Un-Hate Me (Enemies to Lovers Romance) (DOM for Hire Book 3)

by Hazel Parker

  I sighed. Burke did have a lot of nerve, but if he’d gone through as much as it looked like he had to get a chance to speak to me, well, fuck, I suppose the least I could do was give him a chance.

  “You’re lucky it’s slow at work,” I said. “But you get five minutes before they start thinking you’ve kidnapped me. So make it sharp.”

  “As if I never do,” he said, one of those little off-the-cuff remarks that made me feel all sorts of ways about him. None of them that I liked, even if it felt good. “First, I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’m sure as hell not fucking good at it, but…fuck, I’m sorry, OK?”

  He was right. He wasn’t very good at it.

  But that just made it more sincere.

  And, unfortunately, it continued to spike the arousal I felt for him. This was bad. This could not continue. I most certainly could not let this happen in my office at a minimum.

  “I—”

  “Burke, I need to stop you right there before you go any further,” I said, needing to take the initiative. “I don’t know where this is going. I’m happy to have you in the lives of my kids to a certain degree. And again, I’m sorry, too, that it’s kids and not just a kid. But there can’t be anything else between us.”

  And yet, there was a certain falseness to those words that made them sound so damn hollow, so damn weak. It was like my mouth spoke them, but my soul refused to put weight behind them. I didn’t know, I just knew that I could see Burke didn’t buy it, and he had damn good reason.

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  What a fucking cocky thing to say.

  “You saw me at my worst when we last met. Let me show you at, well, not my worst. Come for lunch?”

  I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes until noon. I couldn’t use time as an excuse. This man knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Burke, I can’t just flip the switch like that.”

  Even though I desperately want to.

  “Maybe if, I don’t know, we’d managed to speak to each other before all the paperwork and such got signed, I don’t know. But when the first thing that shows up after you storm off is legal documents, you know what I feel like? A goddamn business transaction. And when I’m negotiating pricing on billboards and online publications, that’s fine. When I’m negotiating…whatever this is?”

  I sharply inhaled after I said it. Was really was this?

  Maybe it was something more than what I wanted to admit.

  “You’re tied to me now forever,” Burke said.

  It wasn’t his usual voice. There was no arrogance behind it. In fact, it sounded very dangerous.

  “At least for the foreseeable future, I need to be with you.”

  “You need to be?”

  Even if my mind and my words were saying two different things, at least the way Burke was explaining the situation made it easy to seem outraged. I just couldn’t say if this would remain the case for long.

  “Yes.”

  “And why the hell is that?”

  He grimaced for a second and looked away, like he was contemplating something. But when he finally did look back at me, there was no hesitation and no indecision in his eyes.

  “Our greatest enemy is a man named Snake, and that is the guy that did this to me,” he said, motioning to himself. “We’ve tried now twice to bring him down, and it hasn’t worked out. We’ve got reason to believe he’s going to come after us and those we love and care about. Scott and Liam have their families, including Kelly and her kids, in Maine. I told them you weren’t going to leave work, but I at least need to stay here and protect you and…our babies.”

  Was this for real? My life had just started to get boring. And now I was to believe that a situation like Sean was going to happen all over again?

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am completely serious. I need to protect you.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said, feeling a little condescended to. “Kelly’s in a far different spot. She’s been with Liam for over a year now. You and I? We’ve been talking for, what, a month? You’re not my boyfriend, much less my husband. I’m not even showing that I’m pregnant.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Snake has ways of finding out. He could be watching us right now.”

  “So go away if you’re just going to bring him to me!”

  I was not acting in the right headspace. These DOM guys hadn’t brought my ex to me, quite the opposite, actually. If this “Snake” guy was coming for me, I needed help.

  And yet…it just didn’t feel right at all. Like why should Burke get to act like an enormous jackass to me and suddenly be my knight in shining armor?

  Why was life playing out like this?

  “I promise you that Snake already knows or knows how to find out. It doesn’t matter if I hideout in Japan. He knows coming for you will drag me out, and if he’s prepared, he can easily kill me.”

  “So how would you kill him?”

  He shrugged so easily.

  “If he doesn’t have the element of set up, it’s an even fight at worst.”

  He says as if it’s just a question of who pays for dinner. Jesus Christ.

  “Look, if Snake shows up, I’ll call and ask for help. It’ll be like Sean.”

  “This is nothing like that,” Burke said with such forcefulness I literally took a step back. “Sean was just an asshole. Snake is an international criminal mastermind. You know the Mexican cartel? They work for him. Terrorist groups? Same. He’s not named Snake for nothing. You call the police, and you know what happens? You’re never found again. I am the only person that can help you right now.”

  I stared right into his eyes when he said that, and he stared right back at me. And for several moments, that was all that we did. I had to say, goodness, there was something just so tense and erotic about the strength of his stare. I felt like I would wilt just looking into his eyes, he had such authority and power about him.

  I almost wondered if we were about to kiss. That’s how intense that gaze was. If anyone came upon us right now, it was going to be incredibly awkward.

  “I am not going to put your life at risk any more than I already have,” Burke finally said, though his gaze never wavered. “I will protect you at all costs.”

  “Then at least at this moment, you need to leave,” I said. “I have work to do. And yes, I know, Snake could come to my work. But if he’s as cunning as you say he is, he’s not going to kidnap me in the middle of an office. So leave me alone.”

  Burke blinked. He muttered under his breath. And finally, he nodded.

  He left down the stairs, limping more than I’d noticed before. And he was going to protect me from a criminal mastermind?

  The thought should have made me laugh at its absurdity.

  But instead, I was feeling something strange. I was feeling appreciative. I was feeling…

  I was feeling for him again.

  I just still didn’t know if it was an actual good idea or not.

  Chapter 20: Burke

  If Emily was truly going to reject my help, if she was going to turn me down in a moment when her life could be at risk, if she was going to say no at an hour when she most needed it, the only thing I could conclude was that I could only do so much.

  It was my own damn fault, of course. Just like it was my own damn fault that I’d never had a serious relationship but this is why. Everyone I touch eventually is in danger.

  That didn’t mean that it didn’t suck all the fucking same.

  I couldn’t ignore that Snake would come after her, so I chose for the rest of the day not to go any further than the hotel that I’d procured in between her office and her home. But I also vowed that I wouldn’t go near her unless I saw Snake or one of his goons making a beeline for her. She’d made her choice.

  And I, somewhat, had made mine, although mine was “made” by my actions, not by a literal decision to stop seeing someone.

  I got to the hotel bar and found a spot at t
he end of the bar. I ordered myself a dry martini and slowly sipped, letting the minutes go by. I didn’t really think or do anything. I just…was.

  I guess you could say that moment with Emily had made me numb. The mother of my kids, and she didn’t want anything to do with me. At all. Not even with everything at risk.

  I suppose I could slightly celebrate the fact that she’d let me have time with the kids—kids, not kid, I still couldn’t fucking believe that—but even that would only lead to more pain, a wonder of “what could have been” had I not acted like an enormous dick to her.

  As the hours passed, as late morning turned into early afternoon turned into happy hour, more and more people streamed in, almost all of them with coworkers or significant others. I was the lone weirdo sitting by myself, keeping to myself, not even talking with the bartender. She knew well enough to only check in when I needed drinks.

  Supposedly, this was my strength. My ability to be by myself, to not depend upon others, to have almost complete independence was seeing as what got me through each and every day. It was the reason I was as strong as I was.

  That was the idea, at least. Now I was questioning it.

  Fuck me if I wasn’t questioning everything right now.

  About half an hour before sunset, I closed out my tab, leaving a generous tip. Hey, someone needed to have a good day here. I pushed my seat back, brushing past all the people with full social lives, and began a steady walk to the beach, fortunately just two streets down from me.

  Here, it didn’t feel as weird to be alone. Maybe I was just finishing a job, maybe I was just catching some sunlight, or maybe I was doing anything I could think of that wasn’t the truth so I wouldn’t have to face my ugly self.

  I looked out on the ocean. I knew I couldn’t literally see out to previous missions; for one, the geography wouldn’t allow it since I’d have to look southwest to the Cayman Islands. But as I stared out on the seemingly endless horizon, I found myself thinking about my past, my present, and my future.

  My past was filled with nothing but isolation and grief. From the time I’d been a little guy, I had never fit in. The scrawny kid in elementary school had become the scrappy fighter in middle school, who then became the big, bad beast in high school. Obviously, I never attended college, but the theme, whether I was the one being picked on, the one winning fights, or the one no one wanted to fight, was the same—a lone wolf.

  Even when I was old enough not to act like a shithead around women, I never allowed myself to be anything more than a curiosity from afar. The closest I’d ever come before Emily was going on a few dates with someone over the span of about three months, but I never committed myself. And even then, after the three months, I cut it off precisely for that reason, because it was lasting much too long.

  Was it any wonder that I didn’t know how to handle myself when Emily pushed back a bit? It was hard to know how to act when you’d never had any frame of reference before.

  My present, obviously, was painful. I didn’t need to be walking the fucking beach on my own to have that knowledge.

  And as for my future…

  Well, right now, the odds were not very much in favor of it. It seemed painfully clear-cut that if things didn’t change with Emily, I was likely to just continue down this path of being a stoic dom. Maybe the violence would lessen if we finally killed Snake, but that only meant the downside and the danger would end, not that the upside would magically feel much better.

  If I could not get Emily at least consider give us a shot, I couldn’t sit around acting like a pussy-ass bitch. I had to set my future for myself. I had to get the fuck out of Miami.

  But in the short term, I could not do that. Not with Snake still rolling around. Not with the prospect of him coming for me, and possibly Emily, still very real, if not very likely.

  I decided that I’d stick around another week and protect Emily from afar. If Snake appeared then, I would kill him and move on. If he did not, then it could be reasonably assumed—given Snake’s impatience in many spots—that he did not know about me and Emily. I would only ask to see my kids twice a year, and otherwise, I’d step back.

  I wouldn’t end DOM. I would just become DOM. And whatever romance came my way would have to be short-lived unless lightning struck twice.

  “So be it,” I said to myself as I looked out on the setting sun.

  I walked back to my hotel room in silence. I never bothered to check on Emily again. I’d make one more run this evening to her place before I went back to my room to sleep, but I did not intend to speak to her again. She had made her position abundantly clear to me.

  I made it back to my hotel room when I received a phone call. I looked down to see Scott calling.

  “Scott.”

  “Burke, where’s Emily?”

  That was a hell of a way to start a phone call, and not in the good sense of the word. My stomach dropped. Had they gotten intel on Snake? Had they learned something I’d somehow missed?

  “She’s here, why?”

  “Here, with you?”

  “No, she’s being stubborn. She thinks she’s safer on her own.”

  “I…shit.”

  Scott did his best not to micromanage us and tell us how to do our jobs, but I could tell he was struggling hard right now not to do that. Unfortunately, I actually agreed with him. But I knew the more I pushed into trying to get Emily to do what I wanted, the more she’d push me away—and the more danger she would be in.

  “OK, here’s the deal. We don’t know where Snake is. He’s fully off-grid.”

  “What?”

  “Our last intel had him moving on a boat, but it’s the damndest thing, Burke. That boat arrived in the Keys, and he’s nowhere to be seen. He eluded our sights.”

  Which means he could be anywhere near us.

  “Burke, I would move with extreme caution for the indefinite future. I have no idea where Snake is, and until we get a sighting of him, we have to assume that he’s near you.”

  “It’s not an assumption, Scott. He is here.”

  I wasn’t saying that because I could literally see him. I was saying that because years of instincts had told me he’d come for the easiest target first. He’d chop us up bit by bit.

  And Emily was first.

  “We’ve got to stay in Maine, Burke, or he’s going to come for our families.”

  “No, I know,” I said.

  I’m on my own. But it’s how I’ve always operated.

  “I’ll kill that fucker once and for all. And I’ll let you know when it’s done.”

  “Be careful, Burke.”

  We hung up right after. But I knew now. I knew I definitely couldn’t leave Emily.

  I just had to hope and pray that whatever happened, I wouldn’t be too late.

  Chapter 21: Emily

  The Next Evening

  By some strange gut feeling, a part of me kept wanting to reach back out to Burke.

  I knew he was still in town. I didn’t know if he realized it, but I had seen him from afar going into a hotel on my way back from work. It was kind of stalkerish, yeah, but he had a way of remaining in my mind that made it impossible not to notice him.

  And how sullen and downcast he looked! I didn’t think what I’d said would hit him so hard, but apparently, it had done a number. The stoic expression remained, but even from afar, his posture looked more defeated, less prone to facing the challenges of the world. The tender side of me wanted to give him a hug and a chance at conversation, the more defensive side of me warned that I’d already been there and done that, and each time, Burke’s anger and protective nature won out.

  But with it being the next day, sure enough, on my drive home from work, I saw him once again heading into that same hotel. He looked a little more upright today, but it wasn’t like he looked cheerful or happy. A certain gloom captured his presence, and even though I only saw him for probably a total of three seconds before my car drove right on by, I felt like I owed it to
myself to have a conversation with him.

  No disruption of the workday. No yelling and screaming. No cursing each other out. Just a real talk.

  And if anything, maybe he’d provide me protection from the supposed bad guy that was coming after me. I hadn’t noticed anything to that effect yet, but maybe that was because my radar for that kind of thing was really poor.

  Once I got settled in at home and finished a workout, I got dressed in some jeans and a tank top and began the walk to the hotel. I thought about driving, but the hotel was closer to me than my work and only required about fifteen minutes. Plus, it was warm outside, and I could have used the open space to relax some.

  The hotel was nice and upscale, though no one would mistake it for the W in downtown New York City. I entered and smiled at the receptionist wearing a suit and tie.

  “Hello, how can I help?” he said in his very professional voice.

  “I’m looking for a man by the name of Burke?”

  “Last name?”

  I hesitated. I…didn’t actually know Burke’s last name. He had literally never given it to me. I didn’t look at the legal documents closely enough, actually, I didn’t even know if the legal documents contained his name. That seemed absurd on the surface, but this whole situation with Burke was absurd.

  “Johnson,” I said, just making something up, hoping that the receptionist would say something like “Well, there’s no Johnson, but…”

  I sat silently as he went through whatever programs he had on his computer.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have anyone by that name at this hotel.”

  “Any Burke in general? Sometimes he likes to change the last name he’s staying under so people don’t know he’s here.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, but we don’t have anyone by that name at this hotel.”

  A literal interpretation would have suggested that he meant no one named Burke was at this hotel, period. An obvious understanding was that this hotel employee was not going to give me an inch without saying anything, no matter what.