Kidnapped by the Billionaire (15 page)

This is a really bad idea. You weren't supposed to let yourself go like this.

No, she wasn't, and yet she couldn't remember why.

Was it so wrong to want to be touched? To be kissed? Was it so wrong to be wanted by someone, even if it was by the man who'd captured her at gunpoint?

No one had come after her but him. No one had wanted her but him.

She wasn't going to give that up, not yet.

“You should be afraid of me, princess.” His voice, rough and gritty near her ear, his breath warm against the side of her neck. “Why aren't you afraid?”

Her hands slid up over the hard surface of his stomach, feeling every dip, every hollow. Reading the sharp definition of his muscles like a blind woman reading Braille. “Because you want me,” she murmured thickly. “Because you won't hurt me. You talk big, Elijah, but you're not as cold as you like to make out.”

The fingers curled in her hair tightened, his mouth nuzzling her throat. “You shouldn't say those things. Don't you know that only makes me want to show you why you're wrong?”

“Do it.” She was panting because the pressure of his thigh between hers was driving her insane. She couldn't stop herself from rocking against it, seeking more friction, more pressure. “I told you before I wanted it.”

“Fuck.” The word sighed against her skin and she shivered as his free hand slid down over the front of her top, cupping her breast, his thumb brushing over the hard outline of her nipple. “You've got no idea what you're even asking for.”

Well, maybe she didn't. Then again she wasn't stupid. “Perhaps I'm not the one who's afraid. Perhaps it's you.”

His hand on her breast shifted, her nipple caught between his thumb and forefinger. And a gasp tore from her throat as he pinched her. Hard.

“And what would you know about me, you delicious little bitch?”

Such icy words said in a cold, cold voice. They made her shiver with delight. Because threading each of those words was a heat that gleamed like a strand of gold through a coal seam.

He was trying to distance her with them, maybe. Yet when she looked up into his face and met his dark eyes, it wasn't distance she saw there. Or snow and ice. She could have burst into flame from one look alone.

“Show me then,” she whispered, unable to look away. “Show me what I should be afraid of.”

He stared at her, his gaze sharp and bright as obsidian, and a fleeting doubt streaked through her mind. Perhaps she shouldn't have said that after all.

But it was too late. Because suddenly he bent and his mouth was on hers again, ravaging, taking. A hard, desperate kiss that had her hands sliding around his waist and up his back, her fingers digging into all that hot skin and hard muscle, holding on tight as he devoured her like a starving man devouring the first meal he'd had in years.

Then he lifted his head again, letting go of her hair and her breast, his fingers moving to the waistband of her pants and pushing them down with a short, sharp movement, taking her panties with them.

You're really going to let him do this? Screw you in an alleyway in the middle of the day? This is what your desperation will lead you to do …

God, who the hell cared about her desperation and what she was doing? Did it really matter? She was twenty-six and she'd been alone a long time, starved for contact, for touch. For a connection in some way to one other person. Her father was a monster, her mother a society ice queen, and her beloved brother, the only deep connection she'd ever had, was gone, disappeared.

Now this was all she had. And she didn't care whether that made her so desperate she'd let this man screw her up against a wall in the middle of the day. She didn't care about any of it.

So she ignored the voice in her head. She ignored everything. The people moving past the entrance to the alley, the music coming from one of the windows above her head, the sirens and car horns. The roar of the city.

There was only one thing that mattered and that was him and what he was going to do.

The cold air on her skin raised goose bumps everywhere and she was shaking as he put his hands on her waist and turned her around so her back was to him.

“Hands on the wall,” he ordered.

She didn't even think about not obeying, the brick rough beneath her palms as she did as she was told. She couldn't get a breath, her heartbeat roaring in her head like a hurricane.

His arm slid around her waist, holding her, and there was heat against her back. Her breath sawed in and out, little chills running up and down her spine.

She could hear the sound of a zipper and she had to close her eyes, bite down hard on her lip because she didn't know what sounds were going to come out of her mouth and she was half afraid of begging or pleading, or moaning with hunger. She might even cry, because for some reason this was agony. The combination of visceral need and anticipation, of not being able to see what he was doing. Not being able to know …

“Elijah.” His name was a raw whisper as she turned her head, her cheek against the brick. “I—”

His free hand slid down her stomach, his fingers pushing through the damp curls between her thighs, finding and circling her clit, cutting her words off dead. The breath left her in a sharp exhalation and her hips jerked, pleasure streaking through her like lightning. “Oh … God…”

She'd used her own hand like this some nights, when she'd been lonely and craving something she didn't have a name for, bringing herself some pleasure. But her own touch had never been this hard, this ruthless. His thumb pressed down hard on her clit while he slid a finger inside her, tearing a groan from her and making her legs tremble. This pleasure wasn't the slow build she was used to. This was sudden and raw, an electric shock from a hundred-volt cable.

Barely able to process that touch, she nearly groaned again when heat burned along the length of her spine as he pressed her against the wall, his fingers suddenly spreading her sex wide, the head of his cock pushing against her entrance. Then he flexed his hips, thrusting hard and deep without any kind of hesitation at all, impaling her.

A hoarse little scream tore from her throat, because although she'd been expecting pain, she hadn't expected that raw pleasure to get even sharper. Or that the combination of both should be so intense, so vicious. That he'd feel so big and that he didn't stop. He drew back, then thrust again, pushing deep, shoving her against the bricks in front of her. One arm was still curled around her waist, his other hand between her thighs, his fingers circling and stroking her clit with merciless expertise, intensifying the pleasure with every stroke.

Words came out of her mouth, words she barely heard, and she didn't know whether it was a plea to stop or a plea to continue. “Elijah … please … Oh God … please…”

His teeth were at the side of her neck, and he was moving inside her even deeper, even harder, each thrust pushing her into the wall, and her legs were shaking, the maddening circling of his fingers relentless. She could hardly breathe through the sharp edge of pleasure.

This was way more than she'd thought. Way more than she'd ever imagined.

He bit her in the sensitive place between shoulder and neck, the pain only adding to all the sensations, the stretching of her sex around his cock and the merciless friction as he drove himself into her. The brick scraping at her palms, scratching her cheek. The iron weight of his arm around her, the slide of his fingers on her clit. Ruthless, searching.

A rough, cold wall at her front, a hot, hard wall at her back. And she was crushed between.

God, she loved it. Perversely it made her feel safe, protected. All those hard surfaces containing all the wildness inside of her. A wildness gathering tighter and tighter, a wave about to break. A bomb about to explode. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter, her whole body beginning to shake, sounds she had no control over starting to come out of her mouth.

She wanted to turn, to see his face, see if he was feeling this like she was, but she couldn't. And a nameless panic gripped her, as if she was on a roller coaster moving faster and faster, and she couldn't stop it or slow it down. Because nothing would. She was going to come and come hard, right here in this alleyway, with a man who she'd repeatedly tried to tell herself wasn't dangerous.

But he was. Of course he was. She just hadn't realized where the danger was coming from.

He was right, she should have listened.

Then his thumb pressed down on her clit as he thrust high and hard, and the wave broke, the bomb exploded, her scream bouncing off the buildings on either side of them.

And she came and came and came.

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

Honor paced back and forward in front of the tall windows of Gabriel Woolf's Tribeca apartment, watching as the sleet hit the glass. Crap weather for a really crap day.

“Eva'll be here in five,” Gabriel's deep voice rumbled from behind her. “She's got a lead.”

Honor stopped and turned to stare at the man she'd fallen so unexpectedly and so deeply in love with.

He was coming across the apartment toward her, tucking his phone away into the pocket of his jeans, all contained power and leashed menace. God, so sexy. Construction magnate and ex–motorcycle club president, he was the ultimate bad boy.

She'd never get tired of watching him.

Gabriel reached her, his long-fingered hands settling on her waist, pulling her close. His dark eyes were fierce, searching. “You okay?”

Honor swallowed, letting herself lean against him, content to absorb his heat and strength for a moment. “No, not really.” Because she wasn't. The last few weeks had been hell. First Alex had been shot and almost killed, then the real identity of Gabriel's father had come out. Evelyn Fitzgerald, pillar of New York society, also rapist, murderer, drug lord and pimp.

And now that the man was dead, she couldn't get ahold of Violet, his daughter and her best friend.

She was worried, terribly worried, and no amount of pretending otherwise was going to work. Before all the crap had gone down with Fitzgerald, Violet had sent a text telling Honor she wanted to see her. Honor hadn't replied immediately, too caught up with the discovery that it was Fitzgerald who'd been behind many of the awful things that had happened to her friends. But after he'd subsequently been shot and the truth about him being Gabriel's father had come out, she immediately picked up her cell and tried to call her friend.

Except Violet hadn't answered. She hadn't texted either.

Which made Honor worried, because there had been something urgent in the first text Violet had sent.
I need to tell you something.

And now she'd seemingly disappeared.

At first Honor had wondered if it was shock at Violet's father's murder—security expert Zac Rutherford's clean-up crew had removed all evidence of the real cause of Fitzgerald's death, courtesy of Eva and point-blank range, planting evidence that would lead police to the assumption of a professional hit. But as the hours had ticked by and there was no contact from Violet, Honor had begun to wonder if something more sinister had happened.

Fitzgerald had a lot of enemies and now that he was gone, there were probably many people who'd want to take advantage of that. People who might find his daughter fair game. His unsuspecting daughter.

Honor had tried getting in contact with Hilary Fitzgerald, Evelyn's wife, but the woman was refusing all calls and Honor wasn't able to get any information about Violet from her secretary who'd obviously been tasked with fielding all the attention.

Going around to Violet's Upper West Side apartment had drawn a blank too. There had been no answer to her knocks, the apartment remaining silent.

It was then that Honor had become officially worried and gone to Gabriel.

They really didn't need another problem, because although Fitzgerald was now dead, the remains of his empire were still very much alive and someone would want to know who'd taken it out. Someone would want payback. Then there was the fact that the man's drug and human trafficking businesses seriously needed taking down, and if anyone could do that, it was the Nine Circles. Eva King, CEO of Void Angel, one of the country's biggest tech companies, and tech head extraordinaire, had already begun putting together evidence for an anonymous tip-off to the CIA and Interpol, since getting the authorities involved was the next step.

Yet Gabriel had been insistent that tracking down Violet was a priority. Not that any of the others had protested. Violet was now his half-sister, and that made her one of theirs.

His hands tightened on Honor's waist. “We'll find her,” he said with his characteristic certainty. “Don't worry, baby.”

She rested her palms on his chest, loving the hard warmth beneath the dark blue cotton of his T-shirt. “Thank you. I know there's not a lot of time, what with—”

“Hey,” he interrupted gently but firmly. “Violet's your friend and she's my fucking half sister. You really think I'd just let her disappear?”

Honor sighed. “No, of course not. We've just got a lot of other things to think about. And … well, I don't even know if she
is
missing.”

“She's not answering your calls or your texts, and she's not at her apartment. That's enough for me to start getting worried, especially after what happened to Fitzgerald.”

Honor stared at the material of his shirt. “She's not involved in any of what went on with her father, Gabe. I know she's not.”

A gentle finger caught her beneath her chin, tilting her head up so she met his dark brown eyes. “I know she's not. Believe me. But that shithead's got lots of enemies around, and now that he's gone, she's a sitting duck.”

Anxiety twisted inside Honor's chest. “What if she's dead already? What if someone got rid of her?”