Free Unconditional by Lexi Blake Page B

about it, too. Keith is into the lifestyle.”
    “That’s not the problem. Ashley’s obviously subby,” Ryan said. “But Keith is not the Dom I would have chosen for her.”
    “Did everyone know that? The sub part? Because it would have been nice if someone had told me. I might have figured out the sex stuff way before now.” She felt a smile cross her face because so far the sex stuff was really good.
    Not that they’d had real sex. It was real. It just didn’t involve his cock going into her, but she wanted to fix that pretty damn fast.
    Ryan turned a little green. “Sex stuff?”
    “We’re not all as technical as you and Ian,” she shot back.
    “When I left, you were hiding from that man. Now you’re calling him Ian?” Jill asked, her mouth hanging slightly open.
    She’d gotten far more comfortable with the big boss since Keith had started sitting with the men for an hour or so every night. She’d taken to sitting with her head in his lap and sort of halfway listening. Ian Taggart liked to cuss a lot, but underneath it all was a man who really gave a damn about the people around him. In the guise of being a complete dick, he’d managed to convince Jesse Murdoch to ask out some chick at their office, hounded Simon Weston into calling his cousins, who were apparently more like brothers to him, and gotten the raging ball of murder to go see a doctor about his health issues. No one else seemed to see that he was actually the most nosy, pushy busybody in the whole place. He was currently talking to Keith about expanding his business to New York.
    Keith would be the one putting together the financing. He was good at that sort of thing. And she was good at helping him relax. She’d started to notice how tense he was at the beginning of their sessions. At the end, he was just as relaxed as she was and he hadn’t even had an orgasm.
    “Could we get back to the part where Keith is taking advantage of my sister-in-law?” Ryan said with a frown. He neatly sidestepped the baby, managing to place a kiss on the top of her head without allowing her to grab on to his suit.
    Emily had left little handprints on more than one of his formfitting suits.
    She had to get her brother-in-law under control and fast. “He isn’t taking advantage of me. We have a contract.”
    “I want to see it. Who the hell wrote it?”
    “Ian did.”
    Ryan held a hand out as though trying to get her to take a time-out while he processed. “Taggart wrote a contract for you? Without consulting me? That son of a bitch.”
    One of the things she’d learned about the lifestyle was that Doms tended to think it was the year 1503 and the gender laws were still rigidly enforced. Because he’d married her sister, in Ryan’s head that made him responsible for her, and Emily too, because she didn’t have a father or a man in her life.
    Except she kind of did.
    “I wouldn’t have let you write a contract for me, Ryan. If you had come to me with the idea, I would have turned you down flat because there was no way I would ever have talked about those things with either of you.” She cleaned up Emily and reached down to lift her. Something about having her daughter in her arms always gave her strength. And it took strength to admit the truth. “I wouldn’t have told you how lonely I am. I wouldn’t have told you how weak and inconsequential I feel. I wouldn’t have admitted that I’ve never enjoyed sex.”
    “Oh, honey.” Her sister had tears in her eyes. “Why wouldn’t you talk to me about that?”
    “Because I was ashamed. Because I felt like I wasn’t much of a woman. I couldn’t hold on to Trevor. I wasn’t even strong enough to force him to pay child support. Jill talked Simon into doing that for me.” And even that hadn’t lasted. He’d stopped sending checks months ago and had turned off his cell phone. She’d been too embarrassed to do anything about it. “I need this.”
    Ryan sighed. “Fine. But I reserve the right to