Rhett: Dragon Security Volume Two, #2

By Glenna Sinclair

Rhett is the second book of the Dragon Security Volume Two series, containing over 50,000 words of romantic suspense. For the best reading experience, it is highly recommended to start from the beginning with COLE, Dragon Security Volume One.

 

RHETT

He doesn't know who he is. A year ago, he woke in a hospital with no memory of his name, his occupation, or how he got himself in that predicament. All he had was a security badge from an unknown business and a duffle bag full of money. I was supposed to find his past for him. The thing was, I found it characteristically impossible to think whenever I looked at him. God knew what he was doing when he made Richard Chandler. Or was his name Xander King? And why was another security firm working to find him? What was I going to discover when I uncovered his past? He seemed like the perfect man. Or was that just an illusion?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenna Sinclair
• Release date: Jan 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9798224741342

Glenna Sinclair

Experience the heart-racing novels of Glenna Sinclair, the master of romantic suspense. Sinclair's books feature strong male protagonists, many with a military background, who face real-world challenges that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Books2read.com/GlennaSinclair Facebook.com/AuthorGlennaSinclair GlennaSinclairAuthor at Gmail dot com

Book preview

Prologue

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He opened his eyes and looked around the room, but then had to close them again. The light was so bright. He lifted his arm to try to rest it over his eyes, but it was suddenly so very heavy. He peeked and found himself looking at a huge plaster cast on an arm that was dangling from some sort of contraption right above his body. His leg was in the same condition, wrapped in plaster and hanging from a series of ropes and some sort of canvas.

What the hell?

He tried to think back, to figure out what had happened to him. Had he been in an accident? Did he fall from some height? Was it...what else could it be?

Instinct told him he was in danger. But he didn’t understand why.

The door opened and he instinctively reached for a weapon. Under his pillow. Why would he have a weapon under his pillow?

Well, you’re awake, a woman in a white lab coat said.

Where am I?

You’re in the hospital. You’ve been here for quite some time.

How long?

A little more than a month. You’ve been in a coma, but you began coming out of it several days ago.

A coma? Why? What happened to me?

You were in an accident. You sustained some very serious injuries. It’s actually quite amazing that you survived.

And you? Who are you?

The woman held up the badge that was hanging from her jacket. Dr. Wistmore. We spoke yesterday.

I shook my head. I didn’t understand any of this.

You suffered significant head trauma, Mr. Chandler. It’s quite possible that it’ll take time for your memories to come back.

How much time?

I don’t know. It differs from patient to patient.

I reached up with my other hand—this one was free of obstacles save the IV line—and brushed my forehead. There was a bandage there. I touched my cheeks, my jaw, looked down at the line of my chest.

You had to have surgery on your belly, Dr. Wistmore informed me. Your spleen had to be removed and your small bowel was repaired. There was a laceration in your liver, too. You broke your arm in four places, your leg in two. You snapped several ribs. There was a skull fracture, and your eye socket was shattered. We’ve been able to set your leg and arm. Your face will require a few more surgeries, but we should be able to get you back to your handsome self.

You called me Chandler?

She nodded. It was on the ID you had with you when you came in. A security pass on a lanyard around your neck. Richard Chandler.

What kind of security pass?

The doctor shrugged. I don’t know. They’d have that done in admitting.

She turned to the machines beside the bed and flicked her finger against the IV tube running down to my arm. We should be able to move you down to the surgery floor in a day or two. Prepare you for your next facial reconstruction surgery.

Okay.

She smiled. You’ll be fine, Mr. Chandler. And in a week or so you’ll likely know exactly who you are and you can call your family to come rescue you. In the meantime, you’ve got most of the staff around here talking non-stop. I’m sure you’ll have no shortage of nurses willing to cater to your every need.

She paused at the door, looking back at me over her shoulder. You came in with a duffle bag, too. That’s in admitting as well, but I would suggest you call down and have it brought upstairs. It seemed to be extremely important to you when you came in.

What makes you say that?

You were screaming for it. We had to sedate you to get you to calm down about it.

She left, but I wasn’t alone for long. Several nurses came in to offer me whatever service I might possibly want fulfilled. I waited until they were gone before I made the call Dr. Wistmore recommended. When they brought it—it was a simple black bag that I did not recognize—I had them set it on the bed beside me. The moment they were gone, I managed to open it with one hand. Just a little. Just enough to peek inside.

Money. The damn thing was packed to the gills with money. Cash. Millions of dollars in cash.

What the hell?

Who the hell was I?

Chapter 1

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Hayden

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I rolled over, thinking I should probably get my ass out of bed and to work. But it was so incredibly comfortable. The idea of sleeping on silk sheets used to seem almost pornographic. But whoever put that idea in my head was full of crap. This was so luxurious, I couldn’t even begin to explain.

These had to have cost a fucking fortune, I said.

Half my sign-on bonus. But they were worth it, don’t you think?

I rolled toward Waverly, my hand automatically sliding over her breast. Those nipples were so beautiful, the way they stood straight up as if they were saluting the ceiling. She was long and thin and...damn, her body turned me on in ways that I didn’t think I’d ever considered before. I ran my hand over both breasts, watching them dance under my palm. She grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand up to her mouth, running her tongue along my lifeline.

That’s nasty, I said, pulling my hand away.

She laughed. You like my tongue on every other part of your body. Why not there?

Because that’s just...weird.

Any other woman probably would have been offended by that, but she wasn’t. She just laughed again as she pushed me back and climbed on top of me.

We have fifteen minutes before we won’t have time to get dressed and be on time to work. Do you want to screw here or in the shower?

There’s a romantic question.

Who said this had anything to do with romance? You hate me, and I just barely tolerate you.

I don’t hate you.

It wasn’t a complete lie. I ran operations at Dragon Security and Waverly ran the computer information section. Seeing her every day reminded me of the woman who’d preceded her in the position, my fiancée, Sam. My dead fiancée. Seeing Waverly in Sam’s old office perpetually evoked her memory. Every time I turned a corner at Dragon, there was always the chance that Waverly would be standing there discussing the same computer things that Sam had been fluent in.

I hated that Waverly wasn’t Sam, but I couldn’t hate the woman herself. It wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t who I longed for.

Waverly watched my thoughts whir past, her almond-shaped eyes soft and knowing. Maybe you only hate me a little bit.

Maybe I did. And that cruel knowledge made me hate myself even more than I already did. The only way I knew to hide from sadness and self-awareness was sex, and luckily Waverly was always eager and willing.

I grabbed her around the waist and tried to pin her to the mattress, but Waverly refused to be moved. She was strong, despite the fact that she was half my size and weighed no more than a couple of sacks of potatoes. I gave up and let her push me into the bed, sighing as she leaned down and kissed me with a determination that only Waverly could possess.

She moved her hips and captured my cock in one nice thrust, swallowing me whole so quickly that it stole my breath. I slid my hands over her ass and tugged her down against my hips, raising them so that I was buried as deep as I could possibly go.

She sighed against my mouth, sitting still for a long moment. But then she untangled herself from my touch and sat up, bracing herself on my chest before she began to do that dance that only a woman could do.

I watched her, admiring the way her body moved in one easy wave, the way she ran her hands over her belly and her breasts before touching her own face, lifting her hair off her neck as she raised her hands into the air.

It was like a performance, one designed for my enjoyment only. But then there was the sense that Waverly was in this all on her own, that my body was just the instrument she used to make the performance whole.

God help me, I liked watching her in those moments. I liked the pleasure that danced on her face, the way she took control and did things to me that no other woman had ever done without a little coaxing, a little pushing. Waverly enjoyed sex in a way no woman I’d ever been with did.

Not even Sam.

I closed my eyes, pushing that thought away.

My cock was throbbing almost painfully. I moved my hips and she slapped my side, reminding me she liked me to remain perfectly still while she was rushing toward her orgasm. But today I just couldn’t.

I grabbed her hips and lifted her off of me, throwing her against the headboard of the bed. She cried out—which was unusual in itself since Waverly rarely made noise during sex—as I moved up behind her and thrust roughly inside of her. Now she was the one pinned, her body caught against the headboard with my cock as her stake.

I grabbed hold of the headboard and thrust hard. With another woman it might have felt like I was demanding submission, but Waverly was more than my equal in bed, as she was in all other things. She cried out again, her hand moving over the back of mine.

Her fingernails raked me, drawing blood as a third scream slipped from her lips. But it wasn’t anger or pain that inspired her scream, her attack. It was an orgasm that made her thighs quiver and her knees grow weak. She pushed back against me, her ass cradled in my pelvis, her muscles shivering against my cock, tugging at it, pulling me deeper inside of her.

It was more than I could take, more than any man could take. I came in a rush, the pain and the pleasure taking the strength from me. I collapsed against her, causing us both to fall in a heap on her silk-covered pillows.

Get out now, she said when she’d caught her breath. My boss doesn’t like it when I’m late for work.

I’m your boss.

Yeah. So?

I bit her shoulder. Then I got up, tugged on my pants, and headed for the door.

Thursday morning, right?

She tossed a pillow at me, but she was smiling when she did it. For once, I didn’t feel like I’d broken her heart—or mine—when I walked away.

***

There was a man standing at the reception desk when I walked into Dragon Security’s main offices a little over an hour later. He was tall and dark. He was wearing a leather jacket and his shoulders were slumped a little, like he was used to trying to disappear in a crowd.

I walked past, intent on the elevators, when the receptionist called to me.

Mr. Dubois? Could you help me out here?

I turned around, forcing a smile as I approached the desk.

What’s up, Lily?

She gestured to the man standing in front of her. This man would like to hire us to help him find himself.

My eyebrows rose. To what?

The man cleared his throat. I have amnesia, he said in a quiet but deep voice.

I looked him over, noting a fairly intense scar along one side of his face. It went from under his hairline to the corner of his eye, clearly created by a surgeon’s knife. An accident?

He’s been asking to see Megan, but I don’t think she intended to come in today. In fact, Mr. Murphy is upstairs getting some things for her, so I think she’s working from home.

It’s no problem, Lil. I gestured for the strange man to follow me. We’ll go to my office and see what we might be able to do for you.

Thank you, the man said, a lack of gratitude in his voice. He simply sounded relieved.

We didn’t exchange words until we were inside my office. I gestured for him to take a seat as I made my way around the monstrous desk, dumping the bag I carried—filled with the extreme amount of paperwork required for the job every day—on a side table. I settled in my chair and dug out a legal pad and a pen before focusing on this stranger again.

So, amnesia?

The man nodded. I was in an accident a little over a year ago. I woke up in a hospital in a small town not far from Austin and had no memory of the accident, the town, the hospital...nothing. They told me I had a security pass on me when they brought me in, but no one could find it when it was time to let me go.

A security pass? Did they say for what?

He shook his head. No one could remember. It had been a little over a month by the time I woke up. I guess no one really took that close a look at it.

I made a note on the pad and then sat back, my eyes moving over that scar again. Is that where you got the scar?

He reached up and touched it. Yeah. They said I crushed my skull and this eye socket. They did their best to repair it, but couldn’t quite remove all the scars.

Do you have any information on the accident? A police report or anything like that?

He nodded, digging in a bag I hadn’t even seen him carrying. He pulled out a file folder and slid it across the desk to me. Everything I know is in there.

I opened the file and was immediately greeted with a picture of a man—this man, I assumed—covered in bandages, lying on a hospital bed. His face was bruised and swollen, blood visible on his skin and soaking through the bandages. Whatever the accident, it had been serious.

There were several pages of notes from the hospital and then the accident report from the cops. It was the responding officer’s opinion that it was a one-car accident caused by driver error. He suggested that the driver—again, the man sitting across from me—had fallen asleep while driving, causing him to miss a curve at high speed.

I glanced through the rest of the information, but there didn’t seem to be a lot there.

Have you ever hired a private investigator to look into any of this?

The man held up four fingers. Four different investigators. The first while I was still in the hospital, the second just after I was released. And again a month ago. But none of them could find anything more than what’s in that file.

I closed the file and sat back. "What about the people at the hospital? Did you say