His Secret Desire (8 page)

Angel stood by her car; a figure of infinite
patience.

"If you don't come then I'll be forced to
call the authorities for your own safety." Clayton added.

"That would not make me safer." She said in a
low, quavering voice. "You have to let me go. Please."

There was a silence. Katy strained to hear
with all her being.

"I can't." He said. "And I won't. Now you
have your choice. I suggest you ride with Angel and let my people
go out to pick up your car."

She gave no answer. The feeling of being
cornered was suffocating, but the idea of giving in to Clayton
Hargrave and accepting his protection was dizzying.

Continue on into the forest, alone, knowing
that the police would soon be after her with all of what that
entailed, or get into Angel's car and drive back to his secure
mansion on the seafront and spend the evening with easily the most
attractive man she had ever met, a man she had almost given herself
to just a couple of hours ago…

Clayton waited. He was sure of the outcome
and he was never wrong about these things.

"I'll take my chances." She said in a voice
barely above a whisper.

The billionaire didn’t move, didn’t breathe;
this
answer was strictly not an option.

********************

An hour later Angel's car was passing through
the automated front gates of the Beechwood Cove estate. When Katy
had said she would take her 'chances', Clayton had almost panicked,
but after a short pause she had continued. 'I'll take my chances
with you for now Hargrave.' She made it sound like a death
sentence. 'I need a place to stay for tonight but this doesn’t mean
I'm working for you.'

Clayton had breathed a quiet sigh of
relief.

The distraught woman had passed the gates of
the Beechwood Cove estate a couple of times in her year long stay
in Lovett, but she had never been inside. It took a while before
the house came into view on the long, winding drive from the
entrance, but when it did, the property was breathtaking. Outside
lighting made the house appear surreally beautiful and the view out
onto the water was magical.

"I see your boss likes to keep a low
profile." She said sarcastically. "Does he think that keeping his
shopping mall sized house lit up like the fourth of July is a good
way of protecting his privacy?"

Angel grunted.

"Anybody comes within two hundred yards of
this property will already have been on camera for five hundred
yards. Clay doesn’t want to be invisible, he just likes to be left
alone. "

"Is that a fact."

"Surely is. Especially when he's feeling the
love."

There was a weird silence.

"I hope you're not talking about me there."
Katy said. "I'm grossed out enough already by your bosses stalker
personality, don’t make it any worse."

Angel pulled the car into one of the many
parking bays.

"Ain't no other ladies allowed on the
premises tonight Ms. Maldon." He looked at her with just a shade of
a mischievous smile on his handsome lips. "I'd say you better watch
your ass in that big house tonight. You may be safe from everything
outside those gates, but it's what's inside those doors you should
worried about."

Angel's large presence had felt comforting up
to this point, now he was just being creepy.

"Don’t worry about me big guy." She said.
"Your boss may be a big shot to you but he's just another client to
me."

"Is that a fact." Angel quit the engine and
turned fully to his passenger. "Well just so you know, Clay and I
go back a long way. All the way back to college when we bunked
together. I used to look after the little punk even back then, and
I always knew he'd make good. I've never and I mean
never
,
not even in the military, met anyone more determined, more clever
and more downright obstinate than that guy."

"You don't know me yet." She said defiantly.
She was here, but she was here because Hargrave wanted something
and that meant bargaining power. She wasn't out for the count
yet.

Angel grinned widely.

"I like your style Ms. Maldon, but guess
what, so does Clay. As soon as I laid eyes on you this afternoon I
knew what I was in for. Clay was always very particular about his
women. As good looking a boy as he is, there were always sorority
girls, cheerleaders, you name it, all running after him, but he
never had an interest. God, it used to make me mad sometimes to see
him pay those hot little mamita's no attention at all because he
would have spotted some nerdy little bookworm computer geek like
you buried away in the college library, or glued to a computer
terminal in the lab all day long. I don’t know what he sees in
women like you." He paused. "No offence of course."

"None taken."

"I've only seen him with three women in all
the time I've known him and compared to them you are the closest to
what he's looking for that I've ever seen."

Angel hadn't stopped staring at her all the
time he was speaking. Katy was trying to stay calm, keep her head
on her shoulders but she was beginning to feel as if she was
floating. It had been one hell of a long day and now this hulking
human brick wall was telling her details about the emotional and
sexual life of his boss, insisting that she was somehow his ideal
woman.

What the hell was this really all about?

"Is this a joke?" She said, trying to bring
herself back down to earth. "I mean, really, where's the camera?
Trust me Angel, I'm nobody's dream girl and certainly not your
boss's."

"I didn't say dream girl
Ms. Maldon
;
ideal fantasy fuck would be closer to the truth."

Katy's mouth dropped open. Angel was still
grinning like a stupid, immature little boy playing a game. The
crudeness of his words were lost in the infuriating playfulness of
his smile.

"I… but I… I'm just…"

"I know." Angel said. "A geek, a nerd, a high
IQ bookworm with an attitude that stinks and a life that looks like
it's about to go down the toilet. I don’t get it either. Add to it
this goddamn secret life you have and bingo, Clayton Hargrave is
well and truly fucked. I've never seen anyone tick all the boxes
like you have. I swear to you, I don't know what he would have done
if you hadn't agreed to come back here with me. You could have
ended up in the damn trunk of the car and that's one scenario even
I never want to see play out."

The implied threat put Katy back on the
offensive.

"I don’t get it Angel, why the hell are you
telling me all this? What's it to you who your boss takes to
bed?"

Angel leaned in close to her and his
expression changed from playful to deadly serious.

"I'll tell you why Katy, because this guy is
like a little brother to me and if you fuck with him I will
personally take you apart."

Katy drew back from the menacing stranger in
shock. She had expected to feel safe and protected on Hargrave's
property, not threatened and cornered by him and his closest
buddies from college. Maybe this was just one more mistake in a day
littered with bad decisions.

"I'm no threat to him." She said hastily.
"None at all."

"We both know that ain't true. You're on the
run for a reason and those two cops had no business at your place
today. You're trouble. I can smell it. Now Clay, he thinks he can
save you. He thinks you're this nice geeky girl with a fighting
spirit and a boat load of secrets he can unlock like some kind of
mystery game, but he's taken it too far this time. I want you gone
by tomorrow. One way or the other. You give him what he wants and
then you get the hell out of here."

"I wish I knew what he wanted. I'd give it to
him already, right now just to make him leave me alone for Christ's
sake."

"Then we don’t have a problem. I'll tell you
what he wants. You tell him everything there is to know about you
and that will get him off, big time. He wants to know what makes
you tick. He wants to know your deepest, darkest, sickest secret
and then once you've told him everything, confessed all your girl
sins to him, then he can fuck you until you scream for him to stop.
Then and only then, will that be enough. Me entiendes guapita? Do
you understand me?"

Katy had gone pale. She looked up at the
house and imagined the full force of what was waiting for her there
inside. It seemed there was no way back from here, no way out, but
the craziest thing of all? She didn't want to back out now. As
scared and confused she was, she wanted to be there, in that house,
with him and give him not only what he wanted but a whole lot more
than even
he
had bargained for. If that was possible.

And for one night only.

Then she would get back to her real world;
alone, anonymous, untraceable, unbreakable. Nadia Komerov, still
free, still strong and needing no-one to take care of her.

"Don’t worry." She said with a new
determination. "One night's all I’ll need. He'll be satisfied."

"Completely."

"Completely, deeply, absolutely. Don’t worry
Angelito, I want to get just as far away from your boss as you want
me to be."

"I seriously doubt that." He said and then
put his hand to his earpiece. "I've got the package outside Clay.
You want me to send it on in?" He nodded his head and then looked
back to Katy. "You're up." He said and then gave her a more serious
look. "Don't screw up Maldon or you might find someone worse than
the cops looking for you if you do."

He leaned roughly across her and flung the
door open.

"You got twenty-four hours to do what you
gotta do. Now get out of my car."

********************

Katy walked the brightly illuminated wooden
staircase towards a vast decking area to one side of the house. Her
secure Blackphone had been buzzing in her bag throughout the
journey from the woods to Beechwood but she had studiously ignored
it. She was tempted now to throw it out into the sea together with
any other device that connected her to the identity she was on the
brink of annihilating. Except that throwing it away might just land
it on the rocks below, ready to be gathered up by Hargrave's staff
and then well and then potentially cracked by his technology. She
would have to keep it for now.

She was still wearing her running clothes and
her legs felt weak beneath her.

When she got to the top of the staircase she
was surprised to see that the deck was as homely and welcoming as a
family home. She had expected something more austere from the
sharply dressed and weirdly obsessive billionaire.

He was standing with his back to her on the
other side of the deck taking a call.

"I thought our security was iron clad, the
best there is, I don’t see how anything like this could even
happen." His deep, velvet smooth voice carried easily through the
evening air and sounded annoyingly familiar already. She didn't
want familiarity. Not with him, not with anyone.

He turned around and stopped speaking when he
saw her.

"Ms. Maldon. I'm so glad you could make it."
He said with the sexiest of half smiles she could have
imagined.

"You're shitting me, right?" She said.

He smiled a little more, only adding to his
sexiness and then spoke into the phone.

"I'll be in touch Dale, keep me posted on the
security breach."

He put the phone away and directed himself to
Katy.

"Are foul language and verbal aggression part
of your psychological defense mechanism Ms. Maldon? Or is that your
actual personality?"

"Psychoanalyst as well as military hardware
tycoon. Is there anything you aren't good at? Or is that just a
massive superiority complex you have?"

He smiled. This was going to be good.

"You've been doing your homework I see."

"If you want to call a ten minute Google
search homework, then yes, I did some homework. Something tells me
the research you did on me took a little more than an internet
connection."

"Dear oh dear, we are a bit grumpy this
evening, aren't we Ms. Maldon?"

"I'm standing in the sweat pants I went for a
run in three hours ago and I'm a prisoner in your, admittedly
gorgeous, home; should I be singing choruses from the Sound of
Music?"

"You really are something." He said with
obvious pleasure. "I've never met one quite like you before."

His use of the word 'one' brought Katy back
to reality. This wasn't a fantasy date with a supermodel rich
enough to outbid Bill Gates, she was here under duress to stay one
step ahead of the Russian Mafia, the police and the FBI, and if
that wasn't enough she would soon have one of the smartest men she
had ever met digging into her past for his off the wall sexual
gratification. Add to this the insane best friend outside who
essentially had her on the clock with a mission to satisfy all of
his boss's perverted needs within the next twenty-four hours and
the atmosphere became something less than romantic.

She put her hand to her forehead and looked
around the deck, over into the house and then back out over the
dark ocean.

"Clayton…" It was the first time she had said
his name.

"Katy?"

"Clayton, I don’t feel so good…" The room
began to spin around her, the feeling of disorientation making her
nauseous. Had she moved far enough away from the steps she had
climbed to get to the deck yet? Jesus, she would break her neck if
she fell back down there.

She felt the ground go from under her feet
and saw blackness; the inky darkness of the clouded night sky above
them seemed to move in slow motion and then her vision was filled
with two most beautiful eyes she could imagine.

For a moment she didn’t recognize them.

The black night was replaced by soft light
and soft, warm, comforting interior colors. She was indoors.