A Hot Mess Read online

  Mr. Dreamy offered me a knee-weakening smile. "You look about as miserable to be here as I am." His words were accented with a French bend, and yeah, my libido took notice.

  I had a thing for men with accents. Sue me.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but all I managed was a pathetic squeak.

  His grin growing, he extended a hand toward me. "Théo Roux, senior publicist for Dubois Fashions."

  Mr. Dreamy worked for Giselle?

  From one heartbeat to the next, he plummeted several rungs on the Attractiveness Ladder.

  I moved my wineglass to my opposite hand, wiped the condensation from my palm, and took his outstretched hand. "Breanne Jennings, manager of—"

  "Red Light Lingerie, a subsidiary of Whitecliff International, owned by the formidable, worldwide powerhouse Maxwell Penn. Yes, ma chère, I know who you are. There isn't a designer here who isn't falling all over themselves to get Mr. Penn to back their next line."

  "Including your boss?" My words sounded as if I'd chewed them up and spit them out.

  "Guilty as charged, ma chère." His smile never faltered. At least, he was honest. "But as of the moment I walked over here, I'm officially off the clock."

  Yeah. Sure, he was.

  "So, you just came over here to talk to me, someone who has Mr. Penn's ear?" I didn't believe that for one second.

  "But of course, I came to talk, ma chère, but not about business. I was hoping to see if you'd like to accompany me somewhere a little more private."

  Alarm bells sounded in my mind. Okay, scratch what I'd thought about him being honest. Giselle had sent him to lure me away from Max; I had no doubt about it.

  "Private where?" I asked.

  "Relax, ma chère. You look like you think I'm about to drag you into the woods and murder you."

  He might not have murder on his mind, but he had an ulterior motive all right.

  Max's arrival kept me from having to invent an excuse as to why I wouldn't be leaving with Théo, and I was extremely grateful. Max stepped close to me, as close as humanly possible without us physically touching, and became a barrier between myself and Théo.

  "Théo." Max's voice showed about as much compassion as a lion staring down another predator.

  "Hello, Maxwell. It's wonderful to see you again."

  "What the fuck are you doing here?" Accusation laced every syllable of Max's words.

  Théo motioned to me. "Actually, this lovely woman and I were about to indulge in a nightcap." Théo turned to me. "Weren't we, ma chère?"

  We most certainly were not.

  But before I could get the words out, Max leveled me with a glacial stare, and I completely froze in the iciness. Oh, god, did he think I'd agreed to go to the bar with Théo? Surely not, but something in his eyes bordered on panic. At least, I thought it was panic—possibly panic mixed with a healthy dose of anger. Whatever it was, Théo had rattled Max.

  In the end, all I managed was a quick shake of the head.

  Max turned back to Théo as abruptly as he'd turned to me. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but Ms. Jennings will not be going with you. Not now, not ever. Do I make myself crystal fucking clear?"

  "The lovely Ms. Jennings is a big girl, Maxwell. Surely, she is capable of making her own decisions."

  "Yes, she is," I interjected. "And she will be leaving with her boss. Mr. Penn and I have a prior engagement. Don't we?"

  For a long moment, Max didn't move. He stared at Théo as if unwilling to take his eyes off someone he'd designated a threat. It was the same sensation I'd had when looking at Giselle. These two were working an angle, and Max and I needed to figure it out.

  Giselle had gotten to Max.

  Théo had gotten to Max, too.

  That was twice in one evening.

  And sure, they'd gotten to me, but that was no big deal. But to get to Max, that was something altogether different. I needed to get him alone, and we needed to hash this out.

  I placed my hand gently on Max's elbow and whispered, "Let's go."

  My lover stood steadfast another moment, and when he spoke to Théo again, his voice held a menacing quality. "I will tolerate Giselle here if it's in my business interest, but not you. I want you out. Tonight. If I see you in my hotel or anywhere near me again, I can't be held responsible for what I might do to you."

  I stared at Max, my jaw somewhere on the floor. The threat in his words was unmistakable. If these two ever found themselves in the same room again, I feared one of them wouldn't walk out alive.

  Max and I didn't speak until we were in his Jaguar and flying along the interstate toward his house. His fingers clenched around the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles had turned a sickly shade of white. We needed to talk about what had happened at the hotel, but I wasn't sure where to start. Or how.

  "Just so you know," I began hesitantly, "I never agreed to have a drink with Théo. He lied about me saying yes. I'd never do that to you, Max. Ever. Actually, I think he and Giselle are—"

  "You are mine," Max said on a growl. "No one else's. Got that."

  I bristled at his words. Knowing my own feelings on the subject was one thing, but having those feelings directed back at me as an order was not something I was okay with. He needed to know that.

  "I'm not property, Max. I'm not something you own, no matter how much money you have. I'm not for sale. I hope you know that."

  "Goddamn it, Bree! Of course, I know that! I know you." He jerked the steering wheel to the right, and the vehicle slid from behind one semi and barely missed clipping the one in the lane we now occupied.

  I grabbed onto the door and braced myself. "Good. Now that that's settled, how about you take a breath and slow down before you slam us into a telephone pole or something."

  Max hit the brakes and swerved into the parking lot of what looked to be one of the abandoned warehouses at the edge of town. The tires squealed as if Max were a NASCAR driver. With a quick flick of his right hand, he put the car into park and turned to me, face furious, and yanked me in for a hard, brutal kiss that had me melting into him faster than he'd pulled into the lot.

  Instant submission.

  God, he'd trained my body so well.

  The click of a seatbelt drew my attention seconds before Max dragged me across the center console and into his lap. He had a hand between my legs and inside my panties before I could get my head around his actions or conjure any reason—any at all—why this might be a bad idea.

  When Max kissed me, I did well to remember my name.

  "You are mine," he said, his words muffled by my mouth. "This is mine, too." He pressed his cupped hand harder against my sex. "All of you belongs to me. Got that?"

  "Max, I—"

  "Tell me you're mine," he demanded. "Tell me no other man will have access to your body unless we both agree."

  Realization hit me as hard as my lust. The root of Max's anger, his possessiveness, probably even the panic he'd shown with Théo, I suddenly realized where they came from. His first wife, Gina, had been a serial adulteress, and she'd rocked his trust. Until tonight, I'd always assumed Gina had been the root of Max's trust issues, but after seeing the way he'd reacted to Giselle and Théo, I feared Max's insecurity went back much further than Gina. Were Giselle and Théo the cause? Or did it go back even further?

  Given the fact Max didn't talk about his past gave the possibility high odds. Did Giselle know about Max's mysterious past? Was she using this knowledge in her plan of attack? I gave the idea good, solid odds. I hated that she knew more about Max than I did, but that was a problem for another day. Right now, I had a much bigger problem to rectify.

  I placed my hands on either side of Max's handsome face. I needed to reassure him of my feelings. That was what his outburst was about, after all. He wasn't demanding my affection; he was desperate for reassurance about my affection.

  I chose my next words carefully. "There's no one else for me, Max. No one. It's been you for years, and it's still you. It's always
you. Always." I sealed my words with a kiss.

  Max pulled back. "I want to hear you say you're mine. Mine."

  Before I could respond, he eased two fingers deep inside my sex and sent a sigh filtering through me, followed by a full-body shudder. My Max, my Dom, took immediate advantage of my submission and added his thumb into the mix, awkwardly stroking my clit as he fingered me.

  "Say it, Bree."

  He worked me faster, harder, building me toward climax in the precise method he'd perfected over the months. He worked me into a frenzy in precisely the way he knew I liked. He was fighting dirty, and damn it, I wanted it.

  I shouldn't.

  But, god, I did.

  "Max, there's n-no one but you. Ever. I swear." I let my knees fall as wide as our precarious position allowed. Goosebumps spread over my skin as the familiar pre-orgasmic muscle contraction seized me. Everything in my body was drawing in on itself. "I'm yours, Max. Unquestionably. And you're mine."

  "And I'm yours." The left side of his mouth curled up, and he fingered me faster, harder, pushing me screaming over the edge, giving me the orgasm he'd expertly primed me for.

  I didn't leave the shelter of Max's arms for the rest of the night. When we arrived at his house, we went straight to bed. No Dom/sub scenes played out between us. No conversation. Hell, there wasn't even sex, not in its usual definition anyway. Max simply held me as the hours slipped away, skin to skin, his cock buried inside me. He held me as if, by gripping me tightly enough, he could keep me from ever getting away.

  I shook my head and smiled as I stepped into Max's kitchen. His longtime housekeeper, Patricia Higgins, was busy setting out my traditional weekend breakfast of ham and egg on a toasted whole wheat English muffin. A travel mug of coffee, no doubt dressed exactly as I liked it, sat in its usual spot at the right of my plate. A small bowl of fresh fruit sat to the left.

  Every morning I stayed over, without fail, she'd make me breakfast. If today had been a workout morning, she'd have had my food packed to go, my favorite pre-workout bar sitting atop for easy access. Max might be used to this treatment, but I wasn't. Not by a long shot.

  I placed my overweight cat, Tabby, on the ground and moved in to hug the other woman. "You don't have to keep doing this, Tricia," I said, for what felt like the millionth time. "You're spoiling me."

  As always, she waved me off. "It's my pleasure, dearie. Besides, a girl can always use some good spoiling in her life."

  "I agree." Max pressed a kiss to the top of my head before taking the barstool in front of his own meal.

  I left Tricia to her work and turned my hugging on Max. While I stood behind him, I kissed the side of his neck. "You spoil me, too, Mr. Penn. I fear you're creating a monster."

  "I consider myself duly warned, my sweet, but if you're expecting me to stop spoiling you, you might be disappointed."

  I laughed and kissed his neck one more time before settling on the barstool beside him.

  Considering how much of a problem Max had sharing information about his past, he didn't seem to have any qualms sharing his luxurious lifestyle with me. When I'd mentioned not having anything to wear to Boudoir Fashion Week, at least not anything that wouldn't make me feel like a demure bag of bones, he'd gone all Pretty Woman and bought me a new outfit for each day of festivities, jewelry, shoes, the whole nine.

  He'd opened his house to me and my cat. Whenever I slept over, Tabby did, too. She even had her own "cat castle" in one of Max's unused rooms. Hell, Max didn't even seem to mind that she'd decided his bed was her bed.

  Max dug into his breakfast, black coffee and a large bowl of steel cut oats piled high with fresh strawberries, blueberries, bananas, hemp seeds, maple syrup and cinnamon. The portion had grown since I'd become a regular houseguest, as I usually helped Max finish by stealing a bite—or ten—and Mrs. Higgins had compensated.

  God bless that woman!

  Max and I ate in companionable silence, which wasn't unusual. When it came to business or sex, the man could speak for days, but as I'd slowly begun to accept, he wasn't big on chitchat. Oh, he'd talk to me if I initiated conversation, and even then, our conversations never felt forced. Today, however, I had a specific topic I wanted to bring up, and I was dreading it like a colonoscopy prep.

  When Tricia had cleaned up from breakfast and excused herself to begin her daily cleaning routine, I decided the time was as good as any to bring up a topic I knew he'd hate.

  Giselle Fucking Dubois and Théo I'm-Too-Sexy-For-This-Hotel Roux.

  "Max," I began, "about last night with Théo, I think he and—"

  "I don't want to talk about that snake."

  Max dropped his spoon and pushed his nearly finished bowl away, as done with breakfast as he was with this conversation. Well, that was tough; I wasn't finished.

  "I know you don't want to talk about him," I said, "and I get that. Trust me, I don't want to talk about him, either. It's actually him and Giselle I want to talk about."

  "I don't want to talk about her, either."

  Big surprise.

  "Max, love, look at me." I gripped his forearm with both hands, holding tight and not relenting until he finally turned to me. "You don't like talking about your past. I get that. There're ghosts there you don't want me to know about or that hurt you too much. I get that, too, but I don't think we have a choice." I took a deep breath. "Is there something from your past that she knows about, something she could use against you?"

  His eyebrows drew together. "Use against me?"

  "I just find it weird they both show up on the same day and upset you so easily, and let's face it, you're not a man known for letting people get under your skin. There's some serious bad blood between y'all. What is it? If I know, we might be able to predict their next move."

  "Do you think they know about us?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "Could be. Or maybe she just suspected and then sent Théo over to flirt with me to gauge your reaction. Or maybe she knew and just sent Théo to flirt with me, knowing it would rattle you. It's hard for me to make any sort of educated guess until you tell me what happened between y'all."

  He said nothing.

  "What does she know from your past that she might be able to leverage against you? There must be something. They wouldn't have gotten so under your skin if there wasn't some massive history there. Tell me what it is."

  His curiosity piqued, he asked, "Leverage against me? Like… blackmail?"

  "Maybe. Possibly." I took a deep breath, preparing myself for a line of questioning I knew Max wouldn't like. "Does Giselle or Théo know how Gina's death affected you? Do they know something about your childhood that might—"

  "They know nothing about my father!" His words erupted on a harsh tone, and I instantly recoiled.

  I hadn't mentioned his father, but the way he'd exploded spoke volumes. Max had once told me he didn't want to "be like his father,” and when he'd said it, venom had saturated every word, kind of like now. Whatever had gone down between them was heady, and heady things were the perfect fodder for blackmail.

  Max's single outburst was the sum of what I knew about his childhood. Over the months, I'd tried to piece together the puzzle of his past, but it was like trying to assemble a puzzle without a picture and where all the pieces fit together whether assembled correctly or not. If Giselle or Théo knew any little bit of that puzzle, I had no doubt they'd find a way to use it against Max.

  "Are you positive they don't know anything?" I asked hesitantly. I didn't want him turning his rage on me. I'd been on the receiving end of one Max lash out, and sure, he'd dropped to his knees and immediately apologized. The damage, however, had been done. I wasn't itching for a repeat.

  He didn't answer.

  "Max, please," I implored. "Talk to me. If I knew what happened between you and your father, we could talk this out. We might be able to predict what they're planning."

  "Drop it, Bree. My relationship with my father was complicated. I may have talked about it in a
roundabout way with Giselle, but I assure you, I gave no details. I never would have. Trust me; there's no way she knows anything she could use against me. That's not what this is about."

  His words were cold. He was a man on the edge. If I were smart, I'd heed the warning his body was telecasting.

  Was complicated?

  No way she knew anything she could use against him?

  That's not what this's about?

  Why was it, the more I learned about his past, the less detailed the picture in my head became? His past was a fucking Pollock-Picasso hybrid, a muted canvass with a complex structure underlying an intricate web of inconsistencies and secrecies.

  "Then what is this all about, Mr. Penn? As it seems you know everything, and I'm just the hired help. Yes, sir. No, sir. Would you like some more coffee, sir?"

  "Bree, stop it. It's not like that." He reached for me, but I pushed from my seat and sidestepped his grasp.

  "Then, what is it like, Max? I love being with you. You know that, but I'm getting tired of having a relationship with twelve percent of you?"

  "You have much more than twelve percent of me. So goddamn much more." He pushed to his feet, and this time, he was faster than I. Gathering me tight against him, he lifted me and set me on the bar. We were eye to eye, his Texas-sky-blues piercing into me. "I've confided more in you than I have anyone, save for Garrett and Karen."

  Considering I knew practically nothing about the man, I found his statement a bit hard to believe, but I nodded. I'd exchange all his pampering to have all of him to myself.

  "You say I know you more than any other woman, and that may be true. But is what we've shared enough to sustain an entire future?" Because, that was what I wanted.

  "Yes." He pressed his lips to mine and kissed me until I was dizzy. "You have the best of me, Bree. You are the best of me. Fuck the past. Everyone has secrets. Our future is the only thing I care about, and I'll protect that, protect you, until my dying breath."

  I instantly deflated. Conviction played in his words, and he almost had me believing everything would work itself out somehow. Besides, could I truly be mad at him for not sharing his past when I couldn't share mine?