by Celia Aaron
“Don’t come.” His voice was deep, hoarse. “Not yet. Your orgasm belongs to me.”
I circled my clit, teasing it before delving inside and pulling my wetness onto my hot flesh. My moans grew louder in both fantasy and reality.
Sebastian licked his full lips. “Spread wider for me.” He put his knees on the bed and stroked his cock down the length of my pussy.
I arched, my fingers playing my favorite tune. “Sebastian.”
He smirked. “I told you this was it. That you were mine.” His cock head pressed against my opening. “Now you’re going to feel it.” He pushed inside in a harsh movement, claiming me with a sure stroke.
I cried out and bit my lip. The delicious mental image pushed me to the edge, my body on the verge of letting go.
Sebastian grabbed my hair and pulled, then fastened his mouth to my neck as he pumped into me, each stroke driving me wilder than the last. My legs began to shake, the sensations overwhelming me.
“Sebastian, please,” I whimpered.
“This is just the beginning.” His voice in my ear, his body owning mine—I couldn’t take it.
I came on a long, low moan, my body folding tight before exploding outward like a deck of cards. Parts of me scattered everywhere, though I kept the image of his intense green eyes. It stayed with me until I came back down, my lower back finally hitting the mattress once again. I breathed deeply, the lust fog clearing from my brain. Now I could concentrate, could stop thinking of Sebastian as anything other than my jailor.
“I just came in my office bathroom. Your name was on my lips.” Sebastian’s deep voice was almost breathy. “Fuck, that was hot.”
I froze and yanked the blanket to my chin before anger burst to my surface. “You said you’d removed the camera. You promised!”
“I did.” His sexy laugh relit the fire I thought I’d doused. “But there’s still audio.”
28
Sebastian
She fell silent, and I wanted so badly to see her. But I’d made a deal, one I couldn’t cheat on. There was no camera capability in our bedroom or bathroom.
When I’d received the notification from Timothy that she’d returned to our bedroom, I’d clicked on the audio and popped an earbud into one ear while I listened to a new ad campaign pitch with the other.
Her first labored breath had punched me right in the stomach, and when she’d said my name? I’d walked right out of the meeting and to my office. My secretary had given me a blank look when I’d instructed her to tell the ad company to wait for my return, then I’d slammed my door, locked it, and turned up the volume. Her sounds had almost killed me. And the way she’d said my name? If she did that in person, it would bring me to my knees. It already brought me to climax in my fucking washroom. A first.
She’d gone silent after I let her in on the audio secret, so I’d returned to the meeting. They resumed as if nothing were amiss. But if I’d been mentally absent before, I was on a mental vacation now. My thoughts circled Camille like vultures around a kill. She couldn’t deny she wanted me, not anymore. I had so many of the necessary ingredients to convince her to stay, but I was still missing the main one—trust. What would it take to get it?
The room had gone silent, and with the way everyone was looking at me, it had been that way for quite some time.
I stood. “I’ll consider it and get back to you within the week.”
The lead ad man—a pudgier Don Draper sort—smiled and rose along with me. “Thank you for the opportunity.”
Link stood as well and opened the door, an expectant expression on his dumb face as he watched me.
I strode past him, heading for my corner office.
“Sebastian.” He dogged my heels. “Can I have a word?”
No, but you can have a pen in your eye. “What would you like to discuss? I have a full schedule this afternoon.” I did. It was true. But I intended to cancel everything and fly home to Camille. I could beat her orgasm by a mile with just my mouth, and she knew it.
“Mr. Lindstrom, Graffine called to confirm your reservation for Saturday evening?” My secretary held the phone to her ear.
“Cancel it. I don’t have time.” I was supposed to meet Dad, but he’d understand I was too busy for an evening out, not when Camille was waiting for me at home.
“Fine.” She turned back to her desk as I entered my office.
“Graffine? That place is tough to get into.” Link was still at my heels.
“What do you want?” I didn’t bother hiding my irritation.
“It’s about my girlfriend.”
I continued my brisk stride to my desk, though I wanted to grab him by his suit coat and throw him through my window. “What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, there’s this kid who’s been bothering me about her, and he’s sort of getting into my head. And now he’s gone and got a couple of her friends worried, too.”
“I’m sorry, where is your girlfriend in all of this?” I slid off my suit coat as I listened intently to each syllable the imbecile uttered.
“She’s on this expedition to the Amazon to study plants, but she’s been acting weird in her texts and I can’t get her on the phone. I tried calling the leader of her group via satellite phone, but he said she couldn’t talk because she was up a tree, and—”
“What does this have to do with me?” I sat at my desk and opened my emails.
He sank into one of my chairs, unbidden. “Nothing, really. It’s just I know you have ways to get things done, and I was hoping maybe you could pull a few strings—”
My eyebrows rose, and I gave him what I could only call a stony glare of imminent death.
He hurried along, “There are two Lindstrom operations in Brazil, so I figured—”
“You figured that I would use valuable company resources to track down the girlfriend who doesn’t want to talk to you?” I leaned back in my chair, giving him my full, withering attention. “And just how long has she been gone?”
“She left Saturday morning, and it’s Thursday, so—”
“Six days? You’re in my office asking for favors when she’s only been out of your sight for six days?”
He pulled at the knot in his tie as his cheeks blanched. “You know, you’re right. That kid just got into my head, and then Veronica started asking questions.”
“The blonde?”
“Yeah.” He did his best to smile, though it turned out sickly at best. “You want her number?”
“No, thank you.” I swiveled back to my computer. “If that’s all, I have work to do, and I suspect you do, as well.”
“Yes.” He rose and walked to the door.
I did a rapid calculation and erred on the side of getting as much data as possible. I tried for a compassionate tone. “Hang on a moment. I didn’t mean to be harsh. Look, if more time passes and you still have these suspicions, let me know. I’ll see what I can do about it.”
I smiled.
He flinched.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.” He gave me a curt nod and hurried out of my office.
The moron was still in the dark, and I’d gotten a direct line to any suspicions he may develop. I needed him to calm down, though he didn’t seem to be the real problem. It was that brat from her class. He was the one raising a stink. But if Veronica had become suspicious too, I needed to do damage control.
I logged into the cell account for Camille’s phone. She had a dozen texts from Veronica, each one more frantic than the last. On top of that, there were a couple more from Mint. And finally, the dipshit managed to text, “Is everything okay?”
Was I so bad at mimicking a normal human being? Clearly, I was. Given the alarmist tone of Veronica’s texts, which included a threat to call the American ambassador in Brazil, I needed to do something, and I needed to do it quickly.
My phone beeped, and my secretary’s voice cut through my musings. “Mr. Lindstrom is here to see you.”
Dad wasn’t on my calendar,
but it wasn’t as if I could turn him away. Damn, I didn’t have time for him.
He walked in and shut the door behind him. I’d seen him on the weekend, but he seemed to have aged even more in the five days between then and now.
His tired eyes surveyed me as he took the seat the cretin had vacated. “Have you let her go yet?”
I stifled a sigh. “No, and I’m not going to.”
“You have to.”
“Dad, I appreciate you coming to talk to me about this, but nothing has changed. She belongs with me.”
“Son, please.” He leaned forward, his eyes carrying some of the same intensity I saw in the mirror every morning. “You can’t do this to her.”
“I’m helping her.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You aren’t. You’re helping yourself.”
Frustration crept along the edges of my voice. “Nothing you say is going to changed my mind.”
“Don’t you trust me anymore?” Pain, the identical sort I’d seen when my mother died, bloomed in his eyes. “After everything?”
“I do.” I wrestled with my thoughts and tried to put them in the most logical order. “I always do. You’re the one person who’s never let me down, the only one who has my best interests at heart. But this is different. Camille is different. I can’t explain it.”
“I can.” He scrubbed an age-spotted hand down his face. “You love her.”
I scoffed. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“You may not, but that heart you’ve got inside you, it does.” He leaned back, though the strain in him didn’t lessen. “If you don’t let her go, you’ll never have her. She’ll slip through your fingers like sand.”
What was he talking about? “I already have her. She isn’t slipping through my fingers at all.”
My phone started buzzing on my desk. I snatched it up and entered the code. Fuck. I had a full camera view of Camille jetting across the lawn toward the tree line.
“Son, you have to look deeper. You want her, but you want what’s inside her. Her heart. You’ll never get it while she’s in a cage.” His sigh was bone deep, exhausted.
My palms broke out in a sweat. “Dad, I have some work to attend—”
“No, you’re going to listen to me.” His tone brooked no argument. “The two of you.” He pointed at me. “You belong together.”
Where the fuck is Timothy. My phone buzzed harder as she passed the next security level. I wanted to bolt, to fly to the house and catch her, but I couldn’t.
“Son!” Dad slammed his palm on my desk—the first time I’d seen him this agitated in a long while. Then his expression softened. “When I talked to her in the library, I could see it all, maybe even the same way you do. Her personality, her likes and dislikes, her light to your dark. I—” He stopped and swallowed thickly, then swiped at his eyes. “I even had this brief fantasy of grandchildren—the two of you making a family and being so happy together.”
“Exactly.” He was finally catching on. Movement from the edge of the screen caught my eye—Timothy on an ATV. Relief coursed through me. She wasn’t going to make it to the woods.
“But this is wrong. What you’ve done won’t work.” He shook his head. “I want all those things. You two together. Grandchildren. Happiness. I want all of it for you. But this is not the way to get it. You can trap her and hold her all you want, but you’ll never have her until you set her free.”
“That’s not true.” I had everything under control. Timothy circled her, and she stopped. Before long, she’d climbed on the ATV with him, and they were both headed back to the house. I set the phone down, but kept peeking at the screen. “You’re wrong.”
“No.” He labored to get to his feet, and shuffled to the door. “I’m not. And that’s the saddest part of it all.” He didn’t look back as the door clicked closed behind him.
29
Camille
Dark veins flowed from the tip of my color pencil, the hue giving the appearance of black blood streaking through the leaf. I’d never gotten my hands on a sample of Tacca chantrieri, so I was thrilled to find it in the acquisitions Gerry had brought by earlier, once I’d returned from my last failed escape attempt. My subject sat in the middle of the wide wood table near the library windows, and I drew it as accurately as I could. The plant, often called the black bat flower, had a particular beauty that spoke to me. Inky leaves with ever darker veins were accompanied by a light green display of tendrils that appeared like whiskers on an old cat. I only hoped I could translate it onto paper.
A knock at the door drew my eye, and Timothy strode in with a box in his arms.
“What’s that?”
“A microscope, slides, mortar and pestle, tools, and a few other items to get you started. I’ve ordered the rest and will set up a small science area right inside the music room, unless you’d prefer it in the greenhouse or here.”
I stopped drawing. “If I said I wanted the moon, do you think he’d get it for me?”
“I daresay he’d try.”
I lifted my gaze to the chandelier. “Sebastian, hey.”
Silence.
“Hey, I’m about to take my top off. You have any thoughts on that?”
“Camille, please.” Timothy closed his eyes. “I don’t know if I can handle any more today.”
I rose and walked to him so I could help with the box. “I just wanted to see if he was listening.”
He didn’t give me the box, but carried it to the table where I was working.
“Can I ask you something?” I peered into his light blue eyes.
“If it’s about you leaving, I’d rather you didn’t.” He grimaced and took a step back.
“No.” I gestured toward the leather sofa and the comfortable chair I liked. “This isn’t about me escaping. I promise. Can we sit for a minute?”
“I probably shouldn’t.”
“Please?” I perched on the edge of the chair and hoped he’d follow my lead.
He gave a long look at the door.
“Just for a minute, I promise.” I clasped my hands together.
He sighed and moved to the couch where he sat gingerly and threw frequent glances to the chandelier. “What can I do for you?”
“When we spoke last, you said that Sebastian saved you. Could you tell me what you meant by that?” I was looking for any insight into my captor I could find, and Timothy seemed like a direct inroad.
“That’s not something I like to talk about.” He tangled his fingers together and avoided my gaze.
I rose and sat next to him. “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable. I’m just trying to understand him.” I kicked my leg up, the golden anklet barely visible at the hem of my jeans. “I don’t want to be a prisoner forever. If there was some way I could…I don’t know, trust him, then maybe I could find some better ways to deal with him. Does that make sense?”
“It does.” He sighed and unbuttoned his fitted black jacket before leaning back against the cushion. “He’s not a good man. He’s not a bad man. There’s no direct way to explain a man like him. So much of what you see is the real him, undiluted, but then there are parts he hides away. I didn’t even realize he had that extra depth until you showed up. It was the first time since I met him that I actually saw him change.”
He’d left an opening, and I took it. “How did the two of you meet?”
He pressed his lips into a thin line, as if uttering the answer aloud would hurt him.
“Will you tell me?”
He grew more tense by the second. “I don’t know if I can.”
I took his hand and squeezed it in mine. “Help me understand him, please. It’s the only way I’m going to be able to survive here. Besides, I think you owe it to me, Dr. Williams.”
He turned to me, regret in his eyes. “You know that wasn’t my idea, don’t you?”
“I realize that, but I will use whatever I can to get you to talk, up to and including guilt for getting me into this situation
with your telephone trickery.”
He shrugged. “I was quite proud that I was able to talk science with you enough for you to fall for it.”
I rolled my eyes. “No wonder you and Sebastian are friends.”
“Friends?”
“Yeah. I mean, I realize you’re his butler or manservant or whatever, but I can tell the two of you have a bond like old friends.”
He smiled. “I like to think so.”
“It’s true.” I patted the back of his hand. “Now spill the history or I’ll tell Sebastian you made a pass at me.”
He snorted. “I don’t think he’ll find that believable, but you’ve done enough strong-arming already. I’ll tell you. But, please.” He squeezed my hand again. “Don’t judge me too harshly.” Pausing, he closed his eyes, as if collecting his thoughts before handing them to me. “When he found me, I was in an institution. I was only twenty, and I’d been in the system for four years.” His voice didn’t stop as much as it faltered away into silence. He cleared his throat. “I was there because when I was sixteen, I killed my boyfriend.”
I froze, unsure if I wanted him to continue. He seemed just as unsure, but eventually found his voice. “But I loved him, so I didn’t see how I could have done it. I still don’t remember it. Not all of it.” He opened his eyes, though he seemed to be looking far beyond the walls of the library. “I’m bipolar. I’d just been diagnosed a few months before…” He swallowed hard. “Before it happened, but my parents didn’t believe in medication or anything like that. When I was eight, we’d moved to the States to join a church with a dirt floor, daily baptisms, and a pastor who had five wives. They thought that my diagnosis was the result of me consorting with the devil. Even though I would fall into these senseless violent rages, they said that prayer was the answer, not pills. They thought that church would cure me.” He smiled, though the sadness in his expression made tears well in my eyes. “They thought church would cure a lot of things about me. But they were wrong. Sam died because they were wrong. And I was thrown into the darkest hole at St. Andrews after the judge found me incompetent to stand trial for his murder.”