The Bastard: King Family, Book Three

by Julie Kriss

“Everyone is fine. Medieval kings had nothing on Hank. That place could probably withstand an army.”

  That got me a smile, though it was a weak one. “We should get Julia to a hospital.”

  That must be the little girl. I could see that Garrett had already loaded her and her mother into his SUV. “Garrett will take them. You need to get in the car with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I kissed her again, briefly. “You need food and water. We both need a bath. And then I think that as soon as the flights are going again, we should get the hell out of Texas.”

  Her dark brown eyes looked into mine, and I saw everything I wanted there. Beauty and brains and humor and toughness and a sweet, buried vulnerability. And sexiness. And, maybe—I hoped—love.

  “You really are a superhero,” she said with a smile.

  I leaned in and kissed her. “If you think so, then I’ll do my best,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  26

  MADDY

  It wasn’t the wedding of the century, but it was a wedding.

  My wedding.

  The one thing I’d never thought would happen was actually happening: I was getting married. To Dylan King.

  It was six months after the day of the tornado, and the LA sky was dark and dreary. It was two weeks until Christmas, which was the strangest time in California: lights and Christmas trees and presents under cool skies, smog, and palm trees. It was very weird, and I loved it.

  I stood in front of the mirror and straightened my dress. It didn’t look much like a wedding gown, which was the way I wanted it. It was a simple knee-length dress of dark gray with a deep V neck and a slim belt at the waist. I had my hair brushed down my back and tied back at the temples, simple makeup, a few pieces of jewelry, and heels. I felt…beautiful.

  Because I felt like myself. I was a woman who worked hard and made money and liked to look nice, but I wasn’t a woman who needed to prove anything to anyone. I was also a woman getting married to the man she was deeply, crazily in love with.

  The last six months had been better than I’d ever thought possible. Not because they’d been particularly eventful—though they felt eventful to me. I’d gone back to work and lived my life, but piece by piece, I’d become a different woman. I’d felt so much change within myself that I wondered why the rest of the world wasn’t as breathless as I was, trying to keep up.

  While Ronnie and Sabrina had stayed in Texas—and had invited us countless times to come live there—Dylan and I had stayed in LA. We both liked it here, and more importantly, both of our careers were here. I worked best from the firm’s LA office, where I could closely oversee all of the employees and the client accounts. Dylan, now that he wasn’t going to be CEO of King Industries, had partnered with his friend and former Special Ops colleague, Eli McLean, in his private security business. They took contracts that Dylan sometimes couldn’t talk about, but that paid insane amounts of money. Because apparently—and this was no surprise to me—they were very, very good.

  Clayton had taken over King Industries, except he’d given up one thing—Hank’s LA condo. He’d given that as a gift to Dylan and me, accompanied by the simple sentiment: No hard feelings. Even without the gift of the condo, there were none—Clayton was doing an incredible job leading Hank’s company and managing his legacy. But I had sold my own condo and Dylan and I had moved in, redecorating and making the place our own.

  I’d never lived with a boyfriend before, and Dylan had spent over a decade on military bases, so we shouldn’t have worked. But we did—we really did. We liked the same food and the same kinds of wine. I hated clutter, and Dylan only owned a bag’s worth of belongings. He gave me most of the closet without a fight. I bought him clothes, because it was fun to buy things to put on his sexy body. He got up half an hour earlier than I did on weekends and brought me a fancy coffee from the coffee shop, because he knew it made me happy. Which it did every time.

  He was intelligent and funny and brilliant and gorgeous, and the sex…dear God, the sex. There was a lot of it, and it was incredible. We wore each other out regularly, and then we rested and did it again. To be honest, although I was still working hard, I wasn’t working quite as many hours as I used to. Or I was taking more work home. Because at home was Dylan and all that sex.

  He’d proposed to me in bed, in fact. With his body cradling mine and his muscled arm around me and his face buried in my neck. Marry me, he’d said. Just marry me. A proposal that was simple and straightforward and went straight to my heart, like Dylan himself.

  I’d said yes. And now here we were.

  We’d thought about doing City Hall, but when Sabrina got wind of that, she wouldn’t hear of it. We refused to do a big wedding—that seemed to be a curse in the King family—but we had to do something. Brin’s argument was that the entire King family had been deprived of a wedding when the tornado blew Ronnie’s away. The fact that she was marrying Garrett Pine, and the wedding was undoubtedly going to be An Event, didn’t count. Her one and only brother couldn’t get married without some kind of party to mark the occasion.

  So we’d compromised. We’d rented a small hall and brought in a justice of the peace. The catering was simple and the alcohol would be champagne. We invited a dozen close friends, family, and clients. And as soon as I was ready, I’d go out and get married.

  I looked at myself in the mirror and thought about the scared girl who’d had an anxiety attack when the cops came to break up her parents’ fight. That girl was still there, but she wasn’t quite as afraid anymore. She thought that maybe her past was behind her.

  Behind me, the door opened and I saw the familiar figure of my husband-to-be, dressed in one of his gorgeous suits that pretty much made my panties drop. Just like he did no matter what he was wearing.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I said, turning from the mirror.

  “I know,” he said, coming toward me. “I couldn’t resist.” He looked as gorgeous as ever, with his dark hair worn just a little long, his beard trim against his jaw. He’d offered to shave it if I wanted, but I said no. I liked the feel of it on my inner thighs—a fact I didn’t admit aloud to him for fear of how big it would expand his ego.

  When he came close I put my palms on his lapels, smoothing them. Oh, he even smelled good. Divine. “You look very handsome,” I admitted.

  “I know,” he said again. He gently put his fingertips to my hips and lifted my skirt. An inch. Two. “You look beautiful, Mrs. King,” he said, smiling down at me.

  “We’re not married yet,” I protested, trying to focus as his fingertips hitched my skirt a little higher. “And I’m not Mrs. King.” I wasn’t going to change my name—we’d already decided that. Again, Dylan’s ego. “But I’ll take the compliment.”

  “Will you?” He hitched my skirt high enough to get his hands beneath it, and he traced his fingertips along my thighs. “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. King.” He bent and kissed the side of my neck. The spot I liked best—the spot that made me wet for him every time he kissed me there.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, my voice a little strangled as his fingertips continued their exploration.

  “Checking that you’re certain you want to marry me,” he said against my skin, kissing me again. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, Maddy.”

  Was he insane? Of course I wanted to marry him. Did he think I was going to say no thanks? The little girl I’d been woke up at night sometimes, worrying that it would be him who backed out. That it would be Dylan who decided that my shit was too much to deal with, that all of this was too hard, and he had somewhere else to be.

  But he hadn’t done that. And neither had I.

  I put my hands on his shoulders, stroking them and enjoying the feel through the fabric of his suit. “I’ll marry you,” I said, keeping my voice light. “You have certain qualities that I suppose I can put up with.”

  “Such as?” His fingers found my pussy through my panties, stroked it gentl
y.

  “If I tell you, it will just feed your ego.”

  I felt him smile against my skin, and his fingers didn’t stop moving, thank God. I was starting to feel boneless.

  “I suppose I should ask you the same question,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. God, I loved the way he touched me. He was so perfect at it, like he knew everything I wanted before I did. “Since we’re here and all of our guests are outside, waiting for us to get married. Are you sure you want to be tied to only one woman for the rest of your life?”

  He kissed my neck softly. He was avoiding kissing my mouth, I knew, because I had just done my nice wedding makeup and he didn’t want to ruin it. That was the kind of thing Dylan picked up on, like he was psychic. “Depends on the woman,” he said. “If the woman is you, then yes, I’m fine with it.”

  He would not make me melt. No way. Not now. “Think it over. You have quite a history, Mr. King.”

  A history I’d seen pictures of. Though the infamous file was long gone, deleted into the digital ether. But still.

  “I do have quite a history,” Dylan agreed. His fingers pushed my panties aside and moved inside them, making me hiss in a breath. “Let’s see. There was the time we went to Sonoma for the weekend and did it in the hot tub. And the time I bent you over the kitchen counter when you came home from work. Oh, wait, that was more than once.” He was rubbing my pussy now, in the perfect way he always did it, and I should probably have stopped him, but the thought never crossed my mind. Instead I panted and pressed my legs open to give him better access. Because Dylan made me weak, he always had, and that was just fine with me.

  “Then,” he continued as he pleasured me, “there was the time I woke up and you already had your mouth on me. That time was particularly dirty. Or the time I took you out to dinner and found out halfway through the meal that you had no panties on under your skirt.”

  I tilted my head back as pleasure swirled through me. It was good. It was so, so good, and just the sound of his voice made it better.

  “So, yes,” Dylan said, leaning in to kiss my neck again, “you could say I have quite a history. With you. That’s why I plan to marry you. Just as soon as I make you come.”

  I gripped his lapels as pleasure pulsed through me. “God, you’re about to,” I breathed.

  “Let me see it,” he said in my ear, and I came on his fingers, my body shaking and flushing hot, my hips pressing down on him. I bit my lip to keep from shouting. He put an arm around my waist to keep me upright.

  It took me a minute or two to come down, and then I sighed. I really was literally swooning. “I love you, Dylan,” I said.

  That made him smile. It wasn’t one of his cocky smiles—it was a real one, laced with delight and a little bit of surprise. I was the only person Dylan gave that particular smile to, and it always stopped my heart when I saw it. It was the smile that said how he felt about me. Truly.

  “I love you, too,” Dylan King said. “Let’s go get married.”

  A Note from the authors

  Thank you for reading the King Family series! We hope you enjoyed it.

  If you missed the other books, here they are:

  The Tycoon by M. O’Keefe (Book 1)

  The Bodyguard by S. Doyle (Book 2)

  Yes, Bea is getting a book! It’s called The Cowboy, it’s by M. O’Keefe, and it’s coming in Fall 2018!

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  Also by Julie Kriss

  The Riggs Brothers Series

  Drive Me Wild

  Take Me Down

  The Bad Billionaire Series

  Bad Billionaire (FREE on all retailers)

  Dirty Sweet Wild

  Rich Dirty Dangerous

  Back in Black

  Standalone

  Spite Club (FREE on all retailers)

  The Eden Hills Duet

  Bad Boyfriend

  Bad Wedding

  The Stepbrother Books

  Break Me (Free in Kindle Unlimited)

  Play Hard