Free Yellow (The Safeword Series, #2) by Ava Claire

Chapter One: Desmond
    “S o...who is she?”
    Every other question my sister had asked over the past half hour had garnered grunts, nods, and shrugs.
    How was Hush?
    Fine, I’d grunted, declining to share that ‘fine’ didn’t begin to illustrate just how fucking amazing Hush was.
    Not Hush.
    Her.
    Sophia.
    ‘Sin’.
    The woman with the eyes that I couldn’t escape and the moans that had been playing on repeat all through the night, sighing into morning.
    Are you ready for your interview with Tell-tale Mag?
    A nod sufficed. Usually, I’d grimace at any mention of schmoozing. The public relations side of being a celebrity was my least favorite part of the job. While the celebrity was what transformed me from restauranteur and renown chef to household name, there were days when I wondered what it was all for. No one remembered how my dishes inspired and my restaurants revitalized communities, bringing in revenue and new jobs. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, I was that douchebag judge from those cooking shows.
    You know Kara is gonna be pissed when she finally graces us with her presence?
    That got a shrug. Kara Mills was an executive producer on America’s Chef . All the things I’d once found endearing - her tenacious personality, the brusque, Brooklyn tenor of her voice that reminded me of home, and her intensity - were now things that made her unbearable to be around.
    But Mallory’s last question stopped me dead in my tracks. Who is she? The answer was something I was still grappling with myself. Sophia was, in a word, temptation. She was the exact opposite of what I was searching for when I created Hush. I wanted sex; dirty, kinky, no strings attached sex. Flesh and moans, nothing complicated, nothing more than escape. But in her, there were all kinds of strings I wanted to untie and untangle. Who was she beneath the mask? What was it about submission that spoke to her? For the first time since-
    I doused the name with gasoline and set it on fire before it had a chance to ripple through my head. I picked up my coffee and forced all emotion, all everything, to the back of my mind. I focused on the robust bitterness of the caffeinated liquid, struggling to ignore the fact that I damn near burned my tongue off.
    I finally answered my sister’s question. “I don’t know what you mean.”
    Even slightly obscured by my shades, Mallory’s incredulity came through loud and clear. “Dude, I wasn’t born yesterday.”
    “Pretty close,” I kidded, swiping the S.Pellegrino. I threw back several gulps, trying to wash the coffee from my tongue. The bite of it danced in my mouth like Pop Rocks. I kept drinking, pretending I didn’t notice the annoyance all over Mallory’s face. She’d hated it when I treated her like my little sister when we were thirteen, putting the fear of God in any friend of mine that looked at her with hunger in their eyes. She was just as annoyed at twenty-two by the reminder that she was, and always would be, my little sister.
    “Whatever,” she huffed, bringing her mimosa to her lips. My attempts at deflecting fell short because after she took a sip, her smug little smile was back and in full effect. “You’re so transparent it’s almost funny. Cute, even.” She lifted her glass like she was toasting herself for catching me in a lie. “Exhibit one: you’re always full of complaints when Kara sets up these morning pow wows. Exhibit two: you weren’t a pain in the ass when we got the menu, asking the waiter a round of questions that are way above the call of duty-”
    “This place charges $29 for a cheese omelette,” I cut in, not even caring that I was missing the point. Mal and I had come a long way; raised by a mother who worked three jobs so we could have a shot at something better. Something more. No matter how much my net worth grew, I never lost my urge to hold people accountable for service and quality. If they had the balls to charge a ridiculous amount of