101 Nights Box Set: Volume Two Read online

  “Sometimes I think it’d be worth having sex with you if I could whip you first.” She flushes as soon as she says the words.

  I chuckle, caught off guard by the charming sentiment. The suspicion that she knows what’s between us is confirmed. “Sex with the right person is better than whipping a man.”

  “I’ve seen what you can do to people. I can’t even …” She looks away, flustered.

  “I’d never hurt you, Alisha.” I touch her cheek with the back of my fingers. Her skin is soft, smooth, warm, and my eyes travel the path my mouth wants to take, from her plump lips down the side of her neck, where her pulse flutters quickly, to her large breasts.

  “Done, mate!” Comes the cheerful call from the living room.

  He breaks the spell, and I shift away, aware I’ve been once more distracted from my task by the enchanting woman beside me. My plan was to keep her safe – yet far enough away from me that I could concentrate. Now that she’s in Hasan’s crosshairs, the safest place for her to be is at my side.

  I don’t know how I’ll stay on target when my thoughts continue to stray to her. I stand and pull her to her feet.

  The mess in the living room is completely gone. Not one drop of blood remains. The carpet was cut out and repaired, along with the stains in the couch. The living room smells heavily of industrial cleaners, and I go to the balcony doors and fling them open to air out the flat.

  “So you’ll call Malika now?” she asks, trailing at a safe distance. She appears tired and anxious. I can guess she didn’t sleep last night while waiting for the dead man to wake up and attack her.

  “If you will remain here,” I say firmly. “And keep your hands off my laptop.”

  Alisha nods readily.

  I’m pretty sure she’ll be on my computer five seconds after I step outside. For once, I’m not overly concerned. I took certain precautions when I heard the news that Hasan was after her. Assuming she’d be pinned to my hip, I got rid of anything I didn’t want her finding. It didn’t do much to lessen my discomfort with her operating in my comfort zone, though I know there’s nothing she can use against me on my laptop.

  I go to my bedroom after silently admiring the work of the cleanup crew and change into a suit. My absence was likely noticed, so my first stop is to visit Malika.

  My favorite pair of shoes is out of alignment with the rest of them. I pick one up and study it briefly, uncertain what Alisha was doing messing with my loafers. I don’t have time to give it much thought. She’s not out to kill me, so whatever she did, it shouldn’t interfere with my plans for the day.

  When I’m dressed, I leave my room. “Stay here. Get some rest. I’ll put a couple guys on the door so you can sleep in peace.”

  “Wait.” Alisha bounds up from the couch. “I know you don’t want me on your laptop. But … I think I can crack the communications channel you couldn’t get to. So … rather than lying to you this time, I figured, if you’d let me use your laptop, please, I’ll hack it for you.”

  I pause near the door, considering her offer. She’s right about being the one person who can help me. Smart, sweet and incapable of matching her own socks, Alisha is an alluring mix of innocence and brilliance that’s blinded and intrigued me since I first stumbled upon her.

  “I thought I owed you that for being … nice earlier,” she adds, the tips of her ears bright red once again.

  “No whip?” I tease.

  “Omigod!”

  “You may use my laptop,” I tell her, unable to contain my amusement. She manages to disarm me at almost every turn. “I appreciate you asking instead of hacking it.” I peel off my watch and pass it to her so she can use it to get the login code that changes every sixty seconds.

  “No problem,” she mumbles. “Although you kind of owe me for defending you from a bad guy while you slept.”

  “Do you really want to open that can of worms?” I ask coolly. “I haven’t forgotten that you drugged me and hacked my laptop while I slept.”

  She grins and whirls away, disappearing into my bedroom to grab the laptop.

  I watch her plump ass and the way her hourglass figure moves, as unguarded as she is. The image of my dick sliding between her cheeks to pierce a cunt I know from experience is hot, slick and so tight …

  Uncomfortably aroused, I leave, unwilling to lose my focus for fear of putting us both in more danger. If I know anything about Elijah’s father, he’ll torture someone like Alisha to get to me. I don’t break during interrogation, but seeing someone like Alisha hurt …

  I’d tell them whatever it took to save her, and I despise acknowledging my weakness.

  Chapter Three: Alisha

  Layla is everywhere. Every television news broadcast, internet forum, and news website. I read the articles for hours, seeking some piece of information hidden in the official press release, conspiracy theories and ill-informed gossip pages that might help me find Natalie.

  There’s absolutely nothing useful, aside from the fact that Layla is here in Nijala, which means George was right. Hasan brought the teen and Natalie back to the kingdom, probably on the king’s orders. I don’t understand why the king chose now to reveal Layla, since I suspect she’s been in country for much longer.

  The pictures of the girl make me pity her. I almost think she was better off with Natalie wherever they were than being thrust into the spotlight. One day, she was a normal American teen with a disability trying to make it through the awkward stage of puberty where she didn’t fit in anywhere.

  The next, she’s a princess headlining every newspaper and blog. Standing next to her smiling father in most pictures, she appears at the very least bewildered, if not outright terrified of the circus around her. I have no idea what it’s like for her, since she has no memory of the people claiming to be her relatives. She knows only her brother, George, and the caretaker she was taken from.

  I hope Malika is able to protect her. I don’t understand why Elijah was hiding her, except that there were allegations of abuse long ago from sources I dug up.

  Nothing is getting me closer to Natalie.

  Upset, tired, I roll off George’s bed, where I’ve remade my nest of laptops and pillows, and pace into the living area.

  In my mind’s eye, I can still see the body of the man who tried to attack me. I avoid the living room. The tremor of fear inside me comes to life again. The coffee table is gone, the sole sign that something happened. I can’t help thinking the guy was dead, even though George said he wasn’t.

  George is the last person to care about my feelings. If the guy were dead, he’d tell me.

  And I’d ball my eyes out for the rest of my life.

  Taking my mind from the horrible experience, I walk onto the balcony overlooking the gardens of the courtyard. I’ve been waiting for the blue butterflies to appear without finding them and lean against the railing. The sun blazes overhead, and I look around at the quiet palace framing the courtyard.

  Somewhere in the maze of a palace, Layla is hidden away. Scared, alone, trying to figure out her new world. I relate to the teen without ever having met her. Does she know her father kidnapped her? Does she know who Hasan is? Where Natalie is?

  What if she’s afraid to say? What if Hasan or her father threatened her?

  Despite the weirdness between us, I take comfort in knowing George is looking out for the little girl as well as Natalie. He’s so much tougher than I am. I accidentally defeat a bad guy and spend half a day traumatized in the kitchen, terrified of leaving.

  How does he do what he does? What made him not even blink when he saw the mess in the living room? He tried to comfort me of all things. He didn’t give a shit about the wounded man bleeding in his living room and seemed not to be concerned about me drugging him.

  He was nice again. It’s moments like those when I can’t think of anything else except for how warmly he regarded me and how gentle his touch was after watching him beat someone near death with those same hands.

 
George leaves me confounded.

  Unable to help anyone from here, I return to the bedroom and throw myself down in the center of my nest. I’m waiting for some encryption software to finish off what I started in hacking into the secure lines of the Nijalan Security Bureau. My laptop is alternately sifting through all the legal ways into Nijala and accessing the databases of passenger data, so I can see if Hasan slipped up anywhere. My gut tells me he didn’t enter the country through legal or overt means, but I gotta do something. It’s virtually impossible for someone to move around with no electronic trace. I just have to find the string I need to pull to unravel the whole thing.

  Restless, I crawl out of the nest and go to George’s drawers. I searched most of his apartment before the intruder attacked me, which was how I found the pile of GPS trackers he had squirreled away. I put one in every one of his left shoes and activated them. Something tells me when he finds Natalie, he’s going to lie about it and lock me up somewhere. This way I can at least track him.

  I rifle through the top three drawers of his dresser, where his clothing is folded in neat piles that make me roll my eyes.

  “Disciplinarian down to his socks,” I mutter and drop to my knees to search the final drawer. I open it. “Hello, what’s this.”

  He really does have a whip and other sex toys with him: dildos in different sizes and shapes, anal beads, fuzzy handcuffs, feathers, tongue vibrators. There are others I don’t recognize.

  Does he carry these just in case he gets lucky? Because he claims there’s no prostitution in Nijala.

  I pull out the whip and whack the dresser. It makes a satisfying crack, and I close the drawer. Testing it on my calf, I wince at the sting.

  Pain is definitely not my thing after Tony. But I think I could smack the shit out of George, because he pisses me off and makes me forget which way is up.

  “That’s for being a smartass, you English bastard.” I smack the door. “And this is for beating up that guy in the alley.” Whack. “For my destroyed apartment.” Whack. “For dragging me to Nijala and ignoring me.” Whack-whack.

  I kind of like this. I realize the pillows and rest of my surroundings don’t deserve to be smacked. In the absence of the man driving me crazy, they’ll have to do, though.

  “I can’t stand this.” I leave the bedroom and go to the kitchen. I don’t know what he eats, but it’s nothing remotely appealing. I rummage around the fridge and then whack it in disapproval before doing the same to the cupboards.

  There’s a bag of cookies, so I open them and eat a handful then smack the pantry closed. Entertained with my new toy, I laugh and take out my shitty luck on the couch cushions before going to the balcony once again. My computers have timers set so when one of them finishes its tasks, it’ll buzz at me. In the meantime, I’m playing a waiting game.

  I can’t help thinking if I could just talk to Layla, I’d be able to figure out where Natalie is. It doesn’t take much for me to start to narrow the search. I don’t know the layout of the palace well enough to guess where she’d be, and I doubt her security would let me walk up and talk to her. If anything, she’s probably got two billion guards right now. Hasan and his boss are smart enough to cover their tracks; they’re definitely smart enough not to let anyone talk to her about what happened.

  I’m not sure I’d be able to leave my room anyway, not with George’s minions guarding it.

  I tap my head with the whip, lost in thought.

  “I presumed you would fancy it. Seems I was correct.” George is amused.

  Whirling around, I shove the whip behind me, not caring that he’s already seeing it. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” He joins me on the balcony. Before him, I never thought twice about men in a suit. But George is hot in his perfectly tailored, light grey suit. It matches his eyes and amplifies the width of his shoulders, the leanness of his torso. His dark hair is ruffled, as if he’s been running his hand through it. The circles that were beneath his eyes are gone, and he looks much healthier than he did before.

  Realizing I’m staring at him, I clear my throat. “Did you talk to Malika?”

  “I did.” His gaze sweeps over me before traveling out to the gardens. He rests his elbows on the railing, bringing his face to the level of mine. He’s standing too close, and the butterflies start rattling around in my stomach. No part of me wants to move, though, especially not when I get a whiff of his cologne.

  “And?” I prod eagerly. Once more, I find myself at war. Would I regret sleeping with him more or less than not sleeping with him?

  “She can’t get close to Layla. The king has the poor girl locked down.”

  “She’s here somewhere. I bet I can break in and …” I trail off, feeling his gaze. “We can,” I add, doubting it’ll help.

  “You may want to rethink that plan,” he advises. “Assuming I let you out of my sight, you would have to take on at least six members of her security team. I’ve already cased the place.”

  “That’s where you come in,” I reply. “You take them out, and I talk to her.”

  “There are times when discretion is called for.”

  “It’s been two weeks!” I don’t know where the emotion comes from, but it’s enough to draw his attention. “How do we know she’s even alive?”

  “She is, Alisha,” he says quietly. “Hasan is trying too hard to hide her for her to be dead.”

  I wait for more.

  He studies me without supplying anything else I’d consider more reassuring, like proof, which I really need right now.

  “I’m so sick of not doing anything to find her!” Frustrated, I start away.

  “We’re doing what we can, Alisha.”

  God, I hate that tone from him! It’s almost patronizing, as if I don’t know how serious this situation is. I turn around and whack him on the ass with the whip. “Stop being an asshole!” I snap. “Stop pretending like you’re the only one capable of solving world hunger when I’m standing right here, ready to help, if you’d give me a fucking clue what we need to do to find her!”

  “I think you got the right idea.” He glances at the whip.

  “Wrong answer, George!”

  He smiles faintly and leans back against the railing. “Alisha, we cannot control what’s happening right now. The smartest thing to do is to let what’s in process work out and wait for the results. Malika is pushing from her end to get me access to Layla. You’re working on Hasan’s networks, and I’m manipulating a couple more angles, along with waiting for word that Elijah has reached the beach.”

  “You’re smuggling him in.”

  “I am, with help from my brother.” Too polite to roll his eyes, George gives his version of a crude gesture by pursing his lips.

  His low voice and cultured accent fascinate me as well as calm me. I don’t like what he’s saying, but it’s difficult to argue when some small part of me knows he’s right.

  “So, either make with the whipping or go back to hacking,” he adds.

  I really don’t know how anyone can like being whipped. I smack him with it to prove a point.

  He doesn’t even flinch. If anything, he’s a little too interested.

  “Hmmm,” I say and frown at him. “You don’t strike me as someone who’s submissive.”

  “I’m whatever my partner needs me to be. Some women like to be dominated and fucked rough. Others want to be in charge and tell me how to fuck them. It’s all in what my partner is comfortable with. Some like toys while others do not. I’m flexible.”

  “Which am I?” I hear my words and curse myself silently.

  George isn’t fazed. There are times when his ability to talk about sex in such a matter of fact way without blushing – which I can’t do – is a relief. He considers me for a moment. “I’d say at the stage you’re in now, you probably prefer to have some semblance of control in the bedroom.”

  “So I get the whip.”

  “You get the whip. You get to tell me how you want it, what I
can do, how far I can go.”

  Like we did the first couple of times we fooled around. I don’t say the words, though they’re at the tip of my tongue.

  “You get to make me beg,” he adds in a huskier timbre.

  Superhero George begging me? It’s an intriguing idea, one I find more appealing than I expect. “The moment I let you in, you slam the door on me,” I say. “I don’t think I can trust you, George.”

  “You can’t,” he confirms.

  Ouch.

  “In the bedroom, you can trust me and be in charge. Outside of it, I’m in charge, and you probably shouldn’t trust me with more than protecting your life,” he says.

  I know this already. It stirs the part of me that’s hurting. My eyes travel down his muscular frame. I recall too well what his chiseled abs felt like beneath my palm, how soft the skin of his dick was and how empowered I felt fooling around with him.

  I can’t believe I’m considering it. Just because I’m bored? Restless? I’m not like him. I can’t just sleep with someone and then know it’s over. My emotions are involved in everything I do, whether or not they should be.

  “You want to say yes,” he says, assessing me.

  “I do not!”

  “Maybe this will make it easier. Say yes, and I’ll let you be the first to talk to Layla.”

  My mouth drops open. We’ve gone from the world of the hypothetical and dived headfirst into reality. “But … didn’t you say you don’t even know where she is? How can you follow-up on that promise?” I demand, waving the whip at him.

  “Malika assured me that she can arrange it, even if only for a minute or two.”

  There’s more. I can see it in his face. He’s hiding something unpleasant, which makes me wonder if he had to promise to sleep with the old bat to get her to agree to it. Which in turn makes me inexplicably jealous.

  “I’ll give you some questions to ask her and let you ask whatever else you want,” he continues.

  I shift, my insides roaring into overdrive. “You want to sleep with me why? Because prostitutes are illegal here or you’re bored waiting for something to happen?”