The Bonk Squad (30 page)

Meg wrinkled her nose. “It was a
stupid big thing. I’ve often wondered if there was room for a
shower box and a much smaller basin.”

“
A complete second
bathroom?”

“
Make good sense, wouldn’t
it?”

He sipped his tea and nodded. “I’ll
check it out. Cost a bit though. You’re insured?”

“
For damage by marauding
elephants? Yes, I suppose so. I’d better phone them.”

“
Poor old Liz,” he
muttered.

“
Poor old Vi,” Meg
countered. And then couldn’t resist asking “How about that
corset-thingy, then? No wonder she always looks so
trim.”

Ian’s mouth twisted at the memory. “I
suppose Mandy’ll phone if Liz is hurt. She looked all right to me.
Annoyed, more than anything. She didn’t fall far.”

“
But you fell on top of
her?”

“
Managed mostly not to, I
think.” He sipped his tea again, buried deep in thought.

“
I’ll get some leaflets,”
Meg said to break the lengthening silence. “Shower boxes, basins
and so on. The toilet didn’t get hit, did it?”

Ian set his mug on the
kitchen bench and went to check. Meg trailed after him, carrying
her coffee with care.
Not that a few more
spots outside the powder room are going to make the carpet any
wetter than it already is.

“
I’ll see if I can get one
of those machines you hire,” she said to Ian’s long back. “The ones
that suck up spills.”

“
It’s a bit more than a
spill, Meg. Ask your insurers to get the proper carpet salvage
people onto the job.”

He bent and inspected the toilet for
damage. “No, it didn’t get hit.”

“
God, it
is
a mess,” she said,
padding across the slippery floor and poking at the torn wallboard
where the brackets had been wrenched away.

“
I’ll re-line that
wall.”

“
The whole
thing?”

“
Need to rip all the old
stuff off anyway, to get at the pipes.”

She nodded slowly, imagining the room
re-arranged.

“
I can’t get onto it until
Boxing Day, Meg. We’re always frantic at work pre-Christmas. But
then we close down for two weeks. It gives the staff a decent
break.”

“
I bet you miss out on
business?”

“
Tough. They can
wait.”

Samantha reached out and
gripped his silk tie—monogrammed with his entwined initials—and led
him to the four-poster in the center of the bedroom in the discreet
hotel. The city noises barely intruded through the double glazing.
And the walls and doors were thick.

“
Trousers off,” she
demanded. “If that’s your idea of customer service, you deserve to
be punished.

Alex removed his suit
jacket, hung it with care over a chair-back, and turned to face her
again. His face showed no emotion at all, but she knew how excited
he’d soon be.

“
Trousers
off
,” she repeated.
“Obey me. Hurry up. Leave the shirt for now.”

He unlaced his polished
shoes and placed them beside his glossy Gucci briefcase. Peeled his
fine Merino wool socks down and tucked them inside the shoes. Then
reached to unbuckle his black leather belt.

Samantha waited. The
obedience of such a powerful man was a real turn-on. She moved to
the head of the bed, walking slowly because of the dauntingly high
heels on her thigh-high boots. She took one of the pillows in her
long-nailed fingers and positioned it halfway down the bed, then
twirled her shiny riding crop, making it whistle through the
scented air. “This will sting. But remember, you deserve the
pain.”

She slapped it against the
palm of her hand, again and again.

Alex slipped his belt
buckle free. His eyes fastened on the whip, but his lips remained
pressed together in an unreadable expression. Slowly he drew his
zipper down.

“
Faster!” she snapped. The
dark pin striped fabric dropped to reveal white cotton briefs, and
long well-muscled legs dusted with dark hair.

“
Leave them on the floor,”
she demanded, knowing that mistreating his expensive tailoring
would cause him more grief than the little spanking she was about
to administer.

He stepped out of his
trousers.

“
And those,” she
insisted—prodding the front of his briefs with the leather tag on
the end of her slender weapon.

His shirt tails concealed
his groin as he bent to remove the snowy underpants. And then he
straightened.

So. Resisting her
authority. Not yet aroused, but very thick and dangerously dark.
She slipped the whip under his cock, lifted, and released it with a
sniff of disdain.

“
Perhaps I’ll have the
shirt off after all,” she sighed. “Leave the tie.”

She watched his manicured
hands loosen the Windsor knot of the monogrammed silk, and then
move from button to button until he shrugged the shirt
away.

Under his conservative
clothes he hid a tough athlete’s body. Samantha knew she’d have to
work quite hard to hurt him adequately.

“
Turn.”

He raised his chin and
obeyed. But not before she noticed the definite stirring of his
dark flesh.

“
On the bed, face down.
Hips up over the pillow.”

She waited until he
positioned himself with his delicious bottom raised for its
punishment. Then she ran the leather tag of the whip from his neck
to the base of his spine.

Alex flinched. And parted
his legs.

She set the smart little
wand on his neck once more and dallied down his back...down to the
cleft of his firm buttocks...until it rested on the plump exposed
pouch that held his testicles. He was utterly still. Utterly at her
mercy.

She lifted the whip and
brought it down with a sharp little snap on his left buttock. He
gave no sign he’d felt it. She struck again, harder, several times
in succession. Again no reaction.

“
Beg for mercy,” she
whispered, raising her arm and putting more force behind the blow.
Although she now saw a hot pink stain, Alex remained
silent.

“
Brave boy,” she
whispered, trailing a finger over the little patch. His skin
smelled of expensive soap. She had no trouble picturing him in the
shower, fragrant suds sliding down his superb body in the sluicing
water.

She hit quite hard again,
right over the last blow. Surely that must be stinging him now? She
touched the mark she’d made, smoothing her hand along his warm
flesh, and enjoying the scent of him again.

“
And now the other side,”
she said, strolling around the bed, making him wait. She stood for
some seconds admiring his spectacular build. The she raised the
whip. It whistled down on his right cheek this time, making a mark
to match the other. Still he uttered no complaint apart from a soft
grunt.

She hit again, really
hard. Saw his muscles tighten, and knew his teeth must be clenched
to deny her the satisfaction of sound.

“
Kneel,” she hissed. “Legs
apart. Pillow your head on your hands.

Now he was truly exposed.
And as long as a stallion. Samantha ran the tip of the whip down
the length of his spine, batting him gently all the way down to his
balls.

“
I could hit you right
here very hard,” she suggested, caressing his sac with the soft
leather tab. “That would make you jump.” She hit very softly and
watched his cock jerk. “But I wouldn’t be so cruel,” she murmured,
moving up to his taut rump and delivering four more stinging
slashes.

She trailed the whip over
the smooth skin of his hip and underneath him, pushing at his
prodigious length so it swung back and forth. She tried a gentle
flick. Saw the muscles of his butt tighten. With pleasure or pain?
She flicked again, playing with him like a cat with a succulent
mouse. Then laid the whip on his neck, building the anticipation.
Was he expecting her to hit him there?

He waited, the muscles of
his beautiful shoulders tensed and ready. She lifted the whip and
gave his balls another teasing tap. His cock jumped. She hit again,
just a little harder. His breath whistled out.

A reaction! She drew the
whip upward and snapped it down onto each cheek in turn, right over
the burning hot patches where she’d already drawn the blood close
to the surface.

“
Mistress,” he ground
out.

So he finally acknowledged
her power over him? She angled the whip under him and gave his cock
a final flick. “Stand up,” she said in a bored voice.

He rose, and Samantha
grasped him by his silk tie. She led him like a horse, and pushed
him so he leaned back against one of the posts of the decadent bed.
Then she tugged the two ends of his tie around the sturdy timber
and knotted them tightly.

She stepped away,
regarding his hugely aroused body with amusement.

“
Cruel enough?” she asked,
slipping her coat on to conceal her dominatrix costume. She strode
to the door and unlocked it. “Goodbye.”

Where the hell did that come from, Meg
wondered? It seemed pretty rough punishment for bad customer
service.

“
God, I feel shitty,” Liz
complained, clutching her head, and giving no thought to the
possibility of being hung over and dehydrated.

In fact she was only a little bruised,
and had barely bled at all. She’d hit the back of her head against
the mirror, but not hard. Ian had managed to support himself, at
some personal cost, instead of falling onto the cushion of her
body. Liz would never know it but his knees were scraped, his new
trousers ripped, and one wrist slightly sprained.

“
We’ll get you home to
bed,” Nurse Mandy insisted, after the x-ray had shown no
fractures.

“
I’m not that bad,” Liz
snapped.

“
Shock,” Mandy said,
wondering if she could work an incident very like this afternoon’s
into her ‘Addy and Brad’ novel. (Would the editor think the names
were confusingly similar? Should she change one right
away?)

Bed? Like hell,
Liz thought, already planning what to wear out to
dinner. She had no intention of losing the chance of an evening
out, and another man to parade in front of Paul. “Maybe just a
little lie-down,” she conceded, hoping this would get Mandy off her
case. She’d stayed stonily silent about the scene in the powder
room. Let them think what they bloody well liked!

She had her ‘little lie-down’ in the
bath—after taking two pain-killers and turning her favorite old
Santana ‘Supernatural’ album up quite loud. For once there were no
children wanting ‘Rudolph’s Christmas Tunes’ instead.

By six-forty-five she was fragrant,
pain-free and wearing, of all things, a dress. A summery black and
white leaf patterned floaty thing. She’d bought it for Paul’s
father’s sixty-fifth birthday party two years earlier, and never
worn it since.

Although she’d offered to buy Al
dinner at Pizza Hutt, he’d demurred and suggested they might do
better than that. “My shout,” he’d insisted.

Liz was savvy enough to know jeans
would not be appropriate.

And when his silver-gray Audi purred
up her driveway, she watched with pleasure as he unfolded from the
beautiful car and approached her front door.

Yes
, she thought,
he’ll be
excellent
.

For he was taller than Paul, had a
newer car than Paul, and wore his expensive clothes with ease and
grace. Perhaps she should forego the bath towel idea? Keep him
fully clad? Poke his money instead of his body in Paul’s
face?

She opened the door and
smiled.

Al’s Sicilian forebears called it The
Thunderbolt…that swift gut-wrenching explosion of lust...the fierce
need to possess absolutely and exclusively. In that instant it
rampaged through him like a firestorm—sweeping away arguments and
objections and commonsense. At forty-two, and for the first time
ever, he was pitched into a hellish cauldron of desire and
confusion.

“
I’m Liz,” she said.
“Hello.”

“
Al,” he
growled.

Instead of clasping her hand, he
raised it to his lips.

“
Smooth,” she said, turning
away to secure the door.

He burned. She was tall, slender,
gorgeous—and making fun of him.

She clipped down the steps in high
unsafe sandals.

He wanted to support her.

She opened the car door before he
could reach it.

He wished he’d been faster.

And she gave him a mischievous grin as
he closed the door to protect his precious cargo.

“
Well, this makes a
change,” she said as he settled into his seat. “An almost-blind
date.”

“
You came highly
recommended,” he said, cursing himself because he’d made her sound
like a commodity for sale.