Bought (Unchained Vice Book 3) (2 page)

Scarlet sat on the chaise in her library with a glass of red wine in her hand. The depth of the silence was disconcerting. She sat in a room filled with words and … silence. Gone was the life. Gone was the laughter. Gone was the abundance that had filled these walls.

Everything good was slowly dying in stages.

She used to like moments of silence.

The peace in watching Killian and Daniel sleep. The calm of floating in her large bathtub while she soaked the good aches away. The happy, quiet contentment of her mind.

Now the silence was empty.
Hollow.

Mute grief.

She twirled the goblet, detached as she watched the swirl of dark, viscous liquid before taking a sip. Dinner would be served soon. It would be as good as the wine and equally tasteless. She made a mental note to thank Sarah. It wasn’t the cook’s fault her appetite was missing.

She’d skip dinner altogether, if not for Killian.

When she’d come home, his car was already in the drive—a rare early night for him, but maybe not surprising. The following day would be the anniversary of Daniel’s death. One year.

Their
annus horribilis
.

It had all started with Daniel. Even before the kidnapping, things had been going wrong. In just twelve months, their lives had been irrevocably changed. She and Killian were still standing, so why didn’t she feel as if they were the lucky ones?

She took another tasteless sip. The wine didn’t even have the decency to get her drunk. It was a sobering thought that, even though the loss of Daniel tore them up, it wasn’t what tore them apart. No, this open wound had been left by the kidnapping.

A wound all the surgery in the world couldn’t heal.

A grief you couldn’t bury.

Still, Killian was home tonight.

Did he want to be close to the memories?

Close to her?

The flare of hope cut so sharp, she flinched, a painfully bright longing that was quickly gone, even as she tried to hold onto it.

Empty-handed.

Just like the shopping trip today. She could buy anything she wanted and nothing she needed.

She stared up at the photograph of a man on her library wall. His build was athletic, his skin dusted in light gold, permanently sun-kissed with a texture that looked like velvet. The honeyed tones created shadows along his planes, accentuating the muscles and strength of him. There was a coarseness to the hair on his lower arms and legs that was utterly appealing.

Temptation stirred the memory between her thighs, slowly rekindling her silent hunger. She loved her men rough. Textured from living. She liked this picture.

She was glad she’d gone to Jason Wright’s exhibition.

Glad she’d bought this piece.

She pushed herself up from the butter-soft leather, drawn to the photograph by its beauty. Her fingers twitched, itching to trace the finely detailed tattoo curling around his broad thigh. A lion, leopard, and she-wolf winding their way up a seven-terraced mountain on an island. Wright had explained the scene depicted Dante’s Purgatory and Hell. He’d called the man a fallen angel.

Her angel lay on a warehouse floor, a shaft of light illuminating him and the small white feathers scattered on the ground. Arms outstretched like a crucifix, he was gloriously naked, but the bended knee hid his groin, and the angle hid his face.

He could be anyone.

He could be—

She looked down at the black business card in her hand and tapped it against her knee. Jerricho Black, Dom for hire.

He could be bought.

She hadn’t purchased anything at the store today, or the day before that. Nothing since this picture … nothing since Jason Wright had placed this business card in her hand and told her she could buy what she wanted.

Needed.

The arms of an angel to comfort the damned.

Scarlet lifted the glass to her lips, tilted her chin, and threw back the last of the wine. A waste of a good vintage. Killian had bought it during better times.

Killian.

She closed her eyes. God, she loved him.

She looked back down at the card.

The attainable and the unattainable.

She turned away to look for her husband, drawing a deep breath because she was tired of the charade. Tired of pretending Daniel was their only tragedy. Tired of talking but saying nothing. Her limbs were heavy as she slowly walked down the passage to Killian’s study.

He wasn’t behind his desk. Instead, Killian was sitting on the rich blue damask couch opposite. Elbow on the armrest, his index finger rested on lush, pursed lips as he read the document resting in the lap of his crossed legs. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves, the navy-blue Italian cotton one she loved. The top two buttons were undone, his ruffled brown hair so dark it was almost black. The errant wave in it was always unruly by the end of the day. She loved him like this. Messy. Human.

“Killian?”

He looked up. The stormy indigo of his gaze settled on her, and her heart did that stutter that made her his. He gave her a tired smile and patted the couch next to him. It was all so familiar and all so fragile.

“What are you reading?” She sat on the couch, kicked off her shoes, and swung her feet onto his lap.

“Government proposal. They’re thinking about a new port in Northern Queensland to increase the shipping routes.” He squeezed her foot.

The heat of his hand on her skin burned as if it held all her desire.

“Will it go through? Vincent Mason is running a hard campaign on environmental issues. The voters like him.”

Killian shrugged. “If it does, I want to be ready.” His trucking empire followed the rail and the ports. “Besides, decisions like this are based on commercials not virtue.” He lifted her foot and kissed the arch.

Hot lust shot up to her core.

She must’ve gasped. She must’ve given some kind of signal of what that kiss did because his body froze. He immediately sought her gaze. A torturous moment as his lips hovered against her skin.

Her heartbeat uncontrollable in her chest.

Her breath stolen.

An agonizing moment of the same searing hope she’d felt when she’d seen his car in the drive.

He broke away.

This time, she didn’t care if he heard the strangled sound of pain, didn’t care if he flinched as something passed behind his troubled eyes.

“Don’t.” He placed her foot back in his lap.

“Why are you home, Killian?”

“Because I don’t want you to be alone. Tomorrow we’ll go to his grave.” This time, he didn’t hide the pain as he spoke of Daniel.

At least, he still shared that … the intimacy of his grief. Maybe that was where she found her hope.

“Thank you.” Her voiced wavered on tears.

He gave her a curt nod as he went back to reading.

Scarlet studied his profile. The moody Irish in his features. The beauty of his broken nose. Everything in her ached for him.

She looked at the open whiskey bottle on the table next to him. He would keep her company, put her to bed then drown his sorrows.

She wanted to drown in him.

Mouth dry, she inched her foot closer to his groin. Emboldened when he did nothing, she rubbed his cock, swallowing the sudden saliva as wetness pooled in the moist, intimate parts of her.

She could feel his cock stir, grow as it swelled and hardened.

An empty twitch inside her sex grew from such a small response. Tension held her body as she resisted the urge to clench, the need to squeeze and soothe the aching hollow between her thighs.

She wanted to feel this need, linger on every sensation he would give her.

She could die from wanting him.

Sink into the madness of longing.

So tired of waiting. Perpetually holding her breath.

She startled at the shock of violence as his hand snagged her ankle, the tremble of restraint in his iron grip.

“Don’t.” A quiet growl.

This time, he didn’t even look at her.

She sensed the burn in her cheeks, and that all-too-familiar bitter taste of shame.

***

Jerricho stopped on the landing and looked at the woman as she came out her apartment door as if she had been waiting for him. His neighbor. Head tilted, he walked up to her. She lifted the covered dish she had in her hands and smiled.

“Everything all right?” he asked, as he got closer.

Yesterday he’d found her pacing the hallway trying to placate a crying baby and not disturb a sleeping husband. A civil engineer by trade, the man now worked a double shift as a taxi driver and shelf-packer at the local supermarket. The building was filled with the displaced and the desperate.

“My son is good.”

He smiled.

“I made this for you.” She lifted the dish again. “To say thank you.”

He’d diagnosed the low fever as teething, then gone to the chemist to fetch her something to relieve the baby’s suffering.

“You knock on my door if he worries you again.” Mothers, he would forever be trying to fix things for them.

She nodded. Her shy smile grew even wider as he took the meal from her.

He unlocked his door to his small studio apartment. Inside, stagnant hot air pushed up against him. Poorly ventilated and without air-conditioning, his living arrangements were a far cry from the opulence of the Dungeon, where he’d just left his last client, but arguably better than any cell.

The basic space was not a home.

He could have bought a fridge that had more capacity than a mini-bar. He could have put flyscreen on the windows to keep the mosquitoes out. He could have rented a better place. The last would have just prolonged his problem.

He wanted to stay uncomfortable, a thorn in his side goading him to action.

He put the dish of food into the warming oven and got out of his suit and shirt—soft luxury cotton that sold the fantasy of power for his clients. Clothes didn’t make the Dom, but it wasn’t about his personal preferences when it came to paying clients.

He pulled on some jeans, and then, barefoot and bare-chested, returned to the kitchenette to warm up some homemade flat bread.

The comforting scent of saffron and cinnamon wafted into the room as he opened the oven. He would add some chopped coriander and mint to garnish the chicken and rice.

The first forkful was heaven; home-cooked flavors melted on his tongue. He spooned over the rich paprika tomato sauce and took another bite.

He pulled the book lying across the table closer and began to read. Rumi was his favorite poet, and the English translation was like discovering the poems all over again. He’d lost his Persian copy on the boat in the high seas. A crashing wave had torn away his only means of escape from the squalor.

His phone vibrated on the kitchen counter. It was tempting to ignore, but he couldn’t afford to miss a client. He reached for the phone.

Tomorrow. 8:30

The muscles in his forearm pulled as his grip tightened at the name of the sender.

He took a deep controlled breath before he typed his response.

10:30

Fuck you. 8:30

10:30. If you fuck me, I can’t be out there being your good little whore.

It took two minutes for the reply.

10:30. Hyde Park.

He tossed his phone back on the table.

It was a dangerous game, pushing back. There was always the risk that one day it would backfire.

He could live with the risk. What he couldn’t live with was giving more control than was absolutely necessary. Just because he wasn’t free, didn’t mean he couldn’t be his own master.

Jerricho showed up at exactly 10:30, nursing his coffee after a restless night. Outside of his hotbox apartment, the air was fresh and the grove of trees in Hyde Park were colored in the new leaves of late spring.

He looked around. Dado wasn’t there yet.

He joined a crowd watching an outdoor chess game, the board and pieces were both oversized.

The older of the two players, a clear favorite with the regulars, joked with easy confidence as he contemplated his next move. The man was the king of the board.

But Jerricho was more interested in the younger player. A student maybe? The boy stood there fidgeting, all lanky youth and still bearing pimples. But his eyes, they were ancient. Intently studying the board, the boy chewed his nails as he waited for
the king’s
next move.

A bookie stood near the far black rook corner. He probably held odds in the old man’s favor, at least two-to-one, maybe more. The youth hesitated with each piece, as if he were second-guessing his moves.

Jerricho watched the kid’s gaze; while everything else seemed undecided, his eyes shone with a hungry cunning. The win meant something to the youth, maybe everything. The most dangerous player on a board was always the one who had the most to lose.

A shoulder knocked into Jerricho’s back, the force unexpected enough to momentarily unbalance him. The man moved past him without an apology and without looking back.

Jerricho watched the man’s retreating back as he went to an empty bench. Then Jerricho threw back his head and drank the last of his coffee.

He met the newcomer’s eyes once as he dropped his empty cup in the bin before ambling over to the bench. Sitting down, he turned his attention back to the board.

“The boss wants you to do him a favor, Doctor-Man.”

Jerricho ignored the statement, smiling to himself as the kid took a bishop. He had five thousand dollars in his jacket pocket. Part of him wanted to say ‘Fuck it’ and make a bet. A year of this shit was enough to urge him to take the risk.

Dado continued on in the same dispassionate voice, “My boss told me to tell you he understands that if he takes with one hand, he has to give with another. He is not an unreasonable man. Cooperation can be mutually beneficial.”

Dado stopped talking and leaned back, casually resting his arm on the top of the bench.

The coil of tension tightened in Jerricho’s stomach. He wasn’t prepared to let them manipulate him into any more illegal medical favors. Despite what the man said, the words were all threat.

Jerricho let nothing show. It took physical restraint to just sit and let the conversation play out. To the casual passer-by, the two of them on the bench might even pass as friends.

That observation would be wrong.

When Dado offered nothing more, Jerricho reached into his pocket and took out the money, tossing the envelope into the man’s lap. “Tell your boss no.” The words came out more forcefully than he’d intended, but nobody around them seemed to notice.

Dado grinned, his off-white teeth predatory. “Don’t be so quick to say no, Doctor-Man. Give him six months’ medical service and he’ll wipe your debt. Even the debt for the boy.”

The boy in question was dead. He’d died on the boat. Already sick and weak, he’d been killed by the heat and harsh conditions of the three-day trip from Indonesia to Australian shores. After dumping his body overboard, the smugglers had demanded double passage from his distraught mother, their greed hidden under the lie that the boy could’ve infected everyone. It was unlikely the boy had anything that contagious or deadly. Jerricho had stepped in when the smugglers had grabbed the boy’s sister as payment instead. One look at the young, terrified girl and he’d taken the boy’s debt on behalf of the mother, trading one freedom for another.

“Your boss is very generous,” Jerricho sneered.

“You do it?” Dado’s English rarely slipped.

“Tell your boss thank you for the offer, but I’m not interested.”

It was a trap. He’d done medical
favors
before; he didn’t like where that had taken him. Ten months ago, he’d removed bullets from one of one of Dado’s men. Ever since they’d been trying to coerce him into forcibly sterilizing their sex workers.

“You like to make things hard for yourself, Jerricho Black—”

Jerricho didn’t hold back the huff of amusement.

“—one call and I can give you up to the authorities. How long do you think you’ll be on that stinking detention island before Australia discovers the Americans want you? You think there’s some new hidden Guantanamo Bay? Tell me, Doctor-Man, how well do you hold your breath underwater?”

His shoulders tightened, the tension running all the way up his neck. He was illegal and he was wanted. The only value he had for these people were his medical skills, but that could always change; men like Dado and his boss were unpredictable.

For a while, Dado sat there, no doubt to give Jerricho time to contemplate his fate.

Then Dado laughed. “Lucky we won’t drown you just yet. Well, not with water.” He laughed again. “You understand?”

Yeah, he understood. Fucked either way.

“Spit it out, Dado.” His words belied the pounding of his heart. “I’m going to be late for my client.” He looked at his watch, tired of this game.

“Interest.”

He’d anticipated it coming and still it stung. The more he fought, the more they pulled him into their web. When he’d refused to sterilize the girls, they’d doubled his debt … with interest. He had money in the banks but didn’t know if that was being monitored. He’d been living completely off-grid.

“How much?” He tried to keep the pain out of his voice.

“Only twenty-eight percent.” Dado grinned as if the offer was one of generosity.

“We done?” Jerricho’s jaw muscle ticked, the tiny pulse irritating when he was pulled this tight.

Dado’s smile spread. “You like being a whore, sticking your cock where people tell you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Jerricho stood up. He wasn’t going to be goaded by this piece of shit. Some days, though, it was hard to be a fucking pacifist.

He looked at his watch. “I have a client.”

“Maybe you want to take cock to earn a little more business? I know some men if you’re looking …”

The sick fuck was enjoying this.

Jerricho walked away, ignoring the comment yelled at his back and the smile in the man’s voice.

So close.

So fucking close to paying off the debt and leaving this all behind.

The injustice burned.

A while back, he’d contemplated running again, but how many people would he have on his heels?

He had to get them off his back so he could focus on clearing his name—his real name. Jerricho Black had been born on a people smuggler’s boat in international waters. A pseudonym until he could get to New Zealand. He knew a retired human right’s lawyer there, an old friend of his father.

He didn’t like it, but he was going to have to get the money.

His phone buzzed in his pocket as he crossed the road, and he reached for it expecting his client.

Five more grand next week, Aqua-Man.

As if he’d forget.

He stuffed the phone back in his pocket and did his best to swallow down his rising anger.

A girl waited in a hotel room, like a godsend, because fuck knew right now, he needed something else to focus on.

***

Room 434.

Jerricho knocked on the door. There was no sound of movement on the other side.

“Open the door.”

Nothing.

“Now.” His low order ground out at the door.

For a moment, still nothing. Then he heard it, the faint sound of her shallow breathing. She had to be standing up against the other side.

The door remained closed.

He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Why did everyone want to fuck with him this morning?

“Jessica.” He spoke softly, almost sweetly, knowing now that she was close. “If I have to tell you to open the door again, you’re going to regret it.”

The door cracked open.

An eye peeped at him through the opening, the pupil fully dilated and leaving only a halo of watery blue around it. He wanted to get lost in that. He needed this.

No longer muffled, her breathing was louder, ragged—a rhythmic lulling.

He let himself fall, his world spiraling into a single focus.

Her.

She flooded his senses. He could smell her, taste her, even feel the racing beat of her heart.

“I lied.” A cold, cruel smile curled his lips. “You’re already in trouble, Chinkara.”

She half gasped, half moaned at the pet name. A desert gazelle.

Prey.

There was no one but him in the hallway. No one to witness. He abruptly shoved the door wider and stepped inside.

Jessica staggered back wide-eyed as he dropped his bag.

In one fluid step, he was in front of her. The silly girl tried to hold her ground instead of backing away.

He slapped her.

She squeaked as his backhand caught her cheek. Her hand lifted to cover the stinging skin even as she unbalanced and fell to the floor.

He turned his back, dismissing her as any threat to him, and locked the door. When he faced her again, it seemed to jolt her back into action. Her hand fell from her cheek, uncovering a beautiful, hot, red bloom from his hand. She scrambled to get up.

“Stay.” The order cracked with intent.

She froze, crouched and panting on the floor.

Awareness of her prickled across his skin. He was almost disappointed she’d listened.

The mark of his hand coloring her cheek caused a rush of blood to his cock. Yes, he was in the mood to be the big bad wolf today.

He stalked toward her. Jessica’s wide eyes were rapt as she tracked his movements.

He felt the heat of her gaze, noticed her focus on the erection straining behind his zip.

Her gaze flicked up as she slowly smiled.

A wicked, wicked knowing smile. The tip of her tongue darted out her mouth to wet her lips.

She made her move.

The wonderful, silly girl.

He was in front of her before she was even on her knees. He kicked her right hand out from under her so suddenly she almost crashed face-first into the floor.

He caught her left hand under his foot, pinning it against the carpet, deliberately grinding some weight on her fingers. Enough to get her attention.

It wasn’t playing rough until it hurt.

Jessica made a strangled noise of pain and stopped. Her chest heaved from the burst of effort.

From the fear and the pain.

From her arousal.

He’d carefully orchestrated every feeling crashing through her right now just by pushing the right buttons.

She leaned forward as if she could ease the pressure on her hand. He looked down her shirt, at her braless nipples hard and protruding.

He had no doubt she would already be wet between her legs. Ready for him.

For whatever was going to come next.

He roughly grabbed her hair in a cruel grip and yanked her head back. The fingers of his free hand curled as he restrained the urge to smack her again, hard enough to maybe split her lip. She liked blood, had begged for it.

Maybe one day when the trust was stronger.

They played harder each time, but he never left any lasting evidence. He didn’t need to talk to any police.

She squirmed as he yanked her back against his legs, so turned on it was hard to keep still.

He loved the way bodies talked.

“If you’re anywhere but on that bed” —he pointed— “then you’re on your knees. Got it?”

His grip in her hair too tight for her to nod. He pulled harder, making her wince.

“Y-yes, Sir.” She looked back up at him and wet her lips.

There was a glint in her eyes, the barest hint of a tilt to those glossy lips.

The little fox was going to try again.

When she did, he’d be waiting.

When she did, he wanted her already stiff and sore from being used.

When she did, the real game would just be beginning.

Everything up to that point of folly would’ve been foreplay.

The thought settled into a warm buzz. He was going to savor the wait.

Dramatically, he sighed and shook his head. “I’m not sure you do understand, Chinkara, but I’m going to help you.”

Still using only her hair, he dragged her toward the bed as she flailed about at his feet and scrambled after him.