Bliss Read online

  Bliss

  Erotic Short Shorts, #3

  Liz Meldon

  Copyright Liz Meldon 2018

  Published by Liz Meldon, Amazon Edition.

  License Notes

  Thank you for purchasing this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to purchase their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1. Bliss

  Stay Updated with Liz!

  Thanks for reading!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to my phenomenal editor and proofreader Phoenix, for catching my errors with poise and tact. As always, much love to my author besties group, my sun and stars, and my parents for being incredibly supportive of this journey. Last, and certainly not least, a great many thanks to my readers. Without you, there’s nothing but me and my imagination.

  Prompt

  Punishment

  Trigger Warnings:

  While everything you read in BLISS occurs between consenting adults, the content may not be recommended for all readers. This erotic short story contains a scene featuring bondage and discipline play, anal, and mild exhibitionism.

  1

  Bliss

  “I think she gets off on watching us suffer.”

  “What boss doesn’t?” Jenna muttered, though she didn’t look away from her computer screen—not once in the last hour, in fact, had Andy noticed her turn away. He knew why, though he wished he didn’t. Jenna had a date tonight, but their hellion of a boss, Lydia Warlow, had kept both of her executive assistants late so they could correct all the fuck-ups the graphic designers had left in the copy—which was somehow their fault. Scowling, Andy huffed at his computer screen, then leaned back in his incredibly non-ergonomic chair, the hinges groaning under his weight.

  Why did they have to suffer for the mistakes of the designers and the writers? Wasn’t a writer’s job supposed to be catching all these mistakes before they were transferred by the artists onto the final piece? When he had finished his degree in advertising two years ago, this wasn’t how he had thought he would spend his Friday nights.

  But then again, he’d be an idiot if he expected the marketing world to be like any regular nine-to-five. Still, their contract guaranteed them at least one weekend off a month and stated that they would leave the building at their regularly scheduled hour. So far, he’d worked the last three weekends in a row, but this was the first Friday he’d had to stay this late.

  Not that Lydia cared. The dictatorial blonde with the perky ass and great pair of tits had been a slave driver from day one. To her, no one had a life outside of the office, even if she and the other corporate stooges had promised they would during the interview process.

  Andy cracked his knuckles noisily, which earned him an irritated huff from his cubicle mate. He’d thought being an executive assistant would mean at least getting his own office, even if he had to share it with someone else. But nope. Just another cubicle alongside the copywriters and designers.

  Man, this job so wasn’t worth it.

  Sighing, he spared a quick peek in the direction of Lydia’s office, then straightened up at the sight of her bending over to get something out of the bottom filing drawer. Whoever had made her four office walls entirely of glass was a fucking saint. Because even on his worst days, when Andy felt like he’d wasted all that money on a prestigious degree, mostly to get his father off his back, there was always the chance he’d catch his bitchy fox of a boss bending over.

  You could write whole epics about that ass.

  She stood upright a moment later, giving him a perfect view of her hourglass curves from behind, that snug pencil skirt and fitted button-up tucked into it doing wonders for her figure. The best view was the profile shot, which he got to enjoy for a few seconds as she walked back over to her desk.

  Once she was facing him again, settling into her stately chair and clacking away at her wireless keyboard, two computer monitors making a ninety-degree angle at the corner of her desk, Andy got a look at that face. Her face, while gorgeous, with full lips that she always painted up and thick lashes that the girls swore she added fakes to, usually dispelled whatever fantasy her body created in his mind. Because it was the face that yelled at him, that expressed his boss’s distaste for his work. Even now her forehead creased, and her pinched lips looked about two seconds away from losing it—probably at her assistants, the only two people left in the sprawling top-floor office.

  Andy’s gaze followed Lydia’s lithe arm as she reached out and pressed the intercom button on her desk, and suddenly her voice was crackling through the connected speaker on his desk.

  “Where are we at, people?”

  Jenna beat him to the response. “Almost done. Another twenty minutes and we should be finished making all the changes, Miss Warlow.”

  “Good.” Even at a distance, Andy noted the way her eyes narrowed, and suddenly she was looking up at him. “Maybe if Andy stopped staring at me, you could be out of here in ten.”

  Colour flooded his cheeks as he whirled around and pressed a finger to the intercom button. “So sorry, Miss Warlow. I’ll… I’ll get right on it.”

  He didn’t look back, but he could feel her glare burning a hole through the side of his face as he scrambled for his computer. Sure enough, there wasn’t much left to do, but it would be over with faster if he put some effort into it.

  Still. She didn’t need to take that tone with him. He was here two hours after his workday should have ended. She could at least be grateful instead of reveling in his misery.

  Fucking bitch.

  * * *

  Lydia was going to throttle them. Absolutely throttle them. After a hellish week of juggling fickle writer egos, temperamental client requests, and micromanaging galore from the only two people higher than her on the business hierarchy, she desperately needed her weekly Friday night appointment with Reid. And Reid hated when his clients were late. Hated it. He’d expressed just how much he hated it very clearly during their first session, and thus far Lydia had been a model student when it came to adhering to his rules.

  But as of that moment, she was officially a half hour late, and it was giving her a wicked case of anxiety. Every few seconds her eyes flitted to her wall clock, then back to her computer screen. Her work was done. Her underlings, however, were woefully behind this week—partially their fault, partially the fault of a client who couldn’t make up their mind—and she had to sit and babysit as her assistants played catch-up for the last two hours.

  Nothing like this had ever happened when she was in their position. Her boss would have reamed her out and fired her if a shit-show like this had happened under her watch. But Lydia was less of a hard-ass than he had been, though not by much, and she considered it a small mercy to let her two highly educated assistants pick up the slack rather than outright firing them.

  But if she caught Andy blatantly staring at her ass one more time, things were going to come to a grinding halt for that trust fund baby—Lydia would see to that.

  “Miss Warlow?” Jenna’s voice trickled out of the speaker built into her custom desk. Lydia looked away from her computer screen, eyebrows up. “We’re finished out here, if there’s anything else you need—”

  “No,” she said curtly, waving them off. “Get out of here and enjoy your weekend.”

  That was the fastest she’d seen them move all day. For how hard she rode them during the week, Lydia wholeheartedly believed in giving her employees weekends off whenever the workload permitted, and she usually wanted them out of the office by the e
nd of the workday. She’d found in her three years of running this particular branch of the marketing firm that well-rested and happy employees produced better work than miserable exhausted ones. It may have been unorthodox, given the highly competitive field they were in, but she had enough big-name clients that she could afford to treat her staff well. She pushed them hard because she knew they all had potential. Lydia only hired the absolute best, and nothing less would do. They were all capable of the best, even if occasionally they needed a boot up their asses to get there.

  But good grief was there going to be a pissed-off memo waiting in everyone’s inboxes by Monday. This week had been totally unacceptable across the board.

  Angry email tirades could wait, however, until tomorrow. Once her assistants hightailed it out of there, Lydia raced through her usual closing duties and flew into the elevators just as the janitorial crew arrived for the night.

  Forty-five minutes late.

  Arms crossed, Lydia kept her bright blue gaze fixed to the floor-display box over the elevator doors. Somehow things always felt slower when you were in a hurry, and tonight was no exception. Not only did the elevator seem to take forever, but it was constantly stopping at various floors and picking up staffers whose bosses didn’t share Lydia’s philosophy of reasonable hours and weekends off.

  By the time she reached her sleek Mercedes in the underground parking lot, she was fifty-two minutes late.

  “Fuck,” she hissed, jabbing at the start button and tossing her things in the tiny backseat. Her mother had told her the car was impractical—“Where will the baby’s car seat go? You know they shouldn’t be in the front!”—but Lydia had bought it outright because she’d earned it. Plus, she was single as sin. There were no babies coming near her for another ten years, at least, and by then she’d probably just adopt a kid who was tall enough to sit in the front seat. Lydia Warlow didn’t do babies.

  Friday-night traffic was a nightmare, especially downtown, and when Lydia finally rolled into the parking lot outside of Reid’s upscale apartment complex on the edge of the city, she was well over an hour late. Panic made her chest tight as she stumbled out, knowing she was in for it tonight. Just as Lydia didn’t do babies, Reid didn’t do rule-breaking.

  One final painfully slow elevator ride stood between her and her destination, and when she reached his door, she leaned against the frame and let out a ragged breath. Perspiration trickled down her forehead, and she wiped it away before flipping the Open sign around to read Session in Progress.

  The rest of his building thought he was a massage therapist who treated upscale clientele out of his home. Little did they know that Reid Jameson was anything but.

  Well, that wasn’t fair. He could give a mean massage—but only if she’d earned it.

  Only if she was a good sub.

  Lydia shivered at the thought.

  Inhaling a cleansing breath, she closed her eyes tightly for a moment, bracing herself, before turning the knob and slipping inside. Reid’s entryway was lit with various lamps, creating a soft atmosphere that belied exactly what went on inside the four walls. During her first session, Lydia had thought it odd that a man who wore perfectly tailored suits and Audemars Piguet wristwatches wouldn’t have some semblance of interior décor. But the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Reid was a Dom who catered to many clients. Everyone’s sexual fantasies differed—muted tones and limited knickknacks helped keep the fantasy alive.

  She found him seated in the armchair next to the sprawling bay window of the living room, the electric fire in the hearth flickering its greeting.

  “I’m sorr—”

  “You’re late,” Reid remarked, closing the book on his lap with a whip-sharp snap and setting it on the window ledge. “Very late.”

  Lydia swallowed hard at the tone he took with her: light, airy—casual. Like she wasn’t treading in shark-infested waters.

  “I should have called.” Lydia bowed her head and looked to him through lowered lashes. “Work ran late—”

  He raised a hand to silence her, a gesture she obeyed immediately, a flood of desire washing over her.

  “You are lucky I had a gap in my schedule.” He stood, hands clasped behind his back. “Otherwise you would have found the door locked.”

  “I understand,” she told him, eagerness encouraging a tremor in her words. “I am sorry, sir.”

  “I know you are.” His mouth, capable of inflicting excruciating pain and exquisite pleasure, shifted into a smirk, “but you and I both know words are not enough.”

  “No, they aren’t,” Lydia agreed softly, her sex clenching in anticipation. She was wet already. After a year of seeing him weekly, a minute of conversation was all it took.

  He studied her with a lazy flick of those gorgeous eyes, black like charcoal, and her knees threatened to buckle. Reid oozed sex god in regular light, but in the shade of night, he was a demon waiting to strike—and Lydia was always willing to offer her body as a sacrifice. Statuesque yet lean, Lydia suspected he’d been one of those skinny beanpole types until college—and he’d been beautiful ever since. Beautiful—and skilled at making her weep in agony and bliss in equal measures. A two-day scruff along his jawline and up to his cheeks caught her attention fleetingly; Lydia imagined the painful scrape of it over her thighs and suppressed a shudder.

  “Get changed,” he ordered softly, then turned his back to her to look out the window, its sheer white curtains drawn back to reveal the glittering metropolis in the distance.

  “Yes, sir.” Thrilled that the night wasn’t cancelled or postponed due to her bumbling underlings, Lydia scurried from the living room, her heels clacking down the hall and into the bathroom. She knew every inch of his apartment, having been fucked on or tied to just about every surface in every room. That in and of itself brought her comfort. Her work was high stress—draining. Stepping into Reid’s home every week helped her breathe again. It was her mental and emotional reset, one that enabled her to keep functioning in her incredibly demanding world without turning to booze or drugs or whatever other vices people like her used to numb themselves.

  Lydia found her outfit, or lack thereof, hanging on the back of the bathroom door: red crotchless panties, thigh-high black tights, and garter belts. That was it. A blush warmed her cheeks as her frantic fingers shed her work attire. Reid catered to sexual fantasies. In one conversation, he’d told her he tried not to express any personal fantasies of his own, as it might take a client out of the moment. Still, with the outfits he chose for her, Lydia had two working theories: he was an ass guy, because he usually dressed her in garters and barely-there lingerie; or he was a boob guy, because she seldom wore anything to cover them.

  After folding her clothes neatly and setting them on the counter in a pile, her hands trembling in her haste, she slipped into the provided clothing, yanking the store tag off the panties when she was through. Each outfit she wore here was used only once—it was part of the contract. Lydia thought Reid was worth every penny, but she appreciated that a portion of the hefty fee she paid went to a clothing budget.

  A sharp knock at the door made her fumble over the garters.

  “Today, Lydia.”

  “Yes, sir,” she called back, hastily snapping everything into place. One final look in the mirror and a quick fluff of her lustrous mane and she was done, scrambling out the door and shutting it behind her.

  A hand closed around her throat before she took so much as a step down the hall, Reid shoving her back into the door with practiced force. She let out a little squeak on impact, then pressed her lips together, head bowed and heart racing as he closed in on her.

  God, he smelled good. Cologne spicy and rich, so exquisite that she just wanted to bury her face in the nape of his neck and breathe him into her soul.

  The punishment for such presumptuousness would probably leave her unable to sit for weeks.

  But totally worth it.

  “Tip your head back,” Reid instructe
d huskily. Her eyes flickered to his as she obeyed, finding them dark—totally in control. Goosebumps rose across her flesh and her nipples hardened to tight peaks. With the only light emanating from the living room down the hall, Lydia drew in a shaky breath as he moved closer, his jacket brushing against her skin. Heels gone, she stood roughly a head below him, and she felt every inch of the difference as he towered over her, head cocked to one side.

  “I had other plans for you today,” he murmured, and her eyes threatened to drift shut as he trailed a finger across her cheek. It was gentle until it reached her chin. From there, it forced her head up higher, her body pressed back against the bathroom door as he invaded every inch of her personal space, so close that she felt the soft, controlled breath from his nostrils dance along her lips. “But I’m afraid I cannot permit such reckless tardiness. You will have to be punished.”

  “Of course, sir,” was her response, the only response permissible, and she swallowed a whimper at the sharp bite of his nail under her chin. Their eyes met again, his skilled at hiding his emotions, hers completely open to him. When Reid’s hand left her throat, she contemplated easing forward, drawn to the gravitational pull of his body, but she held herself perfectly still when Reid wrapped her old leather collar around her throat in place of his hand. A throb of need shot straight through to her sex as the clasp clicked shut, and she resisted the urge to fidget as he adjusted its tightness. Never too tight. Her collar was like a second skin.

  He had used it on her often when they’d first started—she’d had a lot to learn. Now, almost a year into this arrangement, she prided herself on following his rules to the last detail. She hadn’t needed to wear the collar in a long, long time. Yet it brought out a delicious excitement within her once it was fastened, anticipation unfurling across her body like a slowly opening fist, caressing her with each finger.