Page 34 of Capturing Victory

“Oh her,” Jaya said dismissively, turning her face away from him again.

“How many times?” he demanded sharply, his fingers tightening on her arm.

She shrugged. Instead of saying anything, she rubbed one of her wrists over top of the bracelet. Her actions were almost jerky, as though involuntary.

“Are you hiding out here?” he asked. “Sitting up on the ledge so she can’t shock you again?”

Jaya blew out an annoyed breath and shrugged her shoulders again, this time trying to push him away. “I don’t know,” she said impatiently. “Maybe. She was getting on my nerves and Haty didn’t like the tension so I decided to come out here. She tried to make me go back inside using the phone thing. I sat on the ledge to stop her. I thought she was going to use it anyway, but I think common sense stopped her.” Jaya snickered. “I’m guessing your orders were for a lightly fried prisoner, not a pancake.”

Ivan’s need to immediately go and disembowel Siti warred with his need to check every inch of Jaya to make sure she was uninjured. Since he knew Siti was in Keane’s sadistic hands, he decided to stay with Jaya.

“Enough of this nonsense,” he said darkly and hauled her off the ledge, careful to pull her into his chest in case she struggled and accidentally threw her weight toward empty space. She didn’t struggle. She let out a small sigh, turned and slid off the concrete barrier and into his arms.

“Did you send her away?” Jaya asked hopefully.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “She won’t be back.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, gratitude leaking into her voice.

He felt like a bastard. He didn’t want her gratitude. He should have kept her safe. Siti was meant to be a measure of protection and comfort for a young woman who’d spent a lifetime away from the company of women. Instead he’d fucked up and chosen badly. He knew nothing about caring for the damaged woman he was falling in love with and he feared he was only making things worse for her.

Ivan led her off the balcony and sat her on the edge of the bed. He took both of her wrists in his hands and pushed the bracelets back as much as they would go so he could examine the delicate flesh beneath. What he saw made him grit his teeth and take several deep breaths to calm himself so he wouldn’t do something stupid that might frighten Jaya. The skin of her arm, usually a smooth medium brown colour was red and chafed. It was beginning to bruise with dark purplish-blue marks. He ran his thumb over the tender, slightly swollen skin and felt like the worst sort of asshole for coming up with this method of controlling her. He touched a tiny mole on inside of her wrist and lifted it to his mouth, placing a gentle kiss on the mark.

“I regret that I was the cause of these injuries,” he told her, trying to infuse sincerity into his voice. “I didn’t mean for you to be so heavily punished, simply deterred from escaping.”

She stared at him for a moment and then asked, “You don’t apologize often, do you?”

He chuckled. “Never.”

“So I’m special then.”

“Very,” he affirmed.

“Huh,” she said, her voice taking on a tone that suggested she’d just learned something she could take advantage of.

“You’re still wearing the bracelets, sweetheart,” he pointed out. “Perhaps you shouldn’t push your luck.”

She lifted a shoulder and dropped it carelessly. “I think you’ll only zap me for sexual titillation and that seems to float my boat too. I’m also guessing you’re about to make that old bitch very uncomfortable for spending the entire day electrocuting the shit out of me, which also floats my boat. Now you’ll have to think of something else to contain your captive since your cages aren’t very effective anymore.” Her voice ended on a purr and she dropped her eyelashes, looking at him from beneath the dark fringe.

He growled and reached for her, wrapping an arm around her waist and hauling her onto his lap where she was forced to straddle him. The T-shirt slid up her thighs exposing her panties. She wiggled until she was able to wrap her legs around his waist. He fisted his hand in her hair and tilted her head back so he could see her face.

“Your brain is so fucking beautiful,” he said, his voice deepening. “Even as you plan to escape me, I crave your intelligence, crave to know what you’re thinking every moment that you think it. You are so perfect, my lovely Jaya.”

She whimpered and moved against him, her pupils dilating as passion began to ride her. He ran a hand down her back and cupped her ass, pulling her against his erection. Holding her head firmly in place he licked a path from her ear down her shoulder and back to the place where her neck met her shoulder. He bit down and sucked hard, marking her, claiming her. Her hips began moving, back and forth on top of him as she sought pleasure against the ridge of his cock, hard against the zip of his pants.

“You can try to fly away, baby,” he growled against her, reaching between their bodies while she cried out her pleasure in his ear. “But you’ll never escape. You belong to me now.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Jaya waited. One, two, three, four, five seconds passed. Finally, Ivan looked up. She grinned and waved at him from where she was sitting cross-legged on the ledge of the balcony. The look of deep concentration that had been stamped across his features twisted into a fierce scowl. He straightened from where he’d been bent over, grappling with one of his men in what she could only assume was some kind of fake combat situation; though the punches, elbows and kicks they slammed into each other’s bodies looked real enough. She’d been enjoying her bird’s eye view, watching the sweat drip from Ivan’s hair, down his naked, rippling torso to soak into the low-slung waistband of his workout pants.

Ivan pointed a finger at her and growled something completely inaudible. Jaya laughed, swung her leg over the ledge and blew him a kiss. His opponent took advantage of Ivan’s momentary distraction, driving a fist into Ivan’s stomach. Ivan barely flinched, instead swiveling around, grabbing the man’s head and bringing it down sharply onto his knee. Jaya winced as his nose shattered, spraying blood all over the beautiful tiles surrounding the pool deck. The guy dropped to his knees but bravely kept his hands down while Ivan spoke to him, presumably explaining where the guy went wrong.

Jaya’s hand twitched to her face and she wrinkled her nose in sympathy. In a mock deep voice, she said, “If you manage to land a punch on your victim then you finish him. Don’t wait for him to turn around and break your nose. We like to break shit around here. You’re lucky I didn’t stab you in the throat, I like doing that too.” She switched her voice to a nasally falsetto when she noticed the bloody nosed guy speaking. “Yes sir, anything sir. I enjoy broken bones. Should I lick the shit off your shoes now, sir?”

Someone giggled from behind Jaya. She glanced over her shoulder catching sight of her new keeper, a young woman around the same age as Jaya. Her name was Ndari. The woman had been shadowing Jaya since the disappearance of Siti two days before. Jaya had tried hating the other woman on sight, but Ndari was oddly endearing. She chattered nonstop, enjoyed modern conveniences, laughed at her mistress’s shenanigans and, best of all, didn’t zap Jaya.

Jaya found it completely incongruous that Ivan would hire such a woman to care for her. Yet, he’d also felt really bad about the whole Siti-electrocution situation, though he hadn’t removed the bracelets yet. She glared down at them darkly.

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