The Secret (Arranged Book 2)

by Stella Gray

  I ground my hips against him, wanting his tongue even deeper inside of me while I stroked and sucked at his shaft, my hands moving hard and fast up and down, following the motion of my mouth. I took him deeper than I ever had before, and all of my insecurities about being inexperienced fell away as he began thrusting against my tongue, finding the rhythm he wanted. I could feel his head thumping against the back of my throat, feel how hard he was inside my mouth, and I loved every moment of it. I could feel him going wild, could taste his pre-cum, and it was all I could do to hold back as I felt my own orgasm start to rise inside of me.

  He was licking and stroking me hard and fast, adding his fingers to stretch my pussy wide. I was mindless with desire, writhing desperately as he brought me to the edge, just as I was doing for him. We were both moaning, thrusting, losing control as we gave and received in tandem. It was so erotic that I could hardly stand it.

  Finally, he curled his fingers inside of me, knowing exactly how to find my G-spot. As his tongue rolled over my clit, I exploded with one of the most powerful orgasms I’d ever experienced. It hit me in waves, each one stronger than the last, and I felt tears gathering behind my closed eyes as I moaned in ecstasy.

  I had popped his cock out of my mouth when I came, and I was still grinding my pussy against his face as I rode out the aftershocks, my hand tight on his wet cock. My jaw was sore, my lips swollen, but my mouth was ready to take him again.

  Instead, Stefan flipped me onto my back first. My body was still trembling, but he spread my legs without hesitating and plunged his cock deep inside of me.

  “Yes,” I panted. “You feel so good.”

  He kissed me as he fucked me, his tongue matching the rhythm of his thrusts. I cupped his face, wanting to be even closer to him. Wanting to touch every inch of him, inside and out.

  My body was open wide to him, allowing him to go deep—so deep—inside of me. I wanted him to go hard, to be rough with me the way he always was, but that wasn’t what he wanted. Not tonight. Instead, his strokes were long and languid as he took his time, kissing my lips, my throat, my breasts, his cock moving slowly in and out of my body. He kept my hips pinned to the bed so even if I wanted him to move faster, even if I wanted him to take me harder, there was nothing I could do about it.

  His hot gaze met mine, and I saw all the love and passion that he had been afraid to speak of. Until now. My body tightened in response and I could feel another orgasm gathering inside of me. Stefan could see that I was close, his lips curving into a smile as his hand slid between our bodies, his fingers finding my clit. He teased me there, still thrusting oh so slowly—painfully, agonizingly slowly. Making sure I felt every inch of him. This was a different, new kind of torture. I hated it and loved it at the same time. I never wanted him to stop, yet I was desperate for relief. Greedy for it.

  “Please,” I begged him. “Harder.”

  I knew that he liked it when I begged. When I was at his mercy. His eyes flashed with victory as he pressed hard against my clit, his fingers pinching and holding me there, providing the perfect combination of pleasure and pain. A combination of sensations I had learned to love because of him. A combination of sensations I knew I’d never be able to live without.

  As he tortured my clit, his thrusts went deeper, my moans pitching higher and faster. He began to pump into me stronger, gaining speed, leaving me breathless.

  “Come for me, Tori,” he said, and in that instant I came hard, the orgasm cresting over me, my body arching hard against the mattress. I could feel my pussy clenching tight around Stefan’s cock as I cried out, my nails digging into his back with the force of my climax.

  When I returned to earth, I realized that he was still moving inside of me, completely in control of his own pleasure. I couldn’t allow that. Not after the two mind-bending orgasms he had just given me. I wanted to dominate him the way he had dominated me. Wanted to force the pleasure out of him as he had done to me.

  Shoving him hard on his chest, I pushed until he had rolled onto his back and I was on top. He had let me ride him before, knew how much I loved this position, but this time would be different. Tonight I wanted to show Stefan what I had learned from him—how to give pleasure the way he liked. How to tease and torment and satisfy.

  I began to ride him, leaning back, spreading my thighs even further apart, knowing that in this position he had a full view of my bouncing breasts and his cock buried inside me. I took him deep, so incredibly deep, and his fingers slid up my thighs and then dug into my hips, as if he thought he would be able to control me, even with me on top. I was eager to prove him wrong. This time, I wanted him to be the one begging.

  I began to move slowly, leaning forward to press my palms against his chest for balance, arching my hips against his, drawing him deeper and deeper into me as I fucked him. My knees dug into the bed beside his hips, my clit rubbing deliciously against his body as I lifted myself up and down on his hard, gorgeous cock. The muscles in his neck stood out as his head fell back against the bed, his eyes closed as he let me take control.

  He was the sexiest man I’d ever seen, his muscles tensing as I rode him, his stomach contracting with each thrust, giving me an incredible view of his six pack. His hands slid up to cup my breasts, his fingers teasing my hard nipples, sending hot sparks of pleasure through me. I knew I had to be careful or I would come again too quickly. This was about him.

  I rode him even more slowly, but it only turned me on more. I tried speeding up then, and I could tell by his groans that it was exactly what he wanted, that he was starting to lose control. It wasn’t long before I was wet enough to speed up even more, savoring the tight friction, unable to resist the rhythm my body craved. The rhythm my body needed.

  His fingers pinched my nipple hard and I gasped. I rode him harder and faster, my moans pitching higher, chasing my own orgasm. His hands dragged back down to my hips and he was urging me on, his own hips rising up to meet me, slamming against me, making my whole body shake with the power of his thrusts. Even though I had intended to take him to the edge, it was Stefan who was dragging me over it. The way he always did.

  Without warning, he sat up so we were facing each other, and I could feel him even deeper inside me as he positioned my legs so they wrapped around his torso. He grabbed my hips again, rolling me back and forth over his cock in short, fast circles, steady as he fucked me, our faces inches apart so I could see the desire in his eyes. We were so close. So connected. And I loved it.

  I was filled with so many emotions and so much pleasure that the entire world seemed to shatter as my orgasm hit me. This time, I felt Stefan coming with me, thrusting impossibly deep inside of me, filling me with his hot release. I gasped, collapsing against his chest as we held onto one other, whispering those words again and again as we rode out the waves of pleasure.

  “I love you,” he whispered between jagged breaths.

  And I loved him. Completely. Utterly. Unmistakably.

  I would never look back.

  Tori

  Chapter 26

  “I want to tell you about Anja,” Stefan said.

  We were stretched out in bed together, and my head was heavy against his chest, where I’d been listening to his racing heartbeat slow back down to its normal pace.

  “You mean Irina?” I asked.

  At last I could breathe easier. He was finally going to tell me what he’d done for her. What she’d meant by the message she had asked me to deliver to him the other day at the café.

  “No,” he said. “Anja. Anja Borjan.”

  Stefan’s hand was in my hair, his other arm wrapped around my waist, keeping me close.

  Confused, I raised my head and looked up at him. I expected him to be half asleep after the marathon sex we’d just had, maybe to the point of being mixed up regarding the woman he was telling me about. But he was wide awake, his green eyes focused intently on the ceiling.

  “Okay,” I said softly. I couldn’t help fearing the worst. “Wha
t do you want to tell me about her?”

  Whatever it was, we’d get through it. If he was making the effort to be honest with me, it meant he wanted us to work out. To be together, despite anything that had happened in the past.

  He didn’t say anything for a long time and I started to worry that he’d changed his mind. That he was going to return to the quiet, closed off version of himself that I had lived with for so long. At last, he let out a long sigh and looked down at me.

  “Who is Anja?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle and accepting.

  “She’s a woman…from my past,” he said.

  I nodded, feeling relieved. This wasn’t his mistress. It was someone from a long time ago. But clearly someone that had a hold on him, still. Someone who meant something to him.

  “You can talk about her,” I urged him. “I’m listening.”

  I wanted him to be honest with me. Open with me. I wanted to know all his secrets, even if they were hurtful or dangerous. It wasn’t like I expected him to have never loved anyone else.

  “I knew her when I was younger,” he went on. “I was a teenager. We met just before I turned eighteen.”

  Thinking back, I remembered what Emzee had told me. About how different Stefan had been in high school. How she thought something had happened to him to make him change. Was this woman Anja the reason for the way he was now? Hard, controlling, fiercely guarded to the point of cageyness? I propped myself up on my elbow, rolling to my side, and placed a hand over his heart. I could tell he was struggling for the right words, but that he wanted to keep talking.

  “How did you two meet?” I asked.

  “She was one of KZM’s models,” he confessed. “I met her at a show in Paris. I knew that she was working for my father, the way all the models work for him. The…jobs on the side.”

  “Sure,” I murmured, letting him know I was following his words without judging.

  “You have to understand—I thought, back then, that they were doing it because they wanted to. I had no idea they were being forced. I didn’t judge them for it, but I never stopped to think—I just assumed it was another job to them. Another way to make money.”

  He shook his head, obviously angry at his naïveté.

  “You were young,” I said, soothingly.

  “I had my head up my own ass,” he scoffed. “And I wasn’t an innocent seventeen, either. I should have known.”

  I felt a twinge of sympathy for a seventeen-year-old Stefan. It must have been a terrible thing for him to discover.

  “You couldn’t have known,” I told him. “Not the way your—the way the company runs.”

  Placing the blame on Konstantin, though fair, wasn’t the way to help Stefan right now. As much as I would have enjoyed it. As far as I was concerned, his father was pure evil.

  Stefan took a breath and then continued. “I started seeing Anja, casually at first but then it got more regular. A few months into it, I realized I was in love. She was the first person I was with who seemed interested in the rest of the world, who was ambitious and tough like me. She had nerves of steel. It wasn’t just that, though. We had fun. Actually…she was a lot like you.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. The way he was talking about her, I couldn’t feel jealous. Because despite how great she sounded, I could tell by the tone of his voice that things between them were long over. And I guessed that something had gone terribly wrong.

  Turning his eyes back to me, Stefan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and smiled. He took a deep breath and said, “Me, being the fine young idiot that I was, decided I wanted to marry her. But when I told her that, she said my father would never allow it. And I didn’t believe her. I thought—foolishly—that love could conquer all. That he would understand.”

  Bitterness had crept into his voice, and my heart sank. I knew exactly where the story was going, and it was nowhere good.

  “What did he do?” I said.

  Stefan looked away. “A few days after I proposed to Anja, she was gone. Disappeared without a trace. When I went to my father for help, he told me he’d had her deported. I was devastated.”

  I wrapped my arms around Stefan, feeling his pain as if it were my own. All I could think about was this bright, optimistic young version of my husband, still so new to the world, his first relationship—his first love—torn out of his hands by his vile, criminal father. He’d been even younger than I was now.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “Did you go after her?”

  “My father made me swear I wouldn’t, but I tried.” He cleared his throat, as if to break up the emotion that was making it hard for him to speak. “It didn’t matter, though. I never saw or heard from her again.”

  My heart broke for Stefan. For the man he had been. No wonder he had become hardened after losing someone he cared about when he was so young.

  He was looking up at the ceiling again. “I’ve been searching for her ever since,” he said. “Trying to figure out where my father sent her. Wanting to make sure she’s safe.” He shook his head. “It’s been eight years and I’ve never found a trace. Sometimes I think she’s…”

  But he couldn’t say the word. His hand tightened into a fist. I could feel his frustration. His anger. And I could understand it. It was cruel what his father had done. Beyond cruel.

  “I want to believe that my father wouldn’t have done anything to her. That she might be in hiding, but that she’s still safe. Still alive. But after all this time, I can’t be sure. She’s eluded every private investigator I’ve hired. I’ve called in every resource, spared no expense. There’s been no sign of her.”

  I suddenly remembered our honeymoon. The way Stefan’s colleague Marco had shown up at one of our dinner reservations in Austria. At first, they’d discussed KZM’s marketing plans, hiring new models for a runway show, the kinds of things that would practically put me to sleep. But when I’d returned to the table from the restroom, I’d overheard them discussing something much different. Stefan had been angry, and Marco had looked apologetic and upset. I walked up just in time to catch the end of a conversation that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be privy to. Stefan had been looking for someone. Searching for someone.

  “That’s who you were looking for,” I said. “On our honeymoon, that night with Marco. You were searching for her. For Anja.”

  Stefan nodded. “I’m still looking. I refuse to give up, even though she hasn’t been seen once in all these years. I refuse to let my father win.”

  I was filled with sympathy for Stefan. Almost a decade of searching, of hoping, of not knowing if the woman he’d loved was safe, or even still alive.

  “I can’t believe your father did this,” I said, my own words filled with anger.

  And yet I could believe it. I believed every word. Stefan’s story only proved what I already thought of Konstantin—that he was a bad man who deserved to be locked up, put away where he couldn’t hurt anyone ever again.

  Stefan said, “I decided then and there, the moment he told me that he’d sent Anja away, that I would never be like him.”

  I was glad to hear it, even though I now knew that Stefan was nothing like his father. The two could not have been more opposite. Konstantin was cruel and hard and monstrous. Stefan was capable of great love, as he had shown me tonight. It was amazing he could still open his heart up to someone after how damaged he had become as a result of Anja’s disappearance. All thanks to his father’s cruelty. I didn’t know if I would have been able to do the same.

  “You’re not like your father at all,” I told him. “You never will be.”

  He didn’t respond, but closed his eyes for a brief moment.

  “I want to undo everything my father has done. Erase him, erase what KZ Modeling stands for,” he said, opening his eyes to look at me, his gaze burning with clarity. With focus. “I’ve spent almost a decade of my life working my ass off to get my father to trust me. To involve me in running the family business. So that I k
now enough about how the agency works—how the prostitution ring works—to turn him over to the feds. It’s the only way I can even begin to fix all the damage he’s caused. All the lives he’s destroyed.”

  “You’re going to shut it all down,” I said, the pieces coming together.

  Stefan nodded. “But my father doesn’t trust anyone. Even me. Not completely, anyway. He still remembers Anja, how I cared for her. He doesn’t think I can play ball the way he does.”

  The conversation I’d had with Stefan on the night we first met came back to me. Stefan had point blank told me that his father was old school. That he wouldn’t hand over the agency to someone he didn’t trust, someone who hadn’t settled down. It all made sense, the way I’d gotten caught up in this mess.

  “You agreed to this marriage so you could take him down,” I said. “Not just to take over the company. But to obliterate it.”

  “Exactly,” Stefan agreed. “It was my plan all along.”

  I sat up, my mind still reeling with all the implications. “What about my father? How is he involved?”

  There was still bad blood between us. We hadn’t spoken since the fight we’d had at his office, the day I’d told him he wasn’t my father anymore.

  “I shouldn’t tell you,” Stefan said. “This is between me and my father.”

  “No it’s not,” I said. “It’s so much bigger than that, and you know it. Tell me.”

  But waiting for Stefan’s response, I couldn’t help holding my breath. I needed to know the truth, but whatever he told me about my father would change my opinion of him forever.

  Stefan took a deep breath and then sat up, leaning back against the headboard.

  “Your father,” he began, “is deeply involved with KZM’s illegal business dealings.”

  It wasn’t a surprise, but I still felt my stomach drop. Still felt the shock of betrayal.

  He went on, “Not only is he one of the company’s most profitable clients himself, but he also gets kickbacks for referring other wealthy, high-powered men to the backdoor side of the agency. And he refers a lot of them.”