Anthology - Behind the Mask Read online

  His hands lingered on her face, and she felt his reluctance to leave her side. It infuriated her. The whole situation, his ridiculous, patronizing assumptions, his gall in saying… God, why did he say that? Already in a tailspin, now she was diving out of control, all her thought processes lost, and all she could fall back on was frightened fury.

  He returned to his chair, but from the creak of its frame, she suspected he’d turned away, was looking out over the panoramic view of the city. She’d gotten so familiar with his habits that, even blinded, she knew what he was doing.

  It was something he did when he was contemplating something that disturbed him, and the fact that mattered to her made her even angrier.

  “If you’re ballsy enough to do this to me,” she grated. “You should be ballsy enough to watch your men grope me.”

  The frozen stillness that settled over the room told her the arrow had hit its mark. There was the sound of the chair again as he turned, and she imagined him laying his hands on the table. One palm flat, fingers straight, the other laid casually upon it, like a lion lying at the edge of a meadow, watching a deer with every appearance of casual regard, all the while mulling whether he was hungry enough.

  She’d seen the pose, knew it elicited tremendous discomfort in his prey. She wasn’t sure she could be even more disturbed than she was at this moment, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d unsettled her further, not after his declaration and his peeved withdrawal when she hadn’t fallen fawning at his feet in gratitude.

  “Jon. Proceed.”

  Chapter Three

  “Can I have the lighting aimed at the center of the table, please?” Jon spoke, revealing that he was behind her. Directly behind her.

  If Matt was known as the fearsome Lord Kensington, Jon’s nickname was Kensington’s Archangel. Savannah remembered the first time she’d heard him speak and she, like everyone else, had done a mental double take. Words came from his mouth in such fluid, resolute tones that it was nearly impossible to imagine arguing with him over anything, even if he calmly indicated the sky had orange polka dots and grass sprang out of the ground purple. With the inexorable strength of water, he could break down financials into their most elemental pieces as quickly as he could an engine’s components, revealing every flaw, and not use any visuals to get complicated points across. In the most turbulent conditions, Jon could bring absolute silence and attentiveness to a room the moment he began to speak.

  But it was not just his voice that gave him that power. It was his expressions, his body language. He always brought to mind the words of Han Suyin: “There is nothing stronger than gentleness”. It was an honor just to agree with Jon, because he seemed to take so much joy in a person’s accord.

  The others teased him, because his passion was reading enlightenment texts. Not the new age and self-help works with their generalizations and crunchy granola messages carried over from the sixties. The ancient works of Eastern gurus or Greek philosophers. He would bring up excerpts during their meetings, amusing them all, but the observations were never trite. Savannah had noted that often those quotes served a purpose. With them, Jon gently reminded all of them that their negotiations to win more stock shares or acquire companies could never be treated as a Monopoly game. That jobs, livelihoods and local economies were involved. He provided perspective and, according to him, helped them all keep their karma slate clean. No one disputed it.

  There was a different kind of beauty to him. Slender, not tall, with luminous blue eyes and a black mane of silk that fell like feathers over his forehead and past his shoulders. Pale, for his interests kept him in offices and laboratories most of the time. Holding a dual Master’s in accounting and mechanical engineering, he could slip from one topic to another as smoothly as he now began to touch her with the cool firmness of his hands. Down the crease between her buttocks and lower, where she was still wet and dripping from her climax, something she’d chosen to ignore until he reminded her of it. The embarrassed flush on her cheeks was something she could not stop or hide, particularly when Jon’s request was met and the spotlight warmed her skin.

  Typically it was used to highlight marker boards set up on easels on the table. Now it highlighted every bit of data concerning her.

  She heard his footfalls as he came around the table, the roll of the chair a moment before she felt the touch of his hands on her face. He removed the mask’s blinder section so she could see. She blinked a moment, despite the dim light of the conference room.

  “Savannah, I’m so glad we decided to do this.” In his magical way, he almost made her feel like she’d had a hand in planning the evening. “I’d like to do something to give you pleasure, something I’ve invented. You’ll be the first woman I’ve tested it on, and I’d like your permission.” His long, clever fingers stroked her forearm, making her shiver.

  She was wrong. She had fantasized about these five men, in one way or another, for months. Matt had always been central, but they’d been steamy appetizers. They’d been her sex life, all in the realm of her mind.

  What does it do? Her eyes asked the question she couldn’t bring herself to ask. Of course Jon read it easily. Every man in the room was an expert at reading body language. Even with the gag, they’d likely understood her every wish. Though Matt alone seemed to have a clear window to her darkest fears, with no curtains to keep out his shrewd gaze.

  “It brings a woman to climax almost immediately, and keeps her there, through programmed adjustments of the angle, for a prolonged period of time, to satisfy her fully. It stimulates her between the legs and the buttocks both.”

  “I’m not sure. I’m… I’ve never…done that.” She’d actually never done any of this, but she’d never contemplated anything in that back area, even in her fantasies. She didn’t know if that was naïveté or revulsion, but she didn’t feel revolted about the idea now. Just nervous.

  “It will be very gentle,” he promised. “Not invasive at all. And I’ll stop if you want me to stop.”

  It was strange, feeling as if she were alone with him, but at the same time being aware of the others that were listening. Of Matt in the shadows, watching over it all, his presence a pulsing awareness in her body.

  He’d known Jon would be perfect at this juncture, after that first hard climax. To slow her panic, after having lost her infamous control. The handkerchief was in a ball in her sweaty palm, her fingers clutched tightly on it, as if her subconscious was afraid she’d drop it by accident and be misunderstood.

  She’d seen Matt choose a moment of intense conflict to have lunch brought in by a pretty, cheerful office assistant, diffusing tension. Or he’d suggest a break, and they’d adjourn to the roof garden to enjoy the spectacular view of the city. It changed the moment, made his opponent feel cozened, good about giving Matt and his team nearly everything he wanted. He did it so strategically that the calculation was obscured. Even recognizing it, she felt its effect stealing over her own senses, as if that emotional part of her could care less about what her rational mind knew.

  She could set him back on his ass by denying Jon now, but she was curious, extraordinarily, intensely so, about what Jon had devised.

  It was as if her body, so long suppressing its enjoyment and exploration of physical desires, now could not get enough. A lever had been flipped, suggesting she could safely do and explore everything tonight. Had Matt known that? Provided her a unique way of losing her virginity?

  And when that moment came, would it be him, in front of all of them? Or would it be all of them? Somehow, despite the titillation that such a thought should cause, based on how aroused she was, the idea did not please her. She could not block the vision that rose within her of more private desires. Just her and Matt, the ruthless hands becoming gentle, the weight of his body bearing her down, taking her into its shelter…

  She reined back that thought. It didn’t matter if it was him, or the whole group. In fact, there was no reason to get emotion
al about this situation at all. Tennyson Rule Eleven: Unpleasant experiences at the hands of your enemy become lessons to turn against him later. While she wasn’t certain she’d call this an unpleasant experience, and Matt was an unpredictable business partner versus an outright enemy, she’d known her physical innocence combined with her looks was a handicap in an industrial world dominated by men. She’d put on a good façade, and managed to do well enough without full understanding, but by losing her innocence here tonight, in these many ways, Matt was really doing her a favor, giving her a leg up.

  “I really want you to be the first woman to try it,” Jon repeated the appeal.

  “But I just…climaxed.”

  “It won’t matter,” he said. While she’d been subconsciously aware for some time of the sexual undercurrent between herself and all of them, seeing the desire unmasked in his direct gaze slammed it home so that she could not draw a deep breath under the intensity of it. “That’s its magic. By the time I give you the full setting, your body will be more than ready, and when you come…” That light smile touched his lips. “Let’s just say we could go through the entire first quarter financial report and you wouldn’t hear a word of it.”

  It was an intensely erotic image. Her body, writhing and straining through climax after climax in the center of the table, while business was conducted as usual. Only she could vividly imagine the way that the words would drift off to silence, into a sexually charged stillness as the attention of every male was absorbed by her display. Their bodies, so marvelously different from a woman’s softness, becoming even more hard, aroused, waiting to be unleashed.

  The way this team interacted during meetings to go over market trends, cost analyses and production reports often reminded her of a dinner scene from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Ben gesturing with a carrot stick off the vegetable tray, making a side riposte, Lucas coming back with a quelling retort and then continuing his point with barely a break in stride. Peter pacing, working the latest MENSA-level brainteaser in his hands as he considered the issues of contention and fired thoughts from different sections of the room. Matt interjecting a vital piece of information, seemingly out of left field, but which tied everything together. Jon smiling at them all and working the numbers.

  As their latest cooperative ventures had required more and more frequent meetings with her, they’d included her in the banter, in such a natural way that it had taken her awhile to recognize the tone of her inclusion was somewhat different, low-level flirting dynamics. Something she found she liked, even if she parried it with appropriate cynical retorts.

  She’d enjoyed being surrounded by them so often, being the one-woman beneficiary of their mingled scents, voices, the feel of their heat and strength around her as palpable as physical touch. Once, she’d even caught herself letting out a breath when she sat down among them, as though she’d arrived somewhere she could relax. Be at home.

  “That might be a bit distracting, to all of you.” Her voice shook with nerves. “You could miss a crucial piece of information, lose your advantage.”

  “We could at that.” His lips curved. “Maybe we’d make you participate, get you to go through your numbers with us, answer our questions. See if we couldn’t catch you in a mistake, make you lose that infamous cool of yours.”

  “I’d hardly call it infamous.”

  “Honey, you don’t know the half of it. Don Blatovsky said you were ice from inside out, though he put it in less than flattering terms.” Jon’s eyes took on a gleam. “Which is why Peter utterly destroyed him in racquetball.”

  There were a series of chuckles around the table, male sounds of satisfaction that made her feel…protected. Championed.

  “Plus, he didn’t have this crucial bit of information.” Jon leaned forward, bringing his face close to hers as his hand slid across the table, under her suspended body, and found her pussy. He dipped into her heat and wetness, making her gasp. “There’s no ice here. In fact, there’s heat enough to burn.” He smiled at her from inches away, those glowing eyes dominating her vision. “I’m waiting for your answer to my original question.”

  She had to struggle to remember. “I’d like to try it.” Then, because it made her feel raw to see the warmth in his eyes, and sense the pleasurable approval of all men at the table, she added, “Maybe I’ll buy the first one off the line. The Who-Needs-A-Man vibrator.”

  Jon withdrew his hand, brushed his knuckles over her cheek so she smelled herself on his skin. “Honey, I’ve never seen a woman who needed a man more than you do. You’ve needed one your whole life.”

  Before she could fashion a reply to that appalling and confusing statement, he had removed the device from his suit pocket. After all that talk, she would have expected a complicated design. Instead, it was innocuous and sleek, and appeared to have three main pieces. An oblong disk of a soft material, a curved shaft, and a circular piece about the size of a silver dollar. The circle looked like a tiny wagon wheel, with a short, thick piece of rubber as the hub and a pinwheel of silver spokes. A network of slim straps tied the whole thing together.

  He laid it on the table before her and rose. Placing his hands together before his chest in an attitude of prayer, he bowed, nearly touching his forehead to hers, then straightened. “I see the divine in you, the face of love, and I honor it.”

  At her curious look, he gave her his angelic look. Not quite a smile, but then the expression didn’t need it to convey the same delicious feeling inside of her. “That’s the namaste. It’s from Hindu culture, used in various ways, but in Tantra it’s a way to begin lovemaking, a reminder that coming together with a lover in true sexual intimacy is a way to spiritual development.”

  The knowledge he gave her of its meaning caused that delicious feeling to spread out through her torso into her limbs. It should have seemed incongruous to be restrained the way she was and yet to feel so suddenly…cherished, but she couldn’t deny the reaction. Lucas’s mouth on her body, Jon’s quiet approach, even Matt’s watchful regard abruptly became something else.

  This night, for all its volatile moments, had the quality of a ritual. And suddenly she felt like the center, like she was being worshipped, an incredible thought that she nevertheless could not deny.

  “I was trying to resolve how to stimulate and please a woman in all her most erogenous areas at the same time, without overloading her nerve endings.” The inventor part of his personality took over and she was almost amused to see it in his body language. “I want to incorporate some stimulation to the nipples eventually, but right now I wanted to keep it to the areas below the waist. Matt, if you could come and help me?”

  An involuntary ripple of need surged through her as she heard Matt leave his chair, move behind her. Jon gave her cheek a reassuring caress and then joined Matt, where she could not see them.

  “Touch her here,” Jon’s voice said softly. She quivered harder as Matt laid his palms on the curves of her ass, his thumbs inserting between them and then spreading her open, causing her breath to catch and hold in the back of her throat while a hard spasm of sensation rocked through her, like an aftershock of climax.

  “She likes it very much when you touch her, much more than when we do. Hold her open like this.”

  Such a simple, truthful statement from Jon, no slyness. Almost as if he were trying to reassure Matt. Did Matt need such reassurance?

  “I don’t want her hurt.” Matt’s voice was rough, odd. “Is that lubricated enough?”

  “It is. She’ll feel nothing but pleasure, I swear it. Savannah, what you’re feeling now is my finger. I’m very gently placing some lubrication in your anal passage. I’m only going to be putting some pressure on your sphincter, not going all the way in, but I want you to be comfortable.”

  There was a gentle, rubbing sensation around the rim that made her buttocks tremble under Matt’s grip. Instinctively, she lifted toward Jon’s touch. God, it felt…good.

  “Now, let that breath you’re holding ou
t slowly, for a count of five. One, two…”

  She followed his direction, and felt something rounded, smooth and slick ease into the opening of her rectum. Not deep, as he had said. It just stretched the opening, made her want to squirm with the stimulating sensation. He’d seated the short rubber hub in her passage, she realized. The “wheel” was placing the firm pressure against the rim of the opening.

  “While many women enjoy getting fucked in the ass, the sensation is ninety percent psychological and ten percent stimulating the opening,” he confirmed her reaction. “With a device like this, therefore, I’ve focused on the sensitive nerves there. Plus, we agreed your ass would be Ben’s specialty. Just like your breasts are Peter’s area of expertise.”

  Savannah froze at that remarkable statement. “Don’t worry.” Jon’s hand stroked her back. “You’ll love having him there, and this, as well as Peter, will help you prepare for him. Now, Matt, with your permission, I’d like to take it from here. Savannah, this next piece will stimulate your clit. “

  Jon’s long fingers slid up her thighs. With her legs spread apart, she felt the trepidation again, but no one had hurt her yet, physically, and she decided to rely on the empirical data she had and tried to relax.

  “Good girl,” Jon murmured. His fingers moved under her, past the pussy. The material of the oblong piece felt like good quality linen, now viscous with some type of adhesive. He completely hooded her clit, pressing firmly, making her breath rasp as the two sensations twined together and pulled pleasurable tension down even lower in her stomach. “The adhesive is a warming oil, so it won’t feel much different from your own fluids after a moment, and it’s fragrant, a vanilla smell to make it pleasant to your nose, though I personally prefer the smell of a woman’s aroused cunt to any other scent on earth.”

  He withdrew and shifted, placing the flat of one palm against her lower back, just at the rise of her buttocks. Something touched the opening of her pussy, the shaft piece, she realized. “Now, the phallus. It’s up to you how deep I’ll go. I don’t want to break anything that’s not mine to break.”