Page 12 of The Bodyguard and the Bombshell

“Yep, he’s my dad. I hear you’re his new hire,” Seth said, taking a sip of the beer in his hand. “Good luck. All of my siblings and most of my cousins have worked at McKay-Taggart at one point or another. Mostly as summer jobs. I lasted maybe a month before I begged to wash dishes at my uncle’s restaurant. My dad is a sarcastic asshole. I love him but I cannot work for the man.”

“I suppose I’m used to the type. Spent some time in the Army,” Nate replied. “Also, I’m in the bodyguard unit, so I don’t see much of the upstairs folk. At least not yet. My boss is Tessa Hawthorne.”

Seth nodded. “Yeah. She took over when Wade Rycroft got an executive job at Lodge Corp. To say my dad was unhappy would be like saying a nuclear bomb causes a little mess. At least they didn’t take his assistant. I don’t know what my father would do without Genny Rycroft. But Tessa’s awesome. She’s much easier to get along with than my father. The key with my dad is to pretend like nothing bothers you. Ever. Nod and agree with him, and then go do whatever you were going to do in the first place. It’s how I survived my childhood.”

Nate had to chuckle at the thought. “I grew up around a group very much like the one here in Dallas.”

“That’s right. Aidan was telling me you spent most of your childhood in London, right? Your dad worked for Damon Knight,” Seth said. “I’m sure we’ve met at some point.”

“Probably, though we were much younger. We moved back to Australia when I was eleven, and our visits here became more infrequent.” He’d lost touch with some of his closest friends from childhood. He’d heard Oliver Knight was working with his dad. He’d been close to Oliver and his brother, Archie, and their sister, Samantha, had been around Elodie’s age.

It was his mom’s relationship with Avery O’Donnell that had kept him close to Aidan, and even they had gotten distant when he’d gone into the Army and Aidan had gone into college and then medical school.

It was odd how easily they’d fallen back in.

“Yeah, life catches up to you, doesn’t it? I live close to a bunch of the kids I grew up with, but sometimes I only seem to see them on nights like this. Starting this club actually kept us all together. Huh. I always thought it was because my sisters and their friends were perverts,” Seth said thoughtfully. “Now I have to wonder. Not about Kala, but Kenzie might have thought this was a way to keep us all together.”

“Are you the older son or the younger one?” Aidan had been on an opposite schedule the week since Nate had gotten in, and honestly, he’d been trying to adjust to his new American time zone. It would be good to start putting names to faces.

Like Daisy O’Donnell, who he would meet later tonight when he got home.

“Older,” Seth explained. “You might have seen my younger brother, Travis. He was the dude asleep on the couch in the locker room.”

He’d wondered about the bloke snoring away earlier in the evening. The men’s locker room wasn’t elegant, but it had its charms, including a big living room area with a TV and game systems and a couple of couches, one of which had been occupied by a sleeping Taggart. “Is he okay?”

Seth stared out over the dungeon floor as though looking for someone. “It depends on your definition of the word okay. He’s a third-year law student and a single dad with an infant. This is the night my parents agreed to watch his son so he could have some form of a social life, and what does he do? He falls asleep in the locker room during the wildest party of the year. Didn’t even manage to get a beer in. I knew he likely wouldn’t indulge in the sex part of the evening, but I thought he would at least get a little drunk.”

Poor guy probably wasn’t sleeping at all between school and parenting. He felt for Travis Taggart.

He checked his pocket. Yes. The condoms he’d snagged were in there. Just in case.

“Is there a reason you’re not down there? It really is a wild time,” Seth said. “We only do it once a year, though it gets talked about for months after. The couples of the group tend to either skip this party or sit up here and watch the chaos.”

Aidan had taken one look at Carys and swept her away, picking her up and carrying her toward the privacy rooms. He’d told Nate he would see him at home.

“I don’t know.” He wasn’t sure this was the right night to make his debut at The Hideout. The idea of some giant orgy wasn’t appealing.

Of course an orgy wasn’t what was happening. It was more like a slow rotation of Doms around subs before one of the Doms would gently move in and separate his selected treat for the evening from the crowd.

He understood what a party like this was for. Exploration. It was for indulging in something that in this group wouldn’t come back to bite a bloke in the arse.

A couple was already playing on the main stage. A big Dom in all black had a tiny sub tied to a St. Andrew’s Cross, and he was using a violet wand on her nipples.

It should have him aroused, but he was still strangely numb.

He wanted to blame it all on jet lag, but he was over it. And the numbness was exactly why he’d taken the job in the first place. It wasn’t working.

“Then this is not your night because the chaos is part of the fun. It’s also a great way for a smart woman to indulge in self-delusion.” Seth stared out as a couple of subs walked in from the locker room. One of them was a petite sub in a red catsuit and matching mask, dark hair piled high on her head. She was whispering to her blonde friend and seeming to look around for someone. “I think I’m going to go downstairs. Hope you find what you’re looking for. I’m going after what I need tonight.”

Seth strode toward the stairs. He obviously knew what he wanted. Nate stared out again, trying to figure out which gorgeous sub had caught Taggart’s eye, but before Taggart came into view a woman in white stepped out from the hallway leading to the locker rooms, and Nate felt like the world slowed down.

Long, dark hair caressed rounded shoulders, tumbling over a set of truly gorgeous breasts. They were offered up by the pure white corset that cinched in her waist and flowed over hips he could hold on to. She stopped at the edge of the crowd, staring out as though trying to decide if she would join them. The white boy shorts she wore barely covered a spectacular arse.

She was a beauty, and he felt a rip of pure lust go through him, making his cock tighten and sparking his dominant instincts.

A Dom approached her, his every move seemingly predatory. His lips curled as he moved in close. She turned her chin up and said something. The Dom suddenly stepped back as though shocked. His hands came to his chest, palms out, and he backed away.

The pretty sub’s face fell. She glanced around the dungeon and seemed to realize there were a lot of eyes on her, but now the first Dom was talking to another, and they all seemed to ease away from her. One of the subs moved in, but she shook her off. Her head came up and he watched as she pasted a smile on her face and squared her shoulders. She leaned over to the other sub who nodded, and then the gorgeous woman turned to the stairs.

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