Page 72 of His Captive

Buddy shakes his head in disagreement.

“No, she ain’t, boss.” He lifts back on to his feet and leans across my desk.

“She's making you live again,” he walks out with the biggest grin I’ve seen on his face in a very long time.

People have put Buddy down over the years. Treated him like a nobody. But to me, he’s always spoken a lot of sense. His head isn’t clogged with the worries that come along with living in the real world, and he sees things without the filters of if, buts and maybes.

That doesn’t mean he’s right about this situation though.

I manage to calm myself down before I head to the conservatory. When I get there, she’s already waiting for me, wearing one of my shirts and sitting at an angle on the chair that reveals her panties. I shake my head as I approach her.

She knows she’s testing me by helping herself to my clothes, but with her looking sexy as fuck in my shirt, I’m not about to do fuck all about it.

I sit opposite her, purposely ignoring the fact she’s wearing it. She won’t be getting a rise from me unless it’s coming from my dick.

“I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed your shirt?” she goads.

“Not at all,” I shrug. Acting unfazed when really I want to rip it from her body and use it as a gag for her pretty little mouth.

“Good,” she smiles, sitting back and raising her knees to expose more of her perfectly slender thighs. My pulse races, and my cock stretches in my pants.

A throat clears from behind me, that’s too low and gruff to be Mrs. Pritchard’s. I turn around to find Tristan, his eyes looking past me, stretching wide as they take in every perfect piece of what’s mine.

“Sorry, sir. I just. Um. Me and Joel are ready to leave.”

“Well then...fucking leave,” I snap. My glare enough warning for him to remove his eyes from Lysa’s legs.

“Yes, sir... Have a good weekend, sir.” He backs out of the room. His eyes searching for something else to look at on his way out.

“See what you do Lysa? Not only have you made a member of my staff feel uncomfortable, you now have me debating whether I should scoop out his eyes with my dessert spoon or slice through his cock with a rusty razor.”

She looks at me like she doesn’t know whether to laugh or worry.

“Where are they going?” she asks, leaning forward and taking a sip of the wine Mrs. Pritchard has served up with lunch.

“There’s a festival in town this weekend. They’re more useful to me down there than they are up here.”

“Do you really own the town?” she asks, spiraling her finger around the rim of her glass like she’s nervous asking.

“Depends how you look at it.” I shrug. “I own eighty percent of the commercial buildings and forty-five percent of the residential properties. The bistro is my business, the bar and the beauty salon too. And, I took shares in some of the smaller businesses to get them back on their feet,” I explain.

“I’ll bet you kick ass at Monopoly,” she smiles, and I relax in my seat a little smugly.

“So you’re kind of like Sorrento is in Cooper’s Ridge around here?” she asks, looking disappointed.

“I am nothing like Sorrento,” I correct her.

“I don’t lend people money and charge them extortionate rates. I barely charge them rates at all. I help other businesses build around mine. With an aim to make the whole town a success.”

“So the town is important to you?”

I don’t have the answer to her question. I don’t know what the town is to me anymore. It started off as a ‘fuck you’ to Sorrento. It was his town to start with and he’d dragged it into the gutter with his greed.

Before I’d purchased the first building in Cannonville, I’d already secured enough money to last me a few lifetimes.

I hadn’t needed it.

I’d wanted it.

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