by Anna Zaires
As the plane ascends, I entertain myself by watching the Swiss Alps until we get above the clouds. Then I lean back and wait for the beautiful flight attendant—Isabella—to come around with our breakfast. We left the hospital so quickly this morning that I only managed to grab a cup of coffee.
Isabella comes into the cabin a few minutes later, her bombshell body squeezed into a tight red dress. She’s holding a tray with coffee and a platter of pastries. Goldberg appears to have fallen asleep, so she heads toward us, her lips curved in a seductive smile.
The first time I saw her, when Julian came back for me in December, I was insanely jealous. Since then I’ve learned that Isabella has never had a relationship with Julian and is actually married to one of the guards at the estate—two facts that have gone a long way toward soothing the green-eyed monster within me. I’ve only seen the woman once or twice in the past couple of months; unlike most of Julian’s employees, she spends the majority of her time outside the compound, working as his eyes and ears at several high-end private jet companies.
“You’d be surprised how loose-lipped people get after a couple of drinks at thirty thousand feet,” Julian explained once. “Executives, politicians, cartel bosses . . . They all like having Isabella around, and they don’t always watch what they say in her presence. Thanks to her, I’ve gotten everything from insider trading tips to intel about drug deals in the area.”
So yeah, I’m no longer quite as jealous of Isabella, but I still can’t help feeling that her manner with Julian is a little too flirtatious for a married woman. Then again, I’m probably not the best judge of appropriate married-woman behavior. If I were to stare at any man longer than a second, I would be signing his death warrant.
Julian takes possessiveness to a whole new level.
“Would you like some coffee?” Isabella asks, stopping next to his seat. She’s more circumspect in her staring today, but I still feel the urge to slap her pretty face for the come-hither smile she gives my husband.
Okay, so Julian is not the only one with possessiveness issues. As messed up as it is, I feel proprietary about the man who abducted me. It makes no sense, but I gave up trying to make sense of my crazy relationship with Julian a long time ago.
It’s easier to just accept it.
At Isabella’s question, Julian looks up from his laptop. “Sure,” he says before glancing in my direction. “Nora?”
“Yes, please,” I say politely. “And a couple of those croissants.”
Isabella pours us each a cup, sets the pastry platter on my table, and sashays back to the front of the plane, her lushly curved hips swaying from side to side. I experience a moment of envy before reminding myself that Julian wants me.
He wants me too much, in fact, but that’s a whole other issue.
For the next half hour, I read quietly as I eat my croissants and sip my coffee. Julian appears to be concentrating on his drone design email, so I don’t bother him; instead, I do my best to focus on my book, a sci-fi thriller I bought at the clinic. My attention, however, keeps wandering, my thoughts straying every couple of pages.
It feels odd to be sitting here reading. Surreal, in a way. It’s as if nothing had happened. As if we hadn’t just survived terror and torture.
As if I hadn’t blown a man’s brains out in cold blood.
As if I hadn’t almost lost Julian again.
My heart starts beating faster, the images from this morning’s nightmare invading my mind with startling clarity. Blood . . . Julian’s body cut and mangled . . . His beautiful face with vacant eye sockets . . . The book slips out of my shaking hands, falling to the floor as I attempt to suck in air through a suddenly constricted throat.
“Nora?” Strong, warm fingers close around my wrist, and through the panicked haze veiling my vision, I see Julian’s bandaged face in front of me. He’s gripping me tightly, his laptop forgotten on the table next to him. “Nora, can you hear me?”
I manage to nod, my tongue coming out to wet my lips. My mouth is dry with fear, and my blouse is sticking to my back from perspiration. My hands are clutching the edge of the seat, my nails digging into the soft leather. A part of me knows that my mind is playing tricks on me—that this extreme anxiety is unfounded—but my body is reacting as if the threat is real.
As if we’re back at that construction site in Tajikistan, at the mercy of Majid and the other terrorists.
“Breathe, baby.” Julian’s voice is soothing as his hand comes up to gently cradle my jaw. “Breathe slowly, deeply . . . There’s a good girl . . .”
I do as he says, keeping my eyes on his face as I take deep breaths to manage my panic. After a minute, my heartbeat slows, and my hands uncurl from the edge of my seat. I’m still shaking, but the suffocating fear is gone.
Feeling embarrassed, I wrap my fingers around Julian’s palm and pull his hand away from my face. “I’m okay,” I manage to say in a relatively steady voice. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
He stares at me, his eye glittering, and I see a mixture of rage and frustration in his gaze. His fingers are still gripping mine, as if reluctant to let go. “You’re not okay, Nora,” he says harshly. “You’re anything but okay.”
He’s right. I don’t want to admit it, but he’s right. I haven’t been okay since Julian left the estate to hunt down the terrorists. I’ve been a mess since his departure—and I seem to be even more of a mess now that he’s back.
“I’m fine,” I say, not wanting him to think me weak. Julian was tortured, and he seems to be handling it, whereas I’m falling apart for no good reason.
“Fine?” His eyebrows snap together. “In the past twenty-four hours, you’ve had two panic attacks and a nightmare. That’s not fine, Nora.”
I swallow and look down at my lap, where his hand is holding mine in a tight, possessive grip. I hate the fact that I can’t just brush this stuff off, the way Julian seems to. Sure, he still has some nightmares about Maria, but this ordeal with the terrorists appears to have hardly fazed him. By all rights, he should be the one freaking out, not me. I was barely touched, whereas he’d undergone days of torment.
I’m weak, and I hate it.
“Nora, baby, listen to me.”
I look up, drawn by the softer note in Julian’s voice, and find myself captured by his gaze.
“This is not your fault,” he says quietly. “Any of it. You’ve been through a lot, and you’re traumatized. You don’t need to pretend with me. If you start to panic, tell me, and I’ll help you through it. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I whisper, strangely relieved by his words. I know it’s ironic that the man who brought all the darkness into my life is helping me cope with it, but it’s been that way from the beginning.
I’ve always found solace in my captor’s arms.
“Good. Remember that.” He leans over to kiss me, and I meet him halfway, cognizant of his injured ribs. His lips are unusually tender as they touch mine, and I close my eyes, my remaining anxiety fading as heated need warms my core. My hands find themselves on the back of his neck, and a moan vibrates low in my throat as his tongue invades my mouth, his taste familiar and darkly seductive at the same time.
He groans as I kiss him back, my tongue curling around his. His right arm wraps around my back, bringing me closer to him, and I feel the growing tension in his powerful body. His breathing speeds up, and his kiss turns hard, devouring, making my body throb in response.
“Bedroom. Now.” His words are more of a growl as he tears his mouth away and rises to his feet, dragging me up off my seat. Before I can say anything, he wraps his fingers around my wrist and marches me toward the back of the plane. I give mental thanks that Dr. Goldberg is sound asleep and Isabella went back to the front of the plane; nobody’s there to see Julian dragging me off to bed.
As we enter the small room, he kicks the door shut behind us and pulls me toward the bed. Even injured, he’s incredibly strong. His strength both arouses an
d intimidates me. Not because I’m afraid he’ll hurt me—I know he will, and I know I’ll enjoy it—but because I’ve seen what he can do.
I’ve seen him kill a man with nothing more than a leg of a chair.
The memory should disgust me, but somehow it’s exciting as well as scary. Then again, Julian is not the only one who’s taken a life this week.
We’re both killers now.
“Strip,” he commands, stopping a couple of feet from the bed and releasing my wrist. The sleeves of his button-down shirt are ripped out to accommodate the cast on his left arm, and with the bandage across his face, he looks wounded and dangerous at the same time—like a modern-day pirate after a raid. His right arm is bulging with muscle, and his uncovered eye is startlingly blue in his tanned face.
I love him so much it hurts.
Taking a step back, I begin to undress. My blouse is first, followed by my jeans. When I’m wearing only a white thong and a matching bra, Julian says hoarsely, “Climb on the bed. I want you on all fours, with your ass toward me.”
Heat slithers down my spine, intensifying the growing ache between my legs. Turning, I do as he says, my heart pounding with nervous anticipation. I remember the last time we had sex on this plane—and the bruises that decorated my thighs for days afterwards. I know Julian is not well enough for anything that strenuous, but that knowledge doesn’t diminish my trepidation or my hunger.
With my husband, fear and desire go hand in hand.
When I’m positioned to Julian’s satisfaction, with my ass at the height of his groin, he steps closer to me and hooks his fingers in the waistband of my underwear, pulling it down to my knees. I quiver at his touch, my sex clenching, and he groans, his hand trailing up my thigh to delve between my folds. “Your pussy is so fucking wet,” he whispers roughly as he pushes two large fingers into me. “So wet for me, and so tight . . . You want this, don’t you, baby? You want me to take you, to fuck you . . .”
I gasp as he curls those fingers, hitting a spot that makes my whole body go taut. “Yes . . .” I can barely speak as waves of heat wash over me, clouding my mind. “Yes, please . . .”
He chuckles, the sound low and filled with dark delight. His fingers withdraw, leaving me empty and pulsing with need. Before I can object, I hear the sound of a zipper being pulled down and feel the smooth, broad head of his cock brushing against my thighs.
“Oh, I will,” he murmurs thickly, guiding himself toward my opening. “I will please you so fucking well”—the tip of his cock penetrates me, making my breath catch in my throat—“you’ll scream for me. Won’t you, baby?”
And not waiting for my response, he grips my right hip and pushes in all the way, startling a gasping cry out of my throat. As always, his entry batters my senses, his thickness stretching me nearly to the point of pain. If I hadn’t been so turned on, he would’ve hurt me. As it is, his roughness only adds a delicious edge, intensifying my arousal and inundating my sex with more moisture. With my underwear down around my knees, I can’t open my legs any wider, and he feels enormous inside me, every inch of him hard and burning hot.
I expect him to set a brutal pace to match that first thrust, but now that he’s in, he moves slowly. Slowly and deliberately, his every movement calculated to maximize my pleasure. In and out, in and out . . . It feels like he’s stroking me from the inside, teasing out every bit of sensation my body is capable of producing. In and out, in and out . . . I’m close to orgasm, but I can’t get there, not with him moving at this snail’s pace. In and out . . .
“Julian,” I groan, and he slows his pace even more, causing me to whimper in frustration.
“Tell me what you want, baby,” he murmurs, withdrawing almost all the way. “Tell me exactly what you want.”
“Fuck me,” I breathe out, my hands fisting in the sheets. “Please, just make me come.”
He chuckles again, but the sound is strained, his breathing turning heavy and uneven. I feel his cock thickening further inside me, and I squeeze my inner muscles around it, willing him to move just a little faster, to give me that extra bit I need . . .
And he finally does.
Holding my hip, he picks up the pace, fucking me harder and faster. His thrusts reverberate through me, sending shockwaves of pleasure radiating out from my core. My hands clutch at the sheets, my cries growing in volume as the tension inside me becomes unbearable, intolerable . . . and then I splinter into a million pieces, my body pulsing helplessly around his massive shaft. He groans, his fingers digging into my flesh as his grip on my hip tightens, and I feel him grinding against my ass, his cock jerking inside me as he finds his release.
When it’s all over, he withdraws from me and takes a step back. Shaking from the intensity of my orgasm, I collapse onto my side and turn my head to look at him.
He’s standing there with his jeans unzipped, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. His gaze is filled with lingering desire as he stares at me, his eye glued to my thighs, where his seed is slowly leaking out of my opening.
I flush and glance around the room, searching for a tissue. Thankfully, there is a box on a shelf near the bed. I reach for it and use a tissue to wipe away the evidence of our joining.
Julian observes my actions silently. Then he steps back, his expression growing shuttered again as he tucks his softening cock back inside his jeans and pulls up the zipper.
Grabbing the blanket, I draw it up to cover my naked body. I feel cold and exposed all of a sudden, the heat inside me dissipating. Normally, Julian would hold me after sex, reinforcing our closeness and using tenderness to balance out the roughness. Today, however, he doesn’t seem inclined to do that.
“Is everything okay?” I ask hesitantly. “Did I do something wrong?”
He gives me a cool smile and sits down on the bed next to me. “What could you have done wrong, my pet?” Looking at me, he lifts his hand and picks up a lock of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers. Despite the playfulness of his gesture, there is a hard gleam in his eye that deepens my unease.
I experience a sudden flash of intuition. “It’s the morning-after pill, isn’t it? Are you upset because I took it?”
“Upset? Because you don’t want a child with me?” He laughs, but there is a harshness to the sound that twists my stomach into knots. “No, my pet, I’m not upset. I would make an awful father, and I know it.”
I stare at him, trying to understand why his words are making me feel guilty. He’s a killer and a sadist, a man who ruthlessly abducted me and kept me captive, and yet I feel bad—as if I inadvertently hurt him.
As if I truly did something wrong.
“Julian . . .” I don’t know what to say. I can’t lie that he would make a good father. He would see right through me. So instead I ask cautiously, “Do you want to have children?”
Then I hold my breath, waiting for his answer.
He looks at me, his expression unreadable once more. “No, Nora,” he says quietly. “The last thing you and I need are children. You can have all the birth control implants you want. I won’t force you to get pregnant.”
I exhale in sharp relief. “Okay, good. So then why—”
Before I can conclude the question, Julian rises to his feet, signaling an end to our discussion. “I’ll be in the main cabin,” he says evenly. “I have some work to do. Come join me when you get dressed.”
And with that, he disappears from the room, leaving me lying in bed naked and confused.
Chapter 3
Julian
I’m in the middle of reviewing my portfolio manager’s write-up on a potential investment when Nora quietly takes her seat next to me. Unable to resist the lure of her presence, I turn to look at her, watching as she begins reading her book.
Now that I’ve had a few minutes apart from her, the irrational need to lash out and hurt her is gone. In its place is an inexplicable sadness . . . an odd and unexpected sense of loss.
I don’t understand this. I didn’t
lie to Nora when I said I don’t want children. I’ve never given the subject much thought, but now that I’m considering it, I can’t even imagine being a father. What would I do with a child? It would be just one more weakness for my enemies to exploit. I have no interest in babies, nor do I know how to raise them. My parents certainly weren’t role models in that regard. I should’ve been glad that Nora doesn’t want kids, but instead, when she brought up the morning-after pill, it felt like a kick to the gut.
Like a rejection of the worst kind.
I had been trying not to think about it, but seeing her wipe my seed off her thighs brought back those unwelcome emotions, reminded me that she doesn’t want this from me.
That she’ll never want this from me.
I don’t understand why that matters. I never planned to start a family with Nora. Marriage had been a way to cement our bond, nothing more. She’s my pet . . . my obsession and my possession. She loves me because I’ve made her love me, and I want her because she’s necessary to my existence. Children are not a part of this dynamic.
They can’t be.
Catching me looking at her, Nora gives me a tentative smile. “What are you working on?” she asks, placing her book face down on her lap. “Still the drone design?”
“No, baby.” I force myself to focus on the fact that she came for me in Tajikistan—that she loves me enough to do something so insane—and my mood begins to lift, the lingering tightness in my chest fading.
“What is it then?” she persists, and I smile involuntarily, amused by her inquisitiveness. Nora is no longer content to be on the fringes of my life; she wants to know everything, and she’s growing bolder in her quest for answers.
If this were anyone else, I’d be annoyed. With Nora, however, I don’t mind. I enjoy her curiosity. “I’m going over a prospective investment,” I explain.
She looks intrigued, so I tell her that I’m reading about a biotech startup that specializes in brain chemistry drugs. If I decide to proceed, I would be a so-called angel investor—one of the first to fund the company. Venture capital is something that’s always interested me; I like to stay on top of innovation in all kinds of fields and profit from it to the best of my ability.