Virgin's Daddy: A Billionaire Romance

by B. B. Hamel

  Emma came up next to me. “We’re not in the city anymore.”

  “No,” I grunted, “we’re not.”

  Forest spread out all around us. There was maybe fifteen feet until the tree line started.

  “Any idea how long we drove?” she asked.

  “Half hour is my guess, but I really don’t know.”

  She nodded and sat down on the bed. “Why did they do that?”

  “I don’t know that, either.” I sat next to her. “But friends don’t usually drag their friends off with black hoods over their fucking heads.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  I grinned at her. “Happy you came with me?”

  “Not at this moment, no. Not really.”

  I laughed. “This is what my life is like, dangerous and violent.”

  “So you get a black bag over your face a lot then?”

  I smirked. “That was a first.”

  “Well look at you. Apparently you haven’t done everything.”

  I leaned closer to her. “I’ve done enough, girl. You learned all about that last night.”

  Before she could answer, there was a short knock at the door before it pushed open.

  A woman stepped inside, quickly shutting the door behind her. She had blond hair pulled back into a tight braid and wore a flannel button-down shirt and tight jeans. She had a large rifle loosely hanging down from her shoulder.

  “Brooks, Emma. I’m Kasia.”

  I stood up. “Kasia. Where the fuck is Louisa?”

  “Lou couldn’t come with us, but I’m her second in command,” she said. “I want to start by apologizing for this.”

  I stepped toward her but she didn’t flinch. I saw her hand drift slowly toward her weapon and grinned at her.

  “Why are we here?”

  “You were under surveillance, Brooks,” she said. “We had to take action quickly before we were discovered.”

  “Who was watching?”

  “Your boss, Dante,” she said. “Apparently he’s more capable than we realized.”

  “Just him?”

  “Him alone,” she confirmed. “But he got too close.”

  “Why the fucking bags?”

  “We couldn’t wait for you to decide. We had to move. The bags were to protect the location of this safe house in case you both decide you wish to leave.”

  “So you’re still helping us then?” Emma asked, standing.

  Kasia smiled at her. “Of course we are. Did Lou tell you what we do?”

  “She said she gave power to the powerless.”

  Kasia laughed. “That’s just the way Lou talks sometimes. Really, we combat human trafficking. We save lives, Emma. That’s what we do.”

  “I saw what you do,” I said quickly. “You don’t save lives.”

  “Yes, well, that operation got out of hand, thanks to you,” she admitted. “We prefer to save these girls with a lot less bloodshed, but things happen.”

  “They do happen,” I sneered. “I don’t appreciate getting a bag over my fucking head without my permission.”

  “Brooks,” Emma said, and came up behind me. “Calm down.” She put her hand on my arm.

  I realized how fucking tense I was. I wanted to tear Kasia apart, even though that went against everything I believed in. I wanted to tear her fucking smug smile from her face and shove it down her throat. I hated being locked in a cage, but more than that, I hated how Emma took everything she said at face value. These people were liars and killers, but she couldn’t see it.

  “Here’s the deal,” Kasia said. “You’re not prisoners, not exactly, but we do need to keep you inside this room. We can’t risk either of you running away and betraying our location. We have other women here who need our help too, and we can’t risk their lives.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Emma said.

  “So,” Kasia went on, “if you want to leave this room, just knock. There’s a guard nearby that will escort you around.”

  “How about you let me leave right now?” I asked Kasia.

  “If that’s what you want,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea. You two should stay here. We’re safe, far away from the mafia. Soon we’ll figure out a way for you both to escape the state and to set up new lives.”

  “Sounds too fucking good to be true,” I grumbled at her.

  “Maybe,” she said, “but this is Lou’s dream, helping the helpless.” She smiled at Emma. “I’ll be back to check on you two later.” She turned and quickly left the room, shutting the door behind her.

  I walked over to the door and tried the knob, but it was locked. I knew I could probably force it, but if there really were guards, then it wouldn’t be worthwhile.

  Emma came over to me and put her hands on my arms again. “Come on, Brooks,” she said. “Sit down with me. Let’s figure this out.”

  I grunted and sat on the edge of the bed, rage rolling through me. Emma sat down next to me.

  “Let’s stay,” she said. Before I could disagree, she spoke over me. “At least for a little bit. Let’s figure out what they’re all about.”

  “I think that’s a very bad idea,” I said. “These people are killers, Emma. I’ve seen it.”

  “Maybe they are, but maybe they really want to help.”

  “You can’t just trust everyone.”

  She frowned. “I know that.”

  “You can’t just trust these people.”

  “Like I trust you.”

  I clenched my jaw. “I proved myself to you.”

  “Let them do the same then.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  Emma stood up. “I’m going to go look around.”

  “What? No. Stay here.”

  “You wait for me,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

  She walked over to the door and knocked before I could stop her. A second later, another woman opened the door, this one a bit older than Kasia though dressed in similar clothes.

  “Hi,” Emma said. “I was hoping I could take a look around.”

  “Sure,” the woman said, “but only one of you at a time, at least until another guard can come look after the big boy here.”

  Emma grinned at me. “Hear that, big boy? You’ll have to wait for an escort.”

  “Emma,” I said, “please just stay here.”

  “I’ll be fine. What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m coming then,” I said.

  She smiled and then stepped out into the hall.

  The guard looked in at me. “I’ll get an escort for you. Just sit tight.” The door shut and locked.

  I stood there, staring at the closed door, anger welling up in me. I couldn’t be mad at Emma for any of this, since she was only doing what she felt was right. She was making it hard to protect her, though, running off like that.

  No, I was pissed off at these fucking Spiders. They talked about freeing women and saving lives, but so far all I’d seen was death, violence, and jail cells. They talked a big game, but I didn’t trust them, not one tiny bit, not yet.

  They were going to have to prove themselves to me. I sat down on the bed and waited.

  I was willing to give them a chance, if only because Emma wanted me to, but at the first sign of any sort of fucking shit, I was going to get us far away from here and never look back.

  18

  Emma

  Marta, my escort, followed me like a shadow. I tried to engage her in conversation once or twice, but she just didn’t seem all that interested in talking.

  But she did let me walk around wherever I wanted.

  As I wandered the house, I felt like I got a much better sense of who these people were than I could have from anything they might have told me. Upstairs I passed a ton of rooms, most of them containing young women. They all smiled at me, but when I tried to talk to them they usually ignored me or spoke a language back that I couldn’t understand.

  “Sex slaves,” Marta commented to me after the third girl ignored me. “
Not from here.”

  “Really? These are the girls you saved?”

  She just smiled at me, and I knew the conversation was over.

  The doors to their rooms were open, and they seemed free to move around the house. I was surprised by how big the place was. It clearly used to be an old farm house, but it had been added on to over the years. The walls were old and the wallpaper was peeling, but it was clean and comfortable.

  I went downstairs and found more women in the kitchen. They were cooking something that smelled absolutely amazing. A young girl with bright red hair smiled and said something to me in a language I didn’t understand. Then she held out a bowl of a dark brown soup.

  I took it and took a bite. “Delicious,” I said.

  She smiled and nodded and then went back to work. The women were cooking and preparing more food, probably to feed the whole house. I devoured the little meal in a second and placed the bowl in the sink. Marta stood by the doorway, watching me but smiling.

  I found more guards wandering around the grounds, holding rifles, though nobody seemed to be in a hurry. They mainly just smiled and nodded at me as if I were just another guest there.

  There was a large dining room, a living room with a television, several bathrooms, and another large sitting area. I moved out the back door and stood on a large porch with rocking chairs. An older woman was sitting in a chair, knitting something.

  “Hi,” I said to her.

  I was surprised when she looked up. “Hello, dear.”

  Marta stood close behind me. “Can I sit?” I asked her.

  “Of course.”

  I sat down next to her.

  “Marta, dear, would you get us some tea?”

  Marta nodded. “Sure thing, Nan.” She disappeared back inside.

  I looked at the old woman. “Nan?”

  She laughed. “They call me nana because I’m old. I don’t look that old though, do I?”

  “You’re the youngest person here.”

  “Thanks, dear. Massage my ego.”

  “What is this place?”

  She shrugged, knitting. “It’s a halfway house. It’s a safe place. We take in broken women, we try to nurse them back to health, and then we release them into the wild.”

  “How?” I asked her. “How does this place exist?”

  “Louisa Barone.”

  “But why? Aren’t you hurting her family?”

  The woman just kept smiling serenely, knitting as she spoke.

  “Louisa is an interesting woman,” she said. “Maybe we’re hurting her family’s business, but as far as she’s concerned, we’re helping to save them, too. What do you know about human trafficking?”

  “Not much,” I admitted.

  “It’s horrible. They addict these young girls to drugs, get them into debt, and then force them to prostitute themselves until they’re dead or all used up. In Louisa’s mind, saving these women is also helping to save her family’s soul.”

  I nodded, frowning. I didn’t know anything about the mafia or about Louisa, but everything this woman was saying made sense to me. I understood why Brooks didn’t trust these people, but so far I’d seen nothing that made me think they were trying to do anything but help.

  I stood up. “Thanks, Nan,” I said. “I’ll leave you to your knitting.”

  “Tea hasn’t come yet, dear,” she said.

  “Is it okay if I just go for a walk? I’ll just be in the woods.”

  She looked at me, smiling. “You’re not trying to run away, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “Honestly. I just need to think.”

  She stared at me for a second, and I saw a hardness in her eyes. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. I’ll tell Marta where you’ve gone, but don’t go far. And come back soon. We’ll be eating in an hour.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and then I walked off toward the forest.

  I felt the cool breeze on my skin and realized that I had left Chicago for the first time.

  I grew up in the city. I knew the streets better than anything else in my life. It was my home and I didn’t know anything else. Sure, I was only out in the suburbs, but I felt like I was lost in an enchanted forest.

  The women back there were amazing. Every one of them was so strong, so much more than I could ever have imagined. I knew that if Brooks just saw what I saw, he’d understand. These people weren’t here to hurt us; they were here to try to help us.

  More specifically, they wanted to help me.

  But the fact that they were taking Brooks in as well spoke volumes about him. I knew he said he didn’t hurt women, but I was willing to bet that the Spiders didn’t take men in very often unless they really were special.

  As I walked through the forest, soon losing sight of the house, I knew that Brooks was something special. I’d never met someone like him, and although he was a killer, he really did care about me. He didn’t trust these people, but that made sense. He didn’t know them and probably had been burned too many times by too many different people to really let his guard down.

  The more I got to know him, the more I felt like I could understand him. There was an anger inside him, an anger at life. He became a killer because that was all he knew, death and violence. But I couldn’t picture him as dangerous, not really.

  I sighed and breathed in the cool air as I walked, twigs snapping. I had no clue how this day had gotten me here, but I wasn’t trying to fight it. I was done fighting it. Life simply swept me up and bore me along, and I had to learn to react like water, flowing along with it. I couldn’t control it. I just had to learn to form myself along with it.

  Suddenly, I heard a twig snap nearby. I looked around, my eyes wide. I felt my heart begin to beat fast.

  “Marta?” I called out. “Is that you?”

  I heard another twig snap and whirled around. Brooks stepped out from behind a tree.

  “Fuck,” I said, releasing a breath. “You scared the shit out of me.” My heart was hammering in my chest.

  He smirked at me. “Sorry. I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Where’s your guard?”

  He shrugged. “Looking for me, I guess.”

  “You lost her?”

  “She didn’t stand a chance. I gave her the slip pretty fast.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted to talk to you where nobody would overhear us. Someone mentioned that you were out walking through the woods, so this is as good a time as any.”

  I crossed my arms. “We’re actually alone out here?”

  He nodded. “We are. Nobody for at least a couple miles.”

  “What do you want to talk about?”

  He stepped closer to me. “You like these people.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “Did you see the girls upstairs? And in the kitchen?”

  “I saw a bunch of young, scared girls who can’t speak English. I’m not sure what any of that means.”

  I sighed, frustrated. “I saw a bunch of women helping each other,” I said. “Maybe you don’t understand because you’re too busy thinking with your dick.”

  He laughed. “This isn’t some feminist bullshit, Emma. This is about whether or not we can trust the Spiders. I’ve seen them do some violent fucking shit, and I’m inclined to run.”

  “I want to stay.”

  He came closer to me and stopped. I looked at him, at his body, his muscles, and his hard eyes, and I wanted to throw myself at him. I wanted to wrap my body around his and feel the way I felt the other night, but I couldn’t, not yet.

  “I know you do. I can’t say I blame you.”

  “Give them another day. That’s all. One more day, and if you’re not convinced, I’ll go.”

  He frowned at me. “Promise.”

  “I swear. We’ll leave.”

  “Okay.”

  I blinked. “Seriously?”

  “This is as much your choice as mine, Emma. I can’t force you to stay wi
th me.”

  It hit me in that moment. He was absolutely right. Before I’d had to stay with him, because he was the only one protecting me. But now I didn’t need to stay with him at all if I didn’t want to. I was free to make my own choices, and I could stay even if he decided to leave.

  But I didn’t want that, not at all. I still couldn’t imagine doing this without him, Spiders or no Spiders. Whether they could help me or not, it was irrelevant without him.

  I stepped closer to him. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “We’re in this together.”

  He grabbed me by the hips and pulled me against him roughly, kissing my lips hard. I melted into his embrace, returning his kiss with a passion I didn’t even realize I had inside me. I felt hungry, starving for his touch.

  I felt his hands move along my body as I pressed myself harder against him, wanting to feel his every inch. He kissed along my neck and whispered in my ear.

  “I’ve been fucking thinking about this every second since you left my bed,” he said.

  “We can’t do anything here,” I whispered. “We’re out in the open.”

  He laughed and pushed me back, my body pressing up against a tree. He pinned me there and kissed my neck, his hands slipping down the front of my jeans.

  “Soaking wet,” he whispered as his fingers pushed under my panties and found my dripping clit. “I think your body disagrees with you.”

  “Brooks,” I gasped as he began to stroke me.

  “Nobody is coming,” he said.

  “Except for me if you keep doing that.”

  He grinned at me. “See. You fucking like it.” He pressed a finger deep inside me.

  I gasped, smiling. “Maybe I do.”

  “You don’t have to pretend around me,” he said, kissing my neck again, his lips so close to my ear. “Let go.”

  He began to stroke his fingers in and out of my pussy, fucking my soaking spot. He rolled them up along my skin and rubbed my clit. Then he rolled them back down to press deep inside me. I gasped as he worked me like that, his skilled hands pressing against my body, moving me closer and closer.

  I couldn’t help myself. I was worried someone would catch us, but that fear only heightened the sensation of his fingers working my pussy. I reached forward and grabbed his thick cock, feeling his hardness through his jeans. He grunted as I fumbled with his belt, pulling it off and then unbuttoning his fly. I reached down the front of his pants and grabbed his thick cock with both hands.