Tempting Trade, page 14
part #1 of Desolate Lands Series
Jackson: You fucking touch her and I’ll end you.
Sienna: Calm down for fucks sake. The plan has changed anyway, it’s not nearly as nasty now as what we were considering. Before, we wanted her to sleep with a whole host of sick, twisted men until she found the information we needed. Now, we only need her to sleep with one. There is a seriously senior figure in the government, who we have discovered likes his women young, blonde, and virginal, and he’ll pay an awful lot of money in order to get what he wants. There’s an auction, held at the start of next month and we can send her there. He’ll bid on her, no doubt. And she only has to sleep with him. One of our females has already been with him, he’s vanilla, a gent by all accounts. It won’t be horrible or dangerous.
Jackson: Sick and twisted men? This is the first I’m hearing of this.
Sienna: Oh, choice of words, you know what I mean. Anyway, now it’s one, safe, older man. Okay?
Jackson: No.
Sienna: Listen to me. It’s sex, once or twice, with a gentle, older man and she simply needs the skills to get inside his head. Then she can come back and stay with you guys if you want that.
Jackson: No.
Sienna: This is insubordination. You’re risking everything. For what? Some girl who has turned your head? Is this truly worth risking it all? Risking humanity?
Jackson: We can do it a different way. We have a plan. We’ll meet with you, soon. In a couple of weeks. I think this way will be better. But whether you agree or not, the original plan is off limits now. I won’t let her be pimped out, Sienna. And me and my men will defend her with our lives. You come near this house, uninvited and you are starting a war with your own side. And right now, you’re uninvited. Leave us be. Let us have some time with Milly to help train her so she can work with us, not for us, like some cheap prostitute.
Sienna: Fine. I won’t come near you, not now…but mark my words. You’ll fucking pay for this. You’ve made me look like a stupid bitch and no one does that. I’ve got to go tell my higher ups that the whole goddamn plan has changed because some stupid little college girl has got you enchanted by her golden pussy.
Jackson: This conversation is over. Leave her alone. Don’t come near us. We will contact you.
Sienna: Jesus.
Jackson: The girl is mine. No more to discuss.
Sienna: Right.
Jackson: Right.
Sienna: You’re making a big mistake.
Jackson: Let’s wait and see, shall we. Until then, stay away.
The girl is ours.
You don’t get to have her.
Read on for a sneak peek of book two! **Please note, book two’s opening may change slightly in final edits, thanks.**
Dangerous Deal
Desolate Lands series book two: Sneak Peek
Chapter One
Milly: Me and my Big Mouth
I had been at the house for well over a week, I’d lost track of the days. Things were…strange. Intense. Dream like. At times, in unguarded moments where I merely let myself feel, I loved it. Then my brain would come back online, and I’d remember I also hated that the guys had basically taken me and made me theirs without giving me any say so in the matter. Not that I’d put up much of a fight, which disturbed me more.
I didn’t see much of Jackson as he was spending most of his time looking for my parents, for which I was truly grateful. When I did see him, he’d started training me to use my talent, but so far it was basic stuff. Helping me learn to meditate, to clear my mind, to focus on other people. It made me realize how much idiocy ran through my brain on a daily basis.
During our training sessions, he was quiet, focused. He seemed tired and that was probably due to the amount of time he spent trying to find my family. He mostly went out at night and took Alex. They figured mum and dad were likely to be hunkered down somewhere for the night and easier to find than in the day when they’d be moving about, possibly outside the compound. Apparently, a whole group of parents from the compound were still looking for their missing kids despite the extreme danger. Kids that Doc had tagged and examined and sent on their way. Some days I looked at him and the thought turned my stomach, but then I’d see the way it wore him down, how he looked older than the others and I’d get a twinge of sympathy for him. Talk about conflicted!
Since my first evening there, none of the men had touched me. I didn’t understand it. They’d all been so hot for me, then…nada. Nothing.
Jackson and Alex were one thing, they were hardly ever there, but Doc had retreated from me, and Ben…well Ben was tactile, affectionate, but not sexual. I didn’t get it. I also knew I shouldn’t care, shouldn’t want them, but I did. Despite everything.
I was sitting in the library, reading but really going over all this on an endless loop, with Tils by my feet when the slam of the heavy front door made me jump out of my skin. Sturdy footfalls stomped down the hallway. Jackson.
The library door opened, and a rush of charisma and testosterone entered the room before the six-and-a-half-foot wall of muscle that followed.
With his hair scraped back as usual, tied off his nape by leather bands, and his beard fuller than normal, Jackson looked all kinds of scary.
“Your parents are difficult folk to find,” he groused.
I looked at the clock, three in the damned morning. I hadn’t been able to sleep, all het up and worried and…well, frankly more than a little sexually frustrated, which I hated about myself. In my defense, I was living in a house with crazy-hot guys and they hadn’t been near me for days on end.
“Let me come with you,” I asked for the umpteenth time.
“No can do, baby. Too dangerous.” He shrugged.
“It’s not so dangerous in the day, can’t you, me, and Doc go out tomorrow? Look for them in the day. It can’t hurt. You’ve had no luck at night.”
I expected a big argument, or a curt, no. But to my surprise, he gave a nod, a grunt and a short, okay.
I nodded, sighed and went back to my book.
“Why the sigh, I’d have thought you’d be happy at this turn of events,” Jackson said. “You’ve got your own way, you can come look for them tomorrow, against my better judgement I might add.”
I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have known better. Instead, I blurted out. “Why haven’t any of you touched me since the first night? Have you gone off me now you’ve had me?”
He stilled, stared at me as if I’d grown another head. “You think we don’t want you?”
Why wouldn’t I think that? They fed me, talked to me. Ben hugged me. Then they walked me upstairs every night, kissed me on the cheek, the cheek like I was their daughter, and let me go to my room. To bed. Alone. Although I often got into Jackson’s bed while he was out.
“Erm…yeah. I was thinking that. None of you have touched me since.”
“We’re trying to be…gentlemen.” He sounded angry, which made no sense because I’d done nothing wrong. I might be confused, conflicted, but so would most women in my position.
“We’re trying to give you…what is it you call it…space. Time. To get used to this. We want to find your parents, bring them here so you’re not alone.”
His words were nice…caring, but they glaringly contradicted one fact. One huge, important, big fat elephant in the room of a fact. “If you cared so much you’d let me go,” I whispered. I didn’t exactly want to leave, but I wanted to stay of my own free will. Something Jackson didn’t seem to understand at all.
“Let you go?” He echoed. “Let you go?”
I nodded.
“Where Milly?”
I hesitated. “To the compound?” I didn’t know why I phrased it as a question.
“To the compound.”
“Yes. Home.”
“Oh, I see. Home.” He rolled the word around in his mouth as if tasting it, then he fixed me with his intense amber eyes and my stomach flip-flopped. “You mean the home that doesn’t exist anymore? That home?”
“What?” I shot out of my chair.
“It’s gone, Milly. Burned down two nights ago.” He held his hand up quickly. “Just found out tonight through someone we’ve been getting information from. Your parents weren’t inside. They are safe, but they are travelling around, with a band of other parents all looking for their kids. They go out of the compound in the day as you know. People keep telling us information, they’ll do that when you offer them gold, and they tell us where they might be sleeping but we get there they’ve moved on, or it’s a dead end. You know how big the place is, we’re not talking a tiny village but half a damned city!”
He ran a hand over his jaw. “We thought we had found them last night, got told they were sleeping in the school dining room, but when we got there it was empty. Someone told us to try the church tomorrow. We had to come back as we couldn’t risk it getting light and trapping Alex.”
My house was gone? All my things, the few of them I had. Precious reminders of people I had loved and lost, like my Grandma. Gone. I knew I should be grateful, my parents were still alive, my piece of shit brother was alive. I was safe here, and I had my beloved dog, Tils with me. But the idea of all I owned, what little it had been, being gone made me cry. And once I started I found I couldn’t stop.
Jackson bit off a vile curse and then stalked right up to me. I thought he’d hold me, but he didn’t, he picked me up instead. The man literally swept me off my feet, into his arms and strode out of the room with me.
He headed up the stairs and to his bedroom. As he walked, he talked. “We haven’t stopped wanting you, Milly. Having you here with us is torture, but Alex gave us all a talking to. He said that this is all new to you, that your head is in bits, and taking you right now wouldn’t be right. It would be…fucked up. Messed up. He says you’re not in the right place to consent. He said it would be wrong. I heard him out and he made some good points, so I’m trying to do the right thing. The other guys too.”
“I don’t understand you.” I shook as I sobbed into his shoulder. Despite my upset and my anger, my fingers were curled around his neck and my face was burrowed into his warm body. “You keep saying all this, saying you want to do right by me, but I’m your prisoner.”
“You are not our fucking prisoner, Milly.”
“What am I then?” I sobbed.
“You’re looking at it the wrong way. More like, you should be asking, what are we?” Jacksons mysterious words pissed me off, but thankfully he didn’t leave it there. He elaborated. “We are your guards. Your protectors. The people above me in the food chain want you. I wouldn’t be surprised if others don’t want you. Your power, as untrained as it is, means an awful lot to them. At the same fucking time your safe little haven is falling apart. Your home is no more, your family is scattered. You are not our prisoner, you’re our ward. We are your protectors.”
He’d reached his bedroom, and he kicked the door open. Stomping inside, he placed me on the bed with a barked, stay. Then he disappeared into the bathroom. I heard taps running, glass cabinet doors sliding open and shut and some rummaging around then nothing for a while. About five minutes later, Jackson opened the bathroom door, a swirl of steam surrounding him.
He came to me and picked me up again, carrying me into the bathroom, where he placed me gently on the floor and began to take my clothes off. Oh, God, was he going to try to have sex with me now? Trust me and my big mouth. It didn’t feel like it would be right, not now I’d found out my home had gone. Burned down. My parents still out there, still in danger. Despite my raging hormones arguing otherwise, I tried to focus on my rational brain and think of a way to change the course of whatever this was.
I realized that although Jackson was indeed undressing me, his own clothes remained resolutely in place.
When he’d got me completely naked, he picked me up and placed me in the bath.
Warm, soothing water surrounded me, slippery with some sort of oil that smelled like heaven. Despite myself, despite everything, I couldn’t help but sigh at the sensation.
“My aunt used to collect all these oils and shit, she gave me this one when I’d torn a muscle because she said it helped with pain. I don’t think she meant your sort of pain, Milly, but I don’t know what else to do.” Jackson sat heavily down on the floor beside the bath and swirled one hand in the water. Not looking at me he carried on talking. “I’m sorry about your home, and I’m sorry I haven’t found your parents yet. I’m sorry I took you the way I did from Chris and his men and scared you. I’m sorry that I took advantage of your fear and confusion in order to seduce you when you first got here, and I’m sorry if I’ve given you the impression I don’t want you now. I want you. I’m simply trying to do the right thing.”
Holy hell! His words hit me hard. They curled inside me, warming me far more than the water could. Jackson was a hard man. I’d bet good money he rarely said sorry, and yet here he was apologizing to me repeatedly.
“I want you, too.” I said my confession into the mist floating above the water, not daring to look at my barbarian warlord sitting by my side, me naked, him fully clothed. The power differential in that, alongside his size, it only turned me on more. “I am scared, and confused, heartbroken, and at times angry, but through it all. I want you.”
I wanted them all, but somehow it always came back to Jackson, to this rugged, harsh male.
“Milly, you say anything else and I swear to God, I’m climbing in that tub, clothes and all.”
I stayed silent for a long beat, my lust warring with my rational brain. My lust won. I lifted my gaze to him. “I’d love for you to get into this tub, Jackson, but I’d much rather you be naked.”
He didn’t hesitate. Oh, yeah, he might be trying to do the right thing, but it didn’t run all that deep and in that moment, I was glad it didn’t.
Pulling his pants down, he sprang free, hard and glorious, no underwear. The man took going commando to new heights. Then he ripped his t-shirt over his head and climbed into the tub, splashing water all over the floor as he did.
Jackson settled in behind me, knees either side of my hips. My legs were straight out, his bent. He pulled me into him, and I went, letting myself fall back against the harbor of his strength as the water lapped at us.
Big arms came around me, holding me, encircling me. For a moment, I simply wanted to feel good. To forget the shitshow of the world outside this room and revel in the safety herein. His hands swept up my side, brushing over my breasts and then up under my arms to curl around my shoulders and hold me to him as he bent and kissed my neck.
“You smell so good,” he rumbled against me. “So fucking good.”
I closed my eyes and let him hold me, kiss me, soothe me.
“I’m tired, Milly.” His words surprised me. “I go out there every day, and it’s always the same. People get shittier by the day. Chris and his gang, they are one of many. The Ferals are…they’re disgusting, living in the mud and dirt and hunting around for scraps like stray dogs. The Foamers, well they aren’t even human anymore. It’s all so…tawdry. Then you came along. You think I want you for how you look, and maybe that’s part of it, not gonna lie you’re hot. But it’s way more, Milly.”
I didn’t speak, almost didn’t dare breathe because I wanted him to carry on, and sensed any movement on my part might break the spell.
“When I was in your head, I felt how good you were. But not only good, smart, and strong, too, if only you’d let that side out, if only you knew it. You’re also damned naïve but I like that. You’re not jaded yet, and although you need to smarten up if you’re going to stay safe, I hope you never lose some of your innocence.”
For a quiet man, he’d said more in a few moments about his feelings than in the whole time I knew him. I stayed still, letting him get it out.
“I watched you, you know.”
Then I did react, I couldn’t help it. I turned around to look at him. The action had his hands slipping down from my shoulders to cup my breasts, he grinned but didn’t let go.
“When did you watch me.”
“Turn back around,” he ordered.
I did.
Jackson didn’t move his hands from my breasts though, he kept them there, cupping my sensitive flesh as he spoke again.
“A few times. I’d dreamed about you and knew you lived in the compound. I used to go there regularly. I went inside a few times but that was risky, so I mostly watched from outside the fence. You used to go to this field, I saw it in one of our shared dreams and I recognized it one day walking the periphery, so I hunkered on down and waited. I waited a long time. Went back day after day, until I almost gave up. On what I swore to myself was the last day, you came. You and Tils. You came, and you walked through the field, you ran, you put your arms out and your face up to the rain, and you smiled at it, and…”
“What? And what, Jackson?”
“I think I fell a little bit in love with you then.”
In love? In love! My head spun as I thought about what he was saying to me.
“I should have known then I could never go through with the plan,” he muttered to himself.
I stiffened in his arms and asked the question I dreaded getting the answer to. “What was the plan?”
“It doesn’t matter now, I’m not letting them do it…and anyway, they’ve changed the plan completely.”
“They have?” I wanted to know more. Maybe the new plan wouldn’t be so bad and I could do it? “What’s the new plan, at least tell me that much.”
He sighed. “There’s some older dude, high up in the government, and he likes young virgins. One of the women who works for us has already spent time with him, and she says he’s…gentle. Vanilla. The powers that be want you to seduce him. Get inside his head.”
It was a shitty plan, and I definitely couldn’t do it. I just…couldn’t. Not for my first time, not now I’d met Jackson and the others. I might be stupid for thinking the way I did, but it would feel like a betrayal.
