Page 67 of Monstrous Urges
But she stayed at Kramer, O’Donnel, and List. Which is…curious.
It wasn’t due to a lack of intelligence or drive. She was purposeful in turning down every other offer.
Out of loyalty.
That’s something new she’s learned in the last fifteen years…
A few years later, though, after an inhuman number of billable hours at the firm, she handed in her notice. So did Alistair and Gabriel Black, at their own firms. The three of them formed Crown and Black, pooling their resources, talent…and more than a few poached clients.
I smirk grimly. There it is. There’s the traitorous streak I know all too well.
I frown as I dig deeper, looking for anything I can about the formation of their firm. Alistair and Gabriel come from some money…not much. Their grandfather, Charles Black, was once a bit of a kingmaker in the gray underbelly of New York. A wannabe gangster who couldn’t quite stomach getting his hands dirty. Apparently he was an early investor and board member of Crown and Black, but it looks like he’s recently been kicked out and doesn’t have anything to do with the firm anymore.
But even there, Charles is wealthy, but he’s not the sort of wealthy that could fund the startup of a firm like Crown and Black. Nothing I read about him, including the tidbit that his own grandsons and a young daughter he’s had with his much younger trophy second wife seem to loathe him, would suggest he had that much invested.
So where the fuck did they get their startup cash?
I put down my drink, and my fingers fly over the keys as I pull up whatever public-record financials I can find. When that isn’t enough, I text Dimitri, a brute-force hacker I have on retainer. I have no fucking idea what time it is in Tokyo right now, but the kid never sleeps anyway.
Sure enough, he responds instantly and gets to work.
And I sit back and let my eyes drag across image after image of a grown-up Taylor Crown.
Aka Annika Brancovich: the Trojan horse who let the enemy inside my walls to destroy my world.
She was always beautiful, I suppose. I was pissed at the idea of marrying for political reasons when I was just twenty-two, and finally free of war after years of bloodshed in the Balkan conflicts. But I was livid at having to marry the daughter of our enemy.
Even so, I’ll admit she was beautiful in that youthful way: tall, leggy, long chestnut brown hair—dyed, obviously—down to her waist. But the Annika I know now, who I’ve taken, and who will play a role to get me what I want, is something else altogether.
She’s simply gorgeous now.
She’s matured into a woman that any man would trip over himself to have. She’s still got the legs and the height. But her hips have filled out into a toned ass, and her tits…
Jesus Christ, I’m…hard.
Very, very hard.
It’s not just that she’s grown into a stunning woman. The world is full of those.
…But none of them, at least hardly any, have the same black tastes as me.
And one of those is her.
My mind replays the delicious way she whimpered in the dark for me. The way she wanted me to chase her. Begged me to, in fact.
To hunt her. To pin her down. To hurt her.
To be my willing and eager little fuck toy and cum slut.
For a brief second, I allow my hand to drop to the obscene bulge in my pants. I cup myself as my eyes slide back to the screen, to an image of Annika—Taylor—smiling for the camera at some charity ball hosted by Crown and Black. She’s in a stunning shimmering green gown that plunges down her back and shows off a tasteful yet teasing amount of cleavage. The contrast between the glittering emerald and the fiery red of her hair brings out a hunger in me that…
Stop it.
I yank my hand away from my throbbing, thick erection and glare at the picture.
No.
I scroll back to the earliest things I can find on her. There’s a great-aunt—Florence, with whom she lived in New York the summer before she started college. But Florence died essentially the week “Taylor” started school. And before that…