Serving the Billionaire (9 page)

To my horror, I started giggling.

He pulled away from me, eyebrows raised. “Is something funny?”

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, covering my mouth with one hand, trying to get myself under control. “It’s just—you’re being so
polite
.”

He folded his arms and fixed me with a stern look, but his twitching mouth gave me him away. “Aren’t I always polite?”

“Not when you’re putting vibrators in my underpants,” I said. “I wouldn’t really call that
polite
.”

“I thought it was considered good manners to make a lady happy,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I’m not a lady.”

His hands, still resting on my shoulders, flexed slightly, and he leaned in again and crushed his mouth against mine.

This time, I managed to stifle my giggles. I clung to him and focused on the sensation of his lips against mine; and soon I couldn’t think of anything but the delicate flicker of his tongue and the way the weight of his body pinned me against the elevator wall. His hands slid inside my unbuttoned coat and explored my body, my breasts, my hips. He pulled away from my mouth and kissed the sensitive skin behind my ear.

I moaned.

The elevator pinged, and the doors slid open.

I expected a hallway, but instead the elevator opened directly into his apartment. We stepped out into a small foyer. I looked around, curious.

“I’ll give you the tour later,” Carter said, accurately reading my expression. “Right now, I want you naked and between my sheets.”

“What about on top of them?” I asked. I didn’t have any idea where that came from. My mouth was just doing its own thing at that point; I had no control over what I was saying, and I just decided to give up and run with it.

His eyes darkened. “That works too.”

He led me down a hallway and into a large room with dark walls, a huge white bed, and a view over the Hudson to New Jersey. It was just as sumptuous as I’d imagined, but I didn’t have time for more than a quick glance before Carter had scooped me up and carried me over to the bed.

I wondered if I should squeal girlishly and protest. That seemed even more undignified than being carried, though, so I just held on to him and said nothing. He laid me down on the mattress and knelt beside me on the bed.

I was nervous.

No, scratch that: I was terrified.

It was one thing to be in the club with him, where I knew I could leave the room at any point and flee to Germaine’s office and be safe. But now I was in his territory, and I was there on his terms. And what did I even really know about him? He’d been nice to me, but niceness was easy enough to fake. We had undeniable sexual chemistry, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a sociopath. Plenty of people had chemistry with sociopaths. I’d watched something on television about how sociopaths were usually very charismatic. He probably wouldn’t murder me or anything, because it would be bad for his business. Well, assuming he got caught. Rich people probably had all sorts of ways to stay out of jail.

Sadie would kill me if I got axe-murdered.

All of those ridiculous thoughts ran through my head in a split second. And even still, there I was, lying on his bed, looking up at him, ready to take off my clothes and let him do anything to me that he wanted.

The thing was, if I didn’t have sex with Carter Sutton, I would never forgive myself.

That wasn’t entirely true. It wasn’t just the sex. It was more that if I didn’t let this happen, if I didn’t let events play out and fate run its course, I would always wonder
what if
. What if I’d gone home with him. What if I’d said yes.

I didn’t want to have any regrets.

So I looked up at him and smiled, and said, “What are you going to do with me now?”

“Everything,” he said, his voice rough.

I swallowed hard.
Everything
covered a lot of ground. I dug my fingers into the bedspread and tried to think of a witty response.

“Regan,” he said, face softening. He touched my cheek. “I want you to enjoy yourself. We won’t do anything that you don’t want to do.”

“I know,” I said, and I
did.
It was crazy, but I trusted him. For whatever reason, I trusted him implicitly. “It’s just, uh. I don’t really do things like this. You know. Ever.”

His mouth quirked. “I don’t either.”

“We’ll just have to be clueless and awkward together, then,” I said, and we looked at each other, smiling, laughter bright in his eyes. Then his smile faded, and he bent down to kiss me.

Our kiss in the elevator, for all its heat, had been tentative, exploratory. There was no hesitation in him now as he claimed my mouth with his. He moved on top of me, bearing me down into the mattress with the weight of his body, and I felt his erection against my hip, a hard, hot ridge.

God. Even just the press of his body against mine turned me on.

I was in infinite amounts of trouble.

His tongue slid against mine, urgent, claiming. I stopped trying to play an active role in the kiss and just lay there and let him take over. I felt like I was dissolving into shards of light. I let go of the sheets and instead slid my hands over his shoulders, feeling the play of muscle beneath warm skin. He was
strong
, and his muscles tensed and released beneath my touch.

He kissed down the side of my neck, his stubble scraping against my skin and sending shivers running along my back, and then he bit down and sucked, marking me. I clung to him, abandoning myself to the sensations running through my body. There was no room for thought or speech. I was electric, finally alive.

Then he pulled away from me and sat up. I frowned, worried that I’d done something wrong, or that he’d changed his mind, maybe. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d changed his mind.

Instead, he chuckled. “What a frown,” he said. “Regan, I’d like to be upfront with you. I have... particular preferences, when it comes to sex.”

My head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. It took me several long seconds to parse what he’d said. “You like being in charge,” I said. I knew that already. I didn’t know why he was acting like he had some sort of horrible secret.

His eyes darkened, his pupils dilating. “Good girl,” he said. My favorite words. I wanted to be good for him; I wanted to be
so
good, I wanted to do whatever
he
wanted, whatever he desired. “I want you to be mine tonight. I want you to do whatever I say.”

It sounded scary, but also incredible. He was holding a door open for me; I had to decide if I wanted to step through. I hesitated, the words caught in my mouth. I’d read the books. I knew how this worked. “Don’t I need a safeword?” I asked.

He laughed. “You read that book, didn’t you? You can just say ‘no.’ Will it make you feel better to have a safeword? You can use ‘sassafras.’” He traced his fingers along my jawline. “But I don’t think you’ll want to.”

“Will it hurt?” I asked.

“You sweet thing. No, it won’t hurt. I have no interest in hurting you. I just want you to obey me completely.”

I was going to come in my panties before he even touched me. “What do you want me to do?”

He exhaled, a long breath of air. “I’m going to leave the room. I need to get a few things. While I’m gone, I want you to take off your clothes and kneel on the bed on all fours.”

“What things?” I asked.

“You’ll have to wait and find out,” he said. He gave me a kiss, deep and heated, and then stood up and walked out of the room with a purposeful stride.

Alone, I climbed off the bed and stripped off my clothes: my blouse, my skirt, my tights, my bra, and the lacy thong Carter had given me, with the vibrator still tucked inside. I let them all fall to the floor, wrinkles be damned, and knelt on the mattress, facing the headboard and balancing on my hands and knees. Naked, the air in the room was slightly too cold, just enough to make my skin prickle. And more than that, I was
exposed
. Carter could come in at any moment, and I was ass-up on the bed, helpless, and he would be able to see how wet and pink I was, how eager for him.

It should have been humiliating, but instead, it just made me that much more desperate for his touch.

I waited. I lost track of time, my mind occupied with fantasies of what he would do, how he would touch me, whether he would make me beg. I
wanted
to beg. I wanted to be completely debased. I wanted him to
own
me.

I didn’t know where these thoughts were coming from. A month ago, this kind of relationship was something I’d read about in a few smutty novels—not something that people actually did. But here I was anyway, stripped bare in a billionaire’s bedroom, about to let him do things to my body that most people only saw in expensive porn.

I heard the door open, and turned my head to see Carter coming into the room, his hands full of fabric. I didn’t asked him what it was. I could guess.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and
looked
at me. His gaze was like a physical touch, running over my exposed body, making my nipples harden and my pussy throb with renewed heat. Anticipation formed a sweet knot in my belly, the kind of feeling that I imagined people usually referred to as “butterflies.” I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my entire life.

He came around the side of the bed and sat on the mattress beside me, resting the cloth in his lap. “You’re ready for me, aren’t you?”

I swallowed. I didn’t see any reason to deny it. “Yes,” I said, and then, testing how it would sound, “Please.”

He ran one hand down my back and over the curve of my ass. “I want you to hold onto the headboard. Don’t let go until I tell you that you can.”

“What happens if I let go?” I asked. Would he punish me?

“I’ll stop,” he said. “And you’ll go home, and we’ll never do this again.”

I swallowed. That wasn’t the sort of punishment I’d been imagining. I was thinking of some spanking, maybe. What he said sounded worse. “I won’t let go,” I said.

“I know you won’t,” he said. “You’re a good girl, and you want to make me happy.”

He was right, and I didn’t understand how he knew everything I was feeling. I wanted him to be happy with me. I reached my arms out and took hold of the slatted headboard, wrapping my fingers around two of the wooden bars. They were smooth and rounded, some sort of wood that I didn’t recognize. Mahogany, maybe. Or something fancier than that, some kind of rare rain forest wood that I’d never heard of.

Mental babbling was always a sign that I was nervous. I drew in a deep breath and tried to calm down. But I had been desperately turned on for about four hours straight, and it was hard to feel calm when he was sitting there looking at my naked body.

I flexed my fingers around the slats and waited.

“Good,” Carter said. He took the fabric from his lap and showed it to me. It was a long scarf, fringed at the ends, and made of a heathered charcoal material that looked like cashmere. “Close your eyes,” he said.

I obeyed, and felt the brush of soft cloth against my face, and then Carter’s fingers moving against my hair as he tied the scarf at the back of my head. Even with my eyes closed, the world suddenly became much darker. I opened my eyes again. My eyelashes brushed against the fabric, but I saw only darkness. The scarf was thick enough to cut out all light.

Unable to see anything, and unwilling to let go of the headboard, I waited.

I could feel my pulse throbbing in my clit, and in the thick artery deep in my belly.

My pussy flexed involuntarily. Wetness trickled down my thighs.

“I can smell how much you want me,” Carter said, his voice coming from somewhere above my left hip.

His words made my scalp prickle with a sudden flush of arousal. The air in the room didn’t feel cold anymore. I was overheated and sweating slightly. I arched my back, lifting my ass higher, hoping he would take it as the invitation I meant it to be. If he didn’t touch me soon, I was going to lose my mind.

And then he did, finally, trailing his fingers lightly down my ribs, making me jump. It wasn’t where I wanted him most, where I
really
wanted to feel his fingers, but it was better than nothing. It was a start.

His fingers left my ribs, and landed again on my hip. I jumped again. With no way to see what he was doing, every touch took me by surprise. He drew a burning line around the curve of my hipbone, down across my abdomen, down, almost there, and then he switched directions and moved back up my stomach. I could have cried with frustration.

His hand slid up the center of my body and came to rest just below my right breast. My nipple hardened with anticipation. He traced his fingers, so gently, up the underside of my breast, skirting around the nipple, and then switched to my other breast, drawing light circles with his fingernails, so close to where I wanted him to touch me but not quite there.

He was
teasing
me, I realized. It was a surprise for only a moment. I had thought he would get right down to business, but of course he wasn’t going to, not with the scarf, the elaborate setup—it was all about making me lose control. And I was going to. I could already tell. I was going to sob and beg and break for him, shatter into a million pieces and hope he could put me back together again.

I trusted that he would. It was the only reason I was still there.

“That’s right,” he said. I didn’t know what I had done that he was approving of. His hands left my body, and I felt the mattress shift, and the sound of cloth rustling. Was he—oh, God, he was going through my discarded clothes.

“Are you going to use the vibrator again?” I asked. My voice was shaky and barely recognizable.

“Hmm, not yet,” he said. “Maybe later, after your second orgasm, when you tell me that you can’t possibly come again.”

Second orgasm?
After
? He’d already made me come once that evening, and I couldn’t imagine that I had another two in me. I shook my head, mutely denying it, and he chuckled, that warm sound I was becoming so fond of.

“Your body belongs to me, now,” he said. “Don’t forget that. I’ll make it do whatever I want it to.” As he spoke, he drew his hand down my side, a firm pressure this time instead of the teasing glide he’d used before. I leaned into him like a cat.