I gaped at Sarit. What had happened to the shy Thai girl who could barely say a word to anyone?
Susan giggled at my expression. “Sarit always gets chatty at the end of the auction,” she said. “Sheer relief that it’s over. Everything went well, and Sarit’s probably looking forward to her reward by Madame Lorraine.” She giggled again. “Judging by what she just said to you, I’m betting money that her fantasies involve a threesome. Maybe that’s what’s in store for her tonight.”
I laughed lightly though I heard the strain in my voice. I hid away the memories of the way Dylan’s bodyguards had closed around my body before they’d started to hurt me. One man was bad enough.
“How’d the auction work out for you?” I asked her instead. I was genuinely curious. Susan had been friendly and her kindness had helped soothe my nerves all evening.
“A Sheikh from Oman won me,” she smiled. There was a look of warmth in her eyes and her cheeks were flushed. “We went to the same boarding school in Switzerland.” She laughed. “This is going to be an interesting three months.”
I needed to talk to Lucien before Alexander came and whisked me away. My gaze rested on Elena on the other side of the room. Perfect. I could pretend I needed to talk to her. “Susan, will you excuse me? I’m going to pump Elena for information on my new Master.”
She nodded, her thoughts clearly still on the man who had bid on her. She had a look that I recognized from a long time ago. Lisa and Amber often had the same look when they had a crush on someone. Susan, despite her chatter about how she was hoping to attract Alexander, appeared quite happy with the way her auction had ended up.
Chapter 9
Ellie / Jenny:
Before I could make my escape, Madame Lorraine clapped her hands for attention. The hum of conversation ceased immediately.
“I’m delighted to announce,” she said, “that all of you are thrilled with your auction proceedings. Please follow me back to the main floor so you may officially be given to your masters and mistresses.
I was thrilled at my auction proceedings, was I? If I hadn’t been so sick to my stomach, I’d have snorted in derision at her choice of words. Instead I lined up with the others and made my way outside.
In the short while that we’d been in the antechamber, the room had been completely transformed. Now, the couches and separate sitting areas were gone. Any illusion of civilization was stripped away and what was left was raw carnal desire.
A drumbeat played through the speakers. Cages hung from the ceilings and in them, women danced, gyrated and beckoned. St. Andrews Crosses were set up throughout the space with bodies already strapped in. From the sounds of their moans, barely heard over the pulsing music, they were willing participants as they were punished and pleasured for the entertainment of all.
Men and women knelt at the legs of their Masters and Mistresses, held in place by leashes.
A line of six naked women were bent over spanking benches. Floggers caressed their skin, wielded by hooded, muscled bare-chested men. Their whimpers and wriggles drew the eyes of everyone in the room.
Waitresses threaded their way through the large space, carrying trays of wine and champagne, wearing short skirts and nothing else, their nipples pinched by bell-tipped clamps. Chiming followed their every footstep. Passing hands groped at their bodies while reaching for a glass of champagne, causing the trays to wobble and the girls to giggle and shriek.
The sounds and sights and smells of sex were everywhere.
Yet he was there and I had eyes only for him. Marc. Alexander. Whoever he really was.
His eyes flickered over me and there was appreciation there but no recognition. Despite everything, my heart broke. I wanted to yell and rail at myself. Alexander Hamilton was a dangerous man. One of the very few people who was always allowed access into Dylan McAllister’s compound, which made him a player of note in the shadowy world of sexual slavery and human trafficking. And he’d kissed Sylvia and I couldn’t wipe that image out of my mind.
I couldn’t wipe any of the images out of my mind. That was my problem. Try though I might, I couldn’t forget that night in Paris when his body had ground against mine and he brought me the deepest of pleasures, over and over again.
There was a brief ceremony. Each Master and Mistress held a narrow leather collar in their hands and each of them collared their kneeling slaves. When Alexander’s hands closed around my neck, my body trembled. It too remembered that night. It remembered his touch.
“Jenny from Cleveland.” He looked down at me, kneeling in front of him. “Get up. Come with me.”
It was beginning.
***
Alexander:
She remembered me, my bright star. I saw it in the flash of recognition in her eyes when our gazes connected, then a carefully blank expression replaced it.
She’d lost weight. In Paris, she’d been lush. Real and alive. Here, she was like a pale shadow of herself. The flaming red hair was gone, to be replaced by a flatter brown. She looked like a different person. Except for her eyes. Those sparkling green eyes had haunted my dreams.
Had she not mattered as much, I might not have remembered her. But she had been impossible to forget.
Of course, I wanted her. Anton and I got into a bidding war, but at the million mark, he gave up with an amused chuckle. “At that price, I could get two,” he said with a grin. “I didn’t think you particularly wanted a pain slut.”
“She isn’t one,” I replied. “We’ve met before.” Had Anton not been a friend and a good one, I wouldn’t have volunteered the information. I might have also been staking my claim, though I would have never admitted that to myself.
Curiosity radiated from him. “A former lover?” He looked intrigued. “And from your expression, one that was important. I thought you don’t get involved.”
“I’m not getting involved,” I said. “It’s a three month term. That’s all. I just want to renew an old one-night stand.”
“Really?” Anton raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Then you don’t mind sharing? I noticed Sylvia looking quite intrigued. She’s always wanted one of Lorraine’s submissives, hasn’t she?”
My hands clenched into fists. “I wouldn’t let Sylvia close to her,” I ground out.
Anton laughed. “Already more involved than you would admit, Alexander,” he said. “Still, I’m glad this auction has been more fruitful to you than it has to me.”
“You didn’t bid on anyone else?” I hadn’t been paying attention to much more than Rachel. Or Jenny, as she now called herself. “Couldn’t find a single woman here you wanted?”
“There are many beautiful women here,” he agreed. “But as always, the gap between what I want and what I can have is insurmountably large.”
Anton was a romantic. And his life was complicated. It didn’t lend itself to long-term relationships. Just like mine. I had to keep reminding myself of that fact.
***
I’d fastened a collar around the neck of a submissive at Lori’s auctions twice before. I’d never been as keenly aware of the significance of the act as I was in this moment.
She trembled when my fingers grazed her neck. Desire and fear warred in her gaze. A familiar expression from two years ago. She’d been afraid then too at the start.
That night, I had needed her fear to recede so we could seek pleasure together. But things had been simpler then. We hadn’t been in a BDSM club where sex was expected. I wondered what she thought of the chains and the whips and the clamps. Perhaps underneath the worry in her eyes, there was curiosity. A desire to explore. I very much hoped so.
I didn’t really care for novice submissives, but Rachel wasn’t a novice. Lori’s dominants would have evaluated her and they would have never let her participate in this auction if she didn’t have some experience.
She kept so many secrets, and I burned to uncover each and every one of them.
***
Ellie / Jenny:
He held his ha
nd out towards me and I placed mine in his. He tugged me up and to a corner of the room. His eyes never left my face. He watched me take in the overwhelming sensation overload of the room in front of me.
“Tell me, Jenny,” he leaned against a pillar and pulled me against him so my back rested against his chest. “What do you think of this?” One hand waved languidly to the scenes of sex being played out in front of me.
I watched, part fascinated, part fearful. The open lust in the air pulled me back to the past. To the room in Nigeria where five men had crowded around one frightened girl, cocks in hand, waiting for their turn to rape her.
“I don’t know, Master.” I couldn’t hide the quiver in my voice.
“Master…” he said thoughtfully. “I think not. Let’s not fool ourselves about what we are doing here, shall we? This thing that Lori runs isn’t a slave auction. Slaves don’t have choices. Slaves don’t have safe words and sheets outlining their hard and soft limits. Slaves just do whatever their masters tell them.” His voice tickled my ear as he spoke. His hands curled around my waist, holding me close to him. “What you are, Jenny, is a submissive on a three-month contract. You can call me Sir if we are in a scene and Alexander otherwise.”
His words cut to the heart of the matter. Slaves didn’t have choices. I couldn’t have ever said no to anything Dylan had done to me. From what Alexander had just said, he recognized the difference.
His fingers were so close to the underside of my breasts. All I could feel was a yearning in my body. I wanted him. I couldn’t lie to myself. The way my pussy clenched, the way my nipples perked up, neither of these responses left any room for self-delusion.
“Alexander.” My voice was soft and needy.
“Jenny.” His knee nudged my legs apart, shoulder-width. “Tell me what you think of this. Do you want to be strapped on the St. Andrews Cross in the spotlight, watched by a crowd as I whip your body?”
I felt both fear and arousal. The source of the arousal was easy enough to pinpoint – I could feel Alexander’s erection against the thin robe that barely covered my ass. But the fear was more complex.
There was fear of being discovered. If this man found out what my plan really was, he would kill me. I had no doubt of that. Layered in with that was the fear that my desire would cause me to act without thinking and I’d say something that would reveal more than I should. There was an awareness that this had been the only man I’d ever wanted and that sparked its own special kind of panic.
But he’d asked me a question. Right now, I needed to stick to a story that was as close to the truth as possible. I didn’t trust that I could improvise, not when my emotions were reeling and my head spun with the events of the day. “I’ve never done something like this before.”
“Something like what, cherie?”
“I’ve never participated in an auction,” I replied. “I’ve never seen something like this.” I gestured to the orgies unfolding in front of me.
“No, you haven’t, have you?” His voice was level. “Though your questionnaire indicated that you were comfortable with public sex and exhibitionism. You said you were aroused by it.”
I lied on the questionnaire so you’d bid on me, Alexander, I wanted to snap in reply. Instead, my brain performed calculations and ran various scenarios through my head. I didn’t think I could hide my emotions from this man. I’d have to pretend instead that my worry for my sister had made me reckless. My voice trembled and the distress wasn’t an act. I was at a pivot point. He could easily decline to go through with the auction and surrender me to Anton. We would never get another chance at Dylan. “My sister…”
“… has leukemia, and you made up everything on the questionnaire. Because, Jenny from Cleveland, you’ll do anything to save her.” It was a statement, not a question. But his body stayed relaxed. His hands still held me by my waist. His grip on me had neither tightened nor loosened. If he was angry by the pretence, he didn’t reveal it.
Not to save my sister. I’ll do anything to kill Dylan. “I didn’t make up everything.” My voice was soft as I answered him. “I have been trained before.”
I couldn’t read his tone, and pressed against his chest, I couldn’t see his face. “Do you want to walk away, cherie?”
“No, please no.” Desperation tinged my tone.
“There are other ways to help your sister, Jenny.”
I turned towards him and I met his eyes. My plan was once again on the verge of unravelling, but my thirst for revenge wasn’t the primary emotion when I looked at him. Rather, there was a genuine panic that he’d send me away. That he didn’t want me. That he didn’t feel this lust and passion dancing in the air between us, a palpable chemistry that pulled me close to him. “I don’t want another way,” I whispered.
His lips ground down on mine.
My memory was always faultless, often to my detriment. I would have sworn I’d remembered the way Alexander’s lips felt against mine. But this kiss in this moment –no memory of mine could compete.
I groaned and moved closer to him, my hands reaching to pull his head towards me. He shook his head and I stopped myself, but I couldn’t hold back my whimper of longing. My hands closed into fists at my side.
My nipples pressed against his chest. My pussy wept with need. Suddenly, the scenes of sex in the room didn’t matter. All that mattered was the way he felt against my body.
When he pulled away, I swayed. The room spun around me. If it wasn’t for his hands holding me safe, I would have fallen to the floor.
“We’ll have to re-do your limits list then, cherie. This time, the old-fashioned way. Through experimentation and discovery.” His voice was like foreplay. There was the promise of so much more in his tone, in the way his eyes examined me. I should have felt like meat, given my complicated history with sex, and my awareness of who this man really was. But I didn’t. I felt desired.
I probably needed someone to slap some sense into me.
“Have you eaten?” His question interrupted the self-recrimination.
I shook my head mutely. I hadn’t eaten since last night, too stressed by the upcoming auction to be able to force food into my stomach.
“Tell me, Jenny,” he asked, his eyes boring into me, “would you enjoy being paraded around Bangkok in this…” his hand gestured to my short robe, barely covering my ass and pussy, “robe, with my collar around your neck?”
What was I supposed to say? He already knew that I’d lied on my questionnaire. And if I started lying, the falsehoods would stack on top of each other and I wouldn’t be able to keep all of them straight. It was best to stick to the truth. “No,” I mumbled, my eyes on the floor.
He laughed, a short, humourless sound. “I thought not.” He lifted his hand up and in a flash, one of Madame Lorraine’s staff appeared. “Could you show us to a private room, please? And have Ms. Fullerton’s luggage sent to that room?”
“Of course, Mr. Hamilton,” came the respectful reply. “Please follow me.”
I needed to talk to Lucien. Wrapped up in his arms, it had temporarily receded from my thoughts, but Alexander had been in Paris two years ago when I’d killed Ivan Klimov and he was here at Madame Lorraine’s auction. There were no coincidences.
In order to survive the next three months, I had to forget that I was a trained killer and pretend that I was only an object of desire. But before that, I needed to warn Lucien. I didn’t know what Alexander had been doing in Paris two years ago. Lucien needed to start digging. “Sir,” I asked, doing my best to keep my tone deferent, “please may I go to the ladies room?”
He gave me a pointed look. “Sir in a session, Alexander otherwise,” he reminded me. “And you don’t really need to ask permission to go to the bathroom. That’s ridiculous.”
Maybe it was ridiculous. But nothing I’d experienced before in my life had prepared me for this situation and I was floundering. I nodded silently and walked away. I felt his gaze on me the entire time.
***
In the lobby, I made my way to the coat-check where I had surrendered my purse earlier in the day. The attendant, another beautiful Thai girl, saw me come and reached for it for me. “Thank you,” I said gratefully, impressed she’d remembered which purse was mine. Then again, maybe the other women had sleek designer handbags. Mine was a cloth satchel, bought on Khao San Road two days ago.
I half-walked, half-ran towards the bathrooms. No stalls in this luxurious club. Each bathroom was a separate area, complete with toilet, sink, and full-length mirrors. I gave thanks for the privacy as I groped through my bag, looking for my phone and dialing Lucien’s number when I found it.
The phone was somewhat of a risk. Had my purse been searched, Alexander Hamilton might have wondered why a woman who knew no one in Thailand would need a phone so much so that she saw fit to buy a cheap prepaid model. I had a cover story prepared for that, something about safety and needing to stay in touch with my sister.
What I would have loved to find in the purse was a weapon, but that was a risk I couldn’t take. And in truth, there was no weapon that could protect me against Alexander. It wasn’t just my body at risk anymore. This attraction I felt for him was dangerous. It could impact me far more than I was ready for.
As the phone rang, I watched my shaking hands with dispassionate interest. The last few days had taken an emotional toll on me and my journey was nowhere close to complete. I was entirely unprepared for Marc to be here and for him to be Alexander Hamilton. Remember Dylan, I hissed fiercely at myself. Remember your revenge.
“You are late,” Lucien snapped when he picked up. I heard the thread of worry in it and I almost cried.
“We have a situation,” I said tersely. “Remember the night in Paris, after Ivan Klimov?” Lucien had made his one and only pass at me and I’d kneed him in the groin, before disappearing for the night.
Bought (Assassin's Revenge Book 2) Page 7