His to Claim

by Shelly Bell

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Shelly Bell

  Cover design by Elizabeth Turner. Cover image © Shutterstock. Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Forever

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

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  twitter.com/foreverromance

  First Edition: April 2018

  Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing.

  The Forever name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  LCCN: 2017963493

  ISBNs: 978-1-4555-9599-0 (pbk.), 978-1-4555-9598-3 (ebook)

  E3-20180116-DANF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  About the Author

  Don't miss FOR HIS PLEASURE

  Also by Shelly Bell

  Newsletters

  To Spencer—for giving me one of my favorite lines in this book and for making me laugh. I’m so proud of you.

  Acknowledgments

  I never knew how many people went into making a book until I visited the Grand Central Forever office in New York! Thank you to my editors, Madeleine Colavita and Amy Pierpont, for your patience and guidance. Working with both of you has been a dream come true. Also, a huge thank you to everyone at Forever who worked behind the scenes to get At His Mercy and His to Claim into readers’ hands.

  Writing is a solitary profession, but knowing that my author friends are only a click of a button away helps me through those tough days. Thank you to Aliza Mann, MK Schiller, Heather Novak, Sage Spelling, Dana Nussio, Isabella Drake, Sienna Snow, Codi Gary, and T. J. Kline for always bringing a smile to my face.

  Thank you to Jodi Ellen Malpas and Alessandra Torre for your support and all your kind words. I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me.

  Thank you to Neda Amini, publicist extraordinaire, for keeping me organized and for being a champion of my books. I can’t wait until I finally get to meet you!

  A huge thank you to Jessica Alvarez for helping me through one of the roughest years of my life. I’m thankful to have you in my corner.

  To my husband and kids, thank you for peeling me off the ceiling when I get a little crazy. I hope you know how much I love you.

  Last but never least, to my readers. I know there are thousands of books out there, and I’m honored that you choose to read mine. A special shout-out to Melanie G., Miriam L., Rachel B., Crystal B., Jennifer R., Kathleen R., Carolina L., Christi L., Amy B., Ralou, Tamara B., Jennifer A., Jennifer S., Misty P., Nicole K., Rebecca W., Susan M., Cara R., Crystal C. B., Bridget W., and the Shelly Bell Insider’s Facebook group. Thank you for going above and beyond for me. I love each and every one of you.

  PROLOGUE

  Twenty-four years ago

  Ryder McKay woke up in his race car bed, sweaty and damp underneath his new Star Wars comforter.

  The room was pitch-black.

  He didn’t like pitch-black.

  That’s why he had his R2-D2 night-light. But it wasn’t working, because if it was, he’d be able to see something other than black.

  His dad didn’t think he needed a night-light. He’d said it was only for babies.

  Ryder wasn’t no baby.

  His brother, Finn, had told him he sometimes got scared of the dark, too, and Finn was fifteen, ten years older than him. Then Finn had bought Ryder the night-light from his own allowance.

  Ryder missed Finn a lot. He’d gone to visit his mother in a whole ’nother state for the summer.

  Ryder didn’t have no mother.

  She’d died giving birth to him. That’s what Dad had said when his eyes had gotten shiny.

  Ryder had killed her.

  Dad hadn’t said that, but Ryder was smart, so he’d figured it out.

  Ryder had never even seen a picture of her because Dad didn’t have none. It must make him too sad. Ryder got sad about it too sometimes because all his friends had mommies.

  But he had Finn and that was better than a mommy. When Ryder got scared, Finn would make him feel safe.

  Dad and Nanny Spector didn’t do the kinds of things Finn did to make him feel safe. No hugs. No smiles. No funny jokes. Dad just patted him on the back and told Nanny to take care of him. Nanny pretended she liked Ryder, but she liked his daddy more. He knew this because he’d seen them hugging and kissing in Daddy’s bed once. Naked! It was yucky and it made him feel weird to see, so he’d left before they knew he was there. He didn’t know why she had to sleep in Daddy’s bed when she had her own room in the house.

  He didn’t like Nanny. Her breath smelled funny after she drank from the square bottle she kept hidden in her purse. Sometimes she fell asleep with the bottle in her arms like it was her baby. On those nights, Ryder couldn’t wake her up even when he jumped on her bed.

  A loud bang came from downstairs, shattering the silence.

  His body twitched before he lay perfectly still.

  It sounded like a firecracker had exploded inside the house.

  That would be so cool.

  He hopped out of his bed and put his arms out in front of him to find the door.

  He heard angry voices. His daddy and a lady. It wasn’t Nanny. This lady was talking in another language, but he understood one word very clear.

  Ryder.

  Ryder slid his hands along the smooth wall until he found the door. Not wanting to make any noise, he slowly turned the knob and cracked open the door. The shouts grew louder.

  Careful as to not make a sound, he tiptoed along the carpeted hallway, passing by all the fancy artwork on the walls that Daddy always warned him not to touch.

  “You’re not taking him, you crazy bitch!” Daddy shouted.

  Daddy said a bad word.

  He must really be mad.

  Ryder got on his knees and looked down through the white wooden railing. Yep, there was his daddy, and he was wearing his shiny pa
jamas, so the lady must have woken Daddy out of bed.

  The lady kept yelling at his daddy in that funny language while waving something gray in her hand. Every time she moved, her long, straight black hair swayed. He’d never seen hair so long. It was like that stupid princess stuck in the tower, only this lady’s hair was black instead of yellow. Black as his room without his night-light.

  And she was just as scary.

  “Give me the gun before you hurt someone,” his daddy said. He spoke to her like Ryder talked to his friend’s dog when he wanted to pet him.

  But maybe the lady didn’t understand or maybe it was because his daddy didn’t say please, because she started screaming for Ryder. Then she said another word he recognized.

  Mama.

  Ryder must have made a noise because both the lady and his daddy turned their heads toward the stairs.

  Was the lady his mama?

  He touched the top of his head. He had black hair too.

  But his mother was dead.

  Wasn’t she?

  The lady started running toward the stairs and Daddy grabbed her arm, swinging her around and stopping her from going anywhere. She growled like a wild animal and then they were wrestling over that gray thing in her hand. For a moment, they looked like they were dancing, and he giggled.

  There was a loud bang, so loud it hurt Ryder’s ears and made him shake. Warm pee trickled down his legs and turned the white carpet yellow.

  The lady slumped to the floor in front of the stairs and Daddy stood over her with the gray thing in his hand. There was bright red blood all over both of them and it was pouring out of her stomach onto the tiled floor.

  Ryder wanted to run and hide, but he was too scared, so he curled into a ball, hoping he could make himself small enough to disappear.

  The lady’s eyes rolled upward, and she stared at him. “Ryder,” she said between coughs. Blood was dripping from her mouth now as she whispered his name over and over.

  Then she stopped whispering. Stopped coughing. Just…stopped.

  That’s when he knew that the lady with the long black hair was dead.

  Daddy had killed her.

  Daddy spoke on the phone. “Got a situation. I need the crew here for cleanup.” He hung up without saying goodbye and looked upstairs.

  Ryder’s heart was beating really fast. Would Daddy kill him next?

  His eyes filled with tears. He didn’t want to die.

  He crawled backward until he could no longer see downstairs. After jumping to his feet, he grabbed a towel from the closet and tried to get the pee out from the carpet. Maybe if he cleaned it up good enough, Daddy wouldn’t notice. As he worked, he heard doors slamming, lots of footsteps, and a bunch of different men’s voices.

  A few minutes later, he ran to his room and stripped out of his wet clothes. He threw them and the towel into the back of his closet and changed into dry pajamas. Things began to get quieter downstairs as he fell back into bed and drew the covers over his head.

  It was pitch-black again.

  But this time, he didn’t mind.

  Because it was much scarier out there in the light.

  His door creaked and someone walked across the carpet toward him.

  He held his breath, wishing that Finn were here to save him.

  “I know you’re up, champ,” Daddy said, dragging the blanket off his head.

  Light beamed into his room from the hallway. Ryder blinked, his eyes focusing.

  Wearing different pajamas than earlier, Daddy stood over him and rubbed his eyes with his hands like he’d just woken up.

  He didn’t look mad anymore.

  Just tired.

  “Was she my mama?” Ryder whispered.

  Daddy’s eyebrows crinkled. “Who?”

  Ryder sat up. “The lady you killed downstairs.”

  Daddy grabbed his shoulders. “Nothing happened.”

  “But I saw—”

  “Nothing.” Daddy sat on the bed and leaned in close, his breath blowing on Ryder’s face. It smelled like Nanny Spector. “You saw nothing. You had a bad dream. But Daddy’s here now. He’ll always be here. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re mine.” Daddy put his hands on both of Ryder’s cheeks. “As my son, you belong to me. And that means, no matter what happens, Ryder, I’ll never let you go. Now go to sleep and don’t let me ever hear you talking about the bad dream again. Because if you do…well, let’s just say, I would hate for anyone to get hurt.”

  Ryder didn’t want to belong to Daddy.

  Not if it meant being trapped in this big, scary house like a hamster in its cage.

  But if he told on Daddy, Finn could get hurt. And he didn’t want nothing bad to happen to Finn.

  He’d have to keep it a secret.

  Even if it killed him.

  ONE

  Present day

  Ryder McKay knocked back a shot of Jameson, slammed the glass down on the bar, and grabbed the next one, relishing the smooth burn sliding down his throat. It wasn’t every day your brother was about to marry the daughter of the country’s most powerful man.

  The press was calling the union a “marriage made in heaven.”

  More like a deal with the devil.

  Only in this case, it had been a deal between two devils. Two criminals posing as legitimate businessmen who were likely using their offspring to solidify some kind of pact between the two families. If Keane McKay and Ian Sinclair joined forces instead of working against each other, they’d have the potential to be largest crime syndicate in North America.

  It had been years since Ryder had turned his back on Keane and that life. After he’d graduated high school, he’d made good on his lifelong promise to himself. He’d moved out and never returned.

  Any conversation with Keane over the past decade had been limited to Ryder’s insistence that his father not contact him again. It had taken several years, but he had eventually gotten the hint and stopped calling.

  To maintain his distance from Keane, Ryder hadn’t planned on attending his brother Finn’s wedding.

  Then last week, he’d come across a photograph that had changed his mind.

  A photo of Jane.

  Recalling the vixen he’d spent one wild night with almost a year ago, he licked remnants of the whiskey from his lips and swirled his finger along the rim of the glass. Before falling asleep that night, he’d realized one time inside of Jane hadn’t been enough for him.

  He’d wanted more.

  Not just sex, but the chance to get to know her.

  Crazy thoughts for a man who’d spent his adult life never having sex with the same woman twice.

  But she’d pulled a Cinderella on him, fleeing his hotel room in the middle of the night. Other than her first name, he’d known nothing about her.

  Obsessed with finding the woman he couldn’t forget, he’d wasted months searching for her. He’d checked with the organization that had sponsored the conference where they’d met. Called other attendees. Combed through photos of the conference. Hell, at one point, he’d been so desperate, he’d hired a private detective.

  And what had he found?

  Nothing.

  It was as if she’d never existed.

  His fingers tightened around his glass.

  He’d been a fool.

  Because now he knew the truth.

  Shortly after their night together, he’d realized someone had copied design and software files from his computer. He hadn’t wanted to believe that Jane had been the one to do it—the time stamp didn’t match—but last week, Ryder stumbled upon a recent article online about his father’s foray into the automated commercial kitchen business, the same business as Ryder’s company, Novateur.

  Then the photo accompanying the article caught his attention.

  It was a photo of the company’s vice president of innovation standing beside Keane.

  Jane.

  A muscle popped in his jaw as he acknowle
dged once again what an idiot he’d been that night.

  He’d played right into her hands, lowering his guard when he brought her to his hotel room, not suspecting she would stab him in the back while he slept.

  Novateur was one of the first in the world to bring “smart kitchen” technology to restaurants and bakeries. Already in business together providing productivity consultations to restaurants, Ryder and his best friend Tristan had formed the company shortly after their discussion that automation was an effective way to cut costs and increase efficiency in restaurant kitchens. Voice-activated appliances, robotic arms, and conveyor belts for restaurants and bakeries—even the smaller, family-owned ones—were now an affordable reality.

  Novateur was the only restaurant automation company to custom design and install the technology per the customer’s specific needs—until McKay Industries.

  The evidence was indisputable. Jane had been the one to steal the designs for his father.

  Had she thought Ryder wouldn’t find out? Or had she thought that changing the time stamp would save her?

  In the end, the joke was on her. Because anything she copied was worthless without key pieces of code. That alone should have given him the satisfaction to move on.

  And yet he couldn’t. Something about her didn’t add up. He couldn’t equate the woman he’d met that night with the woman he now knew her to be. She’d acted so innocent in his bed, her eyes widening in something that looked like awe as he’d removed his clothes and given her the first glimpse of his cock.

  Not that it wasn’t awe-worthy. He didn’t bother with false modesty.

  But Jane’s response had seemed…honest. She’d actually flinched when he’d first entered her. Even now, he could hear her husky voice in his head and the way she whispered his name as he brought her to climax. He remembered the sensation of her silky thighs against his cheeks and how tight her pussy had clamped around him when she came.

  He rubbed the stubble on his chin with his knuckles.

  Since that night, every time it came down to sealing the deal with a woman, thoughts of Jane popped into his head.

  And while he could admit he was bit of an asshole when it came to the opposite sex, he wouldn’t fuck one woman while thinking of another.