Page 14 of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs 5)

This morning, he awoke in a mood designed to piss even himself off. His skin felt stretched, irritation tightened his guts, and damn if he didn't still have the hard-on from hell throbbing between his thighs.

He took care of the hard-on in the shower, masturbating as he closed his eyes and imagined Kira, on her knees, her lips surrounding him, her tongue licking and stroking as she sucked him to her throat and made his teeth clench with the need to hold back.

Not that his hand came anywhere close to the imagined feel of her mouth, but the thought succeeded in spilling his semen to the shower floor and taking the bitter edge off his lust.

Hell, he could have gone to Astra's room and awakened her last night. He could have fucked her all night long, and rather than giving him grief, she would have smiled and licked her lips in anticipation.

She was one of many women that Diego seemed to delight in filling the villa with. He liked pretty women, and he liked having them near. Women who liked rough sex. Hell, they went beyond a little rough sex. They were women who enjoyed the pain Diego could mete out.

Ian grimaced at the thought of that. He had seen one of the maids, Eleanor's, back beaded with blood from the stroke of Diego's whip, and still she had begged for more. Not more sex. Not more fucking or a deeper penetration, because Diego rarely fucked one of his toys. No, it was the pain that got both of them off. Diego got off giving it, and Eleanor could climax from it. Ecstasy would wash over her face and her body would tremble with it.

It was enough to make a jaded man wonder what the hell had gone wrong with the world. For all his cynicism and experience, he still couldn't understand that one. But it wasn't Astra he wanted, it was Kira.

Stalking into the breakfast room nearly an hour later, he found Diego at the breakfast table. Just what he needed that morning, a healthy dose of dear old pop.

"Ah, good morning, Ian." A smile creased Diego's swarthy face as he laid his forearms on the table and regarded him with something resembling pride. "I trust you slept well?"

Could his morning get any worse?

"Morning, pop." It was the most disrespectful title Ian could come up with. It was the one thing that had earned him his stepfather's ire when he used it.

John Richards wasn't a man to stand on ceremony, but he did demand respect, and he earned it. Ian could call him John or Dad, his choice, John had informed him. But call him pop again and he would show Ian a pop he wouldn't forget. Ian almost smiled at the memory.

Diego frowned. He didn't like the title any more than John Richards had.

" 'Father' would be a much better greeting," Diego informed him, not for the first time.

"Too stiff." Ian moved to the sideboard, piled his plate high with fluffy scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, and toast. For all his faults, Diego had an excellent cook, and she seemed to have grown fond of Ian. "'Father' sounds like something from the fifties," he continued, passing over the fruit and various sweets the cook had laid out as he turned and moved to the glass-topped breakfast table.

Sunlight spilled through the open doors and tall windows that surrounded the room as Ian took his seat and let the little dark-haired maid pour his coffee.

"Thanks, Liss." He smiled as she moved back.

"You are welcome, Mr. Fuentes." Her lilting English was a little shy, but Ian had learned early just where this little cat's loyalties lay. And they weren't with him.

"Set the coffee on the table, Liss," he directed her. "And then you can leave."

She looked to Diego. The obvious cut was irritating.

"Liss, he didn't give you the order, I did," he told her softly, meeting her dark eyes with the promise of retaliation in his own gaze if she didn't do as ordered.

"Of course, Mr. Fuentes." She set the silver pot in the center of the table, between him and Diego, and then headed for the wide double doors, the short skirt of her uniform swishing.

"Close the doors behind you," he ordered, before nodding to Mendez to follow her out. The other man would stand guard at the doors. Deke and another bodyguard stood guard at the patio and the fourth had positioned himself at the door leading to the kitchen.

Only Deke knew his true purpose there, but the other three were slowly proving their loyalty to Ian rather than the cartel.

"I do not like how you require that I serve myself," Diego snapped as he reach for the coffeepot and refilled his cup. "I have the servants for a reason."

"And I'm always amazed that they survive it." Ian grunted at the thought of the perversions the maids shared with Diego. "But I see no reason to have to kill one of them because they overheard the wrong thing."

"You should not discuss business with breakfast," Diego instructed him. "It is bad for the digestion."

"Right now, business is bad for health, period." Ian sipped at his coffee as he stared back at Diego. "I'm canceling our relationship with the Radacchio consortium. My men were hijacked on the way to the delivery point and I lost two of them. We nearly lost the shipment."

The report of the lost coca shipment hadn't been as bad as learning that the two men he had lost were handpicked agents he had put in place. That pissed him off.

"Sorrell?" Diego narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched Ian.

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