Alexa pressed her head against his brow, her arms going around his shoulders. “I just wish it would hurry up and leave me the hell alone. It exhausts me. If I’m not depressed, I’m hyper and manic. I feel like a damned ping pong ball getting batted back and forth, Gage.”
He lifted his brow from hers, looking deeply into her anguished hazel eyes. “You’ll never be a ping pong ball. You’re too pretty.” Gage offered her a slight smile, tenderly kissing her, wanting to infuse Alexa with his love, his belief in her working through this trauma. More than anything, as he skimmed his mouth against her lips, easing them open, sliding his tongue between them, tasting her, hearing her moan softly, he wanted to banish the returning anxiety. She quivered, a sign that he was giving her pleasure.
Without a word, he eased Alexa down on the blanket, his arm beneath her neck. She opened her eyes and he saw arousal in them. Leaning down, he slid his other hand beneath her tee, knowing she wasn’t wearing a bra. He cupped her breast, watching the nipple become a sharp point against the cotton material. He eased the material upward, revealing it. Watching her, holding her drowsy, hungry gaze, he reached down and closed his lips over that hard bud. Instantly, Alexa moaned, her hips bucking upward, her hand gripping his shoulder, willing him silently to stay and suckle her nipple as shards of fire leaped from there down to her simmering lower body.
This time, he licked it, teased it, and then drew it into his mouth to drive her out of her mind. Gage could chase her anxiety away by loving her. It was medication of another sort. Alexa came unhinged in his arms, her hips urgently pressing against his jeans where his cock twitched and thickened, hungry for her again. Her cries became low and her breath grew ragged as he ruthlessly tugged and suckled on that sweet nipple of hers. He would never cause Alexa pain, at least in loving her, but he could walk her along that very fine edge of pleasure/pain that would bring a woman to a swift orgasm if the man knew how to do it.
“Let’s take off your tee,” he urged, helping her sit up. “I’m going to love you out of your mind.” He saw her give him a shaky look, her hands trembling as she tried to grasp the ends of her tee. With a tender smile, he rasped, “Let me undress you …” and he brought the tee over her head, dropping it nearby. Urging her to lie on her back, he opened her shorts and pulled them down. Lastly, he took off her sneakers and socks, mentally photographing her beautiful, sinuous body spread out on the bright green wool blanket. Her auburn hair was thick, glistening, creating a halo about her head and shoulders.
He took off his tee, throwing it aside, opened his jeans and unzipped them. Pushing off the jeans after getting rid of his hiking boots, he came back to Alexa, lying by her side, sliding one arm beneath her neck. As he captured her other nipple with his lips, she cried out, leaning into him, her one hand gripping his shoulder, pulling him closer, feeling his throbbing erection brushing against her rounded belly. At the same time, Gage moved his other hand across her mound, his fingers sliding into her moist folds, knowing she was very close to orgasm once more. In the back of his mind, he knew that by loving her, he could keep the anxiety at bay for another hour or two. As he slid two fingers into her slick, juicy entrance, she cried out, hips powering toward him, wanting more. She clenched, losing her mind to the boiling heat he was creating with his skill. Gasps tore out of her as Gage eased his way into her. She moaned his name, her fingers gripping the short hair near his nape, begging him to alleviate the pressure building up within her.
Gage lifted his lips to the other nipple and he grazed the peak with his teeth. It was just enough pain-pleasure. Almost instantly, she was coming, coming, and screaming. He felt the orgasm hurtle her to a place where nothing, not even memories, could touch her. Opening her thighs, he blanketed her, easing into her tight, wet channel. He lost his mind as she hungrily thrust her hips, pulling him fully into her.
Gage felt his whole body explode with hers. And, in the midst of their passionate union, he gave thanks that he could give the woman he loved a reprieve from the nightmares of her past.
CHAPTER 3
Gage tried to downplay the concern he felt for Alexa as he stood near the door of the Delos Gulfstream jet at Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., a week later. She and her newly hired assistant, Sarina Elstad, were boarding the jet. Before they’d left for the airport, he’d wanted to give Alexa a farewell kiss, but she’d been cold to him since she’d awakened, barely speaking to him. Their wonderful time on the hill above the farmland was now just a dream from the past. He’d wanted it to last, but knew it never did. Two days afterward, Alexa had cycled down into that PTSD pit of high cortisol once more. It was painful to watch her being tortured by it, all her emotions distorted and making her edgy, irritable, and argumentative over nothing. And that’s exactly what had happened at the office yesterday. Gage didn’t want Alexa to go to Paris because she was still raw and healing. She bull-doggedly forged ahead and told him she was going. Worse? She erupted over dinner at their home when he tried to gently bring it up once again, hoping she would be more reasonable. But that’s not what happened.
Miserable, Gage knew he hadn’t exactly approached the issue very well himself. He loved Alexa, and he was overprotective of her for a lot of good reasons, but she saw it as suffocating her. That had hurt him deeply. And they were still reeling from that fight. Now, she was cold and distant with him, equally hurt by his words and his trying to get her to stay home and heal. Gage knew Alexa had an undue responsibility to others. It had been bred into her by her global family, who believed in serving those who had less. It was not only a calling, but a duty. And Alexa took her obligation seriously. Sometimes, he felt, far too much. There was a time to fight and a time to stop and heal. She didn’t know her own limitations yet, and that’s what bothered Gage the most.
The late September sky was cloudy, and it began to rain before dawn. Pulling the sheepskin collar of his leather bombardier jacket up to protect his exposed neck, Gage watched Alexa disappear inside the jet. His heart broke a little more, not wanting to part like this.
He’d tried to talk her into not going to the sex trafficking conference held in Paris, because he knew she wasn’t ready for it. Instead, he’d tried to persuade her to let Sarina go by herself to represent Artemis Security. The Norwegian blonde, a blue-eyed beauty of twenty-eight, was a Ph.D. from Harvard whose whole life had been dedicated to battling sex traffickers, and she had one of the highest profiles in the world, which was why Alexa had hired her for Artemis.
Sarina would be given the job of managing the sex trafficking department under Alexa’s Safe House Foundation, a division of Artemis. After Alexa had told Gage one night after dinner that Sarina’s sister, Kiara, had been kidnapped at the age of fifteen and forced into sexual servitude, Gage fought his instinctive reaction to go out and find the bastards who’d done it.
Sarina’s father was a wealthy shipping magnate in Norway and had spent millions trying to find his youngest daughter. Finally, she’d been spotted by a hired security contractor over the small European country of Malgar, bordered by Macedonia and Albania. Her father recaptured her and brought her home to Oslo, Norway, after five years of enslavement. Kiara had been brainwashed, drugged, and sent to “sex school” to learn how to please her future master. She’d been given a designer sex drug known as Compliance twice a week, just in time for the clients’ arrivals. Although she was abused sexually, because of Compliance, she would never have any memory of what had happened. Gage supposed that it was actually a blessing in disguise.
Frowning, Gage turned away, walking back toward the gate as the jet’s engines whined to life. In Alexa’s case, she had also been given a drug during the physical exam performed by the monsters who had planned to sell her to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, that drug had rendered her body so weak, she couldn’t fight back. Her mind, however, was left clear, so the abuse would be held in her memory forever. And to this day, it lived within her, which is how she developed PTSD symptoms.
St
icking his hands into his jacket pockets, Gage turned at the gate. As the jet was given clearance and headed out toward the runway, he lifted his hand to Alexa, whom he saw in one of the small, round windows. She had been so looking forward to this conference. Sarina had brought together a high-powered group of human rights directors, all of whom were passionate about shutting down sex trafficking in their particular country.
The jet slowly trundled away, and Gage felt his concern morph into ice-cold fear. He couldn’t get the words or images of Kiara’s capture, torture, and brainwashing out of his mind. One of the major sex traffickers in the world was a billionaire named Valdrin Rasari, who made his “legitimate” money in oil, textiles, and steel mills. He hid his dark activities in the country of Malgar, where the government left him alone because of the money he poured into their needy coffers.
Kiara had been kidnapped by Rasari’s men, predatory animals walking the streets of nearly every country in the world. They looked for girls and boys as young as age twelve, kidnapping them right off the streets. The victims were then brought to Malgar, to a town called Lugina Pisha, or Pine Tree, where Rasari had his compound.
Gage hunched his shoulders, turned, and walked through the guarded gate. Outside was his gray Kia SUV. Had it only been a week ago that he and Alexa had taken that unforgettable hike and made love to one another in the woods?
Concerned that Alexa was diving into this lurid, monstrous business too fast, Gage had talked with Becka yesterday, who had cautioned Alexa not to go to the conference; she agreed with Gage that she wasn’t emotionally prepared for it.
Gage climbed into the SUV, rain dripping off his face. Shutting the door, he watched as the jet rolled along the runway toward a distant takeoff point. Alexa was in a downswing in her PTSD cycle, that was clear, and Gage couldn’t reason with her when she became emotional and at times, almost hysterical.
Last night, Alexa had exploded angrily at him, telling him she wanted to sleep alone and that he could sleep on the couch. Damn it, he hated when she was at the mercy of a hormone known as cortisol.
Feeling hurt and upset, he’d barely slept last night out on the couch. Gage didn’t blame Alexa for her reaction to his attempt to keep her safe. He was becoming familiar with the stages of her suffering. Now she needed to prove to herself that she still had the courage to confront her own traumatic experience.
Of course, Alexa didn’t need to prove anything to him or anyone else. Gage wearily moved his fingers through his dark, rain-soaked hair, started the Kia, turned on the wiper blades, and watched for the Delos jet to safely take off.
His mind swung back to Valdrin Rasari. The man was a huge black hole. Kiara had been the most extensive source of information about him and his infamous compound. Until her, no one had ever escaped from it, and lived to provide such lurid testimony.
The compound had been hidden in a narrow valley covered with pine trees, mountains ringing three sides of it, and a lake on the fourth side. Kiara had said that the compound was really a breeding facility. Men called “breeders” impregnated the women, known as “broodmares.” The children produced were cruelly taken from their sex slave mothers at three months old. Those children were already sold and sent to their respective parents in some other part of the world. At that time, a broodmare would be bred again to have another child by a selected breeder.
Gage could hardly believe what he had heard. He was equally stunned by the complex infrastructure Rasari had created.
Malgar was a third world country into which Rasari poured billions. The government, as far as he was concerned, was merely a puppet whose strings the sick monster pulled. He had created his evil facilities without government oversight, and because Malgar was not in the European Union, it answered to no one.
Women like Kiara, then in her teens, were the most highly prized and sought after on the street. They were physically mature and able to provide sexual services. They were usually beautiful and still young enough to be brainwashed, threatened, and forced into sexual slavery. Gage could barely stand hearing about what these young children were put through. His heart ached for all of them.
Wiping his face, he knew why he couldn’t get through to Alexa. She was driven and committed to her work, and he agreed with Tal, her big sister, that this trip would be a distraction for Alexa. She was running away from her trauma, trying to bury it beneath the traumas of others, which was somehow easier to deal with.
Jesus, what a mess. Alexa was in free fall, heading for a darker place if she didn’t pull out of this dive. The conference would traumatize her even more, he was sure of that.
The jet taking her to Paris, its yellow and red stripes proclaiming its identity, took off, disappearing into the rainy gray sky. Frowning, Gage drove out of the parking lot. This was one miserable day. He should have kissed Alexa goodbye, even though she was pissed as hell at him. He should have told her he loved her. But he’d done neither. And she’d been icy and withdrawn, her glare accusatory, as if he weren’t supporting her when she needed him to be there for her. He’d had no intention of forcing himself upon her, but regrets were always a mean son of a bitch.
*
Valdrin Rasari took one last look in the mirror of the Fontainebleau Hotel, only blocks from the famed Eiffel Tower. He smiled coldly into the full-length gold framed mirror. His mouth curved even more at the irony that he, one of the major sex traffickers in the world, would be a wolf in sheep’s clothing at this conference on sex slavery. He could easily travel the world in disguise with forged passports. Right now, fifty countries had him on their no-fly list. Only third world countries were open to him buying the best children from parents who were starving. Sell me your child, and you will live to put food on the table for a year for the rest of your family. It’s a good trade.
Tonight, at the cocktail party in the huge chandelier ballroom downstairs, no one would recognize him. At six feet tall, muscular without being muscle-bound, he would carry a cane, under the guise of Dr. Analius Revig from the University of Oslo. His injury was from a “skiing accident” in his twenties, of course. Today, his short black hair was dyed gray, and his square-jawed face now sported a sporty gray mustache. His brown eyes had blue contacts over them, covered further by a pair of fashionable wire-rim glasses. After all, he was pretending to be a sixty-five-year-old man …
Since his alter ego was a professor at the University of Oslo, he dressed in a fashionable brown wool sport coat and black wool trousers. Valdrin was exceedingly sensitive to anything touching his flesh, so beneath the black trousers he wore the world’s finest silk boxer shorts. Never mind that they cost a thousand dollars—they were worth it. His cock was long, thick, and super-sensitive to touch or material covering it. Under the elegant coat, he wore a white cotton shirt that had been ironed to perfection; it gave him a professorial look. He wore a black bow tie that was in keeping with the look he desired.
He was looking forward to prowling the huge gathering, eavesdropping, and seeing who was there. Valdrin took great enjoyment in being undercover. He spoke six different languages, Norwegian being one of them. Placing his old leather wallet into his coat pocket and his passport in an inner pocket, he adopted the proper slump and slight lean to the right, his cane in his left hand. Fortunately, he had one of those nondescript faces that no one would ever recognize. In fact, he had destroyed any photos of himself for the last thirty of his forty-five years. No one really knew who the monstrous Rasari was or how he looked, even while he was on every country’s radar.
He left his bodyguards behind, a door between the sumptuous rooms. They were handlers from the compound who also looked nondescript, nothing like the usual hulking guards. He smiled, ruffling his hair so it looked like an older person’s hair. Perfecting his slump to the right and engaging a proper limp, he walked around the huge suite until he felt comfortable with his disguise.
The ballroom was packed with men in black tuxedos and women in tasteful European gowns or pantsuits, but Valdrin di
dn’t worry about his appearance. As a university professor, he would be easily forgiven for such fashion oversight. He limped slowly, skirting the outside of the gathering. Wine was flowing, but not much hard liquor. He knew this group quite well, because he was their number one focus among the world’s most loathed sex traffickers. He smiled faintly, keeping his head bent slightly as he looked up through his false bushy gray eyebrows.
A redheaded woman with a blond woman beside her caught his attention. Moving out of the walkway, he leaned casually against the heavily brocaded gold wallpaper and watched. Who was this woman? He’d not seen her before. Over the years, Valdrin had learned and committed to his impeccable memory all the major leaders in the human rights movement. This woman was new. Some of his interest was doused as he saw the blonde beside her was none other than Sarina Elstad. His lips twitched, remembering how lush and sexually hungry her sweet little sister, Kiara, had been. For two years, she had been his favorite BDSM sub—and what a fine sub she had been. At first, she’d fought him, but he would give her the drug Compliance and watch her turn from fiery fighter to a whimpering, sexually starved woman who would do anything to attain an orgasm.
One of the nice side effects of Compliance was that a woman’s womb began to cramp, as if she were having cramps during her menstrual period. The gnawing, edgy pain was actually the body hormonally wanting to be bred so a woman could become fertile.
Kiara had become pregnant four times in those two years. And each time, Valdrin had given her a pill for her to abort the fetus, after which she would be understandably sore and tender for the next few days. He never wore a condom when one of his personal sex slaves was on Compliance. In fact, he disdained condoms completely. They robbed a man of exquisite sensations and pleasures.
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