Dangerous Pleasures (17 page)

“I’ll try to learn fast,” she said. “I know not working with a guest costs you tips.”

“Not to worry,” he assured her, his blue eyes meeting hers. “Nora told me there would be more in my pay packet for this duty, but, Annie, I’d be glad to do it even if there weren’t. It’s fun being with you.”

“Are you flirting with me, Devyn?” she asked, and then blushed for being so stupid. What was he going to think of her coming on to him like that? Annie slid into the driver’s seat, feeling like an idiot.

“As a matter of fact I am,” he told her. Then he shut the car door. “Drive carefully, Annie. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then he turned away and headed back to the main building.

She watched him go, admiring that tight butt of his. God, what was she thinking? Annie chided herself as she started the car and headed for home. And what was he thinking? That he had discovered his own Mrs. Robinson? She pulled into her drive just ahead of the school bus, which was dropping Mark Iaonne off up the block. Seeing her getting out of her van, Mavis Iaonne waved brightly. Annie waved back.
I wonder if she gets the Channel,
she thought.

Lizzie called after the kids were all settled for the night. “So, how did the first day go?” she wanted to know.

“You were right. I’m pooped, but it was good. I’m glad I took the job. They’ve given me Devyn to help me get everything set up and learn how to operate the computer. He’s flirting with me, Lizzie, and I want to flirt back.”

“So?”

“So? Lizzie, I’ve got five kids! I’m going to be forty-four in December. He’s thirty-one, if he really is.”

“There are plenty of older women with younger lovers these days,” Lizzie noted. “No one thinks anything about it. After all, older men take younger wives, girlfriends, and mistresses all the time. This is the twenty-first century, big sis.”

“I think I need to visit the Beast, but I’m so afraid the kids will come in,” Annie said. “How can I be certain my fantasy won’t be on if they do?”

Lizzie reassured her sibling. “Look, go in after midnight and lock your bedroom door,” she suggested. “Why not program the B button, using Devyn as your playmate?”

“Not yet,” Annie demurred. “What if the line between reality and fantasy blurred for me, Lizzie? How embarrassing would that be?”

“But you want him, don’t you?” Lizzie persisted.

“Yes, I think I do,” Annie admitted. “But, like you, I have a reputation to think of, sis. Can you imagine how mortified the girls would be if they found out I was screwing my personal assistant? He’s only thirteen years older than Nathaniel.”

“And only eleven years younger than you. I’ll bet he could do it all night,” Lizzie said, sounding envious. “I’ll be meeting him soon,” she said. “I booked the Columbus Day weekend at the Spa. If I could get the Channel Corporation as a client for the firm, it would be quite a coup. Even a private facility like the Spa should have a lawyer on retainer.”

“You are shameless.” Annie laughed. “I’m going to bed. Good night, Lizzie.”

“Night, big sister,” Lizzie responded, and hung up.

I am horny,
Annie thought to herself. She hadn’t been able to access the Channel since she had gotten home. Getting up, she went out into the upstairs hall and checked on the children, peeping into the three bedrooms where her son and daughters were. They were all sleeping soundly. She tiptoed back to her own bedroom and, taking her sister’s suggestion, locked the door behind her. Opening the cabinet where the television was hidden, she climbed into bed and, pointing her remote at the screen, clicked the A button.

“I like it when you bathe my cock and balls,” the Beast said. “You are gentle, Mistress Anne. I have never known gentleness from a woman.”

“Was your mother not gentle with you?” Annie asked him.

“I had no mother,” the Beast said harshly. “I killed her with my birth, and her death killed any affection my father might have held for me.”

“My mother died when I was so young, I cannot remember her,” Mistress Anne, the merchant’s daughter, told the Beast. “She birthed my sister too soon. They were buried together on the hillside behind our home. Surely your father was kind to you.”

“All I remember of him were the beatings he gave me weekly. One was always for taking my mother’s life. The others were for any small infraction I might have made that displeased him. You asked me if I wear a mask because I am scarred, and I told you aye. I did not tell you my father marked me when I was twenty. He had decided he wished to remarry. And he told me that if his new wife birthed him a son he would make that child his heir, if it did not kill its mother in the birthing.

“All my life he had punished me for something I did not do. Was it not he who planted the seed of life within my mother? I told him that it was he who had killed her with his unbridled lust and demand for a son. I taunted him with the knowledge that the woman he wished to wed had already succumbed to
my
lust, and taken
my
cock most willingly. I had had her virginity of her, and it had been sweet. He attacked me then, and in defending myself I killed him. But not before he had maimed me, screaming that my pretty face would never again lure a woman willingly into my bed.”

“Ah, poor Beast,” Annie said, and her hand stroked his face beneath the mask.

“I do not need your pity, wench!” the Beast snarled. “I am a fool for having told you my history. You shall be beaten for your temerity, and then I shall fuck you until you beg me for my mercy.”

Annie caught at his arm before he could jump from the bed. “Why do you beat your women?” she asked him. “Did you learn nothing from your father’s cruelty?”

He wrapped his hand in her chestnut hair and yanked her close. “Women need whipping to arouse their juices and their passions,” he told her.

“Nay, I think it is you who gain the real pleasure from such actions,” she accused. “Let me make love to you, my lord, and I will prove to you that you need no harshness to entice me into your arms.”

Curiosity bloomed in the dark eyes behind the mask. “If you fail, it will go the harder with you,” he warned her. “I will give you to my officers for an evening’s entertainment, bold wench. Would you not rather take a strapping now, and be done with it?” the Beast said to her.

In answer to his question Annie loosened his hand from her hair and pushed him back against the pillows. “That magnificent cock of yours needs no inducement but my passions for you, my lord,” she assured him. Bending, she kissed his mouth, running the pointed tip of her tongue along his lips until he opened them, his tongue fencing with hers as she caressed it with slow strokes. Her lips touched the leather-and-silk mask, kissing it. She gently pushed his head back and slowly licked his throat from its base to his chin. Then she nibbled gently back down the rough length of it.

She moved her body down slightly and sucked hard on his nipples while one of her hands encircled his taut belly again and again. Biting on his nipples, she elicited a small cry from him. With a smoky laugh Annie licked and nipped her way down his muscled torso. Then, before he realized her intent, she swiftly clapped the leather restraints fastened to the headboard about his wrists.

He gave a warning growl, but made no move to free himself.

Annie positioned herself with her bottom facing his head, but, restrained, he could not touch her. She tangled her fingers in the thick mat of black curls covering his groin and tugged gently upon them. Then, picking up his massive cock, which was already showing signs of his arousal, she licked its length several times before beginning to tease its Cyclops head with its single eye. Her tongue ran around beneath its rim. She sucked it as one would suck a tender morsel. When she began to take him more fully into her mouth he groaned. She sucked, gently at first, then harder and harder. The flesh within her mouth swelled and grew tight. It was beginning to throb.

Annie repositioned herself and crawled between his outstretched thighs. She nuzzled at his hairy balls, taking them into her mouth, rolling them about with her tongue until he was almost crying with the pleasurable pain she was inflicting upon him. When she was certain he was more than ready, Annie released him from his bonds, rolling onto her back and holding her arms out to him. “Come, my lord, and have your reward,” she cooed at him.

He loomed over her. “Let us see how deep your tenderness goes when you see the truth of your passion, Mistress Anne,” he said, tearing the mask from his face.

The scar was deep, and it had been administered with deliberate cruelty. It ran from the outer corner of his right eye, across his cheekbone, beneath his nostril, to the left corner of his mouth down to his jawbone. Annie did not cry out, nor did she display any sign of the sorrow she felt at seeing the deformity. Instead she took his head between her two hands and, pulling it down to her, kissed him with every ounce of passion in her soul. “Have me, my lord,” she whispered against his mouth. “I find you far more exciting in truth than with your mask.” Her fingertips ran gently down the ridged scar.

With a roar he drove himself into her. Never had his lust risen so high, burned so brightly. “I will never let you go!” he told her.
“Never!”

“Fuck me, my dearest lord,” she cried out to him. “Fuck me!”

And he did. They came together the first time, his rich, thick cum so copious that it overflowed her vagina. But he did not withdraw from her, and he remained as hard as iron within her. Once again he began to piston her with long, hard strokes, howling like a crazed man with his climax. Now she came a second time a moment behind him, crying with the pleasure that weakened her. He rested briefly, still firm.

“I can bear no more,” she whimpered.

“You have done this to me,” he said gently against her ear. “Now you must see it through, Mistress Anne.” And he kissed her tenderly as he began his third race. And finally he felt the peculiar stiffing that signaled his satisfaction. He shuddered hard several times, and came a third time with another cry.

As he did Annie climaxed a final time, passion washing over her in fierce waves. Her body arched up against his. She trembled as her insides quivered and quaked until she thought she would be torn apart. She cried out, half-fearful, but he held her tightly until the spasms racking her body subsided. He reached for his mask. “No,” she said. “No more when you are just with me, my lord.” And she drew his dark head back to her for a tender kiss. “Wear it if you will among your men, but not with me.”

“Are you not fearful? Disgusted?” he asked her. “I am ugly now, where once I was considered the handsomest man in the kingdom.”

“You are beautiful to me, my lord,” Annie reassured him as he laid his head on her breasts. She stroked his dark hair gently.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

“End fantasy!” Annie said quickly, her head turning to look at her clock. It was almost four. Well, nothing lost. She climbed from her bed and, turning the key in the lock, opened the door. “Wills, what’s the matter?” she asked her little son.

“My tummy hurts, Mommy,” he said, his blue eyes looking up at her. “I think I’m going to throw up.” And before she could move him, he did so on the carpet before her.
“Mommy!”

Picking her son up, Annie raced to the bathroom down the hall as Wills began to vomit again, but at least this time into the toilet.

“Mom, what’s the matter?” Rose was there.

“Your brother is sick. Stay with him while I clean up my bedroom doorway,” Annie said with a sigh. The perfect end to a perfect evening, she thought wryly as she went to fetch a bucket, soap and water, and some rags. She checked back with Rose before she began her onerous task. Wills was still throwing up every few minutes.
What a disaster,
Annie thought as she cleaned up the mess.
I cannot stay home with a sick child on my second day of work. What am I going to do?

Wills finally stopped throwing up, and she tucked him back into bed after bringing him a Pedialyte pop to suck on and ease any dehydration. “Thanks, Rosie,” she said to her daughter.

“I heard something’s already going around the kindergarten,” Rose volunteered.

“Wonderful,” Annie replied. “Go back to bed, sweetie. It will be time to get up before you know it.” Setting up the old baby monitor in Wills’s room, she took the remote back to bed with her. There was just no help for it. She couldn’t ask one of the twins to remain home tomorrow. They were too young. And Amy was going on a field trip to the city. It wasn’t worth asking her to give that up. And if Wills had this bug, his best friend, Mark, would, too, so Mavis was out. She dozed, not hearing her alarm, only to be awakened by Amy before she left.

“I need money for the trip,” her eldest daughter said. “What was all the noise last night? Is someone sick?”

“Wills.”

“I cannot stay home!” Amy immediately cried.

“You don’t have to,” Annie said wearily. “Money is on my dressing table.”

Amy grabbed it up, and was gone.

Annie reached for her cell phone and went to the directory, pushing the number marked,
NORA
/
HOME
. The phone rang twice, and then Nora’s voice came on the line. “Nora, it’s Annie. I am so sorry, so embarrassed, but I’ve got a sick five-year-old, and no sitter. If you want to fire me, I’ll understand.”

Nora Buckley laughed. “Get ready for work. I’ll take care of it. The sitter will be there by eight, Annie. You couldn’t expect that your son would get sick on your second day.”

“I told them all no one could get sick until at least after Christmas,” Annie joked weakly. “No one listens to me.”

Nora laughed again. “The Channel Corporation doesn’t just hire people, Annie. We hire the right people, and we back them up when they need it. You are the right person for the gift shop. Go have a cup of coffee and relax. It will all be taken care of, I promise you. See you later.” And she rang off.

“Mom?” It was the twins.

“We could stay home today if you want,” Lily said.

“No need. My boss is sending a sitter,” Annie said, and she smiled. “Thank you, my twins, for offering. Now go get ready or you’ll miss the bus.”