Arran’s Obsession (Body Count, #1)

In my arms, Genevieve slept. I’d drifted but not fallen unconscious, my dick still inside her keeping me awake. It thickened all the more, and I slowly drew out of her then back in. No rush or hurry, just feeling.

She had my cum inside her. I only wanted to add more.

We rested on the pillows, almost face to face, her head a little lower than mine, and I shifted back so I had a view down her body, the dancing candlelight revealing the place we were joined. With my knuckle, I caressed her cheek, down her throat then palmed her breast. Genevieve was a knockout. Perfect. Mine.

It made me want to ruin her, or lock her away.

Keep her for certain.

Continuing on, I spread my fingers over her pussy, spearing them around my dick. The wetness we’d created earlier dampened my fingers, and I thrust again, keeping it slow so she didn’t wake, though this time, it felt suspiciously like I wanted her to rest rather than not join in.

Genevieve sighed in her sleep. I kept up my roll in and out of her tight channel. Now I’d done this once, the whole deal, I was addicted. Far beyond where the past week had taken me.

Fucking her slowly, I focused on the feeling of being in her, connected to her, her pussy swallowing my dick just like she’d taken all the shit I’d gathered from around my apartment.

Every single dick-shaped thing I owned or bought was going in her cunt at some point. A permanent reminder of my obsession.

I hardened even more and bit back a groan. Then Genevieve bucked against me, a soft sound of pleasure leaving her lips.

Her eyes opened, and she reached for me. Kissed me.

I seated myself deep inside her then grabbed her ass and lifted, swinging us both from the bed. Carrying her to the window, I pushed her against the glass and fucked into her, then dropped her legs, spun her around, and drove back in, her naked body flush to the cool panes and me behind her. Beneath us, the streets were almost empty, the few remaining clubgoers staggering home in dribs and drabs, the faint line of silver in the sky announcing the approaching dawn.

“This city will know you’re my woman.” I fucked her harder.

She reached for my hip, her other arm bracing the window. I found her clit and caressed her, needing to feel her throbs because I was half awake and focused on coming in her without delay.

Working her with nothing hiding my actions from anyone looking up, I sped up until I was fucking her in a fury, mindless. She cursed and grabbed my wrist, clamping down on me in a way that had me seeing fucking stars. Feeling her orgasms destroyed me. I allowed my body to take over, gave a few more punishing thrusts, and came.

Slamming, damning, conviction.

Ragged breaths and desperation.

Pure, unbeatable pleasure.

Keeping her clamped to me, I returned us to the bed, not wanting to let go. On the sheets, I still didn’t release her, curling around her back. I touched where we were joined because my dick never softened around this woman, and got my fingers wet again. Took them to her lips.

“Suck.”

Genevieve held my gaze and opened her mouth. I drove my arousal-coated fingers over her tongue. She sucked them, her eyelids fluttering closed.

Then we stayed like that for minutes, her light sucking on my fingers and my dick buried deep the strangest form of relaxation.

Eventually, she bit the pad of my finger, and I drew my hand away.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” she said.

Of course, the other shoe had to drop. The truth of whatever she was would come out.

“I talked to your staff about Cherry last night. I want to find out who killed her, and assuming it’s Don because he happened to be there isn’t enough. My gut feel is I need more information.”

I furrowed my brow, surprised. “I’m doing my own investigation.”

She entwined our fingers. “Can we compare notes when we’re ready? Between us, we might work it out.”

For a moment, I stayed quiet, the weird sense of us shifting to something new. “Fine. Don’t do anything dangerous.”

“I won’t. There’s something else. I need you to help me find my dad. It’s not what you think,” she added quickly. “I’m not planning anything or plotting against you. It’s for both our purposes. One because I need to know he’s okay, and two, I think he has information you’ll want.”

I scowled into the dark room. “What are you talking about?”

Genevieve turned to face me, my dick leaving her. I scowled more and pulled her leg over mine, but she paused me with a press to my chest, something meaningful in her eyes that I didn’t like at all. As if what she was about to say was dangerous.

“Back in your friends’ mansion, Cassie showed me a picture of a child. She said you were seeking them and had been for years. I recognised the photograph. Then when we returned, I realised where from.”

My breathing ceased. Shock froze me. There was no way.

Genevieve winced. “I just heard how that sounded in my head. That I’ve taken something deeply personal to you and made it into an opportunity for me. I haven’t. It’s true.”

My jaw worked, but I couldn’t form words, the coincidence too unlikely.

“It isn’t a trap,” she tried again but weakly.

“What does this have to do with your dad?” I managed, my tone hard.

“First, tell me who the child is to you.”

“My sister or brother. My mother had a second baby, a long time after me.”

She nodded, as if this was her conclusion from the backstory I’d had no idea she’d heard. “Dad had a girlfriend named Flora for a while. She had a kid. The child in your picture.”

Fuck. I lurched over her, imploring her with every cell in my body. “Don’t. Fucking don’t do this.”

“Jesus, Arran.” She grabbed my wrist. “Her toddler’s name was Addie. A little girl. Adelia. She was the same child as in your picture. Honest to God.”

A girl. My heart thundered, and I hunted for the lie in her eyes. If this was a trick, it was the cruellest she could ever have devised. The problem was in the name she’d given—I didn’t think she was playing me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to believe it.

Addie. Adelia.

She dug her nails into my skin. “In my dad’s room in our flat, there’s a picture of me with her. Dad took that photo. It’s all the proof you need.”

I released her. Sat back. “Kids all look the same. How can you be sure?”

“No, they don’t. I recognised her, and her dungarees.”

“Was he the father?”

“My dad? No. He can’t keep a secret to save his life. If Addie was his, he would’ve said. He and Flora weren’t together that long, but I know after they broke up, they kept hooking up for a few years. Then she moved away.”

“Where?”

“I’ve no idea, but Dad would know. They stayed in touch, even after her marriage. He was a shit boyfriend to Flora, to Mum, too, but loved them and stayed friends.” She watched me. “That’s why you need to find him as much as I do.”

I dropped down on the bed, my brain fucked up over this revelation. Hope was a terrible thing. It sidestepped reason and beckoned in betrayal. Yet this was the first clue I’d had since I’d found out the child existed.

The girl. My sister.

“Blackmail doesn’t suit you,” I forced out.

She sighed. “Ever since I made the connection, I knew you’d think that. Believe me or don’t. You’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll fetch the photo. You can send your friends to find Dad. Protect yourself however you need to. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

I didn’t answer, lost in memories, abandoned hunts, and dead ends.

I’d no idea what a happy family was like, but I hoped Addie had it. I tested the name. If she wasn’t real, that name was going to fucking kill me.

“Why don’t you know where she is?” Genevieve broke the silence.

Suddenly wiped out, I drowned in the lifetime of stories I had, of shit never shared, and the rigid hold I maintained on my image and how much people knew about me. I had a choice to make. Trust her and risk everything, or ignore her temptation and stick with life as I knew it.

No. It wasn’t a choice. Not anymore.

This woman had come to me for reasons I didn’t fully know. She’d taken over my world, and my senses. My ability to stop her died.

Turning my gaze back on her, I found myself talking.

“You had a list of questions for me. How I got my money, how my friends are connected to my business. What I’ll tell you starts with public record, as you put it, then goes deeper. But we’ll start with the easiest part. My father, and my friends’ father, ran a trafficking ring. They established routes through Europe and kidnapped girls and women to be sold for sex. My father is in jail for life for his sins, theirs is dead.”

Genevieve stared, her beautiful lips apart.

“My father was the chief of police and a lord of the realm. Lord Kendrick. A title that can’t be taken from him and will one day pass to me. With it came the estate I took you to as well as a lot of money. Most of it was seized by the government as it was tainted by his trade, but my father was devious. His inheritance from his father stayed locked in vaults in other countries. Untouchable by the law. His empire fell when I was seventeen. I couldn’t handle the fallout so spent months sleeping in my car and evading anyone I knew because of my age.”

“You were sleeping in your car at seventeen?”

I uttered a hard laugh. “Because I’d burned the house down. My mother was dead, my father in jail. I had nothing. My friends found me and supported me, but I was reeling. On my eighteenth birthday, I drove to my father’s lawyer’s office and told them I wanted to claim whatever was left of my birthright.”

Genevieve’s lip trembled. “I don’t even know where to start with that. What happened to you in those months?”

“I fought for money. My dad had made sure I was strong, resilient, and used to pain. I let people bet on me and took and delivered beatings for money. It’s how I met Convict. Shade was via a different path, though equally bloody.”

“You survived, then you took that inheritance and made your empire. God, Arran.”

Not one person had heard or summarised my background in this way.

Her eyes lined with tears. “How did you grow up? What kind of things did you see? Did your dad expose you to what he was doing?”

My pulse thudded, images flashing in front of my eyes that I wished I’d never seen. His parties. The bored, naked women waiting to act for him. The pain they hid. The delight in him when he got a response he wanted.

“He didn’t hide anything. Even in my earliest memories, he abused women in front of me. He hurt them for pleasure and made me watch. Punished me with his fists if I dared disobey him, real or imagined. Now, when I hunt down and kill men who I know hurt women, I do it wishing they were him.”

She recoiled, shock evident. “You… No. I don’t want to know about them. How did no one rescue you?”

“He fucking owned the police. Who would they call? The people who worked for him were scared of him. I never left his house.”

Her eyes shuttered closed. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Hugged me.

Fucking hell.

“He gifted me Alisha when I wasn’t even a teenager so I could learn his trade.”

“But you didn’t touch her.”

“Never once.”

Her embrace tightened. “That’s why you stayed a virgin. Because of everything you’d seen.”

“Or had done to me.”

“By your father.”

It wasn’t a question, but I left that hanging, the additional answer not forming. “When I was older, after my father had been caught and the fire erased our house, I tried to be normal, or at least copy what I saw other people doing. I tried to have sex. Never a girlfriend, but I let a woman come on to me in a bar then take me outside.”

Genevieve inched back, her lips pursed. She swiped at her eyes. “Why is it that I don’t know the woman, and am fully aware that you never fucked her, yet I want to kill her?”

Despite everything, I allowed a savage grin. “There’s my little maniac. Don’t you dare talk to me about previous boyfriends or they’ll probably end up in pieces and floating down Deadwater River.”

She sucked in a breath. “God. Fine. Tell me the rest of what happened.”

“She blew me on her knees on the wet ground. All I felt was panic and anger. I let her finish, then walked away like an asshole. I tried it again, and the same thing happened. No pleasure, but a fucked-up head.”

“How…? I don’t know if I want to ask this. How do you feel when we sleep together?”

I watched her. The lips I’d tasted while she slept and now needed more and more. The body that I’d never get enough of. There was more at the edges of my thought, but I couldn’t let it in. “Different.”

She flinched. “No girl wants to hear that.”

“Why, you don’t care about my opinion?” I sounded petulant but I was stating a fact. From the start, she’d wanted to leave. She’d stayed but not out of devotion to me.

Genevieve’s cheeks flooded red. She fell back, dropping eye contact. “What happened to your mother? Tell me that part. She’s a missing piece in all of this, and I can’t work out how she connects in. Who was she? Where did she exist in all this?”

“Audrey was a sex worker my father bought. He got her pregnant then took her baby, not letting her tell anyone else including me what she was to me.”

“He took you from her? That evil bastard. Did you see her when you were growing up? Why didn’t she say?”

“My father’s control was absolute, and I assume he didn’t feel there was any danger from her. Audrey regularly came to Kendrick Manor with the other women bought in to entertain Dad from the brothels established from his trade. She was as much part of my growing up as any other of the familiar faces.”

“If she wasn’t able to tell you who she was, did she try to get close to you?”

My mouth dried. I couldn’t stomach what Audrey had done. Nobody knew this, though Camden suspected it after what he’d seen one night at Kendrick Manor. He and Jamieson had once tried to talk to me about abuse and living through it, but as much as I cared about my friends, I couldn’t go there with them. Didn’t want it said.

“No. She suffered for years then provided evidence against him and posted it online. A full account of everything she’d experienced at his hands, including about me. But for the seventeen years before that, she did exactly what my father told her. Performed for him. Rarely spoke to me. The only part of her I had, beyond DNA, was my name. She gave that to me. It’s why I believe you about Adelia. It fits.”

“Audrey, Arran, Adelia. She named her babies with her initial.”

“She tried to fuck me, too,” I got out, putting the words ahead of any sympathy that tried to diminish what she’d done. “On one of his twisted evenings, Dad ordered her to take me, and she obeyed. She heard him, crossed the room, and stroked my chest. Ran her hand down my body.”

My throat clogged. I coughed to clear it.

“I guess she thought I’d never know who she was. Divine, because that was her sex worker name, was so messed up by the world, and by me and my father, that she would’ve gone there just to be close to me. So don’t ask about sex and how it makes me feel. It’s right there in the name of my clubs. Divine and Divide, because that’s all I am. A son divided.”

Genevieve’s soft sound of dismay didn’t stop me.

“In Divine, I spend my life trying to protect women and girls, yet I failed the mother and daughter who were the ones who mattered most. But that mother failed me, too. And I hate myself for even thinking that. Now you know exactly how to destroy me, Genevieve. Use that as you will.”