Trickiest Job (8 page)

A hand touches mine. Romeo, I’m sure. I can tell by the size. He helps me stand but then moves away.

“Remove your clothes,” Hawthorne says, his voice hard. “Start with your shoes.”

I hesitate a moment, then carefully step out of my heels.
 

Even though I can’t see the three well-dressed men standing around me, I’m acutely aware of them.
 

My feet flat on the floor, I feel like an absolute idiot. In my imagination, my bosses are growing taller by the second.

“Give your shoes to us,” Romeo rumbles.

“They won’t match your tie,” I say nervously. No one laughs.

“Now,” Romeo commands. His voice is close enough that I’m tempted to reach out, to try to touch him.
 

The sooner we move to the sex portion of the evening, the better, and it’ll happen faster if they don’t need to spank me for disobedience.

Though the thought does start a little tremor that turns to warm fluttering between my legs.

I clamp my knees together and dip down. My blindly thrusting fingers knock over one of the shoes—it hits the carpet with an almost imperceptible thump. After finding both stilettos, I stand and hold them out.

No one takes them.

At first I think they’re doing something else and can’t see me, and I lower my hand.

“Hold them out,” Romeo says, and I do.

The seconds tick by, and I feel exceedingly foolish. If he doesn’t want the shoes, why did he tell me to give them over? My arm starts to tremble as muscle fatigue sets in.

“Are you going to take these or what?” I finally snap.
 

They don’t answer.
 

Sadistic bastards.
 

I hold out my other arm before transferring the shoes. The way I do it, the shoes stay offered the entire time—I’m following their ridiculous instructions to the letter. My actions are imbued with every ounce of irritation and sarcasm I can muster—which is substantial—but I don’t know if it’s affecting them because I can’t see.

Another hour passes—well, it feels like an hour to me—and I switch hands again. This time it doesn’t take long for my arm and shoulder to burn.
 

This keeps happening, back and forth, and I don’t know why I don’t just say
fuck it
and walk away. But I don’t.

Soon I’m needing to switch arms every five or six seconds.
 

“Will you
please
take these?” I pant. “They’re getting too heavy.”
 

“We’re honored to relieve you of your burden,” Romeo says, and when the weight of the shoes is gone, I moan in relief. Even to my ears, the sound is orgasmic.

“Please remove your blouse,” Slade says, and I unbutton it.

Perhaps if the men hadn’t tortured me already, I’d make it a sexy tease, but I’m not in the mood.
 

Besides, my arms really hurt; I’m going to be feeling that for days.

I slide the blouse off my shoulders.
 

“Please hold it out,” Slade says.

Using both hands, I present the blouse. “Won’t you please relieve me of the burden of this designer shirt?” I ask.

“We would be delighted to,” Slade says.

Then Hawthorne tells me to take off my skirt, and I offer it to him, and of course he’s
over the moon
to take it, and I’m standing there in my bare feet with nothing on but my bra and my underwear.
 

I’m wearing a flattering, lacy black combo. At least, I think that’s what I put on this morning.

“Your bra,” Romeo says, and I know he’s annoyed that it’s got more padding than an ice hockey goalie’s uniform, but he can’t punish me for that because I didn’t wear it to the office, did I?

I unhook it, slide it down my arms and present it. “You’ll need this if you don’t want your highlights beaming through the blouse,” I say.

They’re not amused.

Taking a deep breath, I say what they want to hear. “Please relieve me of my heavy burden,” I say. “But could you please not cut holes into this bra? It cost almost three hundred bucks.” I lick my lips. “Not trying to sass you, Romeo. Honestly, I’ll never wear one in your presence if I know I’m going to see you.”
 

If Romeo doesn’t want to see me in padded bras, he won’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop wearing them completely.

Romeo—or someone—takes the bra. There’s no formal acknowledgment this time.

My fingers are sliding into the waistband of my panties. I wiggle them down my hips, then pick them off the floor. “Please accept my underwear.” My damp, soiled underwear, apparently. Why being blindfolded and having to strip gets me excited, I don’t know, but it does.

Instead of accepting the panties, someone is pushing my hand toward my face. “Use them to wipe the lipstick off your mouth,” Slade says.

Well, at least the panties aren’t white.
 

I do as he asks, making sure to use a dry bit of cloth. Someone takes my panties.
 

Now I’m naked.

Chapter 11

A door opens, and I feel a rush of warm air. There’s a familiar scent, some kind of cleaning product. Am I in front of a storage closet?

“Take eight steps forward,” Romeo says from very close by.

I take two steps, then stretch out my hands in front of me so that I don’t go into a wall.

“Not like that,” Romeo says. “Six more steps, hands on your thighs.”

My palms glued to the fronts of my thighs, I take six teeny, tiny steps.

Someone grabs my shoulders and pushes me back.

“Try again. Eight steps forward,” Romeo instructs patiently.

This time I manage three before losing my nerve. Even though I know I must be roughly in the same place I was when they told me to strip, in my mind, I feel like I could be six inches from the edge of a cliff.

I’m pushed back. Again, I’m told to walk forward. Again, I fuck it up.

And again.

I lose track of how many iterations this game runs through before I get tired of it and take eight big steps. I hope I slam into a wall, to teach them a lesson.
 

But that doesn’t happen.

“Four more steps,” Slade says.

He gets his four steps.

“Turn right,” Hawthorne tells me.

I jerk to the right.

“Five steps,” Romeo says.
 

Five steps.
 

“Good.” He touches my hand, guides it to the inside of his muscular forearm, wrapped in a soft, expensive-feeling suit jacket. As far as rewards go, it’s a pretty good one, but I was rather hoping for some hard fucking.

“We’re going down three stairs,” he says, leading me forward.
 

Taking the first step isn’t exactly pleasant, but I survive by digging into his arm.

It’s easier to do this with Romeo next to me. I get the point of their irritating game: life is smoother if I trust someone.

But I haven’t been going through life blindfolded, no matter what they might think.

At the bottom of the steps, Romeo lifts me into his arms. I gasp, surprised, and when he carries me swiftly across whatever this room is, I brace myself.

He gently puts me down.
 

Then the men are pulling my limbs outward.
 

My wrists are cuffed over my head and stretched out, and my ankles are likewise spread wide. Cool air caresses under my arms, between my legs, and I shiver.

“It’s too bad you can’t see how beautiful you look,” Slade whispers into my ear.

Someone runs a hand from my neck and down between my breasts. The rough touch stops just above my sex, and I whimper.

Then I hear footsteps walking away, going up the steps, the door closing.

~ ~ ~

I figure they want me to wait here, and I’m not thrilled, but I’m hardly in a position to do anything about it.

Sighing, I settle in for more of this pointless exercise, but within a few moments, I’m aware that someone is breathing nearby.
 

My head swivels as I try to pinpoint the sound, then a hand touches my waist, startling me.

Fingers caress my cheek. I think it’s Hawthorne.

But when the lips touch mine, I know it’s Slade. I recognize his scent.
 

Tilting my head, I give him access to my mouth.

His hands go to my neck, his fingers toying with me, wrapping around my throat, then releasing. He’s not cutting off my air supply, but it occurs to me that if he wanted to hurt me, he could.
 

But it’s
Slade
. I’m not afraid of him, and when his fingers tighten again, I whimper. I want him to fuck me so badly.

“You told us your secrets earlier today,” Slade says. “Now each of us will tell you something. I don’t have any hidden traumas, but there is something I’ve been hiding from you. See if you can guess what.”

His tongue sweeps past my lips, and he kisses me for a long time. Finally he stops, leaving me gasping so hard that I don’t immediately realize he’s walking away.

“What have you been hiding?” I call after him.
 

Pleading doesn’t do me any good.

The door opens. Slade is saying something, but I don’t know what.
 

I stand there, my legs open, my breasts and pussy on display. The deep, masculine voices are too far away. It’s torture.

Thanks to Slade’s kiss, I’m painfully horny.

Footsteps return. “I have something for you,” Hawthorne says, and I guess that Slade has left.

He holds a straw to my lips and urges me to sip, which I do. It’s a light citrus drink, mildly carbonated and not too sweet.

When I’ve had my fill, he tells me to continue, that I can drink it all, so I do.
 

“Just a little more,” he says, and I draw hard on the straw until I’m noisily sucking air. I hear him set the glass down on something, then he’s close to me.
 

His fingers, chilled from holding the icy glass, toy with my nipples, and I moan, leaning into his touch. The creaking overhead tells me that my restraints must be some kind of cord or rope; I’m certainly not chained.

“I want you to know that I take much of the blame for how things were between us,” Hawthorne says. His voice is low and husky as he pours the words into my ear. The heat of his body is an intolerable torture. “I was wrong to conclude malice from your actions.”

I feel strangely compelled to say something nice. “I wasn’t the easiest employee,” I offer.

“No, you weren’t.” He pinches my nipples until I gasp. “We’ll work on that tomorrow,” he says.

When I start to ask him what he means, he covers my mouth with his and thrusts his tongue deep. He pinches my nipples, and I pant. Why he wants to kiss a woman who’s breathless with pain, I don’t know.

Well, maybe I do—it turns him on.
 

Control freaks, the lot of them.
 

I shift my hips, trying to rub against him. It doesn’t work.

Finally his touch softens, and his lips do, too. Heat snakes from my nipples. It intensifies as it burns and twists lower, and I swear that if one of these men so much as touches my clit, I’ll orgasm immediately.

Unfortunately, I don’t get a chance to test that theory. Hawthorne steps away.
 

“I can’t promise to be someone I’m not,” he says, “but I’m going to do better in the future. We both are. Deal?”

I’m pumped too full of raging lust to disagree with him about anything. “Deal,” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.” He caresses my hair, his touch so gentle that it somehow hurts.

“Will I get sex tonight?”

A short exhalation tells me he’s amused. “We’ll see,” he says. He runs the pad of his thumb over my lips, then he’s walking away.

I’m not wholly surprised when Romeo comes into the room.
 

“Do you need anything?” he asks. “Are you thirsty? Hungry?”

Truth be told, I have to pee, but it’s not urgent, and I’m far more interested in his secret than taking a bathroom break. I shake my head.

I sense him standing in front of me.

His large hands press onto my thighs, like he’s spreading me open for him. He’s only about five or six inches from my pussy, and I begin trembling all over.
 

Suddenly, I don’t care about his secret; I only want his enormous cock inside me. I
need
to feel physically close to him.

“You know, I worried that I’d never see you again,” he says. The anger that I noticed earlier, when he trapped me in the hotel parking lot, is back in his voice. “Hawthorne told us everything. That you wanted us to stay away. The night you slept in my bed… What was it like for you?”

I try to shrug. It’s not that I don’t care, but I don’t know how to answer. How can I possibly tell Romeo that it was the most amazing night of my entire life? But I can’t shrug, not restrained the way I am.

His fingers dig into the soft flesh of my inner thighs, and I want him to force my legs wider, then to impale me on his shaft.

Of course he doesn’t. That would be too pleasurable.

His mouth grazes my neck, and I throw my head back. He makes a masculine growl as his lips drag over my sensitive skin.
 

“Tell me,” he says. “When you ran, was it only because you were afraid of being discovered by your family? Or were you afraid of me? Are you afraid of me now?”
 

He’s nuzzling the notch at the bottom of my throat, so I know he can’t see my face, and maybe that’s what gives me the courage to tell the truth.

“I was starting to want more.” My voice shakes, and my mouth is completely dry.

He goes still, and I think I made a mistake. Then his hands move from my thighs to my face. He pushes the blindfold up, onto my forehead. The knot is so tight that the fabric scrapes my skin, but I don’t care.

Even though the lighting in this room is muted, I have to blink a few times. Romeo’s gorgeous face is mere inches from mine, and his fathomless brown eyes… They’re breathtaking.

He’s just too hot. The perfect, masculine symmetry of his tanned face, his mane of dark hair, the powerful breadth of his shoulders…