We land in Bermuda that same night on a dark runway in Damian’s private plane. Damian surprised me by inviting Melina and Alec, who by some miracle are still dating, even though Melina usually cycles through boyfriends as often as most people change clothes. Angie came along too. There’s even a man I’ve never seen before--he’s about my height with a kind face and a mustache. My best guess puts him in his mid forties, and judging by the way he and Angie keep stealing glances at each other, I’m thinking Angie brought along a romantic partner too.
I smile to myself when I realize how important she has become to me over the past few weeks. I would’ve looked down on the idea of a nanny, because I thought it was just an excuse to neglect the kids, but I used to spend more time cleaning, cooking, and keeping up the house than I did focusing on Dean. Angie being here has given me so much more quality time with Dean than I ever could’ve had before, and it means I can sneak out of the house during his naps and at night without fear that he’ll wake up while I’m gone, because I know Angie is there.
It’s been perfect, like just about everything else since Damian came back into my life.
Damian insisted on a strict dress code of bathing suits for the flight, so we all look ready to go for a beach party as we descend the stairs from the plane. Angie, Melina, and myself all wear cover-ups over our swimsuits, while Damian, Alec, and Dean opted for board shorts and no shirts. I’m having trouble deciding between admiring how adorable Dean looks wearing a matching shorts to Damian’s with his little belly hanging over the waistband, or at how sinfully good Damian looks with his sculpted body on display. I eventually decide there’s no problem in enjoying both.
Damian ushers us all into a limo, which takes us on a half-hour ride before we have to switch vehicles to a small convoy of jeeps that can handle a little bit rougher terrain. He has professional drivers taking us through relatively dense forests that the drivers must know well, because it looks like we’re driving straight into trees half the time, only to turn at the last second and take a hidden path.
We eventually break free of the trees to a view I never thought I’d actually see with my own eyes. It’s lit by starlight instead of a blazing afternoon sun like in the postcard, but I’d know the scene anywhere. It’s my beach. The beach I’ve spent half my adult life fantasizing about visiting, like coming here would somehow be a remedy for all that was wrong in my life. The irony is I only managed to make it here when my life is already fixed--when it’s already perfect.
I squint down at the beach and notice tiki torches and some cloth tents set up a distance from the water. I also see a dozen or more people mulling about down there. I turn to Damian with a confused expression.
Except he’s not standing. He’s kneeling in front of me with both his hands raised up toward me. He’s holding a diamond ring that catches the distant light of the torches and bounces it back in every color imaginable.
Everyone is standing around us in a semi-circle, watching with smiling faces, but they are just a blur to me right now. An engagement ring?
“Will you marry me?” he asks. Then he lowers his voice until only I can hear it. “Remember the consequences if you displease me.” Damian winks.
My eyes well with tears of happiness. I fall down to my knees, forgetting the ring and hugging him so tight I don’t know how he keeps from dropping it. I’m laughing and crying like a complete idiot, but I don’t care.
“Well?” he asks after I’ve calmed down a little. “You’re kind of leaving me hanging here.”
“Yes,” I say, taking his face in both my hands and kissing him. “Yes. A million times. Yes.”
He slides the ring on my finger and grins at the sight of it. “Good. Because I would’ve had to explain to everyone down there why the wedding ceremony was canceled, and I brought them a long way to see this.”
I frown in confusion. “Wedding ceremony? Isn’t there usually the whole planning thing and--”
“Usually,” he says. “But I couldn’t wait. I’m sorry. I want it all. And I want it now.”
I bite my lip, looking toward what I now realize is the place I’m going to get married. It’s perfect.
“You’re lucky I’m not one of those girls who spent her whole life fantasizing about my wedding,” I say.
“Not lucky,” he says. “I just did my research. I asked Melina. She said you always dreaded having to plan your own wedding because you hate making decisions. She said you also never cared much for traditional weddings with big dresses and suits and ties. What was it you said? It seems so stuck up and stuffy?”
I glare at Melina, who is studying the top of a nearby tree innocently.
“You knew?” I ask her.
She reluctantly looks back toward me. “Only for a few days. He made me promise not to say a word.”
I shake my head, but I’m smiling. “Traitor.”
“Well, they’re all waiting for us,” says Damian.
We all make our way down the somewhat steep slope of grass that eventually turns into pure white sand. I kick off my shoes so I can feel it between my toes.
“I’ve never felt sand this soft,” I say.
Damian kicks his own shoes off and nods in approval. “Wow. Yeah.”
Dean takes two steps before he face plants into the sand and sits up with a grumpy look on his face.
“This is so past his bedtime,” I say with a laugh. “Are you sleepy, Deanie?”
“No,” he says firmly. “Daddy. Hold,” he stands up, reaching for Damian and yawns.
My heartbeat quickens when I realize he just called Damian daddy for the first time. I’ve spent some time with him trying to explain to him that Damian is his father, but at Dean’s age, it can sometimes be hard to tell what’s sinking in and what isn’t. I wanted it to be a surprise for Damian, who thought we were still waiting for the right time to tell Dean. As far as I was concerned, the right time was right away, because I couldn’t wait.
Damian kneels down and wraps his arms around Dean. At first, I think it’s a trick of the light when I see something catch the light and slide down Damian’s cheek as he squeezes his eyes shut and hugs Dean, but it’s no trick. I feel my own eyes watering and I move in to hug both of them. My little family.
And my little family is going to keep growing if Damian has his way. Not that I’m complaining. Not in the slightest.
16
Sneak Peak: Knocked Up by the Master
I hope you’ll enjoy this sneak peak of my brand new book, Knocked Up by the Master.
I did something reckless. Something crazy…
For one night I gave my submission to a stranger.
I let him dominate me. Claim me. Own me.
But that night rocked my world in more ways than one… I’m pregnant.
Now he’s back and won’t stop until I’m calling him Master.
17
Lysa
I watch my mom lay peacefully in the hotel bed like I have so many nights before. She’s strong. She always has been. I know if I didn’t come visit her as much as I do, she wouldn’t hold it against me, but she’s all I have left. We lost my dad when I was so young I can only remember his face from the pictures mom kept. No cousins. No surviving grandparents. Just us
So even when it’s not easy, I visit every day. Even on the days when seeing her hurts because it reminds me she doesn’t have long left, or the days when work was tough and I have so much classwork I just want to go home. I still come.
She stopped chemo when the cancer came back three months ago, so the doctors told us it was only a matter of time now before the cancer shuts her organs down. Weeks, months--they couldn’t say. All we know is it won’t be long.
Her eyes flutter open. They’re walnut brown, just like mine. She raises an eyebrow when she sees me. “Enjoying the show, perv?” she asks in her usual cranky tone.
I try to hold back a smile. Encouraging her only makes it worse. She’s sixty-two years old, but most of the time, she seems more
like a surly and highly mischievous child trapped in the body of an adult. “I just got here,” I say. It’s a bit of a lie, considering I’ve been waiting for her to get up for nearly half an hour, but I don’t need to give her more ammunition. “Besides, I was enjoying the view out the window. It’s not like I was just staring at you,” I add.
“And I see you just got here without my coffee. No sympathy for a poor, old, decrepit woman?”
I pull the coffee from behind my back with a half-cocked grin. It’s not piping hot, but my mom always lets it cool for a while before she drinks it anyway. “You’re not old and decrepit,” I say, setting the coffee beside her bed. “You’re a fighter. You always have been. And you’re going to beat this.”
She waves me off, letting her guard down for a split second. I see the real sadness in her eyes slip through the cracks, but she covers it just as soon as it comes. I know her sorrow isn’t for herself though. She’s sorry I’m seeing her this way. I just wish she would get it through her stubborn head that she’s my mommy, damn it. Dad’s not here to take care of her, and I’m not going to leave her to go through all this on her own.
“And you’ve always been too worried about everyone else,” she says with her voice full of scorn. “You’re young and beautiful, Lysa. You should be out breaking hearts and taking names, not stuck in a stuffy room with a cranky old coot.”
“You’re hot? You should’ve said something,” I say, getting up to turn the air down for her.
She sighs. “You’re too nice. I always tell you. Someone is going to come along and take advantage of that kindness. Then I’m going to have to go and get out of this bed to stab that someone because they hurt my baby. I’m far too old to go around murdering foolish men, Lysa.”
I grin. “You’re still young enough to go murdering, mom.” I get up to look for her prescriptions. As if she didn’t have enough problems on her plate, my mom has Crohn's disease, and she has a bad habit of forgetting her pills if I don’t remind her.
She gives me the first real smile since she’s woken up. “That’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me all week.”
“I won’t be sweet if the housekeepers threw away your pills again,” I say, after I’ve checked all the possible places for her prescriptions. “Did you move them?” I ask.
She throws her hands up in innocence. “Do I look like I’ve been up and ‘attem? Moving things around, adjusting the feng shui and all that nonsense? Maybe a little nude yoga by the window...”
I take in her graying hair and the way it’s tangled up into something a bird might mistake for a home. “It was the housekeepers. I told them last time that--” I sigh in frustration, cutting myself off short. “You know what? I’ll be back. I’m going to go straighten this out.”
She gives me a half-hearted clap. “That’s the spirit. Go ream someone out for me.”
I make my way to the lobby downstairs, still in slight awe of how nice the Beaumont Hotel is. My mom only wanted to pay for some roach hotel so she “wasn’t squandering my inheritance.” I may have gone a little overboard when I bullied her into staying here instead. Either way, the thought of her sitting alone in some cheap motel to live out the last of her days was too much. Waiting tables hasn’t left me with a ton of extra cash, but I’m not about to let my mom live out what could be her final days in a miserable, poorly lit hotel where she has to listen to people fighting and screwing all day.
I feel totally out of place here. I’m just wearing a worn out old summer dress I threw on after work to replace my sauce-stained work jeans and shirt. Compared to the sleek dresses, business-formal, and fashion chic outfits that seems to be dress code for all the other women, I look like a slob. Thankfully, the housekeepers have me pissed enough to ignore it for now. For all they know, those pills could be for some life-or-death illness.
A man with a ridiculous, pencil-thin mustache waits behind the customer service desk in the lobby.
“Excuse me,” I say, not bothering to hide my annoyance. “This is the second time my mom’s prescriptions have gone missing from her room. I need you to check with housekeeping to see if any of them were stolen or thrown away.”
He regards me coolly, raising one well-groomed eyebrow as he looks down at me. “Do you propose I order a search of all the trash cans in the entire hotel, or perhaps a pat-down of the housekeepers for contraband, Miss…?”
“Lysa Ross. And I don’t really care how you do it, but I need those prescriptions before noon.”
He folds his hands and purses his lips. “Of course you do. Your mother--she’s quite elderly, then? Did it occur to you that she might have misplaced them herself?”
“My mother is bedridden right now,” I say. “So no, it didn’t--”
“Is there a problem?” asks a deep voice behind me.
My anger boils over at the interruption. I spin, finger raised and eyebrows drawn. I’m about to lay into whoever has the nerve to interrupt when my jaw drops open soundlessly.
The man looking down at me has green, smoldering eyes that drink me in. It’s all I see at first--those pools of emerald burning into me with so much intensity I could melt into a puddle right here in the lobby.
He’s gorgeous. No, I’ve seen gorgeous men before. Whatever this man is defies traditional vocabulary. All my brain can do is take him in piece by piece, as if the entire package is too much mouth-watering man to comprehend all at once. Stubble shades his strong jaw, giving him a gruff, almost rugged look despite the expensive suit he wears so well. The first button of his white shirt is undone enough to show a hint his muscular chest, giving me enough of a glimpse to know his body is probably full of hard-cut lines and sculpted flesh.
“You’re going to come with me,” he says firmly, eyes locked on me.
I expect the little man with the mustache to protest having me pulled away, but he nods instead. “Of course, Mr. Carlyle.”
“Come,” he says again. When I don’t move immediately to follow him. He actually grabs me by the arm and starts tugging me along.
“Hey!” I say.
He rounds on me so quickly I take a step back. Those eyes. God. It’s like looking into a furnace full of jade flames, like he wants to put his hands on me right now. Or his mouth. My body betrays me and I take a step toward him, eyes locked on his. I think I catch the glimmer of a satisfied smirk twitch across his mouth, but it’s gone so quickly I can’t be sure.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“My office,” he says gruffly.
“I’m sorry, but exactly who are you?”
“In charge,” he says almost flippantly as he continues to pull me away from the lobby.
“Of what?”
He stops mid-stride to glare down at me. “That’s quite a mouth you have.” His hand comes up to touch my face, thumb brushing my bottom lip. There’s no air in my lungs. No space for my chest to expand. It’s like the world closes in on me until my attention is laser focused on that single point of contact between the rough pad of his thumb and the soft skin of my lip. It’s all I can do not to grip his wrist and take his entire thumb in my mouth right now, to suck it while I look up into those arresting green pools of sexuality he calls eyes.
And wow. There it is. The single most insane thought I’ve ever had. I’ve never, ever thought of doing something like that to a man, let alone a stranger. It’s like this man in the suit is the embodiment of sexuality, and even my normally tame, reserved personality is getting whipped into some sort of feral frenzy just being near him.
He lets his hand drop from my face, showing that same hint of a grin. “You had better watch it,” he says.
“Watch what?” I ask breathlessly. I realize a heartbeat too late his meaning was obvious, but my brain isn’t exactly functioning on all cylinders right now.
“Your mouth. It could get you into trouble. Especially with me.”
Wow. Why does the idea of getting into trouble with him make me throb with heat between my legs? And why is my
mind filling with images of him standing over me while he takes off his belt?
I really must not be sleeping enough. I’m apparently half out of my mind. In my circle of friends, I’m always the butt of jokes because I’m the last person on Earth to do anything wild or risky, especially when men are concerned. Now here I am, letting my mind run wild with every dark fantasy in the book just because this guy is giving me a little attention? It doesn’t matter, though. No matter what’s going on in my head or what I’m reading into his body language, he’s probably just going to sit me down while he calls the housekeepers and asks about the pills.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Way ahead of myself. And even if he really is planning something, I’d be way too chicken to take him up on the offer.
He starts walking without waiting to see if I follow--expecting me to follow. The assumption irks me, but I know I don’t dare cross this man. I can’t say how I know not to test his limits, but there’s a certain level of authority that seems to radiate from him. I don’t think I want to find out what would happen if I displeased him, I know that much. He pulls me along behind him as he walks, just as surely as if he grasped me by the arm again, yet he’s not laying a finger on me now. There’s a chemistry between his movements and my body I can’t seem to overcome, an attraction. A magnetism.
A few words. A few gestures. Less time than it takes to brush my teeth and this man already has my mind feeling like jelly and my body moving at his whim like a marionette.
He opens the door to his office and motions for me to sit in front of an impressive desk.
“Are you the manager?” I ask as I sit down and take in my surroundings. Large, expensive looking furniture. Gold baubles, leather-bound books, and countless items that look like they came from all over the world. I reach to touch a solid metal globe but his hand snaps out, gripping my wrist.
“I own this building, and some others like it,” he says, still gripping my wrist, eyes boring into mine. “I own everything in it. Everything.”
Knocked Up by the Dom: A BDSM Secret Baby Romance (Babies for the Doms Book 1) Page 14