Rod of Correction: Taken and Tamed (2 page)

Another breathlessly sexy not-quite smile.  If the man had any idea what he was doing to her with those, he’d cut it out or find himself flat on his back on the luxuriously carpeted floor of his den with her finally riding cowgirl above him, a position which she purported to prefer, with her legs – and other more delicate parts – spread wide to accommodate him . . .

Her mind lived quite happily in the gutter most of the time and the tequila managed to emphasize that, loosening her tongue, too, in a dangerous combination that she’d – so far – been able to control around Rod Salem.

Not so much tonight, though, apparently.

“Yes, submission.”

Another deliberate flick of his imaginary finger over the swollen tip of her clit, so much so that she felt compelled to squeeze her legs together - which only seemed to make things worse, if that was possible.

“What do you mean, exactly?” she asked, proud of how sober she thought she sounded.  It wasn’t often she allowed herself to explore the . . . distinctly less dominant impulses she had spent her life trying to bury, and it didn’t seem at all prudent to let them out to play in front of him.

He had put her on guard, somehow, which hadn’t been his intention.  He could see how her body had tensed up at his choice of words, but he didn’t regret it.  It was the perfect term for what he would demand of her.  A certain amount of caution on her part was expected – even welcome.  She would have to determine tonight just how much she trusted him – or didn’t.

“Do you require a dictionary definition of the word?” he asked, but not solicitously.

Her middle finger went up immediately, and Sunny founder herself disconcerted by the fact that it only seemed to increase the size of his smile – and even then, it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Point taken.  The English minor understands the O.E.D.’s definition of submission.”

“How’d you know I minored in English?”  She couldn’t recall having told him that . . .

Not in the least concerned by her question, he said, “You must’ve mentioned it, or perhaps Laura did.”

She wouldn’t have put it past Laura to have told Rod that she was into whips and chains – and she wasn’t, necessarily – or had spent a night in jail for speeding while they were in college, or that she had a raging crush on him.  Laura was nothing if not a blabbermouth.  Sweet, generous, and a whiz at math, but couldn’t keep a secret to save her life.  It always amazed her that Laura had been able to keep her lips buttoned about her attraction to Rod.  Miracles
did
happen.

“Oh.”  Sunny shifted in her seat, as if he’d already spanked her and she was sitting on a sore behind, although the cause of her unease wasn’t that – it was a genuine interest in not leaving a big wet spot on his immaculately upholstered chair.  “You’re going to have to elaborate, friend.  I ain’t agreeing to just ‘completely submitting’.  I have no interest at all in my family having to identify my remains when my body’s retrieved from a shallow grave -”

“Now
there’s
an interesting character reading.”  She only paused slightly at his comment, “ – nor in being yet another notch on your bedpost.”

That had him chuckling – or whatever his equivalent was.  The man wasn’t a fount of joviality even in the best of situations; she could probably count the number of times she’d heard him laugh on one hand.

What he did next surprised her.  They had been sitting opposite each other, and he got up to take the chair next to her instead, sitting so close that his big jeans-covered knees were butting against her bare ones as they faced each other.  Sunny wanted to move away from that contact, because, even as innocuous as it was, it rocketed to the area between her legs.

When he took each of her hands in his, she felt a rush of her own lubrication onto pink bikini panties as she fought with herself not to reclaim her hands and leave the room – and his house.

But she wouldn’t.  She couldn’t.  She was no coward.  So instead she steeled her spine and grasped his hands firmly, forcing her eyes to meet his.

Rod almost let himself grin at that, but he didn’t want to let her know what he’d seen – that he’d watched the thoughts flowing frantically through her mind as they played across her face – especially the impulse to flee – thoughts that she had tamed ruthlessly and, instead, sat there with him, contentedly, at least on the surface.

The conflict he’d seen there intrigued him, because he would have sworn she was much more in touch with the side of her that he was intent on bending to his own purposes.  “It means that, for the rest of this weekend, whoever loses this hand will do anything the other asks them to do, until, say, seven o’clock Monday morning.”

Rod was amazed that she was still with him, but her only response to his outrageous terms was to raise her eyebrow.  “Anything?”

“Well, I think that certain things would be considered ruled out automatically – nothing life-threatening, of course, nothing illegal, etc.”

“But lots of immoral?”

He stared at her with those steely eyes, not answering her question at first.  “I’m absolutely serious about this, in case you were wondering if I’m kidding, or if I’m going to laugh it off once the game is played.  Don’t agree to this unless you intend to commit to it.  If you chicken out on me halfway through the weekend, I reserve the right to tease you about it until the day you die.” He cleared his throat and continued, “I’m sure nowadays submitting oneself – especially in the manner I have in mind for you – would definitely be considered immoral.”

There was that shiver again, keeping her nipples crested painfully, but her heart was also beating double-time. He seemed quite serious.  She wondered if this should be anything she was seriously entertaining, but then she realized that she wouldn’t necessarily be the one who lost. She swallowed a big lump of apprehension – liberally mixed with sheer desire - at his words, but gave him a questioning look.  “So, if I should win the hand, then I could tell you to do anything I wanted?”

“You could.”

“And you’d do it?”

Without hesitation, he replied, “I would.”

“I could make you touch my breasts?”  Sunny brought their hands to one firm mound, rubbing the back of his hand against the diamond-hard peak where it poked through the sage green silk blouse.  When she won, she was going to make him do a hell of a lot more than that!  The idea of having such a powerful man at her command made her loins quiver as much as what she refused to consider in the least – that she could end up having to submit herself –
completely
, as he’d put it - to him.

His only trace of a reaction was a slight tension of his lips until the much more satisfying, much more telltale hoarse, ragged response.  “Yes, you could.”  He then brought their other hands to his crotch, pressing the back of her hand against the ridge of hardness she found there.  “Just as I could require you to do this.”

Sunny could feel the rigidity behind his zipper, and she knew she wanted this - more than she wanted to admit, even more than she’d wanted her first CEO position.  Much more, if she was truthful with herself.  This man was a force of nature, powerful, rich - and, apparently, hungry -and she wanted to sate his every desire, no matter how depraved.

She had a feeling they were very much in line with her own.

“Anything wild?” she asked, her tongue darting out to wet her lips as he watched avidly.

“No.  Straight draw poker.  One hand decides your – or my - fate.”  Rod leaned forward, their hands still where they’d been placed moments ago on each other’s erogenous zones, whispering with only slightly tequila scented breath, “Are you woman enough to take the risk, I wonder?”

She wanted to snort at him, yearned to dispel his lack of faith in her, despite the small alarm in the back of her head that screamed that this man had had much less alcohol than she had, and that she ought to be careful.

Tequila-inflamed passions of all sorts burned within her and wouldn’t allow her to ignore his blatant challenge.

Sunny abruptly let go of his hands and sat back, away from him, saying, “Deal.”

He hadn’t expected to feel bereft at the loss of contact with her, however benign, but he did.  To cover his feelings, he offered her his hand.  “Shake on it.”

Sunny complied unflinchingly; pumped his big hand twice, then let go.  She usually had pretty good luck in poker, as shown by the big pile of change to her left.

Rod shuffled the cards a few more times, then presented the pack to her and inclined his head towards it. “I think we should cut for the deal.  Shall we say high deals, ace high?”

Nodding, Sunny reached for the cards and cut it relatively close to the top, showing an eight.  Not
too
bad.

His cut was more towards the middle of the remaining pack.  A ten.

After collecting the cards and shuffling several more times, he reiterated the rules they had played under all evening:  the draw limit was three, unless you could show an ace, and then you could keep the ace and draw four.  He dealt five cards, face down, to each of them.

Sunny took a deep breath as she reached for her hand, before having seen it, uttering a prayer for she didn’t know what to she didn’t know whom before fanning them out:  an ace of clubs, two kings, a five of hearts and a three of diamonds.

When did the ticking of the enormous, antique grandfather clock in the corner become so blasted loud, she wondered?  The disappointing contents of her hand made her so tense she would swear she could hear every second of her life ticking slowly by, as if it was going to end if she lost this hand.

Dammit.  She had been hoping for three of a kind on the first draw – to have something to pin her hopes on.  A pair of kings wasn’t much - she sneaked a look at him as he was staring intently at his cards – against the man who could control her every move for the next two days, and who looked like he would thoroughly enjoy every second of it.

“Three, please,” she asked, throwing the ace, the five and the three face down onto the table between them.

“Three to you, and dealer takes,” he looked at his hand again for a second then discarded his own rejects, “two.”

Two?  That wasn’t at all good, especially when she’d gotten no help at all from the extra cards – a four, a two and a seven, all of different suits.  That could mean that he had three of a kind already - even before he got to draw more! 

But Sunny did her best not to let the panic show on her face.  “So, since we’re not betting money, who calls who?”

“I think we both just show our hands and determine the winner from there.”

Throwing everything but the pair away, Sunny put down first one king, then the other, like it was some big reveal.

“A pair of kings.  Pretty good,” he nodded.

Following her custom, he slowly, deliberately put down his cards, holding her eyes the whole time.   First there was one ace, then another – having beat her with that – and then, just for good measure, a last ace, giving him three aces.

She’d lost. 

The enormity of what she’d bet came rushing into her head, crowding out her booze-emboldened surety that she was going to win.  The idea of losing hadn’t even occurred to her until this moment.

She was his for the weekend, to do with as he pleased, with no holds – or holes – barred.

What had she gotten herself into?  Was she crazy?  She should have gotten something in writing at the very least!  How the hell could she possibly have agreed to something so stupid!  She barely knew the man!

In her panic, she allowed every emotion to play across her face, the foremost of which was fear - while Rod’s first impulse was to comfort her, he held himself back.  A little fear wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in a submissive.

He didn’t gloat at all, but busied himself at first cleaning up a bit, putting the cards away in one of the drawers under the table, then brushing it off a bit before standing to help her up.

His hand was surprisingly warm against her cold fingers as she leaned on him a bit to stand, eventually coming out of her pure panic mode and more to her senses to stand stock still in front of him.  She wasn’t sure whether panicked was better, though, since she immediately found her senses overwhelmed with his nearness.

Rod guided her to the middle of the room, moved a comfortable looking Queen Anne upholstered chair to one side and took a seat, commanding with alarming alacrity, “Strip.”

The longer he stared at her and she couldn’t find it within herself to obey, the more thoroughly flustered she became, fidgeting with her fingers and dancing from one foot to the other.  She had the fleeting thought that she must look like some of the underlings at work, and she made a mental note to be nicer to them from now on.  This situation was a thousand times worse.

When he stood and caught her hand, she assumed he was bringing her to his lap to cuddle and talk about the situation, to explain himself to her and calm her fears; she couldn’t have been more wrong.

She didn’t end up on his lap; she was, instead, guided quite expertly
over
it.  Her short skirt worked against her, immediately riding almost all the way up to her waist and leaving her mostly bare cheeks completely exposed.

Sunny could hear him clucking his tongue at her disapprovingly as he relieved her of panties that weren’t much help anyway, although she loudly protested being divested of them, as if they were the last barrier between herself and the fate he had in store for her.

She was entirely unprepared for the barrage of swats he administered to her now completely naked backside; a horrible, intolerable sting erupting in her flesh and filling her mind as the only important thing there, and indeed, it was.

Chapter II

No one had ever treated her this way.  No one.  Her parents were the touchy-feely kind she could play like a kazoo, and, in her relationships with men, she had always been the one in control, the one on top, the one calling the shots.  In fact, she’d never hooked up with a man she couldn’t control, one way or the other.  The artistic types needed money, and that was their Achilles heel.  Young, brash, overachievers were eager to climb the corporate ladder and to use her name and her connections.  The nerds, well, she’d always just had a soft spot for them, and in a lot of cases, they were embarrassingly happy just to get some sex.