by Chloe Cox
And then, after they ate, he’d take her to the club and fuck her brains out.
But not before making her work for it. He’d made her serve cocktails topless while wearing a mask. He’d strapped her down in the main playroom and invited others to watch as he made her come over and over again. One time he’d just had her on his lap while he watched the game in the library, and he’d kept her available to him the whole time. During the third quarter, he’d ordered her on her knees.
She still shivered, thinking about it.
“Italian?” Conor said, walking into her kitchen. Sierra followed him with her eyes.
Ok, she followed his ass.
“Sure,” she said.
Conor turned and flicked the menu at her with an accuracy that she would never understand. He was like one of those guys in a kung fu movie. If she tried that, it would end up down the hall.
She watched him take off his jacket and his weapon, down to the white t-shirt underneath. God, he was attractive. And Sierra wasn’t the only one who thought so. Her hot bodyguard with a tendency to throw her over his shoulder had already been a hit with her core fans, but the internet had gone completely insane for him since that little morning show incident.
Which felt like yesterday, but was actually…two weeks ago? Three? It had been a blur of work events since then, and, encouragingly, nothing from the stalker. Conor said they were on the offensive tracking the guy down, that maybe he’d gone into hiding. Whatever—she’d take it.
She just tried not to think of what would happen if they actually caught the guy. She wouldn’t need a bodyguard anymore. And the thought of having to do all these events without Conor by her side was suddenly so freaking exhausting. He made it fun. He’d started a game where they whispered ridiculous things into each other’s ears on camera, and the first one to laugh lost. If she could get him to laugh first, he’d have to be in one of her videos. What Conor won if she laughed first wasn’t entirely clear, but the look he’d given her when she’d asked had given her a lot of feelings.
And mostly she was feeling fantastic. Except for Tiffany, obviously.
Sierra rummaged in her pillow throne for her phone. Tiff had been flaking a lot lately, and she’d been vague about where she was spending her time. Sometimes Tiff just did that for weeks or months on end and it was fine, and sometimes…it wasn’t.
She looked at Conor, who was getting out the wine. She wanted to talk to him about Tiffany, but it felt like it would be crossing a line, somehow. They’d had sex a million different ways, but they’d never slept together. And unspoken between them was this sense that this was temporary. So she kept putting up walls to protect herself, and then he’d do something adorable, and, well…
It was better if she didn’t talk to him about Tiffany.
She finally found her phone — nothing from Tiff. But there was something she had to deal with.
“Shoot,” she said.
“What’s up?”
“My business partner wants to do a call,” she said, furiously texting back. “Tonight.”
Which by itself was worrisome. But then Conor looked at her, his eyes darkening, his lips beginning to smile. No matter what was happening, she couldn’t feel anything other than sexy when he looked at her like that.
“How much time do I have?” he said.
“Ten minutes,” she said.
Then she did a double take. They still hadn’t had sex outside the club. He hadn’t so much touched her outside the club. Conor had been really clear about that rule. He hadn’t meant…?
Maybe she would have gotten the courage to ask after the glass of wine he handed her. After the call. Maybe things would have gone differently if there hadn’t been a knock on the door at that very moment.
But there was.
And it was freaking Jared.
Conor opened the door to the most punchable face on the planet.
Jared Fiore.
In full light, this time, and with another Lyons Security guard behind him, Jared Fire looked even less impressive than he usually did. Hair gelled back, a dapper suit, and an overall impression of oiliness. Conor wouldn’t like him much even if Jared wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer.
But he was.
“What do you want?” Conor said. Barely kept the growl out of his throat.
Jared cocked his head and smiled, as though it were a stupid question.
“To talk to my sister,” he said.
It was bravado to cover fear. Conor could see it in Jared’s dilated pupils, his flaring nostrils, his uneven, constricted breathing. Jared could tell that Conor saw through him, but he didn’t know how much Conor knew. He didn’t know how far Conor would go. He didn’t know who Conor was.
Conor was a fucking Dom, is what he was.
With iron self-control, he swallowed the rage that bubbled up in him whenever he saw Jared Fiore. Now was not the time.
“Sierra, you want to see him?” Conor said, without moving a muscle.
“Of course,” she said, behind him.
Jared sneered. Conor, for the moment, stepped aside.
And he had to watch Jared Fiore walk into Sierra’s home as though he belonged there. As though he wasn’t responsible for her father’s death, as though he wasn’t terrorizing her right now, planning to kill her the same way he’d killed their father.
There was a flash of guilt, too. He should have taken care of this by now. They were still waiting on Rourke’s LEO friends to get them the info on where the burner phone had been purchased. It was a big favor, but the longer it took, the colder the trail would get. And in the meantime, Conor had let himself get wrapped up, to some degree, in Sierra. He could admit that.
He looked at her, pulling herself together with her usual grace. No man alive could blame him. And then Jared crossed in front of her.
For a second Conor was gripped by not just the anger, but total disbelief. The fact that Jared Fiore still walked the Earth while Mikey didn’t would never register in his brain as right. As correct. It was a fundamental fucking wrongness with the world that could never be completely corrected. But Conor could get close.
It was in that moment that he knew that, if it wasn’t for Sierra, he would take Jared out himself. But Sierra needed more than that. He watched her, making an effort to welcome her shithead brother, arranging her army of pillows on the couch, offering him a glass of water.
She needed the evidence. She needed justice if she was ever going to be free of all of it. So he’d do it for her. Even if he could never tell her about it.
Conor closed the door behind him and walked back to the living room, where he took a silent post between Jared and Sierra. Sierra looked at him, her face questioning, knowing something was up.
“I was just telling Jared that I’ve got a call in…um, two minutes,” she said, checking her phone. “Sorry, Jared, it’s just weird timing. Can whatever this is wait?”
Jared smirked. “Actually, that’s why I’m here, Sierra.”
Sierra’s face was worth a thousand words. But she didn’t get a chance to follow up on that, because her phone rang.
The gears in Conor’s head were turning, and he guessed at what was coming. It allowed him to focus on what was important: Sierra’s expression. And Jared’s.
She knew something was coming, too. She’d known her brother a long time, after all.
“Let me put you on speaker, Palmer,” she was saying. She put her phone on the table, speaker blaring. “Can you repeat that?”
“As I was saying,” a tinny, hollow voice said, “we were never completely thrilled with the event planning for the launch, although of course your work in establishing vendor relationships has been invaluable, Sierra.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
“But with everything going on, we’ve understandably been quite concerned with your safety. We’re invested in you, Sierra. And this young man has been quite convincing.”
The voice chuckled, even as Jared visibl
y bristled at the “young man” diminutive. Conor would have grinned if it weren’t for everything else.
“What are you suggesting, Palmer?”
Conor’s eyes darted over to Sierra. She looked different. She looked, all of a sudden, tired.
Palmer’s voice warbled over the speakerphone as Jared smirked some more.
“It seems security would be easier at the family compound,” the voice said.
“I’ve told Palmer we can merge your little launch thing with the birthday party,” Jared said, leaning back with a smile on his face. “It’s not a problem at all.”
Conor bet it fucking wasn’t.
For whatever reason, Jared really wanted Sierra at that compound, on that weekend. Most likely because that’s when he was planning on having her killed. But he wasn’t planning on dealing with Conor.
He was going to have to deal with Conor.
In fact, Conor and Lyons security were going to get Jared’s hired gun before Sierra ever stepped foot on the family compound, or she wouldn’t be going at all.
Of course, Sierra hated the idea anyway. She’d shut it down every time it had come up. So it wouldn’t matter. She’d tell her business partner it was too late to change plans, and she’d tell her brother to fuck off. Though she’d probably be nicer about it.
But that’s not what concerned Conor at the moment. He was still watching, quietly. Sierra hadn’t told Conor why she hated the idea of a birthday party. He’d just been left to guess, and he had a few good ones. But now, watching her face, he knew it was a lot more specific than that.
Sierra wasn’t surprised. And she wasn’t mad.
Not at all.
“Ok,” she said, closing her eyes. “That’s fine. We’ll do it on the compound.”
What the actual fuck?
Conor almost said it out loud. He stared at Sierra.
She wouldn’t look at him.
She wouldn’t look at anybody.
“That’s it,” Conor said, suddenly, his deep voice loud in the silence. “Done for the day. Everybody out. Now.”
Something was wrong with his sub. And Conor Kelly was done pussyfooting around.
Twenty-Two
Sierra watched Conor intimidate her brother out of her apartment as though she were watching from a distance, somehow. It didn’t really make sense. But she did know that, as soon as Conor closed the door behind Jared and it was just the two of them again, in their little bubble, she felt better. Even if that bubble was now a little tarnished.
Because obviously Conor couldn’t protect her from everything. No one could. Case in point: he couldn’t protect her from her brother’s…Jaredness. Even when the offense was relatively minor — like bullying her into a birthday party, of all things — it was the way he did it that rankled. And Jared would hold a vicious grudge about this birthday party for the rest of their lives if she didn’t give in, or didn’t give in the right way. Sierra knew that for a fact. Just like she knew that Jared didn’t just need her to agree to the birthday party—he needed her to do it reluctantly. He needed to feel like he’d bullied her into it. That was the part he enjoyed.
So the hard truth was that giving in was just easier. And safer. You give him what he wants in the short term, and maybe you don’t have to worry about what he’ll do to get back at you in the long term.
It made logical sense. So why was she so ashamed of it?
And why was she so afraid Conor would see it?
He paused with his hand on the doorknob for just a moment after Jared was gone. She could see the muscles in his arm and his back expand and flex, briefly, like he was shrugging something off. When he turned around, his bright eyes were dark.
She knew that look. That was the way Conor looked at her when he saw through all the bullshit.
Sierra stiffened, then grabbed a pillow and looked away. She was so used to the way most people reacted to Jared when he pulled something like this. The way they pulled away, inside, while they found some sort of mask to put on, some series of platitudes that would help them navigate the suddenly uncomfortable social landscape until they could get far the hell away from openly acknowledging how Jared treated people, especially Sierra. “Family can be so hard,” “my sister and I used to fight like cats and dogs,” etc etc. Anything to pretend that Jared wasn’t just mean for the fun of it.
Sierra had come to count on those social graces, because then she didn’t have to deal with it either. But now that she thought about it, there wasn’t much about that that was graceful. And no matter how you thought about social graces, the fact remained that Conor Kelly was not the kind of guy who gave a rat’s ass about them.
“What the hell was that?” Conor said into the silence.
Sierra looked at him, startled by the emotion in his voice. It was almost like he was mad.
“Exactly what it looked like,” she said.
“I know you don’t want to do that joint birthday party bullshit,” Conor said, and walked around the couch. He was still standing, and at his height, he loomed over her. Sierra could have moved, but she didn’t.
“Of course I don’t,” she said.
Conor exhaled.
“So why the hell did you agree to it?”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try me, Princess.”
Yeah, sure. How do you explain a lifetime of being unable to stand up to a bully without looking completely pathetic? This was one of the sides of herself that she didn’t show people, and for a good reason. She was always afraid that if people saw it, they’d see what Jared saw—that she was someone who should be bullied.
“Why are you pushing this so hard?” she said.
Sierra met his eyes, and watched them soften. Conor’s face was normally so…not unreadable, necessarily, but unperturbed. Most people’s expressions were this ever-changing reflection of how they felt, whether they knew it or not. Conor’s was no different, it was just that most things didn’t seem to bother him. It was weirdly one of the most Dominant traits he had. Nothing scared him.
But now, as she was looking at him, she could see that he was troubled. Like there was something he wanted to say, or didn’t want to say. Something he was holding back. It reminded her of the picture she’d seen in his room, the steps he’d taken to hide his personal life, and involuntarily she shivered.
Conor took a step forward, frowning, like he was going to fix that for her too. Instead he stopped, fixed her with those eyes, and said it.
“I know you hate your fucking brother.”
“I do not hate my brother,” Sierra said, and she actually stood up. She only came to about Conor’s chest, but whatever. She could still glare up at him.
But the second her eyes met his, her resolve melted. She melted. She didn’t know how he did it, but Conor saw her. All of her. Even the parts of her she wanted to hide, even the parts she was ashamed of. No point in freaking hiding it anymore.
“He’s my brother,” Sierra said, needing him to understand this too. “And it’s easier just to try to keep him happy, and I keep thinking that one day, maybe…”
“You think he can change,” Conor said, flatly.
“Maybe,” Sierra whispered. “My father did. Was maybe starting to. I don’t know, I just…”
Sierra could feel the distance between them as though it were a real, physical thing. Only two feet. Felt like a chasm opening up at her feet.
And then he crossed it. Another step forward, and his giant hand covered hers. The contact was like an anchor, bringing her into the moment, into her body in a way that threatened to overwhelm her.
Her heart hammered in her chest like it was trying to escape. She’d dreamed about something like this, about someone seeing how hard this part of her life was for her. And now that it was happening she was…
She was freaking the hell out?
She could hear her words, echoing back at her, and they sounded dumb as hell. Gullible. Idiotic. And on top of all of it, it was about a bi
rthday party?
“It’s always the fucking birthday party,” she muttered. “I hate birthdays. I’m sorry, Conor, there’s no…”
She stopped, swallowed. He was watching her, almost with idle curiosity, the kind that came from the sort of confidence Doms just seemed to possess naturally. Sierra, meanwhile, was suddenly very conscious of his hand on hers.
She was even more conscious of the rules. The rules that said they only had sex at the club. A boundary that glowed brightly between them, that that said this wasn’t real.
But his hand was on hers.
“You must think I’m a moron,” she said.
“I told you never to talk about yourself that way,” he said. A warning.
Sierra looked up again, sharply.
“You don’t have to try to make me feel better, you know,” she said. “I know that’s not part of the deal. It’s not…”
The words faded from her lips as she saw the look on his face as he closed in on her. Even in the dull blue of the early evening, those bright blue eyes were relentless. Ruthless. Fierce.
And tender.
“It’s not your job to make me feel better,” she finished, quietly, and for the first time realized how ridiculous that sounded.
“I know what my goddamn job is,” Conor said.
And he kissed her.
For maybe a split second Sierra hesitated. The bright line they’d drawn between them, separating real life from whatever they were doing as Dom and sub, from what Sierra needed for her protection and what Conor was to her, glowed just a bit brighter, a warning light in her mind. Kissing her outside the club was on the other side of that line, and beyond that was a cliff from which Sierra was sure to fall, with no freaking clue what lay beneath it. Rocks, probably. It was usually rocks.