The Billionaire's Payment (BBW Erotic Romance) (7 page)

It was my eighteenth birthday and I woke up happy because my mother had promised to take me to get my hair trimmed and then to the West End for a day of shopping.  At the hairdresser’s I listened as she argued with the stylist who said my hair was too gorgeous and healthy to be cropped into such a short style.  She got her way and then I tried to smile bravely at her because she was happy, but I felt like a shorn lamb.  The next day as I tried to finger the unfamiliar short strands on my head into the style the hairdresser had reluctantly achieved, she walked into my room and said casually, as if the hair could be magically reattached, that perhaps the woman had been right—I looked better with long hair.

Then it was my grandmother’s funeral and I watched the thousands of people who had come to pay their respects stop and offer condolences to my mother who painted a tragic portrait of grief dressed in Prada and wearing oversized sunglasses, with a snowy lace handkerchief clutched in her hand to dry the occasional tear.  In the car on the way back I reached out to take her hand, to let her know that I would miss her mother just as much as she did.  She raised the sunglasses and stared haughtily down at my hand until I drew it back.  Her eyes when she lifted them to mine were clear and showed no sign of recent tears.  Something inside me died at that moment as I realize that my grandmother was truly gone.

At some point….hours, minutes later…I realized that he’d stopped spanking me.  We were lying on the bed and he was holding me gently while I cried.

“Let it all go, my love,” he whispered, kissing my brow.

I buried my head against his shoulder and did what he asked of me.

Chapter Seven

 Jared reached out, his eyes still closed from sleep, and found only an empty space beside him.  Sitting up, he looked around him wildly.  Then he smiled and sunk back onto the pillows, still exhausted from the marathon sex session that had finished only as the day was breaking.

He couldn’t believe that Shakira  had had the strength to get up and do her morning’s yoga and meditation; he was tired enough for ten men.

But then,
he told himself smugly,
she wasn’t the one who had done the hard work!

He was still amazed at the way she had bloomed after the spanking.  She had awoken the next morning with a huge smile on her lips and a glow on her face.  After a short dip in the Jacuzzi—he had been too horny to stay in for long—she’d allowed him to blindfold her and handcuff her to the bed, and do with her as he willed.  The more he had demanded, the more she had given, allowing him to explore her boundaries and test her responses to various stimulants.

The memory of her clit clamped and glistening between the redden, swollen folds of her pussy and her nipples wearing similar devices and extended to their fullest, and then some, made his cock instantly harden.

He smiled ruefully.  She would be the death of him.  But what a way to go!

She would have to ride him when she returned, he decided, reaching down to his aching cock.

If she’s not here in five minutes, I’ll bloody go and get her!

He wouldn’t, Jared admitted to himself as he closed his eyes again.  The only time she’d been away from him the whole week was for bathroom breaks and the half an hour she spent very early each morning doing yoga stretches and meditating.  He really didn’t  mind at all.

The last week had been the most exciting of his adult life.  He’d shaken his head in sheer disbelief when he’d realized only as he’d collapsed beside her on the bed that very morning, that in the entire time they had been together he hadn’t worn protection.  He hadn’t done that with any other woman, ever.  Being skin to skin with her had felt so natural.  A manmade barrier would have spoiled the magic of their joining.

He understood how Adam had been tempted to bite that apple for Eve.  He would do no less for Shakira.  She brought excitement to his life.  He had been living well, but not feeling real joy.  She made him feel younger, energized and perhaps ready to delegate some of his workload to trusted employees or sell off some of the hotels….

He started out of his sleep two hours later and found himself still alone in bed.

Even as he jumped to his feet and screamed for his valet, he knew that something was desperately amiss.

“Yes, sir?”  Ambrose appeared at the door before Jared got to it.

“Where is Shakira?”

“I haven’t seen her, sir.”  A less-brave man would have cowered under Jared’s thunderous glare, but the ex-army soldier steadfastly stood his ground.  “I got here at six as instructed.”

Jared cursed himself for not only giving Perkins the week off, but for drastically reducing his valet’s work hours.  He’d wanted total privacy with Shakira, but there were basic duties he’d still needed his valet to perform.  Otherwise he would have given the man the entire week off.  But now he regretted it—had the man been there Shakira would have never gotten past him.  Nor his ex-mercenary butler, had he been there.

“Call Rigby.”  The ex-army intelligence officer had been the one to recommend Ambrose as a valet when the man had been made redundant by the British Army and couldn’t find employment.  “Tell him I may need his services.”

“Very well, sir.”

***

Less than half an hour later, dressed impeccably as usual, but with a betraying wildness in his eyes, Jared entered the already-open door of the plush office assigned to the hotel’s manager.

David Phillips was sitting with his feet up on the large desk, sipping a mug of coffee and reading
The Times
. He didn’t officially start work for another twenty minutes yet, but Jared felt a sudden, intense dislike for the way the man acted as if he owned the place.

The man turned, smiled when he caught sight of Jared and said breezily, “Good morning!”

The man didn’t have the grace to show a trace of discomfort, facing by the man who had taken his daughter’s virginity as payment for her father’s sins.  In a similar situation, Jared would have ripped the man’s balls off!

“Where is she?”  Jared tried to keep his barely controlled anger in check.

Since meeting Shakira he had decided against keeping David on staff—the man would take early retirement, or be fired if he didn’t agree.  A man who would sacrifice his own child was not one Jared wanted in his employ.  One that would sacrifice a sweet, innocent daughter like Shakira should be drawn and quartered!  He’d often seen David strutting around the hotel as if he owned it.  He hadn’t minded the man’s pompous display—in fact it had pleased him that the man took such pride in his job.  It had obviously been more than simple pride; the man had delusions of grandeur—he would be a fool to keep him on staff now.

“Where is who?”

“Shakira!” Jared ground out.  Was the man so uncaring he didn’t remember his own child?

“She’s with you…  Do you mean to say that she never turned up?”  The man’s face went taut with anger.  “Apologies, Jared, I will find her and bring her to you.  I can’t believe she would make a promise to me and then break it.  I thought better of her.”

“Did you really?”  Jared asked him coolly.  The older man finally had the grace to flush.  “Shakira was with me.  She left this morning before I had a chance to discuss important matters with her.”

“She’s probably out shopping,” her father dismissed, seeming unconcerned that his child, who had barely ventured out in the last five years, was suddenly at large in the capital.  “I’ll tell her you were asking after her.”

“I’m concerned for her safety.  Do you have any idea who her friends are and what their addresses or telephone numbers are?”

“I never paid much attention…”  Realizing how terrible that sounded, the man left the sentence open ended.

“Are you aware of the torment you and your wife have caused Shakira!”

“We provide a roof over her head, feed and clothe her!  She can’t ask for more than that!”

“She can ask for love.”

“Look, my wife never took to her when she was born.  When I tried to play with her, my wife got jealous, so I gave up.  I love my wife.”  The man uttered the last statement with a touch of defiance.

“David, I’m going to search for her…the whole country if I have to.  When I find her I’m going to marry her in the most lavish wedding London has ever seen.”

The man’s scowling face broke into a wide smile as he discarded the paper and rushed around the desk.  “Welcome to my family, son!”

“No, David.”  Jared sidestepped and avoided the man’s embrace.  “I don’t want you or your wife around Shakira unless she asks for either of you specifically.  You were blessed with an angel and you crushed her gentle spirit and denied her the chance of living a happier life with her grandparents in India.  You should both be charged with reckless child endangerment.  Now get your things and leave these premises.”

Jared turned and rapidly walked out of the room.  He stopped at the next doorway and rammed his right fist into the open palm of his left hand.  Another second in the older man’s presence and he would have rammed it into his face.

He forcibly willed himself to calm down.  He didn’t have time for anger.  He needed to have all airports, ferry crossing and exit points out of the country covered.  It would cost money, but that was of little concern to him.  He had more than he could ever spend or needed.

If he’d lost Shakira, he had nothing.

***

“Miss, beg pardon, the man is here to see you.”

“To see me?”  I asked, wanting to smile at the older man’s carefully spoken English.  Although I constantly reminded my grandfather’s servants that I speak both Marathi and Hindi, they always spoke to me in English.  I didn’t mind if it was giving them practice, but I worried that it was because they didn’t want to offend me.  “Thank you.”

It’s probably one of Grandfather’s old business acquaintances,
I told myself as I hurried from the library to his massive hallway.  As I passed, I admired the beautiful wooden tiles on the wall which had been laid in an intricate design and then lacquered.  His house was well maintained but hadn’t been updated in over forty years.  I love its old charm and hoped he’d never change it.

At first I didn’t recognize Jared.  He looked gaunt as if despair had pulled at his face until it had changed his features.  Our gazes met and held, and then he smiled.  His eyes lit up and his features rearranged themselves into those dear familiar ones I had traced so many times in our week together.

I picked up the end of my sari and ran to him.

He sprinted towards me and then I was in his arms, being spun around and around as we kissed.

“How did you find me?”  I asked breathlessly when we finally had to break for air.

“Khabi Khabie.”

Khabi Khabie? 
What had mine and my grandmother’s favourite movie have to do with anything?  I leaned back and stared up at him, worried the scorching sunshine on the trip from the airport to my grandfather’s house had impaired his mind.

He laughed at my concern.  “I watched it time and time again after you left.”

“I thought you said it was a chick flick!” I accused.  The night I had cooked him dinner I had tried to interest him in the movie, having had a copy of the DVD picked up with the ingredients I’d needed.

“It grew on me.  Especially the poetry.”

“You’re lying!”  He had laughed the hardest at the corny poetry.

“I
did
watch it several times.”  His face sobered and I knew he was telling the truth. “I knew if I kept watching that it would trigger something I had overlooked.  Two days ago I remembered that you’d said you could play a mother or grandmother.”

“But how did you know that I travel on my grandmother’s passport?”  It had been sheer luck that it had had another eight months before it expired.

“My team and I had looked through all the images of passengers leaving UK airports.  We were looking for a beautiful
young
woman.  I never thought to look for one that was slightly older, but still beautiful.  When I remembered the conversation we had, I instructed them to go over the images again, looking for a mature Indian woman.  If we hadn’t found you, we would have then re-examined the faces of every passenger, male or female.”

“You went to all that trouble for me?”  I still couldn’t make myself believe that he was here in Mumbai, in my grandfather’s house.  I’d thought he’d forgotten me the very day I’d left.

“I would have searched the ends of the earth for you, my love.”

My love!
 He must have meant the words when he’d said them previously.  If only I had known.

“I love you, Jared,”

“I love you, Mrs Codrington.”

Jared’s lips covered mine and the world spun crazily around us.

“Who is this, Shakira?”

My grandfather’s voice boomed down on us from the first floor corridor and we hastily broke apart.  I looked up to see him glaring down at Jared, his bushy eyebrows meeting in the middle and giving him a comical single straight eyebrow.  I took Jared’s hand and he obediently followed me up the staircase.

“This is Jared, Da Da Gyi,” I introduced.

“You have a lot to answer for, young man!”  My grandfather pulled himself up to his full height and tried to stare down Jared.  If he had remained the sturdy six-footer he had been in his youth it would have been more effective.  Instead,  he was staring up at Jared, instead of down his slightly hooked nose at him.

“I know, sir.”  I admired Jared for not laughing.  I wanted to double over at the sight of my overweight, pot-bellied grandfather challenging a younger, fitter man less than half his age.  “I intend to make it up to her by throwing her the biggest wedding London’s ever seen and giving her anything her heart desires.”

“She will be married here first…in Mumbai…on my birthday…on Thursday.”  Each time he paused for breath, my grandfather poked Jared in the chest.  “I’m too old to fly halfway around the world for the wedding and I want to see her married.”

“It will be as you wish, sir.”