Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1) (4 page)

But she wasn’t going to think about him either. Positive thoughts were the order of the day.

She managed to keep her head up and her optimistic attitude firmly in place until her meeting with an anxious, embarrassed Hiro, who told her what he’d learned from his connections on Moorea.

There was a way for Hannah and Sybil to save the resort: a billionaire who was willing to give them the money they would need to rebuild. But what he wanted in exchange was something Hannah had never imagined putting up for sale.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, glancing over her shoulder, hoping no one else at the open air café had heard Hiro’s proposal or her response. She wouldn’t even be considering what the pearl farmer had suggested if she weren’t backed so far into a corner she was starting to fear she’d never get out.

When she was certain none of the other patrons of the café were listening, she turned back to Hiro and whispered, “What kind of man is he? Do you know him? Would I be safe?”

“Yes, he’s a good man. A very good man. And very rich.” Hiro’s dark eyes tightened with concern. “But it is too much, yeah? You are a good girl.” He ran a tanned hand through his lightly graying hair. “Your aunt would be so angry with me if she knew I’d even mentioned this kind of arrangement.”

Hannah shook her head as she picked nervously at an empty sugar packet. “Sybil could never know. If I do this, if I become…” She swallowed hard, unable to speak the words “erotic companion” aloud. “I’d have to make up another excuse for leaving the island. I couldn’t let her find out. It would kill her.”

And it might kill you. You trust Hiro, but do you trust his assessment of a stranger’s character enough to risk your life on it?

She wasn’t sure, but after they had finished their tea and she’d walked down the crowded village street to the grocery store and checked her and Sybil’s bank balance at the ATM, she knew she had no choice but to accept the terrifying offer. They were almost broke. There was no other way to pay for Sybil’s medicines, let alone get their business up and running again.

And it would only be for a month. She could do anything for a month.

Pushing away throat-tightening images of a greasy man with a hairy back ordering her to spread her legs, Hannah pulled out her cell and dialed Hiro’s number.

“I’ll do it,” she said when the farmer answered. “I’ll pick up the directions on my way out of town.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Jackson

It was time, the moment Jackson Hawke had been working toward for six long years. He was finally going to have his revenge on the woman who had taken everything that mattered away from him and set his life on fire.

The woman whose death he’d mourned even as the wounds she’d left on his heart teemed with hatred, unlike anything he’d ever known.

During his ten years in the Marines, Jackson had been deployed to some of the most violent war zones in the world and seen men commit acts so heinous they deserved no mercy, no trial, no second chance. He’d come face to face with human monsters, but Harley Garrett was the worst of them all.

She was pure poison, venom wrapped in an irresistibly beautiful shell. She was a nightmare come to life, but he’d cried when he’d learned she’d been killed in the car wreck that had claimed the life of his best friend. Still, he’d ached to hold her, even after learning she and Clay had been on their way to Niagara Falls to get married when their car was forced off a dangerous mountain road.

It wasn’t until Jackson was locked in a cage, disowned by his family and reviled by his friends, that he’d stopped grieving and started hating with a purity that had transformed hatred into a religion. Hate became his center, his mantra, and the reason he’d been able to rise from the ashes of his former life to become something stronger and better than he’d been before.

He no longer had an honor code, morals, or ethics standing in the way of taking what he wanted. Now, he had hate and the single-minded focus it lent all its devotees.

Without that focus, he wouldn’t have kept digging into the details of Harley’s death until he discovered that Harley Garrett had been born out of the ether that summer six years ago. He wouldn’t have learned that there wasn’t a single photograph of the woman on the web or a record of her body being buried anywhere in the United States. He wouldn’t have made contact with the kind of men who made a living finding people who didn’t want to be found or kept paying them to search for Harley for years after a less vitriol-filled man would have given up hope of finding the monster who had gotten away.

And without hate, he never would have learned that Harley was living the sweet life on a tiny island in Tahiti or had the patience to wait until she was vulnerable and powerless to fight him to take his revenge.

Initially, he’d planned to buy her property for a song and drag out closing negotiations until she and her aging aunt were so desperate to survive that Harley would have no choice but to agree to his demands.

But this…

This was so much better.

His cock thickened at the thought of all the things he was going to do to Harley’s tight little body once she belonged to him. He hated her, but he still wanted to fuck her, to get his cock in her lying mouth, into her slick cunt, into the pretty pink asshole she’d denied him access to years ago, back when he’d cared what she wanted. He was going to have her every filthy way he’d imagined and make all the lies she’d told come true, until she regretted ever hearing the name Jackson Hawke, let alone ruining his life.

Once upon a time, his dark desires would have troubled him. But now he didn’t care if it was twisted to want his enemy on her knees in front of him choking on his cock.

He didn’t care about anything except seeing that bitch get what she deserved.

“She’s on her way up, sir.” His pilot and right-hand man, Adam, stepped into the artificially cool hotel room, his tanned face shiny from the late afternoon heat. “Is there anything else you need before I head down to the field?”

Jackson shook his head. “No. Just be ready for takeoff when we show up. If all goes well, we’ll be there before sunset.”

Adam nodded and stepped out of the room without another word. It was one of the things that made the man invaluable to him. Whether they were smuggling guns to drug lords in South America, selling secrets to rebels in war-torn countries, or arranging to buy a woman for a million dollars and change, Adam didn’t put his oar in. He did as he was told, got the job done, and kept his mouth shut.

It made for boring company, but Jackson wasn’t worried about it being just the three of them and a small number of carefully selected support staff on a private island for a month.

He expected Harley would keep him more than entertained.

Jackson turned to the computer monitor on the desk in front of him, waiting for his prey to appear, wondering if she’d follow the directions she’d been given like a good girl. The Harley he’d known had chosen defiance over obedience at every opportunity, but the woman he’d known had been a cipher, a lie from beginning to end.

Soon he would get to know the real Harley and maybe even learn why she’d made it her mission on earth to destroy him.

Not that he cared anymore.

He couldn’t care less if his name was cleared—he’d done his share to tarnish his formerly pristine reputation in the past few years—but he would still make her return to Virginia with him to meet his father. He needed to see the look on Ian Hawke’s face when he learned that a lying whore had tricked him into disowning his son. That alone would be worth more than a million dollars.

As if summoned by his thoughts of lying whores, the door opened in the room on his screen and a woman in a simple, sleeveless black sundress stepped inside.

The moment her tensed, frightened features turned to face the camera set up beside the bed, he knew it was Harley. Still, something in his gut pinged, insisting this wasn’t the woman he’d been hunting for. But for once, Jackson ignored the gut instinct that had kept him alive and out of prison during the years he’d enthusiastically embraced a life of crime.

It was no wonder his gut was confused. Harley had changed significantly in the past six years. Her once dark brown hair had turned auburn in the island sun and freckles covered her tanned face, making her eyes look even more strikingly blue than they had before. But it was her body that had changed the most. Gone were the relatively boyish figure and stick legs she’d complained about when they used to go walking on the beach. In their place were curves for miles and miles.

She’d been beautiful before, but now she was…a goddess.

She was exactly the kind of woman he’d always preferred, with abundant breasts that would overflow even his large hands, generous hips, and a curvy ass he couldn’t wait to get turned over his knee.

As soon as they reached his island, he was going to give her that spanking she’d begged for back when they were lovers. But this time he wouldn’t stop before pleasure-pain turned to suffering. He would keep reddening her ass until her flesh glowed and she squirmed on his lap, begging him to release her. But he wouldn’t, not until he’d bruised her sensitive skin, making sure that every time she sat down for the next week she’d be reminded that she was his property, to do with as he saw fit.

The thought was dizzying. And so arousing that by the time Harley reached for the top of her dress with trembling hands, his cock was testing the integrity of his zipper.

Slowly, slowly, doing exactly as she’d been told, she pulled her dress down to reveal her breasts, then her tanned stomach, and finally her full hips before pushing the fabric past her thighs. It fell down to puddle around her ankles, taking Jackson’s breath away. She had obeyed the order not wear anything under the dress, as well, so the moment the black fabric dropped to the floor, she was bare to his gaze.

From her stunning breasts with the dark pink nipples to the gentle curve of her belly to the small thatch of dark hair that covered her mound, she was perfect.

Jackson’s throat tightened and a wave of lust swept through him, making his skin feverishly hot. He wanted her. Now. He wanted to abandon this chair, hurry down the hallway to the sunlit room where Harley stood trembling in front of that camera, and show her how much more scared she should be.

He wanted to see her face when she realized who had come to claim her and then he wanted to bend her over that mosquito-netted bed in the corner and fuck her, hard and deep, until he lost himself inside of her, marking his new pet with his cum.

Instead, he forced himself to relax, to exert control.

Revenge wasn’t something to be taken fast and hot. As the saying went, revenge was a dish best served cold.

When Harley laid eyes on him for the first time in six years, he would be cold, glacial. He would give her no power, no hope of using his emotions to manipulate him. She would never know how deeply she’d hurt him or how much he still wanted her. When he did eventually fuck her, it would be calm, efficient, a means to an end, a step on the path to breaking her.

He would not give her his need or his hate. He would give her nothing but what she had given him—suffering and pain.

And so he sat completely still as he watched Harley bring her hands to her breasts, ignoring the fact that the sight of her small hands cupping her full mounds made his balls ache. He remained frozen as she rolled her nipples between her fingers until her breath came faster and the anxiety on her face was replaced with arousal. But when she dropped one hand between her legs and began to rub her clit in circles, clearly intending to reach orgasm the way her instructions had commanded, his control snapped.

As Harley plucked at her nipple and fingered herself, he stood, wrenching open his fly. His swollen cock bobbed free, so hard and hot the skin felt like it would burn his palm as he took himself in hand and began to stroke his engorged length in time to the rhythm Harley had set. He jerked harder, faster, his cock swelling in his own hand as he imagined what it would be like to be in the same room as his prey.

Would he be able to smell her wet cunt, salty and sticky-sweet in the air? Would he be able to hear the sound of her fingers gliding through her slick, swollen flesh? See the flush that spread across her chest right before she came?

Would he have rushed in to catch her as her legs buckled and she dropped to the floor, crying out in ecstasy and fear as her orgasm brought her to her knees? Or would he have simply stepped in and finished with his cock level with her face, shooting his release across her pink cheeks and between her parted lips?

He groaned as he came—hard, exploding in his own hand, his cum splashing across the computer screen, covering Harley’s face before leaking down to coat her breasts.

It wasn’t as good as the real thing, but it was still pretty fucking amazing. She’d followed his orders and now she would be his. And in a few days—or a few hours, however long he was able to last—he would have her on her knees in front of him, ready to take whatever he would give her.

Jackson fetched a towel from the bathroom and cleaned up his mess, watching Harley get dressed with stiff, jerky motions that made him think she was embarrassed by what she’d just done.

Good.

Embarrassment wasn’t shame, but it was moving in the right direction.