Claimed: The Dark Christmases Trilogy

by Z. L. Arkadie

  “How much will it cost you?” I asked, feeling a little less bitter than I had a minute before.

  “A lot.” He leaned toward me. “But I never planned on letting her get away with this for long. Every crook meets their demise at the right time.”

  Lord knew I wasn’t one of those people who held others to unreal and ideal standards of what it meant to be a decent human being. I knew the world wasn’t wrapped up in a pretty little box. It wasn’t Jasper’s job to look out for all journalists. But it was mine.

  I looked down at my cell phone on the table, contemplating all that I had just discovered. Then I was struck by a new thought and shook my head in anger, although I really wanted to just scream so loudly that my voice shattered glass. “She wants to destroy you, Jasper. And she wanted me to do it because she knew how I felt about you. I mean, no wonder she was so interested in what I’d learned about Eve. No wonder she left so many voice messages and emails, making sure I hadn’t abandoned the process of cooking your goose. How could I have been so fucking stupid?”

  “Don’t say that.” He took my hand in his. “You’re not stupid. You’re the smartest person I know.”

  My heart was beating so fast that I could hardly breathe. Tears rushed into my eyes. After he said that, I didn’t feel stupid anymore. However, I wanted revenge, which meant I had to be very angry. The inability to steady my breathing was a measure of how much I was seething.

  I grabbed my phone off the table. “I have a call to make.”

  Jasper’s hand came down over mine. “You’re not calling Miss Roberson, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t dare betray you in that way, ever.” My heart was full—I was overtly emotional but in control of my intellect. “I’m calling Branson.”

  He frowned curiously. “Who’s that?”

  “The best investigator in the world. I’m going to have him check out everything in this email Kylie sent me. I want him to confirm that they’re lies. If they are, which I believe is the case, then I’ll feed her fake details with fake sources, giving her exactly what she needs to beat me to the story.” I winked at him.

  Jasper smirked. “You have a dark side, I see.”

  “I wouldn’t call it that. I’d call it…” I twisted my mouth, searching for the right word. “Being an agent of proper retribution.”

  I’d seen a snake strike its prey, darting forward so fast that it caught the rodent off guard. That was how fast Jasper pulled me against him and let his tongue dive into the depths of my mouth. He lifted me off my feet, and my body was pressed against his so tightly that I felt every bit of his chest, abdominal muscles, and solid erection. He carried me away from our plates on the table and set me on top of his large office desk. He tossed my right shoe over his right shoulder and my left shoe over his left shoulder. The hard surface of his desk agitated my back as he tugged my pants off. I twisted my hips to get comfortable, and he must have seen traces of agony on my face, because he picked me up and set me in his big comfortable leather chair. We grinned naughtily at other as he leaned over me, fingers gripping the arms of the chair.

  “Spread your legs,” he ordered.

  Without hesitation, I did as I was told. He sniffed and then looked down at my thighs. He looked into my eyes again. The lust behind the windows to his soul made me swallow the lump of anticipation that was lodged in my throat.

  “Wider,” he ordered.

  I opened my thighs so far that my knees stretched to the edge of the seat.

  “I want to see your pussy dripping, glistening. I want to see your beautiful pussy—all of it, baby.”

  I was so turned on that I didn’t even have to check and see if he had gotten his wish granted. I was wet—soaking wet. I skipped a breath as my sex throbbed to be pounded by his thickness, banged into next week.

  Jasper took a deep breath in through his mouth. I could hear his lungs expanding. Then he pushed the air out with force as he fell to his knees. A moan escaped me, and I gasped as his fingers dug into the flesh of my thighs. He tugged my ass toward his face. Then I felt the soft, warm, delicate but ravenous stimulation of his tongue, breath, and pressure against my clit.

  The gratification was immediate. I grabbed the arms of the chair, but that brought me no relief from his pleasurable assault.

  “Oh, ah, oh…” I sucked air through my teeth. Every time he ate my pussy, he did it differently from the last time, and sometimes he would go back to how he’d done it six times before. At the moment it was a combination of all the ways he’d done it previously. I felt every stroke of his tongue on every part of my clit—the top, the bottom, the right, the left, and every place between.

  I cried out louder and louder and louder. I tried to move my hips away from his mouth, but he had fastened them in place.

  “Jasper, oh, Jasper, please.”

  The sensation abruptly changed. Stimulation was on the right side of my clit, building and building into an explosion. I screamed. It seemed as if the orgasm would never stop… until it did. But the strong, pleasurable sensation was already intensifying on the left side of my clit.

  “Holy shit.” I sucked air as if I were drowning. My hands were still searching for a solid place to land until my fingers gripped his scalp.

  “Umm…” he moaned, seeming to like how I was touching him.

  And then I came again. And he still didn’t stop. His tongue had moved to the top of my clit, but now Jasper had his fingers inside me, rimming a very sensitive spot in my pussy. My goodness. I had never felt such a thing in my life, as though my orgasm was building in several spots. How can this be?

  “Jasper, baby,” I said with a whimper.

  “Mm…” he moaned without stopping.

  “Oh, baby,” I cried.

  His grunt reverberated.

  “Oh, baby!” What the fuck… My mouth remained caught open, and I struggled to breathe past what was happening in the depths of my sex.

  The blast of orgasm saturated every single area of my pussy, the pleasure stretching like vines. I whited out while it was happening, wondering if I was dreaming. Someone was screaming Jasper’s name, and it took me a moment to realize it was me. Suddenly, I was lifted out of my chair and set on top of Jasper’s desk. I knew what he wanted, but when I went to undo his pants, he’d beat me to the punch. His dick was out and so hard against his belly.

  Jasper breathed heavily through his nose, his teeth clenched as, with one hand, he grabbed his cock to guide it into my wetness, and with the other, he gripped my ass to crush my pussy against his erection. When the two met, he slammed himself so deep inside me that I could feel him in my belly. Jasper was fucking me with force. His lust for me had soared past a tolerable level. With each stab of his dick, I moaned and sucked air while keeping my hazy gaze trained on his face.

  “Oomph.” He was banging me. “Oomph.” He banged me harder, faster. “Oomph,” he kept repeating. “Oomph, you’re so fucking tight,” until, with one hard plunge into my slippery heat, he quivered and cried out.

  Jasper and I held each other for a while after he came. He must have felt the same thing I did—that we were in the wrong spot for what we’d just done. I wanted to be in his arms. I wanted his nakedness against mine. I wanted to roll around on the mattress, kissing, touching, fondling, and caressing each other.

  “Baby, we’re going to fly out to Newport tonight,” he finally said.

  I was caught off guard by his words. Apparently, we weren’t thinking the same thing.

  “Okay,” I whispered, my disappointment quickly yielding to curiosity. “But why?”

  “I have an idea about what the key in my mother’s box might open.”

  I pictured going back to the place where we’d first met, made love, and parted in sorrow. A sense of exhilaration and trepidation gripped me. I held onto Jasper extra tight. “Okay, then. Let’s go see. But one more thing…”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Why would your mother have a note in her possession that
says, ‘Benji Dow, not his real name’? Do you have any idea who she’s referring to?”

  Jasper was silent for a few beats. “Not yet.”

  “Then we’re going to figure out who he is?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I smirked, satisfied that we were on the same page. And then we were kissing again.

  Chapter Eight

  The office held the unique scent that occurred when Jasper and I made love. It was sweet and spicy and divinely sensual. I couldn’t put my panties back on—they were way too wet for that. Jasper called his housekeeper and directed her to bring us two white fluffy robes and slippers. After we stripped out of our clothes, including our underwear, she took them to wash and press and have them back to us before Jasper and I left. We were planning to leave for Newport, Rhode Island, after midnight. Due to the weather conditions, we would take his private airplane and not the helicopter. That meant we had five hours before heading to Teterboro.

  It was quiet and cozy in the room as I sat in Jasper’s executive chair. A few minutes before, I’d ended my call with Branson, who asked me to forward him the details. I hit the send button, redirecting the messages Kylie had sent me to Branson. Jasper sat across from me in the smaller—yet still pretty grand—chair, asking his assistant to schedule him for phone calls within the next hour with his contacts on the FBI project as well as other people. He was still being cryptic, but I didn’t care. Jasper and I had an unwritten rule: if I asked it, he would answer as much as possible, but first, I had to know what to ask. He wasn’t going to make it easy. The challenge was sexy. I liked it. And at the moment, I was too incensed by what I’d learned about Kylie to figure out what he was saying behind his encrypted words. He mostly said yes and no as I swiveled in my chair to watch the snow hit the warm glass and melt. The clouds roamed through the skyscrapers and settled over Central Park. I had no doubt how cold and miserable it was outside. However, where I sat, the atmosphere felt like a snuggly, warm hug.

  My cell phone finally beeped just as Jasper ended his call. I swiveled back in my chair to face my sexy lover as I read the message.

  “Is that your investigator?” Jasper asked. He had gotten up out of his chair and walked to the table to collect the file he had on Kylie.

  “Yep. He says he’s on it.”

  I observed him as he went to the file cabinet to put away the folder. I eyed him curiously as he pressed numbers on the keypad.

  “I thought you moved to LA,” I said as my thoughts came pouring out of my mouth.

  The keypad beeped, indicating the lock had been engaged. “Yes, I live in LA full-time.”

  “Do you work from here often?”

  He tilted his head, studying me with a grimace. “Be direct, babe. What are you asking?”

  I twisted my lips anxiously as I sat back in my chair. I took a moment to notice all that I was feeling inside. Normally, I would come right out and ask what was on my mind, but something had changed. I was afraid of offending Jasper—scared that something I said would lead to him taking his love away. I knew that fear came from the little girl inside who was afraid to let her parents know how much she hated the way they lied and schemed to take care of her. If I’d told them the truth, I feared they would have abandoned me.

  I breathed deeply as I allowed myself to remember that I was not that little girl anymore. I was an adult. Life would be safe as long as I didn’t abandon myself.

  “If you spend most of your life in LA, why would you keep information like the file you have on Kylie in New York?”

  He got that look on his face that told me I’d said something he liked. “Good question, beautiful.” He came over and asked for my hands. I gave him what he sought, and he helped me to my feet. Jasper held me against him. “I keep shadow copies of my paper files in all my offices.”

  I nodded, impressed. “Shadow copies. I like the sound of that.”

  He moaned as if tasting something delicious. “Let’s improve our current circumstances.”

  I smirked naughtily. “Improve our current circumstances?”

  He winked and took me by the hand. My head spun as we walked down the long hallway. I knew what was coming next as we entered his stylish yet comfortable bedroom. He unpeeled my robe, and I took his off too. Skin on skin, we fell onto his king-sized bed and rolled around on it, kissing in our sensual way, our tongues gliding, teeth nibbling, and fingers stimulating each other’s erogenous zones.

  I loved licking and gently raking my teeth against Jasper’s nipples. I loved how his powerful body quickened beneath me until he couldn’t stand it any longer. Then he would take me and flip me onto my back. My mind and body felt as if they were floating before both hit the mattress. He would then do the same thing to me that I had done to him. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  “Hey, babe,” I said after moaning from the sensual feeling of just being close to him.

  He gathered me into his arms with my cheek resting on his warm chest. “Hmm?”

  “What was that you did earlier in your office? When you went down on me. It was like… I never knew that could happen to my body.”

  “Then you liked it?” he asked.

  “I loved it.”

  He remained silent for a moment. “I’d never done that before. But over the course of time, I’ve gotten a feel for your body. I know where to touch you, where to stimulate you to make you climax.”

  I quickly shifted to rest my chin on his chest and gazed at him with appreciation. “Really? I mean that much to you that you learned my body?”

  He smiled as his finger traced my eyebrows and ran down the side of my face. All of a sudden, I was floating, twisting until my back landed on the mattress.

  Jasper straddled me, still grinning. “I know you like when I do that, because you always chuckle.”

  Goodness, he’s right. I hadn’t noticed. I just enjoyed the ride. I was chuckling even more because I loved that playful side of him.

  His eyes burned with lust. “And you always like it when I say this.”

  “Say what?” I said, surprised to hear myself speaking in a sensual tone.

  He flexed his eyebrows. “Spread your legs.”

  He was right about that too. His fingers slid through my slit and entered me before I could complete the motion. However, now Jasper’s fingers were delicately, methodically slipping in and out of me.

  “Like this,” he whispered.

  The immediacy of the spark of orgasm that I felt made my eyes expand as the back of my head slammed against the pillow. He didn’t stop. He kept doing whatever the hell he was doing.

  “If I increase my speed…”

  I gasped. It was coming. I was about to blow.

  “If I slow it down…”

  The sensation subsided, but my hips tried to chase his fingers to get it back.

  “Ah, I see you want it.” He was going fast again, and all that pleasure was back with a vengeance. “How hard do you want to come?”

  I tried to answer him, but what I was experiencing almost felt too good to bear.

  “Say something, baby, or else…” He stopped, and I lost the sensation again.

  But before I could fully applaud him for what he’d just done to me, his fingers were back in my pussy, rubbing that spot. It was brash of him to show me just how easily he could find it again and how quickly he could bring my body magnificent pleasure. I knew him well too. There was something about the way that my body responded to him that put that lustful look in his eyes.

  Jasper bent down to bite my hard nipples as he continued stimulating me. “How hard do you want to come?” he asked again, then bit my right nipple.

  The stinging sensation was numbed by the button he pushed in my pussy.

  “Hard,” I strained to say.

  And just like that, my wish was his command. Jasper’s fingers worked fast and faster. The sparks of orgasm gathered and, moment by moment, intensified until they made me quake.

  Once his fingers wer
e out of me, I writhed with pleasure until all the sensations had subsided. “Oh my goodness, Jasper. You have learned my body.”

  “More than you’ll ever know.”

  When I turned to face him, I saw that his dick wasn’t all the way erect, but it was getting there.

  “How about I do something for you.” I reached out to wrap my hand around his pole.

  He caught my hand before I reached his manhood and enfolded my fingers with his. “Not yet, babe. I have meetings before we head out. But enjoy a bath, watch some TV, order some dessert, rest. Whatever you want, my staff will get it for you. I want you completely comfortable here.” He grabbed hold of his dick. “And don’t worry about this. I’m going to give you a lot of it as soon as I’m done.”

  I felt my gaze turn hazy as my eyes fell on his perfectly molded cock. “Later, then.”

  He kissed the back and then the palm of my hand. I love it when he does that too.

  “You’d better believe it.” Jasper sprang to his feet with the energy of a gazelle. “And, babe, you’re in hiding. Remember that.”

  I groaned. “So that means you can work, but I can’t?”

  He hovered over me, pushing both hands onto the mattress. Our faces were so close that I had to lean back, or I would have been forced to kiss him.

  “You have a problem with resting? Is it hard for you?” That sounded like a challenge.

  “I can rest,” I purred, although I hadn’t even convinced myself of that.

  Jasper kissed me swiftly on the lips. “Good.” He stood erect.

  I reached out to him as though trying to catch him before he got away. “By the way, I wanted to ask you about Bryn. Have you heard anything about her?”

  He veered away from me, that stony expression back on his face. “She’s fine,” he said as if it hurt him to reveal that.

  My jaw dropped. “Then you know where she is?”

  His eyes darted from left to right as he pursed his kissable lips. “Yes. That’s all I’m saying for now. Are you satisfied with that answer?”