The Ex (33 page)

I scanned the room, seeking out one “friend” in particular. An employee, really.

“Thank you for coming, Ian.” Neil took his hand and shook it. “We’ll be back in two weeks. Maybe you’d like to come round for dinner?”

“Call my secretary when you get back, we’ll set something up,” he promised.

I watched him as he went off toward the bar. My heart did a little skip. Penny was headed to the dance floor—in a surprisingly sexy violet A-line dress with a plunging neckline. Like something out of a romantic comedy, their paths seemed destined to cross.

And they did, just as Ian saw someone he recognized and turned course, barely missing her.

Damn it
.

I sighed and leaned my head on Neil’s shoulder. “I need to go mingle with my family. Why don’t you find your brothers and let them tease you about kidnapping me.”

Kidnapping the bride was apparently a custom out of Viking lore. Runólf and Geir had tried to convince me that it was an important Icelandic wedding tradition, but I’d Googled it on my phone and called them on their bullshit.

We snuck a quick kiss and split up for some family time.

As I approached, Grandma waved me over to the table. Marie had a three-quarters of an empty four pack of Bartles and James fuzzy navel on the table in front of her.

“Where did you get those?” I pointed to the bottles.

She swallowed the drink she’d just taken from wine cooler number four and said, “Chad went out and got these. They didn’t have Mike’s or Smirnoff Ice or anything at the bar.”

“We’ve got Boone’s Farm, too,” Grandma said, pulling a plastic shopping bag from beneath the table. “You want some?”

“Hell, yes, I want some. You got Snow Creek Berry?”

She handed me a bottle of the stuff—it looked like a pink version of Windex—and I unscrewed the top.

“So,” Grandma began, and I could tell she was unhappy with something. “What’s this about you’re not having a dollar dance?”

I nodded as I raised the bottle. “You heard correctly. We are not going to do a dollar dance.”

“Why not?” She spread her hands, the sleeves of her royal blue chiffon tunic nearly catching on her water glass. “People like dollar dances. They get to feel like they’re helping you get a good start on life.”

Grandma was missing the obvious. I took a deep swallow of the “wine”. “Grandma, Neil and I have almost seven billion dollars. We can afford a new coffee maker.”

“Well, I gave you fifty-dollars, anyway.” She rummaged through her purse for a card. “I didn’t put it in the box because it’s cash, and you never know with people.”

I stooped down and hugged her, and slipped the slender rectangular envelope into the band of my strapless bra. “Thanks, Grandma.”

Everyone partied for a
while.
I did a little drinking, but I cut myself off before I got super drunk—no one wants to see the bride vomit. I took selfies on the dance floor with Holli and Deja. I tried to act cool in front of my friends whenever a legitimately famous person drifted into view—Neil had tons of celebrity work friends we’d had to invite, despite barely knowing any of them. I’d been hoping Prince Harry would crash again, like he had at Neil’s fiftieth, but to Penny’s disappointment, his royal hotness did not appear.

I managed to get a few more dances with my wonderful husband, fitting him in around requests from Rudy and Ian and Michael.

“So, I’m thinking of calling you Mother Elwood now,” Michael said, playfully spinning me under his arm.

“I think you’ll regret that,” I warned. Then, I stubbed my toes against his shoe. “Just like I’m regretting that. Ouch.”

“I’m not going to tell Emma that happened,” he swore. “She’s already deemed your shoes too ridiculous to wear.”

Okay, Emma may have had a point. My strappy black Fendi stilettos with Swarovski crystal embellishments were hot, but they had a four-and-a-half-inch heel. I should have considered optional flats.

The night passed in a rush; I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun. At midnight, like Cinderella, Neil and I made our getaway. The reception would continue into the night for our guests, but we had a plane to catch. I’d changed into a floaty gold silk maxi dress with spaghetti straps that would be comfortable for travel and light and breezy when we arrived in Papeete. We dashed through a crowd of our remaining guests beneath the Baccarat chandeliers in the lobby. My mom caught me for a hug, and Rudy halted us again to kiss both of us on the cheek. Outside, on the steps of the grand entrance, my single friends waited. I tossed my bouquet to them as we hurried to our escape vehicle.

“They’ve decorated the car,” Neil observed through his tightly clenched smile.

“Yup.” I waved to my mom and my aunt Marie, who’d come outside to see our reaction. They looked pleased with themselves for helping.

Neil held the door for me, saying low beside my ear, “They put chalk paint and soda cans on the back of my Maybach.”

I caught Tony’s eye as he closed my door, and he smirked. He’d watched the whole thing happen, and he’d let it. I laughed, and then, I couldn’t stop laughing. My heart bubbled over with a sudden surge of effervescent happiness, and I choked back tears of joy. I blinked and composed myself to smile at our guests as Neil got in beside me.

As we pulled away to the sounds of our cheering friends and family, I turned to Neil. “Wow. So…that was fun.”

“And exhausting.” He leaned against the corner of the door and the seat and slumped down.

“I know. I can’t wait to get these shoes off.” My chest hurt; I was happy to bursting. “At least we’ll be able to sleep on the plane.”

Well, I hoped we’d be able to do more than
sleep
on the plane. It was our wedding night, after all. I read enough historical romances in high school to know that I was supposed to be ravished tonight.

“About that.” Neil sat up and coughed into his fist. “You stayed reasonably sober, didn’t you?”

I pressed my thighs together. “Mmm, yes, I did.”

“Well, I have a surprise, then.” He reached for me and pulled me close to lean on him. “Go to sleep. We’ve got a drive ahead of us.”

I frowned up at him. “I thought the jet was standing by?”

“I told you, I have a surprise. Now, listen to your husband and do as you’re told.”

I sat up and gave him a warning glare, but he had already dissolved into laugher. “I’m sorry,” he chuckled. “I can’t say that and keep a straight face.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Sophie? We’re here.”

I blinked awake with some difficulty. My mascara had turned into cement while I’d slept. The facade of a building showed through the windows, and it took me a moment to recognize it as the model Pavillon Français on our property. The upward grazed lighting illuminated the nook where the center chamber met two of the outer four rooms. The building was a cross with an octagonal middle, and we were parked between it and the huge fountain in the drive. While the grounds weren’t to scale, the previous owners had gone to the trouble of recreating some of the water features.

We’d celebrated my birthday here, and it had been unbearably romantic, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you just kept around. “I thought you were going to renovate this.”

Neil took my hand and helped me from the car, and I staggered a little on my tired legs. “I did have it renovated. I think you’ll like some of the changes.”

We entered the main salon, the towering center of the building. My heels clicked on the inlaid marble floor. Unlike its counterpart in France, this version of the Pavillon had electric candlelight. Neil took the remote off the wall and turned up the lights, bathing the room in soft, subtly flickering illumination.

One of the “renovations” was quite obvious. A black steel frame stood vertically in the center of the room, shackles dangling from all four corners. A table stood nearby, its gleaming white marble top bearing all sorts of tantalizing goodies. Three paddles, one of unadorned black leather, another that was a bit wider with dulled, square metal studs in a grid, and a larger wooden one with rows of small holes drilled through. A set of nipple clamps. A long black cord threaded through wooden, spring-style clothespins. The wireless wand.

Neil took off his tuxedo jacket and threw it over the back of the Louis XVI chair positioned in front of the frame. Standing there in his white shirt and black trousers, his silver hair slightly mussed, he looked so, so good.

“Oh my gosh, I bet my makeup is all messed up,” I lamented, and he motioned me closer, meeting me halfway. He hooked an arm around my waist and pulled me up roughly. The delicate silk of my dress rode up my thighs.

He caught my chin and smeared the pad of his thumb over my lower lip. If there was any trace of my dark berry lipstick left behind, it was smudged across my mouth now. Tilting my chin up farther, he said, “It certainly is.”

I gestured to the room around us. “Is this my surprise, Sir?”

“It’s a gift,” he corrected me. “To both of us. You can look in the other rooms, if you’d like.”

Warily, I crossed the salon for the first of the four sets of double doors in the room. I stepped through, and Neil followed behind, turning up the lights as I went. All around the room, pieces of furniture were draped in white drop cloths. I cast him an uncertain glance as I lifted the edge of one, a long, low rectangle on the ground. It was a wide, short table, and on top rested a very familiar shape.

“A Sybian?” I almost clapped my hands with joy.

“You said you wanted to try one. I don’t know why we haven’t yet.” He motioned to another of the shapes doing their ghost impressions. “Have a look there.”

The second one was a complicated-looking piece of machinery with a rod affixed to a wheel, attached to another, smaller flywheel. An electrical cord lay wrapped around the base. If not for the black silicone dildo attached to the machine’s long arm, I would have had no idea what it was for.

“It has a surprisingly powerful electric motor. It’s adjustable up to three hundred strokes per minute, and the horsepower—” At my beleaguered eye roll, he changed subjects. “There’s one more, here.”

He pulled the cover back on the next item, a black steel H-shape with two rods and a dual controller on a long cord. “For double penetration.”

“Are you kidding me?” I twirled around. “I feel just like Belle when the Beast gives her that library.”

“That was my inspiration really.” He circled me slowly, his hands in his pockets. “Go on, have a look in the other rooms.

Another salon had been transformed into a gorgeous eighteenth-century bedroom, with a canopied bed. Where there might have been elaborate scenes painted in a real palace, the oval frames and curved ceiling above were mirrored, reflecting and multiplying us above our heads. I imagined seeing myself spread out, shackled to the bed with the golden cuffs that dangled from their anchors on the scrollwork headboard.

There was a recamier, a narrow, backless sofa with padded, curled arms on either side, like the one he’d tormented me on in the hotel suite in France. Only, that one had been powdered blue silk. I trailed my hands across the white leather.

Neil stepped close behind me and caught my hips, pulling me back. He put his lips to my ear and said, his voice low and husky, “It will be far easier to clean, after you’ve been tied to it, pleading and gushing and screaming in frustration.”

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered, trembling.

A tall armoire held a selection of sex toys that rivaled some stores I’d shopped at—and I’d shopped at Babes in Toyland. I gasped and touched a soft leather harness dangling from a hook. “Is this a strap-on?” I heard the excitement in my voice. “Oh my gosh, is this for what I think it’s for?”

“I thought we might give it a try sometime. What do you think?” He flushed above his collar.

“I think I can’t wait to fuck you in the ass,” I blurted, startling myself into a fit of giggles.

He grinned. “And I suspect there is a certain red-head you might like to try it out on, if she’s amenable.”

My pussy flooded at the thought, but in my fantasy, our roles were reversed; I imagined her above me, pushing a thick, long dildo into me with a stroke of her hips. I squeezed my internal muscles with every step we took to the next room. It was a bathroom, with a large, white oval tub, a modern vessel in the middle of the floor. Beyond was a barrier-free walk in shower with nine heads and a detachable one on a long hose. There were shackles there, too, and I didn’t have to wonder what Neil planned to do with them. Tormenting me with water was something he particularly enjoyed.

A toilet and sink stood behind their own partition, and a basket of condoms, dental dams, and gloves sat on the counter. So, it was clear that he expected we would bring guests here.

The final room was thoughtful and practical, a small kitchenette stocked with simple necessities like protein bars, electrolyte replacement tablets, bottled water, blankets, comfortable robes and pajamas, and various pain relief supplies. It was basically the anti-sub-drop room.

“This place is…amazing.” I stepped close and slid my palms up the front of his crisp white shirt. “Why is this room the one that turns me on the most?”

“Because you get off on being cared for.” He leaned down to kiss me, and I melted against him. He was right, I did get off on being cared for. I lived for the torment, the extreme pleasure and brutal pain, the loss of control. Through all of that, he showed me love, but the care he gave me after sealed it in my heart.

My mouth parted beneath his, and he supported me with a hand at the small of my back. I held onto his upper arms, my fingers sinking into the muscle there. What was it about his arms that made me want to bite into his biceps like they were apples? The fact that they were now legally bound to me? Was it a sense of pride in ownership?

The thought made me giggle, and he lifted his head to smile down at me. “Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.”

“I am. And I assume I’m going to be enjoying myself further tonight?
Sir
?”

He took a step back. “I think we’re both physically exhausted and emotionally spent. And you know what that can lead to.”

“I do.” On a night like tonight, with my emotions running high and my energy dipping low, I could sub drop so hard, all the aloe and fuzzy PJs in the world wouldn’t help. I could do emotional, and I could do tired, but after a couple of bad experiences, we’d found that I couldn’t do both.

But this was like having someone hand you a bowl of candy then take it away without letting you taste any.

“Maybe…” I tried for cute wheedling right off the bat. “Maybe we could just do a little something?”

He smirked down at me. “I didn’t say we weren’t going to have sex. It would be a waste of a perfectly good ‘boner pill’, as you would put it, if we did not.”

I rolled my eyes. “Just nothing too hardcore. I get it.”

“I do have something…special planned for us tonight.” He slipped into the low, dangerous tone he used as my Sir, and my panties flooded. He lifted my chin with one crooked index finger. “I don’t have to go hard to prove that I possess you.”

My breath skated across my parted lips as he gazed down at me. I saw a dim reflection of myself in the green-gold depths of his eyes. He released me and turned away, walking to the door. “Sophie, come.”

If you keep talking like that, I will. You won’t even have to touch me.

I followed him to the octagonal center room. Though I usually kept my eyes downcast during play, I couldn’t help my longing glance at the tall metal frame. Neil was right; we were both too tired to go wild. But it wouldn’t hurt to fantasize and plan for the future.

“Stand still. Hands at your sides. Keep your eyes on the floor.”

I obeyed automatically.

He moved away, and I kept my gaze trained on the veins in the marble. I imagined them as my veins, blood and desire coursing through them. Then, I thought of the veins on the backs of Neil’s hands, the thick blue lines beneath the thin skin of his wrists. The ridges of them along the shaft of his penis.

It was difficult to stay still.

The first light tones of a baroque harpsichord piece filled the room. The slow, haunting pace of the music was spritely and moody all at once. There was a delicious darkness to it that made my nipples bead inside my bra.

Neil moved behind me. With one hand on my hip, he slowly drew a strap of my dress down. “Turn around.”

He stood so close that when I turned, all I saw was the crisp white of his shirtfront.

“Take off your dress.” Exhaustion made his voice lower and huskier than usual. It sounded the way whiskey made me feel, rough and burning warm. He brushed the backs of his curled fingers down my cheek. “Look at me while you do it.”

I lifted my head and found myself pinned by my Sir’s dark gaze. My cunt clenched as I slipped the other thin strap from my shoulder. I moved languidly, because I knew it would please him. And pleasing my Sir, especially on a night like this, filled me with such an urgent lust I swore I would combust. I rolled the dress down—over my breasts, over my hips—to puddle on the floor at my feet. I stood before him in my strapless gold satin bra and matching thong, the cool night air in the room chilling my skin.

“You’re cold,” he said, his voice full of concern. “Here.”

I watched him retrieve his tuxedo jacket from the chair he’d left it on. He draped it around my shoulders, pushing me down with gentle pressure to kneel on the floor atop my crumpled dress.

Though I hadn’t been invited to, I wrapped my arms around his thigh, clinging to him as I looked earnestly up at him and asked, “May I please suck your cock, Sir?”

The body part in question moved against his left thigh, a growing ridge beneath his pants. He palmed the back of my head with one big hand, but said, “No. Not yet. I haven’t given you the rest of your gift. Stay there.”

He left me alone so long that the marble floor warmed beneath my knees. I kept my eyes downcast and listened to the echo from his shoes as he returned. Every part of me reached out to him, though physically I wouldn’t dare. It was my place to kneel and wait, and I knew my place. By the time he stood directly in front of me, the polished toes of his glossy black shoes mere inches from my knees, my panties were plastered to my vulva.

“Look up.”

I raised my eyes. The artificial candlelight flickered on the gleaming metal and sparkling diamonds of my collar. He unfastened the clasp and tilted it toward me. “Read what it says.”

There, engraved in the formerly unmarked surface inside the shining platinum, were words that made my cunt tighten on frustrated emptiness. I licked my lips. My voice trembled as I read, “Property of Neil Elwood.”

“And what does that mean, Sophie?”

I wanted to speak without tears in my voice. It was a losing battle. “It means that I belong to you, Sir. Every part of me is for you to command. To touch. To fuck. To hurt.”

He tilted my face up with two fingers, pinning me with his intense gaze. “You knew that already.”

“I did.” I closed my eyes and a tear slipped down my cheek. “But it says ‘Neil Elwood.’ It doesn’t say ‘Leif.’ It doesn’t say ‘Sir.’” There was a reason for that, a reason that made my heart as tight and achy as the rest of my body. “It means…this is between us. Not between Sophie and her Sir. Not between Chloe and Leif.”

His thumb skimmed over my cheek. “It means that you are mine. My only sub. There will never be another.”

My chest hitched, but it took a moment to realize I was crying from the sheer joy of the moment. We had pledged our love as husband and wife in front of our friends and family, but this vow went deeper. No one saw my collar, apart from Neil and me. No one knew the depths of my submission to him, or knew him as their Dom. What was between us in our roles as Dominant and submissive would always be our most sacred, secret vow.