The Bastard Read online

  But Dylan was here. Part of me was so, so fiercely happy that we were sitting like this, just him and me. That I had him all to myself. And another part of me knew that we had made a deal, and when he’d fucked me for seven days he’d leave again.

  When he did, I’d throw the second goddamned chair over the balcony.

  He was treating this foot rub like serious business, his brows lowered in a slight frown of concentration. “You should wear flats,” he said. “Your feet are in knots.”

  “Heels are sexy.”

  “You’d look sexy in Crocs and a paper bag.”

  I downed the other half of my wine in a single gulp. “Is this part of the deal? The compliments?”

  “If you like.” He wouldn’t take the bait, wouldn’t fight. And I felt like crying, so I couldn’t stop baiting him. I wanted to, but I didn’t know how.

  “You don’t have to be chivalrous,” I said. “You signed the papers. I’m yours. You don’t have to rub my feet or bring me wine. I said I’d consent, remember?”

  “I remember,” Dylan said, his voice easy and low. His hand moved to the back of my ankle, then up my calf, kneading. “Heels affect the calf muscles too,” he commented. “Yours are a mess.”

  It felt good. So good. Not just the massage—which was fucking heaven—but the intimacy of it, the fact that he was doing it at all. I was his, true. But he was also mine.

  For a little while.

  I stared at him, not bothering to hide it. I watched his face, his eyes, his lowered lashes as he looked at my feet. I watched the muscles play in his forearms, his hands. I was raging wet, and he probably knew it, and he didn’t do a thing about it.

  Then it hit me. The long day and the stress and the wine and all of it. Why he was going so slow, why he hadn’t called in days. I suddenly understood. “You don’t want to fuck me,” I said to him.

  He kept kneading for a second, and then he stopped and raised his gaze to mine. It was dark, fathomless. His expression was tight and restrained.

  “I do want to fuck you,” he said, his voice rough. “And when I do, you’re going to come until you can’t breathe. And then I’m going to do it again. And again.”

  I couldn’t breathe now. I just stared at him.

  “You’re going to wrap these long legs around me,” Dylan said, “and I’m going to be so deep inside you that I’m the only thing you feel. You’re going to forget every stupid doubt and stupid argument that’s going around in your head right now, because those are defenses. When I fuck you, you’ll have no defense against me. None at all.”

  “Jesus, Dylan,” I breathed.

  Gently he put my feet back on the ground. He leaned forward in his chair and hooked his hands behind my knees, pulling me forward in my own chair until I was on the edge. He pulled my knees apart and put his knees between them, then kept his hands where they were, holding me in place.

  “You had me sign those papers,” he said, his gaze burning into mine. “I don’t know what your game is, and I don’t care. I walked away from millions of dollars for the chance to be between your legs for seven days, and I intend to take my side of the bargain. Tonight you’re angry, and angry sex can be fun, but you won’t be angry when we fuck for the first time. You’re going to be begging me. You’re going to be wild for it. You won’t want anything else or anyone else. Just me.”

  My lips parted. You don’t have to wait, I wanted to say. That’s how I feel right now. The words nearly rose to my lips. But I said, “You’re a cocky bastard.”

  “Maybe.” He stood up, still between my knees, his body so close that I was level with his jeans-clad thighs. I could have unzipped him and taken his cock in my mouth, and for a crazy second I thought about it. Then he tugged me upward and said, “Stand up.”

  I did. “What for?”

  “For this,” he said, and he cupped my jaw and kissed me.

  His mouth was just as soft, just as pleasurable as I’d always imagined. We hadn’t done this the other night—he’d licked me until I came, but we hadn’t kissed. Now he was the only thing I could feel and taste, and instead of fighting him I leaned in to his tall, hard body and let him open my mouth. I put my hands under his shirt and my palms on the muscles of his bare back as he cupped my jaw and licked into my mouth, as slowly and as skillfully as he’d licked my pussy.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been kissed. My texts to Axel, and the men before him, had always been about sex, not romance. I’d kissed Axel maybe once, a harsh, clammy affair that I’d never wanted to repeat. It had only lasted a few seconds before he’d pushed my skirt up and gotten to business.

  Dylan didn’t even feel me up—he kept his hands on my jaw as he explored my mouth. I couldn’t muster the same politeness. I slid my hands down over his ass and gripped it.

  He didn’t comment, just broke the kiss, tilted my head, and dropped his mouth to my neck, dragging it slowly along my sensitive skin. I shivered and kept my hands where they were.

  He took his time kissing my neck, then brushed his mouth over mine again. “Saturday morning,” he said, his voice rough. “The flight leaves at eight.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  “Good night, Maddy.”

  I let him go. I didn’t follow him as he left the balcony, left my apartment. I just stood there, my body humming, thinking that for the first time in years I had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow. Or the day after that, or the day after that.

  And I liked it.

  I went inside to get ready for bed.

  18

  DYLAN

  Texas in June was already blistering hot. The sun was hazy behind a bank of lowering clouds, as dark and ugly as smoke, but it was still so powerful I felt sweat on my back before we’d even left the air-conditioned airport. Next to me, Maddy twisted her hair up and put on a big pair of sunglasses as we walked to the rental car counter—she had obviously come prepared.

  I was in my usual jeans and tee, and she had on a sleeveless dress that wrapped and tied at one hip. It made her tall, curvy body look like a fucking dream, and she’d taken my suggestion and put on flat sandals. We looked like a couple, I knew. The flight attendants had treated us as such, and the rental car woman did, too, giving us big smiles and glancing at Maddy’s left hand. No one knew we were actually colleagues locked in an agreement over power, money, and sex—that we were wedding dates and God knew what else.

  We’d spent the time on the plane with Maddy’s laptop open, her giving me a rundown of King Industries, even though I wasn’t going to be taking it over. It was my suggestion. I wasn’t going to be CEO, but I was still Hank King’s son, and I wanted to know everything I could about my father’s estate. It would make it easier to keep my eye on Clayton Rorick. Just because I was ceding him the top position didn’t mean I was going to be out of his hair.

  Maddy knew everything about my father’s holdings and how they ran. The more she talked, the more she confirmed what I already knew: in any situation, Madison White was the smartest person in the room. I’d bet my abandoned fortune on it. She was not only a legal expert but had a head for figures and an understanding of complex financials. She liaised regularly with King Industries’ staff of accountants and tax experts, bouncing issues back and forth. I tried to picture how she must scare the living shit out of most of the men she dealt with in an average day. I also tried to picture what it must be like to be a girl this smart, born to a drunk and a shoplifter who couldn’t keep from getting arrested and rarely tried.

  But I didn’t say any of that. I just shut up and tried to absorb what she was telling me, though, of course, she was right—I didn’t have the head for this shit. It was a sobering lesson, and it made me wish I could show her some of my most impressive skills, the classified ones, so I could get my male pride back.

  “Careful driving,” the car rental woman said, handing me the papers. “There’s some rough weather coming in, or so I hear.”

  Maddy held her hand out
for the keys, but I kept them. “I’ll drive,” I said as we crossed the parking lot to the car. “You just schooled me for three hours. Let me get my dick back.”

  “If you lost your dick over a few spreadsheets, you weren’t very attached to it in the first place,” Maddy shot back.

  “I am very attached to it,” I said, “and so will you be, soon.”

  “Big talker.”

  I glanced at her. “You realize you just flirted with me again, right? Like, actual flirting? Do you feel feverish?”

  She pressed her glossy lips together, though I could swear she was trying not to smile. “I do know how to flirt, Dylan.”

  “You also know how to grab my ass, I noticed.”

  She shrugged. “If it wasn’t allowed, you should have put it in the agreement.”

  I did smile at that as we got in the car. I put on my own aviators. “What kind of rough weather do you think she meant?” I asked as I reversed out of the space, my arm over the back of her seat.

  Maddy was already checking her phone. “Thunderstorms,” she said. “Risk of tornadoes.”

  “Good,” I said. “Maybe the whole wedding will get blown away and we won’t have to go.”

  She laughed at that—actually laughed. She was already a different Maddy than the one in LA, who’d been defensive and angry and so brittle the last time I’d seen her that I thought she’d break if I touched her wrong. I hoped I hadn’t touched her wrong.

  “If there’s no wedding, Dylan, then what will we do with our time?” she asked.

  “You leave that to me,” I said. “I’ll think of something.”

  As we drove south from Dallas, the wind picked up. We left the interstate and got on the two-lane highway that led to Dusty Creek, among other tiny Texas towns, and civilization fell away. Maddy turned the car radio on for weather updates; otherwise we were quiet.

  As we got closer to Dusty Creek the clouds lowered ominously, turning the day dark. The wind got stronger and I could feel it buffeting the car. “Is this normal for Texas?” Maddy asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “Though I grew up in Florida, where we have hurricanes all the time, so I wouldn’t really know.”

  “I’m an LA girl,” she said. “Earthquakes and fires are more my thing.”

  I glanced at my phone and saw another message left by my mother. She’d left two while I was on the plane and another while I was at the airport. It was Ronnie’s wedding day, which meant my mother was drunk and on a rampage. One I had no time or patience to listen to.

  I put my phone back down as Maddy hung up with Ronnie. “She says the wedding is still on, weather permitting,” she said. “They’ve moved it indoors and they’re taking down the catering tents. But guests are already starting to arrive at the prewedding reception, so it looks like they’re going to get married, come hell or high water.”

  I’d noticed something as I listened to Maddy’s end of the conversation. “You didn’t tell her you were coming with me,” I said.

  “It didn’t seem like the right time.”

  I frowned. “Do you think the fallout will be bad? That Clayton and Ronnie will fire you if you come to the wedding as my date?” I hadn’t thought of that angle, and I realized now that I should have.

  “Clayton and Ronnie aren’t petty.” Unlike Hank. Unlike my mother. She didn’t say the words, but the implication was there. “They know that I do a good job and that Hank trusted me. You might not be the most popular King right now, but everyone will calm down when the dust settles and they know what you intend to do.”

  “Which you also haven’t told them.”

  “It isn’t my place.”

  She was right. I gripped the wheel, navigating toward our hotel as the first drops of rain pelted the windshield. “I’m going to tell them after the wedding,” I said. “I was hoping to get Clayton and my sisters alone. Garrett Pine, too. We’ll tell them all at once.” That the estate was theirs. That they had nothing to worry about. That Dylan the Bad Guy, the one who could wreck everything for everyone, was backing off.

  Maddy took off her sunglasses and looked at me, but I kept my eyes on the road. She seemed to be guessing what I was thinking. “I also didn’t know exactly how to word it,” she said. “The fact that I’m coming to the wedding with you. I didn’t know whether to say we’re together.”

  “We are,” I said.

  She tucked her sunglasses into her purse. “For a while. A week, to be exact.”

  I felt my jaw tighten. I pulled into the hotel parking lot and said nothing. She was right. Were we supposed to go to the wedding and tell people We’re fucking for a week as part of a deal?

  The problem was, as time went on I liked the sound of one week less and less. I was all about time limits with women—I never wanted one to get attached. That was easy when you were always moving from country to country, base to base, mission to mission. I could always pack my bag and say Sorry, duty calls. I gotta go. And it had always worked for me.

  But Maddy was different. And more and more, I felt I was different. I wasn’t in SpecOps anymore. I didn’t have the next place to go to, the next bag to pack. I was no longer just passing time on my way back out of the country.

  And I thought I could get used to it.

  My sisters were here in the States—the sisters I’d neglected for too long. Eli was here. King Industries was here, and so were my father’s properties, including The King’s Land. Even without the money and the power of being CEO, I could get used to it here. I had ideas of what I could do instead of rotting uselessly in a Panamanian jungle. Maybe, instead of taking over what Hank had built, I could build something for myself.

  What if Maddy could be a part of that? What if we scratched the one-week deal and tried for something more?

  Jesus, I hadn’t even slept with her yet and I was already thinking these things. Things I’d never thought about any other woman. But to be honest, the mindless screwing had been getting old. It didn’t have much excitement anymore. Whereas every time I looked at Maddy, or thought about what she tasted like, I felt things I hadn’t felt in years, if ever.

  Anticipation. Excitement. Hope.

  “By the way,” Maddy said as I parked the car. “I’ve decided that since we didn’t sleep together last night, the seven days haven’t started yet.”

  I pulled my aviators off and looked at her. She was sitting with her purse in her lap, staring ahead. Her chin up. Beautiful and dignified as ever, though now she didn’t look cold to me. Frankly, she never had. Maddy White was a lot of things, but cold—truly, down-to-her-soul cold—wasn’t one of them.

  No, she was warm. She tried harder than anyone else to hide it, but she wasn’t cold at all. And from the way she wouldn’t look at me—the way she kept her gaze ahead, like part of her was worried what I would say—I thought I had an outside chance at longer than seven days. I’d just have to fucking earn it.

  Which I was looking forward to. I was no stranger to hard work, after all.

  “So,” I said, “the seven days don’t start until we fuck? That’s interesting. If we don’t fuck, then the clock never starts at all.”

  She blinked, startled, and her cheeks went red. She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. She turned and looked at me, and for a second she looked alarmed. Alarmed. Like there was a possibility I’d decide we were going to be platonic, that we wouldn’t go to bed in this nice hotel after all.

  Her gaze caught mine, and I smiled. Gotcha. Her eyes narrowed.

  “You are such a dick,” she said.

  That made me smile more. I picked up my phone and checked the time. “Two hours until the wedding, and it’s starting to rain,” I said. “I don’t want to be early, do you?”

  19

  MADDY

  Dusty Creek was a small town and not much of a tourist destination. But halfway between the town and The King’s Land was a golf course where rich people liked to go. On the golf course was a hotel that was probably the best one fo
r miles. I stayed here every time I needed to be at The King’s Land and not in Dallas—like the night of the disastrous engagement party.

  The rain was starting to come down hard as we checked in. I could see drops as big as silver dollars hitting the lobby windows.

  Dylan had booked us the so-called Honeymoon Suite, the best room in the entire place. It didn’t hold much of a candle to the suite at the Hexagon, but it was still rather nice, with a large bed, a big walk-in shower, and a small balcony. If the balcony was only three levels up and overlooked the eighteenth hole, it didn’t really matter. Enjoy and congratulations, the hotel clerk had said to Dylan when he handed him the keycard. Dylan just looked smug and thanked him.

  He really was a bastard.

  But for the next two hours, he was my bastard. It looked like we were going to start our deal. After all this time, after years of seeing him only in the digital pages of my files, I was going to have Dylan King exactly where I wanted him. I’d had to negotiate the riskiest deal of my career to get him into bed, but it had worked.

  I walked away from millions of dollars for the chance to be between your legs for seven days, and I intend to take my side of the bargain.

  I dropped my bag next to the bed and hung up the dress I’d brought for the wedding on a hanger in the closet, pushing the doubts away. The doubts that Dylan was only here to amuse himself. That I was a temporary distraction, like all the other women in his life had been—except that he’d gone to their beds freely, without having to sign a contract. And the doubts, of course, that after seven days he’d walk away and forget about me. That he’d be screwing someone else while I was still hurting over this. Because I would be hurting when this was over; I could be honest about at least that much.

  So I stayed turned away, pretending to adjust my dress on its hanger. Gathering myself. Rain lashed the window; outside, the afternoon had turned as dark as evening. There was a flash of lightning, a smack of thunder, and the lights flickered.