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I didn’t know how to embrace it . . . until you. So what do you want to do next, princess? Obviously, you need to marry me.” He gripped her hand tighter. “And we’ll have to decide where to live. I’ve never been to London, but I’m not opposed—”
“Say that again?” Mystery couldn’t possibly have heard that right.
“I’ll move to London with you.” He grinned at her.
“Actually, I’d like to stay here, but repeat the part you said just prior.”
He sighed heavily, then pressed another kiss to her lips. “I can’t slip anything past you, can I? All right. Marry me.”
“You’re sure? We’ve really only known one another for a few days.” She played devil’s advocate. “Are you certain?”
“Yep.” He grinned broadly, showing off his dimples. “I don’t have to think twice. When you know, you just know. In fact, I’m so sure that when I called your dad to tell him everything that had happened, I asked him for permission to marry you. I wanted to propose to you with an engagement ring but I wanted it to be special, like you. Meaningful. The most meaningful thing I could think of was your mother’s wedding ring.”
He extracted it from his pocket and held it up, his big fingers around the thin band holding up the winking diamond solitaire. Mystery gasped, touched all the way down to the bottom of her heart. Mom couldn’t be with her, but with this ring, Axel both gave her the promise of a future and something like her mother’s spirit and blessing.
Tears stung her eyes, rolled down her cheeks.
“We can have a new wedding band made to match. Or if you want something that’s all yours, that’s fine. I want you to have whatever—”
“This is perfect. Ohmigod, I love that you thought of this,” she sobbed out, losing herself in his eyes. “I’ve always known you were the one for me. I swear I’ll do my best to be the most loving, trusting, supportive wife ever, but I’m not perfect and I may slip up—”
“I might, too. Listen, I took your advice and tracked down my mom this morning. Turns out she regrets leaving the family more than anything and didn’t think any of us would ever speak to her again. She’s sad and lonely and broken, just like my dad and brothers. Just like I would have been without you. We’re going to keep talking, but the whole thing made me realize that I masked my isolation well by taking care of everyone around me, especially Sweet Pea. But no one ever touched my heart until you. We’re not perfect people, but I think we’re perfect for each other. Isn’t that what’s important?”
Happiness broke through her headache, the fog of her sedatives, her exhaustion, insecurities, and trembling desperation.
“Yes.” Mystery met him halfway for a reverent kiss. She pressed her lips to his for a long, lingering heartbeat. “With my whole heart, yes. Nothing is more important than how perfect we are together. I will very happily marry you, you wonderful man.” She cupped his face; she couldn’t touch him enough, couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than to see him in her arms, across her kitchen table, smiling in the car, holding her and their children. She couldn’t think of anyone else she wanted to share a future with.
“Oh, thank God.” Axel sounded like he’d been genuinely worried about her answer. “And you want to stay in Dallas?”
“I think so. It’s hotter than hell, and I may change my mind come August, but yes. I’m an American girl at heart. I can write anywhere, but this is your home.”
“You’re an amazing woman. I’m so lucky you said yes.”
Mystery smiled, then rolled her eyes. “How could you doubt my answer? Come on, I’ve thrown myself at you since almost the moment I met you. At the ghost town . . .”
He groaned. “I wanted so badly to throw you against the wall and fuck you blind.”
Mystery smiled. “I wanted you to, but you were right. Now that I’ve felt how connected we are when we make love, I couldn’t have handled the emotion then.”
He dragged in a shuddering breath. “I don’t know if I could have even handled it. But when you picked me up at that little beer dive the other day? Oh, princess, the things I wanted to do to you. You know, I’ve only scratched the surface.”
He hissed through his teeth, a sound sizzling with need. Every cell in her body pinged with life. “Is that right? Well, then . . . I really wish we could go somewhere more private and . . .”
“Talk?” He echoed the words he’d said to her in the bar the afternoon that had changed both their lives. The heated grin he paired with that deep, dark syllable had her shivering. Conversation was the last thing on his mind.
“No.” She shook her head and sent him a saucy, come-hither stare. “To fuck. Would you be interested?”
As she traced a random pattern across his jaw and over the rapidly beating pulse at his neck, he sucked in a breath. “Every day. I love you, princess.”
“My hero.” She sighed, smiling at him with her whole heart. “I love you, too.”
DON’T MISS THE NEXT BOOK IN SHAYLA BLACK’S NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING WICKED LOVERS SERIES
Yours to Protect
COMING SOON FROM BERKLEY BOOKS
NOW, TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE NEXT PERFECT GENTLEMEN NOVEL FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORS SHAYLA BLACK AND LEXI BLAKE
Seduction in Session
COMING WINTER 2016 FROM BERKLEY BOOKS
I DON’T really need a bodyguard.” Lara Armstrong took a sip of her chai tea and sat back, staring out the coffeehouse window. Everywhere she looked, people bustled by, their briefcases in hand, cell phones pressed to their ears. They were lawyers and politicians, along with their aides, and anyone else who thought they were important in the political spectrum. Soon, one of those people hustling about would be the man designated to throw himself in front of a bullet for her.
Connor. No last name. Or maybe that was his last name and he hadn’t given her his first name. She wasn’t sure. She only knew that enigmatic Connor had commanded she meet him here at three thirty. Did he realize how bad traffic was going to get?
“Look, someone knows what you’ve been doing, L, and that means you need a bodyguard.” Her best friend, Kiki, traded a look with the only male at the table.
Tom sat forward, his hands around his nonfat latte as though he needed the warmth. “I don’t know. I kind of agree with Lara.”
Kiki rolled her dark eyes. “You always agree with Lara. You even agreed with her when she broke off your engagement. You’re a doormat.”
“I’m helpful and practical.” He frowned. “Look, she’s only received a couple of e-mails, and it wasn’t as if the sender attached a bomb or anything. The contents simply stated that they ‘know.’ Know what? That could mean anything.”
Lara sighed and lowered her voice. Only a couple of people in the world knew what she did for a living, and she meant to keep it that way. “He knows I run CS.”
Capitol Scandals, DC’s most fun and informative news site. Oh, most people called it a horrid tabloid rag that aimed to ruin the lives and reputations of politicians and bigwigs, but Lara liked her description better. And she never ran a piece that wasn’t true or aimed at someone who didn’t deserve it. Well, she never ran a serious piece that she couldn’t verify. She didn’t personally know the size of the current president’s penis, though several confidential informants had used the words extra extra large.
“Shit.” Tom’s thin lips flattened further, and she knew she was in for a lecture. Unlike Kiki, who often wrote articles for CS, Tom thought the site was a horrible idea. “I told you something bad would come of this. You can’t expose the people you do and expect to get away with it. I thought someone had realized you spearheaded the effort to remove vending machines from public schools or something.”
“Those vending machines never sell anything but processed foods. Kids should have healthier options in school,” she began.
Tom shook his head. “People don’t like it when you take away their sodas, L. They get crabby. Still, I was fairly certain no
one would actually kill you over that. Running a tabloid that ruins high-powered careers? That might be a little different.”
Kiki nodded. “Exactly. Have you told your father?”
Lara winced. Her father knew about Capitol Scandals. He’d been very supportive when it had been a little site that reported on things like environmental bills and ran essays on the Lilly Ledbetter Act. When she’d changed to the current iteration of the site, she knew she’d tested him. He’d called screaming when she’d run a not-so-glowing story about one of his closest allies. She’d detailed just how much money the congressman had spent on hookers outside his district while those actually working in his district had lamented about a drastic downturn in income.
She’d been perfectly right to publish the story since the congressman had been running on a platform to bring new jobs and opportunities to his constituency. All the while, he’d been making deals with businessmen to send jobs offshore to Korea. So it really was a true-life metaphor for all that was wrong in politics.
Shortly after she’d published the story, the late-night circuit had picked it up. While the comedians and hosts had laughed about the hookers, their viewers had also heard the very true news about backdoor deals, too. Lara had learned early on that she had to catch the public’s attention if she wanted to do any good in the world. And she wouldn’t do that with a protest or a well-crafted op-ed piece.
“I’m not telling my dad. He already blackmails me. If he found out that someone else knows and is sending me semi-threatening e-mails, he would likely force me to move in with him or something. It would be awful.”
It wasn’t as if she didn’t love her father. Her parents were amazing people. She couldn’t think of another man in the world who would support her the way her dad did. He’d been angry when he’d learned about CS, but he hadn’t outed her. And given that he was a senator from the great state of Virginia, he probably should have. Instead, he’d forced her to accept an apartment in a swanky part of town. She could never have afforded her DuPont Circle condo on her own. She’d wanted a little loft in a more real part of town, but her parents had been insistent.
Luckily, she’d never had to decide whether or not to run a story about her father. He was madly in love with her mom and he played things straight. Lara had never gotten a tip about him taking bribes or selling out his constituents. When she’d started Capitol Scandals, she’d realized a surprising majority of politicians were acting in the public’s best interests—even if you didn’t agree with their beliefs, they were following their own convictions. It was just that rancid ten percent who really screwed things up for everyone else.
She’d created Capitol Scandals to call them out.
“Maybe you should move back in with him. He has serious security.” Kiki set down her mocha. “Not just a doorman named Moe who sleeps on the job.”
“Moe has a serious case of narcolepsy. You shouldn’t judge.” She shook her head. “Besides, I can’t risk working at Dad’s place for two reasons: One, I don’t know who’s watching him. I’ve long thought the CIA, the NSA, or DARPA listens in on all elected officials.”
Tom coughed but it sounded suspiciously like paranoid.
She ignored him because she knew paranoia could be a lifesaver. “And two, if anyone ever learns my secret and outs me, I want my parents to have plausible deniability.”
“I don’t think they’d care. They would stand by you,” Kiki said.
Bringing trouble down on them was her only real fear. Well, that and global climate change. She fought for what she believed in, but she loved her parents, too. She didn’t want to cause her dad issues.
“I have a plan,” Tom said, getting serious again. “Hear me out. You close down the site for a while and come stay with me. I have a second bedroom. I can watch out for you. I am a Krav Maga god. We’ll hang, and the heat will die down. Then you can go back to fighting the good fight.”
She loved Tom, but she wasn’t going there again. There was a reason she’d broken off their engagement. There was also the fact that Niall thought she needed someone to watch out for her.
Niall. Her heart did a little shudder as she thought about him. Since he ran a small site that called for transparency in California politics, he’d come to her a confidential informant. Nothing he’d sent her had actually panned out, but that wasn’t so surprising. Ninety percent of her leads were dead ends. But Niall had come to mean more to her than just a source. Over the course of the month, she’d come to view him as something of a soul mate.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “I need to meet this bodyguard. I’ll talk to him and see what he thinks. He’s supposed to be a professional. He can give me advice.”
“He can give you protection,” Kiki argued. She was dressed in her normal Bohemian garb: a peasant blouse and a flowy skirt. She somehow managed to make it sexy. “You have to take this seriously. Whoever sent you that threat knew your personal e-mail.”
“But there wasn’t anything specific about the threat,” Tom argued, then turned to Kiki. “In fact, I’m not even sure it was a threat. Maybe we’re freaking out about nothing. What are the real odds that someone’s put this all together? There are rumors everywhere about who runs CS, and not a one of them mentions you, Lara.”
She wasn’t sure that was true. What else could someone know about her? She was Senator Armstrong’s vegan hippie daughter, whom everyone in the Republican party knew not to put on camera because she would use the opportunity to talk about policy as she saw it.
There really wasn’t anything else about her that would be considered even slightly gossip-worthy. Good grades in the right schools. A degree in political science that would probably lead to law school when she found the time someday. She’d broken her engagement an acceptable amount of time before the wedding. She hadn’t even dated in the two years since she and Tom had broken up. Capitol Scandals was the sum of her “nefarious” existence. She’d put everything she had into it, and she was finally scenting something big.
Could this new threat have anything to do with the anonymous stranger who claimed to know what really happened to Maddox Crawford? He’d hinted that if she figured out the truth, the trail would lead to something much bigger.
She merely needed to find a woman named Natalia Kuilikov. Just find one Russian immigrant, and the yellow brick road would open up and take her straight to Oz.
Lara found it interesting that her first big case and her first death threat had come so close together.
“I don’t know that there’s no threat, but simply figuring out who I am doesn’t mean someone intends to kill me. I might have overstated that,” she admitted.
“To your Internet guy?” Kiki wasn’t Niall’s biggest fan. She might have mentioned on more than one occasion that he was likely a middle-aged creep looking for some online hookup. “He’s the one you told, even before you told me. Before you told Tom. I hate to say it, but you seem to have some stake in the guy, and that’s why you’re listening to him.”
“Maybe you should listen to the people who have been with you for years. What do we know about this Niall guy? Next to nothing. You can’t just let this random dude start to dictate your life.” Tom hopped off his barstool. He straightened his V-neck tee. “I’ve got to run. We have oral arguments on the McNally case tomorrow. Lara, call me if you need me. You know I’m always here for you.” He walked away.
Tom clerked for an appellate judge, so he was always talking about oral arguments and drafting opinions. She had to admit, watching Tom was one of the reasons she hadn’t given in to her parents’ pressure and gone to law school. He was endlessly writing other people’s opinions. She wanted to make up her own mind.
“Holy jeez.” Kiki’s eyes went wide as she stared beyond the door through which Tom had exited moments ago. “I think my mouth just watered. I finally understand what that means.”
“What?” Lara turned and caught sight of a man in jeans and a T-shirt. He stood right outside the coffe
ehouse, his cell phone against his ear.
His shoulders were so wide they almost spanned the window. He had to be six and a half feet tall, and his T-shirt molded to every muscle and sinew of his lean strength.
He turned slightly, his profile coming into view. Lara realized then that mouthwatering was really just an elevated term. Drooling was more accurate. The man was stunning. His jaw looked perfectly square, though the lines of his face were far too angular to be beautiful. His dark blond hair was cut in an almost military style, accentuating his features. Manly. Handsome. Sexy.
His lips suddenly curled up in the hottest smirk she’d ever seen.
Caveman. Alpha male. Probably straight off some military base. She could appreciate him on an aesthetic level, but she preferred her men a little more civilized. “He’s very nice looking, Kiki.”
Kiki groaned. “Nice looking? There is nothing ‘nice’ about him. He’s dirty. He’s bad. And you can’t dare call him a boy because he’s all man.”
Lara adjusted her glasses. “I like Niall more.”
Niall had perfect surfer hair and the sweetest face.
“You’ve never met Niall.”
