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  When the haze started to clear, she heard him grunt and felt him pulse inside her. He was coming. She tried to squeeze his cock, to milk his balls of every last drop, but her pussy was already doing that without her control. Her orgasm went on and on, lasting through his. Only when he was sated did it stop, and only the fact that her wrists were tied stopped her from relaxing every muscle in her body and lying on the bed feeling like a boneless puddle.

  “Wow,” she murmured.

  He chuckled. Damn it, even after coming he was still in control of himself. She didn’t feel in control at all.

  He gripped the condom as he pulled out of her, and then tossed it into the wastebasket. She couldn’t read him.

  “Did I please, Sir?”

  He grinned. “Oh yes, Teresa. You pleased.”

  Well, that was it, then. Wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, although he wasn’t likely to say ma’am, and she supposed she couldn’t complain. She’d never had sex so powerful, even if it was just sex. She wanted something more though, something emotional. Even an indication he wanted to do it again.

  “Are you going to leave me tied here, Sir?”

  “Not a chance. That wouldn’t be safe, not without me to watch over you. But you look lovely there and I was admiring the view.” He reached over her and untied her wrists, then massaged the feeling back into them. They hadn’t gotten all the way numb, or even tingly, but the massage helped.

  He kissed her behind the ear. “Come to my room at nine for your punishment.” He let her wrists go.

  “Punishment?” she asked. “What am I being punished for, Sir?” It seemed horribly unfair, but she knew she would be there.

  “For coming without permission. You’ll learn.”

  He walked away and she watched his butt as he did. She supposed with his body, there was no reason to be self-conscious about being naked. He closed the door behind him.

  She sighed and held herself for a few moments. A cuddle would have been nice. She wanted him to hold her.

  I knew from the start he wasn’t exactly a warm person. She gritted her teeth. She wasn’t going to turn down the best sex of her life because the man she was having it with wasn’t into cuddles.

  Then she smiled. “I’m not the only person who has something to learn here,” she said aloud. She got up and opened her suitcase. She’d get some clothes on—she wasn’t going to walk down naked to retrieve her clothes from around the pool. Then she’d find Gallagher and get him started taking pictures of the way the waves came up on the little cove at the far end of the island. That was where Odysseus’ ship would come ashore in her vision, and if he was going to take video, that was as good a place as any for him to start.

  Chapter Four

  I don’t do novices. So why am I fooling around with Teresa?

  Kyle closed his door behind him. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts for a while. Gallagher was up. Kyle heard him moving about, even if Teresa seemed oblivious. Teresa. He refused to think of her as Terry, having envisioned Terry as some old movie guy. He pulled back the shades that covered his window and looked out.

  Gallagher was at the pool. Kyle watched as the man picked up Teresa’s bra, looked at the label and set it back down. Kyle frowned. They should have been more discreet, he supposed. Although Teresa had been obvious enough about her flirtation the night before, and maybe she was happy letting Gallagher know she was getting sexually satisfied elsewhere. It didn’t matter. The way Teresa screamed, the whole island would have known. Downstairs in the basement, the dungeon was soundproofed, but the upstairs bedrooms were not.

  He wondered what Teresa would make of the dungeon. He wanted to see if he could make her scream again. To see how much she could take and enjoy. His cock hardened at the thought of her tied up again, naked. She’d liked the flogger and she’d liked the pinching. How would she deal with clamps—clover clamps preferably, the kind that tightened when a sub wiggled or when he pulled on the chain between them. How would she deal with a cane? A single tail?

  Kyle had no business thinking about those things with a novice. Even many experienced submissives found that much pain hard to take. But he never dreamed of soft cushions and champagne and sweet caresses. Not for a very long time. He enjoyed his sex intense. When he was fucking a woman hard, he had no room to think about anything else. When he was using a cane, he felt every stroke he delivered. It kept him focused.

  He hadn’t wanted to stay focused after fucking Teresa. He’d wanted to hold her and be held, to feel her soft breasts against his chest and unbraid her hair so he could run his hands through it. If he’d stayed there any longer, she’d have seen a different side of him, one he didn’t want to let her see. Better she view him as a strict, uncompromising Master than as a lover. Mastery he could provide, and pain, and pleasure. Love was another matter. Love was something that made you lose control, and he couldn’t afford to lose control.

  He looked out the window again. Gallagher had gotten one of the big trunks that presumably held photography gear and was lugging it into the jungle. It was obviously no easy burden for him, but Kyle had no intention of shadowing the man around, carrying his gear. Still, something about it struck him as off. Why would the man have gear packed in such a way that he could barely lift it? For traveling on the boat, maybe, but for actual work? He shrugged. It probably didn’t mean anything. People made choices he considered poor all the time. Hell, Teresa fooling around with him was probably a bad choice. At least Gallagher’s choice gave him a workout. Kyle could give Teresa a workout too, although he didn’t want to harden her soft, luscious curves. He smiled, thinking of her.

  He heard knocking from the hallway. Since it wasn’t his door and Gallagher was accounted for, it was Teresa knocking at Gallagher’s door. Obviously she wasn’t going to find him there. He heard her footsteps on the stairs a few moments later.

  He was still standing at the window when Teresa walked out. She was dressed again, which was a pity. She wore blue jeans and a dark-green blouse that set off her hair perfectly. She looked around and started picking up her discarded clothes, although she left his where they were. Good, it showed she was being neat, not so embarrassed by what they had done she had to suppress the evidence. He could pick up his own clothes later. She folded hers and set them on top of the box where the towels were, and then called out for Gallagher. There wasn’t any response.

  After a few more tries, she headed off into the jungle. There was only the one path, and if Gallagher wasn’t in the house or near the pool, there was a limit to where he could be. Kyle was glad she wasn’t afraid.

  He wanted to follow her and keep her safe. Safe from what, he wasn’t sure. From Gallagher? They had arrived together in a boat, and the other man didn’t seem to pose any obvious danger. The jungle looked dark and ominous, especially at night, but there wasn’t anything that would cause serious harm there—the biggest threat was tripping over the tree roots. She wasn’t in danger and there was no subtle way to follow her. If he’d stayed he could have simply walked with her but that moment was past.

  Better not to get too close. He didn’t want to stir feelings in her that he couldn’t reciprocate. He didn’t want to stir feelings in himself that he couldn’t follow through on. He watched Teresa until the jungle swallowed her up, and then he turned away.

  * * * * *

  In the end, Terry found Gallagher about ten feet away from the area she wanted him to shoot. He didn’t have his gear out, although from the looks of the heavy trunk, he’d brought much of it along. He looked winded, possibly from carting it around, but he wasn’t doing anything but standing there.

  It took her several minutes to explain what she wanted, thinking of how very unnecessary it was to scout out the scene all the while. Still, Stegner wanted video, so Stegner was going to get video, and she was going to do her best to make it the most useful video that could be taken. Maybe it would be inspiration. She realized she didn’t think of Stegner as an artist who could even be inspired. Hi
s early films had been decent, but at this stage he was simply a hack. Maybe he dreamed of getting it back. She shrugged. He had his job, she had hers and she wished he’d let her do it.

  Either way I get paid. It wasn’t satisfying, but it was something.

  Gallagher set up the camera. When she felt he had it right, she walked away. She decided to see how far she could get around the edge of the island. There wasn’t much of a beach; the trees came right up next to the shore and in some cases mangroves were rooted under the water itself. It made for an interesting effect, and she suspected it would be rather spooky at night. Maybe Stegner could use it, although it certainly wasn’t authentic. She took off her shoes and picked her way carefully through the shallows when she needed to, watching out for jellyfish. The tide was heading out at the moment, which meant that any jellyfish would probably have been washed out with it, but she wanted to be careful. She’d do the other side of the island a different time. Kyle might know when the next low tide was. She should ask him. In the meantime, she tried to imagine how it would look closer to dusk, stopping now and then to take photos. It would certainly be harder to spot jellyfish.

  By the time she got back to the building it was afternoon and her stomach was rumbling. Kyle was nowhere to be seen. He’d probably eaten already. She fed herself a sandwich, helping herself to some tuna fish salad someone, probably Kyle, had made. She considered knocking on his door. He’d told her to knock at nine and it was barely after three. Would he punish her for showing up early, even if it was completely unrelated? The thought of him flogging her breasts again made her shiver. Her nipples bunched up as if someone had cranked the air-conditioning. I wouldn’t mind if he did flog me.

  She marched upstairs. Of course he might find some other way to punish her. A spanking, maybe. That would be fine too. A flogging across her thighs. It bothered her that he might even come up with something she couldn’t anticipate, something that would be worse or more painful, but it excited her too. By the time she hit the top of the stairs, even the fact she didn’t know what he’d do was delicious as well as frightening.

  She knocked on the door and waited. No answer. She tried again. She called out his name. Still no response.

  She’d walked past the pool on the way in and peeked in the kitchen as well as walking through the living and dining rooms. Of course there were other rooms upstairs and he could be in any of them, but why would he be? She walked back downstairs and was startled to find Kyle standing in the living room. He hadn’t come down the stairs, and he hadn’t been outside, so where had he come from? It was as if he’d walked out of the closet or something. He was wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt that did little to conceal the muscles underneath.

  “Kyle, I had a question.”

  Kyle shook his head.

  “What, I don’t have a question?”

  He shrugged, still not saying anything and then took two long strides toward her, closing the gap. He was so close she had to look up to see him. “Sir. I am always Sir to you when we’re alone. Your question can wait. Nine o’clock.”

  What is his problem? Can’t we have a normal conversation? But her anger melted away as quickly as it had come, replaced by desire. He smelled right, that was part of it, all musky. She felt weak in the knees. It took her a moment to even remember what her question was. “Tides, Sir. I need to know when the tide is out on the east side of the island.”

  He frowned. “Same time as on the west side of the island. Don’t go swimming, it’s dangerous.”

  Sigh. She knew that it wouldn’t be different, and the way she’d asked the question made her sound stupid. “I’m not going swimming. Wading maybe. Just trying to walk around the island so I can see what spots would be good for filming.”

  “Should be around ten tomorrow morning. I can take you around in the boat. Safer than wading because a rip can come up and even a decent swimmer can be swept out. You’re not good at listening, are you? I said your question could wait. I’ll talk to you at nine o’clock. There will be clothes in a box outside your room and you will wear them and nothing else. Be there at nine and be prompt or there will be consequences.” As soon as he finished, he kissed her, drowning her objections in a hot rush of swirling tongue.

  “Sir?” she asked. What clothes? What kind of consequences?

  “Not another word.” He moved past her, and then he was gone up the stairs.

  Strange man. She turned and stared after him. He’d said her question should wait but he’d gone ahead and answered it anyway when he thought she was going to do something dangerous. And he’d offered to take her out in the boat to make sure she was safe. He pretended not to care, to be so cold and distant. She remembered the way he’d squeezed her hair with a towel, obviously aware of how much water it soaked up when it was braided that way, and she smiled. You are not as hard as you pretend to be.

  She spent the next three hours uploading the photos she had taken and typing up her observations. She didn’t know if Stegner would read her report or have some flunky read it and distill it for him, but she wanted to be thorough. One thing was becoming clear to her, and that was that housing any substantial number of people on the island was going to be problematic. The house could hold a few stars, but most of the staff were going to have to sleep on a boat or commute from the mainland. If they tried to set up tents or something on the cove, they’d use up the best spaces for actually filming the movie.

  She came down to eat dinner and found Gallagher in the living room rather than Kyle. He was watching TV, which seemed to be an Australian reality show. She watched for a few minutes and decided it was no better or worse than Jersey Shore. He looked up eventually. “You want to cook up some steak?” Gallagher asked. “There’s some potatoes too.”

  Go cook them yourself, she wanted to say, but they both needed to eat, and she suspected Gallagher was as ignorant as he was lazy. “How’d your shooting go?”

  “Good, good.”

  “I’d like to see,” she lied.

  “Stegner wants me to send them to him directly.”

  She frowned. That got her off the hook, but it rankled. “Do you know how to cook, Gallagher?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, watch a cooking show instead of that crap and learn. I’m not going to be your chef this whole week.”

  Gallagher shrugged. “I’ll eat sandwiches.”

  Terry rolled her eyes, but Gallagher had already turned back to the television, so the gesture was wasted. She walked into the kitchen and was surprised to see a sign on one of the cabinets with two columns on it, one for cooking, one for cleaning. Kyle had put his name on two of the dates for each, which was an even third. There was a pen on the counter below.

  Guess we get two evenings of sandwiches. She wanted something more substantial tonight, however, so she put her name down for cooking and started scrounging around in the fridge. The thought of cooking for Kyle made making food for Gallagher palatable.

  She found some tuna steaks in the freezer and ran some water over them to thaw them. A cupboard had a large bag of jasmine rice, which would have been a challenge to lift if it was full but fortunately it was half empty, so she started that going in a pot on the stove and then worked on salad. She was on the road so much that she rarely ended up making dinner, but she found it oddly relaxing that night.

  She heard Kyle’s footsteps on the stairway, even though he wasn’t being particularly loud. Maybe she was tuned in. He stopped in the living room and said something to Gallagher she couldn’t make out. It didn’t matter, she supposed. She wondered what it was like to be Gallagher, trapped on an island as a third wheel. He had to have seen the clothes strewn about the swimming pool, even if she and Kyle weren’t being all lovey-dovey in public. Or in private, for that matter. Kyle had gotten her motor running and given her the ride of her life, but love was most definitely not what was going on. Just as I want it, she told herself, although she wasn’t entirely convinced.

  It was Ga
llagher, not Kyle who entered the kitchen a few minutes later. She tried to hide her disappointment. She wasn’t attracted to him and she didn’t even like him much, but he was still a person and deserved some measure of empathy. She tried on a smile. “Would you mind taking these to the table?” She handed him a couple of salad bowls full of lettuce, spinach, croutons and mandarin oranges.

  Gallagher shrugged and took the bowls. “Sure. Thought you weren’t cooking.”

  “You’re on for tomorrow,” she said, nodding at the schedule and then the pen.

  “Right.” He looked at the pen. “Hands are full.” He walked the bowls to the table but didn’t pick up the pen when he came back either. He did get the third bowl at least. “He’s watching cricket.”

  “Oh. Was your show over?”

  “Yeah, but there was another one I wanted to watch. I sure as hell didn’t want to watch cricket. Apparently there’s some really important,” he made air quotes “test match between Australia and England. It’s like baseball, but more dull. At least baseball doesn’t have tests.”

  “I like baseball.” Maybe after dinner she could cuddle up with Kyle and let him explain cricket to her. Men usually loved to explain things and even if he wasn’t the cuddling type she thought she could persuade him.

  Gallagher shrugged. “You probably like dull, then.”

  She resisted the temptation to stick out her tongue at him, and placed the tuna steaks on the skillet she had heated. “It was nice of you to let him watch his game,” she said tactfully.

  “Yeah, well, I got the impression from his stare that he might cut my throat if I didn’t. I don’t think you know what you’re getting into, Terry.”

  She blinked and looked over at him, touched by his concern until she saw that his gaze was fixed on a part of her body at least a foot lower than her face. He wasn’t concerned, he was just bad-mouthing the competition. “You never had a chance, and never will,” she said. “Let him know dinner will be in ten minutes.”