Devoted: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella (2 page)

One afternoon, curious about the myth of the

Arabian Nights, I traveled back to ancient Persia to

see for myself if it was true that every day Shahryar

(Persian:
شهریار,
“king”) married a new virgin, and then

sent yesterday’s wife to be beheaded. It was written

and I had read, that by the time he met Scheherazade,

the vizier’s daughter, he’d killed one thousand

women.

Something went wrong with my efforts. I arrived

in the midst of the story and somehow exchanged

places with Scheherazade – a phenomena that had

never occurred before and that still to this day, I

cannot explain.

Now I am trapped in that ancient past. I have

taken on Scheherazade’s life and the only way I can

protect myself and stay alive is to do what she did to

protect herself and stay alive.

Every night the King calls for me and listens as I spin tales.

And when the evening ends and dawn breaks, I stop at a

point that leaves him breathless and yearning for more.

And so the King spares my life for one more day, so that

he might hear the rest of my dark tale.

As soon as I finish a story... I begin a new

one... like the one that you, dear reader, have before

you now.

Chapter One

Amy Slaten hung up the phone and sighed.

“Not again.”

She kind of wished her ex-husband wasn’t here to witness her complete and utter humiliation. Unfortunately, her ex-husband also happened to be her best friend and had been her business partner for a very long time. Their firms had been kept separate by an ironclad prenup and they’d handed back each other’s stock after their amicable divorce, but still she turned to him in times of trouble.

And the times they were a troubled now.

“Yes, we lost the Kleinman account. They’re concerned about the lawsuit and how my father could keep us wrapped up in court for a long time. Naturally they went to Glendale.” Glendale Incorporated was the bane of her existence and had been for a long time. She’d heard the company was under new management since John Adler had died. John and her father had been business rivals, and not the friendly kind. They’d gone for each other’s throats and it looked like the son John, Jr. was planning on keeping up the family traditions. He came after every contract Slaten Industries had, competed for every one they went after. Even the ones they shouldn’t. Glendale was so much bigger than Slaten. They shouldn’t play in the same sandbox, but the Adlers seemed determined to wipe out Slaten no matter what the cost to their own company.

Frankie sat back, his perfectly tailored clothes not wrinkling at all. He was wearing a Dolce & Gabbana three-piece suit with a snowy white dress shirt and a peacock blue tie that nearly matched his eyes. He was the most stunning man she’d ever met.

Unfortunately, he was also gay. Their marriage, while loving and friendly, had not been intimate in a physical sense.

“Is there anything I can do?” Frankie asked. “Beyond assassinating your father? Because I could arrange that. I know some interesting people.”

She had to chuckle at that. “Don’t tell me you’re bringing in the gay mafia.”

His lips curled up in a perfectly gorgeous smile. “Don’t underestimate the gay mafia, darling. They will take care of business and with amazing style.” He sobered. “You know I would do anything for you, right?”

He’d proven that when he’d married her in order to help her take Slaten Industries away from her awful father. At the time her father had been planning to sell the company her grandfather had built and take all the profits for himself. He’d been willing to sell out every employee they had for his own gain.

She’d stopped that with Frankie’s help, and she’d used the stock she’d gotten on the day she’d married him to help him wrest power away from Hank Lyndon, Frankie’s father and chief tormentor. They’d bonded over horrible parents.

His company was running brilliantly. Hers not so much. She was dealing with a board filled with relatives waiting to stab her in the back, chaos from moving the main office to Dallas along with her entire staff, multitudinous lawsuits filed by her parents, and a never-ending blood feud she didn’t quite understand.

All in all, her stress levels were reaching maximum capacity and she wasn’t sure she could come back down.

She bit back tears as she looked at him. There was no crying in CEO land. “I do and I thank you for it, babe, but unless you know John Adler, Jr. and can force your will on him, I think I’m screwed.”

“Let me look into it. Will you at least let me look into him?”

She winced. It wasn’t the first time he’d offered. The trouble was she didn’t want to play the way her dad did. Her father had kept dirt on every single business rival he’d had. He’d had files on all his perceived enemies. When she’d taken over the company, she’d inherited all of them and promptly burned them.

Her father kept files on everyone, including her and her sister, Bridget. She could still remember looking through her own file.

Amy is weak. All it would take to deal with her would be to send in a man who could make her feel pretty. With the right man in place, she will be completely controllable.

Lucky for her the “right man” in her father’s words had been the one who could make him money. He’d made a deal with Frankie’s father that would benefit the both of them, and neither gave a damn that their kids had plans of their own. It had worked out for her and Frankie in the end.

But she’d learned to never trust a man like her father.

Frankie was different, but he could be just as ruthless when it came to someone he loved. She was determined to never behave like that. If she won, she would do it fairly.

“I don’t want to come at him personally,” she said. “He’s done nothing like that to me.”

“You don’t think he’s playing dirty?”

“I don’t think he’s coming after me on a personal level,” she clarified. “This is business, babe. You know as well as I do that it can be cutthroat and nasty and not personal.”

“So if you met this asshole, you wouldn’t slap him?”

She had to laugh at that. “I would buy him a drink and ask him what the hell my father had done to his. Seriously, I would do that in a heartbeat. And I would flirt shamelessly with him.”

Of course, he was very likely thirty years older than she was and probably married with kids or even grandkids. His father had been eighty when he died. If he’d been like her parents, he’d had kids in his twenties and that would make them in their fifties or sixties, so her flirtation likely would be for naught.

Frankie grinned. “And he would fall madly in love with you and all of this would be over.”

He could also be an optimist at times. “I doubt that, but I would ask. Unfortunately, I’m not likely to sit across a table from him. He won’t meet with me and I’m not flying back to California to force a meeting. We’ve got another shot in a month. If we can get the Clannahan account, we’ll be in the black for another six months. And I can flirt with those men.”

They were an Irish company looking for an American company to make a deal with. They had all the access to European markets that Slaten needed to grow. In exchange, Slaten could give them a position in the States. It would be a win-win for both companies.

If she could only convince them. Everything was on the line. Everything she’d worked for. All the jobs she’d tried to save. They would be gone if she didn’t manage to make this work.

“You know I want to help you in any way I can. I love you, honey,” Frankie said quietly.

Tears misted her eyes. After her sister had left home, she’d thought she would never find another person she could count on, but she’d met Frankie in college. She’d had boyfriends and lovers and a couple of wild nights she didn’t wholly remember, but she’d only loved one man. Unfortunately, he was attracted to men. She’d accepted that a long time ago.

“I love you, too, but you can’t force my father to drop the lawsuit. We sincerely pissed him off and he won’t give up easily.”

“How about the other issue?” Frankie asked, his eyes trained on her as though attempting to detect any untruth she might give him.

He had good reason for that. She’d been trying not to worry him. It was her problem after all, and she was a big girl. “Are you talking about Ray Paulsen? I’ve got lawyers working on that, too.”

Frankie leaned forward. “He’s unstable, Amy.”

“Which is one of the reasons I had him fired.” Ray had been her father’s head of security. Amy had considered him little more than the asshole who intimidated everyone so that her father got his way. She’d been more than happy to show him the door the minute she’d taken over the company.

“He swore he’d get you back for that,” Frankie pointed out.

“And he’s suing me, too,” she said. She was so tired of lawsuits.

Frankie didn’t seem convinced. “I’m going to look into that asshole. He’s not the type of man who would be content with simply suing you. I want you to be careful. The minute anything feels wrong, you call me.”

And have a bodyguard put on her ass? “I promise. But he’s not an idiot. He knows if he harasses me and I catch him it won’t help his case. Besides, the last time I checked, he was still in California, half a continent away. Aside from Ray and my father, the good news is we’re truly the best fit for Clannahan. I think after we meet next month they’ll understand it, too. Then I’ll be in a better position to deal with all of dear old Dad’s crap.”

She was going to be positive. Change wasn’t easy. It was difficult but everything that was meaningful in life was hard to achieve. She’d managed to break away from her father. She’d moved her company and her life across the country to be closer to her sister. She’d made deals with the city that ensured she could bring her people with her. Tax incentives had given her the cash to offer any employee who wanted to move the wherewithal to do it. Slaten would be stronger here in Dallas. She’d lowered their costs across the board for years to come with this move and she’d offered good compensation to the few employees who’d chosen to stay behind. They would build a company that served its employees and not the other way around.

She was strong. She could do this.

Frankie reached across her desk to put a hand over hers. “I know they will. Are you really going through with tonight?”

The question made her grin because she was totally going through with tonight. “Does the thought scare you?”

He frowned. “The thought makes me kind of want to go and get my own membership at Sanctum so I can be your training Dom.”

That was absolutely the last thing she wanted. For the last couple of years she’d used Frankie as a protective wall, a reason to not put herself out there. She was done with that. She loved him so much, but she needed more. First and foremost, she wanted a damn orgasm that wasn’t battery operated. “You would never be assigned to me because they pay attention to what a sub needs. I had to fill out a freaking book on what I need. Do you know one of the things I need? A penis that might want to slip inside me and rub one out.”

His eyes closed, a grimace coming over his perfect face. “Do you have to be so forthright?”

She kind of loved it when he got all prudish. He was not a man who ever should take that attitude since she knew damn well he’d had some wild nights himself. “Mama is stressed. Mama needs a little something something, if you know what I mean.”

He put a hand out. “I do. Please don’t tell me about it in detail.”

Where was the fun in that? “I’m not planning on jumping the poor man or anything, but if it comes up, I’m ready and willing to get three kinds of kinky.”

It had been a rough eighteen months. Between the takeover and her pre-planned divorce, it had been hard. There hadn’t been a ton of time for dating. She’d focused entirely on Slaten Industries, and she was ready to have a few hours a week to relax and work on herself. And to be around a man who might want to put his penis inside her.

That was a definite goal.

Frankie stared at her for a moment. “Sweetheart, how much have you dated since we got married?”

She smiled on the outside. Inside she was punching something. This was a conversation she’d been trying to avoid. “I’ve been busy.”

Frankie leaned in. “When was the last time you had sex?”

She felt herself flush. “Before we got married.”

She wasn’t a prude. Far from it. She liked sex, but she took the marriage thing seriously. Even when he hadn’t. Frankie had spent their wedding night with his boy toy of the moment.

No honeymoon for Amy.

So she should have a post-divorce bacchanal complete with tons of wine and a super hot Dom. Not necessarily at the same time.

“I thought we talked about that.” Frankie had his concerned face on.

Yep, this was why she wanted to avoid this conversation. “We did. I made a decision to honor my vows. You know what my parents are like.”

His father screwed anyone with a skirt—and that did not necessarily mean a vagina—and her mother regularly made love to her bottle of Chardonnay and the pool boy. She’d grown up with constant cheating. She couldn’t stand it. Her marriage might have been a sham, but she respected it.

“I do, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I should have been better.”

One of the reasons she’d avoided this talk was because the last thing she wanted was to make him feel guilty. “I made that choice, Frankie, and it had next to nothing to do with you. It was something I needed to do. Now that I’m single I intend to be as skanky as possible. I’m serious. I want to tear through some dicks.”