Chapter One

 

When he was young, Ethan was both passionate and emotional. He'd been driven to get the very best marks in school, driven to succeed, to make something of himself. He'd been inspired, after school, to strike out on his own, and built a web site the world had beaten a door to - and which had been bought out for tens of millions.

Then he'd started a software company with a niche product, and that too had been bought out, this time for hundreds of millions. He hadn't been impressed by his investment broker, or their fees, so had started his own, and done very, very well, building it into a worldwide name.

No one at any of those enterprises would have ever described him as a nice man. If pressed for adjectives which would not be construed as too unflattering, they'd have called him driven, focused, demanding, brilliant. He demanded a lot of his people, they'd have said, but no more than he demanded of himself, and he rewarded good work.

The reason most would have chosen not to use unflattering words would be that he was, in all actuality, not a nice man. He was vindictive, intolerant, arrogant, and, as one previous partner had once put it "was not content to merely defeat opponents but had to stomp them into the ground".

At thirty years of age, Ethan Stone was a billionaire, and at thirty-one, an orphan, after his parents died in a car crash. He was at the summit of financial success, and in a moment of epiphany, at the side of his father's grave, came to realize how little it mattered compared to the inevitability of his own mortality.

And what more was there to achieve? He'd built great companies three times now, and had more money than he could ever spend, at least on himself. He had a list of contacts as long as his arm, of powerful men interested in his opinion, eager to meet with him and conduct business. Politicians routinely whored themselves to lobbyists who worked for him, and his employees jumped the instant he uttered a preference.

But he was not a man who had made many friends, or even any friends. Women? He hadn't had time for girls in school. He had less time when he was building up businesses. High priced escorts did the job just fine, without the need to wine and dine them. They expected nothing of him but money, and he had a lot of that.

So at thirty-two, he found himself at loose ends. He didn't really see the point of what he was doing any more. He sold his brokerage firm, and became a multi-billionaire. That was nice, but what was it all good for? He already had a very, very nice penthouse in downtown Manhattan, another in downtown London, a castle in Ireland, and a beach house in Hawaii., as well as a private jet to fly him between them all.

He tried going on vacation. He went on safaris in Africa, explored the jungles of Peru, toured the pyramids and the Great Wall of China. He learned how to fly his own jet, bought some racing cars and tried that for a while, then bought a ranch in Nevada and tried his hand at raising racing horses.

Then he was thirty-three.

He became known for drifting amongst the beach-side bars in California for a while, and became an expert surfer, and got his first real girlfriend. He was, after all, very attractive, very fit, and very wealthy. Having a girlfriend was difficult for Ethan, at least at first. He'd never had to consider anyone else's wishes before, certainly not that of the women he'd hired.

It emerged he was both too 'bossy' according to Deidre, and not all that good in bed, or least, that was what she said on leaving, after a furious fight.

In typical fashion, Ethan decided to make sure he was, in fact, very good. He hired escorts and ordered them to fake nothing, but to give him feedback, to tell him what they liked and didn't. Making an escort achieve orgasm wasn't easy, but then, Ethan loved challenges. And as always, he eventually succeeded. Repeatedly.

Ethan became extremely good in bed, finally finding something to drive him again. He wanted to not only be good but great. He wanted to be a lover women would remember as their best, however many men they eventually had in life. He already had the natural equipment for it, but he found, during his efforts, that he came, more and more, to be able to understand the subtle signs women gave off, to be able to read their moods, to know what pleased them and what didn't, even when they tried to hide it.

He was still very much the A-type personality, however, which presented a problem. The women he enjoyed were educated and intelligent, but such women tended to be strong-willed, as well, and Ethan was not good at compromise. When he wanted to do something, he wanted to do it, and now. When he wanted to see a movie, he wanted to see HIS movie. Sitting through some sort of vapid romantic comedy to please his date was mind numbingly boring.

And if he didn't want to have dinner with her asinine father or boring friends then why in the hell would he?!

Denise was an escort who set him on another path entirely. She was the typical lovely, lithe professional, pleasantly surprised to see how young, handsome, and fit her 'date' was. But however good in bed he was, and Ethan was damned good, she sensed something about him which aroused her much more.

And asked him to spank her.

She usually charged men extra for that, but there was a thrill in her stomach at the thought of this handsome, strong-jawed, steely eyed man with the fluid movements and the dead certainty in his voice and manner, a commanding presence which took her breath away, for Denise had a submissive side.

Ethan, not at all to her surprise, turned out to be a natural dominant, a dominant who quite literally took her breath away, a dominant who made her scream in pain and pleasure at the same time, and who almost took her away from her 'business'. But she'd fled, for her sanity, she had told him. For every day she spent with Ethan she found more of her will slipping away, more of her desire turned to pleasing him.

She realized she was losing herself in the heat and excitement. And in the end, Denise had always been too wary of men, too distrusting of them to ever let herself be that much under the influence and control of one, even Ethan.

But Ethan had discovered something else he was good at, very, very good at. He enjoyed dominating women, not just physically, but emotionally. It both excited and challenged him to stretch their limits, and then take them beyond them. He loved to watch them squirming, both physically, with pleasure, and emotionally, with the shock of what they had somehow been persuaded to do.

He loved to tear away their dignity and inhibitions and lay bare the animal heat which lay at their center, exposing it to them, as if for the first time.

But these relationships were fleeting things. He had little real respect and no love for any of them. He took pride and pleasure in driving them into screaming, heaving orgasms, loved the look of disbelief on their faces, the raw hunger he drew to the surface, but they were toys to play with, and little more.