All I Want For Christmas

by Shelby Morgen

  "It’s not that simple. You have to have stuff. Identification."

  Patiently Candy pointed to the screen she’d pulled up on her laptop. "Yes, I can see that. Your birth certificate and seven forms of secondary ID. Some of these things must be available. I’ve e-mailed Kelly to start on the list right away. It’s going to take a couple of days to get all this together, but if anyone can do it, Kelly can."

  "Where would she even find any of that stuff? I never had a union card!"

  "Your high school yearbook should be on file in the public library. School transcripts from high school and college are no problem. She gets those for employment purposes all the time. Copies of your diplomas will take longer, but they can be had. And the college can produce a W-2 and a copy of your insurance card from their records, I’m sure. If not you must have had some medical bill somewhere at some time. Kelly will take care of it, whatever it is. She’ll send a courier to pick everything up, then expedite it all to us. We should have your ID in hand by Monday morning."

  Brooke paced the room, looking more and more agitated. "It’s not that simple. Nothing is ever that simple."

  Candy laid down her pen, trying to read between the lines. "You mean you don’t want it to be that simple."

  He stopped, his eyes searching hers in that uncertain, questing way he had. As if searching for answers within himself. "I—if it’s this easy, why am I still here after all this time?"

  "Because you had no one to help you," Candy explained, holding out her hand to him. He closed his eyes as she pulled him close, doing her best to absorb the pain and the desolation of those lost years.

  In the end he surrendered to her leadership, and they made the short trip across town to the Consulate’s office. The Embassy was a simple matter, really. Almost anticlimactic. Paperwork. Everything revolved around paperwork. Forms to fill out. Backgrounds to be checked. A few small fees to be paid. And waiting. Always, with the government, there was waiting.

  In the mean time, to distract him as much as to amuse herself, Candy took him shopping. That in itself was its own form of torture.

  They visited the tailor, who, with the help of his eager young assistant, had taken dozens of measurements. They staggered out of his tiny shop carrying a trail of newly acquired purchases, with the rest of the goods to be delivered to the hotel. While the cabdriver and the doorman argued over the disposition of her many packages, Candy dragged Brooke to the Oriental’s first floor, where the hairdresser took extra care to restore order to that mass of sun bleached curls, leaving Brooke looking even darker, and more stylish, and devastatingly handsome. The manicurist worked her own miracles while he grumbled about unnecessary expenses. No more broken, work-scarred nails.

  Candy sensed Brooke had had as much of civilization and polite society as he could handle for one day. He seemed relieved when she suggested they head back to the hotel.

  "I'm starving," he assured her. "I might even let you order room service for me."

  Candy laughed as he kissed her, demanding more when he would have pulled away with a quick touch of his lips. "Why do I think you're talking about something more than Pad Thai?"

  "You can see right through me, woman," he whispered as he cupped her hand around his throbbing cock. "Let me show you what I mean by room service."

  "We're going to have to behave until we get back to the hotel. Too bad."

  Brooke slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, shielding her body from the cabdriver's view in the mirror with his bulk. "Who says?"

  Candy tried to look scandalized, instead of exhilarated. "Brooke, we're in public!"

  "We're in Singapore. The birth rate here is so low they've passed laws making it legal to make out almost anywhere. Including in a car." His fingers paused as they found the naked triangle of fur that pressed against his hand. "Forget something?"

  She blushed as he slipped a finger inside her, trying not to moan in delight. "No…"

  "No what?"

  "I didn't forget—I was planning to surprise you."

  "I'm surprised," he agreed, sliding her hand over the length of his scalding erection. "If this cabdriver doesn't hurry up I'm going to find out whether cabs count as cars or not."

  He kissed her again, swallowing her cry as she drenched his hand with the first flood of her delight.

  *****

  Except for that air of sultry defiance that shimmered in his eyes, Brooke could have been any other hotel guest. That, and of course, the fact that he was far too handsome to escape notice. Women turned to stare at him as they passed through the atrium on the way back to the elevator. It wasn't the same stare they'd given him the first time she'd brought him up to her room. Candy knew what they saw. He looked like the kind of man who'd have something more exciting than her on his arm.

  Well, men walked out of here escorted by beautiful women all the time. Candy held her head up high as Brooke lead her back through the Atrium to the main elevator.

  Shopping bags filled his arms. "Tell me you’re done spending money for a while," he whispered against her ear as he watched the lights for the floors. "I’m beginning to feel like a gigolo."

  Candy laughed as the elevator doors swept open. "Darling, if you were a gigolo, you’d already have a wardrobe like this. Probably much more expensive. If you’re going to model, you have to look the part."

  "Model." Brooke shook his head, sending the carefully groomed sable curls spinning. "Why on earth would anyone ever want to pay me to dress in their clothes?"

  Candy felt the heat in her veins as he shifted the open neck of his dress shirt. She leaned forward to lick the hollow at the base of his throat with the tip of her tongue. "I’m sure you could make as much or more money taking those clothes back off," she ventured.

  "You’re insane, woman." Still, his hands rose to pull her lower body against the erection that seemed to constantly be there to greet her. His hips ground slowly against her, teasing, heating her blood past endurance.

  Candy slipped her hands between them to unfasten the waist of the pleated dress pants that strained now to contain him. In moments her questing fingers had captured her prize. His low gasp of surprise and appreciation had her fingers drawing over the length of him as she bunched her skirt up higher on her hips.

  "Candy, are you insane? Here? Any one could—Oh, God!" His protests died as she slid over him, impaling herself on the length of his steel-hard shaft. He pulled her higher, lifting one leg to wrap it around his waist as he struggled with the logistics of maintaining his hold on her, his protests already forgotten. He reached out past her shoulder to stab at the elevator's emergency button.

  The lights went out. The elevator lurched to a stop.

  "Someone will notice the elevator's quit moving. They'll call Hotel Security," Candy warned breathlessly.

  "It'll take 'em a while to get here," Brooke assured her. "We won't take that long."

  She hitched her leg higher around his waist, allowing him better access as he thrust against her, but it wasn't enough. Supporting her with her back pressed against the elevator wall, he cupped the curve of her hips to raise her completely off the floor, tilting her pelvis for better access. The red light began to blink on the elevator panel, lending an eerie glow to his face.

  Candy rocked against him as hard as she could with the limited movement allowed her, clenching tightly with her legs wrapped around his waist. "Oh my God," she whispered. "We're going to get caught, aren't we? Is this against the law?"

  His breath tickled her ear. "I don't know, Counselor. You tell me."

  "Hello?" A man's voice, faintly accented, called out in the dark. "Is everything all right up there?"

  "The lights are out," Brooke answered, his voice incredibly calm and poised. "And the elevator quit moving. What's wrong?"

  "We're not sure, Sir. We'll try to get it fixed as quickly as possible."

  Candy fastened her teeth over his shirt collar, trying to swallow a moan. "Please do. My wife is getting a little hys
terical."

  "I'm sorry, Sir. We've got our best team on it."

  "Oh, yes," Candy agreed. "Please hurry."

  "Shh!" Brooke laughed against her ear. "They've left the speaker on."

  "Oh my God!" She wasn't sure whether it was the sizzling pace of his frantic thrusting, or the feel of his lips nuzzling her ear, or the very real possibility of getting caught, but the orgasm ripped through her like the pain of a shattering blow. Brooke's mouth covered hers, helping to swallow her cries.

  "Can you get this thing moving?" Brooke asked the speaker grill that shown intermittently in the blaze of the flashing red light. "My wife is afraid of small places. I'm afraid she's coming a bit unglued."

  Candy bit his ear, daring him to protest.

  "Why do you want to hurt me?" he demanded, his voice sounding amused.

  For torturing her right now for earlier, for -- "Do you know what it was like, watching the tailor's little apprentice running her hands all over you?" she snarled. "I wanted to punch her."

  "Vicious wench, aren't you?" His pace increased to a mindless frenzy as he slammed into her, his thrusts urgent and demanding now. "Are you going to get jealous and possessive on me?"

  "Yes!" she cried, hiding the truth of her answer in her scream as she shattered around him.

  "Good," he agreed as he rocketed into her. "Because I won't share you, either."

  Tears streamed down her face as she dug her fingers into his shoulders, clenching around him helplessly as she came again and again.

  He wanted her. For however long this lasted, it was she who was his slave. She'd done the one thing she'd promised herself she would not do. She'd lost her heart again. To a man she was going to send off to another life within the week.

  Chapter Five

  Friday, 21 December 2001

  Candy woke up with a start. It took her a moment to figure out where she was. She could hear water running. Her hand brushed over the still warm place in the bed next to her, and everything came crashing back. She’d accidentally entered another man’s private nightmare, where slavery existed in the twenty-first century. She was the proud owner of the most beautiful man her fantasies could ever have devised. And in less than a week he'd be gone and she'd never see him again.

  Not that she wanted to keep him. At least not as a slave. And why would a man like that hang around once he didn’t need her anymore? She couldn’t keep a man her own age interested, and Richard hadn’t been anywhere near that handsome.

  Well, Brooke was certainly interested. Maybe he was only doing his job, but if so, he did it damn well. Candy ran her hands over her breasts, remembering the feel of his teeth raking over her nipples. God. Just the thought of him got her wet and aching all over again….

  Brooke braced his hands on the tile shower wall, letting the water beat down on his head, hoping it would help. The nightmare wouldn’t go away, even with his eyes open. He might be in a luxury hotel suite at the moment, but the reality of his life was just outside the window, down some squalid back alley where tourists weren't allowed.

  Focus on something else, he lectured himself. You're still alive. You're out. Things could be a hell of a lot worse.

  He was alive and for the first time in twenty-four months he was clean. The hot water beating over his head felt reassuring—the strongest proof he had that this was all real. You couldn’t dream hot water up, could you? No. Not this hot for this long. Besides, he’d never stayed in a hotel like this. He didn’t have the memories to conjure this place up. And for the first time in two years he wasn’t hungry. He’d eaten most of his leftover dinner before it occurred to him that Candy really wouldn’t mind if he called room service.

  Not that he would ever take a chance on calling room service. The fewer people who knew he was here the better. Too many people had already seen him with her. They'd been all up and down Orchard Road, for Christ's sake.

  The point was the money really wasn’t important to her. She'd spent a small fortune on his new wardrobe. And this room wasn’t what most traveling business people booked themselves into. Place must go for five hundred a night. Hell. Spending fifteen hundred dollars hadn't meant that much to Candy. She could have walked into that auction unaware. She could be telling the truth. She might have simply been trying to help him the only way she knew how.

  If she had been his contact, would she have done anything different? Couldn't an ordinary civilian get involved, just because it was the right thing to do?

  He wouldn't have fucked his contact.

  He wouldn't have let his contact get to him like this.

  He didn't think it had even occurred to her that she was committing a crime just bidding on him. He didn't have to turn her in. He could just walk away.

  Like hell he could.

  He didn’t even have to make contact. If she really could get him out of the country he could just go home. He didn’t have to…

  No. He had an assignment to complete. These last two years had to have been for something. People had died. Someone had to pay. He had to pass along what he knew.

  There was only one problem.

  He'd violated the first rule of undercover work. Never get involved personally.

  He cared what happened to Candy. She was more than just a handy fuck. She mattered to him.

  But was she so much different from the people he was trying to help bring to justice? Just the fact that she was a woman didn't make her any less guilty, did it? She had money, and she didn’t mind parting with it. She expected to buy what she wanted.

  That wasn't fair, not really. He wanted to believe that she'd really been trying to help him. She seemed to enjoy spending her money on him. The concept was as alien as the notion that she found him attractive. A woman like that could have any man she wanted. Why would she have turned to trafficking in slavery and prostitution?

  Maybe what she’d done was illegal, but she’d done her best to help him. What the hell had happened to the people who were supposed to get him the fuck out of there months ago? He hadn't had any illusions standing there on that auction block. No one was coming for him. Somehow they'd lost track of him. No one had any clue where he was by now. If it hadn’t been for Candy…

  If he turned her in, no matter what happened, it would be over between them. She'd never trust him again. Not that he blamed her.

  Christ. Why couldn't he have met her three years ago?

  Maybe this had all happened just the way she said it had. And if so, if she'd only been trying to rescue him, he couldn't turn her in. And he had asked for her help, damn it. Maybe not with words, but he'd been desperate when he saw her in that crowd. He knew instinctively she didn't belong there. She was too innocent. Too trusting. Too willing to meet his eyes. No one else had done that. He'd asked her to bid on him, the only way he knew how. The alternative had been trusting his contacts to find him in Japan…eventually. She'd saved him from that. How could he ever testify against her?

  He'd never had to sort out feelings like this before. Things were supposed to be black and white. Right or wrong. This gray area in the middle was enough to drive him crazy.

  Maybe he didn’t need to understand her. Maybe it should be enough that, for whatever reasons, she’d wanted him to make love to her.

  She'd wanted him enough to pay fifteen hundred dollars for him. He was her sex slave. No way around that. And that was a crime.

  She hadn't exactly forced him into her bed. Maybe she'd coerced him, technically. No. That wasn't fair. She hadn't had to try very hard to persuade him. She'd wanted, but she hadn't demanded. She'd touched, but she hadn't taken. Always, always she left him a way out, gave him the opportunity to say no.

  Not that he'd wanted to. It had been so long--a lifetime had passed since he'd held a woman in his arms. Maybe it really didn't matter why Candy had wanted him.

  Maybe he was half-crazy from the last two years. Maybe he saw conspiracy everywhere now—even in places and in people it didn’t exist.

  He c
losed his eyes, remembering the feel of her hands on his body, her lips touching his. He got hard all over again just remembering how good her skin felt when he touched her.

  Thinking about her didn't make things any easier.

  He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself as he heard the bathroom door open and then click quietly, as if she'd kept her hand on the handle and turned the knob rather than just letting it catch as she pushed the door shut. For several long moments the only sound in the room was the water beating against the tile shower stall. Then cool air sent a shiver up his spine as the shower door slid open.

  His cock jumped to rigid attention. He didn't dare turn around—there was no way to hide what he'd been thinking. Still, Candy didn't say anything. Just stood there, staring. Or at least he could imagine her staring. He hated being watched. Always had. And the silence was getting to him.

  "Morning," he managed.

  "Good morning." Her voice had that soft, sexy purr to it. "You've been in here long enough that I got a little worried."

  He hadn’t thought….She was a lawyer. Contract law. She was here on business, after all. He'd probably made her late for a meeting. "Sorry," he mumbled, trying to regulate his breathing. "I'll be right out."

  "Brooke, I—" There was a catch in her voice. "I was thinking maybe I could come in instead. If you don’t mind sharing."

  She didn’t make him feel like a slave. If he had a lifetime he doubted he'd ever get used to the idea that this woman wanted him. Of course if he'd misunderstood somehow…

  He turned to look over his shoulder, still a little embarrassed at the way her eyes swept over him. She was standing in the shower doorway, wrapped in a towel, looking more than a little uncertain herself. That helped. He turned slowly so that she could see what he’d been trying to hide. "I was just thinking about you."

  The uncertainty left her face as her eyes swept over him. Her smile turned brilliant as her towel dropped to the bathroom floor. Brooke drew his breath in sharply, trying not to stare. Then he remembered that he was allowed to stare. Or at least admire.