Tied to the Billionaire(10)

“You seem pensive.” Olivia glided up to stand beside him, gazing into the night. Her scent had him half hard in seconds. “Are you feeling guilty? Contemplating the immorality of your life?”

“Miss Alcott, it is you who should feel guilty. You managed to completely disrupt my poor mother’s dinner. She’s quite distressed.” He bent to bury his nose in her soft curls. He couldn’t help himself.

“I regret having caused her pain, but someone needs to tell the truth about this life of yours. It’s a bit obscene. You have everything you could desire. You can do whatever you want.”

“Do you think so? I’ve far fewer choices than you’d imagine—as you saw this evening. I’m shackled by wealth and privilege, imprisoned in a kind of gilded cage. Before I do anything, I must consider the expectations of family and society.”

“Can you not consider sharing with the poor unfortunates upon whom your wealth is founded?” Her face was shadowed, but her voice was like music.

“Are you lobbying for that extra dollar in wages, Miss Alcott?” Slipping his arm around her back, he stroked the side of her breast through the velvet.

“That was, if you recall, a part of our bargain.”

He ran his finger down her neck, along her collarbone and into the hollow between her breasts, all bared by the evening gown. She shivered and pressed against him.

“I’ll think about it, Olivia. Meanwhile, what about your part of the bargain? Your agreement to follow my orders in every particular? You weren’t very obedient this evening.”

“You never ordered me to lie—Sir.” She gazed up at him. Now, finally, he could see the sparkle in her eyes. “However, if you feel I deserve it, well then, you must punish me.”

Andrew took her arm and led her back into the echoing halls of Wavecrest. “That’s exactly what I plan to do.”



Chapter Six





“Seven!” The strap whistled through the air. Olivia steeled herself as leather bit into the tender flesh of her ass, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Her lips pressed together to contain her cries. Her eyes were screwed shut to hold back tears. Each stroke hurt twice as much as the previous one, but she was determined to endure the punishment Andrew MacIntyre had decreed—twenty lashes with his hand-tooled belt of Moroccan cowhide—without complaint.

“Eight!” A starburst of pain exploded at the point of contact, then faded to a throbbing ache, echoed by the insistent pulse in her clit. Her buttocks, already sensitised from his earlier spanking, felt as though they’d been roasted over an open flame.

“Nine!” Despite her determination to be stoic, she could not help flinching away from the vicious strap, but she could not escape. Her bonds permitted only the most limited movements.

Andrew had her bent over the footboard of the bed with her buttocks in the air, her chest upon the mattress and her arms stretched over her head. Ropes looped around her wrists and pulled them towards the far bedposts on either side of the pillows. More rope fastened her ankles to the legs of the bedstead, keeping her thighs spread wide. She could do little more than wriggle, and when she did, her pebbled nipples rubbed against the silk coverlet and triggered another sort of agony.

The pain was terrible and yet somehow it excited her beyond belief. It was not the sensations per se that inspired her arousal. She feared the next application of the lash as much as she craved it. What thrilled her was the realisation that she embodied Andrew MacIntyre’s darkest fantasies. Everything he’d ever imagined, she could give to him. Unquestioning obedience. Willing surrender. A ripe, strong female body for him to use as his toy and his comfort. In the breathless moments between his strokes, they were deeply connected by complementary need. That connection was intoxicating.

“Ten!” The belt snapped as it met its target, landing precisely on the delicate underside of her rear cheeks, near the crease where they met. The awful sting forced a cry from her throat, before she caught herself. Hot embarrassment at her weakness mingled with the fire consuming her ass and the fever in her *.

Her inadvertent vocalisation made Andrew pause. “Olivia, are you all right?” His fingertips brushed across her welts, waking new pangs that sizzled straight to her sex. She arched backwards, seeking greater contact, and was rewarded by the warmth of his palms, massaging and soothing her battered flesh.

“I’m fine, sir.” The confidence and certainty she heard in her own voice amazed her. “You may continue with my punishment.”

“No, no—I don’t want to damage you.” His hands wandered along the curve of her hips to her waist, then up along her sides to the splayed swell of her breasts, flattened against the mattress. Everywhere he touched, he kindled shivers of delight. He had to lean over her to reach that sensitive spot and the wool of his trousers stung her abraded skin. Awkward, constrained by her bonds, she rubbed against the hard bulk prodding her buttocks. His sigh of pleasure only added to the heat building between her thighs. More of his weight settled upon her back. If only he were naked!

“Miss Alcott, I’d love to thrash your delectable ass until it’s twice as red as it is now. But it’s too much—much too much for the first time.”

“I deserve it, sir—ah!” He had wormed his hand beneath her body to capture her swollen nipple in the pincer of his fingers. “Oh!” He ran his tongue down her spine to leave a wet, tingling trail. “And—ah—oh, sir!” He’d pulled back far enough to slide a finger into her soaked depths. Although he kept well away from her clit, the stimulation still had her teetering on the edge of climax. “I—oh!—I can handle it, sir. It’s not my first time.”