Bounty (13 page)

The awareness of that fact makes me freeze in my steps. And then there’s April, emerging from the bathroom. She locks eyes with me, and gestures with a finger.

Come here.

A
gain we can use
the pretense of canoodling to talk.

There’s a few more things I think I need to cover before Liam meets my father. Things to warn him about, for his own protection.

The fact that we’ll be crammed in the back together, away from prying eyes, is something I’m choosing to ignore.

Sure.

As he makes his way back towards me, the way he looks at me — raking his intense gaze from my head to my toes — it’s as if my dress goes with it, clawed straight down to my feet. And I realize I cherish the fact that he’s undressing me with his eyes.

I know it’s bad. I know I should stay out of his life, that we need to just get through this meeting with my dad and part ways, for his own good.

That there’s no way he’s still into me, even if his body still desires mine.

He’s a man, after all, and I have tits. And let’s be truly honest — I know the sex we had after the attack was amazing. He couldn’t have faked that kind of animalistic pleasure.

But I need to stop dwelling on that.

By the time he reaches me, I’ve already started this off on a bad foot, if only in my mind. I’m turned on just looking at him.

“Liam, I have to talk to you,” I whisper.

He puts a finger to his lips, that plump, gorgeous, bottom lip, and waves his other hand in the air to indicate that they could be listening. He gestures again, this time pantomiming writing.

It’s like we’re in a movie. I nod, once, and hunt in the back area where stewardesses keep food and stuff, looking for a pen. He darts back to his seat and grabs his spiral notebook that he brought.

I find a blue pen, and he hands me his notebook, which seems to have only a few pages written in it, and in some language I don’t understand.

“Wow. Is that Greek?” I ask.

“Just the letters,” he answers cryptically.

“Okay,” I say, and I begin to write on a fresh page:

1)
Dad is VERY Irish.

He points to the word Irish, and then himself, and nods.

I add:

Don’t fake being more Irish than you are. Downplay.

He nods again, and the edges of a smile, playing across his lips, are beautiful to see. But this is serious.

2) He’ll have looked you up and know everything about your life. Be honest, and play dumb.

His eyes crumple in brief concentration as he reads, and then he just looks worried and a bit confused.

“Well, that part should be easy,” I say aloud, and he lets loose one bark of laughter. I resist the temptation to touch him. He doesn’t want that. Instead, I write the most difficult part.

3) Do not mention my mother.

He shakes his head solemnly as I continue.

That’s for me to deal with.

He nods and puts a hand on my shoulder. Almost immediately, he snatches it back as if scalded.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

I want to tell him there’s no need to be sorry for touching me. Ever. But I guess that’s where we are.

4) And tell him EVERYTHING you saw the night of the attack. Don’t hold anything back. Even if you think you’re protecting me, or yourself.

“Guess we’ll have to tell him what I did to you after, hmm?” his voice, grave and low, is startling and cognitively confusing after these last few minutes of focused silence and furious whispering.

I guess, given what I just wrote, that there’s no use in trying to keep this part a secret. (I mean, I’m not totally convinced we’re actually being eavesdropped upon, but Liam’s fear isn’t outside the realm of possibility.) But it’s still uncomfortable to mention sex… well, my dad won’t press on it, that’s for sure. Way too awkward. But no reason to for us to lie if it comes up.

Wait.

“What do you mean did to me? You saved me.”

“And then I… I assaulted you all over again.”

“What?”

“I should never have done that to you after a night like that.” I’ve never seen such pain on his face. He looks utterly devastated. Not at all the cocky smirks and quick smiles I’ve been used to, or even the set, efficient expressions he’s been wearing lately.

“Liam –”

“It was so wrong. I don’t know what happened, I just lost control. The adrenaline, maybe, I don’t know, some kind of crazy impulse… I’ve never felt like that before. April, I’m so sorry, I —”

“Liam, stop. You didn’t do anything to me. With me, maybe. For me, even.”

“What?”

“I decided just as much as you did. I wanted it just as much as you did. I begged you for it, don’t you remember?” The memory of being spread out for him, aching, craving his cock — it sends a zing of heat through me, pulsing from my pussy up to my nipples.

I pull him back into the lav. I thought we didn’t need to hide this conversation, but fuck if I’m letting my bodyguards listen in, or even the stewardess. The bathroom is bigger and much nicer than the ones in commercial jets, that’s for sure.

Liam considers me carefully, five inches from my face. “But you were vulnerable. You weren’t truly in your right mind.”

“Well then, neither were you!” I realize I’m shouting but I don’t care anymore. “Don’t take my agency from me. Don’t you dare. Not now.”

“I took advantage of the situation.”

“Who’s to say I didn’t take advantage of you?”

“You didn’t want —”

“Does this feel like I don’t want it?” I grab his hand and bring it under my dress to graze against my lacy panties, between my legs, where I’m already wet again. Just from standing near him, watching his lips, remembering his tongue on me. Remembering the wanton begging.

He’s frozen in shock, his fingers gently pressed in a line between my lower lips, triggering a response in me I can’t quite control. A little uptick in my hips, my hands go to his shoulders, and now I’m taking my pleasure from him, riding on his fingers ever so subtlety.

Oh my God.

I step back, off of his hand.

“I wasn’t… sure…” he trails off.

He’s so wrong. Can’t he see, I’m the one flinging myself at him? I have been all along. How much I want him, how much I like him, it’s insane. It’s almost embarrassing.

“Listen to me, Liam Copperhead. Don’t you dare take this decision away from me. I wanted to fuck you that night. I want to do it now. And if… if you’re into it,” his body certainly seems to want it, even if logically he doesn’t love me, “then I’m ready for you.”

“I don’t understand.” He does seem truly baffled.

“Does this help clear things up?” I drop to my knees and start unbuckling his belt, twisting apart the button. “Say yes,” I remind him. “Like I did. Remember?”

I said yes many times the night he fucked me.

He looks down at me, eyes full of wonder.

“Yes,” he breathes, and I untuck him from his pants. He’s hard as a rock again, and this time I get to examine him up close.

He’s gorgeous. Perfectly shaped, huge, stiff as a rod but plump and soft at the tip. The perfect slight curve upwards for hitting the g-spot.

I bend over his manhood, hovering my lips right at the tip, and slowly flick a tongue over the pink, twitching tip, eliciting a throaty moan from him. Even the tip of his cock is bigger than I’ve ever seen, so big that it’s almost hard to fit it in my mouth. I give it a few more wet licks, hot, slow. Teasing him, breathing over him, feeling the blood rushing under my hands, making him harder and harder. His cock leaps with each stroke, a sharp intake of breath hisses from his teeth.

“God,” he moans.

“Mm hmm?” I respond, and the vibration makes him jump again. Then I pop my mouth off of him, and he groans in protest.

“Please,” he says. And now he’s the one begging me.

I love it. I love the control.

“See?” I ask him, and he nods vigorously, lifting his cock upwards towards me involuntarily.

I lay my forearm across his pelvis to keep him still and descend upon him again, working him slow, with a light touch, using his precum as lube. His breath gets throatier and throatier, quickening in pace as I suck him down deeper and deeper with each pump, letting my saliva drop down his staff, lubricating my hand as it jacks him off.

Soon he’s filling my mouth, my lips parted around the base of his cock, the tip pressing against the back of my throat, struggling to fit it all in. I’m literally gagging for him and it’s turning me on like nothing I’ve ever felt before; I’ve never had a man so huge, so rock hard. I can just imagine the hugeness filling up my cunt, remembering how it stretched me to accommodate it. How full it felt, how overwhelming.

I creep a hand down to play with myself, rub against my little pearl of pleasure. He reaches a hand down to pinch my nipple, but I bat it away.

This is about him, not me. And I don’t care if I’m blowing a guy while riding my dad’s airplane, or that he’s destined to leave me. This is about him. I need him to understand he didn’t take advantage. And I love being in control.

M
y rising pleasure builds
, agonizingly slowly. April maintains the most perfect, most exquisite rhythm — fast enough to fetch me, inexorably, towards the edge, but slow enough that my progress is relaxed. I keep wanting more, but she gives me exactly what she wants to give me.

Her forearm keeps my hips pressed down, keeps her in perfect control. I, on the other hand, am losing my mind. Grasping at the sink I’m pressed against, bucking my hips up into her arm, begging her for it, I think. In truth, I can’t really think at all, I can only feel.

I’m so deep down her throat that I feel like there is nowhere else to go, but then she only sucks me down further.

I have an amazing view down the tops of her breasts, her cleavage, and imagining fucking her between them brings me even closer to orgasm. When I see her reach down between her legs to start playing with herself, I just about lose what little control I have left.

I want this to last forever, but I feel my orgasm building, my balls tightening, my cock going even more impossibly stiff, so hard that I might explode any second.

But as I build to the inevitable, she slows, anticipating my state and adjusting so that I don’t go over too quickly. She’s not ready for me to come yet. She makes my plateau last, milking me for precum, grasping the base of my cock just tightly enough that it delays my orgasm, as she regulates her pace to keep me riding the edge.

I seem to float, every nerve ending pulsing in pleasure, until she tilts her face up to make eye-contact with me.

The view of her mouth wrapped around my huge cock, her breasts straining in her bra, her hand snaking down to rub against her wet pussy — it’s too much. I’m right on the brink and she knows this is it, so she pumps me just right, cupping my balls and taking me in deep so that I’m coming down her throat, wracked in ecstasy.

I come and come, and it seems to last forever while her lips pull every drop from my gushing spurts, swallowing my whole load down greedily. She moans as I come, her hand still working under her dress and bringing her to her own sweet release. Finally, we’re both spent.

I lean back against the glass mirror, utterly destroyed, just listening to my heart race, feeling my muscles twitch.

“Okay,” is all I can manage to huff out. April laughs and stands to wrap herself around me, both of us slumped over the sink. It’s not exactly comfortable, but I don’t care.

Best orgasm of my life. Absolutely no question. I feel like I’ve been through a marathon. Exhausted and glowing.

But even as the pleasure just begins to fade, I’m already questioning the wisdom of what just happened. What I let happen. But then April’s voice comes back to me:
don’t you dare take my agency
.

And who am I to question whether she “really” wanted to do that or not? Why not take her word for it?

I drop a kiss to the top of her head, an automatic gesture, but as I do it, it just feels right. I want to be tender with her. I want to take care of her. I want her to blow me like a porn star and then cuddle me like a best friend. I want this, even though I don’t want to want it.

Things are more complicated than that. Because while I feel slightly absolved of one guilt, over circumstances of our sex the other night, it only increases my guilt about lying to her. She thinks I’m someone she’s not. She has no idea that I found her, that I’m with her, just for her father.

And I’m about to meet the man whose daughter just blew me on his private jet.

The man I’m trying to figure out how to illegally kidnap and bring back to the United States for prosecution.

Yeah. Shit’s complicated.

I
t’s
super sticky and warm when we disembark from the plane. Costa Rica is hot even in late October, it seems. April’s yellow sundress — which I almost can’t look at without having blowjob flashbacks — seems to have been the right choice. I’m immediately suffering in my dark jeans and button-down. Suddenly, the fact that they “confiscated” my boots doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. My feet are blessedly cool (and not sweaty) in flip-flops.

We walk from the landing strip to a bus that takes us to a small city-center. Not much more than some convenience stores, some gorgeous old restaurants, and docks encrusted with sailboats and fishing boats. The sea breeze is a godsend. I ditch my shirt and roll up my pants.

“You look like a dork,” April says to me, and the easy, teasing voice makes my chest twinge.

I don’t deserve her affection.

“So where are we?” Lying via questions. That’s my way. “Like… Thailand?”

She squints at me. Too much? I wonder if she knows we’re in Costa Rica.

“Probably not,” she says. “It’s not… jungly enough. And c’mon, we were only in the air like six hours.” She shrugs. “But I don’t know where we are. We’re going to a fancy hotel, so that should be nice. That’s all I know.”

Without my phone, there’s no way for me to get my bearings, and even if there were, I wouldn’t be able to contact Vicente. I can ask the concierge when we arrive, and then walk to a cafe. Make a landline phone call. Risky, but unexpected. Figure out, perhaps, where our designated meeting zones are.

I don’t have much time.

“And when is dinner?” I ask.

“Oh, pretty early, maybe five?” she says. “He likes to start with early drinks and spend the whole afternoon drinking before dinner.” As we round another corner, a Marriott looms into focus.

I researched this. I know which town this is, based on the hotel types available. Parismina is the only Costa Rican eastern coastal town with a Marriott. Built just one year ago.

The streets don’t look like they did on Google maps — or maybe I’m more disoriented than I thought. Those pictures can also be out of date.

Now I just have to ask the concierge for the café Vicente and I agreed upon. Then one of the embassy workers will meet me with more materials.

“So, we’ll check in, and today we should just relax, enjoy the beach, and um. I don’t know...” She trails off.

“I’d kind of like to explore a bit,” I say. Casually. “Maybe I’ll ask the concierge.”

She bites her lip, glancing at the bodyguards that are not-so-discreetly following us, wearing loud vacation-print shirts but not looking any less threatening for it.

“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea,” she says. “Um. It’s kind of… I’m not sure this is such a great town… We probably shouldn’t just wander around.”

“Right.” More like, her father doesn’t want me wandering off.

I wonder if he controls a large part of this town. Doesn’t make much sense, for Irish mafia, but maybe this is near a supplier’s base. Or maybe this has been a safe house for a while.

I guess it’s to the hotel.

When we check in, I’m half-disappointed and half-relieved that we get separate rooms.

April just nods.

“Okay, well.” We stand awkwardly at the counter. “I’m going up, and then I think I’ll hit the beach.”

“What should I do?”

“You can come with me?” She asks.

I’d really prefer to plan my mission, but with no materials, no access to the internet, no way to sneak off and meet with one of Vicente’s people… there’s not much I can do.

Maybe if we hit the beach, I can find a place to get on the internet. Or, Christ, run into someone who I can at least ask what fucking country we’re in.

“Okay,” I say. “They took my bathing suit, though.”

She throws her head back and laughs.

“We’ll buy you a new one.”