In His Wake: His #6 (A Billionaire Domination Serial)

IN HIS WAKE: HIS #6

(A BILLIONAIRE DOMINATION SERIAL)

by

Erika Masten

KINDLE EDITION

Copyright © 2012 Erika Masten

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Erika Masten

[email protected]

http://erikamasten.com

http://erikamasten.blogspot.com

Published by Sticky Sweet Books. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored on, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual persons or events are purely coincidental.

Warning: Explicit content. Intended for mature readers only. All characters depicted herein are 18 years or older, and all sexual activities are of a consensual nature.

This is a work of erotic fantasy. In real life, please protect yourself and your lover by always practicing safe sex.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

In His Wake: His #6

Excerpt From

Domination Sex: Conditioned Response

Excerpt From

Room Service: Dominated #3

IN HIS WAKE: HIS #6

There was no leaving Adrian Knight.

Physically, perhaps, but not emotionally. The discontent, the sense of debilitating disequilibrium that overtook me in the absence of the comforting routine I’d fallen into as Knight’s sexual submissive, interrupted the rhythm of my thoughts and my breath as I hurried from meeting to meeting, back at work at the environmental law firm where I was supposed to be the most promising of the junior partners. It manifested as a clumsy catch of my designer heels along the sink-down carpet, a wince at the constant burble of digital ringtones in a busy office, a nagging dissatisfaction with every detail of my surroundings.

It was a creeping panic.

A month on, I was barely sleeping, hardly eating, and still swinging wildly between sobbing into my pillow at night at the thought of Adrian and punching it with the force of thirty years of pent up outrage.

For the first time, I found the earthy smell of leather and aged paper from the extensive reference collection in the bookshelves lining two walls of my much-envied corner office almost intolerably oppressive. The stifling atmosphere had me short of breath, with a heavy weight mounting little by little in the middle of my chest. It irritated me like a scratching along the inside of my skull, the inside of my skin, that the pristine sets of law books were all the same colors and size with identical, pretentious gold stripes along their flawless cobalt blue or ruby red binding.

I longed for the irregular outline and mismatched covers of the used books that had shared shelf space with my mother’s record collection in the corner of the living room in our shabby little apartment, when it had been just the two of us. Before I’d gone off to college to
better
myself, to ascend the career ladder and climb above my station. To earn the money and respect and position I believed, not entirely consciously, would insulate me from the hardship and rejection that had characterized my childhood. The thought of dog-eared, thrift store paperbacks, in no way uniform, had me waxing nostalgic for the late nights when my mother would cuddle up on the secondhand sofa to read to her little
Chloeblossom
while Beethoven or Bach or Pachelbel played low and distant on the radio from the gloomy recesses of the dimly lit room.

This morning, my high sheen, dark wood office was quiet and still with my own inactivity and inattention. I was ten floors up, far removed from the chaos of the traffic and bustling crowds on the street below me.

Below me
…

I snickered at myself and rose from behind my oversized desk to gaze out at the moody April skyline. My Italian-label dress, all white poplin and pintucks for the bodice, feathery soft gray cashmere for the sleeves and fitted skirt, couldn’t keep me nearly warm enough as I stared at the bruised sky and hard-angled buildings. The scurry of tiny figures in their dark overcoats trailing along the barren sidewalks stirred a deep sense of anxiety and isolation. I couldn’t help focusing on the lack of clear blue sky, the loss of pale yellow sand, the wistful memory of samba music thrumming along the length of my spine. The unwieldy knot of my upswept brown hair, a questionable attempt at a prim style that seemed so unnatural now, made my head ache and my scalp bristle as I fussed with the coils and counted all the ways this city was not—could never be—the pristine Brazilian island of Ilha de Flor. Adrian’s tropical haven, with the long, low villa that had been our private retreat.

Below me…

What was I thinking? There was nothing
below
me. I was a little tenement rat at the core. The daughter of a low-rent Casanova and the kind of woman they wrote self-help books to rescue from herself and her dangerously codependent addiction to reckless love, consequences be damned. The humiliated conquest of the Ellison heir apparent, his indiscretions chronicled in vivid color photos on a half dozen high society gossip blogs. The foolishly willing sexual submissive to enigmatic, dark horse billionaire Adrian Knight with his devil-may-care British accent.

Make that Adrian Alexander, youngest son of Alistair Alexander, widely believed to be the most ruthless and cut-throat businessman in Europe. Adrian had turned out every bit his father’s match, in the bedroom as much as the boardroom, whatever surname he used. Knight was a man without compunction, without conscience, perfectly capable and even eager to seduce and subvert me to settle an old score with my ex-boyfriend, Penn Ellison.

My teeth gouged the inside of my cheeks. Just now, the environmental law degree on my wall felt as contrived and desperate as the designer clothes and the poised posture that helped me mingle with the rich and powerful. I was my father’s castoff, in my mother’s mold...after all, despite it all, regardless of education and career and careful observation of East Coast etiquette and culture.

My forehead was pounding as I let the emotional bile that had characterized the four weeks since my departure from Ilha de Flor—without warning in the middle of the night—bubble up along the back of my throat. Sour regrets left a stinging, ashy aftertaste along my tongue. It tightened my jaw, the muscles in my face.

Time, Chloe. Give yourself time. It was a mantra I repeated to myself often over the course of a day. I had to take it on faith that the practice would eventually make a difference. So far, no luck.

The case files that had accumulated in my absence, over the two weeks I had been off on my South American cruise to escape Penn’s relentless attempts to win me back and the two additional weeks I’d spent on Ilha de Flor serving every visceral desire Adrian Knight could muster, sat piled on my desk along with everything new that had come into my office over the last month. I glanced hesitantly over my shoulder as though to check that they were still there, then shook my head at myself. The backlog of work, the mitigation plans that needed reviewing, the litigation requiring response, never lessened. I should have been grateful. Idle hands made for the devil’s work, as the saying went. Idle thoughts too often led back to Ilha de Flor, to the sensation of
his
long fingers tangling in the hair at the back of my head,
his
tongue filling my mouth,
his
collar around my neck and
his
belt laid across the curve of my bare, upturned ass.

There was no leaving Adrian Knight, but I told myself I could at least take a coffee break from the angst. I stuffed my arms into my heavy black wool overcoat as I tapped my way down the corridor of the junior partners’ floor to the elevator, my stiletto heels clacking against the polished wood. The coffee shop was on the ground floor of the same office building, but near the rotating entrance door that allowed a constant stream of cold air to flow through the lobby. After a month of tropical sun, half that being kept nude as Adrian’s sex slave and donning only the lightest of sundresses or cocktail shifts for dinner at the resort, an early East Coast April was a shock to the system.

Waiting for the gleaming metal elevator doors to part for me, I shook the memories of Ilha de Flor out of my head. Time to get back to my life, back to business, without the constant comparison to a fantasy that I no longer lived. How many times, I wondered, had I said that to myself since I’d come back to the city? How many more times would I need to say it before it took? When the doors slid open, I gave the traditional pause, enough time for any occupants in the car who wanted this floor to disembark. But the elevator wasn’t on its way down to the lobby, instead heading upward to the offices for the senior partners.

Linda, the slender, chestnut-haired matron who was the chief administrative assistant and all-around den mother for the juniors at Ferris & Hale, stepped out with her armload of manila folders. Behind her stood an array of well-manicured professionals with faces I might not have recognized but whose manner and dress clearly marked them as counsel. Not an unusual sight in the building. We were specialists, and attorneys with more generalized practices frequently accompanied their clients to meetings in our offices.

Today they circled a client of obvious stature, both social and physical. Six-feet-two-inches of lean runner’s muscle. Sable hair that would’ve looked black if not for the rich brown highlights. Smooth skin lightly tanned but still too dark to go unnoticed amid the pale complexions of office-bound easterners. And those eyes… Moonlight on latte.

My first thought…
He came for me
. And damn my heart for swelling, my mouth for going dry, and my palms for beginning to sweat. For a waning fantasy flaring to life as I gazed into the perfect curves and chiseled lines of Adrian Knight’s face while the world around me receded and faded to a fuzzy blur.

High cheekbones, lush lips, flawlessly trimmed stubble along his hard, wide jaw, Knight was a testament to just how good my memory was. While I was used to seeing him in cashmere hoodies, cargo pants, and deck shoes, or else in the tuxedos he’d put on for dinner, now he wore the style and quality of business attire I would’ve expected of a man richer than God. The light gray silk tie matched his shirt perfectly, with the vest, jacket, and slacks being just a shade or two darker. The cashmere scarf around his neck and the fine woolen overcoat tossed over his arm were a complementary charcoal gray. Not the usual sea and sand colors I associated with Adrian, to be sure, but damn if it didn’t bring out that silver sheen in those amber brown eyes. My heart, my fists, and my sex seized tight at the sight of him.

Of course, it made no sense to think that Adrian had come for me. Why would he? Ours had been a temporary liaison, a three-month agreement that I would serve him sexually. For me, the goal had been to renew my flagging confidence while teaching myself to enjoy sex the way men did—the way Penn had, the way my father had, without emotional attachment. My careless assumption had been that Knight simply wanted sex from a woman who would cater to his particular tastes. I hadn’t realized at the time that Adrian had his own very specific agenda, far beyond personal pleasure, that being to seduce the woman who had gotten away from his lifelong rival. Regardless of whatever wounds that might have inflicted on the inconsequential target of those advances—me.

In the end, I had lasted hardly more than two weeks before I’d started to fall for Knight, only to learn his true motives, and before I’d found the subpoenas that proved he was every bit the scoundrel his father was. I’d left Adrian and Ilha de Flor on a midnight ferry bound for the mainland port of Natal and the first flight I could catch back to the States.

There had been no phone calls asking why I’d fled or begging my return. No letters or emails. The belongings I’d left behind had shown up at my door, shipped express with no charge to me. And
that
had been the end of
that
.

Until now, as I stood mouth agape, eye to eye with Adrian Knight. My face burned with the need to scream at him to get the hell away from me and out of my city, my chest with the need to feel his arms around me, my sex with a disturbingly Pavlovian obedience to his mere proximity. I gathered a slow, deep breath to keep myself from tearing up at the force of the emotional swell, but I refused to let myself blink, just in case. The last thing I needed right now was a teardrop breaking down my cheek, smearing mascara and making my coworkers wonder. Or letting Adrian see how deeply he’d wounded me.