Free For His Keeping (For His Pleasure, Book 3) by Kelly Favor Page A

Even thinking about it got her wet, and right now she was only wearing a hotel bathrobe. Nothing at all underneath. “Last night wasn’t boring,” she said, smiling and avoiding his gaze. “What I meant was that maybe after some years, it could get repetitive. There has to be more to life, don’t you think?”
    He put his cup down and looked at her. “Of course there’s more to life. That’s why I have you.”
    She smiled again, but shook her head. “No, that’s not what I mean either.”
    “Well, then, what exactly are we talking about?”
    Finally Nicole met his eyes. “I mean a family.”
    Red nodded, considering the question for a while. Nicole started to wonder if she was scaring him off. They’d never ever discussed the idea of children, and this was probably a bad time to bring up the subject. “I want to have a family some day,” he said.
    “I never really thought much about it until you came into my life. I never really had an answer in my mind until this very moment, sitting and looking at my beautiful fiancé.”
    “I don’t want you to do it just for me,” she said.
    “It wouldn’t be,” he said. “But I’d never met anyone that made me think I wanted to have children until you came along. I know you’d be a loving, kind mother. You’re gentle and sweet, and I think I’d like to see a little girl version of you running around our house.” He smiled.
    Nicole’s heart was beating faster. “I’m not saying we have to do it anytime soon.”
    “I wouldn’t mind trying right now,” he said, his eyes hungry as he looked her up and down.
    “Red,” she giggled.
    And then they heard someone on the Internet radio show mention “Red Jameson’s free falling company.” Both of them fell silent.
    “You know every day,” the radio announcer said, “I like to talk a little bit about stocks that are going to have a lot of action. Sometimes it’s because they’re announcing positive earnings, or it could be a piece of street gossip.”
    Red glared at his laptop. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
    “In this case,” the host went on, “it’s a mix of two pieces of information that have hit Wall Street. Red Jameson and his billion-dollar business, Jameson International, have rarely taken a wrong step since he started the company nearly a decade ago. But recently, things have turned ugly. For the first time last quarter, they posted earnings significantly below what was projected. And then, Jameson spent almost a hundred million dollars to acquire a German advertising firm, which was since reported to have lost nearly two-thirds of its top executives to European mogul Kane Wright. And now it’s being reported that Kane Wright’s firm has also stolen Jameson’s biggest German advertising client, and the company is on the brink of collapse. As a result, we expect that tomorrow’s trading will show a huge downturn for Jameson International’s already ailing stock price…”
    Red turned the show off with a quick motion and got up from the table, muttering and swearing.
    Nicole’s appetite was gone. “Red, what does this mean?”
    He smiled tightly, his cheeks red with anger. “What it means, is that last night while he was wining and dining us, the delightful Kane Wright had already stolen the biggest German client we had. I should have known that would be coming, but I made a rookie mistake. I was so busy trying to gather my guns for the big battle that I forgot to lock the doors and windows in my house. Kane Wright came in through the back entrance and robbed us blind.” Red folded his arms and looked up at the ceiling. “He didn’t even need to fire a shot to kill us dead.”
    “What do we do now?” Nicole asked.
    “Now?” Red laughed hollowly. “There’s nothing left for me to do. Next week, when the board of directors of Jameson International meets, I’m going to be fired. And then I imagine they’ll structure some kind of buyout deal with Kane Wright.”
    “He told