Their Seductress [The Hot Millionaires #1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (4 page)

“Do you know if the police have any leads?” Paige asked.

“If they do, they’re not sharing what they know with me. Not that I’d expect them to. They’re under a lot of pressure to get a result. The media are all over this, and I happen to know that the mayor’s on the lieutenant’s case.” He shook hands with each of them, holding on to Paige’s for long enough to make her uncomfortable. “Expect a visit from him sometime soon. He knows the contents of this will and will have questions.” He turned back from the door. “Oh, I almost forgot.” He put his case down and withdrew a sealed letter. “Ellie left this for you, Isaac.”

Paige showed the lawyer out, slipped into the hall cloakroom, and took a moment to regain her composure, still confounded and overwhelmed by Ellie’s generosity. Then she returned to the room where the two men still lingered, keen to know if they could make any more sense of it than she could.

Isaac had opened his letter and obviously didn’t like what it said. His face was screwed into an expression of extreme anger, a pulse beat at the base of his neck, and he turned a flintlike gaze on Paige as she walked back into the room.

“What does it say?” Nick asked.

“That I should ask you for the truth about my brother’s death,” he said, grinding his teeth.

Nick expelled a long breath. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“What do you mean?” Isaac asked.

“Well, you and Paige were both favorites of hers, and she hated seeing you at odds.”

“Tell that to her,” he said, glowering at Paige.

“Come on,” Nick said, sounding as exhausted as he felt. “If we’re gonna thrash this out, let’s do it in the den.”

“What’s to thrash out?” Isaac asked. “My brother adored her.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Paige. “She dumped him, and he never got over it.”

“Oh please!” Paige rolled her eyes.

“Come on!”

Nick’s tone brooked no argument. Paige and Isaac followed him into the den, walking as far apart as they decently could, both seeming brooding and resentful. Nick broke out beers and handed round the cold bottles.

“Sorry to put this so brutally,” Nick said to Isaac, “but your brother wasn’t quite the blameless saint you’ve built him up to be in your mind.”

“Ah, so you’re on her side, too.” He glared at Paige. “Might have guessed that she’d get you thinking with your dick.”

“Grow up, Isaac. It’s not a case of taking sides. Ellie knew the truth about Doug’s problems, and now she wants you to know it, too. If it weren’t for that letter I would have kept my mouth shut.”

Isaac curled his lip. “You only know what Ellie told you.”

“Sometimes you’re a real arrogant prick, you know that?” Nick asked, glaring at Isaac.

Isaac glared right back. “And where do you think she got her information from?”

“I thought you knew Ellie better than that. She never took anything at face value and always made sure of her facts.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Paige
did
dump Doug, but only after she caught him cheating on her.”

Isaac shrugged, looking a bit like an overgrown teenager in a strop. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“Sure, because it’s true.”

“Look, Doug told me exactly what happened, so let’s cut the crap. He wanted to marry Paige, and she got cold feet. He fell apart when she left him, got back into drugs, and couldn’t do his job. Ellie flew to London to sort out the office when things started to slip, and gave Paige Doug’s job. That’s the truth of it.”

Isaac pointed at Paige again, and Nick automatically followed the direction of his finger. He was taken aback by how pale she’d gone, how small she looked, curled up in a chair with her knees touching her chin, refusing to look at either of them. Nick’s protective instincts came out in spades, and it was all he could do not to stand up and knock some sense into Isaac’s thick head.

“Cool it, Isaac,” he said through gritted teeth. “Things aren’t always the way they seem.”

“She got what she wanted. She destroyed my brother, made him fall off the wagon.” Anger and bitterness competed for dominance in his expression. “She let Doug down by not being there when he needed her the most. Made him drive his car off a fucking cliff, and you don’t think I’ve earned the right to be upset.” He thumped his fist against the wall, causing a picture to jump. “Christ!”

Without speaking, Nick stood up, rummaged in a drawer, found what he was looking for, and slipped a DVD into the player.

“What’s this?” Isaac asked suspiciously.

“Don’t take my word for it. You know how Ellie recorded
all
her activities.”

“Yeah.”

The room fell ominously silent as the face of Isaac’s dead brother filled the screen on the fifty-inch plasma TV.

“I really fucked up,” Doug said, shaking his head. “I screwed up the one good thing that happened in my life.”

“Paige?” Ellie asked.

Everyone in the room inhaled sharply. Seeing Ellie, all five foot nothing of her, so alive and vital, affected them profoundly.

“Yeah, Paige. She caught me a couple of times before, just dabbling with other women. It didn’t mean anything, but Paige isn’t liberal minded enough to see it that way. I managed to convince her that it wouldn’t happen again, to give me another chance.” He shrugged. “Then Layla came along.”

“The English pop sensation who collapsed on stage?” Isaac asked.

Paige nodded. There were tears in her eyes, but Nick could see that Isaac wasn’t moved by them, was nowhere near ready to absolve her from blame. He returned his attention to the screen, still seemingly convinced it was all some sort of gigantic scam.

“Layla wasn’t like Paige. She was fragile. Needed careful handling 24/7. I was her contact at the agency. She wouldn’t deal with anyone else.”

“And you got involved?” Ellie suggested.

“Yeah, she needed it, and I couldn’t afford to piss her off.”

“But it wasn’t a one-off like the others?”

“No, she wouldn’t let me go. Said if I dumped her she’d go to another agency.” Doug spread his hands. “What could I do? It was my big opportunity to put the London office on the map. Layla was a real coup for me professionally, but she was adamant that I had to ditch Paige. She wouldn’t even talk to her on the phone, couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her. That’s how possessive she was.”

“Christ!” Isaac scrubbed a hand down his face. “I’m not hearing this.”

“If you loved Paige, why risk losing her?” Ellie asked.

“Ambition. For once in my life I had a chance to outshine my brother. Nothing mattered more than that.”

“What the fuck?” Isaac sprang to his feet, but Nick motioned him back to his seat.

“We’re twins, but he’s always eclipsed me. He was stronger, better looking, smarter. He’s your deputy, for fuck’s sake, and I’m stuck here in London, not making a success of this tin-pot field office.”

“Layla got you back on drugs?”

Doug expelled a long breath. “Yeah, I have her to thank for that.”

Nick picked up the remote and froze the DVD on an image of Doug’s face.

“Seen enough?” he asked Isaac.

“I don’t believe it.” Isaac rested his elbows on his splayed legs and dropped his head into his hands, shaking it from side to side. “Doug was jealous of me? It’s not possible. I had absolutely no idea that he harbored such resentments.”

“He was weaker than you,” Paige said in a tiny voice.

“Why the hell didn’t Ellie tell me about this?”

Nick shrugged. “I guess she had her reasons.”

Isaac finally turned to face Paige. “I suppose this changes everything, and I owe you an apology. All those things I accused you of. You tried to tell me, but I didn’t want to hear it.”

“You were right in some respects. I knew he had his hang-ups, especially over you. I should have cut him some slack.” Paige sighed. “I was ambitious and uptight and all those other things you accused me of being. And I do blame myself for what happened to Doug. Not a day goes by when I don’t ask myself if I could have done things differently.”

* * * *

Isaac was deeply ashamed of the conclusions he’d jumped to about Paige. He’d needed to blame someone for the loss of his sibling, and she’d been the obvious target. No wonder she hated him. Pity, because he was now ready to admit he’d been jealous that she belonged to Doug. Perhaps that’s why he’d been so ready to dislike her. It was true what they said. The dividing line between love and hate was thin to the point of emancipation.

“Doug was the other half of me,” he said. “It didn’t once occur to me to question his word, even though I guess I always know I should have.”

“He knew that,” Paige said. “And probably played on it to save his pride.”

“Paige, as we’re having a soul-bearing session, why don’t you explain to Isaac how Ellie helped you to get over your hang-ups? Come on, baby,” Nick cajoled when she hesitated. “Don’t allow Ellie’s good work to go to waste. You’ve nothing to be embarrassed about.”

She flashed a wan smile and blushed. “I think I need something stronger than beer if I’m going to do that.”

Nick poured her a generous glass of wine and opened new beers for himself and Isaac.

“Shoot, baby,” he said, sitting back down and smiling at her.

Nick had stripped off again after the lawyer left and was once again wearing nothing more than a pair of shorts. Isaac wondered if the man ever wore clothes.

“Shortly after Ellie appointed me as temporary head of the London office,” Paige said, “she invited me to Tampa to meet everyone. I stayed here at the house, and we had long talks about my relationship with Doug, the fact that I hadn’t really dated anyone else seriously and didn’t feel tempted to. As you know, she was impossible to shock, and I never saw her embarrassed about anything. She told me all about her early life, working at a sex club at a below-legal age, and her predisposition to be a dominatrix. That’s how she met Greg, in case you didn’t know.”

“I did,” Isaac said nodding.

“He married her, and they carried on with their sex games throughout their marriage. He adored her and loved watching her with other men. And women.”

“That’s our Ellie,” Nick said, smiling when Paige’s words temporarily dried up. “Don’t stop now, darling. Let him hear it all.”

“I found Ellie easy to talk to and told her about my strict upbringing. How sex was looked upon as a dirty word in our household, which probably accounted for my guilty hang-ups on the subject. Doug was right about that. I am…was uptight about things like that. I just didn’t realize it at the time. Anyway, I stayed in this house, and on the third night we got a bit tipsy and finished up in bed together, just talking. I had no interest in other women, not like that, but being in bed with Ellie seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and I fell asleep in her arms.” Paige smiled. “It was the best night’s sleep I’d had for years.

“The next evening, early, she invited me into her room. Said she had something to show me. We drank quite a bit, and she showed me some of her sex toys. I had no idea what half of them were, so she educated me. We giggled like schoolgirls and I was eager to try them for myself. I stripped off and tried the nipple clamps. Ellie showed me how to attach them without them hurting, but didn’t actually touch me. She knew, I think, that I wouldn’t go for that.”

“What did you make of the clamps?” Isaac asked.

“It was
the
most incredible sensation. My nipples were so sensitive. I rubbed them with the pads of my thumbs and felt it all the way to my pussy.”

Paige paused to sip at her wine, probably aware that she had Isaac’s and Nick’s rapt attention. Isaac tried to keep a persistent erection in check but was always going to fail in the face of an image he’d have paid good money to see. This gorgeous creature decked out with nipple clamps, touching herself, was the answer to his wildest fantasy.

“My cunt was dripping wet by then,” Paige said.

“Which is when Ellie sent for reinforcements,” Nick said. “I stripped off Paige’s panties and found a tube of lube.”

“Oh God!” Isaac groaned aloud, noticing that Nick was as erect as he was.

“He drizzled that lube over my butt and inserted a finger in my anus. I tensed up, but he ordered me to relax with so much authority in his voice that I immediately did. Then he inserted a butt plug. It was uncomfortable at first, but then it warmed up and the sensation blew my mind.”

“What happened?” Isaac asked, almost panting for more details.

Paige laughed. “Ellie ordered Nick to dress me in a slick bodysuit with nipple cutouts and a gap for my pussy. It held the plug in place and made the sensation even more intense. Then she told him to remove the nipple clamps, put a dress over the bodysuit, and told me we were all going to a restaurant for dinner.”

Nick laughed. “That was Ellie.”

“I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I just wanted to be right where I was whilst Nick fucked me with his tongue, or any of the other toys Ellie had there. I was beyond caring which.” Paige licked her lips. “But there was no arguing with Ellie when she made up her mind about something, so the three of us took a taxi to an upmarket restaurant in downtown St. Pete. Ellie talked about being a dominatrix and how she’d gotten into all that. How much pleasure I’d get from Nick punishing me once I learned how to let the pain transmute to pleasure. Nick didn’t say much but kept running his hand up my thigh. Sometimes his fingers found my cunt. I was dripping wet, totally excited, leaking all over my chair. Ellie noticed and said Nick would have to be punished for that as well, and I couldn’t wait to discover what he had in store for me.”