A smile threatened to break through at the thought of my lord Ivan protecting my honor by challenging Kent to a duel or something. He was now rubbing circles below my ear right against my neck, distracting me further. A deliciously sensual spot he'd discovered on my body. Ivan already knew where he should be touching me. How was this possible?
I was beyond understanding how it all would work. I didn't even want to try to figure it out. Ivan didn't seem to be worried a bit. He had enough confidence for the both of us. So, I let him plead his case. I leaned into his caress and allowed him to continue with his closing arguments most convincingly.
"I do know it's not good for you to deny yourself something you need, though. It also doesn't work that way. You cannot deny physical needs. You need the submission as much as I need the domination. And you're going to seek it out with someone at some point, and I believe that someone should be me, of course." He pressed his lips to the spot he'd been caressing with his thumb. "I'll take care of you here. We have a pretty damn perfect sexual connection already even without the kink, you know?" He stroked a single finger down from my lips, over my chin, down my neck, and then kept going determinedly until he reached a breast, stopping at my nipple. He circled the tip of his finger over my sensitive flesh, teasing it to attention with the added pinch between his thumb and forefinger. I couldn't help the intense jolt of pure pleasure that grabbed me any more than I could prevent the little moan that escaped my mouth. I could only observe the response of my body to his touch as my nipple budded up hard and tight under his fingers. "Am I right?"
"Yes." At least I wasn't lying to him. I could wholeheartedly agree that the sex was addictive even without kink. It was so good. So good.
"And Donadea is private and safe and don't forget the bonus of the art gig. You're going to be paid very well for a large job which could take an awfully long time to complete. It's the perfect arrangement in so many ways."
"But the university will be credited with the evaluation, not me. I won't be paid personally. My salary is from—I work for U of L—"
"Yes, you will be fucking paid, Gabrielle. My contract will be with you alone. I no longer have a contract with the university as of the morning after you left here the last time. Paul Langley called me out, chastised my stupid arse for sexual harassment of his student, and then dropped me as a donor to the university."
Whoa. I had no idea about Paul dropping Ivan. He'd mentioned before that Ivan was a big donor, so it must have hurt the budget a lot to cut him loose. I felt a twinge of guilt for turning him in to Paul, but he did proposition me and accuse me of being a sex worker. I truly believed he was mentally unstable. God, that situation with us the first time I came to Donadea was a complete clusterfuck of misunderstanding from start to finish.
"So… the art evaluation is a private contract between you and me?"
"It will be. I'll have the original redrawn and you can look it over tonight before you sign."
"Don't forget I'm still a student in a graduate program. Any new works I bring in will still have to be certified by an official body like the university to be taken seriously in the fine art world. Nobody will accept the observations of a mere grad student. If I'm all on my own here, it won't be a sanctioned evaluation until you bring in someone official. Don't you want this to be an official cataloguing of the Donadea collection, Ivan?"
"When you put it like that," he said thoughtfully, stroking his stubbled chin in a way that made me insanely jealous of his hand, "I'm only more determined that it just be you, Gabrielle." He gave me a devious little wink, making me note his successful fake-out. "The fact that you're so passionate about protecting the provenance of the Donadea collection before you've even had any kind of look at it, and willing to forgo payment even, just further convinces me that you're the only person I want for this job. Can I make myself any clearer on the matter?"
"Wow, that's a lot of confidence in someone you don't even know beyond a friendship with your cousin's new bride."
"Not really. Paul Langley sent you here in the first place. He said you were uniquely suited for this job in fact. He chose you. We may not be on the best of terms at the moment, but I trust department chair, Paul Langley, as the go-to-guy for knowing who to entrust with a valuable collection of bloody fucking art."
Stifling the urge to laugh was impossible. It slipped out of me. He made me smile and laugh with the stiff-upper-lipped, civilized British sarcasm he used so liberally in his speech. Even more when arguing a point—which, I might add, he did often. It seemed that Ivan had no problem at all offering up plenty of arguments for why his way was the right and correct decision. Must be the politician in him. My lord indeed. A lord in life and in personality really existed on the earth. Somehow, I'd found a unicorn. Or…the unicorn had somehow found me.
Just listening to Ivan talk was enjoyable to me for some reason. That voice of his… A mercurial beast in a Brunello Cucinelli suit. A sophisticated savage. A Greek god—my Eros asking for permission to worship at my temple. When he spoke, the words that came out of his mouth were something just so very beautiful—
Words saying, I was sexy and gorgeous. Words commanding me to take him inside me and submit to his desires. Words so very filthy, but also perfectly placed in divine moments of deliciously dirty fucking. Words kissed over my body and caressed into my skin reverently. Words laughed back at me for something witty I'd said. Words of compliment, but also of the most brutal honesty.
"The little laugh you just gave me tells me all I need to know, Miss Hargreave. Thank you for that. Because now I know you're going to sign that contract, and then we can negotiate the rest. I will require a non-disclosure for privacy reasons. Which will cover the collection's contents as well as your relationship with me, and also extend to any time you're here in residence at the estate. You can't discuss any of it with anybody. The non-disclosure takes precedence over the contract for the art evaluation, I'm afraid. I hope you won't have problem with that." He stared down at me, probably trying to read my reaction to his requirement of a non-disclosure agreement for being here at Donadea, regardless of what I was doing. Evaluating his art collection or working off the sexual tension surrounding us like a brewing storm cloud which never quite blew clear through. I'd be doing both if I accepted and signed. Yes, maintaining his privacy here at this lovely aristocratic oasis perched among the wildness of the North Irish coast was indeed extremely important to Ivan Everley. Even I could deduce that significant fact at this juncture just from our limited encounters with each other up till now. God, the night I showed up here in the rain and surprised him… He was so enraged at his privacy being breached, mistaken identity or not. It was a trigger for him. One I'd have to remember.
But it was important for me to make one more thing clear to him before he started asking for signatures on contracts. He needed to know. “Ivan, as long as you understand that the submission happens behind the door for me. It won’t ever cross over into the rest of my life, or my work. During sex is the only time I feel the desire—when I feel like giving up control to another person. The only time.”