Wicked Heat

by Kelli Ireland

  “Achieve the desired outcome at any cost.” Ella swallowed hard. “I remember this part of the program.”

  A smile teased one corner of his mouth. “I’m the boss, so I’m exercising my right to change the program.”

  Her head was spinning. This wasn’t happening, wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. “You don’t make yourself vulnerable, Liam. It’s not who you are. You’ve said as much yourself.”

  “Words I’d take back if I could, but I can’t. So, that leaves me with two choices.”

  “Which are?” she whispered, scared to death to hope.

  “I can stay the course, or I can change. I can remain a closed-off, narcissistic, self-serving asshole, or I can open myself up to be the man I want to be—a man not quite so Baggett-like as my father would have preferred.”

  Change the course. A spark of hope flared in her heart and burned hot. “Why?”

  “Because I’m still Baggett enough to do whatever is necessary to achieve the desired outcome. But a smart woman showed me that vulnerability is actually strength manifest. It takes a brutally strong person to put themselves out there, knowing they could be hurt, and yet still take the risk in pursuit of the reward.”

  “Sounds like a smart woman.”

  “She is. Smart, funny, loyal, brilliant, creative, sexy as hell. I could go on if you’d like.”

  She shook her head, the movement minute. “No. What I mean is, why now, Liam? Why me?”

  “Jenna asked me the most profound question. ‘If she walks out of your life, will you be a better man, Liam, or will you be a broken man?’”

  Ella waited, not sure where Liam was going with the question. She knew—God help her, she knew—what she wanted, needed, to hear from Liam. But she wasn’t going to put herself out there, refused to offer even a single word of encouragement that might change his authentic answer, the answer he had to come up with on his own if it was going to matter.

  “I will be a broken man if you leave this island without me, Ella. I don’t know how we’ll make it work. But I know with absolute certainty that there is no obstacle so insurmountable that I can’t conquer it with you.”

  With her. Not for her. “Sounds like a pretty intense partnership,” she said quietly.

  “I can only hope.” He held out a hand. “I’m far from perfect. I’ll make missteps. I’ll stumble. I’ll be an asshole of ridiculous proportions more often than not...but only until you’ve polished my roughest edges and helped me shape my vulnerability into strength.”

  She took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet.

  “You are the only woman who has ever made me believe in love, Ella Montgomery.”

  “May it always be so.” She smiled. “Unless we have daughters.”

  His eyes went comically wide. “God save us all. I botched up having a little sister. Any daughter would be doomed...save for the fact she’d have you as her mother.”

  “Is she staying or going?” someone asked in a stage whisper. “I’m going to miss my connecting flight if she doesn’t choose quickly.”

  Liam looked down at her. “What will it be, Ms. Montgomery? Will you stay?”

  Ella took his face in her hands, rose to tiptoe and kissed the man who had won her heart.

  Liam pulled her into a fierce hug. “Captain,” he called out, “file your flight plan with one change. Your passenger count is minus one.”

  * * *

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  King’s Ransom

  by Jackie Ashenden

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ajax

  I WAS TEN years old the first time I suspected my father was a criminal.

  At thirteen he showed me the truth.

  That’s when I decided I was going to take him down. But if you want to take down a man like Augustus King you have to do it right. You can’t leave anything behind. A crime empire is like a Hydra—cut off the head and twenty more sprout.

  It took me nearly two decades to cut off every single head. Yet I did. And I put that prick in jail once and for all.

  But surviving decades of being the oldest son of the biggest crime lord in Sydney doesn’t leave a man without scars, and mine ran deep.

  That was okay, though. Scars were reminders of the big picture and my big picture involved keeping my brothers and my city safe. Staying vigilant for danger. Always on the lookout for threats.

  Threats such as William goddamn White, my father’s enemy and the last head of the Hydra.

  Dad had been in jail five years and I’d been legit ever since, running one of the fastest growing
property development companies in Sydney, and, as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t simply cut that head off the way I preferred. Not if I wanted to avoid jail myself.

  No, I had to use other methods.

  I leaned against the wall of the ballroom of one of Sydney’s top hotels, studying the glittering, couture-wearing crowd all gathered to celebrate the formation of a new charity.

  I hadn’t been invited—no one would invite a King to a swanky charity ball like this one—but I’d shown up anyway and they’d been too afraid of me to turn me away.

  The King past was something my two brothers and I were trying to overcome, but it came in handy at times. And I wasn’t above using it, especially when it came to driving home to the cream of Sydney society that the King brothers were up-and-coming and they couldn’t ignore us any more.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I was here.

  That other reason was sitting across the ballroom from me, at a table surrounded by goons in suits trying hard not to look like goons in suits and failing.

  Miss Imogen White, William White’s daughter and the most guarded heiress in the entire city.

  The chick was like Rapunzel in her tower—no one was getting inside. Both figuratively and literally. She was the apple of her father’s eye and he made sure she stayed pure and pristine, his perfect Princess.

  Sadly for White, I was about to storm his daughter’s pretty little castle and sully the fuck out of it.

  He’d managed somehow to stay out of the law’s reach following the collapse of Dad’s empire and he’d been waiting in the shadows ever since. Not drawing attention, quietly trying to resurrect Augustus King’s filthy legacy.

  A legacy I was going to destroy once and for all.

  That motherfucker was going down and I was going to use his daughter to do it.

  I tilted my head, studying her as she sat on her chair, all alone apart from her goons.

  Five foot nothing, long blonde hair the colour of pale corn silk. Big green eyes that watched the rest of the room and the people in it like they were a cage full of tigers and she was a goat tethered to a stake.

  Interesting that her father had managed to get her an invite and that she was attending without him. Almost made me think that she was playing the part of a goat tethered to a stake.

  Bait. To lure someone out.

  Me, perhaps? But then, probably not. As far as White was concerned, I was too busy running King Enterprises, my property empire, to worry about him—an illusion I’d worked hard to cultivate to hide my real motivations.

  Whosever bait she was, Imogen was pretty in her plain white cocktail frock. A perfect little doll. Pale and virginal and pure. Except not totally pure, not with the kind of sulky pink mouth that would look great wrapped around a man’s cock.

  Yes, she was lovely, but she was also nothing but leverage.

  Her father’s weapon that I was going to turn back on him, using her to ensure that whatever he was doing in those shadows, whatever plans he was hatching, he needed to stop immediately and get the hell out of Sydney.

  Only then would I release his daughter.

  And if he didn’t? I’d take that carefully guarded virginity of hers and make her mine. Because if there was one thing I knew about William White, it was that he’d rather slit his own throat than have a King touch his daughter.

  Especially me. As far as he was concerned, I was still rough and brutal, still only a few steps away from the violence that had made me.

  He wouldn’t want his daughter anywhere near me.

  As plans went it wasn’t all that subtle, but I’d been searching for some legal way to take that bastard down and hadn’t managed to find anything I could use against him.

  No, his daughter was it. My plan to protect everything I’d built.

  Ten years ago, I could have headed over to her and slung her over my shoulder and no one would have stopped me. Even the police would have given me a wide berth—they didn’t want to mess with a King.

  But it wasn’t ten years ago. It was now, and even though I’d never have considered using Dad’s kind of tactics—I was, after all, a different man—the stakes were too high to risk failure, which meant the end justified any means.

  Such as kidnapping William White’s daughter from a ballroom full of people.

  Oh, yeah, and not get caught.

  I glanced away from the scaredy-cat Princess and looked towards the bar area of the ballroom. Sure enough, there was my younger brother Leon, along with his wife, Vita. They were commanding a lot of attention, which was the reason I’d demanded the pair of them attend the ball with me.

  They could take the heat while I did my thing unnoticed.

  Leon would be pissed if he knew what I was planning, especially given his own past, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. This was my idea and not telling him would allow all the responsibility to fall on me if it turned to shit.

  The only person who’d get hurt here was William fucking White.

  I shifted against the wall, checking on Imogen again.

  She was sitting up so straight and still, her hands clasped in her lap, holding herself rigid, except for one little white-satin-covered foot that was tapping to the music that filtered through the ballroom. Then it stopped and she looked down at herself, colour staining her pale cheeks. As if she’d only just realised what she was doing and caught herself. As if tapping her foot to the music was a bad thing.

  Another man might have felt sorry for her sitting there all by herself, not even able to enjoy the music. But I didn’t. I couldn’t afford to. She was a tool for me to use. That was all.

  On the table near her was a glass of iced water that I’d paid one of the waiters to keep refilled. Eventually, given the amount of times she’d emptied the thing, she’d need to visit the bathroom and when she did...

  Right on cue, she glanced at her bodyguards and slid off the chair, gesturing towards the exit to the bathrooms. One of them nodded and jerked his head at the man standing next to him, the two of them then falling into place behind her as she moved towards the exit.

  Good.

  Taking on five of them would be tricky, but two? Easy.

  I stepped away from the wall and ducked out through a nearby doorway that led to the same corridor where the bathrooms were located, reaching the ladies’ bathroom in time to see her vanish into it. The two guards stationed themselves outside.

  Giving them a minute or two, I took out the cap I had in the back pocket of my suit pants and put it on, pulling it down to hide my face, then I moved in for the kill.

  I took them down as quickly and as quietly as possible then shoved their unconscious bodies into the empty men’s bathroom, pulling shut the door behind me and breaking the handle so they couldn’t get out.

  That done, I moved over to the ladies’ and stepped inside.

  Luckily it was empty, apart from White’s little Princess, standing at the bank of sinks opposite the door. She was in the process of washing her hands, her head bent.

  I closed the door silently behind me and locked it for good measure, then I leaned back against it, watching her, waiting to see how long it would take her to notice me.

  A good minute as it turned out.

  She was humming something under her breath, a cheerful-sounding pop song, completely distracted. And it wasn’t until she’d dried her hands and had leaned forward to study her reflection that her gaze met mine in the mirror.

  The humming stopped, her green eyes going big and filling with shock.

  ‘Don’t scream,’ I said calmly. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. However, I might change my mind if you try to call for help. Is that understood?’

  Her eyes widened even further, her mouth in a soft pink O. But she gave a very slight nod to show me that she did, staring at me in the mirror all the while as if I was
the devil himself.

  I stared back.

  Her skin was pale, like cream, and her eyelashes were tipped with gold. She had a conventional prettiness that was saved from being bland by that quite frankly carnal mouth and the delicate little mole sitting just above it.

  There was an energy to her, an electricity that reminded me of a live wire about to spit sparks.

  Somewhere deep inside me, interest tightened.

  What would it feel like to put my hands on her and touch that electricity for myself? Would it shock the dead parts of me back to life?

  Shit, touching her wasn’t the point of the kidnapping, no matter the threat I was going to deliver to her father. Besides, pure princesses—live wires or not—had never been my type. I liked a woman who knew her way around a man’s cock and who didn’t mind getting rough with it, not a wide-eyed virgin like this one.

  I dismissed the thoughts. Right now, getting her out of here with the minimum of fuss was my priority.

  ‘W-where are my bodyguards?’ Her voice was clear with an inexplicably sexy roughness to it.

  ‘I dealt with them.’ I stepped away from the doorframe and straightened to my full height, her gaze following every move I made.

  The shock had begun to drain from her pale face, leaving behind it an expression I didn’t recognise. ‘Both of them?’ She sounded incredulous, as if I’d done something incredibly difficult.

  ‘Yes. They’re in the men’s room with the door locked.’ I took a step towards her. ‘They’re not coming to save you, little one.’

  She didn’t move. ‘You’re Ajax King.’

  ‘You’ve heard of me.’ I took another step.

  ‘Of course. My dad hates you.’

  ‘The feeling’s mutual.’ I was close now, standing right behind her, watching her face in the mirror.

  Her lashes lowered. Then she turned around, her head tipping back, looking straight up at me.

  She was very small, the top of her head barely reaching my shoulders, and the pale skin of her cheeks had gone pink, deepening the vivid green of her eyes. They were glowing. They were full-on fucking glowing.