Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1) (3 page)

“I’m yours,” Hannah said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I’m yours. Forever. Yours.”

“Fuck yes, princess,” he moaned, thrusting faster, deeper, demanding her pleasure. “Come for me. Come on my cock. Let me feel you.”

Hannah’s head fell back as she came with a sound that wasn’t cute or ladylike. It was wild and base, a cry of animal satisfaction that ripped from her throat as her pussy clutched at her stranger’s pistoning cock, demanding his orgasm with the same assurance that he’d ordered her own.

He came crying out her sister’s name, his thickness jerking hard inside of her, the feel of his scalding heat soaking her insides sending her soaring a third time. Lights danced behind her tightly closed eyes, and somewhere deep inside of her, things she needed to live lost purchase and floated away from their moorings. She was adrift, helpless to defend herself, totally at the mercy of this man who gently untied her arms and kissed the red welts on her wrists.

And she didn’t even know his name.

Hours later, after he’d had her again—this time with his hand fisted in her hair while he took her from behind, his rough use making her feel safer than every considerate kiss from every ex-boyfriend she’d ever had—that’s all she could think about. She didn’t know the name of the man who kissed her like she was his world before climbing back out the window he’d crept through hours before.

And she wasn’t going to find out until tomorrow, when she would be forced to come clean to her sister and confess the nightmarish thing she’d done.

Harley might actually forgive her—she didn’t tend to get too attached to her lovers, especially the summer boys she used to entertain her between epic trips abroad—but the stranger would hate her. He was in love with her sister. He thought he’d been making love to Harley, not a complete stranger.

As Hannah lay in the dark, in sheets that still smelled of sex and sweat, she was forced to admit that she was a terrible person. She wasn’t the good twin, after all. She was weak and selfish and obviously unfit to become a psychiatrist and counsel troubled kids, not when she was so messed up in the head that she’d slept with her sister’s boyfriend.

The first time, he hadn’t given her time to protest, but she could have stopped things before they came together again, before he held her on his chest and promised she would always be under his protection, or before she whispered “I love you, too” as he eased out onto the tree limb beneath the second story window.

Liar. She was such a miserable liar.

She didn’t know if Harley loved the man, but Hannah barely knew him. It was impossible to love a man you had just met and barely spoken to aside from some scalding hot pillow talk.

She knew that, but as she got up to put the sheets on to wash and start a pot of coffee—sleep was going to be impossible, might as well help the insomnia along—she couldn’t help wishing that she didn’t have to tell her stranger the truth. A selfish, wicked part of her secretly hoped that Harley would never come back to her summer apartment, that she would hop the next flight to Paris and disappear the way she sometimes did, usually right when Hannah needed her the most.

And then Hannah could meet the man again, learn his name, and start figuring out what it would take to make him hers.

In the years to come, she would think of that selfish, wicked wish again and again, wondering if wishes like that had a power others didn’t. Wondering if her greedy longing was the reason her sister had been murdered and Hannah would never see her best friend’s face again.

Even when her Aunt Sybil spirited her away from Harley’s very private, very secret wake, insisting it was past time she learned about the darkness that haunted their family, Hannah couldn’t bring herself to blame fate or her father’s enemies for her sister’s death.

She would never forget that one wonderful, terrible night, or that she had wished that Harley would disappear and that hours later she had.

Forever.

CHAPTER THREE

Hannah

Six years later

Freedom doesn’t come for free. Neither does forgiveness.

Every step Hannah had taken from the moment she’d learned Harley was dead, to the morning she awoke to find Aunt Sybil crying on the back steps of their storm-battered bed and breakfast, had been taken with one goal in mind: Absolution.

She wanted more than survival. She wanted release. She wanted to shed her skin and leave the sins of her former life far behind her. But the past has long arms and sharp claws that dig in deep and hold on tight. The past was a monkey on her back. A monkey with an ugly sense of humor she swore she could hear cackling at her attempts to escape the Mason family curse.

In the past six years, The Mahana Guesthouse had been damaged by gale force winds, lost three cottages in an electrical fire, suffered through two Dengue fever outbreaks that scared the tourists away for months, and nearly been reclaimed by the sea when Hurricane Isra swept through last week.

The morning after the storm, the Laurents, their only neighbors close enough to reach the guesthouse on foot, had come to check on Sybil and Hannah. The sweet older couple had wept with relief when they found the women huddled in the cottage farthest from the beach—the only structure not falling in on itself—soaked to the skin but safe. The Laurents had taken them to their home, fed them fresh French bread and guava fruit salad, and spent the rest of the day telling them how lucky they were to be alive.

But life was fragile, especially when you were a Mason.

Their savings had finally run out after the last Dengue fever outbreak. Now, if Sybil and Hannah couldn’t find the money to repair the main house and guest cottages, their income would disappear, and their lives not long after. They could never return to the states or reach out to their family for help.

They were dead to the world they’d known before. This was their safe place, their one chance to carve out an existence far from the people determined to destroy them. But if Hannah didn’t figure something out soon, their safe haven would be a thing of the past. She had to pull it together, get creative, and whip up a miracle with nothing but her hands, a dash of hope, and an abundance of determination.

But first, she had to make sure her aunt didn’t hurl herself into the sea in despair.

“I come bearing gifts.” She held the steaming cup of coffee beneath Sybil’s nose, grateful when her aunt reached up to take the mug instead of staring zombie-like at the horizon the way she had for most of the week since the storm.

“I’m going to figure out a way to get the money today,” Hannah added, curling her hands around her own warm mug. “I promise.”

She had promised the same thing yesterday, but so far she’d come up with nothing. Their tiny Tahitian island was a paradise, true, but it was also a place where jobs were few and hard to come by. And even if Hannah could manage to land a job as a maid or bartender at the luxury resort on the south shore, she wouldn’t be able to cover basic expenses, let alone the cost of repairs, and the burden of raising the money sat firmly on her shoulders. Sybil could sell her homemade banana bread and other baked goods, but she couldn’t hold down a job. Her aunt’s arthritis made for days where she could barely get out of bed, let alone work ten hours stripping beds and cleaning toilets.

“I had a dream last night.” Aunt Sybil swept the tears from her tanned cheeks with a trembling hand.

“Not a good dream, I’m guessing.” Hannah sat down beside her on the steps leading down to the beach.

“No, it was,” Sybil said, her gaze trained on the waves lapping at the sugar-white shore. “Aaron, Ezra, and Matthew were alive. We were at the old house eating dinner on the lawn the way we used to in the summers when we were young. But in the dream, we were all grown up and there were children and grandchildren everywhere.” She smiled. “Dozens of dirty bare feet and popsicle sticky hands. It was lovely.”

Hannah sighed, knowing the sound would be masked by the wind rustling the palm leaves.

They hadn’t lost all the trees. Or the pool. That, at least, was lucky.

She was determined to stay positive. She couldn’t think about all the things that had been lost. She couldn’t think about the dead uncles she’d never met or that Harley might still be alive if Sybil had embraced her conspiracy theorist side sooner. Before Harley’s car crash and the series of “accidents” that had picked off their first cousins one by one, Hannah wouldn’t have believed that there was a contract killer out there somewhere determined to kill off their entire family. She would have thought her aunt was paranoid at best, delusional at worst. She never would have dropped out of grad school and fled the country without saying a word to anyone—even her mother and father—before the day she was forced to pick out her twin sister’s coffin.

No, there was nothing to be gained from the “what could have been” game and dreams like her aunt’s only made the waking world seem like more of a nightmare.

“I’m going to head into town to talk to Hiro this morning,” Hannah said. “He said he might have some good news for me from his friends on Moorea. Do you need anything from the store while I’m there? Flour? Sugar?”

Sybil frowned but didn’t turn her gaze away from the shore. “What kind of good news? You told him we weren’t selling, right?”

“I did.” Hanna ran her fingers idly back and forth across the wood beneath her. The planks still smelled of fresh stain and were one of the few parts of the guesthouse she’d been able to rebuild herself.

She was handy, but she wasn’t a trained carpenter or a roofer or a plumber or any of the other endless skilled laborers they’d need to hire to make sure their tiny resort was ready to receive guests.

Still, she understood why her aunt didn’t want to sell. After the hurricane, property values were in the gutter. They’d never get what the resort was worth and it was dangerous for them to conduct any business with a paper trail. Both she and Sybil had fake passports with assumed names, but anything that made people pay attention was a bad idea. That’s why they had kept to the tradition Hannah’s father had started long ago and never posted pictures of themselves on the Internet. They didn’t have host photos on their website, refused to be photographed with their guests, and conducted all of their transactions in cash.

Cash that was growing perilously low.

“I’m not sure what he had in mind, but he seemed hopeful,” Hannah said, forcing an upbeat note into her voice. “And if anyone can be trusted to help us wiggle out of this, it’s Hiro. You know how much he wants you to stay on the island.”

Sybil grunted, but Hannah could tell her aunt was fighting a smile. “You’d think after a year of trying he’d get the message that nothing’s going to happen between us. He’s half my age, for goodness’ sake.”

“He’s only ten years younger,” Hannah corrected, nudging her aunt’s knee gently with her own. “And he might get the idea if you’d stop flirting with him like a shameless hussy.”

Her aunt’s answering laughter was one of the sweetest sounds Hannah had heard in days.

“Oh my goodness,” Sybil said, still giggling. “I didn’t think anyone had noticed.”

“Kind of hard to miss,” Hannah said, grinning. “I think it’s adorable and I bet you and Hiro would have a lot of fun together. And how many people can say they’ve dated a pearl farmer?”

Sybil’s smile faded as she tucked her gray-streaked blond curls behind her ears. She really did look so much younger than fifty-five, with only lightly wrinkled skin and bright blue eyes that danced when she was happy. She swore that her commitment to looking on the bright side had kept her young, which only made it harder to see her succumbing to despair and losing faith that everything would work out okay in the end.

“Maybe I’ll think about it,” her aunt finally said in a soft voice. “If we’re still here come the new year.”

“But it’s only November. You know you don’t have to wait until New Year’s Eve to try something new, right?” Hannah pressed. “Why don’t you let me invite Hiro to come have dinner on the beach with us tonight? It’s supposed to be a beautiful evening, and I’ll be there to chaperone.”

“Oh no,” Sybil said shaking her head. “I don’t even have a proper kitchen to cook in. I can’t feed a guest anything I’ve whipped up on the hot plate.”

“Give him a few beers first and I doubt he’ll notice he’s eating grilled cheese,” Hannah said, finishing her last sip of coffee. “Besides, it’s the company he’s after, not the gourmet experience.”

Sybil’s head shaking grew more agitated. “No, Hannah. I’m not ready. Maybe someday, but not now. Not until we know you’re safe.”

Hannah’s spirits fell and she suddenly wished she hadn’t pushed. She knew her aunt wasn’t comfortable with change and even less comfortable with men. Besides, Hannah wasn’t in any position to preach about embracing opportunities for romance. She had only dated two men since the move and both relationships had lasted only a few months before fizzling away.

She told herself it was the need for anonymity and secrecy that made it hard to forge a connection. She refused to admit how often she thought about the night she’d promised herself to a stranger. Or how often she woke up from erotic dreams featuring
his
hands on her body and his lips on her skin.

Her mystery lover, the one who had ruined her for other men.