All I Want For Christmas Read online

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  Warning:

  The following material contains strong sexual content meant for mature readers. All I Want For Christmas has been rated NC-17, erotic, by three individual reviewers. We strongly suggest storing this electronic file in a place where young readers not meant to view this e-book are unlikely to happen upon it. That said, enjoy…

  Special thanks to Maryam

  for dedication above and beyond the call of duty

  And to Irene

  who's always there when I need her

  Chapter One

  Wednesday, 19 December, 2001

  Candy sighed as she scanned the pick-up lane for an available cab. Holiday travelers had traffic snarled. Most of the cabs were reserved and she had way too much to carry to manage with public transportation.

  She jammed the toe of her black leather pumps into the nearest bag in frustration. Lord, she was tired.

  She took a steadying breath as she shoved a wayward strand of hair back away from her face. Airport security was so tight it had taken her over an hour to get through customs. The airports were finally crowded again with everyone headed home for the holidays. And she was going to be late.

  Candy hated being late.

  Less than an hour to get checked into her hotel and find her destination, and she couldn't even get a damn cab. She huffed as she watched yet another taxi drive away.

  No one else from her office had wanted to take an out of the country assignment over the Christmas Holidays, not even when it meant an all expenses paid trip to Singapore. No one felt much like traveling these days, so Candy had volunteered.

  Christmas wasn’t her favorite holiday anyway. It wasn’t really Christmas that she minded. It was the fact that her birthday fell on Christmas Day. The worst part was that her parents had done this on purpose. They’d wanted a Christmas baby. But now they were gone, and there was no one around who would even remember that it was her birthday let alone make a grand display about it.

  Well, she consoled herself, she loved Singapore. Might as well spend Christmas somewhere beautiful even if she did have to work...

  There!

  Candy breathed a sigh of relief as a cab pulled up to disgorge a touristy looking couple, luggage in hand. This cab looked older than the others, and not quite as spotless, but she had no time to worry about that. She straightened her shoulders and put on her most professional face. "Taxi!"

  The driver was small and dark, probably Malaysian, with beautiful black hair. "The Mandarin Oriental, please," she offered as she slid into the back seat. The upholstery was old, but it appeared to be fairly clean. She was too tired to be critical. She'd seen much worse in New York.

  "Shiok, Lah?"

  He didn't speak English? Well, that was just great. Candy sighed in frustration. Most of the locals she'd met here spoke a kind of bastardized English fairly fluently. Still, he seemed friendly enough. Once he got started he chattered to her constantly in a mixture of Pidgin English and what sounded like Chinese as he gathered her and her luggage into his ancient cab. Holiday traffic was heavy, but the driver seemed to know the best way around the busier streets, and soon he delivered her to the hotel entrance.

  Candy closed her eyes and sniffed the air. The light breeze brought the smell of the ocean in with it. The Mandarin Oriental Singapore was opulent and exclusive, and one of the few luxuries she permitted herself. The concierge would know her by name, and room service would have a double espresso sent up to her precisely at 7:00 AM, and there would be stationary in the drawer with her name printed on it. And she'd never have to send the waiter back for a fork.

  Candy gave the cabdriver a ten-dollar tip on top of the twenty-eight dollar fare and asked him to wait. She didn’t have the time or the energy to try to find another cab now. The doorman raised an eyebrow at her awaiting taxi, but he smiled at her as he snapped his fingers for the bellhop to take her luggage. When she turned away, she heard him say something to the cabdriver in Chinese or Malaysian, sounding displeased, but the driver just laughed.

  Once she had her room keys in hand and had her luggage on the way to her suite to be unpacked, she was on her own. This was her time now. The whole reason she'd been willing to make this trip. Visions of ancient silk and time-marbled china swam before her eyes. She smiled at the cabdriver and showed him her carefully copied address.

  The man gave her an odd look, shaking his head. "Sotong! No woman! No go! Terok! Ulu, kayu, lah?"

  No woman? What the hell did that mean? He wouldn't take her because she was a woman?

  Candy's cheerful disposition dissolved into a haze of irritation. She didn't have time for this. She pulled out the information she'd printed off from the website. The pages were crumpled from carrying them in her purse and reading them over and over again on the agonizingly long flight. "Auction!" she explained. She pointed to the picture of a little girl holding an antique china doll. "Antique auction. This address."

  The man looked at her, then the picture in her hand, then back at her, shaking his head no. "No go. Terok, Ulu. No woman. No go."

  Candy searched her phrase book impatiently. "Auction," she attempted in Chinese. Assuming he spoke Chinese. "Where I come from women go to auctions all the time. Alone." She tapped the face of her watch. "I'm going to be late." She held out two more Singapore twenties.

  The cabdriver pointed to the address and said something that might have been the word for auction again. Candy waved her papers insistently. Finally the little man snatched the money from her hands, still muttering in a curious mix of Malaysian and broken English as he turned the key in the ignition. Candy smiled smugly as the cab lurched forward with a cough and a sputter. She'd just rest for a moment while the cab took her across town…

  A dreadful lurch brought her back to consciousness. The driver must have hit a pothole. Candy looked around in bewilderment. Gone was the dense mass of glittering high-rise hotels and office buildings. They'd left the modern section of the city far behind. They appeared to be in China Town. If they were still in Singapore at all. This wasn't the modern, beautiful China Town she knew.

  The skyscrapers had given way to shorter buildings piled one atop another in no discernable pattern. Red painted dragons and gaudy glittering gold leaf signs adorned the fronts of the run down looking shops here. Street venders waved their products at the windows of the cab as they crept down the narrow streets.

  Candy gripped the edge of the seat as they left even those vestiges of familiarity behind for even narrower cobblestone streets. Finally they wound into the oldest part of the city. The slums here were as bad as any she'd ever seen. Children played naked in the streets. Women paused in their chores to stare at the intruders.

  By the time the cabdriver pulled up behind an ancient building that looked like an abandoned warehouse, Candy could feel the warning bells go off in her head. "No woman!" he had tried to warn her. What was she doing here?

  She gripped her purse tightly to her side, fingering the rat-tailed comb she always carried for protection. It wasn't much of a weapon, but airport security never noticed the hard plastic handle ended in a sharp point.

  Why had she ever settled for a cab instead of the Limousine service her expense account would have allowed her? Why did she always need to prove she could manage everything on her own?

  The driver gesture
d toward the building, chattering away again. She didn't need to speak Chinese to know he expected her to follow him, and apparently stay close to his side. Candy glanced around uneasily. It wasn't as if she were here alone. There were several limousines, a few Mercedes, and even a couple of small vans parked here…

  By the look of the license plates this auction had drawn diplomats from around the world. Surely the auction house could have found a building more suitable than a seedy death trap in the slums of...Singapore? Were they really still in Singapore? The place didn't feel right. But how could she have crossed the border without knowing?

  There was no reason to take such risks unless...

  Unless some of the items for sale here had been smuggled in.

  She gulped. She should have known some of these items were too rare to be on the market legally. She closed her eyes for a moment. No. She hadn't flown half way around the world to turn back now. She wanted that doll, damn it.

  Candy squared her shoulders and climbed resolutely from the cab. The driver led her around to an old wooden side door which sagged badly on its hinges.

  The door opened immediately when the driver beat on it with the flat of his hand. Candy followed him in, her grip tight on her hard plastic comb.

  She found herself in a crowded, smoke filled, dimly lit hall. To her relief, no one paid any attention to her. As her vision adjusted she realized there was a raised platform in the center like a stage.

  The cabdriver stayed close to her side as she slowly pushed her way through the crowd. Gradually the noises broke through her trance and the setting began to make sense. It was an auction, all right. But they weren't selling antiques. There were people on the platform. Dozens of people.

  This was the twenty-first century, for the love of God. You couldn't buy people.

  Maybe you could rent them for a period of time? Like migrant workers?

  These people rather looked like they could be migrant workers. They didn't seem to have much. A few scanty rags of clothing. A bag here, a backpack like satchel there.

  The workers seemed to be divided into groups. There were men and women and children. Mostly they were Asian, and looked much like her cabdriver, except that they were all nearly naked. They stood with their eyes downcast, even the children, their faces vacant. She supposed she could understand that...the life of a migrant worker was undoubtedly a rough one.

  One man was different. In the center of the platform, standing a little apart from the others, was the most gorgeous man she had ever seen. Too bad, she thought cynically, an automatic response elicited around any male looking that good. A man that handsome was bound to be his own favorite topic of discussion.

  The man didn't blend in. He was almost as dark skinned as the rest, but he stood a head above them in height. In this crowd he looked like a giant. His head sported a riotous mass of dark honey colored hair, highlighted from hours in the sun, and he had the most beautiful body she'd ever seen.

  Not her type. Definitely not her type. She went for men with brains, like Richard.

  Yeah. That had worked out well, hadn't it?

  What the hell is wrong with me? she muttered to herself. The man is obviously looking for work, not for...not for that.

  She looked away, but her eyes kept coming back to the man. Maybe beautiful wasn’t the right word for him. He was lean and hard and he rippled with muscles everywhere. The kind of muscles a man got from demanding physical labor, not from going to the gym. She'd seen construction workers with bodies like that. Construction workers with hard, well-muscled bodies and hot, knowing eyes that understood just why she was looking.

  Not that she'd ever done anything more than just look. Naturally she'd never dated a man like that. No. She stuck with sensible men, men like Richard.

  Why did her mind always come back to Richard? The thought of him made her angry enough to do something rash. She studied the construction worker again. "You can hammer me anytime, lover," she whispered to herself. "As long as you don't say too much about your old girlfriends…or your mother."

  She spoke little Chinese, but she understood money. As the bidding closed on a small Asian man she realized she could have had that one's services for the equivalent of a little less than five hundred dollars. She licked her lips. This was crazy. What did she care what the bidding was doing? She hadn't come here looking for a man. As if she needed a migrant worker in Manhattan!

  Her construction worker was up next. He scanned the crowd as if looking for someone. He looked beyond her, then back, his eyes searching the crowd. The only reason Candy could think of not to flee the room immediately was the expression in the man's eyes.

  As Candy looked, really looked for the first time at what was happening around her, it occurred to her that most of the people on the stage looked fatalistically resigned. She could tell by the set of their shoulders. Whatever had happened to them before, this would be worse, and they knew it...

  But the big man still cared. Their gazes met and locked. His eyes seemed to plead with her.

  A man with a short prod in his hands shoved her construction worker toward the auctioneer. Candy chewed on her lip. She wasn't exactly certain what was happening, but it didn't sit well with her.

  A man in a rumpled business suit moved forward to inspect the merchandise before he shouted a bid in what sounded like German. Candy didn't like the looks of that one. He was too short and too bald and too ugly. He'd already bid on two women who now stood behind him, their eyes downcast. He seemed to like the younger ones, barely more than girls. She didn't like the way he grinned when he bid, his price high.

  She glanced back toward the platform. Her giant still focused on her, as if trying to hold her attention, his expression all too easy to read.

  Fear.

  He didn't want the German to win, but no one else was bidding.

  Well, she didn't want the German to win either.

  This was insane, she reminded herself as her hand reached into the air. There were hundreds of reasons not to do this, she told herself as she countered the German's bid.

  "Five hundred."

  Six hundred. The German again. He scowled a warning at her from across the room, his eyes narrowed into two slits.

  This was foolish. This could even be dangerous. And Richard would be furious if he ever found out.

  The auctioneer pointed at her again.

  "Nine hundred."

  They might not be engaged anymore, but Richard still expected her to maintain a certain image for the sake of Brasden-Marten. If he found out he would have her fired. Or committed.

  One thousand.

  Fuck Richard.

  "Eleven-fifty."

  Fuck Brasden-Marten.

  Twelve hundred.

  Fuck images.

  This was a mission of mercy. She could save this man from whatever lurid fate the German had in mind. "Thirteen hundred."

  The room had gone quiet. Everyone stared, watching the German decide whether to counter her offer. His eyes glimmered with rage. "Thirteen fifty."

  Candy swallowed hard. She could wire Kelly for a cash advance…

  "Fifteen hundred."

  Her voice was strong and clear, easy to hear above the subdued sounds of a hundred bodies holding their breath.

  The gavel hung in midair while the auctioneer waited. Nothing. At last the German turned away, his nostrils flaring in anger as he shook his head.

  The gavel banged on the rickety wooden podium, echoing through the quiet room. The dark haired giant stared at her, his face wiped clean in shock. He didn't even move when the auctioneer's assistant prodded him. Just stared as if mesmerized. Another assistant shoved him aside as the next man took his place. He stumbled, nearly falling, catching himself just in time as they prodded him toward her. The noise started up again as the auctioneer's voice sang out, extolling the virtues of the next in line.

  Candy finally remembered to breathe.

  As the tall man was being led toward her, she s
aw what the crowd had hidden from view. His hands were tied before him with a piece of stout rope. She'd seen some of the others bound this way...

  The cabdriver looked even less happy than he had when they arrived, if that was possible. God, what had she done? She’d rented a man to keep her company for the weekend? For a week? For a month? For...what?

  She'd heard of such things, of course. It was impossible to escape knowledge of such things with the advent of the Internet, but…

  Candy looked her man over again.

  Damn it! This was foolish. And the man was probably dumb as two rocks. But Lord, he was attractive. And she really hadn't wanted to spend Christmas alone. Not even in Singapore. Especially not in Singapore.

  There were no rules that said she had to keep him tied up, were there?

  Candy ran her eyes over her prize. The auction workers brought him to stand in front of her and she handed over her money. In return they handed her the end of the rope. Candy just stared at it.

  She was more than a little nervous now that the deal was done. The man didn’t look quite as good up close. Oh, he was handsome enough, just a bit unkempt. A faintly metallic smell like old sweat clung to him. He could really use a shower. It was going to be hard as hell to take him back to her hotel room wearing nothing but a pair of dirty cutoff shorts that revealed more than they covered. And the rope had to go. She might be a preferred customer, but this was over the line. She could just imagine the doorman’s reaction…

  He looked even more like a construction worker up close. She dropped the end of the rope and pulled his hands close, trying to get the thing off of him. Her fingers fumbled at the knot in the thick hemp. His hands were broad and long fingered, the nails broken and dirty.

  So why was she imagining those hands running over her skin? Well, that wasn't a very practical thought. He wouldn’t even meet her eyes now. He seemed embarrassed. His skin felt flushed under her hands. Maybe she wasn't supposed to take the rope off.

  The hell with that. The knots finally worked loose under her relentless attack.