Accidental Slave (10 page)

“I quite agree,” Cole said, liking her very much.

They lingered after they’d finished their sandwiches. Though Elizabeth remained upset about Gary, somehow, when she was with Cole, it didn’t seem to matter quite as much. He was so easy to talk to. And yes, very easy on the eyes as well.

But beneath that, beneath how kind and gracious he’d been in handling the whole hideous debacle, something was definitely sparking between them. His words played over in her head, exciting something deep inside her. …
When I find my true love, my sub girl
…
We would be
partners. Lovers. Equals who understand and appreciate the exchange of power we both crave.

These words spoke directly to a secret place inside her. Though she was always in control and liked it that way, a part of her longed to give up, to give in, to surrender to another. She’d never permitted herself to give in to this longing, thinking it was merely a throwback to her genetic coding, the instinct of a woman submitting to man in a primal way.

There was something about Cole. Something different, something dark and exciting beneath the surface. He was so confident and self-assured. So…dominant. Yes, that was the word, though when she thought of it in terms of him, it didn’t come across as chauvinistic and controlling. It was…sexy.

A little dangerous.

A lot intriguing.

She needed to understand more, though. He’d dropped various hints and casual remarks about his particular brand of D/s, but what did it really mean? What was the whole concept of erotic, romantic submission really about? Would he be the one to teach her?

“You’re awfully quiet.” He pulled her from her reverie. “What are you thinking?”

She avoided a direct answer. “You want to get out of here? We could, uh, take a walk or something.”

“That’s a great idea. If you want, we could catch a taxi over to Central Park. Walk under the trees, have a little privacy.” For once traffic was on their side, and they made it quickly to the park. Neither spoke during the ride, though the silence was companionable.

They began to walk, passing a fenced-in pet area with dogs large and small leaping and cavorting about, deliriously happy to be off their leashes. They watched the animals a while and then meandered down a nearby path.

They talked about Gary and how she might go about getting some hard evidence against him. She knew she should focus on that immediate problem, but found what she really wanted to do was broach the whole BDSM, D/s thing.

She decided the time wasn’t yet right. Maybe she’d just find out more about him—get a little background. “Can I ask you something? You said you’d been married fourteen years. And that she died three years ago. I have to say, you don’t look old enough for that.”

He shrugged. “I’m thirty-nine. We were both twenty-two when we married. And don’t ask me why we married so young, because I really couldn’t tell you, except that she was very eager to marry. I loved her and at the time believed she was the one for me and me for her. I spent the next decade figuring out I was wrong, but not really doing anything to fix it. I think I stayed with her so long partly because I felt guilty.”

“Guilty? For what?”

“She wanted children but she had a very hard time conceiving. We spent tens of thousands of dollars on infertility treatments. She did manage to get pregnant three times, but miscarried early on each time. I was so sad and so sorry for her. But for me children weren’t the be-all, end-all of our relationship. She let her infertility sort of define her life. She couldn’t get past it, though she refused to even consider adoption. After a while, I have to admit, I kind of stopped trying to make things better. I think I gave up, in a way. On her, on us.”

“Did she know, was she into, uh, you know…the scene, as you call it?”

“D/s? Joanie? No. No way. She had this idea of whips and chains, of brutality and abuse, of pain for its sake, of a man overpowering a woman simply because he can.” He shook his head.

“Though to be fair, I never really tried to explain it. It was years before I was comfortable enough with myself, and my own understanding of erotic submission. By then we’d become sort of hardened into our respective roles. Sex was vanilla, infrequent and unsatisfying.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Vanilla. I like that. So what’s D/s? Chocolate? Strawberry?”

Cole grinned. “It can be whatever you want. It’s the intensity of experience that makes it so phenomenal. Lick the surface of the vanilla, and find layers of chocolate, of coffee, of caramel, of mango and mandarin orange. With enough trust and desire, there’s no limit to what you can discover.”

“That sounds kind of catchy. You ever think about writing advertising copy?” Elizabeth teased.

“You hiring?” he teased back.

They passed a bench and by mutual, silent accord they sat down side-by-side. Cole’s thigh touched hers. Drawn to him, she put her hand on it, feeling the hard muscle beneath the denim.

He put his hand over hers and looked into her eyes. She tried to hold his gaze, but somehow could not. She looked down instead at his hand.

She thought about his marriage, and how it had been on its way to failing. “I never married,”

she volunteered. “I’m not sure I’m marriage material. Sometimes I wonder if I even have the capacity to love.” She bit her tongue, furious with herself for admitting such an intimate, painful truth to a man she wanted to impress. She could have bit her tongue off. Instead she rushed on.

“Actually, I’m probably just too busy with my career. I don’t have time to connect.”

“You make the time,” Cole said. “That’s something I learned, but too late. I didn’t make the time. When things got too difficult, we both just turned away. Instead of doing something to repair the marriage, she had affairs and I threw myself into my work.”

He sighed and smiled at Elizabeth, but she could see the pain in his eyes. “Part of the problem was I was being dishonest with her. Not intentionally and not to hurt her, but because I didn’t have the courage to face or understand my own desires. I’ve learned so much since then, and I’ve promised myself to be true to my own nature.”

“Your nature...?”

“I’m what you’d call a Dom, which is short for Dominant. The yin to my yang is a submissive. A submissive is someone who craves the experience of yielding sensually or sexually to another person. She allows herself to be controlled, to be taken sexually to heights she might not achieve otherwise. It’s a very intense experience. Very powerful for both sides, when the connection is the right one.

“Submission requires absolute trust. To me it’s a sacred trust, one that must never be abused.

Sadly, there are assholes in the scene, just like everywhere else. Maybe even more so, because the whole BDSM thing provides a nice cover for bullies who need to hurt women—who are clueless about the romance of erotic suffering.”

“Erotic suffering? That sounds like a contradiction in terms.” Despite herself, Elizabeth’s nipples hardened and her mouth felt suddenly dry. She licked her lips, met his eye and looked quickly down.

“Not at all,” he answered, his hand still on hers. “Not in the right context. Pleasure and pain are subjective terms. They’re fluid. What you might not tolerate in one situation, can be highly erotic, even deeply pleasurable, in another.”

“I don’t understand,” she claimed, though on some level, a level deeper than words, she did.

They locked eyes again and this time she managed to hold his gaze, though she felt herself falling into those deep, dark eyes.

“I have to kiss you,” he murmured, echoing her own secret longing. Oblivious to passersby, she closed her eyes and leaned toward him, answering without words.

When he finally released her, Elizabeth fell back against the back of the bench, her heart pounding, her lips tingling, her body on fire. No one had ever kissed her like that. His lips, his tongue, the passion spilling and melting between them as he held her—he hadn’t simply kissed her—he had possessed her.

She tried to catch her breath, both frightened by her own strong reaction and deeply aroused.

What was happening to her? It was just a kiss.

But it wasn’t only the kiss. His words had ignited feelings deep and fiery inside her, something that had lain dormant and unacknowledged until now. Though she didn’t yet understand his talk of pleasure and pain intermingling, or the concept of erotic suffering and romantic submission, every fiber of her being felt alive with expectation and desire.

Cole stood and held out his hand. She took it and he pulled her up and into his arms. After a moment he released her. “Come back with me to my place.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her legs were weak and she leaned against him as they walked. He wrapped a strong, comforting arm around her. She relaxed against him, as if they had always walked together like this, as if she were right where she belonged, possibly for the first time in her life.

~*~

Gary pulled out the small silver flask from the desk drawer and unscrewed the top. The confrontation with Elizabeth had gone even better than he’d expected. It was perfect, their meeting at the office, with him behind his desk at a symbolic advantage. She’d been so easy to manipulate. For all her supposed savvy, she wasn’t too swift at thinking on her feet, at least not this time around.

He’d spent a mostly sleepless night, waiting for either her or the idiot who’d paid all that money to take home a zombie, to call and demand an explanation, or worse, for the police to show up with a warrant for his arrest.

What he’d done had been beyond risky—he knew that. And yet it had worked. The drugs did their job—making her compliant and docile, then conveniently wiping her mind clean by the next day. He had half a mind to send the online Mexican pharmacy from which he’d obtained the drugs a testimonial about its excellent side effects.

She was clearly confused by the night’s events—what little she could remember. Not only was it his word against hers, she wasn’t ever sure what hers
were
. He laughed aloud with bitter pleasure, recalling the dark red surge of color in her face as he calmly took her to task for subjecting him, her poor, beleaguered employee, to her fetishes and perversions. Oh, how good it had been to put the bitch in her place, reducing her to a stuttering, blushing mess.

She’d insisted he knew he was lying and she knew it too, but did she? He wondered just what had transpired with the guy who took her home. From the sound of things, she probably spent the night completely passed out. Not much fun to whip and fuck an unconscious slave girl.

Probably the guy would be calling the club, demanding his money back.

That was another delicious irony. Though she wasn’t technically his to sell, Gary had even made money on the deal. House of Usher paid the owners forty percent of their take on the auction, though it was done in the form of play money to keep it legal. Though he didn’t plan to return to the club, aware he would be none too well-received after what he’d pulled, the idea of taking cash, fake or otherwise, for the hoity-toity Elizabeth Martin, vastly appealed to him.

He took a long swig of the whiskey before screwing the lid closed and storing the flask again in the bottom drawer. It was a little after six. He’d spent the entire day at the office, waiting for others on his floor who came and went to clear out.

He was reasonably sure everyone was gone, but just to be sure, he called out, “Anyone left?

I’ve had it for today. You’ll set the alarm?” He stopped, listening for a response from behind any of the closed office doors, but all was silent.

His heart picked up its pace as he approached Elizabeth’s office. Reaching into his pants pocket, he removed his key ring and inserted the key in the door. His key, which all executives were given to enter the front doors of the agency during off-hours, also unlocked all the office doors, except for human resources, where employee files and payroll information were kept.

Even that door used to have the same key, until fanatical Helen came on board and insisted the lock be changed.

With a glance in either direction down the silent hall, he unlocked the door and went in. He wished he had taken the flask with him, as he could definitely use another belt, but he didn’t want to take the time to retrieve it. There was no knowing if some gung-ho employee might suddenly decide the best way to spend their Saturday night was at the office.

Gary turned on Elizabeth’s computer, drumming his fingers impatiently on the smooth, shiny surface of her rosewood desk while it booted up.

He smiled at how easy it had been to get Sheila Murphy, one of the company’s techies, to reset Elizabeth’s corporate password, which worked for both her computer and email account.

Sheila wasn’t unattractive but she was too thin for Gary’s taste, not to mention too aggressive. Gary preferred his women with more curves and less independence.

Nevertheless, somehow they’d ended up making out in a supply closet at the office Christmas party that past winter. He’d been drunk and she’d been eager. She’d made it clear she’d like to get to know him better after that, but he’d managed to come up with enough excuses so she’d stopped asking.

Until this morning.

Earlier in the week Gary had been nosing around the tech offices while formulating his plans to slander Elizabeth. He’d learned Sheila had accepted a new job in another state. Seeking her out, he’d struck up a conversation, turning the charm on full force. She’d reacted as he’d hoped, blushing and smiling. She told him she was coming in Saturday morning to tie up a few loose ends and when he suggested breakfast with him beforehand, she’d jumped at the chance.

When he’d explained how Elizabeth’s team planned to pull a fun prank on her and needed access to her password to do it, she’d been skeptical at first, spouting party line about security.