AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Rory was already crossing the stone plaza before the thought was fully formed inside her head.
She skirted the gated part of the church’s grounds and went instead to the big, ornate doors. They rose high and proud, but she headed for the smaller door tucked inside them, and didn’t bother attempting to use the code she’d had when she’d worked here. She felt certain that he had changed it, but even if he hadn’t, she wasn’t foolish enough to think he would find her letting herself in the least bit entertaining.
The truth was, she doubted he would find any of this entertaining. But here she was all the same.
She rang the bell, not surprised to hear that it sounded like church bells. A cascading sound that filled the plaza and soared up toward the night sky.
This is a terrible idea,she told herself. Run while you can.
But she didn’t move.
A light flicked on above her, flooding her face and making her blink. But Rory stayed where she was, her arms folded, and—she hoped—no particular expression on her face, because she knew he could see her on his security video.
An eternity later, she heard the heavy iron of the dead bolt slide free, and then the door swung open.
She held her breath.
Conrad stood in the opening, light from inside and the light above bathing him and making him look like...a god. And tonight he wasn’t dressed like a page out ofGQ. Tonight he was dressed in dark jeans and a dark black T-shirt that made her brain short out. Because she could see his biceps and every ridge in his abdomen, and she was suddenly afraid that she might actually explode.
Right where she stood.
His mouth was hard. A stern, flat line.
His navy blue eyes blazed.
“What an unexpected surprise,” Conrad said, and thatvoice... It was worse—better—than she remembered. It seemed to crash over her like a wave, even as it was already inside her, filling her up. It made her breasts ache and her pussy pulse and even her hair down her back felt provocative. When all she was doing was looking at him. Listening to him.
“I don’t how to do this,” she told him, feeling jittery. Practically like she was on drugs. “I’m sure it’s all wrong. I’ve never... I mean I don’t know...”
“So far, all you have done is ring a doorbell and stammer,” Conrad replied, quiet and sure but not, she was almost positive,furious.He didn’t even look annoyed. She was going to cling to that. “It would appear you know exactly how to do that. Is that why you came here?”
She remembered her hands on the brick wall and some dark thing inside her pulsed hot, so she did it again. She held out her hands like that, like a supplicant.
And scarier by far, she held his gaze.
“Please,” she heard herself say, in a voice that sounded like need. Not like her. “I... I want more.”
CHAPTER FIVE
FARBEITfrom Conrad to refuse such a pretty little act of surrender.
“You’d better come in, then,” he said, a sense of inevitability kicking through him in a way he would not have liked if he’d allowed himself to focus on it.
He focused on her, instead. She looked different tonight, his little cleaner, who he’d had every intention of forgetting as soon as he walked away from her that night. Before he walked away, even. He’d been sure that it would take very little doing on his part. He would go out, he would indulge all of his appetites in all of his favorite ways, and that would be that.
But it hadn’t worked out that way.
He’d discovered that the appetite he had was very specific, no matter how he wanted it to be otherwise. No one but a disrespectful American would do, a state of affairs that so appalled him that he’d upped his usual ninety-minute daily workouts to twice that to see if he could sweat it out.
Alas, he could not.
And of course, Conrad had her contact details. They had been part of the email his secretary had sent him when Rory’s cleaning service had been hired three months ago, but he hadn’t bothered to look at it until now. It had been lowering indeed to find himself digging out that email, clearly indicating he could not conquer this desire he didn’t want. And he’d spent entirely too much time over the past two weeks arguing with himself about whether or not he would do something with them. Something like call her, God help him, when he had always been known as a master so exacting, so precise, that only the most graceful, obedient, and service-oriented submissives ever dared imagine they might have a chance with him.
He hadn’t bothered with graceless, ignorant, mouthy beginners in a long, long time.
He hadn’t planned to change that. Ever. If anything, the debacle of his attempt to marry had made him an even sterner master, not less.
And yet it had taken him far more self-control than it should have to keep from calling the little cleaner.
