Free Devoted: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella by Lexi Blake Page B

wouldn’t have minded. God, she hadn’t even cried after she’d signed the divorce papers. She’d loved him but she’d always known it was futile. Like her life. Wasted and impossible and useless.
    It came at her like a tidal wave, and she found herself turned in his arms and crying against his chest. She clutched at him, needing to be so close. Somehow in the warm intimacy of the shower what had started as something sexual had become so much more intimate. No one in the world had seen her like this. Stripped and raw. No one had seen her because she’d been convinced no one could want her like this.
    Flynn’s hand moved on her hair, soothing down her back and up again. She could feel his cock hard against her belly, but he wasn’t going to use it. He wouldn’t. Not until the time was right. He would give her this tenderness, this affection she hadn’t realized she needed so very badly.
    “You’re all right, pet. You’re okay here with me.” He kissed her forehead. “I was scared, too. When you called. I was more scared than I probably should be. I don’t know what’s going on between us, but I don’t want to lose you now. Tell me you’re real.”
    She looked up at him, unsure of what he meant. She was sure she looked real to him now. There was no way her face wasn’t puffy, her nose red. “I’m very real, Flynn.”
    Something passed over his face, some unnamed emotion, and then he leaned over and kissed her, his lips sweet on her own. “I would have missed you, Amy. I want to be the first person you call. Now tell me how you feel.”
    Lighter than before. Her chest was still hitching from leftover emotion, but she felt happier than she had in a very long time. “I’m good, Sir.”
    He turned her again and there was that monster cock, nestling against the small of her back. “Let me make you feel even better.”
    His hands slid over her breasts. There was still a hard ache in her backside she would likely feel in the morning. It didn’t stop her from wiggling against him, trying to feel him. He caught her nipples and gave them a hard tweak.
    “Stop. This is my time. I want to be the reason you fall asleep tonight and wake up happy and rested in the morning. Let me take care of you. There’ll be plenty of time for fast and hard later. Tonight you take only what I give you.”
    She sighed. He was going to be a hard-ass about this and he’d already given her so much. She couldn’t refuse him now. “Yes, Sir.”
    His left arm snaked around her chest, held her tight against him while his very clever right hand made its way down her torso. “Do you masturbate often?”
    “Apparently not anymore.”
    Her nipple got another tweak that had her yelping. “Don’t be a brat.”
    “I do it to relax. It’s the only sex I’ve had in about eighteen months. Don’t make me out to be some prude though, Flynn. I was married and then I…my job got complex.” She didn’t want to go into it with him.
    “You didn’t have sex while you were married?” The question was whispered against her ear, the heat of his mouth making everything seem so damn erotic.
    How to answer that question without going in to work? Mitch wouldn’t have talked to him about Slaten, but she knew what her family’s reputation was like. She didn’t want him to think poorly of her. Surely that could wait until later. “It was a marriage of convenience. He’s a friend of mine and he needed a wife for business purposes. It’s over now, but no, we didn’t sleep together. It was simpler that way.”
    If they stayed together for any amount of time, he would meet Frankie and then she would have to deal with those explanations, but for now she wanted to revel in Flynn. She didn’t want him in her everyday, crappy world. She wanted to hoard him like her secret stash of happiness. The minute he entered her world, he would be subject to her family’s awfulness.
    “You’re getting tense again.” He nipped at her earlobe. “I’m going