Illicit Liaison (7 page)

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

“I’m afraid that someone will…”

“Nobody will hurt you. They will have to go through me. They won’t touch you either, you belong to me and if they touch my most prized possession they will lose a hand.”

Her heart galloped in her chest and her face heated. The words caused a primal and visceral reaction in her that staggered her.

She thought she would be angry. She had never allowed any man to possess her, for any reason. She knew the cost of that far too well. The idea of being Darien’s however, made her feel whole and complete for the first time in her life. She
wanted
to belong to him, wanted it so badly.

To be his she would have to please him, she knew that instinctively, just as she knew that whatever was going to happen it would be a test, for both of them. She took a long breath to steady herself and moved to the doorway.

**

The blue room was a long low dungeon decorated in black and red velvets, silks, satins and leathers. The chandeliers glowed above them and Lolita, aware of the interested and approving stares directed at her nearly naked body clung to Darien. His hand swallowed hers and imparted warmth, and confidence but did little to allay her fear.

“Why do they call it the blue room?”

“Madame has a sense of humor.”

She got it then and a grin canted her lips upward but that smile died when he stopped in front of a large wooden St. Andrews cross with leather padding and manacles attached to its upper and lower points.

A woman in a black silk mask and nothing else appeared, holding out a long and terrifying coil of leather, a snake whip that danced sinuously in Darien’s hands when he took it from her.

He whispered, “Trust me,” into Lolita’s ears then placed her on the cross, snapping the manacles securely into place.

The cold steel closed around her wrists and ankles. She stared at the leather and the grain of the wood; dread and nervousness making her limbs tremble violently. There was a snick that made her go stiff; she knew the sound of a knife opening when she heard it.

The corset laces fell open below the sharp blade’s press and she stood there, in front of the crowd, wearing nothing but the stockings and the stilettos. He stepped back, and whispered, “Trust me sweetling” and then the whip cracked.

She screamed, fighting the bonds, realizing only after it was too late that the whip had never touched her. Feeling foolish she sagged against the cross and relaxed just slightly.

A light kiss brushed her shoulder, then the other. It startled her and she jerked but it came again, this time it brushed her hair back and forth and it dawned on her that it was the whip gently caressing her.

The proof of his skill made her relax even further, she stopped fighting the bondage and stopped thinking about the spectators, the pain that the whip could bring, everything. She simply let go and Darien began to vary his swings, landing mild strokes on her ass, the back of her thighs and calves and then traveling back up the entire length of his body. Some strikes were horizontal, other times he swung in a side-to-side motion that caught her left then right side in perfectly symmetrical hits.

The pain began to build; each trip up and down her body brought a heightening of intensity. Along with the pain, however, came a pleasure she had never experienced before in her life. Each blow brought a thin sting with it and every sting made her cry out. If she had had a free hand she would have masturbated furiously but all she could manage was to press her throbbing slit against the padded leather and rub as hard and fast as she could.

The whip ceased its song momentarily. Her lust-hazed mind registered that fact but his hand was pressed into her soaked folds, his fingers were manipulating her clit and sliding deeply inside of her and she could not bear it any longer.

His silk shirt pressed against the burning ache that was the back half of her body, soothing the pain even as his free hand tangled into her hair and yanked her head back.

His teeth sank into her neck, not lightly either, pain that was as icy as it was hot shot through her flesh and she shrieked even as her hips gyrated madly against the cross, pressed backward toward the hot meat in his pants.

Need tore through all of her inhibitions, she was reduced to nothing more than want and lust by the whip and his fingers.

“Tell me, tell them, who you belong to,” he growled into her ear.

“You!” Lolita screamed. She wondered, briefly, if she would ever know his real name. Then she came. Slick and copious fluids shot form her center, coated his fingers and ran down his wrist.

His zipper came down in a flash. Her face pressed deeper into the cross so that her whole world was leather, the feel of his hand in her hair, his fingernails in her scalp and his cock, filling her as she thrust her ass out away from the cross in a frenzied effort to take him, all of him, inside of her.

His hard length pushed against her walls, stretched them wider and she gasped and shuddered, no matter how much he filled her she wanted more, needed more.

Darien’s hands slid from her hair and to her hips, someone knelt at the foot of the cross and freed her ankles, the manacles let go with a loud clink that made her scream again, her ass jerking back even further.

Darien’s hands lifted her lower body, her face smacked into the leather of the cross while his body beat relentlessly into hers. She begged for more, there were no words left to her so only her mostly inarticulate cries served as pleas.

A second orgasm exploded through her and she felt the throbbing of his member inside her clenching walls as he joined her in that ecstasy. An eternity passed, he held her and stroked and kissed her body. The pain was back and it was ringing throughout her being but she welcomed it as sanity returned.

The room was filled with people and when he released her and turned her around shame made her drop her face but the murmurs of, ‘
that was lovely
’, ‘
thank you for sharing such magnificence with us
’, and so on made her lift her head again. Over and above all of that, though, was his pride in her.

His hands rested around her waist and he walked her through the room, his body leaning close to hers until they reached a handsome older man with a mustache and dark eyes who stopped them with an abrupt gesture.

“Knight,” he said under his breath, “I have some information you need.”

“What information?”

“The whereabouts of certain documents, and a certain young lady.”

Illicit Liaison Book 4: Final Engagement

Darien felt Lolita’s muscles tense below his fingers. He held her a little more firmly, a silent warning and she stayed mute despite her instincts to lash out. That the man knew who they were was not in question, he had called Darien out by his name after all.

The whole game had worn thin on her nerves. She wanted her sister back, she wanted to gather up the things she had been preparing for the last few years and head off into the proverbial sunset to enjoy the rest of her life.

I am guilty of so much; do I even deserve to have a happy life?

That thought surfaced and she shoved it back down just as quickly as it had reared its ugly head. No matter how tough she tried to be, or how uncaring of society’s rules her conscience was never completely quiet or at ease. Now was not the time to suffer an attack of conscience, if need be she would steal the crown jewels to get Jamie back safely.

Was she safe? The men they were dealing with may very well have killed her. Lolita had tried to reach the couple who had taken care of her sister, and the desire to go to the villa they lived in had been incredibly strong, it was not that far from where she was standing, but to do so would be to risk their lives, if they were alive and she could not handle that guilt.

“Do tell,” Darien said just as softly. The conversations and ecstatic cries riding the air covered their words effectively from anyone who may have been eavesdropping but he was not taking any chances.

The man stepped a bit closer and his hand came out, in it was a plain black leather envelope. “Compliments of Madame,” he said softly. “There are clothes waiting for you and a car. Please leave now, before you cause any danger to the other guests.”

Lolita knew their hostess must have found out something that frightened her for this turn of events to have transpired. She walked behind the man and in front of Darien, acutely aware of her nakedness, her wet pussy, and the marks on her back.

Their escort led them down a labyrinth of corridors that terminated in a garage where only one car was parked. This must have been the entrance for the guests who wore the black velvet masks. Those people were royalty, politicians, and businessmen. They could not afford their predilections to become public knowledge.

The car was a plain sedan, unremarkable in every way, a car that would sit in the garage of most middle-class families. The clothes they donned were inexpensive, Lolita found a black wig, cut in a plain style that allowed for a low ponytail and put it on. They also had colored contact lenses that they both stuck into their eyes with expertise.

They looked over their new ID’s as they were trundled to the airport. They were a couple from Chicago. They had arrived a week ago and stayed at one of the least expensive places in the city. They had one backpack each, no suitcases and neither of them wore any jewelry except the plain dull gold wedding bands on their fingers.

They both tensed when they approached the airport. Darien slouched a bit, shuffled his feet, and kept his knees slightly bent so that he appeared shorter while Lolita, dressed in several layers of shirts, appeared to be heavier than she was. Her face was darker thanks to a dab of foundation and when she spoke to the customs agent, she slid back into the Midwestern drawl she had grown up using.

Neither of the were able to relax during the long security line, the interminable wait in the lounge by the gate and even when they were in their seats and securely buckled in they were still tense, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The name scrawled on the piece of paper had astounded them
both. If anyone had ever seemed above reproach it was Jimmy Wyatt, the computer mastermind locked away in a federal prison for the rest of his life.

Why would he have sold them out though? Lolita used him for her software, Darien had been one of his mentees in prison, and he too used Jimmy for his software needs. Why would Jimmy have sold off their secrets to a mobster like Antony Valente?

The whole thing was odd and neither of them could grasp the point of the scheme. By the time they touched down in Chicago, they were weary and unable to consider the implications.

They used a shuttle to take them to a nearby hotel, checked in, changed clothes and their appearances once more, destroyed the ID’s they had used to get on the plane, booked a last-minute flight to LA and hurried back to the airport in a cab.

They both slept the entire flight to LA, not even bothering to try to puzzle it out. The last few days had been too draining on them physically, mentally and emotionally and they needed the rest.

On the ground, they called Antony from a pay-by-the-minute-phone they purchased in a kiosk then destroyed. They made a hasty stop and then headed for the mobster’s mansion.

**

Jamie sat in a chair, holding a stuffed bear. Her face wore a placid expression, Lolita examined her face for signs of tears or fear but found none. Jamie handed her the bear and said, “Look, I made a new friend. His name is Jasper.”

“I did not mistreat her.” There was amusement in Antony’s voice but Lolita was not amused.

“There is your ring.”

The ring glittered and sent sparks toward the ceiling. Antony picked it up, a gloating look on his sallow and handsome face. “You did a good job. I was assured you would.”

“Jimmy told you.”

Antony laughed, “He gets around given that he is unable to leave the grounds of that prison, doesn’t he? I enjoy his work.”

“Did he recommend us to you for this job?”

“Of course.”

Lolita pulled Jamie to her feet with one hand. The other was close but not hovering near the gun tucked out of sight near her waist. Antony slid a packet of papers over to Darien and waved a hand at him, “I think you will find that those are copies. Perhaps the best solution to your current problem is more difficult than you might have originally thought.”

The only solution would be to kill Jimmy. That is what Antony was telling them. Jimmy knew too much about too many. He held the secrets of every criminal in the world in his data banks. Darien flinched away from that. He was many things but he was not a cold-blooded murderer.

A howl went up from outside, then a rattle of what sounded like hail hit the roof and windows. Lolita stood stunned, unable to comprehend what was happening. Darien, with his military background, knew exactly what was going on.