I love it. I love the control.
“See?” I ask him, and he nods vigorously, lifting his cock upwards towards me involuntarily.
I lay my forearm across his pelvis to keep him still and descend upon him again, working him slow, with a light touch, using his precum as lube. His breath gets throatier and throatier, quickening in pace as I suck him down deeper and deeper with each pump, letting my saliva drop down his staff, lubricating my hand as it jacks him off.
Soon he’s filling my mouth, my lips parted around the base of his cock, the tip pressing against the back of my throat, struggling to fit it all in. I’m literally gagging for him and it’s turning me on like nothing I’ve ever felt before; I’ve never had a man so huge, so rock hard. I can just imagine the hugeness filling up my cunt, remembering how it stretched me to accommodate it. How full it felt, how overwhelming.
I creep a hand down to play with myself, rub against my little pearl of pleasure. He reaches a hand down to pinch my nipple, but I bat it away.
This is about him, not me. And I don’t care if I’m blowing a guy while riding my dad’s airplane, or that he’s destined to leave me. This is about him. I need him to understand he didn’t take advantage. And I love being in control.
23
Liam
My rising pleasure builds, agonizingly slowly. April maintains the most perfect, most exquisite rhythm — fast enough to fetch me, inexorably, towards the edge, but slow enough that my progress is relaxed. I keep wanting more, but she gives me exactly what she wants to give me.
Her forearm keeps my hips pressed down, keeps her in perfect control. I, on the other hand, am losing my mind. Grasping at the sink I’m pressed against, bucking my hips up into her arm, begging her for it, I think. In truth, I can’t really think at all, I can only feel.
I’m so deep down her throat that I feel like there is nowhere else to go, but then she only sucks me down further.
I have an amazing view down the tops of her breasts, her cleavage, and imagining fucking her between them brings me even closer to orgasm. When I see her reach down between her legs to start playing with herself, I just about lose what little control I have left.
I want this to last forever, but I feel my orgasm building, my balls tightening, my cock going even more impossibly stiff, so hard that I might explode any second.
But as I build to the inevitable, she slows, anticipating my state and adjusting so that I don’t go over too quickly. She’s not ready for me to come yet. She makes my plateau last, milking me for precum, grasping the base of my cock just tightly enough that it delays my orgasm, as she regulates her pace to keep me riding the edge.
I seem to float, every nerve ending pulsing in pleasure, until she tilts her face up to make eye-contact with me.
The view of her mouth wrapped around my huge cock, her breasts straining in her bra, her hand snaking down to rub against her wet pussy — it’s too much. I’m right on the brink and she knows this is it, so she pumps me just right, cupping my balls and taking me in deep so that I’m coming down her throat, wracked in ecstasy.
I come and come, and it seems to last forever while her lips pull every drop from my gushing spurts, swallowing my whole load down greedily. She moans as I come, her hand still working under her dress and bringing her to her own sweet release. Finally, we’re both spent.
I lean back against the glass mirror, utterly destroyed, just listening to my heart race, feeling my muscles twitch.
“Okay,” is all I can manage to huff out. April laughs and stands to wrap herself around me, both of us slumped over the sink. It’s not exactly comfortable, but I don’t care.
Best orgasm of my life. Absolutely no question. I feel like I’ve been through a marathon. Exhausted and glowing.
But even as the pleasure just begins to fade, I’m already questioning the wisdom of what just happened. What I let happen. But then April’s voice comes back to me: don’t you dare take my agency.
And who am I to question whether she “really” wanted to do that or not? Why not take her word for it?
I drop a kiss to the top of her head, an automatic gesture, but as I do it, it just feels right. I want to be tender with her. I want to take care of her. I want her to blow me like a porn star and then cuddle me like a best friend. I want this, even though I don’t want to want it.
Things are more complicated than that. Because while I feel slightly absolved of one guilt, over circumstances of our sex the other night, it only increases my guilt about lying to her. She thinks I’m someone she’s not. She has no idea that I found her, that I’m with her, just for her father.
And I’m about to meet the man whose daughter just blew me on his private jet.
The man I’m trying to figure out how to illegally kidnap and bring back to the United States for prosecution.
Yeah. Shit’s complicated.
It’s super sticky and warm when we disembark from the plane. Costa Rica is hot even in late October, it seems. April’s yellow sundress — which I almost can’t look at without having blowjob flashbacks — seems to have been the right choice. I’m immediately suffering in my dark jeans and button-down. Suddenly, the fact that they “confiscated” my boots doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. My feet are blessedly cool (and not sweaty) in flip-flops.
We walk from the landing strip to a bus that takes us to a small city-center. Not much more than some convenience stores, some gorgeous old restaurants, and docks encrusted with sailboats and fishing boats. The sea breeze is a godsend. I ditch my shirt and roll up my pants.
“You look like a dork,” April says to me, and the easy, teasing voice makes my chest twinge.
I don’t deserve her affection.
“So where are we?” Lying via questions. That’s my way. “Like… Thailand?”
She squints at me. Too much? I wonder if she knows we’re in Costa Rica.
“Probably not,” she says. “It’s not… jungly enough. And c’mon, we were only in the air like six hours.” She shrugs. “But I don’t know where we are. We’re going to a fancy hotel, so that should be nice. That’s all I know.”
Without my phone, there’s no way for me to get my bearings, and even if there were, I wouldn’t be able to contact Vicente. I can ask the concierge when we arrive, and then walk to a cafe. Make a landline phone call. Risky, but unexpected. Figure out, perhaps, where our designated meeting zones are.
I don’t have much time.
“And when is dinner?” I ask.
“Oh, pretty early, maybe five?” she says. “He likes to start with early drinks and spend the whole afternoon drinking before dinner.” As we round another corner, a Marriott looms into focus.
I researched this. I know which town this is, based on the hotel types available. Parismina is the only Costa Rican eastern coastal town with a Marriott. Built just one year ago.
The streets don’t look like they did on Google maps — or maybe I’m more disoriented than I thought. Those pictures can also be out of date.
Now I just have to ask the concierge for the café Vicente and I agreed upon. Then one of the embassy workers will meet me with more materials.
“So, we’ll check in, and today we should just relax, enjoy the beach, and um. I don’t know...” She trails off.
“I’d kind of like to explore a bit,” I say. Casually. “Maybe I’ll ask the concierge.”
She bites her lip, glancing at the bodyguards that are not-so-discreetly following us, wearing loud vacation-print shirts but not looking any less threatening for it.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” she says. “Um. It’s kind of… I’m not sure this is such a great town… We probably shouldn’t just wander around.”
“Right.” More like, her father doesn’t want me wandering off.
I wonder if he controls a large part of this town. Doesn’t make much sense, for Irish mafia, but maybe this is near a supplier’s base. Or maybe this has been a safe house for a while.
I guess it’s to
the hotel.
When we check in, I’m half-disappointed and half-relieved that we get separate rooms.
April just nods.
“Okay, well.” We stand awkwardly at the counter. “I’m going up, and then I think I’ll hit the beach.”
“What should I do?”
“You can come with me?” She asks.
I’d really prefer to plan my mission, but with no materials, no access to the internet, no way to sneak off and meet with one of Vicente’s people… there’s not much I can do.
Maybe if we hit the beach, I can find a place to get on the internet. Or, Christ, run into someone who I can at least ask what fucking country we’re in.
“Okay,” I say. “They took my bathing suit, though.”
She throws her head back and laughs.
“We’ll buy you a new one.”
24
April
I feel like my heart is in a headlock. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. If Liam finally understood that he didn’t rape me — and I can’t believe he thought that — that he would… just somehow magically fall into my arms?
Instead, he’s acting weird. Standoffish. Even after the fun we had on the plane, he seems, I don’t know. Distant.
I don’t know why I thought a blowjob would change anything. We’re still in this shitty situation where we’re at the mercy of my gangster father, in the middle of nowhere and completely lost, and under constant surveillance.
It’s no wonder he’s acting a little strange.
I put on my favorite orange bikini, the one that makes me feel like a Bond girl. Who says redheads can’t wear orange? Then I get some towels to hit the sand.
The entire afternoon is an exercise in self-restraint. In studied innocence. In strange acting.
We have to act normal, relaxed, and cute for my bodyguard observers. Who, if I’m guessing right, are sizing Liam up for my father, and are meant to control our behavior as well as protect us.
But I also have fun joking around with Liam. He teases me, hops in the waves with me, splashes me. The sun on my skin, the salt, the sand — I adore the beach. And over and over I’ll spend ten, fifteen, twenty minutes just enjoying his company at face value, relishing the warm weather, forgetting all the larger issues at hand, forgetting my… my heartache. My fear. My father.
Only to have it all crash down again. It’s fucking exhausting. And then I go quiet. And Liam, he asks if I’m okay, but he’s distant too, and we’re not quite connecting.
Even out in the waves, where I think, maybe we can talk candidly. They surely can’t overhear us here. But we don’t.
There’s nothing more to talk about, I guess.
On our way back to the hotel, just a two-hundred meter walk, since the resort boasts the best beach in the region, we bump into a man selling hats. Liam buys the biggest and most ridiculous looking one, and plunks it right on his head.
I can help but laugh.
“Yeah, definite dork,” I say.
Liam turns to the man selling it. “Quo pinensa usted?" He asks.
I don’t speak any Spanish, but it looks like Liam is trying to get fashion advice from the street vendor. I can’t stop giggling as they talk.
But then I hear the guy say something very distinctly: “Sí, Señor. Panama, correcto.”
“Panama,” Liam whispers to himself, then quickly glances at my bodyguards, who are a few dozen yards off. Liam stares into space for a second, and his face is completely unreadable.
“Liam?”
He snaps out of it, thanks the guy with a handshake, and we basically bolt back to the hotel. When we get to the front desk, Liam starts firing off in Spanish again, and I have no idea what’s going on.
“Liam, what’s wrong?”
He turns a bright smile on me, but I know him. I can tell it’s not real.
“Nothing, I’m just realizing that I haven’t done work in three days and it’s a Wednesday. Want to send a message to my employers.”
“Don’t you work remotely, anyway?” All I know is that he does some boring statistics contract work for the state government.
“Yeah, but I’ve been totally incommunicado. I just wanna get in touch.”
I’m not totally sure if my father will allow it, but I just wish him good luck and retreat to my room.
I wanted to invite him up with me, but… he seemed distracted. And the sex we’ve already had was probably a mistake, given the way this has to end. There’s no use in getting more attached, getting more obsessed with his body, his mind, the way his hands feel on my skin.
Yeah. No point in that.
I should probably just concentrate on covering up my bruises before dinner, so dad doesn’t flip out. There’s no way he won’t see the ugly marks on my face from… memories of the gloved hand clawing against my skin and pulling me back cause me to shudder.
Now I really wish Liam were still here.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these… these flashbacks, sure, I can call them that, that they seem to happen less when he’s around.
I am such a mess.
And tonight I have to convince my father that everything is perfectly fine.
Great.
25
Liam
Panama. We’re in fucking Panama. I don’t know if I was wrong the first time, if I fucked up my geo-location, or if Sullivan moved, but I am not prepared for this.
Vicente and I didn’t prepare for this. I have nothing with me. No way to coerce Sullivan at all. I cast about the room for inspiration. What could I bring to dinner that could help me? There are knives for room service, but I’m sure they’ll search me again before letting me in the presence of Sullivan, and a knife tucked into my back pocket… yeah. Not great.
What else? I’m flying by the seat of my pants here.
But at least they didn’t take my little tracker stickers from me. Leaving them in my spiral notebook, one of the few things they let me keep, was a lucky break.
Someone at the hotel brings me a suit. How they knew my size, I have no idea, but it’s three-piece and looks pretty damn sharp.
Why would Sullivan bring me a suit? Some kind of power play? Or maybe just being polite, after taking all my clothes?
I try not to let it get to me, I’m just on edge after the clusterfuck this trip has already turned into. He may or may not be trying to get in my head — but even if I wasn’t secretly a bounty hunter trying to bag him, I’d be a nervous boyfriend, simply only knowing what April has told me about him.
Boyfriend. Wouldn’t that be much simpler.
I go down to the lobby to meet April, armed only with a small wrapped parcel, tied up with a bow made out of a bit of twine I found wrapped around one of the towels in my hotel room.
The ride to dinner takes longer than I expected. The sun slowly slips closer to the horizon, the light tilting further and further to the side, going from harsh white to a warm yellow to a bright copper-gold.
April looks amazing. Of course. I almost can’t look at her.
And her bruises and cuts are almost gone. I didn’t have quite as much luck on mine.
“You got any more of that makeup?” I ask her.
“Oh hush. You’re lucky,” she says.
“Hmm?”
“Injuries are sexy on a man. Women have to have perfect skin no matter what.”
“Aren’t you just hiding your —”
“Shh,’ she hushes me with a hiss and subtle gesture towards the driver.
“ — Blush?” I finish smoothly. “Since you’re so flustered to see me?”
She rolls her eyes, but then gives me a waggle of her brows.
We finally arrive at a tiny restaurant positioned on a sea cliff, and it’s not at all what I expected. I thought Sullivan would be dining somewhere fancy, somewhere black-tie, what with the suit and all. Lots of glass and delicate china.
But this restaurant is simple. Almost a shack, hanging halfway off the cliff side.
&n
bsp; Before we’re allowed in, I get searched one more time. They find my little package, as I expected, but allow me to keep it after giving it a little shake. It’s obviously too small to be a bomb and not shaped right to be an obvious weapon.
“April’s gonna love it,” I say, trying to sound conspiratorial. One of the bodyguards even smiles, just for the briefest moment, as he hands it back to me.
When we enter through the front door, I’m hit by a waft of sizzling fish and rice. Something fruity, too. And the sea breeze, hitting us straight through from the source, because there’s no wall, no window, no screen blocking the interior of the restaurant from the ocean view.
And then there’s Sullivan himself. A man only seen in grainy security-camera footage from the FBI, but I recognize him immediately. Sitting alone at the only occupied table in the entire place.
Still, he’s not quite what I expected. I thought he’d be a bit larger, maybe balding, or even just thuggish in some way. Most of the men I deal with, in the end, are. But Devlin Sullivan, he’s something else. It’s hard to tell with him seated, but he doesn’t seem very big, yet he does seem cut, almost hungry – a predator that relies more on stealth than sheer force.
He doesn’t look that old, either. He has a long, sharp face with a strong jaw, just a bit of salt and pepper in his beard, and the kind of bright, intelligent eyes that always warn me a mark is going to be difficult to nab.
Yeah, that’s putting it mildly. A bodyguard in each corner of the room, a man like Devlin Sullivan, and April as potential collateral damage.
I’ve got my work cut out for me.
Sullivan stands, extending a hand to me. “Welcome! Welcome. Such a pleasure to meet ye, Liam.” His handshake is firm, warm. Friendly, even. “A good, solid Irish name.” His accent is more charming in person than it was over my hacked audio feed.
“It’s a pleasure, Mister…” I suddenly realize I don’t know what to call him, but luckily he interrupts me.
Bounty Page 12
