Stranded with the billio.., p.4
Stranded with the Billionaire, page 4
And she would be before the night was over.
He moved closer, his abdominal muscles rippling, glistening with sweat; sexy as hell. He could suck her into his orbit with just a glance—made her feel like she was as vital as breathing, as if he’d actually die without her. When she’d married him, she felt whole. The slide had been so gradual that she had not felt the momentum until she was lying in pieces at the bottom.
She felt like that far too often these days. But not when she had the riding crop in her hand.
Anne squared her shoulders, the chill air kissing her naked flesh. Her nipples were hard, sharp—throbbing. And the vibration at her center… oh fuck. She was shivering with desire, trying to stave off the orgasm that was already threatening to render her inert. Her juices dripped down her thighs.
“I want to be on my knees,” she whispered, her voice trembling as much as her insides, a deep, low ache so intense that it stole her breath. “My tongue between your legs instead of the crop against your chest. I want you in my mouth when I come.”
Charles shook his head and grimaced.
To be expected, perhaps. His mother had been giving blow jobs for money up through the month Charles was born. His father had set her up with an estate to pull her out of the sex trade, but not because he cared about her; he’d wanted that woman under his thumb. The estate and proper doctors were better than being born in a strip club bathroom. And either of those was better than where Anne had come from—a fire station in the dead of winter, left in a cardboard box like an unwanted litter of kittens.
“You look disappointed, Anne.” Charles grinned, the candlelight glistening off of his bare skin.
The candles would be weapons soon enough—the red ones especially. He turned the vibrator up again. Higher. Higher.
Anne moaned, breath wheezing from her lungs.
“Make me pay for disappointing you,” he said. “Show me that you deserve better. Any pain I’ve caused you… give it back.” He tossed the crop her way, but she made no move to catch it; her legs were too unsteady, every muscle in her body focused on the vibration against her clit, the frantic rubbing on her G-spot. The crop hit the floor with a wet slap that was both alluring and anxiety-inducing. Fear and pleasure. Pain and euphoria. Charles could not have one without another.
“Pick it up,” he hissed. “Please.”
Her skin shivered. He’d said the same thing the first night he’d shown her the toys—crops and whips and restraints, vibrators of all sizes. He hadn’t used the vibrators that first night, nor had he used his dick. He’d made her come with the whip’s handle inside her, Anne screaming at the ceiling, exhilarated and ashamed.
She cut her eyes at the crop, black against the floor. She turned and bent, carefully, carefully, conscious of the way her ass stuck out, gasping as the toy shifted. His cock stood hard and long against the trail of hair below his belly button.
He grinned more broadly as she retrieved the crop. Heavy in her palm. Charles opened his arms wide into a T. “Do it right, and I’ll fuck you until you beg me to stop. Would you like that, Anne? Do you want me to fuck you?”
His words almost pushed her over the edge. She raised the crop, nipples aching in the frosty chill of the room. Then she brought it down, wincing at the whistling shriek as it cut the air toward his chest.
Crack!
Charles hissed, but his face did not change—a sound more pleasure than pain. “Again,” he said.
She did, oh, she did, again and again, each lash raising welts along his ribs. Pressure at the apex of her thighs. Low, steady throbbing, the excitement that came with power.
But she wanted more than power. She wanted his mouth. His tongue. His fingers gently flicking against her clit. She wanted him to make her come.
She raised her other hand to her nipple, pinching, rolling, relishing the tender sensations that burgeoned in her belly. The pulse between her legs intensified, her need bright and achy, a wave trying desperately to crest. She ground her teeth, bit her lip against the shuddering sensation at her core, and hit him again—hard.
Charles did not flinch. He grinned, straight white teeth, blue eyes glittering. “Beg me, Anne. Beg me for what you want.” Still smiling, laughing at the flush in her cheeks.
Her fist tightened on the handle, the leather slick in her fingers. Fuck you, Charles. Make me come, Charles. Fuck me, Charles.
She brought the crop down as hard as she could, the lash splitting a crimson seam from clavicle to belly button. Anne froze. Had she… cut him?
But it didn’t matter. The vibration at her center was too intense. She grabbed the wall, trembling, trying to remain upright, euphoria pulsing through her body while blood leaked over his hip and dripped to the floor.
She moaned, loud and long, shaking as the orgasm ripped through her. Charles stared. Then he opened his mouth so wide she could see the fillings in his back molars.
“Beep-beep-beep!” he screamed at her—unnatural. Shrill. So high and sharp that she dropped the crop and reared back, her internal muscles still quivering with orgasm, stumbling over the thing, landing on her ass—
Anne blinked, the hazy dawn irritating her eyes. Charles… was gone. And this wasn’t her bed, wasn’t her floor she was sitting on.
Oh… Austria. She was in Austria. Fuck, she was dreaming. And that wasn’t a riding crop she’d tripped over. A fire poker sat on the floor near her left sock. Embers lay scattered along the brick hearth.
“Beep-beep-beep!”
Anne rubbed at her hip, aching from the hard floor. Still throbbing between the legs, but that would pass soon enough. How long had she been sitting here while embers smoldered on the wood? She could have burned this place to the ground.
She grunted, pushing herself to her knees. The nightmares had started not long after she’d left Charles. She should have anticipated that the stress of this trip might bring them back. After all, she was here to fix what Charles had broken. She didn’t have to be Freud to figure out that connection.
It felt crazy now, the things she’d done with him, but it had felt somehow necessary at the time. He’d craved pain until the ache in his flesh matched what he felt inside. She imagined they’d use that physical pain to process the emotional, that by healing his body in the aftermath, she was somehow healing his spirit. That once the pain dissipated, they’d live happily ever after.
But Charles’s pain never ran out—it never would. That was the part she’d missed.
“Beep-beep-beep!”
Anne shoved herself to her feet and stumbled over to the bedside table. The alarm was still shrieking. She slapped it off. Anne could still see Charles’s open mouth, the noise emanating from deep in his throat. She’d have felt better if he’d screamed when she hit him. It would have shown that he felt… something.
Anne shoved her tangled hair from her eyes. The four-poster bed was swathed in garish red linen and might have been inviting if the silks weren’t currently balled on the floor. The sheets looked like a puddle of blood—the aftermath of a massacre. The sun wasn’t up yet, but she could see the light along the horizon, pinkish-purple haze glowing behind the looming mountains.
The phone on the bedside table rang. Anne jumped. For a moment, she saw Charles once more, screaming that horrific jangling sound into her ears. She snatched the receiver and immediately dropped it back into the cradle. The cord felt nice in her shaking hand, and Anne felt better still when she yanked it from the wall.
A little peace and quiet. A few hours of solitude, and maybe she’d be able to function again. She needed to get her head together before that meeting.
Anne splashed water on her face, her eyes on the clock. Seven o’clock here was the middle of the night in New York, but in California, it was ten. An hour after her brother’s wife got off work but half an hour before her nephew went to bed. They weren’t blood-related, but she and her brother had chosen one another as siblings during her fifth foster home… no. Seventh. His tenth. It was a bond far more profound than that of genetics. It had been a connection forged of trauma and survival—a bond set in stone.
She busied herself getting dressed, and by the time her hands had stopped shaking, the clock read seven. Kristin answered on the second ring.
“Hey, girl. Are you going skiing today?”
She smiled. Kristen knew her too well. Anne had skied some of the most dangerous runs known to man. France, Utah, Vermont, even other pistes in Austria. It was a point of pride, a way to stick it to her second foster father—every time she completed a hard run, she heard that asshole’s voice: No one wants to marry a thick woman, Anne. Now she heard Charles’s voice more than not.
Beg me, Anne. Beg me.
Kristen cleared her throat. Her sister-in-law was still waiting for an answer.
Anne lowered herself to sit on the end of the bed. “Yup. I’ll find a good run today before this storm comes in. I need to work out some of these nerves.”
If she wore herself out enough, she might even sleep tonight—without dreaming. She’d rather not tie her own leg to the bedpost to ensure she didn’t light the suite on fire.
“You there?”
“Yeah,” Anne said. “I just…” She took a breath.
“I miss him, too, Annie.”
Her eyes burned, but no tears fell. For months, she’d sobbed herself to sleep; maybe she was finally all cried out. “How’s Henry?”
“He’s hanging in there. We had an appointment at University South yesterday.”
The hospital. Oh no.
“The doctor thinks he might benefit from another spinal surgery. I’m anxious about it, but if there’s a chance that they can restore some function to his lungs…” She sniffed. “I’m always terrified. But I want him to be able to live a life as close to normal as possible.”
“I know you’re scared, Krissy. I would be, too—hell, I am. Tell me when it is, and I’ll come down to be with you, okay?”
“You’re the best, Annie. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d sleep—that’s what.” Kristen laughed, and Anne went on, “I’ll send you some money so you can take time off work to be with him.” And to cover the hospital bills.
Kristen made just enough at her job not to qualify for assistance, and her current insurance wasn’t good enough to pay for her son’s treatment. Fucking ridiculous the way that worked.
“I can’t keep asking you to—”
“You’re not asking me; you never have to ask. He’s my family, too.” It was the very least she could do. She was a goddamn lawyer, and she hadn’t been able to get her brother out of jail before he overdosed.
Anne blinked at the red sheets. Adam had hit a parked car while under the influence and had wound up in prison—his third drug-related offense. John O’Connor had smashed into a bicycle, had killed a man, and he hadn’t even spent the night in county. He was lucky the company had a separate team of criminal attorneys to deal with the details of that case—she might have wanted to help the prosecution. As it was, she hadn’t wanted to know particulars. All she’d done from her corporate office was cut a check to the victim’s family and watch John traipse away without a care in the world.
“I’m so… angry that he did this to us,” Kristen whispered.
“I am, too.”
Her brother was not so much a victim of willpower as he was a victim of trauma. Drug addiction was like taking a painkiller for the dull throb in a rotten tooth; sometimes, you just needed the ache to stop. And what kind of pill was there for the childhood she and Adam had suffered through? What pill was there for Charles’s pain?
There wasn’t one. No matter how many drugs you did, how much pain you inflicted on those around you, you couldn’t erase the demons in your soul.
Not until you were dead and buried.
Chapter 6
John
The air was freezing, a bitter wind that smelled of minerals—iron and stone. John ducked his head, Big-Bird yellow ski poles clutched tightly in his gloved hands as he cut his way downhill. The world before him was a blanket of white. But Anne was a streak of blue, her dark hair a comma flipping behind her shoulders.
They’d ridden in silence the rest of the way to Austria, the plane filled with the buzzing of the engines, a subtle pressure clogging his ears. Anne hadn’t said another word. And once they’d arrived, her hotel phone had gone unanswered. Suspicious as hell. Was she trying to stall him? There were only so many reasons for that.
If Charles had a plan, it’d likely be too late to stop it by the time they returned to New York. As Desmond had said, even the shareholder meeting might be too late. They might be too late now if Anne was in on it. And it was that possibility that had driven him to follow her out here.
If John was with her, she couldn’t plot anything more with Charles—couldn’t solidify whatever plans they’d already set in motion. He couldn’t be around her all the time, but he’d meant what he told Desmond: he intended to do his best to take care of this. Even if following her around like a stalker felt grosser than toothpaste-filled Oreos.
John tracked her down the slopes as best he could, Anne vanishing around curve after curve, skis sashaying back and forth as if dancing. But she wasn’t dancing. She was running. From him.
The slopes near the eastern foothills were supposed to be her destination—just a hop and a jump, the concierge had said. But she’d refused to ride with him, had tried to lose him on the way here. She’d even parked beneath an outcropping of rock near the edge of the mountain as if she’d be able to hide her car—as if he had a drone tracking her.
Unluckily for her, he was a better driver than he was a skier. He’d managed to stay on her tail despite her weaving through traffic and, later, rushing at a breakneck pace to this remote section of mountain. More suspicious with every mile. When he’d pulled up beside her beneath the outcropping, she was already stomping off into the snow.
He had not anticipated any of that. He’d thought they’d ski, get hot chocolate, maybe chat—anything to keep her from conspiring with Charles. At least calling her ex was an impossibility. They’d lost cell reception hours ago.
John squinted after her, the sun glaring against the white, blinding even with his ski goggles. He wasn’t as fast as Anne, and he was certainly more cautious. He hadn’t seen a tree in ages, but on either side of him, planes of flat rocks jutted from the earth to stab at the sky. More teeth. One wrong move and he was good as dead, eaten by the mountain.
He wasn’t a bad skier—the fact that he was upright was a testament to that. But he hated being out of control, knowing that his fate might be determined by one rough patch of ice or a misplaced stone. Anne knew that after an ill-fated company ski retreat, probably why she’d chosen this run. He’d spent that week in the hotel room, raiding the minibar under the guise of catching up on paperwork.
She cut around another corner—gone.
John followed the path right. His breath caught. An enormous stone loomed out of the ice like an apparition.
Anne didn’t seem to notice. She was heading straight for it—so fast.
“Anne!” he called.
She did not turn; did not hear him. His thighs burned, eyes aching with concentration. Anne’s skis were still aimed straight at the outcropping of rock. No hint of slowing down.
“Anne!” he screamed, louder this time.
He could practically see her smashing into the boulder before them, bones shattering, head cracking open—like a skull against a windshield—a bloody heap of flesh. Dying before he could even get a call out to rescuers.
Anne cut a hard left around the stone outcropping and vanished around the bend.
Air exploded from his lungs; he hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. John followed her around, zig-zagging to dodge a scraggly pine.
They shouldn’t be here. They were too far out—too high. And this wasn’t where they’d told the hotel they’d be. Once they hit the bottom of the slopes, they’d have a long trek back to their vehicles. If they got lost or injured, they were fucked.
Desmond’s voice echoed in his head: Anne definitely knows something.
Yeah. She did. It had been niggling in the back of his brain the entire time they’d been on these slopes, had been screaming at him as he followed her for hours along the mountain roads to get here. And the more he considered it, the bleaker the situation seemed. He was her boss, but the way she was treating him, avoiding him as if she had the right to pretend he didn’t exist…
The only reason she’d act like that is if she had job security that superseded insubordination. She wouldn’t try to piss him off if she imagined he’d still be her boss when this was over. Voting with the O’Connors but creating a hostile work environment for herself made no sense. Either Charles had promised her something if she voted his way, or she was back with her ex. And John knew better than anyone how easy it was to fall back into old patterns. If Rebecca called him tomorrow… he’d have a hard time hanging up.
John bit his lip and crouched, trying to keep his center of gravity low, trying not to fall. The outcropping of rock vanished from his peripheral, but another replaced it, the world pockmarked by vicious gray stone.
No, he did not like this. Not at all.
He flew around another zig-zagged corner, wind stinging his nostrils—too fast. Anne was a dot of blue jacket and dark hair 500 feet ahead, nearing a large cornice of blue-gray ice that threw a wide moon-shaped shadow to the snow beneath. Near the cornice, a bare pine stuck from the snow like a needle, and beyond that, the world stretched into nothingness. A void—a cliff.
His heart rate exploded, ankles screaming as he tried to slow himself before he went barreling over the edge.
Anne cut right, her skis shhing to a stop, powder flying. She half-turned his way, but her eyes were not on him. Gazing at the cornice.
His skis slowed—thank goodness his feet listened to him. He slid to a stop beside her much less gracefully, his heart hammering. Colder in the shadow of the ice.
