MILITARY ROMANCE: The War Within Himself (Alpha Bad Boy Marine Army Seal) (Contemporary Military Suspense & Thriller Romance) (160 page)

Bound to the Alpha Billionaire

Book 5

(Can be read as a standalone book)

By: Lucy Wynand

The Architect’s Passion

Chapter One

From the outside, La Maison Noire looked like just another decaying remnant of the eighteenth century.  Badly constructed during the Rococo movement in Paris, its asymmetrical plasterwork mildewed silently over rotting wood.  The vampire of time had also drained away the rest of its dubious, overly ornate charms.  Only the chateau’s blackened windows hinted at an exterior possibly less disappointing.

Once he stepped inside, Eliot Tashiro felt no disappointment, only disgust.  The infamous “blackest” of Paris’s underground BDSM club had been outfitted like a brothel for Goths.  Wall displays of whips and chains did nothing to perk up the funerary furnishings.  Industrial burgundy carpet stretched out like a pool of congealed blood under the bruised or bruising clientele.  Other imminent victims crowded a chrome and black-leather bar forming a moat around the performance stage.  Flickering faux wall torches made Eliot imagine bad wiring more than the dungeon.  Nothing could dispel the unlovely, sour aroma of countless lager spills.

“Monsieur.”  At the bar a handsome, bare-chested boy with pierced nipples lifted his eyebrows in an invitation for Eliot to order.

He placed the black-edged card he’d bought from a very grateful vice detective atop a black cocktail napkin. “I will speak to your manager now.”

“
Oui
, Monsieur.”  The boy collected the card before he waved over a blunt-faced bouncer.  The big man eyed Eliot and then gestured for him to follow.

Back in a large office that could have been at home in any corporate headquarters, the club’s stocky, weasel-faced manager carefully examined the card and then Eliot. 

“This is your first visit to La Maison Noire, Monsieur?”  He sounded politely suspicious.

“You know it is, and I am not a policeman.”  He felt so tired of these inspections he didn’t have to feign his boredom anymore.  “I am here to seek a particular entertainment.  Very young.  Fresh.”

The manager’s gaze grew shuttered.  “You can find many such young, fresh things out in the night club, Monsieur.”

“Not as fresh as I’d like.”  Eliot lowered his voice before he added, “My dear friend, Jin Chen Ba, assured me that you could provide exactly what I desire.  If this is not the case, I will seek my pleasures elsewhere.”

The club manager stood up, all smiles now.  “Mr. Ba is one of our most treasured patrons, Mr. Tashiro.  Please, let me show you to our private level.”

Eliot hated using Ba’s name to gain access to these clubs, as just thinking of the sexual predator made his skin crawl.  But Eliot needed a guaranteed in, and few people outside Tokyo knew that Ba had just been murdered by a young victim’s outraged father.

Once the manager escorted Eliot to a far more sumptuous and tasteful lounge on the third floor, he personally served him a glass of overrated champagne and seated him among a small group of other affluent-looking men.

“Tonight we are holding an auction, Monsieur,” the manager said.  “Some very fine submissive young men willing to attend to all your needs.”

“Only boys?” Eliot asked, setting aside the bubbling flute.

“For tonight, yes,” the manager said, sounding apologetic now.  “I can of course arrange to have some girls brought in for you to inspect, if they are more to your taste.”

Before Eliot could reply, adolescents began shuffling into the room.  The guards escorting them guided them over to the back wall and lined them up under a bright light.  Nearly all of them blinked in confusion, or shaded their dilated eyes with a hand.  One small, slender boy with long silver hair and large blue eyes hesitated for a fraction of a second before doing the same.

“I believe I’ll stay,” Eliot told the manager.  “I see something I like after all.”

#

              Wren Calhoun hated being sold as a sex slave. 

She could fake being drugged with the best of intelligence operatives, of course, and not only because of her MI-6 training.  Most of her childhood had been spent in a sedated stupor.  Because they wanted her to look good, the slavers usually didn’t knock her around much.  The abduction phase usually went fast.  She knew how to project exactly the right amount of dazed fear, too.  Really all she had to do was take her cues from the terrified victims she was trying to save. 

If a pimp or trafficker tried to strip her or take her for a test drive before auctioning her off, she could handle that as well.  Wren always drank two big glasses of warm milk before an op.  The milk settled her stomach, but even more importantly, gave her some extra ammunition.  She could puke on demand, and no one wanted to touch or screw a kid who had sour milk vomit all over her front.

So it was all good, except the gender she had to play.  Becoming a boy being sold as a sex slave was never fun.  For one thing, the prosthetic penis she had to wear itched like crazy.  Then there was the body makeup she had to use to camouflage the prosthesis, which also irritated her skin.  Her handler also always insisted she dye her hair some ridiculous color to distract attention from her somewhat too-feminine features.  For some reason T.J. thought the Lady Gaga hair made her look more convincing as a young gay guy, something Wren would never understand. 

As for the pervs, who were generally heavy-handed brutes who couldn’t wait to maul her, they could be troublesome as well.  Sometimes Wren had to deal with them in their car as they whisked her off to their sex slave love-nest.  She really hated fighting in a confined space, too.  Inevitably she ended up with a black eye or swollen nose after she smashed out a window with the perv’s face.

As soon as she nailed tonight’s pond scum-sucking pedophile asshole, Wren intended to go on a nice, long vacation.  Somewhere hot where no one cared what gender she was, why she had silver hair or who she slept with.  She’d drink and dance and find a nice, big, strapping guy or pretty girl willing to serve as her sex slave for a few nights.

Anything to help her forget that beautiful man in Tokyo she’d kissed.

Once her eyes adjusted, Wren peered through the glaring light.  A good dozen pervs stared back, their faces shiny and their eyes hot.  Only one guy sitting in the shadows seemed less than interested.  She couldn’t make out his features, not that it mattered.  Whoever paid for her would be going directly to jail for the rest of his scum-sucking life.  If not, he’d be forced to play informant, which was even better.  The real deviants rarely lasted more than a month before they botched things and ended up floating in some sewer.

To keep herself from smirking, Wren mentally reviewed her last op.  Pretending to be a cosplay geek at an anime convention had been fun.  Her sting play there had successfully trapped a pair of dangerous Chinese snakeheads, too.  Since the two smugglers had killed or enslaved hundreds of desperate immigrants, she’d been overjoyed to hand them off to the Japanese authorities.  During the op she hadn’t made a single misstep.

Afterward?  She’d couldn’t have staggered into trouble more if she’d walked naked and drunk into a Siberian labor camp.  Instead of going to her room to pack, she’d idiotically decided to visit the hotel’s rooftop bar to have a celebratory drink.  Where she had stupidly talked to the outrageously handsome Asian-American guy standing out on the observation deck.  Of course he’d turned out to be Eliot Tashiro, the billionaire architect who designed for the world skyscrapers, opera houses, and art museums. 

Just her luck, he had to be hot and interesting and elegant, too.  Wren never could run into some dull, shovel-faced Joe Schmoe from Buffalo. 

Of course she knew better than to engage a high-profile man like Tashiro.  If only the bar band had played that slow, sexy ballad she loved.  If only Eliot hadn’t asked her to dance.  Just like a moron, she’d stepped into his arms.

Dancing with Tashiro under the stars had made her feel amazing – as if she were floating on air – but not even that snapped her senses back to full alert.  No, it had taken the thank-you peck he’d given her.  That little polite peck that had somehow turned into a sweet, hot, delicious open-mouthed full-on French kiss.  That had finally blasted through her like a firehose of ice-cold water.

But, oh, that kiss.  Even as she discreetly fled and grabbed her stuff and got out of the hotel, Wren had already labelled it in her memory for future reference:  Best kiss ever.  

One of the guards grabbed her arm and jerked her forward.  Wren faked a stumble and ducked to get a better look at the bored guy.  She looked directly into a Caucasian face with Asian eyes the color of gold-speckled black marble.  As the blood went icy in her veins, she slowly straightened.

“Gentlemen, we will begin the bidding at five thousand Euros,” the ring leader announced in his oily French.  “Do I have five?”

“Ten,” Eliot Tashiro said.

Chapter Two

              A heavyset Slav with a scarred face glowered at Eliot before he bid twice against him for the silver-haired boy.  He then demanded in broken French that the manager let him take a closer look. 

Eliot clamped down on his temper as he watched the brute grab the boy and fondle him between the legs.  As the manager hovered anxiously, he told him, “I don’t want the boy damaged if he is to be mine.  Tell that dolt to sit down.”

The manager went over to persuade the Slav back to his seat.  Eliot watched the boy’s seemingly dazed expression, and saw another, faint glimmer of awareness before the blue eyes shifted to stare at the floor.

“So you do remember,” he murmured, and then briskly took up the bidding war with the Slav again. 

In the end it cost Eliot sixty thousand Euros to prevail, but the money didn’t matter.  Getting his prize out of the club before the brute or anyone else challenged his claim did.  He paid the manager, put an arm around the boy’s narrow waist, and guided him downstairs while he called his driver.

“Don’t worry,” he said as they walked out to the private car that had just pulled up to the curb.  “You’re safe now, little bird.”

“My name is Justin,” he said, slurring the words as he climbed in.  “What’s yours?”

“Please.”  Eliot ordered his driver to take them back to his hotel, raised the privacy screen and then tipped up the boy’s chin.  “I know you’re not drugged.  How did you get involved with these bastards?  Did they abduct you?  Did they hurt you?”

The submissive shrugged and inched away, huddling in the corner.  He lowered the window and reached out as if to feel the night air rushing through his fingers – or to gauge how fast they were moving.

Eliot engaged the locks.  “You’re not jumping out of the car, little bird.”

“I told you, my name is Justin.”  The submissive yawned and closed his eyes.  “You got a thing for birds, man, then you don’t want me.”

              Eliot contented himself with watching the boy until they reached his hotel.  He kept a firm grip on the thin arm as they got out and walked to a side entrance.  Once inside Eliot took his guest directly into the elevator and up to his suite, where he led him to an armchair by the fireplace.

The submissive dropped onto the seat but still wouldn’t look at him.  “So what do you want me to do, man?”

“Sit there while I contact the authorities.”  He walked over to pick up the phone, but then felt arms winding around his waist from behind.  “It will only take a few minutes, little bird.”

“It can wait.”  The boy unzipped Eliot’s trousers and reached inside to curl long, cool fingers around his thick, hard shaft.  “This can’t.”

Eliot watched as the submissive came around and dropped to his knees in front of him.  “What are you doing?”

“Please,” the boy said, and rubbed a lean cheek against him.

Before he could use his mouth on him, Eliot hauled him to his feet and gave him a firm shake.  “Stop this.”

The boy finally met his gaze, his eyes narrow and glittering like sapphires.  “This is why you bought me, man.  Don’t you want it?”             

“I’ve wanted you since you kissed me at the Tokyo Hilton’s rooftop bar.”  He watched Wren’s eyes widen.  “Very well, I kissed you.  I couldn’t resist, not after dancing with you.  You were so light on your feet, I thought we might float off into the clouds.  You can stop pretending you’re a boy now.  I know you’re a woman.”

#

              Wren knew she had to leave, now.  “You don’t know anything about me.  Let me go.”  When Eliot released her, she headed straight for the door, but he beat her to it.  “You really don’t know what you’re doing, Mister.” 

“I’ve done many things this last month,” Eliot told her.  “I’ve bribed hotel managers, and traced credit cards, and followed a hundred false leads until I finally tracked you to Paris.”

She turned to stare at him.  “You did what?”

Eliot nodded.  “I’ve spent the last two weeks here going to sex clubs, talking with deviants, and seeing things that belong in nightmares.  I do need to get away from these people, and have a long soak in a tub of disinfectant.  I should probably have my head examined as well.  What I will not do is leave without an explanation.”

              Wren opened her mouth, shut it, and then banged her head back against the door.

              “Stop that.”  Eliot pulled her away before she could do it again.  “You will give yourself a headache.”

              His move plastered her against his chest, and as much as she wanted to stay there, she had some serious business to attend to.  “Of course I remember you, Tashiro.”  She wriggled out of his arms and put some distance between them.  “I was just having some fun with you.”

              Going to the bar and making some drinks gave her a little time to regroup.  By the time Wren added the olives, she had a new plan.

              “I’ve been trying to find my brother, Justin,” she told Eliot as she offered him one martini, and sipped the other.  “He’s gotten mixed up with some bad people.  The only way I could get into that club was to dress up like a boy.  Then they grabbed me, and I had to fake the whole drugged thing, and you’re not buying this, are you?”

              “This is what I know.”  Eliot set the drink back on the bar and folded his arms.  “Your name is Wren Calhoun, your age is somewhere between eighteen and forty years old, and you are a woman.  You have traveled to nine countries since January, but you have no passport, no identification, no job, no birth certificate and, evidently, no country of origin.  Your name doesn’t appear on any public records.  My people found no records of you anywhere, for that matter.”

              She toasted him.  “But I make a great vodka martini.”

              “This means you are likely working deep undercover for a very powerful organization.  One that has gone to great lengths to erase your existence, no doubt to provide you with ever-changing false identities.”  He studied her face.  “Not Interpol or the CIA.  Something more elegantly underhanded.  The DGSE?  MI-6?”

              “Perverts without Borders,” Wren said, giving him her best woeful face.  “Well, it’s been lovely, Tashiro, but I really must be on my way.”  She drank down the rest of her martini, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and then struck him in the solar plexus – or tried to. 

The world whirled upside down, and then the floor slammed into Wren’s back.

“You should never try to strike a seventh-dan kendōka,” Eliot advised her as he scooped her up into his arms.  “You could get killed.  Did your karate instructor not teach you this?”

She groaned a little.  “I think he forgot to mention it.”

Eliot sat down in the armchair with her cradled on his lap.  “So much trouble for such a small woman.”  His forearm brushed the front of her trousers, and he frowned.  “I know you are not happy to see me.  What is that in your pants?”

“Prosthetic penis, in case I got groped.”  She batted her eyelashes at him.  “Want to see?”

  “I told myself that if you were a lesbian you would not have kissed me the way you did in Tokyo.”  Eliot traced a fingertip along the curve of her bottom lip.  “But I am a fool in love, and you may be a very good actress.”

“I am whatever I have to be, Tashiro.  Usually gender-fluid, although for sex I lean more toward guys.”  She sighed.  “But you aren’t in love with me.  Infatuated, okay, obsessed, maybe, but you can’t love someone who doesn’t exist.”   

He threaded his fingers through her platinum locks.  “I can try.”