And that’s exactly how it happened. Before Mo Jackson even sold my book to a major publishing house, it had been read by over a hundred thousand people and counting. Mo worked out a seven-figure deal for me—let me say that again, seven figures. And that wasn’t all. Hollywood came calling and before the beautiful people left my attorney’s office, I had a second seven-figure deal in my hot, little hand. Shit. I was wealthy!
By July, I had finished my time at Cambridge, traveled Europe a little, and finally returned to the States. All told, I’d been gone a few weeks shy of a full year. While still in Britain, I decided to relocate from Portland to Los Angeles, so I went straight there and rented a cottage while I trolled for the perfect house. I was having lunch with a college friend in Los Feliz—the neighborhood I’d chosen for my real estate search, when my cell phone began to blare Aretha Franklin singing Respect. I looked at the number but didn’t recognize it.
“Hello?”
“Am I speaking with Ariel Strong?” The voice was smooth, deep, and unfamiliar.
“You are. May I ask who is calling?”
“Yes. Ms. Strong, my name is Jackson Delacroix. I am an attorney with Delacroix, Steinem, and Tucker. I’m contacting you on behalf of a client, a Mr. Ian Blackmon. Ms. Strong, I’m afraid Mr. Blackmon is filing suit against you for breach of contract. I’ll need to meet with you and your attorney as soon as possible.
“Ms. Strong, are you there?”
Chapter 3
Got her! Ian thinks. For a year now, he’d been trying to figure out a way to get Ella back into his life. He’d been rendered senseless at the desolation he felt when she disappeared: he didn’t want to admit it, even to himself, but the girl had worked her way under his skin and so very quickly. He’d even been ready to give in to her, to agree to a traditional romantic alliance—just one ordinary relationship, hold the kink.
But then she up and disappeared.
He knew why, of course. He’d displayed an appalling lack of good judgment in using the single tail on her—a girl who was brand new to any of it, reward or punishment. He should have waited, at the very least, bided his time, until she got more comfortable with the whole idea. But he’d been anxious. His last submissive had been banished for nearly six months when he met Ella and he needed some consistency back in his life. The club had not been doing it for him and he knew most of the regular subs there already. None of them tripped his trigger. So he’d gone too fast with the innocent Ella, overly eager to play with her, introduce her to the pleasure of erotic pain, and it ended up costing him. Big time. He was furious with himself when she went MIA.
He tried to move past it—no girl was worth such grief. But he found, much to his profound consternation, that no other woman interested him in the least anymore.
He fucking wanted Ariel.
At first, he couldn’t find her. It was infuriating: he could make anything happen and here was this little slip of a girl running him ragged, both emotionally and literally, all over town searching for her. He tried everything he could think of to locate Ella himself and came up flat. Where was she? What stuck in his mind most about that time was his unabiding panic at not knowing where she was, his pretty girl. Losing her threw him into the blackest funk, a place where no sunlight managed to filter into the dark. He had to find her, get her back.
Finally, he resorted to hiring a private detective and the man ran her to ground in less than forty-eight hours. She was in the UK, studying at Cambridge, on a fellowship, he’d said. So Ms. Strong was as smart as she was beautiful. Somehow he wasn’t at all surprised.
Ian was a man who knew his own mind, accepted his limitations, and made peace with his very real flaws. One thing he was not comfortable with was emotion. He loved his parents, his siblings, even the family dog: he did not, however, ever love his women.
No. Emotions clouded reasoned judgment, thus getting in the way of an otherwise harmonious relationship. Women made for excellent dining or party company and for sex. That’s all. And that’s exactly how he liked it.
Until he met Ariel Strong.
She’d fiddled with his sense of self, unknowingly or not. He found himself stalking her. He had a dossier compiled on her, as he did with business competitors, and the wretched girl invaded his thoughts without warning on a regular basis. All it took was one chance meeting in a shop and a girl with wild tresses of chestnut-colored hair, looking up at him with impossibly huge eyes and calling him sir. He shook his head in self-disgust. What a pathetic ass he’d become.
He’d been having lunch with his sister two weeks ago. Zoe had decided it was her mission in life to see him in a long-term relationship. Of course, she had no idea he usually had one, since he kept his romantic life quiet. They had just ordered their lunch when he stepped away to use the men’s room. While he was gone, Zoe had pulled out her iPad and was engrossed in reading something on it.