Have Me - Anne Marsh

PROLOGUE

IGNITION

Liam

A NAKED COUPLE bangs enthusiastically behind the rhododendrons by the pool, ignoring the pile of people conducting an orgy on my front lawn. God bless California’s outstanding nighttime weather. I tend to skirt the group sex thing. Not because I’m prudish but because if I get too close, I’ll join in and I shouldn’t have sex tonight. Mostly because when I drink this much, I black out and then I do the filthiest, half-remembered things that I completely hate myself for. My Napa sex parties may be popular with the Silicon Valley elite who make the two-hour drive north from San Francisco, and my guest list may boast more start-up founders and CEOs than a venture capital fund, but certain people on a certain board don’t like them. I’ve been spanked and told to stop and apologize for past bad behavior—or else.

I haven’t taken orders since earning my first billion dollars, and I’m definitely not apologizing for anything. Turning over a new, reformed leaf is also not part of my plans for tonight. Instead, I head for the music and lights of the nearby big top. The enormous tent wasn’t included with my purchase of the ten-thousand-square-foot château, although there’s more than enough room for it between the French-style formal gardens and the acres of grapevines. Tonight’s party theme is Fun Under the Big Top and I’ve imported an entire circus and midway, complete with a Ferris wheel, naughty arcade games and a three-ring show of sex acts. Waiters pass champagne and carnival food, but the snacks aren’t the focus of attention. That would be the acrobats building a complicated pyramid of naked bodies in a showy display of minuscule loincloths, sequins, muscles, tits and asses. I work up some applause and devote myself to draining the remainder of my bourbon.

This is where the night starts to blur and jump thanks to what I’ve knocked back from the bottle of ridiculously expensive bourbon in my hand. Drunk me time-travels in tiny hops, skipping from one moment to the next so that I can gloss over the boring parts, like how I’ve got from a tent of naked people to the base of the Ferris wheel. I’m not blackout drunk, not yet, but I’m close. The ride spins in a dizzying circle, spokes flashing past me as the riders shriek.

I’m thinking I do want sex. Dirty, filthy, anonymous sex. The kind that makes you hate yourself in the morning for what you were willing to do or let be done. The kind of sex that hurts and leaves a mark.

So of course that’s when I spot the girl. Woman. She stands out, a quality about her, a hot, magnetic pull between us that gets my dick hard. Mostly, I want to fuck her, to drag her down to my level, but she has to say she wants this, too. That’s the one rule of my nasty game. You have to admit your secret wants out loud.

She’s one of my few guests who hasn’t raided the adult aisle of the Halloween store for her costume. I mentally mark her up for that because she’s stunning anyhow, even all covered up. A black-and-white-striped dress bells out from the curve of her waist to mid-thigh, the hem decorated with a row of pom-poms. It’s more cute than sexy until I get to the red-and-white stockings in a naughty pair of red fuck-me heels. And as if she hasn’t hit all my hot buttons already, she wears fingerless gloves and carries a tiny black umbrella that she twirls as she tips her head back to watch first the Ferris wheel and then me.

“Are you taken?” She grins at me, face still upside-down, her voice soft and irrepressibly mischievous. A black velvet mask conceals most of her features but strawberry-blond hair spills down her back in an unruly ponytail.

“By you.” It’s cheesy, but entirely true. Right now, right here, I’m all hers and she’s welcome to do whatever she wants with me.

She’s so completely covered up, I want to strip her bare, brush my mouth over the column of her throat and then move lower. I could fist her hair as I drive into her and make her scream with pleasure. Her eyes laugh at me, happy, pleased to be here.

I really shouldn’t go near her.

So of course I do.

I stride right over until my shoulder is brushing hers when she straightens.

As soon as I touch her, as soon as I pull on the ties of the