Buch lesen: «I Have You Now»

CHAPTER 1

KENDRA

"Danielle, come here", Aleksej ordered me in his usual hasty, overbearing manner, which made me so nervous.

How much I wanted to say no, that I wouldn't do what he wanted, but I knew that if you wanted to stay in his entourage, those words were forbidden.

I showed off my best smile and I approached languidly. I measured each step with studied slowness, continuing to challenge him staring at him straight in the eyes, even knowing how much that gesture would break his already limited patience.

Instead of standing in front of him, as he wished, I relaxed leaning against his massive mahogany desk and letting my hands wander over the documents stacked behind me.

I knew I was annoying him with my arrogance and I liked it. I enjoyed those little moments of arrogance, even though I was aware of the risks I was running. However, I didn't care and I was sure it was easier to win his trust thanks to those rebellious gestures than with more condescending ones.

"Sit on my legs", he was angry.

I obeyed, holding back a snort.

In a moment his hands landed on my body and his lips pressed on my neck.

I hated his mouth, especially after discovering the pleasure he could give me, so much so that I started to feel fear.

Fear of experiencing wrong sensations that confused and bewitched me.

I wanted to escape but I couldn't.

When I had decided to approach that man, I knew that I would have to lower myself to his level and commit recklessness.

I had taken the risk.

I would have done anything to get to him and what revolved around him, such as those diamonds that were scattered in the blue velvet box, open on his desk.

"Do you like diamonds?", he asked me at a certain point, breaking away from me.

"Why are you asking me?", I worried about that insinuation, while I felt his hands go up inside my skirt up to the elastic of the thong.

"I've noticed how you've been staring at them since you walked into my studio. You seem very interested", he continued undaunted, despite my grip around his wrist as I tried to pull him away from me.

"In fact it's so. Every woman wants to cover herself with jewels", I replied feigning indifference, though I couldn't hold back a gasp when I felt the lace fabric of my underwear tear and scratch my skin.

It was always so with Aleksej. Apparently he seemed focused on what he was saying, enough to warn you, but then you found that he was already over and when you realized it was late.

"You too?" he whispered in my ear, kissing my neck and starting to slip his fingers between my tight thighs.

I was so uncomfortable and unable to reason that I no longer understood if we were still talking about diamonds or whatever.

"Of course" I managed to reply before being caught by his mouth as he pressed against mine with violence and possessiveness.

"So why have I never seen you wearing a jewel?", Aleksej went on, always leaving me shocked by his coldness with which he never relaxed completely. I hated him for it.

"What can I say? No man has ever bothered to give me one", I muttered sourly, putting my hand close to the dark blue velvet box, but before I could get to the diamonds, Alexey grasped my wrist and brought me back to him.

"Those aren't for you", he warned me sternly, striking me with his icy gaze.

"So who are they for?", I asked suddenly curious.

"None of your business", he cut out, grabbing me by the hips and bending me over the desk.

"Are you also fucking someone else?" I blurted out, trying to free myself. I wasn't going to let anyone get in my way or stop me from getting where I wanted!

"Are you jealous?", he burst out laughing.

"I'm not a woman who likes to share. You should know that."

"We only fucked once and are you already demanding exclusivity?"

I avoided replying to him how much it cost me to have given myself to him voluntarily and how long the marks of the ropes he had tied me with remained on my wrists.

I had found it harder to hide the fear of being at his mercy than the lack of arousal.

The only thing that had given me the strength not to blow everything up were those diamonds and the source from which they came and which I wanted to access too.

"I've been working for you for eight months", I reminded him.

"So what?"

"Finally I let myself go thinking that I am important to you and instead I discover that you have someone else", I infuriated, feigning indignation.

"What do you want, Danielle?" Aleksej asked me instead, not believing my outburst of jealousy. In fact, my ice mask had always made me detached and numb to anything and now I was not believable with that soap opera drama.

"I want you", I whispered, pinning him with my gaze and placing my mouth on him impetuously. It was a kiss of anger. Just what I was feeling at that moment ... Anger at having to sleep with him and having to lie every day, when inside of me I just wanted to access his unlimited funds, take possession of his contacts and disappear into thin air.

"Then kneel down and take it in your mouth", he challenged me, as his hands continued to touch me.

"I'm not your whore!" I growled nervous for not being able to get even half the information out of him and for his way of touching me and turning me on against my will.

"What is it, Danielle? Are you no longer available because this time you don't have to distract me from getting caught putting your nose where you shouldn't?" he hissed in my ear, grabbing my hair to pull my face up to bring it closer to him.

I bit my lower lip with anxiety and nervousness.

Yes, he had discovered me just as I was one step away from understanding who his contact was. I remembered that episode three days earlier very well, in that same studio.

I realized I was one step away from blowing my cover, I had read Aleksej's distrust in his eyes and I realized that I had made an unforgivable mistake.

My only solution for not being thrown out and losing everything I had done to get there was to kiss him and get him what he craved from the first time we met.

I got fucked right up against that bookshelf ten feet away.

He even wanted to tie me up at one point and hang on a hook that protruded from the bookshelf.

I knew that he had done it to test me and I had let him.

I had managed not to move a muscle despite the terror that I had felt running in my blood like a lethal poison.

I had let myself be taken on his terms and without replying for his rough and wild ways.

And now I felt that he would do the same thing to me.

I wanted to deny myself. I knew that he would accept it because after all he was a gentleman, but his insinuation weighed on me like a sword of Damocles and so I let him do.

"Aleksej, you disappoint me. You can't distinguish a woman who wants to fuck you from one who wants to screw you", I teased him knowing I had just signed my sentence.

"You need a good lesson", he whispered to me hoarsely, making me lean forward against the desk.

He held me still with one hand still in my hair, while with the other he lifted my skirt, lowered his pants and finally tore off my underwear for good.

He made me spread my legs and, before being able to pull me up, I felt him penetrate me with a single and powerful thrust, filling me more than I could imagine.

I screamed in dismay.

I tried to rebel, but the more I resisted, the more his member penetrated me furiously and deeply.

"I love the way you are always so wet, ready to welcome me", he murmured gravely, increasing the speed with which he thrust inside me.

I hated his words because I knew they were true. No one had ever fucked me like that, and while I despised him and made me feel submissive and inferior to him, deep down I liked and turned me on more than I was willing to admit.

Suddenly I felt his hands stretch on my hips until they reached my breasts protruding from his neckline.

I couldn't see him, but I felt his fingers pinch my nipples and torture them until they were turgid and swollen, causing me a pleasant discomfort every time they rubbed on the wood of the table with each push.

"Aleksej", I whispered in the grip of ever more uncontrollable desire, while he returned to my hips and crept between my thighs up to my clitoris, to which he reserved the same treatment as my nipples.

It took a few seconds and my body contracted due to the orgasm that hit me with the violence of a tornado.

"Stop, please", I begged him feeling my whole body in the throes of contractions around his penis that kept making room inside me and his hands that did not stop provoking me.

"I decide when to stop", he warned me hard and adamant. "I want to make you cum again."

"I can't", I gasped in exhaustion, as my body was once again letting itself be seduced by Aleksej's touch.

At one point I felt him cum inside me.

I sighed with relief, thinking that the torture was over and instead I found myself still bent forward, with one hand of Aleksej on my breast and the other still on my clitoris.

Aroused by his orgasm still throbbing inside me and his fingers sliding between my thighs, I finally felt a new orgasm rock me deeply.

"Good my babushka ", he smiled, freeing me from his body.

I dressed quickly, trying to erase from memory what we had just done.

The thong was unrecoverable, so I threw it away.

Meanwhile Aleksej opened a desk drawer and took out a small box.

He handed it to me.

"What is it?" I asked, grabbing the package and sitting on his legs.

"Open it."

I obeyed and inside I found a ring in white gold and diamonds. The brilliant cut center stone was framed between two pear cut diamonds. It was a spectacular ring. The most beautiful I've ever seen in my life.

"What does it mean?"

"You decide."

"I'm not a whore", I cleared, putting the ring on my right ring finger greedily.

"I didn't say this is the payment for your performance."

"No, but you thought so."

"I think what I want and you can do the same in this case."

"Then I'll take this ring as a proposal", I challenged him, determined to make his life hell, like the one I had spent in those months by his side.

"A proposal?! About what?" Alexey suddenly frowned.

"Of marriage", I exclaimed, unable to believe my own words. How had I come to think of such a thing? Was I going crazy or was the closeness of that man making me want things I had never wanted in my entire life?

"What?!"

"Yes, I do, Aleksej. I'll marry you", I continued, fully savoring the disappointment that appeared on his face, before bursting out laughing.

In response, he chased me away. "Get out. I'm busy."

"Me too. I have a wedding to prepare", I chuckled.

Aleksej grumbled something in Russian that I could hardly interpret. He had just said that he would only marry me when he was dead.

"Aleksej, honey, you know I don't understand Russian. Speak my language, please."

"I told you to leave. I am waiting for a person and I want to be alone with him. We need to discuss business."

His serious tone and his determined gaze immediately made me realize that the guest he was waiting for was very important.

I really needed to know who he was, so I decided to stall and I tried to kiss him to buy time, but he pushed me away again.

"Don't make me use bad manners, Danielle."

"Okay, you've won", I sighed in surrender. When I got to the door, all I heard was Aleksej answer the phone and tell the guards to let the guest in. He spoke in Russian, but I understood every word perfectly and I knew that if I wanted to catch that person, I would have to find an excuse to go downstairs through the hallway and main staircase.

Slowly I made my way to the door and went out.

Instead of returning to the room I had been assigned, I continued down the central corridor which opened onto an imposing staircase that forked symmetrically in two opposite directions, both towards the ground floor lounge.

With great satisfaction, I saw Aleksej's guest come up.

He wore sunglasses that obscured his face, but there was something familiar about him.

I stalled further, waiting for him at the top of the stairs to pass him by.

He sent me a quick glance that did not escape me, but went on pretending nothing happened.

I wanted to approach him and talk to him, but I knew that my attitude would be too suspicious and I couldn't play that occasion with the very man with whom Aleksej smuggled diamonds or exchanged them for something else.

I've been waiting for that moment for eight months.

I even went as far as going to bed with that Russian only to enter his private home, where I knew his most interesting and profitable encounters were taking place.

And now my chance had come!

The man passed me and I feigned indifference, but just as I was about to go down the stairs, I inhaled his aftershave.

It was a very peculiar and expensive perfume.

I only knew one man who used it.

A man with whom I had been in a relationship that lasted almost a year, but made up only of sporadic and quick sexual encounters and short chats, almost always centered on work or our dreams of glory.

It had been almost a year since I last saw him, but now, in a moment, my mind outlined the profile of my ex.

Blond hair, blue eyes, square jaw, hook nose, average height and weight ...

"Ryan!" I stifled a gasp.

Suddenly I turned around in shock.

He too had turned to me and took off his glasses.

He had longer hair and an unkempt beard, but it was him.

How was it possible?

I thought back to that year together and the problems I had had ...

I remembered all the times I'd confided to him my suspicions that someone close to me was cheating on me.

"How could you do this to me?" I understood instantly. He was the person who had hindered my projects from the very beginning.

Only then did I realize how much he had used me and how he had tried to compromise my plans.

Instinctively I looked for my Beretta hidden in the pocket of my skirt, but too late I realized I had left it in my room when Alexey had called me.

Ryan did the same and suddenly I found the barrel of his gun pointed at me.

"Kendra, don't take this personally, but here only one of us can get out alive".

"It doesn't have to end like this" I tried to convince him, starting down the stairs slowly, without turning my back on Ryan.

By now it was clear that he would soon betray me with Aleksej and at that point there would be no way out for me. I had to get out of that villa and quickly!

Also, the anger at the humiliation I suffered only made me want to take my cell phone in my pocket and call my contacts immediately to warn them not to trust Ryan.

"What the hell is going on?" Aleksej's voice thundered, attracting Ryan's attention.

I had too much experience not to understand that I was burned, so I did the only thing I could still do. I picked up my cell phone and quickly wrote a message, explaining what had happened.

"Put that phone away!" Ryan yelled at me out of his mind, as soon as he noticed it, blocking me just before sending the message.

I saw Aleksej stopping Ryan with a wave of his hand and come towards me.

His gaze seemed like a thin sheet of black ice that would soon break, exploding into a thousand shards ready to hit anyone near him.

After eight months in close contact, I knew him enough to know that he wouldn't hesitate to make me pay every single second alongside him, exploited only for my own purposes.

Forgiveness was the only thing he would never have granted me.

I had no doubts about this.

He would have done anything to destroy me. But only after making me confess how far I had come to do the same with him in those months.

"Give me your cell phone" he hissed in a low voice a step away from me, holding out his hand.

I took a quick glance at the display, regretting the old cell phones that used keys, easy to recognize by touch, instead of sight.

I just had to hit the Enter key with my thumb.

I was about to press it when I saw Aleksej's swift hand reach me.

I barely had time to move my arm to avoid it, but at the same time a gunshot echoed throughout the villa.

I didn't even notice the bullet directed at me, until a sharp pain in my chest cut my breath and pushed me backwards, making me lose my balance.

The heels of my shoes lost their support and, before I could cling to Aleksej's arm, which was stretched towards me, I fell into the void.

I barely felt the touch of Aleksej's fingers before starting the descent towards my end.

The last thing I remembered was his name which I weakly pronounced as a desperate and absurd request for help and then ... the pain.

Only the pain had the power to make me feel still alive, despite the bullet lodged a few centimeters from the breastbone and the repeated blows on the steps of the staircase, on which I rolled violently to the bottom.

And finally, there was only darkness.