Claire: The Forced Virgin Of The Billionaire

I felt the color drain from my face, “I just left a voicemail for my friend to tell her I was fine. I don’t want her meddling in my mess and putting her family in danger in the process and thought if I just left a message to tell her I’m fine she would back off.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking so much like his brother that I felt a stab of fear in my gut. He shook his head, “No more, okay? I can’t deal right now.” He left the room. I followed him into Azriel’s office.

“What’s going on?”

He shook his head and reached for a phone charger plugged into a power bar under Azriel’s desk and plugged his cell in, “Don’t worry about anything. It’s all good.”

“I call bullshit,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.

He rolled his eyes, “Alright, we can’t find him. We’re looking. I’m torn between going myself and staying. He wants you safe so I’m staying like he wants and trying to organize things from here is frustrating.”

“What about Earl and Juan Carlos?”

“He dealt with both of them; we know that.” Dario said.

I tried to ignore the cold pit in my gut. “Then where could he be?”

“Exactly.”

I sat down behind the big desk. I saw a photo in a frame of him, his uncle, and his cousins, their kids, and spouses, around a Christmas tree. There was a small wedding photo of who must’ve been his Mom with his father, by the looks of it, and beside that photo was the engagement ring he’d given me. I’d left it in Tessa’s car and she must’ve returned it to him.

I leaned over and picked it up and looked at it sparkling in the light.

Dario was in the doorway now, “I’ve gotta go outside and talk to someone. Stay out of trouble, please?”

“I will,” I told him as I put the ring back down. I stared at the picture of Azriel and his family around the Christmas tree. They were all smiling and looking happy, except him. He looked like he was forcing a smile for the camera but his eyes looked dark and broody.

He looked like gangster Azriel in the photo, not nice dinner date Azriel. I stared at the other photo of the young and pretty dark-haired woman in the white dress and veil standing beside the happy-looking youthful Thomas Clarke Sr as it said at the bottom of the frame.

I wondered if he was a criminal back then or if something changed him to become that way.

I wondered what might’ve happened to Azriel to make him swing back and forth like a pendulum between good guy and bad guy. If he made it back could I find a way to keep it swinging in one direction versus the other or would that be totally out of my control?

** ** **

Rosita couldn’t talk me into more than a few bites of food for dinner. I just wasn’t hungry. I knew I hadn’t eaten much the last few days but how could I? I went to bed early, zoning out in front of the television and feeling myself drift before it was even dark outside.

The next day dragged, too. Dario was miserable. I heard him snapping at Rosita and at one of the guards. I hid out in the bedroom all day, trying to watch TV, read, I helped Rosita cook dinner. I tried to keep busy. I didn’t know what to think.

If Azriel was gone, what’d happen to me?

If he was gone, how would I feel?

I didn’t know how I felt about him. I felt numb about him, confused about him. I cried myself to sleep that night because I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t cope with the worry, the stress, the fear of the unknown, the flashes in my mind of him being sweet to me.

** ** **

“What’s this?” I heard in the dark, “Unauthorized sleepwear!”

I jackknifed straight up to sitting. Azriel was on his knees on the bed leaning over me, “You’re here,” I breathed and his lips were on my jaw and then my lips. He took my face in his hands and kissed me long and deep. I put my arms around his neck and he kissed me again and then backed up and then off the bed,

“I need a shower badly, baby. I’ll be back in five. Get naked!”

He backed up and threw his t-shirt over his head onto the floor and was undoing his pants as he headed to the bathroom.

I sat there in the dark, heart thumping loudly and then a minute later, without putting any thought into it, I padded to the bathroom and it was already filled with steam. I took off my pajamas and opened the shower door and stepped in behind him. I guess I had an inkling of how I was feeling after all.

Azriel’s POV

She was here, in the shower with me, voluntarily, happy to see me, her arms around me. I flinched at first as she’d come in so quietly it startled me when I felt her reach around and put both of her arms around my waist. She put her cheek on my back and squeezed.

Seeing her sleeping in my bed when I got home gave me the oddest most possessive but yet happy feeling, like the first time I’d come in and found her sleeping in my shirt but multiple-fold after all that had happened.

Now she’d come to me in the shower. She gave my back a soft k**s. I put my hands on the wall to brace myself because I was a little overwhelmed at that. Then I felt her soaping up my back. I closed my eyes and absorbed it, all of it.

I was never so tired in my life but I just had to be inside of her. I turned around and got her front up against the wet shower wall and drove inside of her so fast and so hard that I saw a flash of shock in her eyes as I spun her and heard her gasp in surprise as I entered her. The sharp intake of breath was just enough to give me a little tiny bit of that rush I wanted, that I needed.