What To Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection Part Two (26 page)

“In a week. It’s a four month European tour.”

I caught Jack’s jaw tense, but he tried to hide it from me. He brushed my hair back from my face. “Congratulations, Syd. It’s your dream come true.”

I thought about his words. He was right. It was my dream come true, but why did it feel like my worst nightmare? “Thank you. I think I need some time to process it all.”

A few days passed and Jack and I went about our lives as usual. We talked about the tour schedule, the travel plans, and the venues we would play, but we steered clear of the thing we both needed to talk about most. Us. What would my leaving do to us? Would we be able to survive as a couple with months of not seeing other? Would we even try a long distance relationship? I wasn’t sure why we hadn’t talked about it yet, but I was terrified of the answers that needed to be said.

Two days before I was to leave, I woke up to find Jack in his home office, working. I couldn’t leave without having the conversation, no matter how much I dreaded having it. I sat on the other side of his desk, something I had never done before. The only place I ever sat in Jack’s office was on his lap. Jack looked up at me and waited for me to speak.

“What’s going to happen to us when I go, Jack?”

Jack stopped what he was doing and his hands rubbed his forehead. “What do you want to happen, Syd?”

“I don’t want to go, Jack. I’m afraid to leave you, I don’t want to lose you.” A tear escaped before I could stop it.

“I don’t want you to go either, Syd. But you have to. When we first met in Hawaii you said yourself that you had forgotten who you were when you were with Michael. You need to do this for you. It’s your dream.” He came around the desk and lifted me, setting me down on top of his lap. “I’ll come to Europe to see you and you can come home when you have a few days between shows.” His face was serious and his tone was unwavering.

I knew he was right, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. I looked into his eyes and saw his sacrifice. “I love you, Jack.” I hadn’t planned to say it, the words just came out on their own.

Jack lifted me up and carried me to the bedroom, setting me down on the bed gently. I watched as he unbuckled his pants and took off his boxers, never taking his eyes off of me. He sat me up and pulled the tank-top I was wearing over my head. He climbed on top of me and gently kissed my lips. He pulled his head back just enough to look me in the eyes. “I love you too, Syd.” Then he made love to me.

On the morning of my flight, I was surprised that Jack said he needed to stop at the office. “I just have to pick up something. We can stop on the way to the airport. It will only take five minutes.”

We were both quiet, but it didn’t have anything to do with the unplanned stop at Jack’s office. I wasn’t going to see Jack for three full weeks, until I had a break in my schedule. We planned for him to fly to Rome for four days then. He was going to come for the Rome concert and then we were going to stay three days together, before I had to fly out to Prague for the next show.

Mateo pulled up in front of Jack’s office and he opened the door and held out his hand. I was surprised that he wanted me to come inside, after the last time I had visited. I really didn’t want his last memory of me in his office to be my childish behavior from last time, so I sucked it up and got out with him without question.

Jack’s assistant spied us as soon as we walked in. “It’s on your desk.” She smiled at me sweetly.

We walked to his office hand in hand. I was relieved that I didn’t have any Jenna sightings that might upset me before I had to leave. Inside his office, Jack handed me an envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Inside was a pretty silver heart keychain with a bunch of keys and some folded papers.

I looked at him curiously.

“The keys to the penthouse, my office, and the storage unit. And an open first class ticket in case you need to come home for an unplanned visit.”

I understood the first two and the last. “The storage unit?” I asked, confused.

“Where I’m having your furniture stored next weekend. I’m moving you into the penthouse next weekend. You can figure out what you want to keep and get rid of when you get back.”

My eyes widened with disbelief. I was about to argue when, out the corner of my eye, I saw the picture that I had given him on his desk, perfectly positioned for him to see from his chair. He had taken the present I had rudely delivered to him on his birthday and put it proudly on display. My picture was on the desk of the man who never had any personal belongings in his office. I took a deep breath and decided to throw caution to the wind. “Okay.”

“Okay?” He had definitely expected more of an argument.

I reached up on my tippy toes and kissed him sweetly on the mouth. “I belong to you, so why not.”

Jack tipped my head back and kissed me deeply. “I’m going to be taking a lot of cold showers over the next three weeks.” He made a sexy growling noise as he took both my ass cheeks into his hands and pressed me up against his erection. For the first time in a week, I felt like we might actually make it. We might….

Jack and Sydney’s story continues in book two,
Made For You.

Vi Keeland is a native New Yorker, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling author, attorney and mother of three. She’s addicted to caffeine and reading and has too many book boyfriends that live in her head to count.

Get in touch with Vi online!

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http://www.vikeeland.com

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Guilty Pleasures (#1)

Dominated By The Billionaire

BBW Erotic Romance

Adriana Hunter

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Wet Ink Publishing

Adriana Hunter

http://www.AdrianaHunter.com

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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and places are solely the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, including events, areas, locations and situations is entirely coincidental.

I
set the book aside with a deep sigh. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon and I’d just finished the final book in the
50 Shades of Grey
trilogy that my friend Chelsea had recommended. The Texas twilight was deepening outside my apartment window; another weekend spent indoors and alone, this time with my nose in a book, dressed in sweats and cocooned on the couch in an old afghan.
Where’s my Christian Grey?
I sighed again.

Do men like that really exist? Or was he just a fantasy of the book’s author? I knew there was a whole BDSM scene out there, people who enjoyed tying up their partner, spanking them, whips, chains, all that. Honestly, it all intrigues me—quite a bit, in fact. And it scares me as well; the idea of giving up complete control in return for boundless pleasure. But how can someone learn to trust a man enough to surrender to him completely? It made my head hurt thinking about it, and my body quiver both with desire and in pure white-knuckle fear.

It wasn’t so much the wealth and power of the Christian Grey character that appealed to me—although I’d never walk away from a millionaire—but that a man would enjoy dominating a woman so passionately, and in doing so, could provide so much pleasure to her, but not crush her spirit in the process. It was a completely foreign idea to me. I’m never been one to willingly ask for pain, or ever wanted to be dominated by a man, but there was something very deeply arousing about the thought that pain could be pleasurable, that giving control of yourself in such a vulnerable situation over to someone else could intensify the whole erotic experience.

What kind of man would be able to do that? Would he be that way all of the time, or just in the bedroom? Would it mean that I was placing myself beneath a man? That I was belittling myself in some way? The feminist in me wanted to scream that it was disgusting, humiliating and absurd, yet another part of me, a darker, animalistic part of my very core ached to be taken so fully, with or without my full consent. I couldn’t believe the delicious rush of heat that washed over my skin at the thought of giving my body for a man’s total and completely selfish use. To let him position me however he chose, to bind me so that I was nothing more than his possession to play with and discard at his desire.

My body was always my greatest obstacle when it came to truly enjoying sex. I was always a heavier-set woman;
“full-figured”
is the term that most people use though I always just feel fat. It doesn’t matter what fancy terminology or trendy wordage is currently appropriate, when I find myself in bed with a man I’m instantly on high alert, careful not to let him explore my body too much, fearful that I will turn him off…and turn him away. I wonder if other women of my size feel that way and then I think of the countless magazines, reality television shows and celebrities; all plus size, who claim that they love their curves and wonder if it’s really just me.

A vague thought runs through my head before surfacing as a concrete idea. I know there are dating sites for almost every type of persuasion; gay, Latino, Christian. There had to be BDSM dating sites.
Would joining one, even out of curiosity, be such a bad thing? What did I really have to lose?

My cell phone interrupted my thoughts. I fumbled for the phone as the book slid to the floor. I glanced at the caller ID; it was my friend Leslie.