In His Grip: His #5 (A Billionaire Domination Serial) (4 page)

“Don’t forget I raised a girl.” Manuela lifted that classically beautiful face and pursed her glossy red lips in a subtly impish smile. “And I used to be one, you know. I may be just a simple cook—”

“Chef,” I corrected her.

“But you should trust the judgment of this old Brazilian grandmother. Keep your girl from making a mistake, Deus me livre, with that rich blond filho da puta.” That son of a bitch.

“Language, Avό,” I chided, but I couldn’t help warming to the passion in Manuela’s voice, even when it came out as a sudden curse…or perhaps because of it.

Another few hours at the project site, swinging a hammer and jerking a saw through all the thickest pieces of wood I could find, and I’d settled myself enough that I thought I might have a fair chance at a civil conversation with Miss Bloom. With the heat of the day, and in need of a shower, I didn’t bother to put my shirt back on for the trip back to the villa. I was at a distinct disadvantage upon my arrival, finding a small collection of men at my front door, some clad in the dark shirts and khakis of federal authorities and several in the green of the Brazilian environmental police. They were waving papers in the face of the security guard at my door, a furious clamor of hurried Portuguese buzzing amongst the men.

My gut tightened at the sight, at the recognition of impending confrontation, and my brow started pounding with the pressure that always preceded a torturously resilient headache. The fragile calm I’d found working at the project site burned off with the heat of rising blood pressure as I pulled my dirty t-shirt back on while walking up to my door.

A quick scan of the group told me Daniel Vaz was not there, but I had no doubt this was the IBAMA investigator’s influence at work. For a moment, the hair on the back of my neck rose, and I clenched my jaw, wishing futilely that Chloe has listened to me and stayed away from the man. It wasn’t a fair thought, I knew, and I quickly dismissed it. How could I say I shouldn’t
have rushed to pull him off her when I’d found him forcing himself on the submissive under my care? Vaz was just lucky I’d only broken his nose. He owed that to Chloe, who had dragged me off him when the blood started to flow.

Now a bear of a man with swept-back black hair and a thick mustache nodded at the sight of me, grabbed the bundle of papers, and notified me crisply and officially of the pending federal charges against me. The cool façade necessary for damage control washed over me as I read through the paperwork, not arrest warrants—not yet—but search warrants and subpoenas for documentation.

With a quick glance to the security guard, I asked, “Is Miss Bloom inside?” It wouldn’t do to have federal agents rush in to find my naked submissive. I had promised Chloe no one would ever violate our privacy the way Vaz had.

“No, Mr. Knight.” Which was both a relief and a concern. Was she with Penn?

It appeared to take the authorities off guard when I consented to the search without making a fuss, though I did use my cell to call my attorneys.

While federal agents scoured my home, my sanctuary, confiscating desktops and laptops and PDAs, I sat patiently in the golf cart with arms crossed over my chest and one ankle crossed over the other as I propped my feet up on the dash. It wouldn’t do to look worried at a moment like this. By now, the flush of stress and temper had faded to a low simmer of heat over my cheeks and the bridge of my nose, hardly noticeable in the afternoon sun.

I recognized the feeling, the sense of defeat, of everything that could go wrong going so much more wrong than feared. But I’d lived through it before, when Penn had led the effort to utterly ostracize the new boy with the supposedly fake British accent at Siemer, and when my first attempts to find work in the industry had met either with disdain for my last name or a distressing reverence for it. I’d tamed that London lilt, pulling it out only in private for girls who asked
nicely
, and I had finally changed my surname and acquiesced to my adviser’s recommendation that I use my trust to start my own business.

But the more I remade myself, the more I became those things I rejected. Until Ilha de Flor and the eco park project. That was me, or what I wanted to be. For a few days—God, it really had only been
days
—I’d had the woman to go with that fantasy identity, the image I’d pictured for myself as an idealistic teen giving my family and all the right social circles the finger.

It would have been just perfect to have my Miss Bloom show up now, I mused darkly as I vacillated between picturing the worst—a Brazilian prison, Penn riding off into the sunset with Chloe, Ilha de Flor sold off to someone who wanted to tear out every tree and orchid in favor of a twenty thousand acre carpet of golf turf and tennis courts—and pep-talking myself through the steps of answering these federal charges, bringing my submissive in line, and throwing Penn Ellison the bloody hell off my island.

Two hours later, as the investigators were packing their boxes of confiscated documents and equipment into the black SUVs they had ferried over from Natal, I had come to only one decision. I wanted the Macallan scotch, not the Dalmore. After a shower, of course. I suffered an hour of cleaning up the villa first, only surprised the disarray of having a half dozen strangers rifling through my belongings was not much worse. Of course, I could have called over to the resort to have them send cleaning staff to do it, but I didn’t want anyone else there just then. It was my space, my haven, and my damage to repair.

The first swallow of obscenely expensive and startlingly smoky scotch was only just burning its way down my throat, where I stood in nothing more than a towel at the wet bar in the living room, when someone knocked hard at the front door. I took my time and a second slow sip. That wouldn’t have been the investigators again, I wagered. They’d have given me a quick count of two after that knock and just barged in. And Chloe wouldn’t have knocked at all.

With a third sip, I glanced at the dark wood clock on the far wall. It was late afternoon, about the time my Miss Bloom and I usually showered together and started getting ready to greet dinner guests at the resort’s upper balcony. With our tendency to get sidetracked into an impromptu
session
, we needed the two or three-hour head start.

When the knock sounded again, I responded, “Come in.” I didn’t mean it, but it was too late and probably inadvisable to take it back.

The door slid open with a light creak of wood, and Penn fucking Ellison walked into my villa. To my credit, I didn’t lunge at him or break the heavy crystal glass in my hand to gut him with a shard. That would’ve ruined the tailored white linen shirt and matching cargo pants. Instead, I gave him no reaction at all, continuing to sip at the fifty-thousand-dollar-a-bottle whiskey without greeting him or even fully turning to face him.

“Alexander,” he breathed out with a smile. Never one to suffer inattention, the arrogant blond colonial held up his hand, a pair of strappy women’s heels dangling from his fingertips. “Chloe left these behind this morning. Thought I should return them.” He obviously meant for me to assume a great deal from that comment, but I’d only seen them together on the beach. With his arms around her. That was bad enough.

Another sip of whiskey trailed fire down my throat, warmed my face, and blurred my thoughts. “What do you want, Ellison?”

Penn dropped Chloe’s shoes onto the floor with an unsettling clatter and slid his hands into his pockets. He rocked on his heels in a show of affected relaxation and impromptu deliberation. “Oh, I don’t know. The island, maybe. That would be a good start.”

“Too bad for you it’s not for sale.”

“And too bad for you neither is Chloe.”

When I had imagined this scene, the moment when I would look this man in the face after having seduced the woman who got away from him, it had always played out in Boston or New York, in an expensive restaurant. With Chloe on my arm, I’d
happen
to run into Ellison, and she would step closer and press herself to me while he looked on dejected. I had considered sending him candid photos of Chloe and me on the balcony dance floor, an anonymous tip to let Ellison know he’d been one-upped, just in a far classier way than the last time we’d competed over a woman. But when we’d actually faced him last night, my instinct had been to hide Chloe behind me, shelter her. Keeping her to myself had been worth more than humiliating Penn Ellison. That made the sting so much worse when she had disavowed the intimate nature of our relationship in front of him.

“It would be best,” I muttered low, “if we didn’t talk about her.” It would be easier to control the urge to get into the kind of bare-fisted brawl Penn and I had made a habit of during our senior year at Siemer.

“Still don’t have the killer business instinct, I see.” Ellison approached the bar and inspected the Macallan bottle, which I took away from him and slammed back down on the counter. “If I were you, I’d be suggesting a trade.” He focused his icy blue eyes on me as a burning indignation at what I thought he might be suggesting flashed over my face and the back of my neck.

“A trade?” I asked in a guttural voice just shy of a growl. A betrayal? Filho da puta.

“Of course, that would depend on exactly how much you want Chloe. She’s a remarkable woman, isn’t she? Smart, educated, beautiful. And for a very firm hand, she’s a very good girl.”

I got hard, my cock immediately swelling and aching, not just at the thought of Chloe as my submissive but with the need to pummel Penn Ellison to a bloody pulp. That undeniable connection between sex and violence…

Finishing off the glass of whiskey filled my mouth for a moment and drowned the stream of obscenities Penn Ellison had earned with every word he’d ever said to me. “Are you actually suggesting that if I sell Ilha de Flor to you, you’ll give Chloe to me? Like you even have that power.” I set the glass down carefully, for fear of shattering it with the force of my thinly veiled rage. “Like she’s a possession to be gifted.”

“Or hoarded away jealously,” he suggested…threatened.

The sad part of this reprehensible discussion, the pathetic part, was me having to turn back and pour another glass of scotch for the excuse not to look at Ellison. To keep him from seeing my eyes, the way they gleamed, dampened. Because for a moment, I was absolutely willing to give up the only project, the only endeavor, that might have proven me anything less than a total bastard. If it meant keeping Chloe. Like she had no say in the matter.

“You’re not being serious, Ellison.” It wasn’t a question or a statement. It was a warning.

He sighed, a chuckle under his breath. “No, I’m not”. But his pause and his tone said otherwise, and he was lucky I only
wanted
to kill him for it.

“Get out.”

Well-prepared, and though every aspect of this encounter had been carefully orchestrated, Penn fished a small white scrap of paper from his pocket and slapped it face down on the bar. “My final offer. It’s more than the island is worth, frankly.” A crooked smile twisted those pretty boy lips. “And more than you warrant, in your position.”

The way he emphasized of the word warrant made me grit my teeth, and I finally turned to square myself with Ellison. I let him watch me crumple the paper without looking at it and toss it into a dark corner behind the counter. “Get out,” I said again.

His expression soured, his eyes narrowing and his lips pressing into a hard, menacing line. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance, Alexander. What happens here on out is entirely your choice, your fault. Remember that.” He took a swig of the scotch straight out of the bottle and huffed out hard at the end of the swallow. “And don’t get too comfortable with Chloe here. She’s not staying.”

I wanted to punch him. I wanted to slam that perfect face into the wall and the floor, but I just watched him go. Was there force to that threat? Had he already taken steps? Had I been wrong in assuming Vaz alone was behind the pile of warrants and subpoenas sitting on the small writing desk in my bedroom?

This raised my ire, and I was happy to have something spark the fight in me. But his final words lingered. Chloe wasn’t staying. I knew that, and it drained the will out of me better than a whole bottle of Macallan.

***

It was work not thinking about Adrian Knight, and no matter how hard I tried, I was never completely successful. As I walked the beach, it was on his island. When I marched barefoot into one of several ridiculously upscale boutiques in the resort and picked up a pair of flats to replace the shoes I’d forgotten at Penn Ellison’s feet, the shop girl only let me take them without paying because she’d seen me so many times with Adrian. The nature walk and guided tour to the forested area just beyond the resort’s manicured lawns, where exotic orchids grew thickest, kept reminding me of the day I met Knight and he’d impressed me with his spiel about the natural wonders of Ilha de Flor.

I was a runaway submissive today, pretending to be a tourist, which really wasn’t all that different from my everyday life. A girl like me was only ever a visitor in that world of New York offices, private planes and yachts, Senate luncheons, Hampton getaways. But the question was this… What…
who
was I here?

All day long, little snippets of conversation between Adrian and me had haunted my thoughts. When he’d mentioned his surprise that Pritchard Management had never tapped my firm for their legal defense, I didn’t think I’d mentioned yet that I worked for a law firm. He’d said I should know that men of wealth always pursued what they couldn’t have, but he hadn’t been aware of my history with Penn. That I’d known of.

Late afternoon and I was shuffling hangdog up the path to the villa, my mind swirling with possibilities but unable to fully grasp any. I supposed it was possible Adrian had known who I was when I arrived on Ilha de Flor. Society functions, charity banquets, gossip columns… There had been plenty of photo opportunities with Penn and me together. But why would Adrian care? Was there something special about the rivalry between him and Penn? Something that went beyond the uber-competitiveness I’d expect of ultra-wealthy alpha male businessmen? Was it…? Was it the woman Penn had alluded to, the one Adrian had loved?