Compulsion Read online

  He propelled me straight into the lounge and pushed me down to sit on his couch. The couch where he’d been… God, I was in so much trouble!

  The porn movie was still playing on the TV. Despite my fear and embarrassment, my eyes were drawn to irresistibly to the screen. The men had prepared a huge butt plug for the woman on the table and were spinning her around to see who would get to insert it. She seemed to know what they were about to do and was moaning and begging, “Not the big one, oh god, please, no, not the big one…” The table stopped and with a satisfied smirk the man who ended up standing between her spread legs picked up the butt plug, glistening with lube. He motioned to the men on either side and they seized the woman’s ass cheeks, pulling them apart, spreading her open and holding her motionless. The camera zoomed in as he positioned the plug against her tightly puckered anus and began to push it in, twisting it slowly as he worked it into her, ignoring her clenching resistance. With a cry she surrendered, her muscles overcome by the merciless pressure. The butt plug popped inside, stretching her beyond her limits for an instant, then disappearing into her body as she choked out a sob. They released their hold on her immediately and sent the table spinning again.

  The sound of my neighbor shutting and locking the sliding door refocused my attention on my current dilemma. He dropped into the recliner opposite me, picked up the remote and turned off the TV. At least he wasn’t going for his phone. It was lying on the side table, next to his beer.

  He was silent. I could feel his eyes on me but I couldn’t look at him. All I could hear was my blood pounding in my ears, and all I could think was that this was the worst moment of my life—and I’d had some pretty humiliating moments, so that was saying something.

  The silence drew out. Eventually I couldn’t bear it. In a small, choked whisper, I said the only thing that I could possibly think of under the circumstances.

  “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “Are you Jane Hedley?”

  Surprise made me look up and meet his eyes. They were light—pale-blue or gray—I couldn’t be sure from across the room.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Dave Fitzsimmons, the estate manager, mentioned you this afternoon. I stopped by to arrange to have my lawn mowed once a week and we had a nice chat. He said you were friendly, and that I should knock on your door if I needed anything. Apparently you’re usually at home in the evenings and on the weekends.”

  Great, even the estate manager knows that I don’t have a life.

  Bet he didn’t tell you about my secret hobby as an international super spy!

  But of course I didn’t snap out my snarky comeback. I just said, “Oh.”

  He gave me a sharp glance, as if he knew I wanted to take the piss.

  “My name is Matthew Forbes. Now tell me why you were spying on me.” He sounded as if he were used to being obeyed.

  I wasn’t spying, I was just welcoming my new neighbor. Darn, did I forget the cake again?

  “Er… It’s all just a terrible mistake. I’m sorry. It’ll never happen again.”

  “What didn’t you say?”

  “What?”

  “You were going to say something else. You did it before too. What didn’t you say?”

  “Um, I wasn’t spying, I just wanted to welcome my new neighbor. Darn, did I forget the cake again?”

  I delivered it really badly, my voice a trembling squeak, but he burst out laughing. I felt a tiny sliver of relief. Surely he wouldn’t call the police if he was laughing at me like that? The laughter transformed his face, softened all those severe angles. He looked…friendly, almost.

  I plucked up my courage.

  “Um, Matthew… Are you going to… I mean, what are you…?”

  “What am I going to do about you? Or to you?”

  I nodded. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. My eyes were drawn to the snaking tattoos encircling his arms from wrists to shoulders. My mouth went dry, but whether it was from nerves or from the desire I felt for him, I didn’t know.

  “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “If you’re going to be honest with me.”

  He got up and walked over to me, stopping just before he touched me. To my shock he knelt down in front of the couch. The waistband of his jeans was level with my knees and the top two buttons were undone. I was staring but I just couldn’t stop.

  He picked up my hands from where they were clenched in my lap, parted them and turned my dirty palms upward then loosely held my wrists. His hands were very warm and far larger than mine, with long, strong fingers and neat, squared-off nails.

  “Why did you come here?” he whispered.

  We stared at each other. His eyes were grayish-blue, like the ocean on a cloudy day, and his irises were rimmed with black.

  I’m a nosy idiot.

  You’re so goddamn hot, I just wanted to look at you.

  I’m totally creaming for you and I just couldn’t stay away.

  I had a fantasy that we’d meet, fall in love and have wicked hot sex for a week.

  “You’re not saying things again.”

  Nobody else has ever noticed that about me before.

  “I wanted to ask you to come to a party with me.”

  He was obviously surprised by my answer. So was I. I’d been agonizing over the party for weeks, but I wasn’t the brave, confident type who asked guys out on a whim. Or at all.

  He leaned in closer, crowding me. His shoulders were twice as wide as mine. I felt breathless as I waited for his answer, or maybe it was just the effect that his immediate physicality had on me. He was so large, so solid, his naked chest looming over me. His obvious power called to something primitive inside me and I wanted to test my strength against his, to wrestle with him so that he could subdue me, trap me, pin me under the weight of his muscles, take me. Oh god!

  “What party?”

  “My office Christmas party.”

  “When?” He was focused on getting the facts.

  “This Saturday night. Seven o’ clock.”

  “Where?”

  “The Renaissance Plaza Hotel.”

  “Black tie, I presume?”

  “Yeah.” Part of the nightmare.

  “Again, why?”

  I’m tired of being Plain Jane.

  If I arrived with you, all those people who ignore me at work will catch a wake-up.

  Just once, I’d like to be the princess who gets the handsome prince.

  “I don’t have a date yet, and…I’m invisible at work.”

  I whispered that last bit. I’d never admitted it to another soul.

  Understanding flared in his eyes, followed by calculation. He let my wrists go and stood up.

  He moved over to the curtainless window and looked out into the darkness. He caught me watching him in the reflection in the dark glass. Too much time went by.

  I stood up and sidled toward the door.

  “I’ll go now. Again, I’m really sorry, and thanks for being so decent about it.”

  He stepped into my path, close.

  “I’m not being decent about it. I’ll take you to your party, but there’s a price tag.”

  “Price…tag?”

  “Um-hmm. You’ll have sex with me. At the party. Where, when and how I say. You will submit to me completely.”

  His voice deepened as he spoke. My legs suddenly lost the fight to keep me upright. Shock tore through my body in an icy wave, followed by a hot rush of arousal. His face was deadly serious. He meant every word.

  He caught my arms, holding me up. I stared at him helplessly. I just didn’t know what to do. I found him desirable on every level, that much I’d known before I’d even started on this stupid adventure of mine, but I’d never imagined that he’d want me back. Men always ignored me. And what he was suggesting was just indecent. No dating, no romance, nothing of the fairy tales that I fantasized about. I was shaking my head, totally incapable of verbalizing what I was fe
eling, because I couldn’t understand it myself.

  “B-but I don’t even know you,” I whispered eventually.

  He smiled, showing me his even white teeth that were as perfect as the rest of him.

  “That’s not a problem. We have five nights to get to know each other, starting now.”

  I was out of smart comments, but my expression must have said it all, for he elaborated.

  “Between now and Saturday night, you will come here and spend the evenings with me. By Saturday, we will no longer be strangers, and you will be ready.”

  Reeeaaaly?

  “Uh, what will we do to get to know each other?”

  I was quite proud of myself—that was actually an intelligent question.

  Wakey wakey, brain. I need you here!

  “I’ll work out an agenda for us. We may go out, or we may stay in. You’ll like it.”

  “Well, do I get any say in it?”

  “No.”

  That was it? No discussion? No polite inquiry about my interests? Then again, the way he was looking at me was anything but polite. And I hadn’t been polite either, I supposed, spying on him in his own house.

  “What if I say no? What will you do then?”

  He stepped back from me, releasing his hold on my arms, and my skin felt cold where his hands had gripped me. I folded my arms and put my own hands exactly where his had been.

  “What do you expect, Jane? I’ll do nothing. You’ll go back to your house, and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

  I was relieved. He wasn’t going to report me to the police. But I wasn’t happy.

  “You’ll go to your party, with or without a date. It’ll be none of my business. You may, or may not, continue to be invisible at work. That, too, has nothing to do with me. You may, or may not, ever think of this moment again, and wonder what would’ve happened if you’d said yes.”

  His cold words were clipped and precise. He’d summed up my dilemma in a neat, little package and put it on the table before me. I was under no threat from him, and he wasn’t going to coerce me into doing anything that I didn’t want to do, but my own life was all the threat I needed. The sameness of it, the invisibility. The inevitability.

  “Give me a moment. I need to think.”

  I went back to the couch on autopilot and sat down.

  All my life I’d felt as if I had the potential to be so much more, to do so much more, but I had no clue how to go about it. And there were no role models in my family to help me. My parents, who were as loving and supportive as one could ever wish for, lived in blissful mediocrity, and I was turning out just the same.

  Take my virginity, for instance.

  Yeah, that’s topical right now!

  In the beginning, when I was a teenager, I’d hung on to it so tightly. I’d thought it was such an important thing, and that I was so much better and wiser than my friends who’d thrown theirs away so carelessly in the backseats of cars, or in dark bedrooms at high school parties. But I never met a guy who valued it—or deserved it. So no one asked me out at school because I was no fun, and the guys only wanted to date girls who’d sleep with them.

  By the time I got to college, and then started working, I seemed dried up and left behind somehow. Men paid no attention to me. No handsome prince ever fell in love with me and claimed the precious gift that I’d guarded for him with respect and gratitude. I was just Plain Jane, the PA—twenty-four years old, practical, efficient and of no interest to men.

  Until now, it seemed.

  It would be a chance to lose my virginity in a spectacular way. He was spectacular. It would be like my favorite romance books, the forced seduction of an innocent but fiery-spirited heroine by a dangerous lord of power and wealth, who eventually falls in love with her. Desired tingled in my pussy.

  Oh please, what’s wrong with you?

  The only person who knows that you’re fiery-spirited is you, and it won’t be a forced seduction if you agree to it upfront. And he’s not going to fall in love with you. He just wants a quick fuck to liven up what will otherwise be a boring evening!

  You get that? A quick, sordid fuck!

  So why was I so tempted?

  He was seated in his recliner again, his legs crossed so that the ankle of the right rested on the knee of the left. His arms lay on the rests. He looked still and calm, but I could feel his unique masculine regard focused on me. I was hyperaware of him on every level.

  It really seemed worth it. Based on the way he’d reacted to catching me spying, he didn’t seem too dangerous. Wildly inappropriate, definitely, but unlikely to hurt me. Besides, I didn’t value my virginity much anymore—and had no delusions that anybody else did either. But pitching up at the office party with him in tow, now that would be priceless.

  This was a turning point, I suddenly knew with certainty. My answer now was going to affect everything in my life from this point onward.

  “Yes,” I said. It came out as a cracked whisper. His eyebrows rose.

  “Yes,” I repeated, more strongly. “I agree to your price. I will have sex with you if you be my date for the party.”

  He sat forward in his chair and I could sense that sharpening of his focus on me again, like a thin beam of energy directed at me through the air between us. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I wondered if he felt it too.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s be very clear. I will take you to the party, and in return, you will have sex with me while we are there.”

  It was not a question. I swallowed and nodded.

  “Answer me! Say, ‘Yes, Matt.’”

  “Yes…Matt.”

  “Good girl. The sex will be on my terms—where, when and how I say. You will do exactly as I tell you.” His voice was hard.

  “Yes, Matt.”

  A thought suddenly occurred to me. “You won’t, er, do anything to jeopardize my job, will you, or embarrass me in front of the people from work?”

  He just stared at me until I was all but squirming in my seat.

  “No, I will not do anything like that. Now I hope you enjoyed that, because, from now on, you will not question me about our sexual relationship again. Do I make myself clear?”

  No. Nope. Not in the least.

  “Yes, Matt.”

  He obviously liked to play little games. No problem. The party was in five days, so I’d just go along with it, and afterward we’d go our separate ways.

  He smiled slightly, the corners of his sexy lips tilting upward a little.

  Hot.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he murmured. “But we’re going to seal this deal with a kiss. Time to show you what you’ve agreed to.”

  Heated anticipation slammed into my body at his words. We were actually going to kiss? Right now? I felt moisture surge between my legs.

  “Slide off that couch onto the floor, and come over to me on your knees,” he commanded, but his voice was gentle, almost as if he were making a suggestion. His eyes told another story though, blazing with heat and anticipation. I did as he said, a feeling of unreality washing over me, as if I were disconnected from my body, no longer in control. My knees were tender from my ignominious crawl through his garden, but the carpet was plush and I noticed that it smelled fresh. It must have been cleaned for him.

  Seriously? You’re about to kiss the most gorgeous guy you’ve ever seen, and you’re checking out his housekeeping. Must be nerves.

  He spread his legs apart as I approached and indicated that I should crawl right between his thighs until my legs were up against his chair.

  I was so close to his naked torso, all muscles and smooth skin, that I hardly knew where to look. I stared at his face, desperately fighting the hot blush that was trying to take over my entire body. On top of that, I was so aroused that I was just about panting.

  He remained absolutely expressionless except for his blazing eyes and half-smile.

  At last, when I thought I couldn’t stand his scrutiny for anot
her second, he reached out and touched my hair. When he withdrew his hand he was holding a little, curly leaf. As if I needed a reminder of my garden activities!

  Just get on with the kissing already!

  He reached out again with both hands and lifted my glasses gently off my face, placing them with care on the table next to his chair.

  “You have beautiful eyes, you know.” His voice was an intimate whisper. “I thought they were brown, but up close they’re quite green. It’s a shame to hide them behind glasses all the time. Don’t you have contact lenses?”

  “Yes. I just usually…don’t bother.”

  Seems I was destined to be embarrassed about everything.

  “When you come to me, you must bother. Don’t bring these again.”

  “Yes, Matt,” I whispered.

  Next he tugged my hair tie out. His approval was obvious when the exceptionally thick mass fell in reddish-brown waves past my shoulders. He pulled a handful to himself, rubbing it between his fingers, bringing it to his nose and inhaling deeply. A frisson ran through my overheated body, adding to my arousal. Nobody had ever deliberately smelled me before. It was so…animalistic.

  He pushed the whole lot back over my shoulders and gathered the ends. He watched me closely as he circled the fall of my hair around his fist, twisting it over his knuckles, higher, harder, until his hand was locked against the back of my skull and I couldn’t move unless he let me.

  Very deliberately he tipped my head slightly back and to the side then held me there, unmoving. My heartbeat was pounding in my ears. He slowly closed the distance between our faces. His breath fanned over my face. He smelled divine, of vitality and heated male, and I breathed him in hungrily, anticipation and desire swirling in my belly, making me dizzy. I closed my eyes.

  He brushed his closed lips over mine, his gentleness at odds with his hard fist in my hair. His lips were soft but I felt the stubble on his chin and upper lip rubbing gently over my smooth skin—so male, so different from my softness.

  “Open now, Jane,” he breathed against my mouth, “I want in.”

  “Yes, Matt.” But I had no breath to carry the sounds. With that he took my mouth. He kissed me with a deliberation that left me defenseless. He was holding me up with that hand in my hair, his other hand pressing my jawbone almost painfully, and his knees gripping my sides. I was surrounded by his strength, penetrated as his ravishing tongue pierced and probed into the secret places of my mouth, always returning to brush against my tongue in a velvet rush and drag. Then I was sucking on him frantically, rubbing him back, his taste exploding across my senses, feeling his kiss in every fiber of my body.