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Publisher: Cari Silverwood
Release date: March 30th, 2015 Length: Novel of 108,000 words Genre: Heterosexual M/f Dark erotic fiction Wren, the rich girl with a tainted past, is on a crusade to track down her father’s murderer only to find not one, but two, bad men. Moghul is a sadist and businessman, with a finger in every kinky enterprise he can get his hands on and a jaded view on life. When his eye turns to Wren, he realises how dull life has been. He hasn’t tried everything after all. When they can’t say no, things might be more…interesting. Glass is the dominating ex-SAS soldier. Each man is determined to keep Wren for himself using methods that may be illegal, immoral, or likely to make somebody feel the pain for a long, long time. If you lie down with bad men, be prepared to get up on your knees. The ending will be the reader’s decision. Give Wren to the dark or to the light, then read the other ending if you wish to. Mindf***s included free. |
This book is part of a dark erotic fiction story and may disturb readers who are uncomfortable with non consent, dubious consent, or graphic violence.
Book Reviews
Cari Silverwood never fails to capture and enthrall me. Her Pierced Hearts series is among the very best in dark BDSM.
Expect blood, pain and tears. And orgasms. Because Wren is a dirtier girl than she ever imagined and so are we for enjoying it.
~ Under the Covers Book Reviews
The writing style had me hooked,(no pun intended). It's dark, seedy, dirty. There is no gloss on this world, and it's not prettied up to make it easier to swallow. We get thrown in the deep end, right from the start.
Some parts of this story are probably a little hard to read, but if you love this sort of thing. It's perfect.
~ Louise Seraphim Reviews
Cari Silverwood ends the Pierced Hearts series with a bang. An intense kidnapping and bondage read that gives you the choice on how the book should end.
I still cannot decide which ending I preferred, both of them had me in tears.
~ Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
The Beginning
Wren
I played with the napkin next to my plate. The late afternoon sun came in low, glinting off the tableware and making the place so glary it was difficult to see the man weaving between the other empty chairs and tables. For a little roadside pitstop eatery up in the Papua New Guinea mountains, the décor was...cute. My napkin had Bart Simpson on it and none of the chairs matched. And the waitress had vanished.
I glanced at my hulking bodyguard and he nodded reassuringly. Not a single black hair was out of place. James Bond and Hugh probably exchanged texts and anti-villain plans, but my father always had employed the best. Hugh had insouciance down to an art. Nothing fazed him, except maybe the tropical heat. He had a thing for being properly dressed in at least long pants and buttoned shirt. Today was a day for sweating.
Even in my tank top and denim knee-length pants, I was feeling the heat. More sweat dribbled down my spine. If we stayed any longer, I’d melt and stick to the timber. I took up the napkin and used it for a fan as the new arrival reached the table. Surfer shorts and T-shirt. Good. I hated being the underdressed one. Student life at university had been like diving into my ideal environment. No one had ever dressed up except at parties or functions.
A flight of parrots shot past a few yards away, squawking.
“Hello.” He put his hand on the back of the chair beside me. “Wren Gavoche?”
“Yes.”
The British accent sounded wonderful and never failed to give me an instant rapport with the speaker. It was just...cute, even when attached to an alarmingly large man. Despite my instinct that looking more pointedly might give him the wrong impression, because really he was not within light years of being inscribed in my little book of possible BF’s, I looked...and looked.
I let my gaze cruise over the swell of his biceps with the mysterious tatt peeking from under the sleeve, took in the breadth of his chest, his scent, the solid don’t fuck with me way he stood, those huge hands, and those palest ever blue eyes.
Ooops. Caught staring. His minimal yet knowing smile seemed to rivet me to my seat.
“Hi.” I pasted on an innocent grin. “You’re Richard? No last name?”
That was so odd but I had Hugh. Safety in numbers, and concealed firearms.
“No.” He removed his baseball cap, revealing a perky, light blond mohawk, pulled out the chair, and sat.
Then he waited.
“You contacted me, Richard. You said you had information.” About what I had no clue but this search for what was behind my father’s death, at a place designed to turn women into sex slaves, had so far gotten me one step past the starting post. “Do you know anything about my father’s death? About this woman Jazmine Foulkes? I think she was abducted and kept there and that she escaped.”
Jazmine, hotshot journalist, had written a damning article on my brother revealing how he was stealing millions from the government. But it wasn’t that which had made him suicide, no, it was the other information she’d revealed. A blind person could see it was a personal attack. She’d found out about his cross dressing fetish.
That he’d killed his family as well as himself...
I didn’t know for certain why Jazmine was at that slave house, but with my father being found dead there too I’d gradually come around to suspecting something perverted had happened to her on my father’s orders. It was such a twisted idea and I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around it.
The chair squeaked as Richard reclined. His focus was entirely on me, as if the menacing Hugh wasn’t sitting beside me. “Perhaps. I don’t know her whereabouts but I can help you find the man who set your father up to die.”
“Oh.” I tensed. This was what I’d been looking for. A breakthrough. “Who?”
He gestured at Hugh. “Get your watchdog to move away and I’ll say more.”
Damn. Was this safe? Hugh shook his head, grimly. But I dived in. Nowhere was where I’d gotten so far.
“Hugh, please?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Ma’am...” But he took in my expression then nodded.
Once he’d risen and seated himself at a distant table, one with the wall behind him, I nodded at Richard. Clever Hugh. Always seeking out the safest places. Could he read lips?
Richard, or whoever he was – I didn’t believe it was his name for an instant – leaned his forearms on the table. His nearest hand ended up resting inches from my left hand. My breaths turned ragged. Just that proximity had made warmth suffuse between my legs. This man attracted me, no matter that he was clearly out of bounds. Fantasy territory – like lusting for the tatted-up, muscle-bound biker stalking through the pub on a Saturday night.
With my friends, I’d ogle after this type of man then turn aside and giggle about what he’d be like in bed.
“Well?” I pulled my hand away a fraction, but the electricity of his presence drew me still.
“The man you want is called Vetrov.” Ugh, and even his voice seemed to stroke between my legs. Testosterone concentrate.
I swallowed and made myself listen.
“He organizes human trafficking. I know where to find him.”
To business. I’d get the person who had done this and to hell with my life until I did. No brother, no mother, no father – only I remained. Most days I wanted to weep despite the millions Dad had left me. My vet science degree could wait. This money, what better thing to do with it than destroy the man who’d killed my father?
“Give me his name, where he lives, and I’ll pay you very well. Once I know for sure he’s the right man, one hundred thousand is yours.”
For the first time he truly studied me. When his eyes lowered, my breasts tingled, my nipples tightening until they were aching and hard. They’d be showing through my skimpy shirt. Focus. Business.
His mouth twitched and he lifted his hand and trapped mine. What the hell?
“Remove your hand.” I tugged but he held on tight. The creak of the chair warned me that Hugh had noticed. I shook my head at him and he subsided into his chair.
“First hear my terms. Two hundred thousand. You’re going to need me with you to help fine tune the location of Vetrov.”
I frowned and was still considering when he spoke again.
“Also, I want you.”
Time shivered. “What ?” I’d heard wrong.
“You.” His smile was hard, uncompromising, and so lethal every hair on my body stood on end. “I want you in my bed. Once. After that, you won’t want to leave. No you. No deal.”
He didn’t wink or move in any way, just waited while examining my face, and that floored me. Arrogant bastard.
Was this blackmail? Yet he intrigued me. I shook my head, jarring myself out of the state of shock. “Ummm.”
One eyebrow rose. “Dare to take a chance for once, Wren. Life is better with surprises.”
One night. Why was I even thinking it was possible?
I blinked, running through crazy thought after crazy thought. What would it be like to have sex with such an overtly dangerous man? All my past lovers had been students. Young safe men who’d never done more than go to university, parties, maybe the beach.
Insane to say yes.
I opened my mouth and was caught by how he stared at my lips. His large hand squeezed down harder until where his thumb pressed hurt. The pain brought another level of scariness to this. Now I was aroused and afraid in equal proportions.
The words seemed to blurt out without my mind having much say. “Once, only. And it’s one hundred thousand if you want me as part of the deal.” Let’s see what the smart ass thinks of that.
“Done.” He drew my hand to his mouth, kissed my knuckles like a gentleman, then he singled out my forefinger and sucked on it.
I could feel the movement of his tongue.
In one second, my finger became hot and wet and his.
Tremors ran through my pussy. Breathing halted. My eyes must be so very wide. The man had turned me on so much with that simple action, as if it were a button to my sexuality.
Holy fuck.
His murmur rumbled past my last defenses. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll bend you over this table now, pull down your underwear...”
...and fuck you. I could hear those unsaid words in my mind.
He released my hand. I snatched it away.
What had I just agreed to?
*****
Moghul
“Moghul! Problem.”
At the sound of my name, I shut off the phone and swung back to the naked model my rigger had suspended from the ceiling by hooks. Her frantic pleas to be let down were worrying my men but the film crew kept to their task. Randy was working methodically to get her down.
The ropes lowered the last foot. Her bound breasts, then the rest of her front, gently kissed the floor.
“Way to go,” I muttered. Maybe I could salvage something from the footage.
Not all the scripts worked, especially when we tried something new, like hook suspension.
The crew relaxed and Randy went to one knee beside Mel to extract the shiny hooks.
“Thank you, Randy!”
The Texan gave me a thumbs-up then resumed soothing and freeing the girl. The man was a find and a half with all his skills – big attitude, bad jokes, and big dick. If anyone else had been handling the submissive, she’d have been screaming the room down.
My second phone buzzed and I walked carefully backward until I found the wall.
I did a last check on the scene.
There was nothing sexy about the next part. Not with her panicking. Maybe if we were a torture snuff porn site but Kinkaverse was a straight up BDSM porn site. Domination, humiliation, and bondage of every sort while the models got fucked every which way. All above board and legal.
I pursed my lips and, just for a second, allowed myself the leisure of imagining Mel being made to stay up there. Enticing situation. Suspended on hooks, with her arms bound and anchored to the wall by other ropes, blood trickling from the points of entry, gagged maybe. Then she could be fucked by the Texan, and one or two others.
I smiled and let the little vision slip away.
It wasn’t often I let myself dwell on the possibilities. Not while at work. My employees would be aghast, but not at my fantasies, at my realities.
“Got ya, sweetheart.” Randy removed the last hook then cuddled her to him.
I snorted and glanced down at the message on my screen. Military-grade encryption but it never hurt to be careful. Someone reading over my shoulder could be as disastrous as the message being sent in plain text.
The woman in Moresby is not a friend of Jazmine Foulkes. She’s Gavoche’s daughter, Wren. She’s trying to figure out her father’s death. Dangerous if she links you and the House.
“Fuck,” I said softly.
The spotlights in here were overcoming the aircon. I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm then stared up at the ceiling for a while.
The slave House, in Papua New Guinea, I’d written off. The place was being closed down anyway and the only liabilities, my men there, had been killed by the men who’d rescued Jazmine Foulkes. Those rescuers had also killed Wren’s father.
Which was good, really, even if the man had been a friend.
I smiled thinly. No one left alive could connect me directly to anything as illegal, immoral, and depraved as sex slavery. Vetrov was a name I kept in quarantine from the legal, if dirty, businesses I ran as Moghul.
What were the odds Wren would connect me to the House? Low, as in very.
I should have her killed. It was final. It was sensible. People were loose ends because of their nosiness and Wren had met me, even if she knew nothing of her father’s fetishes. Once all the immediate family was gone, no one was likely to see anything except an old man’s kinkiness exposed in a tawdry fashion by his death in Papua New Guinea.
I grimaced. What a waste. The last time I’d seen her, the girl had blossomed into a beauty.
The hooks called to me. Someone needed to try them out properly.
I never took things that far on my home turf. Absentmindedly, I tapped my finger on the mobile phone.
Yet a woman caught on those hooks, for me, just for me... Definite possibilities there. It would be karma in a way, considering Andrew’s proclivities.
Chapter 1
Glass
The last flicker of the white painted metal of Wren’s four-wheel-drive showed between the heavy green leaves of the trees.
What a woman. What a surprise that’d been – her agreeing to get in bed with me. I grinned. The buzz from that might take a while to die away.
That road wound down the mountain for miles and miles then back to the coast and Port Moresby. I whistled once. With the driver’s side door of my Land Rover propped open with my boot, the sound carried well.
From the jungle to my right, Pieter emerged. His leonine dark locks had been tied back, revealing the heavy bones of his face. He was a man who looked like a brick to the face would barely dent him, and that he’d then apply that same brick to his attacker and make him wish he was home in bed. His looks told no lies.
He jogged over, yanked open the door, and slid into the front passenger seat, making the car creak.
“Lose some fat, man. You’re killing the suspension.”
“Har har. It’s muscle not fat.” Pieter pulled out his shiny Glock and laid it across his lap.
Seconds later, Jurgens appeared from behind the vehicle and hauled his ass into the back seat. Enough ink on the man to make a tattooist salivate. Enough metal to set off detectors at fifty feet. South Africa had lost a couple of predators when these guys left the country.
Their doors slammed and I pulled mine shut.
“Go,” murmured Pieter.
“What did you find?” I turned the wheel and gently accelerated.
“Two men in the bush watched while you spoke to her. They must have their own car back there. We took them both down. Ziptied them. We’ve got everything from their pockets –
phones, and a camera, wallets. We chucked away their weapons. Next time we won’t get to sneak up on them so easily.”
That was the drawback of not acting while we had an advantage. I’d known this and yet I still hadn’t given the go ahead to terminate them.
As I steered around the long swooping bends of the track, the bumps of a poorly maintained bitumen surface shuddered up through the seat. Birds whooped and whistled above the subdued growl of the engine. I settled my hands on the leather steering wheel cover. Land Rovers had an elegance to them even when they were working hard.
If I didn’t tell Wren what had happened...
I fished my phone from my pocket and tossed it to Pieter. “Text her that they’re back there. Where you left them. Tell her no security when we meet in town or the deal is off.”
A few minutes later, Wren’s vehicle passed us going back up to the café.
“You should’ve let us take them.” Pieter cocked his head.
Yeah, maybe I should’ve.
“Why didn’t you?”
I took too long figuring out my answer and Jurgen popped in with his view.
“Glass isn’t into killing ladies. None of us are, come to think of it. Fokken bad business that is.”
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a nod from Pieter.
“True.” The man shifted his shoulders to lean into the doors and angle himself toward Glass. “But we had other plans for her, didn’t we?”
“Ja. I think she confused Glass. That one could make you think with your cock instead of your head. Pretty little thing.”
Pieter grinned. “Was that it? Though, hell, taking her would’ve solved that problem right smart.”
“Taking her?” Bloody hell. It had been the plan. I grunted and kept steering. They let me have the silence.
Good men. Despite the joking, none of us thought lightly of kidnapping Wren or killing her guards. We were all ex-military with jungle actions in Africa under our belts. We’d killed, close up, many times. War had toughened us but it had also made us aware that death was final and life wasn’t something you extinguished on a whim.
I glanced across at Pieter. “Did they get pictures?”
“Probably.”
Shit.
“There’s no internet access here though. Once these are gone we’re okay.” He pulled out a phone then dismantled and mutilated the sim card. “Jurgen, we may as well toss these out here.”
“Sure.”
To let them throw the bits as deep as possible into the jungle, I pulled over for a few seconds.
I didn’t mind killing, when I absolutely had to, to keep my friends and employees out of jail and healthy. Wasn’t that. Admit it, I had reservations about doing anything to a woman. Made my bloody toes curl.
But...I’d let Pieter do whatever he’d wanted to Jazmine. They’d deserved each other, though. From the first moment I saw Jazmine, her devotion to Pieter had shone through. She might not have seen it in herself, but it’d been there. Now she was his happy little slave. They were in love, for whatever strange reasons rocked their world.
Pieter and Jurgen deserved an apology. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. We’ve lost the initiative.”
Concealing ourselves from any police inquiries was the prime, A-grade reason for this meeting. We needed to stop Wren chasing down clues. Even if it hadn’t been a bullet from my own sniper rifle, I’d been in charge of the assault that had freed Pieter and Jazmine and killed Wren’s father.
We should’ve stayed away from her and prayed she found no witnesses, no clues.
As if. I smiled to myself. As if praying was ever going to be our first line of attack for any problem.
Besides, if we’d stayed away, I’d never have met her.
A rich little spoilt bitch in the middle of the New Guinea Highlands searching for the answers to her father’s death. If ever there was a man who deserved death it was him. Perverted sick bastard.
Would she still follow through with the meeting? Fuck, I hoped so. Still driving, I drew on memories. Petite, that was the word for Wren. She’d acted bold as brass but with that neat black hair flipping across her shoulders, and those big eyes peering at me when I’d suggested anything shocking...and that body, she seemed ripe for the next unscrupulous bastard to take advantage.
What was it about boobs, body, and cleavage, that enticed a man when he’d seen it a thousand times on porn sites on the internet and on every woman who’d ever graced his bed?
Nothing but her had existed as I’d threaded between the tables and chairs on the approach to her table.
That bright lipstick was such a contrast when the rest of her was faded denim shorts, white T-shirt, and pale skin. Red on cream. When she’d spoken, I’d imagined kissing those glossy lips, shoving her against a wall and kissing her.
Instant hard-on material.
Wasn’t there some theory that women’s lips were supposed to remind you of their pussy? I could go with that idea.
But kissing? Only kissing? How undirty and unnasty was that? I was slipping.
She looked like some innocent hidden away from the world for most of her life. Unsullied. The report said she was twenty-six. She probably knew every sex position in the book.
Who gave rat’s ass? Just looking that innocent grabbed my attention.
Man, I was in trouble.
The vehicle hit a bigger bump and veered off course. I tugged it back into line and cleared away all the visions clouding my mind, or tried to.
My cock ached with the possibilities. I didn’t feel right about kidnapping her, or killing her, just to tidy up my world...and how messed up were my morals that I’d even considered that? Pieter would be surprised to hear me question my moral code but it was true. There was a line I never wanted to cross and I’d found it the day we’d thought about killing Jazmine. Today had only reinforced that line.
Yeah, deep down I was a little angel with a halo made of stolen gold...and I had so many dirty things I wanted to do to pretty little Wren...over and over and fucking over.
Chapter 2
Wren
In my hotel room, I packed my handbag under Hugh’s vigilant eyes. The Beretta, with an extra magazine, made the bag weigh a ton already. My wallet was in there too, as well as everything else a woman needed on a dirty evening assignation, like red lipstick and pepper spray.
Hugh put a small packet in my hand. His facial expression was as disgusted as that of an opera singer asked to do rap. We’d argued for hours. Apparently, what I was about to do was the equivalent of throwing myself off a cliff. There was no one whose opinion I valued more. Hugh had been a cross between my bodyguard and babysitter for years. When he’d finally agreed to help me, I’d been torn between wanting to give him a big hug and smacking him.
I turned the packet over. A condom?
“When did you become my mother, Hugh? My creepy mother, come to think of it?”
He raised a brow. “I’m being practical.”
Agreeing, taking it, seemed to say, first of all, that I was indeed having sex with this Richard in exchange for information. Ugh. What had I been thinking? Second, that I should not expect him to provide the condom...or condoms. Wasn’t that traditional male territory?
“No.” I placed the packet on the glass-topped sideboard. With my forefinger, I pushed it away a few inches.
His brow stayed up.
“No thank you, Mother, I have other plans.” I did too. Let’s see what mister tough and arrogant Richard did when faced with insubordination. Wrong word...not insubordination, no. A redefinition of his clause. I didn’t really expect to need a gun. My guards had been left intact, just gagged and bound.
The man could have hurt us both. Hugh wasn’t a superhero – just a super-good friend slash bodyguard slash security organizer.
I reached for the last item on the sideboard – a knife – and slid it from the leather sheath, then turned it over. The blade danced with light.
Knives with their long, sharp steel, and their potential for penetrating the human body, were endowed with an unearthly promise that never failed to send cold shivering through me, down my spine, between my legs, to my sex.
The things a knife might do.
“I don’t think you need this either.”
What? I frowned. Sometimes, Hugh had a thing about letting me near knives, as if he sensed when they affected me badly. As I mostly did, I gave in. Gently, Hugh took the knife and sheathed it.
Snatching up my bag, I marched to the door, and threw a few last words over my shoulder, “You are odd. Guns get a big tick of approval but knives make you jittery?”
“I don’t get jittery. Today is a day when you make me think you’ll be careless. Your pistol has a safety catch.”
“Hah.” I pulled open the door. After Hugh followed me out, the luxury hinges huffed closed slowly.
With the Beretta, I could hit a bull’s eye at twenty yards with ninety-three percent accuracy. A knife required close-up encounters. It required me being near enough that an assailant could wrench it from my hand if I made a mistake. No matter how much training I had in self-defense, a man was more dangerous up close. Hugh’s logic argued the opposite, that I might hurt this Richard by accident. Maybe it was best I not be tempted.
“I’ll be in the bar for a while, talking to a possible informant. If you need me, do not hesitate to press the emergency button in your handbag. We can track you to a degree with the location service, but here, in Papua New Guinea, it’s not going to be as reliable. We may lose you. Be careful.”
“Sure. I will be. You remember, no surveillance of us meeting at his car.”
“I agreed to that, and if this goes wrong and all he wants to do is to ransom you, you’ll lose millions.”
I nodded. Nothing more to say, really. We’d gone over this ground many times. This was not in Hugh’s handbook on keeping me safe.
I needed to know what had happened to Dad. Even if he was...had been, an utter bastard of a parent on most days of my life. Love didn’t obey logic.
I heaved in a breath.
There was one other couple in the corridor, also heading for the lift.
My black high heels made no noise in the carpet. Such a quiet place. Behind all those doors, people were probably fucking their little hearts out while tied to the beds, being spanked, cropped, snorting cocaine. Even if I didn’t partake, I knew of fetishes, kinks, and addictions. It had hardly been a secret after dear brother showed me a video of father whipping one of his mistresses. I’d been ten. Such a sweet brother, and I’d loved him too, despite his flaws.
If I died tomorrow, I’d be the end of the family line.
The family line being extinguished bothered me little. Our...my Gavoche family was about as close to Heaven as the murderous medieval Borgias. It was sadness that flattened me. My mouth turned down as I contemplated the past.
Children, a baby or two, might be nice, one day. At twenty-six, I could finally declare myself responsible enough to be a mother. No one else was left. Father could no longer deny me.
Babies... Huh. I clamped down on bad memories but a tear or two threatened to spill. Funny, how a still birth bit so deep, even though it was a person who had never quite been born. I sniffed then swallowed past the tightness in my throat. The pluses to being the last one left standing. Fuck, there had to be some, right? As well as the excess of money?
The handbag slapped against my side, no doubt making the crushed red silk of the dress even more crushed.
A few yards down the street from the hotel’s circular drive, barely within the pool of light from a streetlight, Richard waited. Arms folded, he leaned on the hood of a black corvette – an old, remodeled one from the looks of it.
I glanced about, betting this spot was outside the hotel’s video surveillance range. Far enough to be safe for me to walk, but also discreet.
“Enter.” He waved at the Corvette.
Once I was sitting in the car, he leaned over and drew down the safety belt at the same time as I put my hand to it. His larger hand engulfed mine, pulling down the belt to click it in place while I stared at the stubble on the side of his face, stricken with both fear and arousal. This close, smelling him was a given. Whatever pheromones had kicked in, they were doing unwelcome things to me.
If he leaned his elbow on my lap, I’d possibly self-combust.
“I can do this myself.”
“Just making sure.” He resumed his seat. “Wouldn’t want you getting hurt.”
No smile, just that assessing appreciation that strayed downward to my breasts, for a second, before he met my gaze again.
Smug bastard. I blinked and pretended to straighten my skirt. Scary bastard.
Smart rejoinders could wait. Right now, this second, I was still humming with the effect of his proximity. Breathing steadily needed my concentration to the nth degree.
I simply hated men who could do this. It reeked of me losing control, them gaining it. Father had been good at that – control, and most men who attempted to make me do what they wanted only triggered a rise of temper. Sometimes when it was the stupid thing to do.
I had to say something or seem an idiot. But what?
He started the engine, clicked on his own belt, and pulled away into traffic.
Saved.
“We’re going to a friend’s house. Not mine. Not far from here.”
After driving in what seemed circles, no doubt to check for my men tailing us, he stopped at the side of the road with a small bridge just ahead.
“Is there anything in your handbag that’s important to you?”
Suspicious, I gripped it tighter, on my lap. “Why?”
“It’s going into that river.”
Fuck him. “Why?”
“You know why.”
He put out a hand, imperious, expectant – and having it there in front of me, waiting, annoyed me no end. My gun – I’d lose that.
“The deal’s off if you don’t give me it.”
Could I claim my phone as precious? No, he wasn’t that stupid. “My wallet has all my credit cards, my driver’s license.”
“I’ll keep those for you.” His hand stayed out.
“And pills. There’s a packet of them in there I need. I don’t have another prescription.”
“They’re prescription? Not crack, uppers, downers? I’m not saving your fancy little rich girl designer drugs.”
Shit. This man... I had thought him hot, now I knew better. Just another asshole.
“I don’t do drugs. I have a sleep disorder. I sleepwalk.”
“Sounds like fun. I’ll find the pills.”
My temper simmered down from molten to bubbling.
“You’d better be trustworthy.” Because if he wasn’t, I’d drive his bloody Corvette keys through his eyes before I’d give in to any demands.
“I am.”
“You really expect me to –”
“I do. Trust me or it’s off.”
And so, after another twenty or thirty seconds of stonewalling him, and fuming, I relinquished the bag. Then I watched him find my wallet and pills, take out the cards, and declare me a bad girl for having a gun. Asshole. He drove closer to the bridge and exited the car to hurl the bag into the water.
The splash died away, leaving only the throb of the engine then the slam of the door as he reentered.
Gone. On my own. It had been nice knowing I had a gun if I needed it.
Glass might be a recruiter for one of those slave houses. I could end up locked away forever as some man’s sex slave. I risked a sideways look and his set expression gave me no reassurance. I could be dead tomorrow too. Shut up doubts.
“Damn you,” I whispered, staring out the window at the stonework of the bridge. “Damn you to hell.”
“I’m already going there. Save your breath.”
Hugh needed to invest in a GPS tracker I could insert up a body cavity. And wouldn’t that be fun on a date night. Making light of this wasn’t going to fix anything but it made me feel better.
“Now we can have our night in privacy. I’m allergic to people barging in with guns.”
“Really? I’m not so gauche as to let Hugh do that.” I slumped back into the upholstery. My orneriness surged to the fore. Fuck him ten times over. “Besides, I have an emergency beacon elsewhere on me.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t see much of his face as he drove, but amusement showed in his tone. “Then I will have fun searching for it, with you naked.”
I glared. If looks could kill, he’d just been stapled to the seat with a hundred knives. Sharp fuckers. I could see the blood soaking that fancy dark shirt. The handles wedged deep, right up to his chest. Well...almost see them. Let’s see him call that fun too.
I kept my eyes open as he maneuvered through the streets, fairly certain I could find where he was taking us on a map. Until he pulled over and made me sit still for a blindfold to be tied on. Deal or no deal. I had to say yes. This was getting more and more like a bloody game show.
At one point, I sneaked up a hand to raise the edge. He stopped me with one uh-uh and threatened to tie my hands. Now that rang alarm bells.
So I was good, outwardly, while inwardly adding some knives to the collection in his chest.
The echoes and creak of a metal door winding up said he’d driven into an underground car park. Somewhere secure then. A compound for foreigners probably. They were a common way to be safe here, what with the high crime rate against foreigners.
When he led me up and around some flights of stairs and through a door, then lifted off my blindfold, I found myself in an immaculately decorated apartment.
“What a pity,” I sighed out.
That drew a sharp look.
I studied him as he ambled from the short entranceway into a living room to toss the blindfold onto a giant glass and metal chessboard. Ferns and small palms added greenery, their fronds hanging from small pots. An ocean theme encompassed a sand and blue color scheme, paintings, and furniture like a driftwood-inspired coffee table. There was even a small rowboat upended and fastened upright to one wall.
“A pity? Why?”
I shrugged.
To the left was a small but modern kitchen that ran along the wall. Beyond him was an opened wall looking out onto the night sky. Folded back shuttered doors were concertinaed at either end.
“Call me Glass. It’s friendlier than Richard.”
“If you want.” Was this another fake name? Glass, it sounded like a nickname.
He propped his hand on the wall beside the boat.
For a moment I admired the way his arm muscles bulged and flexed under the sleeve of his dark gray shirt. Glass had that physical solidness of a man who could effortlessly fill a room with his presence. Had it in spades. Curiosity kept me looking far too long.
I tore myself away and answered his first question just to see his reaction.
“I was hoping to see a few knives in you when you removed the blindfold. My imagination amused me on the way here.”
“Bloodthirsty.”
“Yes. That’s me.”
He studied me. “Snap. Me too. We’ll make a great couple.”
“I’m paying you a lot of money. Don’t trivialize this.”
He snorted. “I’m not toning down my jokes for you. Be happy I’m not trivializing your quest to find your father’s killer.”
Stalemate.
Slowly, he approached, his tread measured, his gaze as nonchalantly menacing as a leopard that’s found a fear-paralyzed bunny in its territory.
I steeled myself not to back away and dug my nails into my palms to make myself focus.
Look at him. Do not take your eyes away, do not blink, it shows weakness.
“You made me a promise yesterday.” He stopped a foot away, glowering down at me while I strived to keep my tongue from straying onto my lips.
When nervous, I licked them or even ran my tongue under my top lip. I wasn’t nervous, just...just...fuck. My toes curled as he reached out, slow and deliberate, toward my face.
My response was automatic. “Do not touch me.”
At that, one brow inched up, but he still took my chin in the cup of his hand. I rocked back, gasping at the contact. His subtle smile transfixed me as much as the feel of his calloused thumb running lightly along my jawbone. Such warm skin, as if his body were several degrees hotter than mine.
Heat spread from between my legs and my nipples ached and tightened.
“See.”
God, the way he watched me...
I swallowed surreptitiously, “See what?”
“You can take my hand on you. I don’t bite.”
Something about those words broke the spell. The assurance that I’d stand there for him, perhaps? When he moved his hand to caress my hair at the side of my face, I stepped away.
“Oh but I do. I bite.”
To my consternation, that only made his mouth quirk at one corner.
Fine. Did he want me to think him made of rock? Emotionless?
This seemed a good time to set boundaries. Was it reckless, considering where I was? Perhaps. But I’d been rock climbing, kayaking, done my share of hiking through wilderness and even tried parachuting, once. I had a father who’d scared me so much I nearly puked, once, when I did something he detested. Damn though, my pulse went crazy as I found the bedroom doorway to the right and entered.
“Is this the main bedroom?”
“Yes.” He came up behind me, close.
“Good.” I went and sat on the edge of the king-size bed, sinking into the heavy quilt, then bouncing up and down. “Care to take a seat?”
Though he looked suspicious, he sat beside me, merely inches away.
Goose bumps. All my hairs stood on end. I hadn’t considered he’d sit this near me.
I lined up the right words in my head, enunciated them carefully. “You said you wanted me to join you in bed before you’d help me. Well, now I have. My part of the deal is done, apart from the money. I never said it meant sex. Now, you have to fulfill your side of things.”
I waited, my lips set in a line. My impulsive decision at the café had been thrown down and ground underfoot. If he was angry, I’d offer to pay more.
If...
What if he wanted to rape me?
Those – rape, death, kidnapping – were what Hugh had railed at me about, for hours. I didn’t care. My psychologists would be aghast, but I plain didn’t care. Maybe I would care if it happened. Of course I would. Logically, I knew it. But rape and assault seemed distant, far-away concepts. My father’s death had ushered in a weariness, which came and went like a gray tide.
If bad things happened, at least I’d be done with this man; I’d know what he was capable of. Perhaps it would bring me peace, as if a penance had been paid. God knew, I owed a lot. It often seemed as if I’d been waiting to pay my whole life.
Bravery was easy when you were numb.
I waited still. What was he doing?
With his thigh almost touching mine, and the dip in the mattress, I had to be careful not to topple into him. I listened to his breathing, smelled him. My awareness seemed to sharpen. From the corner of my eye, I saw the muscles of his arm, and I wondered. What if...he did try something?
I must be mad. I think I wanted him to.
The urge to look at him intensified.
Chapter 3
Moghul
Op1
to Vetrov (decrypted)
7.43 pm Wren G observed entering black Corvette. Surveillance ceased after driver (blond male 30 to 40yrs approx) began evasion. Male unidentified at present. Do you wish his identity?
A video was downloading.
Did I? I held the phone to my chin, staring unfocused down the flight of stairs. I was annoyed at myself. I didn’t have any rights over this girl or her body. Then why my reaction to the knowledge that a man was taking her on dates?
My meandering thoughts took me down the stairs. I hadn’t been to my island house for years. No reason. My private playing area held no interest for me. Any subs I took up with at play parties were happy being little exhibitionists and flogged, fucked, or whatever, in public.
Was it fortuitous, some subtle nudge of fate’s hand that the text about Wren had come through while I was visiting?
I could sell this place in a month. I was considering it. Sunlight streamed in through the thick plate glass wall. I glanced across, through the tinted glass, at the blue on blue horizon. The views over the ocean were spectacular. It would need some cleaning, some removal of kink equipment, unless I wanted to shock the real estate agent. I leaned on the rounded steel railing encompassing the rectangular hole in the tiled floor and peered over the edge. The pit of despair, as my last submissive had labelled it, was full of dead bugs, dust, and cobwebs. How spiders got into an air-conditioned, sealed home was inconceivable, as Vizzini might have said.
The brushed steel was cool under my palms. My architect had done well. Outside was searingly hot.
I was fantasizing about a pretty woman when there were a million of them out there. A pretty woman hung on hooks, with an audience of one. I could see myself making her come despite her predicament...her writhing and screaming, then I’d tease her endlessly and make her come again and again. Sadism plus orgasms – my favorite recipe.
Whoa. Lips pursed, I let out a long breath. I was getting a hard-on just thinking about it.
A Vetrov affair should not invade my legal, if very kinky, Moghul world. It was as if Alice in Wonderland had popped out of a rabbit hole in my living room, though Wren did have a tenuous link to me through her father.
The high-res video downloaded onto the screen and I clicked play. As she walked toward his car, her red dress frothed about her legs like waves washing onto a forbidden shore.
What the hell. Just this once. I could follow what she got up to with impunity. In Papua New Guinea, my affairs were all cleaned up.
Of course, if she wandered into my territory here, now, that would be a whole new ball game. It would be irritating. I sorted through my emotions. And interesting and tempting, definitely tempting. But I could see no route she could take that would lead her to me. No one knew my alter egos.
I shook my head. All hypothetical. After twenty years building my little empire I wasn’t about to jeopardize it on a whim.
Vetrov
to Op1
Yes.
*****
Glass
Was this Wren girl suicidal? I hovered between laughing at her antics and just grabbing her.
Her light blue eyes were dilated, though maybe that was the low light. A little muscle on her jaw twitched. She held my gaze despite toying nervously with the cloth of that dead sexy red dress.
Balls, steel lady balls, even if she was crazy.
She had no idea who I was, except that I’d said I could help her track who had killed her father, and she knew I had men capable of neutralizing her security. I wasn’t your average guy on the street with a deep respect for the law.
I could kidnap her and beat the crap out of her for bugging me.
The neighbors wouldn’t hear much, if I gagged her first and tied her up. I had to admit she tempted me. I could do anything. Pieter had showed me the other side. The dark possibilities: ever since I saw Jazmine kneel to him, they’d been like a siren song.
Wren blinked and ducked her head again.
Especially when she acted submissive like that. Jesus. I stared down at the top of her head, as if struck by lightning along with an earthquake and a small nuclear device.
“You expect me to roll over and agree to that?”
Her back stiffened and she unleashed a glare on me. “Two hundred thousand is not a pittance.”
“Gone back to two hundred, hey?” Compensation. She knew she’d done wrong, and that glare, it was like a kick to my brain and my balls.
So I grabbed her. I clenched my fist in the back of her hair. Her eyes snapped open.
Revelation rolled in. This was nice.
Soft hair. A woman in my hand. While she was still gasping, I relentlessly pulled her backward until she hit the bed, then I anchored my elbow near her and waited to see what she’d do.
Her hands came up to pry mine off. One after the other, I trapped them and clasped them to her, below her breasts.
Another glare.
“Let’s cut all the fucking around.” I didn’t expect her to give in.
When she arched as if to kick me, I laid my thigh over hers. After a few more seconds of curses, and trying to wriggle loose, she lay there panting.
“You fucking bastard!”
“A fucking bastard? Bastard, maybe. The other? I promise you’ll know when that happens.”
The wrestling had done nice things. If breasts ever heaved, it was now.
“That dress would make a blind man want to rape you.”
She fell silent.
Was there fear in her eyes? Or just anger?
“Why? Why’d you change your mind?”
“I don’t. Want. To fuck you.” Those words came out through an angry sneer.
Nasty. I snaked my fingers deeper into her hair and got another gasp for my efforts. I twisted my wrist and turned her to face me more. I could see the appeal this had for Pieter. Controlling her was a damn aphrodisiac.
“You don’t want to fuck me,” I deadpanned.
I wasn’t impervious to this woman squirming under me. I had a hard-on tenting my pants.
Maybe her mind had problems with fucking me, a lowlife mercenary living in New Guinea, but I’d bet my two hundred K that her pussy was wet and wanting me.
“You’re damn lucky,” I said, grating out the words with my mouth two inches from hers. “That I’m not into rape.”
“Oh.” She blinked while her mouth closed from making that Oh.
Disappointment, I swear, written in big red letters. What the hell?
Oh baby, I’m going to convert your confusion into a yes tonight.
“This was a business deal. Not a date. You want to renegotiate? It takes two.”
“It wasn’t signed and sealed.”
“In my universe, our agreement was as good as signed in blood. Want to argue?”
Under my hand, her wrists moved as she flexed her fingers and her tendons shifted. I let her go and jumped to my feet. My maneuver seemed to have stunned her and she lay there looking up.
I leaned over her, steadying myself with a hand to the quilt by her hip. Then I smiled.
“You want to get out of this deal, Miss Wren?”
She nodded.
“Then I get part of you to play with tonight.”
“What?”
“Let’s see. Which bits?” I did an insolent appraisal of her body, sliding my hand upward from her hip, over her belly, to the undercurve of her breast. She quivered enough that I registered it. “Your mouth?” I bent and brushed my lips over hers, then pulled away, slow, conscious of how her breathing had ceased.
So soft. Her mouth was lush, fertile, like maybe I could give her babies just by kissing.
“Wait,” she said huskily, her palms pressing on my chest. “Wait now. You’re talking kissing? I guess...I can do that.”
My knee had ended up against the edge of the bed, squashing the dress material between her legs.
I slid my hand to her dress and started gathering fabric in my fist, making it slither up her legs. “Best of all, after I play with you, you show me your panties. If they’re wet, I get to fuck you.”
Her hands whipped down and she tried to hold down the dress. “Hey! No! No agreement. No way can you do that!”
“Why? Afraid you’re already in violation? Show me or I’ll assume you’ve got the hots for me anyway. I’m being lenient.”
I shoved up the dress, baring a smooth expanse of upper thigh and the lowest point of a triangle of red lace. Damn. The swell of her mons showed above that. I could bury my face there and not come up for a month. Move aside that elastic and I could...
I coughed. Back on subject. Shut up, dick. Later you’ll get your turn.
“This is perverted,” she said, quietly alarmed.
“You’re lucky they’re not black. With black, I couldn’t tell from looking. Red is good.” I nudged with my leg, applying pressure to the inside of her knees, encouraging her to spread them. “Red goes dark when it’s wet. If they weren’t red, I’d have to take these off and feel your pussy with my fingers.”
“This is...” Her throat moved and her tone had lowered to a whisper. “It’s totally crazy.”
There was a fevered look to her face that hadn’t been there before, a blush on her cheeks. She wasn’t resisting enough for a woman who really, truly meant no. Maybe she thrived on reluctance? Maybe she wanted a man who would simply do what he wanted to her. I could run with that. Run a long fucking way.
“Are you wet, Miss?” Miss? Where’d that come from? I’d never called a woman miss before. “Show me. Now.”
She made a weird noise in her throat – half whimper, half question. I fixed her with a determined glower. “Now.”
“Glass...” But her ass did a subtle squirm, and this time she gave in. Her leg muscles stopped pushing against my palms. Slowly, they fell open.
I straightened and took in the scenery, wishing I had a camera.
Her blue eyes were half closed. Her red dress was scrunched onto her stomach. Her thighs had opened, revealing those red panties. One yank and I’d have them gone. The crotch area showed a quarter inch wide line of darkness. If I bared her pussy by rolling aside the cloth, my finger would find more than enough moisture to sink effortlessly into her.
Now I knew.
Did she know how aroused she was?
She lay under me looking distressed, flushed, a little perplexed even. Expectant.
This was too easy. I wanted her on fire, dying to have me inside her. I didn’t want some miserable victory that she’d forget tomorrow. I wanted total surrender. If I didn’t get her to scream out a climax loud enough to give someone a heart attack, I’d missed my mark.
How wet could I get her? My cock could wait while I stirred this little miss until she was begging me.
“Outside. Now. I’m starving.”
“What? Dinner?” she blurted, staggering as I towed her out of the bedroom to the broad balcony and a set of table and chairs.
“Yes, dinner. Sit. Stay. Miss Wren.” I hauled out her chair.
When she was sitting and had arranged her dress, I bent over. “Hold still.”
Then I gave her the first kiss, making her part her lips and holding her under the jaw lightly. Just enough pressure to keep her there. Just enough to say, right now, you’re mine. When she raised her hand and touched my shoulder, I pinned it to the table. Her breathing hitched.
The more I held her still, the more she reacted. Or so it seemed.
Her eyes followed me as I lifted away and she was panting. That red-lipsticked mouth. One day, I needed to fuck it.
I stroked her hair, ran my finger down her ear, and smiled when she shivered. “Now, forget what I mean to do to you. Enjoy the night.”
Tell someone not to think about something and they will. I wanted her worried and thinking.
Her mouth opened and closed, then her tongue poked around at her top lip in an adorable way. “I cannot believe I let you do that. You are incorrigible, Mister Glass.”
“Mister Glass? Sounds like a promotion.”
She made a dismissive noise. How wet had that kiss got her? How often could I check her panties? Figuring that out might kill me.
The smell of the takeaway food drifted past and her stomach growled.
“I need to rescue the food from the microwave.”
When I returned with the plates and the Champagne bottle under my arm, I found she’d angled her chair to look out over the roofs to the bay. Most cities had an allure at night, when the grime and crime was disguised by sparkling strings of streetlights. Below us the swimming pool water slapped at the sides as someone did laps.
She turned and simply sat for a few minutes staring at me. I let the silence be, figuring she was adjusting to what had happened, justifying her reactions somehow. Besides, I was happy watching her back.
At last she inhaled deeply and leaned in to peer at the plate before her.
“Thai. Best I could do. This is Moet Chandon however...” I brandished the bottle and uncorked it, poured us both a glass before sitting.
“Champagne?” She cruised her fingertip through the moisture already dimpling the outside of the glass. “If I drink this, I can’t take my pills. I have a sleeping disorder.”
“Go without for one night.”
Wren lifted the glass and swirled the liquid, tilting the goblet as if fascinated by the play of color. “Once, I walked down to our garage and started the car while asleep. I’m told some people can drive even when sleep walking.”
“Really?” It seemed incredible. “It’s worth it to drink some Moet.” I indicated her champagne. “If you drift off I promise I won’t give you my keys.”
If I tied her to the bed she wasn’t likely to sleepwalk far.
I sat back and picked up my fork while she tasted the wine.
“This is nice. I haven’t had Champagne for so long.” She took another sip.
We ate and shared a few stories, dancing around what was not okay to tell each other. As the scene in the bedroom ebbed from her mind, she grew more confident.
I took possession of her hand and held it as often as I could. Tracing between her fingers while she tried to talk about some sensible thing let me watch the subtle changes on her face. Her eyelids fluttered. When I lifted her hand to my mouth and kissed each finger, one by one, she glanced down at the table and shifted position. The chair creaked.
I wondered if I was arousing her. I hoped so.
“I can’t eat, easily, when you do that.” A little crease formed on her forehead.
“I’m done.” I gave her hand back to her, trying not to smile when she fumbled and dropped her knife.
“What do you do for a living?” I forked up noodles. I knew the answer but figured I should ask.
“I’m studying veterinary science at Sydney University. You? Killing people?” Her smirk said she was trying to tease.
“And here I was polite enough not to ask if you spent your days counting money.”
Wren shrugged. “When you have more than you need, it means little.”
“When you have almost none, it means everything.”
“Are you saying you’re that poor? Somehow I doubt it. Besides, isn’t money the root of all evil?”
“That philosophy is a little overrated, otherwise we’d all be giving our money away not struggling to get more.”
Wren swirled her goblet, staring at me as if surprised I knew the word philosophy. I doubted she’d ever struggled for money.
“So if you’re not simply killing people?”
“I’m ex-army. I went to officer training at Sandhurst then the SAS for a short time before I was injured and retired.”
The arch of her brows was perfect. “So, you’re British? You don’t quite sound it.”
“I am. Or I was. Now I’m...” I waved a hand. “A bit African, a bit Papua New Guinean, a bit Aussie. I haven’t been back for thirteen years. You’re Australian?” I knew she was. I knew a lot about her.
“No. No. I’m a bit of everything, like you.”
Seemed like she was saying she had no idea who she was. I let it pass...and I wondered why it bothered me. Her accent seemed private school when she concentrated, but when I caught her off guard in a joke, she lapsed into something less posh. A few times, I caught her staring at nothing, her mouth downturned, as if she relived a painful memory.
I was seized by moments of her. Her lips nudging the edge of the glass. The sway of her breasts. The curves revealed and sculpted under the silk. Black hair, red lips, cream skin. Like a china doll with cracks you couldn’t see.
Something was riding her. She had demons, same as me, which only intrigued me more. A sleeping disorder? I could guess why with a father so immoral I’d felt dirty seeing his corpse. A brother with his own perversions, too, from what I’d heard. Where did she fit in all this?
Her knife and fork were scraped across the plate and neatly arranged. Done eating.
What the hell was I doing experimenting on her by trying to emulate Pieter?
What the hell was she doing here? For all her money and her paid security, she was here with me. I had an inclination to wrap her in my arms and fix whatever was making her sad. And I wanted to throw her down on that bed in there and fuck her. Why hadn’t she run from me when I started controlling her?
I shoved away my chair roughly enough to make it screech and rose to my feet, ignoring her startled expression. “We’re going swimming.”
In a closet, neatly packed away, I found a few bikinis, the tags still on them.
It was a muggy, humid night and the coolness of the pool would be welcome.
“One of these should fit you.” I put the whole bunch of them in her hands. “The bathroom’s that door.” I pointed.
Then I went and leaned my head on the wall in the bedroom.
Was this me? Maybe if I banged my head a few times, I’d see sense? This woman didn’t need me to abuse her, she needed someone to stop her falling over the next cliff. Throwing herself over even.
She’s an adult.
I wrenched on the boardshorts I’d found – the pair with the condom packet still in the pocket.
She met me in the hallway, wearing the blue bikinis with the tassels.
They fit her like a dirty depraved glove that covered her like body paint, and showed everything that needed seeing when her nipples peaked. I could even see the shape of her pussy. Not looking would’ve taken a court order.
Fucking hell.
I checked inside my head for those doubts. Conflicted, man, conflicted.
If I had a conscience it was a damn fornicating voyeur of a conscience. My libido was taking me somewhere my brain had rejected.
In her hand was her dress and a red bra, the straps dangling, and those panties – I could just see the edge of them. As I approached, I think my stare was close to nailing her to the wall behind her, because she gaped at me then stepped back and hit that same wall.
“Wait.” She held up a hand, waving it palm out. “Glass, I thought you’d changed your mind. You were so civilized at the table.”
Civilized? What man was civilized?
I’m pretty sure I growled.
My little victim.
In one stride I was in front of her. I could see myself fastening her to that wall with my hands on her neck and my leg between hers. I could feel it. I flexed my fists. Don’t.
I pressed my forehead to hers. What better route into her mind than through her eyes – through the trembling of her eyelashes and the shifting shades of blue in those irises.
“I was thinking of letting you go home untouched. Then...this.”
I trailed my gaze down to her cleavage and beyond. Every curve led to another and downward, her breasts, her hips, that cute belly button I wanted to stick my tongue in, the slight mound of her stomach. She was a sexual puzzle with the best ever prize when you solved her.
Eyes wide, mouth open, she didn’t even bother to try to stop me. Her hands were splayed against the wall either side of her as if she needed that to stop her falling.
Her clothes had landed in a pile at her feet.
She hadn’t run.
Maybe I could do this without breaking her.
Maybe? What was I letting myself become? She wasn’t some disposable sex creature.
I put my mouth to the side of her face and my lips moved on her ear as I spoke. “You’re fucking with my head. I do all kinds of shit to you, and you don’t run? You don’t scream or panic or look for the door? From now on, if you stay, I’m going to do what I like to you. Fuck etiquette. Hear me?”
Wren
I played with the napkin next to my plate. The late afternoon sun came in low, glinting off the tableware and making the place so glary it was difficult to see the man weaving between the other empty chairs and tables. For a little roadside pitstop eatery up in the Papua New Guinea mountains, the décor was...cute. My napkin had Bart Simpson on it and none of the chairs matched. And the waitress had vanished.
I glanced at my hulking bodyguard and he nodded reassuringly. Not a single black hair was out of place. James Bond and Hugh probably exchanged texts and anti-villain plans, but my father always had employed the best. Hugh had insouciance down to an art. Nothing fazed him, except maybe the tropical heat. He had a thing for being properly dressed in at least long pants and buttoned shirt. Today was a day for sweating.
Even in my tank top and denim knee-length pants, I was feeling the heat. More sweat dribbled down my spine. If we stayed any longer, I’d melt and stick to the timber. I took up the napkin and used it for a fan as the new arrival reached the table. Surfer shorts and T-shirt. Good. I hated being the underdressed one. Student life at university had been like diving into my ideal environment. No one had ever dressed up except at parties or functions.
A flight of parrots shot past a few yards away, squawking.
“Hello.” He put his hand on the back of the chair beside me. “Wren Gavoche?”
“Yes.”
The British accent sounded wonderful and never failed to give me an instant rapport with the speaker. It was just...cute, even when attached to an alarmingly large man. Despite my instinct that looking more pointedly might give him the wrong impression, because really he was not within light years of being inscribed in my little book of possible BF’s, I looked...and looked.
I let my gaze cruise over the swell of his biceps with the mysterious tatt peeking from under the sleeve, took in the breadth of his chest, his scent, the solid don’t fuck with me way he stood, those huge hands, and those palest ever blue eyes.
Ooops. Caught staring. His minimal yet knowing smile seemed to rivet me to my seat.
“Hi.” I pasted on an innocent grin. “You’re Richard? No last name?”
That was so odd but I had Hugh. Safety in numbers, and concealed firearms.
“No.” He removed his baseball cap, revealing a perky, light blond mohawk, pulled out the chair, and sat.
Then he waited.
“You contacted me, Richard. You said you had information.” About what I had no clue but this search for what was behind my father’s death, at a place designed to turn women into sex slaves, had so far gotten me one step past the starting post. “Do you know anything about my father’s death? About this woman Jazmine Foulkes? I think she was abducted and kept there and that she escaped.”
Jazmine, hotshot journalist, had written a damning article on my brother revealing how he was stealing millions from the government. But it wasn’t that which had made him suicide, no, it was the other information she’d revealed. A blind person could see it was a personal attack. She’d found out about his cross dressing fetish.
That he’d killed his family as well as himself...
I didn’t know for certain why Jazmine was at that slave house, but with my father being found dead there too I’d gradually come around to suspecting something perverted had happened to her on my father’s orders. It was such a twisted idea and I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around it.
The chair squeaked as Richard reclined. His focus was entirely on me, as if the menacing Hugh wasn’t sitting beside me. “Perhaps. I don’t know her whereabouts but I can help you find the man who set your father up to die.”
“Oh.” I tensed. This was what I’d been looking for. A breakthrough. “Who?”
He gestured at Hugh. “Get your watchdog to move away and I’ll say more.”
Damn. Was this safe? Hugh shook his head, grimly. But I dived in. Nowhere was where I’d gotten so far.
“Hugh, please?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Ma’am...” But he took in my expression then nodded.
Once he’d risen and seated himself at a distant table, one with the wall behind him, I nodded at Richard. Clever Hugh. Always seeking out the safest places. Could he read lips?
Richard, or whoever he was – I didn’t believe it was his name for an instant – leaned his forearms on the table. His nearest hand ended up resting inches from my left hand. My breaths turned ragged. Just that proximity had made warmth suffuse between my legs. This man attracted me, no matter that he was clearly out of bounds. Fantasy territory – like lusting for the tatted-up, muscle-bound biker stalking through the pub on a Saturday night.
With my friends, I’d ogle after this type of man then turn aside and giggle about what he’d be like in bed.
“Well?” I pulled my hand away a fraction, but the electricity of his presence drew me still.
“The man you want is called Vetrov.” Ugh, and even his voice seemed to stroke between my legs. Testosterone concentrate.
I swallowed and made myself listen.
“He organizes human trafficking. I know where to find him.”
To business. I’d get the person who had done this and to hell with my life until I did. No brother, no mother, no father – only I remained. Most days I wanted to weep despite the millions Dad had left me. My vet science degree could wait. This money, what better thing to do with it than destroy the man who’d killed my father?
“Give me his name, where he lives, and I’ll pay you very well. Once I know for sure he’s the right man, one hundred thousand is yours.”
For the first time he truly studied me. When his eyes lowered, my breasts tingled, my nipples tightening until they were aching and hard. They’d be showing through my skimpy shirt. Focus. Business.
His mouth twitched and he lifted his hand and trapped mine. What the hell?
“Remove your hand.” I tugged but he held on tight. The creak of the chair warned me that Hugh had noticed. I shook my head at him and he subsided into his chair.
“First hear my terms. Two hundred thousand. You’re going to need me with you to help fine tune the location of Vetrov.”
I frowned and was still considering when he spoke again.
“Also, I want you.”
Time shivered. “What ?” I’d heard wrong.
“You.” His smile was hard, uncompromising, and so lethal every hair on my body stood on end. “I want you in my bed. Once. After that, you won’t want to leave. No you. No deal.”
He didn’t wink or move in any way, just waited while examining my face, and that floored me. Arrogant bastard.
Was this blackmail? Yet he intrigued me. I shook my head, jarring myself out of the state of shock. “Ummm.”
One eyebrow rose. “Dare to take a chance for once, Wren. Life is better with surprises.”
One night. Why was I even thinking it was possible?
I blinked, running through crazy thought after crazy thought. What would it be like to have sex with such an overtly dangerous man? All my past lovers had been students. Young safe men who’d never done more than go to university, parties, maybe the beach.
Insane to say yes.
I opened my mouth and was caught by how he stared at my lips. His large hand squeezed down harder until where his thumb pressed hurt. The pain brought another level of scariness to this. Now I was aroused and afraid in equal proportions.
The words seemed to blurt out without my mind having much say. “Once, only. And it’s one hundred thousand if you want me as part of the deal.” Let’s see what the smart ass thinks of that.
“Done.” He drew my hand to his mouth, kissed my knuckles like a gentleman, then he singled out my forefinger and sucked on it.
I could feel the movement of his tongue.
In one second, my finger became hot and wet and his.
Tremors ran through my pussy. Breathing halted. My eyes must be so very wide. The man had turned me on so much with that simple action, as if it were a button to my sexuality.
Holy fuck.
His murmur rumbled past my last defenses. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll bend you over this table now, pull down your underwear...”
...and fuck you. I could hear those unsaid words in my mind.
He released my hand. I snatched it away.
What had I just agreed to?
*****
Moghul
“Moghul! Problem.”
At the sound of my name, I shut off the phone and swung back to the naked model my rigger had suspended from the ceiling by hooks. Her frantic pleas to be let down were worrying my men but the film crew kept to their task. Randy was working methodically to get her down.
The ropes lowered the last foot. Her bound breasts, then the rest of her front, gently kissed the floor.
“Way to go,” I muttered. Maybe I could salvage something from the footage.
Not all the scripts worked, especially when we tried something new, like hook suspension.
The crew relaxed and Randy went to one knee beside Mel to extract the shiny hooks.
“Thank you, Randy!”
The Texan gave me a thumbs-up then resumed soothing and freeing the girl. The man was a find and a half with all his skills – big attitude, bad jokes, and big dick. If anyone else had been handling the submissive, she’d have been screaming the room down.
My second phone buzzed and I walked carefully backward until I found the wall.
I did a last check on the scene.
There was nothing sexy about the next part. Not with her panicking. Maybe if we were a torture snuff porn site but Kinkaverse was a straight up BDSM porn site. Domination, humiliation, and bondage of every sort while the models got fucked every which way. All above board and legal.
I pursed my lips and, just for a second, allowed myself the leisure of imagining Mel being made to stay up there. Enticing situation. Suspended on hooks, with her arms bound and anchored to the wall by other ropes, blood trickling from the points of entry, gagged maybe. Then she could be fucked by the Texan, and one or two others.
I smiled and let the little vision slip away.
It wasn’t often I let myself dwell on the possibilities. Not while at work. My employees would be aghast, but not at my fantasies, at my realities.
“Got ya, sweetheart.” Randy removed the last hook then cuddled her to him.
I snorted and glanced down at the message on my screen. Military-grade encryption but it never hurt to be careful. Someone reading over my shoulder could be as disastrous as the message being sent in plain text.
The woman in Moresby is not a friend of Jazmine Foulkes. She’s Gavoche’s daughter, Wren. She’s trying to figure out her father’s death. Dangerous if she links you and the House.
“Fuck,” I said softly.
The spotlights in here were overcoming the aircon. I wiped my forehead with the back of my arm then stared up at the ceiling for a while.
The slave House, in Papua New Guinea, I’d written off. The place was being closed down anyway and the only liabilities, my men there, had been killed by the men who’d rescued Jazmine Foulkes. Those rescuers had also killed Wren’s father.
Which was good, really, even if the man had been a friend.
I smiled thinly. No one left alive could connect me directly to anything as illegal, immoral, and depraved as sex slavery. Vetrov was a name I kept in quarantine from the legal, if dirty, businesses I ran as Moghul.
What were the odds Wren would connect me to the House? Low, as in very.
I should have her killed. It was final. It was sensible. People were loose ends because of their nosiness and Wren had met me, even if she knew nothing of her father’s fetishes. Once all the immediate family was gone, no one was likely to see anything except an old man’s kinkiness exposed in a tawdry fashion by his death in Papua New Guinea.
I grimaced. What a waste. The last time I’d seen her, the girl had blossomed into a beauty.
The hooks called to me. Someone needed to try them out properly.
I never took things that far on my home turf. Absentmindedly, I tapped my finger on the mobile phone.
Yet a woman caught on those hooks, for me, just for me... Definite possibilities there. It would be karma in a way, considering Andrew’s proclivities.
Chapter 1
Glass
The last flicker of the white painted metal of Wren’s four-wheel-drive showed between the heavy green leaves of the trees.
What a woman. What a surprise that’d been – her agreeing to get in bed with me. I grinned. The buzz from that might take a while to die away.
That road wound down the mountain for miles and miles then back to the coast and Port Moresby. I whistled once. With the driver’s side door of my Land Rover propped open with my boot, the sound carried well.
From the jungle to my right, Pieter emerged. His leonine dark locks had been tied back, revealing the heavy bones of his face. He was a man who looked like a brick to the face would barely dent him, and that he’d then apply that same brick to his attacker and make him wish he was home in bed. His looks told no lies.
He jogged over, yanked open the door, and slid into the front passenger seat, making the car creak.
“Lose some fat, man. You’re killing the suspension.”
“Har har. It’s muscle not fat.” Pieter pulled out his shiny Glock and laid it across his lap.
Seconds later, Jurgens appeared from behind the vehicle and hauled his ass into the back seat. Enough ink on the man to make a tattooist salivate. Enough metal to set off detectors at fifty feet. South Africa had lost a couple of predators when these guys left the country.
Their doors slammed and I pulled mine shut.
“Go,” murmured Pieter.
“What did you find?” I turned the wheel and gently accelerated.
“Two men in the bush watched while you spoke to her. They must have their own car back there. We took them both down. Ziptied them. We’ve got everything from their pockets –
phones, and a camera, wallets. We chucked away their weapons. Next time we won’t get to sneak up on them so easily.”
That was the drawback of not acting while we had an advantage. I’d known this and yet I still hadn’t given the go ahead to terminate them.
As I steered around the long swooping bends of the track, the bumps of a poorly maintained bitumen surface shuddered up through the seat. Birds whooped and whistled above the subdued growl of the engine. I settled my hands on the leather steering wheel cover. Land Rovers had an elegance to them even when they were working hard.
If I didn’t tell Wren what had happened...
I fished my phone from my pocket and tossed it to Pieter. “Text her that they’re back there. Where you left them. Tell her no security when we meet in town or the deal is off.”
A few minutes later, Wren’s vehicle passed us going back up to the café.
“You should’ve let us take them.” Pieter cocked his head.
Yeah, maybe I should’ve.
“Why didn’t you?”
I took too long figuring out my answer and Jurgen popped in with his view.
“Glass isn’t into killing ladies. None of us are, come to think of it. Fokken bad business that is.”
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a nod from Pieter.
“True.” The man shifted his shoulders to lean into the doors and angle himself toward Glass. “But we had other plans for her, didn’t we?”
“Ja. I think she confused Glass. That one could make you think with your cock instead of your head. Pretty little thing.”
Pieter grinned. “Was that it? Though, hell, taking her would’ve solved that problem right smart.”
“Taking her?” Bloody hell. It had been the plan. I grunted and kept steering. They let me have the silence.
Good men. Despite the joking, none of us thought lightly of kidnapping Wren or killing her guards. We were all ex-military with jungle actions in Africa under our belts. We’d killed, close up, many times. War had toughened us but it had also made us aware that death was final and life wasn’t something you extinguished on a whim.
I glanced across at Pieter. “Did they get pictures?”
“Probably.”
Shit.
“There’s no internet access here though. Once these are gone we’re okay.” He pulled out a phone then dismantled and mutilated the sim card. “Jurgen, we may as well toss these out here.”
“Sure.”
To let them throw the bits as deep as possible into the jungle, I pulled over for a few seconds.
I didn’t mind killing, when I absolutely had to, to keep my friends and employees out of jail and healthy. Wasn’t that. Admit it, I had reservations about doing anything to a woman. Made my bloody toes curl.
But...I’d let Pieter do whatever he’d wanted to Jazmine. They’d deserved each other, though. From the first moment I saw Jazmine, her devotion to Pieter had shone through. She might not have seen it in herself, but it’d been there. Now she was his happy little slave. They were in love, for whatever strange reasons rocked their world.
Pieter and Jurgen deserved an apology. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. We’ve lost the initiative.”
Concealing ourselves from any police inquiries was the prime, A-grade reason for this meeting. We needed to stop Wren chasing down clues. Even if it hadn’t been a bullet from my own sniper rifle, I’d been in charge of the assault that had freed Pieter and Jazmine and killed Wren’s father.
We should’ve stayed away from her and prayed she found no witnesses, no clues.
As if. I smiled to myself. As if praying was ever going to be our first line of attack for any problem.
Besides, if we’d stayed away, I’d never have met her.
A rich little spoilt bitch in the middle of the New Guinea Highlands searching for the answers to her father’s death. If ever there was a man who deserved death it was him. Perverted sick bastard.
Would she still follow through with the meeting? Fuck, I hoped so. Still driving, I drew on memories. Petite, that was the word for Wren. She’d acted bold as brass but with that neat black hair flipping across her shoulders, and those big eyes peering at me when I’d suggested anything shocking...and that body, she seemed ripe for the next unscrupulous bastard to take advantage.
What was it about boobs, body, and cleavage, that enticed a man when he’d seen it a thousand times on porn sites on the internet and on every woman who’d ever graced his bed?
Nothing but her had existed as I’d threaded between the tables and chairs on the approach to her table.
That bright lipstick was such a contrast when the rest of her was faded denim shorts, white T-shirt, and pale skin. Red on cream. When she’d spoken, I’d imagined kissing those glossy lips, shoving her against a wall and kissing her.
Instant hard-on material.
Wasn’t there some theory that women’s lips were supposed to remind you of their pussy? I could go with that idea.
But kissing? Only kissing? How undirty and unnasty was that? I was slipping.
She looked like some innocent hidden away from the world for most of her life. Unsullied. The report said she was twenty-six. She probably knew every sex position in the book.
Who gave rat’s ass? Just looking that innocent grabbed my attention.
Man, I was in trouble.
The vehicle hit a bigger bump and veered off course. I tugged it back into line and cleared away all the visions clouding my mind, or tried to.
My cock ached with the possibilities. I didn’t feel right about kidnapping her, or killing her, just to tidy up my world...and how messed up were my morals that I’d even considered that? Pieter would be surprised to hear me question my moral code but it was true. There was a line I never wanted to cross and I’d found it the day we’d thought about killing Jazmine. Today had only reinforced that line.
Yeah, deep down I was a little angel with a halo made of stolen gold...and I had so many dirty things I wanted to do to pretty little Wren...over and over and fucking over.
Chapter 2
Wren
In my hotel room, I packed my handbag under Hugh’s vigilant eyes. The Beretta, with an extra magazine, made the bag weigh a ton already. My wallet was in there too, as well as everything else a woman needed on a dirty evening assignation, like red lipstick and pepper spray.
Hugh put a small packet in my hand. His facial expression was as disgusted as that of an opera singer asked to do rap. We’d argued for hours. Apparently, what I was about to do was the equivalent of throwing myself off a cliff. There was no one whose opinion I valued more. Hugh had been a cross between my bodyguard and babysitter for years. When he’d finally agreed to help me, I’d been torn between wanting to give him a big hug and smacking him.
I turned the packet over. A condom?
“When did you become my mother, Hugh? My creepy mother, come to think of it?”
He raised a brow. “I’m being practical.”
Agreeing, taking it, seemed to say, first of all, that I was indeed having sex with this Richard in exchange for information. Ugh. What had I been thinking? Second, that I should not expect him to provide the condom...or condoms. Wasn’t that traditional male territory?
“No.” I placed the packet on the glass-topped sideboard. With my forefinger, I pushed it away a few inches.
His brow stayed up.
“No thank you, Mother, I have other plans.” I did too. Let’s see what mister tough and arrogant Richard did when faced with insubordination. Wrong word...not insubordination, no. A redefinition of his clause. I didn’t really expect to need a gun. My guards had been left intact, just gagged and bound.
The man could have hurt us both. Hugh wasn’t a superhero – just a super-good friend slash bodyguard slash security organizer.
I reached for the last item on the sideboard – a knife – and slid it from the leather sheath, then turned it over. The blade danced with light.
Knives with their long, sharp steel, and their potential for penetrating the human body, were endowed with an unearthly promise that never failed to send cold shivering through me, down my spine, between my legs, to my sex.
The things a knife might do.
“I don’t think you need this either.”
What? I frowned. Sometimes, Hugh had a thing about letting me near knives, as if he sensed when they affected me badly. As I mostly did, I gave in. Gently, Hugh took the knife and sheathed it.
Snatching up my bag, I marched to the door, and threw a few last words over my shoulder, “You are odd. Guns get a big tick of approval but knives make you jittery?”
“I don’t get jittery. Today is a day when you make me think you’ll be careless. Your pistol has a safety catch.”
“Hah.” I pulled open the door. After Hugh followed me out, the luxury hinges huffed closed slowly.
With the Beretta, I could hit a bull’s eye at twenty yards with ninety-three percent accuracy. A knife required close-up encounters. It required me being near enough that an assailant could wrench it from my hand if I made a mistake. No matter how much training I had in self-defense, a man was more dangerous up close. Hugh’s logic argued the opposite, that I might hurt this Richard by accident. Maybe it was best I not be tempted.
“I’ll be in the bar for a while, talking to a possible informant. If you need me, do not hesitate to press the emergency button in your handbag. We can track you to a degree with the location service, but here, in Papua New Guinea, it’s not going to be as reliable. We may lose you. Be careful.”
“Sure. I will be. You remember, no surveillance of us meeting at his car.”
“I agreed to that, and if this goes wrong and all he wants to do is to ransom you, you’ll lose millions.”
I nodded. Nothing more to say, really. We’d gone over this ground many times. This was not in Hugh’s handbook on keeping me safe.
I needed to know what had happened to Dad. Even if he was...had been, an utter bastard of a parent on most days of my life. Love didn’t obey logic.
I heaved in a breath.
There was one other couple in the corridor, also heading for the lift.
My black high heels made no noise in the carpet. Such a quiet place. Behind all those doors, people were probably fucking their little hearts out while tied to the beds, being spanked, cropped, snorting cocaine. Even if I didn’t partake, I knew of fetishes, kinks, and addictions. It had hardly been a secret after dear brother showed me a video of father whipping one of his mistresses. I’d been ten. Such a sweet brother, and I’d loved him too, despite his flaws.
If I died tomorrow, I’d be the end of the family line.
The family line being extinguished bothered me little. Our...my Gavoche family was about as close to Heaven as the murderous medieval Borgias. It was sadness that flattened me. My mouth turned down as I contemplated the past.
Children, a baby or two, might be nice, one day. At twenty-six, I could finally declare myself responsible enough to be a mother. No one else was left. Father could no longer deny me.
Babies... Huh. I clamped down on bad memories but a tear or two threatened to spill. Funny, how a still birth bit so deep, even though it was a person who had never quite been born. I sniffed then swallowed past the tightness in my throat. The pluses to being the last one left standing. Fuck, there had to be some, right? As well as the excess of money?
The handbag slapped against my side, no doubt making the crushed red silk of the dress even more crushed.
A few yards down the street from the hotel’s circular drive, barely within the pool of light from a streetlight, Richard waited. Arms folded, he leaned on the hood of a black corvette – an old, remodeled one from the looks of it.
I glanced about, betting this spot was outside the hotel’s video surveillance range. Far enough to be safe for me to walk, but also discreet.
“Enter.” He waved at the Corvette.
Once I was sitting in the car, he leaned over and drew down the safety belt at the same time as I put my hand to it. His larger hand engulfed mine, pulling down the belt to click it in place while I stared at the stubble on the side of his face, stricken with both fear and arousal. This close, smelling him was a given. Whatever pheromones had kicked in, they were doing unwelcome things to me.
If he leaned his elbow on my lap, I’d possibly self-combust.
“I can do this myself.”
“Just making sure.” He resumed his seat. “Wouldn’t want you getting hurt.”
No smile, just that assessing appreciation that strayed downward to my breasts, for a second, before he met my gaze again.
Smug bastard. I blinked and pretended to straighten my skirt. Scary bastard.
Smart rejoinders could wait. Right now, this second, I was still humming with the effect of his proximity. Breathing steadily needed my concentration to the nth degree.
I simply hated men who could do this. It reeked of me losing control, them gaining it. Father had been good at that – control, and most men who attempted to make me do what they wanted only triggered a rise of temper. Sometimes when it was the stupid thing to do.
I had to say something or seem an idiot. But what?
He started the engine, clicked on his own belt, and pulled away into traffic.
Saved.
“We’re going to a friend’s house. Not mine. Not far from here.”
After driving in what seemed circles, no doubt to check for my men tailing us, he stopped at the side of the road with a small bridge just ahead.
“Is there anything in your handbag that’s important to you?”
Suspicious, I gripped it tighter, on my lap. “Why?”
“It’s going into that river.”
Fuck him. “Why?”
“You know why.”
He put out a hand, imperious, expectant – and having it there in front of me, waiting, annoyed me no end. My gun – I’d lose that.
“The deal’s off if you don’t give me it.”
Could I claim my phone as precious? No, he wasn’t that stupid. “My wallet has all my credit cards, my driver’s license.”
“I’ll keep those for you.” His hand stayed out.
“And pills. There’s a packet of them in there I need. I don’t have another prescription.”
“They’re prescription? Not crack, uppers, downers? I’m not saving your fancy little rich girl designer drugs.”
Shit. This man... I had thought him hot, now I knew better. Just another asshole.
“I don’t do drugs. I have a sleep disorder. I sleepwalk.”
“Sounds like fun. I’ll find the pills.”
My temper simmered down from molten to bubbling.
“You’d better be trustworthy.” Because if he wasn’t, I’d drive his bloody Corvette keys through his eyes before I’d give in to any demands.
“I am.”
“You really expect me to –”
“I do. Trust me or it’s off.”
And so, after another twenty or thirty seconds of stonewalling him, and fuming, I relinquished the bag. Then I watched him find my wallet and pills, take out the cards, and declare me a bad girl for having a gun. Asshole. He drove closer to the bridge and exited the car to hurl the bag into the water.
The splash died away, leaving only the throb of the engine then the slam of the door as he reentered.
Gone. On my own. It had been nice knowing I had a gun if I needed it.
Glass might be a recruiter for one of those slave houses. I could end up locked away forever as some man’s sex slave. I risked a sideways look and his set expression gave me no reassurance. I could be dead tomorrow too. Shut up doubts.
“Damn you,” I whispered, staring out the window at the stonework of the bridge. “Damn you to hell.”
“I’m already going there. Save your breath.”
Hugh needed to invest in a GPS tracker I could insert up a body cavity. And wouldn’t that be fun on a date night. Making light of this wasn’t going to fix anything but it made me feel better.
“Now we can have our night in privacy. I’m allergic to people barging in with guns.”
“Really? I’m not so gauche as to let Hugh do that.” I slumped back into the upholstery. My orneriness surged to the fore. Fuck him ten times over. “Besides, I have an emergency beacon elsewhere on me.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t see much of his face as he drove, but amusement showed in his tone. “Then I will have fun searching for it, with you naked.”
I glared. If looks could kill, he’d just been stapled to the seat with a hundred knives. Sharp fuckers. I could see the blood soaking that fancy dark shirt. The handles wedged deep, right up to his chest. Well...almost see them. Let’s see him call that fun too.
I kept my eyes open as he maneuvered through the streets, fairly certain I could find where he was taking us on a map. Until he pulled over and made me sit still for a blindfold to be tied on. Deal or no deal. I had to say yes. This was getting more and more like a bloody game show.
At one point, I sneaked up a hand to raise the edge. He stopped me with one uh-uh and threatened to tie my hands. Now that rang alarm bells.
So I was good, outwardly, while inwardly adding some knives to the collection in his chest.
The echoes and creak of a metal door winding up said he’d driven into an underground car park. Somewhere secure then. A compound for foreigners probably. They were a common way to be safe here, what with the high crime rate against foreigners.
When he led me up and around some flights of stairs and through a door, then lifted off my blindfold, I found myself in an immaculately decorated apartment.
“What a pity,” I sighed out.
That drew a sharp look.
I studied him as he ambled from the short entranceway into a living room to toss the blindfold onto a giant glass and metal chessboard. Ferns and small palms added greenery, their fronds hanging from small pots. An ocean theme encompassed a sand and blue color scheme, paintings, and furniture like a driftwood-inspired coffee table. There was even a small rowboat upended and fastened upright to one wall.
“A pity? Why?”
I shrugged.
To the left was a small but modern kitchen that ran along the wall. Beyond him was an opened wall looking out onto the night sky. Folded back shuttered doors were concertinaed at either end.
“Call me Glass. It’s friendlier than Richard.”
“If you want.” Was this another fake name? Glass, it sounded like a nickname.
He propped his hand on the wall beside the boat.
For a moment I admired the way his arm muscles bulged and flexed under the sleeve of his dark gray shirt. Glass had that physical solidness of a man who could effortlessly fill a room with his presence. Had it in spades. Curiosity kept me looking far too long.
I tore myself away and answered his first question just to see his reaction.
“I was hoping to see a few knives in you when you removed the blindfold. My imagination amused me on the way here.”
“Bloodthirsty.”
“Yes. That’s me.”
He studied me. “Snap. Me too. We’ll make a great couple.”
“I’m paying you a lot of money. Don’t trivialize this.”
He snorted. “I’m not toning down my jokes for you. Be happy I’m not trivializing your quest to find your father’s killer.”
Stalemate.
Slowly, he approached, his tread measured, his gaze as nonchalantly menacing as a leopard that’s found a fear-paralyzed bunny in its territory.
I steeled myself not to back away and dug my nails into my palms to make myself focus.
Look at him. Do not take your eyes away, do not blink, it shows weakness.
“You made me a promise yesterday.” He stopped a foot away, glowering down at me while I strived to keep my tongue from straying onto my lips.
When nervous, I licked them or even ran my tongue under my top lip. I wasn’t nervous, just...just...fuck. My toes curled as he reached out, slow and deliberate, toward my face.
My response was automatic. “Do not touch me.”
At that, one brow inched up, but he still took my chin in the cup of his hand. I rocked back, gasping at the contact. His subtle smile transfixed me as much as the feel of his calloused thumb running lightly along my jawbone. Such warm skin, as if his body were several degrees hotter than mine.
Heat spread from between my legs and my nipples ached and tightened.
“See.”
God, the way he watched me...
I swallowed surreptitiously, “See what?”
“You can take my hand on you. I don’t bite.”
Something about those words broke the spell. The assurance that I’d stand there for him, perhaps? When he moved his hand to caress my hair at the side of my face, I stepped away.
“Oh but I do. I bite.”
To my consternation, that only made his mouth quirk at one corner.
Fine. Did he want me to think him made of rock? Emotionless?
This seemed a good time to set boundaries. Was it reckless, considering where I was? Perhaps. But I’d been rock climbing, kayaking, done my share of hiking through wilderness and even tried parachuting, once. I had a father who’d scared me so much I nearly puked, once, when I did something he detested. Damn though, my pulse went crazy as I found the bedroom doorway to the right and entered.
“Is this the main bedroom?”
“Yes.” He came up behind me, close.
“Good.” I went and sat on the edge of the king-size bed, sinking into the heavy quilt, then bouncing up and down. “Care to take a seat?”
Though he looked suspicious, he sat beside me, merely inches away.
Goose bumps. All my hairs stood on end. I hadn’t considered he’d sit this near me.
I lined up the right words in my head, enunciated them carefully. “You said you wanted me to join you in bed before you’d help me. Well, now I have. My part of the deal is done, apart from the money. I never said it meant sex. Now, you have to fulfill your side of things.”
I waited, my lips set in a line. My impulsive decision at the café had been thrown down and ground underfoot. If he was angry, I’d offer to pay more.
If...
What if he wanted to rape me?
Those – rape, death, kidnapping – were what Hugh had railed at me about, for hours. I didn’t care. My psychologists would be aghast, but I plain didn’t care. Maybe I would care if it happened. Of course I would. Logically, I knew it. But rape and assault seemed distant, far-away concepts. My father’s death had ushered in a weariness, which came and went like a gray tide.
If bad things happened, at least I’d be done with this man; I’d know what he was capable of. Perhaps it would bring me peace, as if a penance had been paid. God knew, I owed a lot. It often seemed as if I’d been waiting to pay my whole life.
Bravery was easy when you were numb.
I waited still. What was he doing?
With his thigh almost touching mine, and the dip in the mattress, I had to be careful not to topple into him. I listened to his breathing, smelled him. My awareness seemed to sharpen. From the corner of my eye, I saw the muscles of his arm, and I wondered. What if...he did try something?
I must be mad. I think I wanted him to.
The urge to look at him intensified.
Chapter 3
Moghul
Op1
to Vetrov (decrypted)
7.43 pm Wren G observed entering black Corvette. Surveillance ceased after driver (blond male 30 to 40yrs approx) began evasion. Male unidentified at present. Do you wish his identity?
A video was downloading.
Did I? I held the phone to my chin, staring unfocused down the flight of stairs. I was annoyed at myself. I didn’t have any rights over this girl or her body. Then why my reaction to the knowledge that a man was taking her on dates?
My meandering thoughts took me down the stairs. I hadn’t been to my island house for years. No reason. My private playing area held no interest for me. Any subs I took up with at play parties were happy being little exhibitionists and flogged, fucked, or whatever, in public.
Was it fortuitous, some subtle nudge of fate’s hand that the text about Wren had come through while I was visiting?
I could sell this place in a month. I was considering it. Sunlight streamed in through the thick plate glass wall. I glanced across, through the tinted glass, at the blue on blue horizon. The views over the ocean were spectacular. It would need some cleaning, some removal of kink equipment, unless I wanted to shock the real estate agent. I leaned on the rounded steel railing encompassing the rectangular hole in the tiled floor and peered over the edge. The pit of despair, as my last submissive had labelled it, was full of dead bugs, dust, and cobwebs. How spiders got into an air-conditioned, sealed home was inconceivable, as Vizzini might have said.
The brushed steel was cool under my palms. My architect had done well. Outside was searingly hot.
I was fantasizing about a pretty woman when there were a million of them out there. A pretty woman hung on hooks, with an audience of one. I could see myself making her come despite her predicament...her writhing and screaming, then I’d tease her endlessly and make her come again and again. Sadism plus orgasms – my favorite recipe.
Whoa. Lips pursed, I let out a long breath. I was getting a hard-on just thinking about it.
A Vetrov affair should not invade my legal, if very kinky, Moghul world. It was as if Alice in Wonderland had popped out of a rabbit hole in my living room, though Wren did have a tenuous link to me through her father.
The high-res video downloaded onto the screen and I clicked play. As she walked toward his car, her red dress frothed about her legs like waves washing onto a forbidden shore.
What the hell. Just this once. I could follow what she got up to with impunity. In Papua New Guinea, my affairs were all cleaned up.
Of course, if she wandered into my territory here, now, that would be a whole new ball game. It would be irritating. I sorted through my emotions. And interesting and tempting, definitely tempting. But I could see no route she could take that would lead her to me. No one knew my alter egos.
I shook my head. All hypothetical. After twenty years building my little empire I wasn’t about to jeopardize it on a whim.
Vetrov
to Op1
Yes.
*****
Glass
Was this Wren girl suicidal? I hovered between laughing at her antics and just grabbing her.
Her light blue eyes were dilated, though maybe that was the low light. A little muscle on her jaw twitched. She held my gaze despite toying nervously with the cloth of that dead sexy red dress.
Balls, steel lady balls, even if she was crazy.
She had no idea who I was, except that I’d said I could help her track who had killed her father, and she knew I had men capable of neutralizing her security. I wasn’t your average guy on the street with a deep respect for the law.
I could kidnap her and beat the crap out of her for bugging me.
The neighbors wouldn’t hear much, if I gagged her first and tied her up. I had to admit she tempted me. I could do anything. Pieter had showed me the other side. The dark possibilities: ever since I saw Jazmine kneel to him, they’d been like a siren song.
Wren blinked and ducked her head again.
Especially when she acted submissive like that. Jesus. I stared down at the top of her head, as if struck by lightning along with an earthquake and a small nuclear device.
“You expect me to roll over and agree to that?”
Her back stiffened and she unleashed a glare on me. “Two hundred thousand is not a pittance.”
“Gone back to two hundred, hey?” Compensation. She knew she’d done wrong, and that glare, it was like a kick to my brain and my balls.
So I grabbed her. I clenched my fist in the back of her hair. Her eyes snapped open.
Revelation rolled in. This was nice.
Soft hair. A woman in my hand. While she was still gasping, I relentlessly pulled her backward until she hit the bed, then I anchored my elbow near her and waited to see what she’d do.
Her hands came up to pry mine off. One after the other, I trapped them and clasped them to her, below her breasts.
Another glare.
“Let’s cut all the fucking around.” I didn’t expect her to give in.
When she arched as if to kick me, I laid my thigh over hers. After a few more seconds of curses, and trying to wriggle loose, she lay there panting.
“You fucking bastard!”
“A fucking bastard? Bastard, maybe. The other? I promise you’ll know when that happens.”
The wrestling had done nice things. If breasts ever heaved, it was now.
“That dress would make a blind man want to rape you.”
She fell silent.
Was there fear in her eyes? Or just anger?
“Why? Why’d you change your mind?”
“I don’t. Want. To fuck you.” Those words came out through an angry sneer.
Nasty. I snaked my fingers deeper into her hair and got another gasp for my efforts. I twisted my wrist and turned her to face me more. I could see the appeal this had for Pieter. Controlling her was a damn aphrodisiac.
“You don’t want to fuck me,” I deadpanned.
I wasn’t impervious to this woman squirming under me. I had a hard-on tenting my pants.
Maybe her mind had problems with fucking me, a lowlife mercenary living in New Guinea, but I’d bet my two hundred K that her pussy was wet and wanting me.
“You’re damn lucky,” I said, grating out the words with my mouth two inches from hers. “That I’m not into rape.”
“Oh.” She blinked while her mouth closed from making that Oh.
Disappointment, I swear, written in big red letters. What the hell?
Oh baby, I’m going to convert your confusion into a yes tonight.
“This was a business deal. Not a date. You want to renegotiate? It takes two.”
“It wasn’t signed and sealed.”
“In my universe, our agreement was as good as signed in blood. Want to argue?”
Under my hand, her wrists moved as she flexed her fingers and her tendons shifted. I let her go and jumped to my feet. My maneuver seemed to have stunned her and she lay there looking up.
I leaned over her, steadying myself with a hand to the quilt by her hip. Then I smiled.
“You want to get out of this deal, Miss Wren?”
She nodded.
“Then I get part of you to play with tonight.”
“What?”
“Let’s see. Which bits?” I did an insolent appraisal of her body, sliding my hand upward from her hip, over her belly, to the undercurve of her breast. She quivered enough that I registered it. “Your mouth?” I bent and brushed my lips over hers, then pulled away, slow, conscious of how her breathing had ceased.
So soft. Her mouth was lush, fertile, like maybe I could give her babies just by kissing.
“Wait,” she said huskily, her palms pressing on my chest. “Wait now. You’re talking kissing? I guess...I can do that.”
My knee had ended up against the edge of the bed, squashing the dress material between her legs.
I slid my hand to her dress and started gathering fabric in my fist, making it slither up her legs. “Best of all, after I play with you, you show me your panties. If they’re wet, I get to fuck you.”
Her hands whipped down and she tried to hold down the dress. “Hey! No! No agreement. No way can you do that!”
“Why? Afraid you’re already in violation? Show me or I’ll assume you’ve got the hots for me anyway. I’m being lenient.”
I shoved up the dress, baring a smooth expanse of upper thigh and the lowest point of a triangle of red lace. Damn. The swell of her mons showed above that. I could bury my face there and not come up for a month. Move aside that elastic and I could...
I coughed. Back on subject. Shut up, dick. Later you’ll get your turn.
“This is perverted,” she said, quietly alarmed.
“You’re lucky they’re not black. With black, I couldn’t tell from looking. Red is good.” I nudged with my leg, applying pressure to the inside of her knees, encouraging her to spread them. “Red goes dark when it’s wet. If they weren’t red, I’d have to take these off and feel your pussy with my fingers.”
“This is...” Her throat moved and her tone had lowered to a whisper. “It’s totally crazy.”
There was a fevered look to her face that hadn’t been there before, a blush on her cheeks. She wasn’t resisting enough for a woman who really, truly meant no. Maybe she thrived on reluctance? Maybe she wanted a man who would simply do what he wanted to her. I could run with that. Run a long fucking way.
“Are you wet, Miss?” Miss? Where’d that come from? I’d never called a woman miss before. “Show me. Now.”
She made a weird noise in her throat – half whimper, half question. I fixed her with a determined glower. “Now.”
“Glass...” But her ass did a subtle squirm, and this time she gave in. Her leg muscles stopped pushing against my palms. Slowly, they fell open.
I straightened and took in the scenery, wishing I had a camera.
Her blue eyes were half closed. Her red dress was scrunched onto her stomach. Her thighs had opened, revealing those red panties. One yank and I’d have them gone. The crotch area showed a quarter inch wide line of darkness. If I bared her pussy by rolling aside the cloth, my finger would find more than enough moisture to sink effortlessly into her.
Now I knew.
Did she know how aroused she was?
She lay under me looking distressed, flushed, a little perplexed even. Expectant.
This was too easy. I wanted her on fire, dying to have me inside her. I didn’t want some miserable victory that she’d forget tomorrow. I wanted total surrender. If I didn’t get her to scream out a climax loud enough to give someone a heart attack, I’d missed my mark.
How wet could I get her? My cock could wait while I stirred this little miss until she was begging me.
“Outside. Now. I’m starving.”
“What? Dinner?” she blurted, staggering as I towed her out of the bedroom to the broad balcony and a set of table and chairs.
“Yes, dinner. Sit. Stay. Miss Wren.” I hauled out her chair.
When she was sitting and had arranged her dress, I bent over. “Hold still.”
Then I gave her the first kiss, making her part her lips and holding her under the jaw lightly. Just enough pressure to keep her there. Just enough to say, right now, you’re mine. When she raised her hand and touched my shoulder, I pinned it to the table. Her breathing hitched.
The more I held her still, the more she reacted. Or so it seemed.
Her eyes followed me as I lifted away and she was panting. That red-lipsticked mouth. One day, I needed to fuck it.
I stroked her hair, ran my finger down her ear, and smiled when she shivered. “Now, forget what I mean to do to you. Enjoy the night.”
Tell someone not to think about something and they will. I wanted her worried and thinking.
Her mouth opened and closed, then her tongue poked around at her top lip in an adorable way. “I cannot believe I let you do that. You are incorrigible, Mister Glass.”
“Mister Glass? Sounds like a promotion.”
She made a dismissive noise. How wet had that kiss got her? How often could I check her panties? Figuring that out might kill me.
The smell of the takeaway food drifted past and her stomach growled.
“I need to rescue the food from the microwave.”
When I returned with the plates and the Champagne bottle under my arm, I found she’d angled her chair to look out over the roofs to the bay. Most cities had an allure at night, when the grime and crime was disguised by sparkling strings of streetlights. Below us the swimming pool water slapped at the sides as someone did laps.
She turned and simply sat for a few minutes staring at me. I let the silence be, figuring she was adjusting to what had happened, justifying her reactions somehow. Besides, I was happy watching her back.
At last she inhaled deeply and leaned in to peer at the plate before her.
“Thai. Best I could do. This is Moet Chandon however...” I brandished the bottle and uncorked it, poured us both a glass before sitting.
“Champagne?” She cruised her fingertip through the moisture already dimpling the outside of the glass. “If I drink this, I can’t take my pills. I have a sleeping disorder.”
“Go without for one night.”
Wren lifted the glass and swirled the liquid, tilting the goblet as if fascinated by the play of color. “Once, I walked down to our garage and started the car while asleep. I’m told some people can drive even when sleep walking.”
“Really?” It seemed incredible. “It’s worth it to drink some Moet.” I indicated her champagne. “If you drift off I promise I won’t give you my keys.”
If I tied her to the bed she wasn’t likely to sleepwalk far.
I sat back and picked up my fork while she tasted the wine.
“This is nice. I haven’t had Champagne for so long.” She took another sip.
We ate and shared a few stories, dancing around what was not okay to tell each other. As the scene in the bedroom ebbed from her mind, she grew more confident.
I took possession of her hand and held it as often as I could. Tracing between her fingers while she tried to talk about some sensible thing let me watch the subtle changes on her face. Her eyelids fluttered. When I lifted her hand to my mouth and kissed each finger, one by one, she glanced down at the table and shifted position. The chair creaked.
I wondered if I was arousing her. I hoped so.
“I can’t eat, easily, when you do that.” A little crease formed on her forehead.
“I’m done.” I gave her hand back to her, trying not to smile when she fumbled and dropped her knife.
“What do you do for a living?” I forked up noodles. I knew the answer but figured I should ask.
“I’m studying veterinary science at Sydney University. You? Killing people?” Her smirk said she was trying to tease.
“And here I was polite enough not to ask if you spent your days counting money.”
Wren shrugged. “When you have more than you need, it means little.”
“When you have almost none, it means everything.”
“Are you saying you’re that poor? Somehow I doubt it. Besides, isn’t money the root of all evil?”
“That philosophy is a little overrated, otherwise we’d all be giving our money away not struggling to get more.”
Wren swirled her goblet, staring at me as if surprised I knew the word philosophy. I doubted she’d ever struggled for money.
“So if you’re not simply killing people?”
“I’m ex-army. I went to officer training at Sandhurst then the SAS for a short time before I was injured and retired.”
The arch of her brows was perfect. “So, you’re British? You don’t quite sound it.”
“I am. Or I was. Now I’m...” I waved a hand. “A bit African, a bit Papua New Guinean, a bit Aussie. I haven’t been back for thirteen years. You’re Australian?” I knew she was. I knew a lot about her.
“No. No. I’m a bit of everything, like you.”
Seemed like she was saying she had no idea who she was. I let it pass...and I wondered why it bothered me. Her accent seemed private school when she concentrated, but when I caught her off guard in a joke, she lapsed into something less posh. A few times, I caught her staring at nothing, her mouth downturned, as if she relived a painful memory.
I was seized by moments of her. Her lips nudging the edge of the glass. The sway of her breasts. The curves revealed and sculpted under the silk. Black hair, red lips, cream skin. Like a china doll with cracks you couldn’t see.
Something was riding her. She had demons, same as me, which only intrigued me more. A sleeping disorder? I could guess why with a father so immoral I’d felt dirty seeing his corpse. A brother with his own perversions, too, from what I’d heard. Where did she fit in all this?
Her knife and fork were scraped across the plate and neatly arranged. Done eating.
What the hell was I doing experimenting on her by trying to emulate Pieter?
What the hell was she doing here? For all her money and her paid security, she was here with me. I had an inclination to wrap her in my arms and fix whatever was making her sad. And I wanted to throw her down on that bed in there and fuck her. Why hadn’t she run from me when I started controlling her?
I shoved away my chair roughly enough to make it screech and rose to my feet, ignoring her startled expression. “We’re going swimming.”
In a closet, neatly packed away, I found a few bikinis, the tags still on them.
It was a muggy, humid night and the coolness of the pool would be welcome.
“One of these should fit you.” I put the whole bunch of them in her hands. “The bathroom’s that door.” I pointed.
Then I went and leaned my head on the wall in the bedroom.
Was this me? Maybe if I banged my head a few times, I’d see sense? This woman didn’t need me to abuse her, she needed someone to stop her falling over the next cliff. Throwing herself over even.
She’s an adult.
I wrenched on the boardshorts I’d found – the pair with the condom packet still in the pocket.
She met me in the hallway, wearing the blue bikinis with the tassels.
They fit her like a dirty depraved glove that covered her like body paint, and showed everything that needed seeing when her nipples peaked. I could even see the shape of her pussy. Not looking would’ve taken a court order.
Fucking hell.
I checked inside my head for those doubts. Conflicted, man, conflicted.
If I had a conscience it was a damn fornicating voyeur of a conscience. My libido was taking me somewhere my brain had rejected.
In her hand was her dress and a red bra, the straps dangling, and those panties – I could just see the edge of them. As I approached, I think my stare was close to nailing her to the wall behind her, because she gaped at me then stepped back and hit that same wall.
“Wait.” She held up a hand, waving it palm out. “Glass, I thought you’d changed your mind. You were so civilized at the table.”
Civilized? What man was civilized?
I’m pretty sure I growled.
My little victim.
In one stride I was in front of her. I could see myself fastening her to that wall with my hands on her neck and my leg between hers. I could feel it. I flexed my fists. Don’t.
I pressed my forehead to hers. What better route into her mind than through her eyes – through the trembling of her eyelashes and the shifting shades of blue in those irises.
“I was thinking of letting you go home untouched. Then...this.”
I trailed my gaze down to her cleavage and beyond. Every curve led to another and downward, her breasts, her hips, that cute belly button I wanted to stick my tongue in, the slight mound of her stomach. She was a sexual puzzle with the best ever prize when you solved her.
Eyes wide, mouth open, she didn’t even bother to try to stop me. Her hands were splayed against the wall either side of her as if she needed that to stop her falling.
Her clothes had landed in a pile at her feet.
She hadn’t run.
Maybe I could do this without breaking her.
Maybe? What was I letting myself become? She wasn’t some disposable sex creature.
I put my mouth to the side of her face and my lips moved on her ear as I spoke. “You’re fucking with my head. I do all kinds of shit to you, and you don’t run? You don’t scream or panic or look for the door? From now on, if you stay, I’m going to do what I like to you. Fuck etiquette. Hear me?”
Copyright Cari Silverwood 2015. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.