Emily
TUESDAY BEFORE LUNCH, I walked through the doors of Il Porto with both Bull and Jayson hot on my heels. Bull, because he was still playing bodyguard and attached at my hip, and Jayson, because he’d blackmailed me into letting him come.
“Either you tell Bull, or I will,” my pesky assistant had informed me while I was getting ready to leave for my lunch meeting.
I leveled my best no-nonsense stare at him. “I thought you liked Link?”
“He’s the dreamiest. And perfect for you, Em. Just wait, that man’s gonna make a religious woman out of you.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Sec, I’m getting a vision.” He closed his eyes and massaged his temples like some sort of malfunctioning medium. “I see you on your knees for long hours at a time. What are you doing? Oh. Oh! You’re worshipping a… a python.”
Link’s penis was definitely worthy of devotion, but I wasn’t about to tell Jayson I’d already been on my knees before it. Not to mention all the other ways I’d enjoyed his body.
“As a Link fan, you should probably keep your mouth shut, because if you blab, Bull will call Link, and Link will overreact, and half the Dead Presidents will show up at Il Porto. Then my temper will flare in response to him thinking I’m some half-wit damsel in distress who can’t handle a lunch without him.”
Jayson put a hand on his hip and a lifetime worth of sass into his expression. “I don’t understand why you think having backup is a bad thing. Everyone knows you’re a badass, Em. You wouldn’t lose one ounce of street cred by having a motorcycle club watching your back.”
“I’m not worried about street cred. I’m worried about professional cred. Do you have any idea how hard I’ve worked to get the men in this profession to take me seriously? They can’t see me hiding behind some biker and his club.”
He snorted. “You could lawyer circles around any one of those cunt nuggets.”
“Lawyer circles?” I asked.
“Yeah, argue, find facts, all that shit you do. You do it better than all of them. Why do you care what they think about you?”
His compliment caught me off guard. I wanted to argue that I didn’t care what they thought, but I did. For all my hours of hard work, I still felt like Seattle’s legal scene had me sitting at the kid table. I worked my ass off, and I wanted them to finally recognize that and take me seriously.
“The PI still can’t find either of the girls Noah assaulted,” Jayson said, his tone suddenly somber. “What if he did something with them? What if he tries to do something to you?”
“What’s he going to do? I’ll be at Il Porto, and not even the mayor would be stupid enough to attack me in Abrianna De Lucca’s restaurant.”
“So, you’re trusting the mobster to help you with the politician? Do you hear how bizarre that sounds?”
“Yes, but here’s the thing. Mobsters have a code. Politicians don’t.”
“You have a disturbingly valid point,” he conceded. “But you need to tell Bull what he’s walking into, so he can be prepared.”
I slipped into my coat and grabbed my purse. “I’ll take your advice under consideration, but trust me, Jay, what I need is to draw very firm boundaries with Link. He needs to understand that he cannot affect my job. He has to know and respect that I’m a strong independent woman and I got this shit handled. You need to know and respect that as well, and—”
“Then take me,” Jayson blurted out, interrupting my girl power moment.
“Why?” I asked.
My well-dressed assistant had many qualities. He was an excellent editor and proof reader, he could accurately type faster than anyone I’d ever met, he screened crazies so they never got through to me, and he was loyal. But he didn’t exactly look mean, menacing, intimidating, tough, or any of the other traits a typical bodyguard would employ in their protection tactics.
“Because I’m resourceful,” he replied. “Do you know how to get out of handcuffs, Em? Because I do. Trust me, if you get kidnapped, you’ll need my impressive bondage skillset to help you get free.”
I knew I shouldn’t ask, would most-likely regret it, but couldn’t stop myself. Especially not after my own brief experience with bondage had been such a turn-on. As a self-proclaimed control freak, I never would have thought I’d be into that sort of thing.
But my God, I had no idea it would be so amazing.
I needed to talk about it with someone, and since I didn’t have any girlfriends and Jayson clearly had experience with the matter, I opened my big, fat mouth.
“You like being tied up?”
His eyes went all dreamy. “Oh, honey, tied up, spanked, cuffed, whipped, blindfolded, gagged, hair-pulled, nipple-clamped, pinched, plugged, poked, and prodded is how I roll. Nothing in the world hotter than a man who knows how to dominate and really work you over.”
