Sabrina was concerned. He got it. His woman wanted family, she wanted normal, she believed having her niece with them would erase the years of loss, loneliness, and violence she’d endured. She believed that with the death of Kragen—the man who’d abducted her, attempted to rape her, played center stage in her recent bout of nightmares—the threat was gone.
Zeus knew it wasn’t.
Maxim Kragen III was dead, killed by Zeus’s very own ax-wielding hand. The blood-letting he’d been responsible for on Basir’s estate that night was…deeply satisfying. That the Brood had exposed yet another sex-trafficking ring linked to the Consortium was even more so.
None of it meant the group would stop their abuse and exploitation. Fuckers like that just didn’t react that way. They simply disappeared from view, so they could quietly change the discourse associated with them until their crimes were transformed into things of fiction.
But once the members felt safe, confident that their money, assets, and reputations were secure, they’d resurface and seek revenge for the loss of Kragen. Once they found out that Kragen had fathered a child with Sabrina’s sister, the Consortium would come after his new family. He knew this.
So, yeah, Brianna would learn the skills needed to survive, and eventually she would learn to kill, but for both her and Sabrina’s sake, he didn’t want that to be anytime soon. He needed his family happy. Safe.
But as a predator of predators, he knew time was not on their side.
Chapter 3
Big Country twirled around in Stormy’s office chair, stopping after the second rotation to prop his size fourteens on top of her sleek desk. Yeah, she’d paid a pretty penny outfitting her office, but neither she nor her little business partner had the sense God gave a duck when it came to installing a decent security system. Might as well post aPlease Entersign on the front door. Ironic given the nature of their services, inviting in any thief bent on dicks and vibrators and shit he was too tired to guess the purpose of.
Lacing his fingers behind his head, he reclined as far back as the space would allow and looked up at the tray ceiling painted a slightly darker cream than the walls. Sienna Red had done well, taking her dog and pony show solo. Why work for a bureaucracy when you could get folks to shell out fat checks for an hour-long mind-fucking,thenguide them downstairs to purchase whatever they needed for the kind of fucking you could actually take pleasure in.
He snorted.
Fish, fuck, fight, be a technical wizard, and lift heavy shit; those were the activities he used to stay balanced. Fuck therapy—he’d been forced to try it long ago and no one could ever force him to drink that particular brand of Kool-Aid ever again. Just because his regular stress relievers weren’t working right now, that he’d had his first episode in a long time, didn’t mean he needed therapy.
What he needed was to end this infatuation Lynx had for Stormy Redmond. Once she was set straight about what her relationship with Lynxwasn’tgoing to be, he was sure everything would ease back to normal.
Settling deeper in the chair, he closed his eyes, basking in the sunlight shining from the window behind him. Images of him and Stormy—or just images of Stormy—bombarded him, as they were wont to do, whenever his mind wasn’t focused on a task. Prior to meeting her, he’d been plagued by disrupted sleep, sexual dissatisfaction, and a potentially deadly agitation, the kind that led to his berserker-like episode two days ago, but right here, right now, surrounded by everything that was hers, he was so content he could barely stay awake.
Maybe it was his snoring, maybe it was the sound of keys hitting the floor and a door banging shut that woke him, but either way he kept his eyes shut and listened as heelsclick-clackedagainst the hardwood floors downstairs. A woman cursed as she tapped in the alarm code—a code that no longer worked since he’d deactivated the system. He smirked when she strung together a thread of creatively linked curses. The echo of footsteps climbing the stairs, moving toward his location filled him with a God-awful sense of anticipation.
As the woman got closer to the door with the engraved plaqueStormy Redmond, LCSW, he struggled to hold on to his relaxed demeanor.
All movement ceased at the threshold of the open office door.
Hearing the sharp intake of breath, Big Country opened one eye and let his head loll toward the stunned woman gaping at him.
“Hey there, darlin’,” he said, voice gritty from sleep. “Sounds like you wasn’t expecting company.”
Wide-eyed, Sienna Red stood there taking in the devastating masculinity that was him. Her mouth moved but no sound came out.
“I know,” he said, stretching. “I have that effect.”
She swooped into the office like a banshee, raining down a bevy of slaps to his head and shoulders. “Get…outta…my…damn…chair!” she snapped, punctuating each word with a smack.
He ducked and dodged, tumbled to the floor and crawled to the far side of the room, laughing as he scampered backward on his hands, feet, and ass, until his back hit the far-right wall. He grinned like a fool as he reached up and rubbed the spot on his head that still stung from her hand-whooping.
“Hell, woman, if I’d of known you was into the old slap-and-tickle I’d a worn my special jeans; you know, the kind with the ass hanging out.” He didn’t have no booty pants, but he’d buy a pair in ten shades of sexy if she was willing to bend him over her knee and allow him to do the same after.
“Mr. Big Country, you have exactly twenty seconds to get the hell out of my place of business before I call the police,” she said as she unsnapped her bag; damn thing was too big to be called a purse.
Big Country rested his head against the wall and gazed at her. Lord, if this woman wasn’t made for loving on, he’d never met one who was. It had been less than forty-eight hours since he’d seen her, but he’d swear on the souls of his grands that she’d become more beautiful in that time.
“Darlin’, I can’t say I’m inclined to leave anytime soon. Not when the sight of you alone makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.”
Sienna Red placed her bag on the desk, smoothed her dress down the back of her thighs, and sat in her recently vacated chair.
“In my experience, Wide Earth, warm and tingly inside is usually a sign of infection. Maybe you should get tested for an STD. If you’re available between the hours of six and nine tonight, the mobile clinic will be out in front of Red’s to provide free testing.” She smiled. “And given your penchant for offering money to strangers in exchange for sexual favors, I encourage you to be there.”
He flinched dramatically and placed his hand over his heart. “Ouch, woman! A man makes one wrong assumption….”
