Freed Read Online Free Page B

about what they wanted to do and the money was essential to them pursuing their dreams. Your sister’s illness is a more extreme case, but Lori isn’t an idiot. Each case is judged on its own merit.”
    Her sister wasn’t real. I would wager the diamond she wore around her neck that her cover story was entirely fake. But the concerns she was voicing were true enough.
    “So Madame Lorraine doesn’t care?”  
    “She cares more than you could imagine,” I replied. For the last twenty years, Lori had been haunted by the death of her sister, kidnapped off the streets of London. But because Sandra had been a troubled teenager, bouncing in and out of foster homes, she’d been classified as a runaway and the police had paid no further attention to the case. “Lori screens the Dominants at the auction about a hundred times more rigorously than her submissives. Every single one of us is aware of the financial dynamic at play. I doubt if anyone ever just looks at a checklist and starts to play right then and there. As you yourself demonstrated, checklists are just a form to fill out so you can get the money you really need.”
    She shot me a startled look. “Is that why you didn’t fuck me in Bangkok?”
    “You looked terrified of me in Bangkok,” I responded. “That’s not a turn on.”
    She flushed. “I’m not terrified now.”
    The theatre had been emptying while we’d been talking. “Let’s continue this conversation in the car?” I rose to my feet, extending my arm to her. She took it readily, lacing her fingers in mine.
    “So Emma is in Belarus? Where’s Whitney?”
    “Milan. She’s apprenticing with Prada.”
    She looked uncertain at my answer. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it.
    As we rode in the car, I was replaying our conversation. Her words right after the concert had ended echoed in my head. She had no dreams.
    Everyone needed dreams. Dreams formed the sanctuary in which we took refuge from real life. For the last two years, my dreams had been concentrated around one warm, magical summer night in Paris, when I’d gone home with a beautiful woman and everything had seemed within reach.

Chapter 3
    Ellie / Jenny:
    On the one hand, Lucien had told me Alexander’s former submissives had disappeared.
    On the other hand, I had my own instincts and they told me to trust him.
    Ever since Bangkok, I’d vacillated between the two emotions. Fear of Alexander, of who he was and who he worked for. And desire. Always, desire. From the first moment I’d seen him, Alexander had made me feel safe and cherished and wanted. Whether he was calling himself Marc and pretending he owned a small house in the suburbs of Paris, or whether he was the mysterious billionaire financier who had an unprecedented level of access to Dylan, I had never once felt afraid of anything he might do to me.
    No. None of my fears stemmed from the way he treated me. But so many other things could not be ignored. My past as a sex slave. Lucien’s dire warnings. My own innate caution about male arousal.
    But I had a mission - get to Dylan. The only way to penetrate his secure compound in Hanoi was to make myself essential to Alexander, and the way I was going about it now was not working. Alexander was too cautious around me, too aware of my fear. Too reluctant to open himself up until he knew that I wanted him.
    He could read me too well and so, I had to do something that no amount of preparation had readied me for. I would have to rely on my instincts and trust him. I would have to take it on faith that his former submissives were exactly where he said they were. In Belarus and in Milan.
    It was terrifying because I wanted to believe him . I needed to cling to the illusion that the man I’d met in a bar two years ago hadn’t been entirely fake. That though the two men had different names, they were still the same person.
    The kindness – was it real? His concern for me – was it all an act? I didn’t think so. He