Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1) (5 page)

Her downcast gaze and flushed cheeks made him smile as he placed the final call to set his revenge in motion. “Hello, this is Mr. Hawke. Release the hundred thousand to the Mahana Guesthouse account.”

“Right away, sir,” the banker promised in heavily accented English. Jackson could have spoken to the man in his native French—he had become fluent in both French and German during the years he studied at West Point—but he wasn’t interested in making other people’s lives any easier.

Jackson thanked him and hung up before texting Hiro. It was time for his spy to make one final phone call. The man had obviously begun to regret the part he’d played in the sale of Harley Garrett—or Hannah North as she was calling herself these days—but another deposit in the pearl farmer’s account had convinced him to ignore his protective instincts and get the job done.

Moments after the text went through, the phone in Harley’s room rang.

She crossed to the bedside table, bringing her closer to the camera as she answered the phone, close enough for him to see the faint tan line creeping around her neck. When she was his, she wouldn’t have tan lines. He didn’t plan on allowing her the luxury of being clothed. At least, not at first. Whether she was inside the house they would share or out on the beach scanning the deserted horizon for signs of a rescue that would never come, she would do it in the nude.

“Oh, okay,” she said, nodding though the man on the other end of the line obviously couldn’t see her. “I’ll meet the car downstairs in a few minutes. Thank you, Hiro. For everything.”

The other man said something Jackson couldn’t hear but that seemed to make Harley more nervous. Her voice was shaking when she spoke again. “Okay. I will. Look out for Aunt Sybil for me. I’ll see you both soon.”

She hung up, hesitating only a moment before picking up the phone and dialing another number. In light, lilting French she asked for the banker who had helped set up the funds transfer from Hawke’s Swiss bank account to the bed and breakfast’s local Tahitian one.

Clearly she didn’t trust the mysterious billionaire who had offered to purchase her escort services for the month.

Hawke smiled again. She shouldn’t trust him. Everything he’d told Hiro about wanting a beautiful American girl for a month of fun, sun, and no-strings-attached consensual vanilla sex on the beach was a lie. But when it came to the money he had kept his promise to pay one tenth of the fee up front. He knew Harley well enough to realize she would never get in his car or on his plane unless she knew she’d been paid something for her trouble.

She was a liar, but she was no fool.

She spoke again and was apparently assured that all the money ducks were in a row, because she thanked the banker, hung up the phone, and turned to go. She hesitated for a moment, but then her hands balled into fists, her chin lifted, and she started for the door with a steady stride, obviously determined to meet the man who had bought her with her head held high.

Too bad Hawke would be taking a separate car to the airport and that Harley would be blindfolded and gagged before he arrived at the airstrip. He wasn’t taking any chances that she would see his face and try to call for help while they were still surrounded by friendly islanders who might come to the rescue of a woman in need.

She wouldn’t have the use of her voice until they landed on Le Sauvage, an isolated island at the far edge of the archipelago, where no one would be able to hear her scream.

CHAPTER FIVE

Hannah

Hannah climbed into the back of the stretch limo waiting in the shade beside the Pension La Plage on rubbery legs. By the time the silent driver wound his way through the colorful streets of Fare, down jungle roads tunneled in green, and out to the private jet waiting at the edge of the airfield, she was trembling all over and fighting the urge to dash across the airstrip and make a run for the safety of the tiny airport waiting room.

What the hell had she done?

What you had to do. You’re just lucky there was a man willing to pay that kind of price for a twenty-eight-year-old woman with no experience as an escort.

An escort. It was just a kinder word for a whore. Tonight—or maybe this afternoon, depending on whether or not the man who’d bought her joined her on the private jet—she would have sex with a man for money. It was a lot of money—once he paid the remainder of her fee she would have enough to save the guesthouse and make sure she and Sybil were safe from the ravages of their own bad luck for years—but still…

Still, she felt filthy, ashamed, and dangerously foolish.

She’d been bought and paid for. She had sold herself to a complete stranger. A man who had already seen her naked and watched while she pleasured herself in front of the camera he’d set up in his hotel room. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t that kinky, she supposed, but it was kinkier than anything she’d done before, and it had made her vulnerable to this man in a way she’d never been to anyone.

He’d seen her naked, completely exposed as she’d come on her own hand, and she had never seen his face. Didn’t even know his name.

You didn’t know your stranger’s name, either, and it didn’t matter. It was still the hottest sex you’ve ever had.

As she climbed the steps into the private jet, Hannah swallowed hard, but the bitter taste on her tongue remained. She wasn’t naïve enough to believe the billionaire who’d bought her would be a handsome young man with magic hands and a tender light in his eyes. He was almost certainly at least a decade older and probably not much to look at or he would have been able to convince a woman to come to his private island for free.

He might be hideously ugly, obese, or so ancient he’d have trouble getting aroused and she’d be forced to ignore the old-man scent of him as he labored above her, sweating and grunting.

Or maybe he was simply a twisted monster looking for a woman he could use, torture, and throw away, a woman no one would go looking for when she went missing.

Hannah half fell into the sumptuous leather seat on the far side of the plane, her trembling becoming a full-blown quake. By the time the tanned man with the close-cropped blond hair stepped out of the cockpit, she was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering.

Her eyes flew wide as her gaze connected with the man’s paler, bluer one, but before she could think of what to say—or fully experience her relief at discovering that her client was a perfectly attractive middle-aged man—he crossed to stand in front of her seat.

“My employer asked that I help you tie this over your eyes.” He held out a thick strip of heavy black cloth. “I’ve got another for your mouth.”

Hannah’s breath sped. “Why do I need to be blindfolded?” she asked, not wanting to think about the gagging part. The thought of not being able to speak, or even swallow her own saliva, was ridiculously terrifying, almost as scary as taking her clothes off in front of a camera, knowing a stranger was watching.

God, what had she done? What the hell had she done?

“I don’t ask questions,” the man said, his voice humorless and his blue eyes remaining flat. “My employer doesn’t enjoy questions. He prefers efficiency.”

“All…all right.” Hannah’s heart raced as she reached for the blindfold, figuring it was better if she was the one to tie it on. She wrapped the soft fabric across her eyes and tied it behind her head, tight enough to be sure it wouldn’t accidentally fall off, but not so tight that it pressed against her closed lids.

When she was finished, she held out her hand, willing her voice not to shake as she said, “I can tie the gag, too. If that’s okay.”

“Just make sure it stays put,” the man said.

Hannah couldn’t help flinching as the man dropped the cloth into her outstretched hand. Not being able to see was already heightening her other senses, making the sensation of soft fabric brushing against her skin ricochet through her nervous system in a way it normally wouldn’t.

She tied the gag as loosely as she dared, but when she was finished her tongue still felt cramped, forced to coil at the back of her throat like a snake denied the right to strike. The combination of the stressful day, having half her face covered, her eyesight stolen away, and her mouth filled with fabric combined to trigger the worst case of claustrophobia she’d experienced since she was eight years old and Harley had accidentally locked her in the crawl space next to their room.

She’d sat in the cramped portion of the attic, where she and her sister had hidden their secret treasures from their nanny, for hours, sweating and crying in the summer heat until she’d almost passed out. But she hadn’t dared call out for someone to rescue her. She’d known Harley would kill her if she let any of the staff find out about their secret hideout. Harley didn’t tolerate broken promises, no matter how many she broke herself.

Hannah struggled to swallow, fighting to slow her racing, panicked heartbeat. But it was an exercise in futility. Her heart was beyond her control, like the rest of her life, and the best she could hope for was that she would pass out before her owner joined her on the plane.

The thought made her throat feel even tighter and sweat bead around her hairline and above her parted lips. By the time she heard the door to the plane open a few minutes later, she was sweating profusely, panting through her flared nostrils, and so dizzy she didn’t know how much longer she would remain conscious.

She whimpered and pointed frantically to the gag, praying the blond man would understand that she was having trouble breathing and grant her permission to remove it.

But instead of the first man’s firm monotone, she was answered by a low grumble, “The gag stays in. You need to relax. You’re breathing too fast.”

Hannah tried to relax, she really did, but this man’s voice wasn’t one that inspired relaxation. He sounded hard, cold, and enormous. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized that a voice could project size, but this man sounded ten feet tall and bulletproof. He sounded like someone capable of strangling the life out of her with one hand and mean enough to enjoy it.

As the thought passed through her head, her traitorous breath sped even faster and her chest began to shake.

“You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep that up,” the man grumbled again, his voice so deep she could feel it vibrating through her bones, touching her in places a voice shouldn’t be able to touch. “Hannah stop. Right now.”

A whimper escaped her cramped throat and her breath came so fast it felt like she was being spun in circles by one of those terrible carnival rides she’d hated when she was a child.

“Stop it,” the man repeated, his voice closer and dropped to a soothing whisper. “I’m not going to hurt you on this plane, Hannah. I give you my word.”

On this plane.
He hadn’t said he wouldn’t hurt her at all, just not on the plane, and she sensed that she wasn’t reading more into the remark than he’d intended. This was a man who knew what he wanted and was willing to pay a million dollars to have a woman at his mercy. He had deliberately left the door open for pain.

Hannah clutched the arms of her chair until her fingers ached, fighting to keep from ripping the gag and blindfold off and making a break for freedom. A deal was a deal. This man had paid for the pleasure of terrifying her. And if she backed out of their agreement, she had no doubt he would take the rest of his money and leave her and Sybil to starve.

She’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it.

To sleep with this man in it, even if the thought terrified her.

“We’re ready for takeoff.” The first man’s voice sounded too far away to still be in the plane, but maybe that was because Hannah was so focused on the new voice, her owner’s voice whispering in her ear again.

“Sit back. I’ll put your seatbelt on.”

She leaned back in the plush seat. A moment later, she felt fingers brushing her hips as the man found both halves of the seatbelt and brought them together across her waist. His touch was calm, impersonal. He touched her only as much as he needed to in order to get the seatbelt snug across her lap, but for some reason she still shivered.

There was something about this man, something in the spicy, salty smell of him that drifted to her nose as he settled into the seat across from hers that made her skin prickle and the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. She felt more than watched; she felt hunted and suddenly didn’t know what she feared more—the nameless, faceless people who had killed half her family, or the nameless, faceless man whose foot brushed every so lightly against her own as the plane rumbled down the airstrip.

It wasn’t until they were lifting off that Hannah realized the two might be one and the same.

She might have just sold herself to the man who had killed her family and the past six years of hiding, deferring all her dreams, and abandoning the aunt who needed her, might have been for nothing.

CHAPTER SIX

Jackson

The plane was still gaining altitude when Harley started trembling again, shaking so hard he would have thought she was having a seizure if he didn’t know better. But according to everything Hiro had told him, “Hannah” was in perfect health. It was her aunt who was frail.

So either she was truly scared out of her mind or she was faking it to elicit sympathy from the man who’d bought her. That would be like her. She was a master manipulator.