Romance) (6 page)

Together, Channing and his man vault the cage over the balcony. Channing unlocks the door and she falls into his arms.

He winces as she hugs him with all the strength left in her trembling body.

“Why? What’s the matter?” she whispers in concern.

Has he been shot?

“All that matters is that you are safe,” Channing murmurs, breathing in the scent of her hair. Then he dislodges her arms as he turns to the mercenary. “Take her to safety. I’ll join you.”

“No!” She can’t bear to be parted from him again.

“There is something I have to do. I’ll be with you soon.” .

“We must go now,” says the mercenary as he forcibly shepherds her away. He has an American accent.

“No, wait.” She turns back to look at Channing. He has made his way over to one of the fallen bodies and he now kneels by it. He clasps its hand.

From the body’s clothes, she recognizes Hugh.

Her stomach bolts to her throat.

“Is he dead?” she asks the mercenary.

“Not yet, but he will be soon. Give Mr. Crawford some time alone with his brother.”

A pang wrenches her chest. “Of course.”

They run to the entrance of the tower. Before going down, she flings a look at the gallery again. She does not see the burqa-clad body of Alia.

“Where is she?” she asks.

He understands who she means.

“When she realized she has shot Mr. Crawford’s brother, she flung herself over the edge.”

Susan digests this in horror. She doesn’t recall a body rushing in the darkness past her when she was in the pit, but then again, she was too terrified to absorb anything but her own futile panic.

The mercenary says tersely, “When you fell, Mr. Crawford ran to stop the lever. But his hands were tied behind his back. He had no choice but to wedge his body in between the lever and the floor to prevent you from plunging further. He probably broke a few of his ribs and injured his back.”

Susan turns. “No . . . I must go to him.”

The mercenary catches her wrist. “He’ll be all right. He was a soldier. Please, just give him time alone with his brother.”

It takes all of Susan’s effort to wrench herself from the doorway and follow the mercenary down the spiral staircase. Her eyes blur with tears as her feet carefully descend. Her brain is boiling with everything that has happened.

This is going to scar him badly, she knows.

EPILOGUE

Slowly, they pick up the pieces of their lives.

They leave the citadel, taking nothing but the body of Hugh, which Channing buries in the desert under a mound surrounded by every single flower he can find in the vicinity. Susan notes that none of them is a desert rose.

“How did your guys know how to find us?” she asks.

“I had a tracker device implanted in my molar before I left for the Caribbean to find you. If anything should have happened to me and my men, this was my backup. I knew they would search and strip me if I got caught, and so I made sure that it was hidden in a place I could easily access.”

“Why didn’t they find us sooner?”

“The tracker had to be activated. Only I could activate it.” He hesitates. “I was waiting – ”

She is silent.

“I was waiting . . . to see if I could salvage my brother. I had wondered about his state of mind. I needed to know if I could save him.” His eyes flit away. “But I couldn’t. I’m sorry that I risked both our lives, but it was something I needed to do.”

She understands. There is so much residual pain from the entire tragedy that its echoes will reverberate long into the future, possibly manifesting as nightmares and a lot of psych counseling hours.

They hold each other, clinging on desperately as if they are afraid to let go.

They return to America to much fanfare and press. Channing holds a press conference to calm down his investors. The true story comes out in bits and pieces, although he wisely leaves the part out about the gold bullion. He would have been investigated and court-martialled.

Channing is far from perfect, Susan knows, but she loves him madly anyhow.

They throw themselves into rehabilitating the company. Stock prices had dropped drastically, but with Channing once again at the helm, they are able to fend off hostile takeovers. The stock price finally stabilizes, but it will take a while before they can rebuild what has been lost.

To Susan’s chagrin, Leonard Drake has been poached by a rival company.

Channing makes her his Vice-President. For the first time, Susan realizes the magnitude of responsibility she has been entrusted with. It isn’t a mere title. It isn’t some trophy that you gain against a hated corporate rival. It isn’t a glamorous job. You have to make things happen because so many people are relying on you.

She understands now how naïve she has been.

Three weeks after their return, Channing asks her to move in with him. He has a penthouse in the city. His mansion is still in charred ruins, but the insurance has been worked out and he is looking to rebuild.

Not on the same site.

“Too many memories,” he explains.

Again, she understands. They’ve shared so much together that they don’t need words to transmit their feelings anymore. He has but to begin to say something . . . and she can finish his sentence.

She moves in with him.

Their renewed lovemaking is tentative, almost apprehensive. Channing’s cracked ribs have mended but they are still bruised. His mental block is not yet fully lifted. She is able to suck him into semi-erection, but he fails to maintain it.

“Maybe we need more time,” she says.

He swallows, embarrassed. “Maybe I need a shrink.”

She cups his face in her palms tenderly. “Maybe I know a way to get you up again.” She proffers her wrists. “Go on. Tie me up.”

She knows that his arousal is seeded in bondage because of his damaged psychological makeup, and it will be bondage that will come to his salvation.

He pauses. His blue eyes are smoky with an emotion she cannot define. Although she knows him better now than any other man she has ever known, he is still a cipher in most part to her. So much of his mind is still an uncharted territory, and this is what makes him so mysterious . . . and boundlessly exciting.

He reaches within the bedside drawer. He retrieves two white silk scarves.

He pushes her down onto the bed gently. He ties her wrists to the bedposts, taking utmost care not to make the bonds too tight.

Then he spreads her legs and straddles her body. She watches him – with all her hopes bottled up in her throat – as he massages his own cock into erection. He never stops looking at her face, her bonded wrists, her splayed arms. He remains silent while he works his hand up and down his shaft.

His cock is now stiff. How stiff, she can’t tell, but at least it now stands at three-quarter mast.

He poises himself to enter her. His beautiful face is pensive and there are wells of complex feeling in his eyes.

Then he pauses. His crown is at her ready hole. She is already creaming for him to penetrate her. She can already anticipate his firm rod of warm flesh spreading her walls.

He says abruptly, “I don’t need to have you bound or shackled to be in control of myself. I think we are both past this.”

He reaches out to untie both her wrists. When she is free, he kisses both her palms tenderly.

“I love you,” he says with feeling.

A melted sort of tingle courses through her body, sending waves of heat into every part of her.

“I love you,” she says, holding his gaze.

He enters her with passion, and they make slow, languorous love – filled with every spoken and unspoken emotion they have ever shared.

*

Three months later, in the wee hours of the morning, he says to her while they are in bed, “Will you marry me?”

The sunrise is just peeking over the horizon of the sprawling city in their window.

There is not a shred of hesitation in her when she replies with a heartfelt, “Yes.”

They kiss – slow, open-mouthed and with heated love and passion. She can’t love this man any more than this. He consumes her – mind, body and soul. And she believes with all her heart that he feels the same way about her.

He has replaced his broken molar with a cap. Her tongue can sensuously probe this new addition – completely intact and indistinguishable from his other teeth.

He says, “But there’s something else I need to tell you.”

She tenses. Channing does not do frivolous talk. If he has something to tell her, it is usually a matter of great importance.

He gazes into her eyes. “Before he died, Hugh told me that Alia’s child . . .
my
child . . . isn’t dead. He gave me the name of the Order and the place in which I can find him.”

Susan freezes. “B-but is he . . . ?”

She can’t finish. The thought of that poor child with his large head and stunted limbs still being alive fills her with both hope and dread. Can such a child be alive? Would he be sickly, crippled, deformed and mentally challenged?

Oh . . . the tumultuous possibilities!

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I’ve held this off for so long because I’m afraid of the same things you’re afraid of. But I decided I’m not afraid anymore. It’s time to face reality do the right thing.” He clutches her arms. “Do you want to come with me?”

A kaleidoscope of emotions roils in her mind. The child. Alive! Adoption. An instant family.

Doing what is right.

Tears come into her eyes. “Yes. Because he will be
our
child.”

Relief washes across his face.

“Did I ever tell you that I love you more than anything?”

“You just did ten minutes ago.”

“Well, remind me to say it again in the next ten.”

They kiss, relishing the unknown and yet exhilarating dawn before them.

READ THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS OF’
THE PRETEND BOYFRIEND’, A BARNES AND NOBLE TOP 15 BESTSELLER, BY ARTEMIS HUNT

Samantha Fox takes two steps at a time up the stairs of the nineteenth century Gothic building that hosts Dan’s Café. She is late. She doesn’t like being late because she equates lateness with rudeness.
My time is precious, and so is yours.

She flies into the seating area with its cozy tables and chairs, her shoes clacking noisily upon the black-and-white checkered linoleum. Spotting Cassie, her best friend sitting alone at a table, she almost trips over a pair of shopping bags by a chair at another table. She manages to rescue herself by grabbing onto the back of the chair.

“Hey, watch it, will you?” says the woman with the pixie hairdo seated there, clearly annoyed.

“Sorry, so sorry.” Sam picks herself up and half-clambers, half-limps to the amused Cassie. “Oh,” she groans, “I’m such a klutz.”

“You always were a klutz. It’s part of your charm.” Cassie pulls her coffee mug away discreetly from Sam as the latter sits, juddering the table and sploshing coffee over the rim.

“Yeah, it’s charming when I was fourteen. And even then, not really.” Sam shudders. “Remember how we were when we were in middle school? I wore braces and I kept getting my lunch stuck in my buck teeth.”

“I remember that awful Brian Morton. He was such a bully. Remember how he used to draw funny caricatures of you with your braces all over the lockers? He called you ‘Jaws’.”

“I’m going to expunge that dirty memory forever from my temporal lobes.” Sam runs a careless hand through her mess of hair. “I’m sorry I’m late anyway. My boss wanted me to go over the Killeney account for the seventeenth time. She’s such an anal retentive like you wouldn’t believe.”

“All work and no play makes Sammy a tight ass like she never wants to be. You’re on track for it, you know.” Cassie signals a passing waiter. “Can we have the menu, please, like yesterday?”

“I have to. I’ve got no one else but me. If I want to live the American dream and get that American dream apartment in Soho, I’m going to have to put my nose on the grindstone for it.”

“Or you could marry someone rich and get the American dream handed to you on a china plate, which is probably made in Taiwan.” Cassie arches her eyebrows meaningfully.

“I’m never getting married.”

“You know it’s not true.”

“It’s true. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve been in three failed relationships. I’ve gotten majorly dumped three times, and the third is by a man who decided he was gay after dating me for two months. That’s got to be a record. Anyway, it isn’t PC to want a man to get those things for you. The only person you can rely upon – ”

“ – is you,” they chorus together.

“Hey, you’re finishing my sentences,” Sam complains.

“Only because you’ve said it like a gazillion times.”