Bought (10 page)

Ellie / Jenny:

I dreamed of Paris that night. Not of the time I slept with Alexander, but of the events preceding that meeting.

I sit in a small café in the first arrondissement. Lucien sits next to me. He’s smoking one cigarette after the other. The collection of butts in the ashtray grows. Lucien chain-smokes when he’s nervous.

On the other hand, I’m the picture of calm. My eyes are level behind the sunglasses I haven’t removed. My t-shirt is black, as are my leggings. I lean back in the booth, my legs stretched out. I sip at my small cup of espresso.

“She’s late.” Lucien’s voice is tense as he states the obvious.

Our target is Ivan Klimov. Ivan, who was one of the five men that repeatedly raped me for two years, has left Dylan’s service in Nigeria. He’s now in Paris, part of the private army of one Stanislav Durov.

Durov is a reprehensible human being and Lucien’s fingers clench into fists every time he hears the name. But Durov is beyond our ability to reach. We can both cause a lot of damage. But we are not gods and we cannot take on the twenty-five well-armed men that surround Durov and keep him safe.

I don’t want Stanislav Durov. The world of human trafficking is ugly and sordid and there are more evil men and women than I have the capacity to tackle. My revenge is more personal. I want Ivan.

Ivan likes his whores. He frequents hidden brothels in the grim immigrant suburbs where the French concepts of
liberté
,
egalité
and
fraternité
are conveniently ignored by the authorities and the poor huddle in teeming masses with no better way of life in sight. There, where the girls have insufficient paperwork and therefore no rights, Ivan buys his sex for the night.

He rarely leaves his whores intact. Bruises, beatings, sometimes broken bones. If they cry, it’s all the better for Ivan. He gets off on the pain of the girls who struggle under him.

We wait for our informant. She’s going to tell us which unfortunate brothel is Ivan’s destination for the evening.

Couldn’t we just follow Ivan? Lucien and I have talked about it. Argued about it. But Durov is dangerous and we do not dare risk getting spotted. Pieter Hoffman’s death wasn’t that long ago. Soon enough, someone’s going to realize that the one thing these murders have in common is that all the men getting killed once worked for Dylan McAllister in Abeokuta. The only reason that connection hasn’t been made so far is that these men are scum, unloved when alive, un-mourned when dead.  

“She’s here.” My voice is low but sharp and Lucien stiffens before he straightens up in the booth. His earlier nervousness has vanished. Now the killer is unleashed.

Not just Lucien. There are two killers in this café.

The woman comes in. She’s radiating nervousness. She’ll never make an operative. One look at her and you can immediately tell something’s wrong.

In my lap, my hand tightens on my hidden knife. Amateurs are unpredictable. This woman is a maid in Durov’s estate, one with a grudge against Ivan, who made a crude pass at her and slapped her cheek hard when rebuffed.

Her grudge and Lucien’s offered bounty of ten thousand euros is why she’s in this café.

She slides into our booth but she doesn’t look at either of us. Her eyes stay locked on her hands and I spy one tiny piece of paper twisted tight in her grasp.

“Avez-vous ce que nous voudrons?”
Do you have what we want?

The slightest of nods. The paper slides forward. “
Merci
,” I mutter as Lucien’s hand closes over the scrap.

“What’s going to happen?” she asks in French.

I meet her nervous brown eyes and I reply in French as well. “You were never here.” My voice is harsh, but her curiosity is unforgivable. Curiosity will get you killed. The less she knows, the less can be pried out of her by torture.

She shivers and stays silent. Lucien removes an envelope from inside his jacket and slides it towards her. She doesn’t look inside to see if all ten thousand euros are there. She just flees.

“You’ll have to pretend to be a whore,” Lucien says. Not the first time we’ve had this discussion.

I nod. “Yes.” I’m not afraid of anything or anyone, but this thing causes panic every time I think of it. The lust of men sends terror through me. There has been no one since I left Abeokuta. I hoped my fear would evaporate as my strength grew, but it hasn’t. I’m ashamed of myself. So I hide this truth from Lucien. He doesn’t need to know.

“You have your knife?”

I nod again. Ivan’s ending will be messy and painful. I’m ready.

***

When I woke up in the morning, the sun was streaming through the windows and the sheer white curtains were fluttering in the breeze. The door to the courtyard was open and I could hear Alexander’s voice in the distance, speaking a language I couldn’t quite make out. Not French and not Thai either. How many languages did he speak?

I didn’t know what to make of Alexander. So far, he’d been perfectly kind to me. He’d made me feel desired, but he’d also wanted me to feel at ease. Everything he’d done yesterday had been designed to achieve that. The casual trip to the night market, the dancing at the club after. I’d been a bundle of nerves and he’d calmed me down.

It could have very easily been different. He could have ordered me to blow him off at the BDSM club right after the auction. He would have had every right to expect me to be eager to please him. He’d just purchased me for three months and he’d paid a million dollars, money that was vital in saving my imaginary sister. I would have been grateful. I would have done it if he’d asked.

He could have done more than that. He could have ordered me to parade around Bangkok in that sheer robe, enjoying my humiliation. He could have shared me with Salim and Rachid. He could have punished me for dancing with another man. He could have believed that a million dollars was expected to buy a lot of cooperation.

But he’d sensed my nerves and observed my fear. He’d acted to reassure me. Personality-wise, he wasn’t a different person from the man I’d slept with in Paris. Then too, he waited for my arousal and need to overrule my fear. Then too, he’d been kind.

I couldn’t reconcile this facet of him with his association with Dylan and Sylvia. Where was the empathy then? Could he not feel it for the children that Sylvia arranged to tear from their homes so they could serve in the brothels of her choosing? Could he not see that Dylan was a full, active participant in the rape and torture of one young girl after another, all lasting a two to three year period before he tired of them and sold them, condemning them to a different kind of hellish existence?

Don’t go there,
I told myself firmly. I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on the horrors that Alexander tolerated, even abetted. Ellie wasn’t able to understand, but Jenny didn’t know anything. All Jenny saw was the charming man who had treated her with impeccable consideration and care last night. Jenny would have quite the crush on Alexander Hamilton by now.

I didn’t need to pretend to be eager to please. I couldn’t deny being turned on by his nearness. My body prickled with lust when I gazed into his eyes. And I hated myself for it.

***

“You are up.” He was in the bedroom when I returned, still naked, from the bathroom. He was dressed casually – navy blue linen pants, a white cotton shirt and sneakers on his feet.

I nodded. Everything was going to begin today, he’d said. A strange, heady sense of anticipation filled my blood.

He looked slightly amused. “Use your words, Jenny.”

“I’m up,” I obediently parroted.

“And are you ready?” Again, that amusement.

“For what, Alexander?” I asked him boldly, and he shook his head at me.

“For what, Sir.” His hand gestured, and I knelt on the plush carpeted floor immediately. My heart pounded and moisture pooled between my legs. Everything wasn’t just going to begin today. It was going to begin
now
.

“Part your legs wider,” he ordered, and I nudged my knees apart. My head was lowered automatically. “Still wider. Show me that cunt of yours.”

Heat filled my entire body. But I did as he asked.

“Link your hands behind your back. Grasp a hold of your elbows.” I obeyed, and my shoulders strained.

It wasn’t the lewdest position he could have put me in, though I remained flushed with shame and burgeoning desire. But as I knelt there, I felt the cool air of the air conditioning waft around my cunt. The effect of my hands, clasped behind my back, was to push my breasts out as twin offerings to him.

He didn’t lean in. He didn’t come closer and he didn’t touch me. He just watched me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all. “You look afraid,” he remarked after many moments of silence.

How could I respond to that? He was very good at picking up what I wished to keep concealed. I was a little afraid. Two years in Dylan’s possession had taught me to be terrified of uncontrolled desire. The one night I’d spent with Alexander two years ago in Paris had not been enough to eradicate all my fear.

“Tell me, Jenny,” he asked, “did you enjoy your time with your previous master?”

Ah, fuck. His question was direct and far too perceptive and I couldn’t lie. He would be able to tell. I tried for a half-truth. “Not always, Sir.”

“Why?”

There was panicked screaming in my mind. Everything balanced on my answer. Dylan. My revenge. The fact that Alexander would kill me if he knew who I was. I needed to navigate carefully through this inquisition so that my fear would be explained but my cover story would remain intact.

“My Master punished me harshly,” I whispered. “I’m afraid to do something to displease you.”

He looked unhappy. “You are my submissive, Jenny,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair in a helpless gesture. “And I don’t think you have the slightest idea what that entails.” He fixed me with a piercing look. “Did you get evaluated by Lorraine’s resident Doms, or did you lie your way past that as well?”

I shivered. I had to act, and act well so that he wouldn’t be suspicious of everything I did. He had to trust me enough to take me to Hanoi. “They evaluated me,” I said tonelessly. My mind reeled. What should I do next? This wasn’t what I was expecting at all – Alexander’s focused attention on me.

“Did you enjoy that?” he probed.

“Yes Sir.” No lie there. I had been nervous about their examination, but they had brought me unexpected pleasure.

“Tell me why.”

“Umm…” I struggled with this. “I could trust them to stop, if I needed them to. I trusted them to respect my safe words.”

“And you couldn’t with your previous Master.” His words weren’t a question.

I shook my head. “Not always.”
Never. Slaves didn’t have safe words.

He looked… troubled. “You are a frightened little mouse, Jenny, and I don’t get aroused by your terror.”

“I wasn’t terrified yesterday,” I retorted. “And I’m not terrified now.”

“Yet, if I unbuckle my belt,” he said, his hands at his waistband, “I dare say your eyes will be filled instantly with panic.”

Only from the remembered memory of what Dylan did to me. Only because I can’t forget.

I kept silent. I stayed on my knees on the carpet, my legs spread apart, the breeze kissing my folds. My hands locked behind my back.

“One million dollars,” he finally said flatly. “For your sister. Take the money and walk away.”

My eyes flew to his face, shocked. Again, my mind struggled to keep pace with what was going on and I fought to improvise. I couldn’t walk away. “Why?” My voice was barely a whisper.

“I don’t want anyone in my bed who doesn’t want to be there.” His words were a dismissal.

I laughed inwardly.
If only he knew.
Even now, when my plans lay in potential shambles, my body craved him. I unlocked my arms from behind my back, stung beyond belief at his assertion that I didn’t want him. My eyes stayed glued to his, even as my fingers dipped in and out of my pussy. I held my fingers out towards him. “I want to be here.” The evidence of my desire was extended towards him.

His eyes betrayed his lust. He took a step closer towards me. “If you stay,” he growled, “you will learn to follow my rules.”

“Yes Sir.”

“The first rule – you must be honest about your desires. Your wants and your needs. What arouses you and what causes you fear.”

“Yes Sir.” I gulped. Dylan hadn’t ever been interested in my desire, just my compliance. But Alexander wanted me naked and revealed to him and that terrified me. Already, I felt too much for him. The way he’d held me two years ago in Paris had etched itself into my memory. Last night’s camaraderie and kindness had reawakened every emotion I’d managed to suppress when I realized who he was.

But I had no ability to turn away from the path I was on. Dylan’s death depended on it, but I sensed that more than my revenge was at stake here. Something about this man filled every crevasse in my soul, and I couldn’t walk away.

“I’m going to punish you now.” His voice was very, very close to me. His hands took my outstretched fingers and brought them to his mouth, and his lips tasted the proof of my arousal. “But Jenny, you should know, your punishment will always fit your crime.”