On Your Knees

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

On Your Knees

ISBN 9781419912450

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

On Your Knees Copyright © 2007 Brynn Paulin

Edited by Helen Woodall.

Cover art by Syneca.

Electronic book Publication September 2007

This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

ON YOUR KNEES

Brynn Paulin

Dedication

To all the women who have to be in control but don’t want to be.

Author Note

This book portrays some aspects of Domination/submission and BDSM but is not intended as a true-to-life account of this lifestyle.

Trademark Acknowledgement

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: 7-11: 7-Eleven, Inc.

Barbie: Mattel, Inc.

Hotel California: composed of Mike Dimoulas, Roger Lapointe, and Andre Lapointe

Lone Ranger, The: Classic Media, Inc.

Princess Bride
: Act III Communications, Screenplay and book by William Goldman
Three of Wands

When I chose the Three of Wands for
On Your Knees
I had a plethora of paths to explore. The focus of this card is on new and beneficial partnerships, successful conclusions, fantasies coming to fruition, exploration, having faith and even finding peace with the past. The shadow aspects of the card include wasted efforts and being overwhelmed in delays. Goals are difficult to reach because of failure to work cooperatively with others.

Whew! I could have focused on just one of these but all applied to my heroine, Jessica, who has struggled with her past and as a result, has become a woman obsessed with being in control and proving herself. She feels she must do everything herself.

She’s swamped in the shadow side of the Three of Wands. Jessica needs the partnership foretold by this card. She needs to explore her fantasies and discover there’s more to life than work. Most of all she needs to have faith and trust in someone outside herself. The pressure she puts on herself is eating her alive.

Ryan, the story’s hero, recognizes this. In disguise as a dungeon master at Pleasure Palace, he offers Jessica a new partnership in which he will be her Dom and she his submissive. For a long time, Jessica has had fantasies about submitting to a man who would take the power she’s felt forced to wield. This seems the perfect opportunity to explore her lurid dreams and exorcise a few demons. At Ryan’s hands, Jessica will finally find a happily ever after she’s never imagined.

On Your Knees portrays some aspects of Domination/submission and BDSM but is not intended as a true-to-life account of this lifestyle.

Brynn Paulin

Chapter One

Please Cum…

Crass. Jessica Rush wrinkled her nose as she tossed the invitation onto the corner of her desk. A sex toy demonstration.

“No,” she told her friend Keera.

“Please,” Keera pleaded. “It’ll be fun. The whole place is set up for parties like this.

I went to one last month. Very erotic. You’ll love it.” Erotic. Jess almost snorted as she pulled the latest construction schedule toward her. She’d find it very erotic if her crew could bring in the mall project on time. Until then she didn’t have time for anything, not even a diversion like the party Keera had been invited to.

Keera picked up the invitation and dropped it in the middle of the paperwork.

“Come on. You need to think about something besides work.” That was easy for her to say. Her job overseeing the administrative personnel wasn’t, by her own admission, as stressful as Jess’ as Project Manager for Cress Construction. Plenty of people thought Jess couldn’t do the job and that she shouldn’t have been given the assignment. She was out to prove every one of them wrong, which meant no time for play.

She glanced down at the square of light blue cardboard in the middle of her work.

She flipped it over. “
Pleasure Palace, Giving Single Women What They Want Most
. Hmph.

It’s at Pleasure Palace?” she asked incredulously. She’d heard of that place—and stayed far from it. A sex resort, that’s what it was.

“Some of the guys who will be there are hot and available. You could hook up.

Blow off some steam.”

6

On Your Knees

“Right. You know what I want most? Someone to clean my house.” Keera sighed. “When did you get so boring?”

“Look, let’s just go to dinner so I can get home in time to finish my budget updates and get to bed early so I can get here early tomorrow. I’m still recovering from the last party you dragged me to.”

“The psychic bridal shower? It was fun.”

“Watching the drunk bride-to-be model lingerie? Or that tarot card reader who was a total fraud. I know more about readings than she did.” The woman’s mystic-tinged voice filled her mind along with the ethereal image of the Three of Wands card. The reader had said it signified Jessica’s future. Alliance, exploration and happily ever after, the woman had promised. Past hurts would be healed, she’d learn to trust and her dreams would come to pass.

Right. So far she didn’t see a sign of any of that happening and the likelihood of forgetting what screwups her parents had been was nil. Being forced to be the only grownup in the family had a way of shaping one’s life and future.

And her dreams?

More like nightmares lately. Good God, she didn’t want some of them to occur.

That woman at the party had been a charlatan at best.

“Let’s just go to a movie or something.”

Keera rolled her eyes and snatched away the invitation. “Nope. I’m going.

Seriously, I think it’s a much better way to spend Thursday night than that.” She swept a hand toward Jess’ desk. “You’ve got five minutes to change your mind, then I’m on my way. The party starts at six.”

“Party?”

“Hi Ryan, bye Ryan,” Keera chirped as she headed out the door.

7

Brynn Paulin

Jess almost groaned as Ryan Cress, second son of the Cress Construction family, strolled into her office. Not only did his family own the company but he was her boss and frequently in the middle of her business. And her dreams.

Heat flooded up her back as she remembered last night’s erotic dream. She desperately tried to focus on him in a strictly work-sense instead.
Business. Keep your
thoughts on business.

At least once a day, he stopped by to check her progress—well, actually the progress on the mall. Still it
felt
like he was checking on her. She would have liked it better if he were checking
out
her. She supposed it was his right. This was his family’s company. Rights aside though, she needed space and she didn’t need a micro-manager breathing over her shoulder.

She wasn’t being fair. Ryan didn’t micro-manage. It was just her perception brought on by her need to constantly prove herself.

Still, she didn’t doubt he was here to check up on her. While he folded his long frame into the chair across from her, she mentally readied herself to give a quick update of the project. A lock of his wavy black hair drooped over his forehead while he studied her.

She stifled an appreciative sigh. She’d never seen any man wear business clothes as well and as comfortably as Ryan wore his dark razor creased slacks and starched white shirt. They hugged his body as if they’d been specifically made for his lean figure—and they probably had. He was perfection walking.

“What party?” he asked again.

She shrugged dismissively. “A thing Keera’s going to.”

“You’re not going?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got things to do.” His gray eyes narrowed at her. “Work?”

“Well—”

8

On Your Knees

“Jessica.”

A shiver snaked down her spine at his tone. No one except Ryan called her Jessica.

To everyone else she was plain old Jess, one of the guys.

He leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. “You’re working yourself to death. As far as our client is concerned you’re ahead of schedule. Yet you insist on acting as if you’re behind—”

“I am.”

“You don’t have to prove yourself.” He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. He knew her too well and that bugged her. “Anyone who had doubts is long convinced that you’re the right person for the job.”

She bit back a protest. “Thank you.”

“Do yourself a favor,” he suggested. “Go do something fun tonight.”

“I have too much to do.”

He stood and leaned on her desk, bending toward her. His warm, minty breath brushed her skin. “Take the night off. If you don’t, I’ll reassign you. I will not have you killing yourself.”

“You wouldn’t!” Fighting the image of being reassigned to a position beneath his thrusting body, she glared at him. Her thoughts had gone berserk.

“Try me.”

“You can’t. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

He simply watched her, letting her come to her own conclusions. The authority in his gaze set her back in her chair. “Go with Keera. Where is she going tonight?”

“Some party at Pleasure Palace.”

Ryan tried to breathe as he realized where he’d ordered Jessica to go. His older brother Theo owned Pleasure Palace and he and Ryan had spent plenty of time there with their submissives. It wasn’t exactly the place where he’d expect to find Jessica, as 9

Brynn Paulin

much as he wanted to. He’d stopped fucking other women because every time he did, he saw her face. The disappointment and guilt was too much after a while. Not a good mix for a Dom.

Abstaining until he cleared himself of the obsession seemed the smart thing to do.

Until now, he hadn’t found the means for striking the fixation from his mind.

He watched Jessica turn away from him to grab her purse from her bottom desk drawer and imagined her on her knees, presenting her ass to him. His cock sprang to attention. He swore under his breath. What the hell was wrong with him? Learning to control his reactions was one of the first things he’d learned as a Dom, still every time he was in the same room with her, he got hard.

If Jessica didn’t submit to him soon, he might go nuts.

Of course, she didn’t seem to notice
any
man at the office. She was so driven. Her need to control everything and to prove herself colored everything she did from her prim power suits and upswept brown hair to her hard-as-nails attitude. He watched her drive herself into the ground until the wee hours of every night. She left after everyone else, taking home a briefcase full of paperwork which she lugged back into work the next morning. Dark crescents lived beneath her tired green eyes. She never cut herself a break.