According to Mark Read online

  I thrust them in her direction as she slid from the bed to the floor. She donned the thong first, treating me to a painfully erotic view of her ass as, after undoing the garters, she bent over to put them on. Those stocking and garters were going to be the death of me. I’d never considered watching a woman get dressed—as opposed to undressed—particularly stimulating, but I was revising my opinion on the subject.

  She grimaced as she raised her arms over head to put on the lacy white shirt, and the image of her kneeling naked on the floor, her hands cuffed and my cock pounding her mouth drifted through my brain. My cock twitched.

  I really had to get a grip on myself. Figuratively, anyway.

  When she was fully clothed, I unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall. At the bottom of the stairs, I pulled the key card from my pocket and handed it to Paul.

  “Good evening?” he asked blandly, but I knew what he meant. I’d never occupied a playroom for more than a few hours, and Paul was well aware of that.

  Before I could answer, however, Allison said with a cheeky smile, “Definitely.”

  I gave Paul a shrug and followed Allison as she sauntered toward the front door. The bar was fully lit now, the other patrons having been ushered out some time ago, and the cleaning crew had begun its work.

  “Will you come tonight?” Allison asked as we passed the dance floor.

  I decided to ignore the accidental double entendre and shook my head. “I’m on call for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “The night after, then?”

  Yes. And every night for the rest of my life if it meant I could have Allison’s complete surrender.

  Which was exactly why I had to put an end to this now.

  I grabbed her upper arm gently and pulled her to a halt in the foyer. “No. Not the night after or any other night, ever.”

  The smooth skin between her eyebrows wrinkled. “I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?”

  I let out a puff of irritation. “God, no. You were perfect.” Too perfect.

  “Then why?”

  I wasn’t even going to dignify that with an answer. As if I had to state the obvious. As if she didn’t know exactly what—or who—was between us and had been between us even up there in that room last night, hovering on her lips as the word that would bring everything to a crashing halt.

  “Oh,” she said tightly, reading my silence. “I see.”

  “I certainly hope so.” I released her arm and reached for the doorknob. “Maybe you can get the club to return your membership fee.”

  Now it was her turn to grab me, getting a fistful of my shirt for her troubles. “What makes you think I’m going to cancel my membership?”

  Um, the fact that I can’t bear it? The fact that watching you go upstairs with any other man would kill me?

  Well, hell, I couldn’t say that, could I? “I just assumed…”

  “And you know what they say about assuming.” She dropped her hand. “In case you forgot, Mark Finley, I didn’t join this club for your sake. I joined it for mine. You said last night we weren’t exclusive, and you’re right. We’re not. And that means you have no claims to me outside that room. So if you don’t want me, I’ll find someone else who does.” With those words, she swept past me, pushed open the door, and stepped out into the night. Before the door closed, she added, “I’ll be here tomorrow night if you change your mind.”

  I stood there as the door slammed shut behind her, my mouth gaping like the world’s biggest carp.

  If you don’t want me, I’ll find someone else who does.

  That was exactly what I needed her to do. The sooner the better.

  There was only one problem: As soon as she did find someone else, I was going to be forced to commit homicide.

  * * * * *

  I dragged myself home at eight the following morning after one of the worst shifts of my career. I’d like to claim it was because I lost a teenaged gunshot victim on the operating table and a two-year-old with shaken baby syndrome an hour after closing, but sad as it may sound, I was used to it. We doctors may come out of med school starry-eyed and convinced we can defy God, but reality is a cruel teacher, and she beats it out of us all pretty quickly.

  No, my shift had been nightmarish because, instead of concentrating on my patients and their needs, I’d spent nearly every conscious moment obsessing about Allison.

  Would she go to The Rack even though she knew I wouldn’t be there? If she did, would she go upstairs with some other man? Maybe even Blake Franklin. I’d warned her off him, but what if she decided being Franklin’s slave was better than being my nothing? My mind constructed images I didn’t want to see but couldn’t banish—Allison bound and gagged and fucked by someone other than me. Sometimes it was Franklin in my mind’s eye, sometimes it was someone nameless and faceless, and sometimes it was even Greg Hernandez who swatted her round, gorgeous ass and slammed into her juicy little pussy.

  I got through the entire twenty-four hours purely on instinct and reflex, my thoughts so disjointed that I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t made some fatal error in judgment during those two surgeries. Oh, I was convinced enough that no other neurosurgeon could have saved either of them. I just expected more of myself than I expected of others. On a good night, I might have saved one or both.

  Once home, I climbed into bed and went to sleep, but my dreams were filled with the same images as my waking hours had been. When I woke in the early evening, no more rested than I’d been hours before, I knew what I had to do.

  I had to get Allison Hoffman out of my system, now and forever. Fast, before my inability to stop thinking about her killed someone.

  I just didn’t know how what I was about to do was going to accomplish that.

  Chapter Seven

  I spotted Allison sitting at the bar as soon as I walked in The Rack’s front door. She wore a strappy, barely there dress in a luminous shade of pink. From a distance, she appeared to be clothed in nothing more than a blush, and a fierce possessiveness punched me square in the gut.

  No other man should see her looking like that. Only me.

  But not only were other men seeing her, they were talking to her. Three of them, to be precise.

  Even from twenty feet away, their intentions were loud and clear. Allison might be a submissive, but at the moment, she was the one in charge, and they all knew it. The irony of watching three dominants play the role of supplicants would probably have amused me if they weren’t trying to put the moves on my woman.

  Normally, before being permitted to enter the club, I would have been required to display my membership card to Rex, the doorman, but tonight, I couldn’t be bothered with that formality. I brushed right past him, intent on reaching the bar, and he did nothing to stop me, which could have been tragic if I’d been packing heat.

  In five strides, I was standing behind one of the three men who crowded around her. I cleared my throat.

  Allison was the first to see me. Her eyes widened with surprise, although whether my unexpected appearance was pleasant or unwelcome, I wasn’t sure. Not that it mattered to me.

  She was mine. None of these men was fit to lick her boots, let alone her pussy.

  I was prepared for one or more of them to fight back. Allison was a prize worth having, and I knew they all saw it. Not just because she was beautiful, but because she was so self-contained and reserved. Taking apart a woman like that, breaking down her barriers and making her so needy and uninhibited that she’d beg to be fucked…that was what every red-blooded dominant craved.

  I couldn’t blame them for wanting her.

  But she was mine.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said, “but the lady is spoken for.”

  The man closest to me, a well-built man with dark hair and an Asian cast to his features, gave me a contemptuous sneer. “That’s not what she told me.”

  “Or me,” the tallest of the three put in. He crossed his arms beneath his chest, the better to display hi
s impressive biceps. “She says she’s unattached.”

  “Yeah,” said the third. “Get in line with the rest of us, asshole.”

  I’d seen both of the other men before, but the third guy was new to me, which most likely meant new to the club. He was also young; with his short-cropped hair and chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, I pegged him for a military kid home on leave who probably couldn’t afford the fee to use the playrooms anyway.

  He clearly represented no threat, but he also hadn’t learned the first rule of playing in the sandbox with other Doms, and he needed to—fast.

  My hand shot out, and I grabbed him by shirt collar, squeezing just hard enough to let him know I meant business. His eyes bulged, and he cast a wild glance in the direction of the bartender, who merely shrugged and looked away. He knew the drill well enough by now.

  “What did you just call me?” I asked, my tone low and deadly calm.

  He opened and closed his mouth, looking for all the world like a beached fish, and then said, “Nothing.”

  I squeezed tighter, causing him to rise onto his toes.

  “That is—” He gulped. “—I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  I gave the boy a slight shake and then let him go. He stumbled backward and rubbed his throat before slinking off with his tail between his legs.

  The other two men gave me nods of grim respect. They’d obviously grown tired of the puppy’s antics before my arrival but hadn’t yet felt called upon to bring them to a halt.

  “Tell them,” I said to Allison. “Tell them who I am.”

  She caught her upper lip between her teeth and worried it for several seconds, considering. I knew I’d caught her off guard with the command. The other night, I’d told her our game would only take place within the confines of the playroom. Now, I’d changed the rules. And I wasn’t sure she’d come along for the ride.

  The silence stretched out painfully, so long I thought my heart would explode.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” she said at last, “but he’s my master.”

  * * * * *

  I pushed opened the door of room number twelve and dragged Allison inside behind me.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing down there?” I turned her to face me, my voice even but unmistakably menacing.

  Unintimidated, she put her hands on her hips and responded with equally cool vehemence. “I was doing exactly what I said I would—finding someone else.”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  “So I guess I’m the hay in the manger and you’re the dog? You don’t want me, but no one else can have me, either.”

  I grabbed one of her wrists and placed her palm over my crotch. My dick obliged and rose to the occasion, needing no more encouragement than her touch. “Does that feel like I don’t want you?”

  Her eyes softened slightly, their color darkening, but she wasn’t ready to concede. “You told me this would never—could never—happen again. I believed you and respected that. What I don’t respect is you trying to control me when you’re not offering me anything in return.”

  She was being completely reasonable, of course. That fact, however, did nothing to ease my possessive jealousy.

  “I’m offering you this.” I pressed her hand tighter against my rising erection. “Now. Tonight.”

  She tipped her head to one side even as her fingers explored the outline of my cock through the thick denim of my jeans. “And if this isn’t enough?”

  With a growl, I yanked her into my arms and wrapped one palm around her throat, my grip gentle but unyielding. “It’ll have to be, because I’m not letting you go.”

  Her pupils dilated further, glazing over with the haze of desire augmented by a tiny edge of fear. She was with me.

  “What about my safe word?”

  Almost.

  “Don’t even bring up the existence of a safe word unless you intend to use it.”

  She gazed up at me for several seconds, her tongue darting out to moisten her upper lip in a way that nearly made me groan. I knew how it felt to have that tongue licking my cock, and I wanted it there.

  Just when I feared she wouldn’t capitulate, she dropped her eyes.

  “Yes, Master.”

  That was all the consent I required.

  I peeled the straps of her dress from her shoulders and down over her arms until the material sagged to the floor like an abandoned puppet. My breath whistled in through my teeth as I realized what she’d been wearing underneath that barely there dress.

  Nothing.

  Not a scrap. Aside from a pair of high-heeled platform sandals that laced up around her calves and screamed “fuck me” at the top of their non-existent lungs, she was buck naked.

  Jesus.

  I was dumbfounded. And livid.

  She hadn’t come dressed—or, more accurately, undressed—like this for me, but for some other man she’d never even met. She’d come like this for some nameless, faceless stranger she would have actually allowed to bring her up to one of these rooms and do all the things that only I had the right to do her.

  It was beyond bearing.

  I acted on instinct rather than thought. Releasing her, I marched to the other side of the room and retrieved the spreader bar that hung on the wall and a lightweight riding crop from the bedside table. She watched me warily as I returned with these implements, no doubt wondering exactly what I planned to do with them.

  How badly I planned to hurt her.

  The answer was…only as badly as the thought of her ever spreading her beautiful legs for another man hurt me.

  I bent down beside her. “Spread your legs, pet.”

  Her knees wobbled, but she spread them. I closed the restraints around her ankles, locking her legs in position.

  “Bend over and give me your hands.”

  She did, her auburn hair falling like a curtain of gauze from her head. I pushed her wrists into the cuffs and snapped them shut.

  When I was done, I stood and walked in a slow circle around her to admire my handiwork. Immobilized, her breasts hanging like ripe fruit for the picking, her pussy and ass exposed from behind and accessible to my every whim, she was quite simply the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

  And she was very, very much in need of correction.

  The first crack of the crop across one firm cheek made her jump. The second made her stiffen. The third brought forth a small squeal and raised a light red welt on her smooth, pale skin.

  “Oh God,” she moaned as I struck a fourth time, causing a matching stripe across the other cheek. “Please, Master.”

  “Please what, pet?” I asked, wondering if she understood the dynamic yet. Because if she begged me to stop, it would be in vain.

  “Please, Master, punish me the way I deserve.”

  Holy hell. My cock almost burst through my fly as every last ounce of blood rushed to it from distant parts of my body.

  She did understand. Better than many women who’d been immersed in the lifestyle for years.

  I punished her exactly as much as she did deserve, which was not nearly as much as my lust-addled brain would have liked. And when I was done, I dropped the crop to the floor and kneeled behind her and pressed my lips to each of the already fading marks. The rich, musky scent of her sex filled my nostrils as I worked my way from one cheek to the other and then into the valley between them. Her muscles tensed as I spread the two half-moons apart and pressed my tongue against her tightly puckered rear opening.

  “Has anyone ever fucked you here, pet?” I asked, slipping a finger into the moistened crevice, pretty sure I knew the answer as her sphincter clamped down against even that small invasion.

  She trembled. “No, Master.”

  Exhilaration threatened to separate my head from my body. Not that I needed it for what I had in mind. My cock throbbed with the need to go where no man had gone before.

  “Well, I’m going to,” I said softly. She shivered but didn’t flinch as I circl
ed the tiny orifice with my index finger. “Some day.” A promise and a threat.

  But not today. Or not right now, anyway. I was so frantic for her, so furious with her for even considering fucking another man, I couldn’t trust myself to take it slowly and do it right. No, I needed something fast and wrong.

  I trailed my fingers between the wet folds of her sex. And she was wet—slick and swollen with unmistakable desire. When I circled her clit, her thighs and buttocks clenched as if she were already trying to fend off an orgasm.

  “Whose pussy is this, pet?”

  “Yours, Master.” Her answer was immediate and obedient.

  “And what does that mean?”

  She was silent for a second, processing this question, undoubtedly searching for the answer that wouldn’t get her into trouble. “That you can fuck it whenever you want.”

  “That’s right, pet,” I murmured approvingly, opening my fly and extracting my penis as I continued to tease her clit with my thumb and forefinger. “And I want to fuck it…now.”

  I punctuated the word “now” by embedding myself to the balls in her cunt in one swift, relentless thrust. She gasped, her inner muscles contracting at the sudden penetration even as the outer ring yielded easily to accommodate my girth. I closed my eyes, the sight of her juicy pink flesh stretched around the thick base of my cock almost too erotic for me to bear.

  Drawing back, I grabbed her hip with one hand while continuing my intimate torture of her clitoris. I was preparing to drive forward again when she said, “Wait.”

  I was surprised enough by the command that I stilled. “Wait?”

  “Condom,” she panted. “House rules.”

  I swore under my breath. She was right. I’d been so impatient to get inside her, I’d forgotten. I started to pull out, but the walls of her sex tightened as if to prevent my departure.

  Jesus. How was I supposed to do the right thing when everything in my body and hers screamed in protest?

  And then I realized I didn’t have to do the right thing.