Under His Watch (13 page)

As soon as she realized he was awake, though, she blushed and turned her eyes downward. Ryan murmured in a sleep-fogged voice. “No, honey, look at me. I want you to see how happy your submission makes me.”

Still blushing dark pink, she returned her gaze to his, and he smiled in wonder at his good fortune. He put down his right hand and stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Good girl,” he said softly. “You’ve earned the privilege you’ve wanted so much. Get yourself over the side of the bed, and spread your cheeks for me. I’m going to go get the lube.”

Charity raised her head from his cock and whispered, “Thank you, sir.” She moved to obey him, and he reached into the nightstand drawer for the little bottle he had bought on Monday. He got out of bed, not taking his eyes off the beautiful girl who would soon belong to him completely—for Ryan could think of anal sex no other way than as the ultimate yielding of a girl’s body to a dominant man who knew how best to enjoy her.

Enchanted, he watched her close her eyes and put her hands back, to show him her adorable, virginal anus, and to offer it to him. Pink and tiny, her sweet bottom-hole cringed in the valley between the little white moons, marked still with the belt lashes that had faded to purple. In Charity’s face, in the way she bit her lower lip, Ryan saw that she understood what she was doing: she pulled her cheeks apart with her own fingers knowing that her warrior’s enormous cock would enter there now, filling her most private place to the utmost. He saw that she both wanted it and didn’t want it; feared it, but longed for it.

To make the longing overcome the fear, Ryan prepared her gently and for a very long time, as she whimpered out her submission under his probing fingers, covered in the slick lube. When she tightened against him, he said very softly, “Open up,” and when she pushed the way she should—the way she would have to, when he put his cock there—he said, “Good girl.”

One finger, then two, then three. “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God,” Charity whispered in a kind of chant when the third finger entered.

Through it all, on his instructions, she obediently spread her cheeks for him, until finally he said, “It’s time, honey,” and put the head of his raging erection to the pretty little anus. Immediately, she tightened in alarm, but Ryan only pushed a tiny bit and murmured. “Just push, little slut.”

At the sound of the word ‘slut,’ it seemed, Charity did push, Ryan leaned, and he was inside her. Charity gave a wordless cry, the most submissive sound Ryan thought he had ever heard, and it was all he could do not to press his advantage with terrible authority and show his girl what it felt like to have your ass taken by a Navy SEAL.

“Color?” he asked softly, instead.

“Oh, my God, so green,” Charity said in a strained voice that told him that, yes, it hurt, but that the pain was very, very good.

Then he fucked his beautiful socialite’s tiny ass, as gently as he possibly could, saying only “Good girl,” and “I love you, honey,” from time to time. He managed to remain gentle through most of it, until the need to seek his climax came upon him, and he made Charity take him at full length despite her inexperience and the tininess of her sweet backside. The hardness of his cock knew no compunction; it excited him terribly to think of how sore Charity would be when he had finished taking her bottom’s maidenhead.

He looked down at where their bodies were joined: the sight of his cock engulfed in her backside that way, the lovely feeling of her soft cheeks against his hips, and the sound of her crying out at the way he took his pleasure, sent him off in an instant. He reached out and gathered her long hair in his hand to pull back her head so that her could see her face; he jerked once against her and felt the biggest orgasm of his life roll in waves through his body, sending his seed deep into the adorable, cultured, well-bred rump of the girl he had taken in hand.

Chapter Fifteen

Charity’s bottom was indeed terribly sore in the first-class seat from Kennedy to Dallas/Fort Worth. She couldn’t believe, though, how wonderful it felt to be sore
that
way—or how incredibly horny it made her.

She tried desperately to think about unarousing things: the logistics of the journey, the advice Becca—terribly jealous and a little miffed not to be going herself—had given Charity about how to get good, usable footage, her conversation with her parents. That last probably represented the best way to get her mind off her longing to tell Ryan to take her into the airplane bathroom and put his cock in her ass again.

Talking to her parents with a bottom burning from her belt-whipping, over the pillows that continued to raise and present that bottom as if to signify that Ryan could, if he wished, simply start whipping her again to make sure she didn’t once again lose her cool, had a unique quality. Charity couldn’t tell for certain, but she definitely felt like it helped her make it through the apology at the beginning. She wasn’t sure that without her punished backside to remind her she would have simply let her mother and father cover her with a blanket of opprobrium the way they did. But she finally said quietly, “You can take away my trust fund if you want, but I’m going to Handristan. Ryan’s going to take very good care of me.”

Something in Charity’s tone must have told Prudence that there was more to her daughter’s relationship with her bodyguard than had as yet been divulged. She said, “Oh,” and then fell silent, while John, on the extension, said, “Well, you know, I think maybe Ryan’s a very good influence on you. I have a feeling we owe this call to him. Maybe even you coming to see us before you left—and maybe even us knowing about Handristan at all.”

“Yes,” Charity said quietly, tears of almost-joy filling her eyes. “Yes, you do.”

Then they had talked about the trip, and had the most tender conversation they’d had in years—maybe ever. “Tell Ryan to take good care of you,” Prudence finally said.

“I will, mom,” Charity replied. “I love you.”

“Bring us back some dates or something. They have dates there, don’t they?” John said.

“I will, dad. Love you.”

“Love you, too, pumpkin.” It was the first time he had called her ‘pumpkin,’ Charity thought, in at least ten years.

In the seat next to her on the plane, Ryan said, “What’s wrong, honey?”

Charity wiped away her tears. “Nothing, sir,” she whispered. “I’m just so grateful you made me call my parents.”

He kissed her tenderly. “You’re welcome, honey. I’m glad it helped.”

“I’m very sore, sir,” she said, in what she hoped was a grateful, rather than a resentful, voice.

Ryan’s brow furrowed, as if he were trying to figure out whether he should apologize.

“It makes me very… submissive,” she added in a tiny whisper.

Ryan’s look of puzzlement turned into a grin. “Well, slut,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m very glad to hear that. Have you ever had a cock in your ass in Handristan?”

* * *

To Charity’s astonishment, Cliff Hodges himself greeted them at the exit from airport security. He had with him a woman who had to be his secretary Patricia, furiously taking notes on her tablet, and a man in a black suit who could only be his own bodyguard. Hodges, though, was the one holding the sign that read ‘Charity Phillips.’

Even more astonishingly, as, from the corner of her eye, Charity watched Ryan stiffen, Hodges gave Charity a hug and a kiss. Nor did the way he addressed her stray from the same act. “Why, Charity, you look just as pretty as the last time I saw you,” he said in the Texas accent that Charity had to admit—now that she could see the hotness for example of men like Ryan Bedford—she found rather sexy.

“I’m sorry…” Charity began, having no idea that she had ever met Cliff Hodges before and wondering whether she had missed an email from Patricia telling her to play along with some elaborate cover.

“You don’t remember,” he said, laughing. Nearly as tall as Ryan, Hodges seemed incredibly fit for his fifty-nine years, though he looked like a marathon runner to Ryan’s—and Hodges’ bodyguard’s—linebackers. “Of course you don’t. You can’t have been more than two, and your nanny brought you to your mama’s gala—at Indian Harbor, I think it was.”

Charity blushed—she could hardly tell why, except that to be reminded of her ultra-WASPy youth in Greenwich always seemed to make her uncomfortable, even when it worked decidedly to her advantage. She glanced sidelong at Ryan to make sure he hadn’t suddenly made up his mind never to touch her again—never to fuck her again—because she had once been a two-year-old at a very fancy party on Long Island Sound.

But Ryan just winked at her, as if to say, “You may be from the upper crust, but you’re going to calling me ‘sir’ the next time you beg to suck my cock.”

That gave Charity the strength to laugh and say, “I had no idea you knew my parents. They’re, um…”

“They’re not big fans of mine, I expect,” Hodges said.

“No,” confessed Charity with a laugh, relieved that she didn’t have to dance around the issue. She hadn’t known how she would weave a convincing half-lie around the fact that her father had said, “Cliff Hodges represents evil in its purest form, as far as I can tell.”

“Well, I can understand that,” Hodges said smoothly. “And what happened with some overeager employees of Mithras Mining was unforgivable. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you on this trip.”

“Um, thanks?” Charity said, trying to regain the initiative. “I’m just here to make sure someone’s watching over Alexandropolis. This is my bodyguard, Ryan Bedford.”

Hodges shook hands with Ryan pleasantly, and introduced his own bodyguard, Jim Evans, who turned out to be an ex-Marine.

They had checked no bags; the trip would last four days, and Charity was supposed to look like a working cultural heritage warrior—the more dust-covered the better. Hodges led them out to a stretch limo. They didn’t travel far in it; in a distant part of the airport stood an enormous cargo plane, and in its shadowy recesses Charity could see at least one piece of heavy mining equipment.

The limo stopped. Hodges said, “Alright, now’s when I tell you that half the team you’re about to meet on the plane are CIA. They’re coming to prepare for the fireworks they’re hoping to light in a month or so. All you have to do is your job, understand?”

“What about the temple?” Charity said, slightly flabbergasted to have passed through the looking glass so abruptly.

“It’s all worked out. You actually make one hell of an authentic cover story. Herzyov is pissed at your foundation, and as far as we can tell has no idea what’s really up. He wants to knock down Alexander’s temple, and now that Mithras is refusing to do that—because of you—he’s all bent out of shape. The spooks say that makes him more vulnerable.”

Charity looked at Ryan; he nodded as if to say that he found Hodges’ account plausible.

“So just get your footage, and talk all you want about how grudging I was about letting you come to Handristan, and about how we were going to knock down the temple until you started raking your muck. And don’t question our cockamamie cover story about mining under the temple and keeping it supported on a titanium substructure. Deal?”

Charity took a deep breath, trying to slow her heart rate. “Deal,” she said as decisively as she could.

* * *

The flight to Handristan was long, and very uncomfortable.

“Twenty hours?” Charity asked, turning to Ryan in disbelief when the captain announced the details. “I didn’t even know planes could stay up for that long.”

“What do you expect when you’re flying something the size of a pretty-good-sized building halfway around the world?” he said, laughing.

At least there was plenty of room on the bench seats to stretch out and sleep fitfully, and the twenty-person team included some fascinating people to talk to. She got more excited about real archeology than she had been since her dig in Israel her junior year of college, talking to a woman in her mid-forties named Winnie Chung, who was either the soils expert for the team or a CIA agent who had studied her cover with great enthusiasm.

“What an incredible coincidence,” Winnie said, “that Alexander told them to build the temple exactly where it seems like the vein is richest. It’s not going to be easy to preserve that thing…”

“You can say that again,” chimed in Curt Hewson, the chief engineer, who Charity hadn’t known was awake, let alone paying attention.

They had gotten about sixteen hours in, and it seemed like everyone, despite having slept a bit, had become pretty punchy.

“But,” said Hodges, from the other side of Curt, “they’re going to remember you for it forever, Curt. It’s going to be like the Louvre, some day.”

Charity hadn’t suspected Hodges had that much cultural feeling—even if it was a sham. “What’s the plan?” she asked, knowing that she would get the cover story that Hodges had called ‘cockamamie’ in the limo, but wanting to hear it spelled out.

“Lots and lots of titanium,” Curt said laconically.

“We’re going to put Alexander’s temple on a pedestal worthy of the greatest conqueror the world had ever known, and mine the ore right out from under it,” Hodges said enthusiastically.

Charity pictured a temple hovering over a strip mine and nearly giggled. Ryan must have seen her smile, because he gave her leg a warning squeeze.

“Sounds great,” she said.

* * *

The enormous plane touched down on a long, long dirt airstrip laid out very close to the seashore. All Charity had been able to see on approach had been the water of the Caspian which, while it was definitely beautiful and dotted picturesquely in the afternoon light by charming fishing boats, forbid her a view of Alexandropolis, which she knew must lie just on the other side of the landing strip. When the plane turned, though, after bleeding its speed for what seemed like miles and miles of bumpy dirt, she saw it, and it took her breath away.

The temple absolutely dominated the scene: bigger than the Parthenon by a foot in each direction—Alexander had specified that he would do Pericles one foot better—it stood atop a low hill covered in lush greenery. Charity had been to Athens, a much more arid climate, it appeared, than the southeast shore of the Caspian. The effect of the Parthenon atop the Acropolis of Athens was stunning, of course, but Alexander’s temple of Apollo had something more… tragic about it, obscured as it was by the greenery—palm trees (date palms?) above all that had gone on using its hill long after Alexander was gone.