His eyelids flickered, another sign that his smooth, politician’s façade was finally failing.
“You really should have learned to read your employees better,” I said softly. “The woman who wrote that letter left your employ a while back. Almost went public after she read the book my birth mother wrote. Had a serious change in her priorities, you see. She had a miscarriage.” I was making it up as I went, going for the most gut-wrenching thing I could imagine that would cause such a change of heart. An operation this massive had to have had a lot of hands involved—I knew that just from a business standpoint. He couldn’t possibly know every single person. Another thing I knew from a business standpoint. “She almost died too. While she was lying in the hospital thinking about the baby she’d never know, she was also thinking about the babies she helped you steal.”
He flinched this time.
And Solomon had started pulling at his collar. “Look, Dominic.” He gave me the kind of smile I would have given anything to see from him a decade ago. But it was too late now—too late, and meaningless.
Ignoring him, I kept my focus on Woodrow. “Tell me something…what will your voters think of your cover-ups if they see the pictures of you with my mother when she was just a kid? Only nineteen, and you a married man in your thirties? Think they’ll still buy those lies that she was a confused child making up stories?”
I put another picture on the table. I had four of them, each one more explicit than the last. He looked at it, then raised his head.
“Well.” He nodded slowly. “I think…” He paused and blew out a breath. “I need a moment.”
He pushed back from the table and headed for the men's room as Solomon leaned across the table.
“Dominic, you have to understand…I didn’t know what all he was involved in. I just wanted to make your mother happy. I loved her so much…”
His words fell on deaf ears and I rose, staring at Woodrow’s back as he worked his way through the light crowd. My gut said something was wrong.
And then all hell broke loose.
Two men in suits rushed past me.
We heard the gunshot at the same time.
A man burst out, face pale. “Call an ambulance! Some guy just tried to shoot himself…there was a cop, but man…” His voice warbled, broke. Then he steadied himself. “The guy’s bleeding all over the place.”
***
Hearing about his partner’s attempted suicide seemed to shake Solomon Snow up quite a bit. As soon as he saw Special Agent Carter, he approached her and quietly asked if he could make a confession. She advised him to wait for an attorney, but he refused and after being read his rights, he’d begun to speak.
Jefferson Sinclair arrived not long after, shooting me a pleased grin as he walked past with the Attorney General at his side.
They let Aleena through the barricade exactly two minutes later even though it felt like a lifetime. I had to see her, touch her, talk to her, fuck her, love her, hold her.
As she threw herself at me, I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her neck. “It’s over. At least the worst of it is. It sure as hell better be.”
She stroked a smooth hand down my nape and kissed my cheek.
“Aleena, please say we can get married soon. I don't want to wait.”
“We can get married soon…Sir.”
Chapter 27
Aleena
Hands stroking down my back woke me from a pleasant dream, but I preferred reality these days. I stretched, sighing as a wave of happiness swamped me.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I said teasingly. “It’s my wedding day. The groom isn’t supposed to see the bride on her wedding day.”
“I won’t.”
Puzzled, I looked back over my shoulder and then stared, unable to speak.
I twisted around in the bed so fast, I ended up knocking my head against his chin since Dominic—blindfolded—couldn’t move out of the way. After I’d kissed his chin, I sank back onto my knees.
“I’m a bit perplexed here, baby.”
“I had to make love to my bride.” He reached out, unfazed by his hindered vision, and fisted a hand in my hair, tugging my face to his. “But I don’t want to do anything that might cause bad luck or that goes against tradition. You’ve been all set on the something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”
The words trailed off as he pressed his mouth against mine. Even as he kissed me, I could barely believe what was happening.
Dominic was a Dom through and through. I should've been the one blindfolded. And with his history...
But he’d done this just to make sure he didn’t trespass over any of the little wedding traditions I’d suddenly found myself clinging to. It was one of the most romantic gestures he’d ever made. Heart aching, I curled my arms around his neck and rubbed my nose against his.
“Thank you.”
He leaned forward and took my lower lip between his teeth, worrying at it for a moment before releasing it. “It’s going to be interesting, Aleena, to take you like this. I know your body so well, but learning it this way? Best wedding present ever.”
He eased me off his lap and I gazed up at him, his eyes obscured by the black slash of the blindfold over his eyes. He took my hands and I shivered a little as he began to wrap a blue velvet cord around them. Blindfolded or not, he had no trouble restraining me and within moments, the velvet rope was biting lightly into my wrists. It wouldn't leave any marks, but it would keep me from using my hands.
His mouth sought out mine and he kissed me with a soft tenderness that made my stomach squirm pleasantly.
He wasn’t quite so tender a few minutes later when he spread my legs and bound them, each ankle to a different bedpost. With the way he was moving, I suspected he'd come in here and practiced. The one thing I did know for certain was that he'd never done this with anyone else, and that meant the world to me.
I lay there, spread out in front of him and although he couldn’t see me, there was something terribly vulnerable about the position. A vulnerability I was only too willing to give only to him.
I whimpered as he traced his fingers up my thigh, then cried out when his fingers penetrated me with absolutely no warning, twisting and curling so that he was rubbing right up against my G-spot. I arched up, panting.
“Be still.”
Damn, I loved it when he used that tone of voice.
I obeyed.
It was torture, lying there as he rotated his fingers inside me, knuckles rubbing against all those parts of me until I was hovering right on the edge. Then his fingers were gone and something else was sliding into me. Something hard and cool...and vibrating.
“Fuck,” I groaned, my body jerking involuntarily.
“I can’t see you right now and it’s both a good thing and torture,” Dominic said, his voice calm, casual.
If I hadn’t felt the heat pouring off his body, I would have thought he was discussing the weather or the stock-market.
But his skin was hot against mine and when I shifted slightly, I could see the thickness of his erection pulsing against the shorts he was wearing.
Oh, yeah.
There was nothing casual about this.
He brushed the back of his hand across my breast and I moaned. Maybe he couldn’t see me, but he was insanely attuned to my body.
“It’s a good thing now,” Dominic said. “Because I doubt I'd be able to control myself.”
He bent down abruptly and bit my left nipple. As far as sexual torment went, Dominic was just about a master. A soft, weakened cry escaped me and I tilted my hips up, arched my back to beg for more.
“If you don’t stop squirming,” he warned, breath hot against my throbbing nipple. “I’m going to get some more rope, pull you out of bed and hog tie you. And it'll take some time since I can’t see you.”
My breath caught. Another low whimper escaped me and when his teeth sank into my other breast, I couldn’t stop myself. I twisted my body towards him.
He chuckled darkly. “That’s it. I warned you.”
***
I preferred to think of it as a promise.
And Dominic had been right. It had taken forever for him to restrain me, Dominic’s hands lingering over the knots, his brow furrowed in concentration. And he'd left the fucking vibrator in the entire time.
Now, I was bent over the fat, wide ottoman that sat in front of the chair under the window, hogtied, with rope running from my neck, down to my wrists, then down to my thighs and ankles. Each ankle had been brought up to my thigh and my wrists were looped to my ankles while the bonds were connected to the loosely tied loop at my neck. I wasn't sure what it looked like, but it sure as hell kept me from moving. At all.
“Let’s try this again,” Dominic said behind me.
He twisted the vibrator inside me, pushing it deeper, and I wailed, the sound muffled as I pressed my face against the soft leather of the ottoman. He did nothing else—just let the toy push me closer and closer to the edge. My body was a quivering mass of nerves and I could feel myself ready to break.
He pulled it out.
“Dominic, please!”
He drove into me with one swift snap of his hips and I came with a hoarse cry, writhing and shuddering around his invading cock. He pounded into me through the orgasm, and thanks to the secure bonds he’d wrapped around me, all I could do was lie there and take it. Take him.
I could feel every inch of him pushing into me, feel the press of his fingers against my hips. He was all I knew, all that existed around me. I couldn't breathe or think. The pleasure inside me continued to build and grow until it threatened to destroy me, and then he was coming, emptying himself inside me as his fingers tightened hard enough to leave bruises.
He collapsed against my back a moment later and I shivered when I felt his lips brush against my spine. He was only there for a moment, and then he was straightening and taking care of me. I didn’t move as he started to unfasten my bonds, but once I was free, I tried to turn to kiss him.
He nudged me back down with a hand between my shoulder blades. “Stay,” he said. “I need to get out of here. Fawna and Molly will be here soon. You need to get ready and I’ve got to get out of this blindfold.” His lips touched my spine again. “And if you kiss me, I might have to make us both late for our wedding.”
I smiled and let myself relax against the ottoman. It really was a comfortable piece of furniture.
He stood and slowly made his way towards the door. Once there, he paused. “The next time I see you, it will be when I make you my wife.”
I couldn’t stop my smile.
“And I’ll make you my husband,” I said over my shoulder as he walked out of the room.
“Damn right.”
***
A baby laughed in the background.
Eli.
I found myself smiling as I rested my head against Dominic’s chest.
My father was talking to Fawna and holding the baby. The two of them looked like they were having some sort of serious conversation, while Eli was having the time of his life, trying to pull the buttons off my dad’s tuxedo.
Dad had just handed me off to Dominic after we'd had the traditional father/daughter dance.
Now Dominic and I were sharing one more dance before we slipped away. We had a private jet waiting to take us to Australia and I had a pretty good idea how he intended to spend most of the flight.
“I can’t believe you’re mine,” Dominic murmured against my ear.
I tipped my head back and smiled up at him. “I’ve been yours from the moment you kept me from falling.”
He touched my necklaces. First, my grandmother's. Then, the diamond one he'd given me. I'd been worried they wouldn't go together, but they did. I’d broken tradition by putting the diamond one on myself because he couldn't see me before the wedding, but today of all days, it had been important to wear it, to wear both pieces of jewelry that symbolized that I belonged to him. His collar and his ring.
The rings…
Smiling, I caught his hand and brought it up to my lips. I kissed the cool metal. “Now everybody can see this,” I said, lacing our fingers together. “You’ve got this symbol and everybody knows you’re spoken for, that you’re taken.”
“Symbol or not.” He hooked his arm around my neck and drew me in closer before spinning me out into a quick circle on the dance floor. My skirt belled out around me and for a moment, I felt like Cinderella at the ball. Then he pulled me back up against him and I knew the truth. This was way better than Cinderella.
“You’ve owned me for a long time, baby.”
I smiled and leaned in closer. “I love you.”
“I want a dance!”
Molly’s cheerful voice interrupted us and I glanced up at Dominic. He grinned down at me. As Molly cut in, I found myself swept up in Jefferson’s arms. Maybe we weren’t going to slip away just yet.
But that was fine. We had the rest of our lives, after all.
Chapter 28
Aleena
“Here you go!”
I grinned at Molly as she put a giant cupcake down in front of me. “You realize my birthday was a while ago, right?”