Mile High (Up In The Air #2)

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

I stepped out of my shoes as I approached the bed, shrugging out of my floaty gown with a few easy movements. My tiny lace thong was a distant memory between one step and the next.

I sat on the very edge of the bed, facing him. I was naked, but I didn’t feel as self-conscious as I usually did. I had too many other things to be anxious about.

“Lie down in the center of the bed,” James ordered softly, still framed in the doorway. He was still fully dressed in that devastating navy tux, only his tie mussed, though it still hung undone around his neck.

I obeyed, but it didn’t come as naturally as it normally did. Sheer force of will made me shift my body onto the spot where he’d ordered it.

“Spread your legs and raise your hands over your head,” he continued.

I shot him a wild look. He was getting waaay off track. “James,” I began.


“Do it,” he said with a new trace of steel in his voice. I closed my eyes, nearly shuddering as I obeyed him. I wanted answers, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I wanted this just as much.

He only moved after I’d complied, striding towards the bed and using the restraints hidden at each corner of the bed to secure me swiftly. As he stared at my restrained body, some of the tension seemed to drain out of him, right before my eyes.

He loomed over me from the side of the bed for a long time before he finally spoke. “Now you can’t run away if you get upset. Ask me whatever you need to. I’ll answer all of your questions, and you know I’ll be honest, but you don’t get to run away if you don’t like the answers.”

I was looking directly at him, but I could see my chest rising and falling with rapid breaths out of the corner of my eye. If his tactic had been to distract me from the questions that troubled me, he’d succeeded beautifully. Now that I was naked and bound, nothing seemed as important as what he could do to me, not even those answers.

I mentally shook myself, making my mind move back to the discussion at hand with great effort.

“Was Jolene lying, James?” I finally asked, dreading the answer.

He ran a restless hand through his dark golden hair, mussing up it’s artful evening styling. He began to pace, shrugging out of his tuxedo jacket and tossing it onto a chair. I was ready to scream by the time he answered.

“She wasn’t lying. She was my contracted submissive for about that long. But we didn’t see each other ‘often’ after that. We met up maybe six times a year, if that, and generally when I was between subs. I know this doesn’t make me look any better, but it was only ever physical between Jolene and I. I know she thinks she’s in love with me, so it was badly done of me to keep in touch, but it was a strictly sexual relationship. It’s an awful thing to say, but I don’t even like her.”

I flinched every time he mentioned things like ‘physical’ and ‘sexual’, horribly vivid images of the two beautiful people entwined naked together flashing through my mind. I turned my head away and shut my eyes for a moment, trying to compose myself. I knew it was silly to be so jealous, but knowing and feeling were two very different things. “Was she the woman you were with the night before I met you?”

He cursed, a long and fluid rant, but I didn’t look at him.

“Yes,” he answered after a long pause. “I always used a condom with Jolene, though, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

I counted to ten in my head, the word ‘condom’ striking at some vulnerable part of me. It wasn’t the condom, but rather the act that went with it, and the horrible woman he had done those things with, painting a vivid and painful picture in my mind of the two of them together.

My next question embarrassed me for some ludicrous reason, and my cheeks blushed pink even as I began to speak. “Jolene said a few things about joining you and your other subs…”

I felt him sit down near my hip. His hot hand gripped my wrist. The hold was light, but I thought I could still feel his intensity through the contact. “She joined me and two of my subs in the playground, maybe a handful of times. None of this matters, Bianca. I know it troubles you, but it really is insignificant. How I feel about you is what’s important.”

“She said that there’s nothing you love more than dominating two women at once,” I said quietly, wanting to pull my wrist away from the hot contact of his hand.

I heard him suck in a breath, but kept my eyes stubbornly closed. “That’s a lie. I’ve done that with a few subs, but only the subs I knew favored that sort of thing, but that’s never been about my preferences. I suspect that Jolene herself may prefer that.”

“Jolene said you didn’t stay with women unless they would do that for you.”

His palm made contact with my thigh. It wasn’t a slap, exactly, but it wasn’t a soft touch either. “This is ridiculous. I wouldn’t ask that of you. I would be distraught if you even suggested it. You aren’t just my sub, Bianca. This is much more than just a physical relationship. I feel utterly possessive of you. If someone touched you the way I touch you, male or female, I would lose my mind.”

He took a shaky breath before he continued. “I want to share my life with you, to be monogamous with you, and my past is in the past. I wish there was some way I could prove it to you, once and for all. I do have a sordid past, but I’ve never lied to any of the women I’ve been with, and I’ve never promised to anyone the things I promise to you.”

My breathing was growing more even, the strange red haze over my vision getting better with every word he spoke. He was charming me out of my doubts, and no part of me wanted him to stop. I have it bad, I realized then. It was worse than I had even realized, and I’d known I was already crazy in love with this incomparable man. “Thank you for answering my questions,” I told him softly.

He was so quiet for a long moment that I couldn’t even hear him breathe. “You’re not upset?” he asked finally.

“A little, but I’ll get over it. I get insanely jealous when I think about you with other women, and I was sick with worry that you would want me to do things with Jolene that I just can’t do, but I’m not unreasonable.” I looked at him as I spoke. His face was stricken.

He crawled on top of me still fully clothed. He moved until we were nose to nose, that awful look still on his face. “I would never ask you to do anything like that. Moreover, I wouldn’t allow it. You promised me exclusivity, and I intend for you to hold up your end of that as staunchly as I’ll hold up mine.

Will you still move in with me, still stay with me? Even though I’ve done a dismal job of protecting you?”

I agreed that I would, even though my doubt was still a thick knot in my stomach, but as I was learning, again and again, he was impossible to resist.

“You can’t exactly protect me in the women’s restroom, James. That’s just silly. And you certainly couldn’t predict that they would do that to me. I couldn’t believe it even when it was happening. Jolene showed me her piercings. I really didn’t ever want to see that.”

James got up at my words, moving swiftly into his bathroom. He returned quick moments later with a toothbrush. He was very gentle as he brushed my teeth. It was an awkward angle with me on my back and helpless. “Tell me where they touched you. I want to scrub them off of you.”

I thought he was beyond strange, and it went without saying that this was some kind of OCD on his part, but I enabled his strange need to wash them away, telling him every single thing they had done, and every part of me that had been touched.

His face was dark as he worked, scrubbing hard at my wrists. He worked for a long time on my kiss swollen lips. They were swollen more from the way I had scrubbed them myself than from the kisses, but it didn’t seem to matter to James. When he was finally done scrubbing, he moisturized me thoroughly, spreading something that felt like vaseline directly onto my lips.

“It would have saved time if you had just let me loose to shower,” I told him, trying to make him smile, anything to ease the tense set of his shoulders, and the dark look in his eyes.

“I couldn’t bring myself to untie you. I have this nagging fear that you’ll run away from me again, and I’ll have to suffer through another desolate month. That was the longest month of my life. I’d do anything to never let it happen again.”

I felt a strange wrenching in my chest at the thought of him alone and suffering because of me. I hadn’t withdrawn to hurt him. I had been scared, scared of the way he made me feel, and the way I couldn’t seem to help but do his will.

“Make love to me, James.” My voice held a clear plea as I addressed him.

I didn’t have to ask him twice. He was on top of me in a flash, kissing my mouth as though he wanted to devour me. He was still fully clothed, and the silk of his shirt rubbed against my chest teasingly. He propped the lower half of his body just out of reach. I circled my hips, trying to reach him, but my legs held me securely against the soft bed. I arched my back, rubbing my chest harder against his. He thrust his tongue deep into my mouth, and I sucked on it, drawing on it like I would his cock. He groaned.

He’d propped himself up on his elbows, setting them deep into my underarms so he could cup my face as he kissed me. I thought this was the closest James could get to sweet lovemaking. But even his sweetest moment was still too f*cking hot to bear.

I whimpered against his mouth. It was a plea. My body was throbbing for him, and nothing would feel like enough until he was buried deep inside me. He didn’t seem to agree, and just continued like that for long, torturous minutes, only the top halves of our bodies touching as he worshipped at my mouth.

Eventually he began to move down my body with sweet, torturous kisses along every inch of me. His pretty mouth was incredibly and deliberately soft as he rained kisses across my ribs and into my navel.

He’d avoided my quivering breasts altogether, seeming to focus on absolutely every other inch of my torso. I realized that he was torturing me systematically when he moved back up my body and began to kiss along my shoulder tops and up one of my bound arms.

He moved off of me as he focused on one fettered wrist. I watched him, his face so sensual, no coldness present tonight. He licked along the spot where the black rope met the inside of my wrist, and I writhed.

He rose to his knees to massage my hand for long, agonizing minutes. It felt exquisite, but I wanted to scream.

He moved back down my arm, across my shoulders, and gave the opposite arm, wrist, and hand the same treatment. I felt on the edge of orgasm just from that and the sight of him crawling around me on the giant bed, his full erection clearly outlined even in his navy silk trousers.

I sucked in a breath as he nuzzled into my underarm, licking me there as though it were a rare treat. He licked and kissed just the undersides of my breasts as he moved to my other side to repeat the motion. I squirmed. “Hold still,” he murmured, a warning note in his voice.

He continued to torment me for the longest time, kissing and licking and nuzzling into my skin, while skipping all of the obvious spots. I discovered as he did this that he had enough skill to draw exquisite pleasure from even the most innocent parts of my body. He had me panting just by paying special attention to the dimples in my knees. “James,” I gasped, “you should be illegal. There can’t be anyone alive as good at this as you.”

He gave me a heated look from under his pretty lashes for that one. “If there is, you’ll never know it,”

he said, rather darkly, I thought.

That exchange seemed to light a fire in him and he began to pleasure me in earnest. He licked his way up to my breasts, drawing on a nipple until I was ready to come just from that nearly painful pressure. He gave equal attention to it’s twin before moving down the center of my torso, past my naval, and into my core. I screamed as he finally buried his face there. This was no idle caress, and he used his fingers and tongue to make me come within seconds. He never slowed as I spun back down from my nirvana, bringing me back to orgasm like my nerves were simple keys on a piano.


He was in a relentless sort of mood, and he brought me again and again, until I lost count, though with the mood he was in, I doubted that he forgot the number.

I felt boneless and light-headed when he finally impaled me. He rammed into me with one clean thrust, and my eyes shot open. They had only been closed because he was too absorbed with his face between my legs to notice the slight.

Our eyes locked, and I realized in a corner of my very distracted mind that he was still fully clothed.

Even his tie still remained hanging around his neck, thought he had loosened it. I glanced down at our joined bodies and saw that he had only undone his slacks and pulled them down slightly, just enough to give him access. Something about all of those dark, formal clothes against my naked, bound body was one of the most erotic things I’d ever seen.

His forehead nearly touched mine as he held himself over me, working in and out of me with smooth motions. It was downright gentle, for him. He was making slow, sweet love to me, in his way.

Scant drops of sweat dripped from his temples to mine. I thought it was unbelievably sensual. Only Mr.

Beautiful could make sweat into something so sexy. I wanted to lick it all off of his body. I told him so.

He grinned, though there was an edge to it as he continued to thrust in and out of me with agonizing slowness. “Not tonight. You were thinking about taking other lovers while I made love to you. Now I have something to prove. Perhaps if I f*ck you unconscious, you won’t be able to wonder if there’s someone better out there for you.”

I gave him an exasperated look. As much as I could, considering he was slowly f*cking me out of my mind. “You’re impossible, James. You took that all wrong. I was only thinking about you, and how lucky I am to have you.”

His face went a little slack. It made my heartstrings pull. With a shout he began to thrust in earnest, and from the look on his face, he was completely losing himself. I loved it. I drank in the sight of his composure completely deserting him as he pounded into me, his beautiful eyes made into slits with the strain. He shouted my name, rather desperately, as his orgasm took him. My own caught me moments later as he continued to arch deeply inside of me.

He let his heavy weight sag onto me for several minutes in our aftermath. I nuzzled my face into the hair around his ear, smelling his wonderful spicy scent, mixed with his sweat and just a hint of cologne.

“You’re wonderful,” I whispered against his hair.

He stiffened, burying his face into my neck, nuzzling there. “I want to deserve you, my love,” he whispered back. I could hear the desperation in his quiet voice.

“Do you even know how crazy that is?” I asked in the same quiet voice, as though we could be overheard. “I’m nobody, and you’re the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met. I don’t deserve you.”

He made a little sound of protest in his throat. “You’re my angel, Bianca. You’ve exorcized my demons. I don’t have nightmares when I’m with you. I don’t have to work seventy hour work weeks to keep my mind distracted. My life has become more than work and emotionless affairs. You make me a better man.”

“You’re so good to me,” I told him.

He reached up to untie my wrists, kissing me softly all over my face as he did so.

He had me untied and cradled into his chest in swift moments. I cuddled into the soft silken fabric of his shirt, too tired to even try to get him naked.

I was just on the edge of sleep when I felt him shift. “Love, I promised Stephan you would call and text him before you went to bed. He wanted to make sure your night went alright. Don’t drift off. I’m going to find your phone.”

I quickly found I had to sit up to stay awake as James disappeared into his closet. He re-emerged in short order, stripped down to his boxer-briefs, and carrying my phone. He maneuvered himself behind me on the bed, pulling me between his legs as I checked my phone. I had several texts from Stephan, asking how I was, and I texted him back that everything was fine and I would see him in the morning.

I checked my phone log next. I had missed three more calls from the strange 702 number, and my brows drew together as I saw that the caller had left a voicemail this time. That was new. I found myself clicking the play button and holding my phone to my ear before I thought better of it. I should have waited until morning, but something about the strange caller and number was nagging at me. If it was my father, I’d just as soon know right away, instead of worrying about it all night.

The voicemail was just silence at first, with the slightest hint of background noise, soft soothing music playing, just like in the phone calls. But eventually a harried female voice began to speak haltingly.

There was a familiar paranoid fear in her voice, though I didn’t recognize the voice itself at all.

“Bianca Karlsson. This is, um, this is Sharon.” A long pause. “Sharon Karlsson.” My entire body went still as a corpse and the hair on the back of my neck prickled with a warning. “I’m…married to your father. I, well, I guess that I’m your stepmother. I really need to speak to you. Your father always forbade me from trying to contact you. He would never say why, but, well, um, he’s disappeared. He’s been gone for over a month with no word, and I’m pretty sure he’s gone for good this time. So I would really appreciate it if you would meet with me. Please call me back as soon as you can.”