Aroused had been a very, very good state.
I could have taken her to an expensive restaurant. Bangkok had plenty of them. But that would have been what she would have been prepared for. I didn’t want that. She wore her cover story over her like it was a security blanket. At this moment, I didn’t care what her agenda really was. I just wanted her to soften a little, so I could get another glimpse of the woman underneath.
Because two years after that one night, that woman was still on my mind. And I knew just the place to take her.
***
Ellie / Jenny:
He had said it wouldn’t be fancy. But he was also incredibly wealthy and had paid a million dollars to possess me for three months. I accepted therefore that his definition of ‘fancy’ was a little different from mine.
But he’d brought me someplace entirely unexpected. A bustling night market, crowded with shoppers and street vendors. I gazed at him in surprise and he smiled. “If it’s your first time in Bangkok,” he said, “it seems right that you get to experience this,” he gestured. “Street food is one of life’s best things. Coming?”
I grinned back at him. I adored Thai street food. Alexander Hamilton was full of surprises. “Let’s do this,” I said happily.
We weaved between the crowds, stopping at any stall that appealed to us and sharing our food. We ate satay, noodles, fish cakes and pad Thai. Alexander spoke fluent Thai, a fact I noticed and remarked on. He nodded. “I’m here a lot on work,” he said briefly. That sent a pulse of disquiet through me. Of course he was. Bangkok was the epicentre of the world’s sex trafficking trade.
I pushed aside that thought and stayed in the moment. Jenny wouldn’t know anything about Alexander’s work. “What do you do?” I asked him and he shrugged. “I’m a financier,” he said vaguely. “What do you do back in Cleveland that enables you to take three months off work?”
“I used to work in retail,” I said, as vague as he had been. “But I got laid off and Alicia got ill and my priority became taking care of her.”
His hand linked in mine. “That’s very generous of you,” he remarked. “And this is. Putting yourself on the auction block for your sister.”
I shrugged. “It’s family, you know?” I didn’t know. My mother was dead. Lisa and Amber had been like family, yet in my quest for revenge, I’d stayed and trained with Lucien rather than returning to Cleveland to reassure them that I was alive.
He had a strange look in his eyes at that. “Ah, yes, family.”
We wandered into a cheap tourist bar and ordered pints of beer to quench our thirst. We talked about innocuous things – we shared opinions on the best thing we’d eaten at the market, and we both shuddered in horror at the idea of eating the fried insects that were available in some food stalls. When we were done drinking our ice-cold Singha and I couldn’t eat any more, we walked back to the car again.
“That was really fun,” I told him as he held the door open for me. “Thank you for showing me Bangkok.”
He smiled. “There’s a lot of the world to see, Jenny. Your passport’s going to pick up quite the array of stamps over the next few months.” He shut the door and came around the other side. “Now, to the hotel?”
To the hotel, where he would want to have sex with me. My nerves flared again and so did my lust. But before I could respond, his phone rang.
He reached into his pants pocket and glanced at the screen, before looking at me. “Excuse me,” he said. “I do have to get this.” He made a wry face. “Business.”
“Oui?” he spoke into the phone.
Jenny Fullerton didn’t speak French. But Ellie did. I was pretty damn fluent and I was prepared to eavesdrop shamelessly. Any information I gathered on Alexander could only help me.
“Maintenant?” he asked after listening for a few moments. “D’accord. Je vais venir.”
I will come, he’d just said. Where?
He hung up and looked at me with a trace of apology in his expression. “I hope you aren’t tired,” he said. “I have to make a stop first.”
He tapped at the divider separating the driver from the back seat and the driver lowered the glass. “Sir?”
Alexander said something in rapid Thai. I cursed my lack of familiarity with the language. I wanted to know what was going on. Why our plans had suddenly changed.
Chapter 11
Ellie / Jenny:
I didn’t have long to wait to find out what was next. About twenty minutes later, the car pulled into a narrow alley in front of a faded door, covered with graffiti.
Alexander had been tense during the drive. Whatever the person on the phone had said to him had caused the laughing, relaxed man that had walked with me through the night market to disappear. The man that was left had a hard expression in his eyes and radiated a sense of ruthlessness that caused me to shiver in genuine fear.