A Christmas Promise: Bought By The Billionaire Brothers, #9

Chapter 1

Laird couldn’t get her off his mind.

It wasn’t his usual style to get hung up on a woman – any woman for that matter — but there was something about the poor, fragile thing that plucked at some latent sense of chivalry that he’d never known existed inside him and fuck, if he knew what to do with it.

Lana Winters…beautiful, broken Lana.

So what was he supposed to do with this newfound obsession?

She wasn’t the kind of woman he could fuck and forget — she was the kind of woman who needed cuddling and real emotion and that was out of the question.

Laird Tiechert wasn’t the kind of guy who settled down and played house, no matter how pretty or alluring the woman was.

A figure stirred beside him, reminding him that he wasn’t alone and he sighed with irritation.

A slim hand reached across his chest to pull him closer and he withheld the urge to push away the woman’s touch. Soulless sexual encounters were his thing.

And yet, lately, they just felt, well, soulless. Normally that was the part he enjoyed. It was all her fault. She was all he could think about, all day, every day.

It was getting damn annoying honestly. So what to do? He gently lifted the woman’s hand from his chest and climbed from the bed, walking nude to his bathroom.

The second question of the day was how was he going to get that woman out of his house?

She was one of the Malvagio girls, which meant she was a shameless slut who enjoyed collecting as many dicks as possible but this one, seemed particularly attached to him. And that was just annoying.

He shouldn’t have fucked her but he’d been horny and bored and the combination of the two was enough to persuade him against his better judgment.

Well, now, you have this to deal with.

It’d been several months since he’d seen Lana.

He figured that once he’d washed his hands of her, he’d forget about her.

Not so. Not even a little bit.

He wondered how she was doing, if she was being taken care of, who she was around…what a pain in the ass.

His own thoughts were badgering him to the point of lunacy.

Damn Vince Buchanan for creating this mess.

Usually, Laird was pretty good at handling a crisis but he’d never experienced something like this.

Particularly for a woman he’d never slept with!

Quick backstory, as the story goes, almost ten months ago, Vince found himself in a rough spot at the sex club, Malvagio, when a woman who had no business finding her way into the club ended up getting more than she bargained for and needed rescuing.

Vince, whose first thought had been to protect the club, put the woman under his care, and then, of all things, went and fell in love with her. Laird never could’ve seen that coming.

Vince Buchanan, married?

What the fuck?

Was the world coming to an end? Surely that was a sign of the coming apocalypse.

But, no, the man was happily devoted to his new wife, Emma, even so much that he was willing to give up Malvagio, the club that he and his twin brother, Nolan, founded for the overprivileged perverted who were perennially bored with the mundane.

And, hot damn, Malvagio was a fucking playground of perverted pleasures.

We’re talking threesomes, orgies, drugs, fuck-all, anything you could possibly want with the express exclusivity of an Eyes Wide Shut secret society.

Who wouldn’t want to be part of that guest list, right? Crazy stuff.

So yeah, good times.

Until Lana Winters wiggled her way past security and found herself, wide-eyed and vulnerable, a perfect target for a man they’d had no idea was lurking in their shadowy halls.

Lana had been hurt — no joke — and that wasn’t what Malvagio was about.

Yes, there was plenty of pain happening in the private dungeons, but hell, Malvagio’s motto was one of extreme pleasure and if there was someone getting their ass caned, it was because they craved it, not because they were genuinely being tortured.

The things that Lana endured…it made him a bit sick to think of it because the woman, plainly, had been out of her depth when she’d found her way into the club, and no one deserved the things that were done to her.

Was that why he was so hung up on the woman? He felt bad for her?

No, he’d love to cling to that idea but even as self-deluded as he could be on his best day, he knew that wasn’t the answer.

He wasn’t overly burdened with a sense of empathy but that’s why the situation with Lana baffled him.

Back to the beginning…while Vince had been sorting things out with Emma, Laird had been taking care of her sister, Lana, who had unfortunately kicked off this whole series of events by sneaking into Malvagio in the first place and meeting up with a real closet psycho, ego-maniac who, well, for lack of a better word, fucking tore her up and nearly killed the poor woman.

Not exactly the kind of press Malvagio was looking for so he totally understood why Vince had made the decision he had.

But to ask Laird to care for Lana while Vince cared for Emma?

First of all, Laird a caregiver? Not natural.

He was a spoiled shit, much like the Buchanan boys because they all ran together back in the day but also because Laird didn’t do fragile.

In his clumsy hands he would most certainly break something that was already cracked.

So when Laird reluctantly agreed to take on babysitting Lana…hell, he couldn’t have seen what was coming.

So after everything had gone down, suddenly Vince was permanently hitched to Emma and they were off living la vida loca, he’d relinquished his care of Lana and figured that would be the end of it.

Hell, it should have been the end of it. But here he was, many months later still thinking of the woman that he shouldn’t be thinking about!

There were plenty of beautiful women — with far less baggage – they could spend his time with and yet he was sitting here obsessing on a woman who would likely offer him nothing but blue balls!

Maybe this was dengue fever. Maybe a parasite was eating his brain.

Maybe when Vince had asked for this particular favor he should’ve been a dick and said no fucking way.

But what was done was done, right? It wasn’t as if he could take it back.

Too bad he couldn’t stop thinking about her!

The bathroom door opened and a slim blonde walked in with a sleepy smile.

Her small tits were a nice handful and her long legs were made to wrap around the man’s hips — his hazy memory seemed to recall her mentioning that she was a model of some sort, but who knows maybe he was mixing her up with someone else — and he knew that they would probably fuck again in the shower but the prospect gave him little in the way of excitement.

It was almost a chore. But he supposed he had a reputation to protect.

I woke up alone, she purred as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her lithe body against his. I had fun last night. How about an encore?

He smiled and allowed his hands to slide down to her ass. I was just about to invite you to join me, he lied. I’m ready if you are.

The woman’s brow climbed her forehead in a playful manner as she glanced down at his semi-flaccid cock. Are you sure? Little Laird doesn’t look ready to play.

He just needs a little encouragement. Sometimes he’s shy.

Good God, what were these words coming out of his mouth?

He gently pushed on her shoulders and she willingly went to her knees. He smiled as she took his cock into her mouth.

The sensation of wet mouth and clever tongue always a nice one.

That’s a girl.

And then he closed his eyes and pictured someone else, someone he’d never had the pleasure of touching and yet couldn’t stop thinking about in some fashion or another.

When he finally came, the name in his head sounded a lot like…Lana.

Lana Winters, a.k.a., the broken girl, couldn’t quite get her thoughts organized.

So much had happened in the last ten months that she couldn’t quite fathom how much her life had changed.

At one time she’d been so different. Crazy, maybe even a little reckless. Always looking for a good time. Until Malvagio.

She’d heard about the secret club through the gossip chain, whispered in hushed tones about the sinful things that happened there and, of course, she’d been wildly curious.

It was an exclusive club, one where you had to be invited to become a member and you had to be sponsored by someone to get in.

She couldn’t even remember the asshole’s name who’d sponsored her. Everything about that night was a blur. But even though she might not remember everything about that night, she had the scars both physical and mental to remind her that terrible things had happened that night.

She’d almost died there, and because of that incident, her sister

Emma had felt compelled to try and bring Malvagio down, but, as things turned out, she fell in love with one of the owners, Vince Buchanan.

So, now one of the