Mastered (The Enforcers 1)

It was Silas who calmed her down and said matter-of-factly that she was holding up the process. That if she were to simply relax and allow the doctor to do what he felt was necessary—and he was the doctor, after all—she could have already been finished and back to Drake’s apartment.

She reached for his hand, more for her comfort than anything else, but she offered a grateful squeeze, wondering why she seemed to be the only one to see past this man’s rigid exterior to the kind and gentle man underneath the outward facade. It was one likely perfected out of necessity. She sensed that about all of Drake’s men. That perhaps none of them had come from the best backgrounds and that they’d all likely scratched and clawed their way to success, earning every bit of the money and respect they commanded. They were certainly an odd group, ranging from the polish of Drake and the smooth words he always seemed to possess to the more crudely built and street-smart men like Zander and well, Justice. Just in a different way. Silas was a mysterious combination of Drake’s polish and expensive manner of dress but with the edge Zander and some of the others possessed. But the one trait they all had in common was their don’t-give-a-fuck-what-others-think attitude.

She had no doubt that while Silas had been nothing but patient and kind to her, he wasn’t that way with many other people. She’d seen the hint of coldness in his eyes. And pain. Though she doubted he realized she’d picked up on it and would not be pleased to know she had.

But she was a people watcher. For girls like her, watching was as close to the lifestyles of others as she got, and she enjoyed a certain vicariousness of experiencing their worlds through watching them. As a result, she often saw far more than the average person looking on. She studied people, watched when they were unaware of being observed. It was at these times that most people allowed what they hid on a regular basis to slip and be more readily revealed.

It was presumptuous of her to think she knew anything about Silas or his past or his raisons d’etre. But she sensed an inner torment that went as far back as his childhood, and weren’t most people shaped by their childhood? Their family or lack thereof, defenses learned early and the ability to shut others out and erect shields in order to survive.

She considered herself to be the person she was because of her upbringing, her parents’ unconditional love and support and their constant guidance. Their convictions that they’d passed on to Evangeline. Her parents were good people. The best. She was one of the lucky ones, unlike Silas and, she imagined, the majority of Drake’s men, if not Drake himself.

He was an aloof man who hid a passionate fire inside him. He felt strongly about what he considered his own personal code. She didn’t need a primer to know that. One only had to look at the man to figure out his past had more than likely shaped the man he’d become today. A man she was hopelessly attracted to and helpless to resist, even when her mind, or rather sanity, questioned her motives and her decisions and quite frequently demanded to know if she’d lost her ever-loving mind to have plunged so recklessly, without forethought or careful consideration, into such an extreme relationship with a man she barely knew.

And yet, even as she knew she had a long way to go before she would even scratch the surface of this complicated, mysterious man, she felt an eagerness and yes, a sense of challenge, to peel back layer after layer until she reached the heart of him. Only then would she fully understand what made Drake the unyielding, uncompromising and very dominant alpha male he was. None of which she considered bad traits. Not when they expressed themselves in such delicious ways.

Well, except she’d pissed him off and blatantly disobeyed him this morning and he hadn’t sounded pleased with her at all. She sucked in her bottom lip, nibbling nervously as she considered the consequences of her actions and what Drake’s response would be when he arrived home.

While her cooking might distract the best of them, she doubted Drake would be deterred if he planned to address the issue of her disobedience, something he’d said he wouldn’t tolerate under any circumstances. And looking back, she knew that he was right and she’d been acting like a petulant, tantrum-throwing child out to prove a point by sulkily making the choice she had. She knew the rules. Knew them by heart. And Drake had been correct. All she had to do was pick up the phone and call him, tell him her wishes, and he more than likely would have been fine with it.