His Illicit Passions

Chapter 1

Silas

My shoulders bowed under the weight of my sins.

I had been careful. So careful.

Never gave her special attentions in public.

Didn’t indulge too frequently.

Deleted all her messages immediately.

Paid for the room in cash.

The Governor couldn’t be too careful.

But Whitleigh and I had somehow been spotted—photographed—coming out of the hotel.

It was possible my PR team could play it off. Just a late-night meeting. Just legislative session strategizing. If we ignored the gossip, maybe it wouldn’t blow into a full-fledged scandal.

But it meant I would have to tell my sweet wife about my infidelity. About my secret life.

Whitleigh was—very discreet. She was a longtime acquaintance, a female friend of mine from college. Someone with the same mutual interests.

She also worked in government as one of my legislative aides. So it was easy. So easy to discard my marital vows.

To fall back into what I craved, the world of sin and seduction. . . of dominance.

Our meetings were brief and feral, with barely any words exchanged. It was all about the meeting of our bodies, the slap of flesh on flesh, and at last—a self-loathing release.

I’d swear off the illicit meetings, promise myself I’d remain faithful, but always the temptation to cheat, to get the kind of sex I wanted, would get the better of me.

Even now, my skin crawled with a heady mixture of lust and revulsion at my own baser instincts.

Why couldn’t I stop?

I wasn’t a good man, not at all.

And my poor wife didn’t deserve the shame and embarrassment my mistake was going to bring.

I had wanted to stop, but sinning with Whitleigh felt so right. And I was no saint. Even though I knew, I knew it would shatter my wife if she ever found out. I was a risk taker and I had played the odds.

But for once, I’d lost.

In politics, the name Silas Di Pietro was feared. Not content with the wealth I’d inherited from my grandparents, I’d set my sights on the Governor’s Mansion, and my ruthless tactics kept me in control.

Politics was about power, and no one had more of it than I did.

The men who tried to get through me with their bleeding-heart requests met my stone-cold heart.

While outwardly, I pretended to care, it was an open secret in state government that anyone begging for help would need to pony up a significant donation to my campaign.

My wife was the only thing about me that was soft.

I could never have brought all this debauchery home to my sweet little Paloma.

In a life full of brutality, grit, and power, she alone was all that was pure and good.

It was like I had two supernatural entities on my shoulder—a good angel that said to stick to sweet vanilla sex with my lovely wife, and a devil that said I couldn’t be satisfied without my secret life as a dom.

At first, I had tried to deny the temptation, and for the first year of our marriage, I stayed away. I loved my wife. Loved her fiercely.

But it was too hard. My urge to dominate, to control, was too powerful.

Marriage bonds hadn’t held me. After all, I took pride in being the kind of man who couldn’t be held back by polite society.

Nevertheless, I regretted my actions.

I had been weak. A broken, wicked man.

Whitleigh said there were so many women who wanted me to dom them, that I just came off to those in the know as the perfect dom. But I was careful, cautious. I didn’t want every woman who read 50 Shades thinking they had a chance with me. As the Governor, I had to guard my reputation.

Could I ever do the same things with Paloma that I did with Whitleigh?

She would never understand. This could never be a part of our relationship.

Sully my wife’s perfect pristine alabaster bottom with my heavy hand? Put the imprints of my thick fingers on her pretty rose-leaf skin?

Never, never! That was for Whitleigh, who craved my hand. Craved all the naughty things I did to her.

I should be satisfied with vanilla sex. But I wasn’t.

The limo ride home was bleak. Brutal.

In my guilt and shame, I tore at my dark hair. What would Paloma say?

The sex with Whitleigh was just about satisfying an urge. Nothing like the precious tender times with my wife.

Sometimes I couldn’t even bear to look at Whitleigh after spanking her. Sometimes I would be so wound up my cock was practically weeping, and I’d close my eyes, turn my back, and stroke myself to completion.

But I could not, would not fool myself. It was dirty, wrong cheating. My wife had every right to be angry.

I would come to her with a plan. I had already signed up for a session of marital therapy and sex addict therapy.

I would have to count on the therapists’ discretion. After all, wouldn’t the papers love to get ahold of the Governor and his much younger wife having to go to marriage therapy?

Did it matter? That I didn’t love Whitleigh? That I only saw her as a friend. A friend with certain benefits. We had a mutually beneficial arrangement. That was all.

But it had been my sweet wife who had always held my heart. From the very moment I first saw her. I was 45 and at the top of my game, while she was 25, a blushing, stammering writer assigned to interview me about my position on animal conservation.

She’d been so sweet. So innocent, with her big blue eyes and her neat little polka-dot dress with the big white bow and the plump pink lips. Oh, I remembered how she sat across from me, her hands trembling with nerves as she modestly tucked the long skirts in neatly around her legs.

I wanted to get that perfect virginal body underneath mine.

And a man like me got whatever I wanted. By any means necessary. Power. Manipulation. Control. I didn’t care how I got it, the ends justified the means to me.

And I wanted Paloma, more than I’d ever wanted another woman in my life, even though I was hard and brutal and domineering. I wanted something cream-soft and silky to warm my bed, and to get her I was the perfect boyfriend and husband.

But now my temptations were catching up to me.

The governor’s mansion was a big pure cream building with beautiful molded arches and delicate carved flowers. It had been the ambition of my life to one day live here, and now it would be the ambition of my life to stay here.

I could avoid this scandal. All I needed was a show of perfect unity with my wife.

Behind these luxurious walls was the wife I had betrayed, not because I didn’t love her, but because of this darkness inside me, this craving to lust and cheat and dominate.

Why was I cursed with these wicked temptations? This depraved lust for my hand exploding on a woman’s bare buttocks? Why couldn’t I be satisfied with the shy gasps of my wife during sex? Her sweet and trusting kisses?

I was a deeply complex man, and these sessions with my particular friend satisfied something inside me. But I must—I must learn how to resist them. For my wife’s sake, I had to learn how to.

“My Paloma,” I said, my deep voice echoing in the entryway.

How could I ever explain it to her? These were words I shrank from ever uttering around her. Control. Power. Domination.

She was sitting on the couch with her laptop, and at the sound of my voice she rose to greet me.

Her beauty took my breath away just as powerfully as it had the first day I saw her.

That sweet angel’s face with the beautiful blue eyes.

A tiny button nose with a sprinkling of freckles.

Always the perfect amount of makeup. Just enough to enhance her natural beauty.

Those rosebud lips. And always that beautiful little flush on her cheeks when she saw me.

And now like a brute I would have to ruin that pure innocence, her perfect trust in me.

She rose up, every motion elegant and refined, her long blonde hair falling in soft sweet curls all down her back to her waist.

“Hello, my Silas.”

Her angelic smile almost sent me to my knees.

“Sweetheart, we need to talk.”

The smile slid from her face by inches, leaving me feeling empty and hollow.

I despised myself for the distressed look on her face. The little frown. The unusual lines of worry on her smooth forehead.

I was about to shatter her whole world. I was going to have to admit my most shameful desires to her.

Would she ever trust me again?

“Is something wrong?” Paloma asked anxiously, hurrying to my side and twining her fingers in my much bigger ones. “Did something happen at work?”

She smelled like lavender and ylang-ylang, her scent filling my whole body with an aching longing. For her sweetness. For her innocence. For her beautiful kisses.

If only—if only I didn’t have to hurt her! If only I had been stronger.

“Your face is so serious,” she whispered as I drew her over to the cream sofa, her hand gently stroking my face, fingers soft and delicate against the rough bristles of my beard.

“I’m afraid it is serious, darling,” I said. “It is something very serious indeed. But the thing to remember is, I love you.”

Paloma stiffened, freezing in place as her eyes carefully examined my expression for clues.

“I am here to beg for your forgiveness—”

“What happened?” she interrupted, and there was a hard little note in her voice that I hadn’t heard before.

“I have—been weak. Even though I love you, my darling, more than anything else in the world, I have been—unfaithful to our marriage. I’m so sorry.”

My secret was out

I felt like throwing up, my stomach heaving almost uncontrollably.

“Why?” she asked. "Are you not getting enough—intimate time at home?”

Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, and I clutched desperately at them. She was so pure! So innocent! My sweet wife couldn’t even say the word sex without blushing.

“It’s not about that. There are just some—darker desires I do not feel comfortable talking about with my wife. But I swear, darling, we are going to go to therapy together, and I’m going to overcome this.”

She buried her face in her hands, her long blonde hair falling all over my lap, and making me feel even more like a cruel bastard.

“What are these dark desires?” she asked, her voice sounding stifled.

“I don’t want to distress you,” I said gently.

“Just tell me.”

I swallowed hard.

“My desires are very. . . unconventional. Perhaps it is because I am such a hard, brutal man. But I have these urges to put my hand on a woman’s buttocks.

To spank and smack the buttocks, in fact.

I like it dirty and rough. The name for it is BDSM.

I am so sorry you have to hear this. So very sorry. I promise to do better in future.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “And you have been out there spanking and smacking random women’s buttocks?”

“Not random women,” I hastened to reassure her. “Just one woman. She is very discreet. I have no romantic interest in her, of course.”

Paloma still said nothing, her face hidden in the long curtains of her hair, and I longed to pull her into my arms, kiss away the hurt, but I settled for stroking her sweet little hand gently.

“I love you so much. Please, darling, say something. I understand that this is the worst betrayal. I will do whatever you ask to earn your trust back. I was always fully safe and took precautions, but I will take an STD test. You can come with me to every counseling session to hold me accountable.”

“This changes everything,” Paloma whispered. “It’s all over now.”

“No,” I begged. “No, it doesn’t have to be over. Please say you’ll give me another chance. Say you still love me. I promise I won’t succumb to my temptations this time.”

Then my beautiful wife raised her head up. Instead of the tear-stained face I expected to see, her eyes were dry and there was a smile tugging up the corners of her mouth.

“And all this is about spanking? Spanking? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

I stared at her in incomprehension.

“This changes everything because I married you for your money, Silas. And if you’re stepping out on me like an idiot, that’s going to change a lot of things around here.”