Their Virgin’s Secret, Masters of Menage, Book 2 (29 page)

Son of a bitch, he’d bet the split was ugly. And why did she keep glancing behind her?

“Delaney . . .” Tyler didn’t know what the hell to say. It wasn’t
all
his fault. But a good deal of the blame rested on his shoulders. The need to know why she was here now also kept circling his brain.

“It’s okay. I know you have company, and that this is uncomfortable. I know I handled everything between us badly in the past. I’m sorry. I regret it like hell.”

Delaney’s blue eyes filled up with tears. As she fought them back, Tyler resisted the urge to comfort her as he had when they’d been friends . . . then more.

“Can I come in? There’s something we really need to talk about—and we shouldn’t do it on your porch.”

Everything inside Tyler seized up. The last time they’d talked, she’d asked him to leave,, then cut him out of her life. Whatever was on her mind, it would be heavy. She hadn’t come all the way to Lafayette from Los Angeles to shoot the shit.

Despite everything, how the hell could he say no? He’d ruined her life, and deep down, he’d been pretty damn sure that would be the outcome the second the deed was done. He owed her. Besides, he’d never been in love . . . but he’d come perilously close with Delaney.

“Sure.” He swallowed, grabbed her duffel and stepped back. “Come in. How did you know I had company?”

Delaney glanced at the object with the tall plastic handle beside her, the rest hidden by the exterior wall of the porch. She looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I rang the doorbell a bit ago, and no one answered. So I popped around to the side of the house and . . . saw that you weren’t alone.”

“They’re my buddies’ wives.” He’d meant the words as an explanation, a defense. Then he winced. God, Delaney probably already imagined—with good reason—that he was fucking each and every one of them.

“It’s none of my business.” She glanced at the hidden object beside her again, then the empty street behind her. “I came because I need your help. Really badly and right now.”

“You look tired, Del. And too thin. Come in and tell me what you need.”

She drew in a deep breath, then bent to the hidden item just beside her. A trunk? A dolly? Did she mean to move in?

A moment later, she straightened up, clutching a child. A little boy. He was dead weight in her arms, half asleep, his face against her shoulder, thick blond hair askew. Tyler’s heart skidded to a stop.

The kid’s meaty hands and feet peeked out beyond the arms and legs of his Spiderman pajamas that were just a bit too small. He hooked one arm around Delaney’s neck, then began rubbing an eye with his little fist. Then the kid turned. That little face possessed the Murphy nose. His own green eyes, uncertain and watchful, stared back at him.

Tyler’s entire body went cold. His jaw dropped as his mind came to a screeching halt. Oh god.
Oh fucking god . . .

“Tyler, meet your son, Seth.”

His son.
Tyler had known this kid was his at a glance. A thousand emotions pelted him at once. Shock blazed through his system first. Wonder crashed in next.

He had a son. He and Delaney had created life together that beautiful May night when he’d finally stopped seeing her as a friend and had little choice but to touch her as a woman.

But she’d never bothered to tell him. Had she even tried to find him, or just decided that he was irrelevant and had the child on her own?

Fury swept over him, relentless. One scathing accusation after another perched on the edge of his tongue. Gritting his teeth, he pushed it down for the boy’s sake.

“Hi, Seth,” he spoke in soft tones, then speared Delaney with a glare that dared her to defy him. “I want to hold him now.”

Suddenly, Tyler ached to. This was his son.
His
. . . with her.

Regret made Delaney’s mouth tremble as she nodded. She kissed the little boy’s head, then whispered, “It’s okay, little man.”

Seth frowned and watched him suspiciously, but went into his arms without a fight. Then Tyler was holding his son for the first time, wrapping him as tightly in his arms as he dared.

He tried to swallow, but his throat felt too tight. His jaw ached. His heart beat fast, like a fucking race horse at the Kentucky Derby. Something warm flooded his chest. Tyler had never fallen instantly in love with anything or anyone, but Seth seized his heart in a single moment. He kissed the little boy’s forehead, and the feeling swelled ten-fold.

“Why am I just now finding out about him?” Tyler tried to keep his voice calm and even. But his eyes accused her. What he really wanted to know was how the fuck she could have robbed him of the first fifteen months of his own son’s life.

She glanced at the street behind her again apprehensively and shimmied out of the porch’s light. “You have every right to be angry. Things were complicated, and you became impossible to find once you moved out of state. And I know those seem like poor excuses. At the end of the day, I didn’t know what to tell you or if you’d even care. You can take it out of my hide later. I’m sure I deserve it. But right now, I need your help. I need you to protect Seth.” She swallowed, her red-rimmed eyes looking stark and afraid. “Someone is trying to kill me.”

Excerpt from
The Men with the Golden Cuffs

Masters & Mercenaries, Book 2

Copyright 2012 Lexi Blake

A woman in danger…

Serena Blake is a bestselling author of erotic fiction. She knows how to write a happy ending but hasn’t managed to find one of her own. Divorced and alone, she has no one to turn to when a stalker begins to threaten her life. The cops don’t believe her. Her ex-husband thinks she’s making the whole story up. She has no one left to turn to except a pair of hired bodyguards. They promise to guard her body, but no one can protect her heart.

Two men in search of love…

Adam Miles and Jacob Dean are halves of a whole. They’ve spent their entire adult lives searching for the one woman who can handle them both. Adam is the playful, indulgent lover, while Jacob is the possessive, loving Dom. When Serena comes into their lives, Adam is certain that she’s the one. But Jacob’s past comes back to haunt them all. He is suspicious of Serena’s story, and his concerns are driving a wedge between him and Adam. But when the stalker strikes, they will have to come together or lose each other forever…

Enjoy the following excerpt from
The Men with the Golden Cuffs
– Coming May, 2012

* * * *

Serena forced herself to calm down. Her heart was racing like a runaway freight train. Tears pricked her eyes. 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?”

“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.

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 Barbies?”

She sometimes used Barbies in order to get down the physicality of a love scene. 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. 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. “And Ian is working on an international case or he would have handled it himself. He assured me that these guys know what they’re doing. Adam Miles and Jacob Dean are former Special Forces. 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 mother 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 writer group she’d gone to had asked her to leave because they didn’t want to tarnish the chapter’s image. She was sick to death of being made fun of.

“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. 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 weeks. She’d only recently met him, but he was an incredibly open man. Maybe she should talk to him. He might have some connections. “I have a meeting with Master Storm tomorrow. 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.”

Tears pricked at her eyes. She could feel them pooling there. Why did the thought of not seeing them again do that to her? 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.

“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 husband and her partner. He handled the more mainstream clients. “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.