CHAPTER SEVEN
Hailey
Mick has a smile on his face, but I can sense he’s worried. Maybe it’s the way he looks over at me every five seconds, to make sure I’m still here. Or maybe it’s just the bone-deep intuition that comes with falling in love with someone. He’s rescued me from the tower and stashed me somewhere my father can’t find me, but there’s an air of what now hanging in the air. I’m afraid to find out the answer.
I’m wrapped in a white cashmere robe, snuggled in the most incredible bedclothes, watching Mick pace the floor, occasionally glancing out over the hotel grounds through the curtains. He carried me in here after my bath…and what came after…and I’m too boneless to move. So even though I would love nothing more than to crawl over to my backpack to retrieve my paints, I stay right where I am. There will be plenty of time to paint Mick once we’re in Montana.
Montana. Horses. Space. Friends.
Am I allowed to get excited? Am I allowed to believe this is really happening?
After a long glance in my direction, Mick leaves the room and returns a moment later holding a folded menu. “Let’s get you something to eat, Goldie. Pick whatever you want.”
I sit up and open the menu, gasping over the colorful pictures of pancakes smothered in whipped cream and fruit salads and a whole chicken. “I can’t choose,” I say quietly after a moment wherein I change my mind nine times. “No…I think eggs. And chicken fingers. No. Wait. A burger?”
Mick sits down beside me on the bed, brushing my hair back with a tenderness that makes my heart speed up. “How did you eat in your father’s house?”
“Once a day, the maid would leave a tray outside my door. Usually a sandwich or whatever he didn’t manage to finish at breakfast. She would unlock the door long enough for me to drag it inside.” Discomfort clogs my throat, but I shrug it off, not wanting to be ungrateful for the here and now. “He delivered orders for the paintings, though—he didn’t trust them in anyone else’s hands. He’d bring me a new, blank canvas. Supplies. I usually had two weeks to get it done, unless there was a rush…”
I trail off when I notice Mick’s hand is twisting in the comforter. “You’re never going back there, baby.” He takes the menu from my hand. “You’re getting all three things and I’m adding a milkshake.”
“No, there’s no way—”
He stops my protests with a kiss. “Do me a favor, Hailey. When I want to spoil you, just say, ‘Okay, Mick.’ Seeing you happy makes me happy.”
Fingertips of exhilaration crawl up my spine and scalp, making me feel like I’m back in the hot bathtub with steam swirling around me. “What else makes you happy? What did you do to have fun before me?”
He reaches under my robe and grips my hip, drawing me closer so he can lay his head in my lap. “I collect old pianos,” he says. “Got a whole barn full of them back home, just sitting there. Waiting to be restored and tuned up.”
“Really?” I laugh. “I didn’t expect that. Do you play?”
“Some. Not as well as I’d like.” He undoes the tie of my robe, pushing it open so he can nuzzle and kiss my belly. “There was a neighbor growing up. She used to play late at night and I’d hear it through the wall. There wasn’t much beauty where I lived…but just the sound of the piano made me wonder if there was more in the world. Beauty.” He swirls his tongue in my belly button. “Little did I know, my Hailey was out there. The most beautiful thing in this damn world. You’re the music now, baby.”
Heat pushes behind my eyes. “I want to learn to play. For you.”
He glances up. “Let’s learn together.”
I can’t subdue my smile. “Okay.”
An hour ago, I couldn’t imagine a place finer than this hotel room, but my excitement about getting to Montana is building by the second. I just want to go there now. Somehow Mick has already made it my home.
He slides lower on my body, pushing open my left knee and kissing me on the low waistband of my panties. His heartbeat raps against my leg, faster and faster, but after one final kiss, just an inch or so from my clit, he moves back into a sitting position. He turns away, but not before I can see the shadow in his eyes. It’s not the worry from earlier, though. It’s something else. Something like…shame?
“Mick.” I reach out for him, catching the sleeve of his shirt. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he says gruffly, brushing a thumb across my lips. “I’m just finding it hard not to…”
“Not to what?”
“If I let go of my self-control, Hailey, you’d be getting fucked by me once an hour. I look at you and I want to hold you, feed you, care for you. Talk to you.” He swipes a hand across his mouth. “But I also want your pussy. I want it non-fucking-stop.”
I’ve already grown wet between my thighs. Doesn’t he realize I feel the same? I want his big body on top of mine, pressing me down, his words harsh in my ears. “I want that, too,” I murmur, sitting up and letting the robe coast down my shoulders. “I didn’t know if it was just me. You seemed surprised that I’m so…”
“Horny,” he rasps, adjusting the ridge in his pants. “That’s a real good thing, baby. I didn’t mean to make you feel wrong about it.”
The way he’s looking at me makes me feel sexy, desirable, and I do what feels right. I pile my hair on top of my head and twist a little on the bed, tempting him closer. He comes with a heaving chest and a straining zipper. “Fuck me again, Mick. Again and again.”
After ripping his shirt in the bathroom, he put on a new one—and it lands on the floor now in a heap, followed by the lowering of his fly. “Goddamn, Hailey. I should be working. I’ve got a shit ton of red tape to cut down, but I panic when you’re less than five feet away from me.”
“After this time, you’ll work,” I whisper, boldness making my blood thick and needy. “I’ll make you. I promise.”
With a groan, he lands on top of me, pressing me down into the mattress, his mouth wet and insistent on my neck. The robe and my panties are tossed aside like nothing and we’re skin to skin, Mick coarse and covered in hair on top of my smaller, smoother form. And nothing has ever felt more right.
Despite his thick flesh growing between our stomachs, I still sense him holding back, though. “What do you want, Mick?”
He shakes his head while sucking at my lips. “It’s bad, baby.”
“No, it can’t be.” I spread my thighs wide and roll my hips. “Tell me. I want to give you everything.”
For long moments, all I hear are the shallow breaths he takes against my mouth. “I liked claiming you in front of him. I know it’s wrong, but I have this need for other men to know you’re mine. Especially him. He is…he was…the only other man in your life. And I wanted him to know that shit was over. That you’re mine now. Forever.”
I stroke my fingertips down his broad back. “That’s not wrong. It’s just you,” I whisper, letting him lick me into a hard, grateful kiss. “Maybe it’s both of us. Because I want him to know you’re mine, too.” Closing my eyes, I whisper the truth I’ve been keeping, deep in my subconscious. “I want to do it all over again.”
Mick scrutinizes my face for a few beats, as if he can’t believe what I’m saying. As if he’s in awe of me. That thick part of him throbs harder, more insistently between us. And without warning, I’m flipped over onto my stomach, my left cheek pressed down onto the soft sheets. “Spread them, brat.”
I have to bite my lip to keep from moaning. “No…please.”
“You heard him,” Mick growls, bearing his teeth against my ear. “You’re mine for the hour. We don’t want to disappoint our audience, do we?”
Dizziness wracks me, I’m so hot and turned on in the most twisted way. Moisture pools between my legs, my skin prickling with sensitivity. Mick and I both need the act of him claiming me in front of my one and only father figure, but being attuned to Mick, I know exactly how he wants to play. It matches my own desire, because I like mean Mick. I don’t know how or why, all I know is my body responds and he takes care of the ache. “Don’t look,” I croak, sliding my thighs wide on the bed. “Don’t watch. Please.”
Mick’s growl vibrates through my whole body. My arms are wrenched behind me, wrists pinned at the small of my back. “Oh, he’s going to look, all right.” The thick head of his flesh breaches me, before the rest of him slams deep, driving me up the bed, crackles going off in my ears, my belly. “He’s going to watch his little girl get ruined by a big cock. He’s going to watch it from behind, too, so he can watch me slide in and out, stretching your tight pussy with every pump.” His forearm jerks me up onto my knees. “So get your little ass up. Show daddy how you make the strange man come.”
My thighs are already starting to tremble, but the need for release comes from deep deep inside me after that. Because when Mick begins to thrust, he finds that sensitive spot and hits it over and over. There’s no way to escape the awful, wonderful, scary, intense, wild pressure that begins to build. He’s so rough, giving me no way to move, that arm like a band of steel around my hips, keeping me stationary for his grunting drives.
“Stop him,” I wail, my fingers clawing at the sheets. “It’s too big. It hurts.”
Mick shouts a curse and picks up the pace, the sound of our smacking flesh filling the room. “Paid extra to get you pregnant, brat. Hold still and let it happen.”
“No!”
“Yes.” His mouth finds my neck, his teeth sinking into the soft flesh. “Mine now. All mine. He’s seen it happen. Fucking mine. Always.”
I’m talking to Mick now and that’s what sends me into my climax, blistering white lust taking me prisoner from all sides, dragging me down into those agonizing moments while waiting for the pleasure to break—and when it does, I catapult into the blissful nothing, my flesh clamping down around Mick’s flesh, my consciousness wavering, blinking in and out. He falls forward, pinning me to the bed, his hips ramming into me from above, using my body like a toy.
When he roars loud enough to make my eardrums hurt, I wonder if maybe my father knows what we’re doing after all. Half of Los Angeles must hear Mick hit his peak and unleash endless streams of fluid inside me. It overflows and dribbles down my thighs, while his cock continues to stuff me full. In and out. Hard, rough, desperate. I’m sliding up and back on the mattress, taking it, sobbing, tears overflowing and running down my cheeks from the intensity of it all.
“I love you,” I murmur when he finally collapses on my back, his low, shuddering intakes of breath filling my ears.
“I love you, too, Hailey,” Mick answers, rolling off me and pulling me into his arms. “Fuck, baby. I love you so bad.”
“Good,” I tease him, tickling his ribs. “Now go work.”
I shouldn’t have picked up the phone.
Unfortunately eavesdropping has become a favorite pastime of mine. I mean, can anyone blame me? I don’t even have a television in my room. Listening to my father’s meetings through the vent in my room is my only form of entertainment.
By the time Mick manages to stop kissing me and get out of bed, he still hasn’t quite managed to hide his worry from me. He mentioned having to cut down red tape and I sense he’s not willing to share much more, since he doesn’t want me to be scared. So I’ll have to find out what’s bothering him on my own.
Hearing Mick’s voice on the opposite side of the massive hotel room, I roll over in bed and gently pick up the receiver, covering the mouthpiece with my hand, listening to the conversation already underway between Mick and an older man with a nasal voice.
“You have Stepanov’s daughter in custody, Agent Grady.”
“Protective custody,” Mick corrects him in a sharp tone. “She’s been through hell at the hands of this madman.”
“Yes, you made it clear in your brief last night that she’s a poor little princess who’s been suffering away in her Hollywood Hills mansion.”
“Locking her in a fucking room. Terrorizing her. Did you miss that part? I’ll be happy to read it to you.”
“Somehow I think your interpretation will be different than mine.” I can feel Mick’s frustration and anger in the silence that passes. “I approved the order of protection. Now what can she do for the case? If she’s not an asset, she’s no good to us.” Another tick of silence. “Although I’ve seen the picture of her being taken into protective custody. I imagine you’re finding her good for something. At the risk of your job.”
“I don’t care if you’re my superior. One more comment like that about her and I will not only hand in my badge, I’ll put it somewhere the sun doesn’t shine. I’m doing my job while you sit in an air-conditioned office drinking Starbucks, so spare me the judgment. I get this shit done.”
The man clears his throat. “I notice you didn’t deny a relationship with her.”
“Yeah. And I won’t. She’s mine.” He lets that sink in and warmth spreads in my belly. “But my job is to bring in Stepanov and I’m going to do that regardless.”
“How? Is she willing to testify?”
I swallow hard, trying to imagine facing my father in the courtroom. No. I don’t think he would let me get that far alive. He’d find a way to reach me and make sure I never set foot on the stand.
“She’s not going anywhere near him,” Mick says, his voice deadly. “Not in the building. Not in the same state, as soon as I can manage it. She’s out.”
There’s some bluster on the other end. “Does she have evidence we can use?”
“She’s done with this. Don’t make me say it again.” Mick curses, his stress obvious even though I can’t see him. “I’ve made contact. I’ll get the evidence.”
“You can’t be serious, agent. Your cover is compromised.” The other man snorts. “You’re in his home last night for the first time…and the next morning, there’s a miraculous possibility of mudslides and his daughter goes missing? He’s going to see right through that coincidence and come for you.”
Mick seems unperturbed by this. “Has he already returned to the residence?”
“No. We’re holding the evacuation order for another two hours to make it believable. These things take a while to fix and I’m sure he’s done his due diligence. But as soon as he gets home, the clock starts on him discovering she’s gone and you’re screwed. And unless she can testify, you’ve failed.”
Mick stays quiet, but I can hear his unspoken thoughts nonetheless. He’s willing to compromise himself in the name of my happiness. Safety. And as far as I can tell, he hasn’t told his boss that I’m responsible for replicating the artwork. I could be the ticket to bringing down my father, but he won’t use me. Won’t put me in that position. It could cost him his job.
No. I can’t let it. Not because of me.
I know enough from listening to my father through the grate that his greatest fear is one of his men turning informant. If they ever get caught doing something illegal, they could use evidence against him as a bargaining chip to avoid jail time. Maybe I can do that now. In my room back at the mansion, I have a book of all the counterfeit orders my father left outside my door. I have dates. Even some names my father left on the paperwork by accident. I have everything they’ll need to put him behind bars.
There’s one problem, though. Mick will never let me go retrieve it. He’ll insist on doing it himself. And that could get him killed.
Me, however? If I could sneak back in undetected before my father returns home from being evacuated, Mick’s job will be saved and he’ll have the evidence he needs to complete the case. My father will go to prison and we won’t have to live in fear of him. Dammit. Why didn’t I just bring the book with me?
I’m so distracted by my own thoughts, I don’t realize the men have hung up until I hear Mick’s footsteps approaching the room. I hang up the phone just in time for him to kick open the door, a tray of room service in his hands. “Dinner is served, baby,” he says, a strained smile playing around his mouth. “I’m going to run downstairs to the gift shop and buy you some clothes. Just in case we have to move soon, so you’ll have enough to last. You stay here and eat until you pass out.”
An ache starts in my chest. “Okay, Mick.”
He sets down the tray and catches my chin. “You’re beautiful,” he says gruffly. “You know that?”
When he walks out a moment later, I don’t waste any time throwing on my clothes and shoes, saying a prayer for forgiveness when I scoop a handful of bills out of Mick’s wallet, vowing to pay him back. I wait a full two minutes after Mick leaves the room to poke my head out of the hotel room. My guards are in the opposite end of the hallway, smoking out an open window and watching a sports game on one of their phones. I hear them complaining about Mick being a hard ass and wonder if he just reminded them to do their job better. They should have listened.
Quietly as possible, I slide out of the room and vanish down the stairwell.