Stitch by Jaime Lewis (ebook reader online .txt) 📗

Elijah studied the pictures scattered across his large desk. He hadn’t been lying when he told Mia he had to leave to meet a client. It just wasn’t a client that Mia thought of. The so-called client was a member of the puppy trafficking ring that Elijah had formed a few years ago. The guy was meeting Elijah at the clinic to pick up the puppies that were in the kennels. Some were the same puppies that Mia had helped examine. He felt awful lying to Mia, but there was no way she could know the truth. It was best she just believed the puppies were abandoned and eventually adopted out.

Elijah had a turn-key operation that made him millions. Each week, puppies arrived from various foreign countries. Elijah would match each canine with forged birth and vaccination documents before being shipped to eager buyers across the country. The buyers were clueless about the puppy’s background. The papers provided to the new owners verified their puppy was born in a small town just outside of the City.

He had a warehouse across the Hudson River in New Jersey. The warehouse's interior mirrored a large scale kennel that included two exam rooms stocked with various veterinarian supplies and equipment. Within the last three months, Elijah purchased several warehouses in coastal states near seaports, with hopes of expanding the trafficking business to include shipments to overseas. In fact, his first overseas shipment was tonight’s shipment.

Last night had been a close call with Mia when he and Demitri brought the Blue French Bulldogs to the clinic to examine. There were times when he brought a litter to the clinic after hours to give them an exam, and it wasn’t unusual to find abandoned puppies in the city, so using that cover worked for his explanation to Mia.

Puppy trafficking was a growing business, and it was Elijah’s main source of income.  He didn’t become a multi-millionaire by just owning an animal clinic. The clinic was a front to cover his ass while he conducted business.

With Mia being hired on at the clinic, she’d been able to cover many of the hours he would have had to work, letting him focus more on the business currently at hand.

He sat back in his chair and reached down to adjust himself. Just thinking about the gorgeous doctor made his dick hard. He couldn’t get the image of her in that white dress out of his head. The material clung to every delicious curve her body offered. He couldn’t resist touching her silky, smooth skin every chance he got. She was enticing. Not only was she beautiful, she had a brilliant mind.  He was twenty years her senior but damn if that would stop him from sinking his dick into her when he got the chance.  And he would eventually. He laid some groundwork at the gala by sticking by her side most of the night, along with the few hints he dropped here and there in conversation.

He pictured her splayed out naked, against his satin bed sheets. She had a set of legs he would love to have wrapped around him while he pounded in her petite body. He itched to run his fingers through her jet-black hair as those big brown eyes framed by thick black eye-lashes gazed up at him in lust. He was a dominant lover who enjoyed delivering a little pain to his women. But with Mia, he needed to tread carefully and not come on to her too fast. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off. With the profit he was bringing in, he couldn’t afford to lose her at the office. Eventually, once his bank account hit a magic number, he’d shut it all down and live the rest of his life jet-setting around the world. And if he played his cards right, he would have a stunning woman to keep him company.

Usually, Claus handled all of the shipping logistics, but because of a tip from a source inside the NYPD, he had to change tactics with the puppies' storage and movement. The police had beefed up their patrols along the docks, specifically the rows of warehouses, due to an uptick in crime in the area. Just last week, the cops exposed a massive crack cocaine ring in a building two blocks over from his warehouse. He wasn’t willing to take the chance of getting caught, so that was why there were currently sixty puppies in the basement of the clinic. A truck was on its way to pick them up and take them to the shipyard to be loaded onto a cargo ship. The ship had a secret compartment in the bottom of it where the puppies would be stowed during transport. Once the ship was off the coast of Portugal, it would anchor, and the puppies would be offloaded and transferred to a private boat then taken to a location where they would be inspected before being put on the market.

He looked at his watch and again wondered where in the hell Marlon was. The ass-hat should’ve arrived by now. Marlon had a connection to a guy who handled all of the paperwork needed for the puppies. The guy was instrumental in keeping the business flowing without having to worry.  Knowing Marlon, he probably had his hand up some woman’s dress.  Marlon never went a day without fucking someone.

Elijah was also aware of the way Marlon had been eyeing Mia lately.  Every visit to the clinic, Marlon made sure he got the opportunity to see Mia. His blatant actions were starting to piss Elijah off. If Marlon continued to show an interest in Mia, he would have to step in and give Marlon a warning to back-off.

He was ready to tell Claus to get Marlon on the phone when the back door opened and then slammed closed. “About fucking time,” Elijah mumbled under his breath.  Only it wasn’t Marlon’s voice he heard.