Calen's Captive

by Lucy Leroux

  Calen’s Captive

  A Singular Obsession, Book Two

  PUBLISHED BY: Lucy Leroux

  Copyright © 2014, Lucy Leroux

  http://www.authorlucyleroux.com

  ISBN: 978-1-942336-03-7

  First Edition.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please send them to the author’s website, where they can find out where to purchase a copy for themselves. Free content can be downloaded at the author’s free reads page.

  Thank you for respecting the author's work. Enjoy!

  Publication Schedule

  Making Her His

  A Singular Obsession, Book One

  Available Now

  Confiscating Charlie

  A Singular Obsession Novelette

  Available Now

  Calen’s Captive

  A Singular Obsession, Book Two

  February 16th, 2015

  Stolen Angel

  A Singular Obsession, Book Three

  April 16th, 2015

  Credits

  Cover Design: Robin Harper http://www.wickedbydesigncovers.com

  Editor: Rebecca Hamilton http://qualitybookworks.wordpress.com

  Readers: Thank you to all of my guinea pigs! Thanks to Leslie, Kenya, Evelyn, and anyone else I might have forgotten! Special thanks to Jennifer Bergans for her editorial notes. Extra special thanks to my husband for all of his support even though he won’t read my sex scenes!

  Prologue

  The driving beat of the music was starting to make Calen’s head pound. He put a weary hand over his eyes, trying to block out the noise and flashing lights of his newest nightclub.

  It didn’t work.

  All he wanted was to go home. He hadn’t been here long, but his interest had nosedived after Liam and Trick had left. It used to be the height of his ambition to sit at his own personal VIP table, watching the beautiful people spend their money on his overpriced booze and dance the night away. But the satisfaction of living out this fantasy had faded some time ago.

  Liam might be right. Calen needed to find another challenge. Liam wanted him to open a club at the Caislean, the Tyler brothers’ flagship hotel here in town. The Caislean chain was starting to open hotels all over the place, but the brothers still took the most pride in their first property. So did he. Calen had helped them find the investors they needed to open their dream hotel, and he was also sentimental about the place. But right now the thought of opening another nightclub held about as much appeal as an all-tofu diet. It did nothing to enhance the arousal he should be feeling, given the determined blowjob he was getting under the table right now.

  He was hard enough, he supposed, but nowhere near climaxing. He reached under the long tablecloth, and with a hand on her head, signaled to his lovely companion that she should stop and join him above table. He thanked her politely, and despite her pout, dismissed her as courteously as possible.

  Calen had little respect for women who pouted, but in this case, it was helpful. It helped destroy the image he’d first had when he had spotted her. The brunette had been giving him coy and inviting looks all night. For a moment, in the dim light of the club, the fantasy created by her black hair and green eyes had been convincing, so he’d waved her over to keep him company. But she’d only been an illusion—a poor copy of Elynn.

  He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. Calen couldn’t believe he was still fantasizing about his old university mate’s new wife. The fact he’d been doing so regularly since Alex had gotten married was making him crazy. And he felt like total shite about the whole thing.

  He waved his manager over and told him to keep an eye on things, then got up to leave. He drove home to his penthouse, still deep in self-flagellation mode. He felt like calling Sergei, if only for the fact that he wasn’t the only one of Alex’s old friends to find his new bride a little too appealing.

  Sergei Damov, Alexandros Hanas, and Giancarlo Morgese had been the first and only friends he had made in University. They had all attended Alex’s wedding a few weeks ago at his new Oxford estate and, if circumstances continued as they were, it would be the last wedding among his friends. Giancarlo had technically been married, but the best thing he could say about that disaster is that it had been brief.

  With a sigh, he thought back to those early days at University in Edinburgh. It was one of the first times he’d left the country and, miracle of miracles, he’d done it with his father’s blessing. No one in the family had ever chosen to study abroad before. In fact, most didn’t bother with higher education at all. But he’d known from an early age that he wasn’t going to join the family ‘business’. He was determined to make his own way in the world, and stay clean doing it.

  With his background, he’d had a hard time relating to any of the other people he’d met. Until Sergei. Perhaps friendship between the son of an Irish mobster and the son of a shady Russian magnate was out of the question under normal circumstances, but he and Sergei had felt a connection from day one.

  Giancarlo and Alex drifted into their lives shortly after, and soon the four had become inseparable, despite the differences in their personalities. Alex vacillated between being a risk-taker and a control freak. Sergei was like him—easygoing on the outside but with a tendency for too much introspection. Giancarlo had been the steady one, at least on the surface. But still waters ran deep, as they said.

  The last time he had seen any of them had been at Alex’s wedding. Giancarlo had to leave early after the ceremony, but he and Sergei had stayed on till the bride and groom had shared their last dance. Then he and Sergei had left the reception together to mourn the end of Alex’s bachelorhood by getting completely wasted. After drinking half a bottle of vodka, Sergei had admitted how sexy he found Elynn, and Calen had incoherently agreed. They proceeded to try and drunkenly pinpoint exactly why Elynn had affected them the way she had.

  In a fog of alcohol-induced intuition, they’d eventually decided it was because of the innocent sensuality she exuded. Between him and Sergei, and before his recent marriage, Alex, the three men had fucked hundreds of beautiful women. Giancarlo’s tally had been more modest, but he’d always said it was about quality, not quantity. As for the rest of them, they’d had plenty of models, actresses, socialites, and club girls in their beds. But no other woman of his acquaintance had possessed that look of innocence waiting to be ravaged that Elynn would probably always have. Sergei had mumbled about knowing one other girl with that look, but he’d clammed up when pressed for more details.

  Calen had been glad to learn he hadn’t been the only one to find his friend’s new wife attractive, but it was cold comfort now that he was back home in Boston. In reality, his dissatisfaction with life had begun before he’d attended the wedding, but it had gotten so much worse after he’d returned.

  He wasn’t stupid. He knew he wasn’t in love with a woman he’d only met for a few hours. And he had no desire to see her again. He would never hurt his friend by making a pass at his new wife, especially since said wife was obviously completely in love with her husband.

  That hadn’t stopped him from fantasizing about having what Alex had. He’d even started fantasizing about having kids. But he wasn’t about to have one without meeting the right woman first. But those kind of women—one like his friend had now—only came along once in a lifetime, if at all. And they didn’t come to men like him. Not to men w
ith families like his.

  Arriving at his empty penthouse apartment, Calen started a fire and then took off his suit jacket and tie. Pouring himself a large glass of his favorite whiskey, Knappogue Castle, he collapsed into his newest leather chair and stared broodingly at the fire.

  The fireplace was a monster with an austere marble mantelpiece that dominated the large living room. It wasn’t one of those modern gas ones. It burned real logs, a smell he loved. The fireplace was the reason he’d bought the apartment in the first place. He spent more nights watching the fire than his 4K OLED flat screen, especially lately when he’d begun to wish he wasn’t sitting there alone.

  He spent another hour trying to get drunk, but when he couldn’t even get a buzz, he gave up and went to bed.

  Chapter 1

  Three months later…

  “What the hell are you talking about? I can’t take a meeting for you. You know I don’t get involved with your business. Not ever,” Calen growled into his phone as he threw on some pants.

  It was past noon, but he had still been in bed when his father called. He’d gone to sleep well after dawn, having spent most of the night on his favorite new hobby, photographing fairies. Or rather, looking through security footage for one...

  Colman McLachlan sighed deeply on the other end of the line. “Son, I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if I had another choice. But your cousin Darren is tied up. His wife broke her leg falling down the stairs. They’re worried she might lose the baby, and with all that trouble with little Darren, I can’t ask him to do this right now. I’m still at the hospital. They are going to run more tests, and I can’t leave them right now. You know how Darren can get. And there’s no one else I trust with something this important.”

  Shit. He wasn’t especially fond of Darren’s wife, but she was hugely pregnant. A fall at this stage was a serious thing. Still, he had fought hard to maintain his independence from his family, and he wasn’t about to jeopardize it.

  “Da, I can’t meet the Russians. We made a deal. I stay out of your business, and you stay out of mine. I have back-to-back meetings with my distributors all day today.”

  “You can ask your manager to take those meetings. It’s his job. And you won’t be doing anything illegal. You’re just setting some final terms for the reparations they owe. It won’t take more than a half hour of your time.”

  His father sounded so reasonable, but then he always did. Even at his worst.

  Calen swore softly, realizing he had no choice. About a month ago, a small Russian crew under the Komarov umbrella had made the mistake of setting up an enterprise in a neighborhood run by the McLachlan family. They had taken initiative, not bothering to check with their superiors when they built a large meth lab on the ground floor of an apartment complex that was part of the McLachlan’s legitimate holdings. A few distant cousins had lived in the building, on the second floor. The fumes had poisoned their little girl. She didn’t make it.

  Calen had felt the same rage over her death that his father and cousins did, even if he hadn’t known her. She had been four years old, still a baby. The Russians had discovered exactly how badly they had fucked themselves shortly afterwards. He didn’t know how many had ended up dead at his family’s hands. The chemist and his boss for sure, right after the incident. He didn’t want to know if any others had followed. The Russians had decided against a full-blown war and had offered reparations instead.

  Apparently, he was about to find out exactly what those reparations were.

  ****

  Maia’s heart felt like it was going to explode out of her chest. She was running flat out, her energy reserves long gone. There was a stitch in her side and another under her breast that was making it hard to catch her breath, but she couldn’t stop. If they caught her, she was dead.

  Pumping her already trembling legs harder, she scrambled down a ridge and across a muddy pit, praying that she had lost her pursuers.

  She had thought she’d gotten so lucky today. Her boss had asked her to do him a favor. He was teaching an introductory Entomology class and he’d wanted live specimens for a demonstration. Maia had to check her traps for the moths she studied so she hadn’t minded making the trek out to the woods. She had found an assortment of beetles and walking sticks. Then she had seen a rare species of butterfly, a Long Tailed Skipper, flying overhead.

  That species wasn’t normally found so far up north. Maia had been eager to take a picture of it so she could add it to the butterfly count. Her lab kept logs on the numbers of butterflies spotted each season in order to determine population numbers.

  The dusky blue and grey butterfly had flown just out of the range of her camera lens. She’d doggedly pursued it, crashing through bushes and over fallen logs and uneven terrain. Her lab’s record keeping was strict. You had to take a time-stamped picture in order to add the specimen to the count.

  The Skipper continued to elude her, flying over a ridge. Panting slightly, she climbed up the steep incline until she topped the rise and found herself at the edge of a small ravine. All thoughts of the butterfly promptly fled, even as it flew past the heads of the men at the bottom of the ridge.

  Two men, one in a baseball cap and the other bareheaded, were dropping a partially covered body into a hole near the bottom on the ridge. Coming up above them, she had stopped short in shock, the air leaving her lungs. She’d been so stunned, she’d simply frozen like an idiot directly in front of them.

  Both men had seen her almost right away. And she had seen them clearly, too. Neither was disguised. They weren’t wearing masks. The taller, more muscled one, was covered in tattoos. His shorter and fatter partner, the one closest to her, had some as well, but they were fewer. The fat man’s beady dark eyes had narrowed when they met hers. The giant behind him had shouted, and the heavier one had lunged for her. But he’d been too far away, and she’d dropped everything to run as fast as her legs could carry her.

  At first, she thought she was going to get away. She was small, but fast—faster than the heavy man pursuing her. In junior high, she had set the record in the four-hundred-meter dash. Behind her, the fat man had chased her, and she’d quickly gotten ahead of him. But she wasn’t fast enough to escape his larger and fitter partner.

  There were crashing noises behind her, but Maia’s heart was pounding almost hard enough to drown them out. All she knew was that she had to keep running. She was flying over the uneven terrain when she tripped the first time and went down hard. The knees of her jeans tore, and she could feel that telltale painful friction that told her she’d scraped herself bad enough to bleed. Ignoring the pain, she struggled to her feet and kept running up the hill near her car.

  Suddenly, a large hand grabbed her, its weight enough to send her crashing to the ground once more. Then he was on top of her. The giant grabbed her by the calf, dragging her toward him. She thought she was too out of breath to scream, but she managed to do it anyway. Her attacker flipped her over violently, grabbing her by the legs and waist. She screamed again and kicked out as hard as she could. One of her kicks landed against his stomach, but the giant only grunted before hauling her close enough to backhand her with brutal strength.

  Pain exploded across the left side of Maia’s face, and she crumpled to the ground like a broken marionette. The ground rose up to meet her, but she barely felt its impact. Inhaling dirt, her vision went momentarily black. Rough hands hauled her up, and she was swinging over the ground, back in the direction of the rough grave.

  She turned her eyes to the man carrying her. He looked down at her without expression, his dark eyes flat and cold. The world swam, and the trees became a swirl of green and grey. One blow, and she was done fighting. The most she could hope for was to stay conscious.

  “Please,” she whispered to her attacker through sore and rapidly swelling lips.

  He ignored her as they came upon the fat man. She could still make him out despite the darkness encroaching on her vision. He was sweaty and out of
breath. Bent nearly double, he rested his hands on his thighs before shooting her a look of hatred. But there was another emotion in his eyes as well.

  Lust.

  ****

  The blindfold smelled of oil and gasoline. Maia’s hands were tied behind her, looped to the rope binding her ankles together. Terrified, she cried silently. She had tried screaming when they had stuffed her in the van, hoping someone would hear her. But the blow that followed had taught her to keep quiet. And now she couldn’t hear any traffic noises close enough to make screaming worth it. Not that she could scream with the disgusting rag in her mouth.

  Maia wasn’t sure why she wasn’t already dead. She had thought she was about to join the other body in the shallow grave out in the woods. But it wasn’t going to be that easy. No, she was pretty sure she was going to suffer horribly before she died. The way that porky little man had looked at her filled her with dread.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to calm down enough to think of a plan—any plan to save herself.

  Chapter 2

  Calen was fucking pissed. He still couldn’t believe he was doing this. He had rearranged his meetings and called in Mike, his head of security at the club, in addition to Jay, his regular driver and bodyguard, to go with him to the meet. That had been before Jimmy O’Donnell had showed up, courtesy of his father. The older man had been his own bodyguard growing up. Now he was high up in his father’s organization. The old man trusted him implicitly. Taking Jimmy along made a lot of sense, but Calen resented it. He hated the whole fucking situation.

  And apparently this fucking meeting is in the goddamned middle of nowhere.

  Dilapidated warehouses filled the skyline as his town car wound down one narrow alleyway after another. He hated the closed-in feeling the crowded buildings gave him. But he was careful not to let that show on his face. He had learned to control his facial expressions and body language a long time ago. Besides, it wouldn’t do to let Jimmy see he was rattled. He liked him, but Jimmy was loyal to Colman, not him. And Calen never let his father see him sweat, not even vicariously. Pissed yeah. But never rattled or nervous. It was one of the only lessons he’d learned from his father that he actually found useful.