Chapter 12
TWELVE
Bailey is gorgeous.
I’ve spent time with some beautiful women, each one desirable in their own way, but there is something about the raven-haired wildcat in front of me that has me wanting to lose control.
I can take her right now. Her mouth is inches from my throbbing cock, desire dripping from her pussy like an offering to a deity.
I slide my hand along her side, noting the subtle tremor of her body at my touch, until I am caressing her ass.
The heat from her punished skin has my hardened length jumping with excitement.
I want nothing more than to fuck her mouth again while my brother kneels behind her, licking and sucking at her sweet button until she is screaming my name around my cock, eyes begging us for release.
Soon.
Soon we will claim her as ours.
She will scream our names, and everyone will know who she belongs to.
“Go on, wildcat,” I urge. “Ask your question.”
Her crystalline blue eyes hold buckets of uncertainty as she stares at me, her throat bobbing nervously. Her darling pink tongue comes out to lick her chapped lips before she takes a deep breath, the action causing her breasts to sway beneath her.
God, I want to suckle those petal-pink nipples until she writhes with pleasure beneath me.
“Are you going to kill me?”
It is the question I suspected she would ask first, despite her bold statement that we need her.
Can’t blame her for wanting assurances. She knows what being held by the mafia means.
We should have killed her in the alley, but if there is one thing that sets us apart from other families, it is that we don’t kill women and children.
Not unless it is well deserved. I have only ever known my father to order a hit on a woman once in his entire time as head of the family.
And she wasn’t innocent like Bailey.
She had been a killer herself. A manipulator. There is no regretting that decision.
“No,” I answer her honestly. We don’t have plans to kill her. Use her? Yes. Trade her back to her father? Maybe.
“Then what do you—”
“Sorry, babe.” I wag my finger at her. “Our turn.”
The small huff she gives is adorable.
“What can you tell me about your father’s business with Magnus Knight?”
“Seriously?” Bailey scoffs a laugh as she rolls her eyes.
I can see my brother’s belt hand twitch with the need to punish her for the disrespect.
But he lets it go. This time. “I don’t know anything about my father’s business.
He’s a senator. He does politics. If that’s why you’re keeping me, you’re shit out of luck. ”
“We already told you why we’re keeping you,” Kiernan reminds her. Despite his reservations at the dinner table about using her to spy on her father, we both know it is the only way to get what we need.
“Not going to happen.”
Ignoring her last comment, I fist her hair tightly, forcing her to stare up at me.
“You know something,” I press. “So, if you don’t want to be punished, tell us what you know.”
Bailey shakes her head. “Do you honestly believe that I am going to betray my father that way?” she asks incredulously. “No way. My father gives me everything. I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t rescued me. If I betray him, he will ruin me.”
Cocking my head to one side, I study her, taking in the swell of her chest as a wave of anxiety settles over her. Bailey’s hands tremble slightly where she has them braced against my thighs, but her face settles into a mask of indifference. My little wildcat is trying to hide her fear.
“We won’t let that happen, Mo Stoirín,” Kiernan assures her. His hands come up to rub at her shaking shoulders, easing the goosebumps that have settled over her fair skin. “We won’t let anything happen to you, lass. You belong to us.”
I doubt that will ease her fear, but the minx surprises me when her body relaxes back into her submissive position, her breaths evening out.
“I don’t know much,” she admits, her voice drifting to a low whisper. “Just what I’ve overheard and what Drew has told me.”
Bailey shakes her head, denial and fear trembling through her again.
She is afraid, and I don’t think it is us she fears in this moment but the man who raised her.
But why? What reason does she have to fear her father?
He is a scumbag, there is no doubt about that, but would he harm his own daughter?
“If I tell you…" she looks at Kiernan over her shoulder, meeting his gaze before turning to me, “… you can’t use anything I say. They will know it was me.”
Kiernan and I exchange a look.
“All right.” We nod.
“And… you can’t tell anyone what I am about to tell you. If you do, you would be signing my death certificate. Don’t let them take me.” The look on her face tells me she is serious. Whatever secret she holds about her father is bad enough that she fears for her own life.
Don’t let them take me.
Those aren’t random words she throws out. The look in her azure eyes speaks volumes. She means to say those words. Bailey hadn’t said my father or him. She specifically says them. If it isn’t her father she is afraid of, then who?
“We won’t.” I cringe internally at Kiernan’s promise. I am supposed to be the impulsive one, not him. It isn’t a lie. Technically. We won’t let anyone take her. We planned to use her as a bargaining chip, and part of that is making sure there will be no retaliation against her.
Bailey breathes deeply, her lower lip trembling as she exhales. Her mask of indifference falls back into place, the political mask she has worn her entire life. The one that shows no weakness. I don’t like that mask.
“What do you want to know?”
“There aren’t any adoption records on you.
” I lean back on my elbows. My cock is still rock hard beneath her, but that isn’t going away anytime soon.
Not until those pretty lips are wrapped around it, and even then, I doubt it will be satiated.
Pushing back my primal need to claim the vixen on her stomach in front of me, I focus on the task at hand.
Getting answers and her cooperation.
Bailey shrugs, but I can see the frisson of anxiety running through her. “Can’t adopt a blood daughter.”
Kiernan eyes me.
“Elaborate, Bailey.” Not that much elaboration is needed. If she is about to confirm what we think she is, this is our smoking gun.
The minx rolls her eyes. “Richard Crowe is my biological father. He had a one-night stand when he was younger and boom. Me.”
“Who was she?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
“You never met your biological mother? Or tried to find out more about her?”
“I lived with her until I was three or four. I can’t remember.
She was a no-good junkie who left me in a room filled with needles on the floor and used condoms in the corners.
” Bailey’s jaw clenches tightly. “I don’t care about who she was.
She lived like a junkie and died like a junkie. That’s all I need to know.”
Fair point.
“Still doesn’t explain the secrecy, lass.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Her tone becomes exasperated.
She doesn’t like dredging this up. There is deep-rooted pain she is holding on to.
One she doesn’t want to confront. Too bad.
“My father was the DA when I was adopted. Do you know what a scandal like that would do to his career path? So, when he learned of me, he told the media that they adopted me after seeing me in the hospital during one of Sarah’s fertility treatments.
They told everyone they were struggling to conceive after my sister was born.
Made a big heartbreak, boo-hoo about it, and the media lapped it up like the good little dogs they are. ”
“Is that why you became a journalist?” Kiernan asks. “So you didn’t become a simpering fool like them?”
“No.” She sniffs haughtily, her little nose in the air in stiff indignation. “I want to be a fiction author, but my father won’t hear of it. Journalism is the next best thing.”
“How did you become involved with your fiancé?”
“Ex-fiancé,” she growls before sighing. “Drew and his father came to mine. I was sixteen. Magnus wanted an alliance. He knew of my father’s political aspiration, and he wanted a seat at the table.”
“Why did your father offer up an arranged marriage?” I wonder. There are several ways to go about alliances these days in the political world. Not just marriage. It isn’t mutually beneficial in my opinion. What did Richard gain from selling his daughter? And why her and not her socialite sister?
Bailey shakes her head. “It was Magnus’s idea,” she contradicts.
“He wanted the political alliance, and marriage is the option he thought best. I was not his first choice, but Sarah, my stepmother, refused my older sister’s involvement.
Plus, Sarah had lined up a match of her own for Dalia with the son of the current DA. ”
“What does your father gain from an alliance with Magnus?”
“Power,” Bailey says simply. She makes it seem as if it is the only obvious answer. “My father may be a senator, but Magnus has far greater reach and sway in DC, and with his current political track, he is looking at campaigning for president during the next election.”
“President?”
Fuck. So that is why the old man is campaigning so hard to clean up the city. Taking down the Seattle underground and the mafia families who run it will put him so far ahead of his opponents they won’t stand a chance.