GRIPPED (Romance Mystery & Suspense Box Set)

by Abbott, Alex

  He nearly gasped himself when he looked down at his texts to see that the rumors of Gloria’s infidelities, possibly at a local sex club, broke across the Internet and every media outlet thereafter.

  “Take care of our father,” Lane had said, after one glance down at his own phone. “I’ll get Kate out of here.”

  “No,” Jeremy insisted, rising to his feet with a certainty deep in his heart. “I’ll see to Kate.”

  She’d just been about to step into the aisle, and when Jeremy reached for her arm, she asked, “What is it? What’s happening?”

  “I’ll tell you in the limo,” Jeremy said, guiding her by the elbow, gratified by the way she accepted it with trust. He looked back once over his shoulder to see to it that Lane had their elderly father well in hand.

  It was that one short glance that gave Kate the opportunity to check her phone. “Oh my god,” she said, nearly stumbling.

  He still had her by the elbow, and kept her upright. “Kate, don’t react, not in front of everyone.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what they think.”

  She didn’t. And he loved her for it. But he did care what they thought. For her sake if nothing else. “We’ll talk about it in the limo,” he said again, guiding her a few more steps across the verdant lawn toward the car.

  She kept reading her phone the whole way. But when she spoke again, it was softer. Shocked. “They’re saying my mother frequented a sex club. Some sort of secret sex club. They’re not naming it.”

  They weren’t naming it because they probably didn’t know it. People like the Kenyon family paid a lot of money to make sure nobody would ever know it. The Black & Blue Club was a referral only sort of place; and it came with a test for entry. What you had to do to get in…well, maybe some enterprising reporter found out. But he doubted it, given the clientele.

  He realized, at some point, that Kate was staring at him. “Oh. My. God. You knew about this, didn’t you?”

  Jeremy’s jaw clenched. “Yes.”

  She jerked her chin up at him as if there were a thousand questions she wanted to ask. But the only one that came out was, “Do you know where this club is?”

  Goddamn it. He wanted to lie. Because she’d already suspected him of being her mother’s lover, and he’d hated how that felt. He didn’t want her to mistrust him. So he didn’t lie. He nodded.

  Kate shook her head, pulled her arm from his, and took another step toward the limo. Then she stopped and looked at him again. He saw something change. He saw her decide to trust him. And it was kind of the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.

  Taking a deep breath, she asked, “Will you take me there?”

  Jeremy took a deep breath of his own, trying to make her understand the reality of what it meant to be a member of the Kenyon family during a crisis. “When a story like this breaks, a thousand paparazzi descend. Lane’s security kept the details of the funeral on lock down, but when there are this many people here, it’ll leak. We’re probably being photographed with a long lens from some tree right now. Which is why we need to get in the limo and go—”

  “Home? Where they’ll all be waiting for sure?” she asked, remarkably level headed under the circumstances. “If there’s any chance to evade the press it’s right now, Jeremy. Let’s take a cab. But let’s just go together. Now. Please.”

  Something inside him ached at hearing her say that. And it was an ache he’d never felt before. She sounded like she needed him, and he’d never been needed before by anybody. Never allowed himself to be needed. Maybe he’d have done it before if he’d realized it would make him feel so much stronger.

  There was no time for a cab. Instead, Jeremy turned to Matthew Hastings, his old mate from Oxford—now working at Kenyon Industries. “I’d like to buy your car,” Jeremy said.

  “What?” Matthew asked, looking up from his phone.

  “Your car. I’ll give you fifty-thousand pounds for it.”

  Matthew blinked. “That’s a bit—”

  “Keys,” Jeremy said, and watched as his bewildered friend fished the keys out of his pocket. “Thanks. Tell no one, and I’ll send a bank draft tomorrow. But if you tell someone, you’re going to get the car back in pieces.”

  With that, Jeremy snatched the keys out of his friend’s hand and rushed with Kate to the waiting vehicle. Like two outlaws. Jeremy had never done anything like this before. Something so reckless and irresponsible. And he didn’t want to think about it.

  He only wanted to think about her.

  ~~~

  KATE

  As Jeremy slammed the car into gear and screeched out of the parking lot, driving halfway onto the lawn to get away before too many people could identify the car, I felt like we were making a getaway from a bank robbery instead of a funeral.

  But I wasn’t afraid. I was strangely exhilarated. Strangely freed. Because if every news outlet was now reporting that my mother was having an affair then there was nothing left for me to worry about hiding. The inheritance, well, I hadn’t known about it, and it’d never been that important to me anyway.

  Now I could focus on the one thing that had mattered most since coming here. Finding my mother’s lover.

  “So that’s how you knew my mother was having an affair,” I deduced, staring somewhat numbly out the window as Jeremy pressed his foot to the floor and the road sped by. “You were both members of the same sex club…”

  Jeremy’s jaw clenched so tight I was afraid he might break a tooth. “Not intentionally.”

  “But you saw her there,” I said, so calmly I thought I must be in shock. Yes, that would explain it. The weird numbness I felt.

  “Yes. I saw her there. Once.”

  “Who was she with?”

  Jeremy’s strong, beautiful hands tightened on the wheel. “I don’t know.”

  I turned to him in exasperation and frustration. “How could you not know?”

  He made a small, bitter little laugh. “Because when you’re at a sex club, half-undressed, with two women in your lap and you hear your stepmother’s voice, the only thing you’re thinking about is how fast you can zip your pants up and slink away before you’re both mortally embarrassed. Gloria was with a man, but I didn’t see who. I only know it wasn’t my father. And I didn’t tell him about it because it would’ve broken his heart. And because it wasn’t my business. I didn’t want to know who her lover was. At least not until…until she died.”

  “Because you didn’t want me to get an inheritance,” I said, a little bitterness seeping past the numb barricades around my heart.

  “Kate. I just dropped fifty thousand pounds on a car so I could spirit you away from a funeral. Do you really think I care that much about money?”

  “Your brother said that you do,” I countered. “Lane says you’re greedy.”

  “Lane!” he exploded, then, suddenly yanked the car over to a side street, then up into an abandoned drive where he suddenly slammed to a stop and turned off the car. “Lane told you that I was greedy?”

  He was pissed off. Angrier than I’d ever seen him. Almost white to the tip of his nose. But I wasn’t afraid of him. Not even after all the things I’d suspected him of. Because I knew he was telling me the truth about everything. I knew it down deep in your soul where you can’t even explain why. “Yes. Greedy. That’s what Lane said.”

  “My fucking brother,” Jeremy said, slamming the horn.

  “Stop, please. Can you be mad at him later? We need to get to this club before the press find it and turn it into a zoo. Then no one will talk to us.”

  “No one is going to talk to you there anyway. They won’t even let you in the door. Not even with me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve told you before. It’s not a place for a woman like you. The things you might see in there…the things you have to do to prove you belong…”

  “I’m a big girl,” I said, glaring a bit at him. He thought I was some wide-eyed innocent, but he’d have known different
ly if he’d actually had sex with me when I offered.

  “Kate, it’s not just the kink. It’s also a very exclusive club. Millionaire membership or above. You don’t understand anything about this place. You can’t get in unless a member brings you through an initiation.”

  “Which involves what, exactly?”

  “Arranging for a public sex act. Either with the person that brought you, or with someone they choose for you in the initiation room.”

  “Great. Well, you’re a member, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then initiate me.”

  He snorted. “You’ve got no idea what you’re asking.”

  “I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

  He snorted again. “Really? You’re willing to have sex with a stranger and me? Because that’s probably what it’ll take.”

  I tried not to show surprise. Luckily, that numbness came in handy. “I wanted to have sex with you anyway. I guess adding a stranger will just be a bonus. Fulfills a fantasy, plus, it’ll get me what I really want.”

  “Which is what exactly?”

  I was frustrated that it wasn’t obvious. “I want to find my mother’s lover before the press attention scares him away from ever showing his face there, or before everyone who works there decides to start selling random stories and lies to the media.”

  “Kate, it’s all going to come out on its own. It’ll take some time. But it’ll come out. And when it does, you should be far away from this. From us. Because it’s going to be a sordid, humiliating, circus for the Kenyon family. It doesn’t have to be for you.”

  “I don’t want to wait for it to come out,” I said, my fists clenching in determination, trying to make him understand without accusing anybody of murder. “Jeremy, this man she was with…this guy…I need to know who he is. I need to know it. It’s the only thing that’s going to make me feel better. It’s the only thing that’s going to give me closure.”

  Jeremy ran his hand through his hair. “Then let me take you home, and I’ll go to the club without you. I’ll ask the right questions. The right people. I promise you. Trust me.”

  “I do,” I said, not wanting to admit to him, or to myself, what sort of dark shit was going on inside me. I should’ve been disgusted by the idea of going from a funeral to a sex club. I should’ve been horrified by the idea of trading sex for access. I should’ve wanted to cry, or grieve or do anything a normal person would do in such a situation. But I was spiraling away from myself so far that all I wanted was to fuck and be fucked.

  Not vanilla. Not safe. Not normal. Not in any way I’d ever fucked before. But shameful and dark as my heart. I knew about this phenomenon. I knew how close grief and sex were tangled. Academically. I just never thought it could happen to me. But now it was. “I want to do this with or without you.”

  “I told you, Kate. They’re not going to let you in the door unless you’re willing to do things that compromise you—”

  “And I told you I don’t care,” I said, pressing my forehead to his. “I want to make love to you. I want you. I want you so much. I don’t give a shit if we do it here at the side of the road or in some club with everyone watching. But at least at the club, I get answers. So tell me you’ll take me.”

  Something carnal flared behind his eyes. Then, he swallowed, and nodded. And my heart began to thump with outrageous excitement.

  Chapter Eight

  KATE

  I’d never been to a sex club before. I guess I thought it’d be at some hidden bar in a seedy part of town, all dark and tacky, like a nightclub, only littered with condoms, mattresses, and handcuffs.

  Instead, Lane led me into the lobby of a beautiful glass skyscraper in the middle of the city. And it had an elevator that was actually operated by an assistant. “Tenth floor,” Jeremy said, stiffly, leading me into the elevator by the hand.

  My fingers were sweaty in his palm, and I hoped he didn’t mind. But when you make a decision to sleep with a man, the eagerness that overtakes you is a bit much to handle. I was shaking with sex. I half wanted him to just push me up against the elevator wall and do it. Right here. Right now.

  But I was also scared.

  The elevator itself opened into another lobby, this one filled with potted plants and a pretty receptionist sitting beneath a giant stylized logo. She smiled at Jeremy. More than smiled. It was a smile that told me she knew him. Maybe had sex with him. And I was sure she had sex with him when she purred, “Good evening, Mr. Kenyon. I see you’ve brought a guest for initiation.”

  I hated her. She’d had sex with my…well, what the hell was he? She’d had sex with Jeremy. And I was already jealous, even though I hadn’t even done more than kiss him. But then I remembered that he never had sex with a woman one-on-one. That he’d never let it get intimate. And I suddenly didn’t know how to feel. Because while it relieved me to know that the pretty receptionist meant nothing to him, I knew that when I had sex with him it would probably mean nothing to him either.

  But that wasn’t going to stop me from doing it.

  “Name?” the receptionist prompted.

  And I started to speak. “Ka—

  “Caprice,” Jeremy broke in, then whispered in my ear, “No real names unless initiated. And even then, only if you want to.”

  He’d wanted to. She’d known his name. He wasn’t embarrassed of his sex life, and maybe he shouldn’t be. Because he was a Kenyon. A billionaire bad boy who did what he wanted.

  And right now, he wanted me.

  I knew, because he couldn’t take his eyes off me.

  The receptionist rose from her desk and said, “Please follow me.” Then she clicked on the marble floor in her heels, sashaying her perfect ass the whole way, until we got to a series of doors. “Will Miss Caprice be with you and a friend this evening, Mr. Kenyon, or would you like to arrange for her to be with someone else?”

  “With me,” Jeremy said, tugging a bit at his tie.

  “Only you?” the receptionist asked, stopping to eye him like a naughty minx.

  “We’ll see where it goes,” he answered, squeezing my hand tighter.

  My god. What was I doing? Sudden doubts cracked through my haze of grief-stricken madness. But it was too late. Jeremy pulled open one of the doors, and we entered a little soundproof corridor that opened to something from a different world. Something that looked elegantly furnished, like another era. With a piano bar, and wood-paneled walls. And I could almost imagine that I was in a fancy restaurant except that this one was peopled with well-dressed men with naked women upon their laps. Well-dressed women holding the leashes of naked men, too.

  This wasn’t a place for casual clothes—but nudity was fine—and a couple was actually fornicating on one of the leather sofas while a few others crowded around, and everyone else carried on eating their meals.

  “This is the club?” I asked.

  Jeremy shook his head. “This is only the initiation room. You can’t go further than this until—”

  “Can I see you to a table?” someone asked, and I turned to see a waitress who was wearing a G-string, stilettos, and a leather collar. She was one of the most statuesque women I’d ever seen. And naked, too. I’m afraid I stared.

  Moments later, we slid into a booth with a tiny table, and a menu, and I found myself shaking. “What now?”

  “Did you like her?” Jeremy asked, stroking my hand.

  “Who, the waitress?”

  He nodded, wetting his lip as if he was nervous as to what I’d say. But he wasn’t too nervous. He was comfortable here, I realized. He was sophisticated about sex. I wasn’t. And that somehow made me want him even more. “She’s…she’s very…she’s…is that what you like most? Having sex with two women at the same time?”

  Jeremy waved down a drink from a passing tray. Took two. One for me. One for him. He sipped at his while I gulped mine down. I didn’t even know what it was. Probably vodka.

  “I do like having sex with two women,” Jere
my said. “But I’m not sure I’d say I liked it most. I’d say that’s just what I do the most.”

  “Why?” I asked, realizing I was asking a lot of questions to fight my nerves. Realizing that he knew it. “I mean—I know you already told me why you like to have threesomes. But I mean, why that particular combination?”

  “It’s the most convenient,” Jeremy said, eying me carefully. “It’s not difficult to persuade two women to have sex with me.”

  Oh, I bet it wasn’t. Just look at him.

  He took another sip of his drink. “And it’s even easier to get them to have sex with each other when I’m there to coax them along into it—what’s that face?”

  I shrugged. “I guess I can’t decide if that sounds cocky or lazy. Do you coax them to have sex with each other because it turns you on or because it means you don’t have to satisfy either of them?”

  For the first time since I’d met Jeremy Kenyon, he actually looked aghast. “Why would you ask such a thing, Caprice? Do I strike you as lazy?”

  Caprice. Right. That was my fake name here. And it was kind of freeing to have one. “I don’t know. You talked about how you arranged such things to avoid intimacy. It seems like you might arrange it to avoid—”

  “I satisfy every woman that I’m with,” he interrupted, leaning over the table to stare hard into my eyes. “Always. More than once. Usually until they’re begging me to stop. That’s a promise. And I would very much like to prove it to you.”

  My mouth went a little dry. Because I believed him. And I wanted him to prove it to me. But I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say.

  Thankfully, he broke in with a question. “Have you had sex with a woman before?”

  “No.”

  His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Do you want to?”

  My lips parted, and I felt a blush flash across my cheeks. “Maybe.”

  Jeremy reached around the back of my neck, where my scarf was knotted. “Do you mind if I remove this?”

  I wasn’t expecting him to be gentlemanly and ask to undress me. But I also understood that his question was a formality. “Please.”