desire for Bliss: a novel of Sex, Mystery and Romance (RiverHart Book 2)
desire for Bliss
RiverHart Series No. 2
written by
Adira August
Copyright © 2016 Adira August
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents
are either wholly sprung from
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
desire for Bliss: RiverHart part 2 by Adira August
1st edition. Fiction - novel - romance - mystery - erotica
CONTENTS
SEX
MYSTERY
LOVE
Dedicated to:
My friend and indie publishing fellow traveller,
Nikki Kaye,
who not only writes so well,
and writes so sexy,
but writes so funny.
Which hardly seems fair to the rest of us!
Ecstasy
From Joy there is a scent of bliss,
from Perfect Joy yet more.
The Joy of Cessation is passionless.
The Joy of Sahaja is finality.
The first comes by desire for touch
The second by desire for bliss,
The third from the passing of passion,
Thereby is Sahaja attained.
SEX
SATURDAY
- midnight to 3am
Watcher I
Watcher had been surveilling the reporter’s home for hours. Her car was in the lot, in a space thoughtfully labelled with her condo number. The windshield of her red hatchback was dusty - too dusty to safely drive without cleaning. The strong west wind that had blown up one of the Front Range’s common minor dust storms, had passed by noon. The car had not been driven since. Yet, the lights in the apartment that matched her car space remained off.
Unable to acquire the target at her job or her friends’ or suspected boyfriend’s homes, Watcher waited at her condo. The three-story, six unit building sat conveniently facing the street.
Parked at the curb opposite the well-lighted front stoop, Watcher was able to see straight through the front door’s large glass window, down the hallway to the backdoor that led to the parking lot. If she were inside and left, or in another apartment and came back, she would be clearly visible.
A nearby driveway was the only way in and out of the complex. She’d have to pass Watcher’s location to enter or leave the condo property, or use the street in front of her building. And so would anyone who accompanied her.
Who accompanied her was Watcher’s assignment: Determine if Avia Rivers is sexually involved with anyone and identify them.
Watcher was patient. Sooner or later, she’d come home.
The S.U.V.
The purr of the engine was barely discernible inside the customized luxury of the silver S.U.V. Benedict Hart’s driver maintained a smooth and steady sixty miles per hour in the center lane, allowing the faster, and possibly drunk, drivers to pass quickly.
Avia curled up in one corner of the forward-facing bench seat, eagerly anticipating chocolate malts and chili dogs. She leaned sideways on one hip, keeping her weight off her bottom. Ben had thoroughly, expertly, spanked her in the hours before. More than once. It had been extremely pleasurable, but it left her sensitive.
Diagonal to her, Ben rode in the bench seat that faced her, the privacy screen closed behind his head. In the quiet hum and the occasional flash from passing cars or streetlights, they simply looked at each other. An occupation both found pleasurable.
Avia found him incredibly attractive. She loved the planes of his face, masculine and angular that softened when he did, or tightened into deep shadows and hard lines when he went all Alpha-Dom on her. His firm, well-defined lips tantalized her; his mouth smiled easily and triggered a dimple not in evidence now in his somber, thoughtful expression. She got lost in his intense indigo eyes under clean arched brows and a straight wide forehead, always touched by a dark curl or two that escaped his hair product.
Those curls were more a riot of waves this night, when he hadn’t bothered much with hair products for the ride home from the hotel penthouse, after his shower.
“What?” He asked. “You have a ‘fuck me now’ expression, all of a sudden.”
She was glad the darkness hid her blush, for once. “If we had more than Companionship, I’d be over there with my fingers in your hair.”
His face tightened, the passing flashes of light deepening the sharp shadows of cheekbones and jawline. “If I gave you permission. More likely I’d have you on your knees with my cock in your mouth. All the way home,” he said grimly.
Avia kept still, despite the sudden heat between her legs at the thought. Be objective, she told herself. He’s trying to scare you away from him. Just as he had in his hotel a half hour before when she’d resigned from being a Companion of his, because she needed more …
He paced, running both hands through his hair. “This that we’ve done, that you think you want, isn’t how it would be.”
“This that we’ve done, is what isn’t enough.” She said. “I want to nuke popcorn and watch movies together,” she said. “My sister’s coming to town soon, I’d like you to meet her. I’d like to make dinner with you and discuss what’s going on with the Madigan trial. I want to touch you when I want to without it being a statement of submissivehood or lack thereof. I want more than just the sessions, not to end them.”
“Avia.” His voice matched the sadness in his eyes. “You don’t know what I am, okay? I make myself a certain way for my Companions. For the journey.”
She slid off the bed to stand in front of him. “I said I see what’s in your eyes. I see your love for your family and your joy in your work and your obsessive drive to do things better than anyone, whatever you do.”
She put her hands on her hips and cocked an eyebrow at him. “You think I don’t also see you want to powerfuck me into the nearest wall? Finally, take what you want, the way you want, without giving a shit about the damned journey? You think I don’t see that you want to own me?”
He shifted and looked away. ”I told you. I’m a Dominant. That’s not going away.”
“And around you, I’m apparently submissive. At least in sex. I don’t want it to go away. But I don’t see why that means you can’t eat some damn popcorn on the sofa with me, too.”
He took a step back. “You can’t understand. You don’t have the experience.”
Avia opened her mouth to respond, but stopped. He couldn’t hear her this way.
She dropped to her knees, grasped her elbows behind her back and looked up at his astounded face. “Teach me. Please, Sir.”
Avienne Grace Rivers was very hard to scare. How would she get close to him, if he thought she was fragile? You’re a damned journalist, find out what the story is here.
“Tell me the long story about being a Dominant,” she said. His mouth firmed into a line. “Please. You said you’d tell me in the car.”
“I said we’d talk in the car.”
“Well, we aren’t doing much of that, either.” She smiled at him. “The deal was, everything stays the same until Sunday night when you leave on your trip. Then, we try to figure out what we want. Discuss how to move on together while you're gone for a week or however long your business takes. It would really help me to know how you got where you are.”
He sighed and reached for the overhead controls, flipping the intercom switch. A small red light came on.
“Eustace, how long to the Sonic?” He asked.
“Ten
minutes,” Eustace’ voice came back.
Ben switched off. The red light blinked out. He still didn’t speak, he seemed to be gathering his thoughts. Avia stayed still and silent, attentive. Reporter mode. Waiting him out.
“You recall I said I was raised on a ranch outside of Fargo, North Dakota?”
Weigand, Ivers, Weigand & Shore
“What did she say, exactly?” David Weigand asked.
“‘This is the best case I ever had and I don’t have to offer you a thing’,” Preston Shore, newest partner of Weigand, Ivers, Weigand & Shore, responded. “Then she smiled.”
He recalled his meeting with Assistant District Attorney Natalie Denholm very vividly. Pres was fairly certain the smile had something to do with the vibrator he was pleasuring her with at the time.
“Godammit!” Weigand tossed his pen across the conference table. It ricocheted off a pizza box, knocked aside an empty styrofoam coffeecup, and scattered a mound of dirty napkins before it rolled off the edge. It had been a long night.
Two junior associates scrambled to retrieve the pen. Weigand ran his hands through his wiry red hair. “We’re less than forty-eight hours from jury selection and we haven’t got dicksquat for strategy. How are we supposed to pick jurors, much less defend this piece of crap case?”
Pres was nodding along in agreement. “Yeah, Madigan did wrap it up in shiny paper and ship it to the D.A. pre-paid, didn’t he?” He asked equably. Preston’s unassailable calm was legendary, giving rise to the nickname Zenman, unflappable Superhero lawyer. Looking like Thor of comic book legend in a Brioni suit helped seal the image.
Dave Weigand was pacing, again. “He kept a diary. A diary, for chrissakes, what kind of man keeps a diary?” He snatched the pen he’d thrown out of the hand of a trembling junior. “The goddamned girl reporter is more man than he is.”
“You get anything on her, yet?”
Weigand shook his head mournfully. “No. Dad’s handling that, he’ll let us know.”
Pres doubted it. Weigand senior was a control freak who kept his “special operatives” secret from everyone, including his son. Pres suspected most of them were cabbies and bartenders. He looked around the table at the five associates. “No one figured out how to get the diary suppressed?” He asked them.
Hoping he wouldn’t zero in on them, four freshly-minted attorneys became very interested in their notepads, ducking their heads. The fifth one lifted hers. “I’m trying to figure out how they’re going to get it in.”
All eyes were on Raina Jackson as she tossed a file folder to the center of the table. “That’s the D.A.’s witness list. Avienne Grace Rivers isn’t on it. No one from The Week is.”
“That’s …” David Weigand reached for the file and scanned the pages inside. “ … that’s not possible. Everything the cops and the D.A.’s office did is based on that diary. It’s the tree at the center of the garden. Every warrant issued, all the evidence, is fruit.”
Preston Shore studied Raina while Weigand went through the list. He didn’t need to. No junior associate would drop a bomb like that if she wasn’t sure. Especially not one as ambitious and sharp as Raina Jackson. The firm pretended she hadn’t been an equal opportunity hire. But the very attractive Georgetown graduate was the only associate candidate the old man, Cecil Weigand, had interviewed personally.
Pres had been tasked with keeping the hopeful Ms. Jackson talking outside Weigand’s office, her back turned to his glass wall. Weigand senior pretended to talk on the phone and thoroughly checked out the woman’s very fine ass. He kept her waiting long enough to become uncomfortable on her spike heels, shifting her weight back and forth. His philosophy was, if you were going to carry dead weight because it was black and female, it should at least have entertainment value. The old man was a pig, but a very successful lawyer.
Pres wasn’t as interested in Raina’s ripe, round ass as Cecil, impressive though it was. Keeping her occupied, he found her charming, erudite, savvy. He began to wonder if she’d bought those very high red heels just for this interview, along with the pencil skirt no woman with an hourglass figure should ever wear unless she was trolling the street.
Maybe she is, he thought, noting the only thing he could see under her fitted suit jacket was a peek at some substantial cleavage and the edge of a lacy pink bra cup.
She confirmed his suspicions when she was finally called into The Presence and bent low over the desk to shake the old man’s hand, bestowing on him a close-up view of her glorious vista.
Pres walked away laughing to himself. Good for her. Cecil couldn’t hire her fast enough and she never again wore anything but plain two inch pumps and simple, well-fitted business attire. This was a woman determined to get ahead. He suspected she had a lot more to say about this case.
“Get out,” he told the other four juniors with a wave of his hand. A surprised David Weigand watched them scramble for the door. When it closed, Pres picked up a pen and turned to a clean sheet of his legal pad. “Go ahead,” he told Raina.
She nodded and opened her briefcase. “Here,” she said, placing four photocopies of diary pages on the table, “are the diary pages the prosecution intends to offer into evidence. All the warrants can be justified from what’s in those entries.”
She went back to the briefcase and plopped a thicker stack of paper next to the four sheets.
“That is what we got in discovery. Dumped in a big box with a lot of other material. All the pages out of order. Four non-consecutive diary pages on each sheet.”
“Are you whining about your workload, Ms. Jackson?” Weigand asked, impatient.
“No, Sir,” she said briefly. She pulled a large manilla envelope out of the briefcase and extracted a small black notebook. “This is an exact match to the Madigan diary. I saw it in the police evidence lock-up. It’s loose leaf. Takes pre-punched, lined paper you order online or pick up at the office supply. Comes in packets of seventy-five. What you see is the diary with a seventy-five sheet packet inserted.”
Pres picked up the small notebook. The covers lay parallel, the seventy-five sheets filled it. He looked at the thick stack of paper she put on the table. “You said, four pages to a sheet. How many sheets did they give us?”
“Thirty-nine,” she answered. She drew another small notebook out of the envelope. “That’s 156 sheets. You can’t get more than ninety-two sheets into that notebook, I tried.”
David Weigand finally looked interested. “You’re saying the pages they’re putting into evidence on those four sheets came from two different diaries?”
“At least,” Raina replied, opening the evidence folder. “I cut a copy of the photocopies we were sent apart and put the diary pages in order. The very first entry says, ‘Looks like Gavina’s taking the offer.’ But it doesn’t describe any offer or previous contact with Gavina.”
“Then there were three,” Preston murmured, holding his hand out for the evidence folder she’d opened. He scanned the lists of what was taken from Arthur Madigan’s City Council office and from his home. “The home inventory lists ‘144 sets of printed materials, misc. books and binders.’” He read. He picked up the small black notebook and tossed it to David Weigand. “That’s a binder.”
Raina nodded. “Nothing is referred to as a diary in the search warrant inventory. But in the evidence list for trial they’re required to give us, there are no ‘binders.’ Only references to a ‘diary.’”
“How’d you get access to the police evidence lock-up?” Weigand asked Raina. It was a cover the firm’s ass question in case she’d paid a cop off for the access.
She shook her head. “I didn’t, not really. I was facetiming with the night clerk. Saw one notebook. Just the outside of it. He said they were all the same. All. I asked how many there were, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
The senior attorney beat a tattoo on the table with his pen. Finally nodded to Pres, who wondered what Raina had let the clerk see. “How would you proceed?” He asked her.
Pres hid a smirk. This woman knew better than to come off smarter than the partners. Worked on Weigand.
Weigand smiled. “No. The D.A. thinks we’ll ask for another plea bargain Monday and have to take whatever shit deal we get offered. The question of the diary will never come up.”
Preston looked at Raina. “You agree, Ms. Jackson? You think that’s what’s going on?” He asked, testing her.
Her eyes got big and her voice got soft. “Oh, I wouldn’t know, Sir, I don’t have any courtroom experience.” She looked modestly down at her lap.
He almost laughed out loud. She was good. “Maybe I can arrange for you to get some.” She looked up as if confused. “Experience,” he clarified. “Why don’t you pick a junior to assist you and write up the subpoena for the records?”
“Yes, Sir,” she said, voice softly oozing gratitude. She gathered her papers quickly and hurried out. He let his gaze linger as she went through the door. It really is a very nice ass.
Ben’s Story
“You recall I said I was raised on a ranch outside Fargo, North Dakota?”
Avia nodded. “Two sisters, not ‘overly bratty,’ and a baby brother who sounds like some sort of math genius. Lots of chores.” She grinned, recalling something he’d said the last time they’d had sex. “Tossing forty-pound bales of hay made you strong.”