Love In Handcuffs: The Secret Billionaire (Part One) (BDSM And Domination Erotic Romance Novelette) Read Online Free Page A

me. “I do a lot of things, ultimately. You’ve noticed I’m not exactly poor—I run a business, a few varying interests.” He leaned in and kissed me on the lips. “If you’re going to be asking me questions, we might as well head up to the deck. It’ll be cooler, and if you’re dressed I certainly won’t be constantly distracted.” I rolled my eyes at the implied compliment, but agreed. Michael was plenty distracting enough, even when he wasn’t teasing me with his hands. I climbed out of the enormous bed and looked around for my clothes. Michael got dressed more quickly than I did, stepping over to a chest of drawers that he had apparently packed his clothes into—or more likely had someone else unpack his clothes into—and taking out a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt; it was more casual than his suit, but certainly it wasn’t jeans and a t-shirt. I got into my clothes, feeling his gaze on me as I slipped into my skirt and finished buttoning my blouse.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    It surprised me that I didn’t find him at all creepy. Sure, at first I had thought that he might be a creep, but even though he had basically swept me off my feet in my moment of greatest vulnerability, it felt completely natural that Michael would lead me out of the room, guiding me up to the deck to walk around as if we were a married couple. We would have to keep our conversation discreet, of course—since he had given the crewman the idea that we were married, my asking questions about his life would definitely be out of place—but we wandered around the deck, pausing every now and then to look out over the ocean. The good thing about being up against the railing was that the sound of the boat moving through the water obscured our conversation to some extent.
     
    It was honestly interesting, learning about Michael’s life. I told myself to take his story with a grain of salt but the picture he painted was of a life that was all appearances. He was on the cruise, he told me, to get away from it. The constant pandering, the need to be on his guard at all times. He typically only slept a handful of hours per night—after all, there was always business being done somewhere in the world—and took very little time for himself in the normal course of things. “The miracle was that this cruise even happened at all. I kept waiting for someone to call me and tell me that something had gone wrong in one of the areas of my business, or that there was something that needed to be taken care of at home.” He grinned as he said that. “Fortunately, my phone is turned off, and will stay that way. Though I have to admit, noticing you and either rescuing or kidnapping you—depending on your perspective—probably saved me caving in early. If I hadn’t been intrigued by you, I probably would have gone back to my room hours ago and checked my phone.”
     
    I told him about my life; getting my degree in liberal arts, thinking that I was going to go to grad school and become either a writer or an anthropologist, and then discovering that if I wanted to continue my education, I’d more or less have to go into enough debt that I could have bought a house for less. How I’d gotten the job I had been working for a few years now, stuck with it even though it was utterly soulless. I told him about writing in my spare time, about how I never seemed to be able to get the kind of push to do more than submit and receive rejection notices. I also told him about the incident at work that had spurred my actions. It seemed so neat and tidy, the way I explained it to him; but I knew deep down that it was more complex than I was making it out to be. I was honest enough to know that the biggest single factor in my decision to break the law and flee the country was that I was terrified that I’d be 40 years old and either still getting groped and hit on, or I’d find myself fired for some other 20-something who could be groped and hit on.