by Lexi Blake
If she could only convince them. Everything was on the line. Everything she’d worked for. All the jobs she’d tried to save. They would be gone if she didn’t manage to make this work.
“You know I want to help you in any way I can. I love you, honey,” Frankie said quietly.
Tears misted her eyes. After her sister had left home, she’d thought she would never find another person she could count on, but she’d met Frankie in college. She’d had boyfriends and lovers and a couple of wild nights she didn’t wholly remember, but she’d only loved one man. Unfortunately, he was attracted to men. She’d accepted that a long time ago.
“I love you, too, but you can’t force my father to drop the lawsuit. We sincerely pissed him off and he won’t give up easily.”
“How about the other issue?” Frankie asked, his eyes trained on her as though attempting to detect any untruth she might give him.
He had good reason for that. She’d been trying not to worry him. It was her problem after all, and she was a big girl. “Are you talking about Ray Paulsen? I’ve got lawyers working on that, too.”
Frankie leaned forward. “He’s unstable, Amy.”
“Which is one of the reasons I had him fired.” Ray had been her father’s head of security. Amy had considered him little more than the asshole who intimidated everyone so that her father got his way. She’d been more than happy to show him the door the minute she’d taken over the company.
“He swore he’d get you back for that,” Frankie pointed out.
“And he’s suing me, too,” she said. She was so tired of lawsuits.
Frankie didn’t seem convinced. “I’m going to look into that asshole. He’s not the type of man who would be content with simply suing you. I want you to be careful. The minute anything feels wrong, you call me.”
And have a bodyguard put on her ass? “I promise. But he’s not an idiot. He knows if he harasses me and I catch him it won’t help his case. Besides, the last time I checked, he was still in California, half a continent away. Aside from Ray and my father, the good news is we’re truly the best fit for Clannahan. I think after we meet next month they’ll understand it, too. Then I’ll be in a better position to deal with all of dear old Dad’s crap.”
She was going to be positive. Change wasn’t easy. It was difficult but everything that was meaningful in life was hard to achieve. She’d managed to break away from her father. She’d moved her company and her life across the country to be closer to her sister. She’d made deals with the city that ensured she could bring her people with her. Tax incentives had given her the cash to offer any employee who wanted to move the wherewithal to do it. Slaten would be stronger here in Dallas. She’d lowered their costs across the board for years to come with this move and she’d offered good compensation to the few employees who’d chosen to stay behind. They would build a company that served its employees and not the other way around.
She was strong. She could do this.
Frankie reached across her desk to put a hand over hers. “I know they will. Are you really going through with tonight?”
The question made her grin because she was totally going through with tonight. “Does the thought scare you?”
He frowned. “The thought makes me kind of want to go and get my own membership at Sanctum so I can be your training Dom.”
That was absolutely the last thing she wanted. For the last couple of years she’d used Frankie as a protective wall, a reason to not put herself out there. She was done with that. She loved him so much, but she needed more. First and foremost, she wanted a damn orgasm that wasn’t battery operated. “You would never be assigned to me because they pay attention to what a sub needs. I had to fill out a freaking book on what I need. Do you know one of the things I need? A penis that might want to slip inside me and rub one out.”
His eyes closed, a grimace coming over his perfect face. “Do you have to be so forthright?”
She kind of loved it when he got all prudish. He was not a man who ever should take that attitude since she knew damn well he’d had some wild nights himself. “Mama is stressed. Mama needs a little something something, if you know what I mean.”
He put a hand out. “I do. Please don’t tell me about it in detail.”
Where was the fun in that? “I’m not planning on jumping the poor man or anything, but if it comes up, I’m ready and willing to get three kinds of kinky.”
It had been a rough eighteen months. Between the takeover and her pre-planned divorce, it had been hard. There hadn’t been a ton of time for dating. She’d focused entirely on Slaten Industries, and she was ready to have a few hours a week to relax and work on herself. And to be around a man who might want to put his penis inside her.
That was a definite goal.
Frankie stared at her for a moment. “Sweetheart, how much have you dated since we got married?”
She smiled on the outside. Inside she was punching something. This was a conversation she’d been trying to avoid. “I’ve been busy.”
Frankie leaned in. “When was the last time you had sex?”
She felt herself flush. “Before we got married.”
She wasn’t a prude. Far from it. She liked sex, but she took the marriage thing seriously. Even when he hadn’t. Frankie had spent their wedding night with his boy toy of the moment.
No honeymoon for Amy.
So she should have a post-divorce bacchanal complete with tons of wine and a super hot Dom. Not necessarily at the same time.
“I thought we talked about that.” Frankie had his concerned face on.
Yep, this was why she wanted to avoid this conversation. “We did. I made a decision to honor my vows. You know what my parents are like.”
His father screwed anyone with a skirt—and that did not necessarily mean a vagina—and her mother regularly made love to her bottle of Chardonnay and the pool boy. She’d grown up with constant cheating. She couldn’t stand it. Her marriage might have been a sham, but she respected it.
“I do, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I should have been better.”
One of the reasons she’d avoided this talk was because the last thing she wanted was to make him feel guilty. “I made that choice, Frankie, and it had next to nothing to do with you. It was something I needed to do. Now that I’m single I intend to be as skanky as possible. I’m serious. I want to tear through some dicks.”
Frankie turned a nice shade of pale. “Again, not something I needed to hear from you.”
“So you want me to take notes? We could have a sleepover and talk about our sex lives.”
He stood and straightened his suit. “I shudder at the thought. I have to be at the airport in an hour. Unless you change your mind. I could talk to Taggart and have a membership very quickly. I wouldn’t have to be your training Dom. I would merely ensure that the one selected for you understands how he should treat you.”
She shook her head as she rose to hug him. Nope. She didn’t need her ex-husband giving her potential fuck buddy a lecture. No how. No way. She was letting her hair down and forgetting about work and having fun for once in her life. “There’s a very careful vetting process to ensure we’re compatible and not psychotic. I’m fine. Now go. Have fun in San Francisco.”
He held her close. “I’ll call. Be careful, Amy. I know you want to have fun, but be careful around those men. They can be rough but you need to remember that you’re the one in control. And listen to your sister. She knows this world better than you do.”
Her sister wrote about the world of D/s. Bridget was a romance author and had quite a career. Of course, she also wrote what she liked to call mega ménages, where one woman ended up with five or six men all desperate to service her. Bridget lived in a fantasy world and didn’t pay a lot of attention to the one outside of it. She was also super pregnant with her first kid and not playing a ton these days. Still, if it made Frankie happy to think Bridget was watching over her, she would go with it.
She kiss
ed his cheek and watched him walk away. The man was fine either way he went. Coming or going.
“Ms. Slaten, you have a call on line two,” her assistant said, poking her head in the door.
Amy sighed. “Thank you, Val.”
Tonight she wouldn’t be Ms. Slaten. She would be Amy or pet or whatever her training Dom wanted to call her.
Only hours to go before she could spend some time in another world. Hopefully it would be better than this one.
* * * *
John Flynn Adler, Jr. stared at his brother from across the bar that separated Mitch’s kitchen from his living room. Perhaps he hadn’t understood. Maybe having a child had turned Mitchell’s brain soft. “What do you mean?”
Mitchell Bradford was his half brother. For much of his life, Mitch had been a complete mystery to Flynn. It had only been when their father was dying that he’d connected with his brother. Getting close to Mitch and his wife, Laurel, had been exactly what Flynn had needed at the time.
At the time? He needed it now. He might always need it. Mitch was a taciturn son of a bitch, but he was a great brother. Chase, their youngest brother, was now in college and doing better than Flynn would have imagined and it was all because Mitch had stepped up. Chase lived in Mitch’s guesthouse and was treated like a member of the family by Laurel, who ensured the kid ate something other than mac and cheese.
Sometimes Flynn envied his kid brother. His Victory Park condo had amazing views and he’d discovered it meant nothing if he had no one to share it with.
“Amy Slaten is the partner Kai and Wade selected for you to work with. I peeked at the list when I was reviewing some of Sanctum’s business contracts.” Mitch patted his son on his back in a rhythm only he could hear. He carried Johnny around a lot as the boy seemed determined to only sleep on top of other human beings. “I swear if I’d known she was going to be in that class, I would have moved you to another one. I only figured it out this morning. In their defense, they don’t know about the corporate war the two of you are involved in. Both companies have been very careful about keeping it out of the press. So should I talk to Wade or do you want to do it?”
Amy Slaten. His nemesis, according to the man who ran his company. Amy Slaten was following in her father’s very ruthless footsteps by sending spies into his company and hacking in to steal their data.
Oh, she looked all soft and sweet. She was a gorgeous woman. He’d seen her at a few functions but had chosen not to be introduced. Since he’d handed over the reins of the company to a hired CEO and changed his personal focus to R&D and raising Chase, he tried to stay out of that particular war.
He was still listed as the president of the company, still the figurehead, but he preferred to work on the creative side. When he’d left California behind, he’d tried to start over. The new software he was developing would change the way his clients did business.
The last thing he needed was to get involved in a D/s relationship with his business rival.
And yet, they’d had so many security breaches he had to wonder if he wasn’t passing up an opportunity.
“You don’t think I should go through with it? Maybe it would be a good way to get to know my enemy.” And to see if she’d planned it this way. It was too coincidental to think they would be in the same club at the same time and get partnered up in an intimate pairing.
Slaten was known for dirty dealings. Maybe this was her next play. He would never know if he backed off.
Besides, she really was a beautiful woman.
Mitch stared at him in a way that let him know big brother thought he was a dumbass. Flynn wasn’t sure how Mitch had perfected that particular stare. It might have come to him naturally when he’d become a dad. “Are you serious?”
It would be better to back off. The trouble with Amy Slaten was her connection to Laurel. Laurel’s brother, Will, was married to Bridget, Amy’s sister. God, sometimes he was fairly certain any Sanctum family tree would be the weirdest tree, with branches that wound around each other in a stranglehold. He’d managed to stay away from that side of the family. From what he understood, Bridget Slaten, now Daley, took next to no interest in her family company, though she had taken on a voting share when her sister had commandeered Slaten. She would be nothing but a guaranteed vote at a board of directors meeting. He would actually be surprised if Bridget knew who he was and how he was connected to her sister.
“I think it might be interesting to see what happens.” And if she’d done all of this so she could play Mata Hari. How far would she go?
Mitch was silent for a moment. A little too silent.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Flynn knew when his brother was holding back. Mitch had an incredible poker face, but he rarely used it around his family.
“She might have come in on an assumed name. Not exactly assumed, but she’s not using Slaten. She’s got her membership under Amy Lyndon. It was her married name, but legally she’s gone back to Slaten.”
“So she’s trying to hide her last name,” he mused. “I find that interesting.”
“I do too, Flynn.” Mitch used his name with a pointed stare. “It’s not like you’re going in as John, Jr.”
Flynn waved that off. “I only went by that at the office. I’ve always used my middle name since I discovered that chicks dig Irish sounding names. Also, might I point out if I was still using my legal first name, the baby and I would get very confused.”
Johnny’s head came up at that moment and he yawned as though telling his uncle he didn’t have to be confused. He was the center of the universe and he knew it.
Sometimes Flynn kind of envied the kid. He’d never had that kind of attention lavished on him. Not even when he was a baby. He’d had a succession of nannies who came and went. His parents were all right, but they’d led very busy lives and hadn’t had time for their children. His father had mellowed over the years and he’d been a much better dad later in life.
Flynn had to face the fact that he was lonely. He’d changed up his life and it had been for the better. He enjoyed his job more now. Chase was happy and healthy. But he’d also isolated himself.
It had been an easy thing to do after how his engagement had ended. He never talked about it. Only Chase knew how he’d screwed up. He hadn’t even told Mitch. That was how ashamed he was of not seeing through her lies. After he’d figured out how bad it was, he’d taken a step back and devoted himself to work.
Gaining Master rights at Sanctum had been his way of getting back out there. His brother had introduced him to the lifestyle and he’d realized very quickly it suited him.
That was when he’d started to think about taking a submissive.
It was a logical thing to do. He would look for a woman who wanted the same things he did. They would discuss their relationship up front and work out a contract between them. No more of that shitty go-with-the-flow dating that inevitably ended in him getting his ass kicked. This time he would do it right.
“I thought you were going into this because you were serious about finding a sub.” Mitch didn’t seem to notice the fact that his son suddenly found his father’s nose deeply fascinating. Johnny giggled and he poked at it. “Now you want to play spy?”
“I’m not the one who likes to send in the spies. That’s her MO.”
“That was her father’s MO,” Mitch corrected, gently shifting his son so tiny fingers didn’t go up his nose. “He and your dad apparently liked to go at it hard. Our dad. Sorry, it’s still hard sometimes.”
“It’s okay.” He’d gotten used to Mitch distancing from their father. In some ways, it was a miracle they were so close. Mitch was hard to get to know, but he was loyal once a man was in his circle.
Flynn had earned that. He’d changed his nephew’s diapers on occasion. That had to buy him loyalty. Johnny was a cute thing, but he was squirmy and did not skimp on the poop. He was also going to drive his father crazy. Flynn stood and held his hands out. Johnny gleefully went to him.
“Is Daddy feeling suffocated?” Flynn asked Johnny, who drooled and looked ridiculously adorable.
“No,” Mitch said with a sigh. “I’m not very good at the advice stuff.”
Flynn kept his eyes on the bundle in his hand and shook his head. “But Uncle Flynn didn’t ask for advice.”
Except he kind of needed it.
“Oh, you asked for it by being a dumbass. I know that much. I’ve been around enough brothers to know that the first rule of brotherhood is to not let your brother make an ass of himself,” Mitch explained.
He had to admit, when Mitch used that tone of voice, he really did feel like the little brother. Sometimes it made him feel oddly welcome. Today it put him on edge. “If she’s so innocent, why did we catch a Slaten employee trying to hack into our system?”
Mitch stopped and turned, drying his hands on a towel. “You can prove it?”
Beyond being his brother, Mitch was also a hawk of an attorney. He liked to fly around, looking for places he could swoop in and sue.
“My CEO says he believes it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you know I can’t sue them. I can’t even bring the cops into it.” The weight of the baby in his arms was soothing. He found himself bouncing on the balls of his feet as Johnny yawned and laid his head on his shoulder.
“Because your stock would tank and we would be viewed as soft.” Mitch hung up the towel. “I’m surprised she would do that. You know I advised her on the takeover. I can’t talk about it, but I liked her. She seemed very stable and unlike her father. Are we certain this isn’t her father still trying to cause trouble? He would likely have people on the inside at Slaten.”
