Sophie Oak: Siren in Bloom

“Stop panicking,” Dani said, hoisting herself up. Julian and Finn both hurried to give her a hand. “Guys, I don’t need a crane to get me out of a chair. Not yet.”

“Danielle, you will allow your men to help you.” There was no mistaking the command in Julian’s voice.

Dani softened, letting her husbands pull her from the chair. She went up on her tiptoes and kissed Julian. “Yes, Julian.” She turned to Shelley. “Come on. We’ll get you all gorgeous for Master Wolf. I’ll dress you up since I can’t dress myself up anymore. I have a ton of beautiful clothes I can’t wear since none of them were made for a woman who swallowed a watermelon.”

“That’s ten, Danielle. I can spank you without harming our baby,” Julian promised.

“He’s been practicing,” Finn said with a smile. “After this, he can write a book. The Dom’s Guide to Maternal Discipline or Getting Your Freak on With Child .”

Julian sighed. “Your sarcasm grows by the day.” He sank a hand in Finn’s hair before kissing his partner. It was a sweet kiss of deep longing. When Julian let Finn go, he stared down. “Sex on a stick? Really? Holy hotness?”

Finn grinned. “It was all a lie, Master. I didn’t want Shelley to know the new Dom was really hideously unattractive.”

Julian laughed, ruffling a hand through Finn’s hair. “You keep it that way, Finn. Go on, ladies. Finn and I will have a drink while we wait. I’ll walk you down, Shelley. Master Wolf would like to go over the full contract before you both sign.”

She was going to sign a contract with a man. A contract that detailed all the things he could do to her. It was weird but exciting. She was starting a new chapter in her life.

The Shelley chapter. She followed Dani. There was no way she started her new life in a dirty T-shirt and jeans. She would walk into it with her head held high and hope in her heart.

And her love for Leo would always be there, but in the background. She would go on. She would find someone who needed her.

These were her baby steps, and she would take as many as she had to until she found her peace.

Senator Mitchell Cross stared at the man in front of him. He was a fit man, though Cross doubted he got his physique in anything so tame as a gym. His eyes were a cold, flinty gray, his hair cut in a precise military style. He wore simple, generic clothes, khaki pants and a T-shirt, well-worn boots. But it was very easy to picture him in fatigues. Steve Holder looked exactly like what he was. A mercenary.

Of course, he was a mercenary with several government contracts that could blow up in all of their faces. He was far more dangerous than just his well-trained ability to kill a man.

“You say you know this man?” Cross slid a picture across the desk toward the soldier of fortune. And fortunate he was. Holder was a millionaire because of under-the-table deals he’d made with Cross himself. He had a lot to lose, too. It was precisely why Cross had called the man in.

Holder stared down, his expression closed off. He had a long scar running down his face beginning at the side of his left eye and running down to his chin. Cross wouldn’t like to know what had happened to whoever had given him that scar. “I served with Lieutenant Leo Meyer for about two years. He was in my SEAL unit.”

Before Holder had stopped serving his country and started serving himself. Cross couldn’t blame the man. The Navy paid shit. So did the Senate. $174,000 a year barely paid for his wife’s cocaine habit, much less for his mistress. And his investments were drying up. Old money wasn’t what it used to be. He’d had to set up a nice little network of lobbyist money and selling favors to men like Holder in order to keep up a proper standard of living.

Shelley McNamara Hughes could bring down his entire house of cards.

“Were you close to him?” Units like the SEALs tended to forge strong bonds between the men who served in them.

Holder shoved the picture back toward him. “As much as I got close to anyone. But we weren’t on the same squad. We were in the same platoon, but sure, I knew him. He was a little younger than me, but he was a solid sniper. I heard he went back to school after he left. That didn’t surprise me. Meyer was a do-gooder. He was one of those true believers. He was obnoxious, but he didn’t know I couldn’t stand him. There was an incident with a translator in Afghanistan. He left the unit after that.”

“Really?” Maybe there was something he could use against this guy. It would be so much easier if this Meyer guy was dirty.

“A girl he was fucking got killed. She worked as a translator in the area. It wasn’t smart to get involved with the locals, but it didn’t seem to bother Meyer.” Holder sat back in the wing chair. He could have been talking about the weather for all the emotion in his voice. “She was butchered. He found the body.”

Cross was interested in that. “Did he kill her?”

Holder shrugged. “Who knows? The Navy didn’t think so. Look, it was fucking Afghanistan. Do you know what the locals do to a woman they decide is a whore? They can still legally stone a woman in that part of the world. She could have been killed because some Taliban freak caught her with a man who wasn’t her husband or because they didn’t like her working for the Americans or because she looked at someone wrong. Who the fuck knows what those people think. The Navy cleared Meyer, but he wasn’t the same, and when his time was up, he left. I lost track of him.”

“He wasn’t someone you tried to recruit?” Cross had heard that Holder and his company liked to recruit as many Special Forces soldiers as possible.

Holder waved him off. “Nah. He left. He went back to school. He wasn’t a viable candidate, though I hear his brother just got his walking papers and he didn’t want to leave. I’ve talked to him. The last time I spoke to Wolf Meyer, he was still trying to get back in. He would be an excellent addition, but his brother makes me nervous. What does he have to do with the fact that you let some asshole bug your office?”

He hated the superior way Holder looked at him. But it was the truth. Fucking Bryce Hughes had been a blackmailing son of a bitch. Bryce Hughes was the reason Cross was in this position. He’d been a discreet drug dealer. Bryce had been smooth, friendly even. He’d given the senator a good deal and even offered his lovely wife’s design services.

Which was exactly how he’d gotten caught on tape fucking his mistress on his senatorial desk. It wasn’t that particular episode that worried him. It was the fact that he’d made a deal with White Acres Security that effectively sold out US interests in the Middle East.

“I don’t need your sarcasm, Holder. You’re involved in this, too.”

The tape in which he proved he had problems with premature ejaculation would only get him voted out of office at the midterm election. The second tape, if it existed, could get him brought up on treason charges.

“I wasn’t the one who was friendly with a blackmailer. I thought the fucker died.”

“Oh, he’s dead. He owed a Colombian cartel some cash, and they don’t give extensions. Fortunately, he’d hidden a lot of his blackmail tapes.”

“How do you know he hid them?” Holder asked.

“Because if they had those fucking tapes, we would both be in jail.” Cross took a deep breath. “Look, I can’t be sure the tape even exists. I only know that we had a few meetings during the same time that Hughes was bugging this office.”

He had to find that fucking tape, and only Shelley Hughes could give it to him. Despite the fact that the cops had cleared her of her husband’s wrongdoing, Cross had to make sure she didn’t know about the White Acres deal. He had to.