Sleight of Hand

by BJ Bentley

  “Magnus,” I answered curtly, not bothering to look at the caller ID.

  “Aleks.”

  Just his tone of voice when Jensen said my name was enough for the red flags to start flying. “What’s wrong?” I sat up straight and restarted the engine.

  “There was an incident at Starlight. Get down here.”

  “Bertie?” I choked on my fucking heart, knowing that she had spent the day with Charlotte, and Robert had been sending me regular updates throughout the day.

  “She’s here-” was all Jensen got out before I hung up on him and floored it to Starlight.

  My brakes squealed in protest as I slammed my foot down at the insistence of an emergency vehicle blocking my path. I jumped from my car, engine still running, and ran toward the rubble.

  “Sir! You can’t park there!” someone shouted at my back, but I didn’t give a fuck.

  I tore my way through the yellow caution tape and pushed my way past a first responder before someone finally managed to restrain me. “Let me go!” I yelled.

  “Sir, calm down. You can’t go in there,” a police officer, who looked a little green around the gills, insisted.

  “How bad is it?” I asked but didn’t really want to know. “Bertie!” I hollered, but, of course, got no reply.

  The officer didn’t say anything, just shook his head. I wasn’t sure if he didn’t really know the answer to my question or he was unwilling to share that information with me. I was about to wrap my hands around his throat and demand he talk to me when my phone rang. Looking at the caller ID, I let out a breath when I saw Robert’s name. “Where are you?” I demanded in lieu of a hello.

  “Aleksander?” whispered the sweetest voice I had ever heard.

  “Sparrow?” I asked with obvious relief. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she continued to speak softly. “We’re over by the ambulances. Can you come get me?”

  “Be right there, baby, don’t you move. And don’t hang up,” I tacked on hastily. “Keep talking to me.”

  “What do you want me to say?” she chuckled softly.

  “Anything. Anything at all. Just let me hear your voice,” I pleaded, not caring one bit how pathetic I sounded.

  “Okay. There once was a man from Nantucket,” she began to recite.

  I barked out a laugh. “Good girl,” I said roughly, using the same tone I used in bed.

  I hung up my phone as I rounded the first ambulance and made eye contact with Bertie. I strode toward her with the desperation of a starving predator, and she made it oh so easy for me when she ran forward to fling herself into my arms. I wrapped myself around her and lifted her feet clear off the ground.

  “You’re squeezin’ a little tight,” she squeaked out.

  I set her back on her feet before leaning down and taking her lips in an angry kiss. “Don’t you ever fucking do that again,” I hissed when I broke the kiss. She looked at me, bewildered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. I forbid it,” I stated, knowing I was coming fairly close to sounding like I was a pouting child. All I needed to do next was stomp my foot.

  “Hang on. Are you mad at me?”

  “No. I’m fucking furious,” I raised my voice and grasped her elbow, making her hiss and jerk away. “Are you hurt?” I growled and began eyeing her from top to toe.

  “Just some bumps and bruises. No biggie.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Bert’s hurt, though,” she said in a small voice.

  I let her lead me around to the second ambulance where Jensen and Charlotte were waiting while Robert was having his wounds tended. “Stay right here. Do not move from this spot, do you understand me?” I leaned in threateningly. I waited for her to nod before turning to Jensen. “Watch her,” I said, only to be granted a smirk from the smug asshole. I knew exactly what he was thinking, and I would deal with that later. “Injuries?” I asked when I got to Robert. He informed me that he had a lot of bruising, but also a broken arm and possible concussion. He was being advised by the paramedic to go to the hospital, but he was being stubborn. “You’re going to the hospital. End of discussion,” I determined. “Now, tell me what the fuck happened.”

  According to Robert, after a tortuous afternoon of shopping, the women decided on dinner at Starlight. That much I already knew. What I hadn’t known was what came next. Robert told me about the weird feeling the girls had during dinner and the subsequent trip to the security center. As they were leaving the building, there was a relatively small, isolated explosion. Robert threw himself at Bertie, taking her down and sheltering her from the raining debris. I retrieved his cell phone from Bertie and returned it to him. I also reminded him that he was indeed going to the hospital and was taking off however much time his physician recommended plus an extra week on my orders.

  “Mr. Magnus,” Robert called as I walked away. “Is she okay?” he asked, tilting his head in Bertie’s general direction.

  “She’ll be fine.” I jerked my chin at him in unspoken acknowledgement of his excellent job performance today and made my way back to the woman who I swore was going to be the death of me.

  Chapter 12

  Bertie

  The morning after the explosion, I woke up in a sweat, but not from nightmares. No, it was from the six plus feet of human furnace that was wrapped around me. Last night, once we got back to the penthouse, Aleksander took his time evaluating, cleaning, and bandaging my cuts and scrapes. He tried to force food and drink on me and basically mother henned me until I finally crawled into bed and passed out. I don’t remember him getting into bed with me, though. And I could have sworn I climbed into my own bed last night, but looking around the room, I realized we’re in Aleksander’s bedroom.

  I tried to wiggle out of his embrace, but his hold only tightens. The more I squirm, the more prominent his erection becomes. Oops. Woke the beast. A giggle escapes me at that thought.

  “Something amusing, sparrow?” said the gravelly voiced sex machine behind me.

  “Not really, but you’re smothering me. Let me up,” I sassed, feeling Aleksander’s body tighten just before he flipped me over.

  “I’m smothering you?” he growls.

  He pinned me, face down, on the mattress. He held me down by the back of my neck with one hand and pulled my panties down with the other. I yelped, but the sound was absorbed by the pillow, when he landed a stinging blow to my ass. Despite my verbal protest, he knew my body well enough to know that I liked it, and he got his proof when he slid his fingers between my thighs and glided them through the slickness there.

  “I think it’s high time I take this pussy, don’t you?” he asked, though I sensed it was rhetorical.

  I only whimpered in response.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered as he got off the bed.

  “Wait! Where are you going now?” I demanded, sitting up. I was getting really fucking tired of him getting me all worked up just to abandon me.

  He stopped and turned toward me. His eyes narrowed. “What is your job?”

  “What?” I shook my head in confusion.

  “In this bed. What is your job?”

  It took me a moment to realize what answer he was looking for. “To obey,” I said softly.

  “That’s right, sparrow. Obey. Now, don’t. Fucking. Move.” He turned away again and moved into the closet. He returned a moment later with a scarf like the ones he used to tie me up with before. I felt my stomach drop. “On your knees,” he commanded.

  Despite my anxiety, I moved into position, but instead of binding my wrists or tying me down, he encouraged my knees together and wrapped the scarf around my thighs. I felt his hand slide up my back to press between my shoulder blades, forcing my face down to the bed. With my head down, my ass in the air, and my thighs bound together, Aleksander proceeded to tease my opening with his fingers first and then his mouth. My instinct was to spread my legs to give him better access, but he had effectively prev
ented any such movement.

  I felt his hard length probe my entrance. I suddenly realized we hadn’t done this yet. He’d taken my mouth and my ass, but he had yet to fuck me properly. When I tried to push back against him, I earned myself another ass slap.

  “Be still,” he chided.

  I froze, and I felt him hesitate for a moment before he slammed home. “Ahh!” I screamed into the pillow. He pushed in to the hilt and filled me completely. He gripped my hips in his hands and set a punishing pace. I turned my head to the side in an attempt to catch my breath and couldn’t stop the moans that slipped past my lips. “Aleksander!” I whimpered. I began to move my hips in rhythm with his thrusts when he tightened his grip but stopped his movement. I pushed back against him again in search of friction.

  “Don’t make me repeat myself, sparrow,” he warned.

  I stilled and closed my eyes in relief when he resumed fucking me. The sounds he made drove me wild. Each grunt and groan that fell from his lips spoke directly to my inner minx. I wanted to move. I needed to participate in this wild abandon. “Aleksander…,” I wailed.

  “Something wrong, sparrow?” he responded breathlessly as he paused his furious pace to grind his pelvis into me, blessing me with a different kind of torture.

  “Can I touch myself?” I pleaded.

  “Are you asking for permission, sparrow?” he asked, sounding surprised yet pleased.

  “Yes,” I said, my voice strained.

  Aleksander curled himself over my back to lay a kiss on my spine. “Such a good girl, sparrow,” he practically purred, and I suddenly found myself wanting to give up everything in order to please him. If my obedience or my submission or whatever he wanted to label it or not label it, was what it took to do that, then I was willing to try. Because there was nothing sexier to me in that moment than a man who took pleasure from having control. And knowing that I had the power to allow him that was a heady feeling. “But that’s not necessary. Let me take care of you,” he insisted as one hand slid from my hip to my clit. He resumed his crazed fucking of me while he circled my clit with the perfect amount of pressure. The fire in my belly spread throughout my body until I combusted. I screamed out one orgasm, but Aleksander wasn’t satisfied with just one. No, he worked me over until I came again. This time more intense than the first. Only then did he bury himself balls deep in my pussy and roar with his own release.

  He took me down to the mattress with him, and we both struggled to steady our breathing. I made a move to untie the scarf from my thighs when his hand stopped me.

  “No, leave it,” he said. “I like the idea of my cum being trapped inside you.” The look on his face was possessive and full of male pride.

  And damn if that didn’t send a small thrill through me. A few minutes later, both of our stomachs rumbled their need for sustenance. Aleksander reluctantly unbound my legs, so I could roll off the bed in search of something to wear. Instead of getting dressed, I slipped on the plush cotton robe I found draped over the oversized club chair in the corner of the room.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs in a few minutes,” Aleksander said as he grabbed his ringing phone off the nightstand.

  Nodding, I set off to find out what kind of culinary delights Elaina was going to bless my mouth with this morning.

  Chapter 13

  Aleksander

  “Magnus,” I answered Jensen’s call.

  “In all the the chaos last night, I neglected to mention that I’ve heard some gossip you might be interested in.” Jensen never was one for polite greetings or pleasantries.

  “And what did you hear?” I asked, hoping he had the information I was looking for.

  “Two things, actually.” A pause. “First, it appears that Alan Denning was killed because he lost something that was extremely valuable to some very powerful, and now very pissed off, people.”

  I mulled that over for a moment, thinking I might know of a little sparrow who might have had a hand in that ‘something’ going missing. “What’s the second thing?”

  “Seems that those powerful and pissed off people are looking for someone.

  Someone whose physical description seems to match that of your woman.”

  “She’s not my woman,” I deny, a little too quickly and more out of reflex than anything else because, the truth was, I had claimed her.

  Jensen chokes out a laugh on the other end of the line. “Yeah, okay, man. You keep telling yourself that.”

  “Was that- was that sarcasm I just heard coming from the big, bad Jensen Holm?”

  “Fuck you,” he replied good naturedly.

  “Your wife’s rubbing off on you,” I muttered.

  “Yeah,” he agreed with a smile in his voice. “But, let’s circle back,” he said, all business now. “What do you want to do?”

  I sighed and scrubbed a hand over my face. “I don’t know yet. Do we have any idea what it was that she stole?”

  “No. You could just ask her, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m just not sure she’d tell me the truth,” I grumped. “Any word on what the fuck happened last night? Who the hell would be stupid enough to blow up your place?”

  “Working on that. Trust me, the fucker will live just long enough to regret it,” Jensen growled. Considering the fact that his wife was in the building at the time of the explosion, I had no doubt Jensen would find the bastard responsible and draw his death out in the worst possible way.

  Jensen agreed that he’d keep his ears open for any more gossip and would reach out to some contacts to see if he could garner any more information. He’d call me back if and when he learned anything. I had to figure out how to get the truth out of Bertie. But first… due diligence. It was my home after all.

  I walked across the hall to the room Bertie had been staying it. I checked the obvious places first. Nothing suspicious or out of place in the nightstand, under the bed, or in the closet. I checked between the mattress and box springs and peered into the air ducts for the HVAC system. She had a bag with her when she arrived, but there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary there, either. I knew whatever I was looking for had to be small. Whatever it was, Alan Denning had it in his pocket the night Bertie lifted it off him. What could be that small and still be so valuable? It wasn’t money or jewelry. My concentration was broken by the sound of laughter filtering up from the kitchen. I figured I’d better go down to breakfast before Bertie wondered what I was doing and came looking for me. I’d give her a chance to tell me the truth, and if she didn’t, well, I had my ways of punishing her.

  I found Bertie and Elaina in the living area with their heads together looking very much like they were plotting something. “What’s this?” I nodded toward the large shopping bags the girls were digging through.

  “Charlotte had them sent over. It’s all the stuff you bought me yesterday,” Bertie replied with her sassy mouth.

  “Well, I hope I bought you something sexy.”

  “You might have,” she said coyly.

  “Mm.” I bit my bottom lip as I blatantly perused her body from head to toe. I wanted her to know exactly where my mind was. I wanted her to know that I was thinking about my cock inside her while she screamed herself hoarse. By the way her eyes glazed over, her lids began to droop, and her breathing picked up, I’d say we were on the same page. And that gave me an idea. “We’re having a night in tonight,” I declared.

  “Okay,” she breathed with obvious anticipation.

  I’ve realized that the only time Bertie really opens up to me is in the bedroom, so I had initially planned to use sex as a tool to get the answers I wanted. I was fairly certain she’d tell me anything I wanted to know if I just withheld an orgasm. However, there’s also a strong possibility that she would just tell me anything, whether it was the truth or not, in order to get her pleasure. So, really, how could I know to trust what she was saying? No, the best course of action, although it was more time consuming, was to gain her trust outside of th
e bedroom. And that meant letting her see someone other than Aleksander Magnus the rich, powerful CEO/crime boss.

  So, there we sat, on the couch in front of the TV in our most comfortable clothes. Cotton pajama pants and t-shirt for me, leggings and tank top for her. A giant bowl of popcorn sat between us and the opening credits of some slapstick comedy that I let her pick out playing on the flatscreen. Ten minutes into the film, Bertie’s constant fidgeting was distracting me. I reached over to place a hand on her knee and gave her a firm squeeze. “Still,” I commanded in my dominant bedroom voice. The one that she was finally learning to obey. She stilled. “Good girl,” I said softly as I grazed my knuckle over her cheek. I watched with supreme satisfaction as she closed her eyes and exhaled a sigh of contentment. Seemed my sweet sparrow had a submissive streak after all.

  Turning my attention back to the movie, I kicked my feet up onto the coffee table and slouched in an attempt to get comfortable. Another moment or two passed before Bertie started fidgeting again. I caught her watching me out of the corner of her eye, so I raised a brow in question.

  “This stupid couch is really uncomfortable! How do you stand it?” she exclaimed as she jumped up.

  Her outburst made me chuckle. Poor sparrow was trying so hard to be good. Truth be told, the couch was really uncomfortable. Partially because it was mostly decoration. I rarely watched TV unless it was the news, and that was typically done in my office or online. I had no use for this couch, really. It was here because this was the living room and living rooms had couches. Pulling my feet from the coffee table, I stood and made my way down the hall to a closet. I came back with an armload of assorted blankets and a throw pillow I didn’t even know I had. “Here, sparrow. Perch your pretty ass here,” I said, tossing the pillow down first and then letting her take her choice of blankets. I folded the remaining blanket into a makeshift cushion of about two square feet and settled in again.