Hostile Takeover, Hill, W [recommended books to read .TXT] 📗

“Probably came out pretty close.” Cass gave her a teasing pinch. “Just have a care with some of those rides. There are some proprietary clauses involved.”

Now it was Marcie’s time to get serious. “Cass, we haven’t really talked about it much… It’s more than a little awkward. Lucas—”

“Don’t.” Cass put her hands on Marcie’s shoulders, gave her a straightforward look. “There’s no shame in it, love. You’ll always be my little sister, which means I’ll always see the child in you, but I also see the woman. This is who and what they are. Lucas and I have talked about it. I’m not confused about what will happen tonight, and his part in it. Of course, I’ve told him any fantasies he might have about some sister-sister action is confined to his late-night cable subscription,” she paused as Marcie choked on a laugh, “but this…this is what we are. I’m mainly worried about you. Are you nervous?”

“More than I thought possible,” Marcie said wryly. “But I’m really excited too.”

“All right then. The limo arrived a few minutes ago. That’s why I came out. It’s time to go.”

Marcie glanced toward the house, felt that trembling in her lower belly. “I don’t know what to expect at all.”

“You can expect everything, and things you never imagined. That’s the way they work.”

* * * * *

Max was her driver tonight, and she gave him a warm smile, remembering his kindness the night at the club. There was no awkwardness about that now. It was past, and she saw he was okay with things as well, no concern in his gaze tonight. He kept his attention courteously on her face as he held the door open for her, though she noted he sneaked a quick, sweeping glance over her nearly bare legs when she took her seat in the limo. It made her feel good. He was a guy, after all, and the robe was designed to highlight her full potential.

He didn’t hand her into the vehicle as he normally would. That, and the fact they only exchanged nods, told her he had the no-talking and no-touching part of the instructions. She settled into the plush backseat, drawing deep breaths. There was a tray set up with a bowl of strawberries that had been dipped in chocolates of varying shades. Next to them was a thin black eye mask with lacings to hold it snug on the bridge of her nose and against the eyes. She read the notecard next to it.

Put on the mask, lace it tight, so you can see nothing. You may touch and smell the strawberries, but do not taste.

Picking up the mask in fingers that trembled, she followed the direction. The smell of the strawberries was too good to resist, so she lifted one, inhaled deeply. Oh wow. Ben had done these himself. She knew it, because Dana had talked about the night she was first shared with all of them. How they’d brought the juiciest, largest strawberries she’d ever tasted, coated in a chocolate that was as much an orgasm for the nose as the tongue. Peter’s wife had learned later Ben had hand-dipped them himself in a special mixture of dark chocolates, vanilla and spices.

The richness of it brought saliva to Marcie’s tongue. There was white chocolate, vanilla, butterscotch…praline coating. The evil man knew she lived for dessert. Her tongue longed to taste, her stomach rumbling, but she didn’t.

His directions, so simple and straightforward, had nevertheless kept her in a state of wet longing through most of the day. With every hour that passed, she was more aware of her body. She wished he’d let her shower. She wasn’t grungy, but it felt odd to come to him with hair that had been combed but not styled. She would have touched up her nails, done her makeup. Just as he’d anticipated, her arousal had formed damp tracks on her thighs more than once today, drying there. To heightened male senses, she would smell like what she was. A female in raging heat.

She kept picking up the different strawberries, smelling each. The flavors seemed designed to stir her arousal further. She tried hard to hold them by the greenery at top, but she managed to get some of the melting chocolate on her fingertips. She couldn’t find a towel or wipe, which left only the robe or the seat. Realizing it would qualify as tasting, she stopped with her hand halfway to her lips. Instead, she left her hands in a half curl on her parted thighs.

She couldn’t ask Max where she might find a napkin, of course. For a devilish moment, she imagined extending her fingers over the seat back, a mute request that he oblige her with his mouth. She was sure that would break Ben’s rules on several different levels, particularly the no-male-touching rule.

Another time, she might do it, because she had a sense of what kind of infractions Ben would enjoy punishing her for, but this was not that day. Playtime and challenges weren’t part of this. All balls were now in Ben’s court. In truth, she was more anxious than she’d let on to Cass. Because she’d had to fight so hard for her objective, she’d never completely surrendered herself the way she knew would happen tonight, the way a submissive was supposed to do. She hungered hard for it to come from Ben, but the reality was pretty unnerving.

She wanted to please him. Wanted to feel that sense of completion, of total belonging. She was as nervous about this night as a virgin on her wedding night. To her, it was the same, the level of commitment, the sense of no turning back.

While the physical was a big part of tonight, in the past three weeks, he hadn’t neglected the emotional framework that would propel the physical to go to a far more intense level than she’d yet experienced, God help her. She remembered what Rachel