Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1)
Page 4
Clearly she didn’t trust the mysterious billionaire who had offered to purchase her escort services for the month.
Hawke smiled again. She shouldn’t trust him. Everything he’d told Hiro about wanting a beautiful American girl for a month of fun, sun, and no-strings-attached consensual vanilla sex on the beach was a lie. But when it came to the money he had kept his promise to pay one tenth of the fee up front. He knew Harley well enough to realize she would never get in his car or on his plane unless she knew she’d been paid something for her trouble.
She was a liar, but she was no fool.
She spoke again and was apparently assured that all the money ducks were in a row, because she thanked the banker, hung up the phone, and turned to go. She hesitated for a moment, but then her hands balled into fists, her chin lifted, and she started for the door with a steady stride, obviously determined to meet the man who had bought her with her head held high.
Too bad Hawke would be taking a separate car to the airport and that Harley would be blindfolded and gagged before he arrived at the airstrip. He wasn’t taking any chances that she would see his face and try to call for help while they were still surrounded by friendly islanders who might come to the rescue of a woman in need.
She wouldn’t have the use of her voice until they landed on Le Sauvage, an isolated island at the far edge of the archipelago, where no one would be able to hear her scream.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hannah
Hannah climbed into the back of the stretch limo waiting in the shade beside the Pension La Plage on rubbery legs. By the time the silent driver wound his way through the colorful streets of Fare, down jungle roads tunneled in green, and out to the private jet waiting at the edge of the airfield, she was trembling all over and fighting the urge to dash across the airstrip and make a run for the safety of the tiny airport waiting room.
What the hell had she done?
What you had to do. You’re just lucky there was a man willing to pay that kind of price for a twenty-eight-year-old woman with no experience as an escort.
An escort. It was just a kinder word for a whore. Tonight—or maybe this afternoon, depending on whether or not the man who’d bought her joined her on the private jet—she would have sex with a man for money. It was a lot of money—once he paid the remainder of her fee she would have enough to save the guesthouse and make sure she and Sybil were safe from the ravages of their own bad luck for years—but still…
Still, she felt filthy, ashamed, and dangerously foolish.
She’d been bought and paid for. She had sold herself to a complete stranger. A man who had already seen her naked and watched while she pleasured herself in front of the camera he’d set up in his hotel room. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t that kinky, she supposed, but it was kinkier than anything she’d done before, and it had made her vulnerable to this man in a way she’d never been to anyone.
He’d seen her naked, completely exposed as she’d come on her own hand, and she had never seen his face. Didn’t even know his name.
You didn’t know your stranger’s name, either, and it didn’t matter. It was still the hottest sex you’ve ever had.
As she climbed the steps into the private jet, Hannah swallowed hard, but the bitter taste on her tongue remained. She wasn’t naïve enough to believe the billionaire who’d bought her would be a handsome young man with magic hands and a tender light in his eyes. He was almost certainly at least a decade older and probably not much to look at or he would have been able to convince a woman to come to his private island for free.
He might be hideously ugly, obese, or so ancient he’d have trouble getting aroused and she’d be forced to ignore the old-man scent of him as he labored above her, sweating and grunting.
Or maybe he was simply a twisted monster looking for a woman he could use, torture, and throw away, a woman no one would go looking for when she went missing.
Hannah half fell into the sumptuous leather seat on the far side of the plane, her trembling becoming a full-blown quake. By the time the tanned man with the close-cropped blond hair stepped out of the cockpit, she was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering.
Her eyes flew wide as her gaze connected with the man’s paler, bluer one, but before she could think of what to say—or fully experience her relief at discovering that her client was a perfectly attractive middle-aged man—he crossed to stand in front of her seat.
“My employer asked that I help you tie this over your eyes.” He held out a thick strip of heavy black cloth. “I’ve got another for your mouth.”
Hannah’s breath sped. “Why do I need to be blindfolded?” she asked, not wanting to think about the gagging part. The thought of not being able to speak, or even swallow her own saliva, was ridiculously terrifying, almost as scary as taking her clothes off in front of a camera, knowing a stranger was watching.
God, what had she done? What the hell had she done?
“I don’t ask questions,” the man said, his voice humorless and his blue eyes remaining flat. “My employer doesn’t enjoy questions. He prefers efficiency.”
“All…all right.” Hannah’s heart raced as she reached for the blindfold, figuring it was better if she was the one to tie it on. She wrapped the soft fabric across her eyes and tied it behind her head, tight enough to be sure it wouldn’t accidentally fall off, but not so tight that it pressed against her closed lids.
When she was finished, she held out her hand, willing her voice not to shake as she said, “I can tie the gag, too. If that’s okay.”
“Just make sure it stays put,” the man said.
Hannah couldn’t help flinching as the man dropped the cloth into her outstretched hand. Not being able to see was already heightening her other senses, making the sensation of soft fabric brushing against her skin ricochet through her nervous system in a way it normally wouldn’t.
She tied the gag as loosely as she dared, but when she was finished her tongue still felt cramped, forced to coil at the back of her throat like a snake denied the right to strike. The combination of the stressful day, having half her face covered, her eyesight stolen away, and her mouth filled with fabric combined to trigger the worst case of claustrophobia she’d experienced since she was eight years old and Harley had accidentally locked her in the crawl space next to their room.
She’d sat in the cramped portion of the attic, where she and her sister had hidden their secret treasures from their nanny, for hours, sweating and crying in the summer heat until she’d almost passed out. But she hadn’t dared call out for someone to rescue her. She’d known Harley would kill her if she let any of the staff find out about their secret hideout. Harley didn’t tolerate broken promises, no matter how many she broke herself.
Hannah struggled to swallow, fighting to slow her racing, panicked heartbeat. But it was an exercise in futility. Her heart was beyond her control, like the rest of her life, and the best she could hope for was that she would pass out before her owner joined her on the plane.
The thought made her throat feel even tighter and sweat bead around her hairline and above her parted lips. By the time she heard the door to the plane open a few minutes later, she was sweating profusely, panting through her flared nostrils, and so dizzy she didn’t know how much longer she would remain conscious.
She whimpered and pointed frantically to the gag, praying the blond man would understand that she was having trouble breathing and grant her permission to remove it.
But instead of the first man’s firm monotone, she was answered by a low grumble, “The gag stays in. You need to relax. You’re breathing too fast.”
Hannah tried to relax, she really did, but this man’s voice wasn’t one that inspired relaxation. He sounded hard, cold, and enormous. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized that a voice could project size, but this man sounded ten feet tall and bulletproof. He sounded like someone capable of strangling the life out of her with one hand and mean enough to enjoy it.
“You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep that up,” the man grumbled again, his voice so deep she could feel it vibrating through her bones, touching her in places a voice shouldn’t be able to touch. “Hannah stop. Right now.”
A whimper escaped her cramped throat and her breath came so fast it felt like she was being spun in circles by one of those terrible carnival rides she’d hated when she was a child.
“Stop it,” the man repeated, his voice closer and dropped to a soothing whisper. “I’m not going to hurt you on this plane, Hannah. I give you my word.”
On this plane. He hadn’t said he wouldn’t hurt her at all, just not on the plane, and she sensed that she wasn’t reading more into the remark than he’d intended. This was a man who knew what he wanted and was willing to pay a million dollars to have a woman at his mercy. He had deliberately left the door open for pain.
Hannah clutched the arms of her chair until her fingers ached, fighting to keep from ripping the gag and blindfold off and making a break for freedom. A deal was a deal. This man had paid for the pleasure of terrifying her. And if she backed out of their agreement, she had no doubt he would take the rest of his money and leave her and Sybil to starve.
She’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it.
To sleep with this man in it, even if the thought terrified her.
“We’re ready for takeoff.” The first man’s voice sounded too far away to still be in the plane, but maybe that was because Hannah was so focused on the new voice, her owner’s voice whispering in her ear again.
“Sit back. I’ll put your seatbelt on.”
She leaned back in the plush seat. A moment later, she felt fingers brushing her hips as the man found both halves of the seatbelt and brought them together across her waist. His touch was calm, impersonal. He touched her only as much as he needed to in order to get the seatbelt snug across her lap, but for some reason she still shivered.
There was something about this man, something in the spicy, salty smell of him that drifted to her nose as he settled into the seat across from hers that made her skin prickle and the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. She felt more than watched; she felt hunted and suddenly didn’t know what she feared more—the nameless, faceless people who had killed half her family, or the nameless, faceless man whose foot brushed every so lightly against her own as the plane rumbled down the airstrip.
It wasn’t until they were lifting off that Hannah realized the two might be one and the same.
She might have just sold herself to the man who had killed her family and the past six years of hiding, deferring all her dreams, and abandoning the aunt who needed her, might have been for nothing.
CHAPTER SIX
Jackson
The plane was still gaining altitude when Harley started trembling again, shaking so hard he would have thought she was having a seizure if he didn’t know better. But according to everything Hiro had told him, “Hannah” was in perfect health. It was her aunt who was frail.
So either she was truly scared out of her mind or she was faking it to elicit sympathy from the man who’d bought her. That would be like her. She was a master manipulator.
Until he’d met Harley, Jackson had been certain he could spot a con around a blind corner. His mother had majored in emotional manipulation at Brown and his sociopath father had taught him early on the importance of realizing when you were being worked like a puppet on a string. By age ten, Jackson was a master at spotting reverse psychology; by twelve, he’d perfected his poker face; and by his fourteenth birthday, he had a plan in place to escape his father’s influence: a con of his own Ian hadn’t seen coming until Jackson’s acceptance letter to an exclusive military boarding school showed up in the afternoon mail.
But despite all his experience with the care and feeding of sociopaths, Harley had still worked him like a player piano, arranging things so perfectly he’d practically conned himself.
Like that last night, when she’d promised to belong to him forever, fucked his heart from his chest and down to the floor to lie helpless at her feet, only to run away with his best friend a few minutes after Jackson had climbed out of her bedroom window. She had literally gone from coming on his cock to waltzing out the door with Clay moments later. He’d done that math. She had to have left her apartment no later than midnight in order to be driving down that particular stretch of highway at three in the morning.
But even after years of turning over various possible scenarios, he still had no idea exactly how she’d faked her death. That alone was enough reason not to underestimate her capacity for treachery. He couldn’t let down his guard or allow compassion to creep into his heart. He had to be on his toes and ready to beat Harley at her own game.
And he had a good idea how to start.
He leaned in, placing a gentle hand on her knee. She tensed and made a startled sound behind her gag, but after a moment, she settled beneath his touch. Her muscles remained tight, but she stopped shaking and held very still, clearly waiting for him to make the next move.
With a hard smile, he reached behind her, into her thick, soft hair, and untied her gag. He set it on the seat beside her before returning his hand to her knee, allowing his fingers to curl around the shapely muscle of her calf. “Is that better?”
She swallowed and swiped the back of one hand across her mouth before nodding a little too fast. “Y-yes. Thank you.”
She sounded so scared, so young and vulnerable. Like a woman who had never walked a dark street at midnight, let alone become one of the evil things lurking in the shadows. No wonder the military police had believed every word she’d said. Even without the evidence she’d doctored, her witness statement alone was fucking compelling. She’d been so beautiful in the tapes he’d been forced to watch. So beautiful and broken that he’d understood why the people in charge of investigation couldn’t help wanting to sweep in and do whatever it took to deliver justice.
But her suffering was a lie, like everything else about Harley. She was a monster hiding behind a pretty face and he knew better than to let her play him so easily.
“You’re welcome,” he said, gentling his voice, letting her think she was getting through to him while still keeping his pitch lower than usual.
He expected her to recognize his voice eventually, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for her, and he didn’t want recognition to come too soon. That would spoil the fun and he intended to enjoy every stage of Harley’s undoing.
“I don’t want you to be scared.” He traced a path back and forth across the soft skin above her knee with his thumb. “Is there anything I can do to put your mind at ease?”
Her tongue slipped out. The sight of her pink tongue caressing her full lips was sexy as hell, a fact he was certain she was aware of, no matter how unpracticed the movement seemed. “I d-don’t know.” She took a deep breath, her full breasts rising and falling.
He glanced down at the tempting cleavage visible above the tight bodice of her dress and tried not to think about how much he wanted her gorgeous tits heavy in his hands.
“I um…” She swallowed. “I’ve n-never done anything like this before.”
“I know.” He allowed his thumb to slide higher on her bare thigh. Her legs remained close together, not tightening to bar his passage, but not parting to invite him in, the perfect balance of coy and seductive, proving Harley was still at the top of her game. “But you did very well in the hotel room.”
“I was scared to death,” she whispered.
“I couldn’t tell,” he lied. “I thought you were beautiful and very, very sexy.”
She took a breath, holding it for a moment before she said in a husky voice, “It would help if I could see your face.”
“Not yet,” he said. “Soon, but first I want you to help me live out a fantasy I’ve had for a long time.”
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nbsp; She tensed again but nodded, slowly. “A-all right.”
“I’ve always wanted to be the stranger on the train,” he said, stroking a little higher on her thigh as his other hand reached up to release her seatbelt. “I’ve always wanted to make a woman come before we’ve even kissed. Before she’s so much as seen my face.”
“That’s the reason for the blindfold,” she said, her shoulders relaxing slightly, seemingly comforted by the confession.
“That’s the reason for the blindfold,” he lied again. “And why I’m going to ask you to spread your legs for me.”
“Now?” Her throat worked.
“Now,” he said. “There aren’t any midnight trains on the Tahitian islands, so we’re going to have to settle for a private plane. Now spread your legs, Hannah, show me that beautiful pussy.”
Harley’s fingers tightened on the arms of her chair and her jaw locked. Even with her eyes covered, he could tell her expression was that of someone who’d taken a bite of something rotten and was too mannerly to spit it out. He expected her to deny him, to force him to ask again—maybe even threaten to take the money back if she didn’t obey—but after a moment she slowly spread her legs, parting her thighs for him, granting him his first glimpse of her pussy.
But a glimpse wasn’t enough.
“Wider,” he whispered, exerting the slightest pressure on the knee he cupped in his hand. “And move to the edge of the seat.”
With a shaky breath, she obeyed, shifting her hips and spreading her legs wide enough for her skirt to bunch up around her waist, revealing her pink outer lips and the entrance to the pussy that had haunted his dreams.
She was fucking beautiful, delicate and deadly, like a flower infused with poison. Hers was a pussy men would kill for, one he might have died for if she’d decided to frame him for murder instead of rape.