Chapter 5
five
I stared at the wall, painted a soft dove gray and heard the door shut and lock behind Wester. The lamp in the corner cast soft light over the room. A beautiful, luxurious room, like a boutique hotel. My wrist was sore from Wester holding it over my head and my vagina was still tingling and wet. My skin was warm from him being over me, in me. This would all be pretty damned romantic if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a total stranger and I was locked in this room by a drug dealer.
But since he was a total stranger and I was a captive, it left me stunned and unsure how to feel about anything that had just happened. Wester was… sexy. Unbelievably sexy. There was no other explanation for how I had wound up with his tongue between my thighs ten minutes after meeting him and now letting him convince me that we could have sex on camera in order to save my life. And somehow I had actually enjoyed it.
Because I had. My cheeks heated up as I remembered every touch, every kiss, every nibble. Every thrust of his hard, thick cock inside me. First gentle, then dominating and aggressive. I hadn’t thought about my sister or her husband or my own safety at that point. I was just a woman being fucked well by a mysterious and sexy man.
Which left me completely and utterly embarrassed. That had been far too easy for him. I was no prude, generally, but I wasn’t so quick to let go and dive in to a sexual relationship. Though relationship was a misnomer. There was no relationship. This was a strange unexpected collision of his life with mine.
Pulling the up covers further, I wondered if Eva knew that Ricardo was involved in drugs. She had always claimed his dealings were legal and aboveboard, but clearly that was not the case. Honestly, if we were less na?ve, we would have realized that a man who insists of a staff of bodyguards has a reason to be afraid of exactly something like this. His wife being kidnapped. If Benito found out I wasn’t Eva, he would kill me. A shiver rolled through me. I wasn’t sure if my sister even knew I was missing. Wester had arrived very quickly, making me think he’d seen my abduction and had followed us.
My head was spinning. Initially I had been stunned, but now I was concerned this might actually drag out or worse, I’d be hurt. Killed. The thought made my heart race and my breathing go into overdrive. I wished Wester were back, staring into my eyes, taking control. That thought annoyed me. I’d always considered myself independent, in control. I was the tough sister, not the one who should be curled up in a ball freaking out. Then again, avoiding our mother’s drunken stumbling was different from being locked in a panic room by a drug dealer. This was next level.
There was no way I could sleep, but I couldn’t just lie there rehashing every fear, so I got up and went into the bathroom, walking tentatively across the room, somehow afraid someone would hear me and come in. The only thing worse than being locked up alone would be to have one of those creepy ass guards in there with me. In the shower, I scrubbed off the remnants of sex and the spray of the bay, turning the water as hot as I could stand it. It was a spa bathroom. Either this room was frequently used to hold prisoners or the person who had built the house was afraid of nuclear war or home invasions. It was all weird and disturbing. I was grateful my surroundings were comfortable, but it only contributed to the surreal feeling. I was the bird in the gilded cage...just like Eva.
After toweling off and trying to forget what it had felt like to have Wester deep inside me, those blue eyes destroying me with their intensity, I grabbed a water bottle from the mini-bar and climbed back in bed. There was a TV, so I turned it on to break the silence of the room. How did a guy like Wester become a bodyguard? Eva hadn’t told me anything about him, just that she thought he was cute. Which he was. So very hot.
Hugging a pillow to me and mindlessly watching an ancient Julia Roberts movie, I pushed Wester out of my head by thinking about my grandparents and Sundays at the beach. They would take Eva and I in our grandpa’s beat up truck the twenty minutes to the public beach where we would play in the sand and water all day, only pausing to snack on food my grandmother had packed for us. Those were the days of the simplest pleasures and we hadn’t even understood at that point how financially strapped my grandparents were and how little my mother had done for us.
Later, in our indulgent teen years, Eva and I had been very much aware of their poverty and we resented it, like total brats. We had schemed how to find and marry rich men, and for me, how to have a high paying career to support myself. Eva had never wanted a career. All she had ever wanted was to be taken care of. In retrospect, I wasn’t even sure she had been as materialistic as me. Her needs were to be loved, nurtured, protected, taken care of. Sadly, I didn’t think she had gotten any of that with Ricardo. Just the money. Which didn’t matter anyway. Whatever teen lust we’d had for possessions, I knew mine had dissipated.
This was the end result of marrying for money—a pampered prison.
But what was my need? I was no longer sure and that scared me because I always craved a purpose. I had to know my next move.
I wanted to finish my career and get a decent job. But that was a goal, not my needs. What did I need?
Wester’s eyes popped into my head and I groaned out loud. “You’re an idiot. A complete and total idiot.”
Yet when I finally fell asleep, exhausted from stress and terror, I dreamed about Wester.
We’re in love, he said. Remember that .
Even in my sleep, I felt an ache. A deep melancholy craving for what I could never have.
And I didn’t even know why.
A lizard stared me as I sat in the bushes waiting for the dawn. I had no plan. No big fucking plan other than to try to Rambo-style my way back into Benito’s house and rescue Olivia. I couldn’t leave her here not knowing what might happen to her. That would be the ultimate dick move. I had seen her abduction and it was my responsibility to make sure no harm came to her. And I couldn’t go back to Ricardo, who didn’t even believe Olivia had been kidnapped. He had also fired me, so it was dicey if he would even let me onto his property.
So I was sitting and thinking and staring at the lizard, who was a cute little green guy, zipping over the rocks next to my foot. I couldn’t get Olivia out of my head. She’d gotten under my skin, and that was the biggest surprise of all here, and unnerving. There was something so elemental about her. She was a mix of sweet and sour, strong and soft. A woman who would love with a fierceness and be loyal as hell. Some guy would be a lucky motherfucker one day.
I was squatting and my thighs were starting to burn. “This is stupid,” I told the lizard. “I should just be a dick and leave. Ricardo will ransom her.”
But I couldn’t do that and I knew it. Everything in me revolted against the very idea, and it had nothing to do with her being gorgeous and fascinating. It had to do with her being an unsuspecting bystander who had been dragged into something beyond her control that she didn’t even understand. She was not going to be collateral damage to a drug deal gone wrong on my watch.
I was confident that Benito wouldn’t let any of his staff fuck with her or hurt her for now, given my relationship with her. Or what they thought was my relationship. A flash of her beneath me crying out in pleasure popped into my head. Damn, she had been delicious. I didn’t think I had a lot of time though before someone in that house lost his patience.
The security cameras were strategically placed around the property, but I suspected they did a rotating sweep. The water side would be the least protected. It was also the most obvious and noisy. There was no way I could get out on a boat, even if I had one, which I didn’t. I’d come by car and had parked down the street. The only option was crash and grab.
As soon as she appeared anywhere out of that house I was just going to brazen my way in and haul her out.
Fucking suicide mission, that’s what it was. But I could hear Olivia sighing, her eyes glassy from her orgasm, and knew that if she had given herself to me like that based on my word, I had to do everything I could to get her out of there. She trusted me. With her body. With her life.
For once, I was going to be the man worthy of that trust.
I woke up with a start, a loud knock on the door. For a second, I had no idea where I was, but then I remembered. I was trapped at Benito’s house. Sitting straight up in bed, I didn’t respond to the knock, just listened. The door was opening. Yanking my robe over my chest, I braced myself to face the ugly bodyguard who had hit me. But it was a woman in her fifties, a smile covering her round face. She was wearing a maid’s uniform, her dark hair up in a bun. Relief coursed through me.
She had a bundle of towels and something else in her hand and I gave her a tentative, “Hello?”
“Good morning. Mr. Benito has breakfast for you on the lanai with the other girls. He sent clothes for you to wear.”
Um...other girls? Were there other prisoners here? Plus, she made it sound like I was just a houseguest. I should be grateful, yet it was all so freaking weird I didn’t know what to think. “Thanks.” I took the bundle from her.
The clothes he had sent for me was a bikini and a cover up. Seriously? It was black, with gold rings on each hip and one between the boobs. The sheer cover up had a cheetah print. Benito was most definitely a cliché in his drug dealer tastes. “Where is the lanai?” Sadly, I was actually grateful for the bathing suit. I wanted my vagina covered, even if it was just a scrap of black nylon. I was also hungry, which was ridiculous considering the situation. I should be too stressed to eat, but on the contrary, I was starving.
“I’ll show you once you get dressed.” She just stood there in the doorway. There was a man’s arm behind her, though his body wasn’t visible. My guard.
I didn’t say a word, just went into the bathroom and shut the door. I put on the suit and splashed water on my face and used the hairbrush that had been in a basket with other toiletries. Everything was new in manufacturer’s wrappings, and I thought it was nuts even as I yanked the brush aggressively through my hair. I actually welcomed the pain. It kept my focus.
Outside by the pool there were bistro tables clustered around a buffet table, which held a breakfast spread. There were three other women of various age and coloring sitting around, drinking from champagne flutes and noshing. What the hell? One waved to me and smiled. “Hi, do you want to sit with us? I’m Shelly.”
If she was a prisoner, she was hella cheerful. “Hi Shelly, I’m Olivia.”
“This is Sophia,” she said, gesturing to the brunette sitting next to her eating a bagel with cream cheese. “We’re Benito’s girlfriends.”
My eyebrows shot up before I could stop the reaction. I had never met a man with two girlfriends. It was none of my business and I could frankly care less, but it did catch me off guard. Also, my eyes wandered over to the third woman, who was sitting by herself.
Shelly made a face. “That’s Jessica. She’s a porn star and no, she is not Benito’s girlfriend. That is just me and Sophia.”
Apparently there was a drug dealer compound pecking order. I felt a little bad for Jessica. “I see,” I said, even though I didn’t. I didn’t know a damn thing.
Benito’s house was nowhere near the size of Ricardo’s, nor was it as private. Across the water were the high-rise condos of North Beach, houses clearly visible, snug against Benito’s on either side. The place was definitely palatial and upscale, but in contrast, my brother-in-law was filthy rich. Nasty, dirty, ridiculously rich. Benito looked regular rich.
“I’m starving,” I told the woman across from me. “Is it okay if I just grab something from the buffet?”
“Absolutely,” Sophia said. “This is a mango mimosa. It’s divine.” She had a slight Latin accent and very large breasts in a tiny yellow bikini. She delicately took another sip of her drink.
“Great, thanks.” My stomach growling, I went to the buffet and piled a plate with eggs and fruit. If I was going to die, I might as well enjoy a last meal. Yet the casual friendliness of Sophia and Shelly made me more comfortable that I had been since Wester had walked out on the patio the night before at Ricardo’s. They wouldn’t bother to chat with me if I were slated for execution. I didn’t think.
When I sat back down and started plowing through my food, Shelly gave me a grin. “So… I hear you’re Wester’s girlfriend. He’s a hottie McHot Hot.”
The eggs stuck in my throat. I nodded. I didn’t want to think about Wester and I certainly didn’t want to have to pretend to be his girlfriend to total strangers. He was relegated to a dark, mysterious corner of my brain to be pulled out and examined later, when I wasn’t in a cheetah print cover up having breakfast with drug dealer mols.
“You know he and Benito were best friends the whole time they were growing up.”
I had no clue if Shelly was just being conversational or if this was some sort of trap. “I knew they were friends, yes. Wester mentioned that.” I took a massive swallow of my mimosa. I was overcome by the sudden urge to get drunk. I didn’t do well being passive and this was about as passive as it got. A leisurely meal while I was trapped with no clue what was actually going to happen to me.
My left eye was starting to twitch. I decided to ask a few questions of my own. “So how did you meet Benito?”
Sophia looked away. Shelly’s eyes shuttered. “At a party,” she said vaguely.
Interesting. It confirmed that I couldn’t trust either of them. They were involved in a world I was no part of normally. I tried to picture them taking a chemical engineering class at the University of Miami with me and couldn’t see it. The thought reassured me. I knew where I belonged and it wasn’t here. “Oh, fun,” I said, my voice sounding surprisingly breezy. “Wester is my dog’s bodyguard. That’s how we met.”
“OMG, that’s so awesome,” Sophia said. “I love dogs. I want a Bichon but Benito hates dander. Besides, he says they’re too expensive.”
Benito was quite the layered guy. Loved cheetah, hated dogs. Loved luxury, but was cheap. “Aw, that’s too bad. I love animals.” I did. I just hadn’t been able to have one in my apartment because I was either at school or at work. Once I had my degree, I at least wanted a cat.
“Wester’s an animal.” Shelly giggled.
That sounded a whole hell of a lot like she had intimate knowledge of my fake boyfriend. That pissed me off. I was actually jealous. I was jealous of the drug dealer’s girlfriend possibly having slept with my fake boyfriend, who was actually my sister’s fake boyfriend. I seriously needed to download a dating app when I got out of here because that was ludicrous.
“Are you friends with Wester?” I asked, hoping there was no bite in my voice.
There was. I sounded like a shrew.
She smirked. “A little bit.”
Fun. How fabulous.
“It’s those eyes,” she added, pretending to fan herself with her napkin. “So dreamy. So intense.”
Yes they were. But it was still annoying to hear that I wasn’t the only one who had felt the intensity of his stare.
“OMG, speak of the devil,” Sophia said, her gaze drifting behind me.
I swiveled and saw Wester himself strolling across the back lawn, still in a suit, looking hot and tired and dangerous. He had on sunglasses so those damn eyes were hidden from view, which was a good thing. I didn’t need Shelly and Sophia melting into a puddle next to me. Or worse, me melting into a puddle. He was headed straight for me. Wester bent down, dropping his hand onto the back of my chair. He invaded my personal space entirely and gave me a slow, lingering kiss. I responded because I had no choice. My body was reacting without any directive from my brain.
Memories of just a few hours earlier, his naked body colliding with mine, rushed into my head, crowding me as thoroughly as he was physically. I couldn’t process how to feel in general, but I instantly knew that no matter how annoyed I was or scared I was, he made me weak in the knees.
“Nice bikini,” he murmured with a smirk as he pulled back slightly. Then as he stood up he said in a louder voice, “Good morning, beautiful.” He turned and nodded to Shelly and Sophia. “Ladies. Good to see you again.”
That made me snort. I bet it was.
Shelly giggled. “Hey, Wes, what’s up?”
Sophia gave him deuces, her mouth full.
“What brings you by?” Shelly asked.
That was a good question. I had no idea what was going on and I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. I had yet to speak because I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I came for my girlfriend.” Wester leaned over the table, plucked a strawberry off my plate and popped it into his mouth. “She belongs with me, not Benito.”
Sophia paused with her glass halfway to her mouth. Shelly made a sound in the back of her throat. This was no casual dropping by a friend’s house and we all knew it. Instinctively I knew it didn’t make sense to allow this conversation to linger or to focus too long on why I was there, so I found my voice. “You have no reason to be jealous when you can’t go three seconds without flirting with other women.”
His eyebrows shot up.
“Oh, snap,” Sophia said.
“Don’t start shit with me,” he said. “It’s too fucking early for bullshit.”
So he knew the game and was willing to play along.
“Whatever,” was my pouting response.
“Get up, we’re going home.” The statement was accompanied by him taking my elbow and pulling me up out of my chair.
It wasn’t aggressive or angry, just firm. Yet even though it was for show, it still irritated me. I shot him a dirty look.
“Uh oh, that sounds like a change in relationship status,” Sophia said.
That almost made me laugh. I was supposed to be my sister, who was married. How would ending my affair with Wester change that relationship status? From complicated to monogamous? It was apparent the lifestyle of the rich and horny was not for me.
“Was Benito expecting you?” Shelly asked.
She was definitely the more shrewd of the two women. She wasn’t addicted to slang, either, which elevated her in my book. But she seemed as keenly aware as I did that something was off here.
I stood up to distract her. “Fine, I’ll go,” I said. “Don’t be a dick about it.”
“Where did you get that dress?” he asked.
“Benito. It was a gift.”
“Take it off.” His nostrils were flaring and for a split second, I thought he was genuinely angry. Jealous.
Narrowing my eyes, I just peeled the cover up off over my head and dropped it onto the chair. Even with the sunglasses on, I could see his gaze scrutinizing my body from head to toe in the black bikini I was spilling out of on top. But then he took my hand and pulled me to him. I briefly collided, chest on chest, before stumbling back away from him.
“Have a great day, ladies,” he said, finally breaking the intensity of his stare and glancing down at the table.
“Bye.”
Sophia waved.
I let him lead me away as I called over my shoulder, “So nice to meet you.”
Sophia blew me a kiss.
Wester’s grip on my hand tightened and he walked faster. I was barefoot and winced a little as we fast-walked over the hot patio tiles. He was taking me straight into the back yard, which seemed weird. There was nothing but water back there. But once we reached the foliage, he veered left and took me straight through the banana trees. A minute later we popped out onto the neighbor’s driveway.
That’s when he glanced back at me, his expression tense. “Run, Olivia. My car is up here. Black Honda.”
He pulled his gun out of his waistband and that made my heart crawl up my throat. “What the hell? What’s going on?” A stupid question he clearly didn’t have time to answer, but it was out before I could stop myself. But then adrenalin kicked in and I started running. He didn’t follow me. I glanced back when I was ten feet out and saw men pouring out of Benito’s yard like cockroaches.
The door to the neighbor’s house opened. It was a Hispanic man in his fifties and he took in the sight of me, a blonde in a black bikini, tearing down the street, and just shut the door again.
My lungs were straining, my feet getting scraped to hell, breasts bouncing painfully, when I heard the first gunshot.