Dominated: A Kinky Adult Fairy Tale (Bedding the Bad Girl Book 4) (3 page)

Of the three, the female of the species was the most intimidating.

Women were unpredictable, changeable, with a disturbing tendency to say one thing and mean another. Eleanor was a prime example. She said all the right “dominant” words, but every breath, every movement, every spark of heat in her fuck-me brown eyes begged for him to take her. He hadn’t expected to run into a sex-starved submissive on this job, let alone be tempted to take her up on her unspoken offer to play.

But he didn’t play with women who didn’t understand the lifestyle, and it was obvious Eleanor did not. How she had managed to fool anyone into thinking she was a Domme was beyond him. She was one of the least dominant females he’d ever met, a fact that gave him a raging hard-on that was impossible for him to ignore.

Or for her to ignore, it seemed.

He felt her tense and her heart begin to race as his erection pressed against her ass. He couldn’t seem to help himself, but he could at least let her know that she was safe. No matter how aroused he might be, he wasn’t the type to use force to get what he wanted.

At least not
that
kind of force.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he whispered.

“You already are,” she shot back, voice strained.

Frank cursed himself as he realized how tightly he was holding her wrists. Yet another reason to keep himself under control. He only trusted himself with a submissive he could count on to let him know when fun rough became too rough.

Frank had never considered himself an insensitive lover, but being so damned big did have its disadvantages. One major downside was that he often truly didn’t know his own strength.

“I’m sorry,” he began, loosening his grip on her wrists.

“Security!” she screamed again, using his second’s distraction to stomp a deadly spike heel down in the center of his bare foot.

Before he could say “sucker for a lady in distress,” she twisted free and ran across the room to where her panic button was hidden behind a large, obviously fake potted plant.

Damn it
.

He hated fake plants almost as much as he hated this job.

He followed her, trying not to think about the pain radiating up from his wounded foot. He had to get this situation under control while there was still a chance he could reason with Eleanor and enlist her help. At the bare minimum, he had to get her to put a lid on the hysterics before she ruined his chance to catch the sicko who would be arriving soon. “I’m not the bad guy here.”

“Security! I need help!” She paused for a second, listening to static fuzz from the tiny speaker. “Hello?
Now
would be nice, guys.”

“I promise you. I’m not the man you have to worry about.”

“You’ll excuse me if I don’t believe you. Hello? Kendra? Allison?”

“I sent your staff home and replaced them with my men. There’s no one out there to hear you who will move a muscle unless they get a direct order from me.”

“Who are you?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“I’m a friend of a friend.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

Frank sighed, wishing he had worked harder to convince the queen it was a lousy idea to come here undercover. He was no actor and Eleanor might be wicked, but she wasn’t a fool. She had smelled a rat, and now he would have to work doubly hard to enlist her aid.

It would have been so much simpler if he had been able to approach her as the Captain of the Queen’s Guard in the first place. Surely she would have gone along with her new monarch’s demands.

But the queen was eighteen, an age of willfulness, and had a taste for the dramatic. She had insisted that Frank go in as one of the Wicked Stepmother’s clients, not letting Eleanor know that he was there to catch her stalker until the deed was accomplished. Cynthia had wanted to save her stepmother secretly, only revealing her generosity after the fact.

From what he understood, she planned to surprise Eleanor with a call to the castle to pardon her debt. The queen wanted to put the last two years of bitterness behind them and be a family. She had a soft heart. Foolishly soft, if you asked him. Frank couldn’t imagine making nice with a woman who had put him through the kind of hell Eleanor had put her stepdaughter through.

But then, second chances weren’t his strong point. Never had been, never would be. If you fucked up once with Frank, you didn’t get the chance to fuck up again.

“Hello, earth to psycho! Are you listening to me?” Eleanor squeaked, still looking unbelievably beautiful, though the last of her infamous cool was long gone.

The woman was anything but cool.

She was smoldering, every inch of her body made for the fucking she supposedly didn’t do here in her parlor. She was a Mistress in name only, and made it clear up front that she didn’t offer any sexual favors beyond the adoration of her perfectly shaped feet.

A shame, that.

She was all legs and curves and the face of an angel, with lips that promised the sweetest type of sin. From the second she’d opened her mouth, all Frank could think about was watching those deep ruby lips sliding down over his cock.

He wanted to see her lipstick smeared along his arousal, testimony to how eagerly she had set to sucking him. He would let her set the pace, but in the end his hand would be fisted in her hair, her neck arched backward, taking the full force of his thrusts and loving every minute of it.

She
would
love every minute, he was certain of it. Even the way she called him a psycho sounded like an invitation to bend her over and fuck her against the nearest piece of furniture, to take control of her sexually and give her the freedom of sensual abandon.

He wanted to give that to her, God help him, no matter what she’d been accused of in the past. She was ripe for the kind of night he hadn’t had in far too long. It would be easy to convince her to step over to the other side of the game. By the time he’d bound her to that four-poster in the corner and used his mouth to show her how generously he rewarded his pussy for her trust, she would never go back.

How he was supposed to keep his mind on the job with that kind of temptation thickening his cock to the point of pain, Frank had no idea.

“Fine,” she snapped, “if you’re just going to stand there, then—”

“Will you listen for a second?” he asked, reaching for her.

She answered him with a vicious kick with one of the lethal weapons she was passing off as shoes.

“These are going to throw off your spinal alignment,” Frank said, catching her slender ankles in his hand, noticing as he did that her feet were indeed lovely. If he were the foot fetish type he would be totally enthralled. “Not to mention give you lower back pain.”

“I’m going to give you lower ball pain!” She lashed out with her other foot, managing to hit her target before her upper body crashed to the floor.

CHAPTER FIVE

Frank

Frank groaned and clutched at his aching balls, but held tight to her ankle with his other hand. “You really are insane.”

Despite the agony that radiated through his crotch, he had to give the woman credit. Not only had she surprised him, she had taken a major fall to deliver that kick. And she was still flailing about, kicking like mad.

“Stop it,” he grunted. “I’m not your stalker. I work for the queen and I’m here to help you.”

“The queen?” she asked, paling visibly as she stilled.

“Yes.”

“She’s the one who’s been sending the letters?”

“Of course not.” Frank released her ankle, but not without a hint of reluctance. He liked touching this woman, liked it far too much.

“Right,” she muttered. “Why would she go to the trouble of stalking me when she could just have me killed while I sleep?”

“How’s your arm?” He reached toward her, ignoring her last comment. Whatever quarrel she had with the queen, he was staying out of it. No good ever came from meddling in women’s arguments.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, shying away. “I don’t need your help, if that’s really why you’re here. I don’t need her help either, and you can tell her that.”

“The queen is concerned for your safety. The man who has been threatening you will be coming here tonight. You would be wise to accept her help.”

“Why does everything you say make me feel like a kid who doesn’t know what’s best for me?” she asked, her face telegraphing loud and clear that the more burning question was—why did she like it so much?

“I’m not trying to make you feel like a child, I’m trying to convince you to see sense and let me help you. We both know you’re not a child, Eleanor.” He met her eyes and a shiver of recognition passed between them, thickening his cock and making her nipples visible through the leather she wore.

Damn, he wanted to tug on that thing until her full breasts spilled from the top, wanted to cup her in his hands and tease her already tightened tips with his tongue. He wanted to make her beg him to fuck her, and then he wanted to lick her, suck her, bite her until she begged for more.

Every cell in his body was cursing his lack of theatrical skills. If he’d been a better actor, maybe his earlier attempt at seduction would have worked and they would be in bed right now, waiting for the sicko to show up.

He could stake out the room as well from the bed as anywhere else, and he was the type of man who would do anything to get the job done. He’d crawled through uninhabitable wastelands and fought enemy armies when there seemed to be no chance at victory. If he had to take one for the crown by taking this woman to his bed…well, it was a sacrifice he would be willing to make. He could use a little pleasure right about now.

Eleanor looked like she could use a little pleasure, too. No matter that she had brought her misfortune on herself, he still hated to see the despair in her eyes. He wanted to wipe it away and replace it with lust, nothing but pure, desperate, healthy lust.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said, her breath coming faster.

“I can’t help it. You’re a beautiful woman.”

“I’m the woman who tormented your queen.”

“Everyone makes mistakes. But I don’t really care one way or the other. I’d just like to make you come.”

“Wh-what?”

He might have laughed at how wide her eyes grew, if she hadn’t simultaneously dropped an unconscious hand down to hover over her mound. She was hot, all right, hot and primed for him. He would bet his annual pension that if he slid his hand down the front of her shorts her pussy would be wet.

“I said I’d like to make you come,” he repeated, holding her gaze until the tension lingering in the air between them was palpable.

“I didn’t do those things she said I did,” she said. “I don’t expect you to believe me. No one believes me, but it’s the truth. That’s how I ended up working here.”

“You made a choice to do this work.” Not the conversation he had assumed they would be having, but he wasn’t the type to support playing the victim. “No one put a gun to your head.”

She rolled her eyes. “Try finding decent employment when the queen says you used to beat her and lock her in the basement.”

“You’re saying you didn’t?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Why would she lie?”

“I don’t know.” Eleanor’s arms flapped up and down at her sides. “Because she hated that her father and I were happy? Because she hated me for living after her father died? She’s a teenager and she hated me for everything and nothing at all. I thought it was fairly typical stuff. I had no idea she would take things as far as she did.”

Frank didn’t know what to say. She looked so forlorn, so hopeless. Hers wasn’t the face of an accomplished liar; it was the face of a woman who had told the truth and had it fail her. And now she was getting by on small deceptions, like pretending she was a Domme when she was the furthest thing from it.

Or pretending she wasn’t aching for someone to hold her.

Frank fought to keep from going to her and giving her the arms she needed. No matter how much he wanted to be there for this stranger, he had a prior commitment to the woman she claimed had wronged her.

Eleanor read his decision on his face and made an attempt at a smile. “It’s fine, I didn’t expect you to give me a chance. But will you please leave? And take your friends with you. I can take care of myself. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”

She sat down on the red couch in the center of the room, deflated.

“Eleanor—”

“Please, just go.” She dropped her head into her hands. Her long, honey-brown hair spilled over her shoulders, all the way to the floor, looking as soft as it felt.

Frank’s cock began to throb as he remembered the satin of her hair against his chest. He wanted to hold her again more than he wanted to take his next breath. Even more, he wanted to watch her hair swirl around her shoulders as she rode his cock, wanted to see her skin flush with pleasure and hear her moan as her pussy gripped him tight. He wanted to fist his hand in her silky mane and bring her close for a kiss, then get to work showing her how swiftly he could make her come again.

“I believe you.” The words were out of his mouth before he made a conscious decision to speak them.