Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
All it would take was a single tug and she’d be exposed and vulnerable.
Alexander’s eyes widened. A small reaction, but enough to tell her that he’d noticed the bow, and was calculating how easy it would be to undress her.
Not that she had much on under the cloak.
“…Sir,” she finished.
His attention jumped from her hip to her face. The light in this room was low enough that she couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but she knew they were a lovely hazel. Brown around the outside, and a clear leaf green at the iris.
She held his gaze for a moment, then very deliberately bowed her head.
Alexander stepped forward and she caught her breath. The toes of his shiny dress shoes were mere inches from her knees.
He stared down at her, and once more the silence stretched long and seemingly endless.
“When I return,” he murmured, “you will remove the cloak, and we will begin negotiations.”
Alexander turned and walked out of the room.
Alena exhaled, sagging for a moment. She’d been building to this point for months, each step she’d taken a carefully chosen strategy.
Alexander Wagner had been easy enough to research, but hard to get to. His position and wealth meant he was protected by layers of corporate structure and a personal security team that accompanied him whenever he was out in public.
She’d considered and rejected half a dozen strategies, and that was after months of trying to get what she needed via other avenues.
In the end, she kept coming back to Alexander Wagner, CEO of Wagner Global. If there’d been another way she would have taken it. But this—her kneeling, ready to submit, was the best play.
It hadn’t taken her long to zero in on the one aberration from standard billionaire behavior in Alexander’s life—monthly trips to random cities all over the world. She’d assumed the purpose of the sojourns was to assess the possibility of expanding Wagner into those areas.
Curiosity, her greatest trait or worst failing depending on one’s point of view, had taken hold, and she’d set about trying to discover exactly who he was meeting with.
What she’d found was that Alexander’s visits sometimes took place when the people he’d been meeting with were out of the country. If the CEO of a leading goods manufacturer in a particular city or country wasn’t in town the weekend Alexander was there, it seemed highly unlikely that he’d met with a vice president or other lower ranking official. Billionaire CEOs met with other billionaire CEOs.
The question became, what was he doing when he went away for a long weekend?
Curiosity firmly in control, Alena had explored myriad possibilities. It was the list of other wealthy people who were in the same cities on the same dates that proved to be the key that unlocked the puzzle.
Once she found it, the pattern was obvious—several dozen wealthy, influential people ended up in the same cities at the same times. Rarely all at once, but the names on the list she’d compiled all connected to one degree or the other. That might have been a symptom of their wealth, but often there was no discernible reason for them to be there. No sporting or political event, no recreational activity, such as skiing, that would explain why all these people were visiting a town in the Alps in January or February.
With several assumptions, bribes to hotel managers and town car services, and leaps in logic, she pieced together the existence of the Orchid Club.
A secret BDSM club for the uber wealthy.
The perfect way for her to get close to Alexander.
It had taken her a month to put together the Alena Moore identity and portfolio. Alena Moore wealth came from old money—well, what Americans considered old money—as well as current business interests.
Alena Moore was a woman of similar status and background as the people on the list she’d made. It had been tricky, but not impossible to identify and organize an introduction to the Orchid Club. She’d had to delve into her own past and a friend of a friend of a friend had finally connected her to Lillian.
Alena had been offered membership just before the Copenhagen event.
When Alexander had walked in, Alena had hidden her triumphant smile behind a glass of champagne. The satisfaction of being right was a wonderfully familiar sensation. Alena lived for the buzz of dominoes falling exactly as placed, of puzzle pieces clicking together. It was what made her so good at her job.
Alena enjoyed the game, but she loved to win.
* * *
The sounds of muted footfalls brought her focus back to the moment.
Alena reached up and pulled some dark hair forward over one shoulder, fluffing it a little. Given his preference for blondes she’d considered dying it, but had decided there were simply some things she wouldn’t do. Not many, but bleaching her hair was one of them.