by Josie Litton
He made the ferreting out of secrets sound simple when I knew that it was anything but. Even so, I didn’t doubt that his power and determination were more than up to the task.
“What did you discover?” I asked.
“Glass fragments, paint chips, and skid marks found at the scene all pointed to the presence of another vehicle, one that was traveling far above the speed limit. Coming around a curve, it swerved onto the wrong side of the road. The bus driver tried to avoid it but couldn’t. The impact of the crash propelled the bus into the canyon.”
Children screaming…adults reaching out desperately to them as the driver, throwing all his weight against the wheel, fought to save them even as the hopelessness of his effort exploded in his mind.
“Did the authorities identify that vehicle?” I had to ask even though I already suspected what the answer would be.
Adam shook his head. “Before they could do so, a decision was made to close the case.”
Disgust filled me, bitter as the bile I tasted in the back of my throat. “Someone was paid off.”
“Perhaps or pressure was brought to bear or both. At any rate, if they had pursued the matter, they would have discovered that the vehicle belonged to a doctor at an exclusive rehab facility near where the incident occurred. The facility caters to the wealthiest and most powerful--celebrities, financiers, politicians and the like. While the success rate is negligible, the clientele enjoy every possible amenity. That morning, a patient got high on drugs routinely smuggled in by the staff, ‘borrowed’ the doctor’s car and went for a joy ride.”
I struggled to breathe. Pieces were falling into place--dark, jagged, forming a picture I could hardly bear to contemplate. In an instant, I was standing once again beside the marble-topped console table in the living room of Grandmother’s Fifth Avenue apartment. Amid the silver-framed photographs of her nine children, pride of place belonged to images of the youngest, the one she still called her ‘baby boy’ even though he was in his forties now, a soft-faced child of a man more often than not absent from family gatherings because of his lifelong problems with substance abuse.
“Uncle Ned--”
Adam nodded. “Evidence acquired by my investigators leaves no doubt that he was responsible. Afterward, he returned to the facility and spoke openly to several staff members about what he had done. He showed no concern or remorse. On the contrary, he brushed off any such consideration while expressing certainty that the family would protect him as they have time and again in the past.”
“He’s caused other tragedies, taken other lives?” Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, it did.
“At least four that I’ve been able to confirm beginning when he was still in college,” Adam said. “At the end of his junior year, he drove a car off a bridge, leaving his young woman companion to drown while he swam to safety. The autopsy indicated that she managed to survive for an hour or so as water slowly seeped in, rising until the inside of the car was completely filled and there was no air left for her to breathe. If he had gone for help, she could have been saved. Instead, he went home and called a family attorney, who promptly took steps to shield him from blame.”
My stomach clenched. For a horrible moment, I thought I was going to vomit. Adam must have seen my distress because he moved quickly, coming out of the chair to sit beside me on the couch. Gripping both my hands in his, he said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you that. I truly don’t want to hurt you and yet I keep doing it.”
The self-disgust stamped on his features tore at me, threatening to fracture what little emotional control I still had. Holding tightly to him, I said, “I want to know the truth, all of it. That’s why I came here.”
When he still hesitated, I went on quickly, “After you found out about Ned, what did you do?”
“I informed your family through intermediaries that your uncle had to be held to account for his actions.” A grim smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “They weren’t receptive to the idea.”
Of course they weren’t. They would have mocked the very notion of a Delaney being subject to the same laws as everyone else. Their arrogance was equaled only by their ruthlessness. Both had served them well; they had no reason to change, especially since they couldn’t have had any idea of who they were defying. Even if they had known, I doubted they would have behaved any differently.
“Did you consider making the evidence public?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I promised the people who spoke to my investigators that their confidentiality would be protected. They were all terrified of retribution from your family and rightly so.”
Understanding crept over me. He had tried the civilized approach, offering a chance for Ned to step forward, however belatedly, and do what was right. But I suspected that he’d known all along what the outcome would be and he’d been ready for it.
“You decided to exact your own form of justice?” For the man who served him and was also his friend. For the woman destroyed by grief no human being could bear. Above all, for the dead children and the people who had loved and cared for them, all of them flying away into the cold, blue sky.
Quietly, Adam said, “I took you believing that however reluctant your family might be to turn Ned over to me, they would value you far more than they did a violent, destructive wreck of a man who has never done anything but harm.”
A bitter laugh broke from me. “You tried to assure that by pretending interest in me, didn’t you? But it didn’t work. You couldn’t have been more wrong about them.”
“It wasn’t pretense,” he said, leaving me to wonder whether he could possibly mean that and why he would say it if he didn’t. Before I could ask, he went on, “But I didn’t understand what I was dealing with, as I learned to my sorrow. I made an error of judgment that I will regret to my dying day.”
I didn’t doubt that he was sincere about his regrets, at least. Yet perversely I resented any wish he might have that our paths had never crossed.
“You still won in the end,” I reminded him. “You got what you wanted.”
I didn’t need to know the details of his victory to be certain that it had occurred. The cold rage with which my family had greeted my return confirmed it. One way or another, Ned was paying for his crimes.
“Only because you gave me the clue I needed to finally force their hand,” Adam said.
It took me a moment to understand. When I did, my face flamed. Dread burst from me. “The videos, what did you do with them?”
The ones of me in the cell had to be bad enough. But the last one…at the end…
The glare of the arc lamps illuminating the chair. The creak of the leather cuffs binding my ankles and wrists, the clang of the metal stays growing louder the more I struggled. The sweet salt scent of my skin beading in droplets of sweat. And Adam standing in the shadows, never taking his eyes from me as I cried out and fought, determined to resist until finally I couldn’t any longer. Until the demands of my body, so exquisitely primed by him, overwhelmed me.
I pressed my thighs together as hot, carnal memory flared in every cell of my body and I was filled in equal measure by shame and desire.
Three Weeks Before
I wasn’t prepared for the impact of Adam, naked and furious, striding across the tower room to reclaim the woman who had used his own desire for her as a weapon against him. Nor was I prepared for the feelings that welled up in me when I saw the pain of betrayal in his eyes.
But there was no time to think of that. His arm lashed around my waist, hauling me against his powerful body. A sob rose in my throat as he twisted a hand in my hair, yanking my head back. His eyes glittered with barely controlled rage as he gazed down into mine. The passionate lover of such a short time before was gone, replaced by the merciless captor intent on making me pay for what I had done.
Having thwarted my desperate attempt to escape, he left me without a word. But not before stripping off the clothes I had so hastily dragged
on and shackling me again to the bed. I remained there, torn between fear and anger mocked by the sunlight slanting through the high windows that overlooked the sea.
A breeze stirred the diaphanous red bed hangings. Pulling the covers over me, I burrowed into the warmth left by our bodies. The scent of sex--salty, musky, tantalizing--clung to the sheets. I breathed deeply and fought a treacherous impulse to regret what I had done, any or all parts of it. At least I tried to, without success.
Pride and the most fundamental sense of self-preservation had demanded that I take any opportunity to free myself. But neither could ease the pain in my heart, or the perverse mixture of dread and excitement that I felt while waiting to discover what Adam would do in response.
My nerves were strained to the breaking point when he finally returned. Wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt that emphasized the breadth of his powerful chest, he didn’t say a word as he unshackled me from the bed and hauled me to my feet. With a hard hand gripping my arm, he turned toward the stone steps coiling down toward the base of the tower.
“Wait!” I exclaimed. I was still naked. Surely, he didn’t intend to drag me out like that-- “What are you doing? Don’t--!”
He silenced me with a glare that sent a chill through me. Stumbling after him, I tripped and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught me up in his arms, the rough denim of his jeans rubbing against my bottom as I struggled.
I managed to land a fist against his chin but the blow had no effect. Restraining me with humiliating ease, he carried me down the stairs but only so far as the landing of the floor directly below. Setting me on my feet again, he thrust open a heavy wooden door. Beyond lay darkness broken only by the glare of two arc lamps illuminating a steel frame chair that was bolted to the floor.
At the sight of that chair, panic sparked in me. I turned to run only to slam into Adam’s chest. I felt as though I’d hit a stone wall, not very different from the ones surrounding me.
I fought, flailing out at him and screaming but he wasn’t to be deterred. In moments, I was in the chair with my wrists securely cuffed behind me. As he bent down beside me, Adam’s eyes met mine. Holding my gaze, he pushed my legs apart until they were spread wide, leaving me fully exposed to him. His index finger brushed along my seam, parting my outer lips just enough to tease my clit.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
The only words he had spoken were unmistakably filled with regret and a note of finality that made me tremble.
Whatever he intended, I didn’t think that I could bear it. Giving into the fear threatening to engulf me, I pleaded, “Don’t do this, Adam, please!”
He didn’t reply but instead went about the business of securing each of my ankles to a leg of the chair. His touch was cold and calculated. When he was done, I was unable to move, spread wide and helpless.
“You’ve made your point,” I gasped. “I shouldn’t have tried to get away but--”
Before I could finish, he reached under the chair. Only then did I notice the circular hole cut into it right in front of me. I had barely begun to imagine what that could be for when Adam pressed the palm of one hand downward against my clit and with his index and middle fingers splayed wide the lips of my sex. With the other hand, he lodged the wide, bulbous head of a vibrator firmly against my vulva.
As I stared at it in dawning horror at what he intended, he stood, turned his back on me and walked into the shadows beyond the glare of the lights. Almost at once, I heard a soft, whirring sound and felt the head begin to move against my vulva.
“No!”
A warm flush rippled through me as my breath quickened. Staring down at the vibrator protruding up through the hole in the chair, I screamed, “You bastard! Don’t do this!”
He didn’t respond but I could make him out where he stood beside a table where, I saw to my horror, the red light of what could only be a camera glinted, an evil eye mocking me. The cameras outside my cell had been bad enough but this--
“Noooo!”
Even as I screamed, I saw his hand move and realized that he was holding a control device. As he pressed down, the speed of the vibrator increased.
Desperately, I tried to twist my lower body away but he’d secured me too well. Every move I made only pushed me harder against the rapidly spinning head so large that I felt its pulsations from my clit to my vagina. Within seconds, I was engorged and acutely aroused.
Still, I fought the first waves of a powerful orgasm as they began to build in me. I wouldn’t give in to this, I couldn’t! But my body had other ideas. My nipples hardened almost to the point of pain. My head fell back, my neck arching. Consciousness slowly but inexorably contracted to the focus of exquisite pressure between my thighs.
When Adam increased the speed yet again, I was defeated. Sobbing, I cried out as my vagina contracted fiercely, trying to claim the cock that should have been there even as I damned the man who was doing this to me.
Wave after wave of contractions tightened every muscle in my body before finally, a seemingly endless time later, the vibrations slowed. Sagging against my restraints, I dragged in air and heard the frantic beating of my heart like a bird trapped within the bone cage of my ribs.
With the greatest effort, I lifted my head and stared into the shadows. Adam hadn’t moved. He was still standing there, watching me. I wanted to berate him, to plead with him…
Before I could do either, the vibrator speeded up again. I was hurled back into the dark embrace of all-consuming sexual hunger, slave to a merciless cycle of arousal and release.
One orgasm flowed into the next, a cascade of torturous pleasure that drowned all conscious thought and will. My body clenched over and over until every muscle throbbed. The wetness dripping from me made the chair under my buttocks slick. My thighs quivered as spasms rippled under the taut skin of my abdomen. The merest whisper of air, moving over my swollen breasts and engorged nipples only added to the delirium of the torment he was inflicting.
At some point, my body took over, rejecting the last shreds of reason and reveling instead in its power to do what no man’s could. I embraced the true carnality of my nature, the primal force that lay between my legs and within the hyper-activated pleasure centers of my brain.
Vividly aware of Adam watching me, I gazed into the shadows and slowly, deliberately flicked my tongue over my lips, imagining as I did so that it was his cock I stroked. The darkness enveloping him could not conceal his harsh groan.
He stepped forward, just close enough to the light that I could see him more clearly. His hand went to the zipper of his jeans, easing it down over the bulge of his massive erection. Freed, his cock jutted forward, long, thick, and hard to the point of bursting.
As I stared, unable to look away, his fisted his shaft, running his hand up and down the considerable length of it first slowly, then more quickly. His eyes held mine, shrinking the distance between us as his rhythm quickened.
Pre-come beaded on the tip of his crest. I stared at it, entranced, as the waves of another orgasm built in me--savage, remorseless, not unlike Adam himself. Stripped of any will to resist, I kept my gaze on him, vividly aware of how he felt inside me…how he made me feel…
A sob tore from my throat as I surrendered to the truth. Despite everything I wanted to believe about myself and even in the face of all that he had done to me, I needed him desperately. He was in the air I breathed, the blood that flowed in my veins, the light that pierced the depths of my soul.
The orgasm that tore through me was so intense that white stars exploded nova-like behind my eyes. Bathed in their radiance, I saw Adam, close enough now that if my hands hadn’t been cuffed, I could have touched him.
His head had fallen back, the tendons of his powerful throat cording. His big, powerful body moved in rhythm with my own. I gasped, crying out his name. The hot splash of his semen over my breasts and belly clung to me as I spiraled away into thick, bittersweet darkness.
Chapter Seven
I stared at Adam across the width of the living room. In the charcoal grey suit perfectly tailored to his powerful body, he looked as indomitable as ever. But the stiffness in his shoulders and the slight tilt of his head hinted at a degree of wariness that I hadn’t seen in him before. Moreover, the unmistakable bulge in his trousers told me that I wasn’t alone in remembering what had happened between us in that windowless room shortly before I was “freed” and put on a plane back to New York.
The brutal, relentless force of those memories--life, death, ecstasy, despair--shook me to the core. As much as I tried to resist them, they were merciless in their onslaught. Confronted by their power, the walls that I had built around myself began to crack. Small fissures expanded rapidly until, between one breath and the next, the entire artifice collapsed.
Behind it was a reservoir of rage and humiliation that I hadn’t been able to acknowledge to anyone, not even myself. It had thwarted my attempts at therapy, kept me sleepless at night, and stripped the world of joy and hope. Now it threatened to drown every shred of reason that I still possessed.
For an instant, I saw Adam as though through the diaphanous red silk of the bed hangings. Saw his magnificent body bearing down on mine, the dark passion in his eyes, the bold, sensual curve of his mouth--
I blinked and the image vanished but my fury remained, growing stronger with every breath.
Rising from the couch, I shouted the question that he had yet to answer. “What did you do with the videos?”
He flinched…or perhaps he didn’t. The impression was so fleeting that I might have imagined it. In stark contrast to my own near-hysteria, his response was quiet and measured, yet tinged with unmistakable sadness.
“Your family got only a short, highly edited version of each with the understanding that there was much more. When those taken of you in the cell failed to have any effect, I considered what you had told me and realized what it would take to convince them.”
