"Oh, I don't know. I'm just getting started." He buried his face against the side of my neck. "Can't you wait?"

I answered with a tortured moan of desperation.

"Okay, you naughty little slut, come."

"Oh God," I gasped, writhing in his arms. "You feel so good! I love how you fuck!"

I knew it wasn't my job to critique his technique, but I couldn't get ahold of my mouth in my current crazed state, and I could feel him laughing into my neck as I fell apart.

"You're a little cum whore."

"Yes, yes!" I agreed with each thrust of his hips.

He didn't stop as he carried me across the room to fall on top of me on the bed. He held my hands hard in his over my head, fucking me deep and slow. The way he filled me, the way he moved against me, all urgent, hard, aroused male, I could have lain there and taken his thrusts for hours and hours.

"Yes yes yes!" I hated that I was so out of control, but I was completely powerless to stop it. I was under his spell. I was his.

His thrusts quickened. He let go of my hands and wrapped me in his arms until I could barely breathe, until I could practically hear the blood beat in his veins.

"Oh, Jeremy, God..." He was so close, so close to me. No one had ever fucked me like this, not Douglas, not the play doms before him, not the vanilla boys I toyed with in school.

It was like he wanted to get inside me. It felt so new, so amazing, so intimate to be made love to this way, body to straining body, no holds barred. He was rough and intense, but the way he held me felt at the same time incredibly tender and dear.

"Lovely girl." He nuzzled me. "Come again. Come again, with me."

"I can't," I said, even as I felt my clit throbbing and aching.

"No 'I can'ts,'" he said against my ear. "I know you can."

One hand moved down to cup my bottom and draw me closer, the other fastened on one nipple with a vicious pinch. "Oh God," I said. "Please!"

"Please what?"

"Please, harder...again!"

He complied, and again I felt pleasure bloom in my center, as if my nipples were connected directly to my clit. Pain, pleasure, and his thick cock impaling me. All at once, some receptor inside me tripped. I arched up to him as the orgasm ripped through me. My legs kicked helplessly in his grasp, and he clutched me tighter. I could feel my walls clamping down on his dick. He pounded into me as the aftershocks of my orgasm traveled across my nerves. He bucked against me and then grunted out his own release.

We came to rest, entangled in each other, his hard body plastered to my skin. His hips still pressed against my slick, spread thighs, and my sopping channel still undulated around his cock. I stayed still, wanting him to never move.

Soon, though, he shifted to the side so I could breathe. He discarded the condom and rolled back to look at me. I gazed up at him, spent, satisfied...infatuated. I looked away before he could see it in my eyes. It's sex glow, just like last time, I told myself. You don't like him, you don't love him. He's just your boss.

"Look at me," he said.

I did, guarded now.

"That was good, wasn't it? For the first time."

"It was spectacular. Honestly." I turned my head, but he nudged my chin back.

"Why won't you look at me?"

"Because I'm your submissive."

"Exactly. You do what I want. And I want you to look in my eyes."

I did, and he studied me carefully. I don't know what he wanted to see. If I'd known, I would have given it to him, whatever expression he wanted, whatever would have pleased him. But I didn't know, so what he saw was only guarded confusion and anxiety.

"I hope you liked that," he said. "That's the softest you're ever going to get it from me."

And I knew he didn't mean soft, as in gentle. He meant soft as in, I just made love to you.

Then he fell asleep beside me there like a lover, but woke up in the morning the stern boss again.

Chapter Eight.

Hours and Hours *

"Here, let me help you."

He grabbed my suitcase to sling it into the overhead bin, muttering, "What's in there, bricks?"

Books, mostly, but I didn't reply to what I assumed was a rhetorical question. Anyway, I was too distracted looking at his arms. Lovely, lovely, lustworthy muscular arms and shoulders in a blue cashmere sweater that made me want to rub all over it like a cat.

Enough, Nell. Calm down already.

It was twenty hours to Bangkok, and we hadn't even taken off yet.

Twenty hours to sit next to him in first class, smelling his masculine smell, looking at his masculine hands fidgeting in his lap, feeling his masculine, sweater-encased shoulder pressing against mine. Twenty hours to sit on the sore ass that still smarted from those hands the night before.

He's your boss. Give it a rest.

He was hyperalert and agitated, still trying to manage everything, even though Kyle, sitting behind us, assured him everything was all right. Jeremy sighed, his leg bouncing and jittering beside mine.

"Nervous flyer?" I asked.

"No, just impatient. I hate long flights."

"I hate the take-off and landing."

"That's the time the plane is mostly likely to crash."

"Thanks." I laughed. "Now I feel better."

"You aren't a nervous flyer, I hope?"

"If I were, I don't think I would have agreed to fly all over the world with you."

"Smarty pants." He checked his phone for messages one last time while the flight attendant went over procedures in case of disaster.

In case of disaster. There wasn't a seat belt, life vest, or oxygen mask that could save me if this new job didn't work out. I was flying twenty hours away to Thailand with someone who was more or less a stranger. If you could consider someone who'd spanked and fucked you silly the night before a stranger. I looked over at him typing away with a frown on his phone. A complete stranger, yes.

But everyone else thought they knew him: bystanders, fans, gawkers. Several passengers came up to introduce themselves and chat with him briefly once we were in flight. He was outwardly gracious, but I could hear the tight irritation underneath. After one particularly cloying woman returned to her seat, he turned to me with a frown.

"You're supposed to help me out. Your job is to glare at women like that until they go away."

"Huh?"

"You're my girlfriend. When women are swooning all over me, you're supposed to look annoyed and irritated so they leave quickly. Better yet, stare them off so they don't even come over."

"Like this?" I asked, putting on my best jealous-girlfriend scowl.

"Perfect. That's a big part of why I need you, you know? To fend off female fans."

"Happy to be of service," I muttered.

I turned away and dug in my bag for my well-worn copy of the Kalevala and started to read. I found it a very soothing and entertaining piece of mythology, something relaxing to read when my nerves were on edge. It was an epic poem from Finland, not too terribly ancient, but mythological all the same. I was absorbed in the second Vinminen cycle when Jeremy shifted beside me and cleared his throat. It was already growing late. The sky was darkening and we were flying over black water through endless dark gray skies.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

"Some Finnish mythology. The Kalevala."

"The Kaleva-huh? Let me see."

I handed him the book, and he flipped it over to look at the cover, losing my place.

"You Finnish?" he asked.

"No, it's just a good work I like to read, one of my favorites. Creative, well written, in verse."

"Verse, huh? Sounds gripping."

"It's not for everyone." I accepted the volume back from him and flipped through the pages to find my place again.

"Why are you so into that stuff? The study of mythology?"

"Mythology is what cultures have used for millennia to make sense of the human condition, to make sense of the world. If you gave it a chance, if you read the mythology of several different cultures, you'd be amazed at the similarities they share. Myths tell you a lot about humanity, about cultural perspectives, world views..."

He rolled his eyes. "All those flowery epics and stories are just complicating things. I live by one idea and one idea only-if it feels good, do it."

"Hmm." I looked back at my book. "I do believe that is your credo."

"If it weren't for people like me who live by that credo, you wouldn't have built your nice little career in the sex trade, now would you?"

"Some people just want more out of life than hedonism and sexual pleasure."

"Suckers."

"You know, I fall into that group."

"And you're a sucker, aren't you?" He sat back with a smirk. "A half-good one, I'll admit."

I hunched over my book. I wasn't going to be baited into a conversation about how I gave head in the middle of the first-class compartment of an airplane, even if everyone else was going to sleep.

He watched me read for a while, fidgeted, scratched his chin, ran his fingers through his hair.

"Kalevala," he muttered. "If it's so great, what's it about, then? Tell me one of the stories. I can't sleep. I hate sleeping on planes."

"Are you going to stay up the whole flight?"

"No, I'll sleep eventually, but I'll wake up feeling even shittier than before."

"I hate sleeping on planes too."

"I bet your mythology could put me to sleep."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "I'll tell you one of the stories if you want, but if you're just going to make fun-"

"Actually, tell me a story from Eden. I'd like that better. Tell me a good story from your old work, a cool scene you did. Something sexy."

"I'm not supposed to do that. I signed a confidentiality agreement."

"Don't use names, just tell me what happened. I want it. Something really, really raunchy and nasty."

"Not much raunchy happened there. No sex allowed, remember?"

He rubbed his face. "Something sexy had to happen at least once. One sexy story. Come on. Your mythology. Tell me. Please."

"All right, let me think." I sighed, closing my book. There had actually been a lot of sexy moments at the club, so many I wasn't sure which story to tell him. A few particular clients stood out in my mind, a few scenes I played that changed or affected me. The mythology of Nell.

"There was one couple who came in who always got me going," I began. "A fiftyish man and a younger girl, maybe nineteen or twenty years old. They were hard-core players in a Dom/sub relationship, but they liked to come in and role-play that she was his new wife. That she was being introduced to the lifestyle but was ambivalent about it. Well, sometimes it was more like she was being forced into the lifestyle. Wifely slavery. It was pretty hot. It always began with him introducing her to me formally. He would explain that I was a submissive, that I was the way he wanted her to be. He'd bring out a collar and buckle it around my neck."

"You and your collar thing."

"Oh, collars melt me. Big, black, leather ones-"

"Okay, okay, you pervert." He looked around and leaned closer. "So then what? You're collared and panting..."

"Then he'd leash me and lead me around in front of her while she stared as if she were horrified at what she was seeing. She was a great actress."

Jeremy chuckled. "Maybe I know her."