Hers to Tame

by Rhenna Morgan

  Book two of NOLA Knights, the heart-stoppingly sexy spin-off series by Men of Haven author Rhenna Morgan

  As an avtoritet for the most powerful crime syndicate in New Orleans, Kir Vasilek doesn’t act without purpose, doesn’t speak without thought and never, ever loses his cool. The lives of his brothers, his family, depend on it. But then Cassie McClintock strolls back into his life, and staying cool is next to impossible. Cassie was the one who got away—and Kir is willing to break all his own rules to keep it from happening ever again.

  It’s one thing to report on the Russian mafia; it’s quite another to sleep with one of them, especially one as dangerous, and as sinfully sexy, as Kir Vasilek. Even though the information he once provided helped make her career—and the memory of his touch still keeps her up at night—Cassie knows too much about his world to go down that path.

  But when Kir reaches out for help after a rival family comes for one of his own, Cassie doesn’t want to say no, either to investigating a gruesome murder or to the heat that pulls her right back into his arms...and his heart. Taming Kir—and helping to save the family she’s come to call her own—is not the story she thought she’d write, but it’s the one she’s determined will get a happy ending.

  Hers to Tame is the highly anticipated follow-up to His to Defend. And don’t miss Roman’s story in Mine to Keep, coming soon from Rhenna Morgan and Carina Press.

  This book is approximately 85,000 words

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  Also available from Rhenna Morgan

  and Carina Press

  Rough & Tumble

  Wild & Sweet

  Claim & Protect

  Tempted & Taken

  Stand & Deliver

  Down & Dirty

  Guardian’s Promise

  Healer’s Need

  His to Defend

  Coming soon

  Mine to Keep

  Also available from Rhenna Morgan

  Unexpected Eden

  Healing Eden

  Waking Eden

  Eden’s Deliverance

  HERS TO TAME

  RHENNA MORGAN

  For my daughters. Watching you grow and become your own unique selves is a beautiful thing to behold. I love everything about you both—exactly as you are.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Mine to Keep by Rhenna Morgan

  Chapter One

  White siding, rickety brown shutters and a pecan stained front door. Not a single bit of it matched and the combined effect made the 500-square-foot hut on Mandeville Street look like it’d been pieced together from salvage scraps, but as of twenty-four hours ago, it was officially home sweet home.

  Cassie couldn’t be happier.

  Aunt Frieda’s tired footsteps and heavy panting sounded behind her a second before her favorite relative trundled past Cassie toward the faded painted stoop with its rickety iron railing. At fifty-six, Aunt Frieda was still one heck of a looker. Dark brown hair cut in a messy pixie, green eyes with a wealth of knowledge and mischief behind them and curves that made young girls want to weep. But even more than that, she had a personality that naturally swept people up and took them along for a wild ride.

  Today her outfit was almost as sassy as her demeanor—cutoff jeans, a sleeveless white button-down, red Keds and a matching bandana tied like one of those old Rosie the Riveter posters. “You know, if you want to get this move done before your vacation is over, you’re gonna have to stop grinning like a loon and finish unloading boxes.”

  “I’m not grinning like a loon.” Okay, maybe she was, but after three years of scrimping and working her butt off at New Orleans’s highest rated television station, Cassie had good cause. She hefted the last box from her back seat and kicked the door to her hand-me-down Honda shut. “I’m admiring with deep appreciation.”

  Aunt Frieda grunted and nudged the front door open with her hip, but there was a sly, knowing smile on her face when she did it. “You and your wordplay.” She paused with one foot over the threshold and jerked her chin toward the row of even more ramshackle houses down the street. “Whatever it is you’re doing, hurry it up. The less your neighbors get a look at how cute you are, the less nervous I’ll be leaving you here tonight.”

  Oh, God. Not that again.

  Cassie hurried in behind her aunt and closed the door before any of her precious cold air could slip out into the bright summer day. It might only be June 1 and barely in the nineties, but the humidity was already rivaling August, which meant her baby air conditioner was working overtime.

  The layout of her rental wasn’t much—a living room right as you walked in, a postage stamp for a kitchen with no walls to separate the two and a bedroom in the back. But the coral walls, white trim and yellow painted cabinetry had wowed her from the get-go. She dodged the unpacked clothes, dishes, pots and pans stacked haphazardly everywhere and aimed for the fifties diner-style table where her aunt had already unburdened herself of her own box. “Marigny isn’t that bad of a neighborhood.”

  “Not bad, no. Just butted right up to the Quarter where you can count on all kinds of trouble, and you know what they say about shit running downhill.”

  The harsh scruuunch as Cassie ripped the packing tape from the cardboard filled the tiny space. “I did my homework and there’s very little shit. The only crimes they’ve had reported near here in the last year are a few robberies and a domestic dispute incident. And it’s not like I haven’t had my share of dealings with shady people in skeevy parts of town.”

  “You say that like you’re a cop instead of a reporter.” Frieda pulled the pink stuffed dog she’d given Cassie when she turned three from the box and studied it. Back in the day, Frieda had lived in Houston where Cassie’s parents and older brother still lived, but she’d escaped the stuffy and opinionated confines of her family for the spirited life of New Orleans years ago. After she seemed to overcome her shock that the old stuffed animal was still around, she promptly shook the dog’s head at Cassie. “And don’t act like you’re out there doing those stories on your own. You’ve got a camera guy and an engineer everywhere you go who, thank God, make sure you stay out of trouble.”

  “You’re preaching again, Aunt Frieda.”

  “No, I’m not.” Frieda kept unpacking items onto the table, but peeked up from beneath her lashes long enough to show even she wasn’t buying her bullshit. “I’m vehemently advocating for your well-being.”

  Cassie snickered. An indelicate sound that was somewhere between a giddy witch and a piglet that, knowing her luck, was undoubtedly going to end up happening on camera one of these days. “Now who’s wielding wordplay?”

  “Touché!”

  The lau
ghter that followed was easy, and the conversation while they worked toward the bottom of their respective boxes even easier. Two peas in a pod, fencing with words and debating everything imaginable one minute and fangirling over musicians and actors the next. For as long as Cassie could remember, it had always been that way between her and her aunt, no matter the fact that Frieda was more than twice Cassie’s age.

  Her aunt stacked her now broken down box on top of the others like it on the floor, planted her hands on her hips and sighed. “This place does have a certain bohemian charm to it, but I still don’t see why you didn’t just keep living with me. You had your own entrance. Privacy.” Her gaze swept the chaotic room. Clothes piled high on the plush maroon couch Frieda had found for her at an estate sale. Dishes stacked on the cerulean and red painted coffee table Cassie had found at a secondhand store. The mound of oversized gold, burgundy and jade pillows that would hopefully work for extra seating if Cassie ever had more than three guests. “You certainly had more room to spread out.”

  “Your house is amazing, but it’s yours.” Done breaking down her own box, Cassie opened the handful of kitchen cabinets. She didn’t have a ton of dishes, but with the limited storage, good planning and effective stacking was going to be a priority. “I’m twenty-five years old. I’ve got no family of my own, and the only way you can move up with my kind of job is to change markets. Renting instead of buying makes sense, but the fact that I’ve never actually lived alone is kind of embarrassing.”

  Behind Cassie, the whoosh of her aunt taking a load off in the pile of brightly colored pillows was broken only by her tired sigh. “Is that you talking, or your parents?”

  It was a gently delivered question. One offered with both heart and concern, but it struck deep.

  Cassie stared at the empty cupboards. The outside of the cabinets had been painted a cheery yellow, but the original dark stained wood remained inside. It stared back at her like the black hole of disappointment that seemed to characterize every conversation she’d had with her mom and dad.

  She shook off the dreariness and got to work transferring dishes from the coffee table to where she wanted them. “You know how Mom and Dad are. Logic dictates everything. If what you do for a living doesn’t make you enough to provide for a comfortable and predictable life, then you’re doing the wrong thing.”

  “They said that?”

  “Not in those exact words. I think Dad used something more eloquent like, ‘A professional should be able to cover the expense of a reasonable dwelling and the basic costs of living.’”

  Frieda chuckled at the overly deep voice and enunciated words Cassie had used to mimic her father. “You sound just like him.”

  “Well, I’ve listened to enough of his lectures to pick up a nuance or two.” Cassie paused long enough to figure out where she was going to put various pieces of cookware still waiting for a home. “How I ended up in a family full of scholars is beyond me. If it weren’t for you, I’d swear there was a switch up at the hospital.”

  Frieda grunted a bittersweet hmmff. When she spoke, her voice was a mix of fond memories and sadness. “You know, once upon a time, it was your mother who felt like the black sheep of the family.”

  The statement halted Cassie mid-path to sliding a stack of mixing bowls onto the last shelf. She twisted to see if Frieda’s face showed any signs of the usual razzing she was known for. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Frieda shook her head. “Nope.” Her gaze softened and grew distant, and she smoothed one palm against the top of a pillow’s silk surface. “Our mom and dad were loud and boisterous. Loved going places and experiencing things. I mean, they wanted us to get good grades and expected us to do our homework, but they encouraged us to explore the arts. To follow our instincts and enjoy life.” Her gaze sharpened and zeroed in on Cassie, a soft smile playing on her lips. “Your mother struggled with playing and letting go the same way you struggle with all things science and math.”

  Well, that wasn’t hard to imagine. What was hard to grasp was that her mother could have felt as ostracized as Cassie had growing up and not been able to show some kind of understanding to her youngest offspring. In the end, it had been the rigidity and lack of support toward Cassie being her own person that had spurred her to leave Houston and chase a career as a news reporter in New Orleans.

  Done creatively stashing her meager kitchen things away, Cassie shut the cabinet doors. “I didn’t struggle in math and science. I just don’t like them.”

  Frieda mock gasped and splayed her hand above her heart. “Cassie. How could you?”

  “I know, right? The shame of not pursuing a higher and more educated calling.” She meandered to the couch, plopped down between two piles of clothes and plunked her feet on the now mostly empty coffee table. “I tried. I really did, but I’ve been so much happier living here.”

  “And yet, you moved out of a perfectly comfortable suite that would have provided more financial cushion when you didn’t have to simply to prove yourself.”

  Ugh.

  Straight to the heart.

  Leave it to Aunt Frieda to make a point and do it with the touch of a fairy godmother. “Are you telling me you’ll help me pack all of this back up and figure out a way to get me out of my rental contract?”

  “No. You’ll stay the six months you signed for and give me time to paint your old space in some of these gloriously wild colors. Then we’ll find a couple of hot men to help you move everything back. That is, unless you find some galleries for your pictures, make a million bucks on ’em and shuck that reporting gig. Then you can buy a fancy place of your own and I can move in with you.”

  “Ha! That’s a nice dream. Not realistic, but a nice dream.”

  Frieda somehow managed to ace a motherly scowl even though she’d never had children of her own. “That’s your father talking again. Your pictures are fabulous. Just because someone else tells you you can’t do something, doesn’t mean it’s true.” She huffed out a sharp, exasperated breath and nodded to the stack of framed pictures leaned up against the wall and the boxes with all of Cassie’s carefully stored camera equipment. “Speaking of—where are you going to set up your stuff?”

  A good question, and one she still didn’t have a decent answer for. By moving out of her aunt’s ranch-style home on the eastern edge of New Orleans, she’d willingly surrendered a whole lot of extra storage space. “Maybe I’ll save up and find an antique armoire. Something I can put in here and store my laptop in, too.”

  “You know, I saw a cabinet over at Miss Margery’s shop a few months ago. A vintage-looking armoire that had been reworked to have a hideaway desk. I’ll swing by there the next time I get a chance and see if it’s still there. That would make a nice housewarming gift.”

  “You already chipped in on half of this furniture and all of my dishes. I don’t think I need any more housewarming.”

  “Little girl, I paid off my mortgage five years ago, and I’ve got no kiddos to spoil but you and your brother. If I want to buy you a cabinet and call it a housewarming gift, you’ll let me.” Her gaze slid to the stack of portfolios in front of all of Cassie’s other photography gear. She slid the top one off the pile, positioned it on her knees and started perusing. “Besides, you need to get your savings built back up. You never know when you’re going to need money for an aww-shit moment.”

  “Now who sounds like my dad?”

  “I am nothing like your daddy. There’s a distinct difference between making sure you can pay the bills and having a cast-iron rod wedged up your butt.” She turned the page and a stack of photos Cassie hadn’t mounted yet slid onto her lap. “Oh, are these new?”

  Cassie leaned to one side, but still couldn’t get a good view of them from the couch. “Which ones?”

  “The French Quarter at night... Jackson Square vendors... Lake Pontchartrain...” she said, studying each one then moving
it to the back of the stack. “And...ho, ho, ho...what do we have here?” She angled her head to a considering angle and an appreciative grin crept onto her face.

  Cassie scrambled up and tried to grab the stack.

  Frieda slid the lot of them out of reach before she could, but angled them so the top picture was in full view. “Who’s this guy? He’s hot.”

  Oh. Holy. Hell.

  Of all the pictures Frieda absolutely did not need to be looking at right now, it was the one she’d snapped of Kir Vasilek a month ago. “Aunt Frieda, give me that.”

  “Why? When a man looks like that, the last thing I need to do is let go. Especially when he’s in a suit, has a mouth that could kiss you stupid and looks like he commands the world with a snap of his fingers. You ask me, suit-wearing men are an endangered species. We should protect them at all costs.”

  Lord help her. If Frieda only knew. The man she was advocating protection for was, according to her colleagues, a killer. Too bad Cassie hadn’t known that particular detail before she’d learned he could kiss every bit as good her aunt suspected he could. At least then her libido wouldn’t be at war with her common sense every time her mind went strolling down memory lane—which lately seemed to be too often.

  “You’re my aunt. Aunts don’t call men hot. Especially when they’re half their age.”

  “Um, this aunt does!” She pulled the picture in for another, closer gander. “And there’s no way he’s half my age. I’m only fifty-six and he’s gotta be at least mid-thirties.”

  “He’s thirty-five,” Cassie said, making another grab for the stack and coming away successful.

  “See?” Frieda said. “Totally legal. And I betcha he’d appreciate an older woman.” She paused all of a second, watching Cassie stuff the prints back into her portfolio. When she spoke again, there was a whole different glint in her eyes. “Then again, I’m guessing from your reaction, he already appreciated you. Do tell!”

  “No way. I’ll tell you a lot of things, but dishing about my sex life isn’t in the cards.” With that, she stood and carried the wide leather-covered book to the dinette.