The Bastard

by Julie Kriss

  I didn’t really know, did I?

  “I also called to warn you,” Sabrina said. “The wedding is going to be a big deal. Like, huge. There are a lot of big muckety-mucks coming, like CEOs and the governor and a bunch of others.”

  “And you, the TV star,” I teased.

  “I’m not anymore, you know. I quit the show. But that isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m trying to warn you that there will be a lot of press. Paparazzi. You don’t have any experience with that, Dylan, but I do. I just don’t want you to lose your cool, that’s all.”

  I was out of coffee. Fuck it, I’d have to go get some. “You mean you don’t want me punching photographers left and right?” I asked her.

  “I’m not gonna lie, it’s tempting,” Brin said. “They’re a load of assholes. And I know you’re this Special Ops tough guy, and you might lose your temper. Just avoid them and don’t engage, okay? That’s what I do.”

  “Got it,” I said. “Any other tips?”

  “Yeah, stay out of Clayton’s way. He doesn’t really like you, though I don’t know why. He doesn’t even know you.”

  Fuck you, Clayton Rorick, I thought.

  Still, that wasn’t Sabrina’s problem. “Got it,” I said again.

  “Oh, and come stay at The King’s Land. There’s tons of room here.”

  That thought made me shudder. I had no desire to see my father’s ranch after all these years. “I’ll get a hotel. Really.”

  “Ugh, fine. There’s one by a golf course outside Dusty Creek that Madison always stays at when she comes here. Where are you staying in LA, by the way? You don’t have a place.”

  “I’m at Hank’s penthouse. Have you ever seen this place?”

  Sabrina had spent a lot of years in LA, and she had been closer to Hank than any of us. “I don’t think so,” she said. “He didn’t invite me there. Is it nice?”

  I laughed. “It’s all black and gray. There’s a huge king bed with a black bedspread on it. The pillows are black, everything.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “I don’t really want to know.”

  “Me, neither, but it’s somewhere to stay. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Okay. And Dylan, I guess I should tell you…me and Garrett Pine. The sheriff, you know, who saved me. We’re a thing. Like, a serious thing. We’ve always been a thing, except now it’s for real. He’s coming as my date.”

  I sighed. At least I’d already checked into Pine’s background. I’d assess him closer when I got to Texas. “That’s nice, Brin. I’m glad.”

  “Are you bringing a date?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re so mysterious,” she said. “It’s part of your charm, I think. See you later, Dylan.”

  I hung up, feeling strangely light. That had always been Sabrina’s effect on people—she could put just about anyone in a good mood. It was why she’d made it in TV and had her own reality show, because people just liked to watch Brin be Brin.

  But it wasn’t only that. She was my half sister—my family. For a second I wasn’t a complete loner with no one to talk to. I had someone who was blood who I didn’t loathe. The idea was a strange one.

  As I stood pondering that, the phone rang in my hand. I answered again.

  “This is Madison White’s assistant, Amanda,” said the woman on the other end of the line. “Miss White has asked me to call you in for a meeting.”

  I felt my eyebrows go up. “A meeting? When?”

  “In one hour.”

  My voice was flat with disbelief. “Mad—Miss White wants a meeting at eight thirty in the morning.”

  “Yes. She has a very busy schedule today, and that’s the only time she can fit you in. Are you available?”

  Meaningless, my ass. I smiled to myself. She was screwing with me, and I liked it. She’d made it clear the other night that we were nothing to each other, yet here we were. It was a game, and I was ready.

  “I’m available,” I told the assistant. “I’ll be there.”

  I wore the suit. I showered and cleaned up and did the whole thing. I even wore the tie. I was an expert at fast mobilization, so I was at Maddy’s office right on time.

  Her assistant was a curvy blonde of about twenty-five whose mouth rounded in an O when I approached her desk, even though she’d been the one to phone me. “Miss White is in her office,” she told me when she’d recovered. “She’s expecting you, Mr. King.”

  I walked down a corridor lined with glassed-in offices. People watched me walk by. I paid no attention to them and didn’t bother knocking before I walked into Maddy’s office.

  It was a big corner office, and unlike the others it wasn’t glassed in. It was private. She was sitting behind an impressively large desk, wearing a form-fitting work dress that was scooped at the neck and tucked in at the waist. Classy and feminine at once. Her hair was tied at the back of her neck and she was perfectly composed as she watched me walk in. The woman from five nights ago, who wore a little black dress and a thong in a quest for a fucking, was long gone.

  I walked to one of the chairs in the office and took a seat.

  Maddy waited for me to say something, and when I didn’t, she said, “Thank you for coming.”

  So we were going to play it that way. I was never one for small talk, so I just stayed silent.

  Her gaze swept down me and up again. “Should I be flattered that I’m considered worthy of the suit?”

  “It seemed appropriate,” I said.

  “It is.”

  “I wear what the situation calls for, much like you do.”

  It took her a second, but she caught my meaning and her cheekbones reddened. She pushed back her chair and rose. “I don’t want to talk about that night,” she said. “Not here.”

  I nodded. I could accept that. Maddy had her armor back on, her mask in place. I knew now why she wore it—it was necessary. I even admired it. “So, what am I here for?” I asked her.

  “This is a business meeting,” she said. She paced around to the front of her desk, and fuck if I didn’t look at those long legs, the perfect curves of her hips in her skirt. At least I knew she wasn’t wearing that damn black thong under there. I’d told her to throw it out, and I was willing to lay bets that she had.

  I knew why she was doing it, but it still burned a little that she was treating me so coolly after the other night. She’d been all white-hot fire when I’d been on my knees between her legs. I could still taste her on my tongue. Oh, God, Dylan, please, please, please… That was the kind of thing a man remembered on his deathbed. I’d done that to women before, but not like that. Not with her. Not with a woman who came even close to Maddy.

  She leaned on the front of her desk, hesitating, and I said, “Out with it, Maddy.” My voice was rough because it was getting to me, watching her. “Tell me what you want or I’ll bend you over your desk.”

  Her cheekbones flushed—arousal, I knew, and annoyance. So it was possible for me to get to her, then. “I called you here to ask you to reconsider,” she said. “I want you to cancel your plan to claim the King estate.”

  That put a damper on my desire, but only a little. I felt my eyebrows rise. “You want me to reconsider?”

  “Yes. I want you to relinquish your claim through the will. Fully and permanently.”

  “All you have to do is delay me a little longer and my time is up.”

  “I want a renunciation legally. Signed, in writing.”

  I blinked at her. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

  “It’s a business decision,” she said.

  “A business decision? How so?”

  “You don’t have any business training,” she said. “You don’t have corporate or management experience. You don’t know the ins and outs of the King holdings. You don’t know anything about the investments, the dividends, the capital assets, or the tax structure.” She stopped, took a breath, as if this was taking something out of her. “Clayton Rorick understands all of those thi
ngs. He’s worked for King Industries for years and worked his way up. He knows how to lead the company and what it needs.”

  I watched her for a moment as my blood turned colder and colder. “You don’t think I’m capable of doing it,” I said. “You think I’ll fuck it up.”

  “It isn’t that,” she said. “You’re smart, Dylan, and you’re very good at what you do. It’s just that what you do isn’t running multimillion-dollar corporations.”

  “And what exactly do I do?” I asked her.

  Her cheekbones went red again. “You’re a military hero. Someone who has made great sacrifices for the safety of the rest of us. That’s a good and admirable thing. But it doesn’t mean you can take over the estate and run it.” She took another breath, like she was doing rounds in the ring. “Since you researched me, you’ve undoubtedly researched Clayton Rorick. And you’ve found that he has nothing in his background that says he’s unqualified.”

  I nodded. Since her investigator had a line on me, it made sense that he had a line on Rorick, too. Too much was at stake if he didn’t. “Rorick is clean,” I admitted. “It doesn’t mean I like him or that he’s not an asshole, but he’s clean.”

  “I know he is,” Maddy said. “If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “However, being clean doesn’t mean I hand over my entire inheritance to him. Not at all.”

  Maddy shifted her weight off the desk and stood. “I don’t get it. What the hell do you want, Dylan? It isn’t money or prestige. It isn’t some lavish lifestyle. It sure as hell isn’t a sentimental wish to honor your father’s memory. So what are you after?”

  That was a fucking good question. Leave it to Maddy to say the words that would feel like a knife slicing down my breastbone. Because I was starting to want things that I’d never thought would matter to me: a sense of place, heritage, some kind of belonging. Things I knew a man like me could never have. I pushed those thoughts away and said, “What I want isn’t your business. The question is, what are you after?”

  For a second she almost looked panicked, but she covered it quickly. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “You’re pushing me hard to do this. Legally. In writing.”

  “Because I want what’s best for King Industries. The well-being of King Industries is important to the well-being of the firm.”

  “You mean important to the well-being of the firm’s bank account.”

  She pressed her lips into a line. “You don’t care about money, Dylan, but a lot of other people do.”

  “Is this a negotiation?” I stayed in my chair, though every part of me wanted to stand up and take her on, face-to-face. Where I could look in her eyes, feel her breath. “You want me to walk away permanently from the one thing my father wanted. The one thing he hoped for. The thing that will make me worth millions. You want me to walk away, but what are you proposing I get in return?”

  “It’s a lot to ask,” she said. Her tongue touched her bottom lip, then it disappeared again, as if she’d realized what she was doing. “I wouldn’t ask you to do it for nothing. So you’re right. I’m offering something in return.” She took a breath. “Me.”

  15

  MADDY

  Dylan could have laughed at me. He could have walked out. It was a crazy proposition; I knew it. I’d just insulted him, told him to walk away from millions, then made an outrageous offer. But he simply sat like an elegant god in that damned suit, his arm hooked across the back of his chair. His eyebrows went up. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’ll go to the wedding with you,” I said. “I’ll go as your date. We’ll go as a couple if that’s what you want. And I’ll be…yours.”

  The word hung in the air between us. Yours. It sounded insane, but it was the perfect solution. One I’d come up with in five long, sleepless nights after I’d done the unthinkable and given in to Dylan King on my kitchen counter.

  I should never have done that. It was the worst, absolutely the worst, idea. I’d broken the strictest rule of my career, the one I’d sworn I’d never break after shaming myself with my professor. I’d built my career not mixing sex with business, keeping my defenses up at all costs. And then Dylan had put his mouth on me and I’d given up every rule.

  I should regret it, but after five days of thinking about it, I could admit that I didn’t regret it at all. I should be looking at Dylan with the cringing pain of a bad memory, but instead I was standing here wondering if I could get that suit off him, and how quickly. It felt different with Dylan. We weren’t professor and vulnerable student. We were two adults, and he made me feel like no other man did. I trusted him.

  Dylan was cocky and full of himself, but he was also right: I wouldn’t be satisfied with men like Axel when I had Dylan around. I wanted Dylan’s hands on me, his mouth, his body. I wanted his cock. I wanted the kind of sex I knew we could have—explosive, passionate, wild. I wanted that, and I wanted it with him. With the man I’d been looking at and thinking about for years now. I had him within reach, and I wasn’t prepared to let him go, let him find some other woman to fuck and please and drive wild in bed. I wanted that woman to be me.

  Dylan had made me an offer, and all I had to do was take him up on it. Hell, he’d given me a sample of exactly the kind of thing I liked: pure, no-strings-attached pleasure.

  But I didn’t want to just snap my fingers at Dylan and have him come service me the way Axel had. I didn’t want him to dress afterward and leave to go down his list, which was what I expected of every other man I was with. No, I wanted him. It wouldn’t be forever, but if I could get him for a short time, I would do it.

  Don’t just talk to him, Madison. Convince him.

  Malick’s directive floated back into my mind. He hadn’t let me forget it; he’d pressured me just yesterday, demanding a progress report.

  There was more on the line here than Dylan even knew. My career. My future at the firm.

  But I had the answer. I could have Dylan, and I could satisfy Malick and the other partners. If only I got Dylan to agree.

  I couldn’t let him know I wanted him. It had to look like I was giving in in order to be believable.

  So I watched Dylan’s expression while trying to keep my own cool and unemotional. It wasn’t easy, because he was watching me and I knew that Dylan missed nothing.

  “You’ll be mine,” he said, repeating my words back to me with an edge of disbelief.

  “Yes,” I said, leaning back against my desk. I’d deliberately come out from behind it so he could see all of me, including my legs. I’d seen him look at my legs appreciatively, and I knew he liked them.

  He wasn’t looking at them now. He was looking at my face, which was worse than having him look at my body. I had years of training in keeping my expression a mask, but it was harder with Dylan, harder right now than it had been with anyone else.

  He pushed himself off his chair and stood. I could smell his clean smell, feel his presence, but I pretended I was unaffected. “I need to know the terms of the deal,” he said.

  “Certainly,” I said. “What would you like to know?”

  He took a step toward me. “Exactly how long would you be mine?”

  “That’s negotiable,” I replied. “I thought perhaps a week. We could negotiate to two if you want.”

  “I see.” He seemed leashed, thrumming with some emotion I couldn’t decipher—anger or lust, or perhaps just irritation. He was playing it close to the vest, as I was. “And this possession,” he said, “my possession of you. Is it physical?”

  I swallowed in my dry throat. “If you’re asking if it includes sex, it does.”

  “I didn’t say sex,” Dylan said. He stepped closer, right in front of me, his knees nearly touching mine. The urge to open my legs like I had the other night was strong, and I pressed them together, softly so he wouldn’t notice. “Of course we’d have sex,” Dylan continued, his voice going low, almost to a murmur. His gaze moved over my face, my ha
ir, my neck. “What I spoke of was physical possession. As in, I have you how I want, when I want.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest and my neck went hot, my cheeks. His words turned me on, but they angered me, too. “I’m a person, not a blow-up doll,” I countered. “I don’t relinquish my right to consent.”

  He tilted his head, considering this. “Yet you’re at least implying that you’d consent to me. Is that right?”

  Oh, he was playing this game. The game I had started. The game I wasn’t sure I could control. I was throbbing between my legs listening to that soft voice negotiating our terms. I remembered his mouth on me, his tongue, how I’d screamed his name. And I could tell he was remembering the same thing.

  “Yes,” I said, managing to keep my voice mostly even, though the word came out huskier than I wanted. “Yes, I would consent.”

  He pressed on, still in that low voice. He wasn’t touching me, but I felt it like fingertips on my skin. “And for the duration of this, say, seven days, would you consent to anyone else?”

  “Not if you agree to the same condition.”

  His dark eyes went hard. “I already told you, Maddy, to delete the other men from your phone.”

  “And I didn’t agree.”

  “I see. So you’ve made it a negotiation.”

  “That’s what this is, yes.”

  “You want something in return.”

  “I want you to delete other women from your phone, too,” I said. “All of them.”

  Because I knew Dylan King. He didn’t know I did, but I did. He attracted women so easily—too easily. Beautiful, glamorous, hot, sexy women seemed to find him like moths find light. I was reasonably certain he didn’t have a woman in LA yet; I was absolutely certain that one would find him within days. This was LA, where literally the most beautiful women in the world lived. One of them would end up in Dylan’s bed.