Chapter 8

eight

Two daysafter we get back from Bishop’s Landing, I take the elevator up from the security office to the top floor, doing my morning check-in with the object of my blooming obsession.

For some of the meetings Mark takes, he wants me in the room or just outside it; for some, he doesn’t want the presence of security to upset whatever delicate transaction is about to take place. And yet for others, he wants me visible down on the server floor, a human manifestation of how safe a secret will be at Lyonesse. Each day is slightly different, but I don’t mind because each day is set by what he needs, and so there’s a reassuring logic to that. All I need are my orders, and I’ll march wherever I’m told.

Today I’m also holding a cappuccino fresh from the club kitchens because I noticed on our trip to Bishop’s Landing that it’s Mark’s morning drink of choice. Which surprised me a little—I suppose I expected a precisely pulled shot of espresso or even just black coffee, the lifeblood of the U.S. military machine. But a cappuccino takes time to make, time to drink. It invites stirring and savoring. Hardly the drink of a former special activities officer.

It’s the kind of knowledge about someone that raises more questions than answers, and maybe if I find him in the right mood, already switched into the charming club host from the controlled autocrat he usually embodies during the day, he might tell me why he likes cappuccinos. He might arch his eyebrow at me, the line of his mouth moving just so—the small gestures that would be an earsplitting grin on any other man.

Instead, I walk through the empty vestibule to his office door and push it open to find him taking off his jacket behind his desk. Which has a naked woman tied to the top of it.

I stop, cappuccino hot in my hand, the wooden door swinging shut behind me. The skills I learned in battle and sharpened as a diplomatic escort serve me unexpectedly here; I take in the entire scene in seconds.

The woman, curvy and pale, has bright red ropes knotting her thighs to her calves, and her wrists are bound and lashed over her head. She is tied to the edge of the desk, knees apart, so that anyone who stepped up to the edge of the desk would have easy access to her open, flushed cunt.

And Mark has already taken advantage of that access: a Hitachi wand lays next to her, and a flush is staining its way up her soft stomach to her face, all the way to the roots of her strawberry-blond hair. Her nipples are cherry red and stiff enough to look like they ache. They’re wet too, like they’ve just been sucked on. And even from here, her pussy glistens.

I notice the white latex gloves on her hands just as Mark looks over at me.

“Ah, Tristan, good morning.” His eyes drop to the cappuccino in my hand, a pleased expression on his face. “Is that for me?”

He asks this as he’s unzipping his pants.

The woman tied to his desk stares dreamily at me.

My eyes are drawn to Mark’s large hands as they make efficient work of the clasp and zipper, of the waistband of the dark boxer briefs underneath. His cock, when it emerges, is long and thick. Cut, with a large crown and a visible vein twisting down the side. I watch him tear open a condom packet with the same curt efficiency as he used to free his erection, and he rolls the sheath over himself in three brisk movements.

“You can stay. This won’t take long,” he says to me.

“I—”

He’s already sinking his latex-shiny cock into her swollen core, one hand guiding himself in as the other comes to spread over her sternum, holding her still for his entry.

My breathing comes faster as I watch her arch against the ropes tying her down, as I watch her being held down for him to penetrate.

Two things come to me just then:

The first is that I consented to this. I signed a document; I agreed that I would willingly witness acts of sex and kink at my place of employment.

The second is that the document, the consent, none of it matters right now anyway. Because I don’t want to stop watching.

I don’t want to leave.

Mark strokes in and out of her with the expression of a connoisseur savoring something that meets their approval, and I want to know how it feels. To be him or to be her. To have a soft pussy held still for my taking or to have his thick shaft working in and out of me with slow, powerful drags.

I’m hard now.

I’m aching with wanting?.?.?.?everything. Everything in front of me, and the cappuccino is forgotten, and the day is forgotten, and there’s just my boss fucking a woman tied to his desk like it’s as much a part of his day as reading the news.

Mark picks up the Hitachi, and the woman whimpers. “No, Mr. Trevena, please .?.?.?”

“Hmm” is all Mark says. And then he proceeds to turn it on anyway.

She pulls against the ropes as if in protest, and despite the heat in my blood, I step forward instinctively. She said no—

“Never fear, my knight,” Mark says mildly. The hand not holding the Hitachi is sliding under the knots around her plush thigh, tugging on them with something like fondness in his expression. He’s still inside her. “What’s your safeword, flower?”

“La mer,” she pants.

“And what do you say if you want to stop?”

“La mer.”

Safeword. That term was in the folio, in the comprehensive glossary included with everything else. I stop, one foot still forward and my eyes on her, making sure she’s okay.

She smiles at me and then presses her lips together, as if to show me that wild horses couldn’t drag the word from her lips right now. And then Mark presses the vibrator to her clit. Even from here, I can see that it’s rosy and swollen, and I put that together with the flush staining her skin and guess that she has had an orgasm already.

Maybe more than one—maybe so many that yet another sounds like torture.

And I can see the diabolical genius in it. Mark hasn’t beaten her with a crop or a cane, he hasn’t clamped her, he hasn’t done any of the stuff I’ve witnessed in the club, but it doesn’t matter. She’s squirming, whimpering, reacting, as he tortures her with pleasure, as he strokes himself into her center.

By now, I’ve given up all hope of making myself leave. I stand there, frozen, breathing nearly as hard as they are, having to reach down to adjust the bulge in my pants. My hand lingers there after I’m done, the heel of my palm grinding mindlessly against the stiff flesh.

I have to force myself to drop it. I can’t masturbate. I can’t take his place. I can’t take her place. No matter how badly I want to.

She climaxes with a scream that leaves no doubt how deeply she’s feeling her pleasure. Between the toy and Mark’s relentless thrusts, I have to imagine it’s as deep as her blood, as deep as her bones.

“There we go,” mutters Mark, spearing into her. Even through his suit trousers, I see the moving muscles of his thighs, his backside, and through his shirt, I see the flex and strain of his back and shoulders as he drops the wand and wraps his hands around her soft waist to hold her still. Because he’s driving into her so hard now that even the ropes can’t keep her from being literally fucked away from the edge of the desk.

He ducks his head, and his hair leaves its carefully styled tousle and falls forward over his face. Silhouetted against the sun coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I see it perfectly. I see his lips part too, and I hear a muttered curse.

He drives in a final time, so deep that I almost feel it all the way over here, and then he holds himself completely still as he pumps his release into her body. She’s still coming down from her own peak, breathing hard and half whimpering, and he keeps his hands tight on her waist as he finishes.

It takes me a minute to realize that he’s looking over at me. Watching me as his balls drain.

A surge of heat so urgent I worry I’m going to ejaculate right then and there yanks at my thighs and belly, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from going over the edge. And then the moment ends anyway, Mark closing his eyes once and withdrawing.

After sex like that, no one could fault him for collapsing in his chair and catching his breath, but Mark is already disposing of the condom and buttoning himself up by the time the thought finishes flickering through my mind. He drops a kiss on the woman’s stomach and starts unknotting the ropes with a practiced deftness that reminds me that Mark is the original here. The founder and king of this kinky kingdom.

Soon she is sitting up with a blanket around her shoulders, a glass of water in her hands. Mark tucks a knuckle under her chin and lifts her face to his. He murmurs something to her that I can’t hear, and she murmurs back, equally low.

Even though I can’t make out what’s exchanged, I can see her expression as she looks up at him, and it’s one that borders on worshipful. After a few more words, she slides off the table and disappears into the small bathroom just inside the hallway which leads to his private apartment. She’s shorter than I’d initially thought, and then suddenly Andrea’s words from my first night come to me.

Little blond.

Mark is wrapping the ropes into neat coils, and then with a look at me that clearly says stay put, he disappears into his apartment with the rope and the vibrator.

The submissive emerges dressed in a bright yellow sundress which should clash with her Titian hair but doesn’t at all. She still has the white latex gloves on, utterly incongruous with the small gold necklace at her throat and delicate leather sandals on her tiny feet.

“Thank you again, Ms. Beroul,” Mark says, taking her hand and dropping his head down to brush his lips over her knuckles.

Even through her gloves, she must feel it because she gives a small shudder. “Anytime, Mr. Trevena,” she says huskily, and then she leaves, her topaz-brown eyes flashing once to me in an interested glance, which I return.

“Well, Tristan?” asks Mark, heading behind his desk and putting his suit jacket back on. “You wanted to go over the schedule, I presume. And bring that here. I want to drink it before it’s completely cold.”

* * *

Thirty minutes later,I leave Mark’s office with as much dignity as can be expected. I didn’t cream the inside of my pants, I didn’t stammer and flush while we went over the schedule, and in fact, the only time I found myself unable to speak was when Mark took the mug from me and saw it was a cappuccino and not just a regular coffee. The expression on his face had been so pleased then that I was grateful I was already about to sit down.

It could bring a man to his knees, that expression on Mark Trevena’s face.

But even though I’ve mostly got my hard-on under control, I’m still restless from the morning as I make my way to Andrea’s office to return a folder Mark just finished signing his way through.

“Couldn’t find Sedge, could he?” Andrea asks, extending her hand to take the file and not bothering to look at me. She’s in her uniform of a pantsuit and a low, sleek ponytail, and her expression is the usual one she wears around me—like I’m about to disappoint her.

“I was already in his office,” I explain. My voice is a little hoarser than normal, and she looks up. Something deep in her expression shifts.

“Was Mark with someone this morning?”

I don’t know how closely I need to guard his privacy from her, but I suppose my silence is enough of an answer.

“First time you’ve seen him in action, then?” she asks, leaning back in her chair a little.

Again, I don’t answer, and again, it seems to be its own answer.

She looks down at her desk, and for once, there’s nothing sharp or dismissive in her tone. “There aren’t a lot of Dominants like him,” she says after a minute. “Even here. Mark could make someone kneel for him in the brightly lit aisle of a grocery store. He could gag them with a dirty radish, and they’d thank him for it.”

Yes. They would.

“It was the little blond submissive you mentioned,” I say, passing a hand over my face. I’m still too hot, my clothes too tight. The minute I have a break in the day’s schedule, I’m running to my apartment to rub away the need still fussing against my zipper.

“The little blond submissive?.?.?.? Oh. No,” Andrea says, shaking her head. “She’s not in the city, or I guarantee you that we’d know about it.”

It’s strange to me that Mark would have a submissive who’s not here, but then again, he might have many at Lyonesse to play with in the meantime.

“This must be someone new,” Andrea continues, her tone musing. “But I’m glad he’s found a way to blow off steam. He’s too busy playing the king of the castle in the evenings to make use of our club subs, and now that Strassburg’s gone, I don’t know how he’s managing. Or how we’re going to manage in the long run because he’s a fucking nightmare when he’s not able to scene. Or screw.”

She looks up and sees me staring at her.

“So it’s true, then,” I say. “He and Strassburg?.?.?.?”

“Oh yes. Not publicly, because Strassburg was worried about how being a submissive would affect his reputation as a bodyguard. But for private needs, yes. Mark used him.”

Used him. The words nearly make my knees buckle. God, what is happening to me?

“I see,” I manage faintly.

Andrea eyes me for a moment, and I see the subtle twist of her mouth to the side, like she’s thinking of saying something. But then she just shakes her head and flips open the folder I brought her.

I’m clearly dismissed.

I go back to Mark’s office and post myself outside, knowing in ten minutes or so, Ms. Lim will lead up his first meeting of the day. But my thoughts are so tangled and troublesome that I can barely focus on the day’s schedule.

Does Mark want me to do for him what Strassburg did? Despite what he said to me the day after our kiss, would he want that if I offered it?

Do I want to offer it?

I’ve never done—that. Sex. But it doesn’t mean I couldn’t. That I wouldn’t be good at it.

And I’d want to be good at it, just like I’ve been good at everything I’ve tried in my life. Singing, basketball, soldiering?.?.?.?this could be something else to add to the list.

As the day wears on, what I keep remembering is not the agonized pleasure of the Titian-haired submissive or even the way Mark gazed at me while he came.

Instead, I think of Arjun’s hands moving through Evander’s hair, petting and stroking and praising, and even as I prickle just thinking of it, my mind helpfully substitutes Mark for Arjun and puts me in Evander’s place.

Kneeling with long fingers toying possessively with my hair.

Kneeling for him.

I think I’m fucked.