I put the phone down and smiled to myself. Another successful call to a local businessman had just got us twenty-thousand dollars closer to our new building. I’d been working at the shelter for four weeks now and I loved it here.
Hugo accompanied me every day, and while men weren’t usually allowed inside the place, he was given special permission by Kristen, as long as he kept to himself and stayed with me at all times.
That rule had lasted about five minutes though, because the kids loved him, and they were constantly pestering him to play soccer or baseball or check out some video game. More often than not, he politely refused because he rarely let me out of his sight. But now that I had my own lockable office, he was a little more open to giving in to the kids requests occasionally.
I had told him to go and have fun about half an hour earlier, when I’d known I wouldn’t be leaving the office for a while.
The women and children who lived here were so inspiring and they made me count my blessings every single day.
I looked around the little office Kristen had set aside for me and blinked back tears of happiness. I really felt like I belonged here. I loved working with Kristen and the other shelter workers, and I loved that I could put my fundraising skills to good use. I’d manage to raise almost half a million dollars in donations in the past few weeks and it gave me such a sense of purpose.
And just as my working life was starting to take off, my personal life had taken a pleasant upswing too. Not only was my husband incredibly sexy, but he was a machine in bed. I felt the tightening in my core as I thought about the things that man could do to my body.
He was still the devil incarnate, but he was an incredibly talented one. It had been two weeks since we’d first had sex, and whenever we were together, we’d done little else since. I found myself thinking about what he was doing throughout the day, and counted down the hours until I could be alone with him again.
I wondered if he did the same. I knew that he didn’t do love. He’d made himself perfectly clear many times about that fact, but whenever he came home at night, he always seemed to be as desperate as I was to get to bed. Although more often than not, we never even made it that far before he was tearing my clothes off.
I shook my head to clear it. He probably never thought about me much at all when he was working. He was too busy running the Montoya empire, not to mention he was constantly surrounded by beautiful women at his hotel. I smiled to myself as an idea popped into my head. Maybe there was a way to make sure he was thinking about me, if only for a little while?
I picked up my cell and dialed his number. I knew that what I was about to do was dangerous, but I had come to enjoy trying to push Alejandro’s buttons, especially as I now knew exactly which ones to press.
‘Hola, princesa,’ he answered, his voice low and gravelly.
‘Hey,’ I breathed as goosebumps prickled along my arms. Even the sound of his voice made me weak at the knees.
‘Is everything okay? It’s not like you to call me in the middle of the day?’
‘I know,’ I purred. ‘But I was just wondering if I had permission to buy myself some panties from the store. There’s a Target at the end of the block, and I have a meeting this afternoon with some possible donors. My skirt is really short today, and I don’t want them getting a glimpse of anything they shouldn’t and investing for the wrong reasons, do I?’ I stifled a giggle.
‘What?’ I heard the growl in his throat. ‘You left the house with no panties on?’
‘Yes,’ I purred.
‘What the fuck!’ he snapped. ‘Where are you?’
‘At the shelter.’
‘The shelter? How did you get there?’
‘Hugo drove me, of course.’
‘So, you’ve been sitting in the back seat of Hugo’s car with no panties and a short skirt on?’
‘Yes,’ I stifled another giggle.
‘Alana! Why the fuck would you do that?’ he barked.
‘Because you said no panties. I thought that was the rule.’
‘You had better be fucking kidding me with this!’ he snarled and I suddenly pictured him sitting at his desk with steam coming out of his ears.
I couldn’t hold my laughter in any longer and I burst into a fit of giggles.
‘Alana!’ he shouted.
‘I’m just playing with you,’ I said when I could finally breathe.
‘So, you are wearing panties?’
‘Of course I am. I’m sorry. But you’re so easy,’ I laughed again but he didn’t join in with me and I wondered if he’d appreciated the joke at all.
‘Easy, am I?’ he growled. ‘I’ve half a mind to come over there and spank your ass right now.’
‘Well, I’m leaving soon. So, you’ll have to wait until you get home later,’ I breathed.
‘You do realize you’ve now given me a raging boner and I have a meeting in ten minutes?’
‘Sorry,’ I said again with a smile. ‘I’m sure you can figure something out.’
‘Take off your panties and send me a picture,’ he growled.
‘What? No!’
‘It’s your fault my cock is leaking, princess, now send me something I can jerk off to nice and quick.’
I bit my lower lip. I’d never done anything like that before, but the thought of him having that picture on his cell phone and looking at it whenever he wanted to, sent a thrill right through me. ‘You wouldn’t show anyone else, would you?’
‘What? You really think I’d show anyone my wife’s pussy?’
‘Okay,’ I said as I put him on speaker. I slid my panties off and angled my phone for the perfect shot. I pressed send and then I pressed the phone back to my ear.
‘Fuck, Alana,’ I heard him hiss. ‘That is the most beautiful coño I’ve ever seen in my life. When I get home tonight I want you ready for me, princess, because I am going to fuck you so hard you’ll struggle to walk tomorrow.’
I felt my insides melting like warm butter. I loved his filthy mouth. There was a knock at the office door and I jumped. ‘I have to go. Someone wants to see me.’
‘Fine. I’ll make do with this photograph for now. Now, put your fucking panties back on.’
I laughed. ‘Yes, Sir. I’ll see you later.’
I slipped my panties back on and opened the door to see Lucy Callaghan standing there, her eyes wide and brimming with tears.
She had arrived at the shelter four weeks earlier – just eighteen years old, although she could have passed for much younger, and with no-one in the world to turn to.
I knew she had a story. I’d seen the scars on her arms and back when she’d changed her shirt in the den one day. We’d become close in the past few weeks though, and I knew she’d tell me what that story was when the time was right.
‘Hi, sweetheart. Is everything okay?’ I asked as I put an arm around her shoulder.
‘No,’ she sobbed and shook her head as she walked into my office.
I guided her to the chair opposite my desk and closed the door behind me. Then I poured her a glass of cool water from the jug on my desk and handed it to her. She took a few deep breaths before taking a drink. I let her catch her breath and she looked up at me, her big brown eyes shining with tears.
‘Want to talk about it?’ I asked her as I handed her a tissue.
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Okay. Why not? Are you in trouble?’
She nodded. ‘Big trouble,’ she sniffed and my heart broke in two. What possible trouble could this young girl have got herself into that she couldn’t tell me about?
I pulled up my chair and sat beside her. ‘I know it must feel like you have no-one to turn to, but I’m here for you, Lucy. I promise. No matter what you tell me, I’m not going anywhere. You can trust me.’
She wiped her eyes with the tissue. ‘I know I can. But I can’t tell you this, because you’ll have to keep it a secret and I know that you won’t be able to. You’ll have to tell someone.’
I pressed my lips together. She was scaring me now. ‘Have you hurt someone?’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘Then what is it, sweetheart? I can’t help you if you won’t tell me what we’re facing here. But, if you tell me what it is, maybe we can work it out?’
She looked up at me. ‘Promise you won’t tell a soul,’ she implored me.
I looked at her and felt my heart breaking in two. What the hell else could I do but agree? ‘Okay. I promise,’ I said.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she sniffed and I almost sighed with relief.
‘Pregnant?’ I asked instead.
She nodded.
‘Okay. We can deal with that,’ I said.
She shook her head again. ‘That’s not all,’ she said and started to sob again.
I squeezed her hand. ‘Okay. What else is there?’ I asked softly.
‘I’m only sixteen,’ she whispered. ‘After my parents died, I was going to be taken into care, but I ran away instead to live with my boyfriend.’
Oh! Sixteen. Shit! ‘But your paperwork, it all said you were eighteen.’
‘Blake forged it all so we could get married without consent. It was all part of his plan …’ she started to cry again and I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and stroked her hair as she sobbed against my chest. I assumed Blake was her ex-boyfriend and father of her baby.
‘Everything is going to be okay,’ I whispered.
‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? They’ll make me go back to Chicago. They’ll take me into care,’ she sobbed.
‘I won’t tell anyone – for now, I promise. But we’re going to have to figure out what to do next, Lucy.’
‘We?’ she said as she looked up at me with wide eyes.
‘Yes, we,’ I smiled at her.
‘Everything okay, Alana?’ Hugo asked me as I sat in the back of his car on the way home.
‘What?’ I asked absent-mindedly, even though I’d heard his question. ‘Oh, yes, just some shelter stuff.’
He nodded and went back to driving and I went back to staring out of the window and wondering what the hell I would do about Lucy. After she had stopped crying she had told me that she was three months pregnant. Her parents had died in a car accident a couple of years ago and she had been living a life on the run ever since.
The father of her baby was her ex-boyfriend, Blake, who from what she said was a nasty piece of work. He had basically coerced her into running away with him and had managed to get her some fake documents. She’d been all set to marry him when she’d caught him cheating on her with a waitress and had jumped on the first bus she had found, which happened to be headed to L.A.
She was terrified. Terrified of being pregnant; of being taken into care; of having to leave the shelter she had come to think of as home, but it seemed she was mostly terrified that Blake would find her.
I wracked my brain to think of a solution that would protect her from all her fears, and right now I couldn’t think of one. I knew I’d have to talk to Kristen eventually, but only once Lucy had given me permission. I was a firm believer that a problem shared was a problem halved.
I wondered briefly if Alejandro could help me. I was sure he could find out more about Blake for a start, and he had plenty of officials in his pockets who could help us out. But, I couldn’t. He had made it abundantly clear that we were about sex and nothing more. I couldn’t betray Lucy’s trust by telling him, when I wasn’t even sure he would care or offer any help at all.
No, for now at least, I would have to figure this out on my own.
