Under His Sway Read Online Free PDF

breathed out lightly, almost a chuckle. “No, sir.”
    “But I want you to. I insist… again .” Though my voice contained a low, relaxed rumble, I sounded petulant even to myself.
    This earned me another amused sigh, covering a faint giggle. “Who are you?”
    Who was I? “Your Master?”
    “Before that. Besides that.”
    “Not need-to-know information, Miss Bloom.”
    The small toes of one of her feet trailed along mine and up my ankle, and I wasn’t sure it all if she was conscious of doing it. I rather preferred to think it was subconscious, wholly the result of the fact that for once she wasn’t guarding and planning her every movement. “Tell me anyway,” she said.
    “I’m the very bad son of a very bad man at the end of a long line of very bad men.”
    “Well, that’s confusing. Does that mean you’re very bad or very bad at being very bad? Now answer the question,…sir.”
    “I’m money that comes from money,” I admitted, though I couldn’t fathom why I was being even that forthcoming. Why would I answer this question? Why would I want to? I sighed at myself, feeling the bite of frustration in the ache building along my brow. Because it was Chloe asking, and part of me wanted Chloe to know. Part of me wanted Chloe to believe me a man of value. There was that pesky urge toward honesty, though. “Very old money that we have no business having. We don’t do anything especially good with it.”
    “Like eco parks?” she interjected.
    “That obvious, am I? Yes, like eco parks. I’ll probably be the first in ten generations to leave something behind that was better off for me having touched it.” The obvious question rushed up then, leaving me feeling just a touch sick. Would Chloe be able to say she was better off for having known me? The man who dominated her, ravaged her twice daily, bent her to his every whim—specifically so he could say he’d bested the man who’d stolen the only thing that had mattered to him, and more than a decade ago, at that?
    “Keep going,” she prodded, sounding more than a little like me. I supposed it was unavoidable that submissives would learn their masters’ techniques.
    “You work in environmental law, Miss Bloom. You move in moneyed circles. So surely you know my story, sans minor details. But if it’s what you want…” I nuzzled her neck and couldn’t help enjoying the way she cuddled against me when I did so. “And since I didn’t let you come…
    “I’m from a wealthy London family. Our money is in real estate, commercial development, international project management, that sort of thing. And in cutting corners best we can, whenever we think we won’t get caught.”
    “And that’s what you’re very bad at? Were you born with a moral compass or something?”
    How could I not laugh at that? “That depends on who you ask. Nina, Gabriel, Luiz… Especially Luiz.” As an afterthought I added, “My mother’s family.”
    Chloe twisted onto her back so she could look up at me, a dangerously thoughtful look on her exotic face. “You’ve talked about her family even less than your father’s,” she observed.
    I shrugged and put on an affected smirk. “What’s there to say? She was a second wife and was never intended to supply the true heir. Her family had its own wealth, but it was new money. It smells different, you know.”
    “Really?” Chloe asked with a suggestion of a careful smile. “I hadn’t heard that.”
    “It’s true. My trust fund definitely had that new car smell—hers passing to me. It couldn’t have been more than a few decades old.” I grinned at myself remembering. It wasn’t a mirthful smile but a sour one. “I remember vowing I was never going to use that money. All teenage hormones and angst at the time. I was going to make my own name on my own terms. If her family was too good to have me after she died, then devil take their money. And my father’s family… I couldn’t get away from them fast