“Call it that. Any erotic response?”
“Dammit, yes! How’d you know?”
“That’s a lovely blush. Try and hold it. And I know how you feel, it’s a fact of life.”
“Handcuffs make a girl horny?” She was delightedly incredulous.
His retort was dry. “Ask yourself.” Her blush deepened.
The house fell just short of being a mansion. Its address was enviable. The chauffeur discreetly saw nothing when James Dexter, refusing to use the key, carried Mrs. Caroline Dowling, safely handcuffed, within. He did so with astounding ease.
“The servants have the day off. We go straight upstairs.”
It was pleasant, a little frightening. Caroline felt more female than she had done in a long time. James Dexter was a force. He had purchased her.
“My bedroom?” she queried, close to his ear. “Mine.”
A splendid room. But male! Dexter tossed her on the huge bed with deliberate unconcern. She landed with a bounce, the handcuffs inhibiting feminine grace. Refusing to be untidy, she swung around and sat up. “The captured bride?” she queried caustically.
“Yes.”
His use of the one word was enough. He stood back to look down at his prize. Despite the cavalier treatment the current between them was still strong and still good. They were playing a game. Both were excited. Caroline arranged her helplessness to its best advantage and asked demurely:
“Instant rape?”
“Can a man rape what he owns?” He made the question rhetorical.
Caroline giggled. “I’m not sure you can rape me at all like this.”
“A pity.” He sounded genuinely regretful. “I hate to take those handcuffs off. They become you.”
“Leave them on then, I’m happy.”
“You don’t want to be raped?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m saying it’s something nice to look forward to. Girls are never in the hurry you men are.”
“You’re ready. I can tell.”
He was right. She was quiveringly excited. It was the loveliest sensation she had known in a long time. This man would be hard to best, but she would try.
“Curb your ego, James Dexter, it’s the handcuffs! I’m not always this obvious.”
“But you are wanton, aren’t you? C’mon, tell me?”
“Oh sure, in my responses. In the act, I’m choosey.” She twinkled up at him. “Don’t worry, you’d be eligible.”
“Pity about the rape though.”
“I’ve heard tell it’s enjoyable anyway.”
He set her free. The small key fitted both pairs.
He gave her time to be feminine with her hands. Then his command was crisp.
“Strip naked.”
“Don’t you want to tear them from me in a frenzy of lust?”
“I want to subjugate you. I intend to savour your submission with lecherous gaze.”
“Want a slow tease, or a quick strip to my skin?”
“The latter. Coyness isn’t your bag.”
Caroline refused to pretend: even to herself. She was living intensely, loving every word and implication. She had been female and carnal, in her own immaculate way, before the meeting in the Board Room. Now she could throw decorum to the winds. She trembled with eagerness as she stripped, feeling his intent regard like an impact. Happily bare. Caroline clasped her hands at the back of her neck, thrust out her breasts in deadly aim, and posed for her purchaser.
“Like me?”
“I like you too much.”
She was not to understand his remark until another time, but she perked beneath its sincerity. “Think you got value?”
“Many times over.” Dexter nodded thoughtfully. “It’s true, you are the most beautiful . . .”
“In the world? That’s just a figure of speech. But I know I’m nice. I’m not a bit modest about me.”
“A few good thrashings will look after that.”
“They’re supposed to make a girl horny too. Do they?”
“You’ll find out.”
Would she! Or was he kidding. Caroline hoped he could not observe signs of the sudden flood of lust in which his words submerged her. Thrashed! She shivered deliciously. “Would you really thrash me? Do I have that to look forward to?”
“I’ll thrash you now if you ask me nicely. You’re eaten up with curiosity. I won’t be rough on you the first time. I’ll use my belt.”
“James, don’t—don’t—oh, just don’t! You’ve got me vibrating in every move. You’re a new experience.”
James Dexter drank of her nakedness with appreciative hungry eyes, Caroline was more than beautiful, she exuded an aura. Her woman scent reached him in heady waves, a perfume all her own, owing nothing to a bottle. She was still, unconsciously, posing for his approval. If he was a new experience for her, she was most certainly a fresh dimension of sexuality for him.
“On your back, on the bed. Get those legs wide apart.”
Dexter deliberately made his coarse command brutal, testing her. Searching for a chink in the armour of her sophistication. Caroline laughed in his face and flung herself in a sprawl of nudity on the cover. “I’ll even turn over on my tummy if you want,” she teased. “There’s lots of pillows. They do help.”
The current between them intensified. Dexter had cast aside his shirt and was reaching lower when her suggestion stopped him in arrested motion. There was a moment’s silence before he agreed, his words tense, without emphasis. “Do that. Flat on your face. Use a pillow or two, you know where.”
He was not safe to tease. She would never be allowed the initiative. Trembling with anticipation she arranged her ready nakedness upon a pillow, then another, spreading her legs apart outrageously from the invitation of her loins. She was suddenly ashamed of her temerity, hiding her encarmined face.
Caroline’s yelp of outrage was almost a scream, so sudden and unexpected had been the thwacking impact of his belt across the twin cheeks of her behind. The pain of it was such as she had never known, a shrieking protest from her flesh. Striving, absurdly, to hold her wound, she rolled over and glared.
“Never suggest that—that—thing again.” His cold fury dripped distaste.
The girl on the bed was flooded with happiness. Dexter’s acceptance of her mischievous offer had been a disappointment. Had he pierced her in that manner he would have dropped in her regard. The pain of her strapped bottom was a small price to pay for something nearly lost. Caroline glowed and said. “Thank you” with a sincerity he could not mistake.
“Have you ever done it that way?”
“I’m afraid not. I was being a fraud.” She eyed the belt he was looping back into his discarded pants. “Thank you for hitting me with that. I’d no idea it could be so—so—well, anyway, it was my first time. This is turning out to be quite a day.”
“It’s scarcely started.”
Their eyes locked, laughter possessed them. He gathered her in his arms and kissed her savagely so it hurt, a beautiful hurt she did not want ever to stop. When it did stop he tossed her again upon the bed, a slave woman, owned.
“Dammit, those handcuffs got to me. I want to put them back on you. They’d be even more potent with you naked.”
“I don’t mind. But it’s not very practical, is it? I mean, my feet . . . ?” Her blush returned, she made a quick amendment. “I’m not sure it’s possible . . . But I’ll try . . ?”
They compromised on her hands. James Dexter locked the handcuffs back on her wrists with his own tender cruelty, one notch too tight. Caroline did not complain. In a sudden feverish welter of longing they possessed each other again and again and again. Time stopped. In the arms of the man who had purchased her, Caroline Dowling discovered a world she had never known.
Returning to a sweat-drenched normalcy of tangled arms and legs, Caroline found an ear and whispered into it. “James Dexter, you’re good! Terribly, terribly good.”
“Handcuffs spoil anything for you?”
“Gosh no! Wait ’til you see your back. I don’t know how I got there but I did.” She giggled happily. “You can lock the other pair back on my ankles now.”