Page 59 of Tamed

Isabel in a sexy little pencil skirt with a see-through black blouse that had a little bow at the neck, black patent stilettos, and her red hair falling in sensual little curls around her neck…

I shouldn’t have gotten hard. I’d already told myself a thousand times over the course of the weekend that what I’d done with her was a mistake and that it wouldn’t happen again. That she would go back to being Ten’s daughter and the kid I’d once looked after, not the beautiful young woman I’d wrecked on the floor in Arcadia.

The beautiful young woman who wrecked you in return.

Perhaps, she had. Because none of the excuses I gave myself for why I shouldn’t want her again changed the intensity of the desire that had coursed through me the moment she’d come into my office.

Ididwant her again. Badly. I wanted her all night, so I could take the time to do all the things that my brain had spent the better part of the weekend going over and over.

I wanted her naked at my feet, taking my cock in her mouth. I wanted her on her front, ass in the air, so I could take her pussy from behind, then maybe take her ass as well. I’d make her scream. I’d make her beg. I’d ruin her for any other man.

It was as if she’d woken something up in me, the teenage boy obsessed with sex that I’d once been, and now that part of me was awake, it wouldn’t go the fuck back to sleep.

I’d always liked doing forbidden things. I got a thrill out of it. But Isabel wasn’t supposed to be one of those things. She was supposed to be untouchable, and I was pissed that all I wanted to do now was touch her.

Her saying what she had about her childhood had gotten under my skin too, though I shouldn’t have let it. She’d said it in anger, and I knew her well enough to know that she often said things when she was angry that she didn’t mean. She’d recognized it herself and apologized.

But still…what she’d said had stuck inside me like a thorn.

Hers hadn’t been a normal childhood. It had been fucked up in a lot of ways, none of them her fault. Ten had done the best he could, but he wasn’t perfect, and he’d been far too young to have kid let alone a kid whose mother had been American royalty.

I should certainly never have been her damn babysitter. But Ten had had to hide her in the least likely place the Hamiltons would look and that was with me. And I’d tried. Like Ten, I’d done what I could for her, and I’d liked to think I hadn’t fucked her up entirely. Yet…I couldn’t escape the doubt.

I wasn’t a man who was concerned too much with the road not taken. But there’d always been a kernel of doubt in me about what I could have done better for Isabel. I’d had no experience with kids, and I’d treated her the way I’d have treated one of my little sisters. Except my shitty apartment and a box by the doorway of The Castle, in the company of Old Nick’s chief enforcer, wasn’t exactly an ideal place for a kid.

If you’d done better, she wouldn’t be looking at you the way she does. She basically imprinted on you, asshole.

As if I didn’t already know that.

Anyway, basically my week had gone to hell before it had even begun and it didn’t help that I had only myself to blame, so by the time Livia stepped out of the backdoor of The Castle, I was in a foul temper.

Her high heels tapped on the dirty ground, disturbing neon-soaked puddles of water, and prompting her to give a grimace of distaste. She was a sleek woman in her late fifties, with a smooth coif of short platinum blonde hair and a taste for loud gold jewelry. She wore a silver, sequined cocktail gown with a plunging neckline that perfectly displayed her still-smooth décolletage.

Livia was the master of ‘look but don’t touch’ and she played being the queen of my old empire to the hilt. I trusted her about as far as I trusted anyone, which wasn’t much, but in the decade since I’d handed the running of the network to her, she hadn’t either betrayed that I was still running it or tried to take it for herself. She was happy being a figurehead. All care, no responsibility.

I could see the attraction.

“What have you got for me,” I said as she approached.

She gave the junkies a glance and made a little moue of distaste. “A back alley, Caleb? Really? It’s such a cliche.”

Normally when we met it was at a bar, somewhere nondescript and preferably not very popular. But coordinating that with my schedule was a pain in the ass, and after seeing that message on Isabel’s phone, I didn’t have time to fuck about organizing it. I wanted any information Livia had and I wanted it now.

“Just tell me what you have on the Hamiltons,” I said curtly.

My tone let her know exactly where I stood tonight and she was instantly all business, the fluttery, blonde-bombshell act dropping like a lead curtain.

“My contacts seemed to think something is going on,” she said briskly. “Whatever it is, though, it’s very hush hush, because they didn’t know.”

“I thought you had someone close to James.” I let nothing of my frustration show. Livia had managed to get a contact into James’ personal security, but since getting intel from him was risky, she only used the guy in emergencies.

“I do,” she said. “I even asked him, but he says nothing’s changed. His duties are the same and James hasn’t met anyone new or out of the ordinary.” Livia paused. “Though he thought Charlotte had a change of detail recently.”

Charlotte Hamilton was James’ wife. She was on the board of several charities, was a patron of various different art organizations, and was hugely influential. She was also Juliana’s mother, Isabel’s grandmother, and a very dangerous woman in her own right.

Perhaps she’d been the one trying to get in touch with Isabel and if so, it wasn’t merely to have a cozy grandmotherly chat about Juliana that was for sure. I didn’t know much about Charlotte, but I did know that she played the long game. And she might very well have decided to turn her daughter’s little mistake into an asset for her family, as well as taking some long-overdue revenge on the man who’d sullied — no doubt in her eyes — then killed her daughter.

I stared hard at Livia. “Do you have anyone near Charlotte?”

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