Under His Sway
UNDER HIS SWAY: HIS #4
(A BILLIONAIRE DOMINATION SERIAL)
by
Erika Masten
KINDLE EDITION
Copyright © 2012 Erika Masten
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Erika Masten
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
Excerpt From
Excerpt From
Dominated By Brothers: Hot Hard Ménage #1
The smell of garlic and duck lured me out of my dreams inch by languorous inch, and no wonder. Between mingling with the dinner guests at Adrian’s resort and sneaking away early with him, I might have had four or five bites of food. It was the chill at my back, though, that got me to open my sleep-blurred eyes and twist around to peer over my shoulder in the darkness. When he’d gotten out of bed, Adrian hadn’t quite pulled the silky white coverlet all the way back up, and the slow fading of the hot Brazilian day into the moderate temperatures of a pleasant night left me colder than I would have expected.
When he’d gotten out of bed…
It was the first time in the two weeks that I’d been on the island of Ilha de Flor, since I’d taken a three-month leave from my position as an environmental lawyer back in the States to become Adrian Knight’s submissive, that my first sensation upon waking hadn’t been the warmth of the man’s body against my back. His soft breath stirring the long, loose crimps of my brown hair. The constant and comforting rise and fall of his chest.
Two hazy sources of light caught the cream upholstery and dark wood surfaces of the room, illuminating sharp angles and full curves, outlining the familiar shape of a chair or wardrobe. Moonlight sifted through the heavy, polished wood shutters that made up the wall between the bedroom and the patio, and the glow of lamplight snuck in from down the hall, through the open bedroom door. Only then did it occur to me it wasn’t morning, not even close.
Adrian didn’t have digital clocks in the villa, so I had to grab the vintage brass clock from the night table and hold it at just the right angle to get the moonlight to glint along the glass face and tell me it was a few minutes after midnight. I’d been asleep for two hours. Hard asleep, with racing dreams that seemed to start as soon as my eyes had closed.
Our…
session
last night had been a blur of need and sensation as we’d rushed back from hosting the lavish dinner for the luxury resort guests. My amber-eyed, sable-haired Dom had put me on the floor the rest of the evening. Kneeling to take his smooth, thick erection in my mouth. On knees and elbows at his feet as he had smacked my bare, upturned ass lightly but relentlessly with the wide fur straps of a black mink flogger. Kept on all fours, ordered to spread my legs and press my cheek to the rug at the foot of his bed while he took me from behind, working his thumb teasingly along the nervous bud of my anus.
My dreams were no different.
Naked, as Adrian insisted I remain when within the villa, I wandered down the sconce-lit hallway combing pillow tangles from my hair with my fingers. I might have expected to find him at the piano, his refuge from the pressures of property development on an international scale, but the living room was dark and silent. Though the scent drawing me through the long, low villa would naturally have suggested activity in the kitchen, it seemed so implausible that I had to stop and stand and stare at Adrian for almost a minute when I found him at the impressively wide, stainless steel stove.
On the granite-topped island between us sat an overwhelming array of spice jars, half-chopped vegetables, and precariously stacked measuring cups. Even from several feet away, I could smell the garlic and cumin, as well as more earthy scents I couldn’t readily identify but automatically associated with the cassava sauce the resort chef served with duck—the second Brazilian dish I’d tasted when I got to Ilha de Flor as a tourist myself not that long ago. My first and favorite, of course, being Manuela’s honey cakes with the occasional decadent drizzle of chocolate sauce. The meals I kept missing when Adrian and I ran off to play came in handy for offsetting my love of the Brazilian grandmother’s desserts.
Adrian’s back was turned to me where he stood shirtless, concentrating intently on stirring the contents of a deep copper pot while checking the delicate scrawl of handwriting in a notebook he held in the other hand. The light over the cooktop shone on the blackish-brown swirls of his hair. My fingertips tingled at the ghost sensation of the slight prickliness to the short hair along the nape of his neck, in contrast to the thick waves at his crown, with soft falls long enough to drape over his brow and lend a roguish edge to the already devastatingly handsome man.
I snuck up toward the kitchen island and peeked over the counter, hoping to find the wealthy Dom as naked as I was, but the enticing line of musculature down his sculpted back led to a pair of loose white pajama pants that concealed the toned curve of his backside and thighs.
“Boa noite, Miss Bloom. What are you doing out of bed?” he asked without turning from his task.
In the last few days, I’d finally found something even sexier than the trace of a British accent that laced the edges of Adrian’s smooth voice, infusing his careful diction with a suggestive lilt when he let it. Even better was the mixture of that accent and the rolling tones of Brazilian Portuguese when he tossed out a greeting or what sounded like an endearment.
“I never manage to sneak up on you. Am I that noisy?”
I saw a slight shudder of a chuckle ripple along Adrian’s broad shoulders. “I should let you think so, Chloe, I really should. But it’s the iris and amber, actually.”
Embarrassment surged over my face in a wash hot enough to feel even in a warm kitchen. Perhaps having shampoo, body wash, lotion, and perfume in the same scent was a little overboard. “I’ll, uh, ease up on the girl products,” I promised.
This finally got him to stop stirring and look over his shoulder at me. “Don’t.”
That was it. Just…don’t. Did that mean he liked the way I smelled? My brow furrowed slightly at the thought, or rather at my excitement at the thought. I was hypersensitive to both lately—my expressions as I got into my thirties and started worrying about showing lines when everyone around me was botox’ed to high heaven, and the idea that Adrian’s approval was such a…thrill.
Eager to seize upon a distraction, I circled the counter and came up behind Adrian to peek at the notebook. The difference in height, five-foot-four to six-foot-two, meant I had to come up on tiptoes to see over his arm. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read Portuguese.
“A cookbook?” I asked.
“M-hm.”
Adrian’s reticence to respond in any greater detail piqued my interest. “What kind? Handwritten? Whose is it?”
Regarding me sidelong, those silvery brown eyes narrowed under the shade of his blacker than black eyelashes, Adrian paused a moment. “You are my submissive, are you not, Miss Bloom?”
The peculiar question made me stiffen, made my stomach tense and prepare to knot itself. Old habits, from younger days when my mother periodically came into my room early in the morning to tell me my father was gone again, or was back again. Her announcements always started out with her asking me if I knew she loved me.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you understand the importance of doing as I command?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if I instruct you to keep quiet about something…?”
After a few seconds of head-tilted confusion, I broke into laughter. “Who did you steal the book from?”
Adrian rolled his eyes. “I only borrowed it. She’ll have it back before morning.”
“Manuela? Did you steal Manuela’s cookbook? Why?”
“
Borrowed
, Miss Bloom,” Adrian sighed. “She’s got the best pato no tucupi on the face of the planet, and she refuses to tell me her secret. In fact…” He snapped the notebook closed and tossed it lightly onto the counter beside the stove. “I’m sure she expected me to snoop. There’s no way her handwriting is that bad on accident. And I think there’s a secret ingredient she must have omitted from the recipe. I
will
figure her out.”
“Figure her out, huh?” Interesting way to phrase it. Figure out the recipe or figure out the woman? At once elegant and earthy, the matron spent as much of her time mothering Adrian Knight as she did running the kitchen of his resort. “Why do you have to know? Why not let her have her secret?”
Looking incredulous, brow raised and arched, Adrian shook his head. “Because she doesn’t want me to know, of course.” When I kept watching him, studying the smooth contours of his high cheekbones and the stubble-shadowed jaw, Adrian looked away but added softly, “I’ve always wanted what I can’t have, like any man. Especially men of means. You know that, Chloe.”
A cold nausea welled up abruptly from the pit of my stomach, like a breach in a hull letting in seawater, sinking me. Sinking my mood.
I did know. When I was the aloof counselor he couldn’t charm, Penn Ellison had pursued me day and night. There was hardly time for the golden-haired playboy, heir to a family empire that spanned everything from real estate to defense contracting, to work and court me, too. Once he had me, though, it had been a different story. Penn was never a neglectful boyfriend, but the ardor cooled. What I had interpreted as his acknowledgement that mine was a demanding career requiring several of my evenings each week… Well, that was actually his opportunity to make the rounds among high-priced call girls and wild parties from Miami to Vegas to L.A.
When he’d gotten caught, candid photos spread all over the internet, my reaction had been such a mystery to him. Like I should have known what I was signing on for. I was the girlfriend, the likely prospect for wife down the road, because I spoke well and wore the right labels and went to a good university…and could hide the fact that I’d grown up in a cramped two bedroom apartment in a walkup. No doorman. No prep school. No trust fund.
The fact that leaving Penn had rekindled his affections, so much so that I’d actually booked a last minute cruise around South America to escape him, was further proof that wanting was always more important than having with men of power and wealth. Adrian reminded me of that now, in his offhand comment. Those were always the most telling.
What are you doing to yourself, Chloe?
This had made sense when it began. Adrian Knight had brought out a force of passion in me the very first day I met him, when the cruise had offered an optional stay at the resort on Ilha de Flor while the South Atlantic Sojourn was docked in Natal. I knew nothing about Knight beyond the fact that he was wealthy, stunningly handsome, charming when he wanted to be,
and utterly dominant sexually
. It was the first time I’d ever responded with such desire on a purely physical level, with no emotional feedback, no romantic noise. What better opportunity would I find to learn to separate lust and love, to take ownership of my own sexuality? That I relinquished ownership of my body to Adrian Knight in the process was just one of those contradictions of life…and an acknowledgment that I sometimes needed to be pushed along a path. It had still been my
choice
to let Knight push me.
But my head was getting noisy now, disturbed by murmurs of possessiveness and jealousy and attachment. Wealthy men tended to own people, I knew, but when it was Adrian… When he was inserting himself into the personal matters of everyone from the project manager of the eco park he was trying to establish on the bulk of Ilha de Flor to the improbable head chef of his resort… It seemed more like protectiveness, like a determined and sometimes even desperate effort to control all variables that could possibly disrupt this harbor of calm in an otherwise dizzying and disconcerting world of wealth without limit, power without oversight, freedom without the security of boundaries.