His Vengeance: The Alpha Billionaire's Revenge Complete Series Read online

  "You're a sadist."

  "Not quite." He sighed dramatically. "Oh, I can't deny I'm going to have fun with this. But I just want to make sure you pay for what you did. That's not so wrong, is it?"

  She shivered at his gentle tone. "It's hateful."

  "Yes," he nodded. "I do hate you. That's true. I hate that you seduced, ruined, and most particularly laughed at my brother at his weakest and most vulnerable point and then left him to die alone. I hate that I found out in time to rescue him but too late to save him from the fallout." His voice was low and silky. "But hate is a destructive emotion. I don't destroy. I create. And so, Linnea Melbourne, I'm giving you another option. Maybe you'll prefer it. I certainly do."

  She swallowed. "What is it?"

  He leaned back again and clasped his hands together. Long-fingered and masculine, she noticed inanely. Sexy hands, like the rest of him. But she was beginning to hate that I-know-I'm-hot smile. "This one's more subtle. And in a way, more suitable. Because the effects your actions had on my brother were not just catastrophic. They were also gradual and insidious. He continued to make bad choices for years. He traded one addiction for another. And of course there were the health consequences to his nervous system. Nothing incapacitating, but they're there and always will be. So, too, will this punishment be for you."

  Linnea couldn't stop staring at his hands. One thumb was stroking the other repeatedly. She felt her body flush starting in her face and shimmering down to her toes, which curled helplessly in her shoes.

  "Just say it," she said.

  "You become my plaything. Not for very long, I think. As long as I want you, though. It might be a week, a month. It might be a year. I guess it could even be five years. I really have no idea."

  The world seemed to stop, then turn crazily on its axis. "Your plaything?"

  "Mm, that's right, Linnea. Wherever I want you, whenever I want you. However I want you. My willing plaything."

  CHAPTER 3

  AS SHE ABSORBED THE WORDS and their meaning, her body did much more than flush. It heated into burning flames. She recoiled in instinctive reaction. "You want…I don't really understand. It sounds like a cold and inhuman sexual arrangement, but not a punishment."

  His mouth was still smiling, but the expression wasn't reaching his eyes. "Oh, I want to make you suffer. I believe in like for like. But I honestly have no desire to do permanent bodily harm to you, Ms. Melbourne. I don't want to give you drugs or cut you up. You seem to have gone on the straight and narrow path and I don't see a reason to take you off of that path permanently. So I asked myself, how can I chemically affect her? How can I emotionally affect her? How can I physically affect her? And the answer seemed self-evident. Sex. If you choose option two, you will suffer physically, emotionally, and chemically for a while. Maybe for a long time. You will do so willingly. You will sign an agreement to that effect."

  She stared at him. "That has to be illegal."

  "If I do anything illegal to you, Ms. Melbourne, I fully support your decision to try to have me arrested. And you can try suing the hell out of me afterward, if you like. Better yet, just tell me if you want damages and I'll probably give them to you. There's an exquisite satisfaction in that, anyway." He held his palm up across the desk, snapping his fingers, and automatically she found herself putting the photograph on it.

  "Satisfaction?" she echoed.

  "That's right. If there's one thing I can tell you with absolute assurance, it's that money doesn't buy happiness. Making you suffer, though, does. At least for me. My money will go to a good cause."

  "Are you truly mad, or are you just pretending to be?" She said it almost to herself.

  "Neither. I just want this," he said simply. "Most people aren't in the position to revenge themselves on people who ruin lives. I happen to be in that fortunate position."

  "But—why me? I mean—I know you love your brother. I get that. But to do this, you'd have to…wouldn't you have to…have sex with me?"

  "Oh, yes. Very much sex." His grin widened.

  "But doesn't that repel you? The idea of sex with the person—with me, who according to you did vile things to your very own brother?"

  "According to me, Ms. Melbourne? Are you denying it?" He seemed startled.

  "N-no. No, I'm not denying it. But I'm not confessing it, either."

  "Really? Interesting. But to answer your question, Ms. Melbourne—Linnea—no, it doesn't repel me. It should, I admit. I should want to vomit, and metaphorically, I suppose I do. However, I find you physically alluring. Irresistibly so, actually. I'll have no problems fucking you. If that's the mode of punishment you prefer…?" He cocked one eyebrow, leaving it as a question.

  She looked around the office frantically, her mind whirling. This morning, if anyone had told her that she'd be sitting here listening to a mad ultimatum from a rich lunatic by the end of the work day she'd have laughed at them.

  "You're going to hurt me." She said it as a statement but meant it as a question.

  "Oh, yes. Though I don't plan to leave any marks. And it won't be true torture. I'm not actually into giving pain, even for a good cause like this. We might be talking post-traumatic stress, but no more than that."

  "You want me to consent to this. To agree to be hurt."

  "To agree to let me try, anyway," he allowed.

  "And how would I know when it's over? When the debt I owe you for what my—for what happened is forgiven?"

  "The moment it happens, I'll tell you straight out the punishment is over and I'm satisfied that you've suffered enough."

  "What if you never say it? What if you just keep wanting to hurt me more and more?"

  "That's the risk you run," he said thoughtfully. "I'm not going to commit either way at this point. I think my need is finite, though. I'm not, as I said, a sadist. I just want revenge. Payback. I'm confident I'll know it when I have it. You'll have to take my word. Remember, sweetheart, it's not my honor that's in question."

  "What if I say no punishment at all is acceptable?" she whispered.

  "Then I financially ruin you, your family, and everybody else you care about," he said pleasantly without skipping a beat. "And I continue to do so for as long as I care to."

  "That's extortion."

  "Perhaps," he said, then added ingenuously, "The actual ruination would be legal and above-board. You might find yourself homeless. I wouldn't go quite that far with the rest of your family, but you, certainly. And every time you tried to start your financial life over, you'd run into a very real wall. That," he added, "is the punishment I most definitely don't prefer, because it would leave me with regrets."

  She drew in a sharp breath. This man had to be either the craziest, or sanest, person she'd ever met. He was telling her, her instincts said, exactly the way things were.

  But she was even crazier. Because as she listened to him, she was forced to admit the truth. She agreed with him. She sympathized with him.

  In his position, she might even be him.

  There were times she'd hated her sister with the same passion he did. Times she'd hated herself for not doing more to influence her twin's crappy life decisions. To help her when she couldn't help herself.

  Well, now I have my chance.

  The thought came with a kind of hysteria.

  She put her fingers to her temple and pressed to ease the headache beginning there. "What does this entail? Being your plaything."

  She heard him expel a breath. "Is that your choice then, Linnea?"

  "Tell me more about it first. The specifics, I mean. What would it look like? On an hour-to-hour, day-to-day basis?"

  "A very reasonable question," he said admiringly. "For starters, I tell you to come to me when I want you. If you're in class or at work, you make an excuse and hightail it over to me, no questions asked. If you're at home eating dinner, you drop everything and come to me. When you arrive, I tell you what I want you to do and you do it."

  "Is that it? That's all? I come an
d you make me feel bad and then I go home again?"

  "Not exactly." He chuckled. "It won't be all bad. There will be a lot that's very good. But when you go home, you won't be free. Your life centers around your sex life, and I essentially become your sex life. Outside of what I give you, there's nothing. You don't see any other men, you don't touch any other men. For that matter, you don't touch yourself. You don't pleasure yourself. You give up the freedom of your body. I'm your source of pleasure. Just as you were my brother's source of high."

  "My God."

  "Why don't we give it a try right now?" he said easily. "Take off your suit jacket, Linnea."

  She froze. "What?"

  "I wouldn't make me repeat myself if I were you," he advised. "You heard my order. In fact, go ahead and take off everything you're wearing above the waist." He took another sip of his water, swirling it around on his tongue as though it were wine.

  Her teeth were suddenly chattering. "I haven't agreed to anything yet."

  "You get thirty seconds to make up your mind," he said, his tone clipped. "After that, the offer's gone and I will choose option three—ruining you. Thirty seconds, starting now. "

  Her jaw dropped.

  He met her panicked gaze with his own calm, chilly one.

  She should look at the clock, she thought vaguely. But focusing on how much time she had left to make her decision would take away from that time.

  In any case, Linnea knew she'd made it already.

  "All right," she said thinly. "Option two."

  CHAPTER 4

  HE WENT STILL, his face going expressionless. Then his eyes warmed and he smiled. A different smile from before. "Good girl," he said quietly.

  She shuddered.

  "I'll give you the contract to sign when you go," he said. "You can look it over carefully. Give it to a lawyer, if you like, so he can explain to you what you're getting yourself into. But it's a technicality. The punishment begins now."

  Which meant she'd better start doing what he'd ordered her to do.

  Take off everything you're wearing above the waist.

  No matter how much she willed it, the shuddering didn't stop. It was panic time. Her mind raced through the shock of what she'd just agreed to, what her life was about to become.

  She struggled to force her hands to do their job.

  Linnea found she had barely enough motor control to undo the large buttons of the jacket. She shrugged the garment off her shoulders and started unbuttoning the silky red blouse she wore underneath. The simple action took far too long. But he didn't comment.

  In fact, she almost thought this might not be so bad. His face looked eminently relaxed, not angry or contemptuous at all.

  Still, she found she had to look away from those casually assessing eyes as the shirt fell off her shoulders. She knew what he would be seeing: her slim shoulders and arms, her breasts in their plain white bra, her slender ribcage. Her skin here was almost white in stark contrast to her jet black hair, a legacy of her Irish descent.

  No man had seen her this way for years.

  As she reached behind her back to unclasp the bra, she heard him put down the glass of water onto the crystal surface of the mahogany desk. Her teeth were clicking when she finally eased the bra away from her breasts and let it fall. Now she sat there in the overlarge leather chair with her breasts bare. She had small but plump breasts, with little pink nipples that faced straight forward.

  It was surreal and unnerving. Horrible.

  To sit here topless in front of a virtual stranger with her nipples puckered while the rest of her body remained conservatively and decently clad in skirt, tights, panties, and shoes…it was almost more than a normal person could be expected to bear.

  But Linnea wasn't just anyone; she was an introvert in the classic sense of the word. Few men had ever seen her even half naked like this. The truth was, while her sister was practically an exhibitionist, she herself was painfully shy. Add the fact that the stranger was an intensely desirable man who happened to hate her, or at least the person he thought she was, and Linnea suddenly felt herself in the grips of true anguish.

  "You forgot the jewelry." Jonas Westerling's tone was affable. Twisting the knife.

  Abruptly Linnea began to see what he meant about her suffering. If doing what he said right now was hard, she could only imagine how she'd endure what was to come.

  She took off her earrings and necklace. Then she finally looked at him.

  He was unsmiling now, looking at her with smoky dark eyes. His hand came up to stroke his shadowy chin. It was late evening but his dark stubble seemed excessive to her. Trying desperately to distract herself, she wondered if his beard just grew that fast or if it had been more than a day since he'd shaved. She wondered if it was soft to the touch, or rough. She wondered what his lips would feel like. As she wondered these things about him, she could feel her nipples tighten even more until it was almost painful to just sit there.

  The question was, was she responding this way because of the unique position she was in, or because of the man he was? She had the awful feeling it was the latter. The suspicion that she was naturally attracted to this man made her decision to do this even more dangerous than she'd supposed.

  His gaze moved from her breasts slowly up to her eyes, then back down again, where it lingered for a long time. Linnea sat stiffly, her hands clenched in fists on the bra in her lap.

  "Cup your tits with your hands," he said mellowly. "Lift them up."

  Her body jerked with shock. "What?"

  "You heard me. And do. Not. Ask. Me. To. Repeat. Ever."

  She closed her eyes.

  "No. Open your eyes and look at me, Linnea."

  She bit her lip. Her hands came up and delicately lifted her own breasts by the undersides.

  He chuckled. The sound was so casual and easy that Linnea had to fight the urge to jump out of her chair and scream at him.

  "You look very indignant," he said. "Like a cat about to scratch me. Stand up. Walk around the desk to me. Keep holding your tits. Bring them to me."

  Somehow she got up. Came around to him, her legs teetering on her modest two-inch heels.

  From here, she could smell him. His scent was less strong than cologne, and certainly like no cologne she'd ever smelled. More like soap. Woodsy. Not cosmopolitan at all. It surprised her.

  He wore a plain, slightly shimmery cotton blue shirt and heavy-duty cotton slacks that were more casual than she'd have expected him to wear in the office. His entire form was buff and honed and seemed to emanate energy and virility.

  She stood so close to him, she could almost convince herself that he didn't hold her puppet strings. That he wasn't rich. Wasn't single-minded. That he was just a hot guy and it was fine to let her body respond to him as it wanted to.

  Almost.

  Then he reached up and tweaked her nipple.

  Her whole body flinched.

  "Whoa," he said softly. "Quite a reaction. Try to stay still." Then, while Linnea held her breasts up for him, he teased her nipples with his fingers, plucking them both at the same time. Each tiny pulling pinch was like fire on her prickly nipples.

  "Nice," he said. "Have they always been so sensitive?"

  She made an inarticulate sound.

  "Answer me when I ask you a question," he said. "Immediately."

  "Y-yes."

  "Come sit in my lap," he said softly. "You can let go of your tits now. I'm going to play with them."

  Hesitantly, awkwardly, she climbed into his lap. The moment she was seated on him, her body shuddered. His warmth, the hardness of his leg muscles, caused sensory overload. He pulled her back by the waist and she suddenly felt his erection behind her, pressing into her bottom. It startled her. This was another first, sitting on a man's lap while the man was aroused and not even trying to hide it from her.

  With one hand, he started to fondle her breasts. The other one picked up his water glass. He sipped his water and held the glass while his
fingers moved leisurely over her breasts. The sensations she felt as he teased her nipples was so intense Linnea bit her lip. Within just a few minutes, she was unable to keep from squirming on his lap.

  The glass pressed against one nipple. Linnea gasped at the cool feel of it.

  The phone on his desk buzzed. Jonas went still for a second, then she heard him sigh. He put down the glass and reached for the phone, then held it up to his ear. To Linnea's shock, the hand touching her breasts never stopped what it was doing.

  "Westerling," he said smoothly into the phone as he rolled one of her nipples between his fingers.

  He switched to the other nipple and did the same thing, then back again, with a harder pressure this time.

  He began to speak to his caller. Linnea's hand came up to cover her mouth to try to stifle the small sounds that wanted to emerge. He kept touching her, over and over, going back and forth from one breast to the other, one nipple to the other, while he conducted his phone conversation. If she hadn't felt the swollen shaft pressing into her from below, she'd have thought he'd forgotten all about her.

  The hand began to wander lower. She felt his thumb dip into her navel. Then his palm slid down her clothed hip and thigh and her skirt was being eased up. She sat there, stunned and appalled, as his hand cupped her pussy through her tights and panties. She knew she was swollen there. It felt hot. The touch burned.

  She sat stiffly on his lap. She didn't know what to do. It had been so long since a man had touched her there…years. And it had never felt like this. As much as she disliked to admit it to herself, she couldn't deny the feeling was wonderful.

  One finger began to rub over her clit. Linnea's eyes widened. If her nipples were sensitive, her clitoris was doubly so; every stroke was like fire on her nerve endings. Linnea's hands came out to tightly grip the chair's arms until her fingers turned so white they were almost blue. The masculine finger probing between her legs kept rubbing back and forth, back and forth over her clit through the tights, and the sensation rapidly became unbearable.