The Affair: Week 1 (3 page)

Emma couldn’t take this anymore. She knew about S and M. Almost everybody did in this day and age. It’d become almost a cliché in modern society. References to it usually earned a smirk or eye roll from Emma.

But sitting here, experiencing the sounds of a woman willingly being flogged with the intent of sexual arousal, hearing the taut crack of leather against bare skin and Astrid’s moans, feeling the inexplicable tension and electricity in the air . . .

. . . none of it felt
remotely
funny.

What was worse and far more humiliating? A thick, warm sensation had settled in her sex. What was wrong with her? Colin and she had shared a satisfactory sex life for the past two years, but intimacy with Colin had never inspired this intense, undeniable,
uncomfortable
arousal.

It was humiliating, what he was doing to her. Wasn’t it? Given Astrid’s obvious excitement, it was a little hard to label it.

She began to ease the door open, telling herself that she needed to look if she wanted to escape. She paused when the lashing sounds ceased as well.

“Oh God, Vanni
.
C’est si bon
,” Astrid said shakily. Emma swallowed thickly. He was touching her. Pleasuring her, somehow. It certainly sounded that way.

“I told you to stay quiet,” he said, his patient tone in these circumstances confusing Emma.

Again, the crisp smack. The sound was starting to tear at her, leaving a resulting throb in her flesh. It was unbearable. At all costs, she needed to get out of here. Holding her breath and sending up a prayer, she eased open the cupboard door a tiny fraction of an inch. Cool air brushed against her hot face.

She paused, frozen for a moment in horror. She could
see
them. Or a slice of them, anyway. Not really
them
. The woman. She was
right there
, maybe fifteen feet away. Emma moved her head, holding her breath, trying to get a more complete picture through the cracked armoire door. Astrid was naked and on her hands and knees, kneeling and bound with black rope to a sort of T-bar. The bar rose from a metal rack that sat on the carpet. Astrid’s hair was long and dark—nearly black, lustrous and curled in loose waves. It her position, it hung over her face. Her naked body was voluptuous, the sun-kissed, golden skin gleaming and flawless in the soft lamplight. She clearly sunbathed topless. Her bottom was pale next to her gilded skin, but there was no evidence of a tan line around her breasts. A dozen or so black leather tails landed on a curved buttock, making Emma jump. Astrid cried out sharply. It all looked so alien . . . so
deliberate
. Astrid’s almost palpable arousal confused Emma even further.

Curiosity nudged her. She craned to see the man holding the flogger. He must have been kneeling behind the bound woman, but the door to the bedroom suite blocked her view of him. The flogger fell again, lashing voluptuous flesh. This time, Emma made out the masculine hand and forearm holding the leather handle so surely. The leather tails landed again, the sharp sound twining with Astrid’s loud moan. Emma didn’t think it was a harsh lashing, although Astrid’s bottom was taking on a rosy hue.

Vanni paused, resting the hand that held the flogger on the top of a buttock. Emma saw his other hand moving, rubbing the other cheek, as if soothing the sting. She bit her lip hard. The vision had sent a sharp spike of forbidden arousal through her, shocking her. The large, masculine hand moved, caressing hips and ribs. She saw Astrid visibly tremble in pleasure beneath his touch. His hand caressed the pinkened buttocks again and then lowered between Astrid’s legs. Astrid made a muffled sound in her throat. She opened her mouth.

“Control yourself,” he warned quietly. “You know it pleases me more than your hysterics.”

Astrid bit off a moan. Burning to know what Astrid was experiencing in these bizarre circumstances, Emma moved her view in the small opening of the door. Astrid had turned her head, causing her hair to spill from her face. Emma had never seen a more exquisite woman aside from her sister, Amanda. But it wasn’t just her physical beauty that struck Emma. Her face radiated pure ecstasy. What in the world was Vanni doing to her to evoke that much pleasure? Her eyes were clamped shut. Her dark pink lips opened as if in slow motion. She began to keen, the piercing sound startling Emma. Her hips began to jerk back and forth in a frantic rhythm, her generous breasts bouncing at the motion.

“Fuck me, Vanni. Fuck me with your beautiful cock.”

The flogger fell, harder this time. It struck again and again. Emma strangled a whimper. Astrid forced herself into immobility, but the radiant glow on her face only seemed to grow stronger.

The flogger continued to fall, as if in retaliation for Astrid’s lack of control.

Emma couldn’t take this anymore. She drew her arm across her midsection and replaced one hand with the other, relieving the tension in the aching muscles. She pulled the door shut and buried her hot cheeks against her upper arm, praying for it to be over, when she was free from this wretched moment . . . this excruciating tension. Her sex had grown achy and hot. She longed to touch herself to alleviate the pressure, but the knowledge that she was aroused in these circumstances was horrifying enough without adding to her transgressions. It wasn’t just shameful arousal that she experienced, however, but a wild desire to flee, to escape this untenable situation.

She’d never felt so helpless in her life.

The sound of the flogger ceased every once in a while, and Astrid’s wild moans of arousal grew louder and more desperate, piercing Emma’s unarmored consciousness relentlessly. She no longer needed to see them to be inflicted by their actions. He was touching her during those moments, building her pleasure.

She hated them. She hated
him
for forcing her to endure this, although she knew in some distant part of her brain that it was no one’s fault but her own.

Worst of all, she wanted to see more. She longed to see
him.

“Please, please . . . fuck me,” Astrid pleaded wildly.

Emma lifted her head cautiously when the lashing ceased, rugged cotton fabric brushing her cheek, afraid to breathe in the taut silence that followed. She heard a sound like a piece of metal being moved . . . a clamp released.

“Oh
yes
. Yes,” Astrid moaned wildly a moment later.

“This isn’t for you,” he growled. He sounded annoyed. Intimidating, but also . . .
resigned
?

Why
?

Emma felt like she’d burst from boiling emotion she couldn’t quite name. Her mouth had gone dry. Her throat hurt, perhaps from holding in a silent scream of frustration and excitement for so long now.

Astrid moaned loudly, but it was his rough, more restrained groan that made her head jerk up like someone had called out to her—Emma—specifically. The garments rustled at her abrupt motion. There was a slight jingle as metal hangers shifted on the rack, but Emma was too anxious—too focused— to be alarmed.

What was happening? What was he doing? It was growing so hot in the cupboard. Her throat felt parched and achy.

A strange sound began to enter her ears . . . a sound like . . .
what
? Moving, gliding metal? She heard Astrid’s familiar moans, louder now. She immediately recognized the other sound: skin slapping against skin in a taut, primitive rhythm. Heat rushed through her, the product of the strange marriage of humiliation and arousal she experienced. She didn’t give herself permission to move. Suddenly the door was cracked again and she was peering through the opening.

She stared for several seconds, bewildered as to what she was seeing. Astrid’s bound, naked body jerked back and forth on the metal track in a hard, pistonlike rhythm, the action completely out of her control. The lewd slapping sound Emma had recognized rung in the air, impossible to ignore . . .

. . . the sound of hard, ruthless fucking.

When understanding finally dawned, Emma bit her lip until she felt pain.

The deliberateness of what was happening, the precision, the sheer lewdness was shocking. Astrid still was on the metal rack in a position that was almost on all fours. Her knees perched on a padded bench, her wrists restrained to an elevated T-handled, padded bar. His large, open hands gripped her hips. His skin was darker than hers—a golden brown. She could see his thick, long thumb sinking into the pinkened flesh of a buttock. He flung her back and forth onto his cock with fluid, mechanical ease.

Emma recalled what he’d said about the glider. The mechanism must have been locked into immobility while he’d flogged her, but he’d unfastened it. The device had been designed for this, for the exclusive purpose of allowing him total control of a woman’s body while he fucked her. Astrid would have glided back and forth on the frictionless track with a twitch of his hand. Instead, Vanni hammered her onto his cock. He switched his grip, grasping two metal handles attached to the kneeling bench. Astrid rocketed back and forth against him, screaming in uninhibited, frantic pleasure.

Time seemed to collapse for Emma, and yet the moment went on forever. She still couldn’t really see him totally with the bedroom door blocking him, despite her straining, curious gaze. As their excitement grew and time wore on, however, he moved forward slightly. Her breath burned in her lungs as she soaked in the partial image of him. She glimpsed the front of trim, thrusting hips and a ridged, taut abdomen. She saw his muscular forearms and flashes of a large, glistening, driving cock. She couldn’t even see his face, and yet . . .

He was so beautiful.

The thought seemed to come from somewhere else. Emma herself was too disturbed and confused to have thought it. She was too rapt to judge her admiration of a man who made love with such cold, methodical precision.

How can you possibly call it cold when not only Astrid, but you are boiling hot?

She moved closer, spellbound, her nose touching the hard edge of the wood door. Cool air brushed against her scalding face. He wore a condom that glistened either from lubrication or Astrid’s juices. The latter, most likely, given Astrid’s frenzy of sexual excitement. He’d removed his shirt, but hadn’t even fully removed his black pants, she realized. She could see just the front of his fabric-covered thighs. Daringly—hungrily—Emma opened the door slightly wider, then immediately eased it back, panicked when Astrid spoke.

“Please . . . please . . . may I come?” she pleaded shakily, air puffing out of her when Vanni slammed her onto his cock without interruption.

“Do whatever you want,” he grated out, and again Emma sensed his razor-edged tone contrasted with a weary resignation. She almost heard what he didn’t say. What difference does it make to me what you do?

What difference does anything make?

He strained forward slightly and Emma caught a glimpse of his flexing, powerful biceps. What was that on the one farthest away from her? A tattoo . . . a simple one, some kind of Japanese or Chinese symbols?

Astrid began to wail in climax, thrashing her head. He increased the pumping action to a wicked pace. Only a very strong man could have done it. His hands fisted the metal handles, biceps bulging, cock pounding like a well-oiled piston.

He fucked himself, masturbated using a woman’s flesh. But wasn’t Astrid doing the same, selfishly pleasuring herself using his? It was so wrong, so beyond Emma’s experience, so shocking . . . so exciting.

Emma’s chaotic thoughts were cut off when he suddenly flung his head forward and growled. It was the most thrilling sound she’d every heard. His hair tossed forward as well, blocking his face. It was brown with sun streaks of gold, beautiful and wild. It probably would hang several inches past his chin when he held his head upright. He grunted, his arm muscles flexing hard and huge, his body going rigid. Astrid’s shrieks and cries dissolved into the roar in Emma’s ears. A great shudder went through his powerful body.

He didn’t move, breathe, or utter another sound while he came.

Neither did Emma as she stared openmouthed at this man—Vanni—locking down the detonation in his flesh.

* * *

Her panic and confusion evaporated. Her sex continued to ache dully. Emma switched hands again, alleviating the pain from holding the door closed, and slumped back in the dark cupboard. She should have still been wild with anxiety in the ensuing moments, but something inside her had altered upon seeing that incomplete, disturbing, and yet highly compelling image of him.

She lost track of time and the bizarre reality of her situation. A numbness settled on her.

Something had happened to her in that armoire, and she didn’t know what it was.

She still listened to them. How could she not, as close as they were and knowing their movements prevented or allowed her escape?

After an immeasurable period of time, their more distant, sporadic murmuring quieted. The minutes dragged by without Emma hearing a sound. She finally dared to open the cupboard a half an inch and peer out cautiously. Not only was the bedroom dark, every light in the office had been extinguished. The only exception was the monitor on the desk. It cast a dim, bluish, ghostlike luminescence on the shadowed room. All was quiet.

Now. Go.

Just when she’d galvanized herself into action, she saw a tall shadow suddenly appear in the bedroom entrance—there and then gone. She jerked slightly, her breath hissing into her lungs at the sudden shock of seeing him. She’d rustled the garments in her surprise. Her limbs tingled when she heard the subtle metallic sound of the hangers moving on the rack above her. His footsteps slowed just feet from the armoire.

Oh my God, he heard me.

She waited, horror settling on her like a mist, tingling and burning her skin, but she didn’t move. She didn’t breathe.

A second or two later, she heard the muted sound of the lock being released on the door to the suite, and the knob turning.

No
.
He didn’t hear me.

It’d been her oversensitive imagination.

The door closing behind him sounded hushed and mysterious, like a lover’s secret whispered in the darkness.

* * *

His insomnia was growing worse. It didn’t matter how much he threw himself into his work, or fiddled around in his workshop, or exercised, he couldn’t quiet his brain anymore. Sex used to help him rest, too. But the sickly residue that seemed to be permeating his life was now ruining even that primal, fundamental aspect of his existence. Oh, he still felt the physical pleasure, but it was like he was enacting a parody of the sexual act these days while part of him seemed to watch his uninspired performance, disgusted and amused by his lameness.

Cynical and bored . . . tired, and not yet thirty-one years old.

He’d had high hopes that like his father, full depression wouldn’t settle in until his forties. But in all fairness, his father hadn’t known Cristina when he was eight years old like he had. That was when she’d entered their life like a poison. By most accounts, he was the champion survivor of the Montand family in the post-Cristina apocalyptic world.

Not that there was much victory in that.

He walked silently through the living room and passed the bar, recalling he’d left the brandy decanter in the dining room earlier. A moment later he shut out the lights and stood before the floor-to-ceiling windows with brandy snifter in hand, gazing at the wide body of water that he couldn’t really see because of cloaking night.

The darkness pressed on him. Called to him.

A strange prescience distracted him. The bare skin of his torso tingled and roughened. In the reflection of the windowpane he saw movement. He went utterly still.

His morbid thoughts vanished as he watched the girl ascend the stairs in the distance. What was she doing? Where had she
been
? He’d specifically asked that the nursing staff remain on Cristina’s level, he thought irritably.

Her figure was so light, her feet were so quick, her tread so silent he might have been catching a glimpse of a fey creature making an escape. He watched her fly up the stairs, her red fairy pack flung over her shoulder. Curiosity and amusement replaced his brief flash of anger. Her back and shoulders were held very stiff and erect, as if to say that although she was fleeing, she was doing so proudly. Defiantly? Silently thumbing her nose at the mortal world?

His stiff mouth softened and flickered at his uncharacteristic fanciful thought.

She wasn’t entirely fairylike. No, he’d recognized her just now from the back—that erect carriage, that enticing, graceful curve that led from a narrow waist to round hips. He hadn’t noticed her today because he’d been overseeing some new equipment installation at his plant in Deerfield, but he’d seen her yesterday on Cristina’s monitor. Just in passing . . . brief glimpses before she’d cheekily opened those curtains.

Emma Shore.

He’d asked Mrs. Shaw for the offender’s name yesterday and recalled it now.

He’d thought her unconventionally pretty before she’d irritated him by yanking open those curtains. Interesting looking. Her golden-blond hair was fairly short and reminded him of the style flappers used to wear, boyish and highlighting the shape of her skull. It suggested a nonconformist spirit—or at least a female who wanted others to
think
she was different, anyway. It touched her collar in the back while the soft-looking waves in the front ideally framed a delicate, piquant face. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes on the monitor, but he’d noticed they looked large and dark next to her pale skin and hair. She had a tilt to her chin and a bright smile that went well together. Most people couldn’t pull off brash sweetness, but she did. Somehow. Or at least that had been his quick impression.

He’d certainly thought that her face looked far too young and fresh to go with the lush, ripe firmness of her ass. Her figure was light and supple, the gracefulness of her movement capturing his attention.

Not that he’d been staring. She was just difficult not to notice on the screen, that’s all. Any straight man would have looked twice. Any straight man with good taste would have looked more than that.

He’d follow her now and demand an explanation for her intrusion into his home.

He remained unmoving, however. She’d annoyed him, but her appearance had lightened him somehow as well, freshened him like a lungful of sea air after a night of debauchery.

He stared out at the black lake, lost in thoughts that, for once lately, weren’t bitter and morose.