Free Bought by Tara Crescent

interlude. No. I was confident he didn’t recognize me. Why would he? We had just been two ships that passed in the night.
    He’s not important. You are just feeling peculiar because he was the first man you gave yourself to willingly, I told myself firmly. But the twinge in my heart told me I was lying.
    ***
    “Hello,” his voice spoke. My body remembered those whiskey-smooth tones. Underneath my thin robe, my nipples engorged painfully. A heavy ache pooled in my pussy. Goose bumps covered my skin and I shivered slightly, unable to forget how good this man had made me feel.
    Act. Act now. You’ve never met him before. Your name is Jenny Fullerton. Your twin-sister is dying of leukemia, and you are here to sell yourself so you can save her life. Act.
    “Hello Sir,” I replied, my eyes fixed on the floor. My voice came out shaky and breathy. Though I hated how vulnerable I sounded, I was also grateful. I sounded nothing like the way I’d sounded in Paris that night.
    He didn’t demand that I make eye-contact, the way Anton had. He took a seat in front of me and leaned back on the couch. “Jenny, right?”
    “Yes Sir.”
    “Tell me about yourself, Jenny.”
    Fuck. Open-ended questions. I hated those. “What would you like to know, Sir?” I asked.
    “I’d like to know everything,” he replied. There was a trace of dark heat in his voice. Once again, I was almost overwhelmed by memories of him touching me and whispering words of passion in my ear. His body poised over mine as he brought me to repeated pleasure. His fingers, which had danced surely over my skin, until every bit of me was filled with a trembling need that I’d never before experienced. “Where you are from, Jenny?”
    Lucien and I had decided to keep most of my backstory close to the truth. “Cleveland, Sir,” I responded.
    “And Lori tells me it’s your first time outside the States,” he smiled. I sneaked a peek at him from beneath my lashes. He was so good-looking, Marc. I’d forgotten how absolutely beautiful this man was.
    He’s in Bangkok. He’s at Madame Lorraine’s. You know nothing about this man.
    “It is, Sir.”
    “Alexander,” a voice purred, and I stiffened, every inch of my body recoiling in horror as two realizations swept over me like a tidal wave.
    One, the man in front of me, the man who had given me my most cherished sexual memory, was Alexander Hamilton. The man who we suspected of being Dylan McAllister’s money manager. The man who most likely managed the finances of many men in the tightly controlled and vastly profitable industry of human trafficking.
    Two, the woman who had purred his name was Sylvia. The same tall, blond, Swiss woman who had been at Dylan’s estate six years ago, who had goaded Dylan until his anger had broken in an icy wave over me and who had watched my subsequent, bloody caning with lust-filled eyes.
    I should have been busy making myself irresistible so that this man would bid on me. Our entire plan to infiltrate Dylan’s Hanoi estate depended on it. But all I could feel was shock. It took all of the painful training I’d received at Dylan’s hands to force myself to remain still.

Chapter 8
    Ellie / Jenny:
    She sat on the couch next to him, the woman who still could make fear rise in my heart. Sylvia.
    Even as I kept my eyes submissively lowered, I struggled to understand. Marc was Alexander Hamilton and somehow, he knew Sylvia. That wasn’t entirely a surprise, if I stopped to think about it. After all, Alexander and Dylan were business partners and Sylvia was a regular visitor at Dylan’s various fortified compounds.
    But I’d given him my heart and my body in Paris. How could I have done this? How could my instincts have failed me so badly?
    She leaned her body towards him and her hand came out to cup his cheek. “Are you buying a new toy?” she asked coyly, barely glancing at me. I knelt there, forgotten for the moment, while surreptitiously checking out the tableau being