With every fucking pumped up fiber I have to resist the urge to grab her and demand to know what happened in there. She isn't bruised or hurt in any way physically that I can see. But she looks entirely changed from how I remember her when she screamed and called my name as she clutched the ridges of my shoulders to tug me harder inside her. She looks- when satisfied comes into my mind I slam into the wall again with rage against that prick pleasuring her.
But it isn't satisfied, no, Harl looks serene but also confused. As though someone's taken a piece of her she'll never get back. He's got no right taking my Harley into his depraved control. I don't fucking care if she went willingly. She's mine, no matter how many times she tells me she can't be. If I've lost her to Cruz he's going to have to pay.
Do I follow her like a fucking stalker? You bet your sweet ass I do. I only relax and go home to pound out my fury in my weight room, maybe try to get some rest when I see her safe, coming out of 'Bucks with lattes and going into that friend of hers, Lily's, building.
Harlow
“You better tell me everything,” Lily said, still rumpled from sleep and the previous night at Illicit.
“You first. I have to admit, you really shocked me.” I was so glad to lose the black dress, the gladiator sandals and pop on a long tee from Lil's disaster of a closet. I climbed under the coverlet beside her so we could gossip with our morning venti macchiatos.
“I don't know what came over me, Harl. I think it was a combination of the wild rides on offer at your boyfriend's club but mostly being upset at Ram for abandoning me. Somehow I thought I could wipe out the hurt in my mind.”
I could hardly blame Lily. Hadn't I done the same with Cruz, trying to shake Cole out of every pore? My desperate need for the man who was suddenly a member of my family was overtaking my entire life. I couldn't admit it out loud even to my best friend.
“Did it work?” I said, with a hitch to my throat, sure of what the answer was going to be.
“I don't know. I feel different. I floated home like emerging from an opium den or something. It was so exhilarating and relaxing and liberating- fuck, it was too many sensations all at once. I can't wait to do it again.”
I knew how my bestie felt. Shibari was serenely beautiful and invigorating. I wanted to feel that glorious release all over for a second time.
“But did it allow you to scour Ram from your thoughts?” I needed that vital answer right now.
“Not in the slightest. Now I feel really shitty for what may have started out as punishment if I'm honest. And I kept wishing it was him restraining me in the rope art.”
“I get that.” Every twinge of pleasure that had rattled through me last night only made me yearn more for Cole.
“And look at the massive bouquet of lilies he sent me this morning.”
“The flowers that ate the apartment. They're incredible.”
“Where did you get to? One minute you were laid back on the couch with a Sun God, next you were gone and Cole was tearing the walls apart.”
“He was?”
“He ripped into me like a wild bear for not having your back. Where did you go?”
I couldn't lie to her. Not when she asked me a direct question and had shared her own shame.
“Harl, you didn't?” Lily was looking at me awe-struck. She had no idea of the torment rattling through my body. “That man is an absolute superstar. Do you mean to tell me you've scooped up the two sexiest men in New York for yourself?”
“No, I-”
“But wasn't he with his girlfriend? Okay—spill.”
“I spent the night being tied up by him. He's an expert nawashi. It was almost the most exhilarating thing I've ever done and I blame you entirely.”
It was partly watching the sensuality come over Lily as she was tied into shibari bondage that made me eager to experience being completely vulnerable and trussed up like a beautiful flower. Being made into a work of art and admired by a hunk of man was so erotic, my body was like an envious volcanic eruption ready to blast the heavens apart. The only thing lacking was that every cell in my body wished that Cole was the master.
“I know right? It's off the charts exquisite being stared at like a gallery piece. Being that exposed with that adoration. It was so weird, so exciting. I never thought I could be that daring.”
“Would you do it again?”
“In a flash. Would you?”
Chapter THREE
When I left Lily's apartment, I saw that security bodyguard dude from Illicit. The one that came down the hall when I was eavesdropping at Cole's office door. He was sitting in a car parked across the street. I only recognized him because of the way he'd stared at me as he passed in the corridor, like he'd seen more of me than was proper and asked if I was having a good night with a sort of leer. Yep, it was definitely him.
“Are you having me followed like a fucking stalker?” I screamed, as soon as the elevator opened into Cole's wide angle penthouse. He was sitting alone at the island in his workout gear. A sheen of sweat glistened across his shimmering muscles and I almost stalled right there in the middle of the huge room with a wall of glass windows looking out across Manhattan and the river towards Miss Liberty. Would I ever be free of this man who's inserted himself into my soul and won't leave?
“Harley, I had to know that you were safe. You went home with a man you don't even fucking know last night”
“Seriously? You are sitting in judgment?”
He didn't respond.
“And you followed me from the club as well? How dare you? Who do you think you are trying to control my life and telling me who I can party with? Just get out of meddling in my life and leave me alone. Please.”
I turned to storm from the condo and in the hallway to the private elevator, little Fatou beckoned me into one of the side rooms Cole uses for business. It was the closed circuit camera room - of course he's gotta be watching everything. Fatou pointed at a TV screen showing Rowan stomping across the lobby and getting into the elevator. She was on her way up. I really did not want to run into the woman again.
In truth she gives the creeps with that alpha female thing she's got going on. I waited with Fatou in the small room, hiding like a pair of thieves, until we heard the elevator door slide open and Rowan's heels clacking across the stone floor. So, she doesn’t even need to be announced. She has instant access to Cole's apartment. I really don't like that.
I liked it even less how she strode across the huge reception room and up the steps to the kitchen island like she owned the joint, clearly quite comfortable in Cole's space. They were talking and it was getting heated but it took me a while fiddling around with the zillion buttons and knobs on the hi-tech equipment before I got any sound to listen in.
Cole
I don't know what to tell Harley about why I've had her followed constantly because I can't tell her the truth. So I sat on the high stool and listened to her calling me controlling and abusive and invasive and a murderer and fuck knows what else.
Either she's gonna burn herself out from the fire raging inside her or I'm going to ignite one inside me. It requires every ounce of self control not to grab her and rip the clothes from her perfect little body. If I douse her bod with my more powerful one will she surrender to me finally?
Even in a rage, the light flares in her eyes and I want to possess her. I want to tear the fabric encasing her and have her naked and quivering under me again. I've just spent hours in my private gym, ripping my sinews to shreds trying to work her out of my system. And now she's charged right back in like a bull into the ring.
As I look at her, keeping my own ferocious craving under wraps, the need to tell her the truth is overwhelmed by the need to keep her safe. She can't be involved in this after what my father put her through. She's already showing signs of trauma in the danger she keeps hurling herself at. I would never, ever, be able to forgive myself if anything happened to Harlow.
Two minutes after she's torn out of the apartme
nt, dashing away from me before I can say anything that might change her already made-up mind, Rowan storms in. Thank fuck they just missed each other. Running into Rowan might have detonated even more ballistic missile in my girl. And I'm not in the mood for refereeing a girl fight.
“I just had a call from the senator,” Rowan says without her usual sensual greeting.
She's keeping her distance, which she never does and I know she's feeling aggrieved about last night. Because of that I hope she won't notice my dick still raging in my sweatpants, desperate to bury itself all the way inside the most beautiful girl in my world.
I don't wanna have to fend off Rowan's aggressive advances and tell her it's not gonna happen. I could tell her it's nothing personal but that would be a lie. Aside from the fact that there's no other woman for me but Harley, Rowan and I would rip each other to shreds in moments.
“It's tomorrow. He's arranged the meet and he wants it taken care of. No screw ups,” she snaps.
“Ro, I can't. Harley will never forgive me if I do this and make her mother miserable.” I have got to find a way out of this dilemma before we all go up in flames.
“I thought we decided all this,” she flares back, clearly irritated that I'm protecting another woman.
“However I slice it, the mom still loses out. I want the fucker dead as much as anyone for what he did but she'll never speak to me again.”
“I thought after last night, you'd worked out that bizarre attachment to your sister.” Rowan rolls her eyes in irritation, unable to let this go. I might have to get hard with her.
“And I thought we agreed that last night was a one time thing.”
“Tell me you didn't enjoy it Cole, because from where I was shoved by your beautiful huge prick right through the wall, I could have sworn that you were more than happy fucking my heart into my mouth.”
“We were both on edge. But it can't happen again. I won't use our business as a release for my pent up fury.”
“Fine. I know you're the one man I can't force to do my bidding. But some day Cole I know you're going to realize how much you need me. How much we can achieve together and how much fun we'd have doing it.”
Those had been almost the exact same words running through my head when Harley was raging so stunningly beautiful moments before. I'd wanted to convince her how perfect we were for each other, how she couldn't see that together we could move entire mountain ranges. Nothing could hold us back or come between us. And I wanted her body molded into mine every fucking moment until the need was tearing me open, leaving me behind enemy lines with my guts on the ground.
Harlow
I had to slam both hands across my mouth to stop a scream from escaping when I heard that tall glacier-cold control freak tell Cole they were meant for each other.
What?
So when he couldn't force himself on me last night he went running straight to the fem dom? Hearing the truth coming from her slick red lips was a long blade inserted in my core and slashed all the way through my torso. Maybe he was right to sleep with her. Perhaps she was the perfect woman for him as she claimed with such assertion.
Beside me Fatou was doing a jig trying to get my attention. The fingers of both hands jabbed toward me urgently but I had no idea what she was trying to say. Anyway I couldn't focus on anything outside my impassioned mind. The air had gone suddenly out of the room and I couldn't breathe for the taut agony wrapping my chest like a boa.
Murderer, controller, and now liar.
He told me we needed to be together. That there could never be any other woman for him but me. That he'd thought only of me for the last six years since running out on me. And bare minutes later he was fucking that horrible assistant of his, when they're in the middle of their business day. Okay a non-conforming business but still—that's his office. I slapped at my cheeks to whip away the stupid hot tears pouring from my eyes.
I had no right to this rage. I had told him quite clearly that I had no intention of being with him. Ever. I think I may even have said that I hated him and who he'd become. Everything I'd discovered about him since he came back into my life turned my stomach. That was one side.
The other side I couldn't admit even to myself. The uncontrollable urge to have him hold me, to plunge into me and spread me beneath him that overtook me every time I was within fifty feet of him. He was a tentacled monster who reached out and drew me hypnotically to him like iron filings are suctioned to a magnet. I wanted him with every nerve ending. The one man on earth I could not have.
When I heard them discuss the kill, I knew he'd betrayed me twice over.
Through a blur of tears I didn't see Cole cross the penthouse and leave. All I saw was Fatou pointing furiously then grabbing my arm and dragging me into another room, pushing me through the door and tugging it shut before locking it with the key. What the?? Then I heard the harsh voice on the other side of the door say “Get out, ee-nema dishcloth head.”
Then the sound of the office being thoroughly searched.
Chapter FOUR
It made no sense.
How could Cole help one woman to escape her abuse and yet be able to work alongside another woman who could speak to anyone with such revolting racial slurs. Poor little Fatou. My heart ached for her because although she spoke no English, the tone of Rowan's voice was globally understood.
Now what was Rowan searching for in Cole's office? She was completely entitled to be there as they worked together so closely. But somehow, even through the solid door, I got the sense she was up to something malicious. I pressed my ear hard into the wood.
“Have you received word from the senator's people?” She must have been on the phone as there was no other voice responding to Rowan's query. “Exactly. And when you leave with the money, the police will arrive and arrest the shooter.”
The shooter? The shooter was Cole, her boss and supposed beloved. Her one and only. They'd been working together for years. Surely she couldn't be giving him up. I could hardly hear her voice for the blood rushing through my ear drums with every heart beat.
“That's correct. You'll have the money and the boulder blocking access to the girl will be buried for a very long time.”
She wasn't only giving Cole up, I was part of her betrayal package as well. But why did Michael want me as part of the deal? He had my mother totally besotted by him – he didn't need her daughter along as well.
I trawled back through my last year in high school before I left for college, when he met my mom and she brought him for dinner to the house. Immediately my skin got all prickly with the memory of how he looked at me. I'd skipped into the house still in the cheerleader outfit and Michael had almost choked on his beer. He could not disguise his eyes trawling across my naked thighs and up to my breasts in the tight varsity sweater. How had my mom missed his priapic stare? No mother would have wanted to continue to date a man who looked that way at her daughter. I'd repressed that memory and somehow blamed myself.
Cold fingers of fear crept down my back and into my gut. Without Cole to protect me, Michael could have free run of my body. I hadn't reported his kidnapping me, how he'd tied me up in the basement with a blindfold on while he touched me, pinching me into his version of submission.
The police were unlikely to believe my story after all this time. I couldn’t tell my mother either. I knew she'd think I was making up tales. In a dispute between me and any man she'd been dating, I had always come up short. Cole was my only defender.
Shit, I let myself get distracted and missed the rest of Rowan's conversation.
“You know you can trust me. Didn't I tell you where she was living outside the club?”
So she had been talking to Michael in the alley. Half of had been positive, half figured I was imagining things in my intense dislike of the woman and my stepfather. They were in league together. But what was in it for Rowan? It couldn't only be revenge for Cole's rejection of her advances because this had been put into play before they had their
demon tryst last night.
Yuck.
A dagger of nausea stabbed my stomach at the thought of my Cole with her. Anyone else but her. What on earth was he thinking? He was so kind and caring to women usually – his slave girls, little Fatou and especially me. How could he be so blind to Rowan's demonic character? Some part of him needed that. Buried under his generous facade lurked the same genes as Michael.
This was all getting too screwed up for me. A simple girl with straightforward desires. I couldn't bear to be involved in this sex as power and control lifestyle. I also couldn't let Cole go to jail for what was about to happen. I was partly to blame. His father's sick obsession for my body was fueling his need to destroy his own son. And Rowan? Did she want to take over and be the big boss running Illicit herself?
I had to find out where the hit was taking place and get there to warn Cole. The only clue I had was an initiation party Cruz was throwing for a new service he been asked to provide. Exclusive private events for the politicians and CEOs with the most to lose from having their sexual preferences exposed.
I had told Cruz I would consider his proposal to join the party. I would have told him anything in my eagerness to get away from his suite after the shibari evening. He had seemed adamant about keeping me there with him and Kennedy, as though we could now live together in some kind of bizarre threesome. I would have said anything to get out of there and have some time to think, after the long hours of being tied into a web of intricate rope, naked and exposed with another woman's body bound and bonded to mine.
The rope bondage was nothing at all like I'd imagined when I agreed to leave Illicit with Cruz and his sister.
“Relax, Harlow,” Cruz told me in his graveled silk tones. “The more you're able to surrender yourself to the rope, the more intense will be your experience.'
Maybe that was what I was terrified of. An intense experience of being bound and all my movement completely paralyzed was something I was unpleasantly familiar with. I found myself flinching from Cruz every time his fingertips seared across my naked skin. But then I began to let go to him when I reminded myself that this was not my step dad and I was not held against my will in a dank basement for a group of hoary old drunks to pet and leer at.
Club ILLICIT 3: Billionaire Bonded Romance Page 2
