Wren glared at the man in front of us.

I gaped at him, considering I thought I’d never see him again. Also because the last night I’d seen this man had been the most terrifying night of my life.

Suddenly, my chest felt heavy, my inner thighs burning with the reminder of the pain from violent fingers. Probing fingers.

I snapped my eyes shut and opened them again.

“Babe?” Wren asked, concern saturating her tone. Her eyes went from Karson to me, as if she was readying to take him down if need be. Which would actually be more of an even fight than it looked like on the surface. Wren was 5’2 and one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. But she was also a black belt and had been trained by some super deadly spy who taught her how to kill a man using her bare hands.

“I’m fine,” I assured her before the two could brawl on the street. “Karson, what are you doing here?” I asked in a tone that was perhaps a little too biting toward the man who had essentially saved me from being raped.

But he’d pissed me off. Because he brought bad memories with him. Not just of the horrors I’d endured that night but what came after. Who came after.

Jay.

The man who had not contacted me once since all of this. The man who I really, really didn’t want to be thinking about.

“Mr. Helmick would like to see you,” Karson said. His voice was even. Businesslike.

Both Wren and I just stared at him.

I was struck dumb, Wren, as usual, was not.

“Mr. Helmick?” she repeated. “The Mr. Helmick?”

“The very one,” I confirmed, my throat suddenly very dry.

“There is a car waiting for you,” Karson nodded his head toward the curb, gesturing as if I should hop to it immediately.

That jerked me out of my shock, out of the anxiety caused by the cocktail of emotions Karson brought about.

“A car waiting for me?” I repeated.

Karson nodded.

“You expect me to get in it now?” I asked him.

“Mr. Helmick is expecting your arrival within the next hour. Considering traffic, I would say that you need to be in the car in the next two minutes.”

I looked for a hint of a smile. Something to signify he was joking. There was nothing.

“Let me get this straight,” I said, adjusting the bag on my shoulder. “Mr. Helmick knows my schedule well enough to position you on the sidewalk precisely when we walk out, and he actually expects me to drop all plans in order to get in the car to have an audience with him?” I turned my thumb in Wren’s direction who was watching the exchange like a game of tennis. “She’s the one dating the prince, not me. And prince or not, a man does not have the right to summon a woman. Under any circumstances.”

Karson’s jaw locked and his nostrils flared slightly. The man was so serious and menacing that I couldn’t figure if it was because he was pissed off or amused.

“I’m afraid I must insist.” His tone was hard as steel.

I jerked a brow upward, prepared to challenge him if he moved to drag me off the street. Wren stepped in front of me, obviously having decided that she’d been watching from the sidelines for far too long. “If my girl wants to go somewhere, with anyone, especially some mysterious man in search of some arrangement, she’ll be going on her own terms, in her own ride and with her hair and makeup done to her satisfaction. Do you know how rude it is to accost someone coming out of a kickboxing class? One she actually worked her butt off at?”

Wren, of course, did not wait for Karson to answer her.

“Very fucking rude,” Wren continued, narrowing her eyes. “So, unless you want to take her bodily, in which case you’ll have to go through me first, you can turn around, trot your Tom Ford clad feet back to that Range Rover and drive back to your master.”

I had to stifle a giggle at Wren’s entire demeanor and tone, talking to one of the scariest dudes I’d ever encountered. She was not scared of him whatsoever. Nor was she impressed with him or his devilish good looks. And he was good looking, but that was what you noticed second. You definitely noticed how dangerous he was first. The innate survival instinct inside of every human being on the planet would home in on that first.

Wren, as a rule, wasn’t scared of anything, which was impressive and amusing. She had been brought up in a kind of luxury I couldn’t even imagine. I’d been to her parents’ place a handful of times, and it was more of a compound than a mansion. Her dad was an investor, a businessman and entrepreneur of who knew what, which seemed to be the way of the super-rich. Her mother was a real estate developer and investor who had her millions long before she met her husband.

Tags: Anne Malcom The Klutch Duet Erotic
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