Free Claiming Lauren (eXclave) by Emily Ryan-Davis

 
    Chapter One
     
    These are your instructions
    Her manicured fingers hovered over the mouse but didn't settle. She
couldn't make the brain-hand connection required to position the cursor to open
the e-mail. Her breath clogged behind a knot in her throat and every sensation
came down to the heavy pulse of arousal beating between her thighs.
    Open meant acceptance. Open meant agreement. Open meant...
    Submission.
    And just like that, she could breathe again.
    Swallowing gulps of climate-controlled air, she gathered submission close to her breast and opened the e-mail. She'd read it before. His
instructions weren't new. They'd been living in her inbox for more than a week.
She'd fulfilled every imperative except one.
    Tell him what you're going to do.
    Panic welled up inside her but she drew on a deep reserve of
strength--the strength he told her she possessed--and exhaled slowly. She
visualized her weakness exiting on a puff of air, dissolving into nothing. When
her lungs were empty and the panic was gone, she picked up the house phone and
dialed his London number.
    A sleep-rough voice answered. A man's voice. Never a woman's voice, not
in her husband's house.
    She would have taken comfort in the sound of a woman's voice. Jacob
taking a lover would mean he'd decided to finally bury his first wife, whom
he'd married as an expression of love instead of an action of business. Jacob
taking a lover meant...
    "Is anybody there?" Jacob's assistant repeated.
    Nothing. It meant nothing. Her marriage would never be anything except a
business arrangement negotiated by calculating old men. Lauren squared her
shoulders and pushed the whisper of hope from her mind. "This is Mrs.
Brant. Please notify Mr. Brant that I'm on the line."
    "A moment, please." Without a single remark about the hour,
which approached 2 a.m. in England, her husband's personal assistant put the
call on hold.
    Cradling the receiver between her shoulder and ear, Lauren typed practice
words while she waited.
    I've called to let you know I'm leaving.
    No, that was a lie. She wouldn't leave. She was a twenty-seven-year-old
society wife, bound to him by prenuptial agreement and the public eye. Even if
she could bring herself to walk away from her financial future, she couldn't
face the scrutiny of family, peers and the media. A divorce would devastate her
father, who had nothing left of his empire except what Lauren retained through
her prenup. She deleted the words and typed another sentence.
    I've called to let you know I'm in love with another man.
    But that was a lie, too. She didn't love anybody. Not Jacob Brant, not
even the man who'd agreed to create and nurture her submission. Not anybody.
Maybe this would be a different conversation if she could speak the love words,
but she couldn't, so she deleted them.
    I've called to let you know--
    "Lauren?"
    Her stomach somersaulted, the way it always did when her husband's voice
rolled down the line. She could have fallen in love with a man who owned his
voice. She could have--
    "I can hear you breathing," he said. She expected the words to
sound distant. They were speaking across an ocean, after all, but his voice was
clear and alert.
    She cleared her throat and dismissed the could-haves. They wouldn't be,
and that was a fact she'd accepted years ago. "Jacob. I apologize for
disturbing you this late."
    "You haven't disturbed me. What do you need?"
    "I've called to let you know I'll be out of town for the weekend.
I've notified the security company and assigned the staff to light duty
only." She paused, reaching for courage.
    Jacob spoke into the gap. "You're under no obligation to inform me
of your travels. We've discussed this."
    His words were meant in the spirit of kindness. Lauren knew that but
knowing didn't ease the sting of the other meaning. The "I don't care
about your comings and goings because we're nothing but social partners"
meaning. She glanced at her e-mail and took strength from it.
    "I didn't call to tell