Nothing Less

by Reese Gabriel

  It thrilled and excited Chelsea to think she was only at the beginning, that the man who’d brought her to her knees whipping and fucking her into submission had only scratched the surface of her potential. There was some trepidation in this thought as well, but overall she was prepared. Having done nothing else in her life half heartedly, she was not about to start now.

  Her only real concern was losing Conner. Yes, she knew he wouldn’t want to keep her, but once he saw her in the fullness of slavery, how would he resist her charms? She’d make him keep her, she was sure of it. Chelsea smiled in the bumpy darkness of the trunk. The battle wasn’t really over: it had, in fact, only barely begun.

  Chapter Nine

  Custody

  Agent Shayla McKay had been tracking the Black Dragon for five years, two months, and three days. Which meant she knew him better than she knew her lovers, her colleagues, her boss or her own aunt and sisters. The Dragon, in short, was her life, her obsession, her passion, not to mention the one and only blemish on her otherwise spotless record with the National Security Service.

  Needless to say, then, when word reached NSS headquarters one snowy Tuesday in January that the Dragon had been taken into custody in Mawanesia, there was no question in Agent McKay’s mind who was going to go and pick him up.

  Her boss, Agent-in-Charge Cliff Sanders of the Special Crimes Unit, tried to put his foot down. “There’s too much history here, Shayla. I need this guy back here in one piece. Let somebody else handle it.”

  “To hell with history,” the feisty redhead stormed, slamming a well-manicured hand down on his paper-strewn desk. “This bastard is mine. If he so much as breaks wind until his sentencing, I’m gonna be there to tell you what he ate that gave him the gas.”

  Sixty-one-year-old Sanders scowled, the veins more than a little evident on his smoothly domed forehead. “Fer crissakes, McKay,” he spat at her. “I know you like you were my own daughter. If I send you out there you’ll castrate the son of a bitch and then what am I supposed to do?” He gestured to the many stacks of yellow, pink and white papers surrounding him. “You don’t think I got enough paperwork already?”

  The slender, shapely agent folded her arms over her tightly bound chest. Her breasts were a size bigger than was suitable for police work, a fact that she tried to hide with heavy-duty sports bras. “You could try using a computer like everyone else,” she chided her mentor.

  Sanders’ lips began to twitch in that way they always did when he was about to give in to his favorite agent. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, caving in to her fierce green eyes. “All right, but you gotta swear—you’ll do this by the book.”

  “By the book,” she smiled cat-like, raising her hand pledge style. “Scout’s honor.”

  He mumbled something unintelligible and told her to get out. “You’ll leave in the morning,” he barked. “And no guns.”

  “Don’t need ‘em,” she assured him over her shoulder with shake of her firm arse under the beige skirt. “I can do this in my sleep.”

  Indeed, this was the one moment she’d dreamed of. A thousand times she’d pictured it, bright as day. The smug, handsome pony-tailed bastard in irons, helpless before her, his outrageously expensive wardrobe reduced to coveralls of red or orange. His spirit broken, his supposedly invincible blue eyes humbled.

  “Taste the justice of the people,” she’d say, an inch from his face. “On behalf of all the women you’ve ever wronged, welcome to hell.”

  At this point in her fantasy, she’d grab him by the crotch, squeezing his balls till he squealed like a girl. Needless to say, this was all very personal. White slavery was an offense to every woman, but even more so to her because she’d met him once undercover. It wasn’t something she liked to talk about much. If she were pressed, she’d say she’d peered at the underside of a rock no one should ever have to look at and they should leave it at that.

  “I never do anything to a woman she doesn’t want herself,” he’d told her once.

  Bullshit. She’d seen what he was doing—seen what he’d done to Janet, a fellow agent who’d gone undercover with the Dragon’s organization a month before she did. Janet had gone deep cover, too deep. It made Shayla cringe to this day every time she thought of the last time she’d seen the strong, capable blonde, reduced to a naked, cringing slave, whip marks on her back, chains on her flesh. The room was full of wealthy men, dealers and buyers. It was an auction and Janet was a little entertainment before the main event.

  Men had laughed as she crawled table to table, piteously begging for someone to mouth fuck her.

  “Won’t anyone help the poor dear out?” the Dragon had cried in mock concern. “If she doesn’t take her daily dose of protein, I can’t let her eat. Rules are rules, though I imagine she’s quite hungry by now.”

  Janet was in “training” getting ready to be put on the block herself at a future auction. Shayla had to sit there at the table, unable to break her disguise as the date of a wealthy industrialist, also an undercover cop. The Black Dragon had the audacity to make advances on Shayla in his presence, at one point challenging her to take a little ‘test’ in front of the assembled buyers.

  “My powers are humble,” he’d bragged, displaying Shayla before the crowd. “Compared to the masters of the Orient, I am a mere child. Still, I am male, and this…this is merely female.”

  “This” was her body and what he did to it then shook her up so bad that when the cavalry finally showed up later that evening, Shayla ended up letting the Dragon escape from under her nose. She’d re-run those events a million times in her mind and still it didn’t make sense. It was like she’d been drugged, though subsequent tests showed there was nothing in her system.

  Since then she’d seen the evidence of the Black Dragon’s supposed powers in the form of ruined girls from Seattle to Saigon. Willing slaves all, brainwashed hussies unfit for free life any longer. If it was the last thing she’d do, she’d see their abuser put away for life. In fact, she had a little tour planned for him. The institution where Janet now resided would be one of the first stops.

  They’d put Janet in the hospital at first, into some kind of PTSD program. It was a total failure. Shayla knew it wasn’t trauma, anyway. What kind of trauma do you know that would make a girl—a professional United States law enforcement officer—crawl around a room full of men begging to be sexually violated?

  The Dragon had bragged to the audience that she was next—that Shayla herself could be his conquest, his frigging “sex slave” if he wanted her. Bullshit. He’d find out soon how wrong he was, and he’d pay, too, on behalf of every woman.

  She’d promised to do it by the book and according to international law, an extradited prisoner had certain rights. But she could shake him up a little, couldn’t she? The flight was a long one, and she used every minute of it to think of various tortures she might get away with.

  Police Chief Inspector Yuan was at the airport to greet her, along with a lot of other toady civilians. They obviously wanted to score points with the Americans for the capture, but that was political crap; they could go to State for that.

  She wanted her man. In the flesh.

  The cell was tiny, set in the back of a rather ordinary looking jail. She cringed when she saw the door was unlocked. The local dicks seemed intent on making the National Security Service look ridiculous. As if the Dragon were some frigging jaywalker whom the NSS couldn’t nab without their help.

  “Agent McKay.” The Dragon stood to greet her, nodding his head, as if she were a nurse come to collect him for a friendly checkup at the doctor’s office. “You’re looking well.”

  She restrained the urge to lay the man out, cuffed hands or no. In spite of everything, he was being smug as hell. To her dismay, she saw the years had been kind to him, despite his fugitive status. The tiny lines on his face only added character, as did the peppering of silver and white in his long, luxurious black hair.

  “Richard Mortimer Colliso
n,” she said mechanically, reducing him to his mortal name. “As a duly authorized agent of the government of the United States of America, I have come to take you to stand trial within those sovereign states for the following crimes...”

  “Please,” he laughed thinly. “Spare my hosts the monotony of a complete rundown.” Turning to one of the uniformed officers, he rattled something off in the local lingo. The cop looked at her and smirked.

  Shayla clenched her fists. The motherfucker was sexually harassing her in some language she couldn’t even speak.

  Kicking the Dragon in the crotch was sheer reflex. Not the most intelligent thing to do, but unavoidable under the circumstances. It certainly wiped the smile off the cop’s face, anyhow.

  Three hours later, after a series of phone calls and meetings with the embassy, Shayla was made to apologize to Yuan’s superiors. She also got a thorough reaming from Sanders who swore he’d grow her some balls so he could cut them off when she got back.

  Overall, she considered it a great victory. Not one of the police escorts so much as looked at her cross-eyed as they rode out to the airport. Even the Dragon was surprisingly subdued. He hadn’t seen anything yet, Shayla thought to herself with wicked delight.

  She probably should have asked a few questions about the plane they put her and Collison on. It was an eight-seater, a puddle jumper. They were supposed to be heading out to the other one of Mawanesia’s main twin islands to catch a faster flight back to the States. Four soldiers rode with them. They were toting automatic weapons and never cracked a smile. The pilot was military, too.

  “Isn’t the island we want over there?” Shayla pointed out as the plane veered sharply away from their intended destination.

  “Not speak English,” one of the soldiers said with a diction that told her he was lying.

  The Dragon appeared to be asleep.

  Shayla knew something was wrong. She cursed herself for trying to do this alone. Her only chance was to get one of these weapons. The soldier saw her coming and motioned his arm upwards, efficiently and brutally. The gunstock crashed into Shayla’s forehead, reducing her to instant unconsciousness.

  She awoke a number of hours later, the taste of sand in her mouth. She opened her eyes just as a tiny wave rolled over her prostrate body. Gasping and sputtering, she sat up. Every muscle ached and it took a moment to get her bearings.

  Christ, she realized, looking down at herself. She was naked.

  “Good afternoon, Shayla.”

  It was the Dragon, sitting cross-legged, watching her, his body as exposed as hers.

  “What the...?” Shayla jumped to her feet, moving into a crouch, ready for hand-to-hand combat. “You better start explaining, Collison, or else.”

  “Relax, Shayla,” smiled the Dragon indulgently. “Save your strength.”

  Without taking her eyes off the man, and fighting very hard her urge to be ashamed of her nakedness, she took in the surroundings with her peripheral vision. Blue sky, palm trees, and the ocean at her back. A flipping paradise. “Where are we?” she demanded.

  The Dragon drew up one knee and wrapped his hands around it. She tried to keep his eyes off his well, tanned, sculpted flesh. He was easily in his fifties, but he still could pass for a Greek god. “The natives call it Ha-tou-ghay, though at the moment we are this island’s sole occupants.”

  Shayla felt her breasts swell under his gaze. She hated that she couldn’t cover them adequately. Why weren’t men made so—so soft and floppy? Shayla tried to focus on her anger, on her betrayal. “Those doublecrossing bastards!”

  His lips curled enigmatically. “Let’s just say that ideas of justice and propriety are a bit less cut and dried in the East than they are in the West.”

  “Stop sounding so pretentious,” she snapped. “You were born in the slums of Manchester, not some royal palace; everybody knows that.”

  He inclined his head. “Guilty as charged. Now if you’d like to sit down, I’ll explain why we’re here.”

  Shayla blinked. She was curious, actually, as to why she was alive, or at the very least not in chains. For that matter, why was her opponent naked himself?

  “You must forgive me for interfering in your work. I begged my new gendarme friends for some indulgence, you see. To settle a matter we’d been debating.”

  “Go on,” she said crisply, stifling the urge to throttle the pompous bastard.

  “It’s quite simple, my dear. I told Chief Inspector Yuan I could make you my slave by myself using only my bare hands, given just twenty-four uninterrupted hours.” He stretched out his hands. “This island represents a laboratory in which I may prove my point.”

  Shayla laughed. Though the situation was far from humorous, she was in need of some way to mark the absurdity of the moment. “I may have overestimated you, Collison,” she said, rising to brush herself off. “I’d thought you were smarter than this.”

  “Where are you going, Shayla?” he asked as she began walking inland toward the grove of palm trees.

  She didn’t bother to look back. “To find a way off this island. And you better pray I do, because otherwise I’ll have no reason not to kill you with my bare hands.”

  “Why not do that now?”

  “Because I made a promise.”

  “Very well, in that case, you have my permission to leave me for the moment.”

  She snorted at him loud enough for him to hear. This might be fun after all, she thought, marveling at the man’s ability to delude himself.

  Ten minutes later she’d arrived at the other side of the island. A half hour after that, she’d walked its circumference. The only sign of life, other than palms and coconuts was a small spider-like thing that scurried over her toes as she surveyed the ocean.

  Shayla hated spiders.

  If the Dragon heard her screams, he gave no indication.

  It was while she was running from the crawly thing that she tripped over a fallen branch. A sand crab poked its head out from under the rotted wood. Shayla screamed again. She decided it was safer in the water. Wading out into the inviting teal blue ocean, she considered her options.

  Swirling waves licked at her breasts, a warm current caressed her tingling crotch. She could try to swim for it, though she had no idea how close the next island was.

  A hunger pang gripped her. Shit. How long had it been since she’d eaten? What time was it in New York? That would tell her. Something nibbled her ankle. So much for the water. Running back on shore, she decided to find him.

  The Dragon was where she’d left him, though he was on his feet now, practicing some kind of martial arts. He’d released his long hair. It blew in the breeze as he flexed his muscles, legs akimbo, arms reaching skyward. He was at one with his environment. Unafraid of spiders. She remembered those hands well. With one of them he’d humiliated her in front of a roomful of people.

  “A woman is made to be tamed,” he’d declared, holding the back of his hand up to the crowd. “The male is the instrument of her fear as well as her desire.”

  The test required her to stand perfectly still, arms at her sides, giving no interference as he did as he wished for a full two minutes. She’d sighed when he touched her cheek, light as a feather. She’d also flinched when he raised his hand to strike her. She’d moaned when he flicked her nipple through the gold sequined cocktail dress. Then he went underneath, below the hem of her skirt. There were murmurs of approval as he removed his hand afterward, the evidence of her arousal clearly visible.

  “Look in my eyes,” he’d said. She hadn’t bothered resisting when he had her lick his fingers clean of her own juices. She should have, of course. Afterwards, her partner had told her to put it out of her head.

  “You were playing a part,” he assured her. “Shit, we all do things undercover.”

  It was easy for him to say; he hadn’t orgasmed for a mad man, a human slaver in front of a hundred witnesses. And all without being formerly entered or even stripped. It was all with the eyes, h
im looking at her, her licking and kissing the salty discharge from his skin.

  “You’re a natural slave,” he’d whispered to her at the end, after the uniformed police had arrived. She’d had him in her grips at that point. She’d been the first on the scene at the back door. She’d ordered him to freeze, his hand on the knob, about to escape. He’d turned, then, his eyes narrowing, a deadly smile on his face. She’d made the mistake of coming too close. He’d kissed her then, raping her lips only to spurn her. The gun hung limply in her hand as he spoke the words.

  You’re a natural slave, my dear.

  He’d gotten away and though she was never written up, she’d known it was her fault. That’s why she’d been chasing him so hard. Taking risks, missing chances to advance her career. And now this—allowing herself to fall into a trap. Winding up naked on a tropical island, with a mad man. Also naked. An incredibly gorgeous, dangerous male enemy whom she wished to kill and…

  Shayla stopped her train of thought. Looking down in horror, she realized she was touching herself. Causing herself to juice. Or had she merely been responding to a flow that had already begun?

  “I don’t want to have sex with that man,” she said out loud. “I won’t be any man’s slave.”

  This last word, slave, made her quiver. It had a power to it, coming from her lips, one she could no more explain than she could deny. She took a deep breath. Something was in the air. Something salty, something wicked. Could he be influencing her somehow? Could he be exercising some sort of voodoo on her?

  No, that was ridiculous. She was rational, a woman who appreciated and used facts, a woman who…a woman who was naked…naked and aroused.

  Damn, where did these thoughts keep coming from?

  Exercise. That’s what she needed. A good run around the island. A few laps, maybe more. Whatever it took to wake her up, to get her to that place of clarity and sharp focus, her every muscle screaming with power. As strong as any man. As strong as he was.