by M. S. Parker
“Hello, pops.” I gave him a tight smile as he settled into the seat across from mine. I’d specifically requested the table be set for three and the other seat was still conspicuously empty.
Solomon inclined his head politely. “Dominic. How have you been?”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.”
His jaw clenched.
I’d always pissed him off the most when I acted in a less than acceptable manner. Hence one of the main reasons for my bout of rebellion in my teens.
Lifting my glass, I tipped it in his direction. “Care for a drink, Dad? It’s been a long time.”
“Please.” He waved a hand at a passing server, and a moment later, he had a glass of red wine in front of him, while I had another double put in front of me.
Not that I planned on drinking much of it. It was crucial that I kept my brain focused. One drink might help with the nerves, but I didn't need any more than that.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is about?” Solomon asked.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about reconciliation.” I took my time with those words, as if it was difficult to say them. It wasn’t, but only because I knew they were pure bullshit. The idea of reconciling with the bastard who’d walked away from me after I’d been kidnapped, raped and tortured was enough to make me want to chew glass.
Solomon watched me, his eyes unreadable. Movement off to the right caught my attention and I looked over, head cocked as JC Woodrow appeared in the door, his baby-kissing smile fixed firmly in place. The schmuck’s gaze slid our way and I wanted to lunge up, grab his neck and throttle him. More than anybody, even more than Solomon, I wanted to hurt JC Woodrow. He’d used my mother. Used a lost nineteen year-old and then when he was done, he hadn’t just tossed her aside. He’d destroyed her.
One of the hardest thing I’d ever done was to sit there and smile at him.
The FBI agents were a few feet away, listening in a concealed area of the restaurant. All I had to do was make them say enough incriminating shit and these two bastards would pay for what they’d done.
The question was…how.
***
Arrogance and impatience.
That was how.
After a lifetime of living with the man—or the first half of my lifetime—I knew every button Solomon had and I went out of my way to push them all.
By the time I was done with him and shifted my focus to Woodrow, Solomon was on a hair trigger and my birth father was giving him annoyed, dismissive looks. The kind of looks only the very arrogant could pull off.
When Solomon started to shoot impatient looks at the door, I leaned back in my chair and waved a dismissive hand at both of them.
“You better go,” I told Woodrow. “I think he’s about ready to yank your leash and drag you out of here.”
Woodrow’s face didn’t change. Not at all. But there was a flash in his eyes and I knew I’d gotten him right in the gut.
Score.
He reached for his whiskey. He’d requested Glenfiddich so I couldn’t fault his taste in scotch. I preferred McCallan myself, but Glenfiddich was good stuff. As he took a slow, appreciative sip, Solomon threw his napkin down on the table. We’d ordered and we’d all done the same thing with our meal—pretended to eat. Now, as I shot Solomon a smirk of a smile, I reached for the pickle lying untouched on my plate. “It’s okay…Pops. I’m used to you disappearing all the time.”
“Solomon’s not in any hurry.” JC Woodrow clinked his glass down on the table and inclined his head at me. “We’re both very curious just why you insisted on meeting with you. Both of us. You haven’t exactly said.”
“Haven’t I?” I gave him my best puzzled expression and then grimaced. “Right, right, right…well, it’s simple.”
I reached into my coat.
To my left, Solomon went tense and his hand jerked towards his coat.
I hadn't imagined that.
My blood went cold. I had a bad feeling he had a weapon under there.
But I didn’t let myself react. Tugging out the folded-up letter, one that was a careful forgery with enough facts to fool either of them, I put it on the table. “We’ve got a bit of a problem, boys.”
Solomon’s face went red. “Now see here, Dominic. I raised you from the time you were a baby—”
“A baby you stole.” I grabbed the letter neither of them had touched, or even looked at, and snapped it open with a flick of my wrist. “I’ve got a signed confession from somebody who was in your inner circle, Solomon. Woodrow.”
Slamming the letter down, I put my palm on it to keep them from touching it. Solomon jerked his hand back. To his credit, JC only looked mildly curious. Though that wasn't entirely surprising. He was, after all, a politician.
“She’s willing to swear in a court of law that she helped facilitate the kidnapping of hundreds of children, and then in turn, provided falsified documentation that would smooth things over so they could be adopted.” I paused and looked over at Solomon. “Sound familiar…Dad?”
His face was blood red and I wondered what his blood pressure was. “That is ridiculous. We were told you'd been given up.”
His eyes flicked down to the letter and then back to my face.
“Calm down, Solomon,” Woodrow said, his voice soft, but firm. “Mr. Snow here is just looking for a target. He’s angry, and rightly so. It must be terrible, living all of your life and realizing it’s been a lie.”
“Well, really…the worst part was finding out you were my father. And, considering the hell I went through when I was fifteen, that's saying something.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I’ve already tried to explain, Dominic. I’m not your father. I never touched—”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a picture.
It had been doctored with Cecily's permission. It would never have gotten past a pro, but it had been good enough to fool me.
And judging by the look on JC Woodrow’s face, it was fooling him.
“Care to explain that, then?”
His hand shook slightly as his fingers closed around the photo, crumpling the image.
“Keep it,” I offered. “I’ve got other ones—some of them are pretty…damning. But that's not the real smoking gun, is it? No one really cares about your little affair. But that letter...”
His eyelids flickered, another sign that his smooth, politician’s façade was finally failing.
“You really should have learned to read your employees better,” I said softly. “The woman who wrote that letter left your employ a while back. Almost went public after she read the book my birth mother wrote. Had a serious change in her priorities, you see. She had a miscarriage.” I was making it up as I went, going for the most gut-wrenching thing I could imagine that would cause such a change of heart. An operation this massive had to have had a lot of hands involved—I knew that just from a business standpoint. He couldn’t possibly know every single person. Another thing I knew from a business standpoint. “She almost died too. While she was lying in the hospital thinking about the baby she’d never know, she was also thinking about the babies she helped you steal.”
He flinched this time.
And Solomon had started pulling at his collar. “Look, Dominic.” He gave me the kind of smile I would have given anything to see from him a decade ago. But it was too late now—too late, and meaningless.
Ignoring him, I kept my focus on Woodrow. “Tell me something…what will your voters think of your cover-ups if they see the pictures of you with my mother when she was just a kid? Only nineteen, and you a married man in your thirties? Think they’ll still buy those lies that she was a confused child making up stories?”
I put another picture on the table. I had four of them, each one more explicit than the last. He looked at it, then raised his head.
“Well.” He nodded slowly. “I think…” He paused and blew out a breath. “I need a moment.”
He pushed back from the table and headed for the m
en's room as Solomon leaned across the table.
“Dominic, you have to understand…I didn’t know what all he was involved in. I just wanted to make your mother happy. I loved her so much…”
His words fell on deaf ears and I rose, staring at Woodrow’s back as he worked his way through the light crowd. My gut said something was wrong.
And then all hell broke loose.
Two men in suits rushed past me.
We heard the gunshot at the same time.
A man burst out, face pale. “Call an ambulance! Some guy just tried to shoot himself…there was a cop, but man…” His voice warbled, broke. Then he steadied himself. “The guy’s bleeding all over the place.”
***
Hearing about his partner’s attempted suicide seemed to shake Solomon Snow up quite a bit. As soon as he saw Special Agent Carter, he approached her and quietly asked if he could make a confession. She advised him to wait for an attorney, but he refused and after being read his rights, he’d begun to speak.
Jefferson Sinclair arrived not long after, shooting me a pleased grin as he walked past with the Attorney General at his side.
They let Aleena through the barricade exactly two minutes later even though it felt like a lifetime. I had to see her, touch her, talk to her, fuck her, love her, hold her.
As she threw herself at me, I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her neck. “It’s over. At least the worst of it is. It sure as hell better be.”
She stroked a smooth hand down my nape and kissed my cheek.
“Aleena, please say we can get married soon. I don't want to wait.”
“We can get married soon…Sir.”
Chapter 27
Aleena
Hands stroking down my back woke me from a pleasant dream, but I preferred reality these days. I stretched, sighing as a wave of happiness swamped me.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I said teasingly. “It’s my wedding day. The groom isn’t supposed to see the bride on her wedding day.”
“I won’t.”
Puzzled, I looked back over my shoulder and then stared, unable to speak.
I twisted around in the bed so fast, I ended up knocking my head against his chin since Dominic—blindfolded—couldn’t move out of the way. After I’d kissed his chin, I sank back onto my knees.
“I’m a bit perplexed here, baby.”
“I had to make love to my bride.” He reached out, unfazed by his hindered vision, and fisted a hand in my hair, tugging my face to his. “But I don’t want to do anything that might cause bad luck or that goes against tradition. You’ve been all set on the something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”
The words trailed off as he pressed his mouth against mine. Even as he kissed me, I could barely believe what was happening.
Dominic was a Dom through and through. I should've been the one blindfolded. And with his history...
But he’d done this just to make sure he didn’t trespass over any of the little wedding traditions I’d suddenly found myself clinging to. It was one of the most romantic gestures he’d ever made. Heart aching, I curled my arms around his neck and rubbed my nose against his.
“Thank you.”
He leaned forward and took my lower lip between his teeth, worrying at it for a moment before releasing it. “It’s going to be interesting, Aleena, to take you like this. I know your body so well, but learning it this way? Best wedding present ever.”
He eased me off his lap and I gazed up at him, his eyes obscured by the black slash of the blindfold over his eyes. He took my hands and I shivered a little as he began to wrap a blue velvet cord around them. Blindfolded or not, he had no trouble restraining me and within moments, the velvet rope was biting lightly into my wrists. It wouldn't leave any marks, but it would keep me from using my hands.
His mouth sought out mine and he kissed me with a soft tenderness that made my stomach squirm pleasantly.
He wasn’t quite so tender a few minutes later when he spread my legs and bound them, each ankle to a different bedpost. With the way he was moving, I suspected he'd come in here and practiced. The one thing I did know for certain was that he'd never done this with anyone else, and that meant the world to me.
I lay there, spread out in front of him and although he couldn’t see me, there was something terribly vulnerable about the position. A vulnerability I was only too willing to give only to him.
I whimpered as he traced his fingers up my thigh, then cried out when his fingers penetrated me with absolutely no warning, twisting and curling so that he was rubbing right up against my G-spot. I arched up, panting.
“Be still.”
Damn, I loved it when he used that tone of voice.
I obeyed.
It was torture, lying there as he rotated his fingers inside me, knuckles rubbing against all those parts of me until I was hovering right on the edge. Then his fingers were gone and something else was sliding into me. Something hard and cool...and vibrating.
“Fuck,” I groaned, my body jerking involuntarily.
“I can’t see you right now and it’s both a good thing and torture,” Dominic said, his voice calm, casual.
If I hadn’t felt the heat pouring off his body, I would have thought he was discussing the weather or the stock-market.
But his skin was hot against mine and when I shifted slightly, I could see the thickness of his erection pulsing against the shorts he was wearing.
Oh, yeah.
There was nothing casual about this.
He brushed the back of his hand across my breast and I moaned. Maybe he couldn’t see me, but he was insanely attuned to my body.
“It’s a good thing now,” Dominic said. “Because I doubt I'd be able to control myself.”
He bent down abruptly and bit my left nipple. As far as sexual torment went, Dominic was just about a master. A soft, weakened cry escaped me and I tilted my hips up, arched my back to beg for more.
“If you don’t stop squirming,” he warned, breath hot against my throbbing nipple. “I’m going to get some more rope, pull you out of bed and hog tie you. And it'll take some time since I can’t see you.”
My breath caught. Another low whimper escaped me and when his teeth sank into my other breast, I couldn’t stop myself. I twisted my body towards him.
He chuckled darkly. “That’s it. I warned you.”
***
I preferred to think of it as a promise.
And Dominic had been right. It had taken forever for him to restrain me, Dominic’s hands lingering over the knots, his brow furrowed in concentration. And he'd left the fucking vibrator in the entire time.
Now, I was bent over the fat, wide ottoman that sat in front of the chair under the window, hogtied, with rope running from my neck, down to my wrists, then down to my thighs and ankles. Each ankle had been brought up to my thigh and my wrists were looped to my ankles while the bonds were connected to the loosely tied loop at my neck. I wasn't sure what it looked like, but it sure as hell kept me from moving. At all.
“Let’s try this again,” Dominic said behind me.
He twisted the vibrator inside me, pushing it deeper, and I wailed, the sound muffled as I pressed my face against the soft leather of the ottoman. He did nothing else—just let the toy push me closer and closer to the edge. My body was a quivering mass of nerves and I could feel myself ready to break.
He pulled it out.
“Dominic, please!”
He drove into me with one swift snap of his hips and I came with a hoarse cry, writhing and shuddering around his invading cock. He pounded into me through the orgasm, and thanks to the secure bonds he’d wrapped around me, all I could do was lie there and take it. Take him.
I could feel every inch of him pushing into me, feel the press of his fingers against my hips. He was all I knew, all that existed around me. I couldn't breathe or think. The pleasure inside me continued to build and grow until it threatened
to destroy me, and then he was coming, emptying himself inside me as his fingers tightened hard enough to leave bruises.
He collapsed against my back a moment later and I shivered when I felt his lips brush against my spine. He was only there for a moment, and then he was straightening and taking care of me. I didn’t move as he started to unfasten my bonds, but once I was free, I tried to turn to kiss him.
He nudged me back down with a hand between my shoulder blades. “Stay,” he said. “I need to get out of here. Fawna and Molly will be here soon. You need to get ready and I’ve got to get out of this blindfold.” His lips touched my spine again. “And if you kiss me, I might have to make us both late for our wedding.”
I smiled and let myself relax against the ottoman. It really was a comfortable piece of furniture.
He stood and slowly made his way towards the door. Once there, he paused. “The next time I see you, it will be when I make you my wife.”
I couldn’t stop my smile.
“And I’ll make you my husband,” I said over my shoulder as he walked out of the room.
“Damn right.”
***
A baby laughed in the background.
Eli.
I found myself smiling as I rested my head against Dominic’s chest.
My father was talking to Fawna and holding the baby. The two of them looked like they were having some sort of serious conversation, while Eli was having the time of his life, trying to pull the buttons off my dad’s tuxedo.
Dad had just handed me off to Dominic after we'd had the traditional father/daughter dance.
Now Dominic and I were sharing one more dance before we slipped away. We had a private jet waiting to take us to Australia and I had a pretty good idea how he intended to spend most of the flight.
“I can’t believe you’re mine,” Dominic murmured against my ear.
I tipped my head back and smiled up at him. “I’ve been yours from the moment you kept me from falling.”