Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
“You’re sorry?” That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Not even close. “I don’t give a damn about your apologies. You can take it and shove it up your ass. I want you and Shane out of here, and take the whore with you.”
Dec’s eyes flared, but Kay got between them.
“Don’t. It’s his affectionate name for me now,” she told the big bodyguard. “He’s using it to get to you because he can’t hurt me the way he wants to. He’s in bad shape and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“You can fix it by leaving my house.” And then he would sell the place because it was tainted now. He wouldn’t be able to trust it. He would move again. This time he would find a place far outside of town and be alone. Someplace where no one could find him.
And maybe he had enough money. If he gave up his career, no one would give a crap that he’d been a child used and discarded again and again. The only reason anyone cared now was his status as a movie star. If he sacrificed that, they would leave him alone.
“We can’t go,” Kay was saying. “You still need protection. And we have to think about our operative. Morales is more dangerous than you know.”
“Do I have to call the police?”
“The Agency will override them, man,” Dec said with a long sigh.
“I’m not helping you or anyone. You can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”
“I can get it all back for you,” Kay said with a tremble to her voice. “I can promise you that tape will never see the light of day, will be utterly and completely erased, but you have to let us come with you to Mexico.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “Ah, there’s what I expected. A little blackmail of your own.”
She shook her head. “You won’t let me protect you any other way. I have to do this job and I have to make sure you’re alive at the end of it. Morales wants something from you and he won’t allow you to brush him off with excuses. When you don’t show up, he’ll know something’s gone wrong, and I think he’s going to come after you.”
“Why?” He didn’t understand any of this.
Her jaw tensed. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
She moved into his space. “It doesn’t matter now. I fucked up. I get that. You’re not going to come back from this and there’s no happy beach life for us at the end of this op. But you will be alive and I will handle all those problems I said I would. When this mission is over, you won’t worry about blackmailers again and Morales won’t darken your doorstep.”
“You’re going to kill him?”
Her eyes had darkened and it took all he had to stand his ground. This was the Kayla he hadn’t seen, only heard about. This was the warrior goddess who enjoyed the kill, who lived for it. “Oh, yes, Joshua. I’ll have his head and bring down his entire organization if it’s the last thing I do on this earth.”
God, she was glorious. Why did it have to be her? Why had she turned into such a liar? She could win back almost everything, but trust? That was gone and it wouldn’t come again.
“We can go to the room Shane and I are in and talk about this,” Dec said reasonably.
He wasn’t about to do that. He wasn’t going to listen to fucking reason. He stepped down a stair, coming up against Kayla. “Move out of my way.”
“If you want to take a break, I can understand,” she said. “But you have to take Declan.”
He reached for her, unable to contain it a second longer. She was right there and he still fucking wanted her. After everything she’d done, all the lies, all the brutal manipulations of his life, what he wanted to do was carry her upstairs, strap her down to the spanking bench, and not let her up until she was properly submissive to him. He’d played around with it, but she’d still truly been in charge. The primal male inside him knew he wouldn’t find another like her. That fucking caveman wanted to mark her, bind her, take her until she couldn’t lie to him ever again.
Until she couldn’t leave him.
His hands wound around her arms, shaking her a bit harder than he’d meant to, but then violence was bubbling up and she wouldn’t let him fucking go. “You do not give me orders. You do not have me on your goddamn leash.”
He felt a hard hand on the back of his neck and he was pulled away. Fuck that hurt and it lit something inside him. Declan had hold of him, the monster of a man easily hauling him off his feet.