Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (173 page)

“I’ve missed you too,” I said. The words seemed to come from my mind and my mouth made no sound. Alex’s lips curved into a wide, warm smile. It was an almost uncharacteristic smile, but it only made him radiate more beauty. There was no other way to describe him, he was simply beautiful. I drank him with my eyes and I so badly hoped that I would never wake up.

Alex’s hands broke from mine and fell on the backs of my legs, rubbing softly and slowly in circular motions, constantly moving up in an agonizingly slow tease towards my butt. He pulled me against him. I could feel his thick erection press against my tender skin.

We floated up in the air and Alex was inside me. Pleasure spread through every inch of my skin as we soared higher and higher towards the sun. I could see the golden aura that had encased Alex spread from him and onto me with every thrust.

His hands were everywhere. I felt fingers caress my nipples gently until they grew hard and wanting. Then I felt his mouth fasten on both simultaneously and impossibly, yet I voiced no protest. Alex moved slowly in and out of me.

I locked eyes with him. His eyes were filled with fiery passion. Waves of orgasms rolled over me, and I could taste his seed in my mouth, sweet as honey, yet he never broke from being inside of me.

It was a slow crescendo of ecstasy, growing with intensity with every passing moment. The sun never grew closer yet the Strauss Engines building fell away with every breath.

I looked around and saw that we were in a wide open field. Alex was lying beside me, naked and spread out as if to make snow angels. Our hands interlocked. The feeling of his hard cock, radiating vibrations inside of me, still pulsated through me, even though I could clearly see that he was next to me, opening and closing his legs like a small child in a mound of snow.

“You should try it,” Alex said to me, laughing.

I moved my legs and it felt wonderful. I looked up into the sky and I felt free. Strauss Engines was nowhere to be seen and we were without worry. I opened my mouth and breathed in warm summer air that was untainted by stress.

“I don’t want this to end,” I said.

Alex rolled over onto me and he pulled my hair back, gently, so he could see my face clearly. He pushed his hips against me and I released a cry of pleasure as an orgasm tore through me. My entire body moved like I was possessed. I bit down on my lip hard enough to tear it in two, yet I felt no pain and there was no blood. Soon enough, Alex was moaning with me and I could feel his cock pulsing inside of me. I pushed against it and we writhed in pleasure together.

I could feel a mattress beneath me and when I looked around, we were in Alex’s bedroom. The last remnants of the orgasm were falling away, and Alex slowly slid out of me. I laid next to him. I ran a single finger down the shaft of his cock, still large and captivating, despite becoming soft. Alex let out a small moan and I kissed him.

“This doesn’t have to end,” he said.

I looked over to the bedside table and I saw that the clock was running through numbers as if time was racing forward at a breakneck speed. When I looked back to Alex, he was asleep. Then the clock shrieked a loud buzzing sound, and the room dissipated, along with Alex.

I awoke, startled. The dream swirled down the drain of my consciousness and when I tried to close my eyes to chase it, the buzzing sound filled the room again, destroying any hope of returning to the wonderful dream of Alex.

I rose out of the cot and tripped over the blanket, alarmed over the buzzing sound. It was as loud as a jet engine and I put my hands to my ears to protect them, but the buzzing penetrated every pore of my body and vibrated through me. I screamed for it to stop.

The buzzing stopped so abruptly it startled me.

“Do you know why you are here?” asked the electronic voice. I turned to face the one-way mirror, suddenly very aware that someone was watching me.

I made no move to answer at first. I calculated my response carefully. This was the first opening into why I had been contained in this prison, and I did not want to steer the conversation awry or answer incorrectly. I wanted the answer to the question, badly, but I did not want to show it. It was purely instinctual.

“I’m here because of my job at Strauss Engines,” I said flatly. I pulled the chair out and sat down. There was a bowl of noodles on the desk, still warm. I tried to remember if it was morning or afternoon and could not. There was just no way of telling anything down here. With the lights on all the time, it was high-noon always.

“Correct,” the voice said.

I waited. I began to eat the noodles slowly, acting as if I was disinterested in what the voice was saying. I noticed the noodles were a little saltier this time and I drank the broth greedily. Either my taste-buds were adjusting to the blandness of the food they gave me or they were putting a little more flavor in the food. Either way, I ate without relish and waited for the voice to continue.

“Do you think that your boss is coming to save you?”

I choked on the noodles in my mouth, refusing to spit them back into the bowl and give the voice the satisfaction of seeing me that startled. The noodles slumped down my throat and sat in my stomach like a brick. My stomach tightened and I felt like vomiting them up. I drank a sip of water and calmed myself.

“Someone will come,” I said casually. “Or you’re going to take me somewhere. Why else would you bring me here?”

The room was silent for a full minute. I began to feel a sense of triumph in the conversation, that I had somehow struck a nerve or that I had been right. Still, I did not have the information that I desperately wanted, so the victory felt short-lived.

“No one is going to come for a mistress like you.”

Through the electronic distortion that masked the voice of whoever was speaking, I could hear the disgust when the word “mistress” came over the loudspeaker. It was a peculiar choice of words.

Henderson.

I was positive it was him. Yet I made no move to identify him. If I addressed him as Henderson, maybe he’d have me killed outright. He’d already kidnapped me, and that was a serious offense in the judicial system. I racked my brain through all the Law and Order episodes I had watched in the background while studying for finals for just how serious a crime kidnapping was and decided that it was definitely close to murder. If it really was Henderson behind this, and I was now positive it was, and he knew that I knew it was him, he’d have me killed to save his ass.

“Then you’re going to trade me away, right?” I asked, trying to move forward in the conversation like I had not just had a major revelation as to who had thrown me into this prison.

Something clicked audibly through the loudspeakers. A phone was ringing. I listened with a growing sense of anxiety in my chest. Then another click as someone on the line picked up.

“This is Alexander Strauss,” Alex’s voice said through the loudspeaker.

My heart practically exploded in my chest. I was filled with so much energy that I felt like I could have jumped right through the one-way mirror and taken out every one of my captors. It was really his voice, strong and assertive. I was lost in the moment and I cried out for him to hear me.

“Alex! You have to help me Alex!” I cried loudly.

“Mr. Strauss,” the voice said. “I believe you are missing something.”

“Alex!” I yelled one more time. They never would have risked letting me talk to Alex, he probably could only hear the electronic voice through the phone.

“Oh,” Alex said coolly. “And what would that be?”

I picked apart every syllable of what he said instantly in my mind. He sounded annoyed, as though he was being taunted by an arrogant chess player who had gained the upper-hand and now he was telling him to just move already. There was no distress in his voice. No real sense of urgency or dismay. Shouldn’t Alex be freaking out that I’ve been missing for this long? There was no way that Alex was unaware at this point. Whether Gary was alive, which I dearly hoped for, or injured—the news would have gotten back to Alex.

“A pretty little blonde who’s made some public appearances with you lately. I believe her name is Samantha. Maybe you have a nice little pet name for her, but most people address her as Samantha Dubois, am I correct?”

“Is she dead?” Alex said flatly.

My heart sank so low in my chest that I felt like I could have fallen into a heap on the ground. It was worse than when the son of a bitch who tweaked my nipples punched me in the stomach. There was nothing in his voice at all. He was devoid of emotion. It was like he was asking what the weather was outside, knowing that it was probably raining.

“No, she is very much alive. She’d come to the phone if she could, but she’s indisposed at the moment,” the voice teased.

“You bastard!” I yelled out. “Fucking bastard!”

The voice made no notice of me and said nothing.

“Did you hurt her when you captured her?” asked Alex. His voice remained calm and cool. I felt like vomiting.

“Nothing permanent. She’ll live. For now, at least.”

I felt a pang of fear at the last part of what the voice had said. I knew it was a deliberate way to goad Alex, and maybe even get me at the same time, but it put this whole thing back into perspective. I was kidnapped. I could be murdered at any time. Nobody knew where I was. I had suppressed those facts from my thoughts since I had arrived, but now I felt a whole new wave of terror.

“How many of your men were hurt in the operation? My driver told me that he connected with at least three of your men. Witnesses at the scene reported that two of them were dragged away by the other men. Are they all right?” asked Alex. His voice remained calm, but I could tell a hint of sarcasm peppered it. “You can tell them that Gary is just fine. He’s got a black eye that looks rather nasty, but other than that he’s fine. Just fine.”

The voice didn’t reply to this. I felt a wave of relief at hearing that Gary was okay. The feeling in my stomach abated slightly and I now felt a wave of nausea pass.

“We have the girl. But we’re willing to do business. A trade. You trade us something we want and we give you the girl.” The voice was flat. Harsh.

“Yes, but in order to have it be a fair trade, you’d have to have something that I want,” Alex replied.

I grew dizzy. My whole world was falling apart around me. I walked over to the cot and fell back onto it, sitting down. Everything was spinning and I braced myself with my hand on the wall. There was no way Alex could mean what it sounded like.

“We have Samantha. If you ever want to see her again, you’ll give us what we want.”

“Samantha Dubois is an assistant of mine, nothing more,” Alex said, piercing my heart with every word. “I could buy and sell twelve assistants just like her. You really think I’ll give you what you want for her?”

“You do realize what will happen if you refuse?” asked the voice.

I felt numb. I would have expected to be weeping, or crying out for Alex to think about what he was doing, but instead, I just sat there. All the emotion had been drained out of me.

“Samantha can fend for herself.”

There was nothing more. The speakers fell silent and I was left in the wake of what Alex had said.

Chapter Eighteen

I sat on the cot for what seemed like hours. Everything was lost. Alex had abandoned me completely to the fate that awaited me in this prison. No one was coming. I was on my own.

Bitter tears formed in my eyes and I bit down on my lip to fight them back. I began to think about how I had been played. Alexander Strauss had used me as much as he could and when I became more hassle than I was worth, he had discarded me like a piece of trash. More than likely Henderson had kidnapped me in an attempt to gain something from Alex, and whatever it was, Alexander Strauss had valued it more than my life.

I wondered how long it would be before men came to get rid of me. I held on to a dim hope that maybe they didn’t have the stomach for murder and would let me go instead. I hadn’t seen anybody’s face and I certainly didn’t know how I had gotten here. But when I thought about it further, it just didn’t seem likely. I was way too much of a risk now. I was going to be killed.

The tears dried in my eyes which now burned. Although my hands shook, I couldn’t tell if it was in anger or fear. I looked down at my grey sweatpants and brand new tennis shoes and thought that it was a crappy outfit to die in. This prison cell was a terrible place to die. I could only hope it would be quick.

I started to smell something. Smoke. I could smell smoke. I looked around for the source, but I didn’t see anything. And the smoke was acrid, nasty smoke. It wasn’t like smoke from a fire. It made my eyes burn and when I breathed it in, my throat lit up like I had inhaled acid. I covered my face with my sweatshirt and tried to slow my breathing so I wouldn’t breathe any more of the stuff in.

They’re poisoning me! I thought wildly. This isn’t a prison cell. It’s a gas chamber!

I threw myself at the door and started to bang my fists with all my energy. I had to stop every few moments to cover my face with my sweatshirt so I could take a deep breathe and hold it while I threw myself at the door.

“Let me out!” I yelled. “Let me out!” I pounded at the door in a panic.

Looking around the room, I tried to think of a way to escape. I picked up the chair and threw it at the mirror with more strength than I thought I had. Adrenaline flowed through my veins and I was in a full-on panic. I had to get out of this room. I had to clear the acid smoke that was killing me.

I struck at the mirror at the same place I had first thrown the chair and a small crack enlarged by an inch. Not good enough. The chair vibrated in my hand like a painful jackhammer, but I held tight. My arms were sore with the recoil, but I didn’t relent. I smashed the chair into the mirror again and another crack grew from the small crack that was already there.

By now, the air was vile. I was coughing. My efforts with the chair were going nowhere. At the rate I was cracking the glass, it would have taken me a full day to make a hole to even breathe through, let alone escape through. I was going to die in this cell, poisoned like a rat.