Hush Hush #2
Coming June 4, 2015: Hush Hush #3
Coming April 23, 2015: Meeting the New Mrs. Winters
Hush Hush #2
By Anneliese Vandell
Copyright © 2015 Anneliese Vandell. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either’s products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Cover image credit: NAS CRETIVES/Shutterstock
To Jared, forever and always.
1
“Look at me.”
With some difficulty, I lift my eyes up to the focused expression etched onto Liam’s face. There’s a pinch in my neck as I crane my head upward. My bare breasts are pressed against the floor, my nose mere inches from the wood grain. My arms are outstretched before me, fingers fanned wide. Behind me, my bottom is raised in the air, legs spread, knees red against the hardwood floor.
Liam’s frown seems to flicker as he takes in the sight of me—a trick of the candlelight, perhaps. Or maybe I’m not pleasing him.
My back arches a little more sharply.
His polished black oxfords begin to circle around me. I can feel Liam’s eyes sweeping over my naked body, lingering on my quivering sex. I try and remind myself that he’s seen me nude before, that I shouldn’t feel so self-conscious.
But there’s something about this—something about being stared at so starkly, so
entirely
—that makes my skin twinge with anticipation. A warm, tingling sensation radiates from between my legs.
“Now, tell me how you feel,” he commands.
Excited. Naked. Nervous,
I think to myself.
And a little hungry.
Our evening together had begun downstairs in the dining room, with a meal of seared steak topped with blue cheese-and-chive butter—which would have been delicious, I’m sure, if only I had been able to eat it. As I sputtered down my glass of cabernet and tried my best to ignore the excited butterflies in my stomach, my mind circled around one thing only: Liam’s mysterious sex room, where he promised we would begin our Friday evening with my first “training.”
Training.
Even here, outstretched on the floor, the word is still enough to send a thrill up my spine. I suck in a gulp of air and glance down at my trembling fingers.
Snap!
My body bucks against the leather whip as it comes down across my bottom. A hot, pricking sensation throbs beneath my skin.
“Didn’t I tell you to look at me?” Liam says sternly. His tone is so
intimidating
—it sends another frisson of excitement shooting up my bare back
.
He continues: “And you haven’t answered my question.”
Biting my lip, I look back up at him obediently. I murmur, “I feel fine.”
Liam sighs and brings the whip down to his side, tapping it against his pant leg.
“This isn’t going to work if you’re not honest with me, Sophia,” he says in a disappointed voice.
I smile inwardly at the irony of his words—asking for honesty from a woman who doesn’t exist.
“Stand up,” he commands.
I leap to my feet. I spread out my legs so that they are square with my shoulders, just like he showed me at the beginning of our session, and cross my wrists behind my back. I lift myself a few inches into the air, balancing on the balls of my feet, to complete the pose.
“Your hands are wrong. Palms out, not in,” he says, but the corner of his mouth twitches with approval nonetheless. His hands are strong yet gentle as he takes my wrists and rotates them outward, setting them into proper position.
When he is satisfied with his work, he takes a step back and surveys me once more—but this time with a furrowed brow.
“I’ll say it again,” he says. “Tell me how you feel.”
My nipples harden beneath his gaze. Standing face to face like this only emphasizes my nakedness; he’s still buttoned up to the neck, wearing his steel-gray suit from the office. He hooks a finger into the knot of his tie, loosening it. His movements are slow and deliberate; as I watch his fingers move against his neck, a question forms on my lips.
What is he going to
do
with me tonight?
Here in this room, with all those toys mounted on the wall, he can play my body like a violin if he wants to—and I’ll let him.
My heart begins to thump wildly. My skin is buzzing—but whether it’s from excitement or nervousness, I’m not sure. Both emotions seem to be coursing through me in equal measure, making my blood run hot. Making my lips tingle.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I glance down. Liam is impatiently tapping the leather whip against his leg. He wants an answer to his question. My heart pounds faster.
“I feel…a little timid,” I confess. “This is all just so new to me.”
There’s a shimmering look in his pale blue eyes. “It’s all right to be nervous, Sophia. That’s why we do the training. To push the limits of your boundaries and see how far we can bend them. For example,” he says, taking a step toward me, “I can tell from your body language that you’re uncomfortable being naked.” He strokes his fingers against my breast, circling around my erect nipple. “But after enough sessions with me, I promise that you’ll
prefer
it.”
I let out an involuntary gasp of breath as he flicks my nipple with his thumb. “Right.”
Liam withdraws his hand. He looks at me with stern eyes. “But it’s essential for you to be open with me. About everything—whether we’re coming up against a hard limit of yours, or if you’re beginning to feel too uncomfortable to keep going. We won’t make any real progress together otherwise.”
I nod.
“And so if I ask you a question, I require an honest answer. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Liam,” I say obediently.
He snaps a hand out and grabs me by the chin.
“In this room, you are to address me as
Sir
,” he instructs. His touch is electrifying; as his fingers press more firmly against my skin, little lightning-zaps of excitement rush through me. “If you speak to me so informally again, you will be punished. Now tell me: do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” I say with bated breath.
“Good.” He releases my chin, but remains close to me.
Despite his three-piece suit, I can feel the heat radiating off his body. There’s a kind of power emanating from him, a rippling confidence in the flick of his lips and the flexing muscle in his jaw.
Standing mere inches away from him, soaking it all in—it’s intoxicating. Like taking forbidden sips from an expensive bottle of liquor.
Still, it’s curious—during our trysts around the city, in the jazz club and on the steamboat and everywhere in between, I thought I was starting to get a handle on him. Starting to understand what made him tick. But now, as I tremble under his hungry, reckless gaze, I realize that I’ve never met Liam. Not really. Not until now.
The man in front of me—
this
is the real Liam. He’s more confident, more powerful, than I’ve ever seen him. It dawns on me that there’s something about this room that brings it out of him.
In this room,
I’m
the one wearing restraints.
In this room, he can be free.
Liam reaches his hand out and cups my breast. His thumb draws a soft circle around my nipple, and then the hand drops.
It trails down the slope of my stomach, down towards my sex. I shudder with pleasure as his fingers begin to probe the soft folds of my lips.
“You have a lot to learn about men,” he whispers into my ear. “But don’t worry. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
His fingers brush across my clit. I moan.
“You ought to say thank you,” he says sternly.
“Thank you, thank you,” I breathe out.
His hand falls away suddenly, leaving my sex throbbing and desperate for more.
“
Who
are you thanking, now?”
Right. This is going to take some practice.
Which I guess is the point of all of this
, I think with a shiver.
“Thank you,
Sir
,” I say obediently.
Liam smirks. “In this room,” he says, “you’re mine. I’ll command you as I please, and it will be your privilege to obey.”
He pauses, as if waiting for some kind of response from me. I hesitate, unsure of what exactly I’m supposed to say.
The seconds tick. The leather whip begins to rise in his hand as he grows impatient.
Quickly, I stammer out a “Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”
To my relief, this seems to satisfy him.
“That took you long enough,” he says. “You’re going to learn your manners by the time I’m through with you.”
He begins to slide his hand up the length of the whip, tracing his fingers tantalizingly around the tip of the handle.
“In the meantime,” Liam says, pressing his thumb into the tip, massaging and flicking it, smirking as my own anticipation visibly mounts, “we’re going to have some fun.”
The whip lands with a light
thunk
when he drops it to the floor.
“Pick it up,” he orders.
Feeling slightly breathless, I take a step forward and lean down to grab it—but his arm shoots out and blocks my path.
I look up curiously. There’s a gleam in Liam’s eyes. The look alone is enough to make my heart pound.
“With your teeth,” he specifies.
I can feel the gasp traveling up my throat; I press my lips together to keep from making a sound. Resolutely, I get down on my hands and knees. My chin slides across the hard floor as I open my mouth wide. My teeth clamp down around the handle. The smells of leather, salt, and cologne fill my nose.
As I lift chin and whip alike into the air, for a perilous moment I think that the whip is going to tumble out of my mouth—but to my relief, it stays securely between my teeth.
I turn back to Liam. He raises an eyebrow at me, apparently unimpressed by my feat. His hand makes a “come here” motion.
The message is clear:
crawl back here and put the whip in my hand.
My left arm reaches forward first, and then my left knee, followed by the right side. One limb moving after the other, I proceed closer and closer to Liam, beneath his expectant gaze. I am suddenly aware of how my breasts swing and jiggle with each of my movements.
Only seconds pass, but it feels like much longer.
At last, I find myself at Liam’s feet. My nose presses into his open palm as I obediently place the whip into his hand.
“Good girl,” he croons. “Now turn around. Let me see that beautiful ass of yours.”
His words send my limbs into a wild tremble. My breath is haggard with anticipation as I shuffle myself around, until I am facing away from him and my bottom is within his reach.
“Put your forehead on the floor,” he instructs.
I do as he says. Waves of excitement, mingled with nervousness, rush through me. I press my eyes closed. And I wait.
But the sharp snaps of pain don’t arrive. Instead, with a tantalizing slowness, the hard handle of the whip slides up the inside of my thigh. And then, after a few seconds, it disappears.
I hold my breath, convinced that
now
I’ll feel the stinging tongues of the whip against my rear. But when it lands a moment later, the impact isn’t on my bottom—but rather between my legs. I let out a yelp before I realize that it doesn’t actually hurt. The impact is soft—more like a tap than a smack.
And as the whip continues to tap softly, teasingly, against my sex, my back begins to arch with pleasure. I can feel a moan on my tongue, trapped between my teeth.
“The thing you have to understand, Sophia,” says Liam, “is that if you’re good for me, I’ll be good to you.”