In His World: His #8 (A Billionaire Domination Serial) (3 page)

His tongue. Fuck, yes, his tongue. Adrian knelt behind me then and lapped once at the smooth, slick cleft of my sex. His breath warmed those soft, private lips, then left them chilled and bereft. Allowing my heavy head to loll back, I blinked up at the low ceiling and sniffled and murmured half-coherent pleas, until I felt Adrian’s hands closing over my hips and holding me still for the onslaught of his insistent tongue delving into me. Then I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. And just when my eyes sank closed, just as I felt as though I’d tied myself up so tight in knots that my feet were leaving the floor, he withdrew again and let the brilliance fade before it could burst over me.

“For strike two,” he whispered from somewhere far away, it seemed. Beyond the thick haze of lust that shrouded my senses.

Instead of protesting, I choked out haltingly, “Y-yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s it, Chloe. Relent. Surrender. Trust me.”

“I do,” I sighed. At least, I think I said it aloud, but it was hard to tell so awash as I was in gnawing pleasure, blissful pain.

“Now we both get what we need.”

I didn’t know when he’d rid himself of his pants or stripped off his shirt, but I felt Adrian’s naked torso pressed full to mine a moment before one hand splayed on my stomach and the other guided his stiff cock to my ready entrance. We both grunted out hard and loud as he thrust his hips forward and pierced me straight through to my core, the head of his cock flirting with my cervix and goading a second cry from me. Now inside me, he had a hand free to grasp one breast firmly, possessively, kneading rhythmically in time with the furious motion of his hips as he took me. The bells danced and cried frantically and jerked at my already overstimulated nipples and clitoris until it felt almost like skilled fingers were toying ruthlessly with each.

Beyond the frenzied peal of the bells, I heard Adrian’s rasping breath as his body worked itself into mine wildly. My sheath embraced him, wrapped itself around his engorged cock, grasped at him as he withdrew and submitted as he advanced again. Over and over. Adrian was fucking me like he’d never get enough of it, of me, and my body strained for it, to be broken and spent and finally left sore and sated.

When Adrian had claimed my deepest, most private spaces… When the sting of being stretched and penetrated mellowed to a steady burn of tension and friction along the tender walls of my sex… When the clamp and weight and bell upon my clitoris bounced and swayed just so… A sudden climax burst inside me with a hot, sharp spike of pleasure and a groan of total surrender from the well of my chest.

I knew Adrian felt it, the ripple through my pussy, the clasping of muscles around his cock. He growled out in the exact instant my release took hold of me, and his thrusts slowed to half their previous speed, delivered with twice the strength. Breath hissing through clenched teeth, Adrian continued to spend the force of his desire on my vulnerable, trembling sex. My heart beat in time with the thrusts I counted distantly to still my spinning mind and combat the strange sense of vertigo that overtook me as I hung almost limp now from the leather straps. I shuddered every few thrusts, writhed now and again, as my orgasm finished having its way with me and shook me with aftershocks of decreasing intensity.

The pooling of warmth inside me as Adrian found his own release was the final pleasure I could withstand. With my energy exhausted, I sagged at the end of my restraints, against his body as he ground against me. My head fell forward. And as the bells grew still and quiet, I thought I heard again the Portuguese phrase Adrian had muttered to me as we’d coupled savagely in the courthouse conference room.

“Eu te amo.”

***

Twice lost and twice regained. I dozed off with Chloe, my Chloe, facing me in my bed, where I thought more than once I would never have her again. Her nose was tucked under my chin, and I smiled at the steamy warmth of her breath against my throat as we drifted off tangled around one another.

Three hours. I had three solid hours of hard sleep then the likes of which I hadn’t known since she’d run away from me like that in the middle of the night—while I’d slept. After that, it had been as though part of me refused to sleep, at least until she was back with me.

When we awoke a little before six in the evening, blinking hard and surprised to find we hadn’t shifted in our sleep at all, I pulled on a pair of thin white beach pants and wandered with Chloe back down the dim hallway toward the kitchen in search of juice. Instead we stumbled upon the warm dishes of the dinner Manuela had spread out for us after she had cleared the lunch she’d made, all without ever being seen.

In a repeat of the earlier meal, Chloe pushed me down into one of the heavy dining chairs and perched on my lap. This time she fed me.

“Aha, your favorite,” she said as she dipped a spoon into a brightly patterned bowl.

A bite for her Dom and another for herself. I almost moaned at the taste of Manuela’s pato no tucupi. Distantly, as I swallowed, I acknowledged to myself I was never going to figure out the woman’s recipe for the duck stew. It would always be a mystery about Manuela, something I could admire and adore but never decipher. At any other time of my life, that would have made me uneasy. Now I appreciated it—something I couldn’t control but didn’t have to fear. A rarity, especially these days.

I didn’t comment on the fact that, when Chloe found a bowl of her beloved shrimp risotto, she forgot about her Master for the first three bites. She was finally about to give me a taste when that damn PDA of hers buzzed again. This time, Miss Bloom was quicker than I was and shot up from my lap before I could catch her and hold her still. I frowned and grabbed the risotto bowl for myself, inwardly grumbling that I wasn’t ready for the intrusion of text messages and attorneys and legal maneuvering.

Despite my effort not to watch, from the corner of my eye I saw Chloe tap the screen, read a message, tap it again. Then she brought the PDA mobile to her ear. Even from several feet away, I heard her call ringing through and a male voice answering.

Losing my appetite, I retreated to the bedroom. No tuxedo tonight. Bad form to entertain guests at the resort with federal charges pending. Would have been less a concierge welcome than a circus of speculation. But I began to select a white polo to go with the beach pants and was mulling my choice of vintage deck shoes when Chloe scurried in to find me.

“Adrian, what are you doing? This is no time to be obsessing over shoes.”

I glanced sidelong at my submissive—my legal counsel just then, by the look of her. She was amazing when she was riled up and intent upon her work, something I didn’t tell her, saying instead, “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard those words from a woman before, Miss Bloom. Are you feeling yourself?”

“I’m serious!” When she inserted herself between me and the shoes, locking her arms around my waist, I could hardly ignore her, some body parts being more attentive than others. “We’ve jabbed a hornet’s nest and stirred up movement.”

“Which means?”

“This morning, I passed information about Penn’s inside contact on some pending U.S. military support contracts to a former client of mine who is bidding against him. Karl just told me there’s some kind of a shake up going on with staff. When he tried to inquire about one of the awards, he couldn’t reach the officer administering the RFP’s. Someone new has taken over.”

This finally pierced the haze of flippant denial I was using to distract myself. “Just since this morning? How can that happen so quickly? And what’s this about inside information on Penn? Is that what he was yelling at you about today? Chloe, I don’t want you endangering yourself. Penn is not a forgiving enemy.”

“I think that train has already left the station.”

“You want to tell me everything, right now, Miss Bloom.”

Sitting on the bed, leaned against me, she did—the Southern Command contracts, the inside deals, Penn’s plans to offer Ilha de Flor as a listening post for American intelligence operations against Venezuela, his connection to Daniel Vaz, everything. Chloe put her chin on my shoulder and watched me assimilate the information, but even I wasn’t certain how to react. I was just getting my head around the idea that I needed to admit it was my own collection of cockups that had landed me in trouble, and that I was going to have to sacrifice…whatever it took…to safeguard my closest associates. Now, learning Vaz’s visit had always been a trap, that I always would have found myself in this situation… Was I being too quick falling on my sword? Could I let myself hope enough to fight this? It took a few seconds of staring into those cinnamon brown eyes to get my thoughts in order and move on what she was telling me.

I took my own mobile from my nightstand and switched it back on. A half dozen messages from Quinton came up immediately, beeping and buzzing and nagging me. “You might not want to hear this,” I told Chloe as I hit the speed dial button for my lead counsel. “No point in ruining your appetite as well as mine.”

She reared back to look me in the face with her brows lowered and those beautiful lips pressed into a thin line. “To hell with that.”

The digital ring gave way to Obray’s plain tone. No hello-how-are-you bullshit. “Adrian, you can’t stop taking calls in the middle of this,” he told me bluntly and blandly, clearly nonplussed by the eccentric billionaire antics.

Similarly, I dispensed with the mea culpa. “Noted. Where are we with the prosecutors?”

“Their hardline has softened considerably since we admitted you bribed the nephew of a ruling party official rather than the son of a member of the opposition party.”

“That’s progress,” I agreed as Chloe studied my expression and responses with obvious attention. Did she realize she was digging her nails into my arm? I uncoiled the woman from my scored limb and pulled her into my lap. “What’s the offer on the table?”

Obray groaned and admitted, “Not what I’d like. Ten years and twenty-five million in fines—that’s pounds, not dollars. And they want the island.”

I shook my head. “It would serve them right if I took the deal. Let them find out what it’s like trying to run a resort while they find a buyer who can qualify for this kind of a purchase.” Chloe went stiff against me when I said this. No doubt she was imagining the worst as her mind filled in the portions of the conversation she couldn’t hear.

“Not really advisable, Adrian.”

“See, that’s why I have you on retainer, Obray. Your counsel is impeccable and you lack anything resembling a sense of humor.”

“I was wondering when you’d notice.”

It took me a second to bite back a chuckle that would have belied my compliment. “Let’s see if we can soften them up any more. We’ve got someone putting pressure on the United States Southern Command over possible bid tampering on some support service contracts. The players in question are officers by the names of Buchanan and Greeley, and I think they have some deals in place with Penn Ellison. I have to wonder if the political movement behind the scenes in Sao Paolo might lose its momentum if Penn no longer had Ilha de Flor to gain.”

“We have someone?” Quinton asked. I liked that nothing got past the man, but it was tiresome just now. “Interesting. You wouldn’t happen to be referring to that attractive young lawyer you were conferring with in the conference room this morning, would you? Because you know she’s been ordered back to the States, right? I wonder if she’s gone yet… Is she, Adrian?”

“No, actually, she’s here with me listening to my end of the conversation with a disturbingly keen look on her face. Really, you’d find it as worrying as I do if you were here.”

And for the first time in the seven years I’d known Quinton Obray, I got the man to choke, on a sip of something from the sound of it. “Really? I have to ask how much of the new information I’ve seen coming my way the last couple of days has been her work.”

“Every bloody bit of it. I’d have been hung and quartered by now otherwise.”

“Hm. Perhaps I should be looking at hiring the young lady, seeing as she’s about to be let go from Ferris & Hale. That is, if you’re finished entertaining her.”

“I’m not.” But it was good to know there was a possibility Chloe hadn’t completely destroyed her career and professional reputation for my sake. When all this was over… If I had to give up the next five or ten years of my life… At least I knew I wouldn’t have left her utterly stripped of identity and means.

“Well then, you should at least tell me what you have in mind.”

“Offer to turn the island back over to the Brazilian government as a permanent nature preserve—ninety-nine year agreement—to be maintained at my expense.”

Chloe shook her head vehemently at that statement. “Adrian!”

“I agree with the young lady, Adrian. That’s far too generous an offer.”

I put my finger up to Chloe’s lips to hush her, telling Obray, “But it would take Ilha de Flor off the market and make it worthless to Ellison. Whoever and whatever he’s paying…he won’t have anything to pay for.”

Several moments of silence told me Quinton was weighing the details of such a proposal. “I’ll start with a lesser offer and work my way there if I have to. Even over the weekend, I expect the offers and counteroffers will flow unimpeded. I’ll be in touch when I have news. Can I trust that you will, as well, if your…counsel there develops any new leads?”

“Why would you assume she’d give me a choice?”

As soon as I laid down the phone, my Miss Bloom laid into me. She stood up from my lap, squared off at me, and threw up her hands. “How could you even consider giving up Ilha de Flor? What about the eco park and the demonstration projects?” Was it just me or did she seem all the fiercer for all that loose, wavy brown hair and the fact that she was completely nude and without the least self-consciousness about it?

“That was a labor of ego, Chloe.” A desperate bid to prove I wasn’t an Alexander. “You should know by now to expect that of men like me. And isn’t it a good thing if it humbles me now? After I tried to play outside the rules? Isn’t that what you’ve always hated about most of the companies you had to deal with at Ferris & Hale?”