Claimed (8 page)

“I like this,” he said. This time, it was him who sounded smug. He came around to stand in front of me, moving my hair out of the way so that my lips were free to suck his cock.

Oh god, I was ready. It had been a few short hours since we’d last made love, but I had missed him for eighteen months. For the next few days, danger or not, I was going to have him as much as was humanly possible.

His erection was clearly visible beneath his trousers. I lifted my head up and my lips closed over that cock through his clothes.

“Can’t wait, Ellie?” he teased. His fingers quickly undid his belt buckle and he unzipped his pants, pushing trousers and briefs down and out of the way. His dick sprang out of its confinement and my lips once again parted eagerly.

My body felt afire with lust. His thrusts into my mouth, deep and steady, were about his pleasure, his satisfaction. Even the idea of him taking me this way made my pussy drip.

I had come such a long way. I wasn’t a terrified girl anymore. I was a woman, who could reach out and claim her sexuality boldly. More than that, I could reach out and claim Alexander.

His dick continued to hammer away at my mouth, but I wasn’t passive, not at all. On each out-stroke, my mouth sucked hard, refusing to allow him to pull away. My tongue flicked at the sensitive underside of his shaft. Each moan, each tightening grip of his fingers on my hair filled me with my own pleasure, my own joy that I caused this reaction.

My breasts ached in my bra. Desire pooled lower. Everything hurt in the sweetest possible way.

He pulled out his dick and slapped the thick shaft against my tongue. “Is this my spanking?” I grinned at him. “I like it.”

He laughed, bending down to kiss my lips. “You are really begging for a proper punishment, aren’t you,
cherie?
” he asked me. He walked away to the wall of spanking implements and returned with a riding crop. “What about now, Ellie?”

I looked at him, trying my best to appear innocent. “I’m sorry, Sir,” I said. “Please can I suck your dick again?”

He laughed but he obliged me once more. Gagging, slurping sounds filled the room as his cock thrust down my throat. My drool dripped from my mouth but I didn’t care. I wanted this.

The crop caressed my bared ass, but he didn’t spank me, he just ran the leather tip all over my skin. Each slide sent a shiver of longing through me. When his cock hit the back of my throat, my fingers curled as overwhelming need wracked my body.

“Fuck,” he swore. He pulled free of my mouth and moved behind me, hastily rolling on a condom. His fingers dug into my flesh as his cock plowed into my pussy in one brutally hard stroke.

“Yes,” I screamed. “Please, fuck, yes, please Alexander.”

His body slammed into mine. There was nothing sweet and tender about this fucking, yet it was exactly what I needed. Danger confronted us; our lives were spiralling out of control. At a time like this, I needed what Alexander was giving me. I needed his dominance and I needed to submit to him.

“Ellie,” he groaned. “You drive me crazy with need,
cherie
.”

His hand reached under my skirt and found my clitoris, and his fingers moved firmly over that tender nub. His touch was assured. He knew my body well; he knew exactly what to do to get me to orgasm.

And I did, astonishingly fast. My muscles clenched around his dick and he growled as he felt me tighten. We both climaxed within instants of each other.

“I liked my punishment,” I said cheekily, as soon as I could form words again. “Let’s do that again.”

He chuckled as he untied me. He carried me back to his bedroom and curled up next to me. I felt my eyelids droop as my body registered the softness of the mattress. “I’m jetlagged,” I told him sleepily. “That’s my excuse for my nap. What’s yours?”

He gave me a stern look. “I don’t need an excuse,” he said. His voice was very even and hard. Dom voice. Then he smiled and winked at me. “Do I,
cherie
?”

“No Sir,” I said. I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes as I spoke and the swat I received on my ass was well-deserved.

Ellie:

I watched him absently as he pulled ingredients for a sandwich from the refrigerator, slices of ham and cheese, lettuce and tomatoes. Something had been bothering me ever since the conversation with Jean-Luc. How had Lucien known that Alexander had been in Hanoi? I presumed that Alexander took steps to hide his movements.

“Did you take your plane to Hanoi?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No,” he replied. “It didn’t seem necessary. We all flew commercial.”

“With fake passports?” I guessed aloud. He’d mentioned he wanted to keep the trip secret. Assumed identities would have been an essential part of that.

He nodded. “That’s standard when we take commercial,” he replied. “But if you are still thinking about the leak, that could have come from anywhere. I was selling the Hanoi estate. There were realtors involved and showings and buyers. Lots of people might have been able to sell that information to Bectell.”

“You know what I suspect,” I said. “You have someone in your inner circle who leaked information.”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily,” he argued. “There are other possibilities. I refuse to believe that any of my people would betray me.”

I wanted to strangle him for his crazy, blind faith. But it was the same faith that had brought us together over and over again, so I instead resolved silently to try to solve this with Jean-Luc. Luke was still recovering from his near-death experience, but I needed to talk to Pavel and Katrina and George alone and see if I could figure out where the leak was.

I didn’t flatter myself about my ability to get results. I wasn’t a psychic and Lucien had managed to conceal his motives from me easily enough. But Alexander was the best person I knew. He was a shining bright light in a world lined with shadows
and I would keep him safe.

“Why did you go to Hanoi?” I asked him.

“I needed closure,” he replied. “Everything happened so quickly. Dylan’s body was flown back to the United States and buried in the family plot in Connecticut. There was no funeral, no mourners.” His expression was bleak. “Not that he deserved either of those things.”

I looked at him with sympathy. I understood his feelings all too well. My mother had died in a car accident. I’d made inquiries upon my arrival in San Francisco and I’d found that there’d been a sparsely attended funeral. But people had shown up to mourn her. My friends Lisa and Amber had been there. Some co-workers of hers had attended as well. The funeral home had a guest book; they’d faxed me a copy.

But Alexander had buried Dylan alone. I understood his compulsion to return to the scene of the crime, to revisit that home where his father had been shot.

And I’d pulled the trigger
. As much as my heart ached for Alexander, I had no capacity to feel bad about killing Dylan. He had deserved to die. I knew it and Alexander knew it and in some miraculous twist, he didn’t hold a grudge against me for doing it. He still wanted me.

Maybe this was some of the karma that Alexander believed in. Maybe this was the universe’s way of paying me back for the years with Dylan.

“Where’s Elodie?” I asked, distracting myself from that train of thoughts. I hadn’t run into his friendly French housekeeper this time around. “Is she off for the holidays?”

“Sort of,” he responded. “The staff are all on vacation, but it was dictated by the attack in Hanoi. After that incident, I couldn’t risk their lives until I could understand who was after me and why.”

“Is that why you don’t have any Christmas decorations? Because your staff usually puts them up?”

“Why are we talking about decorations?” he asked, puzzled. “What am I missing?”

“Nothing,” I blushed. “I noticed you didn’t have any yesterday. This is my life now. It is filled with things like classes and grocery stores and pet food and Christmas ornaments. Boring, normal things.”

“Are you bored by them?” His eyes were on my face.

I shook my head. “I never knew how much I wanted the simple stuff till I lost it,” I admitted. “Not just with Dylan. Even training with Lucien, there was so much I missed. He didn’t form friendships, so I didn’t either. He didn’t celebrate the holidays, so I never made mention of it.” I smiled at him. “Am I being too gloomy for you?”

“Of course not,” he replied. “I want to know everything about your life. Did you put up decorations in San Francisco?”

I nodded, warmed by his interest. “I did. It was nice.” I took a deep breath. “Pre-med. That’s my major. You asked earlier.”

“Tell me more,” he urged. He put a plate containing a sandwich and some chips in front of me. “Why medicine?”

I waited for him to sit down with his own plate before I dug in. “I wanted to be a healer,” I said. “I thought about being a therapist, the way you had wanted to once. But in the end, I thought it would be more rewarding for me to fix physical damage.” I looked at him. “Mental damage is harder to heal from.”

“I can’t disagree with that,” he replied. “Do you want to go to medical school in San Francisco?”

“Yes,” I said. “Is that going to be a problem?”

His lips twitched. “I told you I wanted you around,” he responded. “I guess that means I’m moving to San Francisco.” He looked slightly sheepish. “I might own a place there.”

“Might?” I felt an answering grin break out on my face. “When did you buy this place, Alexander?”

He cleared his throat and looked embarrassed. “Around the time you moved there,” he responded.

I laughed with delight. Every moment I’d pined for him, I’d been in his thoughts too. Why else would he have bought a house in the city I had moved to? “What happened to walking away?” I teased him.

“I fully intended to let you walk away,” he said, getting up and walking towards the refrigerator. He shot me a look over his shoulder. “But I did hope that one day, you’d want to come back.”

Before I could open my mouth to answer, the glass window in the kitchen shattered into a thousand pieces.

***

They tell you that in moments of extreme danger, everything slows down.

We’d been sitting right by the floor to ceiling windows in the kitchen, eating our meal. Alexander had just risen to get a drink of water when the shot was fired.

Shards of glass flew everywhere. I hit the floor out of trained instinct, crawling away from the open window. I couldn’t afford to raise my head to see if Alexander had been hurt, lest I gave the shooter a larger target to aim at. I needed to stay alive to help him.

My ears were ringing, but through that noise, I heard the sound of Alexander’s voice calling my name. He sounded anguished. “Ellie, behind the island. Now.” I obeyed him, ignoring the shards of glass on the floor that cut my skin. I was no stranger to pain.
Pain could be endured.

“Come.” I neared him and his hands pulled me to safety behind the island. I saw that he had a gun in his hand, but he wasn’t shooting. That made sense. The revolver Alexander held was a close-range weapon, but the shots had been fired from across the street. There was no point firing.

Eight years back, I would have collapsed in panic. Not anymore. I was a pre-med student in San Francisco, but I’d been an assassin and that training didn’t go away. My mind remembered Jean-Luc’s reference to Alexander’s bodyguards. They weren’t inside the house, so they must be outside. Even now, they were probably mounting a counterattack.

And sure enough, in the street, I could hear shouting and the sound of returned gunshots. In the distance, I thought I heard the faint wail of police sirens.

Another bullet ricocheted against the cabinet we were crouched behind. I expected the wood to shatter and predictably, it did. But underneath the wood was a sheet of metal and it served as a shield of sorts against the gunfire. “Reinforced steel,” Alexander confirmed grimly. “Jean-Luc’s a paranoid old coot.”

The sounds of the sirens grew closer. The police were drawing nearer. For the moment, it seemed that we were in the free and clear, but only for the moment. Another attack could come at any second.

***

There were two windowless rooms in Alexander’s house. The study and the playroom.

We were crowded into the former, taking stock. The air was thick with smoke; the ashtray on Alexander’s desk was filled with cigarette stubs. “Damn it,” Jean-Luc cursed as he puffed. “I thought I had quit.” Jean-Luc gritted out.

I didn’t point out the obvious lie in that statement. “Was it Lucien?” I asked. “Do you know for sure?”

Jean-Luc handed me his phone. “From the security camera in the building,” he said. On the screen, there was a grainy image of a man with a scraggly beard and greasy hair. It was definitely Lucien. I marvelled at the change in his appearance. He’d really let himself go. He had never been vain, but his beard had always been neatly trimmed. But right now, dishevelled was the kindest word to describe how he looked.

“Yes, that’s him,” I confirmed. My heart sank. A piece of me had hoped that this was all some horrible misunderstanding. The man who had trained me for many years had never been the most empathetic of companions, but I didn’t think he’d stoop so low.

But the evidence before me was indisputable. Alexander and I had both been in the line of fire.

Apart from being competent with a gun, Pavel, one of Alexander’s bodyguards, was also a medic. He was tending to my wounds in a corner. There were some gashes and I gritted my teeth as he plucked pieces of glass from my skin. Thank heavens I’d been cold and had worn a thick sweater. Without it, my skin would have been torn to ribbons. As it was, there was blood everywhere. It probably looked worse than it was.

Alexander had turned white when he’d seen my wounds and I’d sent him away. It was nice that he was concerned about me, but we were under attack and we all needed to be strong. Of course, had the situations been switched and Alexander been hurt, I would have reacted the same way. I couldn’t blame him too much for his protectiveness. We weren’t really that different, after all.

“Was anyone else injured?” Alexander’s voice was strained as he spoke. “How did Bectell even get to the building opposite? I thought we’d secured it.”

“The roof, yes. The apartments, no. He pretended to be a delivery man and entered the Durand apartment. He immobilized them, then fired from their window.”

“Are the Durands okay?” The question came quickly.

“They’ll be fine. They are just a little shaken up. Monsieur Durand is a little worse for wear. He tried to fight back.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Alexander ran his fingers through his hair. “Francois Durand is eighty. Why did he even resist?”  

“Why do we all do anything?” Jean-Luc asked philosophically. “We just act in the heat of the moment; we don’t stop to think. Don’t worry, he’s alright. Nothing broken.”

Pavel finished dressing my wounds and I thanked him with a strained smile before I got up to sit next to Alexander. I needed to hold him close after what had just happened.

Suddenly, the situation had become a whole lot more real. So far, we’d talked and had sex and I’d allowed myself to forget that his life was under threat. Now, it was all I could think about.

A shuffle at the door caused us all to tense. Jean-Luc’s grip tightened on his gun. There were guards posted at the front door, but after this afternoon’s incident, no one was taking any chances.

“It’s just me,” the man who entered said, his voice nervous. He held up one hand defensively until the guns lowered. He was skinny, he wore horn-rimmed glasses and he clutched at a laptop.
My laptop.
I guessed that this was Alexander’s tech guy.

It was indeed. “George,” Alexander greeted him cordially. “Good to see you. Sorry about the mess.”

I cracked up. Partly out of nervous tension, but partly because the blandly voiced words were so surreal in the situation. Alexander shot me an amused look before turning back to George. “You know Jean-Luc and Pavel, of course. And this is my girlfriend Ellie.”

Whoa
. Girlfriend? I looked up, startled. Alexander’s eyes were on me, watching my reaction. As was Jean-Luc.
Way to put me on the spot, Alexander.

Except I wasn’t feeling put on the spot. Muted though it was by the events of the day, the emotion that coursed through my veins was joy.

I cursed Lucien under my breath.
Damn him.
I wanted to savour this moment, untroubled by thoughts of assassination attempts and leaks in Alexander’s organization. I just wanted to lean back and close my eyes and play back the sound of his voice saying those words, over and over, till it sank in.
This is my girlfriend Ellie.

“Hi,” I shook George’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Did you find anything useful on my laptop?”

The answer to that question was
maybe
. George launched into a long explanation, but the gist of it was that most hackers didn’t hack into every single database out there. Mary had been able to pull from a variety of information sources, which meant that she would have had to work with other people. Money would have exchanged hands and when money was involved, there was always a trail somewhere. George was going to start following that trail, but it would take time.