The Men With the Golden Cuffs (7 page)

Adam sighed. They were both drama queens. The whole scene could have been avoided if she’d simply answered either her phone or her door. Or Jake could have been a bit softer. Attacking her after breaking in was sure to make her angry. It might have been a better idea to simply break into her kitchen and cook her a nice meal. Then the whole breaking-and-entering blow could have been softened with a little pasta. He’d been taking some lessons from Sean. Cooking seemed like a good way to get a woman into bed. But no, the caveman had to attack in an attempt to prove he could.

He spied her half full glass of wine. The yelling was reaching a level that threatened to shake the walls. Yeah, he was going to need that. He picked it up and, without a single regret, took a long sip.

“Stop yelling!” Jake ordered. Adam recognized it as his big bad Dom voice.

“Let me go!” Serena screamed back. She seemed to be in excellent physical condition. No one could fight that hard and long without some serious stamina. He was impressed. And the Sauvignon Blanc wasn’t half bad.

“You’re both scaring the dog.” Adam held out a hand, and the dog ran to him, cowering behind his legs. A Chihuahua would have at least made some noise.

Serena finally seemed to focus. “Adam?”

He winked her way. “In the flesh, sweetheart.”

Jake’s hold had made the tank top ride up. And he’d been right, the pretty girl wasn’t wearing a bra. He got the slightest hint of nipple. Now that she’d calmed down a bit, she looked right in Jake’s arms. She would be a sweet handful in between them. He’d never loved skinny girls. He wanted curves and boobs, and Miss Serena had plenty of both.

“What the hell are you two doing here? Motherfucker.” She tried to pull away.

She also had a potty mouth. “Oh, I would watch the language, sweetheart. The big, nasty Dom doesn’t like swearing. He just might spank you.”

Serena stopped, every inch of that fair skin flushing in an instant. Yes. She liked that idea. He was going to have to read some of those books. Her laptop was open on a small desk in the corner. Her whole living room seemed to have been converted to a soft, feminine office. She’d been working, walking around her office and dancing. He wasn’t sure how the dancing helped, but he’d liked it.
 

“Let me go, please.” Serena’s voice was hoarse from the screaming, but there was a tight control to it.

Jake hesitated. “Are you going to be calm now?”

“Yes,” she replied, going completely still in his arms. “Now that I know you’re not here to kill me, I think I can be calm. You aren’t here to kill me, are you?”

Adam smiled before taking another sip. “Not at all. We’re here to congratulate you. We’re taking your case, sweetheart. We’re your new bodyguards.”

Serena forced herself to calm down. Her heart was racing like a runaway freight train. She clutched the phone. Her bedroom was down the hall from where the two men who had invaded her home sat, but it still seemed a little too close for comfort.

“I want them gone.” She peered around the corner and could see Adam sitting back, her traitor dog’s head in his lap. She’d thought he was hot before in his perfectly cut suit. Now that he’d ditched the tie and jacket, she could see hints of just how cut his body was. And she’d felt for herself just how fit Jacob Dean was.

And how hard his cock could get. There had been no way to mistake the fact that once she’d started wriggling around on him, he’d responded. And so had she once she’d realized that he wasn’t there to hurt her. She’d felt a deep pull on all of her girl parts. She needed to get laid. And not by someone like Jacob Dean.

There was a long sigh on the other end of the phone. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sweetie. Ian wouldn’t have assigned them if he didn’t think they were the best men for the job. I know you don’t know Ian Taggart, but he’s an honorable man. I trust him. My brother thought he could walk on water.”

Serena softened. She knew Lara’s story. She knew how much she missed her brother every day. “Why can’t this Ian person babysit me?”

“Ian is the head of the company. He can’t be with you twenty-four seven until this asshole is caught. And it’s a bodyguard, not a babysitter. You are in danger. Don’t you dare not take this seriously.” Lara’s sharp voice practically cut through the phone. When Lara loved someone, she could be fierce about it. It made her a hell of an agent. She viewed her clients as family.

“I am taking it seriously. I promise. I just wish they hadn’t broken into my house and caught me in my underwear.” That had been past humiliating. She’d ditched her PJ pants because the house had gotten warm. At least she’d managed to leave her tank top on. She really wished she hadn’t taken off her bra though. She could just imagine what those two intensely fit men had thought of her cellulite and her saggy boobs.

Lara laughed. “Oh, no. Did they catch you doing that crazy dance thing you do when you can’t quite figure out an action scene? Or did they catch you with the ménage dolls?”

She sometimes used dolls in order to get down the physicality of a love scene. She’d rapidly discovered that male dolls were deeply inflexible, so she had to use three ballerina dolls to make things work. Luckily, they were hidden in her desk drawer. “The dancing thing.”

It made her weird. She knew that, but she’d given up on finding a man who would understand her a long time back. Her friends got that she thought better while singing and dancing. They ignored it when she talked to herself because she was working on dialogue and made crazy hand gestures. They didn’t care that she non-sequitured her way through life because she had a million ideas going at once.

They didn’t make fun of her.

“The dancing thing is cute,” Lara assured her. “Ian told me that these guys know what they’re doing. Adam Miles and Jacob Dean are former Special Forces. They worked with Ian’s brother, Sean. He speaks very highly of them. They’ve been working in the private sector for five years. They’re the best in the business. And this is only until we figure out who this asshole is. I promise Ian is working on that, too.”

The cops hadn’t done much. At least if they were paying these guys, they might actually look into it. She didn’t have a problem hiring a security firm. But she did have a problem with Adam and Jake. “They’re already making fun of me.”

It was stupid. She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman. She shouldn’t give a crap what people thought, but it hurt. She’d gotten the crap kicked out of her about a million times since she’d started writing erotic romance. She’d thought she could be happy and proud telling everyone that she was a published writer. Her aunt had asked when she was going to write a real book. Her husband had read it and promptly divorced her because he hadn’t meant to marry a woman of her obviously low character. She couldn’t even find writer friends outside of her genre. The one writers’ group she’d gone to had asked her to leave because they didn’t want her to tarnish the chapter’s image. She was sick to death of being made fun of.

Lara’s voice turned cajoling. Serena had to smile because she’d heard Lara use the same tone on authors who went all diva on her. “What did they do? Look, sweetie, guys don’t understand romance. I know your covers are salacious, but they sell books. You can’t expect some straight guy to get it.”

“No, Lara. They started talking about Doms.” She could still hear her ex-husband berating her for wanting to explore BDSM. He’d called her everything from a freak to a whore. The last thing she needed was two bodyguards who thought they could look down on her.

There was a long pause. “What exactly did they say?”

She felt her whole body flush. She looked around the corner to make sure they weren’t listening in. Adam was still sitting in her desk chair, drinking her damn wine. He looked gorgeous. His dark hair fell perfectly over sculpted features. He spoke quietly to Jake, who she couldn’t see.

“Adam made a crack about Jacob spanking me if I didn’t watch my potty mouth.”

Lara’s laugh came over loud and clear. “Well, you can cuss a blue streak.”

“He said the big bad Dom wouldn’t like it. I’m sick of this shit, Lara. I’m sick of men who make fun of me because I’m not some perfect little vanilla princess.”

Lara sighed. “Okay, sweetie. I’ll talk to Ian. I’m sorry. He’s a good friend. I thought he could help. Have you talked to Storm about this?”

Storm was the Dom Serena had been talking with for a couple of months. She’d only recently met him, but he was an incredibly open man. Maybe she should talk to him. He might have some connections. She turned away and walked to the back of her bedroom. “I have a meeting with Master Storm in a couple of days. I’ll talk to him.”

“All right.” Serena could hear Lara’s tiredness. She wished she wasn’t the cause of it. “I’m sorry. I thought it was the best I could do. Please don’t throw them out. They really will protect you until we can get someone else in place. Just go to bed and don’t talk to them.”

She hated the thought that she wouldn’t see them again. She really was an idiot. They were jerks who had thrown her out of their office, broken into her house, and made fun of her work. And she was hurt at the idea of them walking out of her life.

She really was a masochist.

She should probably talk to Master Storm about that, too.

“I promise.” She felt her whole body sag. “I’ll be a good girl. I really do appreciate it, you know. I just…I can’t deal with it. I’m so tired of getting the shit kicked out of me for being honest. But I’ll handle it while we find someone else.”

“All right, sweetie. Talk to Master Storm. I’ll talk to Ian tomorrow. I’ll find someone who works. Hey, Brian just walked in. He says hi. You know he loves you, too.”

Brian was Lara’s husband and her partner. He handled the more mainstream clients. Serena wasn’t sure he loved her. Sometimes she thought he could barely stand the erotic clients his wife had brought in, but he was still Lara’s husband. “Tell him hi. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Lara.”

She hung up the phone. She felt weary, too. She pulled her robe around her and took a deep breath. It was time to set the ground rules with her new bodyguards. She steeled herself. This time when she talked to them she wanted to at least sound like a professional.

“Who is Master Storm?” a low voice asked.

She shrieked like a five-year-old girl. Jake Dean had somehow gotten into her bedroom and behind her when she wasn’t looking. “You have to stop that! God, you’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“He’s good at that. It’s one of his great life skills.” Adam leaned negligently against her doorframe. Mojo sat beside him, their enormous bodies blocking her escape route. Mojo’s tail thumped and his mouth hung open, tongue panting. At least her dog found them amusing.

They were both here in her small bedroom. It was the most straight-man attention this bedroom had gotten in years.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that.” She forced herself to look at Jake. Between the two of them it was obvious Adam would be easier to deal with. Jake was the hard-ass. She didn’t deal well with hard-asses.

A single brow arched above his model perfect face. “I didn’t sneak up. You weren’t paying attention to your surroundings. You were far too busy telling your agent to fire us.”

Adam’s face fell. “What? But we just got here. Look, sweetheart, I know the whole breaking-in thing was scary, but we did have a point. Your security system sucks. And, in our defense, we did call and ring the doorbell. We can’t do our job standing on your front porch waiting for you to finish with the dancing thing. That was adorable by the way.”

She flushed. God, she hated the fact that a part of her wanted to believe he wasn’t insulting her. His teasing tone was soft and cajoling. When he smiled, the most gorgeous dimples showed up on his face. Adam Miles was just about everything she could want in a boyfriend. He was charming and smart, and he came with a built-in alpha-male partner.

Stop right there, Serena Brooks. Your imagination is running wild. The world doesn’t work that way.

“I don’t think this is about the break-in. She said we were making fun of her.” Jake’s brows drew together in a serious expression as though he was working through a problem. “I didn’t make fun of her. I told her to stop yelling. I have excellent hearing. I can’t stand yelling.”

And he apparently thought she was dense. “You know I wasn’t talking about you.” She turned to Adam. It had really hurt coming from him. She’d expected someone like Jake to think less of her for what she wrote, but Adam had seemed more tolerant.

“What? Me? Are you serious? How did I make fun of you?” He seemed to really struggle with the idea.

“You obviously read some of the titles of my books. Look, I get that you wouldn’t read a book like that, but I won’t listen to anyone denigrate the choices I’ve made in my lifestyle. You might not understand or accept it, but I will demand that you respect it.”

Jake actually laughed. “The little sub thinks we have problems with BDSM.”

Adam’s eyes rolled. “Yeah, uhm, you do have some problems, sweetheart. How long have you been in the lifestyle? Or are you a little tourist who likes to rage against the machine?”