by Linzi Basset
“And what if you don’t? What if somehow they know you’re coming and set a trap for you?”
“Then I’ll die trying but this time I am not leaving that godforsaken country without Jaxon,” Ethan barked.
“Don’t say that!” Paige jumped up and started clearing the table. Ethan followed suit but only to stalk her into the kitchen.
“Borak Saud,” he snarled, watching dispassionately as the plates she was carrying fell from her limp hands, shattering into pieces on the tiled floor. She turned around, her face gray.
“Wh-what about him?” She whispered.
“You tell me, Paige.”
“Ethan—”
He yanked her against him, his hands cut into the softness of her upper arms. Her painful cry echoed through the kitchen.
“Don’t,” he warned. His eyes had turned dark and stormy. “Start talking, Paige.”
“You’re hurting me,” she whimpered.
Ethan cursed and relaxed his hold on her arms. “To my study. Now,” he snapped and stomped away.
Paige felt the tears burn behind her eyelids. Fate was a cruel thing. Ruthless, without care of the hurt it brought.
“Paige!”
Her legs obeyed the bellowing command before her brain gave the instruction. She hesitated in the doorway, watching Ethan pace his office like a caged panther.
“Sit down.”
“Ethan—”
“Seduction isn’t going to work this time, Paige. Start talking and I warn you, don’t leave anything out or fucking lie to me.”
“What do you know?” She asked in a small voice. She sank into the sofa when her rubbery legs threatened to give way.
“What I know is irrelevant. What you do, is. Don’t let me repeat myself again, Paige. You won’t like the consequences.”
“I don’t understand what he has to do with . . .” Her voice trailed off. The conclusion, when he stopped and glowered at her, was inescapable. Paige felt the heat searing her cheeks. It was no use trying to dodge him. She instinctively knew that he had already put two and two together and came up with five.
“Are you going to pretend that you don’t know who Borak Saud is, Paige?” His clipped voice vibrated with a dark edge.
A shadow passed over her eyes and then focused on an empty space between them before she began to talk haltingly.
“I met Borak during the Sports Illustrated shoot in the Hawaii just after my twenty-second birthday―he was there on a business trip. It was an epic experience and one of the most successful shoots the magazine had ever done.” Paige swallowed. Ethan stared at her coldly.
“I was young and so stupid. I’d never met someone like him and he swept me off my feet. He knew exactly which buttons to push, how to destroy every defense mechanism I had erected over the years to keep men at a distance.”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. She had never spoken to anyone about that time in her life. Not even the couple of friends she’d made with some other models. No one knew just how hard she’d fallen for Borak Saud. Or to what extent he’d destroyed her life.
“Continue, Paige,” Ethan barked irritably.
“I fell for him, hard. We became lovers almost immediately. He didn’t want me to return to US and demanded that I follow him home, but I said no. I had worked too hard to just throw it away. At first I thought he understood because he let me go.”
“You were twenty-two years old but not stupid, Paige. He was what? Twenty years older than you? Did you even know that he was a married man then?”
Paige paled. “I didn’t. Not at the time. How could I have? He was with me all the time. Every night, for the two weeks I was there. I was naive, yes, I know. I was shattered when I found out. I googled him and realized that I . . . that he . . .”
“Wanted you for his harem?” Ethan asked sharply. He knew all about the Saud clan.
Paige nodded, feeling even more miserable and stupid. “He followed me to L.A. a month later. He wouldn’t leave me alone and eventually broke down my defenses. He promised that he was going to release the women in his harem and that he was going to divorce his wife.” Her hands flailed in the air. “Yes, I know now it was naïve but I believed everything he told me at the time. Love struck, I believe it’s called.”
“Enough of the soppy love story, Paige. Tell me about your relationship with Prince Khalid Saud and my ex-wife, Delia.”
She wrung her hands. “I didn’t know she was married when I first met her. She’d accompanied Prince Khalid to a couple of fashion shows and I believed they were engaged. Until that day I met you. I was shocked when she introduced you as her husband.”
She jumped up and began to circle the room, her steps jerky.
“Borak was different when the prince was around. He was inconsiderate, cruel and took pleasure in humiliating me. I started questioning whether I wanted to stay in a relationship with him. Khalid on the other hand loved it when Borak treated me like shit. The more he seemed to enjoy it, the worse Borak became.”
She stopped pacing and stared outside at the gardens. The pool glowed like a blue sapphire in the darkness, lit up by underwater lights.
“Where you part of their scheme to take my son from me?” Ethan sneered through flat lips.
“No! I didn’t even know Delia had a child. She never mentioned him and neither did the prince. I accompanied Borak to their wedding but he wasn’t there. I swear to you, Ethan, I had nothing to do with them taking Jaxon from you.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word for it? There are just too many coincidences, Paige. First your involvement with the Saud family, your friendship with my ex-wife and the coup d'etat—coming to work at my clinic immediately after I returned from my failed effort to bring Jaxon home. Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?” Ethan grated.
Paige stared at him wide-eyed. “You believe I’m spying on you for them?”
“It all adds up.”
She shook her head, baffled and shocked. “I couldn’t have helped them take Jaxon from you, Ethan. I was in the hospital when they left.”
Ethan studied her with the unwavering attention of an eagle. He waited with an inscrutable expression. Paige was deathly pale and he noticed her fingers trembling.
“It was a couple of weeks after the wedding. I had made up my mind to break off with Borak and went to their hotel to inform him. I overheard him and the prince talking about how they loved to whip their women into submission. They laughed about it. Now that I think about it, I do recall Khalid said something about the little brat will bend to his will, even if he had to use his whip. At the time I was too shocked and believed he was talking about Delia. I wanted to warn her but the prince saw me as I tried to leave. He ordered his guards to bring me to him.”
Paige clenched her hands hard, trying to work through the disturbing memories.
“They forced me to my knees in front of him. He slapped me so hard, my lip was cut in two places. He was livid that I had dared to eavesdrop. Once he started, it was like he had turned into a madman. He began to hit me with his fists and he used . . . he used his feet.”
Ethan stood frozen. The vision that her words conjured in his mind stumped him.
“I begged him to stop. I cried at Borak to make him stop but he just stood there. That was the worst, seeing the excitement and glee on the face of a man who claimed to have loved me. The fucker just stood there while his cousin beat me to pulp.”
Paige dragged in a deep breath.
“I woke up in the hospital a week later. By then, they had left. I never heard from any of them again.”
Ethan’s jaw turned rigid. Another lie. Goddammit, just when I started to believe her.
“That’s when you walked away from modeling?”
“Yes, I had my degree and all I wanted was to forget the pain that life of glam and glory had brought me. If I hadn’t been one of the models chosen for that bikini shoot, I would never have met Borak.”
“It still doesn’t explain how yo
u miraculously found me four years later, Paige.”
Her eyelids flickered. She bit her lips. “I couldn’t get you out of my mind. That one fleeting meeting . . . there had been something in your eyes that had found resonance deep in my soul.” She shrugged. “When I came across the advertisement for the position at your clinic, I grasped it. It was an opportunity to get out of L.A., the place where I was still surrounded by memories. I wanted to see if there was a chance . . .” Her voice faded away as she looked into his eyes. “You’ve been on my mind ever since the day we first met and once I started working for you; I knew I made the right choice. I’ve been in enamored with you for years, Ethan. I wanted to be close to you to see if there was a chance of happiness somewhere in my future.”
“And yet you still lie to me,” he said in a hollow voice.
“I’m not lying. Everything I told you is the truth.”
“You said you haven’t heard from any of them since the day they left the country but you conveniently forgot to mention the million dollars Borak Saud pays into your account diligently on the first of March every fucking year for the past seven years! Why, Paige? What is he paying you for? Are you the one scouting for sex slaves?”
“I can’t believe you would even think something like that,” Paige said brokenly, devastated that he knew about the money. “I suppose your governor friend was kind enough to inform you about the money.”
“You suppose correctly.”
“It’s guilt money, Ethan. I was pregnant the day I went to break it off with Borak. I didn’t know at the time, but obviously after the way I was beat up, I lost the baby. It was on the first of March. When he found out, he was devastated, especially as none of his women had been able to give him a child.”
“And still you accept it?”
“At first, I didn’t want to and had every intention of sending it back, believing it was a once off thing. Then I decided I could put it to good use. I’m surprised that he still continues to pay me every year. It’s strange that your friend didn’t inform you of that,” Paige sneered. “I’ve been using the money to fund charities for abused women and children. There are two in L.A., two in New York and three here in DC.”
“That’s very noble of you.” Ethan’s voice had lost some of the chilled darkness. He stood in front of the window with his eyes boring into hers.
Paige shivered, he appeared unapproachable. She feared that she’d made a mistake admitting to her feelings. For the first time, she couldn’t read his expression. She had no idea if he believed her.
“I better clean up the mess in the kitchen,” she muttered and escaped his unblinking regard.
Ethan didn’t stop her, nor did he move once she walked out. He was weighing every word, every gesture and every flash of emotion he’d seen on her face while she’d been talking. She was sincere but he was going to investigate further to corroborate her story.
His shoulders relaxed. He could feel the tension leave his body, rolling off his taut muscles like a tide slowly unfurling onto the shore.
“She loves me,” he murmured, savoring the words on his tongue. He searched his own feelings. He hadn’t heard those words for so long, he’d been wondering if he ever would again. Believing them was a different story altogether.
Ethan couldn’t deny that Paige excited him; that she’d unearthed emotions inside him that he’d thought were non-existent, but he wasn’t about to label them as love. It was too early. If he’d learned one thing from his first marriage, it was never to take things at face value.
“On the other hand, I’m not getting any younger,” he murmured. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
Maybe opening his heart wasn’t such a bad idea. Paige had been dealt a bad hand early in her life but she’d risen above it. The scars would always be there but it had made her stronger. It unearthed the passion for life that had drawn him to her from that first meeting at Club Pearl.
Yes, he remembered the sexy and hot little model she had been, but other than acknowledging that, when they’d met all those years ago, he’d not paid her any further attention; not with his wife by his side, who he’d believed, had loved him and their son. Ethan had always been a one-woman man. When he committed to someone, he wasn’t interested in another.
No, his connection with Paige Scott started in a BDSM club as a Dom and sub―she had truly captured his attention at Club Pearl. He needed to examine his feelings before he committed to this woman. Because once he did, it would be a relationship for a lifetime.
“But, Club Devil’s Cove is the perfect place to test her feelings and commitment to me and I have already decided that you, little rosebud, will be my sub. Now that you’ve spilled the beans, so to speak, I might as well make it official.”
His voice still echoed in the room when he walked toward the kitchen.
“Get dressed. We’re going to Club Devil’s Cove.”
“I don’t feel like the club tonight, Ethan.”
“Wear a skirt, Paige.”
“I just said I don’t want to go,” Paige snipped.
“And don’t bother with panties,” he continued unperturbed as he walked toward the stairs.
“I. Am. Not. Going!” Paige shouted after him.
“Be dressed by the time I come downstairs, Paige, or you’ll be walking into the club butt naked.”
Chapter Twelve
Master Slick rested his elbows on the bar. His tall frame hunched over and appeared comfortable. His topaz-blue eyes glimmered in the dim light of the entertainment room of Club Devil’s Cove. He tapped his fingers on the counter.
“Make that a double, Wade.” He returned the club manager’s smile and swiveled around on the barstool to lean back against the counter. His eyes swept the entire room. He was an observer and had the knack for spotting little details with one encompassing glance. He was tired and would rather be at home relaxing but he needed to strategize. His gaze was unwavering as he searched the room until he found what he was looking for.
Or rather who.
“Here you go,” Wade handed him the crystal tumbler filled with a rich amber-colored liquid. “With one ice cube, just as you like it.” He looked around the room. “Quite a crowd we have here tonight,” he said conversationally.
“Like every weekend since you opened. It’s become quite the popular hangout for practicing kink.”
“We’re not complaining.”
“Are you planning to keep it exclusive and limit the number of members?” His sharp eyes concentrated on the curved lines of the beautiful woman across the room while he kept the conversation going with Wade. She looked seductive and hot in a red satin halter neck dress with slits all the way to her waist, leaving her long legs bare. The strappy high-heel silver sandals added to the overall sexiness.
“Yeah. We don’t want to turn the club into a three-ring circus. Rhone and Keon decided to limit the active members to two hundred. We already have that many on a waiting list.”
“So, you allow new ones only when someone is kicked out or leave?”
He saw Wade nod from his peripheral vision, his gaze still glued on the luxurious richness of the woman’s dark tresses that tumbled to her lower back.
“Where did Ethan manage to find that hot little sub,” he murmured as he savored the premium scotch on his tongue.
“She’s the sub who won him on opening night in the treasure hunt,” Wade said. He contemplated the silver-haired man in front of him curiously, wondering why he seemed so enamored with Rose.
“Wasn’t she a redhead?”
“It was a wig. Maybe she didn’t want her true identity known at the time.” Wade glanced at Ethan and Rose, who were standing just inside the entrance, chatting with Rhone and Samantha.
“Quite a beauty,” Master Slick said with a salacious grin at Wade. He noticed Wade’s eyes narrow slightly and then relax as he turned away to serve another customer.
“Fuck, watch yourself. It wouldn’t do
for anyone to become suspicious of you. Not now,” he muttered into the glass and tilting his head back, swallowed the burning liquid in one gulp.
“See you around, Wade. I’m going to wander into the dungeon. I might just find an equally enticing sub to accommodate me tonight.”
“Enjoy, Master Slick.”
Slick chuckled to himself as he ambled toward the dungeon entrance. No one knew just how appropriate his club name was. He operated with the slickness of the best con-artist imaginable. No one suspected anything. They never would. He’d made sure that the double life he led would never be connected. Not even by the clever cyber master, Max Shaw.
It had been a stroke of genius to filter into the inner circle of the Precision Secure owners. He’d learned over the years to play it safe. He didn’t use all the inside knowledge he was privy to, about some of the operations they were involved in for the President or the FBI, but only selected snippets which most suited his needs. At times it meant losing or taking two steps back, but that was part of his strategy to keep his association with the criminal syndicate intact.
He deliberately walked toward the two couples in conversation at the dungeon entrance.
“Master Slick, it’s good to see you back. You’ve not been around for a couple of weeks,” Rhone greeted him with a handshake and a broad smile.
Ethan followed suit and made a quick introduction. “Rose, this is Master Slick, one of our good friends and business associates.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Paige responded. She glanced furtively at Ethan when Slick placed a warm kiss in the palm of her hand.
“Mine too, indeed,” he murmured. He squeezed her hand before he allowed her to withdraw it from his grasp.
“If you’re not busy later, Rose, I would love to discuss a scene with you,” he continued, blithely ignoring the sharp glance from Ethan. “if you’re not already elsewhere committed? I don’t see a collar or any sign that you belong to another Dom?”
“She is, so back off, Slick. This one isn’t for you. Go roam the dungeon,” Ethan said. He kept his voice even but was surprised at the flare of possessiveness that heated his entire body.