The Greatest Risk (Honey #3)
Kristen Ashley
For Liz Berry
A Champion of Writers
A Champion of Sisters
My Beautiful Friend
And one of the most beautiful hearts on the planet
acknowledgments
As ever and always, thank you to my agent, and my friend, Emily Sylvan Kim, who is so many things, it’d take another book to acknowledge them all. And gratitude to Alexandra Sehulster, who took on my Honey at the finale, and allowed me to release the breath I’d been holding after she fell for Stellan and Sixx (almost) as hard as I did.
prologue
Opposites Attract
SIXX
Two years ago …
Sixx sat in the booth at the Bee’s Honey and watched.
She watched what she’d seen time and again.
She watched what set a heavy weight to taking residence in her stomach.
Mistress Amélie had selected her toy for the evening and was going back to the playrooms.
And Master Stellan was sitting in his booth, watching her go, a look of disappointment on his usually remote but always extortionately handsome face that he did not hide fast enough.
Thus Sixx caught it.
“Not gonna go anywhere, sweetheart.”
She turned her eyes to the man sitting across the semi-circular booth with her. A booth he owned because he owned the Honey, a luxurious, exclusive BDSM sex club in Phoenix that had sister clubs in cities across the West.
Aryas Weathers was a very large black man with a bald head, a thick beard and a beautiful soul.
“Pardon?” Sixx asked.
“Leigh and Stellan,” he answered. “It’s not gonna happen.”
“I don’t know what—” she began.
“Yes you do,” he said softly.
She spoke no more because Aryas was a handsome black man with a beautiful soul and a number of sex clubs he owned and operated. He was also a Dom, and a good one, thus keenly observant and empathic. Last, he was a friend and an excellent one.
In other words, with his friends that empathy hit extremes.
“She’s into him and he’s into her,” Sixx replied.
“They’d never make it. He needs a challenge and so does she,” Aryas told her.
Sixx looked down at her glass of red wine, something she’d ordered wishing it was a cocktail with gin involved, but that wouldn’t work with the rep she had going at the Honey, doing this thinking that two Doms finding their way together in life when sexually they didn’t quite fit would be one hell of a challenge.
“Opposites attract.”
Those quiet words from Aryas had her head coming up again and her eyes finding his.
“Can’t say how I know, outside what you know only I know, just will say that I know, you wanted in there, you could turn his eye,” Aryas shared.
She was not going to put herself out there like that.
She couldn’t.
She was strong. A female Goliath, a superhero with a vagina in a five-seven, trim-but-nice-ass, though not-so-much-in-the-breast-department, long-legged frame.
Straight up.
Fuckin’ A.
But not with something like that.
Not that.
“I’ve got an assignment taking me out of town,” she reminded him, and watched his lips form into a frown. “I don’t know when I’ll return.”
Or … if.
Phoenix was awesome. There were good restaurants. There were palm trees. There were hiking trails. Sedona and Prescott were just hours away if you wanted spiritual enlightenment in a place that proved God existed or a break from the pounding sun in a place that proved God didn’t mind flexing his creativity over a matter of mere miles. There was every sport you could want including hockey even though you could usually count the overnight freezes of a year on one hand. And everyone was so damned happy that the summer heat had broken that from October to June it was one huge-ass party, people taking to the streets, malls, outdoor dining, hiking trails and city-wide events like it was a slow-roll Mardi Gras.
And if it snowed, the residents acted like the world was coming to an end because it seemed like it was, but the panic didn’t last because what would only amount to a dusting of that white shit was gone by noon.
But it also had Stellan.
Stellan who got what he wanted.
Always.
And he wanted Amélie.
And Stellan was what Sixx wanted.
But she rarely got what she wanted (as in, never).
Thus Stellan would end up with Amélie.
“You gotta quit that shit,” Aryas replied, his sweet, soft tone turning biting.
Sixx pulled herself out of dismal thoughts and reacted to his tone, shooting back, “And how would I pay for my leather if I stopped that shit?”
“You’ll not have a body to put that leather on if it’s buried in the ground,” he retorted.
“I know what I’m doing, and I’m good at it,” she returned.
“You’ve done work for me, that’s how I met you; you settled that shit like the pro you are, so that’s not in question. But now you’re not a contractor, you’re a friend, and I’m not feelin’ as cheery about your present occupation.”
Sixx quirked a brow. “So, say, a friend of yours who’s in my business is sitting opposite you in this booth and he happens to have a dick, would this conversation have taken this turn?”
Aryas’s full lips thinned as he looked to the hunting ground, the expanse of space situated in the middle of the room surrounded by a classed-up bar on one wall, the other three walls lined with posh horseshoe booths in order that the Doms in those booths could look over the subs in the hunting ground.
She gave it time, and he did not answer.
So she had her answer.
Eventually, Aryas broke the silence, looked back to Sixx and said, “Leigh will find someone.”
“Or they’ll find each other,” she rejoined.
Aryas kept going like she’d said nothing. “And if you take off, he’ll find someone too.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “When one or the other of them quits circling and goes in for the kill, that will happen for both of them.”
“Is there a reason you’re allergic to happy?” he asked irritably.
That had Sixx snapping her mouth shut and looking at the hunting ground.
“You think he’s too good for you?” Aryas pressed.
She stared at a male sub who she had not yet had.
He was not her type.
Her type was a tall, lean, lethal, sexy, rich-as-fuck, handsome-as-all-hell Dom who, she flicked her glance his way, was right then calling over a beautiful, willowy sub to his booth.
She was not beautiful.
Though she could be described as willowy, at a push.
Damn.
“You think he’s got it all together and won’t want to put up with a mess like you?” Aryas kept pushing.
Her eyes slanted back to him, and they were slits.
But she couldn’t argue the fact she was a mess. A big one.
And Aryas knew that.
He did not know because she’d told him anything.
She hadn’t told him anything.
Not a thing.
But he was Aryas, he read it on her like she had her story tattooed all over her skin.
Which, with how much that story didn’t feel too good living, it was a wonder she didn’t.
“You haven’t cornered the market on demons, Sixx. Stellan’s got his own, just like you. And he might also want someone in his life to help him beat them back.”
“I suddenly feel the need to crack a whip,” she retorted.
“Of course you do,” he muttered, looking frustrated.
“I leave in a few weeks,” she declared.
His eyes narrowed angrily.
“Of course you do,” he repeated.
“I might not be back,” she spoke the decision she’d right then made.
“You’ll be missed and not only by me. You might not have taken this in, but your prolonged stay here, my sweet, means I’m not the only one in Phoenix who’s pleased he can call you a friend.”
She couldn’t handle that so she didn’t.
She slid her tight, black-leather-pants-covered ass out of the booth and took her feet on the stiletto heels of her black boots.
“He’ll go all in for you.”
Aryas throwing that out there got her attention again, and she twisted toward him.
He kept at her.