Jessa yelps and half scrambles, half falls into the door that I slam behind her. I pull her flush to my chest and she fights me, squirming, twisting and clawing like a wet sudsy wildcat kitten.
Moments later, the cab is taking us home and I’m sitting on the seat with Jessa held on my lap, still brawling, grasping at anything to escape, kicking and yelling.
“Stop it,” I order softly. She redoubles her efforts and I release her with a sigh. Jessa lunges for the door, pumping the handle to no avail, then bangs on the window.
“Help! Somebody!”
“It’s obscured bulletproof glass,” I tell her. “You can’t break it and no one can hear you.”
Letting out a little sob, she turns. There’s panic in her royal blue eyes and she flies at me. An uncoordinated attack of slaps and shouts and she tries to knee me in the balls. All the time I hear snippets of words and sentences. You. I. Free. No. I don’t… So close. Let me... She’s incoherent as she cries.
I block. I protect my balls. I make soothing noises, because I know she can’t hear logic right now. She’s terrified and furious that her plan failed. She knows she’s caught and can’t accept it.
I’m patient. I dodge her flailing, but it’s easier for me. Being bigger and stronger, and frankly a lot more experienced at fighting, it’s simple. Tears hit me as often as her fists. She’s a whirlwind, a hurricane, but one that loses energy quickly upon meeting solid ground. Me.
For the main part, I’m careful not to touch her anywhere that will cause my cock to respond more than it already has at the mere sight of her. A glimpse is all it takes for me to get an erection like a baseball bat.
Eventually, she begins to tire, the adrenaline draining away and her movements becoming uncoordinated. She hits the seat instead of me. I can see she’ll need to fight to the end, that she can’t give up, and she’ll hurt herself if she continues. I’ll not be her punchbag indefinitely.
“That’s enough,” I growl.
She ignores me.
I snatch her wrists and pin them at the small of her back, and trap both her thighs scissored between mine. Her body goes still as she realises she’s pinned. Her chest heaves and jerks, as she tries to control herself.
“Shhh.” I move her up so she’s cradled into me, the top of her head just below my chin. “You’re safe,” I whisper.
This is the first time we’ve ever really touched, and my body flares with the rightness of it. I have to shift slightly so my hardening cock doesn’t poke obviously into her side.
She’s not relaxed against me, but she is… I don’t know what the word is. Resting. Her limbs remain tense, as though at any moment she could snap back to clawing at me like a feral creature. But right now, she accepts the solidity of my presence and allows me to hold her.
We stay like that for long minutes, and although it’s not the way I envisaged her first being in my arms, I’ll take it. I had hoped she’d come to me willingly. Eventually, her gaze meets mine, and she writhes. Just the tiniest bit. Testing my strength and brushing one pebbled nipple on my arm. Through the thin silk of her dress, I feel her heat.
We’re two magnets battling against each other when misaligned, but the moment there’s a switch… She’s turned on. I’m sure of it. A shaky breath escapes me.
She hears it and stops. Like my exhalation of relief that this isn’t one-sided strengthened her resolve.
“Let me go.” And though the words are the same as she screamed at me only ten minutes ago, the tone is different. She’s all brittle resignation. A trapped wild animal, having discovered the bounds of her prison, now bides her time.
“No more fighting.”
She nods, and the movement rubs the silk of her hair onto my sternum, setting me alight again.
Reluctantly, I uncurl my fingers from her wrists and slide my leg from over hers. The slide of her plump arse on my thighs is too delicious, but I tell my libido to get the fuck down. Now is not the moment, but my cock throbs anyway.
Stiffly, she moves to the opposite seat, collapsing back into it for half a second before the steel in her spine resolidifies and she straightens and raises her chin. The picture of a queen.
My queen. Fuck, but I’m proud of her. When Jessa Southwark sees that we’re on the same side, she’ll be as formidable a partner as she is an enemy.
“Are you returning me to my brother?” Her voice doesn’t wobble.
“No.” I pull out my phone, click on a news site, and hold it out to her. Our fingers brush as she takes it warily, and that sets off my cock again, like there’s a chain between her and me. I’m her slave and she has no idea.
Even as the black cab picks up pace leaving the city, Jessa is immovable as she looks at the news of a bomb being found where she had booked to stay at in Australia.
“I gave the assassin they hired updated orders to bring the date forwards. They will believe it’s a mix-up due to the time difference. A maid at the hotel ‘happened’ to notice the bomb,” I explain. “She was well paid, don’t worry.”
“Quite the coincidence,” she mutters, staring fixedly at the screen. As she flicks her thumb up and scrolls and takes in every detail, her mouth slopes down.
“Quite,” I agree. “They’ve failed on this attempt. But they’ll try again.”
She doesn’t ask who, because she’s a clever girl. Her fiancé and her brother. She blinks as though she has something in her eye as she can’t drag her gaze from the photo of the hotel and the text that shows it could have been her, dead.
“But why?” she whispers eventually.
“I wasn’t privy to that conversation.” Just the fall-out when David Bree-Fogg ordered one of his men to go to Australia. “I suppose they decided it would be easier to simply split the money between them. “
“No.” She shakes her head and tosses my phone onto the seat next to me. “They don’t have my money yet. The wedding was going to be tomorrow.”
“And yet they have photographs of you in a white wedding dress, at the church, with the select guest list. And at the wedding breakfast. All they needed was to fake your signature on the certificate and find a reason, like say, an essential work meeting for David, that means he was following you on honeymoon on a later flight.” I have to give them credit, it’s a solid plan.
She closes her eyes and her face crumples as she sees how their scheme makes sense of everything that has happened today. The strange insistence on two wedding dresses. All the formality. That discreet ring.
“They knew about my escape. And fuck… My brother. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes when I left. He knew I was…” She chokes and tails off and tears spill down her cheeks silently.
Her own brother planned to murder her for a trifling million pounds. The urge to pull her into my arms and comfort her is almost overpowering. But although that’s what my heart wants, my rational mind knows she needs time to take in this new reality.
“You saved my life.” Wiping away her tears with her fingers, she shakes her head. “How did you even know?”
“I’ve made it my business to protect you, Jessa.” It feels good to admit that, small part of what I feel for her though it is.
Her brow creases with confusion. She doesn’t understand that I love her and will do whatever is needed to make her happy, but she will. In time.
We travel in silence for a while. Jessa kicks off her heels and curls on the seat, arms folded over and around her knees, mouth pressed to her wrists. She’s like a pangolin, winding into herself to attempt to protect that soft underbelly.
It’s too late.
“Where are we going?” she asks after a while, unfurling herself and slipping her shoes back on. She looks stronger except for her throat undulating as she swallows, and I can tell it takes effort to keep her voice level.
“My house.”
“Where’s that?”
“You can’t escape, sweetheart.” Because I know that’s what she’s thinking now she’s processed the situation. How she can get the most information from me to serve her purpose. “But it’s in the home counties.”
Her mouth flattens and she looks me up and down.
I take the opportunity to regard her too. It’s not like I’ve never looked my fill before, but forever wouldn’t be long enough. She has blonde hair that falls in soft waves as far as her nipples, the colours in it ranging from the brightest palest sunshine white-yellow to deep caramel, and everything in between. Her hair is utterly beautiful. I’ve been longing to plunge my hands into the silken strands, and wrap my fist in it as she rides me. Or as I fuck her from behind. To begin with. So many things to do. There’s nothing I don’t want from Jessa.
Her face is sweet and heart shaped, with a snub nose, a little cupid’s bow mouth with dusky pink lips, and eyes the blue of the sky before the dark of night. A blue so shadowed you’d think her eyes were black from a distance. I can’t get enough of looking at Jessa. Photographs or CCTV isn’t enough. I have to glimpse her for real.
You’d broadly call what I’ve been doing for the past three years stalking. I like to follow my girl. Keep her in sight. Support her until she comes into her majority, old enough to have her own money and her own choices and be out of her guardian brother’s clutches. Mature enough to choose me.
She’s twenty-one in a few hours. Young, fresh and sweet, and, as I heard her prick of a brother boast to David Bree-Fogg, still a virgin.
Her virginity?
It’s for me. It’s her decision, but make no mistake, her first time is mine and so are all the others. I didn’t expect her brother to try to sell her off like she was a show pony.
That arsehole will pay for trying to take away my girl’s choices, and for forcing my hand.
I first saw Jessa three years ago, across the room of a party where I’d felt as out of place as usual. I climbed the ladder of power and wealth too fast and violently to be comfortable with my peers. A wary blonde young lioness, all lean angles, straight hair and blue eyes that took everything in. Clever, but awkward. On her own, nobody to laugh with or rely on.
I wanted her. The connection was quick and visceral, a tug from every part of my body towards her.
A snapped question to my PA and I’d known: Jessica Southwark was eighteen years old.
Fuck. I felt sordid wanting Jessa when she was two decades my junior. Dirty. But I couldn’t keep away. I had to know more. When I heard she was an orphan, daughter of two-bit mobsters who’d got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and been killed in a shootout, under her brother’s guardianship, all my protective instincts triggered. I resolved to care for her from afar until she was old enough. A few more years to make the age gap a little less filthy, and for her to be in charge of her life.
I intended to woo Jessa carefully, as softly as she deserves. I aimed to grow her love for me like a hothouse flower, tending her confidence into bloom, providing everything she wanted. I was going to allow her the space to be herself and recognise we’re perfect for each other.
Not kidnap her with only a few hours’ notice.
Her brother will pay for this. And fucking David Bree-Fogg too. I saw the angle of his arm disappearing beneath the table. He was dead the second I walked in and saw he was touching what is mine.
She’s not. Jessa is my queen. Mine, yes, but everyone will give her the respect due.
It’s a moment before I notice she’s staring at my chest like the sight compels her against her will. She tracks her gaze over the muscles of my six-pack, down to where my trouser waistband meets skin. Then up to my pectorals. Does she like the smattering of dark hair there, and trailing from my belly button downwards, I wonder, or should I have waxed it for her? I’d take a little pain if she liked my body better as a result.
Her little breasts in that clinging silk white dress rise and fall a little quicker than before. Clasping her hands together like she’s preventing herself from reaching for me, she looks away.
Seems she likes what she sees well enough.
Knuckles white, she keeps her face averted. “How did they know? About my Australia plan?”
“Spyware on your phone.” It’s low. I keep tabs on my girl, but not even I would do that. It’s far beyond my need to see and protect her. It was an attempt to manipulate her in the crudest, most underhand way.
Her mouth presses into a hard line. “Figures. My brother always was a cheat.”
Exactly. We understand each other. When she hands over control, it will be because she trusts me. It will be when, in a fair competition, I’ve shown my approach gives her more.
“I don’t get it,” she says eventually. “What do you gain from this situation? You’ve saved me, but why? What do you want?”
And because she’s my girl, I give her the unfiltered truth. I don’t think before I speak. I say what is in my heart, and has been since the beginning.
“I want you.”
