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After the markets closed, Joshua spent two more hours at his desk, monitoring the overseas currencies. Throughout the day, the wind and rain had been relentless, rattling through the trees and howling across the eaves. The lawn was scattered with the debris of leaves and small fallen branches. Joshua flicked on a desk lamp and turned in his chair for a bottle of scotch.
He started drinking at 6 pm – not with any desire to get drunk, but rather with the need to anesthetize himself against his demons that he knew would come lurking to fill the empty void now that he had nothing to occupy his mind. He drank steadily, idly staring out through the window as the storm crashed and roared across the sky, his mind starting to wander while he fought to keep it on course by calculating a dip in commodity prices and how it might reverberate across the market. Through the big windows the night was a pearlescent mist; an impressionist painting of soft hazy edges and blurred halos around the street lights.
Time crept by and gradually Joshua began to sink wearily deeper into the seat. The level of scotch in his glass ebbed and flowed like the tide with each refill. His head began to loll, and his eyes grew heavy.
Then there was a horrendous sound of splintering wood followed by an almighty crash of noise that jerked him wide awake. He sat bolt upright, the fatigue gone in a second. Instinct told him that the sound had come from somewhere near the front of the house. He snatched a glance at his wristwatch; it was after 9 pm.
Joshua strode purposefully down the hall, peering through undraped windows throughout the house as he passed. He could see a splintered tree-trunk on the opposite side of the road. He got to the foyer and stared out through the curtains. A large tree had been blown over by the storm, tearing up grass and roots and collapsing the trunk across a neighbor’s lawn. There were houselights on all along the street; enough that he could see there had been no damage to any homes or cars, although the concrete sidewalk had been ruptured as if heaved up by the energy of a small earthquake.
Joshua went to the front door and pulled it open. The wind was coming in gusts, spraying rain in misted swirling curtains. Joshua leaned out into the driving rain and the dark storm-filled night…
…and froze in appalled shock.
Kneeling on his doorstep, clad in nothing but a pink bra and lace panties, was Gabriele.
She was drenched, her long hair hanging in thick damp ropes down her shoulders, her makeup smudged and washed down her cheeks. She was shivering with the chilling cold, her eyes lifted to the door, looking as small and frail as a drowned kitten.
“What the fuck?” Joshua gasped the profanity; such was the measure of his shock.
Gabriele looked up at him with her bottom lip trembling.
“What are you doing?” Joshua rasped.
“I’m waiting for my Master.”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“Yes,” Gabriele gave a petulant nod of her head, and then was gripped by a sudden spasm of shivers. “I ignored it.”
Joshua pressed his lips into a grim bloodless line. For an unholy moment he felt his rage simmer – and then just as quickly the emotion dissolved into impotent frustration. “You’re a stupid bloody fool!” He took her by the arm and hauled Gabriele to her feet. She was small and slender against him. He wrapped his arm around her, and she pressed herself against the warmth of him like he was shelter from the storm. “Get inside the house,” Joshua fumed.
In the warmth of the foyer, Joshua left Gabriele dripping on the floor and dashed down the hallway. He came back clutching two fluffy white towels. He tossed the first one to Gabriele, and she wrapped herself in it like it was a blanket. With the second towel, Joshua began to rub her dry, abrading her skin with coarse rough strokes to get her blood circulating and scrub heat into her cold flesh.
“How long have you been outside my door?” Joshua growled.
“Since before 8 pm,” Gabriele said reasonably.
Joshua fixed her with a withering glare. “Don’t you understand simple English when you hear it?” he didn’t know how to feel. On the surface he was stunned that Gabriele would defy him in such a selfless submissive way, but on a deeper level, he felt buoyed by her stubborn defiance. He had asked her silently once before to fight for her right to be trained. Tonight she had displayed more fight than Joshua had ever imagined.
“I made myself perfectly clear in the message I left on your phone, Gabriele. I can’t train you any more. Didn’t you get the message?”
Gabriele’s skin turned rosy red as the shivering cold was chased away by the towels. She unclasped her bra and shrugged it off, then stepped out of the wet panties and left the garments at her feet. Naked, she wrapped one of the thick towels under her armpits as if she had just emerged from a bathroom.
“I do understand simple English,” Gabriele’s tone carried an edge of belligerence. “But the man’s voice I heard on the message didn’t sound like the voice of my Master. It sounded like someone else entirely. In fact, it sounded like a man who was scared. I knew that couldn’t have been you because you’re my Master. You own my mind and body. So I ignored the message.”
Joshua’s face darkened again. He felt a renewed flush of temper burn on his cheeks. “You think I sounded scared?” the tone in his voice rang with ominous foreboding.
Gabriele seemed undaunted. “Frightened, actually,” she taunted.
Joshua laughed but it was a bitter, chilling sound. He felt affronted and it was an emotion he had never experienced before. The damned woman was challenging him, just as he had cajoled and challenged her every night he had trained her.
“You think I’m frightened of you, Gabriele?”
“No, not me,” she held his gaze although she felt her momentary bravado beginning to slip. Joshua was intimidating. She knew she couldn’t keep up the charade much longer. At any moment she was going to crumble into a mess of trembling tears. “I think you’re afraid of us. Of what’s happening between us. The connection… it frightens you.”
“Bullshit!” Joshua snarled, but the declaration lacked the teeth of any conviction. Gabriele was staring fixedly into his eyes as if trying to see beneath the carefully curated shell he shielded his heart beneath, and he couldn’t face the scrutiny.
He seized her by the elbow and escorted her up the stairs, his heavy feet stomping on every step to display his anger. Gabriele padded softly beside him like a scolded child about to be punished. When they reached the bedroom, instead of heading to the training room, Joshua escorted her to another door and turned her so she was leaning against the wall. He hung over her, like an avalanche of raw masculine power, his face inscrutable but his eyes flecked with fire. Gabriele felt small and quailing in his shadow… yet somehow thrilled by her own vulnerability. She was naked beneath the towel. Joshua had only to reach out and take her, for she would have given herself willingly.
“Take a shower,” Joshua said through clenched teeth. The pulse in the line of his jaw throbbed beneath the flesh like a ticking bomb to his temper. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t catch pneumonia after the stunt you just pulled.”
He pushed open the door, and Gabriele stepped into a luxurious bathroom that was wall-to-wall white tiles. There was a large shower recess and a deep bathtub. One entire wall of the room was covered in mirrors and there were more towels on a heated rack near the shower. “Take your time,” Joshua moderated his voice just a little, leaning just inside the doorway. “And keep the water as hot as you can stand it.”
Gabriele dropped the towel and paused for a moment, standing with indolent grace to remind Joshua of just how desirable and perfect her figure was. She caught his hot eyes upon her in the reflection of the mirror. He had his arms folded across his chest, attempting to look unmoved and still angry – but Gabriele knew better. She had seen the telltale look of lust in Joshua’s eyes before. She saw it again and stepped under a spray of hissing water, satisfied.
The room filled with tendrils of swirling steam, and Gabriele gave herself over to the l
uxury of the hot cascades of water. The heat chased away the last vestiges of chill that had burrowed into the marrow of her bones, and she emerged several minutes later with her skin bright red with new vigor.
She was alone.
Joshua was not in the doorway.
Gabriele toweled herself dry and combed her fingers through her hair in front of the dewed mirrors. Then suddenly she knew that he was back in the room with her before she saw him. She could smell the distinctive scent of his aftershave. Joshua seemed to emerge from the writhing steam like an apparition. He was holding a white dressing gown. He came up behind Gabriele, and she felt him press himself against the toned muscles of her bottom. Every nerve in Gabriele’s body drew tight. She sensed his cock was hard. Joshua stared at her through the reflections. Gabriele clutched the edge of the basin and moved her body with small shuffles until her legs were spread. Then she leaned forward a little, pressing her face closer to the mirror and arching her back in a slow voluptuous movement that was an unmistakably clear invitation to Joshua. He need only unzip his pants and she was there – wet and willing and available.
Joshua’s expression stayed fixed. He set the gown on the long vanity.
“Put this on,” he said.
