Hostile Takeover Read online

  During the first two years of college, she’d sent him lots of letters. Not just emails. Handwritten letters on scented girly stationery, with clippings from her studies or the college paper to interest or amuse him. At the beginning, when she told him she was going to write him, he’d told her he wasn’t going to become her pen pal. She’d fixated on him in high school, a crush he’d always carefully managed with platonic affection. While she seemed to accept that, she sought his advice on a variety of things, often inappropriate. The guys had teased him about his wary navigation of those treacherous waters, but he’d opened the letters, read each one, and even answered a few.

  Yeah. He’d become her regular damn pen pal.

  She was family, damn it. She was like having an annoying little sister, one he’d taken under his wing. All the kids had needed some one-on-one in the male role-model department, given that Cassandra’s father had bailed years before and Jeremy, the oldest son, had been a drug addict living on the street. When it was obvious Marcie was gravitating toward Ben, Lucas had trusted him to give her that big brotherly protection and guidance while he and the others focused on the rest of the family.

  Honestly, she got under his skin. Her worries and fears, her successes and missteps. Used to being “second Mom” when Cass was working her ass off to take care of all five of them, she was a serious kid, too locked down, one who’d had too many responsibilities thrown on her too early. He knew enough about that to feel a kinship with her right off.

  When her letters and phone calls slowed to a trickle in her junior year, he’d received the infrequent postcards, sometimes a passed-on hello when she talked to Cass on the phone. It was all normal for a girl growing into a woman, of course. She shouldn’t be spending all her time writing to a guy almost a decade older.

  He admitted he missed those letters, the things she talked about with him, no matter how wildly unsuitable some of those past topics might have been. They’d been friends—in the ultra-cautious way that an older man and jailbait could be. He almost snorted at the thought. She wasn’t jailbait now, but God above, he knew trouble when he saw it.

  “Baby intern?” She’d come to his door, was studying him. Jesus, her voice. How had she developed that sultry little purr to tag her syllables? She was…how old was she? Twenty-three. Barely. “You’re still such an asshole. I’m surprised Janet doesn’t smack you down a couple times a day.”

  “She leaves that to Alice. And Alice is out of town.” Ben kept his gaze fastened on her. “When’d you get home?”

  “Couple weeks ago. Hi.” Marcie’s voice softened. There was a touch of shyness to her smile, something he remembered from her teens, but it was also openly glad to see him. “Did you miss me?”

  “Hi yourself.” He realized his voice had become husky, and he cleared it. “Who are you again?”

  She crinkled her nose, stuck her tongue out at him. When she’d done that as a teenager, he definitely hadn’t reacted the way he did now. He watched that tongue go back between her full lips, touching them briefly, an involuntary gesture. Leaning in the doorway, she crossed her arms beneath her ripe breasts, hooking a delicate ankle around the other heel. “Cass told me you needed someone to fill in while Alice was island hopping, so I had her set it up with Matt as a surprise. I’ve heard working for you is like working for Satan, and I figure that’ll look good on a resume. Especially if you give me a glowing reference letter.”

  For some of the thoughts he was having, he was going to get up close and personal with Satan. He needed to stand up, go give her a friendly hug, stop acting like something else was happening in this room, in the way they couldn’t seem to stop looking at one another. She was a kid. Like a little sister.

  She was also apparently tired of waiting on him. Straightening, she moved across the carpet. The heels she wore were pencil thin, four inches and made her legs look ready to wrap around a man’s hips. She still had those solemn, steady brown eyes. Her features had traces of the girl he remembered, but they’d become more refined. Her makeup was applied with a light touch, because with those doe eyes and thick lashes, the cushion of her bottom lip frosted with a light gloss, she didn’t need much. A few wisps of hair strayed over her brow and around her temples, increasing the focus on her face while emphasizing the delicacy of it.

  He realized then why her movements had seemed familiar. They were like Cass’. Lucas’ wife was a top negotiator who could hit a guy broadside with understated female wiles and nerves of steel. She’d move in for the kill so smoothly a man died with a smile on his lips. Her younger sister had obviously inherited some of that, but this was also Marcie, a separate and unique entity with mysteries of her own.

  She had a gymnast’s grace. In high school, she hadn’t had the time to join teams or clubs, but she’d pursued gymnastics on her own, used the school equipment to stay flexible and lean, and he knew she continued that in college. She’d excelled at everything she attempted, studying business principles practically from the time she was in middle school. Majoring in business and minoring in pre-law, she was as brilliant and driven as her sister, who’d been a child prodigy of Pickard Consulting, a negotiation and corporate investigations firm.

  The slim choker she wore caught his attention. The pendant was a crystal disk with a tiny trio of blue flowers pressed under the glass. Forget-me-nots. Something about that niggled at his mind, but the fact there was a lock above the pendant, a small keyhole decorated with scrollwork, was even more distracting. It could be an affectation of course, not a true lock.

  She was coming around the desk, giving him a warm look. Since he hadn’t moved, he saw a flash of uncertainty behind it, something hard to pin down, as if she wasn’t sure a hug would be welcome. Get up, asshole. Say hello, be nice. What the hell’s the matter with you?

  Why wasn’t he getting up? When he’d been younger and more street raw, Matt’s father and then Matt himself had hammered courtesy into him as a mandate, not just as a way to hustle marks. Like Matt’s unbreakable rule about not cursing around women, that and the rest of it had become part of who Ben was somewhere along the way, the instinctive breeding of a Southern male rising above the circumstances of his birth.

  But he was also a Dom with extreme preferences, whose radar was on full alert. Something was keeping him right where he was, studying her with firm, unsmiling lips and a calculated gaze he intended her to see.

  It was a weighted moment, that indefinable quality teetering on a scale between them. When her gaze shifted to the floor between his knees, her lashes lowering, it hit him in the solar plexus. But then her smile became a wry twitch of her lips. Putting her hand on his shoulder, she gracefully squatted and picked up the pen by his polished shoe. Her fingers slid down over his biceps, an exploratory touch. When she placed her palm on the desk to lever herself back up, she caught the edge of his notepad, knocking it off as well.

  “Oops.” With a glance at him beneath those long lashes, she knelt fully to reach farther under the desk. As she did, she reached over his polished shoe, stretching out to retrieve the pad. He got an eyeful of Marcie on her hands and knees before him, her ass turned up, her back that shallow valley that made him imagine caressing the sweet, naked line of it. Her skirt was pulled drum tight over those toned cheeks, the cleft nicely teased. His palm would make a firm smacking sound on it if he gave her a swat for dropping his papers.

  What would it be like to cover her with his body, hold her there on her elbows as he ripped the fragile silk open, her breasts filling his hands so he could squeeze? She’d gasp, rub her ass against his cock, wanting, begging…

  Christ. Okay, if he invoked that name one more time, he was going to have to go to mass or confession, something he hadn’t done well…ever. To be a lapsed Catholic, you had to be a practicing one first, right?

  She’d knocked that pad off deliberately, was doing this deliberately. He wrapped his mind around that as she straightened, turned in the span of his knees to put the note pad on his desk ne
xt to the pen. She took her time, straightening things, making sure they were exactly the way they’d been before she’d disrupted them. Kneeling there, her back to him, she had her hair in range of his fingertips. He could unclip that barrette, bury his fingers in those thick strands, pull her head back to set his teeth to her throat. She smelled the way a candy shop did, so many flavors to sample and explore.

  Now she shifted back toward him, her hands settling on his thighs as if to push herself back to her feet. He was surprised the heat coming off him didn’t burn her fair skin, even through his slacks. Her gaze traveled along his thighs, lingering over his groin, where it was starting to be very obvious he was responding to her. He stifled a growl. She was putting off every signal in the world, challenging him to take over. When she moistened her lips at the size of his reaction, her eyes widening slightly, he almost gave himself away by putting a death grip on the chair arms. Those sultry lashes lifted, her brown eyes meeting his.

  “Something else I can do for you, Mr. O’Callahan?”

  He saw it in her eyes. She wanted to go down on him, wanted to feel his hand fisted in her hair, driving her according to his will. Since she wanted it that bad, he wouldn’t give it to her right away. He’d make her get up, turn around so he could grasp her hips, work her against him in a lap dance then and there, make her show him how much her pretty ass hungered for his cock. And then he’d blister it good, so that he’d wring a few tears out of her before he fucked her right here on his desk.

  Holy fuck. She was teasing him the way a sub did, trying to goad a Dom into action. He had to be mistaken, but the set of her chin said she could get more determined about it, until she’d be outright bratting, blatantly topping. What the hell was going on here?

  He didn’t know, but while one part of him was reeling, the part of him that was sure of this ground, as sure as breathing, steadied and locked like a collar clamping around a pale white throat. He knew this terrain, even if being on it with Marcie was unexpected.

  “What are you doing?” As she rose, he met her eyes squarely.

  “Just helping.” She wasn’t up to that direct stare. But that only made it worse, because what she did wasn’t calculated. She responded the way a natural submissive did when a Dom finally got his shit together and took the reins. She looked down. Back at his desk, straightening the contract unnecessarily, shifting his coffee farther out of the way. Then she stepped back, and she was smiling again, though it was a little forced. As she put that distance between them, she shrugged, tossed back her hair.

  He’d seen that look before, usually when she’d been figuring her way through the difficulties that had been their home life until Lucas and Cass had gotten together and moved things in a better direction, with the K&A men becoming their extended family to help out.

  “Hey, why don’t you let me take you to dinner tonight?” She held that smile, probably trying to pretend that whatever she’d been trying to pull hadn’t taken an unexpected turn for her as well. Her cheeks had a light flush. “You can bring me up to speed on the things you need me to do, and I can tell you all about my co-ops in the Big Apple and Europe. Don’t say no, because I’ve never paid you back for that trouble you bailed me out of in college. It can be an adult thank-you for helping me out when I was a kid.”

  “You’re still a kid.”

  That smile disappeared. He was getting an overwhelming compulsion to lick at that frosted color, see if it tasted sweet. As her brown eyes became more thoughtful, she leaned in, reaching out to touch his face. He caught her wrist, holding her there.

  “Don’t.”

  She blinked at him. Her fingers closed, touching his knuckles in a light caress. “I’m not a kid anymore, Ben. Will you let me take you to dinner?”

  “To catch up.”

  “Among other things.”

  “No,” he decided. She reacted with a brief flash of hurt, which quickly disappeared behind an unfathomable expression. He needed to make this right, put it on the proper footing. She was still Marcie. He needed to talk to her about this kind of behavior. If she used it on the wrong guy…well, it wouldn’t be good for a lawyer to have a murder rap hanging over his head.

  “I’ll take you to dinner. Old family friends don’t pick up the tab.” He managed a charming smile he hoped didn’t look like a big bad wolf salivating. “Pretty girls especially don’t have to pay.”

  “Not with money.” She slipped his hold with a devilish grin and a little sass to her walk as she headed back to the door, contract in hand. It was as if that hurt look had never existed, but he knew better. Whatever Marcie had been trying to do, she wasn’t the duplicitous kind when it came to emotions. “I better get back to work,” she added, throwing him a look, the blonde hair spilling over her shoulder. “My boss might paddle my ass if I don’t get this contract over to Senecorp this morning. At least a girl can dream he might. Oh and Matt said he wanted to meet with you about fifteen minutes before Johnson arrives. I’ve pulled the file and the notes you’ll need.”

  “Marcie—” He was going to give her a piece of his mind and then some, but of course Peter buzzed him. By the time he’d glanced toward the phone and debated whether to answer, she’d grabbed up some other folders on the desk and was gone, moving with breezy energy on those thin heels.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so outmaneuvered, taken by surprise, flat out punched in the gut. By a freaking kid, a twenty-three-year-old baby. He had about a hundred things to wrap his mind around from that little interchange, but there was one thing his aching hard-on was telling him, loud and clear.

  That’s no baby, buddy. She’s a freaking natural submissive, hungering for a Master.

  What the hell had happened to Marcie? Did she know she’d just thrown down a gauntlet to an experienced Dom, daring him to pick it up?

  He was afraid she sure as hell did.

  I’m really glad to be here, very grateful, but sometimes—don’t tell Cass and Lucas—I feel so isolated. A lot of these kids came straight from high school, from lives where they didn’t have a lot of responsibility. They talk about being on the basketball team, in clubs, with loads of friends they miss, because they hung out together so much. I miss my siblings. It’s crazy. I miss taking care of them, feeling like they’re counting on me to look after them, even though I remember days when I had to step outside the kitchen and scream, pull at my hair, because it became too much. Sometimes I think I should have gone to a community college with single moms, or adult students, where the intention is to learn, not to party or be on my own for the first time. I don’t really know what this kind of freedom is supposed to feel like, Ben. If it’s supposed to feel good or bad. Or how to even handle it.

  Letter from Marcie to Ben, freshman year

  Chapter Two

  Marcie bolted for the fire stairwell, avoiding the elevator. Once she was three floors down, she stopped in the echoing stillness of concrete and metal. Leaning against the rail, she put her hand on her stomach, calming the butterflies. She’d done it. She’d fired the first shot, and she was pretty sure she’d scored a direct hit. Oh God, she was so over her head.

  That was the only toe-to-toe volley she’d get, she knew it. She had to come at him from a more unexpected angle next time, keep him off balance. Once Ben O’Callahan rallied, he’d either rebuff her like an impenetrable fortress or… Her cheeks heated at that loaded or.

  Don’t tease the wild animal. Isn’t that what they posted at the zoos? Kneeling between his thighs, she’d seen up close what she was poking with a stick, had felt the heat coming off him. She’d heard the rumors about his size, but if that was a partial erection, there were monsters in Japan who would run screaming.

  It gave her a half chuckle, which helped calm her down some. Age wasn’t a factor in negotiation, unless you used it to your advantage. Cass had told her that. It was all about confidence, will, commitment, being prepared. More prepared than anyone else, one step ahead.

  Only that
was the irony. She didn’t want to be one step ahead. Her goal was to be a step behind. Following a Master, following his lead, serving his desires, no matter how extreme they were. Following Ben.

  So while she was experiencing a somewhat hysterical form of exultation at what she’d just accomplished, making him see her as a submissive, even if only for a second, she also had a wrong sort of coil in her belly. She was approaching the problem from the only direction that would work right now, but it didn’t mesh with who she really was or wanted to be. This was a means to an end, that was all.

  She couldn’t deny the forces at work seemed to know what they were doing. Right before she’d stepped into his office, she hadn’t been sure what the hell she was going to do, but when she saw him, something else had taken over, guiding her into that crazy maneuver with the pen and pad.

  A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, as the song said. Before she could serve him, she had to push him past any reservations about wanting her. The whole “kid” thing. Touching the pendant at her throat, her fingers glided over the words engraved on the flat back. She knew what she knew. She wouldn’t start doubting herself now, no matter how scared she was of opening a tiger’s cage and stepping back to see what would happen. She could handle herself. She would. The stakes were too important.

  * * * * *

  Ben sat back in his chair, the contract forgotten, his coffee cooling. That trouble in college… Well, he’d been kind of obligated to help, hadn’t he? Since he was the reason she’d needed bail.