Claiming Magique: 1 (7 page)

Hunt sighed.

Beyond the bookcases was a granite
fireplace the color of rum, the stone carved so that it looked like something
ancient and important. More granite flanked the entrance to this room, the
pillars sculpted to resemble Grecian columns. The best however was behind
Hunt’s desk. Five windows afforded a damn good view of the capital, especially
bewitching at night, the lights glittering like those on a Christmas tree.

Debussy’s piece ended, followed by
his
Claire de Lune.

Hunt glanced at his credenza,
complete with a coffee maker, bottled water, fruit, pastries and bourbon if he
wanted it.

Tonight, booze wouldn’t be enough.
He needed
Magique
.

His body tensed, warmth pouring into
his groin, stiffening his cock.

He pictured her standing near one of
those granite pillars, wearing another dress like the one she had on the other
night, only this baby would be scarlet, the color of passion. She’d draped her
hair over one shoulder, leaving the other bared, accessible, defenseless to his
touch and kisses.

Without a word, she strolled inside,
her walk as graceful as he recalled despite her black spike heels. Placing her
small evening bag on his desk, she continued to the credenza. Not to pour a
drink, oh no. She reached beneath her right arm, lowering her zipper. The dress
peeled away from her, its ends folding over, widening the V, showing more skin,
though not too much. Tonight, she’d surprised him, wearing a crimson thong and
bustier. Tonight, she was going to make him work even harder for his pleasure.

The springs in his chair squeaked as
he left it. As he crossed the room to her, she allowed her dress to drop to the
floor and stepped out of it. Keeping her back to him, she bent at the waist,
her hands gripping the lip of his credenza.

The fire’s flickering flames
alternately
pinked
up her flesh and cast soft shadows
on it. The thong’s satin strap disappeared in the furrow between her cheeks.

The sight sucked all the air from
his lungs. It drew him to her. He smiled at her fragrance, the same as she’d
worn the other night. As far as Hunt was concerned, she’d never wear another.
If she didn’t smell like roses, jasmine and musk, he wanted her to smell of
him.

He pulled off his tie and unbuttoned
his collar, edging closer.

At the tap of his shoes on the
floor, she spread her legs and lifted her ass, inviting him to use each of her
openings.

Easy,
he warned himself before he mounted her in haste and the act
was finished. He didn’t want to rush, but couldn’t stand to wait. Bending over
her, he ran his hands down her bare arms. She shivered, making a sound that
told him of her delight. He wound his arms around her in a tender caress,
bringing his mouth to her ear, kissing the lobe, then nibbling it.

“That tickles,” she said and
laughed. A miraculous sound he needed to hear and wasn’t about to question.

Despite his pressing need of her, he
forced himself to go slow and be gentle, easing her thong down to the top of
her thighs, exposing her anus and cunt. Her underwear’s satin crotch was damp
with her excitement. Her female fragrance wafted up, tightening his chest,
muddying his thoughts.

He worked his stiffened rod out of
his boxers and fly, running its head down her dewy cleft. She was slick and
oh-so ready for him.

Every part of his body responded,
making Hunt feel as though he might burst. Unable to hold off any longer, he
positioned himself, driving his cock into her pussy, then grabbed her hands,
lacing their fingers to imprison her further.

She whimpered. He groaned.

“Hey.”

Hunt blinked and frowned at Tim.
Arms crossed over his chest, his friend was leaning against one of those
pompous granite pillars, his iron-gray suit and pearl-gray tie looking as
serious as he did.

“Go away, I’m busy,” Hunt said.

“No kidding. We have a meeting.
Remember?”

He did now, but didn’t move. No way
was he going to hang up before he knew
Magique’s
real
name, her past and present. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

“How about
now?
We all want to go home before today
turns into tomorrow. Have some fun, you know?”

He did, which was why he wasn’t
about to cut off the call. “Soon as I’m finished here, I’ll join you.”

“Waiting for the head chief of some
shit to answer your call?”

Hunt offered a smile. “Something
like
that.”

“Good.” Tim gave him a wry grin.
“Wouldn’t want you to be wasting your time on
Magique
.
Using Flannigan to try to find out
who
she is or
anything like that.”

Right.
“I told you, I’m using Flannigan for something personal.”

Tim arched one blond brow, his
expression remarkably similar to the many corporate portraits of his father. “I
don’t think we could have gotten any more personal with her than we did when we
were at—”

“Hold it,” Hunt interrupted,
then
spoke into the receiver as though a person, not
classical music was on the other end of the line. “Be right with you.”

He frowned at Tim, not wanting the
man to mention
Magique
again, unless it was in the
most favorable and non-sexual terms. “The sooner I get through with this, the
sooner I’ll be in the conference room and you can leave for the evening.”

“Uh-huh.” He pushed away from the
pillar and spoke over his shoulder as he left. “If you find out anything about
her, I’d like to hear the details.”

Not a chance. She was his. Or would
be as soon as he—

“Prescott.”

Flannigan.
Hunt swung his chair around to face the windows and spoke
as quietly as he could, “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Okay, I got what you wanted. Wasn’t
easy, but I got it. Do you have any idea who her father is?”

That wasn’t a question he’d expected
or particularly cared about. “Can you email me the file?”

“I’d rather have one of my
messengers deliver it. I don’t trust the damn
Net
,
phones, pagers or any of that other electronic shit. You’ll have a hard copy in
a few hours.”

A fucking
eternity.
Hunt pushed out of his chair and
paced as he talked. “How much did you get?”

“Don’t worry, we were thorough.”

That remained to be seen. No matter
how good Flannigan was, Hunt didn’t think the man could peer into
Magique’s
heart.
“All right.
A few hours.
I’ll be in my office.”

“Figured as
much.”

“Wait,” Hunt said, before Flannigan
ended the call. “What’s her name?”

“
Alexa
.”

It fit her.
Elegant.
Regal.
He smiled.
“
Alexa
what?”

“Marsh.”

Hunt stopped pacing. His mind raced,
recalling what Flannigan had said about knowing who her father was. He blurted,
“As in
the
Marshs
?”

A chuckle sounded on the other end
of the line, followed by Flannigan’s sigh.
“Told you you’d be
surprised.”

It had been a good day, relatively
pain free. The first she’d experienced in weeks, allowing her to come to the
office and work. And now this had to happen.

Ronnie hung up her office phone and
glanced across the room.
Alexa
was at her desk, a
Louis XV replica, its mahogany inlaid with gold, its top inset with leather.
Typical over-the-top furniture for a madam, a blatant cliché, but Ronnie didn’t
care. She loved this stuff.

There were white roses artfully
arranged in numerous vases, sitting chairs with needlepoint embroidery and
gilded mirrors hanging on the walls. Surrounded by such opulence,
Alexa
might have been a princess-in-waiting at Versailles,
rather than a contemporary woman focused on the company’s spreadsheets, its
profit and loss.

Two years ago,
Alexa
had bought into the company, taking over its accounting and other business
matters. She was a whiz at that kind of work. No surprise. She had an economics
and management degree from Oxford and had been on the fast track to run an
international business or a government agency when she’d chosen this.
A damn escort service.

“I’m not poor and I’m not interested
in love,” she’d told Ronnie when they first met. “So I’m not looking for a
sugar daddy or Prince Charming to rescue me. I just want to have some fun with
guys. Why shouldn’t I get paid for it?”

Ah, the young. They had such
remarkably simplistic ways of looking at things.

When Ronnie had been
Alexa’s
age, she’d been searching for Mr. Right for as long
as she could recall. She’d grown up in a trailer park in a particularly poor
part of Arkansas, the third generation of her family headed for welfare.

The grinding poverty wore at her,
along with working after school at a diner that offered no future. She wanted
pretty things and guys who treated her with respect, opening doors and speaking
gently, rather than bellowing or using their fists to get their points across.

At sixteen, she’d fled and got as
far as the District, selling her body to survive, telling herself she was
looking for love, that’s why she was doing it. The pay was simply how the men
proved they adored her.

Before long, she realized how good
she was at seduction and sex, always picked first among the other girls. In
time, she knew she’d never make any real money unless she had her own business.
Stella Nolan—her birth name—became Veronique
DuBlanc
,
Ronnie for short. By then, she’d lost the trailer park accent, studied French
at night, learned as much as she could about current events and pulled off a
damn good imitation of a woman of breeding.

All while craving and looking for
love.

When she was young and beautiful,
she’d at least had men’s attention, but only because they wanted sex, not her
as a person they cherished. At fifty-eight, guys decades younger than her told
Ronnie she was still hot, which wasn’t true. They were playing with her,
wanting her to be their mother, to nurture and support them emotionally or
financially, when she’d never had the same devotion from anyone at that age.

She wanted better for her
Alexa
.

A smile tugged at the corners of
Ronnie’s mouth, generated by tenderness that had no bounds. She adored the
girl, had from the moment they met. Beneath
Alexa’s
many layers of bravado, there was a fragile soul and heart, reminding Ronnie of
herself…her need to belong to someone. No way would she allow anything or
anyone to harm the girl, especially a man.

The dossiers Ronnie authorized on
Alexa’s
clients were more thorough than any government’s.
The men were educated, upscale, disease free, not married and certainly not
violent. In many ways, Ronnie knew she was protecting her beloved girl more
than life ever could. If
Alexa
had been like most
young women and hung out at a singles bar, she’d be taking a chance on the
strangers who strolled inside.

Still…

Given her condition, Ronnie knew she
might not make it another year cancer-free, much less ten as she had the last
time. What would happen to
Alexa
after she died? It
wasn’t as if the girl could run to her parents for any guidance and warmth. Her
father’s indifference or disapproval of everything
Alexa
did was legend, while her mother—a beauty in her own right—felt compelled to
compete with rather than to appreciate her own daughter.

Idiots.
They didn’t deserve to have a child. They’d never earned
that privilege and continued to abuse it even now.

“So?”
Alexa
asked.

Ronnie blinked. Had she spoken her
thoughts aloud? Her skin prickled with embarrassment. “What?”

“That’s what I just asked you.”
Alexa
squinted as though to read past Ronnie’s expression
into the corners of her mind where lies didn’t exist. “You were staring at me
with this weird look on your face. You okay? Is the pain bad again?”

She shook her head and told a
partial truth, “I haven’t felt this good in weeks. You’re not busy tonight, are
you?”

Alexa
leaned back in her chair, its cushions of red velvet. She
drew her forefinger over her lower lip just as she did when reading personal
information on the men she’d agreed to be with. “You would know. You handle the
reservations, right?”

Indeed she did. “In that case—”

“Wait a sec.”
Alexa
leaned up. “I’m game for a good time, as long as it’s not with Hunter
Prescott.”