“Yes, but everybody hides it, too. That’s the point.”
“Do you have a hang-up about sex or something?”
“No, I don’t have a hang-up about sex! I have a hang-up about guys I don’t even know kidnapping me and—”
“Do guys you know kidnap you?”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“What I was saying was I have a natural reticence to have guys I don’t even know—criminals—sleeping next to me in bed and, and, masturbating right in front of me.”
With a sigh of disgust, he rolled over on to his side to face her back. “Just a tip, hon, but discussing masturbation with a guy usually doesn’t calm him down. It kind of gets him going again. You don’t know too much about guys, do you?”
“Are you trying to make me mad?”
“I’m trying to make you shut up.”
“Better men have tried.”
“I bet.”
“What’s your last name anyway?” she snapped over her shoulder.
“Why? Do you want to memorize it for the mug shot?”
She shook her head and rolled over to face him as well. “I just want to know. It’ll make it less frightening.”
He sighed. “Standish. That’s the name I go by here anyway.”
“Victor Standish.”
“Vikram.”
“Vikram?” That did surprise her. “You don’t look, what is that, Indian?”
“There are billions of people in India. They don’t all look the same.”
“So you’re Indian?”
“I’m tired. Now, unless you want to know my mother’s maiden name and my social security number—”
“Social security number? Are you an American?”
“No, but you sure as hell are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This conversation started out with me trying to get you to stop crying and go to sleep and somewhere along the line we’ve veered wildly off.”
“I suppose you mean I’m pushy. The stereotypical American. Well, who stole whose yacht? I’d say that makes you the pushy one.”
He smiled faintly. “You’re not going to go to sleep, are you?”
“I have trouble sleeping under the best of circumstances,” she admitted.
“How about a drink?”
“That doesn’t usually help.”
“I meant me.”
“Can I watch the television?”
“This isn’t a slumber party.”
“It helps me fall asleep sometimes.”
“You know what helps me fall asleep, Samantha? Silence.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Thanks.” He turned over onto his side again, away from her and after a minute she heard his even breathing.
He was either sleeping or he was making a good show of pretending at it.
And as he had told her, he was very good at pretending.
She sighed.
She guessed she would have to just get better at that. She closed her eyes…and pretended she was safe and home and not in the middle of some scary nightmare.
* * * * *
Michael Reynolds hung up his penthouse apartment phone with hands that were shaking. It had rung, waking him up, and he hadn’t even flicked the light on yet. He was glad he had broken it off with Tiffany earlier today, despite her hysterics. He was glad he was alone in bed with no one here to see the effect that phone call had on him.
For the first time in his life, Michael Reynolds was scared as hell. And he had heard in his father’s voice—behind the domineering tone that was always there, behind the tirade about fucking foreigners and their fucking Interpol, behind the rattled off orders—he had heard in his father’s voice a fear that had never, ever been there before as well.
Damien and Michael Reynolds were two of the most powerful men in the world, and they were both right now scared shitless at the thought of what might be happening to one headstrong, spoiled, rich little girl who they both loved very much, whether she believed it or not.
He picked up the phone again and dialed a number that was so important he had never used it before, although he and his father both knew it by heart. When the party on the other line answered, he said, “I need a favor.”
Chapter Four
Vik jolted awake, managing not to move a muscle in the process. He took quick inventory of his surroundings—the dark cabin, the soft hum of the yacht’s motor, the silky bare leg draped over his own.
With no other motion in the cabin, the door still closed, he surmised that that was what had awoken him. That bare silky leg, perilously close to the huge erection he was getting under his shorts as a direct result of the contact.
The girl was draped all over him, her leg not only over his, but her long hair trailing over his chest as her head tucked into the crook of his arm and her arm came across his waist. And by the sound of her soft, even breathing, she wasn’t troubled a bit by the proximity. The chit was sound asleep.
When he had told Samantha that there were more important things going on than whether he was lusting after her, he had meant it. But nobody would ever know it by the state of his cock right now. In this moment, the fate of the free world could hang in the balance and he might just choose fucking her over going off to save it.
He drew a martyred breath. If he pushed her off him, she might wake up and start that infernal whimpering or, worse yet, chattering again.
Nobody wanted that.
On the other hand, despite jacking off earlier, twice, much more of her sound-asleep-seduction and he just might come in his shorts, which would occasion waking her up anyway as he got up to change and he doubted she’d appreciate the reason. She’d probably rather wake up pre-ejaculation rather than post-ejaculation. He’d probably like that better too.
Don’t go there…
She made a sleepy little sound that tore at him and it was all he could do not to roll over onto her and kiss her awake.
“Fooled you, didn’t I?” she murmured and he started. She lifted her head and he could see in the faint moonlight that was streaming in that she was grinning. “You thought I was asleep, didn’t you?”
“Uh, yeah.” His voice sounded kind of strangled to him, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I was practicing pretending.”
She sounded pretty pleased about it, so he held off on lecturing her about not pretending things that would lead to other things that she didn’t want to do for real. He just lay perfectly still, hoping she would undrape herself from off him, and at the same time praying she wouldn’t.
She shook her head. “You have an erection again,” she muttered.
He took a deep breath. It wasn’t exactly news to him.
“But I suppose you really can’t control it in your sleep, right?”
He said nothing.
She scooted up a little, and he felt her foot graze his calf.
“You’re awake now, though,” she commented.
“It’s not a faucet I can turn on and off,” he finally ground out. “You’re laying all over me.”
“I don’t exactly see you pushing me off.” It sounded like a taunt.
And then, goddamn it if she wasn’t leaning up to kiss him.
Samantha was losing her mind. She really was. After hours of lying here, unable to fall asleep, turning over in her mind worst case scenarios and unexpressed regrets, she just couldn’t stand it anymore. She couldn’t stand to be alone with her racing thoughts anymore, and the man peacefully sleeping next to her, looking like some kind of guardian angel when he should look like the criminal he was, was all she had. So she resolved to wake him up.
But good God, when had that morphed into trying to kiss him? It was really all about the fear and the regrets. Daddy was right. She never had done anything with her life, with her mind. And now she realized that life might be very short indeed. She had known, almost since the minute her father informed her that her mother
would be slotted to only the occasional supervised Saturday visits, that she loved her father very much but that she would never stop hating him.
So whereas she had adored learning before that and her eager mind had always gobbled up knowledge, she would never let her father see the fruits of it again. Although her father claimed to cherish family, she purposely held herself apart from her many brothers, never reciprocating any of their attempts to show affection. And though Daddy despised weakness, she sought out weak man after weak man just to spite him.
But this was her life, not her father’s, not her mother’s. It was hers. And she loved to learn. She loved her brothers—she really did—even Michael with his domineering ways so like their father’s. And she was attracted to strong, capable men…like this Vik.
And that was apparently where her thinking had gone all wrong. As Vik slept next to her, she let herself feel how solid and dependable his big body felt next to hers. He had saved her up on deck before. He was protecting her now and asking for nothing in return. She let the attraction she had fought before flood in on her senses and overtake the fear, the regret, until they were crowded out and the sense of horrible helplessness that she had always felt, but most especially since this whole nightmare began, receded into the background. As she slid her hand along his narrow waist and tangled her legs with his muscled strong ones, she felt a power that seemed to increase proportionately with that ever-present resilient erection. She had a very special power indeed and for once, goddamn it, she would use it.
As Samantha pressed her lips up to his, Vik jerked back in surprise.
They stared at each other in silence for a moment and then she said, “What? Don’t you want to teach me another lesson?”
“Yes.” He brought her hand slowly to his stiff cock. “I want to teach you not to treat me like I don’t have one of these.”
If he thought that would make her pull away in protest, he’d misjudged her. She clasped him firmly through his shorts, stroking, eliciting a groan from him. He yanked her own baggy shorts off abruptly so she was down to her underwear and rolled over on top of her, kissing her wildly, shoving her knees open with one leg. And when he had her bare thighs spread open for him and her wrists anchored by the side of her head, he warned, “Don’t play with me, Samantha. I said I wouldn’t touch you but—”
“I want you to touch me,” she whispered. “I want you.”
He forced himself to remember who she was and why she was here. “You’re just scared and you’re turning to me because of it.”
“Yeah. Stockholm Syndrome. I remember.”
“Right. So just give all this comfy chatter and flirting a rest. I’m getting you out of this. I swear I am.”
She rolled over on top of him before he knew it. “Shut up.”
He let the kiss go on a half a second too long. Just long enough for her little tongue to insinuate itself between his lips before he groaned and turned his head away like a fucking virgin maiden. “Stop this, Samantha.”
She kissed his neck and he actually shivered. “Why? You want it, Vik. You know you want it.”
Right then, right there, what he wanted—besides shoving his dick deep inside her of course—was to tell her who he was. Why he was here. He wanted her to see him not as a criminal or a pseudo-good-guy. He wanted her to see him as the genuine article. And, incredibly enough, he was more than a little pissed off that she was willing to fuck him without knowing that.
“You’re a fool for playing with me like this,” he said instead.
“Who said I’m playing with you? I just want to sleep with you.”
“Yeah? Would you sleep with Santiago? Gunderson?”
“Don’t give me that whore versus Madonna complex thing. You say I’m treating you like you don’t have a cock? Well, you’re treating me like I’m a Barbie doll.”
“What?”
“Nothing between her legs,” she muttered. “I’m a real girl, a big girl, and I know what I want.”
He ripped the flimsy strip of cotton covering her delectable ass right down the middle and helped himself to the silky flesh beneath, taking one cheek in each hand and squeezing, hard. “Yeah, I get that you’re real.”
He had to stop. This was so wrong of him. But Jesus, she was on top of him, hovering over him, her ass in his hands, her tits so close her could just, just…
He flipped her off him abruptly and scrambled up.
“No,” he said sternly. He turned on the lamp, hoping it would help, but he’d forgotten he’d divested her of the shorts and underwear a second ago and had long ago pulled off her tee shirt. So when the light came on, he saw that she had rolled up to her knees, crouching, her heaving tits with the nipples clearly visible through the camisole and the bottom half of her was…bare. Completely bare.
He was breathing as if he had run a mile uphill in five minutes flat, and his eyes zeroed in on that naked pubis. “You wax your pussy,” he muttered. “Christ. I’m not a fucking saint.”
She smiled and the force of it stunned him almost as much as the wax job had. Not surprisingly, he’d never seen this girl smile. It was…beautiful, blinding. In right that moment, he felt like some lovesick adolescent. Or a horny old professor with his prize student throwing herself at him. Or both.
He should go lock himself in the bathroom. But the absurdity of that image made him come to his senses.
“Stop this. You’re not thinking straight.” He sure as hell wasn’t anyway.
Leaning up farther on her knees, still smiling that killer smile, her long delicate fingers wandered down to the region where he normally would have expected dark curls and where there was just smooth white skin. He noticed irrelevantly that her nails were short.
“Don’t your biker babes or drug runners or whoever you usually sleep with ever wax?”
Her fingers dipped lower and he swallowed. Not that he really wanted to talk about this, but he guessed talking was better than not talking as it kept him from stomping back to that bed and shoving her fingers aside so he could feel her soft skin down there himself and dip in her bare pussy. “No. I guess the salon service hereabouts must be pretty limited. Or maybe it’s the hundred bucks you must drop every few weeks to keep it like that.”
“Oh, much more. Much, much more.” Her middle finger slid forward to the hood of her clit, which was clearly in evidence and distended with excitement, and she rotated her finger against it lightly.
“I’m surprised you don’t have long nails.” Somehow, keeping her talking seemed like his best strategy, pathetic as it was.
“No. Too much trouble working on a computer. Why? Do you like long nails?”
He’d never thought much about it one way or the other, but shook his head no.
“It’s easier to do this, too,” she commented as she played with herself.
He groaned, gripping the edge of the bureau behind him. “Jesus, what are you doing? Torturing me? I said I’m sorry we kidnapped you. Give me a break. Please.”
Continuing to rub herself, she laughed. “What? Everybody does it. Isn’t that what you said? And don’t you think the sight of you fisting your cock turned me on?”
His cock eagerly jerked at what it apparently interpreted as a compliment, tenting his shorts further in its enthusiasm to be freed to join in the fun.
But he was a trained Interpol agent. If he could withstand waterboarding, cigarette burns, tasering, he should be able to withstand one gorgeous girl playing with herself right in front of him.
He tried to think of her as an enemy agent. Maybe that would help.
Her finger massaging her clit dipped lower between her thighs and then came back visibly wet. She rubbed the wetness into herself, her eyes narrowing as she did so.
Shit. If she had been an enemy agent, the fate of the free world would be so screwed right now.
“I’m dying here, Samantha. Please. Stop. You don’t want to do this. You’re just scared.”
Her eyes widened and she shook her
head defiantly, her little chin tilting up. “No, Vik, I’m not scared. That’s the point. In just this moment, I’m not scared of you.”
“You should be,” he muttered.
“Why? Because you want to slip your hard cock into my wet pussy?”
Great. He loved it when a woman talked dirty. Was this girl, like, reading his mind or something? Or were all men just such simple dopes?
“That doesn’t scare me. In fact, in right this moment, you’re scared of me, aren’t you, Vik?”
“Yeah.” It came out way too easily. He should have lied or at least protested a little or something.
Man up, asshole.
She laughed again. “So who has the power here?”
She did. She had the power. And God, it felt so intoxicating, so right. For whatever reason, this huge, strong man who was completely in her thrall right now was resisting her and having a hell of a time at it. This was even better than if he had slept with her right as soon as she climbed on top of him.
She was insane. She was playing with fire.
But she sure as hell wasn’t thinking about getting murdered or never getting home…or being scared.
She masturbated blatantly, loving his ragged breathing as she did so, his inability to look away, and most especially the tremendous hard-on batting so furiously against his shorts she was surprised the cotton could take it.
“I get that you’re not like these other guys. That even if you don’t want them to know it, you’re a nice guy, at least when it comes to women.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he warned.
But despite a lifetime of being told she had no judgment when it came to men, she knew she was right about him. She knew she was.
“There’s not a guy alive who’s nice when confronted with, ah, something like this.”
“Seduction,” she murmured. “I’m seducing you.”
“Duh.”
“But you’re not being nice by not sleeping with me now, when I’m inviting you to.”
“I’m not trying to be nice, Samantha.” His voice was actually shaking a little. “I’m trying not to take advantage of a scared little girl—”
UndercoverSurrender Page 8