Only

PRAISE FOR

MERCY

“Everything I want in a book by HelenKay Dimon—emotional, sexy and smart.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Jill Shalvis

“From the first page I was hooked. Captivating, steamy, with an intriguing hero and heroine,
Mercy
is one of the best books I've read this year.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Vivian Arend

“Masterful. Edgy. Hot, hot, hot. Read this now.”

—Alison Kent, bestselling author

PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF HELENKAY DIMON

“She's a delight.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Christina Dodd

“Sharp writing and plenty of sexy romantic sizzle.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“HelenKay Dimon is a genius.”

—
Joyfully Reviewed

“So smart, sexy and fast-paced, I devour her stories.”

—
New York Times
bestselling author Lori Foster

“The sex is steamy. The repartee is witty. There are some things in life you can just depend on, thank goodness.”

—
Dear Author

“I didn't want to stop reading.”

—
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

“Dimon's fresh new series is enjoyable, and the plot will appeal to many different readers. By turns funny and romantic, the sexual tension between the main characters is portrayed perfectly.”

—
RT Book Reviews

Titles by HelenKay Dimon

MERCY

ONLY

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2014 by HelenKay Dimon.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA)

eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-13689-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dimon, HelenKay.

Only / HelenKay Dimon.—Heat trade paperback edition.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-425-27078-3 (paperback)

I. Title.

PS3604.I467O55 2014

813'.6—dc23

2014012889

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Heat trade paperback edition / October 2014

Cover image of “sexy woman” © Leszek Glasner / Shutterstock.

Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Kate Duffy, for starting it all

A quick but heartfelt thank-you to Bree, Viv, Lillie and Jill for giving this one an early read and reassuring me it worked.

While I'd love to take sole credit for this book, it's a group process. It starts with my agent, Laura Bradford, selling it, continues with my wonderful editor Leis Pederson's guidance and edits, and only works because of all the hard work everyone at Berkley puts into making the finished project. And did you see that cover? It's perfect. Thank you to all!

And much love to my husband, James, and my fantastic readers who make it possible for me to do what I love for a living. I appreciate you all.

Sebastian Jameson sat at his usual table at his regular time at the supper club where he always ate a late dinner during the week. Some would say he was in a rut. Bast preferred to view his schedule as a sign of consistency. After his wild ride of a marriage and equally brain-numbing divorce, he craved a little boredom.

His best friend, Jarrett Holt, owned Holton Woods, the private club at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC. They'd known each other for more than a decade. Up until a month ago, they often shared dinner at the reserved table with the high-backed red-velvet-lined booths to the left of the bar. Then Becca Ford burst back into Jarrett's life like something out of an action movie. Their guys' nights had been taken over ever since, probably with nonstop sex . . . the lucky fucker.

Between his stupid grin and the uncharacteristically upbeat personality, Becca had smoothed out many of Jarrett's rough edges from his long-ago days of running the streets and doing whatever he had to survive. The guy was downright respectable now. He dealt in power and information and his club sat at the center of all of it.

The place also ended up being a great source of business for Bast. But that's not the main reason he hung out there. It was familiar. Comfortable. The dark interior and high-end finishes appealed to him. So did the women Jarrett hired to serve the members, all of whom were male.

Bast never touched, because that was against the rules, but a guy could admire the combination of sexy, young and smart. Most had advanced degrees. All wore slim black skirts and lacy black bras that peeked out from their unbuttoned white silk shirts. The smokin' uniforms got a man thinking about ripping through the flimsy material with his teeth.

As soon as the idea popped into his head, his gaze strayed to a rather fine ass a few feet away. Long wavy blond hair and those stockings with the seam running down the back of the leg.

Christ, Jarrett knew how to make men happy and earn a lot of money doing it. He became wealthy years ago by having women strip off their clothes in his clubs. Now, keeping the clothes on, teaching his servers—whom he referred to as private attendants—how to get men talking by showing just a hint of the raw sexiness underneath did the job. Bast approved of the change and the business strategy.

He also realized he'd stepped up to the edge of leering and pulled his attention away from those nearby legs. He wasn't a fucking animal, though spending less time with Jarrett and more time sitting there staring at the female attendants was starting to take a toll on the subject of his daydreaming.

The sound of high heels clicking against the hardwood floor had Bast's focus zipping back to the woman. He looked at her face. Round with smooth skin and big chocolate-brown eyes. And very familiar.

Kyra Royer. So fucking hot, too damn young . . . and totally off-limits.

She stepped up to the edge of his table and threw him a welcoming smile. “Good evening, Mr. Jameson.”

All the attendants referred to the members by their last name. With respect and enough hotness to, in this case, have Bast fiddling to keep his glasses on his nose. “Kyra?”

“What can I do for you this evening?”

He meant to hold the eye contact. He really did, but that husky voice licked over his balls and the blood rushed right out of his head. His gaze went wandering. The top buttons of her shirt were undone, treating him to a fair amount of smooth skin and an up-close-and-killing-him view of her bra down to the front clasp.

He cleared his throat and forced words to form in his head again. “Put on a sweater.”

“What?”

But she knew. That smile told him she knew exactly what she was doing to him. Something about the mix of the provocative outfit and the sweet face had him going under.

“What are you doing here?” he asked because she should be in college, or high school, or wherever young women he shouldn't be allowed to touch hung out.

“Working.”

“Here?” He pushed up his glasses again, amazed the lenses hadn't fogged or shattered from the heat pouring off of him. “Since when?”

“Business school costs money.”

“Ah, right. You're in graduate school.” He'd blocked that part. After Kyra grew up looking like that, with those breasts and that face, he had to think of her as a kid to keep from wondering about what would happen if she wrapped those legs around him and pressed her heels into the small of his back.

She smiled as if she'd read his thoughts. “I start graduate school in the fall, which gets us back to the tuition issue and the explanation for my presence at the club.”

“Do you need money?” Because he would write her a fucking check right now. Whatever it took to remove her from a room full of drooling men. He knew the type because in the last five minutes he'd become one.

Even now he caught the glimpses of club members at nearby tables. Some pretended to continue their conversations while they stole quick peeks at her tight ass. Others all but crawled over and wrapped their arms around her thighs.

Slimy bastards.

He concentrated very hard on not morphing into one. “Kyra, do you need some help?”

“That depends. Are you still talking about money?”

Good fucking question
. “Sure.”

Her head tilted to the side. “And what exactly are you offering?”

Something screeched to a halt inside his mind. He figured it probably had to do with a sudden loss of brain cells. No way was she suggesting . . . Actually, he had no idea what she was suggesting.

Then there was the very real possibility he'd be killed in the next two seconds if he tried to dig deeper on this topic. “You do know your brother is standing about twenty feet away, right?”

She glanced over her shoulder and gave the brute in question a little wave. “Don't mind him. He likes to hover.”

Wade Royer stood behind the bar and managed the club. He looked official and civilized but he once held the role of Jarrett's enforcer. Bast had spent time keeping both men out of jail as they turned respectable and fought to leave their old lives behind.

Back then Wade and Jarrett owned the streets in no small part thanks to Wade's fighting abilities. He was built like a tank but size didn't matter when you had sniper shooting abilities and no compunction about carving up men who you thought did your boss wrong.

Bast tried to imagine what Wade would do to the man who touched his baby sister. Tried and then blocked the bloody images. “Your brother is also an expert with a gun, so let's stick to my questions.”

Kyra's smile only widened. “Okay.”

“There's no way Jarrett hired you to work here.”

The bright wattage slipped a bit. “He was worried about Wade.”

Exactly
. “About Wade killing someone.”

She shook her head and her hair fell around her shoulders. “Jarrett wanted to help Wade get through a tough time.”

“Excuse me?”

She sent a second look in the general direction of the bar before turning around again. “Wade had a bad breakup.”

“Yeah, I know.” No further explanation necessary on that topic. Bast had occupied an unwanted front seat to the mess for the last five weeks. “But I really don't see your brother as the crying-in-his-pudding type.”

“He is human.”

“Are you sure?” Wade's former live-in lover now worked for Bast. The heat between the men had surprised Bast since he viewed both of them as fighting machines. But their breakup had been of the nuclear variety. Bast still dealt with the fallout on a daily basis.

“So, back to us,” she said as her voice dipped even lower.

Bast almost swallowed his tongue. “Us?”

“What do you want from me?” She clasped her hands in front of her. The attendants here didn't carry notepads. They memorized everything and never got a detail wrong.

The move also pressed her breasts closer together, which had his gaze bouncing again, sick prick that he was. “It's probably best I don't answer that.”

“My brother won't kill you.”

Wade contradicted her comment by slamming a glass against the ornate bar and focusing all his attention on Bast's table.

Bast sat up straighter. “Tell him that.”

“You have a drink.” She nodded at his half-empty Scotch glass. “Did you also want dinner?”

Bast wanted an explanation for her presence in his place of relative peace and a promise she would be gone from the building soon. A room full of horny old men was not the right job for her. These guys thought they could buy anything and if one of them tried to touch her, Bast vowed to throw off the glasses and start slamming bodies. “Is Jarrett here?”

“He's upstairs with Becca.”

Bast blew out a long, hard breath. “Of course he is.”

Kyra shot him a don't-be-stupid look. “Jarrett's in love.”

“My friend has lost his fucking mind.” Over a woman. It was a good thing, but Bast never thought he'd see the day.

“I think we're basically saying the same thing.” Kyra let her arms drop to her sides. “Did you want a private room?”

A normal question from the staff at Holton Woods. The club offered rooms for business transactions. For almost whatever a guy needed, except the ultimate release because the women who worked the club were not to be touched—ever.

Still, hearing the words on her lips . . . Bast knew he was never going to survive this conversation.

“No.” He adjusted his glasses and tried to blink away the mental images running through his brain. The one about laying her out on the table and giving the room a show was especially persistent. He vowed to revisit that fantasy later, when he was alone in his bedroom.

Her smile never even bobbled. “Then dinner?”

As if he could eat anything. “Yes.”

“Do you need a menu or do you want your usual?” Her posture remained perfect and her voice clear, just as she was hired and trained to do.

“I still want to know why, with a business degree in front of you, you're working at a supper club.” At
his
club.

“I told you.”

Bast glanced at Wade and saw him staring back. “Your brother's delicate feelings. Sure.”

Kyra's eyebrow lifted. “Is there a problem?”

About a hundred of them, starting with the fact Bast was thirty-four and had screwed a lot of women. Maybe too many. His ex-wife had literally written a handbook on having threesomes, and all that knowledge came from personal experience. Now most women came to him looking for a specific kind of sex—naughty and temporary. He didn't know what the hell Kyra was looking for.

Her eyebrow stayed up. “Do you want another assistant for the evening?”

A reasonable solution. Send her away and forget about the bra and the exposed skin and that ass. Then Bast saw the judge with the sex-with-his-clerks reputation two tables away wave his hand as if trying to get Kyra's attention.

No fucking way
.

“I want your private services,” Bast said before he could come up with a better sentence.

Her smile morphed into one of pure feminine power. “That can be arranged.”

“So none of these losers comes near you.”

“The club has very specific rules about members harassing the staff. I only started on the floor a few nights ago, but my understanding from weeks of training is Becca tightened the restrictions when she moved in with Jarrett and took over security.”

Becca changed many things at the club, including Jarrett. Bast approved of them all. “I know. I reviewed the guidelines with her.”

Funny how Becca forgot to mention Kyra was coming on board. If Bast had heard that, he would have stopped the idea before it took hold. Even now Kyra didn't move away from the table, which could only mean she had no idea what type of skin-on-skin images flashed through his head.

“I thought you weren't a lawyer,” she said.

He did spend a good deal of time saying that, but truth was he was the managing partner of a law firm. Just not the traditional sort. “By training and according to all the nonsense certificates hanging on the wall of my office in frames, I absolutely am. But what I do is negotiate. Solve problems. If a case I'm working on goes to trial, I've failed.”

She pressed up tighter against the edge of the table. “Would you like to negotiate now?”

“What?” His hand flexed against the napkin. Only inches separated her body and his fingers.

“With me.”

“I . . .” Damn it, no way did he hear that right. “What?”

“You asked that already.”

“The way the night's going I might ask it a third time.”

The tip of her finger traveled along the edge of the table. “I told you one of the reasons I work here.”

An alarm bell rang in his head and the flashing warning light almost blinded him. Still, he kept pushing the boundaries, playing the game. “What's the other?”

“You.”

Son of a bitch
. “Excuse me?”

“You're here three nights a week, sometimes more. Since you work all the time and we rarely mingle socially, despite having several friends in common, this seemed like the best way to get your attention.”

She had to be kidding. “Oh, you have it. Trust me.”

“Good.”

He waited for common sense to kick in. When it didn't he dragged it out of hiding. “I'm old enough to be your father.”

“Only if you became a dad at eleven.”

Man, it sounded even worse when she did the math. “You know exactly how old I am?”

“Of course.”

“Do you also know your brother, Jarrett and Becca—those people we have in common—would get together and beat me to death if I said hello to you the wrong way?” That very event could happen within the next ten minutes. All of them had weapons training, and Becca used to kill for a living. Bast didn't even want to know how far Wade and Jarrett had gone to get things done in their old jobs on the wrong side of the law.