The Devil’s Pawn (12 page)

My pulse quickens, and my pussy warms and clenches at the thought, but I don’t know how to do this. Derek is regarding me coolly. He sees my nervousness, but he doesn’t care. He expects me to comply, and he knows I will. I mount his hips as he holds his erection, waiting for me to impale myself on it. I rise up on shaky knees and align myself with him. His lips part as his body waits for my touch, and as I slowly lower my opening to his incredibly impressive cock, he holds his breath. When I make first contact, my stomach muscles twitch, and as I push down past the head of his penis, I can feel it pop past the taut skin of my hole.

I slide slowly and persistently down his length as his head falls back and a loud groan escapes his lips. His jaw tightens and his eyes smolder in heat. He moves his hands to my hips, pulling me the last couple of inches to his body. They are the most painful inches. He’s deep inside me, and when he reaches my core, it shoots pain through my body, but it is the most incredible sensation of fullness. He watches me and sees my nervousness at this new position, and the control that it puts me in. He gently rubs my hips around to my bottom, but he doesn’t ask me to move. He just watches. Waiting.

As I look down at him, he runs one hand from my hip around to my belly, studying the movement of his hand all the while. He strokes me gently with his palm flat against my stomach before it slowly works its way up to one of my breasts. His eyes are focused so intently on my body and every inch of skin that he touches. There’s an unexpected look in his eyes, intrigued, confused. He’s out of his element, and it shows, but I love this touch, and his vulnerability is intoxicating. His index finger slowly traces lightly around the areola while his eyes continue to explore my nipples. He then gently strokes the tight nub of my nipple. He continues to watch my eyes, his cock occasionally flexing within my tight sheath. When he leans up to my breast, I gasp. His mouth opens, and as I watch in stunned silence, he lightly teases the nub with his tongue. He then clamps down lightly with his front teeth, and my breath is stolen again. It is incredible. He’s touching me with his mouth. The man who doesn’t do intimacy is using his mouth to pleasure me. Me! And God what pleasure.

After he finishes with my nipple, he sits farther up to me, and with a gentle but insistent hand at the back of my neck, he pulls me down to him as his body sinks back to the mattress. Our faces are close, so intimately close it’s almost harder not to kiss him than it is to hold his gaze. For a moment, I think he might kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he thrusts up into my body, demanding I push down to his. We find a new rhythm together, and it works so perfectly. He thrusts as I push down to meet him. He clutches the cheeks of my ass, pulling me harder and more vigorously as his thrusting quickens. My nipples are brushing his chest, sending radiating warmth through my chest, and every time they do, he glances down at our meeting bodies, his arousal mounting. With one final loud thrust, we find our release together, and he moves one hand from my bottom to my face, where he brushes my curls that have found their way free of my upswept hair. As our bodies slow, he pulls gently at a strand, twisting it in his fingers as he studies it. My breathing hasn’t yet slowed, and I’m still taking in every amount of air I can get.

When at long last he finishes looking at me and touching my loose curls, he rolls us to our sides, gently pulling his length from my body. A hiss escapes my mouth at his withdrawal, and his lips part marginally at my response to his loss. He continues to watch me with a look that borders on confusion. I know, though he holds so much back, that his confusion is at his response to me. Whatever little glimmer of humanity this might symbolize, I’ll take it. It’s enough. He feels. It doesn’t mean he’ll compromise; hell, it doesn’t mean he’s capable of ever fighting past his over-restrained soul tucked away and hidden from the world. What it does mean is there is a light buried somewhere deep inside, a light I desperately want to find. God, I want to know this man. But not tonight.

There is no pushing him, and I’ve suffered too much emotional anguish in the past two days not to take this small opportunity to regain my footing. So, difficult as it is, and fighting everything that my body wants to do, I pull away and sit up to the side of the bed. He watches calmly, not so much as the slightest degree of what he’s thinking flashing in his eyes now. And I speak. They aren’t the words I want to say; they are the words that I must say. “I should go.”

I want him to disagree, but I know he won’t. Instead he watches me. My every last move is captured by his eyes. As I stretch, as I stand, as I walk to the door where my dress lays in a heap, as I slowly turn it right-side out, and then pull it back over my head, he watches. And with one final look to him from the door, I bid him a quiet “good night.” He responds in kind.

Chapter 13

Life has never been easy since my parents were killed, and this place has pushed me nearly to my breaking point. But in all its cold, emotional emptiness, I don’t miss the life I came from. I have an unnerving fear that I risk losing myself, my heart, my ability to feel anything at all here, but I don’t fear starving, or going cold, or being tracked down like a dog and threatened. It’s a difficult dichotomy to grasp.

When Derek comes to speak with me in my room the next day, I’ve just gotten out of the shower. My hair is loose and crazy, and he walks into my bathroom while I’m standing naked in front of the mirror making ridiculous faces at myself in admonishment of my tangled mess of a head. He catches one such odd face, and with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, he watches me. I’ve learned his smirk is as close to a smile as I can hope to get, and my soul warms when I see it.

I feel a sudden need to cover myself, which is ridiculous considering how much of my body this man has seen. Wet, unclothed, and my hair trailing long and crazy down my back has me feeling utterly self-conscious, but as he speaks, he’s all business. “We need to talk about tomorrow night. Get dressed.”

There is little Derek tells me that Liz hasn’t already filled in, but there are a few points he’s adamant about. If I’m approached with any requests for my time, I’m to say nothing whatsoever and to send them directly to him. If any man wishes to speak with me in private, I’m not to leave the gaming room floor under any circumstances, and finally, I’m welcome to have a drink or two, but I’m not permitted in any way to over drink. Apparently he doesn’t trust me to make sensible decisions while I’m drunk, and he wants me lucid and cautious. Derek reiterates some of what Liz has already told me. Most of the men are regulars, and they’ll notice I’m a new face, but what Derek is most adamant about is that I not put myself in any compromising positions with the men. As though he need worry that I would. By the time he leaves, I’m more nervous than I’d like to be, and by the following afternoon, I’m an absolute wreck.

I spent the evening with Derek again the night before, and as he came inside me, it was with the harshest utterance of “mine” on his lips. I once again left feeling consumed and owned by him, and for the first time, I felt as though that was exactly how he wanted me to feel. His appetite for fucking is insatiable, and I love that he gives all of that desire to me. I can’t help but wonder when it will end, but I also can’t help but revel in it. It makes my life tolerable, but it is also the biggest threat to my emotional existence.

As I stand with my wet hair taunting me in the bathroom mirror a mere two hours before I’m expected to be downstairs, I’m thankful for the strong and intense feeling of ownership that his attention has given me. I feel safe even in my fear.

As I get ready for the evening ahead, I end up letting my curls dry on their own, and braiding my locks loosely down my back. The emerald gown is stunning, and when Liz arrives thirty minutes before we need to be on the gaming room floor, she appraises me excitedly. “You look amazing.”

She must be trying to make me feel better, but the honesty in her eyes is encouraging. She sets about the task of helping me with my makeup. I haven’t yet been to the spa and won’t until the week prior to my starting to work, so Derek has asked that she help me with makeup.

She sets to work on my skin and wryly comments, “I can see why Derek asked me to keep your makeup simple.” She looks to my eyes with her provocative comment, knowing I’m hanging on her every word. “You are far too pretty to need this.” She smiles and winks at me before she finishes her comment. “Besides, I think Derek’s a little worried about the attention you might get…”

When I look myself over for the last time before we leave my room, I’m surprised with how content I actually am with my appearance. My auburn locks are in a loose, long braid that falls over my shoulder. My makeup is exactly as ordered: my eyes made up in natural colors that look stunning against my bright blue irises, my cheeks a soft pink, and my lips a glossy and natural hue. The slinky dress feels smooth against my bare skin. The spaghetti straps show off my shoulders and neck nicely. I’m braless and wearing no underwear, and the dress leaves no curve to the imagination. It isn’t tight, but skims my body perfectly. Jacob did an amazing job. My taut and nervous nipples show through the thin fabric, and the skirt falls to the floor. My heels are blessedly more comfortable and easy to walk in than I worried they might be. My jewelry is beautiful and borrowed from Liz. The earrings are long but not big. They hang simply down my neck. The necklace is equally exquisite and trails down between my breasts.

And as Liz stands behind me taking in my appearance, looking beyond amazing herself, she smiles gently before giving me her feedback. “You look stunning, Ash. Don’t be nervous. I’ll be there.” With that, we leave my room and make the short trip down to the twentieth floor where the gaming hall is located.

When we enter, I’m taken aback, and I’m suddenly terrified. The room is large, more than large, it’s huge—ballroom huge. The ceilings are massively high, and there are poker tables, black jack tables, and other gambling tables I don’t recognize from wall to wall. There is a large circular bar in the middle of the room that serves all sides of the room. There are servers moving through the throngs of men, taking drink orders. Everywhere I look are beautiful women. Some of them I recognize from the building, and others I’ve never seen before. They all look far more stunning than I do, and while I may have felt reasonably confident in my appearance ten minutes before, I now feel like the self-conscious child that hides inside of me, ready to come out as soon as I’m reminded just how plain and ordinary I really am.

The room isn’t crowded, but there are more men than I can count, and as we walk in, their eyes move to us, appraising us. I see Frederick a short distance away, and he approaches us quickly. “It’s good to see you, Miss Monroe. I’m glad to see you’re with Liz tonight.”

I greet him in kind, and he moves away from us. I’ve not seen Derek yet, and as Liz and I start moving through the men toward the bar, I start scanning the room looking for him. We take our seats at the bar and order a drink, and Liz starts filling me in on the ins and outs of the gaming room floor. Essentially, men gamble, and they buy women for a period of time. Often the purchased women are used as gambling stakes, subject to their house manager’s approval. House managers are in charge of arranging and approving purchases, and there is a special desk set up by the entrance that handles the actual transaction of a purchase. This desk also notifies security of the arrangements being made so that security is monitoring the appropriate rooms at the appropriate times. House managers come and go as they please and as they are able, but their function is to oversee their women and approve arrangements. They gamble, drink, and socialize with the other men, but their responsibility remains to the club.

Liz eyes me speculatively as she goes over these details and points out different activities as they are happening. At one table a woman from a different house has been put up as stake in a poker game. Her house manager, ugly Aaron—I feel sorry for her instantly—is watching nearby, with a drink in his hand, talking to another man. The woman is stunning, far more stunning than any one of the men at the table, and she watches the activity with amusement, feigned or not, I can’t tell, but she is playing her part well. I can’t help but wonder if I could ever be so comfortable in such a situation. The whole operation looks normal—the men, the women, everything looks normal. I’m not sure what I expected to see … naked women, people having sex in the middle of the room … but it is nothing like my imaginings.

Once Liz and I have been at the bar a few minutes taking in the scene, Derek approaches us. I’m glad to see him there, but he definitely doesn’t seem to feel likewise. He looks me over carefully while Liz watches him.

She smiles slightly before commenting, “Doesn’t she look lovely, Mr. Pennington?”

His eyes slowly leave my body before travelling to her. He looks at her for many seconds, castigating her with his eyes for putting him in such a position before he finally answers, “Yes, she does.”

The smirk on Liz’s face tells me she expected just such a reaction but didn’t care. She wanted to put him on the spot, and she managed it beautifully. His eyes return to me, but flit away quickly. He leaves us there to continue our drinks after lightly touching my arm and telling me that he’ll talk to me later.

As he moves away from us, Liz comments, “Sorry to put you on the spot, but I just couldn’t help taunting him a bit with you.” There is a wry smile on her face as she eyes me.

We continue our drinks as I look around taking more of the place in. The room is incredible, appointed as nicely as the rest of the building, and the activity is all equally sophisticated and regal … that is, apart from the dress of the working women. They are all dressed far more provocatively than I am, and I was feeling exposed in my evening gown! I’m suddenly thankful for my skimpy fabric. At least it isn’t skin tight and split up the side to my hip, or so low cut that my nipples sit a mere fraction of an inch beneath the line of the cleavage threatening to show themselves. I’m suddenly very grateful to Derek and his decision to keep me simple and “demure.”