“Apparently, Cassie may have been the victim of mistaken identity,” Patrick said. “There’s a local cell of infidels who are engaging in terroristic activity. They’re looking for arms, big time, and they seem to think that Cassie may be connected to an arms dealer.” He glanced over at me. “You don’t know anything about that, do you?”
I was silent, my mind still focused on the words ‘local cell of infidels.’ That wasn’t Manuel Brown. His men were all sophisticated, white collar people like myself. Confusion must have shown on my face, because Patrick continued.
“You know that anything you say to me can be used against you; that’s my job. But, morally, if you have anything you need to tell me about Cassie…”
“I don’t know who has her,” I said sharply. “Obviously.”
“Of course,” Patrick said. We drove quickly along the city streets. Soon, the buildings became fewer and further between as we moved out of the city and into the country. My phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. Simon!
“Simon!” I exclaimed. “Are you all right?”
“I am now,” Simon said. “Is Cassie all right? Is she with you?”
I winced. “She’s not,” I said.
“Damn,” he whispered. “They got her.”
“Who’s they?” I said. I debated putting Simon on speaker, but decided against it.
“It’s not Manuel Brown, Brad. It’s someone else. I don’t know who, but I saw her get taken and it wasn’t Manuel’s MO.”
“You saw her get taken?” I could hear the rage in my voice. Patrick pulled over.
“I saw her get taken, and then I got thwacked in the head and I woke up in the hospital. That’s where I am now.”
“Shit, man, okay. I’m glad you’re okay. Can we come and get you? Patrick will need to hear exactly what you saw.”
“Yes, come and get me. St. Francis Hospital. And, I think we should contact Manuel Brown. He has a vested interest in this if they have Cassie. He has the resources to get her back.”
“Um,” I said, glancing over at Patrick. He was listening keenly to my side of the conversation. “Um, I’m not sure that’s advisable, actually, at this time…”
“The entire project is at risk, catastrophic risk, until she’s found. You know that.”
I thought quickly, exploring both possibilities, the outcomes of what could happen if I contacted him and if I didn’t.
“You may be right,” I said slowly. “When we pick you up, we can discuss it.”
“Time is of the essence,” Simon said. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”
I closed my eyes and felt my jaw clench with tension. “Call his people,” I said. “Just do it now.”
“Yes, Sir,” Simon said, the sound of approval loud and clear in his voice.
I hung up the phone and looked at Patrick. He signaled and pulled back onto the road.
“What hospital are we going to?” he asked. “And who are you having him call?”
I kept all of my information about Simon close to the vest. Especially with the new information that Manuel Brown might not be at the source of Cassie’s abduction, I needed to make sure I knew the consequences of each move before I made it.
“St. Francis,” I said. “Do you know where that is?” Patrick nodded as he plugged it into his GPS. “And never mind on the other question. I’ll let Simon fill you in.”
I would, of course, do no such thing. My hope was that by the time we got to the hospital and Patrick saw Simon, he would be more interested in what Simon had to say about Cassie’s abduction and his attack than in who we were planning to call.
I exhaled as I pushed stress out of my body; I wouldn’t be able to rest until I knew Cassie was back at the Legacy safe and sound.
Cassie
I heard, rather than saw, my rescue. After finding out that the driver had given me water, my captor decided I was too dangerous to be in possession of all of my senses, so he blindfolded me. I fought it, of course, but struggling against the handcuffs binding my wrists only strained my already exhausted body. I was almost certain I’d torn my rotator cuff.
I was lying against the wall listening to the sounds around me when I heard a car engine. Immediately afterward, I heard two chairs scrape across the floor, so I knew my captors had also heard it. The sound of metal as guns were drawn. I swallowed hard, feeling the chalky dryness of my throat clicking with the sensation of swallowing. My heart pounded in my ears and I struggled between trying to sit up and trying to shrink myself down.
The door opened and there were screams, one, two, three men, maybe more, and shots were fired. I held my breath as time seemed to both slow down and speed up around me. I didn’t scream… or maybe I did.
Suddenly, there was silence. The sound of my heartbeat was the loudest thing in my ears, and then I felt arms around me, yanking me up sharply.
“Handcuffs!” I moaned, feeling my shoulders straining.
“Fuck!” I heard a man’s voice and relief washed over me.
“Brad?” I said, my voice suddenly shrill. “Brad??”
“It’s me, baby, I’ve got you.” He pressed down on me and yelled over his shoulder to someone else to “find the keys! Let’s get her out of here!”
A moment later, my arms were released and the blindfold pulled off. I winced as I felt the tremendous pain shoot through my arms, but Brad filled my vision and I smiled, tears streaming down my cheeks.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he pushed out in a huge sigh of relief. “Don’t worry about how I found you; I did. I wasn’t ever going to stop looking.”
He picked me up and carried me to the door. I tried to ignore the bodies on the floor: two men, their hoods finally removed. They were younger than I’d thought, though not young per say. I wondered which had been my abductor… and which had been the man to show me some kindness.
***
A few hours later, after I’d been checked out by the hospital and released ‘in remarkable condition considering,” I found myself back in the Moroccan Legacy suite I shared with Brad. He’d made me some soup, recommended by the hospital to assist in rehydrating me without stressing out my stomach.
“Your passport,” he said, reaching into his breast pocket and handing me the blue book. I smiled.
“Well, if I’d known all I needed to do to get things moving was to get kidnapped…” I joked, but my voice was weak. Maybe too soon.
“I will never leave you again,” Brad said. He leaned in and kissed me. His lips on mine sent waves of healing energy through me. My heart beat faster for a good reason, finally, and I crawled into his lap and into his arms.
“Hold me forever,” I whispered. I pressed the bridge of my nose against his neck, snuggling in as close as I could. He slid his arm around me, his forearm grazing my breast. I felt a tinge of arousal as he did, and I nuzzled in deeper. I dropped my hand to his thigh and slowly explored; he was hard, his cock pressing against his jeans.
“Hey now,” he said. “You’re teasing me, and you’re in no condition to be doing such a thing.”
“I’ll be the judge of my condition, thank you,” I said coyly. The truth was, he was probably right. The screaming in my muscles suggested that I should be soaking in an Epsom salt bath and doing little else for the next few days.
However, any woman who has ever been rescued by her man in a hail of gunfire will know exactly how I was also feeling. I was carnally horny.
I ignored the sensations in my muscles as I twisted my body and climbed on top of Brad. I sat back, straddling him, as he wordlessly took off his suit coat. I pushed him back and unbuttoned his dress shirt one button at a time, locked with him eye to eye. I could see him trying to fight the urge to overtake me, to control me. He was still not used to passing over control to anyone, and I knew this was against all of the instincts that had gotten him to the status of being a world known billionaire.
I didn’t care.
<
br /> I shifted out of my yoga pants and pulled his dress pants down, dropping them on the floor beside the couch. He arched an eyebrow at me, and I arched mine right back. You have something to say? my look said. I tore my eyes away from his to look at his cock, huge and glorious in front of me, quivering, the tip wet with anticipation. I leaned in and took him into my mouth, sliding my lips up his shaft all the way to its base. I bobbed my head forward and back, my lips in a vacuum against the skin of his shaft. I felt his cock pulsing in my mouth, and I brought my hands to his body, cupping his sack with one hand. His balls were hot and hard in my hand, the skin stretching tightly with his arousal.
He moaned, and I quickened my pace, my mouth moving fast and smooth as I changed my tongue to my hand around his shaft, and began to swirl my tongue around the tip of his cock. I lapped up the bits of pre-cum and I looked up at him. I flipped my hair over my shoulder so he had an unobstructed view of my mouth on his manhood.
He looked down and I saw his eyes roll as the pleasure of my tongue overtook his ability to speak. I flicked my tongue along the underside of his cock, twisting his shaft gently with my hand and squeezed the underside of his sack—and felt him almost immediately explode in my mouth. I drank his cum hungrily, sucking up every last drop before lightly releasing my grip to let him recover.
I laid next to him and he stroked my breast under my shirt. We stayed like that for almost an hour. I was nearly sleeping against his warm body, being lulled by the beating of his heart, when he leaned in toward me and kissed me. He began to pull at me, his strong hands around my ribs, guiding me back on top of him.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I don’t want to crush you,” he explained. “Plus, I know how much you like to be in charge.” He said it in a teasing tone that let me know that he was, in no uncertain terms, allowing me to play the leader for the night.
“I do like to be in charge,” I said. Even though I should have been exhausted, I felt re-energized by the feeling of Brad under my hips. He was hard again, ready to go, and I positioned myself over him and then dropped myself down on to his cock, impaling myself and causing him to gasp, his eyes wide and alert.
“Fuck!” he breathed, and he grabbed my hips and began to drive me back and forth. I let him, feeling his rhythm and capturing it as my clit pressed against his pubic bone, each thrust bringing me closer to my own climax. “You’re so wet!” he whispered, his eyes closed. “So wet, so hot…”
I could feel the heat steadily rising within me, but something else, too: it was as though my body was celebrating being free from my captors. Celebrating being alive. My orgasm exploded and I felt wetness flow out of me as I cried out, energy pushing through every cell, every pore. My vision blurred and the only thing I could see was Brad, looking up at me as he came, holding me hard by my hips so he didn’t buck me off of him.
After, we made our way to the bed so we could stretch out. He laid on his back and I laid on my side facing him, spooning his hip. My hand on his chest, I ran my fingers across the tight, smooth skin that covered his pecs.
“Quite an adventure,” he murmured.
“You could say that,” I said.
“I would never let anything happen to you,” he said; “you know that.”
I let it slide that he had let something happen to me. I tucked it away for use at a later date. Instead, I stroked his chest with my palm.
“I knew you would rescue me,” I said instead.
“It was Patrick, really, who found out where you were. He’s the one who figured out the best way to track you. He’s the one who got in touch with me.”
I felt my body stiffen slightly at the sound of Patrick’s name coming out of Brad’s mouth. His tone was casual, but that didn’t mean anything. Brad didn’t like to share—no billionaire did, that was how they became billionaires.
“Patrick is a good NCA agent,” I said carefully.
“How did you meet him again? I don’t remember you ever bringing him up.”
I lifted my head. “I never did bring him up. He was tailing me one day while we were in London. He wanted to know about you. I told him to fuck off. He did.”
“Huh,” Brad said, stroking my hair with his fingers. He twirled a strand around one finger and tugged slightly. I felt the stirrings of arousal; I loved having my hair played with, and he knew it. “It’s funny that he ended up in Morocco at the same time we were there. Well,” he paused, shifting his head to look at me. “At the same time you were there.”
I felt my heart beating faster. “Yeah, that was quite the coincidence.”
“A coincidence?” he said lightly. “Was it?” He released the lock of my hair and grabbed another, began to gently twirl it as he had the first. “I suppose, yes, it could have been that.”
“What else could it have been?” I asked. I was both angry and nervous. Angry because I sensed he was about to accuse me of cheating on him with Patrick, and how dare he… and nervous because, well, he wasn’t completely wrong. At least in my mind, I had gone further than I should with Patrick Shim.
“That’s a funny question. It could have been lots of things. I guess it could even be that you’re actually not a journalist for an American travel magazine at all, and you’re actually an NCA agent.”
My heart thudded loudly in my chest.
“What?” I asked. “What on earth would make you think that?”
“Nothing,” he said mildly. “Unless it’s true. Is it true?”
I stared at him. He was serious.
Cassie
“Please make sure your seats and tray tables are in their upright and locked positions for take off.”
I heard the flight attendant’s voice over the intercom but did nothing; I hadn’t touched either my seat or the table attached to the seat in front of me yet; I rarely ever did. My carry on bag was still in my lap where I had set it as I’d taken my seat earlier. I stared out the window at the baggage handlers of the London Heathrow Airport and I realized that I had no idea if I was making the right decision or not.
I knew my ribs hurt; that was for sure. I knew that my face, behind my sunglasses, looked bruised and beaten. I had done my best with my make up, but there was no hiding the fact that I had been through the wringer in a pretty significant way. The seat next to me was still empty, and, with any luck at all, it would stay that way. Chances were good, considering the plane was nearly loaded. I looked up the aisle that ran right next to my seat on my right, and I looked at the last remaining people who were boarding and trying to find their seats. I watched their eyes, knowing that almost everyone did what I did when they boarded a plane: they began to count the rows to check out their potential seat mate from the moment they got within eye sight of what could be their row.
No one seemed to be looking in my direction at all, though, so I closed my eyes and leaned back, keeping my hands resting on my bag. The trouble was, I saw Brad’s face every time I closed my eyes, his confused expression as I’d told him I was going back to the United States now that I had my passport back in hand. Our argument, him accusing me of being an NCA agent—of all insane things—and me retaliating by letting him know that he was a fine one to talk about having secrets, that I knew he was continuing to withhold information from me. I had known I was going too far, but my mouth and words seemed ten seconds ahead of my brain. We had stood at one another, glaring, his arms crossed over his chest and my hands on my hips, until I had finally turned away and started to pack my bag.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he’d asked, stalking into the bedroom after me.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” I’d spit back. “Now that you’re done holding me hostage,” I said as I’d thrown my passport on top of my purse, “I’m going back home.”
“To New York?” The look of incredulity on his face would have been funny, if we hadn’t been in the middle of such drama.
“Yes,” I’d said back, firmly and with the coldest touch I could add t
o my voice. “I have a job there. I have friends there. I’ve put everything on hold to be with you, and I think that was a mistake. You don’t trust me, which is ridiculous. I did trust you, but it’s looking now like that was also ridiculous.”
“You can’t just leave,” he said, grabbing some of my clothes from the bed and putting them back into a drawer.
“Watch me,” I’d dared, and then, “and don’t touch my stuff.”
He’d taken one final shot at me. “Is this about Patrick? Are you going to him?” he’d said. But, rather than dignify his accusation with a response, I’d glared at him with every ounce of venom I could muster, and he’d known he had lost. He snarled and walked out of the room.
I had packed quickly and called for a cab to drive me to the airport. I swallowed the painful lump in my throat as I remembered Brad sitting on the couch as I’d left. He hadn’t said goodbye. Hadn’t looked at me. I’d thought about saying something. I’d waited an extra moment before closing the door to see if he’d call my name. Of course he hadn’t; that was part of the reason I’d fallen for him. I couldn’t have it both ways, and I knew it.
“Excuse me, Miss?” A woman’s voice pulled me out of my memory and back onto the airplane. “I need you to put your bag under your seat, please.”
I complied, sitting back up and looking around me. It didn’t look like the flight would be too bad. No kids around me. An aisle on one side, and an empty seat on the other. On the other side of the empty seat was a young man, maybe mid-twenties, who was engrossed in his headphones and iPad. Not a talker. I leaned back and settled in for what I hoped would be a nap long enough to get me all the way back to New York.
“Hi, yeah, sorry, could you move your legs please?”
I opened my eyes as all of my senses except for taste were assaulted at the same time. A woman was on top of me, straddling my knees, trying to wrangle a bag that wouldn’t fit under the seat even if it was empty without hitting me in the head. The woman stank of alcohol and there was a slight tinge of body odor. I couldn’t help but look at her with an expression I knew rang of distaste.
“I can’t move them anymore,” I muttered, unable to help myself, as I tried to shift to give the enormous woman enough space to get by.
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