Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Rather than comment, he raised his hand. She caught her breath as he toyed with the cloak’s hood, which hid her hair and cast her face in shadow. After a long moment, during which he seemed to be considering her, he pushed the hood back.
Magdalena—Alena—looked straight ahead, holding perfectly still as he examined her.
“No collar,” he murmured.
Succinct but blunt, while also making his intentions clear.
Relief mingled with new, but not unexpected, anxiety. “No, Sir.”
The quiet man held out his hand.
Alena accepted the silent offer, his fingers warm as they closed around hers.
Then the quiet man led her through the crowd, past women and men bound to appliances and structures of wood and chain. He led her past a whipping post, the stocks. Past a woman on her knees, panting in pain as her Dom added another magnetic weight to the nipple clamps dangling from her breasts.
The quiet man led her out of the medieval-style dungeon that was, under normal circumstances, a hotel ballroom. The contrast between it and the elegant hallway was sharp, but easy to ignore as she focused on walking beside him, her thoughts on what was about to happen.
The room he brought her to was done in an odd mix of Japanese and Moroccan styles, the floor scattered with massive meters-square floor pillows and soft rugs. The furnishings were low chairs and tables with bowed legs, footstools, and banded trunks.
The theme of the event lacked focus, in Alena’s opinion—a medieval dungeon and a Moroccan lounge were hardly copacetic—but she wasn’t the hostess of this month’s Orchid Club gathering.
The quiet man dropped her hand, then gestured, inviting her, without words, to take a seat.
She hesitated for only a moment, quickly considering and dismissing various options, weighing and calculating what to do.
How she should present herself so that she was both enticingly submissive, but not forgettable?
Alena sat on a floor pillow, but rather than kneeling, she tucked her legs to one side. As she sank to the floor, her cloak—maroon velvet with black closures running from her neck to waist—spread out around her, falling open enough to reveal her legs.
His gaze fell to her limbs, and his attention traveled from ankle to knee up to her thigh, where the lacy band of the stocking gave way to pale skin.
“Your name?” This time he spoke English. He had an accent, a lovely almost lyrical one with just a hint of the hard Germanic syllables.
She’d studied up on the German spoken in Austria before coming to Vienna, and even had she not researched the quiet man, she would have heard the difference from a traditional German accent both in the way he spoke German and his accent when speaking English.
“Alena,” she replied. “Is my accent so obviously American?”
She’d been hoping to make him smile, but he only nodded.
She should have expected that from her quiet man.
“I’m Alexander.”
Alexander Wagner, age 45. Billionaire CEO and president of the powerful Wagner Company. A man who was private bordering on reclusive.
The Wagners were an old Austrian family, and had made their fortune in shipping, bringing things into central Europe along the Danube River that passed through Vienna. The company had survived through both world wars, and was now a global powerhouse.
Alexander had never been married, and when he did socialize, preferred blondes. His primary residence was here in Vienna, but he also had homes—estates more accurately—near Beleu Lake in Moldova, and in St. Moritz in the Swiss Alps. In the few video interviews she’d found, he spoke concisely and slowly, his entire demeanor one of quiet reserve.
Watching those was when she’d first started to think of him as “the quiet man.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Alexander.”
“You would like to play?”
The words seemed innocuous enough, but her whole body flushed with heat, then icy cold.
“Play” was a loaded word when it was spoken in this setting.
The Orchid Club was an innocent name for a debauched society of one-percenter BDSM aficionados. Every month the club moved to a new location. Members took turns hosting, and the host provided the facility and picked the theme, while Lillian, the club’s manager, handled the details of the three-night event.
Alena had been a member for a little over three months. She’d attended her first gathering in Copenhagen two months ago, and again last month in Rio de Janeiro.
Alexander Wagner had been at both.
Copenhagen had been for observation. He’d disappeared into a private room with a tall blonde on the second night, and a different blonde on the third.
In Rio she’d tried, and failed, to attract his notice.
But here in Vienna she’d succeeded. Now all she had to do was follow through.
On the floor at his feet, following through seemed a lot more dangerous than it had when she’d drafted this plan, this series of moves in the game.
“Yes…” She shifted, the cloak sliding away from her skin, exposing her hip and the wide satin bow that served as the hip band.