The Greatest Risk by Kristen Ashley
“Will you ever be?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” she stated clearly.
“Then now’s as good a time as any,” he fired back.
“Right then, did Dillinger tell you their parents didn’t let me go to their funerals?” she queried.
“No. But I’m not surprised. They needed someone to blame. So they blamed a seventeen-year-old girl who had nothing to do with it.”
“He was my uncle, Stellan.”
Abruptly his face got hard, and he leaned toward her, grinding out, “Simone, you weren’t even fucking there. He was known as a charmer. He was good-looking. He’d had two counts of statutory rape dropped on him, according to conjecture by the police, because he’d bought off the parents. He was known to party with young girls, give them drugs, get them hooked as clients and available bodies. Your two friends had been there repeatedly without you being there before he fed them tainted heroin. Repeatedly. Other kids at your school said they were your friends for the sole purpose of spending time with him to get access to his drugs and his attentions. Did you know that when it happened?”
She shook her head. “Of course not.”
“You just had friends over from school like any girl does, not having any clue they were using you.”
“I should have known.”
“How?”
“Because that was my life, Stellan, and it might have been all I knew, but I still knew it was wrong. I just had to pretend. I had to pretend I could be normal and do normal things.”
“And that’s wrong?” he pushed.
“I should have protected them!” she snapped loudly.
“You were no more than a child. It wasn’t your job.”
“I was their friend, so yes, maybe they were using me, but I didn’t know that, and it doesn’t matter. I thought I was their friend, so you are one hundred percent wrong. It was my job.”
“I understand you think that, Simone, but how could you do that when you weren’t even there?”
She looked away.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
“Fuck you,” she spat.
“Darling, look at me,” he called gently.
She looked at him and yelled, “Fuck you!”
“Come here,” he murmured.
She put her glass down and slid off her stool, sneering at him. “No. You can’t be sweet Stellan now. Hold up the mirror and show me how it really is, then pull it away and try to weave your spell to make me think it looks different. It’s never different, Stellan. Never. And this shit…” She twirled her hand in the air. “It’s done. I’m going to take a ride. I’ll come back and get my stuff sometime over the weekend.”
She started to walk away, but of course she didn’t get very far.
Stellan barred her path.
She stopped and looked up at him, her voice vibrating its warning. “I will seriously land you on your ass if you don’t get out of my way.”
“You promised not to leave no matter the reason,” he replied.
Tricky bastard.
With that talk about his family, she’d fallen right into his hands.
She’d even brought it up.
“Apparently I lied,” she retorted.
She went to sidestep him, and he moved in front of her.
Her eyes caught his, she smiled without humor and noted, “Last warning, baby.”
“If you leave me, all will be lost,” he declared.
“No shit?” she asked.
“There isn’t another for me.”
“Oh there is, handsome,” she stated snidely. “Just open up your wallet or waltz into the Honey and they’ll be lining up.”
He lifted his brows again. “Is that what you want for me?”
No.
The thought of Stellan having someone who wasn’t unique. Individual. Exciting. Daring. A force onto him.
No.
She didn’t want that.
It killed her to even think about that.
But she was done with this.
“Get out of my way,” she hissed.
“No.”
“Stellan,” she growled.
“If you’re correct, and you can land me on my ass, that would sting my pride. If you walked out on me, I survived my parents, my sister killing herself, but honest to Christ, Simone, in just one week of having you by my side, I have real fear that would destroy me.”
Sixx went solid.
And Stellan went in for the kill.
“You make me laugh, honey. Even Susan, who was dead set to think you were taking me for a ride, or at the very least would put me through the emotional wringer, got over it when she saw I’d found someone who made me happy. It had not occurred to me in my life of plenty that I was missing anything, but I’ve learned I was. I started this in an attempt to make you happy. What I’m discovering is that it’s happening the other way around.”
His beloved assistant saw it.
She saw that Sixx was making him happy.
She was making him happy.
Sixx looked at his throat.
She looked at the buttons of the shirt on his broad chest.
She looked over his shoulder.
She made a decision.
Then she looked to him.
“I can’t talk about that anymore,” she whispered.
“We’ll leave it for now,” he whispered back.
Still whispering, she said, “I want this. I want us.”
“I know you do.”
“You’re going to have to be patient with me. I’m not used to anyone giving a shit.”
“It breaks me, but I know that too.”
“I also don’t have anyone…” She swallowed. “I don’t have anyone who’s glad I found someone that makes me happy.”
“You do.”
“Just you.”
“That’s not true. There are many of them, Simone. You just haven’t noticed, and you also haven’t let them in.”
She couldn’t do that now either.
“I watched my mother—”
His normally silken voice sounded hoarse in beautiful and terrible ways when he cut her off. “I know.”
“It was my father who got in front of me.”
“Stop it for now and please come here.”
Sixx went there.
Stellan folded her in his arms.
She wrapped hers around him and pressed deep.
He held her tight.
“You’re going to have to give me time,” she said.
“All right, darling.”
“After dinner, I’m going to need—”
“Take your sketchpads wherever you wish. I’ll be somewhere else, and you can come to me when you’re ready.”
She closed her eyes tight.
And he thought she deserved him?
How could that be?
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be,” he said into the top of her hair.
“So yes,” she cleared her throat, “there we go. We’re both royally fucked up.”
“Royally,” he agreed.
“You might be gorgeous and rich and able to cook and have a way with hiring household staff that are awesome because Margarita is just awesome, but when she’s tipsy, she’s hilarious-awesome, but in the royally-fucked-up stakes, I totally beat you.”
His body moved with silent laughter.
It was the best feeling in the world.
She tipped her head back, and when she did, she found him looking down at her.
Just amazing.
“Are you going to feed me?” she prompted.
“Whatever you need.”
That was Stellan.
Whatever she needed.
Sixx got up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.
He bent into her, taking her back to the soles of her feet, and took the kiss deep.
When he’d used his mouth to fill her up with all things Stellan Lange, he led her back to the kitchen, made her an
After they ate, she took her sketchpads to the library and saved the day on paper in ways she could never have done in real life.
When she was ready, she found Stellan.
And he was right where she needed him to be.
ten
Pondering
SIXX
Sixx woke up the next morning to find she was alone in bed.
She sat up, looked around the room, and saw she was just plain alone.
This was a surprise. She and Stellan had had a heavy night the night before, but they’d ended it together, that day heralded them adding a new level to their relationship, and she thought Stellan would want to start that right off the bat.
And she had to admit, she wanted him to start it right off the bat.
She was nervous (her—Sixx—frigging nervous).
But she was also curious … in that sexually-stirred-up-in-a-good-way kind of way.
She threw the covers off, pulled herself out of bed, and padded through one of the archways to Stellan’s luxurious master bath (he had chandeliers and columns in there too, not to mention a flat-screen mounted on the wall).
She stopped when, on the vanity by the sink she used, she saw the glossy cream box with the frosty-blue satin bow. This was sitting on top of what looked like the white linen shirt Stellan had worn at the pool party last weekend. And both of these were beside a full mug of coffee that was resting on one of those individual coffee warmers.
She moved toward it and saw there was a thick-stock notecard sitting on it embossed at the top with STELLAN PETTER LANGE.
Of course the man didn’t just dash something off on a scratch pad.
Always class with Stellan.
She smiled before she even picked the thing up.
Written on it, it said,
S–
Come down wearing this, darling.
I want you adorably fuckable.
–S
Well, that explained him not being in the bedroom.
Sixx felt butterflies hit her stomach.
Actual butterflies.
And they got worse when she opened the box to find an extraordinary set of pale yellow lace underwear. The lace was divine. The demi-cup bra exquisite. The panties a wide strip of lace across the hips with just a narrow gusset between the legs. And they were the perfect size.
She figured “adorably fuckable” meant he wanted her prettied up (in the way Sixx could get prettied up) and good to go for the day. Therefore she took a shower, gave herself a close shave, lotioned up, did a light makeup thing and a full hair thing, all of this while sipping coffee.
She donned the underwear that even felt like sheer decadence, shrugged on the shirt, and took her empty coffee mug down with her.
She saw Stellan was out on the patio, back to the doors, eyes to the pool, cell to his ear.
The heat had finally hit, and Phoenix was experiencing upper 90s/low 100s days, but that wasn’t the reason Stellan was out there with his broad shoulders bare.
She saw his legs covered in a pair of the loose-fitting, knit, masculine lounge pants he wore when he was working a sub (that was, he wore them when he was wearing anything, it was either those pants, or when play had reached a certain point, nude).
She knew what those pants meant considering he slept naked.
A tremor shivering up her inner thighs, she set down her mug in the kitchen and moved out the door to the patio.
The instant he heard her approach, he turned and looked over his shoulder at her.
And the instant he did that, it took everything she had not to stop dead in order to put everything she had into memorizing that moment right there.
Mostly Stellan wearing her favorite look: at his home, relaxed, in his element, surrounded by all he’d wrought, his hair not styled to project the man he was out in the world, his suits in his closet.
No, right there with his dark hair falling on his forehead, messy from sleep and making love before he did that, face relaxed, dark blue eyes soft and content and admiring and pointed toward her. He could give her diamonds and pearls and entire islands, but the best gift she’d ever receive was him sitting there, looking at her just … like … that.
He tipped up his chin indicating he wanted her to come to him.
But she was already going to him. She would have gone to him if getting there meant going to the ends of the earth and she had to do it slaying dragons and battling trolls.
And when she arrived at his side, he kept his head back, his eyes falling to her mouth, telling her what else he wanted.
But Sixx would have dropped to touch her lips to his even if she knew, prior to doing it, it would be the last thing she’d do in her life.
This is love, she thought, feeling his soft lips light against hers and adoring the feel. I’m in love.
When she moved an inch away, thrown by her realization, she stopped only because he’d caught her at the back of the neck.
Up close, Sixx looked in his eyes and realized that was the last thing she wanted to see before she took her final breath.
Stellan looking at her, completely content because he woke up in a home where she would wake up and find him.
“One moment,” he said into his cell, then immediately to her, not covering up his phone, not giving that first shit whoever was on the other line heard him, he said, “Good morning, darling.”
“Morning, baby,” she whispered, her voice throaty with the realization that had just dawned, but as thick as her throat was, for once in her life, her mind was crystal clear.
He pulled her to him to brush her lips against his again before he let her go and indicated with a tip of his head the chair he wanted her to sit in.
Sixx moved there, lowering herself in the patio chair Stellan had angled facing his.
After she sat, he bent forward and did it deep, sweeping her feet up into his lap by hooking his forearm around her ankles. He then sat back, resumed his conversation, and did it one-handed massaging her foot.
“I’d wanted it taken care of yesterday, it wasn’t,” he said into the phone. “And we’ll discuss how I feel about that on Monday. For now, you’ve taken enough of my weekend. My woman is awake. We’re done talking.” He paused, listened briefly, then said, “Monday.”
And that was obviously that because he pressed his thumb on the screen, tossed the phone on the table, and looked at Sixx.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
She nodded.
He engaged his other hand to massage her foot.
Heaven.
My woman is awake. We’re done talking.
Lord, she’d fallen in love with him. Not from-afar love that was mostly deep, abiding fascination but in the end really just a crush.
No, it was real-life, sitting opposite him with your feet in his lap wearing beautiful underwear he bought you after a night where you had an ugly emotional row while discussing viciously painful parts of your past but you ended it cuddling, then making love, then sleeping in each other’s arms, only to wake up to a foot rub … love.
“You all right?” he asked.
Was she?
Was she all right?
Was she like he’d looked when he’d peered over his shoulder at her? Content. Relaxed. Quietly … happy.
Or was that crystal clear of her mind a tactic to hold at bay other thoughts that wanted to crowd in? Terrifying thoughts. Thoughts about how perfect this moment was, how it and the last week and even how Stellan had ended their discussion last night had been everything any girl could ever want—but she was not that girl who got what she wanted.
She was that girl who’d been born to nothing and worked her way to having a bunch of leather and designer gear, one (and a half, as she counted Carlo) true friends, and a lot more of nothing.
“Simone?” he prompted.
“I’m good,” she replied, swallowing instead of clearing her throat when it came out husky.
H
“Not after last night,” he declared.
“Pardon?” she asked, for her part, totally not understanding.
“We’re not playing,” he explained. “Not after last night. We need some time to just be. Be with each other. Clear our heads. Let that go. If you like, we can have a session tomorrow. But now … no.”
Yes.
God yes.
She was in love with him.
She needed to clear her head.
She’d never really done it, but it sounded heavenly to just … be.
That said, what was with the underwear?
“So the yellow lace is a non-starter?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I did buy it for you to wear while I played with you, but now it’s just a gift. Though I put it out as I did to see how you’d respond. And considering it was a sort of test, I’m pleased to note that you passed.”
Deciding for now just to live in the moment, this glorious moment, Sixx kicked playfully at his hands, doing it so he wouldn’t stop because she never wanted him to stop as she shot him a fake-annoyed look that totally didn’t work since she was also grinning.
He grinned back, dug his fingers in at the arch of her foot, she bit back a moan, and he asked, “Do you want more coffee?”
She focused her gaze on him, and she was no longer grinning.
“If you want to play, baby, I want to play,” she said quietly.
That was awarded with a sexy flash in his eyes, but he shook his head again.
“I love that, sweetheart,” he replied in her same tone. “And if you’re there, I’m thrilled. We’ll have our session tomorrow. But this morning, I’ll get you some coffee and bring out some breakfast. We can then go to a movie or go downstairs and spend all day watching them here. I have an extensive library, or it’s set up to get anything online we might want to see. Or we can go to the Botanical Gardens or instead, to Papago and walk the loop. We can also just put on our suits, get our books and have a lazy day by the pool. Your choice.”
Her choice.
Even when she was wearing underwear he’d told her to put on or he was ordering for her at a restaurant, it was her choice.