He had already opened his jeans, so getting him out of his underwear was easy. Peeling her own aside, she was about to guide him in, when his hands stopped roaming and he moved her away from the door.

Fearful he was going to take her to the desk, where they’d be on view, Ivy stopped all action and tried to speak. Dax’s tongue passed her lips and muffled her words, which went unheard and forgotten when he took them down to the floor.

Ivy had to give him brownie points. If he started pounding into her on that door, the noise would carry into the echoing cavern that was the garage and her colleagues would have a second-by-second performance to listen to.

Keeping them by the door, so that no one could walk through it and interrupt them, Dax laid her on the floor and pulled off his tee-shirt, stuffing it behind her head and guiding the end of it around and into her mouth.

‘Things could get rough,’ he smiled. ‘You keep it down.’

Spitting out the tee-shirt tail he’d intended to dampen her screams, she grinned up at him. ‘I have to make some noise. How else will they know how well-trained you are in pleasuring me?’

‘I’m trained?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re the perfect husband now, my evil plan worked.’

‘Shame that mine didn’t. You’re untrainable, Minx, and still don’t know when to keep that mouth shut.’

‘I know when to keep it shut, I just elect not to.’

‘No one tells you what to do or how to be.’

‘That’s right,’ she said, tightening her arms around the back of his neck to bring his mouth into close alignment to hers. ‘But you’ve got a long time ahead of you to try it, tough guy. You better use your time wisely.’

‘I intend to,’ he said, consuming her mouth, sating her passion and reminding her that fate can’t be battled. Its plan may not be what you first think it is, but life will always turn out the way it’s supposed to in the end.

Fighting Back

By

Scarlett Finn

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter One

For weeks, Dax and Ivy hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the Stark family or anyone from Dax’s former life. That had changed this morning. Dax had been talking to Blaser, his new friend and boss, in the parking lot of their apartment complex when Ivy’s hand landed on his abs. He wouldn’t have minded his wife copping a quick grope, except gratuitous fondling wasn’t what caused her to make the connection, she wasn’t even looking at him.

Dax followed her line of sight to see what had her transfixed and was stunned to see a long black limo on the perimeter. It held the attention of the group of residents loitering in the parking lot, but Dax knew why that car was here. Such a show of opulence meant only one thing: the Stark family had come to town.

His assumption was proven correct when the driver left the vehicle and rounded it to open the back door. Brad Stark emerged, buttoning his suit jacket, and he fixed Dax in his sights. Dax despised being a participant in any spectacle and so crossed the apartment complex parking lot in hopes of putting an end to it.

Still shielded by the open limo door, Brad stood with his head held high, proud of the garish display. As irksome as he found it, Dax wouldn’t reveal how the exhibition bothered him, so sauntering up, Dax paid no attention to the chauffeur standing at the head of the open door. Coming to a stop, with the car door in between them, Dax said nothing and waited for Brad to explain himself.

‘Care to take a ride?’ Brad asked, without removing his shades.

The gathering of residents remained outside the apartment building that he’d been living in with Ivy since he tracked her down here about a month ago. Making a scene wasn’t part of his agenda, so he granted Brad’s request with a single nod. The driver moved aside to let Dax follow Brad into the car, then closed the door behind them.

Dax chose the seat opposite Brad, with his back to the screen covered driver’s area. Neither of them spoke until the car began moving.

‘You need to come home,’ Brad said.

‘If that’s why you’re here you can save your breath and your gas,’ Dax said. ‘The answer is no.’

‘I didn’t ask. I told you, you’re coming home.’

‘What are you going to do? Drive me to the airport? Sorry, no ID.’

‘Brought a jet, it’s waiting on a private airstrip.’

His first thought was for Ivy. If he got on a jet with Brad, then California was their destination. If he didn’t get on the jet, then Brad would keep coming back for him until he got his way, and Ivy might get caught in the crossfire. Resigning himself to the fact that he would end up complying with Brad’s request, didn’t mean that he would give up without protest.

‘You have to give me something, a reason,’ Dax said. ‘You and Tryst miss me so bad that you had to chase me down?’ Brad and Trystan Stark were Maurice Stark’s sons, and they had been sort of surrogate brothers to him through the years.

‘Mauri wants to see you, it’s important.’

‘Sure it is,’ Dax said. ‘I told you I didn’t give a fuck and that hasn’t changed. I’m not interested in Maurice Stark, or you and your brother anymore.’

‘Still with Dune?’

‘It’s Harrow,’ Dax said, correcting Brad’s use of Ivy’s maiden name.

‘Oh that’s right, you married the woman you were supposed to be training for Trystan… You’re lucky he didn’t kill you for that stunt.’

If this was a different environment, Dax might have laughed. ‘If he wants to start something, he obviously knows where I am, tell him to come and visit. Ivy might even cook.’

‘You are still with her,’ Brad said. ‘Serg said that you were, but I’ve got to say, I didn’t believe it.’

Serg was one of Mauri’s henchmen and a one-time close associate of Dax’s. ‘We’re married,’ Dax said. ‘You think I’d have fucked around on the family if I wasn’t sure she was the only female I wanted?’

‘Do you want us to pick her up? She can join us on the trip.’

‘I haven’t said I’m going anywhere yet,’ he said, clenching his jaw.

Maurice Stark exuded arrogance, he was a superior sonofabitch who taught all of his sons to be assured. Brad managed it with eminence and authority, Dax did it with aloof indifference, and the youngest, Trystan, used overt ostentatious glitz to show the world that he was better than everyone in it.

Truth be told, Dax wasn’t like the other two, he was an unofficially adopted Stark. When he was a kid, Dax had been caught in the act of picking Mauri’s pocket. Mauri didn’t punish him, he brought Dax home to be raised in the servants’ quarters.

At least that was the story Dax had been raised to believe for all of his thirty-three years, until Ivy Dune came in and turned his life on its head. After her, he started to ask questions of himself, he rebelled against who the Stark’s had conditioned him to be, and then Mauri had revealed some truths that Dax would rather not have known.

‘Bruno bet money that you wouldn’t come,’ Brad said. ‘I took the bet. I knew as soon as you heard he’d said that, you’d be leaping onto a plane.’

Finding out that Bruno, Mauri’s contemporary and right-hand man, was his real father and the real reason that Mauri had taken pity on him as a kid, made him sick to his stomach. Grinding his teeth, Dax sought distraction in the world sweeping past his view through the window.