Taken: Seconds

"Hey, how are you?" The concern in his voice was evident.

Estelle hiccupped. She'd been crying for what felt like days and yet it had only been a few hours since her husband had been pronounced dead.

"Are you crying right now? What happened?" Vincent's almost gravelly voice rose in apprehension.

He was going crazy imagining all the things that could have gone wrong.

"Jim is dead." Estelle's voice was wobbly, and her face scrunched up as a fresh batch of tears fell and a wail tore through her chest and out her mouth.

"I'm getting on a plane. Send me your location when I tell you I've boarded the plane." Vincent didn't like how helpless he felt hearing her cry.

He looked at the screen of the computer in front of him that notified him of three more high-priority emails he had just received. Vincent was getting sick of this corporate BS.

Her voice cut across his thoughts.

"No! I know how busy you are right now, besides...my mommy will be here in a few days, and I think I want to be alone for a while."

Vincent heard the panic in her voice. He couldn't believe it, even when she was mourning, Estelle was worried about him and his workload.

He looked out the window in his office.

Everyone was going about their business. He made a mental note to sort out the three guys loafing on the first quadrant when he was done. His mind was made up.

"I'm getting on a plane." He told her. He would work it out and be by her side in hours.

Vincent heard her huff and sigh and knew he'd won. Good girl, he thought.

"Please don't rush. I need you to be safe." Her voice almost a whisper pleaded with him. His heart twisted.

"Of course, Sweetheart, I can't come to rescue you if I'm hurt now, can I?" His voice was gentle, and his heart twisted hearing her sniffle and then blow her nose.

"Now, be a good girl and take a nap. I know you haven't slept yet and there's a lot you will need to organize. Do you need me to call in at work and tell them you won't be coming in?"

She made a sound at the back of her throat. He raised his brow knowing she was going to resist.

"I have a car launch in three days. I need to hand it over. I'll call my boss; nap then go in." He could hear the fire in her voice, he was glad because it meant that she hadn't lost all of her fight yet.

"Good, call me when you've called your boss. Then call me again when you've ordered your Uber to the office. You're not driving."

"Okay, boss," she teased. Estelle whimpered before starting to cry again. "I'll call you later."

"I'm here if you need me," Vincent told her, cursing the distance between them.

He swore when she whispered that she needed him now. There was no way that she had meant to say that aloud.

"I'm on my way, I just need to shuffle some things around and then I'm on my way. Just be strong for me until I get there. Call your boss. I'm waiting for your call."

"M'kay," her voice sounded muffled. Soon the sound of Estelle breathing softly as she slept filled his ears.

At least she was sleeping. With his cell phone still to his ear, he called her office from his landline. He asked to speak to her boss.

After explaining to her boss what happened and making sure that someone took over her projects for her, he hung up and listened to her breathe. She moaned in her sleep and started crying.

"I'm right here, Baby, it's going to be okay. Just sleep," he told her.

Her breathing slowed down and he heard a content sound from her. He sighed with relief.

He put in an application for leave with HR and shifted up his meetings so he would be done in a few hours.

Vincent called the manager of quadrant one and told him to put his men to work. As he put his office line down, he checked on her.

He was worried about her phone battery. He prayed it was charging. He didn't want to hang up until she woke up.

As Vincent was wrapping up his third meeting with unusual speed, he heard her yawn.

He dismissed the crew and closed his office door behind them. She swore when she saw that her phone had been on a call.

"Muído?" Her voice called out to him. "Are you there?"

He grimaced at the fact that hearing her talk in Portuguese had a part of him he didn't have problems controlling twitch. "Yeah, I'm here Muída. How was your nap?"

"You sound tired." He heard the frown in her voice. "Did you pull an all-nighter again?"

"I'm just getting out of my third meeting in a row. How are you feeling?" He dodged the question.

"Like I just want to curl up and forget everything." She mumbled.

Vincent went over the things she needed to do with her and then rang off. He got a call from his friend in security on the office line. The extension number flashed before he picked up the call.

"Why are you trying to leave so suddenly? Who died?"

"Someone close to me lost her husband. She's not taking it very well."

His friend whistled. "You mean that sexy girl married to that doctor?"

"Who told you she was sexy?" Vincent asked darkly.

A chuckle on the other end met his ear. "I'll arrange clearance for you. Just invite me to the wedding."

"I'm going to a funeral."

Another chuckle met his ear, "Of course, you are, Buddy. Just don't let her slip away from you this time." A long pause ensued. "I mean it, Vince."

"I won't. Thanks, Karl." Vince looked at the screensaver on his phone...she looked back at him smiling.

****

Estelle walked out of the office dazed. As usual, she'd walked in dressed in smart casual, makeup and hair done to a professional look ready to dive in and clear out her work schedule.

Everyone seemed shocked to see her and gently conveyed their condolences.

Her clients had all been taken over by someone. The office had pooled together a care basket for her with bath salts, bath bombs and a few light romantic comedy books. It was really sweet of them.

Her boss had told her that her husband had called and informed them of Jim's death, and she'd frowned. Jim couldn't have called in advance.

Then she'd been told he had a foreign type of accent. Unlike Jim who was distinctly South African.

Estelle figured it was probably Vincent. She'd have to call him and thank him later. Estelle hoped he wasn't really on his way. She just wanted to mope and cry. Her older sister was already coming to help with the funeral arrangements.

Her phone screen flashed. She picked it up. It was a text from Vincent.

Her heart leapt. He was getting on a plane.

She looked at the time and calculated that she would be home by the time his plane landed. She sent him her home address.

Estelle saw that he read her message and she waited for a response.

After 15 minutes, she stopped checking her phone. He obviously figured that she knew he was on the way and that was it. Rolling her eyes, she set to work.

After handing over her last client, she ordered an Uber. The last thing she needed was an Alpha male telling her that she should listen to him. She had enough stress.

When she got home, she prepared the guest bedroom and made dinner. When everything was set, she sat on the couch and fell asleep. She woke up sometime later to a hoot at the gate.

She looked at her phone and saw three missed calls from Vincent. She cursed as she stood up and stubbed her toe. His last message was that he was at her gate.

She saw the car at the gate and opened the front door. Vincent stepped out of the car. Then all of a sudden it hit her.

He was here because James was gone.

Estelle opened the gate by remote and tried to keep it together. The Uber drove off and she closed the gate behind Vince.

He walked towards her with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Vincent opened his arms, and she ran without thinking, bursting into a fresh onslaught of tears.

Vincent murmured words of comfort and his arms wrapped around her.

When she came to her senses they were inside her house, and he had her on his lap and in his arms.

Embarrassed, she wiped her tears away and stood up.

"I'm sorry. You must be tired. I made dinner, you must be hungry." She kept wringing her hands.

He took her small hands in his. "Muída, relax. I'm here for you-"

She burst into a fresh lot of tears. Vincent pulled her into his arms. He tried to suppress the shudder of pleasure that went through him involuntarily as he held her.

When her tears died, he let her show him his room and put his bag on the floor. Then she showed him his bathroom and offered him some coffee.

She suggested that he shower and get ready for dinner, and he did just that.

Dinner was an easy affair, and they kept the topics light. Even so, every other thing reminded her of James. He comforted her when he could and let her cry when nothing else worked.

She went to bed early and he pulled out his laptop ready to tackle the work communications that had piled up. About six emails in he felt strange. He walked down the hall to the master bedroom.

She was crying again. He didn't like how torn and upset it made him feel hearing her cry. Against his better judgement, he knocked on the door.

She sniffed and told him to come in. Her red eyes broke his heart. His legs made their way to where she sat up against the headboard hugging a pillow. He scooted her over a little, sat down and hugged her.

"It hurts so much! We were supposed to have a baby this year! And now he's gone. Who is ever going to love me as he did?! You know how lucky I was to have him.

"Now he's gone and I'm not even pregnant...I just wish I had a piece of him left." Her hand curled around Vincent's bicep.

"He had beautiful arms like you. And big hands. Will you give me a baby?"

His breath caught in his throat as she looked at him through her lashes. He hated how he felt and swallowed it down.

Vincent cleared his throat. "You're grieving Muída, let's talk about this when you are not in grief."

She started crying again, "See, no one wants me!"

Vincent fought himself as he held her in his arms. "You've just lost your husband. Any baby you have deserves to have the bright, sparkly Estelle. Let's get you out of the woods with this and I'm sure you'll find a baby daddy."

She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Will you consider it? After I'm done mourning?"

"If that's what you want," Vincent murmured thickly, cradling her head and shifting her body away from his lower body.

The last thing he wanted was to give her mixed signals.

Her hair was in a silly-looking bonnet, but he could still feel the softness through the satin material. She'd braided her hair into several thick cornrows. Estelle was wearing a long sleeve nightshirt that climbed up her thigh as she curled around his arm.

She was so small. Her full bust cushioned his arm on either side. Petite hands held onto his tricep for dear life. Her tears died down and she slept.

Vincent took a deep breath. He was such a liar. All he wanted to do at this moment was lay her down and give her the baby she wanted.

For once, he could damn the consequences.

And yet here he was cradling one of the few women he'd ever loved deeply. She needed strength. She needed love and reassurance.

He sighed; he was royally screwed. While he was completely sensitive to her grief he was caught up in his, until now, pent-up feelings.

His head rested on the top of hers. She felt good in his arms. Better than he'd imagined, the few times he'd let his imagination go that far.

And yet, it was completely wrong for him to think that now. Of all the times to have a failure in character, now was not the time.

As if to cruelly remind him of that she turned and curled into his body and mumbled, "James, I missed you."

Frustration spiked in him as he waited for her to wake up. She didn't, she just pulled him closer and held on tighter.

His heart went into overdrive when her hand dropped between his legs and cupped him in a possessive manner.

He took her wrist to move her hand and her grip tightened on his tightening body parts. She frowned and mumbled, "This is mine. Only I get to play with it. Mine."

She repeated the phrase in Portuguese, and he felt it.

Taking a deep breath, he looked around their bedroom. He’d never imagined he would be in this room, with her, on this bed.

Vincent had never been to their house without James there and they’d always been outside, in the backyard. The room was nice, with a blend of masculine and feminine in the colours and decorations.

The curtains were dark and heavy, that had been James, he mused. The bed was big, firm but soft. The covers were a shade of pink only a girl could love. He chuckled to himself.

A bean bag was positioned next to the wall-to-wall bookshelf that was littered with medical, design and diet books.

He looked at her and she was really asleep. Vincent had never thought that she might talk in her sleep. He didn't think she was grabby either but clearly, she was possessive.

Oddly, the thought seriously turned him on. Vince wasn't particularly interested in having a possessive woman, but her ownership of his body surprised and pleased him more than he could have ever imagined.

Sighing he tried not to think about the hand firmly holding onto the last vestiges of his sanity. His thoughts were not normally this hard to control.

Vincent waited another ten minutes before attempting to slide off of the bed. She held onto him, and his throbbing headache got a little worse.

Sighing resignedly and yet happier than he had been in a while he lay down next to her and let her mould her body into his.

He knew he was damning himself in a way that he could never reverse. Vince knew this would be the source of all of his cold showers once he left there. He turned down the volume of his analytical mind and enjoyed the moment.

Of course, he should have known that waking up to a warm supple body would be dangerous to him, but he allowed himself to forget. When he woke up, he found himself on the receipt end of kisses that gave him goosebumps. Her eyes were still closed.

"I had the worst dream, Jay. You got into a car accident and died...it was horrible. My friend Vince came all the way from Mozambique to help me until my family came and he was really sweet." Her hand traced his pectorals and his nipples before sliding down.

Vince hyperventilated slightly. Her hand moved down his belly and towards the area she'd possessively cupped the night before. He held her wrist just before it hit his happy trail.

"It wasn't a dream Muída. I am here, for you, through this hard time." He told her as softly as he could.

Silently, Vincent prayed that he could control himself for a little while longer. Lust muddled up his mind.

She looked up at him in shock. Her hand snapped back from his lower abs as if they had singed her hand. Her other hand flew to her mouth.

"Oh my god, Vince, I'm so sorry. Holy hell, I just sexually assaulted my friend. I'm such a pervert, I am so sorry!" She knelt on the bed beside him and kissed his forehead and hugged him.

Just as quickly, she jumped up and crawled to the edge of the bed.

On her hands and knees.

Vincent didn't even pretend not to look. It was a fantasy come true only she was crawling away instead of to him.

She was constantly talking about not losing enough weight and he was so glad he had never encouraged her to lose weight. His head ached from holding himself back, but the view was worth it.

Her curves were a handful, and it was mouthwatering if he was going to be honest with himself. And right now, he was being brutally honest.

He wanted to allay her fears of not being desirable in the most primal way. It took everything in him to take her pillow and place it on his lap. She turned back to him just as she started lifting her night dress.

His breathing stopped just as her hands stilled. Her eyes widened in mortification. Her mouth gaped open. She turned around.

"I'll go undress in the bathroom. I'll make us breakfast after this. I'm so sorry you almost saw me naked."

I'm not, he thought to himself. "Don't worry about it. I'm sure James loved the view and you were comfortable with him," Doing the things I want to do right now but can't.

She sighed. "Yeah...he really liked it." Her eyes widened and she clapped her hands over her mouth. "TMI, I know. Sorry."

"I'll let you shower." He told her as he got up. The cold floor helped focus his sleepy mind despite how snug his sweatpants felt.

They met in the kitchen, both of them fully clothed, twenty minutes later. She was in a shirt dress that gave him glimpses of her thighs. He cursed how his lower body was disconnected from his mind and acting of its own volition. He was too old for this shit.

After her sister arrived, he moved to a hotel and took the girls out for lunch and dinner. He stood beside her at the funeral and only when she needed him. Her sister and mother had to leave a few days after the funeral, so he moved back into her house.

If he'd ever thought, he knew torturous pleasure then he'd been mistaken. It was the best and worst two weeks of his life. It was then that he made his decision.