MasterofVelvet Read online

  Master of Velvet

  Kirstie Abbot

  Former SAS officer Adam Granger has wanted Beth Harrison ever since she came to work for him, but he fears dating his luscious assistant might prove awkward.

  Beth’s been attracted to Adam from the start. Alpha male through and through, he is the model for the fictional Dom in the novel she’s writing. But getting involved with her boss? Probably not a good idea.

  When Beth is mugged on her way home, she finds herself in Adam’s arms and in his life. She discovers that he is the Dom she’s always wanted, but ghosts from his past have come back to haunt him, putting his business and his life at risk. Beth’s life is threatened and Adam must do all he can to protect what he holds most dear.

  Inside scoop: In addition to lots of experimentation with BDSM and a yummy almost-ménage, there are references to a violent, non-consensual sexual encounter.

  A Romantica® erotic romantic suspense from Ellora’s Cave

  Master of Velvet

  Kirstie Abbot

  Chapter One

  The brisk, precise click-click-click of heels on hardwood alerted Adam to her presence—Beth Harrison, his executive assistant, right-hand woman, and of late source of growing frustration. He looked up from the correspondence in his hand, eyes narrowing at her approaching reflection in the tinted window that gave him a panoramic view over London.

  Those damn fuck-me shoes! With that thought, a muscle tensed in his tightly clenched jaw. While her working wardrobe went from black to white and through every shade of gray between, her footwear was downright rebellious—immaculate heels, never less than four inches in height, in myriad eye-catching colors.

  Which ones today? he wondered. The peacock blue, the metallic purple—no, as he turned around he saw that she was wearing a new pair today, red patent leather with an ankle strap adorned with an eye-catching bow—and incredibly flattering to her slender feet and shapely ankles, gorgeous legs clad in sheer black nylon with seams straighter than an arrow.

  His eyes continued upward, taking in the flannel gray pencil skirt—the fabric clinging like a lover to her hips and thighs and so fitted that it gave her hips an ultra-feminine sway as she walked. He experienced a sharp momentary twinge of disappointment—for the lines to be that smooth, there was no way she was wearing stockings. He tried to curb his disappointment that beneath the skirt, there would be no tantalizing exposure of creamy skin at the top of her thighs.

  She wore the crisp white cotton blouse with the top buttons undone and hinting at delicious cleavage, the sleeves long and fastened at her elegant wrists with mock cufflinks. French-manicured hands held a notebook and pen.

  And then there was her face—heart-shaped, lightly made-up with alluring green eyes behind unremarkable spectacles, all crowned by upswept lush brown hair threaded with gold and not one strand out of place. In the three years that she had been his assistant he had never seen her anything less than cool, calm and collected.

  It was little wonder that the staff down the corridor called her The Ice Queen, something Adam knew he needed to put a stop to, since it had come to his notice at the end of the previous week.

  Ten years his junior, Beth had never, as far as he knew, been married. Adam on the other hand, had an unpleasant, expensive and thankfully long-distant divorce behind him.

  “Yes, Mr. Granger?” Her voice was as composed as ever.

  Three bloody years, and she still wouldn’t call him by his given name—it was always Mr. Granger or Sir. His thoughts lingered on the second option—the prospect of her calling him that as her Dom, and the prospect of his collar adorning her neck. Don’t go there, Granger. The tightly controlled little voice warned him off, reminding him of his completely hands-off approach to the best executive assistant he’d had since he’d set up AG Acquisitions—reminding him that for three damn fucking years, he’d been picturing her in his bed, her hair tousled, his collar round her beautiful neck, the soft curves of her bottom a delicious pink after he’d administered a sound spanking.

  “Mr. Granger?” There was a frisson of concern in her soft, clear voice now—it shattered his obsessive train of thought and brought him back to cold, hard reality. He shifted his focus to the present and tried to ignore how he was turned on by the thought of stripping her of everything except those heels and having her kneel before him.

  “I’m sorry, Beth,” he found himself saying absently. “Have we heard anything about the Wolfe-Obsidian Partnership deal yet?”

  “Nothing yet, sir. I’m keeping a lookout for incoming emails.”

  Shit, shit, fucking shit, damn! Why the hell did she have to call him that here? “Thanks, Beth,” he growled, trying to ignore the fresh images in his head. “Let me know as soon as anything comes in.”

  For a moment, Beth debated whether or not she should inquire as to her boss’s well-being. She decided to err on the side of caution and beat a hasty retreat.

  The strangest look had flickered across Adam’s face when she’d answered his question about the Wolfe-Obsidian deal but her sense of self-preservation prevented her from pursuing it with her six-foot-five, man-mountain, panty-droppingly attractive ex-military boss. Gossip among the staff insisted that he’d been in the Special Forces and that after he’d left the military he’d spent some time working in “private security”, whatever that meant.

  Beth wasn’t sure about the Special Forces part of it but he still carried his military experience in his bearing and although the details remained elusive, she did know he shared a history in security with his best friend Dan Chesterfield, who came into the office on a regular basis and who had an appointment that very morning.

  She kept the sigh to herself until she returned to the outer sanctum that was her office. Whatever was riding Adam these days, it wasn’t getting any better.

  Sex. It had to be sex, she realized a few minutes later, seated once again at her desk. Well, a lack of sex, at any rate. He hadn’t asked her to order flowers or book tables for two at his favorite restaurants for about six months—if he wasn’t dating, he wasn’t getting laid and not getting laid was bound to make such a virile alpha male grouchy.

  Beth almost snorted. Grouchy? A bear with a sore head, toothache and rampant hemorrhoids would be less grouchy than Adam Granger had been at times recently. She looked at the clock, it was just gone eight-thirty, and she knew he would have been in the office since before seven. He hadn’t had coffee yet—she eyed the pristine espresso coffeemaker in the corner of her office, next to the grinder, wondering if he’d notice if she switched to decaffeinated beans in an attempt to make him less tetchy. She shook her head—what was that saying again? The road to hell is paved with good intentions…

  He was on the phone when Beth went in with the small cup of liquid dynamite. She had learned early on that hot coffee took precedence over everything else. He was in the middle of an animated conversation in fluent Italian, his voice deep and bone-meltingly sexy. She really had to stop thinking of him like that. It wasn’t doing her any good at all.

  That was why she maintained an air of formality when she addressed him. If she started calling him by his given name, it would be the beginning of the end. “Mr. Granger” kept her from getting all dewy-eyed and moonstruck about “Adam”.

  Beth loved her job. Although she carried out certain tasks for Adam that might cause some to see her as his secretary, she was so much more than that—something he had been at pains to impress upon her at the interview. Adam had a large portfolio of clients. Beth dealt with the less complex acquisitions contracts for those clients whose business Adam preferred to keep within the confines of his own office—nothing illegal or remotely suspect, just clients with a preference for keeping out of the public eye as much as possi
ble.

  The last six months aside, Beth was uncomfortably aware of a steady stream of women who had paraded briefly through her employer’s life—all quite a bit younger than her judging by the voices on the other end of the phone calls she’d fielded. None of them had lasted much longer than about three months, if she recalled correctly. She’d heard the gossip about Adam having been married and that the marriage had supposedly gone spectacularly sour. Ever since then, she’d been fighting her natural impulse to “fix” him—her fairy godmother instinct.

  “Good morning, angel! And how are you this fine day? Is the brute in?”

  Wrapped up in her work, Beth hadn’t realized how quickly the morning was going until the cheerful male voice greeted her. She recognized it instantly—it belonged to Dan Chesterfield, another walking mountain of testosterone. He swept into the office like a force of nature, straight to her desk and lifted her hand to his mouth to place a gallant kiss to the back of it. She couldn’t help but smile.

  And where Adam was dark, moody and could be downright scary, Dan was all blond hair, blue eyes and muscular charm by the bucket-load, packed into six feet three inches of immaculately attired masculinity. Attractive yes, but as far as Beth was concerned he didn’t quite have the same charisma as her employer.

  “I’m fine, thank you, Mr. Chesterfield.” She smiled up at him, rising from her seat. “Yes, Mr. Granger’s expecting you—can I get you some coffee?”

  “Don’t go to any trouble on my account, Beth—I’ll see myself in.”

  Had Beth been a fly on the wall, she would have seen a completely different man lean his hip on the corner of Adam’s desk. Dan, another former Special Forces operative, could be every bit as cold and ruthless as his friend if the need arose and when it came to business, they meant business. And like Adam, Dan too was a Dom.

  “So have you taken her as your sub yet?” Dan asked the question seriously, knowing full well what the answer would be—one of the first things he’d done on entering the outer office had been to check for the presence of a collar.

  “Don’t go there,” Adam growled without even turning around.

  Dan gave an exasperated sigh. “Man, you are going to have to do something and soon. I know I’ve said this before but you know she’s perfect sub material—always so eager to please, moves like a dream. She’s classy and elegant. If you don’t, I will.”

  That made Adam swivel his executive chair round to face his friend. “Like hell you will, Chesterfield.” The statement came out as just short of a snarl.

  Dan raised an eyebrow to go with the smug grin. His ex-military buddy only used his surname when Dan had put a particularly large burr under his saddle. “I thought that would get a rise out of you, old man.” From time to time, he liked to remind Adam of his seniority, in terms of both age—all of two years—and former rank. “So when are you going to do something about it?”

  In the office outside, Beth had no idea that she was the subject of an extremely animated conversation. She was wrapped up in doing some research for Adam and didn’t realize how quickly time was passing until a friend from a law practice on a different floor in the same building rang her to see if she was free to grab some lunch in an hour.

  Arrangements made, Beth then went to make coffee for her employer and his friend. Unlike Adam, Dan liked his coffee white with sugar. And after she delivered the beverages, she remained blissfully unaware of the I-told-you-so look that Dan fired at Adam.

  “And your point is?” the latter said, his tone acerbic.

  “You didn’t even have to ask her. Cheers!” Dan raised his mug before downing a hearty swig of the steaming brew. “And she makes bloody good coffee as well.”

  The conversation turned to business, the original reason for Dan’s visit. Before Adam had started AG Acquisitions, specializing in sourcing high-value gemstones, jewelry and fine art for wealthy—usually foreign—clients, he and Dan had been partners in the consultancy firm that Dan still ran, and had expanded into a substantial concern with clients located all over the world.

  Given the business Adam was in, security was a major concern. Some deals had been going awry lately so he’d called Dan in to conduct a full investigation into security.

  Once all the arrangements were made, Dan turned the conversation back to the woman in the outer office—or tried to.

  Adam scowled. He’d been doing that a lot lately. “Don’t you have work to do, Dan?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait five minutes. It’s Friday—are you going to the club tonight?”

  Dan was referring to the discreet private club where he and Adam, as Doms, were able to indulge their preferences. While Adam had still been a regular visitor with his friend over the last six months, indulging in a scene was something that he had avoided, preferring instead to nurse a Scotch or two before disappearing back to his city-center apartment.

  “Maybe.” His tone was as noncommittal as his response.

  “I’ll see you there.” Dan’s voice was determined. “And for fuck’s sake, will you play with at least one sub tonight? You’ll be losing your touch.”

  “Will you get the hell out of here?”

  Dan grinned wickedly as he opened the door. “Okay, I get the message—see you later!”

  * * * * *

  After saying goodbye to her employer’s friend, Beth checked the time— lunchtime at last. She could switch off from work for a while and jot down the ideas that had been flitting through the back of her mind.

  Beth’s hobby was writing, not in the hope of ever having anything published but purely to exorcise a longing that, on more than one occasion, she’d been told was downright perverted.

  The Ice Queen wanted to be dominated.

  Oh yes, she knew that was what the younger girls in the office called her. They were probably convinced that she was some cat-mad, shriveled-up old spinster. If they ever got their hands on her notebook or her laptop, they’d soon be disabused of that idea.

  Or would they? Her shoulders fell slightly. If she was that hot and that brave she’d be living the lifestyle instead of just writing about it. Where she was and where she thought she wanted to be were two entirely different places—and in between the two was the massive wall she’d built to protect the very part of her that wanted to be on the other side of that wall. It scared her to death, but at the same time she wanted it so much.

  And she knew exactly who she wanted for her Dom—that was yet another reason to address him as Mr. Granger. There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that he was ever going to assume that role for real. Even if he had a tendency toward that sort of thing, she was the last woman he’d take for his sub. Without her glasses she was as blind as a bat and while she wasn’t out-and-out overweight, her curves were a little more ample than the media tended to prefer. Over the years, she’d learned well how to dress to impress. And to camouflage.

  Feeling badgered by the reminder popping up on her computer screen, Beth quickly scribbled down the few lines her imagination had just come up with—and in the rush not to be late meeting her friend, forgot to slip the notebook into her desk drawer.

  * * * * *

  A few minutes later Adam emerged from his office, a brief frown marring his brow at his assistant’s unexpected absence. A glance at the wall clock told him that she was probably downstairs at the coffee shop, buying her usual salad lunch and a skinny latte with sugar-free vanilla syrup. As a devotee of the double espresso, he wondered briefly how she could stomach such a concoction—not that that was relevant. Perhaps the contract he wanted was on her desk.

  His eyes swept over the neatly set-out documents she was dealing with, taking in the hastily written note that seemed to indicate an assignation for lunch when they stopped abruptly at the small, brightly colored notebook.

  He’d seen her scribbling in it during her lunch hour on several occasions but she’d always slipped it into her desk drawer as he approached, with a grace and economy of movement that the Dom in him
admired. Without a qualm he flipped it open.

  He recognized the precise cursive script instantly, feminine, eminently legible, and executed with a fountain pen. He liked that—so few people used fountain pens these days. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the lines and it didn’t take long for what she’d written to send the blood surging to his dick. What in the name of heaven…?

  Uptight, straitlaced Miss Harrison was describing, in elegant detail, a scene that could have come straight from the club where he fully intended to drink away most of the forthcoming evening.

  And judging by the description of the sub who was being disciplined so deliciously, Miss Harrison was painting herself in that role.

  There was more—disjointed snippets of prose, descriptions and conversations that looked like they belonged in a somewhat larger work, a short story or perhaps even a novel. Either way, she wrote beautifully and he didn’t just mean her refined handwriting. She wrote about the act of submission as the truly exquisite gift that it was.

  She wasn’t a collared sub, of that much Adam was certain. She wore no jewelry of any kind that might indicate ownership. His instincts told him that she was untrained, possibly even only just beginning to explore that side of her sexuality, undecided as to whether it was for her or not. Whether she needed it or not.

  Adam found the document he wanted and returned to his office. His mind, however, was far from being on work. It was on Beth, her writing and what lay beneath.

  She let precious little of the non-work Beth out of the bag. Professional in the office, not given to socializing with her colleagues beyond attending the office Christmas party, she maintained an almost aloof distance—but just occasionally she’d slip up and reveal a very sharp sense of humor. There was no doubt that she was intelligent,.

  He wondered how she spent her evenings and weekends.

  Having left the door to his office ajar, he knew exactly when she arrived back, looking relaxed and happy after lunch with her friend—female, he hoped, because no other man was going to lay a finger on her.