Unconditional (Masters and Mercenaries #5.5)(20)

She didn’t see him as anything but a Dom and that was a good thing. A Dom was all he was ever going to be to her. It was all he had to give.

He heard something crack. It sounded like someone had slipped and maybe cracked a skull against the tile.

He stepped out, grabbing a towel. “Hey, is anyone in here?”

Derek stepped out of his stall, blood on his fist. “It’s nothing. I just fell. I’m good.”

He walked out toward the sinks. Keith glanced inside the shower he’d been using. Yeah, lots of guys “fell” forward and caught themselves so hard on their fist that they cracked the tile.

At least he wasn’t pounding inanimate objects like Brighton yet.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was fit. He wasn’t going to make someone faint with his horrible looks. He did have something to offer her and when they were done, he would walk away.

Like he always did.





Chapter Five





“You’re seeing Keith? Ryan’s friend Keith?” Jillian’s eyes went wide.

Ashley giggled just the tiniest bit. It was hard to shock her sister. Emily managed to squish a banana in her little paws. That’s what happened when her momma didn’t shovel the food in fast enough. She scooped a good amount of oatmeal and offered it up. Emily liked to feed herself but she was still very hit or miss with a spoon. “Yes, that Keith.”

“That Keith” was rapidly becoming important to her. It was funny what a couple of honest to goodness orgasms could do for a girl. She’d had five sessions with Master Keith, and she could hardly wait for tonight.

But she thought she should probably warn her sister that she wouldn’t be working behind the bar this evening.

Jillian shook her head. She was tan and looked rested and happy after her Hawaiian honeymoon. A couple of weeks of doing nothing more than lying on the beach with her hubby had done wonders for her sister, but she wasn’t taking the news well. “And you’re…how do I put this?”

She knew exactly where that was going. It was why she’d waited until the morning to tell her. She and Ryan had gotten in the night before, but Ashley thought everyone should be wide awake for this conversation. “No. Well. Sort of.”

She’d needed to prepare for it. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be to tell her big sis she’d taken a Dom.

Jill grabbed a mug of coffee and sat down. “What does ‘sort of’ mean? Because we’re going to have to tell Ryan, and he might get upset about his friend screwing his sister-in-law.”

“Excuse me?” Ryan Church stood in the doorway dressed in a perfectly pressed suit. His face was blank but there was a darkness to his eyes that let her know he’d heard enough.

Jeez, her brother-in-law was really good with the intimidation thing. It was on the tip of her tongue to apologize, but she had nothing to be sorry for. “I’m sort of, kind of seeing Keith.”

Now his mouth turned down in a stern frown. “What the hell does that mean, Ashley? You’re seeing Keith? I’m glad to hear it because it obviously means that your eyes are functioning properly and he’s still alive. Which he might not be if you mean anything else by that statement.”

Luckily, she’d figured out that Ryan was a teddy bear underneath all that big bad Dom. She sat up a little straighter, deciding to take control. The sessions she’d had with Keith had taught her more than the fact that she could come. “Yes, I’m just pointing out that I don’t need glasses. Although I think I might because I keep seeing this black SUV that seems to be following me. Paranoid much?” She nodded to her daughter who was giving her one of those grins that made her heart constrict. “Mommy’s paranoid. Yes. It’s just like they talk about in class. Next she’ll start hearing voices. Yes, she will.”

“Ashley?” Ryan didn’t seem to be distractible.

“Honey, he won’t go away because you disappear into baby babble,” Jill said. “And I’m a little worried about it, too. Keith is into the lifestyle.”

“That’s not the problem. Ashley’s obviously subby,” Ryan said. “But Keith is not the Dom I would have chosen for her.”

“Did everyone know that? The sub part? Because it would have been nice if someone had told me. I might have figured out the sex stuff way before now.” She felt a smile cross her face because so far the sex stuff was really good.

Not that they’d had real sex. It was real. It just didn’t involve his cock going into her, but she wanted to fix that pretty damn fast.

Ryan turned a little green. “Sex stuff?”

“We’re not all as technical as you and Ian,” she shot back.

“When I left, you were hiding from that man. Now you’re calling him Ian?” Jill asked, her mouth hanging slightly open.

She’d gotten far more comfortable with the big boss since Keith had started sitting with the men for an hour or so every night. She’d taken to sitting with her head in his lap and sort of halfway listening. Ian Taggart liked to cuss a lot, but underneath it all was a man who really gave a damn about the people around him. In the guise of being a complete dick, he’d managed to convince Jesse Murdoch to ask out some chick at their office, hounded Simon Weston into calling his cousins, who were apparently more like brothers to him, and gotten the raging ball of murder to go see a doctor about his health issues. No one else seemed to see that he was actually the most nosy, pushy busybody in the whole place. He was currently talking to Keith about expanding his business to New York.