Binding Agreement
Binding Agreement
Pam McKenna
A chance encounter on a moonlit beach draws sensible, cautious Kay Denehy into a night of anonymous passion and surrender with a ruthlessly dominant stranger. As John Randall introduces her to the exotic thrills of bondage and discipline, she learns who she really is under the prim schoolteacher exterior—a sexual submissive who needs the strict and ardent guidance of a take-no-prisoners Dom.
John carries more than his share of emotional baggage, the result of a tragedy for which he feels responsible. Though he cares for Kay, he refuses to pursue a relationship, certain he could only bring her pain. He pushes her away even as his subconscious dream self turns her into a sex slave to be punished and enjoyed ménage-style by two other zealous and demanding Doms.
For the first time in her life, Kay knows what she needs, and who she needs, to be sexually and emotionally fulfilled. She knows, too, the path John must take to escape his dark places—if only he’ll trust her to lead the way.
An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Binding Agreement
ISBN 9781419924149
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Binding Agreement Copyright © 2009 Pam McKenna
Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower
Photography and cover art by Les Byerley
Electronic book Publication September 2009
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Binding Agreement
Pam McKenna
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Barbie: Mattel, Inc.
Camry: Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation)
FIFA: Fédération Internationale; de Football Association
Jaguar: Jaguar Cars Limited
Rolls Royce: Rolls-Royce Limited
Chapter One
He’s still there.
Kay diligently avoided eye contact—not that she could even make out the stranger’s eyes by moonlight from thirty yards away. She’d assumed she’d have the beach to herself on this brisk Tuesday night in late May. Didn’t everyone else have a life?
The wet sand at the water’s edge was smooth and frigid under her bare toes—her sandals dangled from her fingers. The crisp, salt-scented breeze billowed her calf-length skirt and open cotton blazer, and whipped strands of pale blonde hair across her face. She planted her feet as the next icy wave surged ashore, leaving her toes buried in sand. After two more waves, only the insteps showed.
A flash of silver drew her eye down the beach. Not silver, she saw now, but a white dress shirt being balled up and tossed to the sand. The shirt belonging to the stranger she mustn’t make eye contact with because you never know. He wasn’t looking her way, so she watched him. She watched him pull off his black shoes and socks. She watched him unzip his dark slacks and step out of them. She watched him drop his briefs and kick them away.
Her head snapped forward. That’s why you never make eye contact! Because you never know! Because the most normal-looking man can turn out to be some nut job who thinks nothing of stripping in front of a strange woman and—and—
She sneaked a peek.
And running into the ocean full-tilt.
He dove into the curl of a cresting wave, his long, moon-burnished form springing in a neat arc, sleek as a dolphin. Sinewy arms bulldozed him past the breaking waves. He swam parallel to the shoreline for several minutes, back and forth, before catching a wave and riding it to shore.
Kay jerked. He was headed directly toward her!
She turned to hightail it to her car, only to find herself frantically windmilling her arms, struggling to remain upright. While she’d been standing there gawking at the nature boy, the sand had been silently interring her up to her ankles.
Kay wrenched her right foot free, screeching as she lost her balance. She fell facedown with her rump in the air. She raised her head to see how close the man was, just as the next wave crashed over her.
Stinging seawater flooded her mouth and nose and tumbled her like a sock in the spin cycle. Gasping, she lunged for her sandals, now winking out of sight as the wave receded. Laboriously she pushed herself up on her elbows, shoved her sodden hair out of her eyes and scanned the water for signs of the swimmer. A big hand grabbed her arm and she screamed.
Nature Boy hauled her upright, steadying her as she tugged her left foot free and staggered to dry sand. She was soaked to the skin. What before had been a refreshing breeze now felt like an Arctic gale. Her teeth chattered. The only warm place on her body was where the man held her arm.
How had sensible, cautious Kay Denehy ended up on a deserted stretch of beach at night, at the mercy of a naked stranger who, for all she knew, could be the next Ted Bundy? She should be home cuddling Felicia the Cat and making microwave popcorn for one. She knew she couldn’t hope to outrun this guy if it came to that—she’d seen his potent athleticism in action.
“You okay?” he asked, releasing her arm.
“F-fine,” she told the sand at her feet as a deep shiver ripped through her. “I l-lost my s-sandals.”
He tipped up her chin with cool fingers, studying her face as if to divine the truth. He was tall, six two at least. Forced to make the dreaded eye contact at last, she had to admit he didn’t look like a psychopathic serial killer.
But wasn’t that what they said about Ted Bundy?
Abruptly he strode away, leaving her gaping at his muscular back. And everything below his back.
Giving herself a mental whack on the head, she remembered to feel relieved. She wasn’t going to be dismembered and fed to the sharks. At least not tonight.
Kay trudged up the beach toward the road, keeping one eye on Nature Boy. Barely breaking stride, he scooped up his clothes and continued his trek toward an ultramodern cedar-shaked house set well back from the water. He sprinted up the curving staircase to the oceanfront deck and let himself in through sliding glass doors that glowed like a lighthouse beacon in the dark.
Hugging herself against the wind, Kay hurried toward the road where she’d left her five-year-old Camry. White sand gave way to coarse beach grass, which felt like knife blades on the bare soles of her feet. She was shivering so violently she barely managed to fish her keys out of her blazer pocket and unlock the car. She settled behind the wheel and turned the key.
And heard the phlegmatic whine of a motor struggling to turn over. “No…not now. Please, God, don’t let this happen now.”
She waited a moment and tried again, li
stening to the engine crank its little heart out. “Damn you, you’re going to start!” She twisted the key and held it for several minutes until the cranking sound slowed and finally stopped. Her next attempt was met with a series of clicks, then nothing.
“This isn’t happening.” Kay let herself out of the car and retrieved her purse from the trunk. She pawed through it, searching in vain for her cell phone. She stopped and thought. “Shit.” She’d left it on the charger in her kitchen. Again.
The last thing she wanted to do was ask Nature Boy for help—her dignity had been battered enough for one night. She peered into the surrounding gloom. No streetlamps illuminated the road. By the light of the plump full moon she discerned the twisted shapes of stunted scrub pines along the roadside. During her drive out there for a quiet stroll on the beach, she’d noticed that most of the houses on Surf Road appeared unoccupied—not surprising for midweek before Memorial Day, the official start of the beach season on Long Island.
Resigned, she hiked to the front entrance of the house and knocked.
Progress. He was only half naked. He stood in the doorway in a pair of weathered jeans, holding a cut-crystal glass containing an inch of whisky and a couple of ice cubes. His wet auburn hair was slicked back off his face. Some kind of classical piano music drifted to her ears.
Kay was chilled to the marrow—her knees knocked like castanets. “My c-car won’t s-start. C-could you call my auto club?” She held out her club card.
He ignored it and tossed back the last of his drink.
“Please,” she said. “I’ll wait with my car. A white Camry, tell them, on Surf Road about a hundred yards east of here.”
“What’s wrong with it?” His voice was a silky baritone, at once cultured and commanding, the voice of someone unaccustomed to repeating himself.
“Battery. I just need a jump.”
He jerked his head, wordlessly ordering her into the house. He stood aside to let her pass, though neither his tone nor his expression was welcoming.
“No. Thanks,” she murmured. “I’ll wait with my—”
With an impatient huff he seized her arm, pulled her into the vestibule and kicked the door shut. The sudden, welcome warmth went to her head like a narcotic. She nearly wept with the stunning physical pleasure of it.
“Just show me a phone,” she said, “then I’ll be out of your way.”
Gesturing for her to follow, he led the way through a pair of French doors and up a carpeted staircase. His broad back was golden brown from the sun.
Kay found herself on an interior balcony overlooking a magnificent living room with a floor-to-ceiling ocean view and dramatic slanted ceiling. She asked, “Uh…where’s the phone?”
“You won’t be needing it.”
Panic seized her. “Wh-why not?”
He’d already entered what was clearly the master bedroom, as contemporary as the rest of the house with handsome masculine furnishings in shades of cream, rust and deep pine green. Kay recognized the clothing he’d shed on the beach, now draped over the footboard of the king-size ironwork bed. Charcoal suit pants and a snowy white shirt. A matching suit coat and silk necktie lay on the crisply made bed. A professional man’s attire. She couldn’t help wondering what he did for a living. This house had to have cost millions and it was probably just his summer place.
She watched as he pulled on a cranberry-colored waffle-knit shirt and slid his bare feet into deck shoes. He opened another door and she spied a sumptuously appointed bathroom, a spalike retreat tiled in natural stone with an enormous skylight. “Your lips are purple. Grab a hot shower while I give your battery a boost.” He held out his hand. “Keys.”
“Oh. Oh, that isn’t necessary. The shower, I mean.” She handed over her key ring. “I’m, um, warming up already.”
“Suit yourself, but you should get out of those wet things.” He handed her a pair of gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt with faded lettering promoting a marathon in Boston three years earlier. Then he was gone.
As she waited for him to return, Kay decided this was an adventure of sorts, though not quite what she’d had in mind when she’d decided to open herself more to what life had to offer. To take a few risks, have some fun. To live this life as if it were the only one she was going to get.
Which of course it was, which was the whole point, but one she hadn’t fully grasped until a few weeks earlier during what was supposed to have been a routine flight from Fort Lauderdale to New York’s La Guardia Airport. Kay had been returning home after her usual Easter visit with her grandmother in Florida when, a mere fifteen minutes after takeoff, the plane abruptly plummeted out of the sky. She’d been one of one hundred seventy-five terrified, screaming passengers, helpless to save themselves as the plane dropped and everything not strapped down, including the flight attendants, went into freefall.
Later she would find out that the plane had plunged six hundred feet to avoid a collision with a plane above it. Those long seconds before the aircraft leveled out were an eternity for Kay. She’d been given one life and now it was over, and what had she done with it? True, she’d been a good citizen, working hard on behalf of those who needed help most. Her conscience was clear on that score. But she couldn’t shake the thought that there was one person she’d let down—herself. Every decision she’d made on her own behalf had been safe, boring and predictable. Kay decided at that moment that merely existing wasn’t enough. She wanted to live.
Having made the momentous decision, she’d spent the following weeks trying to figure out how to put it into practice—which was what had brought her to the beach that night. She always thought better with the rumble of the surf in her ears and briny sea air in her lungs.
She changed her mind about the shower when she shucked her clothes and realized how much sand she’d brought inside with her. She dried off with a thick, soft bath sheet and dressed in the bedroom. The pants were long and baggy, but at least they had a drawstring. The T-shirt was well worn, soft as thistledown. A brief perusal of the house revealed a den on the first floor, as coolly elegant as the other rooms but made cozy by crowded bookshelves and a stack of magazines. It was there she settled down to wait on a plush sofa upholstered in a nubby fabric. Yawning, she lifted an issue of the Paris Review from the coffee table, curled her feet under her, and started flipping pages…
The return of consciousness was a gradual thing and Kay fought it. A delicious sensation teased her temple, a feathery stroking.
“Mmm…” she mumbled, “don’t stop.”
“If you insist.”
Kay’s heart seized up as her foggy mind struggled to identify the deep voice.
Him!
She lay on her side on the sofa, her head cradled on some firm, 98.6-degree object. She swiveled her eyes downward. Her pillow was upholstered in weathered denim jeans.
She sprang up and lurched away from the sofa. There sat Nature Boy just as nonchalant as you please.
“How did I end up on your lap!”
He scratched his jaw, roughened by a day’s worth of stubble. “You were listing hard to port. All I did was give you a little nudge.” He patted the cushion next to him, wordlessly commanding her to sit.
Kay stood her ground. With blinding speed he lunged for her, and in the next instant she found herself snugged between him and the corner of the sofa. He felt massive and solid next to her, and hot, as if he radiated some sort of energy field. The masculine scent of his skin teased her nostrils, along with a hint of brine from his swim and something else, a subtle, earthy aftershave, no doubt custom-made.
His straight, high-bridged nose gave him a regal profile. His eyes were deep blue, she saw now, inky and bottomless in the warm lamplight. And kind, she noted with surprise.
A glimmer of recognition flared—a fleeting memory that dissolved like mist even as she struggled to hold on to it. Had she met this man at some point? Was that why he seemed familiar? Yeah, right, she thought, and chalked it up to her agitated state
of mind. This wasn’t the kind of guy she bumped into in the halls of Baker Avenue Elementary School. And Lord knew her dreary social life did not include exchanging witty cocktail banter with studly zillionaires who called places like this home. If she’d ever met this man, she would have remembered.
Through sheer force of will, she broke eye contact. “Is my car drivable?”
“The battery won’t catch. Could be a busted fuel pump or a cracked fuel line. Maybe a tank of bad gas.” He shrugged. “Maybe something electrical. Who knows? My guess is, you depleted the battery trying to start the car, but the problem is that the engine’s just not getting gas. Looks like you’ll have to call the auto club after all.”
She groaned. “Well, thanks for trying. Show me to a phone and I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”
“No hurry.” Leaning back, he gave her a small, predatory smile.
Seconds passed. Her breasts trembled with every painful bang of her heart. Her voice tight, she said, “I’m going to call the auto club now and go out to wait for them.”
“Coward.”
She didn’t move. Hardly dared breathe. “What do you want?” she whispered.
“You know.”
His fingertips slipped under her damp hair to lightly stroke the back of her neck. She shivered and closed her eyes. His warm breath curled into her nostrils. She inhaled deeply, drawing him in.
He said, “Open your eyes.”
She did. His dark gaze reached deep into her.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I want. I want.
She knew how to answer I should. I must. The occasional I need.
Kay Denehy had never been an I want kind of girl.
But she wanted now. The wanting squirmed over her skin from her scalp to her toes. It gathered heavily in her breasts and between her legs.
“I’m scared,” she confessed, her voice barely audible.