The Double Read online

  This time, my whole body tensed. “The safe is impossible, too. He’s in and out of the study all the time, if he sees me in there….” I remembered how he’d snapped at me, when he’d caught me on the landing—

  And how he’d grabbed hold of me, to stop me falling. The guilt in his eyes, the fear at nearly losing me.

  I was terrified of getting caught. But more than that: some stubborn, stupid part of me didn’t want to betray him.

  Carrie sighed. “Then we’re back to the laptop. You’ll just have to figure out a way to—”

  “Christina?”

  The cat felt me freeze and sprang off my lap. I jumped up and spun around to see Konstantin striding towards me. He was too far away to have heard anything but that didn’t stop my insides twisting with guilt.

  “Where did that come from?” he asked, looking at the cat.

  “I think he lives in the garden. He’s really friendly, look.” I squatted and reached out to the cat, who eyed me suspiciously, still annoyed at me for jumping up, and then began to nuzzle my hand. Every few seconds, though, it would break off and look up at Konstantin. “You’re scaring it,” I told him. “Come down here.”

  Konstantin blinked, unsure if I was joking. Then he slowly squatted down next to me. He stared around, as if he’d never looked at the world from so low down, before. Then he looked at the cat, utterly bemused.

  Fortunately, the cat knew what to do. It rubbed its furry cheek against his knuckles...and approved. It gave them a lick and started to rub against them in earnest. Konstantin stared at it….

  I held my breath….

  And the corners of his mouth twitched, just a little. It was almost as if he was remembering how to smile. For a second, he looked happy—free.

  Then he turned and looked at me and…I don’t know what it was I was doing, I was just enjoying being there, doing something so normal and fun with him. But it triggered something in him. The heat flared in his eyes: that glittering, molten look I was getting to know so well.

  He suddenly grabbed my wrist and stood, pulling me to my feet so fast I wobbled on my heels and had to cling onto his arm. “What?” I asked, looking up at him. I could feel myself reacting to his gaze, the heat of it melting me inside. “What?” I asked again, hearing my voice go tight with excitement.

  He just shook his head and wouldn’t explain. He marched towards the house, eating up the distance in huge strides, and I think he would have dragged me along if I hadn’t hurried to keep up. When we reached the hallway, he pulled me close. His eyes were glazed with lust and his eyes tracked up and down my body. What is it? What did he suddenly see, out there?

  He leaned in and put his lips to my ear. He almost breathed the words into me, the dark heat of them twisting around my mind and drawing tight, sending shockwaves down between my thighs. “Go upstairs and put on something….” He paused, considering, and took another look down the length of my body. “Put on something for me. Then come downstairs.”

  And he glanced down, towards the dungeon.

  32

  Konstantin

  IT HAPPENED so fast.

  That damn cat was licking my hand and, just for a second, I’d felt like a different person. Maybe the person I could have been, if my life hadn’t been torn apart. The sort of man who would have fallen in love, got married, had kids. And then I glanced at her and….

  I wasn’t looking at Christina. Not the Christina I knew. The Christina I knew was like me, cold-hearted and controlling, incapable of love. This woman was….

  This woman was the other one that I would have found. A normal, innocent, good woman.

  I didn’t know how it was possible. Part of me screamed that it was dangerous, that something was wrong. But the lust took over: all I knew was that I had to have her. She was the light to my dark and the thought of her writhing under me as I plunged into her...I almost ran her to the house, I was so hard for her.

  Now I waited impatiently for her in the dungeon. I’d lit a fire to warm the room. She was going to be naked for a good, long time….

  The door creaked open and then her head appeared around it, her eyes going wide as she glanced around. She seemed so nervous... she normally strutted in here, full of confidence. Is she playing the innocent to turn me on? If she was, it was working.

  She slipped inside and closed the door behind her. She was wearing an ivory satin robe that covered her down to her knees: why so shy, all of a sudden? Christina normally loved to run through the house in just her underwear, teasing the guards into looking.

  That warning bell at the back of my mind again. She’d changed, somehow, since the accident. But: it’s okay. It’s Christina, after all. “Take it off,” I ordered, the lust making my voice thick and slow as honey.

  She unbelted the robe. Hesitated. And then, in a little show of courage that made my heart ache, she suddenly flung the robe back off her shoulders and let it slither to the floor.

  I’d said to wear something for me and she couldn’t have chosen better. Her creamy breasts—I swore they looked bigger—looked amazing in silky bra cups the color of a lush forest, edged with gold thread. What really drove me crazy was the delicate gold ribbon that joined the cups. It was tied together in a bow, the ends hanging tantalizingly down. One little tug and she’d be revealed. The panties matched: a simple triangle of green fabric that concealed her, but that could be stripped away by pulling on the golden bows at her hips.

  I’d seen her in lingerie a hundred times but she’d never looked like this. Alluring and yet innocent. Seductive and yet good. I realized that she wasn’t wearing heels or stockings, like she usually did, and it made her seem not just smaller but more naive. As if she wasn’t Christina, the vampish sex partner, but some civilian who’d wandered in here by mistake. The idea made my cock almost painfully hard in my pants.

  I beckoned her over to me.

  33

  Hailey

  THE TILES were freezing beneath my bare feet. But with each slow step I took towards him, with each second his gaze soaked into me, I could feel the heat strumming and building, melting me from the inside out. By the time I reached him, I felt like I was on fire and the tiles felt pleasantly cool.

  I glanced around and my breathing went tight. I’m really here. Deep underground, where no one could hear me scream. This time, there’d be no interruption, no rescue….

  And this time, I hadn’t wandered down here by accident. He’d told me to come down here and I’d obeyed. Willingly.

  I had to, I told myself. For the mission. But as the broad sweep of his chest filled my vision, as my fingertips tingled with the need to touch him, to smooth my hands over the soft cotton of his shirt and feel the hot muscle underneath... I knew that wasn’t the reason.

  He slid a hand over my bare back, making me gasp, and then buried his fingers in my hair. He tugged gently, just enough to make me tilt my head back to look up at him.

  I swallowed. God, the raw heat in his eyes, like he wanted to devour me whole. What had he seen, out there in the garden?

  He moved his head down and I closed my eyes. But he didn’t kiss me: not quite. He stopped when our lips were just barely touching and stroked, drawing my lower lip down and opening me, and then letting it go, again and again.

  The intimacy of it was amazing: our breathing fell in time and my lips became so sensitive that it felt like I could feel his whole body, all of his size and strength, in that one tiny contact. With each brush of his lips, the pleasure rose and spun, making me heady...but what made me go weak was the way I could feel him struggling with himself. He wanted to just full-on kiss me, to bury his tongue in me and ravish me, but he was forcing himself to keep everything locked down and controlled, to make it a choreographed dance with exact steps.

  And he was losing the fight. First one big hand grabbed mine, then the other. He stood there, his muscled body trembling, his hands kneading my smaller ones as his lips stroked and stroked….

  ... and paused…
.

  He suddenly whirled around and flung me onto the four poster bed. I landed on my back, legs kicking. Before I could speak, he was marching towards me, using his foot to pull something out from under the bed. I leaned over and looked. A wooden box, filled with everything from colored ropes to brutal-looking black leather straps. He’s going to tie me up. And before I’d even finished thinking it, he took out what looked like a long, black satin ribbon. Then he grabbed my wrist and pulled me.

  Something was happening inside me, a thrashing, urgent heat that went straight down to my groin. It had started when he’d thrown me onto the bed, but when that hard grip closed on my wrist and he pulled me, my ass sliding across the covers, it doubled, trebled. It was the way he manhandled me so easily, the way he didn’t ask.

  And then he started to wrap the ribbon around my arm, starting right up near my elbow and spiraling it all the way to my wrist. Just a thin slice of pale skin showed between each loop of glossy blackness. I watched, transfixed. It almost looked as if I was wearing black opera gloves.

  Then he made some clever, looping knot at my wrist and tied the rest of the ribbon to one post on the four poster bed. I was trapped. The heat coiled and twisted, lashing inside me, the blood pounding in my ears. When I pulled, the ribbon spread the load all the way up my arm: I wasn’t just trapped, I was imprisoned, and that idea gave me a strange, fluttery feeling in my chest. I pulled again and felt the tightness all the way up to my elbow. It wasn’t painful, but it was firm. I can’t get free. The heat thrashed even faster inside me. It was like that moment on a roller coaster where the safety bar comes down and you realize you’re not getting off. I started to pant.

  Then Konstantin was moving around the bed and that hard grip was on my other wrist—

  Why am I letting him do this?

  I knew the answer as soon as I’d asked. Because, against all reason, I trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.

  He bound my left wrist to the other post, so that my upper body made a wide Y on the bed. I was gulping down air, now, trembling. Oh God...what’s happening to me?

  He walked around to the foot of the bed and just... glowered at me. Almost as if he was saying this was my fault, that this was the punishment I deserved for tempting him, somehow. All I did was play with a cat!

  He lunged forward and grabbed my ankle. My heart started crashing against my ribs. Oh God that was even better than a wrist. A strong man gripping your wrist might want to kiss you or arrest you but a strong man grabbing your ankle—Did I really just think that? And yet my face didn’t go red. I didn’t have to lie about what I liked, not with him.

  He pulled me down the bed until my body was taut. God, he moved me so easily! And that gorgeous face, those merciless gray eyes glaring down at me as he tied me and spread me, making me ready for him. This was every secret fantasy I’d never admitted to, since I started watching him.

  He started to draw my left ankle to the left, opening me—

  I quickly crossed my legs, right over left, cinching them tight. I can’t explain why I did it, I just had to.

  He scowled at me, but I could see the glittering heat in his eyes burn hotter, darker. He took one ankle in each hand and—

  His forearms bulged and suddenly my legs were forced apart. I actually went a little dizzy with how good it felt: my inner thighs quivering, weakening...and then my muscles giving up and my legs flopping open on the covers, only for my ankles to be quickly bound in place with more ribbons. By the time I was a spread X on the bed, the heat inside me was spiraling out of control. I’d never felt so utterly helpless.

  Konstantin moved around the bed, staring down at me, and every heavy footfall sent a shockwave of heat reverberating through me. I bucked and wriggled in response, and that made my wrists and ankles tug at the ribbons, and the feel of being bound turned me on even more.

  The bed creaked and sank as he put one knee on it, then the other. He knelt there, the top of his head almost reaching the bed’s canopy, hulking between my pale, straining thighs. We watched each other for a second, his massive chest rising and falling under his shirt and jacket. I knew what was underneath it, now, could visualize every hard ridge of tan muscle, every dark swirl of ink. God, I’d watched this man for so long. I just couldn’t believe he was staring back at me.

  He leaned forward and plucked at the ribbon that tied my bra together between my breasts. It slipped loose with a silken whisper and he knocked the cups aside with two impatient swipes of his hand. Suddenly, my breasts were throbbing in the cool air of the room, my nipples puckering and tightening as his gaze roved over them.

  He grabbed the bows at the sides of my panties in both hands and pulled. My panties fell away. I writhed and ground my hips, feeling his gaze like a touch as it ran over every secret fold. I knew he’d be able to see how wet I was.

  He’d been silent for so long that when he spoke, it was a shock. “You’re just...so….” He shook his head. “I’ll never get tired of looking at you.”

  I flushed, but then my chest contracted. It wasn’t me he was talking about. I’d stolen someone else’s face.

  He reached down and touched my naked hip, then followed my leg all the way down to my ankle. His touch was almost reverent. “Since you got back, there’s something….” he pressed his lips together and shook his head in confusion. “ I don’t know what it is. But I can’t take my eyes off you. I want you all the time.”

  A big, warm wave rose in my chest and broke through me.

  He lifted one hand towards my breast...and then pulled it back and gripped the bedpost, knuckles white, denying himself. He got up and walked to the rack of implements. I arched my back off the bed and craned my neck but I couldn’t see what he was choosing...and I knew that he’d designed this room like that deliberately. What if it’s a whip? Or a cane? Something that’ll really hurt? Maybe Christina was into that. Or what if—

  My stomach twisted. What if he knows? What if he’d just been toying with me, all this time, and now that he had me naked and bound, he was going to interrogate me?

  He crossed back to the bed, one hand hidden behind his back, and—

  As soon as I saw the lust in his eyes, I knew: he still thought I was Christina. The mission was still on. Everything’s fine.

  Except...a shockingly strong part of me wanted to just stop all the deception. Not to drop the Christina act and tell him I was Hailey. To forget I was Hailey and just be Christina.

  He brought his hand down and there was a musical hiss….

  A second later, my body exploded into heat. Not pain, exactly, more like the aftershock of pain, when the adrenaline thumps through you and you catch your breath. Warmth radiated out across my stomach, turning to a twisting, darker heat as it sunk into my body and slid down to my groin. What was that?

  It flashed down again, too fast to follow, and this time I was anticipating it. A flash of heat, like a pinch or a slap, but much subtler than either, crackling across my skin and leaving me panting and glowing. I stared at his hand and for the first time I got a look at it.

  He gripped a carved wooden handle in his fist. Immediately above that, it became a thick bunch of soft, flat strands as long as my forearm. A flogger? Was that what it was called?

  His eyes met mine and there was a wicked gleam in them. He glanced down at a particular spot on my body—

  I followed his gaze and saw my naked breasts. Then it clicked. What? No! Not there!

  But part of me burrowed my ass down into the covers and hissed, yes, there!

  The flogger came down again and there was a flash, white-hot but so quick it didn’t register as pain, and then the heat and pleasure rumbled through me like thunder, leaving my breasts throbbing and sensitive, and my nipples straining and pebble-hard. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and it came out as a low, throaty groan.

  He knew exactly how to use it. He could land the lashes just where he wanted them and he could twist and flick his wrist to come
at me from different angles so I never knew what to expect. One second, heat was exploding across my inner thighs, melting up into my groin and making me moan and grind against the bed. The next, it would be a light touch on my breasts, the strands brushing over my nipples as gently as palm fronds, and I’d be clawing at the air with my hands, arching my back to get more, more!

  He kept going until every inch of me was ablaze, until I was a straining, panting, thrashing mess...and then he dropped the flogger and climbed onto the bed…..

  The first time his tongue bathed my nipple, I almost came. I hadn’t realized how super-sensitive the flogging had left me. Everything was throbbing and tingling with heat and suddenly the wetness of his tongue, swirling around the base of my nipple and then flicking over the top—I gave a short, hard yell of shock, the pleasure expanding and turning silver-edged and scarlet.

  He went to work on me with his hands and his mouth and every touch of his fingers, every press of his lips, was magnified a thousand-fold. All I wanted to do was grab him and rub my body against him, press my breasts against his mouth and hump my groin towards his hands to show him where I needed it. But I couldn’t do any of that. The ribbons held me fast and all I could do was gasp and plead and arch my back and trust that he knew where to go next. And he did. He knew better than I knew myself, and he showed me sensitive spots I’d never discovered.

  But instead of making me come, he drew out the pleasure for as long as I could bear, toying with me. He drew blistering paths of heat with his lips that wound from my mouth to my breasts to my groin. He pushed two fingers deep inside me and found that hidden spot that made my brain explode into silvery trails, the heel of his hand grinding down on me while I rocked helplessly against him. He let me feel the edges of his teeth on my nipples while his tongue darted over their tops. I lost track of how many times I came.