MustLoveMusic Page 5

  Rikard didn’t seem to care all that much about the staging or dance details, although he did listen politely. But when she described the songs, he came alive.

  All too soon, the delicious lunch was consumed. She set her fork down, and drank the last of her water.

  “But I’ve been going on and on about me. What about you? What are some of the things you’ve worked on?”

  Gently, he sang, “Everything’s sweeter in the dark of night. Dark desire. Dark chocolate.”

  “Earworm!” she shouted. “I’m going to have that stuck in my head for days, now.”

  “I told you the jingles paid the rent.”

  “Do you have any idea how many bars of Desire chocolate I scarfed down because of that damn jingle? I’d be in the store, see the candy, the tune would start running through my head, and next thing I knew, I had half a pound of chocolate in my cart.”

  His warm gaze stroked her body with admiration. “It couldn’t have been too many bars.”

  “That’s why I have to go jogging every morning.”

  “Every morning?” Horizontal creases formed across his forehead, even though his raised eyebrows were hidden behind the mask.

  “Yeah. The office only opens at nine o’clock. The last place I worked started earlier, and I had a longer commute, so I’m used to getting up at six. I have a nice jog and leisurely breakfast, then shower and dress for work.”

  “I never worked a regular schedule,” he admitted. “Sometimes I’d spend all day slaving over a single phrase, twisting and turning it every way possible until it sounded like how I wanted it to sound. And sometimes everything would flow so perfectly, I was done in two hours. That was for home days. During tours, the schedule was more regimented, although still not what anyone would call regular.”

  “Tours? I didn’t know composers went on tour.”

  “I did.” He stood, and cleared the table. “Speaking of tours, are you ready for your tour of the house, now?”

  A shiver rippled over her skin. “Yes.”

  Taking her hand in his gloved one, Rikard led her out of the kitchen.

  “Hey, your glove’s all wet.”

  “Damp, not wet. I washed my hands earlier, before cooking the tuna steaks.”

  “With your gloves on? Can you do that?” She hadn’t been paying attention, since she was on the phone at the time, but she’d just assumed he’d taken the gloves off while cooking, then put them back on when it was time to serve the meal.

  “They’re deerskin. It’s washable.” They returned to the open entryway, and he led her through the arch opposite the music room. “This is the home theater.”

  A huge flat-screen television that was at least four feet across was mounted on the wall. A modular reclining sofa with built-in cup holders and snack tables faced the television. Trim black speakers were mounted in the corners of the room and bolted to the floor. The only other furniture was a wrought iron cabinet, filled two-thirds of the way full with DVDs.

  “Do you watch a lot of movies?”

  “Not so much now. For a while that was pretty much all I did.”

  She nodded. That would be after his car accident, while he was recovering from the injuries that had nearly blinded him. He probably had broken bones, too, and wasn’t supposed to move much.

  He turned and led her out of the room, back to the foyer. She followed him up the stairs to the spacious landing. Four doors radiated off it, two before them and two to the sides.

  “My bedroom and the master bathroom,” he indicated, pointing to the left-hand door before them. Then he pointed to the right. “The guest bedroom. It shares a bathroom with my recording studio.”

  Gayle tensed with anticipation, knowing where the remaining door must lead. Rikard turned her to face the door, and gave her a gentle push forward.

  “The playroom. Open the door.”

  Unlike the other doors, this one had a heavy silver lock, with an antique key in it. She tested the doorknob, and when the door didn’t move, turned the key. The lock snapped open with a loud click of its tumblers, and the door swung outward.

  “I warn you, it was decorated in a fit of self-indulgence,” Rikard cautioned.

  She stepped inside, her eyes going wide. Any windows the room had once possessed had been blocked up. The walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with trompe l’oeil paintings that gave the appearance of being in a rocky cave, softened by sweeps of burgundy velvet. She glanced upward. The ceiling was painted, too. Flickering torches were mounted on the walls, and branches of lit candelabra were scattered around the room. Despite knowing that she was on the second floor of a modern house, her mind insisted she was standing in a cave belowground. Even the air seemed different, cool and damp.

  “Isn’t all this open flame a fire safety violation?” she asked, the mundane question the only thing she could think of to say in response to the bizarre setting.

  “They’re not real candles or torches. The candles are a flickering bulb designed to simulate candlelight. And the torches are just orange satin, blown by a fan.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw his gloved hand resting beside the doorway, where a light switch would normally be. Where a light switch no doubt actually was, camouflaged by paint, to control the candles and torches.

  She nodded, allowing her eyes to focus on the contents of the room. Black padded benches in different heights, with triangular leather pillow wedges, occupied much of the floor space. A wrought iron wine table had been repurposed to hold a collection of floggers instead of stemware and paddles instead of wine bottles, with two black woven baskets hiding their contents from view inside the base cupboard of the unit. And a number of heavy eyebolts had been screwed into the wall and ceiling. Some had chains dangling from them, while others were bare.

  “I feel like I’ve stepped back in time,” she whispered.

  “To a time when a man was truly the lord of his castle, and had the power to enforce his desires?”

  She nodded, her legs beginning to tremble. “You said you were interested in scene play. What scenes play out in here?”

  He stepped up behind her, hands wrapping loosely around her waist to pull her against him. His masked cheek rested against her hair.

  “What scenes would you like to play?”

  “I don’t know. I told you, I’d only ever done a little bondage before. And that was straightforward, let’s-tie-you-to-the-bedposts sex.”

  “Then perhaps you are a lovely Victorian maid, innocently sailing to Spain, when your ship is attacked by pirates. The pirate captain is captivated by your beauty.” Rikard reached up and stroked her cheek with the back of one gloved finger. “And so, rather than killing you, he takes you back to his hideout. He will spare your life, if you can convince him that it is worth his while to keep you as a slave. A slave to service all of his sexual needs.”

  She shivered, leaning against Rikard’s warmth. In his black mask, laced leather pants and poet shirt, he looked like a pirate. Her imagination ran wild, inspired by his words, until she smelled the cordite, and squinted against the fog of gunsmoke that blurred her vision. Distantly, she heard the cries of men fighting and dying.

  “And if I am unable to convince you, Captain?”

  “Then I will give you to my men. They deserve a treat.” He trailed his finger between her breasts, down to her pussy. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t survive the experience.”

  Fear flushed her body, even though she knew Rikard was not a pirate, that there was no crew waiting to ravish her to death if she failed to satisfy him. Her heart pounded, and her palms sweated, as if the scene he’d described was real.

  He stroked her cheek again, turning her face so that he could read her expression.

  “So, my sweet pirate prize. Do you want to play?”

  “Yes, Master Rikard. I want to play.”

  “Pirate booty does not wear clothing. Take it off.”

  He released her, stepping back so that he was out of her way. Qui
ckly, Gayle pulled off the clinging top, then unzipped the leather skirt and stepped out of it. She dropped her clothing to the floor, and stood naked before Rikard.

  His blue eyes gleamed within his mask as he approached her. Softly, slowly, he reached out and glided his gloved fingers over her shoulders, down her arms, around her breasts, across her nipples, down her stomach, over her hips, and around her ass. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and sighed with pleasure.

  Something warm and wet touched her shoulder, and her eyes flew open. Rikard was kissing her, with a gentle openmouthed kiss that was barely firmer than a breath. He licked her shoulder, then traced the line of her muscles and vein with his tongue, placing another soft kiss in the hollow of her neck.

  “From now until the end of the scene, you will address me as Captain. If you need to stop the scene for any reason, refer to me as Master Rikard.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “The first thing I must do is make sure you can’t jump ship and try to swim to safety.” He opened the wine cabinet and dug in one of the baskets. Triumphantly, he turned to her holding a pair of black leather wrist restraints and a rough length of hemp rope.

  “Turn around, and put your hands behind your back.”

  Quivering, Gayle did as he instructed. She was giving him her trust and belief in addition to her obedience. With her hands bound behind her, she’d be unable to fight him off if he decided to try something she didn’t want him to do. But she had no doubt that she could stop him with a word.

  Getting into the game, she pleaded, “Please, Captain. Don’t tie me up. I promise I’ll do everything you ask. Everything.”

  He chuckled. “Saucy wench.”

  The length of rope flicked out, rasping lightly across her ass cheeks. She gasped, more surprised than pained.

  “You’ll do everything I demand anyhow, or I’ll see you walk the plank.”

  A delightful tendril of fear skittered up her spine, her skin turning icy. Her nipples tightened into hard buds, from the cold, her growing excitement, or both.

  Rikard’s gentle hands placed the restraints around her wrists, testing the fit and ensuring that her shoulders were not pulled too severely. Then he wrapped the length of rope around the restraints, not tying it, but letting the rough hemp brush against her wrists and forearms. Her mind transformed the padded restraints into heavy loops of rough rope.

  He circled around her, admiring her naked body. Gayle held up her head and stood rigidly beneath his examination.

  “Yes, you’re a proper lady. I can tell. But you’re my prisoner now. I’ll break you of that soon enough, and have you begging and moaning like the commonest of gutter trash.”

  She tipped up her chin in defiance. “Never! I am a lady, Captain. And nothing you do to me will make me less of one.”

  He sucked in a deep breath, a slow grin lighting his face. “I do love a challenge. But I can’t have you disagreeing with me. This is my ship, and what I say goes. If one of my crew dared to contradict me as you’ve done, it would be twenty lashes of the cat, until he learned to keep a civil tongue.”

  Rikard stalked closer, his gloved hand shooting out and gripping her chin in a firm hold. She couldn’t pull away or twist out of his grasp, but his fingers merely rested against her skin rather than digging into her flesh.

  “But I’ll forgive you this time, if you beg. Get down on your knees and beg me not to whip you.”

  Gayle stiffened her back, completely lost in character. “A lady does not beg, Captain.”

  He laughed, deep and low in his throat. “Right. It’s the cat for you, then.”

  Grabbing her by her upper arm, he dragged her over to a waist-high bench, and bent her across it. He loosed the rope and unlinked the wrist restraints, then pulled her arms out to the side, clipping the restraints to rings at the top and bottom of the bench. Gayle tried to lift her upper body, and found herself unable to move. She had never felt so completely helpless.

  Hot fluid gathered between her legs. When Rikard slipped his booted foot between hers and kicked her ankles apart with a gentle nudge, flattening her completely against the bench, a trickle of fluid coursed down the inside of her thigh.

  He moved away, returning a moment later swishing something back and forth through the air with ominous snaps. Narrow strips of leather trailed across her shoulder blades.

  “This is the cat. Twenty strips of leather, each with an edge sharp enough to rip open that delicate skin. And you’re getting twenty lashes with it. You’ll be nothing but a bloody wreck from your graceful neck to your sweet, tight ass. Sure you don’t want to beg?”

  Gayle trembled. Rikard wouldn’t really slice her back open. She remembered his desperate panic in the kitchen when he feared he’d hurt her. But stretched across the bench, the lashes of the cat sweeping back and forth across her quivering skin in teasing caresses, she had trouble believing she was not at the mercy of a bloodthirsty pirate.

  “Never,” she whispered.

  “One.” The whip rose and fell, the tips of the lashes flicking across her shoulder blade before the body of the cat smacked her upper back.

  Gayle cried out in shock and surprise. She hadn’t expected he’d hit her with no warning. But it hadn’t hurt.

  “Two.” The lash tips flicked across her other shoulder blade, followed by the heavy smack of the body.

  “Eighteen more to go. Are you certain you don’t want to beg?”

  “Do your worst!”

  Rikard laughed again, the low sound chillingly unlike his normal melodic laughter. The cat smacked her shoulders over and over, as Rikard counted his strokes.

  “That makes ten.” He trailed the whip’s lashes down her sensitive spine. “Halfway there.”

  “You’ll never break me, Captain.”

  “Your skin is a lovely shade of pink, blushing like a virgin bride’s. Where else could my whip touch you? Where else are you a virgin?”

  The lashes stroked down, feathering across her ass, and tickling her crack.

  “Are you a virgin here?” he whispered, one leather-clad finger following the path of the whip to press lightly at her hole.

  Gayle moaned, her ass clenching tightly in reaction to his invading finger. What would it feel like to have him press his finger not just against the entrance, but actually inside? Two fingers? His cock, slicking in and out of her ass?

  “Captain, please.”

  “Please stop? Or please continue?”

  “You’re right. I am a virgin, there.”

  “And…?”

  “You’re a pirate. I’m a lady.”

  “No, I’m a pirate and you’re my prisoner. If I wanted to slide inside that tight hole, pumping in and out until you screamed, I could do it, and no one would stop me. I’m the captain of this ship. My word is law.”

  His fingertip tapped lightly on her sensitive nerves. Gayle gasped, her muscles tightening and contracting. More fluid trickled down her leg.

  “But you didn’t finish whipping me. Or do you want to leave my challenge to your authority unmet?”

  “I answer every challenge.”

  The cat tickled and struck the firm globes of her ass, once on each side. She didn’t think he’d hit her harder than he had before, but what had felt like a weird kind of massage on her shoulders felt mildly painful on her ass.

  “Thirteen.” The whip hit her first ass cheek exactly where it had struck before, wringing a soft whimper from her. It didn’t hurt, so much as burn.

  “Fourteen.” He slapped the cat against her other ass cheek, again in the exact same spot as his first strike.

  Gayle moaned low in her throat.

  “Fifteen.” Another smack, falling on her already tender skin, then again on the opposite side.

  “Sixteen. Are you ready to beg yet?”

  “Never,” she panted.

  Rikard slapped her with his gloved hand. She clenched her ass muscles, determined to resist him, even as her breath grew short, and her body
trembled, eager for him to claim her.

  “I said I was giving you twenty strokes with the cat.” His leather-clad palm smacked her ass with short, sharp strokes, rocking her against the bench. “If I hit you with something else, it doesn’t count.”

  “Vile pirate! I might have known you wouldn’t keep your word.”

  His right hand continued to fall rhythmically on her ass cheeks, his left pressing lightly at the top of her ass, covering the base of her spine, while his thumb gently spread her cheeks. Her ass burned, each stroke a brief sting, followed by a glorious heat that spread down her thighs, and pooled deep in her sex like a hot spring just waiting to burst forth into a steaming geyser.

  “Master…” she moaned.

  Rikard’s next slap never fell. “Master…?”

  Belatedly, she remembered she was to call him Captain, and to call him Master Rikard would end the scene. She had not used his full name, so he wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stop or not.

  “Captain. I mean Captain. You can spank me and whip me until the deck of your ship runs with blood, I will never beg!”

  “Oh, you will beg, my pretty slave.”

  His fingertips smoothed across her stinging ass, cool upon her heated flesh. She shivered beneath his soft caress, desire flaring hot and wet, even as fear rippled through her, tensing her muscles.

  “You will beg for me to let you come, for me to end your torture. You will beg for me to hit you, again and again, until you explode from the ecstasy. And if you beg sweetly enough, I just might give you what you need.”

  He slapped her ass, hard enough to hurt instead of just sting. Gayle’s knees buckled, and all of her weight rested on her chest and stomach, stretched across the bench. Warmth trickled down her inner thigh. She moaned, crushed beneath a landslide of fear and desire.

  “No. Never,” she whispered.