Page 82 of Betrayed

She blinked, still lost in a lusty haze, but replied without hesitation. “To you, sir. Only to you.”

“Damn straight.” He didn’t say another word, simply nodded with grim satisfaction and set her back on her feet.

As he turned to leave, he noticed Cap grinning broadly from where he stood behind his beaming wife’s chair. “Are we fucking meeting, or what?”

* * *

STUNNED, MARI STAGGEREDto the chair Angie pulled out for her and folded into it weak at the knees. She stared after him, wondering what had come over her calm, collected secret agent. She lifted trembling fingers to her kiss-swollen lips, still feeling the demanding pressure of his mouth.

Well, she’d wanted a reaction, and she’d gotten it, but never had she expected that. Rarely had she seen him angry, and never in this type of towering rage, and to make matters worse, he did it in a rapid, very odd mix of English and French, so she hadn’t understood a word.

Lexie’s breathy, “Oh my,” whispered from beside her made her turn. “The French, so passionate,” she added, fanning herself with her hand.

Beyond her, she saw the dreamy-eyed expressions on each of her new friends’ faces. They were gazing dazedly after her man, or maybe it was their men, because they had fallen in line behind Cap who was still chuckling softly as he followed Arturo to the door.

Rick was the last one to leave. Bending to place a kiss on the top of Regan’s head, he murmured with a soft laugh, “Another one bites the dust.” Then he also joined the other owners, less Jonas who was in Houston, to the aforementioned meeting.

“Oh my, my...” She heard repeated, this time from Mara. “There’s no mistake that he cares for you or you wouldn’t set him off like that.”

“Yeah,” Megan sighed, “and, girlfriend, your resistance?” She shook her head. “Give up now and save your strength. ’Because you are toast.”

She couldn’t disagree because like everyone else, she knew she was in trouble with a big, fat, capital T. She’d known it before she’d stared up at him in utter stupefaction as he ranted—yes, ranted, eyes blazing, jaw clenched tight, hands fisted in a white-knuckled grip—then stalked off in a truly magnificent pique of rage.

Oddly enough, his impassioned display saturated her already damp panties, or maybe not so oddly, considering the mere sight of him when he wasn’t fit to be tied made her pussy wet.

It dated back much further than tonight, or the weekend at the beach, or even the first time he’d taken her, driving into her hard and fierce while strapped to a spanking bench in the dungeon. She realized it the first time she’d seen him, not his face, his magnificent green eyes, or his smile. It had come from the confident command he had as he threw his whip all those weeks ago. That’s when she started running scared. But no longer, she was past that and ready to surrender completely.

“Dear heavens,” she murmured in a shaky voice. “Even if I wanted to take part in the dire acts, I presume he just warned me against, I couldn’t, because I didn’t understand a word of that.” Her gaze swept the others. “Please, tell me someone speaks French and can translate.”

“Megan,” Regan prompted, blue eyes colliding with her twin. “You took French.”

Her twin’s eyes flew wide. “In school, a decade ago, I’m hardly fluent and he was so ticked, he was speaking really fast.”

“What about all those stories about that French chef you trained with?” she challenged.

Meg turned to Mari to explain further. “I studied under Chef Michael, a French pastry genius, for six months. Like Master Arturo, he had a long fuse, but when set off, he became hot-blooded and his cursing was volatile. Some things he said would curl your hair.”

“If you recognized curses, you must have understood the gist of what Arturo said,” Lexie observed as she reached to refill her drink. “Even I knowputainis the same as the F-bomb in French.”

“Please, Megan,” Mari pleaded, “I made out the F-bomb, too, and tonight,ce soir, but even the smattering of English he mixed in was beyond me. Can you at least translate what you got?”

Megan’s eyes flashed to the others. “I’m very rusty.” They all nodded in understanding. Still, she hesitated, looking back to Mari briefly then across at her sister and her friends with concern. “I don’t want to make matters worse if I get it wrong.”

“Oh, for crying out loud, Meg, you got straight A’s,” Regan cried in frustration. “Out with it, before we keel over from terminal curiosity.”

Her attention shifted back to Marilee. “Tu m’appartiensmeans you belong to me.”

“I knew it! You’ve been claimed,” Lexie gushed with a grin.

“Why does that sound even more romantic in French?” Regan sighed.

“What else did he say?” Mari breathed.

Resolved to the role of translator, a twinkle glinted in Megan’s eyes. “‘If you even think I’ll let you dance with that prick Seth Benson, or anyone else tonight, there’ll be hell to pay.’ Or something close to that.”

The group’s focus immediately returned to her, their expressions ranging from sympathy to out-and-out glee, and each woman wore a smile, from small to full, broad grins. She knew all of them had once been where she was right now, falling head over heels in love with a gorgeous, seductive, larger-than-life man despite his high-handed, domineering, sometimes infuriating ways. But Mari found it endearing and his jealousy additional proof that she was more than just an assignment to him, that he really cared. She was elated, even though all the therapists she’d seen in the past few years would have said she was fucked up.

With a silly grin on her face, her gaze swept the other subs, and she echoed their collective opinion with a delighted, “He must want me after all.”

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