Jonathan’s POV
I wasn’t one to wax poetic about a woman, but she was stunning. She looked like a doll with her golden hair and big, blue eyes. No, not a doll, a siren. I had found my eyes being drawn to her mouth over and over again, wondering what she tasted like.
I liked to get to know a woman better before I took her to bed, and I knew nothing about Mila. And yet my blood was singing for her.
There was something almost vulnerable about her, something that aroused long-buried, protective instincts towards her. I was curious about Mila in a way I hadn’t been curious about a woman in years.
She slid into the car and I walked around it to join her in the backseat. My driver’s eyes met mine from the rearview mirror, full of wide-eyed surprise. I ignored him.
When I turned to look at Mila, she was patting her hair with a look of pain.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It's nothing.” She said, “Okay, it’s something. One of the pins in my hair Is digging into my skull.”
“Let me try.” I motioned at her hair.
“Oh, no. It’s no problem at all, I’ll just-“ I grabbed her around her waist, lifted her, and deposited her in my lap, facing forward.
“w-what are you doing?” she stammered.
I used the opportunity as she couldn’t see me to breathe her in. In a world full of thick perfumes and cloying scents, she smelled like flowers. I reached for her hair immediately and pulled out one pin, then another, and another. How many pins did one person need? By the time I was done, I had seven pins in one hand.
“Thank you.” She said, then shook her head, sending golden locks tumbling down and down all the way to my lap. I stared in fascination. I wanted that hair spread over my pillow, I wanted to wrap it in my fist as I… I halted with that line of thought immediately.
As she made to slide back to her side of the car, I wrapped a hand around her midriff to keep her in place.
“But now I can’t see you.” She maneuvered her body around till she was sitting astride me. Knees on the leather seats. I hadn’t gone from relaxed to hard so fast in my life. Her hair was in a state of dishevel around her head, falling to cover one-half of her face. I brushed the hair back, tucking it behind her ear. The atmosphere in the car immediately turned charged. What was this woman doing to me?
“Missed your face.” She flashed pearly, white teeth at me. The thing about Mila is that she was sexy, but she wasn’t coy. There was nothing feigned about her. None of that batting of lashes or biting of lips. She wasn’t actively trying to seduce me, but I was being seduced nonetheless.
Of their own accord, my hand flew up to her hair and began to massage.
“Does it still hurt?”
“No. But don’t stop.” She moaned. The sound went straight to my already blood-filled body part, turning me to rock in my pants.
She pressed into me, her head tucked under mine and her small hands on my chest.
“That feels so good.”
“What's your address?” I asked. She rattled it out quickly and I caught the driver’s eye. He gave an imperceptible nod.
“I’m glad I met you tonight. I know we’ll probably never see each other again, though.” I raised a brow at that.
“Why would you think that?” Did she know who I was?
“We don’t move in the same circles. Private clubs and ballrooms are a foreign concept to me. Well, a lot of things are a foreign concept to me. I work from home.” I opened my mouth to ask her what she did for a living, but quickly changed my mind. If I asked her, she’d want to know about me too. And I wasn’t ready for that. I liked how we were, it was refreshing. She didn’t know who I was, didn’t look at me with those calculative eyes or worse, like an exotic zoo animal. The whole world was curious about me and I was exhausted by it all. It was why I stayed within the confines of my house. There, nobody could gawk at me or try to suck up to me.
She nuzzled deeper into me and I liked it. I liked the feel of her soft, smaller body in my arms. The floral scent of he
r skin sank into me and left its mark on my brain.
I delved my thigh forward, taking in the surrounding warmth. I had never been more mesmerized in my twenty-eight years of life. His hand on my hair sent relief surging through my spine. He moved down to my shoulders and kneaded my tense limp shoulder; it felt good, I had to admit. I am not sure when it happened, but a moan escaped through my lips, prompting him to grit his teeth. Unable to control the surge of current, I threw back my head. What was this? He needed to stop before I lost control. "Oh", I had lost control. "Do you like that? ", he inquired, trailing his index finger over the taut swell of my nipple which was visible beneath my gaudy dress. I just nodded, unable to say anything. He uses a remote control, and after a few clicks, the black-tinted glass separating the driver and backseat slides up. It was a Cadillac XTS sedan with three doors on either side, a standard leather interior, and an illuminated door handle that came off as if the stars had dropped from th
Mila's POVThe loud buzzing of the burner phone in the kitchen jolted me out of sleep. I had fallen asleep on the floor, and despite the cold weather, the warmth from the white rug kept me warm. Dragging myself sluggishly towards the kitchen, the phone rang again before I picked it up. Ma was on the phone, her voice cold and impatient. "It is past 10:30, why didn't you call us?" she demanded. When I did not respond for what felt like hours.She continued, "How did things go, and why the silence? I could tell she was worried; she despised a job gone wrong. "One question at a time," I insisted, eager not to reveal the full extent of my meeting with the general. How could I tell Ma that, for a split second, I wanted to throw myself into my target's arms, or that he brought me to life in a variety of ways? "Maybe if you had answered and not deviated from the inquiry, then I wouldn't have to ask them all over again, and to think you didn't report back to me sooner, for God's sake
Mila’s POVSomeone was in my room. My eyes flew open when I felt something cold touch my temple.“Don’t make a sound.” The intruder warned. “Sit up.” I sat up robotically, realizing fearfully that there was a gun pointed at my head. I tried to slow my breathing but I was aware I had begun to hyperventilate. I liked to act tough but faced with my mortality, I was nothing but a scaredy cat.“You’ve been a bad little kitty haven’t you?” The man said. He was wearing a full face mask and a pure black outfit. The only thing I could tell about him was that he had dark eyes and was tall. I shifted my eyes to the side to see that my bedroom window was open, the curtains billowing with the night breeze.My apartment was on the sixth floor, how the hell had he gotten in? And most importantly who the hell was he?“Who are you? What are you doing here?”“Who am I? You’ll know soon enough. What am I doing here? I’m here to deliver a message from my employers. They aren’t pleased about losing their
Mila’s POVIt was the third fundraising event I was attending in two days. I stood at one corner and pretended to sip my drink while my eyes stayed glued to the entrance in wait for the General’s arrival.Ma had faxed over a whole dossier on the man and she had already warned me that the chances of him showing up to these events was less than two percent. I bit back my sound of frustration. Every second I wasted at these events was another second that Helen could be getting hurt.I had already started putting my plan B into motion because it seemed my plan A was turning out to be a total bust. I headed to the bathroom to reapply my lipstick and touch up on my makeup. Two hours standing around in a crowded ballroom had probably smudged the carefully applied makeup by now.“The general won’t show up tonight. He wouldn’t be caught dead in these things.” I heard a woman’s voice coming from one of the sitting rooms as I walked down the hall. I immediately changed directions, inching toward
Mila’s POVPeter Orlando was a sixty-something-year-old man with a double chin and thinning hair who didn’t look at me the whole journey over. He had picked me up from my building by six pm in a blacked-out SUV. As soon as I had joined him in the backseat, he had glanced at me before looking away. For the entire hour-plus duration of the journey, he had been carefully avoiding looking my way.When Ma had said he was her acquaintance, I hadn’t thought much of it, but now I wondered what dirty secret my parents were dangling over his head to make him do this.The car finally pulled up to a gate and a man in an all-black outfit stepped up to the car. The glasses were rolled down and his small, beady eyes scanned the interior of the car.“Who is she?” he asked, eyes pinned on me. My expression remained carefully blank as I held his gaze.“Mila, my date.”“Did she sign the NDA?” I blinked in mild surprise. I hadn’t heard about a non-disclosure agreement.“Of course.” The car slid through t
Mila’s POV“Oh God,” I mumbled, hoping that the ground would open right up and swallow me. The general set me to my feet and the next second, his jacket was off his body and wrapped around my body.“Come with me.” He said. I wasn’t given any time to respond or make a decision to follow him, because his hand found the small of my back and ushered me ahead of him into a room three doors down from the scene of our unusual first meeting. The room he led us into was large and tastefully decorated. A gigantic bed was the center of attraction in the room.The TV was on and showing some sort of documentary. The volume was turned all the way down so I couldn’t tell what it was. I had seen pictures of the general of course. Ma’s dossier on him included pictures of him, mostly pictures of him in his uniform though. But the photos could never have prepared me for the real thing. He was tall, that was my first thought. But it wasn’t just that he was over six feet tall, it was that he was imposing.
Mila's POVThe loud buzzing of the burner phone in the kitchen jolted me out of sleep. I had fallen asleep on the floor, and despite the cold weather, the warmth from the white rug kept me warm. Dragging myself sluggishly towards the kitchen, the phone rang again before I picked it up. Ma was on the phone, her voice cold and impatient. "It is past 10:30, why didn't you call us?" she demanded. When I did not respond for what felt like hours.She continued, "How did things go, and why the silence? I could tell she was worried; she despised a job gone wrong. "One question at a time," I insisted, eager not to reveal the full extent of my meeting with the general. How could I tell Ma that, for a split second, I wanted to throw myself into my target's arms, or that he brought me to life in a variety of ways? "Maybe if you had answered and not deviated from the inquiry, then I wouldn't have to ask them all over again, and to think you didn't report back to me sooner, for God's sake
I delved my thigh forward, taking in the surrounding warmth. I had never been more mesmerized in my twenty-eight years of life. His hand on my hair sent relief surging through my spine. He moved down to my shoulders and kneaded my tense limp shoulder; it felt good, I had to admit. I am not sure when it happened, but a moan escaped through my lips, prompting him to grit his teeth. Unable to control the surge of current, I threw back my head. What was this? He needed to stop before I lost control. "Oh", I had lost control. "Do you like that? ", he inquired, trailing his index finger over the taut swell of my nipple which was visible beneath my gaudy dress. I just nodded, unable to say anything. He uses a remote control, and after a few clicks, the black-tinted glass separating the driver and backseat slides up. It was a Cadillac XTS sedan with three doors on either side, a standard leather interior, and an illuminated door handle that came off as if the stars had dropped from th
Jonathan’s POVI wasn’t one to wax poetic about a woman, but she was stunning. She looked like a doll with her golden hair and big, blue eyes. No, not a doll, a siren. I had found my eyes being drawn to her mouth over and over again, wondering what she tasted like.I liked to get to know a woman better before I took her to bed, and I knew nothing about Mila. And yet my blood was singing for her. There was something almost vulnerable about her, something that aroused long-buried, protective instincts towards her. I was curious about Mila in a way I hadn’t been curious about a woman in years.She slid into the car and I walked around it to join her in the backseat. My driver’s eyes met mine from the rearview mirror, full of wide-eyed surprise. I ignored him.When I turned to look at Mila, she was patting her hair with a look of pain.“What is it?” I asked.“It's nothing.” She said, “Okay, it’s something. One of the pins in my hair Is digging into my skull.”“Let me try.” I motioned at
Mila’s POV“Oh God,” I mumbled, hoping that the ground would open right up and swallow me. The general set me to my feet and the next second, his jacket was off his body and wrapped around my body.“Come with me.” He said. I wasn’t given any time to respond or make a decision to follow him, because his hand found the small of my back and ushered me ahead of him into a room three doors down from the scene of our unusual first meeting. The room he led us into was large and tastefully decorated. A gigantic bed was the center of attraction in the room.The TV was on and showing some sort of documentary. The volume was turned all the way down so I couldn’t tell what it was. I had seen pictures of the general of course. Ma’s dossier on him included pictures of him, mostly pictures of him in his uniform though. But the photos could never have prepared me for the real thing. He was tall, that was my first thought. But it wasn’t just that he was over six feet tall, it was that he was imposing.
Mila’s POVPeter Orlando was a sixty-something-year-old man with a double chin and thinning hair who didn’t look at me the whole journey over. He had picked me up from my building by six pm in a blacked-out SUV. As soon as I had joined him in the backseat, he had glanced at me before looking away. For the entire hour-plus duration of the journey, he had been carefully avoiding looking my way.When Ma had said he was her acquaintance, I hadn’t thought much of it, but now I wondered what dirty secret my parents were dangling over his head to make him do this.The car finally pulled up to a gate and a man in an all-black outfit stepped up to the car. The glasses were rolled down and his small, beady eyes scanned the interior of the car.“Who is she?” he asked, eyes pinned on me. My expression remained carefully blank as I held his gaze.“Mila, my date.”“Did she sign the NDA?” I blinked in mild surprise. I hadn’t heard about a non-disclosure agreement.“Of course.” The car slid through t
Mila’s POVIt was the third fundraising event I was attending in two days. I stood at one corner and pretended to sip my drink while my eyes stayed glued to the entrance in wait for the General’s arrival.Ma had faxed over a whole dossier on the man and she had already warned me that the chances of him showing up to these events was less than two percent. I bit back my sound of frustration. Every second I wasted at these events was another second that Helen could be getting hurt.I had already started putting my plan B into motion because it seemed my plan A was turning out to be a total bust. I headed to the bathroom to reapply my lipstick and touch up on my makeup. Two hours standing around in a crowded ballroom had probably smudged the carefully applied makeup by now.“The general won’t show up tonight. He wouldn’t be caught dead in these things.” I heard a woman’s voice coming from one of the sitting rooms as I walked down the hall. I immediately changed directions, inching toward
Mila’s POVSomeone was in my room. My eyes flew open when I felt something cold touch my temple.“Don’t make a sound.” The intruder warned. “Sit up.” I sat up robotically, realizing fearfully that there was a gun pointed at my head. I tried to slow my breathing but I was aware I had begun to hyperventilate. I liked to act tough but faced with my mortality, I was nothing but a scaredy cat.“You’ve been a bad little kitty haven’t you?” The man said. He was wearing a full face mask and a pure black outfit. The only thing I could tell about him was that he had dark eyes and was tall. I shifted my eyes to the side to see that my bedroom window was open, the curtains billowing with the night breeze.My apartment was on the sixth floor, how the hell had he gotten in? And most importantly who the hell was he?“Who are you? What are you doing here?”“Who am I? You’ll know soon enough. What am I doing here? I’m here to deliver a message from my employers. They aren’t pleased about losing their