What Happens After Dark (27 page)

She didn’t want to watch him. And yet, as he gazed down at the big-breasted redhead, Bree could feel the wetness between her legs, every breath in and out of her lungs, her skin sensitized, her heart pounding. There was a certain excitement in being a voyeur, especially remembering what he’d said he’d do to her, tie her down, make her watch, make her do things. Yet at the same time, jealousy fueled her blood. God, he could probably see mountains of the woman’s cleavage from that angle.

Bree didn’t have cleavage.

He didn’t look at her across the tables, didn’t turn. But she felt him. He knew she couldn’t take her eyes off him, knew her thoughts.
Do bad things to me. Anything you want. Everything you want.
She knew he was totally and completely aware of her.

He leaned on the bar and let the woman touch him, just his arm, but still an invasion of his personal space. She flipped her hair back, probably thinking it was sexy, and even over the distance, Bree thought she heard an annoying tinkle of laughter.

Would he bring her to the table? He’d bought her a drink. It was the start of something.

“You’re just too damn pretty to be sitting all by yourself without even a cocktail.”

Bree jumped, knocking her knee on the underside of the table. The man slid a glass of white wine to her and slipped into the booth. “Mind if I join you?”

Forty or so, short dark hair, suit and tie, handsome, with a nice smile and a wedding ring he didn’t bother to hide. Her gaze shot to Luke.

He was otherwise occupied.

“You looked so thirsty. Waiting for some girlfriends?”

She shook her head and didn’t touch the wine.

“A man then.” He raised a brow and looked even more attractive. “Is he late?”

A normal person would have used the opportunity to give Luke a little payback. Bree was suddenly terrified and not in a good way. She didn’t know how to talk to men, how to flirt. She didn’t know how to pay Luke back, and she didn’t even want to. She wanted Luke to direct everything, not have to take charge herself.

Go away.
She tried to say it with her eyes, yet all she could manage was another headshake.

“So you arrived early.” He smiled, and it was nice. “Is he going to be jealous if he sees you drinking wine with another man?” His eyes sparkled in the waver of candlelight. “Maybe that will be a good thing.” He waved the backs of his fingers at the wine. “Go on, taste. I got you something sweet because you look so sweet.”

Man, he was bold. And sure of himself. Just like Luke. She chanced a glance at Luke. He’d turned and he saw, picking up on her every move like radar.

She was suddenly parched under his penetrating gaze and grabbed the wine to slake her thirst. It was far too sweet, more to her mother’s tastes, but the man . . .

She looked at him, his handsome face and more than decent body. Why was he hitting on
her
? She wasn’t the USDA choice piece of meat here tonight. The woman with Luke offered more cleavage. So did the brunette Luke had pointed out.

“Name’s Frank.” When she didn’t say anything, he added, “And you are?”

“Her name’s Bree.” Luke’s low voice didn’t even startle Frank, nor did the menace in Luke’s tone as he went on. “She’s taken. Buzz off.”

Frank kept on smiling. “So I was right. Jealous lover in the wings.”

Luke pushed the wine away from her fingertips and back at Frank, then replaced the glass with a champagne flute. “Jealousy would imply I have something to worry about.” Luke shark-smiled the guy. “I just prefer that Bree isn’t bothered by lounge lizards.”

Frank laughed out loud, turning a few heads. “I haven’t heard that term since I watched the old fifties movies when I was a kid.”

“Yeah. But it fits.” Luke’s lips thinned. “Do I have to bodily remove you?”

She thrilled to his voice, casual yet brittle, charming yet hard. Like the night he’d taken her from Derek. He meant what he said; he would not back down. And all for her.

“Maybe we should ask the lovely lady.” Frank indicated her with an arch of his brow.

Were they fighting over her? It was awful, the antics of a self-absorbed woman, but it excited her. She was wet and wanting more, needing the affirmation. “What if I said you should both sit down, and I’d share.” She waited a beat, letting an image settle in their minds. “The drinks, I mean,” she clarified after her point was already made.

Luke’s eyes glittered, promising retribution. He sat in the round booth, moving in on her, lowering his voice so it could only just be heard above the din of conversation. “I’m the one who decides when to share, not you, my sweet.” He raised his gaze to Frank. “Tonight, I’m not in a sharing mood.”

She opened her eyes, going for the wide and innocent look. “But just a few minutes ago,” she said, not knowing where the temerity came from, but loving it, “you wanted to share that woman over there.” She jutted her chin at the bar. The redhead was still sipping her champagne and gazing wistfully at Luke.

He chucked her under the chin. “Different kind of sharing, baby.”

Frank’s face was fairly glowing, his cheeks ruddy with either amazement or desire, maybe both. “Guess I found the right party, didn’t I.”

Luke stared at him for long seconds. “Right party, wrong time.” Then he grabbed Bree’s hand and practically dragged her out of the booth.

 

 

“YOU DO REALIZE THIS MEANS PUNISHMENT.”

Luke hadn’t dropped her hand since the moment he’d yanked her out of the bar. “I leave you alone for five minutes, and you’re already trolling for other men.”

“I wasn’t,” she whispered weakly.

“You were.” He punctuated with a growl rising up from his chest. He couldn’t say how he’d felt when he lifted his gaze to the table and found her flirting with another man. It was a heady brew of astonishment, anger, jealousy, fear, and desire. He was well aware Bree hadn’t started it, but she sure as hell hadn’t ended it either. Promptly forgetting the redhead named Liza, he’d waded in to do the ending for Bree.

Only to have her make that suggestive remark.

Emotion and desire were inextricably connected; the higher the emotion, the bigger the kick of desire. In that moment, he’d wanted to haul her up out of the booth, force her face first onto the table and take her that way. All very macho.

That’s what she did to him and for him, pushed his emotions higher until his desire simply burst out of him.

At the car, he whirled her around, shoved her up against the driver’s side door and plastered his body to hers. “You were trolling. And you will be punished.”

“Honestly,” she started.

He stopped her with a hand beneath her skirt, a finger in her pussy, and suddenly she was gasping for air.

“See how wet you are,” he whispered against her ear. “See how much you wanted him.”

“I—I—” She wasn’t capable of more as he played her clit.

“You test me, push me. You want me to punish you. You ask for it, beg for it because you’re a dirty, horny little slut.”

She quivered and moaned against him.

He wanted her this way. When he threatened, she melted, and this was what he wanted, needed. Most women didn’t need the threat; she did. He just needed to shut down the naysaying voice in his head whispering that it wasn’t good for her.

He pulled away, let her straighten her skirt. “Get in the car.” He didn’t play the gentleman and follow her around to open the door. Instead, he climbed in and started the engine, then, once she was beside him, he couldn’t resist a taste of his fingers as she watched, the remnants of her desire coating them.

She opened her mouth. He pointed a finger. “Don’t say a word. I’m so pissed I can’t talk to you without hurting you.”

He pulled out of the lot, making his plans. “Fast hot sex,” he muttered to himself. “Lots of it. With you tied. You won’t be able to stop me.” He entered the freeway and headed home. “I’ll show you what it means to push me to the limit.”

The silence beside him was electric. Her hot sexual aroma perfumed the car. Like the scent a feline gave off when she was in heat, attracting every male.

“You did this on purpose to incite me. To force me to punish you.”

She squirmed in her seat, and he knew she loved this theme.

“You better be afraid of what you’ve unleashed, slut,” he warned, his voice harsh enough to rasp in his throat. He was into it, playing her game, giving her what she wanted. As if he were truly
forcing
her to do it, that it wasn’t her desire.

The sexual tension in the car rose until it was so thick around them he could damn near touch it. By the time he pulled into his driveway, he was as hard as marble.

Still in silence, he rounded the hood, opened her door, and yanked her out of the car. She stumbled; he acted as if he didn’t care. She tripped on the step; he let her catch herself.

The house was dark, cold, and smelled faintly of Italian seasonings. “Where to punish you . . .” he mused to the empty hall.

Then he had it. “Brilliant,” he muttered to himself. “In the dining room. Stand in the corner next to the sideboard.” She followed his direction, facing the wall. “Not that way. Turn around. Face me, whore.” The name calling and abuse was becoming so easy, second nature; it fueled them both.

She gulped, but did as he said without a word.

Over her head, he took down a hanging plant. Beth had loved the greenery. He didn’t know why he kept up the habit. Now, he laid bare the hook in the ceiling.

Leaning in, he pointed his finger right between Bree’s eyes. “Don’t you move; don’t you run.”

“No, Master,” she whispered, her first words since getting into the car.

He left her there in the dark, standing in the corner like a naughty child.

 

 

SHE HEARD HIM MOVING IN THE HOUSE, SLAMMING DOORS, DRAWERS, muttering, and her excitement grew exponentially with every sound permeating the darkness. She could feel her pulse beating fast at her throat and wrists, her heart thumping in her chest.

She wanted this, whatever it was. And oh, she’d had such an idea from the moment he took the plant down from the ceiling and she saw that hook. She couldn’t catch her breath, and without her panties, her thighs were coated with her desire. She dripped with it. He’d ordered her not to run, but she couldn’t anyway. She wouldn’t. She had to have whatever he planned to do to her.

LUKE WENT IN SEARCH OF IMPLEMENTS. IN THE BEDROOM, HE gathered scarves and a blindfold. Perfect. He slammed the bureau drawer for effect, then the bedroom door on his way out. As he passed back down the hall, he flipped the light switch. Illumination streamed into the dining room, stretching across the hardwood floor, enough for him to see but still leaving her in the dark, so to speak.

“Hold your hands out, slut, wrists together.”

She trembled, a fresh wave of her scent wafting up to cloud his mind. He wrapped one scarf around her wrists, binding them together in front. The second scarf he slid between her tied hands, knotted the ends, then raised her arms high enough to slip the loop over the hook in the ceiling.

Then he stood two inches from her, his face right up in hers. “You are
my
whore, no one else’s. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

She was the perfect height for fucking while standing up. Reaching behind, he unbuttoned and unzipped her skirt. With her slender figure, it simply fell to the floor at her feet.

He went down on his haunches to lift one foot then the other and whisk the skirt away. “Your cunt is mine, isn’t it?” He blew a warm breath on her pretty sweet pussy, neatly trimmed, fragrant with need.

“Yes, Master,” she said with a hitch of desire in her voice.

He rose once more. “You don’t deserve to look upon your master while he fucks you, whore. Do you?”

She agreed with everything. “No, Master, I don’t,” she said on an exhale of breath.

He slid the elastic band of the blindfold over her head and patted the padded material in place across her eyes. With no light in the dining room, she would now be in complete darkness, nothing seeping through the edges. Her senses would be heightened, expectant.

He stepped back, said nothing, let her stew a moment. Christ, she was gorgeous. Long, long legs in black stockings, the trimmed triangle of hair against her milk-white thighs, her belly button beneath the tight top begging for his tongue to tease it.

“A true slut needs to be fucked while half dressed. Because she’s such a whore, she can’t wait to get her clothes off before she has to have a cock in her.” He tugged up the Lycra of her shirt and let it rest above the swell of her breasts. In the coolness of the house, her nipples pearled.

She shivered. He thought about turning the heat up. Instead, he gathered both nipples between his thumbs and forefingers and pinched hard until she cried out.

He leaned close, breathed in the hot spice of her arousal. “Sluts like pain, don’t they.”

“Yes, Master. When you hurt me, it washes away all my unworthiness.” Like a sinner giving confession and receiving absolution.

“You have to pay for what you did tonight with Frank.”

She murmured her assent.

Still pinching one nipple, lighter this time, he slid his fingers down her belly to her drenched pussy. He strummed her clit until her whole body trembled. Pain, punishment, and pleasure, she needed it all.

“Don’t you come yet, bitch. Not until I say.”

“No, no, Master, I won’t.” She ended on a gasp, then clenched her muscles, a move intended to stave off the orgasm that threatened.

“Spread your legs wide,” he ordered, kicking her feet apart. Then he grabbed her chin, held her when she might have stumbled off her heels. “Don’t you dare come while I lick you.”

She shook her head almost wildly.