Dangerous Pleasures (14 page)

“You feel good,” he told her, echoing her own thoughts about him.

“You’re too fresh,” she said softly.

“Will you miss me, Annie?” he asked low.

“When I have time to,” she told him. “Wills will be home tomorrow, and Nathaniel the day after, and then the girls. And school begins in a few days, and we’ve got some shopping to do. And there’s parents’ night for high school, middle school, and kindergarten this year. I just hope two aren’t scheduled on the same night.”

“What about Annie?” he asked her.

“Once I leave the Spa, Annie goes back into the closet and Mom comes out again,” she answered him. “This has been an incredible week for me, Devyn. Until this week I was never away from family or friends. I never had any time for just me. I have loved every minute of it, and I’ll always remember it.”

“Somehow that just doesn’t seem fair to me,” he told her.

Annie laughed. “Whoever told you life was fair, kid?” she asked him as the music came to a close and everyone turned to clap for Van Long.

The remaining guests dispersed, escorted to their quarters by their PAs.

“I’ve got your schedule for tomorrow,” Devyn said. “I’ll wake you at eight a.m. You have breakfast, your final beauty treatments, and lunch, and the limo will be here at two p.m. to take you back home.” He leaned forward slightly.

“Okay,” Annie replied. “Good night, Devyn.” And she quickly closed the door to her suite. She wasn’t certain, but it had certainly appeared as if he were going to kiss her.
Wow!
That was certainly a cool end to the week. A forty-something mom of five being come on to by a cute thirty-one-year-old. She still wasn’t certain she believed he was thirty-one. That baby face was very deceiving. Maybe he just felt he had to score with her at least once, because obviously most of the other personal assistants had been laid.

The Channel? Was she in the mood tonight? Maybe for a little while. She had never attempted to end her fantasy early, but she knew she needed her rest tonight. Still, it was unlikely she was going to be able to access the Channel for a while after she left. And from which television would she enter it? With four children at home she was going to have to be very careful. But her user’s pamphlet had explained that if anyone came upon her while she was in the midst of a fantasy the television screen would show snow, as if she had lost the signal.
Still,
Annie thought,
I need to be discreet
.

She decided to pack so she wouldn’t be bothered with it in the morning. Then she washed and got into her nightgown before climbing into bed, reaching for the remote as she did so. She pressed the open/close button, then
A
. The paneled wall opened slowly, revealing the darkened screen. Then, as the screen began to lighten, she felt herself sliding away.

“Ow! Oww! Owwww!” She found herself over the Beast’s knees.

“Next time when I tell you not to wear clothing to bed you will obey me, Mistress Anne,” the Beast growled as his hand descended several more times upon her hapless buttocks. “Damn me, wench, you have a fine round bottom for spanking.” His hand briefly fondled her flesh before continuing the punishment.

“But the night is cold!” she protested. “Owwww! Oh, you are cruel, my lord!”

“Aye, I am, but it is obvious you have still not yet fully accepted that I am your lord and master, Mistress Anne.”

“My poor buttocks are burning, my lord!” she protested, and she wiggled suggestively against him.

“And they will burn a bit more before I am finished with you, my disobedient mistress,” he told her, smacking her several more spanks. “Ah, now, there is the proper pink, wench.” He abruptly stood up, pulling her with him, and flung her facedown upon the bed. “On your knees there, wench!” he ordered her fiercely.

“Ohh, you are a monster,” Annie protested, and pretended to snivel, although she wasn’t in the least harmed by the spanking. She had quite enjoyed it. Devyn had a cute little round butt. She wondered how he would take to a spanking.

“You are thinking of another man,” the Beast said, to her surprise.

“Nay, I am not!” Annie cried. How the hell had he known her thoughts?

“Aye, you are, but it matters not. I am the one about to fuck you, and in this world you are mine and mine alone, unless I permit otherwise.” He directed his long cock to lodge just within her vagina, and when he had he grasped her hips in his hands, thrust hard into her delicious body.

Annie cried out as his great length filled her. He remained perfectly still now that she had sheathed him. Annie waited. She grew nervous, for he did nothing more.

“My lord?” she queried him softly.

“Beg me for it, you duplicitous little bitch,” he told her.
“Beg!”
His voice was dark, and harsh as his fingers dug into her flesh.

“Please, my lord!
Please!
” Annie said. God, she loved his games!

“Please,
what
?” he demanded.

“Please, my lord!” Annie repeated.

“Say the word, wench!”

“What word?” She played his game.

He laughed. “Say the word or I shall turn you over to my men. I’m certain they could make you say it.”

“It is so naughty,” Annie murmured.

“Say it!”
His voice was a whip crack.

“Fuck me!” Annie cried. “Oh, please, my lord! Fuck me deep and fuck me hard! I need it! I need you!
Fuck me!
”

“Now there’s a good and obedient lass,” the Beast replied as he began to piston her with long strokes that grew faster and faster and faster until Annie was screaming with the pleasure he was giving her. And then he stopped suddenly.

“No!” she cried. “Not yet!”

“It does not please me that you come now, Mistress Anne,” he told her. “You need a bit more discipline.” He withdrew from her. “Remain as you are,” he ordered her. Then, walking across the chamber, he took a leather tawse from a hook by the hearth. “Head down upon your folded arms,” he ordered.

Annie quickly obeyed, for she knew what was to come. The tawse cracked as the leather met her buttocks. “Ohhh!” she half sobbed. He laid ten strokes upon her. Then, reinserting his penis into her vagina, he used her fiercely until they both came in a mutual burst of their hot juices. And Annie had to admit to herself that her climax was sharper for the delicious punishment he had administered to her.

He collapsed atop her, and after a few moments he arose, commanding her, “Go and fetch the basin so you may bathe our parts. I am not yet wearied of your company.” He fell back upon the great bed.

And when Annie had obeyed his directive and climbed back into the bed to cuddle within the curve of his arm, she said, “Fantasy end,” and she awoke within her bed in her suite.
Well,
she thought,
it does work. The next time I call up this fantasy it will be a more comfortable beginning.
She shifted to her side. Her butt definitely hurt, and her vagina was a bit sore from his ferocious passion. Relaxed, Annie fell asleep.

She awoke even before Devyn arrived. And the thought she had had the night before entered her head again as she waited for his wake-up call. Would Devyn take to a spanking? Maybe she would program the B button when she got home and find out. She felt her cheeks grow warm. God, what was the matter with her? He was a kid.
But he said he was thirty-one,
a voice in her head murmured. It was more than the age of consent. And he had a cute butt, and a pretty good package, she had noted when they were in the pool. My God, going without sex for two years had turned her into a horny middle-aged woman.

There was a light knock at the door, and Devyn entered the bedroom. He smiled. “You’re awake. I guess you’re excited to be going home today,” he said.

“Yep,” Annie agreed. “I sure am excited. What’s for breakfast?”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

“I
’ve asked your chauffeur to wait a few minutes,” Nora Buckley said to Annie as she came down into the Spa’s main lobby. “I’d like to speak with you. Have you time?”

Annie nodded, noting Mrs. Van der Veer slipping something into her personal assistant’s hand as she bade him farewell and seeing the PA thanking her as the older woman gave his butt a squeeze. “Should Devyn be tipped?” she murmured to Nora.

“Ordinarily yes, but you’re our prizewinner. He’ll have a little something in his pay packet from the corporation at the end of the month for taking such good care of you. I can see that he did. You’re glowing. You looked absolutely worn a week ago. Come into my office, Annie.” She led the way through a small reception room and into a large, bright office decorated with fine seventeenth-and eighteenth-century antiques. The thick carpet was white. The dainty settee was upholstered in a patterned cream-colored fabric. There was a single rosewood chair with a dark green velvet seat in front of a large mahogany desk. “Sit down,” Nora invited. “Have you enjoyed your week?”

“Absolutely! If I had Elise Van der Veer’s money I’d be here a week every month,” Annie told Nora.

“How would you like to be here a couple of days a week all the time?” Nora asked with an amused smile.

“Huh?” The look on Annie’s face was slightly comical.

“Mr. Nicholas liked the few suggestions that you made when you first arrived. Especially your idea of opening a small shop to sell Spa-related items. He wanted to offer you a job with the Channel Corporation, Annie.”

“Me? A job here? Doing what?” Annie was astounded. “I don’t have any business acumen. Working for my father for a brief year really doesn’t qualify as serious experience, Nora. And I’ve got a family to look after.”

“I didn’t have any experience when my husband died, and I went to work,” Nora said. “But the antique shop owner was willing to train me, and the corporation will train you as you work. We want you to run the gift shop we plan to open just off the lobby. We’ll pay you while we train you. You’ll have full health care for you and your family. We’ll open a retirement account for you. You’ll work from eight thirty in the morning until two thirty every afternoon. So you’ll be home to get the kids off in the morning, and there to take your little one off the bus.”

“Five days a week, six hours a day? Even I know that’s only part-time under the labor laws,” Annie said. “Yet you’re offering me benefits?”

“Mr. Nicholas believes you have great potential, Annie,” Nora Buckley said. “He thinks you can move up in the organization. Eventually I’m going to hire an assistant manager, and after several years I will be moving on again to wherever the corporation wants me to go. You could easily end up running the Spa.”

Annie swallowed hard. She was about to say she wasn’t possibly smart enough to run the Spa, but then she thought,
Why not?
Yes, she’d done only menial stuff when she worked for her father, but she remembered how quickly she had learned his business. He had even said to her just before her wedding that if she wanted to keep on working for him he’d move her up in the ranks to agent. She had refused, of course, as she and Nat had wanted to start a family. But her brain hadn’t atrophied yet. She could still learn. They were willing to teach her.

“And, of course, as one of our employees, you will have full use of the facilities of the Spa gratis whenever you want,” Nora murmured.

“If I accepted your offer I couldn’t start for a few weeks,” Annie said. “Nathaniel is going off to college. Wills is starting kindergarten, and I have to get the girls set.”

“How about September twenty-ninth?” Nora asked. “You should have everything in order by then.”

“Can I think about it a few days?” Annie asked. She should take it. She really should take it. Why was she being so coy? She was going to take it.

“Of course,” Nora said. “Let me know the day after Labor Day.”

“Okay,” Annie said.

“You haven’t asked what we’ll pay you yet,” Nora remarked with a smile.

“No, I guess I haven’t,” Annie admitted. “I’m not used to this stuff.”

“We’ll start you at forty thousand,” Nora replied.

“Dollars? Forty thousand dollars? Just to run a gift shop?” Annie was amazed.

“The cost of living around here isn’t cheap,” Nora noted. “To get good people we need to pay excellent salaries and benefits. Do you know what the personal assistants make? A hundred thousand in salary, and probably a couple thousand more in tips. If the spa is successful here, Mr. Nicholas is thinking of opening another in the Southwest.”

“Wow!” Annie gasped.

“Wow, indeed.” Nora laughed, standing and holding out her hand. “Good-bye, Annie Miller. Don’t forget to call me in a few days. I hope you’ll be joining us.”

Annie shook Nora’s hand. “I will,” she said, and, turning, made her way back out to the lobby, where Devyn was waiting to see her off.

“Take care of yourself, Annie,” he told her as he helped her into the white limo.

“You, too,” she answered. “Maybe I’ll see you again soon.”

“I hope so!” he told her, smiling as he shut the car door.

Annie leaned back into the leather seat as her vehicle pulled away from the portico and followed the winding tree-lined road out to the highway. It had been an incredible week. And she knew in her heart that she was going to take the job that Nora Buckley had offered her. It was a heaven-sent opportunity. Oh, she’d talk to her dad and to Lizzie about it, but she was going to take it.

Her sister, bless her, was helping to make certain that Nathaniel could go to Princeton. Amy, unless something changed radically, was unlikely to get into an Ivy school. The twins, now, were something else. But if she could advance within the Channel Corporation, Annie would be able to help them herself. And as for little Wills, who knew what he was going to turn out to be? The twins would be through with college before he even graduated high school. With a good job she had breathing room.

Nat would be very proud of her. And with that thought Annie realized that her mourning had finally come to an end. She was really ready to move on with her life, and the exciting thing was, she did have a life! She felt the car pull to a stop, and to her surprise her father was waiting for her with a smile. The chauffeur helped her out and set her bag on the front stoop. He accepted the generous gratuity that Bill Bradford handed him with a tip of his cap, and then he was gone.