The Greatest Risk Read online

  A close relative.

  Uncle at least.

  Or father.

  The man was holding himself awkwardly, like he wanted to go in for a handshake, or even a hug, but Stellan’s body language and facial expression were not only not inviting that, they were actively warning against it.

  And then Stellan shifted, turning his back on Sixx.

  That was when Sixx saw her.

  A woman sitting at the table facing them, her eyes lifted, trained on Stellan, a look of astonishment and something else suffusing her features.

  She was blonde. Very beautiful. Put together perfectly from head to waist, which was as far as Sixx could see, but that meant it went down further. Perfect hair. Perfect makeup. Perfect accessories. Perfect blouse. And all that perfect was the best money could buy.

  She was either a professional stylist, a model or had a professional stylist because she was a model. She looked like she’d walked right off the location of a photo shoot to come have lunch.

  She also looked like she wanted to eat every inch of Stellan up with a spoon.

  Sixx’s heart started tripping even faster.

  And then it happened.

  The blonde beauty’s mouth went slack, and the fissure of tension splintering through the dining room split wide open.

  Sixx stopped messing around with the mirror and turned on her stool to watch it in full view.

  Scanning the scene with skilled attention, thus taking it all in within seconds, Sixx saw the older man now looked infuriated, his face flushed, his brows snapped taut, his slightly jowly jaw having tightened up.

  The blonde appeared wounded.

  And Stellan looked done.

  He proved her assessment correct by turning on his expensive shoe and sauntering away.

  Sixx watched him go, all the way out the door, noting that he no longer looked murderous.

  He looked his usual.

  Aloof.

  What he’d come there to do, he’d done.

  And now he was moving on.

  She turned her attention back to the couple, and that was when she spotted the huge rock on the blonde’s left ring finger. Massive. Ostentatious.

  Sixx could see it now because the woman’s hands were covering her face like she was hiding tears.

  The older man sat and leaned immediately to her, putting a hand on her back to soothe her. Not in a fatherly way.

  In a loverly way.

  If Sixx had to call it, that man had to be at least in his sixties, the blonde in her twenties.

  Sixx looked to the door to the restaurant Stellan had just disappeared through for a fleeting instant before she turned to her bag.

  She pulled out her slim-line laptop and got the attention of the bartender.

  When he jerked up his chin, she asked, “Do you have Wi-Fi?”

  He nodded. “Password is BookerTMG. The ‘TMG’ in caps.”

  Well, whoever thought that up had good taste in music.

  She thanked him, opened the laptop, started it up, hooked into the Wi-Fi, and as she sipped Pellegrino then, when it arrived, ate her filet and frigging pommes frites, it didn’t take long for her to find it.

  Andreas Lange, multimillionaire hotelier, father of multimillionaire developer Stellan Lange, had just last week announced his engagement to the woman who would become his fifth wife, Priscilla Newton.

  Andreas Lange was sixty-nine years old.

  Priscilla Newton was twenty-two.

  Sixx didn’t dig any deeper because she wasn’t on the job then, but she was on a job, and she needed to eat and get back to business.

  It wouldn’t be until she was bone-weary but unable to sleep in her hotel room late that night (or more aptly, very early the next morning) that she’d go back to her laptop.

  It didn’t take long before she wished she hadn’t.

  She snapped the laptop closed and looked out the window across the night landscape of the purposefully-built-to-impress-and-intimidate capital of the nation.

  “This is why I never do a deep dive into people I know,” she told the window.

  She said it, but her heart was far heavier than it should have been, or than she’d want it to be after doing a deep dive and discovering all she’d discovered about Stellan.

  Sixx left her laptop to slide between the sheets (in a hotel, incidentally, that Andreas Lange owned, which meant she’d be moving to another one the next day), but she did not go to sleep.

  She stared at the dark ceiling and did it until it lit with dawn, pissed as hell that Aryas had been right.

  Everyone has demons.

  Including Stellan Lange.

  But not everyone knew the name of their demon.

  But Stellan did.

  Just like Sixx knew the name of every single one of hers.

  Six months later …

  Sixx was sucking in breath to handle the pain, driving, and hoping with everything she had she could make it to the doc Carlo had told her he had waiting for her without passing out when her phone rang.

  When she saw in the dash who was calling, not thinking straight, she hit the button on the steering wheel to take the call.

  “You’ve got impeccable timing,” she said into the car, hearing that her voice sounded strung tight and hoping the caller wouldn’t hear it too.

  “How’s that?” Aryas asked.

  Just that, if I’m going to die, the last voice I want to hear is yours, she thought.

  “I’m dead tired but completely unable to stop myself answering when you call,” she answered, and all of that was true, she’d just left some things out.

  Like a couple of fresh bullet wounds.

  God, if she lived, it was going to be hell getting the blood out of the cognac leather of her beloved Cayenne.

  Though, right then, that was the least of her worries.

  “Just thought you’d want to know, that stallion I approved for Leigh…” He made her wait for it, but not long. “That shit took. He’s the one, and if I’m not sittin’ in a pew watching them walk down the aisle in twelve months or less, I’ll let you spank me,” Aryas told her.

  At these words, but not entirely because of them, Sixx swerved, righted the car, and drew in another deep breath that wasn’t exactly cutting it to dull the pain.

  When she didn’t answer, Aryas said, “So, what I’m sayin’ is, clear shot for you.”

  “How’d Stellan take it?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t usually Oprah it up with me,” Aryas answered.

  Focusing on the conversation as well as the road, both doing wonders with keeping her conscious, she returned, “Come on. You’ve got your finger on every pulse of every player in every club you own. How’d he take it?”

  “He’s not speaking with Leigh right now.”

  Translation: He’d failed to make a play. Screwed the pooch.

  Now he was licking his wounds.

  God, but she’d love to lick Stellan Lange’s wounds.

  Kiss all his hurts away.

  Including the ones she laid on him with him begging her for more.

  “You know I want all my babies happy, Sixx. Come home. Get some happy and give some to my boy,” Aryas urged. “Stellan is due, and it goes without saying you are too.”

  Damn, it was starting to snow.

  Just what she needed.

  Driving, listening, talking, watching it come down, and trying to stay lucid, Sixx realized how much she hated snow.

  Phoenix didn’t have snow.

  “Sixx?” Aryas called.

  “I’m here but I gotta go.”

  “You cool?” he asked.

  “Peachy,” she lied.

  There was silence before, far more alertly, she got, “Sixx, are you cool?”

  “Awesome,” she puffed out as an unexpected wave of pain hit her when she made a right turn and the movement didn’t suit her gunshot wounds too much.

  “What the fuck is going down?” Aryas rapped out.

  “It’s sno
wing,” she said.

  “Yeah?” he prompted.

  “And I’m driving,” she told him.

  “All right,” he replied.

  “So I’ve got to concentrate,” she pointed out.

  He returned that favor, sharing out loud her earlier thought. “It doesn’t snow in Phoenix.”

  Right then, Sixx made a decision.

  That was, she made a decision if she lived to carry it through.

  But mostly, she made the decision because she was realizing acutely in that moment that life was short.

  Even so, that decision had conditions.

  “You don’t interfere,” she stated.

  “Say what?” Aryas asked.

  “I’m coming home.”

  “Brilliant,” he muttered, a lightness in his deep voice she hadn’t heard since before she left, and they didn’t talk all the time, but they talked frequently.

  Or it was more like Aryas checked in frequently. Sixx wasn’t one to stay in contact or give much away.

  Ever.

  “And you don’t interfere,” she demanded. “It happens naturally with Stellan if it happens at all without you sticking your big nose in it.”

  “I do not have a big nose,” he huffed. Though he was pretending to sound hurt, even in her state she couldn’t miss he was pleased.

  “Now let me go so I don’t crash this vehicle and end up in a body cast, not on my way to finishing this job and heading to the Valley of the Sun.”

  “The job going okay?”

  Hell no.

  “It’s almost done,” she answered.

  And that was no lie.

  “Then I’m letting you go,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “Sixx?”

  “What?” she demanded impatiently, beginning to blink too much and knowing from past experience that wasn’t good.

  Maybe she should keep him on the line.

  “I love everything about you. I’d break my back, sell my soul, work my fingers to the bone for you. And if you want me not to interfere, I’ll do that too. But if you start fucking shit up, I’m in the game. Now finish this fucking job and come home. We miss you.”

  The call dropped before she could say a word.

  But it was good Aryas got his words in.

  They kept her going until she was safe.

  Then, dragging herself through the back door of a clinic that through the powers of Carlo had been opened specifically for her, it was lights out.

  one

  Let’s Go

  SIXX

  Present day …

  Sixx wandered the halls of the Bee’s Honey for absolutely no purpose except to make the boys in the booth watching the cameras that monitored the action in the club think she was taking in the scene.

  Instead, she was biding time to go into the Dom Lounge to get what she’d stashed in her locker.

  She was over it.

  Over the scene.

  Over the wait.

  Done.

  The Honey had now become a place she could hang and have a drink, connect with some friends if she was in the mood, get some of her kink by watching, and torture herself being around Stellan.

  It was also where she stashed something if she had it to stash. This was because the Honey had surveillance and security that rivaled that of the White House. If a person wasn’t supposed to be there, they didn’t get in there. The end.

  She’d been back in Phoenix now for a while.

  Months.

  And although she’d put on a variety of shows, bided her time, put herself out there, made herself available, Stellan hadn’t thrown down the gauntlet.

  She sure as hell wasn’t making the first move.

  Thus that first move wasn’t going to be made.

  So be it.

  She hadn’t expected much and she sure got that.

  And she had to admit, part of her was relieved (a large part).

  Because if he took a shot, what then?

  Could she protect him from all that was her?

  Doubtful.

  More like impossible.

  She never had with anyone who mattered, not that she’d had many in her life who mattered.

  And Stellan absolutely did not deserve to have to deal with all that could befall anyone who got close to Sixx.

  Tonight was different, though.

  Tonight, she wanted done with the extracurricular activity she was engaged in.

  Also tonight she roamed the halls knowing Stellan was there, he’d taken a room, and he’d gone off his normal modus operandi.

  He’d selected a female sub.

  He’d also selected a male.

  If in a mood, though that mood was always rare, he’d pick more than one sub.

  But they were always females.

  Sixx had a feeling she knew why he’d done this. She had Google alerts set up, and she’d seen it.

  That it being that it was announced to the media that day that the two-and-a-half-month marriage of Andreas Lange and his pretty-much-child bride Priscilla was done. Although the press was asked to leave the couple alone in this trying time, it was nevertheless reported that Andreas might often think with his dick and had apparent self-esteem issues that drove him to having a pretty young thing dripping off his arm, but when it counted, he used his other head. The one with an actual brain in it.

  In other words, he had a reported ironclad prenuptial agreement, and the soon-to-be-again Ms. Newton would walk away with the engagement ring he gave her, any gifts she’d acquired during their relationship and nothing else.

  Nothing else.

  Not even a settlement.

  She was young, and Sixx knew that young didn’t make you stupid, it just made you young, naïve, and perhaps with the beauty that girl had, overconfident. Thus she probably thought her golden looks mingled with a twenty-two-year-old pussy would buy her a lot more time to get a lot more gifts.

  Sadly, she’d been wrong.

  Sixx could not know how this news affected Stellan. Although they had exchanged a variety of words since she’d been home, they’d both been at a few get-togethers where he didn’t avoid her, but he didn’t pursue her, they’d caught each other’s eyes on a number of occasions; and she’d noted him watching her work with her submissives, as he’d noted her doing the same with his, they had not even resurrected the loose but friendly relationship they’d had before she’d left.

  She put it down to him still smarting from Leigh’s falling in love with another man.

  That said, even if Leigh had, it appeared that not much had changed between Stellan and Amélie. Although chilly between them when Sixx got back, that had thawed, and they were as sociable and close as they ever had been. And it was clear Stellan liked Olly, Amélie’s enormous, gorgeous stallion.

  Then again, everyone liked Olly. It was impossible not to like the guy. He was just that guy who had it all and not simply the fact he was so easy to look at.

  He adored Leigh, for one. Utterly. And he did not hide it in the slightest.

  But he was outgoing, funny, solid. If you were moving house and you needed an extra pair of hands, he was there. If you had a nephew (or niece) who wanted to be a firefighter (which Olly was), he’d take the kid through his station and introduce him to all the guys. If you were at a cookout with him and running low on your drink, you found your glass slid out of your hand and another one put in it without even having to ask.

  Even Stellan, wanting Amélie for as long as he did, couldn’t dislike the guy.

  So they’d become friends.

  And Sixx had watched.

  That was one of the two things she’d done since being back.

  In a halfhearted attempt to get his attention (and keep Aryas off her back), she played.

  And she watched.

  Which was what she was on a mission to do now before she hit the Dom Lounge to prepare to complete her other mission.

  As she wandered, Sixx didn’t spend time watching Mira and
Trey in their room.

  It was tough watching Mira work now that she had a sub and they were together together. In other words, in love. Mira was good at what she did, and Trey liked what his Mistress gave him, but that look of adoration on her face while she was doing it …

  Sixx just couldn’t deal with it.

  This was also why she avoided Leigh and Olly when they were at play (and more recently, also when they weren’t because the connection they had between them just didn’t stop).

  Right then they weren’t in a playroom. They were still in the bar, holding court, The Stallion Alpha Sub King and his Dominatrix Queen, as usual reigning supreme over the club and enjoying it before they moved to a room to enjoy each other.

  They were actually worse to watch than Trey and Mira, they were so beautiful together. They were like watching dancers, so perfectly in sync, expressive, at one with each other and their own bodies. The sequence practiced, even if it was always different, it was so graceful it was sublime.

  Putting this out of her mind, Sixx moved on her black platform pumps to the back hall full of playrooms, noting, and not surprised, that Aryas’s red room was shuttered away from view. The blackout blinds to that room were scarlet, not black like all the others, thus its name.

  It was his own personal playroom if he was in town. And he was. And he had one of his babies in there, working her.

  Sixx didn’t need to watch that, although she would have. She’d not only seen Aryas at play, he’d worked her because he’d trained her. He showed her how to be who she was. He introduced her to other Dommes to teach her the things he could not. And he’d played with her in his sessions in which she was required to sub so she could understand the headspace her own subs had to get in to serve her.

  She had been surprised she’d liked it.

  She’d been freaked she’d liked it so much.

  Too much.

  Aryas had handled that too for her—amazingly. Which meant he’d helped her handle it.

  And then she’d locked it away.

  However as she bypassed his room, she felt her lips thin that he was back there with one of his babies and not with the woman he should be with.

  At first when Sixx arrived back in Phoenix, he’d let things lie.

  Now that months had passed, he was getting up in her face about making a move on Stellan.

  Fortunately, she was able to fight back since he wouldn’t make a move on Mistress Talia.