Under His Sway by Erika Masten Page B

Handwritten? Whose is it?”
    Regarding me sidelong, those silvery brown eyes narrowed under the shade of his blacker than black eyelashes, Adrian paused a moment. “You are my submissive, are you not, Miss Bloom?”
    The peculiar question made me stiffen, made my stomach tense and prepare to knot itself. Old habits, from younger days when my mother periodically came into my room early in the morning to tell me my father was gone again, or was back again. Her announcements always started out with her asking me if I knew she loved me.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you understand the importance of doing as I command?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And if I instruct you to keep quiet about something…?”
    After a few seconds of head-tilted confusion, I broke into laughter. “Who did you steal the book from?”
    Adrian rolled his eyes. “I only borrowed it. She’ll have it back before morning.”
    “Manuela? Did you steal Manuela’s cookbook? Why?”
    “ Borrowed , Miss Bloom,” Adrian sighed. “She’s got the best pato no tucupi on the face of the planet, and she refuses to tell me her secret. In fact…” He snapped the notebook closed and tossed it lightly onto the counter beside the stove. “I’m sure she expected me to snoop. There’s no way her handwriting is that bad on accident. And I think there’s a secret ingredient she must have omitted from the recipe. I will figure her out.”
    “Figure her out, huh?” Interesting way to phrase it. Figure out the recipe or figure out the woman? At once elegant and earthy, the matron spent as much of her time mothering Adrian Knight as she did running the kitchen of his resort. “Why do you have to know? Why not let her have her secret?”
    Looking incredulous, brow raised and arched, Adrian shook his head. “Because she doesn’t want me to know, of course.” When I kept watching him, studying the smooth contours of his high cheekbones and the stubble-shadowed jaw, Adrian looked away but added softly, “I’ve always wanted what I can’t have, like any man. Especially men of means. You know that, Chloe.”
    A cold nausea welled up abruptly from the pit of my stomach, like a breach in a hull letting in seawater, sinking me. Sinking my mood.
    I did know. When I was the aloof counselor he couldn’t charm, Penn Ellison had pursued me day and night. There was hardly time for the golden-haired playboy, heir to a family empire that spanned everything from real estate to defense contracting, to work and court me, too. Once he had me, though, it had been a different story. Penn was never a neglectful boyfriend, but the ardor cooled. What I had interpreted as his acknowledgement that mine was a demanding career requiring several of my evenings each week… Well, that was actually his opportunity to make the rounds among high-priced call girls and wild parties from Miami to Vegas to L.A.
    When he’d gotten caught, candid photos spread all over the internet, my reaction had been such a mystery to him. Like I should have known what I was signing on for. I was the girlfriend, the likely prospect for wife down the road, because I spoke well and wore the right labels and went to a good university…and could hide the fact that I’d grown up in a cramped two bedroom apartment in a walkup. No doorman. No prep school. No trust fund.
    The fact that leaving Penn had rekindled his affections, so much so that I’d actually booked a last minute cruise around South America to escape him, was further proof that wanting was always more important than having with men of power and wealth. Adrian reminded me of that now, in his offhand comment. Those were always the most telling.
    What are you doing to yourself, Chloe?
    This had made sense when it began. Adrian Knight had brought out a force of passion in me the very first day I met him, when the cruise had offered an optional stay at the resort on Ilha de Flor while the South Atlantic Sojourn was docked in Natal. I knew nothing about Knight