Free In His Grip: His #5 (A Billionaire Domination Serial) by Erika Masten Page A

the vague ripples along the dark surface of the water. His tuxedo jacket discarded over the back of another chaise, his tie loose under his collar, his hands buried deep in his pockets... His full, lightly tanned lips bowed downward, and the darkness along his high cheekbones and the taut lines of his jaw seemed deeper than the well-trimmed five o’clock shadow or the dusky hues of evening would dictate.
    It was still fresh in my memory, that moment back at the resort when Penn had asked me what I was doing on the island and I had lied. When I had hidden—denied—the intimate nature of my association with Adrian, even to a man who had no right to ask that I justify myself. When Adrian’s hand had let go of mine…
    I dragged my hands away from my flustered cheeks, tucked the willful strands of my long brown hair behind one ear, and turned my face toward the man I couldn’t help feeling I’d betrayed—despite our clear understanding that this arrangement had never been about love. “Penn and I were together for a couple of years. Not anymore.”
    A deeper frown crooked one corner of Adrian’s mouth, and he nodded slightly. “He was the one who introduced you to being dominated. Made you crawl for him.”
    And cheated on me.And renewed the ever-deepening well of my mistrust of men in general, especially men of wealth, men surrounded by temptation and swathed in privilege. Men like Knight, or who Knight should have been. Now Adrian knew what I’d done with… and for Penn, and I felt more naked than Knight kept me in the privacy of his home.
    “Yes,” I breathed out.
    Adrian pivoted toward the villa, the soles of his vintage black dress shoes grinding bits of grit against the stone tiles of the patio. Against the rustle of the breeze through tropical leaves and the far off roar of ocean waves, the sound was a high, sharp scratch and a bristle up my back. I braced myself for a confrontation.
    Adrian would demand to know more about my relationship with Penn, how the charismatic blond playboy had come to command such loyalty that he could be unfaithful to me and I would still balk at letting him know that I had become involved with someone else. I would have to apologize for or justify the lie that I was just Adrian’s assistant. But would I have to see it again, that almost wounded look of startled disappointment that had broken across Adrian’s handsome face in that instant he had untangled his fingers from mine?
    With his head inclined enough to avoid looking at me, Adrian muttered low, his faint London accent lost in the depths of his solemn tone. “We missed dinner again. Manuela could send something over from the kitchen for you.”
    Though perplexed at this hesitation before our inevitable argument, I just shook my head and slumped lower over my lap to balance my chin on my balled fingers. “Not hungry.” My stomach was sour, burning.
    He still didn’t look at me, damn it, just nodded. “Then perhaps you should go to bed, Miss Bloom,” he said before walking with slow, measured steps back inside the villa. Leaving me alone in the dull hush of the evening and the sudden chill.
    Perhaps Adrian was right, about me needing to go to bed. Not just because of the emotional turmoil—the mental exhaustion—I felt facing Adrian and Penn at once, or because I’d nearly passed out. I had lost hours of sleep in the wee hours of the morning, at Adrian’s feet, serving his desires. There had been moments when we didn’t seem like Dom and submissive so much as lovers. But now…
    The somber reverberations of Albinoni’s Adagio sounded abruptly through the gaping wooden shutters that made up the wall between the living room and the patio. I caught my breath, whisked back in an instant to the sickening, sinking feeling of being six, eight, eleven… Of sitting on the bare floor hugging my knees in the dark hallway outside my bedroom as my mother played this song low in the living room of our apartment, either on her