She had not thrown them away.
But she had noted, if they were clean, he wore the ones she gave him.
“Bath for you later, make sure you’re all good before we hit the sack,” he told her after he shifted her loosely, front to front, in his arms. “First, make sure the kids are okay.”
He called their pets “the kids.”
It was cute.
It was Olly.
He gave her a squeeze and a light kiss before he let her go and wandered out of their room to go get Cleo, the taking care of the animals portion of their living arrangement falling on him as he got up earlier than she did.
This was also because he was a pushover. Even bigger than her.
Thus Cleopatra had given him her undying love.
Stasia still slept on his pillow by his head. But other than that, as with Amélie, she was choosy with how much and when she gave her attention.
Still, when she slunk close, Amélie noted she did it closer to Olly than her mummy.
This did not bother Amélie. Whatever love Stasia wanted to get after the life she’d lived before she came to her true home, Amélie was happy to give her.
And Amélie well knew love from Olly was the best there could be.
She wandered out of their room back to where Olly had just fucked her on the couch.
As she did, she didn’t miss the vase of perfect red roses that sat proudly at the edge of the island that delineated the kitchen from the vast great room.
Olly bought her flowers every week. They were not always red roses, but they were always roses and they were always perfect.
She had no idea why he did this. In other ways he was not romantically inclined (at least not like that).
And he didn’t make a big deal about it. It was just that one day the last ones he’d given her were there, and before the bloom went off those roses, the next day new ones were in their place with a note that always said the same:
Leigh-Leigh,
You’re it for me.
Olly
In the dozens of roses he’d bought her, knowing countless others were to come, same type, same note, just different colors, Amélie knew she’d never take them for granted.
Because a man like Olly was not romantically inclined like that.
He gave that to her because she was it for him and he wanted to be certain she never forgot it.
He could win the lottery. Be discovered by an agent and become an action hero movie star making tens of millions of dollars a movie. Buy her diamonds and yachts.
But the best thing she’d ever get from him was his roses.
That was, the best thing she’d ever get from him, outside of everything that was just her Olly, was his beautiful roses.
A smile tinkering at her mouth, Amélie collapsed on the sofa and drew a throw up her body.
The fire was lit in the gas fireplace that stood between the couch and the floor-to-ceiling windows that had that amazing view off Camelback Mountain.
It soon gave her a view of her Olly in his pajama pants, who had not only released Cleopatra but also released Chevy (short for chevalier), their new dog. A mutt that it took Amélie precisely five point seven seconds to talk Olly into adopting when she’d made him come to Dr. Hill’s to have a look at the poor baby.
Olly was playing fetch with Chevy in expensive pajama bottoms by a negative-edge pool in a pricey house on an exclusive lot on a beautiful mountain.
He did not look like he didn’t fit.
He looked like he was right where he was supposed to be.
This, Amélie knew, was because he was.
Olly got tired of fetch before Chevy (as usual) and since he had opposable thumbs and access to treats, it was his decision that they both come in, something they did, Chevy far more exuberantly.
The dog bounded to her. She gave him cuddles, got kisses, and finally Olly wrestled his mutt away but he only could do this successfully because he tossed some treats into the room that Chevy dashed to retrieve.
All so he could lay claim to Amélie.
This he did, pulling the throw from her and exchanging it with his body, trapping her under him on the couch and nuzzling her neck with his nose and chin.
“Dad’s house, babe,” he said there, reminding her. “Dinner Saturday.”
“It’s on the calendar, Olly.”
He lifted his head and looked down at her. “And got a call from Barclay today. This new chick he has he’s liking. He wants to know if we can set up dinner, go on a double date.”
She was glad of this for Barclay. He was a lovely man. He needed to find someone to make him happy.
However, she was skeptical about this dinner.
“By that meaning he wants you to suss her out and give your stamp of approval,” she returned. “And because he thinks the world of you, even if they work in ways you can’t see, if you say one word, he’ll dump her, possibly exceptionally foolishly.”
Olly grinned. “Doesn’t work that way, babe. He wants you to suss her out and give your stamp of approval. So if you say one word, he’ll totally dump her because he thinks you’re the shit.”
“Ah,” she murmured.
Olly kept grinning but did it ordering, “You get a bad vibe, you save my brother from headache.”
“Is that my job as your woman?” she asked. “To cast judgment on all your friends’ girlfriends and possibly fuck up their lives?”
“Yep,” he answered casually. “Least one of ’em.”
She rolled her eyes to the arm of the couch over her head.
He dropped his head and kissed her jaw but did it chuckling.
When he lifted it again, she rolled her eyes back and saw he was serious.
“You know if Aryas took care of Branch?” he asked.
What she knew was that for some time, this had been preying on Olly’s mind.
“I know you know that I shared your concerns with him and I told you Aryas shared the same concerns. He said he’d handle it. I know it’s been some time but he’s Aryas. If he says that, he handles it.”
“Ask, babe, because Branch isn’t returning calls.”
At this news, Amélie began to feel troubled.
Branch Dillinger was not the kind of man who showed at Chad and Annie’s for beer, lots of food that was really bad for you, and football (like Amélie and Olly did).
But Olly and he met out for a few beers on a somewhat regular occasion and Branch had been to either Olly’s house (sometimes when Amélie was there before he put his place on the market and moved in with her) and her place (when Olly was with her, even before they were living together).
Branch was not overtly friendly. He was definitely not talkative.
But he was courteous and when he spoke, he was interesting. It was clear he was respectful of women because he was very much that with Amélie and not because she was a Domme and he was submissive (this, Olly did not share outright, but did confirm nonverbally with a slight jerk of his chin when she’d mentioned it—though he didn’t need to confirm; with time spent together, she’d read it all over Branch). That was just his manner.
It was also clear he liked Olly a good deal, even if it was mostly intuition and his being somewhat a fixture in their lives that shared that.
“I’ll ask Aryas,” she offered.
“Don’t bother. Take it direct. I’ll ask him,” Olly replied.
And he could. For Amélie, delightfully, with Olly came his dad, brother, sister, Barclay, Chad, Annie, and his many other friends.
For Olly, with Amélie came Mira, Trey, Felicia, Romy, Talia, her many other friends … and Aryas.
They’d had a moving-in party. Everyone came.
And they got along well.
She’d been right.
In every way he could be, even some she hadn’t anticipated, Olivier Hawkes was a dream come true.
And obviously getting to that had been well proven, over and over (and over many more times), as worth the risk.
Her thoughts returned to the man happily trapping her to her own couch when he cupped her cheek in his big hand.
“What’s on your mind, baby?” he asked, his lovely, deep voice that was lovely just in idle life conversation was even lovelier, sounding low, trembling through her belly and chest because he spoke while both were pressed to her.
Dream come true.
She slid a hand up his chest and rounded his back, arching her own to share with him she wanted more of his weight. He got the message and gave it to her.
“Babe,” he prompted.
“I was just thinking you were worth the risk.”
He’d clearly read her mood but still hadn’t considered that was where her thoughts lay because his head twitched before his face warmed and he dropped it closer.
“Dream come true,” she whispered, taking in all that was Olly right there in front of her face and weighing her warmly into their couch.
“Shut up,” he growled.
She saw the feeling burning in his eyes but she still snapped, “That’s not nice.”
“Shut up,” he repeated, still growling.
“Olly—”
“Love you so damned much, I let myself think about it, honest to Christ, it makes me dizzy.”
Amélie shut up.
Olly did not.
“Nothin’ better, not in this world, nothin’ and I know that in a way I’ll know it until I die, nothin’ better than knowin’ you feel that too.”
She melted under him.
“Olly—”
“Shut up,” he said yet again.
She felt her eyes narrow and opened her mouth.
But she said nothing.
Her magnificent Olly’s mouth crashed down on hers and he kissed her quiet.
When he was done doing that, he lifted his head and said, “Time for our bath.”
Our bath.
Lovely.
And it clearly was because with no further ado, Olly knifed off of her, took her up with him, and they had their bath.
Then, tangled up in a way that was the best part of the tangle that was them, after their bath, they went to bed and Amélie fell asleep trapped under her sweet beast.
Read on for a preview of the next book in Kristen Ashley’s The Honey Series
The Farthest Edge
Available June 2017 from St. Martin’s Griffin
Prologue
Of Course I’m Going to Kill You
Gerald Raines turned the corner into his bedroom and flipped the switch just inside the door that would illuminate the lights on the nightstand.
They didn’t turn on.
His first thought was always his first thought when something went wrong.
To blame whatever wasn’t working on his wife.
His second thought was always his second thought, or at least the one he’d had the last two years.
That being the reminder the bitch had moved out and divorced him.
He flipped the switch repeatedly, and when nothing happened, he stomped into the dark room, grousing, “I do not need this shit today.”
“Not another move.”
The voice came from the dark, rough, male, deep, quiet, calm.
Gerald’s entire body froze solid.
He knew that voice.
Impossible. Totally impossible, he thought.
But what he knew was that if anyone could come back from the dead, it would be a member of that team.
That damned team.
Gerald didn’t move even when the shadow formed in front of him, tall, lean. Healthy.
Impossible.
It got close, lifted its arm, and Gerald felt a circle of cold steel pressed tight to his forehead.
Not a ghost.
Real.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
“John,” he whispered.
“I’d say you got nothin’ to worry about,” the shadow replied. “They’re all dead. But you do got somethin’ to worry about because, contrary to officially unofficial reports, I’m not.”
“How did you—”
Gerald stopped speaking when the cold hardness pressed deeper into his forehead, forcing him to arch back several inches.
In that moment, it took grave effort not to foul himself.
But when the voice came again, it was still eerily calm.
“You set us up.”
“It was the mission,” Gerald returned swiftly, raising his hands to the side, showing he was unarmed, not a threat.
The shadow kept the gun to his forehead.
“You set us up.”
“It’s always the mission, John,” he reminded him. “In the briefing notes, the estimates of success are communicated and they’re never good.” His tone turned from desperate to desperately flattering. “That’s why we’d send your team. You had the skills to beat the odds. And you did. You always did.”
Until they didn’t because the mission had been designed that way.
“You set us up.”
“It was the job, John. You know that.”
“It was a goddamned,” he pressed Gerald’s head back with the gun as his shadowed face got closer, “suicide mission. With my team’s corpses right now rotting in that fucking jungle, except Benetta and Lex, who were blown to fuckin’ bits right in front of Rob and me, Rob dyin’ in my goddamned fuckin’ arms not two hours later. Do not stand there lying to me, telling me it was the job. You … set us up.”
Gerald tried for bravado, straightening his shoulders. “You understood the work we do, John. You signed up for it.”
He took off the pressure of the gun and moved back inches but he didn’t leave Gerald’s space nor did he drop the weapon.
“What I understand is that you had a shot at a deal with Castillo, he had a beef with the team because you sent us to take out his brother, somethin’ we did, and Lex almost bit it during that mission, so you offered us up, ducks in a barrel so you could use Castillo’s network to get your arms where you needed them.”
Jesus, how did he know that much?
Goddamn.
That team.
They could do anything.
And they did.
Even one of them surviving a mission that was designed to kill them all.
“Those fighters needed weapons and they’re the only hope our government has to keep peace in that region without us engaging our own soldiers to do it at great cost of money and lives,” Gerald shot back in his defense.
“So you set up your own fucking team to go down?”
“Castillo was an important asset,” Gerald returned. “The only shot we had. Every mission, every move, we weigh the gains and losses, John, and you know how we reach those scores.”
“We were your soldiers. Our country’s soldiers. And you sacrificed us for shot at a deal with a sleazy arms dealer? Who, by the way, fucked you the minute he could and didn’t deliver one goddamned gun where you needed it.”
Damn, he knew everything.
Gerald changed tactics.
“As far as your country’s concerned, John, you don’t exist. You gave up your lives. You kept your dog tags but gave up your identities. All seven of you did. You were ghosts before you became this ghost.”
“We were,” he pushed the gun back to Gerald’s forehead, “your soldiers.”
That was true.
But in that game, it didn’t matter in the slightest.
There were no soldiers.
In that game, everyone was a pawn.
“I have to make tough decisions every day,” Gerald spat, losing patience so he wouldn’t lose control of his fear. “You can’t imagine, you can’t even—”
The shadow cut him off, stating, “I got a tough decision to make too.”
Gerald felt his bowels loosening.
God, he was going to die at the hands of a man he’d personally handpicked to be trained as a killing machine.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Of course I
’m going to kill you,” the shadow replied calmly.
The bowels didn’t go but Gerald felt the wet trickle down his leg.
There was the barest sneer in his voice when the shadow whispered, “Jesus, did you spend even a minute in the field?”
He smelled the urine.
Humiliated, terrified, Gerald stood there, staring into the dark, featureless face of a man who’d been trained to do a great many things, do them in a variety of ways, do them exceptionally well, and one of those things was to kill, and he said nothing.
“You didn’t,” the shadow kept whispering. “You sent us to dirty, rotten, stinking places, dealing with filth, doing shit that marked our souls, bought us each a ticket straight to hell, and you haven’t spent a minute in the field. In your bedroom, you got one shot to be a real man, to die with dignity, and you wet yourself. Fuck me.”
“Just get it over with,” Gerald whispered back.
“One each,” the shadow returned.
Gerald’s head shook reflexively with confusion but when the gun pressed deeper, he stopped it.
“One?” he asked.
The shadow didn’t answer.
“One what?” he pushed.
“One whatever I want,” the shadow replied. “One day. One week. One month. One year. One for each. Five of them. Maybe a year for Rob. A day for Benetta. A week for Piz. A month for Lex. Another for Di. However I want it. You could have five years. You could have five days. Whatever I want. That’s all you got. Then it’s over for you.”
And with that and not another word, the cold metal left his head, the shadow left his vision, and without a sound, he felt the presence leave the room.
And Gerald Raines stood beside his bed, his shoes sinking into the carpet in a puddle of his own hot piss.
One
Set Up a Meet
BRANCH
Two years, three months later …
The man dropped to his feet.
Without hesitation, even though his jaw was hanging loose from its hinge, Branch kicked the man’s face with his boot.
The head shot back, the body moving with it, but no noise was made, no movement outside what came with the kick.
The guy was out.
And Branch didn’t give that first fuck if he ever checked back in.
Without another glance, he turned and walked away, pulling his phone from his back pocket.