RoxannesPirate Read online

  “I’m brilliant too.”

  He laughed.

  She straddled his body and slipped to his left side. His cock stirred.

  “You have a lovely body too, Carlos, and a particularly impressive cock. I don’t think I could take it all in my mouth.”

  “Why don’t you see how much you can manage?”

  She had trained herself to take most of Paul’s cock in her mouth in the mistaken belief that he would find her irreplaceable. It hadn’t worked to keep him, but Carlos’ soft sighs told her he appreciated her skill. She enjoyed the taste of him, the sensation of his cock hardening to something like granite as she sucked him and pressed the tender area under his balls. She wanted to give him pleasure. She wanted him to feel better than he’d ever felt.

  He pushed her head away. “Stop.” He sat up. “I don’t want to come in your mouth. I want to fuck you.” His voice dropped. “Get on your knees.” It was an order. He smiled slightly, softening the effect of his command. “Please.”

  Roxanne knelt on the bed, her head and breasts resting on the down-filled pillows. Her nipples were hard and sensitive. They almost burned as they brushed against the softness of the sheets.

  “There’s a condom in the pocket of my robe,” she told him. She felt the bed give as he slid off then felt his weight return. She opened her knees wider. The cool air brushed against her hot, moist flesh. He knelt behind her, stroking the soft skin of her buttocks.

  “There is something so erotic about a woman in this position,” he said. “She is so open, so submissive.” His fingers caressed her skin. “It seems so primal. All there is of you is ass and cunt, waiting to be entered and taken. I’m glad you don’t remove all your hair. Women shouldn’t pretend they aren’t animals.”

  She wanted something she had experienced only in her fantasies. Wasn’t this a fantasy? Say it!

  “Spank me,” she said. She pressed her face into the pillow. “Please. Spank me hard.”

  “With pleasure.”

  She whimpered at the sting of his hand on her skin, but at the same time a shock wave wet her, opened her. He slapped her again and again and again. He cupped his hands around her burning skin, soothing her.

  “You’re skin is so red,” he murmured. He slid his finger over her folds and inside her. “And you’re so wet.” He sounded surprised. He slid another finger inside. “So very wet.”

  Roxanne rocked her hips against his hand. She moaned at the pleasure this gave her. He pulled his fingers away and pressed his cock against her. Roxanne pushed against him, to bring him in. She gasped when he filled her. She tried to move her hips, but he held her in place.

  “Let me do it,” he said. “I want to go slow.”

  He pulled his cock almost out and pushed it back in. The friction made Roxanne groan. Out and in. Out and in.

  “This feels so good, Roxanne. Oh, it feels so good.”

  She twisted the sheets in her fists. “Please let me fuck you,” she begged.

  “Not yet.”

  He began to thrust harder, harder and deeper. Then his hands moved, no longer holding her back, he was pushing her hips back and forth. Roxanne thrilled to the sensation of his cock pressing against the walls of her passage. Her own pleasure built, heat spread through her body.

  He bent forward to get in deeper. Roxanne turned her face into the pillow because this deep thrusting hurt, but the pain was mixed with intense pleasure. He assailed her body with such force it was hard to hold up against him. But her pleasure spread. Her climax was tantalizingly close. He squeezed her hips. His breathing was in hard gasps. She raised a finger to touch her throbbing clit. The slight pressure she added was enough to bring her to the brink. He pulled her hips hard against him. And she was there, broken up, dazzled.

  “Aaah!” he cried out, filling her so completely she could feel his cock pulse. He held her tight, emptying into her. Finally, he released her and withdrew. She lowered her hips to the bed. He collapsed on the bed beside her.

  “I needed that,” he gasped.

  She lengthened her body, moving her legs carefully. There was a pleasant ache inside from his pounding.

  “I’m glad I could help,” she said.

  They both laughed. He discarded the condom and pulled the sheets and quilt up to cover them. In a few minutes she heard the deep, even breathing of a man asleep.

  Chapter Three

  Roxanne woke with a start in an unfamiliar room, the soft breathing of another human being in her ear, the weight of a man’s arm across her chest. There was a dull ache in her head. The man next to her murmured in his sleep and rolled away from her.

  Carlos.

  She sat up, careful not to wake him. Her throat was parched. She needed water. She slid out from under the quilt. She could barely make out objects in the dim light. She bent down to get her robe and a hammer struck the inside of her skull. According to the bedside clock, it was ten after four. She put on the robe and tiptoed into the living room. She could see better here—the light by the desk was on. She headed to the sideboard for a glass. She filled the glass with water from the bar refrigerator and pulled out the desk chair. She sat and drank. The water was cold and sweet in her mouth.

  The ease induced by the blue drink was gone. What should she do now? Should she leave? Should she wait until he woke then tell him the truth? Would he find her charade amusing or bizarre? When she told him the truth, would he still like her? Idly, she shifted the papers on his desk. Her eyes caught her law firm’s logo on the top of a letter—a capital W with a superimposed T and the words Taylor, Wheelock, P.C., Attorneys at Law.

  She held the letter closer to the light. It was dated one week before and was addressed to Carlos Delgado, President of Delgado Enterprises, advising him that the firm had been retained by Hector Rivera to pursue claims arising out of a failed resort project on an island off the coast of Florida, which had been known as the Dover Key Development and managed by Delgado and his late partner Spencer Marshall. The letter was signed by Bardon Collins.

  “Shit,” she whispered. She had successfully avoided Bardon since the firm holiday party when he tried to corner her under some fake mistletoe. She had escaped only by jamming her heel into the toe of his shoe. He had backed away and laughed about what he called her overreaction to his harmless joke. The thought of him as Carlos’ adversary worsened her headache.

  She looked at the next paper in the pile. It was the legal complaint initiating the suit Rivera vs. Delgado.

  Roxanne pushed the papers away. She would be committing a serious breach of legal ethics if she read any communications between Carlos and his lawyers. She remembered Andrew’s joke about attorneys and their lack of ethics—yes, there were lawyers and judges who were scum, but she was not one of them. She knew too well what had happened to her father when he lost his moral compass. Thinking of her father raised the old pain in her heart. Roxanne sighed. Her night of fun was over.

  She glanced at the floor and noticed some papers that must have fallen off the desk. She bent to pick them up and winced at the pain in her skull. One paper was blank, but the other seemed to be a diagram—a crudely hand-drawn flow chart with various names circled and arrows and dollar signs connecting the names. She saw the words Dover Key Development and the names Spencer Marshall and Hector Rivera and Investco Associates. A tip of a crudely drawn hypodermic needle pointed at Spencer Marshall’s name, riding an arrow that emanated from the last circled name. Her eyes dropped down to the last circle and she saw the name John Murkley and she sucked in air—as shocked as she would have been if she had stumbled on a corpse. She dropped the paper onto the desk, but her gaze was glued to that name. Murkley! She saw the man’s ice-blue eyes in his handsome blank face, saw his manicured hand holding a small white envelope, heard her father’s strained voice as he struggled to whisper his secret in her ear only hours before he died. “Murkley, he was the one, he was behind it all.”

  Her hand shook as she raised the glass of water to her m
outh. If Carlos had any connection to Murkley—the malevolent architect of her father’s disgrace—she wanted no part of him. She got up and scrambled to find her clothing. She picked up her jacket, halter and skirt with shaking hands, but in the dim light she could not find her panties. She knelt on the carpet to look for them, but a noise from the bedroom made her stop.

  Carlos had turned over in bed.

  His image flashed through her mind. She saw his hair tousled around his face, his muscular arms and shoulders visible above the quilt. It would be so easy to slip back into bed with him—so easy and so stupid. She would leave the panties. She dressed, buckled her sandals and picked up her evening bag. Her phone and wallet were safe inside. Her keys were with the parking lot attendant.

  She put her hand on the doorknob and turned for one final glance at the bedroom. She exhaled softly. You are not a fool. He was wonderful, but the night is over. Don’t linger. Go home. It’s over.

  The streets of Manhattan were brightly lit, but there were few cars on the road and fewer pedestrians out so early on the cold, pre-dawn winter morning. Roxanne had put her down coat over her silk suit and replaced her sandals with her fleece-lined boots. She shivered even with the car’s heat blasting. What if Carlos’ connection to Murkley was innocent? What if the Murkley the paper referred to was not the man who had destroyed her father? She shook her head. A ruined business like the Dover Key Development had Murkley’s stink all over it.

  She sped through the Lincoln Tunnel and got on the New Jersey Turnpike. She concentrated on driving and on the patter of the announcers on the radio talk show. Her head still ached, but her hands were steady.

  It was half past five when she pulled into her driveway. She had three hours before she had to leave for work. She felt immediate relief when she shut her door behind her. She was home. She was safe. She took a long, hot shower and toweled dry. There were slight bruises on her breasts and thighs from Carlos’ hands and mouth.

  Would he miss her when he woke and found she was gone? She saw again the look on his face when she straddled him—how urgently, desperately he had wanted her. What a pleasure it would have been to have his tongue between her legs, to feel the weight of his body on top of her. She touched herself lightly between her legs. She was wet thinking about him.

  She lay down on her bed, covered herself with the blanket and spread her legs wide open. She had time for an orgasm before she had to leave for work. She slipped her fingers over her clit. It swelled at her touch and her memory of Carlos’ face. She would put the paper she had seen out of her mind, she would bury the sight of that hated name, she would resume her hermit life—but she could not forget Carlos. She closed her eyes and pictured him on the deck of a ship with a whip in his hand. Yes, he made the perfect pirate. She would willingly submit to him again and again.

  Chapter Four

  “I apologize, Miss Cline. I’m sorry I missed you at the benefit last night.” Cecily Bigelow’s voice on the phone sounded honey-sweet. “I do hope you enjoyed yourself.”

  “Absolutely, Mrs. Bigelow. My table companions were charming,” Roxanne said.

  “Truly? Joanna showed me an email message she received from Andrew Dalton this morning. He sounded the tiniest bit disgruntled. He was concerned that you had disappeared before the evening was over and wanted to assure me that whatever happened, it was not his fault.”

  “I promise you, Mrs. Bigelow, I had a lovely evening.”

  Mrs. Bigelow chuckled. “Met someone else, did you?”

  Roxanne was glad Mrs. Bigelow could not see her blush.

  “As you did have such a lovely evening, I’m hoping you’ll agree to change our meeting location tomorrow afternoon to your Manhattan office. My plans have changed. I won’t be staying at the house in Far Hills.”

  Roxanne glanced at her calendar. “That would be fine. I’ll send an email to Joanna confirming the change.”

  “Excellent. There is a great deal we have to discuss, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. You know how I hate lengthy conversations over the phone. So last century of me, as my granddaughter says.”

  Roxanne said her goodbye and put down the phone. There was much about Cecily Bigelow that harkened back to even more distant centuries. Like a successful seventeenth- or eighteenth-century courtesan, Cecily Bigelow had amassed a fortune through love affairs and marriages with very wealthy men, and multiplied that fortune through shrewd investments. Now in her late seventies, Mrs. Bigelow took great pleasure in doling out her largesse to charitable organizations. At her granddaughter’s urging, she was moving some of her charitable giving away from museums and schools to micro-finance and environmental organizations. Roxanne enjoyed her work with both Mrs. Bigelow and her granddaughter Ariadne. She was looking forward to their most recent project—the creation of a foundation to fund the development of ecologically sound resorts that would benefit local economies and protect the environment.

  Roxanne shuffled the papers on her desk. Despite her lack of sleep and her lingering hangover, she had spent the morning and afternoon rewriting trust documents for a client. The ache in her head had diminished over the course of the day, but sudden movements still caused pain. She looked out her office window. The lights from her building illuminated the bare limbs of the maple trees that surrounded the parking lot. The thin black branches made her think of frozen fingers stretched up to the cloud-filled sky. The forecast called for more snow that evening. In spite of the increasing hours of daylight that hinted at spring, winter had not yet surrendered.

  Roxanne was the only one in her immediate family who could endure cold weather. Her two older brothers had moved to California for college and medical school and both had settled there. Her mother had remarried three years ago and moved to Arizona with her new husband. She was constantly nagging Roxanne to move west and could not understand Roxanne’s refusal. Last week, they’d had an argument when Roxanne made the mistake of commenting on the unusually heavy snowfall.

  “You’re like your father in so many ways,” Roxanne’s mother said. “I told him that snow might be fun when you’re a little kid, but not when you have to drive through it. He wouldn’t listen to me either.”

  “I’m not like Dad,” was Roxanne’s automatic response. “Lots of people like snow.”

  Years ago, when Roxanne was young, she had loved when other people found similarities between her and her father. When she discovered the truth about him, her pride in their shared characteristics was replaced with fear. Roxanne had promised herself that she would not be like her father—she would never sacrifice her honor, her decency or her self-respect for a destructive passion.

  Roxanne shook her head to dislodge the thoughts and winced as a sharp pain stabbed deep in her skull. She would never drink blue liquor again. But without it, you wouldn’t have had Carlos. She sighed. She did not want to think about him. She pushed her chair back from her desk and went in search of distraction.

  The office cafeteria was usually full of people seeking a caffeine fix or a chance to exchange some gossip, but this afternoon it was empty. Roxanne brewed a cup of hazelnut-flavored decaf coffee then walked slowly back to her office. Everyone, from the office staff to the partners, seemed too busy to chat. Reluctantly Roxanne returned to her desk. She scrolled through her emails. Her mother had written—again—about the amazing numbers of eligible men she had met in Phoenix and how excited she was to introduce them to Roxanne on her next visit. Her brothers both wrote that they were concerned about her and hoped she would take time to do something fun. Don’t be serious all the time, the cardiologist warned her, it’s bad for your heart. Relax a little, wrote the oncologist, your body will thank you. Roxanne’s friend Jill Blake wanted to make a date with Roxanne for dinner or lunch or coffee or just a quick chat. We haven’t talked in ages, Jill wrote. You seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. No excuses this time. Let’s get together this week.

  Roxanne typed her response to Jill. She was very fond of Jil
l, but she didn’t feel like baring her bruises or putting on a cheerful façade. Been so busy, she wrote Jill. Can’t do this week. Maybe next?

  She hit Send. She paused with her fingers on the keys. She knew what she wanted to do next, what she’d spent the day avoiding.

  Go ahead. No one will know.

  She brought up a search engine and typed in Carlos Delgado and Delgado Enterprises. She found the company’s website and learned that Delgado Enterprises had been founded by Ernesto Delgado to develop condominium and resort properties in Florida and throughout Central and South America. The main office of the company was located in Miami. Since Ernesto’s death ten years earlier, the company had been directed by Ernesto’s son Carlos and had gradually changed its focus to developing small-scale luxury resorts. There was no personal information about Carlos on the site. She found references to Delgado Enterprises on other sites. The company had experienced setbacks recently with the downturn in the economy but appeared to be stable.

  While she found information on the company, it was difficult to find information about Carlos. There were millions of links to a multitude of men named Carlos Delgado. It would take her hours to weed through them to find her man. Don’t think about him that way! To speed up her search, she needed more information, the kind of information she might be able to find in the pleadings filed in the lawsuit Hector Rivera had brought against Carlos. She could get the pleadings from the litigation department of her firm, but that would require an explanation. It was not often an estate planner needed to review pleadings in a lawsuit. Whatever she did, she wanted to avoid explaining to Bardon Collins her sudden interest in the matter. She thought about her options and drummed her fingers on her keyboard. Inspiration struck.

  She composed an email to one of the litigation paralegals.

  I have a client interested in funding eco-tourism ventures through a private foundation. I understand there is an island off the coast of Florida that might be suitable but it’s tied up in a lawsuit. One of our clients is the plaintiff. Can you send me a copy of the pleadings? The case is Rivera v. Delgado. Bardon Collins is representing Rivera. Thanks.