He had not expected first contact to go that spectacularly well.

He expected eye contact. Maybe a few words exchanged. Enough she’d get he was into her kink so he could lay the groundwork when he ran into her elsewhere.

He didn’t expect to fuck her against the wall.

And certainly he didn’t expect that fuck to be that outstanding.

He also didn’t expect to feel whatever the fuck it was he felt coming off her after her orgasm milked his right out of him.

He had no idea what it was but whatever it was, he stayed buried inside her a lot longer than he’d intended.

And it made him uneasy.

She’d given nothing away after that and it was almost like he’d imagined it.

He stopped looking at her number, leaned forward, tagged his phone off the coffee table and sat back. He used his thumb to program her in.

And there she was. A bold Olivia Shade at the top of her contact.

Her there with him everywhere he went.

A Shade in his life.

He looked across the room to the chest against the wall where the framed picture of Hettie was. A picture that hadn’t moved for four years, except for when he moved house and when his cleaning service dusted it.

Fuck.

He put that thought aside, tossed the phone back to the table, nabbed his drink, threw it back, heaved himself out of the couch and went to bed.

* * * * *

Like he had a sixth sense (and in his business, he had to), Turner called him the next morning five minutes after Nick’s workout.

“You make contact yet?”

Nick looked from his orange juice out the sunny window.

Cold. Warm. February. July. In Denver, the day dawned, odds were it’d be sunny.

“You wanna tell me why you’re asking?” he requested.

“One of her boys got dead last night.”

Nick’s back straightened but his eyes dropped to the stainless steel countertop.

“What?”

“Eli Cook, street name Green. Not sure why. Cops say the crime scene, that bein’ his apartment, looked like he was packin’ to leave town. Not sure why about that either. Don’t got a lot of insight into the Shade family dealings anymore, but no word on the street sayin’ there was an issue. He had a gunshot wound to his thigh that was not mortal, but was fresh, though not as fresh as the ones that were mortal and no one knows jack about that either.”

Even though Nick knew all about Green, including who shot him considering he had surveillance all over the Shade warehouse, he had nothing to say so he didn’t say anything.

“This is not good, Nick,” Turner went on. “The House of Shade has been a house of cards for years now. A cold wind blows, it’ll blow away and everything stacked inside will go with it. And I gotta tell you, with them taking desperate measures years ago to diversify dealings, that going so far south it dropped off the face of the earth, and them constantly scrambling with not much coming of it, now Eli Cook biting it for no apparent reason, I feel a seriously fuckin’ bitter wind kickin’ up.”

“Fucked her last night,” Nick shared.

There was a pause, then, “Say again?”

“Set it up I was with her last night at the club for the initial meet. Apparently, she liked the scene that was playin’ out and wasn’t feeling the idea of delayed gratification. She made it clear she was good to go; I took her up on the invitation. We fucked. She gave me her number after so we’re gonna do it again. But before that, it was reported to me she called in at just after six to book her viewing. She was there by ten thirty. She left at just after eleven thirty. Tail on her said her driver took her right home and that’s where she stayed. When was her boy done?”

“Jesus, Nick. I’m not callin’ you to be Olivia Shade’s alibi, for fuck’s sake. Christ. I can’t believe what you’re tellin’ me. The bitch is made of stone. First contact and you fucked her? How could you even drive your cock in there without it breaking clean off?”

Olivia Shade was not made of stone.

She was warm and soft, smelled good, and her sheet of straight black hair felt like silk.

And if he was another man he knew her green eyes had the capacity to brand ownership. He knew it because, as they held his while he thrust into her, he had to fight giving over to it.

And last but very much not least, she had a phenomenally tight, hot, wet cunt.

“Trust me,” he muttered. “She’s not made of stone.”

“Nick, nature is gonna take its course with Vincent Shade. With all of them. You do not have to use his daughter to get to him.”

He shouldn’t have told Turner his plan.

But he needed this to succeed and he was going to use everything he had to do that, family, friends, skills…and markers.

And Turner owed him a fuckuva lot of markers.

So he’d told Turner his plan.

“Your concern is heartwarming,” he joked, lifting his glass of juice and finishing it, hoping Turner would take his hint and shut up about it.

He didn’t take the hint.

“You know this family. You know those two women. You’ve done such extensive research on them, you might know them better than they know themselves. So you know the Shade sisters have two uses for men. They can take orders and/or give orgasms. Fuck, Georgia Shade uses her cunt as a recruiting tool and to make sure their soldiers toe the line. At least Olivia doesn’t fuck where she works but you found out yourself the last three cocks she took didn’t know her name and she didn’t ask theirs.”