Temptations - The Complete Series Read online

  He chuckled. “Orange like the fruit or orange like the color?”

  “Both. I like the fruit, but I also like the color. It’s warm and the color of spice.”

  “Orange it is,” he said.

  And then I felt it. It was the drip, drip, drip of candle wax on my back. It felt so familiar and so right. I groaned a little, as the hot wax burned my skin. “Serena, I love you, but you can’t disobey me the way that you have. You have to listen to me.”

  He immobilized my hands by putting cuffs on them. He secured my hands around the bars of the headboard, and I suddenly knew the real reason why he bought me a new bed. He wanted me to have a top-of-the-line bed, of course, but I now knew that he wanted a headboard that could be used for little games such as this one.

  Then he also immobilized my feet by securing them, with handcuffs, to the posts at the foot of the bed. He wasn’t gentle in doing this, either. He took one foot, and then the other, spreading my legs wide. He spread them so wide that I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, but that feeling of being uncomfortable was welcome to me, too.

  I was feeling like I was finally coming home.

  I was helpless, completely helpless, at that point. I couldn’t see anything, I was on my stomach, and I was completely bound to the bed. I had no idea what he was going to do, either. That piqued my curiosity and I felt my body stand at attention. I couldn’t stop my breathing from coming faster and faster. This was the best part, really – the anticipation on what was about to happen.

  He started with a massage. He was sitting on the small of my back, and he rubbed his hands together. When he touched me, I felt the warm oil on my skin. He rubbed the oil on my back, his strong hands kneading my muscles. That hurt as well, because I was that tight. I could feel that my muscles were being loosened with every touch.

  He got to the muscles on my shoulders and he whispered in my ear. “I need to punish you for what you did. Do you know what you did and why it displeased me?”

  I could feel his demeanor shifting from the loving, caring man I had come to know into the powerful, controlling stance of a dominant. Although I had sensed that Slade had an inner dominant side, we hadn’t really discussed it in detail. He didn’t really know for sure that I would be willing, but I was intoxicated by the possibility of introducing this type of play into our relationship. I felt I could trust him to inflict just the right amount of pain to incite my arousal and give me the reprimand I craved. I decided to just follow his lead, so I answered his question. “Yes Slade. I do know that I displeased you.”

  “And what is it that you think you did Serena? Do you agree that it warrants a punishment?”

  “I went against your orders,” I told him. “I went to the prosecutor on behalf of Santino to try and get a lead on your case to help exonerate you. I was just trying to help keep you out of prison, trying to keep you here with me.”

  Tears started to leak from my eyes as the magnitude of what had happened in the wake of my actions hit me hard. “I’m so sorry Slade. I never wanted anything bad to happen. I was just trying to help. I never realized how quickly things would spin out of control. I should have listened to you.”

  “You put your life in danger and that can never happen again. I need to remind you that I am in charge of this case and you will obey all of my orders, no matter what your feelings may be about them. No matter if you understand my reasoning, or not.”

  When he said that, I felt my heart start to pound. I squeezed my eyes shut, which was a reflex, really, because they were still covered by the blindfold. What was going to come next? I had no clue, but I was excited to find out.

  I could hear Slade pacing around the room. His breathing was very heavy. I sensed he had some unease about punishing me. This was definitely not an area we had discussed or entered into before, so he was being very careful. He did not know what my limits were, what I enjoyed, or what I would consider punishment. He needed to be careful to inflict a punishment that would leave a lasting mark on my psyche and not bring me to a state of utter arousal. This was a tricky area. He was going to have to recall everything he had learned about me before deciding on the right way to attack this dilemma. He would also be limited to the items available to him in my room.

  He continued to be silent; this alone was starting to attack my psyche. The silence was entering my mind, swirling all of my thoughts about everything that had happened in the past few days. Leaving me alone to think about my actions and what was to come next was a lethal combination. I was convincing myself that I was wrong, that disobeying Slade was now forbidden, that I deserved to be punished. I had gone against his orders and this had caused some dangerous consequences. The dangers that lurked in the future were unknown so I needed to be more cautious.

  The thoughts of what Slade would do next were causing an arousal between my legs to pulse. Liquid started to drip from my ready opening. My legs were still tethered to the bed so I was unable to help relieve my desire by clenching and rubbing my thighs together. I made some small circling motions with my hips to try and create some friction between the mattress and my clit. My nipples were starting to harden just from the thoughts in my head. I started rubbing my chest on the bed as well trying to heighten the beginnings of the arousal I was feeling.

  And then I felt it - the thwack of his belt on my bare buttocks. I cried out in pain and ecstasy. This was exactly how I remembered it feeling. The sweet sting, the adrenaline coursing through my veins, the feeling of absolution for my sins. Slade was right – I had disobeyed him, and I paid the price. I almost paid the ultimate price. I deserved to be punished.

  “No moving, Serena! Lay completely still. You will not receive the release you crave until I say so. You must learn your lesson here and until I am satisfied that you understand who is in charge here and have learned to obey my orders, you will be denied the sweet pleasure of release that you desire.”

  Of course, he had to know that I was going to go back to what I was doing, even if he didn’t want me to. I had to, so that the truth would come out.

  I had a feeling there would be more encounters like this one in the future, as I was going to continually disobey him until he had been absolved of this crime.

  I was looking forward to them.

  He punished me with his belt several more times, and each time was more savage than the last. I felt it like a crescendo. Like the adagio part of a powerful symphonic piece. That’s what was going through my head – a classical symphony that was going faster and faster. The cymbals were clashing, the drums were beating, and the winds were playing like mad. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy seemed appropriate in this context. I found myself humming some of the bars of this masterpiece as Slade hit my buttocks again and again. I started to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, as the sweet, sweet pain flooded my entire body.

  Then, without warning at all, I heard the tell tale rip of foil and within seconds I felt something completely different. His huge cock had plunged into me. He lifted me up off of the bed, which stretched out my legs even further. He put his hands around my throat and squeezed firmly but lightly. An inkling of fear edged into my subconscious brain. He didn’t kill Jordan, but he told me that he was capable of anything. That anyone was capable of anything. Was he angry enough to keep on going? Would he keep his hands around my neck until he breathed the life out of me?

  That little kernel of fear got my adrenaline going again, and I cried out in a powerful orgasm as he simultaneously drove his huge manhood inside of me, again and again, while squeezing my neck tighter and tighter. “Do it,” I said. “Make me fear you. Make me submit to you, whatever your will is. Show me your anger and your rage. I disobeyed you, Slade. Show me how angry you are about that.”

  He pulled my hair so hard that my head snapped back. As my breathing got heavier and heavier, he kept my head static in his hand. He bent his mouth to my ear. “Oh Serena, what have you done to me? I can’t continue to deny you the pleasure you seek even
though I am not certain that you have learned your lesson yet.” His voice was strained. I could tell he was also on the brink of explosion.

  I felt his lips on mine – hungry, searching, passionate and angry. I felt like his lips and tongue were devouring my own. He quickly released my arms from where they were bound and did the same for my feet. Then he flipped me over on my back, and hovered over me. My eyes were still covered by the blindfold at that point, so I still had no idea what to expect from him. I was filled with a tingly sense of excitement, mixed in with my high adrenaline and a hint of dread. It was an intoxicating combination.

  I put my arms around his back and tried to bring him down to meet me. He resisted. “I’m not quite done punishing you,” he said to me. “You have no idea how scared I was for you. Charlotte is capable of anything, absolutely anything. You’re safe now. You need to make sure you stay that way.”

  At that, he took off my blindfold. My eyes were still closed. “Look at me, Serena,” he commanded.

  I did. I almost drew a breath when I looked into those piercing green eyes. Those eyes that bore right through my skin and set my soul absolutely aflame. They were mesmerizing, yet, at that point, they also showed deep hurt and concern. I could read his thoughts without closing my eyes and concentrating on them. The emotions on his face said it all.

  I just nodded my head, and wrapped my arms around him. He didn’t even have to say anything. I already knew.

  He seemed to understand that I knew what he was feeling, because he put his head down on my shoulder. He played with a lock of my hair, twisting it around his fingers again and again. “Nobody will ever touch you again. I can guarantee this.”

  I shook my head. I saw something in his eyes, something that I wasn’t used to seeing. It was an emotion that I didn’t quite understand, but it was powerful. I shuddered and I looked at my arm. It was covered in goose pimples.

  “Slade,” I began. I needed to know what was going on behind those beautiful eyes of his. “You’re hiding something. Please tell me what it is.”

  He just shook his head. “Later. Right now, I need to ravish you some more.” At that, he lifted up my legs and put them behind his back. He plunged his manhood into me, which was still sheathed from before, again and again. The way that he moved in and out of me was almost savage and primitive. He was just pure, raw emotion right at that moment, and he was making sure that all his aggressions were taken out on me.

  I felt that I deserved it, yet didn’t. I knew that I had defied him. I also knew that I was going to keep defying him. I hated to do that, because I didn’t want that tension to be hanging over our heads all the time. I had no choice in the matter, though. It was either defy him or see him fry. I knew what choice I was going to make.

  I felt myself coming, harder than I had ever come before, and he did the same. He rolled over next to me and wrapped his strong arms around me. I could feel his heart pounding against me and his skin felt like it was on fire. “What’s on your mind?” he asked me. “I could tell earlier that you really wanted to talk to me about something.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject of Malcolm. I somehow knew that particular conversation was going to be one that wasn’t going to go well. “Nothing. Well…” I almost brought up Malcolm, but decided against it. “You told me that I was safe now. How do you know that? Charlotte seems to be just a tad unbalanced, to say the very least.”

  He was quiet. Too quiet. I lay there in the dark, his body wrapped around mine in the stillness, and I felt uncomfortable. There was so much that was unsaid and was just hanging in the air like a thick cloud. “I just know,” he said. “Charlotte won’t bother you anymore.”

  I turned around and looked at him. I put my hand in his thick hair and felt his cheek. “What are you hiding from me?”

  “What are you hiding from me?” He turned the question back on me, and I felt mildly irritated.

  “I asked you first. Tell me what you’re hiding from me.”

  He cleared his throat and ran his finger gently around one of my nipples. To my surprise, his face seemed to flush, as if he was embarrassed. “I broke the Mexican standoff,” he said.

  “What is that supposed to mean? Slade, I have no idea what she has on you, or what you have on her. So, you’re telling me words, but I have no idea what they mean. You need to be specific here.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. I was just now starting to trust that he didn’t kill Jordan, but there was still more. Always more with this guy. He seemed to be a bundle of secrets and I didn’t like that one bit.

  “How are we ever going to move forward if we can’t talk about simple things with one another?”

  He looked annoyed. “Why don’t you tell me? You’re hiding something just as much as you believe that I am.”

  I turned my back on him in the bed. I didn’t know how to talk to him. I hated that I couldn’t excitedly tell him what I found out about Malcolm, and I hated that I couldn’t brainstorm with him about how to bring him down. Not to mention Charlotte.

  Slade reached around into my night table and found a jar of body butter that I kept there. He started to rub the soothing cream over my pink buttocks. As he worked, he left little butterfly kisses on my marks. Marks that I didn’t mind being there. Seeing them would remind me who had given them to me and why. They would also serve to remind me who I belonged to now. I could sense that, given the chance, we could become perfect together, each helping the other to heal and survive.

  In a few minutes, I heard him breathing heavily in sleep.

  But I was still wide awake.

  Chapter 4

  Slade – Ten Years Ago

  All my stress hormones were starting to abate and I was left with the awful feeling that everything was totally screwed up. Charlotte knew what I did. She wasn’t to be trusted with that information.

  Worse than that, she knew what mom did.

  Mom came up from below. “Is it safe to come up on deck?” she asked me tentatively.

  “Yes. Mom, listen, you need to leave the city. I don’t want you anywhere near this place anymore. If there is ever a question on what happened to Hugh, I’ll answer them. I won’t let this stick to you, mom, but you really need to get out of the city.”

  “I can’t just leave. I’m on parole.”

  “I’ll hire you an attorney, mom, to ask a judge to have your supervision moved. That shouldn’t be a problem. You’re only on parole for the next year, and you’ve been stellar. You’ve done everything that they’ve asked of you. That judge will approve your request to move, I know that he will.”

  She got quiet and then started to cry again. “You’re going to be in trouble for this, Slade, and I hate that. You had nothing to do with Hugh being killed. It was all me. Me and my goddamned impulsiveness. I was very scared, though.”

  “Of course you were. That guy shouldn’t have come into your home uninvited.”

  “He shouldn’t have, but I shouldn’t have shot him either.” She shook her head. “What are we going to do?”

  “We do nothing. As long as nobody knew that you were out with him, we should be in the clear.”

  “What about your girlfriend?”

  I felt my shoulders slump when my mom asked about Charlotte. What about Charlotte? Was she going to throw both of us under the bus?

  “I’ll handle her.”

  “How?”

  “I just will.” Charlotte was wrapped around my finger and she had been since we met. There was a part of me that knew that she wasn’t going to go to the authorities about us. But that would mean that I was going to have to step lightly around her from then on.

  I felt trapped. This might mean that I could never actually break her heart, because if I did, she was going to turn me in. Worse, she was going to turn mom in. She was the kind of person who would do that just for spite.

  “Slade, I don’t trust her. I never did trust her. You don’t have anything to black
mail her with, do you?”

  I thought about that one hard. Charlotte was always in trouble, but none of it ever mattered. She had racked up three DUIs, but her mobster father, who was the powerful head of a powerful mob syndicate, got her out of them every time. She had also been involved with petty theft, which was actually to be expected from her.

  From the standpoint of blackmail, Charlotte seemed to be Teflon. Nothing had stuck to her, and nothing probably would.

  I stood there, at the steering wheel of the boat, trying to think of something, anything, that I could use to blackmail her. I had to somehow get her into my back pocket.

  That’s when it hit me. “You know what? Charlotte had an affair with her own uncle. Michael Garancino. He’s not much older than her – he was the youngest of nine kids. But they had an affair last year, right before I met her.”

  My mom was looking mystified when I spoke with her. “So? I killed a man and all you have on your girlfriend is that she had an affair with her own uncle?”

  “You don’t understand. Charlotte is in the public eye now. She’s a very sought-after model and she’s trying to break into Hollywood. Having an affair with an uncle is something that the rest of the world considers to be wrong. It could be something that would dog her in the tabloids and embarrass her. That would be why she swore me to secrecy. I wouldn’t have known about it myself if I didn’t see the two of them emerging from a hotel together.”

  Mom shook her head. “Are you sure that’s all you have?”

  “Well, she’s stolen cars and has been caught shoplifting more than once. And she’s had three DUIs. None of that is a big deal though. It’s to be expected with young stars. But an affair with an uncle…” I shook my head. “Edgar Allen Poe never did live down his affair with his young cousin. Say what you want but people still find affairs with one’s blood relatives to be…icky.”

  Mom was shaking her head. “I wish you had more but if that’s what you got, that’s what you got. Go to her and tell her that you’ll reveal her affair with her uncle to the press if she dares breath a word about what happened with Hugh.”