by Sienna Snow
It was as if the energy of the room completely shifted into something I couldn’t describe but had every nerve in my body on high alert.
I reached behind me to lower the zipper of my dress, stepping out of it and setting it on a nearby table. Then I removed my bra and underwear.
When I reached down to undo the buckles of my sandals, Sebastian said, “Leave them.”
My nipples pebbled in response to the rough timbre of his voice, and my skin prickled with goosebumps.
I moved toward the pillow and lowered onto my knees. I wasn’t sure how to sit, so I positioned my thighs slightly apart and bottom on my heels as I’d seen some of the women do in the public scenes.
“Beautiful.”
His praise felt like a balm to my unsteady nerves.
I lowered my gaze, staring at the floor.
“Look at me. I don’t want you to ever feel like you can’t look me in the eyes. We’re equals, Isa. This is you giving me your control in exchange for the pleasure I can give you. Remember, this is all about you. You’re the one with the power.”
He moved toward me. “The next time you kneel before me like this, we’re going to finish what you started in the jet’s cabin.”
I almost smiled but kept my face calm.
Sebastian offered me his hand, and I slid my palm over his. He walked me over to the St. Andrew’s cross, positioning my back against the cushioned center. He lifted both of my arms, strapping them together with the cuffs hanging from the top, and then bent to fasten my ankles to the lower beams.
Now I understood why he wanted me to wear my heels. It gave me the height I needed to be comfortable without stretching my body too much.
“At any time you feel it’s too much, you say your safe word. We’ll stop, no questions.”
He’d stopped when I’d used my safe word on our wedding night, so I trusted him. He wouldn’t push me any further than I could handle. When it came to sex and my life, I could trust him completely. It was everything else we had to work on.
“I know you will.”
His features softened and he ran a thumb over my lower lip before giving me a soft kiss. “I’m not good with words, Isa. Just know I’ve never given this much of myself to anyone.”
My throat burned, hearing the emotion in his words. One day I could only hope he gave me all of him.
“I do know.”
“I’ll protect you with my dying breath.”
“I’ll protect you too.”
“It’ll never come to that.” He kissed me again and the tenderness from a second before disappeared, replaced by a mask of complete control.
He reached over to a table near the cross, picking up a flogger, much like the one the Dom had used on his submissive at the club. The handle was black and the multitude of leather tails were in shades of red.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then we begin.”
I expected the sting of the flogger. Instead I felt the smooth handle rub over my nipples, circling each and then moving lower until it slid between the lips of my sex, grazing my clit.
My pussy flooded with desire, and a moan escaped my lips.
He teased my body with the handle for…I wasn’t sure how long, lulling me into a half-focused state.
When the first strike came, I wasn’t expecting it and gasped, jerking my bound arms and crying out as the pain shocked my system. Just as fast, it morphed into a dull ache.
“Breathe, baby.”
I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
My body was on fire and I wanted more.
“More, Baz.”
The next smack of the flogger had my mind clouding with pain and pleasure at the same time. Had I ever felt anything so incredible? The sting was something I’d crave again and again.
Sebastian began a tempo of strikes that had me arching into each kiss of the leather straps. Every inch of my exposed skin was on fire and burned with pleasure-pain unlike anything I could have imagined.
“Do you want me to stop? Just say the word.”
Was he crazy?
My pussy dripped with my need for this man and what he was doing to me with the flogger.
“No. Please I need more.” I pled with both my words and eyes.
That was when I noticed the bulge pressing against Sebastian’s pants. He was as affected by this as I was.
“As you wish, love.”
He continued to make me mindless with the kiss of the flogger. It was as if I would orgasm any moment.
“Please Baz. I want…I want.” I thrashed against the cross, lost in mindless need.
Sebastian dropped the flogger, and the press of the front of his body to my aching skin was so intense, tears streamed down my face. “What do you want?”
“You, please. Inside me.”
“As you wish,” he repeated, stepping back to shuck his clothes and returning when he was naked.
He pressed the thick hard head of his cock to my sopping pussy.
“Fuck. You’re dripping.” He pushed in all the way before pulling out and thrusting back in.
He fucked me hard and fast, catapulting me into release.
My core clamped down on his pistoning cock, quivering and spasming.
His pace was unrelenting and kept me rolling from one orgasm to another.
By the time Sebastian came I was mindless and lost in the most incredible experience of my life.
Chapter Nineteen
Sebastian
I held Isa close as we exited the club. She was still riding the high of our scene. I’d allowed her to nap in my arms for an hour after I’d lowered her from the cross and tended to her body, bathing and dressing her. We’d had a light meal to help her with the crash she’d experience from the rush of endorphins coursing through her body.
This woman accepted me, all parts of me, even the parts that went completely against the world we lived in. Whatever the reason Opa and Mama arranged my marriage to Isa, I was eternally grateful.
She really was the perfect woman for me.
While Isa slept, I tapped my Interpol contacts to see if they could help with the threat on Isa and keep an eye on Jonas.
The only way he would ever gain back power was to take me out, and to accomplish that task he’d need a man on the inside of my organization, and I’d cleaned house. Only the most trusted had information on my whereabouts.
If there were rats in the infrastructure, they weren’t in the higher ranks and would have limited information. I’d eventually weed them out.
For now, I’d give Isa time with her friends, who happened to be my friends. Then, I’d set the plan into motion to take down Jonas, the Russians, or anyone who threatened us.
“Baz,” Isa said as we exited the hotel and went to the side walkway leading to the fountain show about to start at another resort on the strip.
“Yes?”
”I want our marriage to work. I don’t want the type of marriage your parents had.”
The thought of the pain and suffering my mother had endured made me want to find Jonas and shoot him in the head.
“That is one promise I can readily make you. Outside of being arranged, we have nothing in common with what Mama and Jonas had. There was never a day of love between them. He never felt an ounce for my mother what I feel for you.”
“What do you feel for me?”
There it was. She wanted the words.
I stared into the blue pools of her eyes. “I love you, Isa. More than you could ever know.”
“I know you do.” A smile broke across her face. “I just wanted you to say the words.”
“You made me go through that, and you knew what you meant to me?”
She leaned up on tiptoes and kissed me. “Don’t look so put out. A woman needs to hear these things.”
She adjusted her clutch and tucked her arms around my waist, burying her face against my chest.
I waited to hear her words agai
n, but they never came. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of disappointment.
She loved me. I knew she did but I’d hurt her by keeping things from her, and it was going to take some time to earn her trust back and get her to admit she loved me again.
“Come on, baby. We still have a five-minute walk before we get to the spot with the best view.”
Isa stepped out of my hold and tucked her arm into mine.
We hadn’t taken two steps when Isa’s eyes grew big and she said, “What’s Kane doing here?”
I shifted my gaze to where she looked and took in the man who managed a few of my businesses. He was supposed to be in the middle of a quarterly review of expenses, not a vacation. And it was too coincidental for him to be in Las Vegas at the same time Isa and I were here.
The only way he would know our location was if Lilly had told him. Lilly wouldn’t betray Isa.
“He has a gun!” I heard our bodyguards shout. “Move!”
Before I could react, Isa reached into her purse, pulled out the pistol we’d bought earlier in the day, took aim, and shot.
At the same moment, we were both tackled to the ground as more gunfire erupted around us.
“Boss, stay down.”
Shouts echoed all around us until it went silent. It seemed as if the never-ending noise of Vegas quieted.
“We have him,” came an American voice. “The area is secure.”
He had to be one of the Lykaios brothers’ men.
The body on my back lifted and I shifted to move off Isa. “Baby. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” she wheezed out. “Baz, I called Lilly today to check on a project.”
She was thinking the same thing I was. Lilly, or someone, had tipped Kane off.
“I know Lilly didn’t do this. She’s naive. She…” Isa trailed off as her eyes closed.
That was when I saw blood on my hand where it rested on her side.
Kane shot her. The motherfucker had shot her.
Everything inside me died.
There was one thing I was sure of, Kane Mancheski was a dead man. As were the people he worked for. If Isa wasn’t lying here, motionless, I’d be in the room getting every bit of information out of the fucker. I’d trusted the bastard for years. Hell, his father had been a trusted member of Opa’s inner circle.
Instead of showing loyalty to the family, he’d betrayed us. And worst of all, he’d used Isa as a way to get to me.
I clutched Isa’s hand as she lay in the makeshift clinic Ana and Adrian had created for us in one wing of their Vegas desert mansion.
They, along with the Lykaios brothers, had given us the cover we needed to escape the chaos that ensued on the strip following the shooting. Police had swarmed the area as had the media. But thankfully Adrian had used his tech skills to wipe all video surveillance for the vicinity and had gone as far as to wash any evidence of Isa’s blood from the concrete where we’d fallen.
“She’s going to be okay, Weber,” Adrian said as he entered the room. “The bullet went through clean. This is normal after major blood loss. Plus, she has a head injury from the impact of the fall.”
I glared at him. “Did it make any difference to you when Ana was hurt? Tell me you didn’t want to resurrect the fucker even though Ana had already killed him so you could do it yourself.”
I couldn’t hide the rage coursing through my blood.
“I won’t say that. I’d end the bastard again for touching her. You have to understand Isa is strong, just like Ana.”
“Did you get anything out of the asshole?” I clenched the fist of my other hand.
After my soldiers had hustled Isa and me from the very visible walkway around Ida, my time was lost in making sure Isa would live. I knew Adrian would use any means necessary to get the information out of Mancheski.
“You’re not going to like this.”
“As if anything about this whole situation is something I’m going to like.”
“Jonas and Malkovich are behind this.”
“That’s not news to me.”
“No, this was a setup from the beginning. Mancheski’s mother is Malkovich’s distant cousin. He targeted Isa’s friend Lilly before Jonas forced the marriage on you.”
“Why would the fucker do that?”
“I’m going to tell you the story Mancheski told us and you tell me if it makes sense.”
Fine. I stared at Isa, who hadn’t budged an inch since I’d laid her on the bed yesterday.
Over the next twenty minutes, Adrian relayed a history of my family I knew but not in detail.
I was well aware my mother and Jonas’s marriage was forced upon them but I hadn’t realized Mama had done it out of desperation. Her wedding to Andrew was supposed to be the week he was killed, and then shortly afterward, she found out she was pregnant.
With me.
According to the story Adrian told, Jonas had assumed I was his child until my sister Hannah was born. She looked exactly like him, whereas I looked like the spitting image of my uncle Andrew.
This bit of information should have felt like a blow to everything I knew, but seemed to only give weight to the reason I knew a man who was supposed to be my father hated me.
Jonas had treated me like some unwanted burden. The only time he ever handled me as more than garbage had been when Opa was around. Opa, on the other hand, had treated me like his heir from my earliest childhood memory, even going as far as putting my training in the business before that of Jonas’s.
“What does any of this have to do with the hit on Isa? I know Jonas had plans to hand her over to Malkovich.”
Adrian shook his head. “The hit wasn’t on Isa. It was on you. In fact, as of an hour ago, we found at least ten contracts out in the market.”
“Then what does Isa have to do with this?”
“Isa was the reward for carrying out the hit. Malkovich wanted Isa from the time her family made her debut into society. She was just as stunning at sixteen as she is now. Apparently, Benz took offense to Malkovich wanting to negotiate a marriage for his teenage daughter, especially with the reputation Malkovich had for his treatment of his mistresses. Benz may be a ruthless bastard, but he would never sell his only child to a fucker like Malkovich, no matter the reward. Isa is the reason for the Benz-Malkovich rivalry.”
The thought of Malkovich even touching a hair on Isa’s head was unfathomable.
“What does that have to do with our current situation? This makes no sense.”
“Man, you can’t be this dense. I get you’re fucked up with Isa getting shot, but come on. You are the best strategist I know.”
“Don’t make me punch you, asshole. Just spit it out.”
“Jonas gets shit as your uncle. You’ve been the Weber heir since your birth. Your grandfather knew it and your mother knew it. The marriage contract between you and Isa was to protect Isa from Malkovich and you from Jonas. Don’t for one minute believe Jonas wasn’t aware of the marriage contract until recently. This whole thing was too cleverly orchestrated.”
I tried to process everything Adrian had said. Under the marriage contract, Jonas inherited millions. Without it, he got nothing outside of the trust fund Opa had created for each of his sons. He would remain the spare son. And Jonas wasn’t the type of man to make way for himself without trading on the family name as Uncle Fredrik had done.
As my father, even if it was on paper, he would get what was due to him as a retired family head. By putting a hit out on me, he would get the money free and clear and return to the helm of the family structure.
Jonas wasn’t the type to do the dirty work himself. He knew any link to him and my death would cause him more harm than good and open him up to retaliation from inside the Weber organization.
Money was the motivation for everything in Jonas’s life. There was no doubt in my mind the hit on Mama was the result of him knowing I wasn’t his child. He wanted to remove anyone who could prove the truth.
&nb
sp; The bastard needed to die.
“My wife and Lilly were pawns in Jonas’s game.” I kept my voice calm, hoping it would stay the anger boiling inside me.
It was time to be rid of Jonas Weber for good. And Malkovich. That bastard was going to suffer the fall of his organization before I took care of him.
“Yes.” Adrian ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, I know what you’re thinking.”
“Don’t even think about interfering.”
First, I was going to take care of Mancheski and then I’d deal with Jonas and Malkovich. There were enough people sprinkled throughout the world who owed me a favor or two. I planned to collect.
“Dammit, Sebastian. You’re Interpol, a fucking cop.”
“Who’s broken laws of nearly every country to make sure the assignment was completed.”
Adrian released a resigned breath. “You know Ana’s going to kick my ass.”
“I’m not asking you to help. Stay with your pregnant wife. She needs you here.”
“You got it wrong. She’s going to kick my ass because she can’t be part of it.”
I smiled and knew Isa would probably have the same reaction. Thinking of her, I looked in her direction.
She still slept, the dark shadows under her eyes less visible. She needed her rest, and there was no way she could handle the journey home. The safest place for her was here, under the protection of a retired Solon agent. Pregnant or not, Ana was dangerous.
Then there were her brothers—they would never let anything happen to Isa.
“You know we’re going to have to do a lot of groveling when we return to our wives,” Adrian said, figuring out what I had planned and deciding to join in.
“Groveling leads to phenomenal sex. I’ll take my chances.”
Chapter Twenty
Isa
“Come home, Schatz,” Mama pled over the phone as I tied the belt of my coat and leaned against the balcony of my room in Ana’s house.
After everything that had happened, I now had a better understanding of the reasons she and Opa had arranged my marriage to Sebastian. It was her way of protecting me. Her baby. Her only child.