His Desire
Authors: Ava Claire
His Desire (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Two)
Ava Claire
Copyright © 2015 Ava Claire
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T
he Billionaire Dom Diaries Series
His Need (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part One): March 13
His Desire (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Two): March 27
His Passion (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Three): April 10
His Love (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Four): April 24
**Please note: The Billionaire Dom Diaries Series is a sequel to to The Billionaire’s Wife series.**
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Chapter Seven
I
was going to kill someone.
I stalked through the entrance of the building, finding no comfort in the fact that my name was over the door. Reminding myself how far Whitmore and Creighton had come with me at the helm was usually a jolt to my system, clearing out any doubt that crept past my defenses. I could lock eyes with any board member, detractor, or obstacle in my way and find the fight I had to channel when I took the reins at 21. And in the years since, I hadn’t met an obstacle, or client, that I couldn’t handle.
Rachel Laraby was proving to be the exception to the rule.
It wasn’t enough that she seemed to sabotage every second chance her fans gave her; the tabloids were consistently filled with her latest bender or booze fueled gaffe. And to add insult to injury (and remind me of the perils of letting my cock take the wheel), she had turned a strictly sexual arrangement between us into a romance that I didn’t sign up for.
It had been months since I realized the error I made and she still called me incessantly. She insisted upon talking about a ‘special someone’ in her interviews. Luckily, the media could care less about the mystery man that put the sparkle in her eye, and more about getting to the root of why she seemed incapable of avoiding scandal.
I’d hoped to send Claudia or Missy to Venice to ensure she stayed out of trouble during her press junket, but I feared I’d have to break my rule. When I ended things with someone, that was it. Per our contract, we never had contact again.
I never should have slept with her, I thought despondently.
My father’s face, leering and intoxicated, sprang into my head. I could practically smell the sea and feel the warm Venice air on my skin while we stood on the balcony of the villa all those years ago. We looked down upon the vast, lush estate, though I knew his attention was on the pool—it was filled to the brim with scantily clad women.
He’d clapped me on the shoulder, his words slurred. “The body wants what the-”
BAM!
Some woman was in the way and I was tempted to snap at her, but I was already late and I needed to nail down the Italy trip. I continued on my way, making a mental note to take the garage and private elevator from now on.
“Excuse you!”
The words were like a lightning bolt, electrifying me on the spot.
No one spoke to me that way...and it should have been enough to unleash an anger of my own. The anger that had been eating at me since I realized I wouldn’t be closing the book on Rachel Laraby after all.
But her voice, this feeling—it was something else.
This was the look on a sub’s face when she saw my equipment; eyes rounding in surprise, terror going down like a rock when she swallowed. This was the hiss of leather slicing through the air; the beautiful sound it made when it licked flesh. The authority in her voice was a mirror to the dominance in my own when I was in that secret place. A place of pain, surrender, and bliss.
I hadn’t even seen her face, this bold woman who spoke to me like I was any man on the street...and I wanted her.
I turned slowly, the anticipation gripping me tight. Hardening a part of me to stone. When I met her gaze, the other part of me that was used to be being as callous as rock, my heart, did the most bizarre thing.
It jerked to my throat.
She was beautiful.
I started with her eyes, deep brown and widening with surprise when she realized who I was. The curve of her nose, the thick suppleness of her lips as she tried to back track when I moved closer...
I’d used the word beautiful before to describe women that had graced the covers of magazines, glittered in the society pages and lit up movie screens. But their beauty was flat and predictable, just like the glossy pages they frequented. This woman had a glow that came from inside and streamed from her like the sun.
I wanted to bask in it. I wanted to know her.
*
“I
don’t know you at all.”
Leila spat the words over her shoulder, a dirty t-shirt held to the wound on Cole’s neck. She’d stemmed the flow of blood, leaping into action like a medic on the battlefield—and no one was dying on her watch.
When Cole let out a dramatic groan, I decided his stay of execution was
not
a good thing. “I barely grazed you.”
“Grazed?” Leila repeated incredulously. It was clear she wanted to throw me a look that would nail me to the wall, but she didn’t let go of Cole. She showed him more mercy than he deserved. “If I hadn’t arrived when I did-”
“I’d be getting answers,” I said calmly. Matter-of-factly. I assessed the situation just as calmly and matter-of-factly. My name is Jacob Whitmore. The pissed off woman holding the ratty, blood stained t-shirt? My wife, Leila Whitmore. The man duct taped to the chair and playing up the pain and drama? My brother Cole Summers. Little did he know that I was just getting warmed up. “I haven’t even asked about Brittany.”
Leila jerked her chin in my direction. It was a start. “I don’t even want to know what Round Two would have looked like. Knives? Jumper cables?”
I glanced over at my backpack, guilt seizing me for the briefest moment before I crushed it. My silence was all the answer she needed.
“Oh, Jacob.”
Her voice was soft. Barely above a whisper. I could hear her heart breaking.
I tore my eyes from her, ashamed. She wore the coat I’d left her in. The pale blue would be etched in our memories, her body wrapped in the delicate color in every picture we’d taken in Dublin.
This was a different picture. Her coat sleeve was sprayed with Cole’s blood. There would be no pictures taken in this room, but that image would be branded on my soul forever.
She wasn’t supposed to see this. She’d already endured her nightmare. My coming after Cole was supposed to shield her from pain, not introduce her to a whole new world of agony.
“We need to call for help. A doctor,” she insisted.
“No.” My brother and I killed that option in unison.
Leila finally looked at me, brown eyes wide with disbelief. When she whipped back to Cole, I imagined she was giving him a similar glare. “It’s not a paper cut, Cole. Jacob tried to behead you.”
“Jesus, Lay.” I shuddered, taking offense when that garish image popped in my head. “You must really think I’m a monster.”
“I don’t know what to think,” she answered somberly. She switched the hand she was using to hold against Cole’s wound. She had to be tired...so tired of running from that kidnapping and being dragged back against her will. By everyday items, suddenly turned sinister. By my pleas for her to open up. By therapy. And now, this.
I ripped my eyes from her, the reality of what I’d done to her, to us, too much to handle. Cole’s home worked against me. It took little effort for the walls to change to the peeling, faded wallpaper in the room of some cheap motel. His lumpy mattress rose from the floor, covered by paper thin sheets and stains one could only see with a UV light. I wasn’t in a cottage on the Ireland countryside; I was transported back to the motel room they’d taken my wife to.
The anger was swift and immediate. The fear was a slow acting poison that crept through me. I was frozen in it, sick with a terror of what horrible thing would come next.
I shut my eyes, a painful reality hitting me like a shot to the heart. Just the thought of the kidnapping and what Leila endured was enough to bring me to my knees. Being in the same room, breathing the air my brother breathed was unbearable.
If it was this devastating to me...
Emotion rushed to my eyes and I had to get to her. Apologize. Get her out. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She didn’t face me, her back and attention firmly on Cole, but I felt her words as if we were face to face. And in that moment, her eyes were burning holes through my chest. “Don’t come any closer. I’m right where I’m supposed to be. With my husband. My family. And thank god I was here, just before you did something you couldn’t take back.”
“What would you have me do?!” My voice erupted from my center, pouring out of my mouth in flames. “They took you, did God knows what, they hurt you...” I stormed to the door. It was still open, the chill of the air drenching me to the bone. The property we were staying had an incredible hot tub with a view that was damn near priceless. But instead of being in that hot tub with my wife, we were here. I’d made her an accessory to my crime. “I didn’t want you to see this, to be part of any of it!”
I expected her body to tense, the argumentative stance that I found equally frustrating and sexy. But her shoulders sagged like she was defeated.
“Of course I’m part of it. I was kidnapped. I came back to you in bits and pieces. You wanted to put me back together. When the glue didn’t work, you reached for the knife.”
She was blaming herself? “No, Leila...this isn’t on you.
I
made the choice to find Cole and to come here and do this-”
“Give me some tape.”
I unclenched my fists and licked my lips, anger slipping out and confusion spilling into the cracks. “What?”
“The tape, Jacob!”
The snap in her tone was like nails on a chalkboard but I forced my inner Dom into submission. We weren’t in the playroom and considering the circumstances, she had every right to be pissed.
I gripped the roll of duct tape, pretending it was some stress relieving device because the closer I got to Cole, the more I longed to tell Leila to step aside so I could finish the job. When he cast his eyes in my direction and his grimace bled into a snarl, I’d had it.
“If you keep looking at me like that-”
“Jacob.” Leila’s voice was low and secret, just for the two of us. It pulled me in and told me that at the end of it all, it was me and her. And I was better than this.
The urge to wipe that look off Cole’s face was manageable but when she gestured in his direction, I still hoped she’d ask me to tape his mouth and pass her the tool box.
“Tape the shirt to his neck.”
I hesitated. She wanted me to help him feel more comfortable? The idea of helping Cole Sommers, even symbolically, made me go cold. “He’ll be fine.”
“Please?” she pleaded.
One heart wrenching syllable and I’d unraveled a strip and secured the shirt around Cole’s neck. Leila reluctantly moved her hands from their position, then turned and walked out of the cottage without another word.
Cole let out a grunt that was either ‘Go after her’ or ‘Ow’.
I’m going with the first, but not because you said so
. I tossed him a scowl and followed Leila. She’d stopped at the gate. The closer I got to her, the more I wished I could take it all away.
She was gripping the rotted post for dear life, like all the times when she thought I wasn’t watching. It wasn’t the kidnapping that brought her this pain.
It was me.
“Leila,” My hands hovered above her shoulders, expecting her to tell me not to touch her. To get in the nearest car and put her and our marriage behind me because we were over. But she remained silent and when I rested my hands on her shoulders, she didn’t flinch. “I’m so sorry.”
She let out a half-hearted sound of acknowledgement. “You hear that?”
I looked out in the darkness, frowning. I heard nothing. “No?”
“Exactly. Nothing. No city. No work. No anything but you and me. That’s what I hoped you’d choose, even though I did my own digging and found out that Cole was in Ireland.”
My heart skidded to a stop. “What?”
She nodded, wringing her hands on the wood. I heard the low, melancholy moan of it. “You had murder in your eyes practically 24/7. I knew it was only a matter of time. And my heart broke when you asked me to come to Dublin. But there was still hope. When we were in the city, there were moments when you almost looked happy and I thought you’d change your mind.” She let go of the post and whipped toward me. Her expression was cold and distant. The kind of look one wore when you had to do or say something you dreaded. “I need you to give me a reason I shouldn’t leave you.”