by Shayla Black
As Bailey took the plate, she frowned. She was hungry, and now probably wasn’t the time to mention her usual high-protein, low-sugar nutrition. “Thank you.”
“And some more clothes. I shopped for you a bit. I hope that’s okay.”
Anything Callie brought her would be better than the nothing she’d come with. Not to mention the fact that the woman had great taste.
“Absolutely.” She took the bag from Callie’s outstretched hand. Inside lay some yoga pants, workout shirts, a few new thongs and bras—all in the right sizes—and a pair of flip-flops. How had Callie known the sort of wardrobe she preferred? “This is perfect. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I know when I’ve been stranded in an unfamiliar place with virtually no clothes, it always made me feel better to have something comfortable to put on my back. There’s also a little bit of skin care and makeup in there. I guessed on what you might like . . .”
Bailey peeked in the bottom of the sack again and saw that everything remaining came in a lovely little box with the interlocking back-to-back Cs of Chanel. These items weren’t necessities, but downright indulgences.
“You didn’t have to go to this much trouble, but I really appreciate you.”
Callie smiled, her eyes warm with understanding. “I’ve been in your shoes more times than I care to remember. Not that I was abducted, I mean. But unfamiliar surroundings, unfamiliar people, unfamiliar situation. I didn’t have any money or time for more than the bare necessities. And I didn’t have any friends. I could have used a few.”
Bailey couldn’t imagine anyone not liking the heiress. Then again, Callie’s life on the run hadn’t allowed her to form many bonds.
Impulsively, she hugged the other woman. “I need one now, so I really appreciate you.”
“It’s my pleasure. Did you sleep last night?”
“Finally. It took a while. I—” Bailey stopped. The other woman probably didn’t want to hear about her spanking dilemma with Joaquin. “Just a lot on my mind.”
“Sure. Totally understand.” Callie cocked her head and studied her. “Mind if I ask . . . was it about being Tatiana Aslanov or about Joaquin?”
So much for trying to keep a casual front. “Honestly, both. And there’s not much I can do about either.”
“Was Joaquin mad?”
“Yeah. Weren’t Sean and Thorpe?” Then a terrible thought occurred to Bailey. “Did I get you in trouble? I know you like a bit of it, but . . .”
Callie laughed, a light sound that lilted with happiness. “Let’s just say that a little disobedience can come with a lot of rewards. It’s called ‘funishment’ for a reason. Besides, I already know I’m in for more tonight.”
“Why do you think that?” What was going on around here?
“I’ve got something up my sleeve. Just wait.” She winked before her expression turned more serious. “You want to talk about what happened with Joaquin?”
He spanked me and I liked it. I wanted it. I hated myself for it. “No.” Then she realized that sounded rude. “Sorry. It’s just—”
“No apology necessary. I’m here if you change your mind.”
“Thanks.” Bailey gathered her courage. During her sleepless hours last night, one fact had occurred to her, and she was dying to question Callie. “I actually wanted to ask you more about the Aslanovs. I don’t remember anything. I apparently understand Russian and their faces all looked familiar, but . . . the memories just aren’t there.”
“You were young. And if you were in the house when they died, as everyone suspects, it was traumatic. Others might wish you could remember, but I know why you can’t. It’s asking a lot of a little girl.”
Bailey nodded, relieved again by Callie’s compassion. “What were they like, my biological family? Did you know them?”
Regret crossed her kind, oval face. “I never met Viktor’s wife and children. I really only saw him a handful of times, the last being when I was about ten. I remember his thick accent. I remember . . .” She smiled. “His bushy mustache and beard. He joked with my sister and me once that he was in training to be the next Santa Claus when his hair went white. Everyone said he was brilliant, even my dad—and he wasn’t a man prone to throwing that word around lightly.”
The man Callie described just didn’t sound anything like the scientist who performed such unethical experiments as to alter human genetics. “I don’t know what kind of man he was.”
Callie shrugged. “I don’t think he tried to discover all those genetic anomalies, at least according to the notes my father left behind, which he based on your father’s research before he burned it. I think he really did set out to try to find the genes that caused cancer and stop them from eating away at people. I don’t think he meant to exploit anyone or anything. He needed money, and with three small children . . .”
In order to feed her and her siblings, her father had elected to do something unethical and sell his accidental discoveries to homegrown terrorists.
“Do you know if he understood the kind of people he was dealing with?”
“I don’t know if he did at first. Eventually, he figured it out. According to my father’s notes, he was terrified of them. At one point, he pleaded with my father to lend him some money.” Callie shrugged. “I’ve often wondered if Dad regretted refusing him when he heard about your family’s deaths. Or when they broke into my house and killed mine.”
“You have to believe he did. Just like I have to believe that mine wished he’d made different decisions. But we’ll never know for sure.”
“We won’t, but I’ve consoled myself with the idea that things happen for a reason. I couldn’t figure out at the time what possible purpose their murder could serve. But maybe it was part of fate’s larger scheme to keep DNA-changing information from the hands of people who would abuse it. And I know that if my life had turned out differently that I would never have met Thorpe and Sean.”
True. Bailey chewed on her lip. What different path had losing her biological family served in her life? She’d grown up in Houston, not rural Indiana. She had been raised an only child, and it saddened her to think that she could have otherwise had siblings. Maybe her biological parents would have raised her to appreciate her Russian heritage. Would she have had dance in her life? All good questions with no answers. One thing she knew for sure: If the rest of the Aslanovs had lived, she would never have met Joaquin.
Why did that idea disturb her?
“Thanks. I appreciate you sharing what you know.”
“My pleasure. Why don’t you eat your breakfast and change. I’ll give you some privacy.”
Bailey really didn’t want Callie to go, but with a wedding in a few days, she couldn’t expect a busy bride to hang out with her. But she still had one question she wished she didn’t. “Have you seen Joaquin?”
“Yes, just before I came in. He was heading behind closed doors with Thorpe and Sean for what looked to be a heavy conversation.”
She wanted to ask how he looked or if he seemed upset, then she realized how junior high that sounded. The truth was, she’d panicked when he’d touched her because she had liked it too much and she hadn’t had the guts to admit it. She had let him blurt out apologies and leave, thinking the worst. But what else could she have said to him? Please, Guy I Barely Know, spank me hard?
“Thanks.”
Callie nodded. “I’ll check in with you later.”
As soon as the woman left, Bailey meandered into the bathroom to change her clothes and brush her hair. She kind of wished that Joaquin had brought her flat iron along when he’d taken her from her house, but alas, he probably hadn’t given her beauty regimen a single thought. Trying to work with her natural waves wasn’t something she did happily or often, and she made a mental note to ask Callie about some sort of hot implement in the future.
After doing what little she could with her hair, Bailey pondered snooping through the bedroom again to f
igure out what exactly some of the sex toys in the nightstand did or flipping on the TV. She was about to open a drawer when she heard another knock at the door, this one firm, decisive.
Joaquin. Somehow, she knew he’d returned.
Bailey dragged in a nervous breath, anticipation and dread swirling in her belly. “Come in.”
Sure enough, the door flung open, and he filled the frame—all six-plus feet of him with broad shoulders straining a white V-neck T-shirt, showing off a chest as hard as concrete. He kissed like a man who knew how to make a woman melt. He spanked like a Dom who had a point to make. He was insistent. Sure of himself. He was nothing like any of the boys she knew. Damn it, if that didn’t excite her.
“Good morning. I have to talk to you about last night.”
She crossed her arms. That conversation would be totally embarrassing. “Can’t we just forget it?”
“No.” He stepped in and shut the door behind him, locking it. “I upset you. That wasn’t my intention. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. I’ve never spanked one, either. You . . .” He shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t have an excuse. I pushed you. I scared you. I hurt you. I’m sorry. That won’t happen again.”
Guilt pummeled her. He might have pushed her, but he hadn’t done anything she hadn’t enjoyed. “You didn’t scare me. Or hurt me.”
His entire body froze. “Then what did I do to you?”
“Nothing, really.” Just stirred up my blood and made me ache for you. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze. Even now, the lie sat heavy on her conscience. “I’m fine.”
Joaquin closed the remaining distance between them and grabbed her chin. “Look at me. Since I didn’t hurt you, did my actions offend you?”
“No,” she breathed, unable to look anywhere except into his eyes. Why did she feel as if she could get lost here, as if he would always catch her and hold her upright even as he kept her off balance. “You shocked me.”
He nodded as if that was a given. “It shocked me, too. Especially that I liked it.”
Wow, that was honest. She opened her mouth to say she had, too, but the words just wouldn’t come.
“What about you?” he demanded.
Bailey blew out a breath. How was she supposed to answer him? You made me wet enough last night to masturbate? “I . . . didn’t hate it.”
His grip on her chin tightened a fraction. He frowned, his gaze deepening as if he wanted to pick her thoughts apart. “Were you at all aroused?”
Why couldn’t he be like so many of the people she’d met during her years of dance, polite and indirect, folks who rarely pinned her down to force out an uncomfortable reply? Even Blane often let her off the hook.
She swallowed, trying to escape Joaquin’s hold and his gaze. He allowed neither.
“Let go,” she murmured, aware that she had no real power in this situation.
“Not until you answer me. And if you won’t, we’ll repeat last night until I figure it out.”
Against her will, her breath caught. The memory of his hand on her ass made her heart pump, her insides flare with heat.
Joaquin stared, not missing a thing. He scanned her flushed cheeks. His gaze fell to the pulse hammering at her neck. Then that burning stare dropped to her breasts, zeroing in on their tingling tips poking desperately at the fabric of her shirt.
He knew. That knowledge flared in his hazel eyes, which looked even more green as the sunlight streamed into the room and across his face. She had nowhere to run or hide to escape his insistence.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Bailey berated herself. She owed him the truth. But hell if it wasn’t embarrassing to admit that she found the guy who’d taken her from her home and spanked her against her will hot.
“Bailey?” he prodded. “I haven’t been less than honest with you.”
“I know.” But she still couldn’t look at him.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded, waiting until she’d complied. “Did you find my spanking arousing? Because if you need me to confess first, I’ll be perfectly happy to tell you that it turned me on like nothing else to see my hand on your pale skin. The redness I left behind after every blow—the marks I’d given you—made me beyond ready to finish stripping you down and fuck you. Does that make it easier for you to tell me the truth?”
She felt her jaw drop, even as desire stung her. “You can’t say that.”
“Why?” His free hand lifted to her waist, skimmed up her rib cage—and kept climbing.
Every muscle in her body grew taut. Bailey couldn’t breathe. Would he dare to just— She had her answer a moment later when he cradled her breast in his hand and feathered his thumb across her beaded nipple.
Her breath caught on a gasp.
“You’re aroused.” He didn’t even ask, just stated fact.
Oddly, Bailey was a bit relieved. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe not.” He shrugged. “But there it is. I want you. You want me.”
“I’m not ready for sex.” She shook her head.
Holy crap, did he think that barely twenty-four hours after he’d kidnapped her, she was going to just spread her legs and welcome him inside her body? She’d always been shy about that sort of thing. She’d had one fumbling lover back in high school. Intercourse had always been something she could take or leave. But already she knew Joaquin would be nothing like that.
He nodded. “I respect that. I understand it. It shouldn’t even be the first thing on our agenda right now.”
God, he’d finally thrown her a bone, and she was taking it. “Exactly.”
Joaquin leaned closer, and she could smell his woodsy, musky scent. It made her weak-kneed and somewhat dizzy, especially when he murmured in her ear. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it. It seems impossible for me to concentrate on much else when I’m around you.”
His words were like a touch right over her most sensitive spot. How could one sentence make her pussy throb? “We still have to figure out exactly who’s after me and how we’re going to stop them.”
“I’ve got a team working on that. I’m hoping we can run the sketch of ‘Uncle Robbie’ through some federal databases today and see if we get any hits. Until then, we need to deal with one another. I need you to be honest.”
“As it pertains to the fruit loop looking for me, I will. But I don’t see why I should have to confess whether or not you turned me on.”
“Well, if I wanted to force-feed you some reality, I might remind you that in life-or-death situations, our ability to trust in one another’s honesty might well determine whether we live to see another day.” He shrugged. “But I’m willing to admit that it’s about more. I like you. I want you. I intend to take you to bed. Not before you’re ready,” he assured her. “But I’ll make damn sure we get there.”
Who the hell did he think he was? “Do you push every woman you meet this hard?”
“No. It’s something about you. We share a high-voltage, almost chemical attraction. I’m not denying it.” He thumbed her nipple again. “Why are you?”
As a fresh flare of tingles filled her, Bailey jerked away. “I didn’t come here to screw, so get that out of your head.”
Joaquin dropped his hand and stepped back. Immediately, she missed the warmth of his touch. Her body ached. Her nipples tightened in distress at his loss.
His jaw firmed, and he didn’t look pleased. “I didn’t come here to screw, either. I came here to save your life and figure out who wants Tatiana Aslanov enough to leave a string of dead bodies. We’re still waiting on information from our investigation so we can solve the case. Until then, I don’t have much else to focus on beyond how much I want you.”
He’d been nothing but starkly honest. She’d been evading his questions and refusing to be completely honest. “Joaquin, can you understand this last day has been a lot for me to take in? I don’t know what’s going on half the time. I don’t know you. I don’t kno
w my surroundings. I barely understand what happens inside these walls.”
Some of the steel left his stance. He stepped close again and held an arm out to her, motioning her to step into his embrace. Bailey needed his comfort and understanding too badly to refuse. Callie had been a lovely balm to her, a kindred spirit, not to mention a kind soul. But the other woman’s comfort didn’t soothe her the way Joaquin’s did.
Bailey stepped into his embrace and wrapped her arms around him. With a little sigh, she closed her eyes and rested her cheek