by Sam Crescent
“I would rather he send someone to kill me than to ever bow down and ‘play nice’ with that scumbag ever again,” I growl. “And I don’t care if it sounds dramatic. It’s the truth.”
I can see the frustration blooming in the blush on his cheeks, the set of his jaw and the dark storm in his eyes. He wants to let loose on me, to tell me how reckless and stupid the plan is. We remain locked in twin postures, me puffing out my chest to look bigger than I am and he looming over me, only inches from my face.
“Fine,” he snaps. He doesn’t step back, and in seconds, the atmosphere changes. His body and mine are both still rigid, but now, with the smell of his cologne washing over me, the anger and passion coursing powerfully through my veins, the frustration is more … specific.
I want to touch him. And from the softening look in those turbulent eyes, I’d say he wants to touch me, too. He wants to touch me badly.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispers, and he’s so close his breath tickles my face. I step closer.
“You said—” he goes on weakly.
“I remember,” I murmur, grazing my index finger down the length of his button-up. “But I’m not paying nice anymore, remember?”
He catches my wrist halfway down and holds it fast, a sexy combination of passion and play in his face. “Are you sure?”
Instead of answering him, I stretch onto my tiptoes, meeting his mouth with mine. A deep groan greets me as he closes the gap between us immediately, pulling me against his lean body as he rolls his shoulders out of their tailored suit jacket. It hits the floor in a puddle of expensive fabric, and I slip on it as we make our way—eyes closed and lips locked—backwards toward his bedroom.
My heels come off somewhere near the dining room, one discarded in the middle of the floor, and the other kicked impatiently against the wall. Deft fingers find their way into my hair, and with the removal of a few pins, the length of it comes tumbling down across my shoulders. We break apart for seconds as he pushes open the bedroom door and pulls me down on top of him on the bed. The brief sensation of weightlessness forces a giggle out of me, and I’m aware suddenly of the difference between that night in Sawyer’s office and now. Then, it was hectic, pure adrenaline and reckless abandon. Now, there is no rush, no perverse necessity. There is just us.
Slowly, taking pleasure in the tiny movements, I unfasten the remaining buttons on the front of his shirt, watching his chest move with his elevated breaths. He lies perfectly still, watching me with a shadow of a smile on his face before shrugging out of the black silk and tossing it to the floor. I remove his belt next, then the pants, and finally, the Calvin Klein briefs, with anticipation.
When I tug the underwear down from his hips, his erection frees itself and my breath catches. I slowly ease onto my knees, looking up at the most beautiful man I’ve ever met. Before I settle myself on the bedroom floor, Sawyer catches hold of one of my elbows and sits up straight, bare-chested.
“You don’t have to do that,” he whispers, planting a sweet kiss on the side of my neck.
My face twists into a smile. “I know. But I want to.”
And as soon as I touch him, I know I’ve made the right choice. I move my mouth agonizingly slowly, planting kisses from the base of his member and running my tongue along the soft skin just below. He sighs with pleasure, and, seizing my opportunity, I move to the top, closing my lips around him and slowly sliding all the way down.
His hands flutter to my hair, holding it in fistfuls as I move up and down, holding onto his hips to steady myself above him.
“Shit,” he breathes, arching his back. I go deeper.
Suddenly, he is sitting up, pulling himself out of my mouth, and sitting eye to eye with me. “Your turn,” he murmurs huskily, lifting me effortlessly and adjusting so I am lying in his place, my feet planted firmly on the footboard and my dress around my hips. Ridding me of my panties is the work of less than a second, and then Blake is on his knees, kissing down the inside of my thigh. Then just as tantalizingly as I touched him, he is kissing me, drawing my clit into his mouth and sucking gently as I writhe in pleasure.
A soft, murmuring moan leaves his lips, and the vibration takes my breath away. Grabbing hold of the blankets on either side of my head, I close my eyes and abandon myself to him, to the kisses and licks and sucks and nips. Then he is peeling my dress off, running his hands up my ribs and lying between my legs, cupping my breasts, circling my nipples with his tongue and working upwards. He kisses my throat, my earlobe, my cheek, and—finally—his mouth is on mine again, where it belongs.
Slowly and deliberately, he thrusts his hips into me, filling every space in me with him. My arms wrap around his shoulders as I gasp, head thrown back in ecstasy.
The sex is different; it’s unhurried, gentle, and passionate. His mouth is on mine more often than it’s not, and after it’s done, all I can think of is his face inches from mine, his breath on my face. I’m left not with the feeling of satisfaction after casual sex, but of intimacy. And now, wrapped in Sawyer Blake’s arms naked and half-asleep, I realize the trouble I’m in. This isn’t just sex.
“Sawyer?” I twist slightly so I can see his face, and he jolts out of a doze.
“Mmhmm?”
“I think…” I half laugh at the craziness of what I’m about to say. “Sawyer, I’m falling in love with you.”
To my surprise, there is no raising of the eyebrows, no widening of eyes. Instead, he tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ears and smiles in the darkness.
“I think I’ve been falling in love with you since I met you, Violet Graham.”
Chapter Eight
Like juicy gossip about any billionaire, the dirt on Stephen Leighton spreads like wildfire, and it doesn’t take long for our plan to fall into place. In fact, it is less than three hours after the story runs on the New York Times website that I get the first phone call from a reporter looking for the story. How they found me so quickly is no accident; I all but counted on Hannah the Secretary to give up my contact info along with any other personal information she had access to. It is an unpleasant truth, but I made my decision. This is what not playing nice feels like.
Even though he was loath to do so, Sawyer went to work like every other day with one exception: he was mobbed by cameras from the moment he left the building and ducked into the back of a black Buick. He hated it as much as I hate having to silence my ringer every four minutes, but it doesn’t matter. It’s too late now. And I already signed on for a TV interview this afternoon. If I can get ahead of it, maybe the other reporters will leave me alone.
Violet Graham: twelve hours ago, a no-name, jobless twenty-something, and now? Now my name is going to be plastered all over every publication in the city. At the thought, my stomach clenches.
I leave the apartment building carefully, through the back exit and with dark sunglasses on. Since no one knows who I am yet, I am able to escape with only a few curious glances from paparazzi and press. After all, they’re looking for the nameless woman whom Sawyer Blake is protecting, and I can’t imagine they’re expecting her to look like me. Joke’s on them, I guess.
Despite everything, a little thrill courses through me as I hail a cab. I’m the woman Sawyer Blake woke up holding this morning. I’m the woman living in his penthouse. I’m the woman. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the fact.
“Upper East side,” I tell the cabbie, looking down at my phone.
“I don’t think so.”
Brow furrowed, I look up and into the rearview mirror at the man driving my cab. He is wearing a black ski mask, and he’s not alone. Another masked man sits in the passenger side, and he’s turned around, looking at me.
Before I can scream, before I can dial 911 or even react to what’s happening, there is a rag stifling my face, and I feel myself fade into black.
****
When I come to, I am handcuffed to a radiator in a cheap motel room. Sitting on the flower-print bedspread is the man from the cab.
He is leaning forward and looking bored, elbows on his knees, a pistol in his left hand. My heart takes off like a jackrabbit’s. Is he going to kill me?
“Who are you?”
The masked man starts a bit, apparently unaware that I’ve woken up. He recovers himself quickly, though, and trains that pistol on my face. I shrink back against the radiator, my cuffs clinking on the metal.
“Don’t worry about it, bitch.”
I flinch. Keeping my mouth shut appears to be the best option, and after I regain all my senses and shake the grogginess fogging my brain, I don’t need to speak anyway. I know who this man is, who the cab driver was. They are Leighton’s lackeys. Sawyer warned me that he had friends in low places. I just didn’t think I’d get to meet them quite so soon.
Am I ransom? Or is he just waiting to put a bullet in my head when Leighton can watch? Or worse yet, does Leighton have other plans for me? My gut roils, and I have to concentrate hard for the next thirty seconds to keep myself from vomiting. I still believe what I said the night Sawyer and I slept together for the second time: I’d rather die than succumb to the nice-girl routine ever again. But I forgot to account for a fate worse than death.
The memory of Leighton’s hand on my thigh makes me shudder. I remember the voice of the woman on the other side of the phone when I tried to convince her to settle. She was terrified, but resolute. “We won’t,” she had said. She was smarter than me; she had sense enough to be brave and afraid.
My eyes scan the room for a way out, but there is none. It is a one-room situation with a tiny bathroom behind a feeble-looking door. The exterior door is deadbolted and has a chain. Even if I could somehow get myself uncuffed and get to the door, I could never do it fast enough to avoid getting shot. And then what? I don’t even know where I am, let alone how to get to safety. I have a target on my back, and I have no one to blame but myself.
Casting my eyes at the small window, I see the orange light of sunset. Sunset! Sawyer has to be coming home now, and when I’m not in the penthouse, he’ll have to wonder where I am. He knows as well as I do what Leighton is capable of, maybe even better. But how will he know where to look for me?
Slumping against the radiator, I sigh. There isn’t a way out of this. I’m stuck.
“Are you going to kill me?” I look up at the masked man, my fear outweighed by acceptance. If I die, I die. If asking questions expedites that process, so be it.
“Not yet.” In the shapeless hole where his mouth must be, I see a leering grin taking shape.
I am nauseous again.
After that, I don’t talk anymore. I let my head rest against the dingy radiator, and I do nothing to quell the tears slipping down my cheeks. This is it. I’ll spend my last moments in a grimy hotel room, alone and probably in pain. I won’t be able to say goodbye to my family. I’ll never become a lawyer. I’ll never see Sawyer Blake’s crooked, playful half-smile ever again. And all because Stephen Leighton couldn’t handle being told no.
At some point, I must have cried myself to sleep because I wake to the sounds of mechanical clicks. Springing upright, I see my captor unlocking the menagerie of locks keeping us inside, and then he opens the door, admitting someone who I had hoped never to see again: Stephen James Leighton III. He wears a peacoat with the collar turned up, a hat, and sunglasses, but he is unmistakable. That perfect blond hair, the arrogant grin—he is every bit the privileged scumbag asshole I remember. And he’s turning his attention on me.
“Miss Graham.” He kneels in front of me as his associate re-locks the door behind him. “You’ve been very naughty.”
I don’t respond, but I can’t help the poisonous glare that takes over my face.
“Oh, come now. It can’t be all bad.” His smile quickly vanishes, and taking its place is a chilling expression. “You can smile or you can scream. It won’t change what comes next.”
Then he is snatching hold of my hair, jerking back my head with one hand and grabbing my thigh with the other. As he predicted, I do scream, a bloodcurdling shriek that makes my ears ring with its force. Removing his hand from my hair, he clamps a hand over my mouth, muffling my cries and slamming my head against the carpeted floor so hard I see sparks. The masked man stands against the far wall, watching, grinning that disgusting leer as Leighton shoves my legs apart and slides his free hand up my thigh.
I thrash violently, kicking out and yanking my wrists into the biting metal of the cuffs over and over again. I try to bite, but Leighton’s hand is taut. There isn’t skin I can get between my teeth. Somewhere under my terror is the dim realization that he will rape me. I’m not strong enough to fight him off.
With shock and acceptance stilling my thrashing limbs in the warm sunset lighting, I see Leighton straighten up. His hair has fallen out of place, and his face is glistening with sweat. He is looking at me like something consumable—like filet mignon or fine wine—and like those things, he intends to use me up. To consume me until there is nothing left.
I bend my right knee, coiling back for one last-ditch effort at hurting him before he hurts me, and then I hear it. There is a strangely muffled pop, then the delicate sounds of glass breaking. Then a river of blood is gushing from Stephen Leighton’s neck, and as he gurgles and thrashes in shock, I have the distinct pleasure of seeing fear in his eyes.
Chapter Nine
As it happens, the NYPD takes kidnapping quite seriously. And since Sawyer Blake hired one of his personal security detail to keep an eye on me, there was no question about what happened on the day the Leighton story went live. They’d called him in before he showed up at the hotel, and he’d refused to turn himself in. So they did what they had to when they saw him assaulting a woman through a hotel window: they took a shot. And they hit their target.
Between the press and the police, telling the story gets old fast, but Blake stays by my side through it all. And I keep reminding myself that I’m lucky to be alive. I took on a massively powerful man and came out on top. Mary Wilson and the rest of the women he hurt will never have to look at his face again. It doesn’t take away what happened to them, but it takes away the necessity of reliving their worst nightmares in the painfully public arena of an American courtroom. That has to mean something.
The extenuating circumstances surrounding the case buy Turner and Blake good publicity, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Without warning, Sawyer turns in a resignation letter only a week after Leighton’s death. When I ask him for answers, he doesn’t have any to give me except what he told me that night in his office. “I’m not ready for this,” he had said. And after the first and last case of his career, he decides he never will be.
I can’t say as I blame him.
As for me, I am not done with law, but I suspect law is done with me. After checking every firm in the city for openings, I am turned away either because of my recent notoriety or because, like always, “the firm is not hiring at this time”. I have nearly given up hope when I finally get the call that will change my life.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is this Miss Violent Graham?”
I frown, contemplating hanging up like I do with 85% of unknown calls. There are still a lot of people looking for the “exclusive” story on Stephen Leighton's grisly death, and I’m no longer willing to indulge them.
“Yes,” I finally answer.
“Hello, Miss Graham. This is Veronica Cooper, from Cooper, Price, and Smith. I was wondering if I might have a minute of your time?”
Heart soaring, a brilliant smile painting my face, I answer. “Yes.”
****
“When do you hear back?”
We are in my apartment, packing my very few belongings in cardboard boxes, readying them for the move to a new townhouse where the ghosts of Jason Rosello and Stephen Leighton won’t be quite so close to the surface. A thin line of sweat is showing through the back of Sawyer’s t-shirt, and I find myself staring as the muscles in his back ripple as he lifts one of the boxes.
&nbs
p; “In two or three days,” I answer. “I’m lucky just to have gotten an interview. Besides, it’s just a paralegal job, so I think I’ve got a shot.”
He turns to me, tossing his curls out of his eyes and smiling. “I have no doubt about that. I’d hire you.”
He puts his arms around my waist, and I relax into him. “You did hire me,” I point out.
“True.” He drops a feather-light kiss on the tip of my nose. “I guess I'm a bit biased.”
Closing my eyes and leaning forward, I lock my lips on his. This—kissing him, touching him—it never gets old. Every time feels like the first time. The butterflies, the warmth, the stirring in my chest … it’s unlike anything I ever felt with Jason.
It’s love.
“You know,” Sawyer murmurs in my ears, “we could move these boxes someplace else.”
My eyes snap open. “What?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t even make you sleep in the guestroom.”
The full weight of his words hits me, and unlike every decision before this one, I don’t hesitate. The answer is completely, crystal clear.
“Yes,” I whisper against his lips. “A thousand times, yes.”
The End
Find more books from author Tesla Storm:
www.evernightpublishing.com/tesla-storm
HIS VENGEFUL HEART
Beth D. Carter
Copyright © 2020
Prologue
Alexander Reinecke stared down at his sister, lying cold and still upon the metal table. A white sheet draped over her from the neck down, no doubt hiding the autopsy scars now forever branded upon her chest. The emotions he needed to process the fact that his little sister was dead eluded him, leaving him feeling hollow.