The Runaway Bride - A Captive Flame Book One (7 page)

I was only barely
aware of Krystopher reaching his own orgasm, of the sensation of
his cock twitching erratically inside of me before his slick heat
shot into me in fiery jolts, completing my climax just as I started
to slip into a daze that deepened into something like
unconsciousness.

Chapter Five

~

For a long time after
I recovered, I sat looking out through the window, in a kind of
daze that lingered even after the aftershocks of my orgasm wore
off. I glanced at the man in the back of the limousine with me and
wondered what Krystopher had in store for me. I tried to remember
what I knew of the man I had just signed myself over to—verbally,
at least. I remembered that when I had tried to look him up, when
the law firm had taken a case that involved him, there had been
very little that I could discover about him. It had been simple
curiosity at the time; I did the same thing with a lot of the
clients and opposition that we worked with. It seemed an awful lot
like Krystopher Danes had just showed up one day; his company had
started out in the financial sector before expanding out in a
matter of a few short years. He was a young billionaire, in his
early 30s—but there was absolutely no touching story about him, no
inspirational “dropped out of college and pursued his dreams” or
“parents invested in his company” blurb in any of the magazines or
newspapers that had covered him.

In fact, I thought I
remembered that there was a great deal of frustration from the
press at the fact that there just wasn’t anything to be known about
the man who was the head of one of the wealthiest cross-industry
empires in the world. I could understand, at least in theory, why a
man like Krystopher would want his privacy. I couldn’t even imagine
what kinds of pressures having billions of dollars put on a person.
I wondered if he had any family at all; I had a lot of extended
family, and I knew that if I suddenly became wealthy and
successful, they’d all come out of the woodwork, trying to get me
to give them money.

The only thing I’d
been able to divine in my research about the man was that the
consensus was that he was self-made. There had been no family money
to bulwark his first foray into business, no rich uncle or
understanding parents. Krystopher Danes had managed to fund his
first business enterprise entirely by convincing a few investors
and by boot-strapping. He had worked hard, and made sure that his
financial company ran the right way, and then he had gotten a few
very wealthy people to contribute with the promise of long-running
repayments. Then, of course, once he’d conquered the financial
sector, the little niche that he had staked out for himself, he’d
jumped over to publishing, then to other industries. He was
considered something like a modern day Rockefeller, diversifying
his business interests and somehow managing to succeed in every
little thing he did. But apart from that, very little was known
about him. It occurred to me to wonder just what a man with
billions of dollars did with his free time; I guess, now that I’d
spent a couple of hours with him, I had at least a small answer to
that question.

Blood rushed into my
face as I remembered the way that Krystopher had punished me on the
plane, the way he had taken me through a session of “discipline”
before giving me my reward only a short time before. I was only
just starting to appreciate the logic behind what he called his
life philosophy, and I wondered just how far it extended. Did he
punish himself? Did he have a whole list of things he would do to
me—or was he inspired by the situation at hand? I trembled and
Krystopher looked at me, a flicker of concern in his eyes. “Are you
cold?” he asked politely. I shook my head, smiling back at him. His
lips curved in a ghost of a smile and he reached out, tucking a
strand of my hair back behind my ear. “It will be a little while
longer until we get to where we’re going.” He sat up and took a
bottle of wine out of a bucket of ice, opening it quickly and
pouring me a glass. “Your first session was more intense than it
probably should have been—I apologize for that.” I shook my
head.

“I’m fine, really.
That was…” I smiled again, blushing a deep red and bringing the
glass of wine up to my lips. “It was amazing.” Krystopher’s smile
softened his face and sat back once more. He looked at me from head
to toe.

“In any case, before
we go anywhere that’s even remotely public, we’ll have to take care
of your clothing situation. That outfit is quite fetching in its
own way, but it’s not going to do for where I’d like to take you.”
I looked down at my garish clothes and thought wryly that he was
right. This was not Pretty Woman, and Danes was a man who I was
sure wanted to avoid scandal as much as possible. I was not at all
averse to blending in as much as possible, wherever he wanted to
take me. Based on his notoriously well-guarded privacy, I didn’t
think he would be taking me out all that much, but likely wherever
he did take me would have high standards for how a person should be
dressed; standards that I would do well to rise to. After all, I
had agreed to be his slave—it would only be natural that in
addition to wanting to possess my body, to having free rein on my
sexuality, he would expect me to abide by certain standards of
behavior and dress. There was a part of my mind—the free-spirited,
impulsive part of me—that thought that there was something just a
little bit insulting about that level of control—but I couldn’t
quite bring myself to object to it completely. It wasn’t as though
he hadn’t given me multiple opportunities to get out of the
situation, without any real consequences.

As the car ride
continued, Krystopher began making a few phone calls, and I found
my thoughts drifting once more. I started to picture lurid
fantasies in my mind about what sort of things Krystopher would
want to do to me—different forms of discipline and punishment he
might subject me to. I remembered his words to me: that discipline
was something that he considered a daily necessity. Punishments
were specific to the situation, but discipline itself was a matter
of lifestyle. I could expect a session like the delicious sex we’d
had—or at least slightly like it, with him teasing me relentlessly
until I didn’t think I could possibly stand it anymore—every day,
at least once a day, and very likely more often than that. I was
torn between wanting to defy his authority over me—to never quite
fully give in to his dominating ways—and the desire to be the most
perfect slave he could even imagine, willing to take any
punishment, able to withstand any disciplinary practice he could
mete out.

I pulled my thoughts
away from the conundrum, realizing that it was only making me
agitated and hot. There was still a lot of daylight in the sky, and
I knew that soon enough, Krystopher would want to play with his new
toy—me—once more. Without warning, my thoughts turned to my poor
would-be husband. I wondered what had happened to Johnny after I
had left. I cringed privately, making sure my face was turned away
from the man who now ‘owned’ me. Johnny. I sighed, sipping at the
crisp, tart white wine. I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I really
did owe him some kind of explanation for what I had done. I
shouldn’t have just walked out without telling him I was going to
call the wedding off.

Had he waited at the
altar, trusting that I would eventually show up once the cold feet
wore off? Or had he stormed out of the wedding, knowing that I had
always been flighty, knowing that there was no chance in the world
that I had just decided to have a few drinks to muster up my
courage? What had happened to the reception that was supposed to
happen afterwards? I rolled my eyes at the fact that I was actually
worrying about the fact that there would be a ton of food, a lot of
alcohol that might have actually gone utterly to waste. I didn’t
even have a second thought about the wedding dress that had been
ruined at Krystopher’s hands, though it had been pricy enough. I
felt bad indeed about what I had done to Johnny. For a long moment
I considered the possibility that Krystopher’s punishment—both what
I had already endured, and what he would mete out to me—was
something that I almost deserved.

I shook my head at
that thought, however. Krystopher’s punishments had nothing at all
to do with Johnny. It was his personal thrill, his personal need
for consequences to actions, for power in his hands. If I had
managed to tell Krystopher about running out on Johnny, would he
even have punished me for it? It was hard to know. I couldn’t quite
think of both Johnny and Krystopher at the same time—somehow they
were completely incompatible in my mind. If I thought of one, I
couldn’t think of the other. I considered how crushed Johnny would
have been when he realized that I wasn’t going to go through with
the wedding. I wondered if he might have even seen it
coming—slightly, even. Just the hint that I wasn’t ready to get
married, that it was all happening too fast.

I tried to tell
myself that it was for the best, for both of us. Johnny would have
been miserable married to me, at least after the excitement of
being newly married wore off and we settled into the business of
actually trying to live “til death do us part.” The idea of
committing myself to anyone for life—of being tied down to a single
person until they or I died—was utterly horrifying to me in a way I
hadn’t been able to put into words when I’d been at the bar. Of
course, it wasn’t like that anymore; you could get a divorce fairly
easily. But what if Johnny’s insistence hadn’t stopped at getting
married? What if he had pressured me into having kids as quickly as
possible? I shuddered again with revulsion at the thought of having
kids not because I wanted them but because my husband was
constantly pressuring me.

It was like something
out of the Middle Ages; certainly not the kind of life I wanted for
myself. Johnny would never have been happy with me—not for long,
anyway—and I would certainly have been miserable with him. But even
knowing that didn’t make it that much easier to not feel guilty for
the fact that I had probably emotionally destroyed him, running out
on him the way I had. It would take a long time for Johnny to come
to the conclusion that I’d actually been doing us both a favor. As
the limo continued on its way and Krystopher reached out, pulling
me toward him with tension in his hands, my thoughts turned away
from my ex-husband-to-be and to the new life I had agreed to.

Chapter Six

~

Obviously, I had
already known that Krystopher was insanely wealthy; from my work
with the law firm, my research, and the evidence of my own eyes, if
I hadn’t known that Krystopher was a billionaire, I would have been
a fool indeed. But in spite of everything I could figure out on my
own, I hadn’t really given much consideration to what that kind of
wealth really meant. Krystopher took me into a designer boutique
shortly after he finished giving me my reward for getting through
the discipline session. The woman who greeted us at the door didn’t
even bat an eyelash at my tawdry outfit or cheap shoes. “Good
afternoon, Mr. Danes,” the woman said to Krystopher with a smile.
“What can we help you with today?” Krystopher gestured to me and
for a moment I caught the amusement in his dark eyes before he
spoke.

“My poor friend
traveled commercial and her luggage was lost on the way into the
city,” he said, and the woman nodded sympathetically. “Until she’s
able to get her luggage returned to her, she’ll need a few
necessities.” I tried to look as though I was just another of the
super-wealthy, consigned to cheap and loud-colored clothes by
circumstances.

“We would be happy to
be of assistance,” the woman said with an even brighter smile,
turning her attention to me. I was whisked around the store, the
attendant grabbing items that I couldn’t even imagine the cost of
as Krystopher followed us, glancing around the store with seeming
disinterest. It was strange for me; normally I had very strong
opinions about what kinds of clothes I wanted on my body, but I
knew that since Krystopher was paying for all of it, my opinion
mattered almost not at all. Before we had arrived, while Krystopher
watched me pull my clothes on once more, he had told me that he
knew I had individual taste, and that he intended to respect my
preferences enough to not want me to wear anything I found ugly or
uncomfortable, he expected me to submit to his desires in my
clothing just as I would in everything else in my life, while I was
his slave.

The boutique was the
kind of place that I never would have walked into on my own in a
million years. There were only one or two other people in the
store, shopping idly; one woman was apparently seeking the exact
right dress for her son’s wedding in a few weeks, while another
seemed to simply be browsing—though as she shopped, another
attendant offered her water, tea, or coffee, and volunteered
happily to carry her potential purchases into the dressing room.
Even in my case, the woman who was taking care of me asked me every
few moments if I was thirsty, and as soon as she showed me the
items she wanted me to try, she draped them over her arm carefully,
carrying them as we wandered around the store.

Finally, nothing
remained but for me to try the items on; I went into the dressing
room and felt another shock—it wasn’t like the usual cramped stalls
with boisterous people in them, calling out to a friend or lover to
stay where they were. Krystopher sat down on a plush velvet couch,
gesturing subtly for me to follow the woman. “I’d love your opinion
on these,” I called softly, covering for the fact that I would
absolutely have to get his approval on anything I decided to buy.
If the woman taking care of me had any idea of what was really
going on, she didn’t betray it at all; she instead informed me that
she really wanted to see me in the pieces, and hoped I’d find
enough that I liked to tide me over until my luggage arrived.