Bought (Assassin's Revenge Book 2)

by Crescent, Tara

  In my lap, my hand tightens on my hidden knife. Amateurs are unpredictable. This woman is a maid in Durov’s estate, one with a grudge against Ivan, who made a crude pass at her and slapped her cheek hard when rebuffed.

  Her grudge and Lucien’s offered bounty of ten thousand euros is why she’s in this café.

  She slides into our booth but she doesn’t look at either of us. Her eyes stay locked on her hands and I spy one tiny piece of paper twisted tight in her grasp.

  “Avez-vous ce que nous voudrons?” Do you have what we want?

  The slightest of nods. The paper slides forward. “Merci,” I mutter as Lucien’s hand closes over the scrap.

  “What’s going to happen?” she asks in French.

  I meet her nervous brown eyes and I reply in French as well. “You were never here.” My voice is harsh, but her curiosity is unforgivable. Curiosity will get you killed. The less she knows, the less can be pried out of her by torture.

  She shivers and stays silent. Lucien removes an envelope from inside his jacket and slides it towards her. She doesn’t look inside to see if all ten thousand euros are there. She just flees.

  “You’ll have to pretend to be a whore,” Lucien says. Not the first time we’ve had this discussion.

  I nod. “Yes.” I’m not afraid of anything or anyone, but this thing causes panic every time I think of it. The lust of men sends terror through me. There has been no one since I left Abeokuta. I hoped my fear would evaporate as my strength grew, but it hasn’t. I’m ashamed of myself. So I hide this truth from Lucien. He doesn’t need to know.

  “You have your knife?”

  I nod again. Ivan’s ending will be messy and painful. I’m ready.

  ***

  When I woke up in the morning, the sun was streaming through the windows and the sheer white curtains were fluttering in the breeze. The door to the courtyard was open and I could hear Alexander’s voice in the distance, speaking a language I couldn’t quite make out. Not French and not Thai either. How many languages did he speak?

  I didn’t know what to make of Alexander. So far, he’d been perfectly kind to me. He’d made me feel desired, but he’d also wanted me to feel at ease. Everything he’d done yesterday had been designed to achieve that. The casual trip to the night market, the dancing at the club after. I’d been a bundle of nerves and he’d calmed me down.

  It could have very easily been different. He could have ordered me to blow him off at the BDSM club right after the auction. He would have had every right to expect me to be eager to please him. He’d just purchased me for three months and he’d paid a million dollars, money that was vital in saving my imaginary sister. I would have been grateful. I would have done it if he’d asked.

  He could have done more than that. He could have ordered me to parade around Bangkok in that sheer robe, enjoying my humiliation. He could have shared me with Salim and Rachid. He could have punished me for dancing with another man. He could have believed that a million dollars was expected to buy a lot of cooperation.

  But he’d sensed my nerves and observed my fear. He’d acted to reassure me. Personality-wise, he wasn’t a different person from the man I’d slept with in Paris. Then too, he waited for my arousal and need to overrule my fear. Then too, he’d been kind.

  I couldn’t reconcile this facet of him with his association with Dylan and Sylvia. Where was the empathy then? Could he not feel it for the children that Sylvia arranged to tear from their homes so they could serve in the brothels of her choosing? Could he not see that Dylan was a full, active participant in the rape and torture of one young girl after another, all lasting a two to three year period before he tired of them and sold them, condemning them to a different kind of hellish existence?

  Don’t go there, I told myself firmly. I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on the horrors that Alexander tolerated, even abetted. Ellie wasn’t able to understand, but Jenny didn’t know anything. All Jenny saw was the charming man who had treated her with impeccable consideration and care last night. Jenny would have quite the crush on Alexander Hamilton by now.

  I didn’t need to pretend to be eager to please. I couldn’t deny being turned on by his nearness. My body prickled with lust when I gazed into his eyes. And I hated myself for it.

  ***

  “You are up.” He was in the bedroom when I returned, still naked, from the bathroom. He was dressed casually – navy blue linen pants, a white cotton shirt and sneakers on his feet.

  I nodded. Everything was going to begin today, he’d said. A strange, heady sense of anticipation filled my blood.

  He looked slightly amused. “Use your words, Jenny.”

  “I’m up,” I obediently parroted.

  “And are you ready?” Again, that amusement.

  “For what, Alexander?” I asked him boldly, and he shook his head at me.

  “For what, Sir.” His hand gestured, and I knelt on the plush carpeted floor immediately. My heart pounded and moisture pooled between my legs. Everything wasn’t just going to begin today. It was going to begin now.

  “Part your legs wider,” he ordered, and I nudged my knees apart. My head was lowered automatically. “Still wider. Show me that cunt of yours.”

  Heat filled my entire body. But I did as he asked.

  “Link your hands behind your back. Grasp a hold of your elbows.” I obeyed, and my shoulders strained.

  It wasn’t the lewdest position he could have put me in, though I remained flushed with shame and burgeoning desire. But as I knelt there, I felt the cool air of the air conditioning waft around my cunt. The effect of my hands, clasped behind my back, was to push my breasts out as twin offerings to him.

  He didn’t lean in. He didn’t come closer and he didn’t touch me. He just watched me. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking at all. “You look afraid,” he remarked after many moments of silence.

  How could I respond to that? He was very good at picking up what I wished to keep concealed. I was a little afraid. Two years in Dylan’s possession had taught me to be terrified of uncontrolled desire. The one night I’d spent with Alexander two years ago in Paris had not been enough to eradicate all my fear.

  “Tell me, Jenny,” he asked, “did you enjoy your time with your previous master?”

  Ah, fuck. His question was direct and far too perceptive and I couldn’t lie. He would be able to tell. I tried for a half-truth. “Not always, Sir.”

  “Why?”

  There was panicked screaming in my mind. Everything balanced on my answer. Dylan. My revenge. The fact that Alexander would kill me if he knew who I was. I needed to navigate carefully through this inquisition so that my fear would be explained but my cover story would remain intact.

  “My Master punished me harshly,” I whispered. “I’m afraid to do something to displease you.”

  He looked unhappy. “You are my submissive, Jenny,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair in a helpless gesture. “And I don’t think you have the slightest idea what that entails.” He fixed me with a piercing look. “Did you get evaluated by Lorraine’s resident Doms, or did you lie your way past that as well?”

  I shivered. I had to act, and act well so that he wouldn’t be suspicious of everything I did. He had to trust me enough to take me to Hanoi. “They evaluated me,” I said tonelessly. My mind reeled. What should I do next? This wasn’t what I was expecting at all – Alexander’s focused attention on me.

  “Did you enjoy that?” he probed.

  “Yes Sir.” No lie there. I had been nervous about their examination, but they had brought me unexpected pleasure.

  “Tell me why.”

  “Umm…” I struggled with this. “I could trust them to stop, if I needed them to. I trusted them to respect my safe words.”

  “And you couldn’t with your previous Master.” His words weren’t a question.

  I shook my head. “Not always.” Never. Slaves didn’t have safe words.

  He looked… troubled. “You a
re a frightened little mouse, Jenny, and I don’t get aroused by your terror.”

  “I wasn’t terrified yesterday,” I retorted. “And I’m not terrified now.”

  “Yet, if I unbuckle my belt,” he said, his hands at his waistband, “I dare say your eyes will be filled instantly with panic.”

  Only from the remembered memory of what Dylan did to me. Only because I can’t forget.

  I kept silent. I stayed on my knees on the carpet, my legs spread apart, the breeze kissing my folds. My hands locked behind my back.

  “One million dollars,” he finally said flatly. “For your sister. Take the money and walk away.”

  My eyes flew to his face, shocked. Again, my mind struggled to keep pace with what was going on and I fought to improvise. I couldn’t walk away. “Why?” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “I don’t want anyone in my bed who doesn’t want to be there.” His words were a dismissal.

  I laughed inwardly. If only he knew. Even now, when my plans lay in potential shambles, my body craved him. I unlocked my arms from behind my back, stung beyond belief at his assertion that I didn’t want him. My eyes stayed glued to his, even as my fingers dipped in and out of my pussy. I held my fingers out towards him. “I want to be here.” The evidence of my desire was extended towards him.

  His eyes betrayed his lust. He took a step closer towards me. “If you stay,” he growled, “you will learn to follow my rules.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “The first rule – you must be honest about your desires. Your wants and your needs. What arouses you and what causes you fear.”

  “Yes Sir.” I gulped. Dylan hadn’t ever been interested in my desire, just my compliance. But Alexander wanted me naked and revealed to him and that terrified me. Already, I felt too much for him. The way he’d held me two years ago in Paris had etched itself into my memory. Last night’s camaraderie and kindness had reawakened every emotion I’d managed to suppress when I realized who he was.

  But I had no ability to turn away from the path I was on. Dylan’s death depended on it, but I sensed that more than my revenge was at stake here. Something about this man filled every crevasse in my soul, and I couldn’t walk away.

  “I’m going to punish you now.” His voice was very, very close to me. His hands took my outstretched fingers and brought them to his mouth, and his lips tasted the proof of my arousal. “But Jenny, you should know, your punishment will always fit your crime.”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his face.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked.

  “A little.” My voice was soft.

  “Honesty. Good. What are you being punished for?”

  “Because I forgot and called you Sir outside of a scene,” I whispered.

  He nodded, his eyes on mine. “Tell me, Jenny, how should you be punished?”

  I blinked, confused. “I don’t know, Sir.” Surely it wasn’t my place to tell him how to punish me. I was the submissive. I had to endure what he wanted.

  “Get up,” he ordered. I complied and he led me to the dressing room. I’d barely noticed it as I walked out from the bathroom, but I paid better attention now. It had a large mirror on one wall and two upholstered chairs on either side of a small table.

  Alexander flicked every light on and positioned a chair so that it faced the mirror. He sat down on it and patted his lap. “Come sit down,” he instructed. I bit my lip and obeyed. My eyes met his gaze in the mirror. “Keep looking in the mirror, Jenny,” he purred. “Keep your eyes open. I want you to watch.”

  Watch what? “Yes, Sir.”

  “Part your legs.” He didn’t attempt to hide his desire; his voice was raspy with lust. I spread my legs and he put his hands on my thighs, holding me open. “I’m going to punish you now, Jenny.” He sounded amused. “I want you to touch your nipples. Run your fingertips all over them.”

  I bit my lip. I rarely touched myself anymore. When I was a teenager, before Dylan, I sometimes caress myself in the dark, lying on my bed. I’d imagine that one of the men in the books I’d read was in the room with me and I’d pet myself the way I’d imagine they would touch me. Gently at first and gradually getting more insistent, as their desire for me overwhelmed them.

  Then Dylan happened and I realized what really happened when desire overwhelmed some men.

  After the night in Paris with Alexander, who had told me his name was Marc, I’d played with myself a few times, trying to recreate his touch. Now he was here and I was sitting on his lap. I was flushed with embarrassment at performing this so-intimate act in front of him, yet I almost wept with frustration that he wasn’t doing it himself.

  My fingertips moved over my breasts, barely making contact with my nipples. The buds engorged in response and Alexander’s mouth descended on the back of my neck, brushing my hair out of the way. “Good girl,” he praised me. “Run your fingernails over them.”

  My nails scraped my tender flesh and I hissed at the sensations that rose in me. “Sir,” I groaned. “Please, touch me.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.” His hands gently traced circles on my parted thighs. In the mirror, his eyes burned into me. “Now, pinch your nipples between your thumb and forefinger.”

  I lifted both hands to do as he asked, throwing my head back and closing my eyes as a shaft of lust pierced through me. A sharp smack on my thighs jolted my eyes open. “Keep your eyes open, Jenny,” he said mildly.

  “Sorry Sir.” My apology was sincere. He was so calm and so controlled and it was such a turn-on. I wanted to please him.

  “Resume,” he urged. His nails scraped my thighs, moving closer to my wet, dripping cunt.

  My fingers pinched and I looked in the mirror, meeting his gaze. In my mind, I pretended it was his hands on my nipples. I kneaded the nubs between my fingertips and I whimpered softly as pinpricks of pleasure spiked all over me.

  “Harder,” he ordered and I increased the pressure. My cunt clenched in response, as shuddering lust ran through my body. “Now, touch your cunt.”

  I blushed but I didn’t protest. My hands obediently trailed down my body, over the swell of my breasts, past the clenched muscles of my abdomen, down to the soft mound.

  “Spread your lips open for me,” he whispered in my ear, nibbling at my flesh as he spoke.

  He didn’t mean the lips of my mouth. He meant the puffy, swollen lips of my cunt.

  “Alexander,” I groaned.

  “Should you be protesting, Jenny?” His voice was politely interested, but his rebuke came across, loud and clear.

  “No Sir.” I flushed in shame.

  He kissed my neck again. “What should you be doing, Jenny?” This time, his voice sounded warmer.

  “I should be obeying you,” I said. I met his gaze in the mirror. I didn’t take my eyes off his as I parted my cunt lips for him.

  He inhaled sharply as my folds opened and the pink flesh within peeked into view. His fingers reached towards me. My gaze stayed locked onto the mirror as one of his fingers dipped into my slit, coming out wet with my juices. He kept looking at me as he brought that finger to his mouth, tasting me. “Such a treat,” he said. He grinned. “Breakfast of champions.”

  I laughed aloud, though my laugh was bitten off as his hands moved from my thighs and cupped my breasts. I watched my reflection, fascinated by the way his large hands enveloped them, by the way my dusky-rose nipples perked up in response.

  “Now, make yourself come for me.”

  Of course I’d known this was going to happen. Through each step of his excruciatingly slow seduction, I’d been aware that it was going to end in this command. I had known that I would have to give in to my arousal as he watched me. My cunt had wept in anticipation of this moment.

  I’d never been happier to obey an order, yet it was painfully hard to keep my eyes open and to keep my gaze locked on his. But his voice interrupted. “No. I want you to watch your body. Don’t look at me.”

  My blood-red clitoris
, swollen with arousal, peeked out from under its hood. I slowly peeled it back, needing to give Alexander a show. So many times, I’d imagined this moment. So many times, I’d remembered how he had watched me touch myself in Paris. So many times, I’d wished for one more encounter with the one man I didn’t want to forget.

  And he was here, and as conflicted as I was about everything, my body didn’t echo my mind’s unease. My body just reacted to his nearness, to the faint spice of his cologne on his skin. I felt the warmth and the weight of his hands curled over my breasts. My back itched faintly, reacting to the weave of his shirt as I leaned against his chest. My fingertips moved over my splayed open cunt and I heard the sounds of my arousal in the squishy sounds of my juices, in my whimpered moans and in his heavy breathing against my ear.

  Always ask for permission to climax. That rule had been ingrained into me. “Sir,” I begged, “may I come?”

  “You may.” His fingers pinched my tender nipples, pulling them outwards, away from my body. Pain jolted through my body at his touch, but I leaned back into him and my fingers moved faster over my flesh. In my state of arousal, the pain he inflicted didn’t feel like pain. It felt like pleasure.

  I was so close to that edge. I wanted to go over so much for him. I felt the sensations rise and sharp stabs of longing pulsed through my body. A full-body tremble wracked my body as I climaxed with a deep growl.

  He wouldn’t let me close my legs. One small shake of his head stilled me. “Now, do it again. Make yourself come.”

  Obedience was harder this time around, but I obeyed nonetheless. Satiated as it was, with small tremors still running through me, my clitoris protested at my touch, but I persisted. This time, my climax came quicker and I screamed out as my muscles clenched in orgasm.

  “Good,” he said. He rubbed his palms over my nipples and I whimpered slightly. Even that gentle touch chafed at my sore skin. “Once more and we’ll consider your punishment complete.”

  It took real effort to bite back my protest. Then his words registered. “This is my punishment?”

  “The second rule. If you aren’t afraid, if you don’t need to use your safe-words, then you don’t initiate conversation in a scene.”