Cherished: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella (3 page)

Not at first. At first he had too much crap to deal with. There were police reports to be filed and explanations given of how a killer had almost gotten away with pinning his crimes on Will. There was Starr, who had used him for months when all she was really doing was getting close so her boyfriend could kill Karina and collect on an insurance policy. He could still see her, her normally placid face screwed up in disgust.

You’re a pervert. The things you made me do. You’re the one who should be going to jail. Not me.

He shook off that particular humiliation. He didn’t like to think about the fact that her trial would be coming up soon.

It had been a motherfuck of a few months. Hence the need to start over.

And to shake off the past and embrace who he really was. He was a Dom and he needed this kind of play. He wasn’t going to hide it anymore. He’d spent the last several years making sure no one at the hospital knew he liked to visit clubs. He’d gone so far as to live in Dallas and work in Fort Worth so he wouldn’t run into anyone who knew him. He’d told lies about his profession.

He was still the kid who didn’t want anyone to know he lived in a trailer and his mom was a meth head.

No. He didn’t hide now and he wasn’t going to hide his interest in Bridget. His sisters even teased him about her because he tended to trip or miss steps when she walked by.

“What makes you think she’s afraid and not simply uninterested?” Mitch asked. There was no way Will could miss the speculative look in his friend’s eyes. Mitch was a lawyer, a shark of the highest order. He was always assessing, always plotting.

Wishful thinking? “She watches me when she thinks I’m not looking.”

Lila had been the one to inform him of that interesting nugget, though she was known for being ridiculously over positive at times. All three of his sisters tended to take a super-positive, the-world is-still-great view of life, which considering how they’d grown up was a miracle.

Mitch’s big shoulder shrugged. “She could be worried you’re stalking her. Which you are. I’ve found women have excellent prey instincts. They get antsy when the big bad predator keeps licking his chops around her.”

“I’m not drooling over her, damn it.” At least he hoped he wasn’t. He had to admit he thought about those tits all the time. Real. Soft. Big. He was pretty sure he couldn’t hold her breasts completely in the palm of his hand. They would overflow. She would never fit into the designer clothes the women at work dreamed about. She was too curvy, too womanly. Soft breasts flowed into curvy hips and that ass. “I’m interested. She’s a gorgeous woman.”

And now he understood that she was a woman with a problem. Yeah, his brain was chewing on that information. Aloha and all that.

“I didn’t think she was your type.”

“I have a type?”

Mitch rolled his dark eyes. “Dude, you’ve screwed every super sub here. You do know that she’s only here for research, right? From what I understand, she’s not looking for a Dom. I’ve worked with her a couple of times and she’s very closed off. There’s not a lot of trust there for anyone except her two sub friends. She wants to ask her questions and do some light impact play, but I don’t think any of it really moves her. I’ve heard she writes romance books. What the hell does D/s have to do with fluffy romance books?”

Ah, the lawyer hadn’t kept up with pop culture. “Didn’t you know Doms are the new cowboys?” He’d heard Bridget and her friends laughing about some blog proclaiming that fact. They’d been of the firm opinion that cowboys were still cool. And Bridget had immediately started talking about a cowboy Dom as the coolest thing ever. “Bridget writes smutty books. Sex books. She’s looking for new fetishes to write about. And she needs a Dom. There’s a lost little sub under all that brattiness.”

Not that he would be her Dom. No. He wasn’t looking to be anyone’s Dom. Not on a permanent basis. He simply wanted to play with her, spend some mutually pleasurable time inside that hot body of hers. Bridget wasn’t the type of woman he would settle down with for more than a few nights. Weeks, maybe. A month tops.

They would kill each other—but they would likely be spectacular in bed, and damn, but he could use that.

“Smutty books?” Mitch huffed. “I don’t see it. She’s a romantic at heart. If she’s writing books, I would bet my life they’re about romantic fantasies.”

Which only proved he hadn’t spent a lot of time studying Bridget. Will had checked out her covers. They were super salacious, with naked bodies and titles like
Her Billionaire Masters
. Yep, in the plural. Somehow, he couldn’t see that book being about love and commitment. No. Bridget had some interesting fantasies, and he was the man to make a couple of them come true.

Though not the ménage one. When he got in her bed—for however long he was there—he would be the only one there. He didn’t share and he would make sure she understood that he could take care of her every need without a partner.

If he could only pin her down.

“She needs a date to her sister’s wedding,” he explained, his eyes on the locker room. He was waiting to see her one last time. He had it so damn bad.

“Interesting. I’m not sure how that will help you. If she’s reluctant, I doubt that a couple of hours with bad champagne and a cover band are really going to help you plead your case.”

He felt his lips curl up. The whole time she’d been talking, he’d had a scenario playing through his head. A scenario that ended with him on top of her. “Do you know who her father is?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

Will doubted there was any pleasure involved. “George Slaten.”

Mitchell whistled. “Are you telling me that Bratty Bridget is the heir to Slaten Industries?”

It had shocked the hell out of him, too. It was obvious she was doing well financially. She lived in a nice building in a good part of town. She drove a nice but not over-the-top car, but she’d come from a billion dollar world. Poor little rich girl. Will had known more than one of those, and it was one more reason to not be attracted to her.

His dick wasn’t listening. His dick didn’t care that she came from an overprivileged background. His dick didn’t give a damn that she wasn’t a woman who would bring him peace or even pretend to need him for anything but an orgasm. His dick just wanted her.

“Her sister is getting married and apparently it’s a lavish event.”

Mitchell nodded. “Big Tag recently signed Slaten Industries as a client. Adam’s revamping their computer security.”

“Apparently he and Jake are also working security for the week-long wedding festivities in Hawaii. And Bratty Bridget has been asked to bring a date.”

A single brow rose over Mitch’s eyes. “You think she’s going to ask you?”

Not a chance in hell. “She’s planning on sitting down with Serena to decide which of the Doms she’s going to ask. They’re going to make a list. I assure you, I won’t be on it, but that’s a mistake.”

“You don’t think the other guys would take care of her?”

“I think she’ll walk all over the other guys. I think the other guys won’t know what to do with her.” He didn’t know what to do with her, but he really wanted the chance to try.

“Maybe she’ll ask me. We get along all right.”

Wow. That was what red-hot rage felt like. It came out of nowhere and set his blood to boiling and his fists to clenching. The entire idea of Mitchell putting his hands on her body made him see red, and he knew damn well Mitch had already done it. Mitch had flogged her, but there hadn’t been anything sexual about it. He’d watched them together, all the while thinking that there wasn’t a spark between them. There had been no real connection, no flow of energy from Dom to sub, and yet he kind of wanted to take his friend apart for even suggesting that he be the one to go to Hawaii with her, to share a room with her, to pretend to be her lover.

Mitch held his hands up in obvious surrender. “All right. I’ll say no if she asks. Will, you’ve got a serious problem. You look insane right now.”

So he wasn’t good at hiding his feelings. He sucked at it. He took a deep breath, schooling his expression. “Sorry. I would rather you didn’t go out with Bridget.”

“Yes, I can plainly see that you would rather kill me than let that happen.” Mitch’s expression turned thoughtful. “You only want to hook up with her, right?”

“Hook up” was a stupid term. He liked the old ways. “I wouldn’t mind having a short-term affair. Nothing serious. Very casual.”

Mitch’s head nodded but in that way that let Will know he was indulging the crazy. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“You’re an asshole.” He had also pretty much become Will’s best friend. Over the weeks he’d been at Sanctum, he’d come to depend on Mitch, despite the fact that they had utterly different backgrounds. Mitch had proven to be the kind of man who didn’t care that a person hadn’t come from money. He respected the hell out of any man who could pull himself up. Will had been forced to pull his own ass up from the muck more than once, and he’d supported three sisters while he was doing it. Didn’t the universe owe him a little pleasure? Didn’t it owe him a couple of nights with the world’s hottest brat? “I’m going to make sure she has nowhere else to go.”

Mitch’s lips curled up. “Really? You’re going to talk to every Dom in the place and scare them off?”

He shrugged. “Scare them. Bribe them. Blackmail them. I don’t care as long as she comes to me at the end of it.”

“Well, you know I love a good takedown as much as the next guy. Try to make sure she doesn’t get hurt. How can I help?”

She wouldn’t get hurt. He knew the type. Bridget Slaten likely wasn’t capable of really being hurt by someone like him. She would never see him as a suitable mate, so all he could ever tempt her into was an affair. Maybe even a D/s affair. The thought of dominating her made his dick jump. “Let’s make a list of our own and start working our way through. By the time we’re done, she’ll know she has one option and one option only.”

She caught his eye as she stepped out of the locker room now dressed in her usual armor of jeans and a black T-shirt and a pair of comfortable sandals. He’d noted that she never wore heels unless she was in the club. Her raven black hair flowed in tresses around her shoulders and he wondered what kind of shampoo she used and how it would feel to have all that hair spread out on his chest as he held her close.

She turned slightly and their eyes met, hers widening in a startled-doe look before turning distinctly arrogant and bratty as she turned her nose up and walked away.

Yeah, she was aware of him. And soon she would realize there was no escape.

Chapter Two

Bridget took a deep breath as she contemplated the hallway in front of her. She would have to walk by his place, and it looked like he’d left his door open. On this floor there were only four units, but naturally he’d taken the one right across from hers. Normally she could sneak in or out without ever seeing him because he kept weird hours. He was a whiz-kid surgeon, so he got called in at all hours of the day or night. She often wondered if the harem got bored when he worked long hours.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t ask him. She had to find another way. She couldn’t ask a man who kept three women on his string to escort her to her sister’s wedding. Certainly not when they would be expected to sleep in the same room. His other girlfriends would likely object.

As if thinking about them conjured one of them up, a slender brunette stepped out of Will’s condo, turning and going up on her toes as Will appeared in the doorway. Great. She got to watch the “good-bye for now, lover” kiss.

The brunette leaned over and kissed Will’s cheek. “Give it another twenty minutes and it should be ready. I feel better knowing you have dinner. You don’t eat enough.”

Poor girl. She was obviously in love, and that was a bad place to be when a dude had two other chicks. She realized she probably looked stupid standing there and started to make her way down the hall. She would ignore all of it and get inside and start looking on Craigslist for a date/potential serial killer. She wondered if the serial killer would let her interview him before her attempted murder.

“Bridget,” Will called out.

Damn it. It would be rude not to say anything, but then she was kind of known for being rude. She managed to get to her door, but she hadn’t pulled out the key.

“Bridget.” He barked her name this time and she couldn’t help but respond. The minute he turned that rich, deep baritone on her she was putty.

She forced a smile on her face and turned to see the happy couple. Will had put an arm around the woman who looked to be maybe twenty years old. Will was in his mid-thirties. Pervert. “Hey, I didn’t see you there.”

“Sure, you didn’t. Lisa, this is my neighbor, Bridget,” he said.

Lovely Lisa’s perfect lips quirked up. “Yeah, I think I know who she is.” She stepped away from Will and her perfectly manicured hand came out. “My brother might have mentioned you on more than one occasion.”

What? “Your brother?”

“Yep. I am the youngest Daley, and according to my sisters, the most obnoxious, but don’t let that fool you. I’m the smart one. Will there is the dunce of the family.”