Ruthless

Chapter 19

Side benefits

April 6

Saturday night

Okay,let Donovan have his illusions.

Mmmm.

Where”d the man learn to kiss? He was doing a great job of showing me just how good he was at it.

Donovan’s tongue and mouth were so rough and demanding that I almost felt like a romance heroine being taken by a villainous pirate or a barbarian. He sank his teeth into my lower lip, and when I groaned he thrust his tongue back into my mouth.

No mercy. The man showed no mercy.

He drew away. “I want you, Lexi.”

I swallowed, hard. “You know they’re watching.”

He didn’t take his gaze from mine. “Let’s give them one hell of a show.” His voice was low, throaty. “I want to be inside you.”

I tingled from head to toe at his words. My mind and body cried out from him and I barely held onto my sanity. “Not a good idea, Donovan.”

He gave me such a sexy smile that I almost gave in.

“Then let’s make it look good.” He slid the top of my outfit back up so that I wasn’t bare anymore. He palmed my now covered breasts and gave me a wicked grin. “Better make some noise.”

I cried out as he lightly squeezed my nipples, as if he’d caused me both pain and pleasure. I was definitely feeling pleasure, even though he’d covered me up.

The stubble along his jaws was rough against my skin as he nipped and licked his way down the column of my neck to just above my breasts.

The silkiness of his dark hair surprised me as I slipped my fingers into it. “More noise, Lex.”

I couldn’t think. Just being this close to Donovan scrambled my brain waves. Who needed signal-jammers?

He pinched my nipples to get my attention, and I cried out in surprise.

Then he was on his knees, purposely rubbing his stubbled jaws over my soft skin before his tongue found the diamond piercing at my bellybutton. He licked all around it and even sucked it into his mouth.

The moans that came from me were more than real. I wanted to cave into him in the worst—make that best—way.

Somewhere I knew there was something we should be doing that we weren’t. Oh, yeah.

Donovan stuck his tongue in my bellybutton, then circling my piercing again, sending crazy sensations straight to every part of my anatomy.

“Wait.” I whimpered as he nuzzled me through the material of my bondage outfit. “You’re supposed to be punishing me.”

“What?” He had an almost dazed expression as he looked up at me. “Punish. Yeah. Give me a minute.”

With my help, he removed my shoes. He commanded in a loud voice, “Hands and knees, slave. I’m going to punish you like you deserve.”

“Yes, Sire,” I said, equally as loud. “I only wanted to please you.”

“You didn’t, and you’re getting what’s coming to you.” He pushed the back of my neck so that my cheek was against the carpet. “Spread your knees, slave.”

“Yes, Sire,” I said, just before he slapped my backside freaking hard enough to make me shout out in pain.

Okay, don’t take this so seriously, Donovan.

He spanked me even harder.

I shouted louder.

Was this to get back at me for holding back, not going all the way with him?

No, he wasn’t that kind of man. But he was certainly getting into the spanking a little too much.

The fact that we were putting on a show made it easier to belt out how much it hurt. I was good at holding back cries of pain no matter how badly I was tortured, but now I had an excuse to let it all out.

His free hand rubbed my clit through the fabric, catching me off guard. Intense pleasure rippled through me and I couldn’t begin to tell him to stop. And then I was gasping and crying out at the same time whenever he spanked me. I could feel an all-time record of an orgasm on its way.

I suddenly understood the true meaning of pleasure and pain, and how the two could intensify a climax. My whole body trembled and I could barely keep from collapsing completely to the floor.

“You’re not allowed to come, slave.” Donovan fingered me even more, his voice so harsh I almost didn’t recognize it. “I have to give you permission.”

“Wha—”

He spanked me again and I screamed again. Screw him. This was going to be an orgasm to end all orgasms.

Donovan stopped spanking me.

“D—Sire.” I looked up at him. “I’ve got to come.”

He gave me a dark look. “When I say.” He started rubbing me through the fabric again.

He moved behind me, and I froze. He started pressing against me and moving back, as if he was really inside me.

The show. He’s giving them a show.

How I wished it could be real.

The movement of his fingers against my clit intensified. “I can’t wait anymore.” I squirmed. “I’ve got to come, Sire.”

“Not yet, slave.” He sounded like he was talking through gritted teeth, and I had a feeling he was having a hard time remembering the Master/slave thing, too.

And he wanted more. I wanted more. But not here, not now.

But an orgasm would be just fine. He’d had one—now it was my turn.

My whole body was nothing but nerve endings that were on fire.

Hold back the climax. Hold back the climax. Do it for the show.

Do it for Donovan.

“Now, slave,” He swatted me hard with his free hand. “Come now!”

I came.

Oh, God, did I come.

I came so hard that my mind went entirely blank and all I could do was feel the most extraordinary orgasm of my life.

And I’d had a lot of orgasms. This one was unbelievable. Never-ending.

When I started returning to full consciousness, Donovan was still pretending to pound in and out of me, making my spasms go on and on, even though he wasn’t really inside me.

I hadn’t even remembered he had his hands on my ass cheeks until he gripped them harder and shouted as he pretended to climax.

Did I climax forever? Or not long enough?

I didn’t care.

Donovan rolled us over onto the carpet so that we were spooned together. The rise and fall of my chest matched my breathing.

He moved his lips close to my ear after he pushed one of the silver studs on my collar that activated the scrambler. “I didn’t know there were such great side benefits.”

I elbowed him in his gut, but I smiled.

I started to slip into a sort of haze, listening to the sounds of pleasure throughout the Glass House.

Then I heard words that captured my attention, and I caught my breath.

“The shipment of auctioned merchandise goes out Thursday night,” a man’s voice said, and Donovan went still behind me.

I started to tip my head to look in the direction the voice was coming from, but Donovan held me tighter. He nuzzled my hair. “Just pretend you don’t hear them, in case we’re being watched through the glass.”

“The merchandise will be transferred from a secret location to a yacht, the Sweet Cherry, that will arrive at the yacht club in Charlestown Thursday night,” the same man continued. “The cover will be a rather exclusive party that will start on the upper deck when the merchandise is loaded onto the yacht.”

A woman gave a soft laugh.

“You can inform the investors they’ll have their merchandise,” a different unrecognizable voice said, “once each piece arrives at the individual destination.”

Auctioned merchandise. Each piece.

The girls.

It was as clear to me as if the men were informing me themselves.

“When is the next auction, Master Schilling?” This time it was a female. Maybe the woman who’d laughed.

“In…”—the first voice was fading—“weeks…the usual…online…”

A few faint murmurs more.

They were gone.

Schilling. Schilling. Who was he?

“Say nothing,” Donovan murmured against my hair. “Just act like you want more sex or something.”

“That wouldn’t be a hardship,” I said as I rolled in his arms to face him. I brushed my lips over his then kissed my way to his ear. “I think I’ll go to the ‘ladies’ room’ if you can find Strong and keep him occupied.”

“Yeah,” Donovan said, his tone hard. “I’d probably end up cutting Strong’s balls off because of what he’d make you do if I left you alone with him and I went to find the john to ‘take care of business.’”

April6

Saturday late night

Adrenaline always made it easier to get the job done. I liked the charge it gave me, the feeling of invincibility.

Sure, I was nervous. But the challenge was what excited me and made my blood tingle.

Of course, tonight my blood and other parts of me were tingling a lot more than usual, thanks to Donovan.

After he left to find Strong, I adjusted the outfit that I’d worn under my clothing and left the dress behind. I couldn’t afford to create suspicion by being fully clothed. I left my stilettos off, and the off-white carpet was soft and rich as I walked.

The blue, green, and yellow lighting made the trip through the glass-walled hallways almost surreal. So much pleasure was going on behind those walls that it was enough to make my head spin. My heart jerked as I passed a couple of Doms, and I kept my head lowered, not just my eyes. They made comments about my “assets” but didn’t stop me. At least they knew how to follow protocol.

Just around the corner from Strong’s office was the ladies’ room. I made a visit there first to check it out. Oh, just perfect. A frosted glass door with a gold-plated sign led to the bathroom. Inside were frosted glass stalls, along with white marble floors and countertops. Lovely. Not a place where one could easily hide if necessary.

Still, I went into one of the stalls and, after closing the door, removed the collar. It took me only a moment to press the right stud on the collar to activate the signal scrambler that would block sound and make cameras fuzzy or dead.

On the inside of the collar was a port device identical to the one in Donovan’s wrist cuffs. The leather was hard and thick enough to snap the gadget back into it without a problem once I downloaded all the contents of a hard drive.

I rubbed my neck where the leather had chafed me. The roughness of the leather was something Martinez and I would have a little chat about.

Next, I activated a camera with a press of another button. The camera was embedded in the outside of the leather, and for it, I didn’t need to do anything. It would stay on as long as I left it on. Martinez was fast and good when it came to designing just about any kind of recon device.

Once everything was activated, I slipped one more thing from the collar—a small lockpicking kit. The kit was flat enough to stuff below the material of the bikini bottom.

The port device was thin enough, too, that I could slide it on the other side of my bikini bottom. Felt a little weird, but hey, whatever worked. I didn’t think the top part of my outfit would hold either device well enough to keep them from slipping down or out.

I fastened the collar around my neck, took a deep breath, and walked out of the restroom. My bare feet traveled from the cool marble of the bathroom to the plush carpeting. Strong’s office was just around the corner.

A puffy-cheeked, not-so-good-looking Dom carrying a whip came down the hallway just as I neared Strong’s office and was eyeing the glass doorknob. I met the brown gaze of the puffy-cheeked man.

He was not one of the “beautiful people” that I’d seen so far at the clubs. When he reached me, he grabbed my arm with a bruising grip that caused me to gasp in surprise as he brought me to an abrupt stop in the hallway.

Damn. I’d forgotten to lower my eyes. I looked down at once. Still, he shouldn’t have touched me.

“Your name, slave,” the Dom demanded in a familiar voice that almost had me jerking my head up.

Schilling. The voice from the other side of the glass.

The dryness of my throat almost kept me from answering, but I managed. “Alexi.”

“I do very special things to bad girls, slave Alexi.” He pressed his big body close to mine and I had to struggle to keep from shuddering. “Are you a bad girl?”

My hair swung in my eyes when I shook my head while I stared at the carpet beneath Puff Cheeks Schilling’s steel-toed boots. “No, Master,” I said in as strong a voice as I could manage.

“Do you have a Master?” He brought his face nearer.

“Yes, Master.” I nodded so fast it was a wonder my head didn’t hit his chin. “Sire Dunning.”

“Too bad you’re taken.” Puff Cheeks brushed his lips along my ear, and it wasn’t a shiver that traveled through my body but a shudder from wanting to puke. “You still deserve punishment, slave.”

I expected him to drag me to Donovan, but he shoved me against a glass block wall and stars sparked in my eyes as my head hit the blocks hard. Before I connected the dots, Puff Cheeks Schilling jerked down the front of my outfit, baring my breasts, and pinched one of my nipples with his free hand.

Thank God I didn”t have my tools or the port device in the top half.

Even as that thought came to me, my muscles tensed as I almost gave in to automatic reflexes, grabbed him, and twisted his arm behind his back.

He took two steps away from me, cracked his whip, and snapped the end across my breasts.

My eyes watered. The strike felt as if someone had branded me with a hot poker.

The cry rising in my throat was hard to choke down, and I shook with the need to retaliate. He had no right to be doing this. He wasn’t my Master. An ache traveled through my hands as I struggled against balling my fists. I forced myself to keep my gaze down, praying he wouldn’t do that again.

Puff Cheeks Schilling laughed and came back to me, obviously to admire his handiwork. He rubbed his big fleshy palm over the stinging flesh and growing red welts. What he was doing had me biting the inside of my cheek to keep from shrinking from the creep’s touch.

My knee. His balls.

Can’t blow my cover. Can’t blow it.

Remember the girls.

“Next time,” he said as he rubbed his thick erection against me, “I’ll have to punish you in a very special way.”

Rage had my voice trembling. “Yes, Master.”

Schilling laughed again. “Go to your Sire and tell him you were punished for being disobedient and not obeying a Master when he told you to fetch a glass of water.” He leaned in close. “Say anything else and I’ll make sure you have a real punishment.”

“Yes, Master.” Sick SOB.

He slapped one of my breasts before he turned and headed for the men”s room. His chuckle had me wanting to run up behind him, wrap his own whip around his throat, and strangle him with it.

When he disappeared behind the swinging door of the men’s room, I pulled my top up for yet another time that night and winced at the feel of the material sliding over the welts.

Now I really had to hurry. I looked both ways and went for Strong’s doorknob.

The lock was standard fare. I was confident that, if Strong had an alarm, another device Martinez had built into the collar would keep the alarm from activating.

Picking the lock was, thankfully, a breeze. I eased the glass door open before closing it behind me and stuffing the tools into my bikini panties again. I was so damned glad I hadn’t put them in the top half of my suit. I locked the door.

Desk, shelves, art—everything was some form of glass or crystal, with the exception of the white chairs and carpet. If anyone came in here, there would be no place to hide, except maybe in the shower in the bathroom that led off from the office, as long as no one looked in there. Even then, the shower was made of glass block.

I hurried around the desk to his pristine white computer, with a screensaver of a bound girl being whipped. It was the first picture in a slideshow screensaver with lots of women in different positions.

And then I saw myself, hanging from that hook, blindfolded, with Donovan whipping me.

I wanted to pick up the crystal paperweight next to the computer so badly that I shook with the need to smash the screen.

Asshole, asshole, asshole!

The picture changed to another woman and man, and relief at not seeing myself anymore helped me focus on my job.

It took me only a few minutes to download the entire hard drive’s contents. Now I could let the geeks worry about cracking any codes.

My cheeks burned at the thought of anyone at RED seeing that screensaver. I’d have to convince Taylor to handle this one himself, and to discreetly remove that particular photograph before his geek squad got a hold of it. Still, it was going to be embarrassing as hell having him see me like that. Donovan and I could remove it, but it might show up on a more intensive search.

I slipped the port with the hard drive back into the lower part of my outfit and started to the door. I looked over my shoulder and saw my footprints in the once perfectly smooth carpet that must have been vacuumed by one of Strong’s maids.

What could I do to cover my tracks? And do it in a hurry. My blood raced and my face felt flushed.

There. The book closest to me on one of the nearby shelves might do the job. I grabbed it and ran to the desk, maintaining the same footpath. I leaned over and started dragging the book behind me, through the carpet, removing my tracks. Unfortunately, if someone was paying attention, it looked like something had been dragged on the floor.

Never mind. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. But I didn’t have time to set the book upright on the shelf, and I needed to back out of the office, erasing the rest of my tracks. Strong would just have to lose a book, and I had to hope he didn’t miss it.

After listening to the door to make sure everything was quiet, I unlocked the door as quietly as I could and relocked it after I covered the rest of my footprints.

After a quick glance around, I hurried to the ladies’ room.

I was just about to lay the book on the counter when I caught a glimpse of the title. Screw the Roses, Send Me the Thorns by Philip Miller and Molly Devon. I almost laughed. From everything I’d read, this was a classic BDSM book.

Female voices came toward the ladies’ room and my heart pounded as I looked for someplace to hide the book. I dashed into one of the stalls, set the book on the toilet tank and plopped down on the seat.

The girls were giggling and talking about Master Strong and Mistress Danica, and how they couldn’t wait to get back to them. After two toilet flushes and water running in the sink with more giggling, the girls left.

I held my hand to my chest. Close, close, close. I got up and looked at the book lying on top of the toilet tank and I smiled. The tank lid was a little heavy and scraped when I moved it, but I opened it wide enough to drop the book in before it grated shut.

The collar scraped my skin as I took it off then slid the hard drive port and lock pick set from my bikini panties into it. I smiled at the thought of what Taylor or Martinez would think about where those things had been. I’d never tell.

I shut off the camera and the signal scrambler before fastening the collar around my neck. With satisfaction I realized the camera would have recorded Schilling’s face and body. It would make it that much easier to take the slaver down.

Was he the man we were looking for? Or was there someone above him? I had a good feeling Schilling was a pawn.

Once I was out of the restroom, down the hall, and back in the room I’d been in with Donovan, I could finally breathe easier. I took the position we’d agreed on so that I looked like he was punishing me.

My belly rested on the carpeted surface of a piece of BDSM furniture so that my head hung on one side and I was kneeling on the other. I was in a position where my butt was up high and blood was rushing to my head. Forever and a day Donovan left me there, and stars started popping in front of my eyes.

“We’ll see you at the Champagne Slipper next week,” came Donovan’s voice from the doorway.

“Looks like your slave was obedient while you were gone,” Strong said. “Maybe she’ll need a reward.”

“I plan to give her one,” Donovan said in a deep, vibrant tone that sent a shiver through me.

After he closed the door, Donovan rubbed my backside when he reached me. “Everything okay?”

When I rose, my head spun a little from all that hanging down. I worked to bring my mind back into focus and fully turned so that he could see the new beauty mark on my naked breasts. “It would be absolutely perfect if not for this.”

The flash of anger on Donovan’s face was intense. “Who?”

It didn’t take me long to tell him in a low voice about the rendezvous with Schilling. The fury on Donovan’s features grew.

“But the important thing,” I whispered, despite the burn on my chest, “is that I have recorded ID on the sicko.” I pointed to the place where the camera was hidden. “It will make it so much easier to take him down.”

“Are you all right?” Donovan still looked angry and I felt his rough edges again. “Let’s get out of here.”

A moment of silence hung between us, thick and heavy.

“You’re doing all you can do.” I slipped my arms around Donovan’s neck. “And you do it very well.”

“We could stay a while longer,” he said, all deep and rumbly.

I smiled, despite myself. “Let’s get out of here, Donovan, before I take you up on that.”