Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  “Stand here.” Movement, light and the rush of a tap running before Tobias reappeared next to her. “I put your pajamas and a glass of water in the bathroom. After you’re changed, be sure to drink the entire glass.”

  “Yes, keeper,” she mumbled as her head lolled against the wall. A thought struck her. “My shoes?”

  “I’ll fetch your shoes, but you have to do what I say and drink the water.”

  She scowled at the amusement she was certain she heard in his strangely persuasive voice and stumbled into the bathroom before turning to him again. “You’re handling me.”

  Nodding, he lounged with one shoulder propped casually against the doorframe, hands out of sight inside his pockets. “Quite efficiently, too, in my opinion.” His suit jacket had come unbuttoned, his tie completely missing along with the top two buttons of his shirt, and she couldn’t help but notice his hair standing on end.

  I did that, she mused proudly, and not a little drunkenly. I made the Ice King melt. So it took a moment to process his smug retort, her glare returning. “I can’t drink the water until I change my clothes. You said.” She sensed her frown give way to a gleeful smile. “Are you going to stay and watch, Toby?” Her hands lifted to her blouse, toyed with the buttons. “I think you want to.”

  He straightened abruptly. “And I think I need to collect your shoes, Cinderella.” Closing the bathroom door between them, he gave one final command. “Drink your water.”

  “Yes, keeper,” she called out on a giggle, and began to strip. It wasn’t until she was two seconds from sleep, under the coverlet in the empty four-poster bed, that she realized they’d never finished their argument. And that he was still the worst fake boyfriend in existence.

  Chapter Seven

  Whomever said a cold shower did wonders for a rampant erection had clearly never been in Tobias’s situation.

  He stood under the icy spray sputtering from the ancient pipes, eyes closed as goose bumps prickled over his naked skin, palms flattened against the tiled wall. He was wet, freezing and so hard it hurt.

  A man didn’t get to age thirty-two without experiencing a hard-on first thing in the morning. He was healthy, after all, in the proverbial prime of his life—and absolutely without an outlet for the growing need that had been plaguing him rather incessantly as of late. Whether or not he’d taken a sexual partner to alleviate those needs in the past fifteen years was beside the point.

  So what is the point, friend?

  Scowling at the sarcastic inner voice, he shoveled a hand through his wet hair and scrubbed the back of his neck, uncomfortable with the direction of his thoughts. The point was, last night he had come remarkably close to tearing the panties off his prisoner, a woman he should hate.

  Should hate, yet did not. Had you asked him a couple of days ago how he felt toward the bloodthirsty blonde still sleeping in the bed on the other side of the bathroom door, he might have admitted to hatred, though that would’ve been a lie. A man couldn’t watch a woman obsessively for nigh on a month straight and maintain hold of constant enmity. It was difficult to separate the fear and helpless rage over Beth’s kidnapping and torture from the logic that told him Chandler, in withholding for days the information needed to rescue Beth, had merely been doing as she’d been trained to do—withstand interrogation. Whether she protected her partner, her agency, or her country, it didn’t matter. She was a spy. Spies lived by a different set of rules.

  But she must have seen the signs with Nash and MI6, known the betrayal was coming. No wonder she zipped lips so quickly during Tobias’s first round of questioning; Chandler had recognized that she was completely and utterly alone.

  So, no, Tobias couldn’t hate her, because he understood all too well about protecting oneself against outside forces, though in his case, he’d never sought to defend himself, but his siblings. The siblings who would never truly comprehend all that Faraday Industries did, nor all that their father, Frank, had done before his multiple sclerosis diagnosis sidelined him. Too many phone calls overheard outside the office door, too many strangers coming and going at midnight hours. The compound had only been as safe as Frank decided it would be, and the truth of the matter was, it wasn’t very safe at all.

  Tobias never wanted them to know. It was his burden to bear, and he did so gladly, for them—Beth and Adam, Gillian and Casey.

  It was a shame he couldn’t stop at simply not hating his prisoner. One thing to comprehend her motivations, another entirely to experience the strangest sense of compassion for her. Compassion went against everything he believed to be true about himself. He was a Faraday, and only other Faradays had earned that emotion from him. A stranger on the outside—a verifiable threat to those he held dear—had done nothing to deserve such softness from him.

  Not that soft was anywhere near the correct adjective for him at this time. Oh, no. He was stiffly erect, his abdomen tight with repressed desire, and he wanted to get off more than he wanted to get warm.

  He glanced through the gap in the shower curtain toward the door separating the bathroom from the rest of their suite. He’d locked it, of course, but a simple push mechanism on the knob wasn’t enough to keep Chandler out if she decided she wanted in. Not that she would, though—want in. There was no reason for her to come storming into the bathroom when she’d be able to hear the shower running, know it was occupied.

  But that she could interrupt him...see him all troubled like this... He had to take care of it, because he’d never get through the day’s activities otherwise.

  Wrapping his fingers around his cock, he fisted its base and squeezed. Hard. The promise of imminent relief beckoned seductively as he pumped once. “Ungh.” Oh, that felt good. So damn good, and he pumped down again, twisting on the upstroke. He skated over the sensitive head, a slickness that had nothing to do with the shower water coating his palm.

  His head fell back as his eyes closed, the harsh spray pounding against his exposed throat, cooling his chest as heat gathered in his belly. Hips thrusting his length into his palm, the rhythm swift and sharp yet controlled, because though he chased his orgasm, he felt compelled to draw it out. Here, in the privacy of his mind, behind the laughable lock on on the bathroom door, he indulged in the fantasies that had plagued his dreams the night before—spurred on, no doubt, by the kiss.

  The kiss. He shuddered, tightening his grip and jacking his erection faster before taking an unsteady breath and slowing again. His entire body remembered the sensation of Chandler’s petite frame plastered against his out by the fountain in the south garden. How her strong legs had wrapped around his waist, her fingers mussing his hair as she pet him everywhere she could reach and lingering over each inch of bared skin she could find.

  Her lips had clung so sweetly to his, before hunger had gotten the best of them both. On her tongue he’d tasted the tartness of her drinks from the karaoke bar, and the way she had licked at him, teasing... For the rest of the night, all he could imagine was what she would feel like underneath her clothing, what he would do with a perfectly naked Chandler at his mercy, because the fully clothed and writhing version of her he’d held last night lit a spark on the desires he’d never needed to battle this hard to suppress.

  Baby, she’d called him in between scorching kisses. Baby, oh, fuck yes, give me your mouth.

  Another shudder rippled through him, and he couldn’t resist rushing toward his finish. Fist flying over the rigid length of his cock, his head fell forward, breaths coming in harsh pants, ears ringing under the pressure from his trippy pulse, and then he groaned. Loudly, and it was a blessing, really, that he hadn’t moaned her name as he came violently, his orgasm lashing the square rose tile of the shower stall.

  While shivers of relief danced down his spine, he blindly cleaned the wall before scrubbing any lingering evidence of his descent into madness from his body. The freezing water fina
lly became too much, and he shut off the shower, pulling a plush towel from the rack near the tub, letting the soft nap of the cotton terrycloth warm him as he dried off.

  His mind felt...empty. But buzzing, too, busy and loud and echoing with indistinct words from a dozen different conversations. Succumbing to his desire for Chandler McCallister, even in so private a way, had guilt prickling the back of his neck and knotting his stomach, but he shoved it aside as he aggressively toweled off his arms and legs. Lust was animal biology. Mere physiology. Sense memories had contributed to his arousal, but so long as he didn’t act on them—with her—no moral or ethical line would be crossed.

  Last night had been an abnormality, he decided as he went through his morning toilette, drawing the razor through his overnight beard growth. An abnormality, but not a mistake, and one he could potentially attribute to scientific inquiry. He’d been curious, faintly intrigued by the possibility that, after so many years of self-enforced celibacy, temptation could be lurking in any corner of this pretentious manor house...so long as it was Chandler in those corners.

  Except temptation indicated his brain was involved, or perhaps an emotional, psychological response, and that would defeat the hypothesis stating his body had simply awoken after fifteen mostly dormant years. It all boiled down to one difficult-to-deny fact, he mused darkly, running a comb through his hair, a fact proven by the kiss at the fountain.

  She’d gotten under his skin.

  Which was absolutely unacceptable.

  Dressing in the small bathroom without the aid of the full-length mirror he generally preferred in order to check his daily armor was an annoyance, especially when he realized he’d neglected to bring in his shoes. Shoes meant he could silently—and immediately—slip out the door, into the suite and escape to the hallway beyond, all without waking the woman in the bed. But with his head so full of the buzzing and the echoes and the baby-oh-fuck-yes, he couldn’t even remember where he’d unpacked the pair of wingtips that would coordinate with his brown herringbone trousers and maroon crewneck sweater.

  Except that when he opened the door, his gaze immediately zeroed in on the targeted footwear, situated neatly in front of his makeshift settee-bed...and toe-to-bared-toe with a rumpled, pajama-wearing Chandler, who was staring at him with a strange gleam in her bright eyes.

  Without a word, he moved to the settee and grabbed a wingtip.

  “You made a noise.”

  He didn’t pause in tying the shoe. “Oh?”

  “In the bath...you made a noise. I heard you.”

  “I’m not a mute, Ms. McCallister.” Finishing with one knot, he pulled taut the other set of laces, not daring to look at her as she sauntered over to the antique dresser. “Sometimes I vocalize sounds that could be construed as ‘noises.’”

  “Hmm.” She opened a drawer, closed it, opened another and began rifling through the contents. “Do you sometimes vocalize sounds that could be construed as sex noises, Toby?” When his gaze darted to hers, she grinned at him, pure smug evil in the curve of her full lips. “I heard you come.”

  “You heard nothing of the sort,” he lied smoothly.

  Laughing, she pulled out a pair of dark jeans and a gray cableknit sweater, along with something light blue and lacy and no, Tobias wasn’t staring at that tiny little swatch and thinking how easy it would be to rip it apart with his teeth, right before he parted her with his fingers so his tongue could taste her. God, he was dying to taste her, and she was laughing at him, taunting him with everything he knew he shouldn’t want but did. Oh, how he did.

  Damn it. Masturbating hadn’t helped at all.

  “I’m going to shower. Any tips and tricks on how to use that showerhead to best effect?”

  “Depends on how dirty you are.” The words escaped before he could think better of it, and he rushed from the bedroom chased by the husky sound of her delighted chuckle. Sighing in unashamed relief, he briskly descended to the lower level, determined to locate coffee before putting on his party face.

  The next time he talked to Beth, he was going to tell her how much he hated the term party face.

  A mug was located on the butcher-block countertop in the main kitchen, the coffee in a carafe poured by a soft-spoken member of the staff. After inquiring where the rest of the guests were at this early hour, he was directed to the sprawling veranda on the south-facing side of the manor house, and, cup in hand, he strode outside into the bracing spring morning air.

  Lady Valsar lounged on a chaise, a blanket draped elegantly over her legs, her dainty hands wrapped around a steaming china cup. Blatantly ignoring her, her daughter Irene sat at a small, round table with two of the other bridesmaids, none of them looking the worse for wear for all that they’d partied so aggressively the night before.

  Pippa rose from the table, both hands outstretched, cheeks pink as she smiled cautiously at him. He couldn’t help but smile back as she clutched his forearm, rose onto her toes and bussed both his cheeks. “Tobias. You look well rested.”

  Evidently that bracing shower had done more good than he’d thought. “It’s the country air.” He pressed a light kiss to her cheek, struck again by how unlike her twin she was. Delicate and cheerful, completely unjaded, Pippa was not fragile, per se, because no person related to Chandler could ever be fragile, but she didn’t have her sister’s toughness. Though last night’s anger spoke to a shared core of inner strength. “I apologize for last night’s...disagreement.”

  “No, it’s I who should apologize.” Pippa’s pale blond locks were bound in a loose braid over the shoulder of her quilted raspberry jacket, a few wisps falling around her temples to frame her heart-shaped face. Her smile faded. “I get so angry when I know she’s keeping things from me. I realize it’s her method of protecting me—she’s always protected me. But you know that already, don’t you.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Tobias answered regardless. “Chandler is built to defend those she loves.” He recognized that quality in his prisoner, mirroring the emotion he carried within himself, the feelings that drove him day in and day out to achieve all he did for his family and their company. Now he was compelled to repair some of the damage for which he was responsible. His voice barely above a whisper, he said, “What she’s been up to for the past several months does you no benefit to know.”

  “But I want to.” A whisper in return, brimming with sadness. “She shouldn’t have to go through life so alone. I know she’s alone, Tobias. You’re temporary, a mirage, but when you’re done with her, where will she be?”

  Dead in Russia. His conscience kicked him, harder than ever, and he hid his grim expression behind a long sip of necessary coffee.

  “But there is a bright side to all of this, of course.” Her glowing smile appeared without warning. “After years of secrets and lies, I finally have something—someone—tangible to blame if Chandler gets hurt.” She patted his arm. “You’re much easier to pummel than the government.”

  “Faraday!” Cameron hopped nimbly up the steps of the veranda, hunting rifle crooked over his elbow, his light brown hair wind-tousled where it fell across his brow. “Target contest in the west garden in a couple of minutes. Do you shoot?”

  Morbid humor tugged at Tobias’s lips. “Not unless absolutely necessary.”

  The other man laughed jovially. “Three days before my wedding to a staunch pacifist? Shooting is absolutely necessary, and I insist you join me and the other gents.” Nodding to the ladies with a charming smile, Cameron gestured Tobias forward. “Come on, we’ll find you a gun.”

  Tobias permitted Pippa to take his coffee mug before following her fiancé down the stairs and onto the perfectly manicured lawn. The west garden started when they turned the corner on the house, a long stretch of mown grass lined with proud oaks on the far end. A dozen straw bales were stacked two high in a line next to a Spanish-style patio,
all manner of firearms and associated accoutrement laid out atop them in a precise fashion.

  Also three bottles of hard, expensive liquor. Because what was a bachelor’s shooting event without imbibing? The assembled groomsmen stood in a semicircle drinking from embossed flasks, which they raised in greeting.

  Tobias scanned the gardens. “I thought you said it was a target contest.” There were no targets to be seen.

  “Moving targets, mate.” Studying the array of weapons, Cameron chose a traditional shotgun with an ancient-looking stock attached to modern metal and handed it to Tobias. “I can’t shoot a real animal, for fear of upsetting my bride-to-be, so the pigeons will have to do.” He gestured to the gun in Tobias’s hands. “Not as fancy as what your family manufactures, Faraday, but it should suffice.”

  Noting the groundskeeper in his tweed cap manning the trap—the device that would release the clay pigeons into the air on command from the shooter—Tobias gathered shotgun shells from one of the straw bales and dropped them into his pocket, the rifle crooked over his arm as he watched the first groomsman wave to the groundskeeper and prep to hit the target. “Pull!” the groomsman shouted.

  Up went the clay pigeon, up went the shotgun, off went the shot. The moving target exploded as the round connected, and the men applauded jovially.

  “There’s a legend in my family, going back to the seventeen hundreds, about a fire that destroyed the west wing of this estate. Pull!” Cameron aimed, let his shot crack the air, missing the clay pigeon but seemingly unconcerned. “Combustion due to some sort of experimentation, performed by a servant.”

  “A shame,” Tobias responded neutrally as he watched one of the groomsmen call out for a target and miss, as Cameron had. “You’ve obviously had it restored since then.”

  “Of course, of course. No point in letting the wound fester—the visual wound, I mean. Though it wouldn’t be much of a legend if there weren’t a bit of personal tragedy involved, as well.”