Sheer Torment Read online

  It was so visceral that for a moment, I thought it was really happening.

  But when I opened my eyes, he was still across the room, staring at me.

  “You can leave now,” I said.

  “You and your sister, you two are close?” He was walking around the kitchen now, opening cupboards.

  “Yes,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure this place is fit for you to live in.”

  “What?” I shook my head. This was getting stranger and stranger.

  From down the hall came the sound of complete silence, and I knew Emma was in her room, hanging on every word we were saying. Emma’s room was never silent. She was either watching TV or talking on the phone. She couldn’t stand silence. She even fell asleep with the television on, that’s how much she didn’t like it.

  “Look, if you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police,” I said.

  “What will you tell them?” The thought of the police coming seemed to amuse him, like he was picturing a bunch of bumbling cops falling all over themselves, tripping up the stairs to get to my apartment, instead of what would really happen -- cops blazing in, guns drawn, putting Landon in handcuffs and hauling him away.

  I would press charges, too, none of that dropping the charges bullshit just because it was easier.

  “I’ll tell them that an intruder broke into my apartment,” I said.

  “I didn’t break in. You let me in.”

  “No, I didn’t.” But I was confused. Had I let him in? I hadn’t invited him in, I was sure of that.

  I reached for my purse, pulled out my phone, clutching it in my hand.

  He was still looking around my kitchen. He’d finished going through my cupboards and now he’d picked up the bottle of wine on the counter.

  “Who bought this?” he demanded.

  “Emma and I.”

  He took it to the sink and began to pour it down the drain.

  “What are you doing?” I moved toward him and reached for the bottle, but he grabbed my wrist, stopping me with hardly any force. I was surprised at his strength, even though I’d had an up close and personal look at it when he’d flipped me over his knee and spanked me.

  He held my wrist until he’d finished pouring out the bottle of wine, and then he pulled me to him, so that my chest was pressed against his.

  My nipples instantly hardened, the right one still sore from where he’d reached down the top of my dress and twisted it.

  He leaned down and whispered into my ear. “You are way too beautiful to drink cheap wine.”

  He pulled back but held my wrist, and now his thumb brushed over my pulse point.

  My heart raced.

  “Aven,” he breathed.

  I was looking at the floor, because I couldn’t bear to look at him. Every time I looked at him, I got myself in trouble. His magnetism was like nothing I’d ever experienced, nothing I ever could have imagined even existed.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine him in the boardroom, taking control, making everyone bend to his every whim.

  “Look at me.”

  It was automatic, my eyes reaching his, responding to his commands.

  “Do you think I hurt your sister?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you realize how crazy that would be? Why would I hurt your sister?”I swallowed. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe because you spanked me and handcuffed me.”

  “Do you think that’s the same thing as what you’re talking about?”

  I knew what he was asking. He was asking if I thought the thing I was accusing him of – pretty much kidnapping and assault - -was the same as how he’d spanked me and touched me. “No,” I admitted. I didn’t. What we’d done, how he’d touched me, I’d liked it. And when I’d safe worded, he’d stopped, just like he’d told me he would. Everything had been completely consensual.

  Landon’s thumb continued moving over the underside of my wrist, leaving little brushfires in its wake.

  “That suite is a company suite, Ms. Sheer. Conner has access to it as well.”

  My breath caught. “So Violet was there with Conner?”

  “That would make more sense than me kidnapping your sister and leaving her scarf behind as evidence, wouldn’t it?”

  “Mr. Sheer – ”

  But his phone rang then, and he released me. As soon as he did, my knees went weak, leaving me feeling like spaghetti.

  He pulled his phone from his coat pocket. “Yes?” he barked into the receiver. “Yes. Thank you, I will.” He ended the call, fired off a quick text, then looked at me. “I’d like to stick to our arrangement, Ms. Courtland.”

  I stuck my chin in the air. “Circumstances have changed.” There was no way I was going to stick to our original plan, not after I found Violet’s scarf in his room. She may have been there with Conner, but I needed more.

  Landon nodded, like he’d been expecting this. “So you’d like to modify our terms?”

  “I’d like more information before we move forward.”

  “Go on.” He folded his hands in front of him, waiting for my demands.

  “You said you had an idea of where Conner is. Is that still true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is my sister with him?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  She had to be. She had to be with him. There was no other place she could be. “Where do you think Conner is?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  “Our cabin in Vermont,” Landon said. He was looking at our coffee pot now, a tiny little four-cup we bought at the drugstore down the street, one of our first purchases when we moved in. Emma and I were both coffee addicts, and while we preferred the fair trade dark roast or espresso drinks we could get from the hipster coffee shop on the corner, our budget didn’t really allow that.

  “Oh.” My heart sank. How the hell was I supposed to get to Vermont? Maybe a bus? Or one of those hourly rental car things, where you paid to use the car for the day and then got to drive wherever you wanted. I had a valid license, even though I hadn’t had to drive since I’d been in New York. “Okay, well, can you give me the address?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean no?”

  “I mean no.”

  “Then how am I supposed to get there?”

  “It’s not that kind of place. You can’t drive there. It’s very remote. Up in the mountains.”

  “And you think Conner’s there?” I repeated, wanting to make sure.

  “He’s been known to retreat there in the past.” He was pressing the buttons on my coffee pot now, shaking his head, half in disgust and half in wonder.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that Conner goes there when he’s in trouble.”

  That didn’t sound promising. “What kind of trouble?”

  Landon ignored my question. “I’ll take you there.”

  I laughed. “Right.”

  He looked up from the coffee pot sharply. “Why not?”

  “Because I know nothing about you.”

  He smiled, the side of his mouth quirking up. “You knew nothing about me when you decided to take my original offer.” He moved back toward me, taking my wrists again, his thumbs tracing that same searing trail over my skin.

  He leaned down and began to whisper in my ear, his voice ragged and rough and sexy as fuck. “And you liked what we did, didn’t you, Aven? I never got a chance to make you come.” His breath tickled my neck, and his lips nipped at my earlobe. His hands were on my thighs, and he ran his finger under the hem of my dress. “I ever got a chance to lick that pussy, to suck your clit until you screamed and begged me to fuck you.”

  My pussy pounded, begging for release, and a moan threatened to escape from my lips. I used all my willpower to hold it back, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

  “You still want to fuck, don’t you, Ms. Courtland?”

  I stared at him, not wanting to admit to him – and
to myself? – that I did.

  His hand squeezed the globe of my ass, so hard it hurt, the skin still raw from where he’d spanked me.

  “Answer me.”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  He released me immediately, and pulled out his phone. He was so close I could see his screen clearly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Ordering you an espresso machine. And some wine that won’t taste like sour juice and leave you with a raging headache.”

  “I don’t need an espresso machine. Or fancy wine.”

  He didn’t listen to me, instead finishing the transaction. I watched the screen flash “Your Order Has Been Received” before he put his phone back in his pocket.

  “Don’t you have some assistant to do that for you?”

  “Sometimes it’s faster to do things yourself.”

  I sighed. “So what? You’re going to take me to this mountain cabin? And what?”

  “We’ll see if your sister is there.”

  “And if she’s not?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t make you any promises.”

  I thought about it. No part of me thought it was a good idea to go to a remote cabin in the Vermont woods with Landon Sheer. Yes, he was famous. Yes, he was rich. Yes, he was ridiculously good-looking. But that meant nothing. All it meant was that if he wanted to hurt me, he could do it and probably get away with it, the same way maybe he or his brother had done to Violet.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth? About knowing where Conner might be? ”

  “You don’t. You’ll have to take a chance.”

  “That’s a hell of a chance.”

  “Do you really think I hurt your sister?” He looked at me like the idea was ridiculous. But underneath that, I saw something else reflected on his face, in the set of his jaw and the curve of his brow. Pain? Disappointment? Hurt that I would believe that about him? No, I told myself. That was ridiculous. Landon Sheer didn’t give a crap what anyone thought about him, least of all me. “Why would I do that? And my brother? What about him? If I’d taken Violet, then where’s Conner? Did I take him too?”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re a psycho who gets off on that kind of thing.”

  “Maybe I am,” he agreed. “But you’ll never know unless you come with me.”

  “When?”

  He took a step toward me, so close that his pelvis pushed against mine. He had me pinned to the counter, his arms caging me in. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

  I let myself let out a breath, thankful I’d have a little time to think about it.

  “You’ll spend the night with me tonight,” Landon said.

  “What? I can’t –”

  He put a finger to my lips. “That’s not negotiable, Ms. Courtland. If, in the morning, after our night together, you chose not to accompany me to Vermont, that will be respected.” His tone made it clear there was no way he thought that would happen, that if I spent the night with him, I would want to go to Vermont with him.

  “And if I… if I spend the night with you…”

  I left the end of my question lingering in the air, not sure what I wanted the answer to be.

  “Then the terms and rules we previously agreed to will be adhered to.”

  The terms.

  Fucking him.

  The rules.

  Calling him sir.

  Not lying to him.

  And being punished if I broke them.

  Landon reached behind me and took the zipper of my dress, which was still halfway down.

  My throat caught as he began to unzip me further, back down over the curve of my ass.

  “I will give you an hour to think about it, Ms. Courtland. My car will be here then.” His knuckles skated over my spine, leaving a scarlet red trail of desire in their wake, so intense I could feel it between my legs. “Wear something sexy.”

  He turned to go, leaving me standing there with my dress unzipped, my heart beating fast, and no idea what the hell had just happened.

  If I’d been worried about Emma being concerned about me or trying to tell me not to go, I needn’t have been.

  She was immediately on board, caught up in the glamour of me being whisked off to some remote location with a sexy billionaire. I’d tried to explain to her that it wasn’t like that, that it wasn’t some romantic retreat, that we were going to find my sister.

  I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince – her or me.

  Either way, it wasn’t working, especially since five minutes after Landon Sheer had left my apartment, there’d been a knock on the door, and when we’d opened it, there’d been two boxes sitting on the landing.

  One contained what looked like an insanely expensive espresso machine, the kind that was made of sleek stainless steel and brewed a million different kinds of drinks, everything from Americanos to Frappuccinos to regular old espresso shots.

  The other box was a case of a dark red wine, a wine with a name I couldn’t pronounce, something exotic and French that neither Emma nor I had ever heard of. We’d googled it, shocked to find out it cost two thousand dollars a bottle.

  “This is so insane,” she said now, gleefully uncorking one of the bottles as I stood in front of my closet, trying to figure out what, exactly, I was supposed to take with me.

  “I’m not sure if I’m definitely going,” I said. I was trying to tell myself this was true, even as I packed my things. Underwear, socks, bras, pajamas. Warm jeans. A blue and white flannel shirt. Two sweaters. My red Providence College fleece. “Can I borrow your puffy navy coat?” I asked.

  “Sure. It’s in the front closet.”

  I went and got the coat, and when I returned, Emma was drinking straight from the bottle, a dreamy look of bliss on her face.

  “Holy shit, this is good. I could get used to this.”

  “Please don’t drink the whole bottle.” I zipped up the suitcase, then got to work trying to figure out what it was I was going to wear tonight.

  Wear something sexy.

  I didn’t have anything sexy. At least, not sexy in the way I supposed Landon Sheer meant sexy.

  And I couldn’t wear this stupid dress, which I still hadn’t taken off.

  In the end, Emma helped me find a pair of black jeans that hugged my curves and an off-the-shoulder black sweater, paired with a black bra and black thong. I would fit right in, since everything Landon Sheer owned was black. I ran a flatiron through my hair and reapplied my makeup.

  “You don’t think he’s dangerous, do you?” I asked Emma as I waited by the door, my hand wrapped around the handle of my suitcase. It had been exactly fifty-eight minutes since he’d left.

  “Honey,” Emma said, uncorking another bottle of wine, “the only thing dangerous about that man is his looks.”

  My phone buzzed with a text exactly an hour after Landon Sheer had left my apartment, alerting me to the fact that there was a car waiting for me outside. It wasn’t from Landon – it was from an unidentified number, some kind of automated service.

  When I got outside, I was met by a uniformed man who opened the back door of a black stretch limo.

  “Oh,” I said when it became clear Landon wasn’t in the car. “I assumed Mr. Sheer would be here.”

  “Mr. Sheer had business to attend to.”

  “Oh. Okay, I guess.” I rolled my suitcase, a totally humiliating purple number that had been purchased at Target a few days before my high school senior trip to Magic Kingdom and had definitely seen better days, across the sidewalk toward him. “Should I just put this in the back?”

  “You can get in the car, Ms. Courtland.”

  I got in, sliding across the smooth, black leather seats, the now-familiar smell of new car surrounding me.

  “You won’t be needing any luggage. Mr. Sheer was very explicit about that.”

  Before I could say anything, he’d shut the door.

  He’d left my suitcase just sitting there on the sidewalk!

&nbs
p; I pulled out my phone and texted Emma, asking her to come down and grab my suitcase and bring it back upstairs to our apartment. Then, as the car began to move forward, its lights shining over the pedestrians of Manhattan, I dialed Landon.

  “Are you in my limo?” he asked. His voice was butter hitting a grill, smooth and sizzling and delicious.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “But I don’t want to go to your apartment.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t… I don’t want to be somewhere so remote.” My palms felt sweaty and I wiped them on my jeans.

  “How do you know my apartment is remote?” He sounded amused, as if he liked the thought that I was checking up on him.

  “I googled you,” I admitted. I mentally called up the article in the Wall Street Journal online, the one that had put Landon’s net worth at over fifty million dollars.

  The article had been all about how Landon and Conner had started their tech company with no money, even though their father had been rich. How they hadn’t used any of his connections, how they’d used investors only to get them off the ground and then bought them out so they could own Sheer Multinational outright. How they’d started out as a software company, but had branched out into having a stake in almost every current tech sector – social networking, cloud computing, internet commerce, and more.

  The article had said that Landon had been the brains behind the whole thing. It’s said that Conner was smart too, but that he’d taken on the role of networking and marketing. The article had been accompanied by a spread of their Manhattan apartments – Conner’s sparse and modern, complete with a man cave filled with arcade games, Landon’s, a three story affair with state of the art security, soundproof walls, and a library with rolling ladders that led to shelves of books that reached the sky.

  “It’s in the middle of Manhattan. I’d hardly call that remote, Ms. Courtland.”

  “Not the location. The… “ I struggled, trying to think of the word. “The way it was set up. I’ll meet you at the Belmont. The same suite we were in before, the one from the party. I’m going to text Emma and let her know I’ll be there.” I wanted to let him know that someone would know exactly where I was.