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Book 0: The Holton Woods Series

by HelenKay Dimon

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

He’s a man who fixes difficult situations. She’s the one thing he can’t handle—and the one thing he can’t resist…

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Sebastian Jameson negotiates for high-end clients who need problems taken care of quickly and discreetly. Accustomed to being in control, he’s still reeling from his ex-wife’s decision to write a tell-all about their private life, one that highlighted their bedroom activities. The fallout left Bast’s love life in chaos, making him a magnet for women who thrive on risky fantasies, and a pariah to all others.

Kyra Royer knows all about Bast’s reputation—and is intrigued enough to try to change him into a one-woman guy. But getting him into her bed will be a challenge. He’s known her brother for years, and her brother, with his rough past and sniper abilities, is not a man you cross. Kyra knows Bast thinks she’s off-limits, so she’ll have to get creative to make him hers.

As Kyra turns up the heat, Bast struggles to resist the sexy young woman’s considerable charms. But when Bast’s job turns from tricky to deadly, keeping Kyra nearby might be the only way to keep her alive—even if it means getting closer than he ever intended…

Release date: October 7, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CONTENTS

ONE

Sebastian Jameson sat at his usual table at his regular time at the supper club where he always ate a late dinner during the week. Some would say he was in a rut. Bast preferred to view his schedule as a sign of consistency. After his wild ride of a marriage and equally brain-numbing divorce, he craved a little boredom.

His best friend, Jarrett Holt, owned Holton Woods, the private club at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. They’d known each other for more than a decade. Up until a month ago, they often shared dinner at the reserved table with the high-backed red-velvet-lined booths to the left of the bar. Then Becca Ford burst back into Jarrett’s life like something out of an action movie. Their guys’ nights had been taken over ever since, probably with nonstop sex . . . the lucky fucker.

Between his stupid grin and the uncharacteristically upbeat personality, Becca had smoothed out many of Jarrett’s rough edges from his long-ago days of running the streets and doing whatever he had to survive. The guy was downright respectable now. He dealt in power and information and his club sat at the center of all of it.

The place also ended up being a great source of business for Bast. But that’s not the main reason he hung out there. It was familiar. Comfortable. The dark interior and high-end finishes appealed to him. So did the women Jarrett hired to serve the members, all of whom were male.

Bast never touched, because that was against the rules, but a guy could admire the combination of sexy, young and smart. Most had advanced degrees. All wore slim black skirts and lacy black bras that peeked out from their unbuttoned white silk shirts. The smokin’ uniforms got a man thinking about ripping through the flimsy material with his teeth.

As soon as the idea popped into his head, his gaze strayed to a rather fine ass a few feet away. Long wavy blond hair and those stockings with the seam running down the back of the leg.

Christ, Jarrett knew how to make men happy and earn a lot of money doing it. He became wealthy years ago by having women strip off their clothes in his clubs. Now, keeping the clothes on, teaching his servers—whom he referred to as private attendants—how to get men talking by showing just a hint of the raw sexiness underneath did the job. Bast approved of the change and the business strategy.

He also realized he’d stepped up to the edge of leering and pulled his attention away from those nearby legs. He wasn’t a fucking animal, though spending less time with Jarrett and more time sitting there staring at the female attendants was starting to take a toll on the subject of his daydreaming.

The sound of high heels clicking against the hardwood floor had Bast’s focus zipping back to the woman. He looked at her face. Round with smooth skin and big chocolate-brown eyes. And very familiar.

Kyra Royer. So fucking hot, too damn young . . . and totally off-limits.

She stepped up to the edge of his table and threw him a welcoming smile. “Good evening, Mr. Jameson.”

All the attendants referred to the members by their last name. With respect and enough hotness to, in this case, have Bast fiddling to keep his glasses on his nose. “Kyra?”

“What can I do for you this evening?”

He meant to hold the eye contact. He really did, but that husky voice licked over his balls and the blood rushed right out of his head. His gaze went wandering. The top buttons of her shirt were undone, treating him to a fair amount of smooth skin and an up-close-and-killing-him view of her bra down to the front clasp.

He cleared his throat and forced words to form in his head again. “Put on a sweater.”

“What?”

But she knew. That smile told him she knew exactly what she was doing to him. Something about the mix of the provocative outfit and the sweet face had him going under.

“What are you doing here?” he asked because she should be in college, or high school, or wherever young women he shouldn’t be allowed to touch hung out.

“Working.”

“Here?” He pushed up his glasses again, amazed the lenses hadn’t fogged or shattered from the heat pouring off of him. “Since when?”

“Business school costs money.”

“Ah, right. You’re in graduate school.” He’d blocked that part. After Kyra grew up looking like that, with those breasts and that face, he had to think of her as a kid to keep from wondering about what would happen if she wrapped those legs around him and pressed her heels into the small of his back.

She smiled as if she’d read his thoughts. “I start graduate school in the fall, which gets us back to the tuition issue and the explanation for my presence at the club.”

“Do you need money?” Because he would write her a fucking check right now. Whatever it took to remove her from a room full of drooling men. He knew the type because in the last five minutes he’d become one.

Even now he caught the glimpses of club members at nearby tables. Some pretended to continue their conversations while they stole quick peeks at her tight ass. Others all but crawled over and wrapped their arms around her thighs.

Slimy bastards.

He concentrated very hard on not morphing into one. “Kyra, do you need some help?”

“That depends. Are you still talking about money?”

Good fucking question. “Sure.”

Her head tilted to the side. “And what exactly are you offering?”

Something screeched to a halt inside his mind. He figured it probably had to do with a sudden loss of brain cells. No way was she suggesting . . . Actually, he had no idea what she was suggesting.

Then there was the very real possibility he’d be killed in the next two seconds if he tried to dig deeper on this topic. “You do know your brother is standing about twenty feet away, right?”

She glanced over her shoulder and gave the brute in question a little wave. “Don’t mind him. He likes to hover.”

Wade Royer stood behind the bar and managed the club. He looked official and civilized but he once held the role of Jarrett’s enforcer. Bast had spent time keeping both men out of jail as they turned respectable and fought to leave their old lives behind.

Back then Wade and Jarrett owned the streets in no small part thanks to Wade’s fighting abilities. He was built like a tank but size didn’t matter when you had sniper shooting abilities and no compunction about carving up men who you thought did your boss wrong.

Bast tried to imagine what Wade would do to the man who touched his baby sister. Tried and then blocked the bloody images. “Your brother is also an expert with a gun, so let’s stick to my questions.”

Kyra’s smile only widened. “Okay.”

“There’s no way Jarrett hired you to work here.”

The bright wattage slipped a bit. “He was worried about Wade.”

Exactly. “About Wade killing someone.”

She shook her head and her hair fell around her shoulders. “Jarrett wanted to help Wade get through a tough time.”

“Excuse me?”

She sent a second look in the general direction of the bar before turning around again. “Wade had a bad breakup.”

“Yeah, I know.” No further explanation necessary on that topic. Bast had occupied an unwanted front seat to the mess for the last five weeks. “But I really don’t see your brother as the crying-in-his-pudding type.”

“He is human.”

“Are you sure?” Wade’s former live-in lover now worked for Bast. The heat between the men had surprised Bast since he viewed both of them as fighting machines. But their breakup had been of the nuclear variety. Bast still dealt with the fallout on a daily basis.

“So, back to us,” she said as her voice dipped even lower.

Bast almost swallowed his tongue. “Us?”

“What do you want from me?” She clasped her hands in front of her. The attendants here didn’t carry notepads. They memorized everything and never got a detail wrong.

The move also pressed her breasts closer together, which had his gaze bouncing again, sick prick that he was. “It’s probably best I don’t answer that.”

“My brother won’t kill you.”

Wade contradicted her comment by slamming a glass against the ornate bar and focusing all his attention on Bast’s table.

Bast sat up straighter. “Tell him that.”

“You have a drink.” She nodded at his half-empty Scotch glass. “Did you also want dinner?”

Bast wanted an explanation for her presence in his place of relative peace and a promise she would be gone from the building soon. A room full of horny old men was not the right job for her. These guys thought they could buy anything and if one of them tried to touch her, Bast vowed to throw off the glasses and start slamming bodies. “Is Jarrett here?”

“He’s upstairs with Becca.”

Bast blew out a long, hard breath. “Of course he is.”

Kyra shot him a don’t-be-stupid look. “Jarrett’s in love.”

“My friend has lost his fucking mind.” Over a woman. It was a good thing, but Bast never thought he’d see the day.

“I think we’re basically saying the same thing.” Kyra let her arms drop to her sides. “Did you want a private room?”

A normal question from the staff at Holton Woods. The club offered rooms for business transactions. For almost whatever a guy needed, except the ultimate release because the women who worked the club were not to be touched—ever.

Still, hearing the words on her lips . . . Bast knew he was never going to survive this conversation.

“No.” He adjusted his glasses and tried to blink away the mental images running through his brain. The one about laying her out on the table and giving the room a show was especially persistent. He vowed to revisit that fantasy later, when he was alone in his bedroom.

Her smile never even bobbled. “Then dinner?”

As if he could eat anything. “Yes.”

“Do you need a menu or do you want your usual?” Her posture remained perfect and her voice clear, just as she was hired and trained to do.

“I still want to know why, with a business degree in front of you, you’re working at a supper club.” At his club.

“I told you.”

Bast glanced at Wade and saw him staring back. “Your brother’s delicate feelings. Sure.”

Kyra’s eyebrow lifted. “Is there a problem?”

About a hundred of them, starting with the fact Bast was thirty-four and had screwed a lot of women. Maybe too many. His ex-wife had literally written a handbook on having threesomes, and all that knowledge came from personal experience. Now most women came to him looking for a specific kind of sex—naughty and temporary. He didn’t know what the hell Kyra was looking for.

Her eyebrow stayed up. “Do you want another assistant for the evening?”

A reasonable solution. Send her away and forget about the bra and the exposed skin and that ass. Then Bast saw the judge with the sex-with-his-clerks reputation two tables away wave his hand as if trying to get Kyra’s attention.

No fucking way.

“I want your private services,” Bast said before he could come up with a better sentence.

Her smile morphed into one of pure feminine power. “That can be arranged.”

“So none of these losers comes near you.”

“The club has very specific rules about members harassing the staff. I only started on the floor a few nights ago, but my understanding from weeks of training is Becca tightened the restrictions when she moved in with Jarrett and took over security.”

Becca changed many things at the club, including Jarrett. Bast approved of them all. “I know. I reviewed the guidelines with her.”

Funny how Becca forgot to mention Kyra was coming on board. If Bast had heard that, he would have stopped the idea before it took hold. Even now Kyra didn’t move away from the table, which could only mean she had no idea what type of skin-on-skin images flashed through his head.

“I thought you weren’t a lawyer,” she said.

He did spend a good deal of time saying that, but truth was he was the managing partner of a law firm. Just not the traditional sort. “By training and according to all the nonsense certificates hanging on the wall of my office in frames, I absolutely am. But what I do is negotiate. Solve problems. If a case I’m working on goes to trial, I’ve failed.”

She pressed up tighter against the edge of the table. “Would you like to negotiate now?”

“What?” His hand flexed against the napkin. Only inches separated her body and his fingers.

“With me.”

“I . . .” Damn it, no way did he hear that right. “What?”

“You asked that already.”

“The way the night’s going I might ask it a third time.”

The tip of her finger traveled along the edge of the table. “I told you one of the reasons I work here.”

An alarm bell rang in his head and the flashing warning light almost blinded him. Still, he kept pushing the boundaries, playing the game. “What’s the other?”

“You.”

Son of a bitch. “Excuse me?”

“You’re here three nights a week, sometimes more. Since you work all the time and we rarely mingle socially, despite having several friends in common, this seemed like the best way to get your attention.”

She had to be kidding. “Oh, you have it. Trust me.”

“Good.”

He waited for common sense to kick in. When it didn’t he dragged it out of hiding. “I’m old enough to be your father.”

“Only if you became a dad at eleven.”

Man, it sounded even worse when she did the math. “You know exactly how old I am?”

“Of course.”

“Do you also know your brother, Jarrett and Becca—those people we have in common—would get together and beat me to death if I said hello to you the wrong way?” That very event could happen within the next ten minutes. All of them had weapons training, and Becca used to kill for a living. Bast didn’t even want to know how far Wade and Jarrett had gone to get things done in their old jobs on the wrong side of the law.

Kyra winked. “Then it’s a good thing they aren’t here.”

Okay, time to backtrack and laugh all this off. “I’m sure I’m misunderstanding you, but—”

“You aren’t.”

So much for laughing. Hell, Bast could barely breathe and his pants were strangling his dick. “This can’t happen, Kyra. Nothing can happen between us.”

“I notice none of your excuses for us remaining apart center on attraction.”

“What does that even mean?” But he knew.

“Are you attracted to me?”

“I’m not blind.” A complete fucking dumbass on the verge of doing something epically stupid, but not blind.

“Then we don’t have a problem.” Her smile promised sex.

The sudden thumping in his dick suggested his lower half was totally on board with the idea. “Right, we have many problems. There’s club policy, my personal code, the fury of everyone we know and the possibility of my impending death at your brother’s hands.” He ticked off the list of cons, then searched his brain for more reasons to add.

“Go back.” Her eyes narrowed. “Personal code?”

Bast noticed the biggest “con” of all headed straight for the table at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. Thinking about Wade had conjured him up. In what looked like two steps, Wade was at the table, right at his sister’s side.

He angled his shoulders so he stood just slightly in front of Kyra. “Is there a problem over here?”

Kyra jumped in without skipping a beat. “Mr. Jameson didn’t know I was working here.”

Yeah about that. “You okay with the arrangement?” Bast asked Wade.

“With douchebags staring at my baby sister’s chest? No.” Wade kept his focus on Bast as he said it. He didn’t look around or point to some of the more troublesome members.

Subtle. “Okay then.”

Kyra waved the warning off. “Wade doesn’t mean you.”

With that Kyra proved she wasn’t picking up on the cues. That was fine because Bast surely was.

Wade shrugged. “I didn’t actually exclude him.”

With a hand on his arm, Kyra motioned toward the other side of the room. “Wade, I believe you’re wanted at the bar.”

Silence vibrated around the three of them. Wade finally shifted and broke the standoff. “Okay, but move this along.”

She nodded. “Sure.”

A few more beats of silence passed before Wade nodded and turned away. He stopped to talk to Kyra. “There are other customers and I’m sure Bast has work to do.”

Bast watched the other man leave and knew messing with this guy’s sister would result in a trip to the emergency room. Yesterday, hell a half hour ago, Bast would have said no thanks to the risk. But Kyra stood there, being cryptic, but not really, and Bast’s good intentions imploded.

“Do you?” she asked.

He had no idea what the question was, so he went with the one running in his head. “Want to die? No.”

“You haven’t told me what I can do for you this evening.”

She had to know what she was doing to him. About how hard his dick was and how he couldn’t stand up any time soon. “This isn’t—”

“Right now I’m talking about the club, Mr. Jameson. Drinks, dinner, a private room. Some gambling. What do you need?”

The sexy smile and the way it lit up her face did him in. “Heart medicine.”

“I’ll order your regular meal.” But she didn’t leave. “But we still have the other issue to handle. The private one.”

“Okay,” he said because despite making a living at talking, he had no idea what else to say.

Her palm flattened against the table as she leaned in. Just for a second, but it was a definite lean combined with a deadly sexy voice. “Consider this my move.”

She couldn’t mean . . . “What?”

“Now you know what I am willing to do to see more of you. I tracked you down, took this job and stated my case. And I am happy to do whatever you want within certain rules.”

He tried to say something but only a strangled sound came out.

She straightened. “The rest is up to you. You get to show me what, if anything, you plan to do to see more of me.”

“I don’t think—”

“Yes, Sebastian. Stop thinking.” Then she was off, those sexy hips swishing as she went.

TWO

Kyra didn’t know how she got through the rest of her shift after making her big play. Leaving Bast’s table, her legs shook and her heartbeat thundered in her ears. Not that he even noticed the effect he had on her body. After their initial skirmish, he sat and ate and read paperwork for hours, hanging around until Jarrett came on the floor and joined him for a drink.

When Bast finally left the club, the trapped air rushed out of her lungs. Everything about him caused her insides to tighten and her mind to spin. She’d planned the moment—the confrontation—for weeks. Taking a job to chase after a man was not her usual style, but then no man had ever played duck-and-run with her quite like this one. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get him out of her head.

While walking up to the table and laying out her case, she could see him mentally draft a list of reasons why he needed to maintain a hands-off policy. He’d been doing that for a year, walking out of a room when she walked in, his gaze lingering just long enough to give her hope. But the panic in his eyes tonight, complete with that sexy low voice, convinced her to move in now instead of waiting for him to get a clue.

She might be young in his eyes but she knew what she wanted, and for more than six months the “what” was Sebastian Jameson.

He’d certainly kept her mind off the rest of the crowd at work all night. Evading the guy whose entire smooth-talking repertoire consisted of smarmy winks and wandering hands got old fast once Bast walked out. At one point the guy promised her a job where she could be on her back most of the day. She somehow saved the eye rolling for her trips to the kitchen, but just barely.

Thinking about the lame line and the way she pretended not to hear it—both times the douche said it—had her smiling as she walked out of the club and headed for the small employee parking lot next door. A shadow fell in front of her right as she cleared the brick wall and turned the corner. Tension pounded her but quickly evaporated. She’d know that scent anywhere. Something smoky with a touch of citrus.

Bast frowned down at her. “What are you doing?”

At six-one, he managed to tower over her. Her spiky high heels brought her close to his height but she’d exchanged them and her stockings for flats and now the five-inch difference had her backbone straightening. So did his attitude. “Walking.”

“Wade lets you dance around out here at night without an escort?”

That seemed like a little much. “Dance?”

“Fill in whatever word you want then answer the question.”

Never mind that she stood inside a high-walled fence and locked well-lit pathway that ran directly from the side of the club to employee parking, or that even now Becca watched over them from her office and the bank of monitors she installed to ensure the staff’s safety. “I’m a grown woman, Bast. I tried to explain that to you earlier.”

“When you made your offer.”

Despite the late hour, or early hour to be technically correct, car horns honked and tires screeched in the distance as DC nightlife roared with life only a few streets away. But all of the noise and mumbling faded as she stared into those intelligent green eyes. The Ivy League buttoned-up type never did it for her before Bast. With him, the clean-cut, wire-rimmed-glasses look had her wanting to strip his tie off and drill down to the naughty center underneath.

His light brown hair, all trim and perfect, begged for her fingers. And if the rumors around town were to be believed, this man knew his way around a woman and what to do to get one naked. Man, she hoped that part was true.

Not that she only wanted a turn in his bed, a quick in and out. No, when she looked at Bast the longing kicked in until her breath stammered in her chest. He made her wish she were someone else, someone like him with his stable upbringing and fancy job. Since all the degrees and polish in the world couldn’t clean up her past, she’d settle for making a move and taking what she could get.

But first they had to scale whatever defensive walls he planned to throw up between them. “How did you slip inside the gate?”

Bast waved the comment off. “Jarrett gave me the code.”

Not a surprise. They were as close as brothers and Bast practically spent every evening at the club. The idea of him enjoying some member benefits others didn’t wasn’t a surprise.

Still . . . “That really doesn’t explain your presence right now. At the club. On the property.” Waiting for her long after he slipped out of the building.

In the universe of good signs, she figured this had to be one, but bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Bast stood there, all commanding and sure, but she sensed inside he ran scared. She recognized twitchy panic when she saw it and he had a heaping dose of it.

“I’m parked at the far end,” he said.

She had no idea how that was relevant to anything, so she circled back to her point. “You left the club more than an hour ago but you didn’t actually leave the parking lot.”

“I wanted to talk with you.”

Fighting for calm and ignoring her jumping pulse, she leaned back until her shoulders hit the brick wall. Much more of this and she’d chew through her cheek.

Thinking this might take some time, she dropped her gym bag on the ground. “About?”

His frown moved into full-on scowl territory. “Are you kidding?”

But he moved in closer. One palm smacked against the wall by her head and his face hovered just inches from hers.

They were so close, with the darkness curling around them and his body cast in shadows from the security lights, but she could see that face. Make out every expression. She wanted to wrap her fingers in that crisp white shirt and pull him in and against her, but she waited. Knowing him, the commonsense lawyer side of him could take over at any time and mess this forward progress up.

She balled her hands into fists by her sides . . . and waited. “If this is the point where you mention my age and talk about my brother and how afraid you are of him—”

“Okay, that’s enough of that. I am not afraid.”

“—then let me stop you.” She rushed on, pretending she hadn’t stomped all over Bast’s ego by accident. “Wade is not out here and I assure you I am of legal age.”

“I know.”

Well now . . . She dropped her head down. “For anything.”

The words whispered across his cheek and he visibly swallowed. Even in the darkness the bobble of his Adam’s apple stuck out. “I’ve done the calculations.”

This guy had a thing for math. “Interesting.”

“I’m not sure that’s how I view the eleven-year difference.”

She almost wished he couldn’t add. “I make my own decisions. I go after what I want. What I want right now is you.”

“For?”

“Oh, come on.” She treated him to a “don’t be an idiot” eye roll to keep from saying the words. “Now who’s kidding?”

His second hand slapped against the wall, trapping and surrounding her. “Everything about this is wrong.”

There, in the cocoon of his body, with his suit jacket hanging open and the heat pounding off his body into hers, everything felt pretty damn right to her. “I disagree.”

“Are you looking for a threesome? Is that what this is about, you trying something new? Wanting some big thrill with the guy who has a reputation for liking sex with more than one woman at a time?”

The words crashed over her in an icy wave, washing away every sexy thought and replacing them with fury. “No.”

“Maybe you want to try some toys or new positions. We could set up a camera . . .”

This time she did touch him. She put both hands against his chest and shoved. “What is wrong with you?”

He didn’t move. “Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. People like to gossip about how dirty I am in the sack. Women volunteer to join me just to get a taste. I’m guessing that’s what this is. You want your turn.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“Do you blame me? That was a pretty heavy pass and you’ve never shown any interest before.”

The man was clueless and right on the border of being an ass. “Clearly you haven’t been paying attention.”

If he heard her, he didn’t let it show. His words tripped over each other as he talked right past her. “I can only guess you want a wild ride and are looking to me to get you there. Strip you naked, maybe call in a friend to make the night extra special. That’s the expectation, right?”

Something in his voice broke through