Master in Shining Armor (Masters Unleashed 4)

Worried about being late, as usual, Will toasted a bagel and ate quickly, jotting a note. He got Beau into her car seat, then brought her upstairs so he could leave the note on the bed beside Juliet. As he was about to put the note down, Juliet’s eyes opened. She smiled a devastating, languorous smile, then stretched. The sheet slipped down and bared the swells of her creamy breasts, giving him a tantalizing hint of pink nipple before she pulled the sheet up again and tucked it under her arms. She sat up and looked from Beau in her car seat, back to him, and seemed to suddenly register that he was dressed.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She glanced around, her gaze settling on the chair where he’d folded her clothes. “Did I oversleep? I’ll get going.”

“No, sunshine. It’s really early. I just have to take Beau to swim class—I’ll be back in an hour to make you breakfast.”

“Swim class?” Her brows rose. “I . . . is it okay if I come watch, or is that overstepping?”

“You want to come with us? It might be boring for you. You could sleep in, instead.”

“And miss you in a Speedo? Not on your life.”

“Full disclosure. I may have gone to Europe a few times, but I have never worn a Speedo.”

“That’s a damn shame,” she said, grinning. “Although I suppose you wandering around almost naked would be very distracting for the moms at swim group and unfair competition for the dads.”

She slid out of bed and stretched again, and he got a good look at what he was missing out on by leaving so early. Juliet dressed in the smallest T-shirt and track pants he could lend her. Beau started to fuss, so he picked up the car seat and held it close to his face. He had a conversation with the baby about patience while he eyed Juliet with an impatience that had nothing to do with wanting to leave the house. As he watched, she twisted her hair up then fished around in her purse for bobby pins, all while daring him to say something with those exquisite blue eyes of hers.

Even though getting ready only took Juliet a few minutes, by the time she was ready he’d thought of forty different things he could be doing to her if they skipped swimming.

They got to the community centre with only five minutes to spare. Of course, by the time he got them both ready and into the pool they were a few minutes late. He spotted Juliet in the bleachers across the pool from them, and gave her a wave.

“Late again,” Varushka teased as he got into the pool beside her. She bobbed in the water, with Ruslan perched on her swollen belly. “At least this time I can see you have a good excuse.” She jerked her head toward the bleachers and grinned mischievously. It took him a moment to figure out exactly what she had said. Her English was getting better all the time, but some of her pronunciation was so thickly accented with Russian that it took him a moment to translate in his head.

“Yes, she’s a very good excuse.”

“I had no idea that baby swim class was the kind of social outing that required a date. Next week, I’ll have to roll Konstantin out of bed.”

“Don’t you think you’ll get in trouble for that?”

“No, no. I’ll tell him you insisted.” She sigh

ed. “But with any luck I won’t be here next week. I’m ready to push this one out anytime.”

“You’re not due quite yet. Tired of being pregnant?”

“No! But the longer he’s in there, the longer it will take before we have the next one.” She smiled wickedly, and he laughed.

“I thought Kon told me that you weren’t going to have any more for a while after this. He doesn’t seem the type to change his mind very easily.”

“My . . .” She paused for a long moment and glanced around. “ . . . Master has the final say about what happens between us, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have ways of getting what I want.” She bit her lip, looking more like a bratty girl than a grown woman. Will remembered the first time Konstantin had brought the girl his grandmother had chosen for him to Catacombs. Security had checked her ID three times because they hadn’t believed how old she was. She’d come a long way from the young woman who looked like she’d faint at the sight of someone else getting spanked to what she was like now.

The dynamic between Kon and Varushka was one of the only reasons why Will had even considered dating Juliet. Before Varushka had started coming to the club, Will had been pretty sure that anyone who considered themselves vanilla would never truly convert to their way of life.

He was really going to have to start training Juliet soon, otherwise the relationship dynamics would be established and almost impossible to change.

As though she were reading his mind, Varushka whispered, “My Master tells me your new girl’s not like us. You chose her because she’ll be a good mother for Beau?”

They were interrupted by the instructor’s opening song. Will sang it absently, doing the actions with Beau while trying to figure out exactly how to answer that question.

When the song was done, Varushka turned to him expectantly.

“She’s sort of like you.” Well, not at all. “She didn’t know much about how we live, but now that I’m teaching her she’s very interested.”

“Oh.” Varushka gave Juliet a long look that seemed rather skeptical. “You didn’t say anything about babies though. Will she be a good mother?”

He floated Beau on her back, loving the look of complete relaxation on her face. She stared up at the ceiling as he steered her around like a little boat in the water and his heart ached for Bethany that she was missing all of this. “She doesn’t want children, so I’m not sure what to do. Other than that, I like her very much. I’ve decided that maybe things between us can be temporary.”

Varushka struggled to get Ruslan’s wrestling under control as he flailed to be free. As pregnant as she was, Varushka had the boy under control in no time, talking to him in sweet, high-pitched Russian. The woman was like the baby whisperer. He couldn’t count how many times she’d shown him what to do with Beau. Beau loved her.