His to Take (14 page)

“You’re welcome. I know when I’ve been stranded in an unfamiliar place with virtually
no clothes, it always made me feel better to have something comfortable to put on
my back. There’s also a little bit of skin care and makeup in there. I guessed on
what you might like . . .”

Bailey peeked in the bottom of the sack again and saw that everything remaining came
in a lovely little box with the interlocking back-to-back Cs of Chanel. These items
weren’t necessities, but downright indulgences.

“You didn’t have to go to this much trouble, but I really appreciate you.”

Callie smiled, her eyes warm with understanding. “I’ve been in your shoes more times
than I care to remember. Not that I was abducted, I mean. But unfamiliar surroundings,
unfamiliar people, unfamiliar situation. I didn’t have any money or time for more
than the bare necessities. And I didn’t have any friends. I could have used a few.”

Bailey couldn’t imagine anyone not liking the heiress. Then again, Callie’s life on
the run hadn’t allowed her to form many bonds.

Impulsively, she hugged the other woman. “I need one now, so I really appreciate you.”

“It’s my pleasure. Did you sleep last night?”

“Finally. It took a while. I—” Bailey stopped. The other woman probably didn’t want
to hear about her spanking dilemma with Joaquin. “Just a lot on my mind.”

“Sure. Totally understand.” Callie cocked her head and studied her. “Mind if I ask . . .
was it about being Tatiana Aslanov or about Joaquin?”

So much for trying to keep a casual front. “Honestly, both. And there’s not much I
can do about either.”

“Was Joaquin mad?”

“Yeah. Weren’t Sean and Thorpe?” Then a terrible thought occurred to Bailey. “Did
I get you in trouble? I know you like a bit of it, but . . .”

Callie laughed, a light sound that lilted with happiness. “Let’s just say that a little
disobedience can come with a lot of rewards. It’s called ‘funishment’ for a reason.
Besides, I already know I’m in for more tonight.”

“Why do you think that?” What was going on around here?

“I’ve got something up my sleeve. Just wait.” She winked before her expression turned
more serious. “You want to talk about what happened with Joaquin?”

He spanked me and I liked it. I wanted it. I hated myself for it.
“No.” Then she realized that sounded rude. “Sorry. It’s just—”

“No apology necessary. I’m here if you change your mind.”

“Thanks.” Bailey gathered her courage. During her sleepless hours last night, one
fact had occurred to her, and she was dying to question Callie. “I actually wanted
to ask you more about the Aslanovs. I don’t remember anything. I apparently understand
Russian and their faces all looked familiar, but . . . the memories just aren’t there.”

“You were young. And if you were in the house when they died, as everyone suspects,
it was traumatic. Others might wish you could remember, but I know why you can’t.
It’s asking a lot of a little girl.”

Bailey nodded, relieved again by Callie’s compassion. “What were they like, my biological
family? Did you know them?”

Regret crossed her kind, oval face. “I never met Viktor’s wife and children. I really
only saw him a handful of times, the last being when I was about ten. I remember his
thick accent. I remember . . .” She smiled. “His bushy mustache and beard. He joked
with my sister and me once that he was in training to be the next Santa Claus when
his hair went white. Everyone said he was brilliant, even my dad—and he wasn’t a man
prone to throwing that word around lightly.”

The man Callie described just didn’t sound anything like the scientist who performed
such unethical experiments as to alter human genetics. “I don’t know what kind of
man he was.”

Callie shrugged. “I don’t think he tried to discover all those genetic anomalies,
at least according to the notes my father left behind, which he based on your father’s
research before he burned it. I think he really did set out to try to find the genes
that caused cancer and stop them from eating away at people. I don’t think he meant
to exploit anyone or anything. He needed money, and with three small children . . .”

In order to feed her and her siblings, her father had elected to do something unethical
and sell his accidental discoveries to homegrown terrorists.

“Do you know if he understood the kind of people he was dealing with?”

“I don’t know if he did at first. Eventually, he figured it out. According to my father’s
notes, he was terrified of them. At one point, he pleaded with my father to lend him
some money.” Callie shrugged. “I’ve often wondered if Dad regretted refusing him when
he heard about your family’s deaths. Or when they broke into my house and killed mine.”

“You have to believe he did. Just like I have to believe that mine wished he’d made
different decisions. But we’ll never know for sure.”

“We won’t, but I’ve consoled myself with the idea that things happen for a reason.
I couldn’t figure out at the time what possible purpose their murder could serve.
But maybe it was part of fate’s larger scheme to keep DNA-changing information from
the hands of people who would abuse it. And I know that if my life had turned out
differently that I would never have met Thorpe and Sean.”

True. Bailey chewed on her lip. What different path had losing her biological family
served in her life? She’d grown up in Houston, not rural Indiana. She had been raised
an only child, and it saddened her to think that she could have otherwise had siblings.
Maybe her biological parents would have raised her to appreciate her Russian heritage.
Would she have had dance in her life? All good questions with no answers. One thing
she knew for sure: If the rest of the Aslanovs had lived, she would never have met
Joaquin.

Why did that idea disturb her?

“Thanks. I appreciate you sharing what you know.”

“My pleasure. Why don’t you eat your breakfast and change. I’ll give you some privacy.”

Bailey really didn’t want Callie to go, but with a wedding in a few days, she couldn’t
expect a busy bride to hang out with her. But she still had one question she wished
she didn’t. “Have you seen Joaquin?”

“Yes, just before I came in. He was heading behind closed doors with Thorpe and Sean
for what looked to be a heavy conversation.”

She wanted to ask how he looked or if he seemed upset, then she realized how junior
high that sounded. The truth was, she’d panicked when he’d touched her because she
had liked it too much and she hadn’t had the guts to admit it. She had let him blurt
out apologies and leave, thinking the worst. But what else could she have said to
him?
Please, Guy I Barely Know, spank me hard?

“Thanks.”

Callie nodded. “I’ll check in with you later.”

As soon as the woman left, Bailey meandered into the bathroom to change her clothes
and brush her hair. She kind of wished that Joaquin had brought her flat iron along
when he’d taken her from her house, but alas, he probably hadn’t given her beauty
regimen a single thought. Trying to work with her natural waves wasn’t something she
did happily or often, and she made a mental note to ask Callie about some sort of
hot implement in the future.

After doing what little she could with her hair, Bailey pondered snooping through
the bedroom again to figure out what exactly some of the sex toys in the nightstand
did or flipping on the TV. She was about to open a drawer when she heard another knock
at the door, this one firm, decisive.

Joaquin. Somehow, she knew he’d returned.

Bailey dragged in a nervous breath, anticipation and dread swirling in her belly.
“Come in.”

Sure enough, the door flung open, and he filled the frame—all six-plus feet of him
with broad shoulders straining a white V-neck T-shirt, showing off a chest as hard
as concrete. He kissed like a man who knew how to make a woman melt. He spanked like
a Dom who had a point to make. He was insistent. Sure of himself. He was nothing like
any of the boys she knew. Damn it, if that didn’t excite her.

“Good morning. I have to talk to you about last night.”

She crossed her arms. That conversation would be totally embarrassing. “Can’t we just
forget it?”

“No.” He stepped in and shut the door behind him, locking it. “I upset you. That wasn’t
my intention. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. I’ve never spanked one, either. You . . .”
He shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t have an excuse. I pushed you. I scared you.
I hurt you. I’m sorry. That won’t happen again.”

Guilt pummeled her. He might have pushed her, but he hadn’t done anything she hadn’t
enjoyed. “You didn’t scare me. Or hurt me.”

His entire body froze. “Then what did I do to you?”

“Nothing, really.”
Just stirred up my blood and made me ache for you.
She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. Even now, the lie sat heavy on her conscience.
“I’m fine.”

Joaquin closed the remaining distance between them and grabbed her chin. “Look at
me. Since I didn’t hurt you, did my actions offend you?”

“No,” she breathed, unable to look anywhere except into his eyes. Why did she feel
as if she could get lost here, as if he would always catch her and hold her upright
even as he kept her off balance. “You shocked me.”

He nodded as if that was a given. “It shocked me, too. Especially that I liked it.”

Wow, that was honest.
She opened her mouth to say she had, too, but the words just wouldn’t come.

“What about you?” he demanded.

Bailey blew out a breath. How was she supposed to answer him?
You made me wet enough last night to masturbate?
“I . . . didn’t hate it.”

His grip on her chin tightened a fraction. He frowned, his gaze deepening as if he
wanted to pick her thoughts apart. “Were you at all aroused?”

Why couldn’t he be like so many of the people she’d met during her years of dance,
polite and indirect, folks who rarely pinned her down to force out an uncomfortable
reply? Even Blane often let her off the hook.

She swallowed, trying to escape Joaquin’s hold and his gaze. He allowed neither.

“Let go,” she murmured, aware that she had no real power in this situation.

“Not until you answer me. And if you won’t, we’ll repeat last night until I figure
it out.”

Against her will, her breath caught. The memory of his hand on her ass made her heart
pump, her insides flare with heat.

Joaquin stared, not missing a thing. He scanned her flushed cheeks. His gaze fell
to the pulse hammering at her neck. Then that burning stare dropped to her breasts,
zeroing in on their tingling tips poking desperately at the fabric of her shirt.

He knew. That knowledge flared in his hazel eyes, which looked even more green as
the sunlight streamed into the room and across his face. She had nowhere to run or
hide to escape his insistence.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Bailey berated herself. She owed him the truth. But hell
if it wasn’t embarrassing to admit that she found the guy who’d taken her from her
home and spanked her against her will hot.

“Bailey?” he prodded. “I haven’t been less than honest with you.”

“I know.” But she still couldn’t look at him.

“Open your eyes,” he demanded, waiting until she’d complied. “Did you find my spanking
arousing? Because if you need me to confess first, I’ll be perfectly happy to tell
you that it turned me on like nothing else to see my hand on your pale skin. The redness
I left behind after every blow—the marks I’d given you—made me beyond ready to finish
stripping you down and fuck you. Does that make it easier for you to tell me the truth?”

She felt her jaw drop, even as desire stung her. “You can’t say that.”

“Why?” His free hand lifted to her waist, skimmed up her rib cage—and kept climbing.

Every muscle in her body grew taut. Bailey couldn’t breathe. Would he dare to just—
She had her answer a moment later when he cradled her breast in his hand and feathered
his thumb across her beaded nipple.

Her breath caught on a gasp.

“You’re aroused.” He didn’t even ask, just stated fact.

Oddly, Bailey was a bit relieved. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe not.” He shrugged. “But there it is. I want you. You want me.”

“I’m not ready for sex.” She shook her head.

Holy crap, did he think that barely twenty-four hours after he’d kidnapped her, she
was going to just spread her legs and welcome him inside her body? She’d always been
shy about that sort of thing. She’d had one fumbling lover back in high school. Intercourse
had always been something she could take or leave. But already she knew Joaquin would
be nothing like that.

He nodded. “I respect that. I understand it. It shouldn’t even be the first thing
on our agenda right now.”

God, he’d finally thrown her a bone, and she was taking it. “Exactly.”

Joaquin leaned closer, and she could smell his woodsy, musky scent. It made her weak-kneed
and somewhat dizzy, especially when he murmured in her ear. “But it doesn’t mean I’m
not thinking it. It seems impossible for me to concentrate on much else when I’m around
you.”

His words were like a touch right over her most sensitive spot. How could one sentence
make her pussy throb? “We still have to figure out exactly who’s after me and how
we’re going to stop them.”

“I’ve got a team working on that. I’m hoping we can run the sketch of ‘Uncle Robbie’
through some federal databases today and see if we get any hits. Until then, we need
to deal with one another. I need you to be honest.”

“As it pertains to the fruit loop looking for me, I will. But I don’t see why I should
have to confess whether or not you turned me on.”

“Well, if I wanted to force-feed you some reality, I might remind you that in life-or-death
situations, our ability to trust in one another’s honesty might well determine whether
we live to see another day.” He shrugged. “But I’m willing to admit that it’s about
more. I like you. I want you. I intend to take you to bed. Not before you’re ready,”
he assured her. “But I’ll make damn sure we get there.”