Indecent Proposal, page 17
He grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head back, making me choke back a moan. “What do you want, baby girl? Tell me.”
Vaughn wasn’t really asking. He was ordering. And I was going to do as I was told and answer the question.
“I want you to fuck me,” I whispered huskily. “As hard as you want… I want you rough, I want you dominating me…”
“You want all of that?” Vaughn’s voice was like sandpaper, and he released my hair to rip my shorts down, possibly tearing them as he pulled them out of the way, then shoved my legs apart and exposed just how dripping wet I was.
I whimpered, too far gone to be embarrassed at the way my inner thighs shone with my own slick, showing off just how ready I was for him. I didn’t even need him to finger me—honestly, I didn’t want him to. I wanted it to be a bit rougher than that. I wanted to feel the stretch and burn and complete possession of my body.
“Yes, I want all of that,” I promised him. “I want you.”
His hand squeezed my thigh hard, but he didn’t move to do anything else. I was about to moan in frustration—but then I realized what he was doing. What he was waiting for me to say.
“Yes, please, sir,” I said, remembering how I was supposed to address him in times like these.
“That’s much better,” Vaughn growled.
I’d managed to get his pants undone before he shoved me back onto the table, and I bit my lip hard as I watched him draw his cock out. He was completely erect, not that I was surprised. I’d felt him stiffening against me, after all. But it was always such a difference between seeing it and feeling it. It always looked so fucking big, so goddamn thick and hard. It made my entire body feel like it was melting and clenching, like I was aching and empty.
“Please, sir,” I repeated, unable to tear my gaze away. Wanting. Starving.
Vaughn wrapped his hand around my throat, and I whimpered as he pressed me all the way down onto the table. His grip was loose, nowhere near enough to choke me or even threaten to, but that didn’t matter. The very touch of his hand against my vulnerable skin was enough to make me remember the power in his hand, and just what he could do to me if he felt like it.
For a moment I worried that he was going to be slow and gentle with me, that he was going to treat me like I was the broken one, which I wasn’t going to stand for. I wasn’t fragile and I didn’t want him to treat me that way.
But before I could protest, he leaned in, his cock nudging against me, and then he was sliding inside and my whole body was on fire. The fact that he hadn’t used a condom made it all the more filthy, and I didn’t stop him since I was still on birth control. I wanted to feel him come inside me, hot and sticky, utterly owning me.
I arched, a cry wrenched from me. Each driving thrust was deep and rough, but I was so wet it was a smooth glide, like Vaughn’s cock had no choice but to enter me completely and fill me to the brim.
“That’s right,” Vaughn said in a low, dark voice. “You wanted it to be rough? Conquering you after I eliminate the threat? I can do that for you. Give you that dominance you crave. That you didn’t want to admit you needed.”
His hand tightened just a bit on my throat—still not enough to cut off any air, but now a weight, a stern reminder.
It only made me more aroused as pleasure coursed through me. I whimpered, unable to get any words out, unable to even really remember how to form sentences with my mouth. I wanted him to stop waiting, to stop holding me there, I wanted him to move.
But that was what he’d taught me before. This wasn’t about him giving me what I wanted when I demanded it. It was about him doing things at his own pace. And if he decided to wait a moment, then I needed to let him, knowing my trust in him would be rewarded.
I let my body relax, feeling almost like I was melting into the table. Vaughn smirked down at me. “That’s a good girl.”
A small moan escaped me at the praise. I wanted to be so good for him. I wanted to do as he told me, because he’d reward me so well for it. He wouldn’t disappoint me.
Vaughn pulled out of me almost completely and I swallowed a whine of discontent. It turned into a noise I could only call a scream as he slammed back into me, his entire cock sliding in with hot, relentless purpose.
Then, and only then, did his hand truly tighten around my throat.
He didn’t stop with just this one deep thrust, either. He kept going, fucking me relentlessly, just like I had wanted, just like he had promised. The angle we were at kept his bad arm mostly immobile and he could rely on the rest of his body to fuck me while he stood, and he was giving me every bit of goddamn strength that he had.
I felt like I might pass out, and I inhaled sharply as Vaughn relaxed his grip for a moment to allow me to breathe properly. I had noises trapped in the back of my throat, desperate moans and whines like I was some kind of animal. I felt completely trapped in the grip of my lust and Vaughn’s power and strength. It was amazing.
I couldn’t stop writhing, twisting, my hips bucking up with every thrust of his hips. Having him dominate me felt so good. The pleasure felt like it was just too much, more than my body could handle. I squirmed uncontrollably, trying to find some way, any way, to express the sheer ecstasy coursing through my body.
Vaughn, Vaughn, Vaughn, I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t seem to form his name, only half of the word getting out. I felt like language itself was fleeing me.
All I could think about was the cock inside of me, claiming me like I belonged to Vaughn, like I was nothing more than a conquest, another thing to conquer after he’d just triumphed over his opponent. His shaft was slick and hard, driving into me over and over—and I was just trapped there, unable to do anything except take it—and his complete dominance felt absolutely glorious.
Vaughn squeezed my throat again and I choked on my own gasp of pleasure. My eyes rolled back into my head, my legs shaking uncontrollably. All I could do was endure this aggressive, animalistic mating. I couldn’t even really move my hips up to meet his cock as he fucked me—I was too far gone for that coordination.
“Are you going to come for me?” Vaughn rasped. “Going to spill all over my dick and squeeze the cum out of my cock?”
I moaned, his dirty words amping up my desire. Yes, yes, yes, I was—I wanted to reply but I couldn’t, all I could do was make helpless noises as my orgasm swept through me. Vaughn didn’t stop, relentless in his deep, driving thrusts, but I thought I could feel him start to lose control a little.
He grunted as he slammed into me harder, his movements more erratic, and even as I continued to ride out my own climax, I was able to watch his face and expression as he came, was able to feel the hot spurts of his release, filling me up and making a mess of the both of us. I felt like I couldn’t breathe—I knew I had to be, but it was like we’d moved past the wild need to fuck and were just coasting on the pleasure, no actual oxygen required.
Vaughn groaned and collapsed on top of me and I shook with the power and intensity of my orgasm, still coming down from it, the two of us breathing together.
I glanced at his arm—it still looked okay, no bleeding through the stitches and staining the bandage. I let my head rest back on the table.
We’d done that. We’d just fucked like that, dark and dirty, with Vaughn injured, in front of a woman he’d just killed.
Maybe that made me a bad person, but I didn’t care. This was who I was. For the first time in my life I truly felt alive, like I was being true to myself and doing whatever the hell I wanted instead of doing what everyone thought I should do, giving into everyone else’s idea of what my life should be like.
I knew it was going to sound cliché, and that it was probably something people usually thought about on their wedding days, but this moment was the start of the rest of my life. I was going to be free, now. And I was going to be myself, with this man who embraced all of me.
CHAPTER 20
Vaughn
Maybe there was something a bit off with me for feeling this way, but fuck, that was the hottest sex I’d ever had in my life.
The way the adrenaline had shifted into lust, the way she’d wanted me to fuck her hard, rough, almost like an animal. My hand on her throat and my cock deep inside of her, I felt like I was going crazy with how good it felt. I was out of control, fucking her as hard as I could, chasing that high. Feeling her come around me as she moaned and writhed was the hottest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Honestly, I couldn’t even feel a damn thing from my arm after all of that. I was high on endorphins.
I kissed her messily, deeply, the two of us panting together and slowly getting our breath back after that glorious trainwreck of an orgasm. I found myself smiling into the kiss, like an idiot, and then Claire followed suit, the two of us unable to kiss anymore because we were smiling together.
It felt so damn good to have her in my arms, to know that she was safe and okay. Thank fucking God. It had been way too close of a call with Ace, but now at least we had the assassin taken care of.
I pulled her up to a sitting position on the table and stroked her hair back, away from her face. “You okay?” I asked, my voice soft.
Claire nodded, her eyes shining with gratitude. “I am,” she promised me. “I’m okay. Thanks to you.”
I kissed her again. Just because I could.
Of course, there was still the frustrating issue of the dead body on the floor, and the information from Richard that we had yet to recover. Claire wouldn’t be completely out of danger until we resolved the latter.
First things first: clean up.
We took a few minutes to put ourselves back together, and then we had to take care of Ace. Dealing with a corpse was never fun.
Given the world that we were in—the shadows we occupied in our profession—I was tempted to just, well, dump Ace’s body and let her disappear as so many operatives in our world disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again and leaving the world to wonder.
But I wasn’t some rogue. I had to make sure that we exposed the Hardman Holdings company for whatever it was they’d done, and for that, we might very well need Ace identified.
That meant bagging her.
To my surprise, Claire insisted on helping. She didn’t look happy while doing it, wrinkling her nose, but she didn’t balk, either.
She really had a goddamn backbone of steel. She kept impressing me.
Once that was taken care of and the corpse was loaded into the back of the Jeep, we could set out. I was going to have to make a satellite call to the others. Bryce and Seth were going to kill me when they found out about this entire situation.
Especially when they found out I had a girl to show for it. I was never going to hear the end of it.
“Is it over?” Claire asked as we made sure the cabin was clean.
“I wish,” I muttered unhappily. “They’ll send another assassin once they realize that this one’s failed. We need to find the documents that Richard was hiding.”
“She was so sure that I had them,” Claire said, sounding defeated. “I just don’t understand why she’d be so certain. She must’ve searched my apartment. And she didn’t mention you.”
No, she hadn’t. Which was odd because I’d infiltrated the Hardman building and gotten files. It had to mean that there was something that wasn’t in them—the gaps the tech guys had found—that was in whatever documents Richard had.
“Richard wouldn’t have called me if he didn’t have anything,” Claire went on, raking a hand through her hair in frustration. “And it wasn’t in his papers in his desk because I searched them and then she did, too. She said she did. So where are they? Did he move them somewhere else?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. You said Richard was interrupted while talking to you, which is when Ace killed him, so he didn’t have time to hide the information somewhere else.”
Claire groaned. I led her out to the car, trying to lighten the mood. “He doesn’t have a secret room or tunnel in that swanky apartment of his, does he?”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t have been shocked,” Claire admitted as we got into the Jeep, with Ace’s body in the back. “Richard was old-fashioned. You saw his apartment. It wasn’t all… chrome and open floor plans the way most rich people in the city like it. All the dinner parties we’d go to at people’s apartments would have the same kind of… ultra-modern empty feel. Richard hated that. He wanted to feel like he was in some old mansion, he said once.”
Claire accompanied this statement with a roll of her eyes, followed by a look of guilt. She glanced away out the passenger window, and I put a hand on her knee comfortingly as we drove.
“It’s getting easier,” Claire admitted softly. “To be okay with how I feel about him, without feeling as much guilt.”
“I’m glad.” I searched for something else to help her not dwell on it. “So was all the stuff in his home actually antique? It sure looked it.”
“I mean, some of it was new but looked old-fashioned, but a lot of it was a genuine antique, he could afford it. I remember when he got that desk, actually, he was so excited…” Claire’s voice trailed off and her eyes went wide.
“What?”
“This is going to sound ridiculous,” Claire said quietly. “But—we should go—we should go to the apartment.”
“Why? You know where the papers are?”
“I’m a fucking idiot,” Claire hissed, smacking her forehead. “An absolute moron. Richard’s screaming at me from beyond the grave.”
I frowned at her rambling. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s in his desk!” Claire yelled. “He didn’t mean in his papers. He meant literally in the desk!”
“Okay, now I’m going to sound like an absolute moron,” I said in a wry tone. “Spell this out for me.”
“Nobody can find what it was Richard had,” she said, sounding more excited now. “You found nothing with your IT guys when you downloaded the digital files, so they must’ve been wiped, but our assassin back there was still looking for whatever it was so it must’ve been a hard copy. That means that information is still out there, and Richard had it—but if it’s not in the papers in the desk, then where is it? Maybe he was talking literally in a way we didn’t think about. The desk is an antique. And a lot of antique desks had hidden compartments.”
Holy shit.
“Okay, now I also feel like a moron,” I admitted, though I was definitely impressed with Claire for figuring it out. I hit the accelerator. “Reset the GPS to Richard’s. We need to find those papers.”
If we could get those documents, then finally this would all blow up for Hardman, and Claire would be safe.
CHAPTER 21
Claire
We pulled to a harsh stop on the street in front of Richard’s apartment building. I was already moving before Vaughn even got the Jeep into park, hurrying into the building using my keys.
The person who had been sent to kill me was dead, and in a movie, that would be the end of it. I would be safe, and Vaughn and I could—I don’t know—ride off into the sunset or something.
But this wasn’t a movie. Whoever had sent the assassin after me, and succeeded in killing Richard, would keep coming for me unless we got proof of what Richard had found and were able to go to the authorities with it—possibly even make it public.
I had to find what he had, and figure out what it meant.
“Claire!” Vaughn yelled after me with frustration, abandoning the Jeep to run after me. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to leave the car with a dead body rolled up in a tarp in the back, but hey, nobody could see it and was going to suspect anything.
I ignored him and hurried to the elevator, mashing the button with my finger. Vaughn caught up to me. “It’s not going to arrive faster if you keep hitting it.”
Even though I knew he was right, I glared at him and mashed the button again.
“You touch it more than three times you’re playing with it.”
“Hardy, har, har.” My mouth did twitch with amusement before I could stop myself, though.
I stepped on the elevator as the doors open, Vaughn right behind me, and we rode it all the way up to the nearly top floor where Richard had lived. My foot tapped impatiently the entire time. If I was right…
God, I hoped I was right. Yes, it made me feel like an idiot that I hadn’t put the pieces together until now. In hindsight, it seemed so obvious.
Richard hadn’t exactly been what you’d call a fanciful guy. I didn’t think anyone would assume he was the type to have a desk with a hidden compartment. But what else could ‘in the desk’ mean when all of his papers had been gone through, by three people now—including one assassin who knew exactly what to look for—without finding anything?
The elevator opened and Vaughn stepped ahead of me, holding out his arm. “Just in case,” he said, his voice tense.
I froze and hung back, watching as he pressed his ear to the front door, and then did something with his shoulder against it that seemed to be testing its weight. He nodded at me, then held his hand out. “Keys?”
I tossed them to him and he unlocked the door, pulling his gun out in one smooth motion with his other hand so that it pointed up ready to shoot at anyone on the other side.
Vaughn pushed the door further open, and I realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled slowly, but my heart continued to thunder in my chest.
A moment—an eternity—later, Vaughn called, “All clear.”
I exhaled sharply, relief flooding me, and I hurried after him.
Vaughn insisted on being in front, in case of a surprise, and we made our way through the apartment to the office. It was all covered up—looked like the police were finished with it and so housekeeping, or maybe Richard’s family, had begun the process of cataloguing and clearing things.
I pulled back the white cloth covering the desk and bent down in front of it. Okay. If I were a hidden compartment, where would I be?
