I had just made the first move in this battle. And I was going to make the second too. The decision was made.
That man was mine.
Stella was okay.
More than okay after the … altercation with Karson. We had wine. We had cheese.
More wine. She smiled, laughed and contributed to the conversation. But I knew my friend well enough to know her mind was elsewhere.
Her mind was on the man that proposed a sex arrangement. Who had her followed, and in turn, was the reason she wasn’t raped. Who then, a month later, sent his lackey to accost her on the sidewalk and spirit her away, seemingly with or without her consent.
He was not a knight in shining armor.
At best, he was a morally grey potential suitor.
At worst, he was the villain.
And there was something about the villain that tempted even the princess.
Although I was technically dating a prince, I was certainly no princess, so I had my mind on a villain of my own.
I’d decided at some point during our altercation on the sidewalk that I was going to fuck him. Something about him, his presence, his eyes, his roguish handsomeness told me he fucked like a man.
I was a very adventurous woman, both inside and outside of the bedroom, and I’d slept with many kinds of men. Almost every kind there was.
But not the villainous, imposing man in a suit with the muscles, the bone structure and the … presence.
So he needed to be checked off my bucket list. I needed to try everything once.
Thinking on it, I may have to try him twice.
But first I had to find him.
THREE WEEKS LATER
His house was nice. Very nice.
It took a lot to impress me, given the amount of wealth I’d grown up with. It wasn’t the grandeur or the monetary value of this house that impressed me... I just liked it. It surprised me, the little house in Malibu. It could almost be described as a cottage.
Almost.
But this residence was owned by a total fucking badass who was the epitome of alpha male masculinity, and it was against the law of physics for such a man to live in a cottage.
He worked for Jay Helmick, who owned multiple businesses, was worth millions and was some kind of king of the underworld. I didn’t know the specifics because Keltan, my private investigator, told me the specifics could put me in danger. Of course, that made me all the more curious, so I’d offered to double his rate to get any and all dangerous information.
Keltan was an alpha male. A fucking hot and unfortunately married alpha male. He was also an incredibly good guy. So he refused the money and refused to put me in danger. He hadn’t felt at all comfortable giving me this address. He’d offered to come with me for the visit.
Across the table from Keltan, I’d pinned him with a stern glare. “Unless you’re going to protect him, no, I don’t need you to chaperone,” I told him with a smirk. “I can handle myself just fine.”
Keltan regarded me in a way that told me his wife was a very lucky woman. Like he was measuring me, weighing my character and capabilities with a mere look. And he was … impressed.
“I suspect you can,” he said in his sexy accent after a few beats.
So here I was, at Karson’s home as the sun set. He had an impressive security system. Luckily, I was pretty impressive myself, so I’d been able to let myself in to make a martini before walking back to the front porch to wait.
The intelligence I got told me that Karson was rarely home, constantly working for Jay, doing whatever it was the second in command for a crime boss did. But he did come home just after dusk for a couple of hours. At least, that was what the intel I’d gotten from the past few days told me. I suspected that Karson was not a creature of habit, both by nature of his business and as a survival tactic.
Though I wasn’t quite an international woman of mystery, I was a woman, and it was drilled into us how to avoid getting raped. Don’t run or walk at night. Don’t wear headphones. Don’t run the same route lest a stalker watch you and know exactly where and when to strike.