On the Ropes

Her life on hold for too long, Janette Hinson has returned to the United States in search of a mother she hasn’t seen in twenty-five years. But to find her Jan will have to accept help from the one man she desperately wants to avoid: Stephen Scott. Sexy, rich, powerful, and dominating, Stephen has been pursuing Jan for the last year, and she’s the first to admit he more than has what it takes to hold a woman’s interest. But her traumatic past has kept from true intimacy all these years. Yet she senses a darkness in Stephen, one that goes beyond the rumors of his kinkier side…

Stephen Scott is not a man to take no for an answer. Ever since he met Jan he hasn’t been able to get her off of his mind. And no matter how many hours he spends at work, he can’t get the hot little vixen out of his system. It’s time to prove he wants more than just a fling, despite his dark sexual history. What he wants from Jan is to Master her. In every way.

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Hearts and Minds

Saint and Scholar

Calculated Exposure

Seeing Red

On the Ropes

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

A Hearts and Minds Novel

Holley Trent

LYRICAL PRESS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

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Copyright © 2015 by Holley Trent

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First Electronic Edition: October 2015

eISBN-13: 978-1-61650-641-4

eISBN-10: 1-61650-641-5

Printed in the United States of America

For all the girls who endured, in spite of everything, and thrive for it today.

The last time Janette Hinson had been on United States soil, she’d been a young girl of four wearing patent leather Mary Janes and socks with lace trim. She’d stepped into a jet bridge with her hand firmly clasped inside a flight attendant’s and boarded a plane. She hadn’t turned back to look into the terminal’s waiting area for one last good-bye, because there’d been no one there to give one to. The little American, without a mother to tend to her, left Baltimore and became Bermudian.

Twenty-five years later, she was back on her home country’s soil.

She tightened her grip on her suitcase’s telescoping handle and took a deep breath. So many strangers swarmed at her back, all moving pointedly to cabs and busses or the parking garage. They all knew where they were going.

Janette, though, waited.

Anxiously.

She was stupid for agreeing to this, but what choice did she have? She no longer knew her relatives in the states and Stephen would, at the very least, be a friendly face. A smirking, sexy-as-sin face she’d been trying to ignore for a year.

She sighed, and at the electric prickle of proximity in her spine, moved out of the way of the hustling travelers. She pressed her free hand to the small of her back to protect it since she couldn’t watch it. It was silly, of course. If anyone wanted to really hurt her—stab her or shoot her—her hand wouldn’t do her a damned bit of good. But, she couldn’t help it. It was a paranoid habit developed right around the time she moved into her father’s home in Bermuda.

Some people were afraid of public speaking, some of heights, some of snakes. Janette was terrified that someone would sneak up on her, just like her mother had been once.

“Come on, Stephen,” she whispered into the din of honking horns and revving engines. Where was he?

She scanned the mass of vehicles idling at the terminal’s curbside. Most had Virginia plates, appropriate given they were in Norfolk, though there were a few North Carolina plates, too. She didn’t know what Stephen was driving or in what state its plates had been registered.

She pulled her slipping purse’s strap over her head so it lay across her chest and wrung her hands. Maybe she should call him. He
had
said he’d pick her up, hadn’t he? Or had she remembered that wrong?

“Shit,” she uttered and dragged the back of her hand across her sweaty forehead. Maybe she had misremembered. Everything had been so chaotic lately. Naturally, some things would fall into the cracks.

Most of the time, she had an exceptional memory for small details. As a resort concierge, she’d needed that seemingly useless trivia, but lately she’d hardly remembered to make sure her shoes were matched before leaving her apartment.

A careless traveler’s rolling suitcase tangled with hers and drove the big aluminum case painfully against her ankle. He gave it a hard yank to free his, switched his phone to his other ear, and moved on as Janette fell into a helpless tangle atop her fallen case.

“Nice welcome back to America,” she muttered, and winced as shock wore off and pain settled in.

“God.” She pushed herself off the suitcase and squatted next to it, vigorously rubbing the bruised flesh of her ankle and shin. At least she’d have a souvenir to show for this seemingly ill-fated trip. A lovely scrape and perhaps some asthma from inhaling all the exhaust. She’d hoped for a gentle reconnection with her mother, not an up-close and personal introduction to Norfolk International’s sidewalk.

If only her stepmother could see Janette now—a wrinkled, travel-weary mess of a woman who’d let her skin go greasy and who’d broken at least three nails since morning.

“Fuck her, too.” Janette rolled her eyes as she heaved herself up. She might not have been so desperate to reconnect with a woman she hadn’t heard from in twenty-five years if she’d been shown a little affection.

Still bent over her horizontal suitcase, she shrieked at the sensation of a hand at the small of her back. Her startled jerk made her lose what tenuous balance she had on her throbbing ankle, and she started losing altitude quickly. Being so close to the ground as it was, her face was prepared to meet the sidewalk in short order, but a strong grip on her elbow pulled her upright as if she weighed nothing.

“Let’s not go bruising that pretty face,” came the familiar, masculine voice.

Relief flooded her as her fight-or-flight adrenaline surge of the past few minutes crashed, and tears ran down her cheeks before she could stop them.

His arm still on her elbow, and his other hand pressed to her back, Stephen tipped his auburn head sideways and looked down at her battered ankle. “Does it hurt to stand on it?”

She shook her head and wiped the tears before he could see them. “Just general throbbing.” God, she was a fucking mess. She hadn’t been so prone to tears since she was five, and back then, she’d quickly learned the waterworks made people perceive her as weak. Children are, in their very natures, supposed to be weak. She hadn’t been allowed the luxury of being childish, and at nearly thirty she was paying the piper for it.

“Well, flex your ankle a few times, anyway, so I can make sure you didn’t twist it. If you want to go to the emergency room, let me know.”

She flexed it. Sore, but nothing serious. She turned to him to state as much, only to be rendered unconvinced at the stability of her legs. Her lips parted to form some words. “Hello, Stephen,” or “Thank you,” perhaps, but all that came out was a whispered, “
uhh
…”

How did he manage to do that every time? Turn her well-trained brain into three pounds of useless mush with just a look?

It wasn’t just that he was handsome—that’d never been in doubt, and in Stephen Scott’s case, the word might have been an offensive understatement—but the ways he looked at her. The lawyer always looked like he was mentally cross-examining every statement she made. Or worse, that he was picturing her naked and conceiving rather imaginative ways to make her submit.

Probably both at once, knowing what she did about him.

He narrowed gray-green eyes at her, and his sumptuous lips parted to reveal teeth that were almost too white.

Movie star teeth.

Movie star
face
.

She’d always been able to avoid falling into the lure of too-handsome men just fine until she’d met him. Most were charismatic, but Stephen… Well, she didn’t have a word for what he was.

She watched wordlessly as he righted her suitcase and knocked the dirt off it. When he took her hand and cocked one auburn eyebrow up at her, it dawned on her that she should
say
something.

Anything
.

“I’m okay?” Well, she wouldn’t be winning prizes for congeniality any time soon.

Obviously, her inability to form a sure statement didn’t matter to him. The brilliance of his grin could have rivaled the stars in the night sky…well, if there’d been any. Norfolk didn’t seem to have stars.

He leaned in close and whispered, “Are you asking me or telling me?”

She blinked a few times, hypnotized by the red-brown tint of his eyebrows. The dark gray rings around his irises. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

He laughed a lot. Was always in such a damned good mood, but being as rich as he was, money probably bought him much of his good humor. If only it were so easy for her.

He canted his head. His kissable lips flattened.

Vaguely, she registered that he’d asked her a question, but she was having a difficult time ordering her thoughts and determining socially acceptable actions. He was so much easier to handle when she didn’t have to hear his voice or look into his eyes. She could be cool and detached in text messages and e-mails. Electronic communication and distance dampened some of his abundant charm. But, with him there in person, she had a hard time forgetting why she’d been telling him
no
for a year.

“Jan?”

Jan. Jan. Jan
. He was the only person to call her that. The only person who cared enough to assign her a nickname, and he was still more or less a stranger. What did that say about her?

She closed her eyes and hoped that would dampen the worst of his magic. There it was. A little pocket of clarity. “I’m sorry. Did you ask me something?”

He laughed a deep, throaty chuckle that always reminded her of rakes and rogues in old black-and-white movies—the kind of sound usually proceeded by the grabbing of some maiden’s wrists and a rough, possessive kiss.

God, she wanted one of those. Her pussy gave an answering clench at the thought. A
year
and she hadn’t let him touch her.

She started again at the sensation of his lips against her ear, and he gripped her waist. “Are you sure you can hear me through the pain? You’re usually a little snappier.”

Bitchier
, he meant.

She nodded and opened her eyes, but kept her gaze firmly below his chin. His neck bore a hint of stubble today. She’d never seen him with stubble, not even when he’d been at the resort for those short vacations. She swallowed hard and took a breath. “Uh, something like that. It’s all right, really. Just scraped. I probably won’t even feel it in an hour. No need to go to the hospital.”