French Kiss (Decadence Nights Book 2) Read online

  French Kiss

  Decadence Nights Book Two

  By

  Maddie Taylor

  ©2016 by Blushing Books® and Maddie Taylor

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

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  Maddie Taylor

  French Kiss (Decadence Nights-Book Two)

  Cover Design by ABCD Graphics

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-687-6

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books’ or the author’s advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Table of Contents:

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  EBook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  Blushing Books

  Prologue

  85 Albert Embankment, Vauxhall Cross, London

  A brilliant flash of light filled the seventy-inch high definition screen and was immediately followed by the boom of an explosion through the speakers, loud enough to rattle the windows and send a tremor through the conference room. A wall of flames shot into the air along with a cloud of billowing smoke as the one woman, eight-man team leaned forward, waiting with bated breath for the gray haze to dissipate and the scene to unfold. Long excruciating moments later, an image of smoldering, mangled metal became visible, which was all that was left of the obliterated vehicle except for the charred, flaming debris that crashed to the ground all around it. In the distance, a woman’s mournful wail rose in the thick, smoky air.

  Arturo Durand, a seasoned MI6 agent, had seen plenty of horrific deaths in the course of his twenty years of service. He’d watched enemy combatants killed, his own bullets at times doing the deed. He’d seen suffering among the innocent bystanders who ended up as collateral damage simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In war, he had watched helplessly as his countrymen fell, fellow soldiers in arms who’d known the risks and accepted them as part of the job. And he’d witnessed car bombings like the one he’d just seen, a few in person and much too close for comfort, but never had he seen a colleague, a man he called his friend, incinerated before his eyes.

  Any loss of life was tragic, but this had become personal and heart-wrenchingly tragic because he knew William Cleese left a wife and two young sons behind. Retired three years past, this man had paid his dues and earned his reward for the dangerous life he’d led while serving his country heroically as an intelligence specialist for almost his entire career. For this to happen after he left the SIS was appalling. Worse, this was the third targeted killing of former agents in the past year.

  As Arturo’s thoughts lingered on Will’s wife—correction, his widow, made so in the blink of an eye and a flash fire of destruction—and the two now fatherless children this act of terrorism would leave behind, his heart ached for them and he wondered, not for the first time, how much more of this endless, senseless violence, day in and day out, he could endure.

  Bottom line, he was getting too old and too damn tired for this shit.

  He scanned the screen, taking in not only the charred shell of the car, but everything around it on what had certainly been a quiet Athens street only moments before. As he studied the image, he realized the damage was more extensive than was typical. The blast had been strong enough to knock the five-thousand-pound vehicle askew, powerful enough to create an extraordinarily large crater in the concrete street, and set the cars in front and behind it ablaze. The surrounding buildings were also heavily damaged, more so than the few blown out windows he would have expected.

  This was not the work of an ordinary car bomb.

  The screen went blank and a hush fell over the room as the agents tried to assimilate what they had just witnessed.

  “Damn, that was hard to watch.” Danvers, one of the ne
west operatives, thirty-years-old at the most, muttered brokenly while rubbing his face, his usually suntanned complexion having gone pale.

  “Has anyone claimed responsibility?” Raymond Ashworth asked with deceptive calm. At fifty-two, the senior agent was known as much for his icy demeanor in a crisis, as he was for his explosive temper at other times. The dreadful event he’d just witnessed had clearly settled heavily on his mind and presaged that if he had a say in it, a painful retribution for the culprits was forthcoming.

  “No credible group has taken credit,” Director Bancroft replied, disgust curling her upper lip. “The usual whack jobs are crowing, of course, but we have ruled all of them out based on the surveillance video recorded before the strike.”

  “Strike?” Ashworth barked. “We know for a fact this was no ordinary bomb?”

  “Yes, this is the work of a BSE M180 CADA with LO technology.”

  “CADA?” Danvers asked.

  “Covert aerial disposable aircraft,” she clarified, adding, “LO is low observability or stealth technology.”

  “An urban stealth drone?” Arturo stated with incredulity. “Who has the capability of delivering a payload that could do such damage?”

  “We do,” the director answered succinctly. “The drone was one of ours. This model was called the Kamikaze.”

  “A remote controlled suicide bomber, holy fuck,” he muttered.

  “Was this a miscalculation or a malfunction?” Ray demanded coolly. “For Christ’s sake, don’t tell me that bloody friendly fire took out one of our own men.”

  “No. We had no tests scheduled.” Bancroft queued up another picture on screen. “This is the Kamikaze. It’s the size of a remote controlled toy plane.” With a laser light, she circled the tail. “Notice the twin vertical and horizontal stabilizers? This prototype was scrapped eighteen months ago when tests found that a single vertical stabilizer and rudder had greater stability and was far easier to maneuver.”

  “This means we have a security breach on our hands,” Arturo put forward.

  “Exactly, and if I was a betting woman, I’d wager my entire pension that the technology sold for a seven figure price tag.”

  “Are there any leads?” Ray inquired in the same chilling tone.

  “The only facility working on this stealth line is the Houston, Texas BSE location.” The director’s shrewd gaze homed in on its target. “You have friends in security in Texas, don’t you, Durand?”

  He nodded. “As do you, ma’am. I worked a campaign several years back with Tony Rossi. He is a retired Special Forces captain and from what I’ve heard, has an impressive security operation located in San Antonio. One of his partners is retired Major General Davis, an associate of yours, I believe.”

  “Ah, yes, Pete Davis,” Bancroft said, smiling softly. “We worked together on a few coalition operations in the past. As for retired, I doubt if the general will ever really slow down and hang up his bars, not while there is breath in his military-to-the-toes body. You’ll be in good hands.”

  “Durand will go in solo?” one of the junior agents asked.

  “In this case, yes. We’ll have additional resources on standby, but I prefer to keep this quiet. Our directive is to seal the leak by whatever means possible before it goes public that top-secret new weaponry was stolen and turned on our own people. While Durand shuts down the security breach abroad, we’ll be busy trying to weed out the sons of bitches that are targeting former MI6 agents.”

  “Bloody bastards,” Ray muttered.

  The director ignored Ashworth’s cursing, so commonplace she didn’t appear to notice as she continued handing out assignments. “Durand, you’ll be going in quietly as a consultant for BSE. Only a few corporate heads know the details. We’ll have your dossier and credentials ready within the hour.”

  He looked at his watch, doing a quick calculation from London to US Central Standard Time. “It’s 8 AM in the States. I’ll make contact with Cap right away.”

  Chapter One

  Parting her lips, she leaned in close to the mirror. As she raised the silver tube of lipstick, a bold shade of red that she’d never dare wear in the bright light of day, her hand trembled perceptibly. She hesitated, lowering it while closing her eyes and breathing deeply, counting to ten, and trying to will away her apprehension. It happened every time she prepared to make the nearly three-hour long trek down I-10 from Houston to San Antonio, walked in the front doors of a kink club—alone—and began trolling for a dominant for the night, her sole purpose for being there clear to one and all.

  Her lashes slowly lifted and Marilee Hoffman stared at the woman in the mirror. Her children, her mother, the few friends that remained three years after she’d basically checked out of her old life, wouldn’t recognize her. She barely knew herself, still finding it hard to believe she had the nerve to walk around in public in skimpy leather and lace. From the top of her head, with its tousled mass of bronze-gold hair to the five-inch, peep-toed high-heeled hooker shoes, she looked nothing like the mother of two dean’s listed college students or the nice woman who chaired the annual fundraising committee for the women’s shelters of Houston. She was far and away the complete opposite of the owner of Marilee’s, the upscale women’s boutique she owned and operated in the stylish Highland Village shopping center.

  What would everyone think if they could see her now? Her children would be mortified, the shelter staff would likely drag her in to see one of the counselors, and her customers at the boutique would whisper behind their French manicured, diamond encrusted fingers as they ran out the door activating their gossip circle on their iPhones as they went.

  Heaving a sigh of uncertainty, she glanced at her bedside clock. The red LED display seemed to shout a warning about the rapidly dwindling window of opportunity. Vacillating as she always did, she scolded herself to be decisive. Put on your big girl panties and just do it already, or wimp out and continue to be irritable, unsatisfied and lonely. And didn’t that sound pathetic?

  Tears misted in her eyes as she sought the 8x10 framed photo of Derek. She wondered frequently what her husband would think of her behavior. They’d never discussed it—what either wanted or expected of the other if the unthinkable happened. If it had been her, she wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer as she had, not after experiencing the sheer loneliness that had invaded her life. She had never known she could be around others and still feel utterly alone, until he’d left her, the fluke car accident making her a widow much too young.

  Her gaze lingered on her husband’s handsome face. His boy next-door good looks—sandy brown hair, deep blue eyes and a brilliant white smile—had attracted her first. She then found out that beneath that boyish face lurked an enigmatic amalgamation of a doting husband, loving father and a brilliant and highly respected engineer at his company. But that wasn’t all. No, not by a long shot.

  Deep beneath the surface, lurked a darker, kinkier side to the man she’d loved for two decades; a side he kept hidden from everyone except his adoring, submissive wife, one he only let emerge when they were alone and behind a firmly locked door. That’s when her master truly emerged, her wicked-minded, all controlling, sadistic master who knew how to bring out the masochist that lurked deep within his submissive wife.

  Dragging her eyes away from the cherished photograph that stirred bittersweet memories, she appraised herself once again, clinging to the hope that although Derek had been possessive of her in life, that he would want her to move on, not wallow in the grief-stricken loneliness that her world had become after his passing. She clung desperately to the belief that he would feel the same way, if their roles were reversed, because if it weren’t the case, the ever-present guilt of her betrayal would consume her.

  Tamping down her overactive conscience as best she could, Mari returned her focus to the mirror and leaned in once again. Carefully, she slicked on a layer of Chanel’s Rouge Coco, the shade called Crimson Kiss. In spite of her auburn hair, it suited her. Once it was pe
rfectly applied, she dabbed on a second layer of sealer, which would keep it from smearing and make it last for hours, an absolute essential for the night she had planned.

  Once finished, she took a step back, taking in the end result of two hours’ worth of preparation. Four if she counted the all over waxing session she’d endured yesterday. She was indeed a true masochist to undergo such painful torture, but most doms she encountered liked bare, or some sort of miniscule sculpted artwork that was too difficult to maintain. So she chose the easiest path because as a submissive, it was her job to please, even if he was a one-night stand, and she fervently hoped if her dom of the hour was happy with her efforts, that he would return the pleasure.

  Turning from side to side, she ran her hands down the front of her black corset dress. Ultra-feminine, it was trimmed in lace at the bodice and adorned with a string of black beads and a black velvet rosette above her left breast. Clearly visible was the cross lacing up the front—chosen specifically for this feature as she would have never gotten back laces tight enough without help—it also had a flirty three-tiered ruffled skirt with satin edging on each hem. She’d paired it with sheer black stand-up stockings and a pair of black suede open-toed heels. They’d been a find, especially with the removable rosette that clipped onto the toe vamp and perfectly matched the one on her corset.

  She checked her hair and make-up one more time. Her lips twitched slightly. Not quite a smile, which was a rarity of late, but she was pleased with her reflection in the floor length mirror. Not bad for a thirty-eight-year-old mother of two.

  Another quick glance at the clock told her she needed to go, now. The commute to Club Decadence was not getting any shorter with her primping in front of the mirror. Stuffing her clutch into her tote bag that contained all the essentials for a night of indiscriminate sex, she flipped off the lights and rushed out the door.