Her words suck the oxygen right out of my lungs and I feel my throat begin to close. I can’t even speak to respond.
“Ella? Are you there?”
I try to make a sound to let her know I’m still here but I’m paralyzed with fear. These people are out to get Ian and they sound like they’ll stop at nothing to do it. Eliza is still talking but I’m only catching every third word or so.
“…sorry to upset… thought it would… best.”
“Yes. Thank you, Eliza. You just caught me off-guard. I’ll be sure to relay the information to my fiancé. Thanks again.”
“Sure thing. Good luck to you.”
I can’t call Ian to warn him of this latest threat because he’s in the air right now. I instead send him a text, advising him to call me ASAP. Taking my coffee, I head into the library to do some research on those stupid Lithuanian brothers, Leo and Lukas Sobel. I’m going gunning for them.
The plane slowly rolls into the next
position in the queue for takeoff at the private airfield. Glancing at his watch, he figures it should only be a few more minutes. He rotates his neck and flexes his arms and legs, trying in various ways to relax but every nerve feels stretched like a taut rope, with zero slack. Daniel, he needs to speak to him. Somehow, over a very short period of time, Ian had begun to rely heavily on the other man’s judgment. For the first time perhaps in his life, he feels he has a friend whom he can actually trust.
While the jet sits waiting for clearance, Ian calls Daniel in New York. Though he might be mistaken, he gets the impression that Daniel is always up for a confrontation with a bad guy and Ian seems to have no shortage of them lately.
“Hey, Ian. What’s going on?”
“Daniel. I’m on a plane right now, on my way to New York. Are you in town?”
“I am.”
“Good. Are you in the mood for some face time with the Russian mob?”
“Always.”
Ian laughs. He knew he’d go for it. “I’ll call you when I touch down and we’ll meet. This matter pertains to our friend Phillips, of course.”
“I might have guessed. Call me when you get in and we’ll make a plan.”
“Good enough. Until then.” He disconnects, satisfied he’s found a kindred spirit in Mr. Butler.
Ian had told Ella he had a plan; that was a total lie. Truth was, he had no idea what to do, short of multiple murders. If he finagled to get Natasha and the rest of her clan deported, then what? He would give them even more reason to regroup and come at him again. What the hell could he do?
Thank God that Ella had no idea the brothers and Natasha were affiliated with the Russian mob. She was worried enough about him thinking they were just troublemakers. He hoped he didn’t let on just how agitated he himself was because he was direly conflicted about how to handle this provocative situation.
He leans back in the comfortable leather seat of his Gulfstream. Something begins to slip off his lap and he jerks up, just catching his iPad before it falls to the floor. Reminded that Ella had written him an email letter and compiled a playlist, he turns on the machine. As soon as he reads her words, his chest constricts with emotion, making him wish he could hold her right this minute. As he scrolls past to head to iTunes for her song compilation, his eye catches the books downloaded on his reader, one book in particular. With a devilish grin, he opens the one that snared his attention:
Three and a Half Weeks
, by Ariel Strong. Almost unbelievably, he never got around to reading it before. Maybe this flight wouldn’t be so interminable after all.
It was nine minutes and twenty-eight seconds before I could lock the doors to close the shop for the night when in walks a man in an espresso-brown business suit, the most gorgeous man who’d ever fallen to earth. Thus begins the story of my three and a half weeks with a tall, dark (emphasis on dark), handsome stranger (emphasis on stranger).
She has his full attention now. He continues to read the book she wrote, the “fictional” story about her three and a half weeks with a kinky man and a dungeon full of whips and toys.
He reads the whole book in four hours and by the time he puts the iPad down, he has a vicious hard-on. Damn, he’s going to have to either live with it or take care of it on his own. No wonder Ella’s book was a bestseller: she has a knack for making a scene come alive with hotness. He laughs, thinking of all the girls and women who got their panties wet while reading about his and Ella’s escapades over the course of that time. Three visits to his dungeon, yes, but there were many more nights in beds, his and hers. Yes, they’d made good use of their limited time together.
Limited
. He lost her after that last time in the dungeon. For a long while the experience and its cost made him never want to use a whip again. Now, though, it was different. He and Ella were secure, engaged to be married—they were in love. Would she want to venture into deeper waters with him now? He wonders.
Ella had made light of that last scene in her novel: she’d obviously wanted to keep the book from descending into too dark or depressing a realm. Still, reading between the lines, her trauma bleeds through. When Rafe (his alter-ego) whips Gia (Ella’s alter-ego), she leaves him, too, but they reunite at the end. Did Ella wish for that conclusion all along? If so, he’s been playing by the book unwittingly.
Rafe was in a strange mood that day. Insisting we play, he enthusiastically escorted me to the dungeon and waited impatiently outside while I “situated” myself, as he euphemistically put it. In plainer language, I was to demean myself by stripping naked and kneeling in supplication to await his exalted presence. He could take one minute or a half hour to get to me. The suspense, so he told me, was all part of my fun.
It’s hard to keep track of time when your knees are aching from being on a cold, hard floor but it was probably only three or four minutes until I heard the door creak open and his footsteps approaching me. Almost from minute one, I realized that this kink was psychological as much as physical, probably in equal measure. The sounds, the silence, the suspense and anticipation—it all mixed and alchemized into intense sexual excitement. This time was so different, though. Instead of leading me to the bench or restraining me from the hooks suspended from the ceiling, he brought me over to what I called the tilted cross. In actuality, it looks like an X and it’s called a St. Andrew’s cross. Back then, I didn’t know what it was but I could certainly guess what it was used for.
Few words were spoken as he lashed my wrists and ankles to each limb of the cross. I bent my face into my left arm, since there was nothing in the middle for me to lean on.
Rafe gave me no details: it wasn’t until later that I discovered he was greatly pissed off at me for flirting with another man. I hadn’t even realized I was flirting: I called it buying a fucking cup of coffee from some young blond guy who works at Starbucks. Trivial details don’t matter, though, when the punishment is a single tail laid across your bare back, posterior, and thighs in rapid succession. He told me I owed him a thank-you for sparing my calves and ankles. I disagreed: I felt I owed him a bullet in his intestines.
Did he think I would get sexually aroused from a whipping? The answer was apparently yes. Some women—and men—like to be taken to heights so lofty that their bodies can’t distinguish between pain and pleasure. Rafe explained it to me by using hot and cold as an example: two extreme temperatures that the body sometimes has trouble differentiating.
I explained to Rafe that he could go fuck himself—not me—and fled the dungeon as soon as I was untethered from the cross. I ran into one of the many bedrooms of his palatial home, knowing it was my last visit. I counted 190 seconds before he came after and found me.
“Don’t push me away,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, as he lay down beside me. I attempted to ignore him but he was persistent. I could feel the heat radiating off his chest as he pulled me close but I was in pain. I had read sexy stories that included whippings and now I understood firsthand what the descriptions meant by prickly pain. The skin on the back of my body felt tight and hot, with pinpricks of an itchy burn barraging the skin, up and down.
He rolled me onto my stomach and massaged the stripes he inflicted, coating them with some kind of ointment. When he was done, his strong hands kept massaging, areas that weren’t whipped, areas that responded to him readily despite my intentions. My body continually betrayed my mind: they were almost mortal enemies at this point.
What happened to mind over matter? My body refused to care about the bridges it was burning. It flipped over and spread its legs, inviting Rafe to come aboard: he did so quickly, before my mind could regain control. We… well, what’s the vernacular? Made love? Fucked? Did the nasty? Whatever you call it, we did it for the next hour or two. Sated, I lay in wait for him to fall asleep before slipping out of bed, searching out my clothes, and leaving his ass cold. Oh, I did write him a note. Time has erased my exact words from my memory but it went something like this: “Drop dead, asshole.” Yeah. I think that was it.
It took Rafe exactly 17 days, eight hours, and twenty-three minutes to change my mind. That was last year. I’m writing these words on the eve of my wedding day. Rafe, the most gorgeous man who walks the earth, will be my husband by this time tomorrow. He’s promised the next whipping will be something more to my liking. I’m holding him to it.
New York in January can be as bleak as the Siberian Peninsula. The magic of all the Christmas lights and greenery, coupled with the joy on strangers’ faces, are now firmly part of history. If there’s any snow, it’s dirty gray and slushy, piled high at the edges of streets and mixed in with all kinds of urban detritus. Usually, though, the air and streets are dry and the cold seeps into the bone, coming off the rivers on all sides of the island of Manhattan. The best part of January arrives with nightfall, when the multitudes of lights illuminate the city: in shadow, the architecture stands tall, stone monuments that are testaments to the hubris of humankind, while the asphalt shimmers in reflected electric glory. At least then one can get the mind off the winter drab and focus on the emerging nightlife.
Location, however, means nothing to Natasha Yenin right now, other than a means to an end. She sits in Lucien’s loft, speaking with him. Natasha understands a few things that the pathetic Lucien does not: specifically that first, they cannot be a couple… ever. Second, that Natasha needs Lucien’s looks, charm, and money to be utilized to win over Ian’s ladylove, something he’s been yet unable to accomplish. What will it take? Everyone has a weakness and Natasha knows that well. Ian Blackmon is her own but she will put family first and destroy him. Pity because if not for her critical need to avenge the heinous wrong done to her family, she and Ian would have made an excellent team—at least they would have in the past. Since she began her crusade to destroy him, he’s gone soft, weak, and almost unappealing. Almost, she thinks as she remembers his beautiful body and the response he had to seeing her. She would dearly love to fuck him one last time.
Lucien slides closer to Natasha. His left hand begins to caress her long hair as he inches his body ever closer. She can feel the heat he is throwing off and knows it’s time to clue him in.
“When did you get to New York, Lady Natasha?”
She chuckles, watching him closely. He certainly looks like a man in love but then she hasn’t seen him in months—she almost but not quite forgot how pretty he is.
“Only just got here today and came right over to see you, love.”
“Natasha,” he breathes, “why can’t we be together? You know I care for you so very much. I want to be with you.”
“I want you and my uncles to grab Ariel again. This time we’re going to make it count.”
Standing abruptly, Lucien turns his back to her. “I don’t want to hurt Ella. It’s not her fault, not any of it, and she does not deserve to pay for Blackmon’s sins.”
“It’s not that she’s paying for his sins, per se. It’s just a way to hurt him through her. He actually loves the girl.”
“So? She’s very lovable. I won’t hurt her. Now explain to me why, after everything I’ve done for you, you continue to spurn me. Why? I want to know.”
“You really are an idiot, Lucien. Why do you think my uncles are so faithful to you? Hmm? Can you tell me?”
“They’ve been with me for a long time, since I was a little boy. They’re loyal…”
“Pfft.” She waves her hand in the air. “Those men are coldhearted opportunists. The only ones they care about are themselves and their sister—my mother. And… their son.”
“Son?”
“Yes, Lucien. Their son. You, to be exact.”
Unadulterated shock floods his patrician features. “What in fuck are you talking about?” Lucien only uses profanity when he’s furious, like right now. Natasha is scheming, thinking nothing about using him as a pawn in her plans.
“I’m answering your question as to why we can’t be lovers, my darling. We’re first cousins. We cannot legally marry, and having children would be egregiously stupid. It’s best we find other partners.”
Barely able to move a single part of his body, Lucien flops back down on the couch, leans his head back and his eyelids drift shut. Is nothing what it seems? “How can that be?” His voice is just audible in the quiet room.
She smirks and shakes her head in disgust. “How do you think, dearheart? My uncles both fucked your mother silly; she got pregnant and told the Frenchman it was his child. My uncles decided to consider you a son of both rather than be tested for paternity. That’s why they love you so very much: blood of their blood, fruit of their loins, whatever the hell people say. So now that that’s out of the way, will you do what I need you to do?”
Lucien somehow summons the energy to stand and begins to walk away and then turns with a newly acquired thought to share. “No, Natasha, I will not. As I said, Ella is a really nice person and I am not going to be party to hurting her. You have a problem with Blackmon? You handle it yourself. Leave me out of it. In fact, get out of my loft and my life. I’m done with you, you heartless bitch.”
Daniel Butler’s office is located in Soho, in Lower Manhattan. The cab ride from the small airport in Westchester takes a little under an hour and drops him off at the corner of Broadway and Prince: the address he seeks is not far away. Ian appreciates the look of the building housing
White Elephant Design
, one of Daniel’s companies. It’s an old industrial brick, built during a time when craftsmanship was expected and artisans took pride in their work. Of course, it was renovated and retrofitted to suit modern tastes. WED’s executive offices are on the third floor and epitomize a high-end NYC loft.