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The Taking [MultiFormat]
eBook by Miriam M. Wynn
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eBook Category: Erotica
eBook Description: Top Versus Bottom in Fascinating B&D Novel! The story revolves around hotheaded Samantha Winterbourne, who takes on work as a live-in personal assistant to Mrs. Carlisle, a blonde bombshell Boston society wife. Samantha discovers shortly that Mrs. Carlisle bribes important people with sexual acts for her fascinatingly cruel lawyer husband. The ambitious Samantha thoroughly uses Mrs. Carlisle for her own erotic amusement while Mr. Carlisle heads off to attend to suspicious business in Miami. Soon heads off hot on the trail of the master of the house. In her search, she leaves behind a swath of breathless male and female lovers. Once in Miami, she blackmails Mr. Carlsile into letting her in on his underworld businesses. For these two, there can only be one "top" in this game of crime, sex, and power, but as they head relentlessly toward a violent face-off, they begin to see each other in a whole new light. Will the pair eventually learn to share the spoils of victory--which include the devastated, but deliciously obliging, Mrs. Carlisle? Or will one of them emerge on top to do all the taking?
eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/Sizzler, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: July 2005
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [785 KB], eReader (PDB) [141 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [130 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [116 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [138 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [175 KB], hiebook (KML) [350 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [199 KB], iSilo (PDB) [107 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [135 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [176 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [172 KB]
Words: 42061
Reading time: 120-168 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
CHAPTER 1The day I started work was the day I began learning a hard lesson about dignity. Having grown up lower middle class with a single mother who struggled to get me through high school and into a good college, I wasn't about to turn away from the opportunity for a job. I knew the value of pinching pennies and keeping up appearances. Twenty years and suburban southern California was a long way from mom's high society past on the East Coast as a Winterbourne; she'd married beneath her, broken her father's heart, and ended up divorced. She'd attended Valleston Academy, an all girls' finishing school through her beehive hair teenage years, and kept in touch with friends she'd made there during her years at Johns Hopkins. There was a clockwork exchange of letters, phone calls here and there, but she'd never had the courage to go back, with her tail between her legs, to old friends and family members who would always hold the "I told you so" card dangling above her head. Or maybe it wasn't a lack of courage, but too much of it. So she died without a resolution, an official "I forgive you." It was a stroke during my last year at UCLA. She was forty-six, too young to be dying, much too young to leave her only child standing beside a grave in the muggy August weather. The calls and cards came; the condolences from the east were fewer. My grandfather paid for everything but used a right-hand man to do his bidding; a pale uninteresting man with a slight lisp. He arranged for the funeral, the procession, the hearse, the wake. The wake her local friends attended, but no family; only me. I called my grandfather when it was over, and his voice was stilted, as if he held a grudge against me for existing, but knew it wasn't fair. He tolerated me, and I guess I tolerated him. The problem was what to do with my life afterward. I finished school--barely--using my mother's savings and picking up extra hours with odd jobs, but the problem remained that I was now responsible for a house I no longer wanted to be in, that required money for upkeep. The job market was struggling, and what little offers there were didn't offer much incentive at all. So I called my grandfather again for help with selling the house, and a guarded request for advice on what to do with my future. "I'm not sure what good it'd do you to stay out there. I can ask around and see if any of your mother's friends could help, but you'd have to be willing to relocate." His words were clipped, and I bit my lip, wanting to tell him to shove it where the sun don't shine but realizing, as it was too easy to realize when I looked around the empty house with its layer of dust and empty bedrooms at any given time, that he was the only immediate family I had left. * * * *The summer of my graduation I received a call from an old friend of my mother's, courtesy of Grandpa Winterbourne. Mrs. Tera Carlisle, fellow debutante and Valleston Academy attendee, remembered my mother fondly, and was willing to do her a posthumous favor. "My life's been a busy mess planning parties and fundraising--plus being the wife of Evan Carlisle ... you've heard of him haven't you?" "Well ... I'm not from Boston..." I tapped my pen rapidly on the legal pad in front of me, staring down at the nicked wood of the kitchen table, then stopped myself. "Well, of course your family was further east, we ended up settling out here," I could almost hear her toss her hair, "but, as luck would have it, my husband is a premiere defense lawyer out here and I am one lucky girl!" Her laugh was husky and rubbed on my nerves. Girlhood had long ago passed on for Mrs. Carlisle, but her watered-down Southern lilt did have a certain charm. It carried a hint of talking from the back of her throat and a drawl that dragged out her sentences, making me narrow my eyes while I tried to predict her next words or die of frustration instead. "So, what I really need is a personal assistant--someone to run errands, remember things I can't always keep tabs on, help me juggle the circus that is my life." I imagined her swooning at her labors, dressed in an eighteenth century gown, using a fan with a tassel. Was she sitting on a verandah sipping sweet tea? She should be performing this scene in Virginia. "I'd of course be willing to pay you, honey, less the cost of living with us. If you stay with us, you'd be on staff, so, naturally you'll live in that section of the house. See if it suits you while you get yourself back on your feet--I know it must be hard, living without your mother now." I pressed my lips together at the mention of my mother. It wasn't as if she'd ever come out to visit, or invited my mother to visit her at her Boston plantation, or whatever it was. It wasn't like she really even knew who my mother was. I sucked it up. "Thank you Mrs. Carlisle, that's a generous offer--" She cleared her throat; even that sounded like it needed a side of gravy. "I'm a perfectionist, Samantha, so I'm a hard task mistress--I won't be cutting you any slack. If you're working for me, you're working for me, and that's something I'll brook no arguments about. So if we're clear on that, we'll start your salary at thirty-five thousand dollars and see where it goes from there. How does that sound?" It's not as if I had a choice. I'd chosen a psychology major but didn't really know what I was going to do with it, and there weren't any employers clamoring for someone with my background these days. "I really do appreciate your offer, Mrs. Carlisle and--I'd be honored." My forehead sank down to the kitchen table as I said it. "Well, alright then! Let's get you out here and see what you look like!"
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