To hurt.
He stared into her darkened eyes until he was certain she wouldn’t interrupt him again.
“I’m willing to compromise, Ms. Harris,” he drawled lazily, letting his fingertips dust the curved line of her spine. “You continue to be my little plaything when I want, where I want, and I will give you the thing you want most.”
The smooth skin on her throat moved with her swallow. “What’s that?”
He skimmed her lips with the pad of his thumb.
Once.
Twice.
Slow glides coaxing them apart, granting him entry.
He nudged inside and watched, enthralled, as the closed around him, a perfect, puckered O. Her hot tongue licked the length of it and he felt it with the same intensity as if she’d licked his cock.
“I will give you my name,” he pressed on before his brain could dissolve completely. “I will take away the last thing connecting you to your old life, to the person you used to be, and you will be a Crow.” He slipped out of her mouth and used the dampness left behind to leave a sheen on her lips. “You will be my wife in every possible way, except in the bedroom. In here, you are mine to do with as I please. You will serve no other purpose, except what I allow, and you will kneel for me, come for me, submit to me without question.”
She gasped as his final words drove home.
“I’m not a submissive.”
His fingers gripped her chin. “In here, you are.” He released her and let his hand trail down to cup her breast. “What will it be?”
Her heart clapped in his palm, an erratic beat that matched her every ragged breath. But the answer was already in her eyes, in the dark flames begging him not to stop. It was in the sharp pricks of her nails burrowing into his shoulders.
“Say it,” he urged, sweeping a thumb over the hard ridge of her nipple. “Tell me you’re mine.”
Her lips parted in a silent moan. Her lashes fluttered, but remained half-mast.
“Yours.”
The moment it rasped free, she snagged her teeth into her bottom lip, but the damage had been done.
She’d sealed her fate.
“Too late, sweetheart.” He pinched and rolled the tender bud, eliciting a whimper from her. “There’s no taking it back, no getting out, no escape.” He smirked up at her. “Now, kiss me and sell your soul to the devil.”
She did without hesitation. Her fingers burrowed into his hair and she tore into his mouth with a violence that would have hurt if he wasn’t loving every desperate second of it.
He let her drag his top off and open the fastens on his pants. The head of his cock peeked out of the V their hands created. It was already hard as stone and leaking all over the skin of his abdomen.
“Get a condom.”
Cora laughed, the sound torn between amused and desperate. “From where? I didn’t exactly bring a lot of guys up here.”
He raised his attention away from her breasts to peer up into her flushed face. “Not a lot, huh?”
She gave his shoulders a playful nudge. “My point is, I don’t have any here. Do you have any in your wallet?”
He shook his head. “We used it. I haven’t had a chance to replenish.”
She giggled at the word replenish. “What now, Captain? You got me all hot and bothered, so you better deliver.”
His fingers slipped down her side, over the curve of her hip to tease the little bundle between her thighs. He watched her with every stroke, savoring in the way her head slipped back on her shoulders and the way her thighs widened for more.
“Think we can ask your parents?” he only partially teased.
Her laugh this time was a broken moan as he sank his middle finger inside her.
“Or ... or you can pull out,” she panted, hips meeting his every thrust. “I’ll clean you off.”
She emphasized her point with a deliberate flick of her tongue over his bottom lip.
“Fuck me...”
James lost it.
His whole world plummeted into a vet of crimson as wild and ferocious as the roaring of blood between his ears. His cock swelled to the point of agonizing pain.
“Get on your knees,” he growled. “Face down.”
She scrambled off him to do what he commanded. He positioned her on the edge with her ass in the air and her back curved downward like a velvet slide. At that angle, he had a clear view of her glistening sex and the thick puddle of cream running downwards with gravity. A droplet clung to her swollen clit, shivering as she did.
But it was as far as he got when a knock sounded. Every muscle in his body screamed for him to ignore it, and he almost did, when the second one followed the first.
Harder.
Urgent.
“Stay there,” he barked as he jerked up his pants and stalked to the door, muttering about someone better having died.
Elise peeked up at him from the other side, expression sheepish. Her gaze flicked down to his naked chest and the button he hadn’t bothered to do up, and her color darkened.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she began.
James did up the button. It made no difference in the scheme of things; his cock was still a bulging lump pushing up the front of his pants, but it made him feel less like an ass.
“Not at all. Was there something you needed?”
Elise bit her lip. “Could I have Cora for a moment? I won’t keep her long. Unless she’s already sleeping?”
He didn’t know why, but he glanced back over his shoulder towards the bed. Cora was exactly where he’d left her, ready to get fucked.
“I think I can untie her for a few minutes.”
Elise blinked several times before she realized he was only kidding.
“Oh!” She giggled. “Thank you.”
He pulled his head back into the room and glanced at the woman waiting for him.
“Sweetheart, your mother needs you.”
Cora raised her head, her hair a wild tangle of dark curls around her face. “Now?” she mouthed.
James shrugged. “You have a few minutes, then those handcuffs are going back on.”
Her horrified gasp stole a snicker from him before he caught Elise’s raised eyebrows.
“Did I come at a bad time?”
James grinned darkly. “Nothing that can’t be continued when she returns.”
He waited until Cora had pulled her top back on and joined him at the door before relinquishing his grip on it and moving away. He heard Elise apologizing again before the door closed behind them.
Alone in her childhood room, surrounded by all her things with a raging hard on, James exhaled. He stroked his poor, abandoned cock through the fabric of his pants, attempting to elevate some of the pressure.
So close, he thought miserably as he threw himself down on the bed and waited for his wife to return.
She didn’t.
Chapter Twenty
Cora was still absent when James reached for her several hours later. The bed lay cool and vast beneath the hand he sent exploring in search of her. It strained on for what felt like forever before he realized he was never going to make contact.
Bemused, he raised his head and squinted at the unfamiliar room, at the dull gloom of late morning spilling through the sheer drapes. Her side of the bed lay undisturbed, still harboring the pen and pad she’d been writing on the night before.
But it was the silence that solidified his awakening. It was the absence of sound when there was no one else in the room.
“Cora?”
Nothing.
Not even a rustle from the adjoining bathroom.
He checked his watch and his confusion dissolved into concern. He snatched his phone off the end table and tapped on the app connected to Cora’s bracelet. The grid blinked on and swirled as it expanded to show the neighborhood, then wider to scan the city. It took several seconds before the tracking device located her position.
Still in the city.
Not too far.
He could reach her by car in under fifteen minutes. The blinking was slow, so she was definitely not driving, or being driven anywhere.
Relieved, he sank back against the pillows and switched on the microphone. Elise’s voice immediately crackled over the speakers.
“I don’t know how I feel about you in that shade of blue. Maybe something lighter. No, that’s too light.”
Cora’s laughter overrode her mother’s disgust. “Will you make up your mind? The poor girl has been in here eight times with twenty different shades of blue.”
“But I hate them all!” Elise whined. “Maybe I should go out there and find something. She might come back with teal.”
Cora’s laugh amplified.
James shut off the sound, but kept the app running in the background.
He shoved back the sheets and climbed to his feet. He snatched up his shirt and shoes and dragged them on as he stalked to the door.
He found De Marco in the dining room, alone, a buttered toast in one hand, the morning paper in the other. He looked far too put together in his steel gray trousers and white dress shirt. It made James painfully aware of his own rumpled attire, his unshaven face, and sour breath.
“Was last night really necessary?” He stormed up to the other man. “Taking her out of my bed just so I couldn’t have her? I thought we had an agreement.”
De Marco took ages finishing the article he was reading before raising unhurried eyes and quirking an eyebrow.
“I had nothing to do with that.”
James didn’t believe that for a second. The whole thing reeked of bullshit.
“Where is she?”
De Marco lazily flipped to a new page. “She’s gone shopping with her mother. They left while you were still sleeping.”
That coincided with the conversation he’d overheard, yet the implication made James’s jaw ache.
“You can’t keep her from me.”
“Captain,” he set the paper down and fixed James with a level glower. “My wife is an amazing woman. She’s also a devoted and overprotective mother. Believe me that this is something you’re going to need to accept.”
“What’s that?”
“That those two are inseparable.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “If they are together under the same roof, you can bet you won’t be seeing Cora overly much. Even I don’t sleep with my wife when Cora’s over. They commandeer one of the guestrooms and turn it into a girl’s slumber party. It’s something they have always done.”
He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Burrowing into Cora at night had become almost essential to his sleeping routine, like brushing his teeth. Having that disrupted left an itch between his shoulder blades he couldn’t reach.
De Marco smirked. “Yes, it’s an unwelcome feeling, but you’ll get used to it.”
“She said a minute.” James nearly winced at the grudging grumble in his own voice.
Jesus.
“She always does.” De Marco snapped his paper open. “You’ll get used to that too.”
He didn’t want to get used to it. He wanted Cora in his bed at night. He wanted her to stay there until they woke up in the morning. That was something they would need to work on.
“Has there been any word on Cora’s apartment?” he asked, redirecting his annoyance to a safer place.
De Marco nodded. “I already spoke to the fire marshal. They’re ruling it as arson, which is covered by Cora’s home insurance policy. Once all the paperwork is done, she can rebuild.”
“I meant about the people who set the fire,” James muttered.
Realizing he wasn’t going to finish his paper, De Marco folded it back up and set it aside with a disgruntled sigh. “I have all my men on it. If anyone knows this Bishop person, I will know about it. In the meantime,” He folded one leg over the other. “The Carmichael place is still available.”
James chose to ignore that.
He dug out his phone and called Nicholas.
The Romanian picked up on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“Where are you?”
James moved away from the table.
“Getting tortured for not nearly enough pay.”
He could hear soft jazz in the background and the low chatter of voices.
“I’m with the women,” the man continued when James didn’t speak. “They’re shopping.”
Of course he was. James should have known Nicholas wouldn’t take his eyes off Cora.
“Keep her safe, yeah?”
Nicholas snorted. “If we visit one more boutique, she might need protection from me.”
James rolled his eyes. “Suck it up. I’ll see you when you get home.”
He killed the line and turned to the man watching him.
“So, what’s the plan now?” He stuffed his phone into his pocket. “Are we just going to sit here and hope Bishop falls into our laps?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He didn’t, but it annoyed him that the great and powerful Giovanni De Marco was proving to be a lazy fuck.
“He burned Cora’s apartment down with her still inside,” James rehashed. “He could have killed her, but you’re sitting here like...” he broke off, his anger overruling his thought process. “Why aren’t you pissed?”
“Who says I’m not?”
James waved a hand at him. “Because you’re sitting there, reading the paper and eating breakfast instead of doing everything in your power to find this son of a bitch.”
De Marco pushed out of his chair and rose slowly. His hands went to the sleeves on his dress shirt and he tugged them down leisurely.
“And what is it you’re doing, Captain?”
James bared his teeth. “This isn’t my city. I have no connections here, but if I did, you can believe I’d be out there right now doing whatever I needed to in order to get answers.”
“See, that’s where you and I differ.” De Marco started towards him. “I have people who do the dirty work for me. That’s what chain of command is when you’re the boss. You outsource.”
It was on the tip of James’s tongue to remind the man that this was about his daughter, not some random stranger on the street. There was no such thing as outsourcing. But his phone took that moment to vibrate in his pocket. He cast the man a final icy glower before answering it without looking.
“What?”
“I think Cora looks radiant in the green dress.” The familiar, British purr stiffened James’s spine. “The blue makes her skin look dull. Don’t you think?”
An incoming text had him drawing the phone down to see a message with an attachment pop up on the screen. It was a snapshot of Cora taken through the glass window of a boutique. Her head was thrown back, her mouth wide in a beautiful smile. And Bishop was right, she looked gorgeous in the satin dress in emerald green.
“Touch her and I will end you.” He lowered the phone to snarl at De Marco. “Get the girls home now!”
He didn’t wait to see if the man would do what he said, he was already stalking from the room, mind focused on getting to Cora and getting her home.
Bishop chuckled. “There is no need to worry, Captain. I’m not after her. It’s you I need a word with. Alone.”
“Tell me when and where, but if anything happens to Cora...”
“Captain, I’m shocked you would think I would ever harm a lady, but I may be tempted if you don’t do what I say.”
He was mere feet from the door.
He was practically sprinting.
“Tell me where.”
Something grabbed his arm before he could throw himself out of the house. He lashed out, slapping the hand and glowering at the owner.
De Marco bared his teeth. “You can’t go alone.”
“He’ll hurt them if I don’t.”
He willed his control to return, to bring with it the semblance of rational thought. He knew De Marco was right. Only someone truly stupid would ever meet Bishop on his terms withou
t backup. But this wasn’t up for negotiation. It was his life or Cora’s. That wasn’t even worth deliberating.
“I need your keys.”
De Marco had the grace to hesitate a fraction of a second before digging into his pocket and removing them.
James gripped them tight and stared hard at the other man. “Get her home.”
The autumn winds grabbed at his sweater and crawled through the loose threads to burn flesh, reminding him he hadn’t thought to find his jacket. He ignored it as he jogged down the steps to the Lincoln.
“Where?” he asked the man in his ear.
“Just start driving. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Bits of rock and gravel spewed beneath the hard grind of tires when James stomped on the gas. The back end swerved once before he shot out of the driveway and down the road. The phone was dumped into the cup holder, leaving his hands free to grip the wheel and take each corner at a reckless wrench.
He drove for nearly an hour in absolute silence. Bishop seemed content to simply wait for James to find his own way, which made James wonder how the man knew. Stolen glances through the mirrors indicated no followers. But he must have been going the right way, because he was never told to turn back or take a different exit.
“Where are you taking me?” he demanded at last.
“No need to rush. You’re nearly here.”
Here wound up being the parking lot leading into the marina. Crystalline waters sparkled, emphasizing the beauty and grace of the boats bobbing across its calm surface. It would have made James homesick for the ocean, but he didn’t allow himself to dwell on it.
“Excellent, you’ve arrived. Go down to the pier.”
The line went dead.
James stared at it, at the blank screen staring back. He pulled up Cora’s tracker app and triangulated her location. The air didn’t leave his lungs until the dot appeared over De Marco’s estate, a clear indication that she was home.
He texted Nicholas.
“Don’t leave her side.”
Response was immediate.
“Where the hell are you?”
James typed as he walked towards the pier. “Having a sit down with Bishop. You’re in charge if anything happens.”
The phone sprung to life in his hand. He didn’t need to see his friend’s number to know who it was.
Blood Script Page 33
