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  “Remember to move your foot if you feel faint. Mouth me. Let me know you want my cock in your mouth.”

  She didn’t think, didn’t review any rules for this situation. Her mouth opened and closed over the fabric of his slacks, her lips pressing hard against the thick width of him, her tongue reaching out to lick and wet the straining cloth, as she made noises of animal hunger in her throat.

  “Jesus Christ.” Matt unfastened his pants and shoved them and a pair of black jersey boxers down to his hard thighs. The organ was so close to her that she couldn’t see it clearly, but her nose brushed the heat, smelled the animal musk of him. He seized the chains holding her, pulled so her head tilted over the edge of the table and she was essentially upside down. He reached past her, took something Jon was offering, a lubricant of some kind, and rubbed it over the broad head.

  “Open up, Savannah.”

  She barely had her lips parted before he shoved into her mouth, stretching her lips as she’d imagined, as she’d craved. He seated himself deep, and then stopped, holding his cock against the back of her throat, moving it slightly, as if he were rubbing it against her. She gagged, and his fingers stroked her throat, soothing her, and then the gagging desire was gone, though he pushed in deeper, against her tonsils.

  “Another of Jon’s many tools,” he growled. “Benzocaine to coat the back of the throat, so you can take me deep. You want to take me deep, don’t you? In your throat, in your ass, in your pussy. You want me everywhere.”

  The tears were starting again, for the pleasure and truth were coming together, tearing her apart. She couldn’t see through them, in the literal or figurative sense, so she simply tilted her head more, giving herself up to this moment.

  Matt withdrew slightly, then moved back in. She stroked him with her lips, just wanting to taste him, feel him. With no experience at all, she simply licked him with her tongue, sucked on him to get that taste, that scent in her mouth, her throat, her nose, where she could keep it. She imagined the earth of a humid jungle would smell like this, exotic and mysterious, brutal and honest. She even scored him with her teeth, tasting the meat of him.

  She was vaguely aware of Jon, applying something soothing onto her clit, just inside her pussy lips and around her anus, something she supposed would keep her from getting raw before the next assault. But then another sensation invaded, something less pleasant. She fought against it, and the fighting made it worse. Dizziness, black spots on her vision. She kept on, furiously, desperately sucking on Matt, not wanting to lose the odd sense of comfort in the act of servicing him, but it was overtaking her, sweeping her body, turning her shudders into a sick trembling…

  She wouldn’t wiggle her foot. That would be failure. And she needed this, didn’t want it to stop…

  “Matt.” Peter’s sharp voice seemed to come from far away and she made a noise of wailing protest as Matt withdrew from her. Suddenly his arms were under her, lifting her, making the chains holding her upper body go slack, lay cool against her skin as he brought her head even and then slightly above the rest of her body. She opened her eyes, saw his face close above hers, the concern in his strong face.

  “I should have known you wouldn’t ask for help when you should,” he muttered, his hands impossibly tender against her temples.

  She wanted to say she was sorry for making him angry, but his lips were soft on hers, making it all right. Making nothing necessary but to simply be.

  Just like she had felt at her father’s funeral, if only for one moment.

  It wasn’t an entirely unexpected thought to have right now. Matt had given her that one moment, just as he had made this night something far different than she anticipated.

  Overwhelmed, she let herself spin comfortably down a gray tunnel, into that memory.

  Chapter Four

  Among all the offers of sympathies, the unwelcome press of strange hands and bodies near her—acquaintances, hangers-on, a few genuine friends of her father’s who had little to offer to her beyond their formal support as she stepped into her father’s corporate shoes—Matt had been close. She remembered the heat of his body near her throughout those long several days. The supporting touch of his hand, the only contact she had welcomed, at the small of her back.

  After the funeral and memorial service, deep into the third or fourth hour of the never-ending wake at her father’s sprawling estate, she had escaped to her room for a few minutes. Burying her face into her pillow, she’d screamed, beating the mattress, wishing for tears that never came. Though she stayed in there a good thirty minutes, trying to compose herself, she’d been undisturbed. It was only when she took a deep steadying breath, checked her hair and makeup and stepped back out in the hallway, that she’d found out why.

  Matt sat on the top stair, with a brandy loose in his hand and a plate of untouched funeral food. Keeping watch. Keeping them at bay, the barbarians away from the gate.

  “I don’t need a watchdog, Kensington,” she said uncharitably, frightened of how relieved she was to see him there.

  He lifted a shoulder, took in everything about her at one glance. “Humor me. It gives me an excuse to stay away from them.” He picked up a carrot from the plate, took a bite. “God, I hate these things.”

  “The vegetables?”

  “No. When I die, I’m going to have a fast cremation and leave instructions for Lucas to throw a street party in my honor for a few thousand drunken revelers who have no idea who I am and couldn’t care less. They’ll toast my memory because I bought the drinks, and the people who love me won’t be put through a dog and pony show.”

  “Nobody loves you, Kensington.”

  He smiled. “You do.” He patted the step beside him. “At least the food’s good. Come have a taste.”

  She found herself quite willingly moving toward him. “Is Morris Johnson still downstairs?”

  “Of course. He and his executive staff. Trying to schmooze up to the CEO of Bank of America and eating as much free food as he can get his hands on.”

  “If we slip a laxative into his crab dip, I’ll bet we get a great interest rate on our next six-month cash loan from BoA.”

  “How diabolical, Miss Tennyson. Remind me not to eat anything you’ve provided next time we’re having an important meeting.”

  “I thought that’s why you employ Ben. To be your official royal taster.”

  “Cute.”

  She lowered herself beside him, in the small space his large frame and splayed knees allowed, but it felt good, not crowded. She absorbed his warmth with a welcome shiver.

  “Cold?”

  “A little. It was overcast at the graveside.”

  “I’m sure Geoffrey arranged it. He did like the appropriate setting for all occasions. Here.”

  “I can go get a sweater.” Her words died as he shrugged out of his coat, bringing a whiff of his cologne to her delicate nostrils, and laid it around her shoulders.

  “There.”

  Suddenly, she was struggling not to weep. Why did she want to weep now, when she felt nothing in her room except rage? She made a snort that sounded suspiciously to her own ears like a sniffle. “I guess if we were in high school, you’d ask me to go steady now. Give me a broken coin and we’d each wear half.”

  A corner of his mouth lifted in a smile, and he reached over, tugged free a tendril of her hair trapped under the collar. “I was on the wrestling team. You’re the football quarterback type. You’d have turned up your nose at the likes of me.”

  “Wrestling?”

  “Absolutely. You know how punishing football is on the adolescent bone structure? At least, that’s what my mother told me, over and over again, ad nauseum, when I whined to sign up. We compromised with wrestling.”

  “Matt Kensington, whining?” She leaned back against the opposite wall, which made her knee brush his. The contact felt right, so she didn’t take it away and he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Like the proverbial girl. But something tells me you neve
r whined.”

  She gave a half laugh and some of the coldness returned. She crossed her arms over her breasts, gripped the edges of the jacket closer to her, letting go of the ball of tissue in her hand so it fell into her lap. The coat smelled of him. She pictured a closet of such suits, all smelling like this, and her falling into them, holding on in the quiet, tranquil darkness of his closet.

  “Geoffrey didn’t believe in it. He taught me that if you want something, you strategize how to get it. You never beg. And if you fail, you accept the failure, analyze it, go back and win what you lost back.”

  He nudged her knee with his own. “What’s that in your lap?”

  “Just a tissue…” She looked down at his puzzled expression and instead of the tissue, she saw a tiny rag doll, little bigger than the length of her hand. She’d left it on her bed earlier, hadn’t realized until this moment that was what she had clutched in her hand as she screamed into her pillow, and apparently had held onto when she left the room. “Oh.” She lifted a shoulder, tried for a casual look, even as her hand settled protectively over it under his shrewd gaze. “At my father’s corporate Christmas party, one of his business associates brought a little gift for me as the ‘lady of the house’. When I was six,” she added, at the twinkle in Matt’s eyes. Her eyes could not linger on his face, so she looked back down, fingered the doll. “He knew nothing about me of course, was just trying to win favor with my father.”

  He had no clue that fawning on Geoffrey’s child meant nothing to Geoffrey.

  “But I liked it.” Extraordinarily liked it. Kept it with her that night, slept with it hidden under her covers where her father couldn’t see. But Geoffrey had known. “One night, I was tired over something, and I whined, I guess as children can do, and he punished me by taking it away. I found it in his closet when I was looking for a suit for him…for this.”

  “He never gave it back?” Matt raised an eyebrow.

  She shrugged. “Of course not. As I said, he’d told me whining didn’t get you anywhere. It meant the things that mattered got taken away from you, and when you lose things from your own actions, you must learn from them.” Savannah shook her head. “Don’t look at me like that, Matt. I know it sounds dysfunctional, and maybe it is, but you know, kids from good income brackets get about everything they want these days, and for the most part, they are whiny, self-indulgent, spoiled brats whose parents don’t know how to say no to them. Geoffrey may not have been a loving, affectionate father, but he taught me everything I know about how to be successful. How to be hungry only by choice.”

  Reaching out, Matt put a hand to her face, startling her. She was immobilized by how good it felt, that human contact freely offered, pressed against her skin. “You were the best thing that ever happened to him,” he said quietly. “He had all the money in the world, and he got his most valuable acquisition the day you were born. And not just because you could run his company better than he could run it himself.”

  Savannah didn’t know what to say to that. She looked toward the bottom of the stairs. “It’s odd no one’s walked by here to disturb us.”

  “I told them there was free food in the main courtyard. It drew them off. Here.” He offered her his plate. “As I said, the food’s quite good.”

  “Of course.” She shook her head at it. “Geoffrey already had his menu planned out. It wouldn’t be less than perfect. Hungry by choice, remember?”

  “The best kind of hunger there is,” he said. Suddenly, she knew exactly where his knee pressed against hers, and what hunger he was talking about, because it had her lower extremities in a perilous grip.

  “I want to give you something for later.” He broke the charged silence between them. Withdrawing the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket, he folded it into her hand, his own remaining over it.

  “What, is my makeup running?”

  “No. It’s for when everything about this day hits you, and you finally cry, even if it’s for no other reason than you don’t feel like crying and that breaks you down.” He rose. “Keep the coat until you’re warm. I’ll get it back later.” Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead, just a gentle brush of lips, his hands holding the lapels so she was in a light embrace within the jacket. “I’m here if you need me, Savannah. I’m always here. Come down when you’re ready. Lucas and Jon are in the foyer hallway, keeping people from coming this way. You don’t have to come down at all if you don’t want to.”

  “Of course I do.” The dangerous temptation of such an image broke the spell. She rose to her feet, slid the jacket off her shoulders and handed it back to him. “I don’t need this.” But she kept the kerchief. It was a gift, after all.

  She was on the step above him, so their positions put them at eye level. His expression had hardened with an emotion she couldn’t read as he studied her face. In a surprising move, he suddenly slid an arm around her back and legs, swung her up in his arms and turned, carrying her down the steps.

  “Matt,” she hissed. “What are you doing?”

  At the bottom, he let her feet touch the floor, but he held her elbow another moment. “That was to remind you that someday, you might need someone else to carry the load for a while. And you can trust me to get you where you need to go, no matter how steep the hill is. Up or down.”

  He left her there, amazed, speechless. Oddly happy and hurting at once. And that was when she used the handkerchief for the very first time.

  * * * * *

  She’d kept it folded under her pillow ever since.

  The fuzziness receded and she became aware of her surroundings again. They’d adjusted the chains so she was level and turned her over so she was once again on her stomach. She was lying on the table, still bound, but the straps had been loosened back to their prior snugness, rather than the snugness that had been necessary when she didn’t have the back support. They’d also let her head down so her cheek was on the table.

  Matt was sitting in the chair, leaned forward, his face no more than a foot from her.

  “I guess we got a little carried away. You carried us all away. You were something else.”

  She coughed, her voice raw from her screaming. “But I’m still tied up. So you’re not done with me yet.”

  “I’ll never be done with you.” He drew even closer, so the depths of his brown eyes were all she could see. “You’ve scared yourself, and you’re retreating again. I can see it. I’m not going to let you. I’m going to feed you.”

  A weak chuckle, somewhere close to a sob, broke from her abused throat. A throat that remembered vividly what it was like to have him slamming against the back of it. “You can’t bribe me with food, Kensington, at least not unless you plan to keep me like this for several days without food and water.”

  “An intriguing possibility.” He cocked his head. As sensation returned to all her limbs, she realized he was stroking her forehead, playing with her loose hair. “Actually, while manufacturing this invention and renovating the room for it, I’ve thought about it a great deal. Imagining what it would be like to have my woman suspended in it every day, accessible to me whenever I wanted to play with her nipples, slip my fingers or cock into her wet cunt. Put her on display for business associates who come in here for meetings, a mesmerizing centerpiece for my conference table. I think my competitors would give me anything for the privilege. But just to look at you. No man other than those in this room tonight will ever touch you again. You’re mine.”

  That harshness came to his eyes again, and just as naturally as command came to him, resistance to capitulation flooded her. But this time she had no sarcasm to offer, just simple denial. “No,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he responded, just as quietly. He supported her skull in his hands as he readjusted the straps so her head was lifted, her facial expressions exposed to them all again. The chains tightened and she was raised from the table, only this time she was only lifted about two feet, and it was her upper body that was raised higher than
her lower, so her breasts thrust out at Matt at eye level, in a blatant display that roused an embarrassing heat along her throat and face. His eyes followed the track of it, and when his gaze got to her face, his own fire was a match for it.

  “Here.” Lucas slid a small plate to Matt’s elbow and Peter placed a gold-edged wineglass next to it. Savannah smelled the rich scent of red Merlot.

  “You need to eat and drink,” Matt said. “We don’t have a good strategy for getting rid of your body if you die from too much pleasure.”

  His eyes glinted with humor, and she bared her teeth at him. He brought the tumbler to her lips, cradling her cheek with his hand, touching the corner of her mouth, compelling her lips to part. The angle was awkward with her position, and before she could take more than a sip, he took it away.

  “A better idea.” There was a pause while he took a swallow. She wondered and imagined and then hoped, and then his mouth was there, sealing over hers, opening, letting the wine on his tongue spill onto hers, his hand still along her face, the grip of his hand moving along her throat as if to help her swallow the liquid.

  She didn’t drink much, having a low tolerance for alcohol, and just this swallow was made more potent by the method of delivery, by his care for her, by the stroke of that tongue on hers. He pulled away reluctantly, and then she smelled one of the snacks they often brought in for meetings from the gourmet deli down the street. Goat cheese flavored with thyme, wrapped in a finger-sized, seasoned flatbread.

  “Your favorite, I believe,” he said, those eyes watching every inflection on her face, his own expression still a little intimidating, reminding her that he was not going to brook resistance. Savannah decided she was going to let him win this minor point to fortify herself and regroup. She wanted to try a different strategy. An experiment, really.

  She ate the entirety of it from his hand, even obeying the sensual urge to clean the soft cheese off his fingertips, taking the taste of his skin with it, those strong fingers resting in her mouth.