This unfamiliar female voice drew his eye for a second, but the words had come from the woman Mauri claimed was his mother. Dax wasn’t going to entertain her because that was exactly what Mauri wanted. ‘Minx?’
Ivy’s lips parted to speak, ‘I…’ her body jolted an inch, and her feisty eyes snapped around to the man at her side.
Taking in the scene again, Dax kicked himself for not sensing the danger sooner. ‘Take your fucking hands off her,’ Dax said, striding toward the man beside his wife.
The drawing room door closed, but he didn’t bother looking to see who had closed it. It should have been obvious to him that Ivy sitting on the couch without expressing a word or opinion was wrong. His mind was mangled by Mauri’s revelations. But at least now he had some legitimate danger to vent his frustration on.
Before Dax got to their position, the man rose and hauled Ivy up to her feet, keeping her body pulled into his side. The gleam of a gun barrel was pressed under her ribs.
‘Now everyone calm down,’ Mauri said, rising from his seat. The man holding Ivy began to inch back until they were aligned with Mauri.
Dax paused next to the couch they had been seated on and made eye contact with Ivy. ‘I should’ve fucking known.’
‘Not your fault,’ Ivy said and managed a smile. She wasn’t saying much and was maybe a fraction paler than normal, but she didn’t have fear or tears in her eyes. ‘They took exception to me wanting to come after you… apparently there’s more that they have to tell you.’
‘We didn’t want to resort to this,’ Mauri said. ‘All we want you to do is hear us out.’
Us. That was a joke. Mauri was a puppet-master who tugged on everyone’s strings whenever he wanted, and Dax had just got his Ivy embroiled in the old man’s sick theatre.
‘Do you think that threatening my wife is going to tempt me into agreeing with you?’ Dax asked.
‘Who would you rather we threaten?’ Mauri asked. ‘She has you hypnotised.’
‘Pissed that I stopped dancing to your tune?’ Dax asked. ‘Ivy doesn’t give me instructions and expect them to be followed blindly. She taught me respect, something you never showed anyone.’
‘You’re lashing out, I understand that,’ Mauri said, glancing at whoever was behind Dax.
He didn’t want to take his focus from Ivy and the weapon in the room, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to because Ivy acted as his eyes for him. ‘It’s Brad,’ Ivy said. ‘He doesn’t have a weapon though. I trust that you can take him.’
‘Like he just tried to take half a dozen security guards in the lobby,’ Brad said. ‘The guests know something is going on.’
‘We don’t care about them,’ Mauri said. ‘Everyone we care about is right here.’
‘Trystan might take exception to that,’ Brad said.
‘Oh, let him, the boy is nothing but trouble,’ Mauri said. Dax had seen him annoyed before, but this was more than that.
‘He’s giving you a run for your money now,’ Dax said. ‘You thought Ivy could get him to shape up before you died, doesn’t look likely now.’
‘No,’ Mauri said. ‘But he will be your problem when I am no longer here.’
‘He’s his own problem,’ Dax said. ‘I don’t give a fuck about your empire or your family. You let mine go, and we’ll be out of the state by sunset.’ Turning to Ivy, he held out his hand. ‘Come here.’
She tried to move forward, but the guy at her side wrenched her back, prodding the gun deep into her side making her wince. Dax’s upper lip twitched with the angry revulsion taking him over. He would remember every detail of that motherfucker’s face, and if he ever saw the guy again, he would make sure that he never drew another breath.
‘Is this what it’s like to have two men fighting over you?’ Ivy quipped.
‘He’s not going to hurt you,’ Dax said, taking a step closer. ‘You think that Mauri would take the risk of hurting you, babygirl? It won’t happen.’
‘I’m expendable,’ Ivy said.
‘Not to me,’ he said. ‘That diamond cost a small fortune.’
‘Well I want to be buried with it, so you’re out of luck,’ she said, smiling again. ‘No refund or return for you.’
‘Damn. I knew I should’ve gone with the zirconia.’
‘Then I might have said no.’
‘You’re not going to say no now, are you?’ he asked, elevating his hand. ‘Come here.’
The guy with a hold of her looked at Mauri when Ivy began to move away from him. The threatener didn’t yank her back, but he kept his hand on her arm.
‘You don’t want Dax to get over there, dad,’ Brad said to Mauri, prompting the guy gripping Ivy to let her go. She bounded forward and put her hand into Dax’s.
‘I’m disappointed, Mauri,’ Dax said. ‘You should follow your own advice. Never bluff in life, someone’s always bound to call you on it.’ Rounding, he went for the door, ready to get out of this house and away from all of these people forever.
‘Your possessions are upstairs, Ivy,’ Mauri’s voice sounded solemn.
Dax kept walking but had to stop when Ivy did. ‘What?’ Dax asked her.
‘I told you not to let them know how important that was to me,’ she murmured then let go of his hand to turn back to Mauri. ‘Where?’
‘There’s a bedroom ready for you and your husband upstairs, next door to the one being used by your sister. If you will hear our offer, we will take you there, and you will be free to have all of your possessions back, and I suspect there’s a particular object of importance to you up there.’
‘What is your offer?’ she asked.
‘We don’t care,’ Dax said, taking her upper arm. ‘Come on, we’re leaving. What’s up there can be replaced, I’ll buy you a new one.’
‘You can’t buy me,’ she said, wrenching her arm back and landing him with her ire. ‘I didn’t marry you for your money.’
‘Why did you marry him?’ Brad asked, and he lowered to sit beside his father. The man who had threatened Ivy went out of a side door, but Dax knew it wasn’t over, he would take care of that guy at the first opportunity.
‘I married him because I love him,’ Ivy said, folding her arms. ‘Is there another reason that a woman would marry a man?’
‘Dozens of them,’ Brad said. ‘You were sure it was love?’
‘We’ve made it this far,’ Ivy said.
Dax came up behind her and brought his lips to her ear. ‘Stop engaging him.’
‘What’s the worst that they can do?’ Ivy asked. ‘They’ve proven that they’re not going to hurt us, even if they threaten it, we know it’s not in their best interest to try and scare us.’
‘You didn’t appear to be scared at all,’ Brad said. ‘Even with a gun aimed at you point blank, you didn’t blink. Most women would be weeping and pleading.’
‘Ivy isn’t the weeping type,’ Dax muttered.
If they were going to be stuck having this conversation until Mauri relinquished Ivy’s possessions, then they had better be comfortable doing it. So Dax led his wife to the couch she had occupied when he entered and seated them both. As long as he maintained his focus on Brad and Mauri, he could just pretend that the other women weren’t here.
‘There was nothing for me to be afraid of,’ Ivy said. ‘That’s the great thing about being married to a man like Dax. Few people take the risk of threatening my life because the consequences would be grave for them.’
‘As we’ve just highlighted,’ Mauri said. ‘I am sorry that we had to take such measures. But if we had allowed you to run after Dax then you would not have heard us out.’
‘You mentioned an offer,’ Ivy said.
Dax rested back on the couch, lifting one ankle to the opposite knee. Ivy twisted her body toward him to address Mauri and Brad and pressed her hands into his thigh. ‘You’re not interested in their offer,’ Dax said to her.
‘No, I’m not. But they said we had to hear it, then I could get my things and
go. So the sooner we hear it…’
‘We want to offer you the chance of a vacation,’ Mauri said. ‘Two weeks in the California sun.’
‘Why would you want to—‘
‘We can afford our own vacation,’ Dax said.
‘We want you to spend two weeks at the beach house, with your relatives,’ Mauri said, glancing over at the silent women, Dax didn’t follow his eye line.
‘You want to facilitate some big reunion?’ Dax asked. ‘Sorry, we’re not interested.’
‘You have to be,’ Brad said.
‘If you do this, you’ll have the time to consider the offer that I made to you before,’ Mauri said. ‘Then if at the end of it you choose not to agree, we’ll provide you a million dollars, no strings attached.’
Dax didn’t like the way that Ivy shifted. He wanted to throw the offer back at Mauri without any hesitation. But the offer of money did bring clarity about why their relatives had come. ‘How much did you offer them?’ he asked, bobbing his head in the direction of the other two women. ‘That how you got them here?’
‘Financial incentive is effective,’ Maurice said.
‘What’s the point of this?’ Ivy asked. ‘What do you expect to happen?’
‘Family is important, I’ve always believed that, but it’s become more relevant to me recently. When I’m gone, Dax won’t have that parental figure in his life anymore. He and Brad have always tolerated each other, but we know what his relationship with Trystan is like. I don’t want him to be alone in the world.’
‘And you thought that bringing my relatives into it would tempt me to coerce him?’ Ivy asked. ‘I don’t have the influence over Dax that you think I do.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Mauri smiled. ‘You’re sitting here now negotiating with me while he remains silent because he will do what you tell him makes you happy. He doesn’t want to lose you. He turned his back on his life for you.’
‘Not for me, because of you and your unreasonable demands,’ Ivy said. ‘If I had influence over Dax, we wouldn’t be here now.’
‘I’m not expecting you to answer this minute,’ Mauri said. ‘We prepared your room and invite you to spend the night. We can complete our negotiations over breakfast. You’re free to leave at any time, from here or from the beach house if you choose to. There is a lot at stake, and it would be foolish of you both to turn your back on an offer of financial stability that you won’t receive again.’
‘Show us to our room, my husband and I have to talk,’ Ivy said and Dax’s eyes closed.
This was an impossible decision to make. He didn’t want to be Mauri’s puppet anymore, but in a few months Mauri would be out of the picture for good. Now they had the chance of a small fortune even if they didn’t choose to take over the empire, and he could use that money to take care of Ivy for the rest of their lives. She was right, they needed to talk.
Chapter Eleven
For the first time in a long time, it seemed like they didn’t know what to say to each other. The party was still going on downstairs, but they had been shown upstairs to a beautiful room, which had a white carpet and blood red sheets on the four-poster bed. The grand space was at the front of the house, so it had a large window, currently covered by drapes matching the colour on the bedspread.
Brad had given Dax his jacket back, but it was cast aside, as were his shoes and shirt. Now just wearing his pants, Dax strode the width of the room, checked out the bathroom, then came back into the room and slid his hands into his pockets.
‘Ok,’ he said. ‘You were right.’
‘You should get used to that,’ she said, pulling the pins out of her up-do and putting them on the dresser by the nightstand.
‘What are we doing here, Minx? Why don’t we just leave?’
‘If you want to then we can,’ she said. ‘But a million dollars is nothing to ignore. And I don’t want tonight to change how you feel about Mauri. I think… seeing my sister there was a shock, but he tracked down your mother. How does that feel?’
‘When I came back here after Brad told me Mauri was sick, I was… I wanted to ask about my history, wanted to ask questions about where I came from.’
‘Now you can.’ And now Ivy understood what that unknown other thing was that had been playing on his mind.
‘Not sure I want to,’ Dax said. ‘She’s a stranger.’
‘Your identity is tied into being an orphan. You’ve identified yourself that way for a long time, all of your life. It’s not easy to change your whole self-image in a single minute.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to change how I look at myself,’ he said. ‘For all the shit I’ve been through, all the shit I’ve done, things worked out ok.’
‘Right now, you’re my husband. You’re a fighter, a friend, and you’re an ex-enforcer, but… none of those have to change if you let yourself be a son too.’
‘You think this is a good idea?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know what I think,’ she said, sitting on the bed and hooking her heels up on the frame beneath the mattress. ‘When I saw you storm out of that room… I wanted to follow you, then that guy came out of nowhere.’
‘I’ll take care of that,’ Dax said, finding his scowl again. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘That’s not what I’m saying. I saw that you were lost and hurt. I wanted to be there with you, to make you feel better.’
Lifting her hands, she beckoned to him, so he came over to take her hands into his. ‘You know how to make me feel better,’ he said.
Dipping down, he caught her lips with his and guided her hands to his hips. Sliding them around to his ass when he came lower, he hooked his hands under her ass and picked her up to move her further back on the bed. His solid form covered her, and he kept on kissing. His tongue slipped deeper into her mouth, and she kept on squeezing his ass enjoying the unyielding gluts that she liked to grope at every opportunity.
His fist closed around the neckline of her dress, and she pushed on his chest to break their kiss. ‘Don’t rip this dress, I have nothing else to wear.’
‘I don’t give a fuck about that.’
‘In front of Mauri and his men, you will, especially when I’m standing in front of them wearing nothing but a thong.’
Rolling off her, he dropped his hands onto his chest. ‘Take it off then.’
Leaving the bed, she unzipped her silk sheath dress and let it drift onto the carpet. Some of his tension ebbed, but the intensity remained in his eyes, though that was nothing to do with what had gone on downstairs.
‘Maybe we should talk,’ she said. Unhooking her bra, she discarded it, then bent to slide down her underwear. ‘There is a lot to talk about.’
‘Forget talking. Talking isn’t what I need from you now,’ he said. Losing his pants took only a few seconds, he kicked them to the floor and curled his hand around his dick. ‘Have a seat.’
‘This is stupid,’ she smiled, climbing onto the bed. High on her knees, she hovered above the crown of his cock that he was trying to direct into her. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this here.’
‘I need this here,’ he said.
One arm swept around her, and he reversed their positions. Getting her onto her back, he was now the one high on his knees above her. She tried to sit up, but he took her move as an invitation. Cupping the back of her skull, he leaned back so that he could guide his dick into her mouth.
Sucking on the bulb he’d pushed between her lips, Ivy held her mouth back, which was enough to make him mutter in his usual private fashion. Increasing his pressure, she was unable to hold herself back in the face of his strength, so she sucked, just like he wanted her to. But as soon as he relaxed his hand, she grabbed his shaft and took it from her mouth, working it with her hand instead.
‘You think that if you come, you’ll be able to see things more clearly?’ she asked.
‘Your mouth has a way of reprioritising my life,’ he said.
Snatching her arms, he pulled her out from under him and res
ted her on the pillows. ‘What are you—‘
‘Stay there,’ he said.
Lying above her, he kissed the side of her neck, and when he encompassed her in his arms, she sighed out. When he kissed her like this, Ivy’s whole body fizzed, her hormones took over, and she couldn’t think straight let alone tease or argue with him.
Dax knew every part of her body, he massaged her breasts, using the tip of his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger to work the nipple, pinching and pulling her into a peak that he loved to suck into his mouth and catch in his teeth.
Running her hands through his hair and down his neck, she was pleased that this endeavour gave him focus. Physical activity was what he needed, and this would keep him occupied for a while. Except her desire was thumping in her ears and the heat of fresh blood gushing through her veins opened every one of her nerves, each of which begged for his attention.
‘Dax,’ she said, but he just grumbled around the breast he was sampling, which sent shivers of vibrations through her.
Locking her ankles at his back, Ivy regretted not taking her chance to ride him when he’d offered her the position. Lost in the deluge of pleasure she got writhing up against his solid member, she almost didn’t notice when he stopped kissing her body and lifted his head.
‘You really weren’t scared down there?’
‘While I was sucking your dick?’ she teased, knowing exactly what he meant. He meant downstairs when she had a gun pointed at her, and to that there was only one response. ‘I trust you.’
That answer wasn’t a tease, and he knew it because he opened his mouth and kept on tasting her. His tongue glided down her abdomen, and while he kissed and licked her navel, she squeezed her lips together because she knew what this was a prelude to. When he was done tormenting her, he moved his attention further south. Parting her legs wide, he pushed down on her inner thighs to give himself a panoramic view of her core.
Coiling her fingers around the pillows that she lay on, Ivy watched him scrutinise her, and held her breath when he descended to taste her.
His skilled mouth licked and sucked on her until she was panting, then he came up over her to kiss her mouth, giving her the full flavour of herself while he sheathed himself in her. Whimpering against the scope of his reach, she relaxed when he moved out and then slammed back in, making no apology for stretching her passage for his own pleasure.
Fighting Back (Harrow #2) Page 11